Gerald Seymour - At Close Quarters

Could have kicked himself. The boy with the sheep wore flopping dun-coloured trousers and he had a grey blanket over his shoulders, and the sheep and the lambs were dirty brown-white with black faces. He hadn't seen them, wouldn't have seen them without the prompting.

"I'm sorry."

"Doesn't help you, youngster. Waking up is what helps."

Holt watched the boy with the sheep. It was as if he were dancing to the music of a flute. Private dancing, because the boy was sure that he was not watched. The boy tripped in the air, and his arms circled above his head, skipping from foot to foot, bowing to something imaginary.

Crane whispered, "If he stops his act, if he starts running, then I get the shits. Do I piss you off, youngster?"

Holt grinned, "Why should you do that?"

"I'll give you a lecture. The troops back there, they hate you. The kiddie with the sheep, he hates you. The guys in the mosque, they hate you. Out here, I'm the only one on your side. Don't get a clever idea that somehow because you're a Brit, because you're not Yank and not Jew, that the troops and the kiddie don't hate you. Our problem was, before we came here in '82, that we never worked out just how much they'd hate us.

When they started to mess with us we kicked their arses, we blew up their houses, we carted their guys away to prison camps. They hate us pretty deep. They're dangerous because they've this martyr crap stuck in their skulls, aren't afraid of biting on a. 762 round. Fight them and you're in a no win, you kill them and you've sent them to the Garden of Paradise which they don't object to. They go in hard. Kill 'em, and more come, there are more queuing up to get to that Garden. They made our life a three-year misery for sinners when we were in the Beqa'a. They sniped us, they mined us, they never let go of us. Bombing them is the same as recruiting them. And they don't fight by your nice rules.

When I'm in the Beqa'a I forget everything, every last thing, that I learned about Hearts and Minds when I was in the British Paras. Treat each last one like he's an enemy, like he wants your throat, that's what I learned here. Don't ever hesitate, just kill, because they have no fear. The girl with the donkey, she had no f e a r…

"

"Do you have fear, Mr Crane?"

"Only when I've got you hanging on my tail, telling me it's all peaceful."

The chanting from the minaret had stopped. In the fields work was resuming. Holt could see the women with their hoes, forks, spades, shovels.

Crane grabbed the binoculars from Holt.

He gazed down at the approach road into Saghbine.

He seemed to smile.

There was a billow of dust on the road. Crane passed the binoculars back to Holt.

Holt saw the car with the dust streaming from its wheels.

"Don't ever forget what that car looks like."

"Why?"

"Because I say don't ever forget that car."

The car was an ancient Mercedes. Holt thought it not much less than a miracle that it still moved. The panels were rusty ochre. The front wing looked to have been in an argument. There were white smears of filler in the roof. He could see packing cases in the back, that the seats behind the driver had been stripped out. At his angle he could not see the face of the driver, only the width of his gut.

"I see the car."

"About time you learned how to make a brew. Get on with it."

The phone trilled on Major Zvi Dan's desk. Rebecca picked it up.

She listened, she passed it to him.

She saw the annoyance, because he liked to be told first who was calling him.

"Dan here… What name? Percy Martins. Yes, I am aware of the presence of Percy Martins at Kfar Giladi

… What do you mean, is he sensitive?… No, I will merely confirm that he is sensitive, but also that his role in Israel cannot be regarded as the legitimate business of the Shin Bet… I don't believe you… You have to be joking… I had a flight for this evening but I'll drive… listen, listen, everything to do with that man is sensitive… three hours."

He replaced the telephone. His head sank into his hands.

Rebecca looked at him. "Is it bad?"

"Unbelievable." As though the wound were personal to Major Zvi Dan.

"Is it bad for the young man?"

"The roof is falling in on him."

Mid-morning, and Percy Martins lay in the bed in his darkened room. He had bawled out the woman who had come to clean and change his bedclothes, sent her packing. He had ignored his wake-up call. There was a drumbeat behind his temples. He knew there was a calamity in the air, couldn't place the source of it. He seemed to think that if he got up and washed and shaved and dressed, then he would get to the bottom of the catastrophe… and he didn't want to. He shirked the discovery.

While he remained in his room, while he lay in his pyjamas, he was unaware that a man from Shin Bet sat on a chair beside the staircase where he could look down the corridor, watch the door of Percy Martins's room. -

A quiet morning in the N O R B A T sector.

The troops had checked and searched only four cars and two cartloads of market produce in the previous three hours. The sun was sprawled in the skies, a lethargy hung over the road block, shimmer burnished up from the roadway. Two of the Norwegians dozed in the oven area under the tin roof that topped their sandbagged position, a third played patience at the lightweight table beside the entrance to the position.

Hendrik Olaffson, smartly turned out in a freshly laundered uniform, carried his NATO self-loading rifle easily on the bend of his elbow. He stared up the road.

He watched the bend. He waited to see if the traveller would come to visit.

He realised they had taken a diversion.

The driver of the jeep turned frequently to give the l ace of Abu Hamid a sharp glance, as though he was the possessor of a private joke. The driver had few teeth. A grin for Abu Hamid to see, and foul breath seeping through the gaps above and below the few there were.

Abu Hamid was not familiar enough with Damascus to know where they went. He would not ask why they had taken a diversion from the usual roads they used to get from the Beirut road across the city to Air Force headquarters, would not give the bastard the satisfaction.

They were in narrow streets. Abu Hamid thought the driver a lunatic. He had the belt on, and that had been a sign of fear, and he knew that he would be ignored if he asked the bastard to go more slowly, or to pay heed to the pedestrians and cyclists. He would just give the bastard pleasure if he told him to pay attention to the traffic signs.

In surges that shook Abu Hamid, lurched him forward against the belt, the jeep hammered down narrow streets, scattered women with their shopping bags, grazed a cart drawn by a ragged, thin horse.

They came into a square. The square seemed over-hung, squashed in, by the buildings around. It was a dark square because the buildings were tall and cut out the sun. Abu Hamid thought that only at the middle of the day would the sun fall into the cobbled centre of the square. There were balconies at many levels of the surrounding buildings, with washing suspended from them, and the stucco facades were peeled raw.

He felt the tug at his sleeve. He realised the driver had slowed. He saw the squinted amusement in the driver's eyes. The driver jabbed with the nicotined tip of his finger, showed Abu Hamid that he should look to the centre of the square.

He was not prepared.

He retched, choked, he tried to swallow down the bile that pitched into his mouth.

There were three men suspended from the gallows beam.

It was late morning. There was the bustle of traffic, and the cries of the hawkers, and the shouts of the traders, and there were three men hanging from three ropes from the scaffold. Their heads were hooded, their arms were pinioned behind their backs, their ankles were tied with rope. He knew they were men because under the long white robes in which they were draped he could see the ends of their trousers, and he could see also that they wore men's shoes. There was no movement in the three bodies because no freshness of wind could enter the confines of the square. Fastened to the robes on each man was a large black painted sign.