sea shore or taken them to a heathland of heather flowers or taken them to the serenity of a woodland. His girl was ashes, gone, dust, earth. So many things that he could remember of her. Meeting in the canteen at the School of East European and Slavonic Studies and thinking she was stunning. Waiting for her when she was late and the tryst was the pavement outside the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square and hoping to God that she hadn't stood him up. Coming to her own bachelor girl flat, with a bunch of freesias and a bottle of Beaujolais and wondering whether he would get back to his own place before the end of the weekend. Holding her and kissing her when she had told him that she had landed Moscow for a posting, and wasn't it marvellous because he was headed there in a few weeks' time, and cursing that for those few weeks he would be without her and she would be without him. Scowling at her because she had put him down for ever and ever, amen, in the corridor of the Oreanda Hotel in Yalta…
'Don't be childish, Holt.'
He had told his minder, his Mr Martins who worked the Middle East Desk of the Secret Intelligence Service, that he wanted vengeance. Bloody light years ago. He would know the man that they called Abu Hamid the moment that he could focus the lenses of the binoculars upon him. No doubt. He had seen the man they called Abu Hamid for nine, ten seconds. He didn't believe he would ever forget the face and the crow's foot scar.
Bloody light years ago he had wanted vengeance, he had told Martins that he wanted the eye and the tooth, both.
He thought that his desire for vengeance was sapped, he thought that he had simply never had the guts to walk away from Mr Martins in England, to walk away from Mr Crane in Israel. He thought that he was on the west slopes of the Beqa'a because he had never had the guts to turn his back on something as primitive as vengeance. He thought that he would in no way benefit from the sniping of Abu Hamid. He knew that nothing would change for Jane, nor for her parents either, even if they would ever know. And would anything change for him?
'I'd want him killed.'
They were at the seventh rally point of the night.
It was where Crane had told him they would spend the few minutes of rest. An exact man was Crane, each rally point reached on time, the perfect instrument of vengeance.
Holt huddled against Crane. The wind caught at the sweat running on his body and chilled him.
'Can I talk?'
'Whisper, youngster.'
'Where are they?'
'Ahead, perhaps a quarter of a mile.'
'And it's a hostage?'
'What I reckon.'
Holt swallowed hard. He caught at the sleeve of Crane's tunic shirt.
'He's more valuable.'
'Riddles, youngster.'
' 'A hostage is more valuable than sniping Abu Hamid.'
'You know what you're saying?'
'There is more value in bringing back a hostage alive than in leaving Abu Hamid dead behind us.'
'I didn't hear that.' Crane tugged his sleeve clear.
'To bring back a hostage alive, that is a genuine act of mercy.'
'Then you're forgetting something, youngster.'
'I am not forgetting a fellow human being in danger.'
'Forgetting something big.'
'What is bigger than rescuing a man from that sort of hell?'
'Your promise, that's what you're forgetting.'
'A hostage is alive, a hostage is an innocent…'
Crane turned away, his voice was soft and cut the edge of the night wind. 'I gave my word, youngster. I don't play skittles with a promise.'
'A hostage is worth saving. Is Abu Hamid worth killing?'
'I gave my promise. Pity you don't see that that's important.'
'They aren't worth it, the people who've got your promise.'
'Time to move.'
'A hostage's freedom is worth more than your promise.'
'I said it was time to move.'
Holt stood.
'If I ever get out of this I'll hate you, Mr Crane, for abandoning a hostage.'
'If you ever get out of this, youngster, it'll be because of my promise… Just stop pissing in the wind.'
Crane searched the ground ahead with the pocket night sight. They moved off. The gap between them materialised. Holt could hear the distant sounds ahead of the progress of a hostage and his captors. To the east of them, below them, was the village town of Khirbet Qanafar. They went quiet, traversing the slope side of the valley wall. When they next stopped they would be at the lying up position overlooking the tent camp.
In the village town of Khirbet Qanafar the merchant lay on a rope bed and snored away the night hours.
Many years before, when he had first forsaken his lecture classes at Beer Sheba and moved into his clandestine life in Lebanon, he had found sleep hard to come by, he had felt the persistent fear of discovery. No longer; he slept well covered by a blanket that he fancied had come from the headman's own bed.
Beside the chair on which were laid his outer clothes, the merchant had spread out two plastic bags of the sort that were used to carry agricultural fertiliser. On these empty bags he had laid all the working parts of the pump engine that brought up water from one of Khirbet Qanafar's three irrigation wells. He had dismantled the pump engine during the late afternoon and early evening, then he had eaten with the headman and the headman's sons. In the morning, after he had woken and washed and fed, he would begin to reassemble the pump engine. He knew the reassembly would take him many hours, perhaps most of the day. He knew that in the dusk of the following day he would still be at Khirbet Q a n a f a r. It was all as he had planned it. Crane would snipe at dusk. He slept easily, he was in position, as he had been told to be.
But how much longer, how many more years, could a university lecturer play the part of a merchant in spare parts for electrical engines and sleep in the bed of an enemy?
When he felt the softness of her body turn to cold, Abu Hamid rose to his feet.
The candle had gone, but the electricity supply was restored and light was thrown into the room from the alley way.
She lay at his feet. Only an awkwardness about the tilt of her throat and the lie of her head.
He went to the window. He edged the thin curtains aside. He saw the jeep parked at the end of the alley.
There was the auburn glow of the driver's cigarette.
He had been briefed on the plan for the attack against the Defence Ministry on Kaplan. They asked him for his life, and for the lives of the men who would travel with him. Of course, they would watch over him.
He lay on her bed. He smelled the perfume of the sheets and the pillows. He remembered the small, groping hands of the boy child she had placed with gentleness on his shoulder.
Heinrich Gunter was pushed down onto his hands and his knees. As he propelled himself forward over the rough rock floor he sensed the damp mustiness of the cave.
All according to Crane's bible. They moved through the lying up position then doubled back to circle it.
They settled. Away below them were the lights of the camp, and the chugging drive of the generator carried up to their high ground.
18
Flooding it with gold light, the dawn slipped over the rim of the far valley wall.
It was as if the valley exploded in brilliance, with the low beams of the sun's thrust catching the lines and
