Percy Martins sat straight backed.
"In the event of a crisis the abandonment of those two men would be contemptible."
"Not as contemptible as the appeasement of terrorism that has for years been the policy of your government, of the governments of the United States, of France, of Germany, of Greece. We have offered and already given considerable co-operation. You should make the best of what you have."
There was the scrape of the chair under Percy Martins. He was red-faced from the heat, flushed from the put-down. He stood, turned on his heel. No hand shakes, no farewells. He strode out of the room.
A long silence and then the major said, "Before he leaves, I should see Noah Crane."
The station officer reached for his hand, clasped it, shook it in thanks.
They took a bus through the snail slow raucous rush hour of the late afternoon. She clung to him to avoid being pitched over in the jerking progress of the bus.
They raised eyes. Margarethe was the only woman on the bus, and a white woman at that. Her Arabic was uncertain, good enough for her pith comment about the coming role of women in a socialist democracy to be heard, good enough to check the blatancy of the gaze she was subjected to when her hands were held behind Abu Hamid's neck.
She had been coy. She had not told him where she was taking him. It was three days after he had found her in the shaded room above the alley in the Souq al Hamadieh. It was the first time in three days that he had left the room, the first time in three days that he had dressed, the first time in three days that he had moved more than a dozen paces from the dishevelled bed.
He was returning to the Beqa'a in the morning.
She released her hands from his neck. She pecked at his cheek. She horrified the men on the bus. He loved her for it. He kissed her. He offended the passengers and gloated. He showed, in public, for all to see, his love for a woman, for an infidel.
They stepped off the bus.
A dark wide street. High walls to the sides of the dirt walkway along the road. He did not know where they were. She held his hand. She led him briskly.
The gate was of thin iron sheet, nailed to a frame, too high for Abu Hamid to see over. She pulled at a length of string that he had not seen and a bell clanked. A long pause, and the gate was scraped open.
She led him forward. They passed through a gloomy courtyard. She had no word for the old man who had pulled back the gate for her. She walked as though she belonged. They climbed a shallow flight of steps, the door ahead was ajar.
Through the doorway, into a cool hallway, on and down a dim lit corridor, into a long room. His shadow, her shadow, were spreadeagled away down the length of the room. He saw the blurred shape of a robed woman coming towards him, and the woman took the hands of Margarethe in greeting and kissed her cheeks.
He saw the lines of tiny cot beds that were against the walls on both sides of the long room. His vision of the room cleared. He saw the cot beds, he saw the sleeping heads of the children. Margarethe had slipped from his side. She moved with the woman, deep in whispered conversation, Margarethe using her flimsy Arabic in short pidgin sentences; they paused only in their talk to tuck down the sheets that covered the children, to wipe perspiration from the brow of a child with a handkerchief. He looked down on the faces of the nearest children, took note of the gentle heave of their breathing, of their peace.
From the far end of the room she summoned him.
Without thinking he walked silently, on the balls of his feet.
A child coughed, the woman in the robe slid away from Margarethe, went to the child.
Margarethe said, "It is where I work, it is the new place that I work."
"Who are the children?"
"They are orphans."
He saw the robed woman lift the child from the cot and hug it against her chest to stifle the coughing fit.
"Why did you bring me?"
"They are the orphans of the Palestine revolution."
He looked into her eyes. "Tell me."
"They are the future of Palestine. They were orphaned by the Israelis, or by the Christian fascists, or by the Shi'a militias. They are the children of the revolution. Do you understand?"
"What should I understand?"
He saw the woman return the child to the cot bed, and smooth the sheet across its body.
"Understand the truth. The truth is these children.
These children lost their parents at the hand of the enemies of Palestine. These children are truth, they have more truth than the baubles that can be bought with five thousand American dollars…"
He closed his eyes. He saw the flame crawling the length of the spiral of paper.
"What do you want of me?"
"That you should not be corrupted."
He saw the radiance in her face, he saw the adoration for the great struggle to which she was not bound by blood.
"You want me dead," he heard himself say.
"The man that I love will not be a hireling who kills for five thousand American dollars."
"You know what is Israel?"
"The man that I love will have no fear of sacrifice."
"To go to fight in Israel is to go to die in Israel."
"The man that these children will love will have only a fear of cowardice."
"To go to Israel is to be slaughtered, to be dragged dead in front of their photographers."
"These are the children of the revolution, they are the children of the fallen. They must have fathers, Hamid, their fathers must be the fighters in the struggle for Palestine."
"Have I not done enough?"
"I Want you to be worth my love, and worth the love of these children."
She took his hand. He felt the softness of her fingers on his. She shamed him. .''I promise.
"What doyou promise, sweet boy?"
"I promise that I will go to Israel, that I will kill Jews."
She kissed his lips. She held his hand and walked him again down the room, past the long rows of sleeping children.
They settled to sleep in a grove of eucalyptus trees near to the north bank of the Hayarkon river. They were at the very edge of the Tel Aviv city mass.
They had eaten the last of their food on the move, as they made their way through Herzilya and Ramat Ha-Sharon.
They had the map of the streets. They would start early in the morning. They had decided it would take them more than an hour and a half to walk from where they were to the bus station off Levinsky on the far side of the city.
With the food gone, the grip bag contained only the three kilos of plastic explosive, plus the detonator and the wiring and the timer. As they lay under the ripple rustle of the trees, Mohammed and Ibrahim talked in whispers of what they would do with the money they would be paid, what they would buy in the stores of Damascus when they returned.
A light wind brought the scent of oleanders in bloom and the rumble of the lorry traffic in from the street.
They were sitting near to the door of the dormitory room, their backs against the wall.
Margarethe said, "When I am here I am at peace."
Abu Hamid said, "I have no knowledge of peace."
Lying on her lap, huddled against her breast was a girl child who had vomited milk. On his shoulder, his hand gently tapping its back, was a boy child now quietened from crying.