source of the missile's energy unit…
It was a big operation. You follow me? All that had to be done. On top of all that we were also obliged to fight off the Syrian interceptors. It was quite a battle… '
'I hear you.'
'My friend, that is what is involved. That is what we have had to consider when you made a request for an airborne pick-up in the Beqa'a.'
'No helicopter l i f t… '
'How could there be? It is not even our operation.'
'Then they have to walk out.'
'Our marksman and your eye witness, and the hornet's nest stirred Do you think in London that they appreciate the teeth of the Beqa'a?'
'Too late whether they do or don't, they're committed.'
From a drawer in his desk Major Zvi Dan took a single plate-sized photograph. He told the station officer that the small pale patches in the magnified heart of the photograph were the tents of what was believed to be a Popular Front training camp for raw recruits. He went to his wall map and read off the co-ordinates for the position of the camp.
'We believe that is where you will find your man. It is a long way to walk to, a long way to walk back from.'
The station officer dropped his notebook back into his case. He leaned over. 'Crane is your soldier.'
'He is seconded to you. He is paid by you. It is your operation.'
The station officer thanked his friend for the photograph.
'I'll pass it on. Thank you, Tork.'
'I thought you should know immediately, Mr Fenner. They'll be on their own in Lebanon.'
They talked on a secure line. Henry Fenner, Number Two on the Middle East Desk at Century, and Graham Tork, station officer in Tel Aviv.
'I'll pass it on, but it's not my concern.'
'Aren't you running this, Mr Fenner?'
'I am not. The Old Man's given it to Percy Martins.'
'Is that a joke…? He must be ready for going out to grass.'
'I tell you, frankly, I'm not that sorry, not after what you've told me. And did you know that Hereford turned it down flat? For your ears, Mr Anstruther agrees with me, it's a no-no-hoper. My advice, meant kindly, is keep your distance. If Martins is going down the plug, where he should have gone years ago, make sure you don't go with him. 'Bye, Tork.'
'Thank you, Mr Fenner.'
In his office in the embassy, the station officer replaced his telephone. What a wonderful world…
Anstruther and Fenner, high fliers on the Middle East Desk, giving him the nod and the wink. He had met Percy Martins on his last journey to London, thought he must have come out of the ark. He thanked the good Lord that he was posted abroad, that he didn't go each morning to a desk at Century.
He wondered if the young man, Holt, knew the half of it, and hoped to God that he did not.
It was the crisp snap voice that woke Mrs Ferguson.
She stirred in her bed. Her eyes clearing, she peered at her alarm clock on the table beside her. It was 22 minutes past six o'clock, it was eight minutes before her alarm would ring.
She had good hearing, she could hear the words.
'At your age a fit soldier can do 50 sit-ups a minute, you managed ten. On your push-ups a fit man can do 30, you did eight. On your squat-thrusts you need to do 25, you got to six… '
She gathered her dressing gown around her shoulders, stiffly levered herself off the bed. She went to the window.
'You'll get fit and quick, or you're a burden to me…
She saw Holt, wearing vest and underpants, lying spreadeagled on the terrace, his chest heaving. Mr Crane was standing over him and holding a stop watch.
'Now you do sprints, three times 40 metres.'
She half hid her face behind the curtain. She saw Holt attempt to sprint between the edge of the terrace and the nearest rose bed, running like a drunk or a cripple, but running, not giving up.
'I reckon round this lawn six times is a mile and a half. If you do it in anything around eleven minutes that's excellent, anything over sixteen minutes is not good enough… Get on with i t… '
Holt was still running by the time Mrs Ferguson had washed and dressed and applied the thin pencil of lipstick, still on his feet, still moving forward.
8
A light wind caught at the tent flaps and swayed them.
There were bell tents for the recruits. From the tent area a clear track had been trodden to a single smaller tent, and there was another path to the cooking area where a sheet of rusted corrugated iron, nailed to four posts, served as weather protection for the fire. Eight tents for the recruits, and a smaller tent for Abu Hamid and for Fawzi when he was there, and the cooking area, they were all in a tight group. Away from the tents and the cooking area, thirty yards away, was a stall with three sides of draped sacking that served as the latrine pit for the camp.
Near to the tents for the recruits were air-raid trenches that had been cut down through the topsoil and into the rock strata. They had been dug deep, approached by wooden slatted steps and covered over with tin to make a roof and then the displaced earth and stones. In one last trench slit a door had been made to fit close against the heavy wood of the surrounds, and in this trench were stored the Strela ground-to-air missiles that were a part of the camp's defence system. Further away, closer to the perimeter of the camp, were three separate ZPU-4 14.5 mm anti-aircraft multiple guns.
The inner perimeter of the camp was marked by a close coil of barbed wire on which had caught fragments of paper and cardboard, and into which had been thrown the debris of old ammunition boxes and packing cases.
The outer perimeter was a ditch, hewn out by bulldozers, and with steep enough sides to hinder the progress of a tank.
To the west of the camp was the wall of the side of the Beqa'a, to the north three miles away was a small Syrian camp housing a company of regular commandos, to the east was the full flat stretch of the width of the valley floor, to the south was a Shi'a Muslim village.
The camp had been sited 24 miles from the southern extremity of the Beqa'a. At its nearest point, the Israeli border was 36 miles from the camp. It was considered a safe haven.
Abu Hamid hated the place, hated the dirt and the filth and the smells of the camp. He hated the recruits who were his responsibility. He hated the flies in the day, and the mosquitoes that came at dusk from the irrigation ditch beyond the perimeter, and the rats that swarmed at night from the coiled wire. He hated the food that was cooked dry under the corrugated iron roof and over the open wood fire. He hated the relaxed calm of Fawzi who was the Syrian spy in place to watch over him. He hated the boredom of the training routine.
Most of all he hated the isolation of the camp.
He had requested of Fawzi the necessary pass that would have enabled him to get to Damascus to see his Margarethe. Of course, the requests were not refused.
Nothing was ever refused by the Syrians, the requests' were only diverted, there was just the hinted promise that later everything would be possible.
For two weeks he had been a prisoner.
In two weeks he had not seen Major Said Hazan, nor had he seen any of the big men of the Popular Front.
Of course, he knew that the Doctor, the inspiration of the Popular Front, could not travel into the valley, could not expose himself that close to the territory of the Zionist enemy, but there were others that could have come,
