Major Said Hazan stood in front of his mirror. He tugged down the jacket of his uniform, he straightened his tie, he smoothed back the few hairs left on his scalp.
'I have bad news, Prime Minister.'
The Director General stood in the centre of the room.
His pipe was in his pocket. The Prime Minister had been in a full meeting of the Cabinet. A note had been carried in, the discussion on the plight of the inner cities had been shelved, the Prime Minister had come out.
The Prime Minister was at the window, staring down at the spring bursting garden.
'Lebanon?' The voice was a murmur.
'You will remember that we sent two men in. We sent an expert in covert infiltration who was also an accomplished marksman, and we sent the young diplomat who was the eyewitness… '
'Of course I remember.'
'We have lost the marksman. The marksman has been captured alive by the Syrians, and taken by helicopter to Damascus.' It was the voice of a bell tolling.
'This is neither more nor less than I expected.'
'The diplomat has not been held.'
'And I wanted it called off.'
'You said, Prime Minister, that the diplomat was fortunate to have the chance of real adventure. He has that chance now.'
'Where did it happen?'
'In the target area.'
'Holt, that's his name isn't it, the diplomat? Can he get out?'
'Frankly, no,' the Director General said curtly.
'They were at the target and they had not fired?'
'If they had succeeded at the target we would have known of it. There is no information.'
The Prime Minister twisted, venom in the eyes, a spit in the words. 'You have made a fool of me. I will be ridiculed in the chancelleries of Europe, in Washington.
This government will be badly damaged. You don't concern yourself, of course, with such matters.'
'Prime Minister, my concern at present is for the safety of young Holt, and it is for the life of Noah Crane.'
'And if your Mr Holt is captured or killed, as seems most probable, will you still blather to me about vengeance? Will you send another clandestine team to Lebanon?… It was utterly preposterous, indeed it was criminally stupid.'
'Recriminations, Prime Minister, regrettably do not help them.'
'And what does help them, pray?'
'Sadly, nothing that I know of. I will keep you informed, Prime Minister.'
When he had gone, the room was silent. The Prime Minister paced. Beyond the closed window the wind whipped the dust on Horse Guards and bent the trees in the walled garden. The clouds scurried low, the lights were dull in the room, and the face of Holt was unknown. The Prime Minister's lips pursed in angry concentration, but no effort could conjure up the face of the boy in such danger, nor of the assassin Abu Hamid, nor of the far away terrain of the Beqa'a.
The Prime Minister lifted a telephone, asked for the Cabinet Secretary in his Downing Street office.
The Prime Minister said briskly, 'A covert mission in Lebanon has failed. I want the Foreign Secretary here at two, I want his principal Middle East people with him… ' The Prime Minister paused, 'And I would like you to draw up a list of names, three, four if you prefer, for us to consider as replacements for the Director General… Casualties? What do you mean, are there casualties? My dear man, we are dealing with a diplomatic catastrophe, not a train derailment.'
The Prime Minister went to lunch – soup and whole-meal bread and a glass of fresh orange juice. A working lunch with close advisers, and the agenda involved future government initiatives to encourage industrial investment in Scotland.
He ate his food cold. Holt did not dare light the hexamine tablets to heat the water. The packet told him that the dehydrated flakes were intended as a beef goulash. He poured cold water into the packet and stirred it to a dark porridge with his finger. He ate as much as he could, as much as he could without vomiting. He drank a pint of water. He checked his watch, he measured the passing of the afternoon. He tried not to think of Noah Crane.
When he had eaten and when he had drunk, when he had stifled the hunger pain, and the pain of isolation, Holt took the condom from the barrel of the Model PM.
Meticulously, stage by stage he started to clean the rifle with the graphite grease.
From his vantage point, as he wiped the working parts of the rifle, he gazed down onto the tent camp. He reckoned the siesta would soon be finished, he reckoned they would emerge soon.
As Crane would have done it…
Holt couldn't help himself, couldn't wipe away the thoughts of Crane, tried and failed. In a dungeon, in a basement, in a cell. The interrogators howling at him, the blows raining on him.
He wondered if he would have the time, the time to wait until he was ready, until the sun started to slide in the late afternoon.
He said, 'My name is Noah Crane. My IDF serial is 478391.'
The kick heaved him across the tiled floor.
'My name is Noah Crane… '
The army boot again, into the kidney area at the small of his back.
'My IDF serial is 478391.'
The army boot stamped onto the knuckle of his hand.
His eyes were closed. They had gone with their gloved fists for his eyes first. His eyes were puffed shut. His leg, where the 12.7mm round had taken away the flesh tissue and the bone at the knee, no longer hurt him.
Too much hurt from the fresher wounds. He was not handcuffed and his legs were not tied, yet he was too weak, too exhausted, to protect himself. He lay on his side, he tried to curl himself forward into his sleeping position, but that was no protection because they could then kick the back of his head, the back of his neck, the small of his back, the base of his spine. He knew that there were four of them in the room. He knew they were high in the building because strong light filtered through the dropped V e n e t i a n blinds. He knew that in the room were two men who wore the uniforms and arm markings of sergeants in the Air Force. He knew that also in the room was the lieutenant who had brought him from the Beqa'a. He knew that these three men were not the ones that mattered. The one who did matter wore the uniform of a major. The man sat on a hard wooden chair against the wall and ground his spent cigarettes on the tiles. The face of the man had been rebuilt. Before his eyes had closed he had seen the smooth baby skin of the major who asked the questions in quiet and cultured English.
'Mr Crane, you are being your own enemy.'
'My name is Noah Crane.'
'You need attention for your leg, the doctors and the nurses and the surgeons are waiting… '
'My IDF serial is 478391.'
'You have to tell me what was the tasking of your mission into the Beqa'a… '
'My name is Noah Crane.'
'You have to tell me what was the object of your mission.'
'My IDF serial is 478391.'
'Mr Crane, by your own hand, with your own knife, you murdered a poor cook boy. You are not a prisoner of war, Mr Crane. To us you are a common criminal.
Do you know, Mr Crane, what is the fate of common criminals convicted of the murder of innocents…?'
'My name is Noah Crane.'
'We have in our criminal code, Mr Crane, an instrument of execution. In our native tongue we call that instrument the khazuk, sadly I do not have present with me such an instrument to show you. It is, Mr Crane, a sharp pointed staff that is driven down into the body of the condemned. To our judges the khazuk is a deterrent.
It is the decision of the executioner into which part of the body he drives the khazuk. The result is the same, it is simply the timing of death that is at variance… '
