At Close Quarters

by Gerald Seymour

  "Mr Crane, by your own hand, with your own knife, you murdered a poor cook boy. You are not a prisoner of war, Mr Crane. To us you are a common criminal.

  Do you know, Mr Crane, what is the fate of common criminals convicted of the murder of innocents ...?"

  "My name is Noah Crane."

  "We have in our criminal code, Mr Crane, an instrument of execution. In our native tongue we call that instrument the khazuk, sadly I do not have present with me such an instrument to show you. It is, Mr Crane, a sharp pointed staff that is driven down into the body of the condemned. To our judges the khazuk is a deterrent.

  It is the decision of the executioner into which part of the body he drives the khazuk. The result is the same, it is simply the timing of death that is at variance . . . "

  "My IDF serial is 478391."

  He heard the rustle of the cigarette packet. He heard the click of the lighter. He stiffened his muscles. He could not protect himself. It was the signal. When the major lit a cigarette and leaned back and inhaled, then the boots flew. The lieutenant kicked hardest. Crane gasped. The lieutenant kicked as if his promotion depended on it. He wanted to cry. Heavy toe caps belting at his shoulders and his back and his spine.

  "Mr Crane, I think you are a racist. I think you believe that because you are a Jew and I am an Arab you are superior to me. I think you believe that I am foolish . . . "

  "My name is Noah Crane."

  "Would you like me to demonstrate to you, Mr Crane, that I am not foolish?"

  "My IDF serial is 478391."

  The boots in again, the kicking and the stamping, and the hands going for his short cut hair and dragging up his head so that his face could be kicked. He thought he was falling, falling in a pit, dark sides, black bottom. He thought of Holt, white light on a hillside, white light of a bullet path over a hillside. Falling, tumbling, helpless.

  And he thought of the face of Holt, the face of the youngster. A thousand yards, and getting into five inches . . . God, the pain . . . God, the pain in the bone at the end of his spine. And the pain was blackness, darkness, the pain riddled through him, and he was falling, backwards, down.

  He felt a calmness. He felt a peace through the battery of the boots. A hillside. Rose flowers and oleander bushes and watered cyclamen. He heard the singing of the rabbi's prayers. He heard the rattle crash of the volley. He heard the beauty of the bugle playing. He walked on the slope of Mount Herzl. He was a stranger amongst the men from Kiryat Shmona who had come south to the cemetery, and the rabbi in army fatigues, and the chief of staff in starched uniform. It was the bottom of the pit, it was the end of the darkness, the blackness.

  It was sunlight on the slopes of Mount Herzl.

  "Mr Crane, because I have to demonstrate to you that I am not foolish, answer me . . . When you were infiltrated through the NORBAT sector there was an Englishman staying at the guest house of the Kibbutz Kfar Giladi. Why was the infiltration the concern of the Englishman?"

  He forced open his eyes. His vision was narrowed by the swelling at his cheeks, his eyebrows.

  He hesitated. "My name is Noah Crane."

  "When you were infiltrated you travelled with an Englishman. Mr Crane, who is the Englishman? Why is an Englishman involved in the infiltration?"

  He stared at the constructed face, at the pink under-skin. There was no challenge in his voice. "My IDF

  serial is 478391."

  He pushed himself up, the pain flooded inside him.

  He knelt in front of the major. He gazed into the face.

  He was losing, he had reacted. He thought of Holt, the clean young face of Holt. He thought he loved the boy.

  He thought he should have been the father of the boy.

  And he asked the boy for a thousand yards, and he asked the boy to shoot into five inches diameter. He felt the wash of despair.

  "Mr Crane, in me rests a decision; the decision that is mine is whether you go from here to a military prison to await some exchange, or whether you go from here to the El Masr gaol to await the convenience of the executioner and the khazuk . . . Mr Crane, why is an Englishman concerned in an infiltration? Why were you on surveillance on the hillside above the camp of the Popular Front recruits?"

  He whispered hoarsely, "My name is Noah Crane."

  As if they were the only men in the room. As though the tormentors had evaporated. The major with his surgeon's face, the marksman with his slashed, puffed, bleeding face.

  "Why are the English concerned with this camp?

  Help me, Mr Crane, because I am trying to understand.

  What is particular, what is important about this camp?"

  The major shook his head. His laugh tinkled. He used his hands - how could he have been so blind. The major beamed his pleasure at Crane. A low voice, as if he confided in the wretch who knelt in front of him.

  ' "Abu Hamid?"

  "My IDF serial is 478391."

  He saw the pleasure in the peculiar wide-apart eyes of Major Said Hazan. He saw the satisfaction curl the mouth that was lipless.

  "You know the name of Abu Hamid, Mr Crane?"

  "My name is Noah Crane."

  "Abu Hamid is the commander of the camp where the Popular Front recruits are undergoing training . . .

  Abu Hamid is the slayer of a British official . . . Abu Hamid is like a toy to me . . . "

  Again the major laughed.

  "You thought me a fool. You mistook me, Mr Crane."

  "My IDF serial is 478391."

  "You are boring me, Mr Crane. I have what I require.

  I have the target for your infiltration. You may take it, Mr Crane, that from this moment the target is taken out of the reach of your English plan."

  He seemed to see Holt. He seemed to see the jutting barrel of Model PM.

  Noah Crane lurched to his feet. The weight gave at his wounded knee. He fell forward. He cannoned down onto the sitting major. He saw the throat, he saw the grafted skin above the knotted tie, below the stubbed smooth chin. His hands found the throat. His hands locked on the throat.

  He seemed to see the corridor aperture of the telescopic sight, and the wavering of the crosshairs on the chest of a sallow skinned, dark haired man who was marked by a crow's foot scar on his left upper cheek.

  He clung to the throat. He felt the blows of the lieutenant. He felt the scrabbling fingers of the sergeants. He heard the shortening gasps of breath.

  He seemed to know the gentle two stage squeeze on the trigger of the Model PM. There was the sunlight shafting between the water green trees on Mt Herzl.

  There was the ripple of the singing, there was the floating of the flowers, there was the love of his people, and there was Holt's love.

  He squeezed. They could not pull him back. He could hear their shouts, he could feel their hammered blows.

  He clung to the throat. The man no longer fought him.

  He saw the pinkness of the face dissolve, washed to pale grey blue. He saw the pistol in the hand of the lieutenant.

  Noah Crane seemed to hear the youngster, Holt, fire.

  The Foreign Secretary slammed down his hand onto the mahogany polished table top.

  It was a theatrical gesture, but he was not ashamed of it. One of his aides took a shorthand note, for posterity. His two senior advisers on the Middle Eastern Desk at FCO shuffled their hands. He knew they were having an affair . . . An affair, albeit adulterous, between an Assistant Secretary and a Deputy Assistant Secretary, between two 70-hours-a-week aides, was a regrettable but supportable nuisance.

  Lebanon, the Beqa'a, was totally unsupportable. It was the end of the world.

  "I do not understand how this could have happened."

  The Prime Minister drew doodle faces on a pad and kept silent.

  The Foreign Secretary warmed, "Only at this moment of failure am I for the first time informed of a clandestine adventure into Lebanon. At no stage was I consulted, but for the record I'll tell you what my advice would have been: forget it, that's what
you'd have been told. My opinion was not asked for, and where do we find ourselves? We sent in two operatives. One is now captured and presumably pouring his heart out in Damascus. The other, untrained, will be blundering around in the Beqa'a, a headless chicken with capture inevitable. Prime Minister, have you any remote idea of the damage that will be done to British interests in the Middle East and in the Gulf when Crane and Holt are paraded in open court in Damascus? Years of hard economic endeavour, years of patient diplomacy, will have been undone by this folly. It goes without saying that I shall be forced to consider my position as a member of Her Majesty's Government."

  "It stood a good chance of success," the Prime Minister said bleakly.

  "Ah, success . . . success is different, success is all important, but we do not have success. We have instead a mission so ill-prepared that even the basement of the White House would have blinked at it."

  "If the brute had been killed . . . "

  "If, Prime Minister, if . . . but one is captured and the other is certain of capture. It is a disaster, and a perfectly avoidable disaster, had you chosen to confide in your colleagues."

  "We had to show our strength, the strength of the free world against terrorism."

  "Your concept of strength is different to mine. I cannot see that I can be of further help to you."

  The Foreign Secretary pushed back his chair. He swept his papers, and his map of Lebanon, into the mouth of his attache case. He stood.

  "Then get out," the Prime Minister said. "If all you can offer is the threat of your resignation, just go."

  The aide who took the record wrote furiously then slapped shut his notepad, buried it in an inner pocket.

  The Foreign Secretary led out his team.

  For a long time the Prime Minister sat bent at the table, digesting the loneliness of the room.

  And no comforting face. Only the prayer that the young man, Holt, was running, running hard, from that Godforsaken place that was the Beqa'a.

  As Crane would have done it . . .

  Everything that Holt could remember.

  The light was going down. Below him the shadows of the tents lengthened. He saw the first figures emerging from the tents, as if in the coming coolness their rest time was complete.

  He shared the rock overhang with a small lizard. The reptile showed no fear of him. He thought there was a cheerfulness about the lizard, as he would have said there was a cheerfulness about the chaffinches and the robins that came to the lichen-covered bird table on the lawn of his parents' home.

  He had cleaned the rifle. He had pulled the 4 x 2 cloth through the barrel, pulling from the bolt end, according to Crane's bible, because to pull from the muzzle end was to risk damaging to a fractional extent the precision of the rifling. He had pulled back the bipod legs and adjusted them so that each was calibrated to the same length. He edged the anti-flash extension to the barrel out through the scrim netting. He took from Crane's Bergen a plastic water bottle and pushed the bottle out under the netting, and then tipped its mouth so that the water ran onto the rock and dirt that was below the muzzle. He saw the dribble of the water, and the colouring of the ground. According to Crane's bible, wet ground under a muzzle reduced the chance of a dust puff at the moment of firing when the bullet and the gases burst from the barrel. A dust puff, youngster, can give away the firing position.

  As Crane would have done it . . .

  He had a degree in Modern History, and his special subject was 1653-58, when Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. He was an entry into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office through the diplomatic service "fast stream". He was a Third Secretary with particular interest in the political development and sociological movements inside the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He was on his belly and watched by a lizard and under a rock overhang on the other side of the hill. He was considering whether he could put a 7 mm Remington Mag bullet into a five inch diameter target at a thousand yards.

  Holt saw the tent flap move. He reached for his binoculars. Holt saw Abu Hamid step clear of the dark opening of the tent. He watched Abu Hamid yawn and stretch and spit.

  He looked for the length of the shadows. He tugged his watch up from under his shirt. Holt thought that the sun was still too high, that he must wait for a minimum of another half an hour.

  Zvi Dan said, "From what we've pickcd up on the monitoring they've lifted Crane to Damascus."

  Martins asked, "Will you get him back? In an exchange?"

  "Alive? If he is alive? Not for months, years, and then only if we have a jewel to trade. We don't have such a jewel. Dead? If they have killed him? They extract a high price. The last time we sent them back a swarm of prisoners, we had in return three coffins, in one was the wrong body, the other two were filled with stones. Does that answer your question?"

  From the bed Martins looked up at Major Zvi Dan.

  "Nothing on Holt?"

  "They haven't caught him, we would have heard.

  They know Crane was not alone, they have set blocks further south, nearer to the border."

  "Thank you, I appreciate your telling me."

  "It is too late to be angry," Major Zvi Dan said.

  Abu Hamid had not slept. He had lain on the camp bed and had watched the radio. The radio would tell him what fate awaited him.

  He thought that the radio would have told if they had found the body of Margarethe Schultz. He could see her in his mind, and he could see on her breast the crimson flash of the flower that he had laid there. He felt no guilt. He thought that what he had done was justified. He thought that what they would do to him would also be justified. Of course, he would not be arrested.. Of course, he would not go to the El Masr gaol. Of course, he would not be driven to a small square at dawn and be dropped from a gallows beam. What they would do to him, what would be justified, was that they would send him ashore on the beaches of Israel.

  In his spider handwriting on a food carton he had written the names of the ten. He walked through the camp. He sought out each of the ten. They were those who would stand at his side. They were those who would protect him.

  He would never be taken.

  He heard the first bickering argument flare behind him. One had not been chosen, one had been chosen.

  The imbeciles did not even know for what they were or were not chosen. But already the argument. When he had spoken to the ten men, he drifted towards the cooking area, and gave encouragement to the pressed volunteer who would prepare their food, and he kicked more wood onto the fire and spluttered in the surge of smoke.

  It was a bargain.

  Jane was no part of the bargain. Nor was his country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The bargain was with Crane, for his being taken and for the freeing of the hostage prisoner. That he would fire a sniper rifle for the first time in his life, try to get into five inches diameter at a thousand yards, no longer had anything to do with vengeance or pat-riotism. He would fire for Noah Crane, miserable old goat. He would use the rifle for Crane who had a disease in the retina of his shooting eye. He would not walk away from Noah Crane.

  He saw the smoke surge up from the fire. He watched the smoke climb and then curve where the wind took it.

  With the compass from his belt he could estimate that he would be firing on a line east south east. He followed the smoke trail, he matched the trail to his compass.

  This was the crucial calculation. If he made the wrong calculation then he would betray the memory of Noah Crane. He reckoned that the trail of the smoke was moving east north east. Burrowing down into his recollection of figures that he had once been told, he dragged out the figures showing a bullet's deviation with wind blowing at ten miles an hour at a deflection of 45 degrees. At 1000 yards the wind deflection would push the bullet a matter of five feet and two and a half inches off course. But at 900 yards the wind deflection would be four feet and a quarter of an inch. And at 1,100 yards the wind deflection would be six feet and seven inches
.

  Crane had said that the lying up position was a thousand yards from the centre of the camp. If Crane had it wrong, was 100 yards too long, then Holt would shoot 14 inches wide. If Crane had it wrong, was 100 yards too short, then Holt would shoot 16 inches wide. It was the difference between a killing shot and a wounding shot, and a shot that missed altogether.

  The target had to be still, and not about to move. To cover one thousand yards the bullet would need two seconds of time. If the target took one step in that two seconds . . . God . . . miss.

  The distance of a thousand yards had to be exact, because that was what the sights would be set to. If in reality the distance was 900 yards then the bullet would reach its target 18 inches too high. If in reality it was 1,100 yards then the bullet would drop to a target point 20 inches too low.

  All of these minute calculations had to be correct. If any were wrong, he would be breaking his bargain.

  Holt grinned at the lizard. The lizard was his only friend.

  He checked that his Safety was on. He eased back the greased bolt. He gazed for a moment at the bullet that lay in the palm of his hand. He thrust the bullet into the breach of the Model PM, then drove the bolt handle forward.

  He had seen two of the recruits fighting, teeth and boots and fists. He could remember the queues that he used to see outside the GUM store in Simferopol. Men and women queued outside the G U M in Simferopol without knowing what they were queuing for. Two of his recruits were fighting, and more were arguing, and they could not know for what the ten had been chosen.

  They sidled around him, those ten that he had selected. Inside the ten were four to whom he had assigned responsibility as squad leaders at the camp. Two of the other six were considered to be proficient soldiers on an all round evaluation. There was one who had scored five consecutive hits in training with the RPG-7. There was one who played with wires and the forces of electricity and who understood the workings of a radio.

  There was one whose twin brother had been killed by the Israelis in 1982, he would fight hard. There was one who would make Abu Hamid laugh, and who could write in Hebrew and in English, and speak the Jewish tongue.