Orders for 300 Islamic fundamentalists to be taken from the Tadmor prison in Palmyra to a trench dug by bulldozers, and there to be buried alive. Orders sent to Hama, after the suppression of revolt, for the killing of 15,000 males over the age of ten. Orders for torture, orders for murder. Mercy is a stranger in Damascus today; perhaps it was always so.
He knew enough of the geography of Damascus to know that they had entered the southern district of Abu Rum-maneh.
He was being taken to the Air Ministry complex.
They were approaching the Avenue El Mahdy. The driver said nothing. Abu Hamid was familiar enough with men such as his driver. A Palestinian learned in Damascus that he could expect no warmth from a Syrian, not unless he had favours to offer.
He had never before been to the Air Ministry complex, sprawling, five storeys high, he had had no reason to.
Close to the Air Ministry, Abu Hamid saw the secur ity presence on the pavements. Young men in street clothes lounged under the trees, leant on the lamp posts, sauntered beside the road. All the young men carried Kalashnikov rifles. When he had first lived in Damascus he had heard the rumours. Even out at the Yarmouq camp he had heard the explosions in the night of roadside bombs detonated against six army lorries in different locations and, so the rumours said, 60 had been killed; a car bomb in the city centre, and 40 killed. He understood why the security men lounged on the street corners, leant against the lamp posts, sauntered on the pavements.
There was a concrete chicane pass inside the gates of the Air Ministry. Abu Hamid was dropped off in front of the gate. He still had his leg in the jeep when the driver gunned the engine. Bastard… He hopped clear.
He endured the suspicion of the sentries, shining helmets, immaculate uniforms. He felt unclean from the dust of the Beqa'a. He could smile as he was body-searched. If there were a car bomb at the Air Ministry then it would be the supercilious sentries at the gate that would catch the flying axles and radiator and gear housing.
He was escorted inside. It had taken twenty-five minutes to establish that he was expected.
A new experience for Abu Hamid, walking the scrubbed, airy, painted corridors and staircases of the Air Ministry. The first time he had ever stepped inside such a place. A new world to him. At the end of a long corridor was a gate of steel bars, guarded. The gate was opened, he was taken through, the gate clanged shut behind him. Into an inner sanctum.
He could shiver, he could wonder what was wanted of him.
A door subserviently knocked by his escort. A uniformed clerk greeted Abu Hamid, ushered him inside, crossed to a door beyond a huge desk, knocked. A shout.
The space of the room emerged in front of him.
In all the years of his young life Abu Hamid had never seen such luxury. He stared around him. His eyes roved from the whispering hush of the air conditioning machine in the wall to the heavyweight softness of the leather sofa to the teak table to the sparkle of the decanter and glasses to the fitted pile carpet to the hi-fi cabinet to the dull true silver of the photograph frames
… could not help himself, a child in a glittering treasure land.
He saw the welcome smile of Major Said Hazan. The major was far back in a tilted chair, his polished shoes on the polished desk top. The major was waving him inside, waving with his stumped fist for him to cross the carpet pile in his dust-laden boots. Abu Hamid knew the man who sprawled in the depths of the sofa. He knew the man only by a given code name. He knew that the man was designated as the head of the military wing of the Popular Front. He knew that the man was believed to be at least number three and possibly number two in the command ranking of the Popular Front. He knew that the man had once himself opened a package sent from Stockholm to the offices of the Popular Front in Beirut… that was many years before, but many years did not restore a right arm taken off at the elbow, nor three fingers amputated from the left fist, nor smooth away the wounds of the shrapnel in his neck and jaw.
"Of course you know our Brother. You are welcome, Hamid. I hear good things of what you are achieving with the young fighters. I hear only good things of you… "
He stared at them both, in turn, these veterans of the war against the state of Israel, and the scars of their war.
A ruined face, a lost arm and a lost grip of fingers. Was that how he would end? A face that his Margarethe would shrink from, hands that could not caress the white smooth skin of his Margarethe…
"Come, Hamid, sit down."
The door was closed behind him. He sat on the edge of the sofa, he felt the leather sink under him.
"I have sad news for you, Hamid. Your commander in Simferopol has gone to a martyr's resting place, but he died in his uniform, his life was lost in the service of Palestine… A car accident… most sad. We all grieve for his passing."
No expression was possible on the unlined skin of the major's face. Abu Hamid saw no change in the eyes or at the mouth of the Brother. The understanding came as a fast shaft. The commander and Abu Hamid and Major Said Hazan had been the only persons directly involved in the shooting at Yalta. Three persons, now two persons.
"I want two men, Hamid. I want two of your best recruits."
Abu Hamid looked across the width of the sofa to the Brother. Their eyes did not meet. Again he understood.
They were the proxies, the Palestinians. He was learning, sharply, quickly.
"What skills would the two men have?" Abu Hamid's recruits were raw, not yet expert in weapons or explosives.
"Courage, commitment. They will join others. You will go back to the Beqa'a this morning. You will choose the two men. You will take them to the Yarmouq tomorrow… What is it, Hamid? I can see your impatience.
Anger, is it? Or passion, is it? Tomorrow, Hamid, you will have the time to attend to your lady. Today the revolution has need of you
… your best men, remember."
"It will be done, Major."
Holt had a sore head. He walked half a pace behind Martins and Crane. It was a part of the airport that was new to him. He hadn't been to Israel before, nor had he been to South Africa, so he had never come this way.
It was the airport high-security corridor, quarantined from "ordinary" flight passengers, reserved for the two flights thought to be most greatly at risk from terrorist attack. He had seen it on television, of course, but the sight of the police and the dogs and the Heckler and Koch machine pistols still startled him. Policemen patrolling and parading in front of him with attack dogs on short leashes, with machine pistols held in readiness across their chests. He wondered how long they would have, how many fragments of seconds in which to beat off an attack. He wondered how long it would take them to snap out of the Musak swimming calm of the corridor, how long to get the safety to Off, to get the finger from the guard to the trigger. He wondered how they slept at night, how they rested, relaxed with their kids. And if he found the man in the Beqa'a, and Crane shot him, would that make their lives easier?
They settled into the chairs of the departure lounge, the same departure lounge in which, months before, an alert El Al security man carrying out the final personal baggage checks had been suspicious of a bag carried by a 32-year-old Irishwoman, Anne Murphy. When the security man emptied the bag he believed it still too heavy. When he stripped up the bottom of the bag he found underneath three pounds of oily soft orange-coloured plastic explosive, manufactured in Czecho-slovakia. The potential of the explosive was equivalent to the simultaneous detonation of 30 hand-grenades.