'Not a joke, it is real. It is for me. It is the paper of the Central Bank of Syria.'
'You have not done anything, sweet boy. You are a revolutionary soldier… why is this given to you?'
Abu Hamid stood his full height. He looked up, into the eyeline of Margarethe Schultz. He said sternly, 'For what I have done this is the reward of the Syrian government.'
She blinked, she did not understand. 'You have done nothing. You came to Syria, you lived in a camp. You went to the Crimea, you were one of many, you came back. Now you are in a camp in Lebanon. What in that history is worth five thousand dollars?'
'It is payment for what I have done for the Syrians.'
'Sweet boy, you are a fighter of the Palestine revolution, not an errand kid of the Syrians.'
'You insult me. I am not an 'errand kid'.'
'Hamid, what did you do for the Syrians?'
She was close to him, she stroked the hair of his neck.
'Hamid, what did you do?'
'I cannot…'
'Damn you, what did you do?'
'Don't make…'
'What?'
It came in a blurted torrent. 'In the Crimea I killed the ambassador of Britain, I killed also one of his aides…'
'For that they pay you?'
'For that they reward me.'
She stood straight, contemptuous. He saw the heave of her breasts under the brocade of her dress.
'Which is more important to you, the revolution for Palestine, or dollars earned as a hireling?'
He said meekly, 'I was going to buy things for you, good things.'
'I fuck you, sweet boy, because I believe in you I have found a purity of revolution.'
He handed her the bank order for five thousand American dollars. He watched as she made a pencil thin spiral of it, as she took from the table a box of matches, as she lit the flame, as she burned the wealth he could barely dream of.
'You are not a hireling, sweet boy. In the purity of fire is the strength of the struggle of the Palestinian people.'
She lifted her dress, pulled it higher, ever higher. She showed him the spindle of her ankles, and her knees, and the whiteness of her thighs, and the darkness of her groin, and the width of her belly, and the operation scar, and the weight of her breasts. She was naked under her dress. She threw the dress behind her.
She took him to her bed. She took the clothes from his body, kneeling over him, dominating. She straddled his waist.
When he had entered her, he told her of the woman who had been a spy, the woman he had shot. As he told her of the killing, she pounded over him, squealing.
Later, when he rested on the bed, when she had gone to the bathroom to sluice between her legs, he would reflect what her ardour for the clean struggle, the pure revolution, had cost him.
Abu Hamid lay on his side on the bed. If an Arab girl had burned five thousand American dollars he would have killed her. He worshipped this European. Could not understand her, her love of his revolution, but could worship her. And she had waited for him, he thought she was a dream of pleasure.
Her soft voice in his ear. 'Will they hunt you?'
'Who?'
'The English whose ambassador you killed, the Israelis whose spy you killed.'
'In Damascus, in the Beqa'a, how can they?'
'You will not be for ever in the Beqa'a. You will take the battle of the Palestinian revolution into Israel.'
If he told her of his fear, then he would lose her, he would be the assassin dismissed from paradise. He lied his courage.
'I believe in the inevitability of victory.'
She kissed his throat, and the hairs of his chest. With her tongue she circled the crow's foot scar on his upper left cheek.
He was a good looking boy, blond sun-bleached hair, a wind tanned face. The uniform looked well on him.
He wore jauntily the sky-blue beret of a soldier on United Nations duty, and his shoulder flash denoted that he was a private soldier of
NORBAT.
He was Hendrik Olaffson. He was 23 years old. He was a nothing member of the Norwegian Battalion serving with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. He had been eight months with NORBAT in the north eastern sector of the U N I F I L command.
Intellectually he was a nothing person, militarily he was a nothing person. To Major Said Hazan he was a jewel. Only to Major Said Hazan was Hendrik Olaffson any different to the thousands of private soldiers making up the U N I F I L force from France, Ireland, Ghana, Fiji and Nepal, men stationed in a buffer zone separating southern Lebanon from northern Israel.
At the NORBAT checkpoint on the Rachaiya to Has-baiya road, it was usual for the U N I F I L troopers to talk to the travellers as they searched the cars for explosives and weapons. The common language of conversation was English, and it was unusual for the troopers to find a traveller who spoke English as well as they did themselves. From a first conversation four months earlier had come the promise of a small quantity of treated marijuana. Enough for one joint each for Hendrik Olaffson and the two soldiers who shared the next night sentry duty with him. The traveller was regularly on that road, the conversations were frequent, the marijuana became plentiful.
In due course Major Said Hazan, who received a report each two weeks from the traveller, had learned of the political views of Hendrik Olaffson. One quiet day at the road block the traveller had heard the gushed hatreds of Hendrik Olaffson. The hatreds were for Jews.
The hatreds went far back beyond the life of Hendrik Olaffson, to the early life of his father. The grandfather of Hendrik Olaffson had been on the personal staff of Major Vidkun Quisling, puppet ruler of Norway during the years of German occupation. In the last days, as the Wehrmacht had retreated, the grandfather of Hendrik Olaffson had taken his own life, shot himself, spared a post war tribunal the job of sentencing him. The father of Hendrik Olaffson had been brought up as a despised, fatherless child in Oslo and had died young, consumptive and without the will to live. Many years ago.
Too many years for any stigma to survive on Hendrik Olaffson's record. But the boy burned with what he believed to be the injustice that ruined his family. All this had been vouchsafed to the Arab traveller at the road block.
He drove a three-ton Bedford lorry, painted white, marked with the sign of UNIFIL. He drove the lorry from the Lebanese side of the security zone that was patrolled by the IDF and their surrogates, the Christian South Lebanese Army, through the zone and into Israel.
A U N I F I L lorry was not searched.
He drove the lorry from the NORBAT area to collect 15 soldiers from his country's contingent who had been enjoying four days' rest and recreation in Tel Aviv. On the way south, in darkness close to Herzilya which was a northern suburb of the coastal city, Hendrik Olaffson dropped off the two recruits who had been selected by Abu Hamid. They had travelled in the back of the lorry hidden behind packing cases.
Of course Hendrik Olaffson was a jewel to Major Said Hazan. The major believed he had found the crack in his enemy's armour, a crack he could exploit.
When they ran from the road, into the night, when they watched the disappearing tail lights of the white lorry, it was Ibrahim who led, Mohammed who held the strap of the grip bag.
'Your man isn't the great communicator, our man hasn't much to say for himself. They're an odd pair of birds,' the station officer said.
Major Zvi Dan shrugged. 'Whether they can talk to each other is hardly important. What matters is whether they listen to each other. What is critical is that they have respect for each other.'
'When I saw them at the hotel yesterday, and the day before, the impression I had is hardly one of
