In the Syrian Arab Republic of today there are many competing Intelligence agencies. That, of course, was the intention of the President, that they should compete, that each should derive pleasure from a coup. It is the belief of the President that competing powers deny any single agency too great an influence. Too considerable an apparatus might threaten the stability of the President's regime. But the President had been a pilot, and in the Syrian Arab Republic of today the Intelligence gathering organisation of the Air Force ranks supreme.
Major Said Hazan used his second telephone. This telephone was the one with a scrambler device and gave him a secure line to the military headquarters at Chtaura on the west side of the Beqa'a.
'The interception of the girl with the donkey leads us to believe that the enemy has an agent free in the Beqa'a, also that this agent has frequent communications with a controller. An especial vigilance is required… '
He drew deeply on his cigarette. He smoked only American Marlboro that were brought to him, free of charge, by the toad Fawzi. Major Said Hazan thought of him as no better than a reptile to be squashed under foot because he had never faced combat. He brought Major Said Hazan cigarettes and much more in return for his licence to move backwards and forwards between Beirut, the Beqa'a and Damascus. The toad was a kept man, as much a harlot as his own foreign sweet pet.
'… We also have reason to believe that some 24 hours ago the enemy infiltrated a group from a checkpoint north west of Marjayoun into the NORBAT area between the villages of Blat and Kaoukaba. It is to be presumed that this group has gone through the NORBAT sector and will be moving towards the Beqa'a. Maximum effort is to be given to the interception of this group.'
In front of him the desk was clear. His papers, and most particularly the plan of the Defence Ministry on Kaplan in Tel Aviv, were locked away in his safe. His evening was free for his sweet pet. The good fingers of his left hand toyed with the clip fastening of the leather box. He thought the pendant, the sapphire jewel and the diamond gems would be beautiful on the whiteness of her throat. The pendant had cost him nothing. There were many merchants in Damascus who sought the favour of Major Said Hazan.
'I would stress that both these matters have the highest priority. We shall be watching for results.'
He saw nothing strange, nothing remotely amusing, in the fact that he handed down instructions for action to a full brigadier of the army. Major Said Hazan was Air Force Intelligence.
If the spy were caught and the incursion group intercepted it would be the triumph of Major Said Hazan.
If they were not caught it would be the failure of headquarters in the Beqa'a.
Now for his sweet pet, the only woman who did not stare at him, did not flinch.
They came back by truck.
Abu Hamid was the first off the tail board. As the chief instructor, he had the right to wash first.
He was filthy. The dust caked his face. His uniform denims were smeared black from handling the collapsed beams that had caught fire.
He had seen the results of air raids in Tyre, Sidon, Damour and in West Beirut, but that had been years before. Many years since he had stood in a line of men manhandling the sharp debris of fallen concrete. Many years since he had helped to manoeuvre the heavy chains of the cranes that alone could lift whole precast floors that had fallen in the blast of the high explosive.
They had been ten miles to the north. They had tunnelled into a ruin in the village of Majdel Aanjar.
Once the building had been a hotel; until that morning the building had been the sleeping quarters of a unit of the Popular Struggle Front. They had been amongst many, digging at the rubble, gently pulling out the bodies. There had been squads of the army with heavy lifting equipment, there had been the local people, there had been men of the Democratic Front and the Abu Moussa faction and from Sai'iqa. Those from the Democratic Front and the Abu Moussa faction and Sai'iqa had been trucked in as much to help in the recovery of the casualties as to witness the damage done by the air strike of the enemy.
When they had finished, when the light was failing, Abu Hamid had called his own recruits together. Force- fully lectured them on the barbarity of the Zionist oppressors, told them that their time would come when they would be privileged to strike back.
He was heading for his tent, he was shouting for the cook to bring him warm water, he was intent on dragging off his clothes. He rounded one of the bell tents.
He saw Fawzi sitting in front of the flaps of his own lent.
Abu Hamid said, 'From what I saw you could have been sleeping in the bunker and you would not have been saved.'
Fawzi said, 'Tonight I sleep in our tent, the Zionist gesture has been made.'
'It was horrific. Pieces of people… '
'We are lucky that our comrades martyred themselves, or it would have been us.'
Abu Hamid said, 'We are the more determined, we will never give up our struggle. Tell that to them in Damascus.'
'Tell them yourself, hero, there is transport coming for you in the morning.'
Inside his tent, Abu Hamid stripped off his filthy clothes. He stood naked. The galvanised bucket of warm water was brought into his tent. He thought of the orphan children. He thought of the mutilated bodies. He could not believe that he had ever hesitated through fear. He thought of his grandfather's home. He thought of the blood that would gush from a bayonet wound.
'I don't have any feelings for him,' Holt said.
'For who?' Crane helped him to ease the weight of the Bergen high onto his shoulders.
'For Abu Hamid. I don't loathe him, and I don't feel pity for him.'
'Better that way.'
'If I'm going to help to kill him, then I should feel something.'
'Feelings get in the way of efficiency,' Crane said.
They moved out.
There was a faint light from the stars to guide them It was the boast of the technicians who worked in the small fortified listening post astride the top of the third highest peak of the Hermon range that they could eavesdrop the telephone call by the President of Syria from his office in Damascus to his mother, telling her when he would call to take a cup of lemon-scented tea with her.
The listening post of prefabricated cabins and heavy stone fort circles was 7,500 feet above sea level. In the Yom Kippur it had been captured. The girl technicians had been raped, slaughtered. The boy technicians had been mutilated, tortured, murdered. On the last day of the fighting, after a battle of intense ferocity, the listening post had been recaptured. The listening post was of immense strategic and tactical value to the military machine of Israel. Beneath its antennae was the most sophisticated electronic Intelligence gathering and signals equipment manufactured in the United States of America and in the state's own factories. The listening post was situated some 35 miles from Damascus, and some 40 miles from Chtaura on the western side of the Beqa'a alley.
The Hermon range marked the north eastern extremity of Israelite conquests under the leadership of Moses and Joshua. The eyes of Moses, the ears of Joshua, that was how the present-day technicians regarded their steepling antennae towers concreted into the bed rock of the mountain top.
The problem lay not with the interception of telephone and radio messages from Damascus to military headquarters at Chtaura, more in the analysis and evaluation, carried on far behind the lines inside the state of Israel, of the mass two-way traffic.
In full flow, untreated data swarmed from Damascus and the Beqa'a to the radials of the antennae before the computers of the Defence Ministry on Kaplan attempted to make sense from the jargon of coded radio messages, scrambled telephone conversations.
Some communications received by the eyes of Moses and the ears of Joshua were more complicated in their deciphering than others. A telephone call from Damascus to Chtaura via a scrambled link offered small scope for interpretation. But radio messages fanning out from Chtaura to battalion-sized commando units stationed at Rachaiya and Qaraaoun and Aitanit gave easier work to the computers.
The orders coming from Chtaura to Rachaiya and Qaraaoun and Aitanit made plain to the local commanders that their origin was Damascus. The orders were acted upon.
