the two can be married together.' The journalist began to take a quick note in his pocket-sized pad of the form of words he would use.
The two men attacked their meal, pulling with their fingers at the larger bones, spitting out the smaller ones, and dousing their hands in the bowls provided. The terrace was quite empty, other than the two diners at this one table. When he had finished the commando leaned forward. There was no one within yards who could have overheard what he said, but old habits die hard.
'The reports speak of two men being found in the car.
There could be no doubt of that one fact?'
'No doubt at all. That is common to all the stories.'
'And if they had captured a prisoner, a third man, would they have released that information?'
'Most likely,' the journalist replied. 'It is not the sort of thing they are going to hold secret. There is no reason for them to.'
Again the smile played around the mouth of the General Command's leader, dallied there a little, and then faded.
He was not one given to conventional humour. One would not expect that from the man who was responsible for a morning's carnage at the bright modern Fiumincino Airport of Rome that left thirty-one dead, nor from the man who ordered his subordinates into the northern Israeli settlement of Kiryat Shmona, an operation that filled seventeen coffins. But irony amused him. And it would be ironic if the death of that man's colleagues were to enhance his own safety. It was no part of the journalist's role in the movement that he should be aware of such interests.
The leader said: 'I would be interested to hear if there are any further arrests, or sightings, or… ' He let it tail away. He had said enough. The journalist waved his arm at a distant figure who hovered at the entrance to the kitchens, gestured a writing motion with his hands to signify that the meal was over and that he wished to accept the bill.
'Before you leave there is a message I want you to deliver. It is sensitive. I want it handed only to the man whose name I shall give you. It is in Beirut, and must reach him this afternoon.' The leader drew a sheaf of papers from inside his khaki combat jacket, revealing for a moment the polished, light-brown shoulder holster he wore through all his working hours, and with a ball-point pen began to write. Had he looked the waiter who brought the reckoning for the meal could not have seen what was being written, as the leader protected the message with his hands. The pen moved hurriedly and with bold strokes across the paper, the Arabic symbols firm and decisive.
While the bank notes were away being sorted out at the cash till he said: it must go straight away to the commercial secretary of the embassy that I have named on the folded paper. I will tell you what it says; you'll want to open it if I don't tell you, and I would rather not have it delivered as if it's been half-way through the souk in Baghdad.' He laughed, and the journalist shuffled in embarrassment, and muttered his protestations. 'No, I know you, you are all the same. It merely says that we go on as before, but at reduced strength. There; that tells you all or nothing. For you, my good friend, I think it tells you nothing. Nothing. And you should be happy that way.'
And he was away, striding between the tables inside the restaurant towards the car park where his Fiat waited.
Once he raised his right arm above his shoulder, a final farewell to his luncheon informant. One of his bodyguards had stayed at the front door of the building, and he now fell in behind. Two more were sitting in the car. As the leader settled into his seat the driver engaged the gears, and they moved off.
'We have to be patient a while,' he said. 'Two of the men on the European operation have been intercepted.
They are dead. There is no word of the third, nor of whether the French even know of his existence. If there were to be one who has survived, and could go on with the task, which one would you select?' He was speaking with the man who sat beside him, an older man whose judgement he trusted.
'Of those three?' the other paused for a moment's reflection. 'It would be the one we code-named 'Saleh'.
Saleh Mohammed. The one that calls himself 'Famy'.'
'That is a good judgement. Pray to God it is that one who lives. They were all fine boys, but he was the best.
The youngest, but still superior. It is a great problem that he faces, the one who has lived, if that is indeed the case.'
His companion stroked the sleek, steel darkness of the barrel of the Klashnikov rifle that lay across his lap, his eyes playing on the cars that flashed by them. The leader was talking softly, half to himself, and there were no interruptions.
'Much will depend on the people that he meets there.
These Irishmen, they represent an unknown factor, and one man on his own must be more dependent on them than we had planned. More is required now than a simple availability of weapons, explosives, transport and a safe house. The foreigners must provide a different dimension.
They must become involved.'
He was silent. The other man said: 'Will they provide that?' it is imponderable,' said the leader. 'Probably, but I cannot say with certainty. In Tripoli they were friendly enough. They wanted to co-operate then — were anxious to buy weapons. They were making a gesture towards us then. That was the conception of the plan. They have killed many times in their own struggle, but always have been fearful of the scale of missions that we are prepared to stage. Perhaps their cause is only worth fighting for, not worth dying for. There were promises in Tripoli, endless promises. As I have said, we shall have to be patient.'
Again the smile.
After their swim the young man and the girl had taken their towels, draped them on the grass away from the pool and close to the high wooden fence that shut it off from the road and the car park, and sprawled down on them. It was hot that evening in London's south-west suburbs, and facilities were overstretched. But few wanted to be in the shade, far from the water, and so the couple found the privacy they searched for.
Five-and-a-quarter miles down the road were the main runways of Heathrow Airport, and every few seconds the couple's voices would be drowned, losing the competition with the Rolls-Royce and Pratt and Whitney engines that surged overhead. But in between the cacophony there was time to talk, not of anything special, nothing heady, just the kind of things that were being endlessly repeated by other couples who shared the grass with them but were out of earshot.
She was seventeen-and-a-half, was called Norah, and punched a cash register in a supermarket from eight- thirty in the morning till five-fifteen in the afternoon. She lived at home, and thought the boy she had met beside the pool the previous evening quite the most interesting she had encountered in her limited experience. She wore last year's bikini, which had been right for Benidorm and the ten days of concentrated Spanish Mediterranean heat, but now seemed tight and restricting, as if unable to cope with the developments of the previous twelve months. He seemed to like it, though; his eyes were seldom off it. Most of the time they lay on their backs, stretched out and relaxed, fingers touching, his short-cut nails searching out the lines on her wrist, the crannies between her fingers, the soft sensitive places on the underside of her knuckles. He'd kissed her last night, quietly and gently in the lane behind her house, after the cinema and the ditching of her friend.
He'd held her loosely with none of the frantic endeavour she was used to from the series of boy-friends who took her for a coffee and a dance or a film and then believed it their right to maul and explore her afterwards as due return for a pound's expenditure.
This one was different. No thigh pressed hard between her legs, no fumbling under her blouse, no hand trying to get inside her jeans. The boy had kissed her, long and easily, seemed to think that was what they both wanted, was right, had told her he'd see her tomorrow, same place.
She'd come to the pool, and he'd been there, where he'd said he'd be, looked happy enough to see her again.
She had done most of the talking, last night and again this afternoon. He seemed to want that, didn't interrupt, looked interested. He said very little himself as she chattered about her holiday, her friends, her mother and father, her work, the prices in the shops, the television programmes she saw when she was at home, the films she went to on her nights out. He didn't reciprocate. Last night, in her bed at the back of the semi-detached house a mile-and-a-half away, she'd blamed herself for that.
