"When I saw them at the hotel yesterday, and the day before, the impression I had is hardly one of respect.
Our man's very quiet, like he's out of his depth and doesn't know how to get into shallow water. Crane speaks to him like he would to a child."
"Respect is difficult when the one has so little to contribute."
The station officer glanced down at his watch. "This Percy Martins will be here soon, he's a crochety old wretch… the word from London is that he was damn near on bended knee to the Director to get this trip…
He's bringing Crane."
"And your young man?"
"That pleasure must still await you, Crane's sent him to the beach for a week, and told him he'd kick his arse if he got sunburn."
"Mr Fenner is not coming to grace your mission with his presence?"
"Staying in London, sadly." The station officer did not expand, did not feel the need to explore the grubby departmental laundry with his friend.
The girl soldier who did the typing and filing in the outer office put her head around the door. Dark flowing hair, sallow skin, tight khaki blouse. The station officer wondered how elderly crippled Zvi Dan attracted such talent. "Martins has arrived," she said languidly.
Holt lay on the beach.
There was a hotel towel over his legs, draped up to the swimming trunks he had bought at the hotel shop.
He wore a shirt, with the sleeves down. He checked the time every half an hour, so that he could be certain that he kept to the schedule Noah Crane had given him. Half an hour with his skin exposed lying on his back, half an hour with his skin covered lying on his back. Half an hour with his skin exposed lying on his stomach, half an hour with his skin covered lying on his stomach.
It was the third morning. He was settling to the routine.
The first morning he had been allowed to stay put in his bed. The last two mornings his alarm call had gone off beside his head at 5.30. Breakfast was tea, toast. Out onto the beach, a lone figure working at sit-ups, push-ups and squat thrusts, and then repeated sprints, and then the endurance run. However bad the endurance run had been on the soft grass of the country house, it was hell's times worse on the dry sand of the beach.
Exposure to the sun all morning, then a salad and cold meat lunch, and then the repetition of the exercises in the full heat, and then recovery on the beach. A final repeat of the exercises as the sun was dipping. After that, the time was his own, that's what Crane had said.
So young Holt had stayed the daylight hours on the beach in front of the row of tower block hotels.
But he had started to walk the streets of Tel Aviv in the evenings, after he had showered the sand and the sweat off his body, before he was due to attend dinner with Crane and Martins.
He thought Tel Aviv ugly and fascinating.
Perhaps there had never been time at the country house for him to consider what he would find there, but nothing about it was as he had expected. He had walked the length of the seafront promenade, past and beyond the hotels, past and beyond the fortified American embassy, past the scorched grass of Clore Park, he had tramped to the old Arab town of Yafo. He had walked down Ben Yehuda, past the small jewellery shops and the shops that sold antique Arab furniture. He had walked back on Dizengoff, past the plastic-fronted pavement cafes. He thought it was a country of beautiful children, and a country of olive green uniforms and draped Galil and Uzi weapons. That the state was not yet 40 years old was apparent to Holt from the ram-shackle development of building, fast and unlovely construction. Dusty dry streets, unmended pavings, peeling plaster on the squat blocks of apartments. He thought he understood. Why build for the future when your country is targeted by long range Scud missiles, when your country is nine, ten, eleven minutes' flying time away from hostile air bases, when your country is flanked by enemy armies equipped with the most modern of tanks, artillery and helicopters?
When he worked at his exercises, when he walked the streets, then his mind was occupied. When he lay on his back or his stomach on the beach, when he lay on his bed after supper, then his mind swam with the character of Noah Crane.
He hated to think of the man. He had tried with eagerness, with humour, with achievement to break into the shell defence of Noah Crane. God, had he failed.
"I find the attitude of the Israeli Defence Force quite incredible," Percy Martins said.
"Not incredible, entirely logical," Zvi Dan said quietly.
"This ground was all covered in my report, Mr Martins," the station officer repeated soothingly.
"It is most certainly not logical that the Israeli Defence Force will offer no facilities for extracting Crane and Holt."
"Mr Martins, if we wished to make an incursion into the Beqa'a we would do so. It is you who wish to do so."
"There has to be a plan for the extraction of these two men in the event of difficulties. They have to be able to call by radio for help."
"Israeli lives, Mr Martins, will not be put at risk for a mission that is not ours."
"Then I will go higher in the chain than you, Major Dan."
"Of course, you are free to do so. But may I offer you a warning, Mr Martins? Create too many waves and there's a possibility that the co-operation already offered you will be reduced… but you must decide for yourself."
"Dammit, man, would you turn your back on them, would you see them die out there?"
Percy Martins took the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit jacket. It did not seem strange to him that he wore a suit of light green tweed plus matching waistcoat with the room temperature close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It was one of perhaps six more or less indistinguishable suits that he always wore, winter and spring and summer and autumn, except on Sundays. There was a watch chain across the buttons of the waistcoat, given him by his mother after his father's death, and the timepiece was more than sixty years old and kept good time if it was wound each morning. He mopped the perspiration from his forehead. He disapproved of the designer safari suit in which Tork was dressed, and he disapproved more of the lack of support he was getting from his colleague.
His career in the Service had been a lifetime of struggle.
His response to all obstacles was to lower his head and raise his voice. There was not one colleague in Century who could level against him the accusation of subtlety.
"I have to believe, Mr Martins, that the hazards of a mission into the Beqa'a were fully evaluated."
The station officer saw Percy Martins blanche. He saw the tongue flick across the lips.
"We must have back-up."
The station officer had been long enough away from Century to recognise the signs. He felt as if he had eavesdropped a conversation on the upper floor of Century. Naturally, the Israelis would jump to the bidding of the men from the Secret Intelligence Service.
Take it for granted that the Israelis would be grateful to help in every possible way.
"I think that what the major is trying to say, Mr Martins, is.. . "
"I know bloody well what he's trying to say. He's trying to say that two men would be left to rot because the Israeli Defence Force is not prepared to get off its backside and help."
Major Zvi Dan said, "Mr Martins, allow me to share with you two facts of life in this region. First, for years Israel has pleaded with Western governments to take action against international terrorism, and for years we have been rebuffed. Now, you are in our eyes a Johnny-come-lately, and you expect after years of rejecting our advice that we will suddenly leap in the air at your conversion and applaud you. We think of ourselves first, ourselves second, ourselves third, it is what you have trained us to do. Second fact: in Lebanon in the last five years we have lost close to one thousand men killed. If our population were translated to that of the United States then we would have lost more men killed in five years than died from enemy action in the whole of the Vietnam war that was of double the duration. If our population were that of the United Kingdom, then we would have lost, killed, some 17,000 soldiers. How many have you lost in Northern Ireland, four hundred? I think not. How many were killed in the South Atlantic, 350? Not more. Mr Martins, had you lost 17,000 servicemen in Northern Ireland, in the South Atlantic, would you rush to involve your men in further adventures that would end in no advantage to your own country? I think not, Mr Martins."