Gerald Seymour - At Close Quarters

He could remember the beating given freely to the bomber. What if the man had lied… What if the man had lied to save his skin from the fists and the boots…

The doubts crawled in him.

What if he had travelled to the Beqa'a and Abu Hamid was not at the camp? What if he had travelled to the Beqa'a and could not recognise Abu Hamid?

For the fourth time he started his search at the southern perimeter wire of the camp, and traversed north, searching for the face, and doubting.

He had laid her body on the bed.

He covered her body with the sheet and then the bed cover. He pulled the sheet high enough to obscure the bruising at her throat.

He had taken a flower from the vase by the window, a rose. He laid the flower on the bed cover across her breast.

He closed the door behind him. He walked down the steep steps and out into the noise and crush of the alley.

He walked very straight, he walked with the purpose of a young commander who had accepted a mission of leading an assault squad against the Defence Ministry on Kaplan.

Abu Hamid climbed into the passenger seat of the jeep.

Holt set the binoculars down on the rock dirt beside his hands. The valley shimmered in the heat below him.

The sun burned a whiteness from the tent tops, and flickered at those strands of the wire that were not rusted. Nothing wrong with the binoculars, he had seen the dart of the rats at the bottom of the wire. He was learning the life of the camp. The men were sitting in a half circle, swatting off the flies, watching a hugely fat young man demonstrate the stripping down and the reassembling of a machine gun. He could not see all of their faces, not at this moment, but he had checked each of the faces before they had sat down, and he had checked the face of the uniformed instructor. It had been a desperation to see if there was a crow's foot scar on the left upper cheek of the instructor, a last throw.

The cook was on his knees blowing at the fire. Only the cook and a sentry at the entrance to the camp and a man asleep in a chair by his tent were not involved in the class session. He had come so far with Crane, three nights' march, a squashed-in lifetime, and Abu Hamid was not there. His head and his body ached and his whole heart sank in despair.

Major Zvi Dan went into the hushed badly-lit room that housed the communications centre.

He closed the door gently behind him.

It was a world where no voice was raised, where none of the men or women in uniform moved other than at a studied pace. The room was an empire of electronics.

There was the purr of the teleprinters and the greenwash screens of the visual display units and the faint whisper of the recording equipment. Because of the nature of events, because Crane and Holt had walked into the Beqa'a, transmissions from the Syrian military that were intercepted by the antennae of Hermon would be relayed to the communications centre at Kiryat Shmona.

In a lowered voice he asked the communications captain if there was any information he should have.

There was nothing.

Major Zvi Dan tore a sheet from the small notepad that he carried in his tunic breast pocket. On the paper was written the figures identifying an ultra high frequency radio channel. He asked that from the middle of the day that frequency should be continuously monitored.

Still he watched the camp. He played through in his mind what Crane would say to him, how he would reply.

Definitely he's not there… Maybe he's a bit changed

… If he was there I'd know him… If he had a beard

…? I'd know him…

Nothing further to look for at the camp. The men were at the machine gun still, three at a time, practising what they had learned. Mr Crane would have been disgusted. The fire in the cooking area was out, and the cook fellow was washing stainless steel dishes, and the sentry walked backwards and forwards across the road track to the camp looking as though he were asleep. The camp had nothing for him.

With the binoculars he tried to find Crane.

Couldn't find him, just as he could not find the man he'd come so far to see killed.

Holt was desolated, he had never been so alone.

"If there is no one else to whom you will communicate your information, then you have to wait."

The traveller settled deeper into the comfort of the armchair. The outer office was cool, pleasantly furn ished. He had walnuts in a bag, their shells already cracked. "My information is only for Major Said Hazan."

The clerk did not trouble to hide his contempt. The man stank, was dressed like a peasant. His shoes had brought the street dirt onto the carpet.

"He has gone to a meeting, I do not have a time for his return."

"Then I shall wait."

The pieces of walnut shell flaked to the carpet. The traveller made no attempt to retrieve them. He chewed happily on the crisp interior.

Holt saw the dust plume spitting from behind the wheels of the jeep. He reached for the binoculars. He saw the markings above the jeep's engine, presumably Syrian army. He saw that a single passenger sat beside the driver.

His sight became a blur. Holt's head slashed sideways, away from the road view, away from the jeep. The magnified vision leaped from the roadway to the camp, from the tents to the camp entrance, from the sentry to the cook.

The cook had come out of the camp. He had skirted the wire. The cook now climbed the slope on the west side of the camp. Holt could see that he was scavenging.

In the hugeness of the binoculars' tunnel vision the cook seemed about to step into the overhang of rock. Holt could see that he whistled to himself. He watched him smile, pleased, because he had found a length of dried wood. He watched him tuck the length of wood under his arm and climb again. He watched him, slowly and unhurried, hunting for more wood, and climbing the slope.

Holt did not know where Noah Crane hid.

At the entrance to the camp Abu Hamid jumped clear of the jeep and strode through the gap in the wire. The jeep reversed away.

He saw Fawzi's lesson. He thought that Fawzi would have messed his trousers if he had ever been called on to fire a heavy machine gun in combat. His throat was dry. He walked to the cooking area. He saw the dead fire. No coffee warming. High on the hill slope above the camp he saw the cook foraging for wood.

The vision of the binoculars roved.

The cook had an armful of wood, so much now that he had wavered twice as if uncertain whether more was needed.

The open falling ground was devoid of cover except for long-dead trees lying strewn and ossified. The sun had burnt the bark from them.

The deep clumsily-dug ditch.

Refuse bags and the sheets of discarded newspaper, trapped on the coiled wire. The men were all sitting, bored and listless, no longer attentive to the gesturing officer in front of his class.

The new arrival…

The new man in the camp walked to stand behind the sitting instructor, listened for a few moments, turned away.

The binoculars followed him.

Something in the stride, something in the bearing.

The twin eyepieces were rammed against Holt's eyebrows and cheekbones. He had seen the right side of the face, he had seen the full of the face, he had seen the short curled hair at the back of the head.

The new man now seemed to walk aimlessly. A tent floated in front of him. Holt swore.

The man reappeared, doubling back, smoking Left side of the face.

Holt could hardly hold the binoculars steady. Breath coming in pants, hands trembling. He gulped the air down into his lungs. He forced the air down into his throat, breathing as a sniper would, winning control of his body. Crane's bible, breathing critical.

He saw the man's left hand raised to his face. He saw the finger peck at a place on the left cheek. He saw the hand drop.