the merchant observed so much more.
He was south of the village of Haouch el Harime, he was north of the small town of Ghazze. He slowed the car, drove off the tarmac and came to stop on the hard shoulder. He walked from his car to a small clump of olive trees. He pulled down the zip of his trousers.
While he urinated he had the time to check that the old upturned bucket beside the tree in front of him had not been moved since the previous time that he had checked.
There was no need for him to check the hidden space under the bucket. If the bucket had not been moved then no message had been left. He shuddered. If any man had watched him, from a distance with the aid of binoculars, they would have thought that he merely finished by shaking clear the remnant droplets. He shuddered in sadness and in fear.
The merchant had known since his last journey back from the Beqa'a to Beirut that an agent had been held.
The conversations at the road blocks had given him the bare information. The unmoved bucket told him which agent had been taken. The spy would not know the identity he assumed, but the spy could have revealed the location of the dead letter box under interrogation.
He turned. If any man watched him through the magnification of binoculars he would have seen the merchant pull back up the zip of his fly before shambling back to the Mercedes. He would not again break his journey by the clump of greening olive trees.
The merchant drove on through Ghazze, and took the winding road south of Joub Jannine that climbed the Jabal Aarbi hills, until he came to the village of Baaloul. At the village he was welcomed like a hero because he brought a new magneto for the petrol driven pump of the community's drinking well. In the morning, after talking late with the villagers, after sleeping in the concrete block house of the head man, he would go south again. He would drop his own message beyond the town of Qaraaoun, and then swing first west and then north for his return to Beirut.
The merchant was a man of middle age, grossly over-weight, a man of Moroccan origin and of the Jewish faith, a citizen of the state of Israel, and in the employ of the Mossad.
In the house of the head man of the Shi'a village of Baaloul, the merchant had slept poorly. His mind could not escape from the vision of a tortured colleague, of the fate of a captured agent.
Major Zvi Dan said, 'We cannot confirm that the recruits are at the camp, nor that they are under the command of Abu Hamid.'
'You didn't tell me that you were trying to confirm it,' Tork said.
'We were trying to, but sadly we did not succeed.
We had an agent in that region, but the agent has been taken… ' Major Zvi Dan sighed, as if this were a matter of personal grief.
'You had someone in that camp?'
'We had an agent in the area.'
'That's insanity. You may have alerted them, blown the whole show.'
'We committed a valued, trusted agent, now lost.
Don't shout at me.'
' S h i t… you may have blown it, Zvi.'
'Wrong. The information requirements given to the agent were vague and covered various areas. Whatever those pigs beat out of her will not identify our target.'
'Her? You sent in a woman?'
Major Zvi Dan slammed his fist onto his desk. 'Spare me your British chivalry crap. We are at war. We use what we have. Old men, women, children, what we have. You miss the point.'
'The point being…?'
'My friend, you may make all your preparations, you may – Crane may and the boy may – walk into the Beqa'a, take up a sniping position above the camp, and find that your target isn't there, perhaps never was there.
That is what I tried to save you, that chance.'
'I'm sorry,' the station officer said softly.
'For what?'
'That you lost your agent.'
'Friend, do not be sorry for me. Be sorry for her, a human being taken by animals. I will have lost a skirmish, she will lose her life, maybe already has.'
'London will be grateful,' the station officer said softly.
'That'll be nice,' Major Zvi Dan said, 'but I don't want their gratitude. What I want is that your people will very seriously weigh the risks before it is too late.
Tell them, so that they understand about real war.'
'I'm better than I was.' The sweat soaked into his tracksuit top. 'Can't you admit I'm improving?'
'Your sit-ups are average, your push-ups are average, your squat-thrusts are average. And all the time you're yapping, you're losing strength,' Crane said. 'You're still a passenger, Holt, so work.'
'I'm fit, and you haven't the decency to admit it.'
'Is that right?'
'Too damn right. You've such a bloody ego on your shoulders that you can't admit that I'm fit to walk with you. I know your sort, Crane, you're the sort that hasn't the bigness to admit that I've done well.'
'Done well, have you?' Crane smiled grimly.
Holt gazed up at the wall of the house. He saw Mrs Ferguson's face at the upper window. She was always there when he was performing his morning exercise ritual, when he went for his shower she would go down to the kitchen. The start of every day.
'I tell you what I think, I think I'm a bloody sight fitter than you are… ' Christ, that was stupid. 'I'm sorry,' he said, sagging back on the damp slabs.
'Wait there.' Crane snapped the instruction. He strode away, into the house.
Holt lay on his back. The sweat was cooling on his skin. His anger cooled too, but he knew what had scratched him. Planning and logistics were between Percy Martins and Crane. They huddled in front of the living room fire, they pored over the maps and over the inven tory of required equipment, and over the aerial photographs. Never was Holt asked for his opinion. He was the bloody passenger. He had not even been shown the aerial photographs of the camp. He had not been lectured on the Beqa'a, what he would find there.
He had not been told how they would go in; he had most certainly not been told how they would get out.
George was standing a few yards from Holt and watching him. He had a sly smile, as if there were some sport to be had. The dog was sitting beside George, quiet for once, interested. Martins had followed George out of the house. He was sniffing at the air as if that would tell him whether it would rain this day. Neither George nor Martins had the time of day for Holt. Something they thought bloody clever was being cooked.
Holt stood. He rocked. His legs felt weak. Of course he was weak, he had done the circuit of the sit-ups, push-ups, squat-thrusts, he had done the triple sprint, he had done the endurance run. He breathed deep, he pulled the oxygen back into his body, down into his lungs, deep into his blood stream…
Crane came through the French windows, out onto the patio. He carried an old rucksack and a set of bathroom scales. He put the scales down and walked into the garden. George was laughing quietly. Martins had the look of a headmaster who has to punish a boy caught smoking – this hurts me more than it will you. Crane was in the rockery, tugging loose the stones. Crane loaded stones into his rucksack. When he had brought it to the scales Holt saw that it weighed five and a half stones, 77 lbs. Crane swept the rucksack onto his shoulders.
'You say that you are fitter than I am. When we are in the Beqa'a this is what I carry, and you will carry the same. Now we shall go six times round the lawn, the endurance… but you won't have the weight, and I shall beat you.'
'I already apologised.'
'I don't hear you.' Crane growled.
Holt led the first time round. He tried to run easily, loosely, he tried to save himself. Past the decaying summer house, past the bare beech tree, past the rose beds, past the rhododendron jungle, past the straggling
