twist was on him, and Armitage was not personal to him.
The turmoil blasting him. He despised violence. He despised Jane's killer. But he had seen the eyes of the killer, he had seen the work of the gun of the killer.
'What are you asking of me?'
'That you join a team that will go into the Beqa'a valley in east Lebanon, that you identify Abu Hamid, the murderer of your girl.'
'And then?'
' Then he is shot dead.'
'And then we all just walk home?'
'You walk out.'
'And that's possible?' Derision in Holt's voice, staring up into Martins's face, into the smoke cloud of the fire.
'If you've the courage.'
'Who do I walk with and who fires the shot?'
'A man who is expert at crossing hostile territory, a man who is expert at sniping.'
'One man?'
'So you're better off that way. He'd be better off alone, but you are the only man who saw the target. You have to go.'
'Could it work?'
Martins waved at the billowing smoke. 'We believe so.'
'I'm a bloody puppet and you're a crude sod when it comes to manipulation.'
'I knew I could depend on your help, Holt We'll have some coffee.'
'I don't have the chance to say no.'
'We'd be disappointed if you did… I'll make the coffee. He's a first class man that you'll be travelling with, quite excellent. He goes by the name of Noah Crane''
'Catarracta is the Latin word for 'waterfall'. Cataract is what you have in your right eye, it is an opacity of the crystalline lens of the eye. At your age it is not at all surprising that you display the early stages of what we call the senile cataract.'
To the ophthalmic surgeon he was simply another patient. The examination was over. After the expla nation, a cheque would be written out at the reception desk. He knew the man was from overseas, he assumed that he was required for diagnosis, a second opinion, not for treatment.
The patient lay back in the padded examination chair.
He showed no emotion.
'In the cataract-affected eye there is a hardening and shrinking at the heart of the lens which in time will lead to the disintegration of the lens. The cataract itself will lead to a deterioration in your short sight. Now, Mr Crane, a cataract can be treated, but regrettably there looks like being another complication… '
They had been through the symptoms before the detail of the examination. Noah Crane had laconically described the frequency of the headaches while the viewing power of the eye was stretched, and the mul-tiplication of bright lights in the distant dark. He had said that he saw better at dusk.
'The complication behind the cataract is – and I would have to carry out a further examination to be certain – that the retina of your right eye is probably diseased. I don't beat about the bush with my patients.
Disease of the retina negates the type of successful surgery that we can carry out to remedy the cataract.'
'How long do I have?'
'You have years of sight.'
'How long do I have with my sight as it is?'
'You have no time. Your sight is already deteriorating. Everyone's is, of course, after a certain age. Mine is. Yours is. Without the problem of the retina I would say we could get you back to where you were a couple of years ago, but we have the retina, and that means your sight will gradually diminish… I should have qualified that. The affliction is purely in the right eye.
Your left eye is in excellent shape. Do you work indoors?'
''Outside,''
''Then you should not be unduly pessimistic. Outside you will be using your long sight, shortsightedness is not so important You should see a surgeon when you return home.'
'I understand that there's a place in Houston… '
'But the American techniques of treatment are unproven. You could spend a great deal of money, Mr Crane, a huge sum, and have no guarantee of success.'
The chair straightened to upright. Noah Crane sat for a moment with his head bowed and his hands clasped together. He could aim only with his right eye. He could not tell the ophthalmic surgeon that although he worked outside it was short range vision that mattered to him, was what his life depended on. No long range vision was required to peer into the magnification of the 'scope sight'. He climbed out of the chair, he walked out of the room.
So he knew. He had asked and he had been told. Time was slipping from him.
In the street he felt the bitter cut of the wind. The wind lashedfrom a side street into Wimpole Street. He wore light trousers and a light shirt that was open at the neck, and a light poplin anorak, Too many clothes for home in Kiryat Shmona at the base camp, not enough clothes for London in spring. In a small grip bag were all his possessions. A change of clothes, a wash bag, and a photograph in a leather wallet of his mother and her sister, and a small brown envelope. No other possessions, because everything else this man used was the property of the Israeli Defence Force.
He walked across central London, and then across the bridge to the railway station. He had seen his mother's sister, he had negotiated his price in the bare room on the third floor of Century, and the sight of his right eye was ebbing from him, he had no more business in London. He was ready to take the train.
The light was failing in the room, the shadows leaping from the fire. Percy Martins stood with his back to the flames.
'Crane being recruited was a master stroke You'll learn, Holt, that when the Service wants something it gets it. When the Service wants a man, it gets that man.
You're to be a team, a two-man team. Neither of you can fulfil your task without the other. Crane cannot identify our target without you, you cannot eliminate the assassin without Crane. Two men with one aim, that's the way it has to be.'
Holt was less than six feet from Martins, taking what heat he could that was diverted around the flanks of Martins's legs. He wondered why the man spoke as if lecturing to a full briefing room.
'Noah Aaharon Crane is 48 years old. I expect that's a relief, eh? No worries about keeping up with an old timer like that. His father was a British soldier stationed in Palestine at the outbreak of the Second War, married locally, got himself killed in Normandy.
'By the time he was 18 he had spent his childhood in Israel, and his adolescence in the UK. He joined the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, that was 1959.
He served with the Regiment in Borneo and Aden and in Northern Ireland, he made it to sergeant and his records speak of a first-class soldier. But his mother died in 1971, and for reasons that are close to him, Crane left the British army, flew to Israel and joined up with what they call the Golani Brigade. The file indicates that he had a sense of guilt at not having visited his mother – who was Jerusalem born and bred – for many years during the last part of her life, that a sense of blame took him back to her country. As an infantry man he earned a glittering record after his induction into the IDF. He was with the Golani at the retaking of Mount Hermon in 1973, he was in Lebanon in '78, he was a member of the assault squad on the old Crusader castle of Beaufort in '82. He was good enough to be a regular, he was hardened by combat experience, but he seems to have next to no interest in promotion. In fact it is difficult to locate what interests outside the I D F he does have. His only living relative is his mother's sister, living somewhere in North London. He has never married.
He refuses leave. There are men like that in our army, every fighting machine throws them up. They are difficult, awkward men. In time of war they are a godsend, in time of peace they are arseholes for nuisance value… I'm digressing… after the capture from the Palestinians of the Beaufort castle, twelfth century in origin but an
