They were in darkness. The shaded nightlight was at the far end of the room.
"When you were like them, was there no peace?"
He whispered, "There was no peace in the tent camps. When I was like them there were only the camps for refugees, for my people who had fled from the Israeli."
"But you had what they do not have, you had the love of your mother."
"Who struggled to survive with a family in a tent."
"What is the future of these little ones, my sweet boy?"
"Their future is to fight. They have no other future."
"What do you remember of when you were a child?"
He grimaced. "I can remember the hunger. I can remember the drills to get us to run fast to the ditches so we would be safe if their aircraft came."
She watched the boy child's fingers clutch and free and clutch again at the collar of Abu Hamid's tunic.
She asked, "You surely do not regret being a fighter?"
"I do not regret it, but I never had the chance to be otherwise. So, there are Palestinians who have gone to the Gulf and to Saudi and to Pakistan and to Libya, and they work for the people there. I do not have that chance.
Margarethe, I can write only my name. I can read a little, very little… I tell you that in honesty. I cannot go to Bahrain or Tripoli to work as a clerk. There is no employment for a clerk who can read very little. There were not schools at the tent camps which taught reading and writing and making arithmetic. We were taught about the Israelis, and we were shown how to run to the air raid shelters. .. "
She saw the boy child's fingers grasping at his lips and his nose. He made no attempt to push the boy child's fingers away.
"… and if we have not succeeded in our lifetimes in freeing our homeland from the Israelis, then these little ones also must be taught to be fighters. We cannot turn our back on what has happened to us."
"You said two hours ago that you had done enough."
"Do you try to make me ashamed?"
"You are a fighter, that is why you have my love."
The boy child's fingers had found the small well hole of the crow's foot scar. There was a gurgle of pleasure.
He suppressed the memory of the stinging pain as the artillery shell shrapnel had nicked across his left upper cheek, the memory of the last days of the retreating battle for West Beirut.
"It is all I know. I know nothing of being a clerk."
Major Said Hazan made up a rough bed of blankets on the leather sofa in his office, then undressed.
When he had folded his clothes, when he stood in his singlet and shorts, he went to the Japanese radio behind his desk and tuned to the VHF frequency of the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation. He smoked another cigarette. He searched his way through the file on his desk, the file that obsessed him. He listened to the news broadcast in the English language. It was a powerful radio, it guaranteed good reception.
The radio, in his opinion, broadcast a news bulletin of irrelevant crap. It said that "orthodox" Jews in Jeru salem had again been stoning bus shelters that carried advertisements showing women in bathing suits. The pipe line feeding the Negev irrigation system from the Sea of Galilee had closed down because of shortage of water. The triumph of a rabbi who had come up with the solution of self-propelled tractors to work on the Golan Heights during the fallow year when the Commandment dictated that a farming Jew should not work his fields. The rate of inflation. The public squabbling between Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. New figures showing the decline of young people seeking a kibbutz life. The performance of a Tel Aviv basket-ball team in New York… But the bulletin pleased him.
If the recruits had been taken he would have heard it on the radio. The IBC was always quick to report explosions, arrests. If they had been taken it would have been on the radio that evening. He switched off the radio and lay on the sofa.
Major Said Hazan laughed and the shiny skin on his face buckled in his mirth. His own secret, his own reason to laugh. The secret of the timer was shared only between himself and the technician in the basement technical laboratory of the Air Force Intelligence wing.
Not shared with the Brother of the Popular Front, not shared with the cattle who had been brought from the Beqa'a. The cattle believed the timer was set for 45 minutes, the cattle believed they would be off the bus at the Latrun Monastery and that the explosion would follow when they were legging it hard to Ramalleh, cross country into the Occupied Territories. The setting of the timer was the secret he shared only with his technician.
When his laughter subsided, he concentrated on the file.
The first page of the file showed in detail a plan of the layout of buildings of the Defence Ministry on Kaplan.
Major Said Hazan was half in love with the file.
He was in singlet and running shorts and track shoes, and washing his stubbled face when the telephone rang in the bedroom. He wiped his eyes. Water splattered on the tile floor. The telephone yelled for him.
It was not yet a beard, just a dark rash over his colouring face.
He picked up the telephone.
"Holt?"
Crane's gravel voice in Holt's ear. "Get your clothes on, get downstairs."
"What's the panic?"
"We're going out."
"Where?"
"Travelling."
"What do I need?"
"Just yourself, dressed."
"For how long?"
"A few days."
"For God's sake, Crane, you could have told me last night…"
"You're wasting time, get down."
He heard the purr of the telephone. He slammed his receiver down. He chucked on his trousers and a shirt.
Holt steamed. He had had dinner with the monosyllabic Crane and Percy Martins. Crane had hardly spoken beyond asking for the salt to be passed him, and sugar for his coffee. Martins had been bottling some private anger. Nobody had told Holt anything.
He ran down the service stairs and strode into the hotel foyer.
Up to Crane who was standing by the glass front looking out, bored, onto the street.
"Will you start treating me like a bloody partner?"
Crane grinned at him. "Come on."
They walked past the hotel's taxi rank. They walked all the way to the bus station. Crane had the decency to say that a walk would do Holt good if he was missing this morning's work-out. Crane set a fierce pace. That was his way. Three times Holt tried to batter his complaint into Crane's ear, three times he was ignored.
It was a dingy corner of the city. Noisy, crowded, dirty, impoverished. And this was the new bus station.
Holt wondered what the old one had looked like. Sunday morning, military travel day. To Holt, it seemed that a full half of Israel's conscript army was on the move.
Young men and young women, all in uniform, all with their kit, most with their weapons, rejoining their units after the weekend. Crane moved fluently through the crowds, through the queues, as though he belonged, and Holt trailed behind him.
There were buses to Ashkelon and Beer Sheba and Netanya and Haifa and Kiryat Shmona and Beat Shean.
Buses to all over the country. Buses to get the army back to work. So what the hell happened if the enemy came marching in at a weekend? Holt caught Crane, grabbed his arm.
"So where are we going?"
"Jerusalem, first."
"Why don't you tell me what we're doing?"
"Surprise is good for the human juices."
"Why don't we drive?"
"Because I like going by bus."
"When do we start being a partnership?"
"When I start telling you where you're going you'll start messing your pants."
Crane grinned, shook himself free.
He pointed to a queue. He told Holt to stand there.
Holt stood in the queue. It stretched ahead of him.