"You win against these people by a rule of law, not a rule of the jungle."
"Is the need for a rule of law taking you into the Beqa'a?"
"Abu Hamid in the Beqa'a is beyond the law, this man is in the custody of the law."
"Neat, and pathetic. Whether or not you'll be alive in two weeks' time may well have depended on the thrashing that Arab shitface is getting right now."
"How?"
"I fancy coffee."
"How?"
"Because we've kicked him and belted him and he talked to us. Abu Hamid selected him for the mission.
He was a Popular Front recruit at a camp run by Abu Hamid. Considering the state of his hands he's drawn us a damn good layout of the camp and he's done us quite a good map of where the camp is. Fair exchange for handing out a thrashing, don't you think, knowing where to find Abu Hamid in the Beqa'a?"
"I just meant…"
"Close it down, Holt. I don't think I fancy walking into Lebanon with you bleeding a damn great trail of your sensitivities."
"I hear you," Holt said.
A police car drove them back to the bus station.
The building was Beit Sokolov, on the far side of the road and down the hill on Kaplan from the Defence Ministry complex.
The chief military spokesman was a barrel-chested bustling man, wearing his uniform well, showing his para wings on his chest. He strode into the briefing room.
He walked to the dais. His entry quietened them. He faced his audience. They sat below him, pencils and pens poised over the blank sheets of their notepads.
They were the military correspondents of the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation and Maariv and Yediot and the Jerusalem Post, and the bureau chiefs of the American and European broadcasting networks, and the senior men of the foreign news agencies. He checked around him. He was satisfied there were no microphones to pick up his words.
"Gentlemen, on a matter of the greatest importance to us, a matter directly affecting the security of the state, we demand your co-operation. Concerning the terrorist bomb explosion in the New Central bus station this morning, you will be handed our statement at the end of this informal briefing. The statement will say that two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organisation were involved in the planting of the bomb, and that both died in the explosion. Your reporters may, in conversation with eye witnesses, bring back stories of one terrorist being arrested and driven away from the scene of the explosion. We demand that that information does not appear. It is of the uttermost importance that the terrorist leaders who despatched these two men do not know that we are currently interrogating one survivor.
A matter of life and death, gentlemen. Any attempt to smuggle information concerning this survivor past the censors, out of the state, will lead to prosecution and harshest penalties of the law. Questions…"
The bureau chief of the Columbia Broadcasting Systems drawled, "Have we gotten involved in another bus ride cover-up?"
The military spokesman had anticipated the question.
Four years before, four Arabs from the Gaza Strip had hijacked a crowded bus in southern Israel, and threatened to kill the passengers if 25 Palestinians were not released from Israeli gaols. The bus had been stopped, and stormed. Two Arabs had died in the military intervention, two others had been seen being led away into the darkness at the side of the road by the Shin Bet. In a field, out of sight, these two were bludgeoned to death. Senior officials of Shin Bet were subsequently granted immunity from prosecution, and resigned.
"The move is temporary. There will be no cover-up because the survivor is alive. Within a month he will be charged with murder and will appear in open court.
Questions…"
The senior Tel Aviv-based reporter of the Reuters news agency asked, "Will we ever be told what it is that is a matter of life and death?"
"Who can tell?"
The briefing was concluded.
Within fifteen minutes the IBC had broadcast the news that according to the military spokesman it had now been ascertained that two Arabs, thought to be the bombing team, had died in the explosion.
Because of the deformity of his features it was difficult for the other officers in the room to ascertain the feelings of Major Said Hazan.
The major had pulled his chair away from his desk.
He was bent over his radio set, listening intently, as he had been for every one of the news broadcasts from Israel that morning.
He switched off the radio. He resumed the course of the meeting. He knew the scale of the casualties. He knew the fate of the two recruits. He knew that the trail of evidence to the Yarmouq camp on the outskirts of Damascus was cut.
More martyrs for the folklore of the Palestine revolution, more casualties for the enemy that was Israel.
The station officer rang Major Zvi Dan immediately after the news broadcast.
"I just want, again, to express my gratitude. If they had known there was a survivor…"
"… They would have moved the camp, the contact would have been lost. We have given you the chance, we hope you can use it."
11
They had slept in a hostel for soldiers in transit.
No explanations from Crane, and Holt was less bothered at the silences with each day he spent in the man's company. He was into the rhythm of tagging along, speaking when he was spoken to, following Crane's lead.
They had had fruit and cheese for breakfast. He thought his beard was beginning to come, slowly enough, but starting to appear something more than just a laziness away from the razor. When he had stood in front of the mirror, when he had taken his turn at the wash basin, when he had looked at himself, then he had wondered how Jane would have liked his beard… only a short thought, a thought that was cut before being answered because Crane had been behind him and told him to put away his toothpaste, told him to get used to life without a toothbrush. No explanation, just an instruction.
It beat him, why they could not stay in a hotel when they had all the expense money available to pay for a suite at the Hilton, why they had to sleep in a hostel at eight shekels a night.
He had reflected. His mind had cast back to the Crimea journey, to the field of the Light Brigade on which he would have walked with Ben Armitage.
"Ours not to reason why."
That was life with Noah Crane.
"Ours but to do and die."
Pray God that was not life with Noah Crane.
When he had finished his breakfast Crane stood and walked away from the table. He wouldn't wait for Holt to finish what he was eating. Holt stuffed two apples into his trouser pockets, grabbed a slice of cheese and followed him out. At a table in the hallway Crane put down his bank notes, and waited for his four shekels of change. No tip.
They walked. Crane said that Holt was missing his morning exercises, so they wouldn't take a bus. Holt was used now to Crane's stride, his cracking pace. They started from old Jewish Jerusalem, with the walls of the old city behind them and the golden semi orb of the Dome of the Rock. If he ever returned to London… of course he would… When he returned to London no-one would believe he had been in Jerusalem and never visited the old city, never walked the route of the Cross. And he was fitter. He could tell that, he was beginning to match Crane stride for stride. Away along wide streets, under gently leaved trees, over steep hills, and into new Jewish Jerusalem, through suburbs of villas constructed of clinically cut sand rock.
They were on the fringe of the city, they climbed the last hill.
They were overtaken by the tourist coaches as they approached the memorial.
"Yad Vashem, Holt," Crane said. "It's where we remember the six million of our people that the Hun slaughtered."
"History makes man complacent, doesn't get people forward. Take the Irish… "