The best vines of Lebanon, the best fruit, the best vegetables, all come from the Beqa'a, and the best hashish.
The history of the Beqa'a is one of murder, conspiracy, feuding and smuggling. The people of the region whether they be Christian or Druze or Shi'a Muslim, have a reputation for lawlessness and independence. Government authority has always taken second place in the minds of the feudal landlords and the peasant villagers.
Times, of course, have not stood still in the Beqa'a.
The villagers are better armed, each community now possesses RPG-7 grenade launchers, heavy D S h K M machine guns, enough Kalashnikovs to dish them out to the kids.
The villagers are well off by the standards of torn, divided Lebanon, because when all else fails the hashish market bails them out. The trade is across the rifts of politics and religion. Druze sells to Shi'a who sells to Christian who sells to Syrian.
The Beqa'a now is a valley of pass papers and checkpoints. Shi'a checkpoints on the approaches to their villages. Druze checkpoints, Syrian army checkpoints on the main road from Damascus to Beirut, and more on the side roads that lead to their barracks, Palestinian checkpoints on the approaches to their training camps.
They had reached the high spot. Behind them were the customs buildings and the missile site. Ahead of them the ground, dun and grey, shelved away into the valley.
The recruits were in two military lorries, while Abu Hamid sat in the jeep driven by Fawzi, his liaison officer.
Fawzi drove with enthusiasm, exhilarated in his role as middle man between the Popular Front training camp and the officers of Air Force Intelligence. Abu Hamid had thought that any man would be sick in his gut at such a job, but all the man cared for, all that he talked about on the climb to the mountain pass and the descent beyond, was the new-found opportunity for trade.
"Trade" he called it. Televisions and video cassette players and electric refrigerators would come to the Beqa'a from Beirut, freshly grown hashish would come from the valley, and Fawzi could take back to the old souq in Damascus as much as would cram into the covered back of his jeep. To Abu Hamid, the man was disgusting, the man was a criminal. He wondered how it was that Major Said Hazan would permit such a man to play a part in the Palestinian revolution.
But he had hardly listened to Fawzi. Yes, he had the babble from the man, from his thick spittle-lined lips, but after a while he had paid him no attention, thought only of Margarethe.
Abu Hamid did not know how long it would be until he next saw Margarethe. He had not been told. He fancied that if he put his hand under the vest below his tunic, and rubbed his hand hard against the skin, and that if he then put his hand against his nose, then he would smell the sweet scent of his Margarethe. With other women shyness made him brutal. It was so the first time with Margarethe, but she had slapped his face, right cheek and then left cheek… then come to him, rolled him onto his back, and loved him. He did not know where a woman had learned to love with such wild beauty. From that first time Margarethe made him love her with all the lights switched on; each time she stripped him, each time she straddled him. He could not comprehend why Margarethe Schultz worshipped the body of Abu Hamid, who did not have the money for shoes. He did not understand her dedication to the cause of a Palestinian homeland, did not understand the Red Army Faction of which she claimed to be a member.
He had written to her on the last day of each month that he had been in Simferopol. And when she was naked she was beautiful to him. ..
What was wonderful was that she had waited for him, waited for six months for his return.
They were coming down into the valley.
He could hear the protests of the brakes of the lorries behind him.
"It is the hashish that gets the best price. I buy it here, I pay the major forty per cent of what I have paid.
I double the cost of my outgoings and that is the price I will get in Damascus. I don't know what charge is made by the man who sells it on from Damascus. When it gets to Europe the price is fantastic. It amazes me that people in Europe will pay… "
They passed through two checkpoints manned by Syrian commandos. They crossed the floor of the valley.
The road took them alongside a small village, and there were women out in the fields hoeing the damp ground between the first early summer wheat crop. They bumped off the road and followed a stone track for four or five miles. Much for Abu Hamid to see. There were old bomb craters still with the scorched blackness that years of rain had not discoloured. There was a tank regiment, hull down, in defensive position. There was a network of slit trenches, newly dug and lined with the brightness of corrugated iron. There were areas that were marked by a single strand of barbed wire and the skull and crossbones sign designating minefields. They crossed two army engineers' bridges over irrigation ducts, and then traversed a rolling plank bridge over the main flow of the Litani river. They skirted a formation of camouflage-painted pillboxes. They were close to the far wall of the Beqa'a valley.
He saw the small tent camp ahead. A dozen tents.
The camp nestled under the rising ground beyond. He winced. There was nowhere else that they could be heading.
"Is that the camp?" The disgust was rich in Abu Hamid's voice.
"You want orange groves and villas? You should go and fight in the Zionist state. You will find all the orange groves and all the villas that you could wish for there."
When darkness had fallen over the Yarmouq camp, when the perimeter floodlights were reduced to small cones of light, a car drove through the gates and to the administration building. A runner was sent from the administration building to the hut where the commander had his quarters. The commander was seen by the runner to talk briefly to the men in the car, and then to get into the back seat. Two hours later the commander was dead, shot once in the head, and he was buried in a shallow grave beside the Quneitra road, beyond the airport, beyond the headquarters of Air Force Intelligence. When questioned by senior officials of the Popular Front investigating the commander's disappearance, the runner would be able to say in truth that the darkness prevented him from seeing the men inside the car, that they did not identify themselves.
For Major Said Hazan, the commander had outlived his usefulness. And he was a dangerous witness to a conspiracy, and he knew the author of that conspiracy.
Of Abu Hamid, Major Said Hazan had no doubt.
Martins had come to the nineteenth floor.
He sat in an armchair with his papers on his lap. He sat uncomfortably upright. It was a strange habit of the Director General that he conducted his meetings from soft seating, never used the polished table and the straight chairs that were at the far end of the room. On the rare occasions that he was summoned to the Director General's office, Percy Martins was never at ease. The Director General seemed not to notice. Percy Martins read rapidly through the brief received from Graham Tork, station officer in Tel Aviv.
"So, it is his conclusion that Abu Hamid has by now either travelled to the Beqa'a, or is about to."
"Which makes it awkward for us."
"In Tork's opinion – rather an eccentric one, in my view – Damascus would be tolerably straightforward, the Beqa'a quite impossible."
"The Service doesn't believe in 'impossible', Percy."
Martins sucked at his teeth. "With respect, sir, the Beqa'a is virtually an armed camp. It is home for the Syrian army, at least one division of armour, regiments of artillery, units of commando forces. It's also home for a violently anti-Western Shi'a Muslim population in the villages. And for the Hezbollah Party of God fanatics, also for the units of Islamic Jihad who, although small, are strong enough to blast the Americans out of Beirut. And for half a dozen or more extreme Palestinian groupings… "