they would make the final LUP on the ground above the tent camp. He showed him by which way they would skirt the high village above the valley of Khirbet Qanafar, how they would be sandwiched between Khirbet Qanafar and the twin village of Kafraiya, he showed him where, above them on the Jabal el Barouk, was positioned the sensitive Syrian listening and radar post. He showed Holt, on the map, from where he would shoot, with the sun behind him, with the sun in the eyes of those in the camp.
Happiness for Holt, because he had won acceptance.
He was trusted.
'And you want him dead, Mr Crane?'
'Just a soldier, being paid to do what I'm told.'
'Being paid a hell of a lot.'
'A chicken shit price for what I'm doing.'
'I'm not being paid,' Holt said.
'Your problem, youngster.'
'I saw your room back at base camp, I couldn't see what you'd spend your money on.'
Crane smiled, expressionless, but there was a sharp glint in his eyes. 'Too long to tell you about.'
A curtain fell in that moment, then Crane's face moved. Holt saw the flicker of regret. He thought a scalpel had nudged a root nerve.
'Have you ever been paid before, to kill a man?'
'Just taken my army pay.'
'Have you killed many men, Mr Crane?'
'Youngster, I don't notch them up… I do what I'm paid to do, I try to be good at what I'm paid for doing.'
'Is it a few men, is it a lot of men, that you've killed?'
'Sort of between the two, youngster.'
Holt watched him, watched the way he casually cleaned the dirt out from behind his nails, then abandoned that, began to use a toothpick in his mouth.
'Is it different, killing a man in battlefield conditions to killing a man that you've stalked, marked out?'
'To me, no.'
'Do you think about the man you're going to kill at long range? Do you wonder about him, about whether he's guilty or he's innocent?'
'Not a lot.'
'It would worry me sick.'
'Let's hope you never have to worry yourself. Look at you, you're privileged, you're educated, you're smart, people like you don't get involved in this sort of dirt.'
'This time I have.'
'… most times people like you pay jerks to get these things done. Got me?'
'But don't you feel anything?'
'I kind of cover my feelings, that way they don't get to spit in your face.'
'What's your future, Mr Crane?'
Again the quiet smile. 'What's yours, youngster?'
Holt was watching a bird like an eagle soar towards the summits above him. A beautiful, magnificent bird.
He thought it must be from the family of eagles. No flap of the wings, just the drifting glide of power, freedom.
He grinned, 'I suppose we get out of here?'
'Or I wouldn't have come. I don't buy one way tickets, I came and I aim to leave.'
'I'll go back to England, then I have to make the big decision of where the next move is. I can stay in Foreign and Commonwealth, as if nothing had ever happened, as if Jane Canning hadn't existed. Or I can quit… I could walk out on them, I could teach, go into business.
Now, I don't know. Where I came from is rough, wild country. It's at peace. Nothing ever happens down there. In our village, if they knew I was in Lebanon, well, half of them wouldn't know where it was.'
'You're lucky to have options,' Crane said.
'What's your future?'
'I'm getting old for this rubbish.'
The bird was brilliant against the fall of the sun. The light in the gorge behind him was greying. The bird was the size of the lofty buzzards that he knew from Exmoor.
'What does an old sniper do in his retirement?'
'Sits at the pavement cafes on Dizengoff, listens to all the talk, and has nothing to say. You can't boast about my work, my work never existed. An old sniper in retirement, youngster, is a lonely bastard.'
'Come to England.'
Crane snorted.
'Where I live, you'd like that.'
'Leave it, Holt.'
He persisted. 'It would be fantastic for you.' He smiled as he planned Crane's retirement. 'You could work for the water people, a bailiff on the salmon runs.
You could be a gamekeeper. It's a huge park area, they need rangers for t h a t… '
'You're all right, youngster, but not all right enough to organise me.'
'You'll have the money to set yourself up, you could buy… '
'The money's spoken for.'
He searched for the bird, couldn't find the damned thing. His eyes raked the crest of the hill. He looked into the sun. He cursed. Eternal damnation in Noah Crane's bible was to look directly into light, self inflicted blindness.
Crane said, 'It's a difficult walk tonight, youngster.
It's where we can hit Syrian regular army patrols, or Hezbollah, or just Shi'a village trash. Tonight it starts to get serious.'
'I hear you, Mr Crane.'
There was the start of a blister coming on his left heel, Holt didn't mention it, nor did he speak of the sores coming on his shoulders from the Bergen straps.
He started to change the rounds in the magazines for the Armalite.
Later, when it was fully dark, he would move away from the rock cleft and squat down, and then he would learn to wipe his backside with a smooth stone. Bloody well looking forward to that, wasn't he?
The deal was struck in the hallway of the house, not that Heinrich Gunter knew of this transaction.
Heinrich Gunter, banker from Europe with a fine apartment and a salary and pension scheme to match, lay tightly bound on the cellar floor below the hallway.
He knew he was in a cellar because almost as soon as he had been brought in from the street he had been bustled down a stairway. He was still blindfolded. His wrists were securely tied behind his back. There was lashed rope biting into the skin of his ankles. He had lost his spectacles when he had been hauled out of the taxi. His tongue could run on the chipped edge of his broken tooth, behind the swelling of his bruised lip.
In the hallway of the house, Gunter was sold on.
There was a gentle irony that amongst the men who regarded the United States of America as the Great Satan the currency of the transaction should be American dollars, cash.
For 25,000 American dollars, the Swiss banker became the property not of the freelancing adventurers who had kidnapped him, but of the Party of God, the Hezbollah.
The money was passed in a satchel, hands were shaken, kisses exchanged. Within a few minutes, the time taken to swill a bottle of flat, warm Pepsi-Cola, the cellar had been opened, and Gunter lifted without ceremony or consideration up the steps, into the street, down into the boot of a car.
He was in darkness, in terror, half choking on the exhaust fumes.
Because the information provided by the traveller moved raw and unprocessed by any other Intelligence officer direct to the desk of Major Said Hazan, the call that he made gave him pure satisfaction.
