'Please immediately arrange for me to see the duty brigadier.'
'He is sleeping.'
'Then you must wake him up,' Zvi Dan growled.
'Regulations require t h a t… '
Zvi Dan lowered over her. 'Young lady, I was fighting for this God-forgotten country before you were old enough to wipe your own tiny butt. So spare me your regulations and go at once and wake him.'
This last he bellowed at her, and she did. She spat dislike at him through her eyes first, but she went and woke the duty brigadier.
He was in poor humour. He was a tired, pale man, with grey uncombed hair and a lisp in his voice.
'Major, I do eighteen hours on duty on a night shift.
During that time I take two hours' rest. My staff know that I am to be disturbed from that rest only on a matter of the highest importance. What is that matter?'
'You have a strike tomorrow against a Popular Front camp in the Beqa'a, located at 35.45 longitude and 33.38 latitude.'
'We have.'
'It has to be cancelled.'
'On whose say?'
'Mine.'
'The strike was authorised by the Chief of Staff.'
'Then he didn't know what he was doing.'
'Tell me more, Major.'
'That camp must not be attacked.'
'What is it? Do we have prisoners there?'
'No.'
The duty brigadier gazed shrewdly at Major Zvi Dan, as if his annoyance was gone, as if now he were amused at the puzzle.
'Do we have a ground mission going in – which the Chief of Staff does not know about?'
'There is a mission. The Chief of Staff would not be aware of the fine detail.'
'To that camp?'
'There is a mission in progress against that camp.'
'An IDF mission?'
'No.'
'Fascinating So, who can that be? The Americans, the doughnut boys?'
'The British.'
'So the British have gone walking in the Beqa'a, have they? How many of them?'
'Two.'
'Two British are in the Beqa'a. What have they gone to do, to pick grapefruit…?'
'There is nothing in this matter that should amuse you.' Major Zvi Dan stared coldly for a long time into the face of the duty brigadier. The coldness came from the freshness of his memory. Two men battleclad, their heavyweight Bergen packs, their bearded dark, creamed faces, their killing weapons. 'In liaison with our Military Intelligence section, the British have two men walking into the Beqa'a to get above that camp, to identify the assassin of their ambassador to the Soviet Union, to shoot that man.'
'It is the policy of Israel, Major, the policy of the country that pays your wage, to hit the source fount of terrorism. From that camp an attack was launched against your country. It is expected and demanded of us that we strike back.'
'You scatter a few bombs about, you may inflict casualties, you may not.'
'It is expected of us.'
'You will break up the camp. You will destroy a real chance of the killing of a single man whose death is important. Send that attack tomorrow morning and you ensure that two days later a brave pair of men will arrive at their target position to find nothing to fire upon.
Brigadier, how many times do you kill the people you want killed, for all the Phantoms, all the bomb weight?'
'Thank you, Major.'
'Which means?'
'That I shall wake the Chief of the Air Staff. Where will you be?'
He wrote on his notepad his extension number. He tore the page off, handed it to the duty brigadier.
'All night.'
'I make no promises, I merely pass the problem higher.'
The quiet returned to the room.
All of them, at their desks and their consoles and tables and maps, watched with the duty brigadier the flapping swing door, and heard the uneven diminishing footfall.
The girl officer asked, 'What do we owe the British, sir, with their arms embargo, their criticism of us?'
The duty brigadier said, 'The British were going to hang my brother in 1947 when he was in the Irgun.
They reprieved him 48 hours before he was to go to the hangman. I was a small boy then The first people that I learned to hate were the British soldiers, who had captured and tortured my brother, and twenty years later I was a guest at their staff college, the staff college of the Royal Air Force. We owe them only what is best for us, and that decision mercifully is not mine.'
In the small night hours, Major Zvi Dan's head lay on his hands that were spread on his desk.
The telephone was close beside him, and stayed silent.
The end of the seventh hour of the first night march, the time of the fourteenth rest moment at a rally point.
Above them, aloft on the steep slope, were the lights of the village of Meidoun. At the previous rally point Crane had shown the marking of the village on the map, used the Beta light for Holt to see it, and then Crane had shaken his head, as though the place was bad news.
Holt knew that already Crane had broken one of his bible laws. The bible according to the prophet Crane stated that they should not pass within a thousand yards of a village. But no damned option. They had been moving on the slope below the village and above the Litani where it ran fast in a narrow gorge. They were sandwiched. It was a bastard place, and the rules were broken. On the far side of the gorge Holt could follow the movement of headlights snaking on the road, going north. To the west was a Shi'a village, below them was the rushing river. To the east was the main military road.
Holt heard a stone fall. He heard a stone dislodged below him. After the long silence of the walk in the night his hearing was clearer than he had ever known.
He froze. Crane, beside him, had half risen. Crane was now a bent statue. There were the sounds of more stones slipping on the slope below. Crane showed Holt the palm of his hand, the gesture that he should not move.
There were the sounds of a young shrill whistling voice, and then the sharp bark of a dog. The whistling and the barking and the falling stones were closer.
Crane's hand was on Holt's shoulder, urging him down, down until his face ate at the cool dust of the rock slope.
God, was this where it ended? Not a third of the way in, not eight miles from the jump-off. Pray God that it didn't end because a village kid had gone after rabbits with his dog down to the scrub at the side of the Litani river. He tried to control the pace of his breathing.
Breathing was another of the chapters of Crane's bible.
Everything was down to control of breathing, keeping it regular, keeping it smooth, swallowing it down. He smelled the boy first, then he saw him.
The smell was of urine and animal fodder. It was a fecund sweet smell. No cigarette taste in his mouth, nor the cloy of toothpaste, nor the scent of soap on his face.
He could smell the boy clearly moments before he saw him.
At first the boy was a shadow shape. The boy materialised as a wraith out of the darkness below, but coming
