Web of Spies

by Colin Smith

  Dove turned on the lawyer, whom he had last seen at the university. ‘Why didn’t you help me when I came to you, instead of having me thrown into your bloody dungeon?’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea,’ he said, ‘but it was necessary to make sure. I’m sure you’ll understand Mr Dove that, in our position, we have to be very certain about who we are dealing with. We admired your courage.’

  Dove was not above flattery; the indignation began to subside. ‘When do we start?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said the lawyer, playing with his beads. ‘And by that I mean a Palestinian tomorrow, not an Egyptian or even a Lebanese tomorrow. I mean that in exactly twenty-four hours time you will be learning to do things you did not think possible.’

  ‘Now this is the Colt Cobra,’ the instructor was saying. ‘It’s an evil little motherfucker. Cops in the States carry’em as a backup gun. Five rounds, soft nose .38 shells, two-and-a-half-inch barrel. You can wear it in an ankle-holster, a shoulder-holster or just a quick draw-sheath on your bel: and nobody sees you’re carrying.’ He twirled the snub-nosed revolver in his fingers like a Western gunfighter and started shooting at three Coca Cola cans he had placed on a little mound of earth about four metres away. All five rounds were delivered in rapid succession and the cans jigged about in a suitably gratifying fashion.

  Dove stood there with his hands in his trouser pockets doing his best to look nonchalant, but he blinked and bit his lip slightly at every shot. It was some time since his father-in-law had given him the demonstration with the Webley and he had forgotten how noisy pistols could be. ‘Of course, that’s just fairground stuff,’ said the long-haired Palestinian with the missing ear who had led the schoolteacher’s kidnapper. ‘We’re gonna teach you how to handle these things properly.’

  He looked like most of the other fedayeen at the training camp, with a black and white chequered keffiyeh knotted around the shoulders of his drab olive green shirt like a Jewish prayer shawl. Yet he was one of the most American Americans Dove had ever met. Now that he was a mentor he was more amenable to questions than he had been at their first meeting, and soon explained his background.

  His name was George and he told Dove that he had served a hitch with the US Marines in Vietnam, which he called ‘Nam’ in the proper fashion. Afterwards he had gone to Berkeley on the GI Bill and studied politics. His upbringing had been entirely in the States and Dove noted that the Arabic he spoke to his comrades sometimes appeared halting. He had, he explained, been taken to California as a child, his parents being among the few Palestinian refugees allowed to emigrate there.

  The lawyer had been as good as his word, better in fact, for Dove had arrived at the camp the previous evening. They had taken him south by Land Rover towards the Israeli frontier, turning off the coastal road shortly after the village of Adlun then following the mountain route through the market town of Nabatiye, where he noted that the chipped old stone houses had weathered Israeli explosives better than the holed and sagging modern villas. At dusk they had bounced along a dirt-track that skirted the stone revetments and glacis slopes of Beaufort Castle, the old Templar bastion brought out of retirement by a garrison of fedayeen. Finally they came to a coppice of pines overlooking the broad green sweep of the Litani River valley.

  Here were half a dozen tents almost invisible until you walked into them for, besides being pitched among the conifers, they were also heavily camouflaged with cut branches. Alongside the tents were several deep-slit trenches. Dove assumed these were a precaution against Israeli air raids. Positioned in a small clearing nearby there was a quadruple-barrelled Czech anti-aircraft gun plus a Russian Dushka heavy machine-gun on a stand bolted to the back of a pick-up truck, like the one Dove had dodged between when he made his dash from the villa.

  The schoolteacher rightly suspected that the camp was not a permanent training establishment. From conversations with George he concluded that it was one of the many changing positions held by the various Palestinian Freikorps who wandered the Fatahland area south of the Litani river. It was the sort of place where a man could be quietly trained to do a certain job without being over-exposed to people or things they would rather he did not see. Yet the tents were pitched less than five miles from Israel.

  The lawyer’s promise proved something of an exaggeration. They were anxious to get Dove to his target and, however dedicated, nobody can be transmuted into a martial superman in just over a week. This being the case, George wisely decided to concentrate on weapon-training.

  Dove learned to load and fire the Kalashnikov on single-shot or automatic, the mysteries of the cocking-handle at last explained, but the emphasis was on pistols. In the end, it was decided that the Colt Cobra was unsuitable because, for travelling purposes, the weapon had to be flat enough to conceal in the false panel of a suitcase. Instead, George selected a Walther PPK modified to fire a soft-nosed 9-mm bullet in order to give it greater stopping power. ‘It’s been throated,’ he explained to the schoolteacher when he showed him the automatic. ‘The feed ramp from the magazine has been altered to take the dum-dum. You could knock over a goddamn elephant with this.’

  ‘Where did you learn so much about guns, George?’ Dove once asked him as they came off the makeshift range. They were out of the conifers, lying in the long grass on a gentle slope looking down towards the Israeli border, having a lunch-break of flat Arab bread, tomatoes and goat’s cheese. There was a Flanders of poppies growing in the long grass and it was warm, but not yet the baking heat of high summer. Other men might have found the atmosphere restful.

  George lit a cigarette and toyed with the Kalashnikov he was carrying as well as a pistol. ‘Nam mostly, I guess,’ he said.

  ‘What, pistols as well?’

  ‘Sure. Some outfits were encouraged to buy their own as a backup. You could either get ‘em in Saigon or send away for them mail-order. I remember we had this sergeant, big black motherfucker, got himself a .44 calibre Derringer, you know, the little two-shot piece the cardsharps in the Wild West had. He used to carry it around in his sock. What an asshole. He got into a fight in some girlie bar in Da Nang and wasted half his foot. After that, word came that Derringers were out. Only proper cannon allowed. I used to carry a .357 Magnum, Smith and Wesson. Then I got wounded, mortar frags in the legs, and some motherfucking medic stole it off me on the medivac chopper.’

  ‘Didn’t it worry you, what you were doing in Vietnam? I mean’ - Dove searched for the right words - ‘now you’re part of the world revolutionary movement and all that?’

  ‘Look, man. Don’t give me any of this world revolutionary movement shit. I’m a Palestinian. I fight for Palestine. If the Russians were occupying my land I’d fight them.’ Dove blushed. ‘Sorry, I mean ...’

  ‘Sure, I regret it now, but I was twenty years old when I got to Nam, I was just a dumb fucking kid. I’d been brought up on John Wayne movies. I really wanted to prove I was as good an American as the next guy. Get my quota of gooks. Shit, I volunteered, remember. I wasn’t drafted or anything.’

  ‘And did you get them?’

  ‘Get what?’

  ‘Your quota. Your quota of gooks?’

  ‘Sure, I got some. I greased a lot of Charlie. I was a mean bastard. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for I’m the meanest bastard in the valley. Lot of guys had that tattooed on them. Crazy fuckers. Course, now I’m not so happy about what I did because Charlie was our brother. It was just that I was such a goddamn dumb asshole then I couldn’t see it. When I got back to the States, back to what we called The World, I began to realise a few things; began to think maybe I should have fragged a few fucking gung-ho officers instead of setting fire to people’s hooches and wasting farmers fighting for their country. I did a year at Berkeley then the Jordanians started butchering our people in Amman, Black September Seventy, so I quit and came out here.’

  ‘You’ve never been back?’

  ‘Once. A few years ago - to see my folks
.’

  ‘How do they feel about what you’re doing?’

  ‘Shit, man. You ask the dumbest questions. How do you think? They’re proud that their son is fighting for their country instead of guzzling Budweiser and chasing tail.’

  ‘But aren’t they worried?’

  ‘No. They know if I die it couldn’t be for a better cause. I’d be a martyr.’

  ‘Don’t you miss America?’

  ‘Sure, I miss it. Like a hole in the head. Ever been there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t been to England either so I don’t know, but the States is the most racist fucking society in the world. At least the South Africans are honest about it, which is more than you can say for those motherfuckers. Do you know what they called me in the Marines? Do you know what those comrades-in-arms called me? I’ll tell you - they called me Sandy. Know what that’s short for? It’s short for Sand Nigger. Bastards. Ever since I was big enough to talk I’ve had to explain who and what I was to a bunch of dumbfucks who don’t know whether to wind their ass or scratch their watch. I almost got lynched by a bunch of red necks in a bar in Southern California once because they thought I was a Chicano.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Chicano, Wetback - Mexican. Man. Don’t you know anything?’

  ‘We don’t have them in England,’ said Dove rather primly. ‘Oh, I say, we don’t hev them,’ said George in a travesty of an English accent. ‘What do you hev? I know you hev the Queen. Tell me about the Queen.’

  ‘Let’s leave her out of it.’

  ‘Why? What are you motherfuckers doing anyway. Isn’t it a bit goddamn backward to have a Queen in the second half of the twentieth century? Why don’t you shoot her?’

  ‘Look,’ said Dove, knowing as he did so that he was about to sound ridiculously pompous, ‘I would rather we didn’t discuss this.’

  ‘Rather we didn’t discuss it! Jesus Christ! You’re a fucking limey royalist.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m nothing. It’s just - it would be rather like me criticizing Palestine. We can criticize her, but you can’t.’

  ‘How can you compare a whole country with a fucking Queen?’

  ‘I suppose it’s something to do with patriotism,’ said Dove, in a faintly surprised tone because he had only just identified the force behind his growing anger. ‘You and the bloody Irish don’t have a monopoly on it, you know.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. Rule Britannia,’ said George. But after that he dropped the subject.

  On another occasion they talked about Koller. ‘What’s he like?’ asked Dove. ‘Have you ever met him?’

  ‘Heard about him,’ said George evasively. ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘He’s a meeeeen son-of-a-bitch, that motherfucker.’

  Dove was getting a little weary of George’s monotonous soldierly obscenities. ‘What exactly is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Like I said. He’s a real mean dude. Cool. You’re gonna have to be good for him.’ The Palestinian suddenly seemed to recall that it was not his role to discourage Dove. ‘You’ll be all right, man,’ he said weakly. ‘You can take him.’ He sounded like a trainer with a fading boxer on his hands.

  But the schoolteacher was insistent. ‘What makes him so special?’

  George sighed. Perhaps the Englishman ought to know what he was up against. ‘He’s got nerve. Of course, a lot of guys got nerve, but he’s in a league of his own. Listen, I’ll tell you a story. Once in Germany someplace, Koller was cornered by the cops in an apartment block. I think he’d just stuck up a bank or something and got separated from the others when they split. Anyway, the pigs had this block surrounded and it looked like he was either going to come out with his hands up or feet first. So what happened? Suddenly this character comes running down the stairs into the lobby wearing an old overcoat, his face streaming with blood, screaming, "There’s a crazy bastard upstairs with a gun. He punched me." The pigs all gathered round. "Where? Where?" they say. ‘"Third floor, apartment five," he said. Most of the pigs all rush upstairs. This character says, "I’m going to see my wife - she’s at a friend’s around the corner. No, I don’t need a doctor - I need a drink."

  ‘Before anybody can say anything he’s out of the door and away. A few seconds later the cops come tearing down from apartment five. Koller had been there all right. Just long enough to stick up the tenant, take his overcoat, smear his own face with tomato ketchup and tell the tenant that if he as much as poked his head out of the goddamn door he was liable to get it blown off - which, incidentally, almost happened when the pigs came storming in.

  ‘You see, what Koller was betting on was that hardly any of the cops charging around there would have any real idea of what he looked like. Sure, they’d all seen his mug-shot on the wanted sheet from time to time - so who looks like their passport picture? There aren’t many dudes around who would think that fast, have the nerve to walk straight into the cops. Most guys would have gone for grabbing a hostage and trying to bullshit their way out. Koller has class.’

  ‘His sort of class belongs in the gutter,’ said Dove in one of his rare displays of emotion. ‘He’s a murdering bastard.’

  ‘OK. So he killed your old lady. But it was an accident. Why do you want him so badly? If she’d been wasted in some automobile smash with a drunk driver would you want to kill that guy too?’

  ‘Yes, for a while,’ said Dove, ‘then I suppose the feeling would subside because society would probably punish the driver and anyway, however irresponsible he was, he hadn’t come to the conclusion that he had the right to kill.

  ‘But Koller’s different. I want to kill him for all the little people who don’t matter to people like him, the eggs sacrificed for his rotten little egotistical revolutionary omelette. For all the happy, decent people with so much to offer who get killed because they happen to be in the wrong place when some clumsy, righteous bastard decides that he’s got the G - given right to kill someone. And if I get the chance, before he dies, before I put a bullet in him with the excellent pistol you’ve given me, I’m going to tell him who’s killing him and why. I’m going to tell him just for the pleasure of seeing the surprise on the bastard’s face. The surprise when he realises that one of those little people whose life he blundered into was so ruined, so shattered, that when he had picked up the fragments of himself and glued them back, more or less, in working order the only thing he had left to live for was tracking him down like a wild animal.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said George, ‘by the time you finish telling Koller that he’ll have barbecued your ass and served it with three kinds of mustard. Go and show me what you’d do to Koller on one of those targets over there.’

  Dove took out the Walther and approached three life-size cardboard silhouettes of charging figures with sub-machineguns, presumably the Zionist horde, which George had planted before an earth bank. He got to within about thirty metres and using a double-handed grip, discharged all eight rounds in the magazine. He hit one figure in his cardboard knee.

  ‘That’s what happens when you’re mad,’ said George.

  ‘You’ve gotta be cool. Keep the madness buried deep inside.’ He banged his heart with his right hand and smiled. Suddenly Dove realised George wasn’t all bad.

  Dove didn’t know how long the course was going to last. ‘As long as it takes,’ George said when he asked him.

  ‘You mean until you find Koller for me.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘How will you find him?’

  ‘I don’t know, man. Not my scene.’

  By about the fifth day Dove was enjoying his training. The stiffness had gone when he crawled out of his sleeping-bag at daybreak before the flies reveilled. His stomach was becoming accustomed to the diet, and he was acquiring a grimy tan. He told himself he was hardening up; even his beer paunch was deflating. This new sense of well-being persuaded him to join the fedayeen in their daily regimen of jogging and exercises. Even so, he was in nothing like as good phy
sical shape as the others; several times he was halted by the need to cough up bloody phlegm or was doubled up by an agonizing stitch that left him feeling nauseous and very cross with himself. Surely he couldn’t be that unfit? He still played rugby.

  Otherwise, he earned a certain admiration from the fedayeen because of the speed with which he acquired new skills. He had learned how to take the pin out of a grenade and could throw one further than any of them. He found it helped to imagine slowbowling them down a sticky wicket. He would never be an Olympic pistol-shot, but at fifty metres he could now put an average of six or seven rounds in a six-inch group across a cardboard chest.

  George also taught him a little about street-fighting. He took him to the ruins of a lonely villa which he said had been wrecked in an Israeli air raid - only the grey ferro-concrete walls had survived. Here he showed him how you flattened yourself to the side of a door - they had to imagine the door - immediately after knocking, because no modern door could stop anything heavier than a pea-shooter and you could be shot through it while you were wondering if anybody was at home. He told him things over and over again until the schoolteacher could never remember a time when he didn’t know them. He told him never to enter a darkened room with the light behind him; he told him if you had to enter a room where you were expected, you charged in and threw yourself down immediately, to the left or right, but you must keep looking because you had to know where your adversary was before he had time to squeeze off his second bullet. If you could afford the noise and you had one with you it was better, of course, to roll a grenade in first.

  And he told him about the trick called ‘ballooning’, designed to put off a sniper attempting a head-shot. You imagined your head was a balloon on a string bobbing about in a gentle breeze and kept it moving like that on a swaying neck so that a sniper was rarely given the chance to settle his sights on your cranium. ‘Remember, for the guy with the rifle six hundred yards away, three inches of movement can be as wide as three miles.’

  ‘But how long are you supposed to keep it up for?’