Gerald Seymour - At Close Quarters

She threw off the cause of the bovine proletariat of her homeland, she embraced the cause of the Palestinian people. She was careful with her favours, she dispensed them only where they could be of advantage to her.

She had sought out a protector, a man of such influence that she would not be repatriated to the maximum security women's prisons of West Germany.

He was a repulsive bastard, the major in Syrian Air Force Intelligence, but he had influence. She warmed his bed. She worked hard to please him. In obedience to the wishes of Major Said Hazan, she had, many months before, given herself to a young Palestinian fighter of the Popular Front.

The pendant hung at her neck.

The pendant was a sapphire held by a fastening crescent of diamonds.

The pendant hung at her neck from a gold chain of close, fine links.

He heard the words. The drooled words slipping from the rebuilt mouth of Major Said Hazan… "in the presence of the orphans of the Palestine revolution you pledged your loyalty to the struggle"… He heard the words that had been used to taunt him.

The chain that supported the pendant lay on the smooth skin of her throat.

She was kissing his mouth, and the lobes of his ears.

She told him of her love. The flatness of her stomach undulated against his groin. The warmth of her breasts drifted through the cotton of his shirt.

Abu Hamid, standing just inside the room, leaning hack against the closed door, hearing the muffled i aucous sounds of the souq, knew that he would kill the girl he had loved.

He was calm. He felt no fear. It was not as it had been when the woman who was a spy for the Israelis had gazed back in contempt into his face. It was as it had been when he had gone to seek out the man who had stolen his transistor radio. It was as it had been when he had eased himself up from the bench outside the Oreanda Hotel, when he had walked, filtering between the traffic, towards the hotel steps. As it had been when he had raised the assault rifle to confront the old man and the young woman pushing through the glass swing doors.

Major Said Hazan had played with him as a child.

The toy that had won him had been the breasts and the cleft of Margarethe Schultz. He held her in his arms.

He smelled the cleanness of her hair and the dry pleasure of her body.

"I love you, brave boy."

"As you love him?" Abu Hamid murmured from the pit of his throat.

"I love you for your courage, brave boy."

She arched her head upwards, she stretched to kiss his forehead. Her neck was pulled taut. The pendant seemed to him to dance on her skin, and the candlelight caught the kingfisher brilliance of the sapphire and flashed upon the wealth of the diamonds.

"As you love him?"

He held the back of her head in his left hand, the fingers tight into the looseness of her hair. He held the back of her neck in his right hand, the fingers twined into the slender strength of the chain.

"I love only you, brave boy."

She had not looked into his face. She had not seen his eyes. She had not seen the smile curve at his lips. He thought of her cheeks against the reconstructed atrocity that was the face of Major Said Hazan. He thought of the fingerless hand groping to the smoothness of the skin of her thighs.

The fingers of his left hand that were tight in her hair jerked Margarethe Schultz's head back. He saw the shock sweep into her eyes. With his right hand he tore the pendant from her throat, snapping the chain clasp on her neck. He bent her head down so that it was lower than the level of his waist, so that she could see only his feet. In front of her, between her bare feet, between his boots, he dropped the pendant. He stamped on the sapphire, on the diamonds of the crescent. He thought of how she had shamed him from taking money, how she had burnt the letter from the Central Bank of Syria.

She had taken a pendant of sapphire and diamonds, she had taken the body of Major Said Hazan. He ground with his heel into the carpet. He heard the wincing gasp of her breath as he moved his foot aside, forced her head lower so that she could see the shattered pendant.

She had taken the love of Abu Hamid. She had taken his pledge that he would go into Israel, take the war into Israel, take his death into Israel.

When he pulled her head up, when she could look into his face, she spat.

She snarled, "You are scum… You are not even a good fuck, not even as good as him… "

He saw her eyes bulging towards him. He saw the blue sheen at her lips. He saw her fingers scrabble to hold his wrists. He saw her tongue jumping from her mouth.

When he let go of her throat, when she slid to the carpet, he crouched over her.

He could hear the choking of his tears. He lay across her. He could feel the wetness of her skin where his tears fell.

Percy Martins was on his bed.

It was hours since he had walked around the bare room. He had only had to walk round once to understand the nature of his confinement. Behind the curtains over the windows he had found the metal bars. He had noted that there was no light through the keyhole of the door. He had heard the coughing of a man in the corridor.

He was on his bed.

He was close to sleep when he was roused into alertness by the muffle of voices behind the door. He heard the rasp of the turning key. He sat upright on his bed.

It was the girl, Zvi Dan's assistant, Rebecca. She carried a mug of tea. He could see that it was freshly made, that it steamed in her hand. She passed him the mug.

"That's uncommonly civil of you."

"It is nothing."

"Why?"

"I thought you had been kicked, I thought they were queuing to kick you again. There were plenty of them in line to kick you."

"People like to kick a fool, when a fool is down."

Martins drank the tea, scalded the roof of his mouth.

"Kicking you does not help Holt."

He gazed into her face.

"I suppose it's stupid to ask, but there hasn't been any news?"

"There could only be news from the Syrian radio.

We are monitoring their transmissions, there has been nothing on their radio."

Martins slumped back onto his bed. "The waiting, it's so bloody awful, waiting for news of catastrophe, and for the inevitability of disgrace."

"What are your feelings for Holt?"

"He's one of the finest young men I've ever met, and I never got round to telling him."

She turned away, went out through the door. He heard the key turn. He lay in the darkness and sipped at the hot sweetness of the tea.

With three men to escort him Heinrich Gunter stumbled, tripped through the darkness over the rough ground on the slope of the hillside.

He was handcuffed to one man.

He had been given back his shoes, but they rubbed and calloused his feet and it was more years than he could remember since he had last worn lace up shoes without socks. He had been given back his shoes, but they had retained his shirt and his suit jacket and his trousers. He wore his vest and his underpants that now smelled and over his shoulder was draped a coarse cloth blanket.

Where they had left the car, his photograph had been taken. All very quick, and he had hardly been aware of the process. The hood had been snatched up from over his face, the light had blasted him. Time for him to identify the gun barrel that had been the sharp pain under his chin, and the face mask of the one who held a camera level with his eyes. Two workings of the camera, and the flash, and the hood retrieving the darkness and falling. The taking of his photograph had disturbed him. As if the photograph brought him back towards a world that he understood, a world of ransom demands and bribery, and of newspaper headlines and radio bulletins, and of the government in Bonn, and of the helplessness of the world that he knew. The taking of the photograph had forced his mind to his family, his wife and his children, and his home. Forced him to think of his wife sitting numb in their home and of th dazed confusion of his children.