He dialled.
He spoke with silk. 'Is it you?… A thousand apologies, I have been away, and since I have been back just meetings, more meetings. Too long away from you…
How was he, my pet?… How was his spirit? How was his resolution?… My pet, you would lift the organ of the dead… Excellent. I will see you, my pet, as soon as I can turn away this cursed load of work. Goodbye, my pet.'
There had been the knock at his door which caused him to ring off. He loved to hear her guttural foreign voice. He loved to linger with his thoughts on the smooth clean curves of her flesh…
He called for his visitor to enter.
Major Said Hazan stretched out his left hand in greeting.
'My Brother, you are most welcome… '
For an hour he talked with this military commander of the Popular Front over the plans for an attack on the Defence Ministry complex in Tel Aviv. That section which housed the rooms of the Military Intelligence wing was ringed in red ink. They discussed the method of infiltration, and leaned towards a seaborne landing, and they pondered over the sort of man who might have the elan, the resolution, to lead such a mission.
After an hour Major Said Hazan had quite overcome his sharp fury at the failure of the girl and her bomb at the checkpoint in the security zone.
Far behind them, far from sight, came the dulled reports of the artillery, and far ahead of them there was the brilliance of the flares bursting and then falling to spread their white light against the darkness.
Holt tugged at the Bergen's straps, wriggled for greater comfort. They were outside the observation post.
Crane said, 'I told you not to look at them.'
Crane had his back to the flares.
'And you haven't told me what they're for.'
'I'm not a bloody tourist guide.'
'Why are they firing flares, Mr Crane?'
'Because you're looking at the flares you're losing the ability to see in darkness. We have to pass through a chunk of NORBAT ground, so we are putting flares up for illumination between NORBAT positions and where we're walking, we're burning out their night vision equipment. Got it?'
'Would have helped if you had told me in the first place.'
'Piss off, youngster.'
'Let's get this show on the road, then.'
They hugged each other. A brief moment. Arms around each other, and the belt kit sticking into the other's stomach, and the weapons digging at each other's rib cages, and the weight of the Bergen packs swaying them.
They were two shadows.
The stars were just up. The moon would be over them at midnight, an old moon in the last quarter.
They crossed the road beneath the observation post.
They headed into the darkness, away from the road, away from the slow falling flares.
They were gone from the safety of the security zone.
Nothing in his mind except concentration on his fool fall and the faint shape walking in front of him. Nothing of Jane who had been his love through his life before, nor of the girl who had been his comfort the night before, nor of the leaders and the generals, nor of his country. Only the care of where he laid his boot, and his watch on Noah Crane ahead.
13
It started as a casual conversation.
At the airfield south of Kiryat Shmona there was a hut where helicopter passengers could wait, sit in comfortable rattan style chairs, for their flight. There was a steward dispensing orange juice, there was a radio tuned in to the army station, there were some pot flowers which had even been watered.
The pilot came into the hut to advise Major Zvi Dan that there would be a short delay before he could lift off with the major and the major's assistant.
'Up to your ears?' the major asked.
The pilot knew Zvi Dan. The pilot sometimes joked that he was a bus driver, that Zvi Dan travelled more often from Tel Aviv to Kiryat Shmona than any grandmother in search of her grandchildren.
'I'm down the queue for refuelling, for maintenance checks. Ahead of us are the choppers going tomorrow.'
Because the pilot knew Zvi Dan, he knew also that the major worked in military Intelligence. He could talk freely.
'Where?'
'Big show up the road.'
'I've been out of touch.' Zvi Dan sipped at the plastic beaker of juice.
'Bombers are going up the road in the morning, we're down for rescue stand-by.'
'So we're in the queue, and what's new? That's the old army motto, Hurry up and Wait.'
Rebecca read her book, almost at the end, rapt attention.
'There's to be a big chopper force on rescue stand-by, it's a difficult target they're going for.'
'How so?'
'The Beqa'a, not under the missile umbrella directly, but the fringe area. It's not the missile that's the problem, the target's just small, and for small targets they have to line up more carefully, all the usual gripes from the bombers.'
'What's the target?'
The pilot leaned forward, said quietly. 'We were told that they had good interrogation of one of those shit pigs that did the bus station – well, you'd know more of that than me, that it was all hocus them both being killed. Seems they came out of a training camp in the Beqa'a, that's where the bombers are going… '
Major Zvi Dan was rigid in his chair. His orange juice had spilled on his tunic.
'Heh, have I said something?'
He saw the major's back going out through the door.
Rebecca looked up, grimaced. She had not been listening. She went back to her book.
Major Zvi Dan, anger mad, pounded into the night.
He swung through the door of the airfield's flight operations room. He stomped to the chair of the flight operations officer. He pulled the chair round, swivelled it to face him.
'I am Major Zvi Dan, military Intelligence. I am an officer with an A level category of priority. On a classified matter of importance I demand an immediate take-off for Tel Aviv.'
He cowed the flight operations officer into sub-mission.
He could barely believe it: two men had started to walk towards the Beqa'a, to walk towards a tent camp, to identify a target, to take out a terrorist, and the Air Force were planning to beat them there by two days and scatter the ground with cluster bombs. Right hand and left hand, light years apart. Why couldn't his bloody country put its bloody act together?
He stormed back into the hut. He limped up and down the floor space, pacing away his impatience.
The pilot came in. 'You put a bomb under somebody, Major. We have clearance for lift-off in ten minutes.'
It was the same rhythm of advance that Holt had learned during the hike in the Occupied Territories. But that had been only rehearsal. Different now. In the Occupied Territories Crane had hissed curses at him when he kicked loose stones, when he stood on dry wood, when he stumbled and stampeded away small scree rock. On his own now, wasn't he? Had to make do without help.
Not that he needed cursing when he scuffed a stone, he wanted to punch himself in frustration each
