"Mr Crane doesn't trust luck."
"I hope you win."
"I'm scared out of my mind."
The officer looked embarrassed, finished with the shoelaces, stood and smiled awkwardly.
When they went down the stairs, out to the Volvo, George was holding the Rottweiler back from the opened hatch of the car and three private soldiers under the supervision of the quartermaster sergeant were loading equipment, wooden and cardboard boxes and two Bergens. When they had finished, George had to rummage in the load to make a space for his dog.
Martins signed three sheets on the quartermaster's clipboard.
The officers waved them away, waved to them until they were round the corner, gone from sight.
Out onto the main road.
George driving fast. The dog snoring again.
"You're off tomorrow, Holt," Martins said.
He didn't ask whether he could telephone his parents when he was back at the house, tell them he'd be away for a few days.
He didn't even ask what was a Rifleman's Assault Weapon, and why it needed minimal training and why it was not right for young Holt.
He thought about a young man from the far side of the world, a young man of his own age. A young man with a crow's foot scar on his left upper cheek.
They drove in silence.
It was evening when they reached the house.
George was left to park the car, unload the equipment, exercise the dog. Martins hurried to the telephone.
Crane said he was going to have a shower. It was as if everybody had too much work on their hands to concern themselves with young Holt, so scared he could scream and starting the journey for the Beqa'a the next day.
Everyone too busy.
Holt sat in the living room, turned the pages of a magazine, didn't read the text, didn't register the photographs.
He heard Martins stamp into the room.
"It's too damned bad. She is becoming quite impossi b l e… "
He didn't take the cue, didn't ask what was bad, who was impossible. Too bitter to be feed man for Percy Marlins's little act.
"She is cooking for a dinner in the village hall, not for us. We come second to the village hall social evening.
Sometimes that woman goes too far."
"I fancy a night out," Holt said.
"A cabaret at the village hall? That's a poor joke, Holt."
"It's all a piss-poor joke, Mr Martins. I fancy a night out."
"Now, wait a minute… "
"Alone. Don't worry, Mr Martins, I won't run away.
You can tell the horrible people who run you that young Holt says you've done a hell of a good job in trapping him."
"Don't you understand, it's for your country."
He had drunk seven pints of best bitter. He had drunk three whisky shorts.
He stood on the stage.
The comedian was long away. The magician had packed and gone.
There was an untouched pint and another whisky on top of the piano.
The clock on the square tower of the village church that was across the road from the hall chimed the strokes of midnight.
He had given them his whole repertoire. He had led them in his South Pacific selection, his Presley impression, his Jim Reeves collection. He had them going with his choruses, he had them clapping to the hammer thump of the pale young rector on the piano beside him.
He rocked on his feet. His face was flushed. He could hear the shouting and the cheering from the audience.
He understood his audience. It was an audience that he recognised from his village at home. They were the farm workers and their wives, and the Post Office staff and their wives, and the council workers and their wives, and the builders and joiners and their wives.
Because he had drunk too much he had pushed his way forward and climbed the steps to the stage after the magician had taken his bow, he had offered himself when he had thought the evening was flattening out.
"Give us one more, young 'un." The shout from the back, from the darkness beyond the footlights and the smoke haze.
The rector shrugged. Holt whispered in his ear.
Holt sang.
"'Wish me luck, as you wave me goodbye, With a cheer, not a tear, make it gay.
Give me a smile,
I can keep all the while,
In my heart while I'm away.
Till we meet once again you and I,
Wish me luck, as you wave me goodbye,'"
How many of them knew where the Beqa'a valley was?
How many of them had any idea what the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was? They joined in for the chorus.
'"Wish me luck, as you wave me goodbye, Cheerio, here I go, on my way.
Wish me luck, as you wave me goodbye…'"
Holt was not aware of the spreading quiet. His song, his voice filled his head. A young man saying his farewells, heading for the Beqa'a with a marksman who could kill with a state-of-the-art rifle at 750 yards. A young man who had been told he was going to the Beqa'a to have a man killed for his country. Did any of them care? Small safe people, living small safe lives, in a small safe community. A lone voice, and a piano, desperate for tuning, echoing through a tin-roofed village hall in the English countryside.
'"Wish me luck, as you wave me goodbye.
Wish me luck,
Wish me luck,
Wish me luck
** •
As the morning sun, brilliant bright, hugged the rim of the valley, the jeep pulled away from the camp.
No heat yet in the air, and Abu Hamid was cold in the passenger seat. He did not know for how long he would be in Damascus, he had not been told. He knew only that he was escaping from the camp and the firing range in the wadi cut into the hillside, and that, along with the possibility that he would have the chance to be with Margarethe, was sufficient to lift his spirits.
While they still crawled over the ruts and stone chips of the unsurfaced road he saw the cluster of dogs.
He knew at once. He should have stood over them when they dug the grave. Slowly they passed the dogs.
There were six, seven, of them, perhaps more. There was no window on the side of the jeep. He heard the snarling, selfish anger of the dogs. The dogs were pulling, snapping, tugging at the dark-stained bundle.
Beside him the driver grinned. They drove on. The fighting dogs were left in the dust thrown up by the wheels of the jeep.
They crossed the valley. They were waved through the checkpoints. They reached the fast, tarmacadamed road to Damascus.
What the wandering Lawrence called a pearl in the morning sun is a vast archaeological treasure ground. It is also the oldest continually inhabited city in the world.
The present population, numbering 7,000,000, are the successors of those who first settled south of the Jebel esh Sharoi, east of the Jebel Khachine, five thousand years ago. Damascus has seen the worship of pagan gods, and of the Roman Jupiter. Damascus was the settling place of St Paul and the budding spirit of Christianity, it was the centre of the world of Islam, it was a great city of the Ottoman despots, it was a fiefdom of European France. Now it is a bastard mixture of cultures. On the broad French-style boulevards of Damascus walk the covert fundamentalists of the Moslem faith, discreet and quiet-living Jews, Sunnis, ruling Alawites from the northern coastline, Soviets from the east, eye-catching prostitutes aping what they believe is the Western way of provocation. The regime, which is bankrupt and sustained by loans from the oil rich Gulf, is headed by a man whose Air Force career was undistinguished, who had levered himself to Defence Minister in time for the catastrophic defeat at the hands of Israel in 1967, who had then climbed to President in time for the greater military disaster of Yom Kippur. The regime lives on a foundation of terror and repression. There are eight separate organisations responsible for internal and external security. The security men are the new masters of modern Damascus; they and their regime are without mercy. Orders are issued for public hangings on the portable gallows in Semiramis Square. Orders for 200 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood to be brought by the lorry load to the centre of Aleppo and executed by firing squad.