"Don't give me university crap. Isaiah, 56, 5. 'Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.' We do remember what happened to our people. If we ever forget them then that will be the day that the same can happen to us."
"I don't believe history tells us… "
"Holt, six million of our people went to the gas chambers and the furnaces. They didn't fight, they lay down.
Because we remember what happened, today we will always fight, we will never lie down. I don't want a debate, I'm just telling you."
They went into the low ceilinged bunker that was the heart of the memorial. They stood at the rail, they looked down on the stone floor in which were carved out the names of the 21 largest concentration camps.
Further from the rail were fading wreaths, and near to the back wall of rough cut lava rocks there burned a flame. Holt was the tourist, he gazed around him, as if he stared at the Kremlin cupolas, or the arches of the Coliseum, or the Arc de Triomphe, or the Statue of Liberty. He turned back to see if Crane was ready to move on. He saw the gleam of a tear rolling on Noah Crane's cheek. He could not help himself, he stared blatantly. He read the names… Treblinka, Auschwitz, Dachau, Belsen, Lwow-Janowska, Chetmno… He stood behind Crane so that he should no longer intrude into the privacy of his vigil.
Abruptly Crane swung away, marched out into the sunlight. They walked quickly.
Crane leading, Holt following.
They walked through a garden parkland that was laid out in memory of Theodor Herzl, the originator of the concept of a Jewish state. They went past the young sprouting trees and bank beds of flowers, and down avenues of bright shrub bushes. When they had crossed the parkland, when they looked down the hillside, Holt saw the terraced rows of graves with their slab stone markers. He stood on the high ground, he left the neat chip stone paths to Noah Crane. It was a personal pilgrimage. For a long time he watched the slow lingering progress of Crane amongst the graves.
Holt brushed the flies from his forehead. He was being given a lesson, that he was aware of. He thought that Crane did nothing by chance.
At the far end of the graveyard, Noah Crane looked up, shouted to Holt, "They're all here, Holt, the high and mighty and the unknowns. Men from the Stern Gang, from the Liberation War of '48, Sinai, Six Days, Yom Kippur, Netanyahu who led the raid to Entebbe, Lebanon, all the men who've given their lives for our state. We value each one of them, whether he's a hero like Netanyahu, whether he's a spotty faced truck driver who went over a mine in Lebanon. Whatever happens to me in the Beqa'a they'll get me back here, that's the best thing I know."
"That's mawkish, Crane."
"Don't laugh at me. This isn't a country that's going soft. You know, Holt, in the President of Syria's office there is one painting, one only. The painting is of the Battle of Hattin. You ever heard of that battle, you with all your history? 'Course you haven't… At the Battle of Hattin the great Saladin whipped the arse off the Crusaders. The President of Syria aims to repeat the dose. He aims to put us to the sword, and the rest of us into the sea. Got it?"
"Got it, Mr Crane."
"It's not my intention to end up here, Holt."
"Glad to hear it, Mr Crane."
"So you just remember each damned little thing that I tell you, each last damned little thing. You do just as I say, without question, no hesitation,"
Crane's voice boomed on the hillside. "That way I might just avoid the need of them cutting a hole for me
''Let's hope we can save them the trouble, Mr Crane."
Later, towards the end of the morning, with their kit, they were dropped off at the start point chosen by Noah Crane.
They were going walking in Samaria, north from Ramalleh towards Nablus, in the Occupied Territories.
Via a scrambled telephone link, Percy Martins reported progress to the Director General.
From Tork's office in the Tel Aviv embassy he spoke directly to the nineteenth floor at Century. By protocol he should have talked to Fenner. He hoped, fervently, that Fenner would hear he had bypassed him.
"Crane's taken the youngster for a few days into the Occupied Territories to get him thinking the right way, used to the equipment, used to the movement."
"And then they go?"
"They're going to be picked up near Nablus, they'll be taken to Kiryat Shmona, rest up for a few hours, then off."
"What state is the eye witness?"
"Holt's in a good state. He'll do well."
"How are they coming out?"
"They're going to have to walk out."
"Haven't you bent a few backs?"
"God knows, I've tried, but they're going to have to walk out."
"Anything new?"
"We have a fix on a training camp that is being run by Abu Hamid. We know exactly where to go for him."
"The Prime Minister wants it for Sylvester Armitage's memory. I want it for Jane Canning's memory.
I'm relying on you, Martins."
Martins, hired hand, third man on the Desk, first time running his own show, said defiantly, "You can depend on us, sir."
Crane was on watch, Holt drowsed.
For Holt, the night march with the laden backpack was the most exhausting experience of his life.
"They're going, Prime Minister, within a week."
"To bring me his head?"
"Regrettably not on a salver, but his head for all that." The Director General smiled.
"He's terribly lucky."
"Who is, Prime Minister?"
"This young man we've sent out there."
"The eye witness."
"Exactly, terribly lucky when so few people of his age have the chance afforded them of real adventure."
"Let us hope he appreciates his good fortune, Prime Minister."
"I have to tell you, I would be less than honest if I did not. I am already savouring the moment when I can recount this small epic to our friends in the States… "
"Forgive me, but they have a long road to walk."
"If I do not have the head of this Palestinian wretch, then most certainly I will have another head. It's your plan and your advice I'm taking."
The Director General smiled comfortably across the Downing Street sitting room.
"It was a very fine calculation then, Prime Minister, and in a number of particulars it is finer still."
The Prime Minister was gathering papers. The meeting was over. "His head or yours. Goodnight."
The second night out, and they had not been walking more than an hour and a half, and it was the third time that Holt had fallen, pulled over onto the rocks by the weight of his pack the moment he had lost his balance.
He heard the stones rumbling away on the hillside.
He could have cried in his frustration. He could hear the venom of Crane's swearing from in front.
Abu Hamid watched them coming.
He stood at the flap of his tent and studied the slow progress towards the camp of the girl who led the donkey, and behind it the crawling jeep. He could hear the soft cough of the jeep's engine as it idled. At that distance, even, more than half a mile, he knew that it was Fawzi's jeep.
She wore the floppy trousers of the Shi'as, and the short cotton skirt, and the full loose blouse, and the scarf tied tight over her head and then wrapped across her mouth to mask her face. She dressed in the clothes of a village girl of the Beqa'a. The jeep was a dozen paces behind her, but she made no effort to quicken her pace, or to move aside.
Abu Hamid sucked at a hardly ripe peach, swirling his tongue over the coarse surface of the stone. He knew that in the Beqa'a, under the eye of the Syrian army, under the control of the Syrian Intelligence agencies, nothing would happen by chance. He knew that it would not be by chance that a girl walked a donkey along the track that led only to the tent camp, and that the girl was followed by Fawzi's jeep. She was young, he was sure of that, he could see the smooth regular flow of her slim hips, the trousers and skirt could not hide the slender outline of the young body.