He was nagged by frustration. Martins could recognise that he was the outsider, he was an intrusion in the smooth dealings between Tork, station officer in Tel Aviv, and his local contacts.
He tidied his paper. He scraped out the debris from the bowl of his pipe into the saucer of the coffee cup that he had been given three hours before. He ignored the No Smoking sign stuck onto a window of the station officer's room.
The door opened. Martins saw the station officer blink as the smoke caught his eyes. Sod him… The station officer tugged in with him a shallow long wooden box, olive green. No greeting, not as yet. The station officer's priority was to get to the window, shove it open, then to the air conditioner, switch it off.
"Been able to occupy yourself?" the station officer asked curtly.
"I've passed the time. What have you brought?"
"A rifle."
Martins tried to smile. "A present for the Ayatollah and the Mullahs?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Just a joke."
"Actually it is the rifle for Crane."
"We brought Crane's rifle out from England – rather a lot of paperwork."
"It wasn't the rifle he wanted."
"Why didn't the bloody man say what he wanted? He test fired the Parker Hale, he didn't complain."
"Perhaps you never asked him what he wanted.
Perhaps you just told him what he was getting."
"The man's impossible."
"Just doesn't waste time arguing. What he would have told you he wanted if he had been asked was a model PM from Accuracy International, small firm down in Hampshire."
"How did it get here?"
"Israelis picked it up yesterday, shipped it out in their DipCorps bag to save time, avoid the export licence. I collected it this morning."
Martins puffed, "That makes me look a complete fool."
The station officer asked, "Would you like some more coffee?"
"There are more important things than coffee. If it has not escaped you, I am in charge… Damn it, man, I didn't know you were smuggling a rifle out of the UK, I don't know where Holt and Crane are, I don't know when the jump off is, I have not been given access to the latest intelligence on the camp."
"Unfortunate."
"Meaning?"
"You're going to have to live with it."
"I'm a senior man in London, Tork… "
"And this is Israel. Sorry… Decision taking is in Crane's hands, and stays there. Crane will decide on the jump off, on the route. He will make the decisions because he is going to be in the Beqa'a, and we are not, for which in all sincerity I thank God."
"You and I are going to have to get one or two things straight."
The station officer glanced up, heard the rasp in the voice. He thought a man who wore a three piece suit in the heat of Israel to be a fearful ass.
"As I understand it, Mr Martins, you got the job, were sent out here, because there were no decisions to be taken – sorry."
"Fenner told you that…? Well, you've got a nasty surprise coming to you. Control of this mission has been entrusted to me by the Director General, and I mean control. And one more thing: there is more to the work of the Service than the analyses that you fill your day in writing. I've read some of your stuff – 15 pages on the future of the Coalition here, eight pages on the prospect of a right wing backlash, 21 pages on future settlements on the West Bank, all the sort of crap that Fenner wants, the sort of gibberish that keeps Anstruther h a p p y. "
"I am sorry if my material is too complex for you, Mr Martins."
"You can think of it as complex if you wish, Tork, but you'd better get it into your head that this mission into the Beqa'a is of infinitely greater importance to the interests of the United Kingdom than the trivia with which you spend your days, and if this goes wrong, for your lack of co-operation, I'll have you gutted," Martins said.
The station officer peered down at him. Twice in the last week his wife had asked him whether they were not duty bound to invite Mr Martins, out from London, to their flat for dinner. Twice the station officer had told his wife to forget it, leave the man to his hotel room.
The station officer fancied he could hear the boast chat in London on the upper floors of Century. Problems, why should there be problems? Difficulties? Difficulties only existed to be overcome. A good show, a super big show.
As if it was a gesture of defiance, Martins shovelled tobacco from his pouch and into the bowl of his pipe.
"I'm going to be in Kiryat Shmona."
"What for?"
"Because I'm bloody well responsible."
"Once they're over the frontier, once they've gone there's nothing you can do."
"I have to be somewhere, and that's where I mean to be," said Martins.
The station officer considered the alternative. He thought of having him fretting in his office for the next week, perhaps longer.
"I'll take you up."
Rebecca was the personal assistant to the major. She had been with him for more than two years. Major Zvi Dan liked to say, when he introduced her, that she was his eyes and his ears, that she alone understood the mysteries of the now computerised filing system. She was blessed also, he claimed, with an elephantine memory. At the end of each working day he would share with her his thoughts, his new found information, and they would be stored electronically in the computer and mentally in her head.
Rebecca sat in the front passenger seat of the pick-up truck. She was out of uniform. She wore jeans and a blouse of brilliant orange. First she had smoothed her nails with a manicure stick, now she painted them purple, fingers and toes.
Rebecca was a fixture in Major Zvi Dan's life. Perhaps he relied too greatly on her, on her memory and her organising skills. She bullied him – not that he complained other than to her face. She made him go to the doctor at Defence when his leg stump ached intolerably, she forced him to eat when the work load bowed him down, she came once a week to his bachelor flat, high and overlooking the Ramat Gan quarter, to collect his dirty clothes and take them to a launderette.
They had been parked at the side of the Nablus to Jenin road for a little more than an hour.
Rebecca glanced up occasionally from her concentration to amuse herself at the growing anxiety of Major Zvi Dan. The major paced around the pick-up.
He looked down at his watch. He fingered the automatic pistol that was tucked into the belt of his slacks. With binoculars he studied the pale rock strewn hills, and the small terraced fields from which the stones had been lifted to make walls.
She heard the snort of Major Zvi Dan's exasperation.
When they had first stopped, he had told her that within five minutes they would be making the ren-dezvous with Crane and the English boy. Five minutes drifting into more than an hour. He was cursing quietly, he was staring up the road, he was searching for the approach of two small and distant figures.
"You should get something done about those eyes, Major."
She heard the voice. She swung her head. Major Zvi Dan was rooted, peering down the rough hill slope that fell from the road. Small rocks only, low and hardy scrub bushes. She watched the head of the major tilt and twist as he tried to find the source. She could see no hiding place.
"Crane?" Major Zvi Dan shouted. "Get the hell up here."
The ground seemed to rise. The figure seemed to materialise. Where there was dung grey rock there was a standing man.
"You need to get them looked at, Major."
She laughed out loud.
"Move yourself, Holt."
A second figure appeared. They stood together some fifteen yards from the road, level with the pick-up.
They were in uniform, their skins were dirt smeared.
"I am a busy man, Crane. I have better things to do."
Crane came forward.