He heard the growl of the dog.
The boy was above them, going quickly. The boy called for the dog to catch him.
Holt fractionally opened his eyes. The dog was two, three yards from them. The dog was thin as a rake, brindle brown he reckoned, and back on its haunches in defence, and growling at Crane.
The boy threw a stone, and called louder for the dog.
The growl was a rumble of suspicion. His bladder was bursting, cramp pain spreading, his sneeze rising.
The dog yelped. The second stone thrown by the boy hit it square in the neck.
The boy raised his voice to shout for the dog to come.
He heard the sounds going away. He heard the sounds of the boy and his dog dwindling away up the hillside path. He lay on his face. He felt only exhaustion, he felt too tired to know relief.
He felt Crane's hand on his shoulder pulling at him to get upright.
Crane's mouth was at his ear, a near silent whisper,
"We've time to make up."
"Did I do all right?"
"That wasn't militia, not soldiers, just a kid. That was nothing."
Crane rose to his feet, headed away. Holt let him go fifteen paces then took his own first step.
He remembered the words of the song, mouthed them silently to himself,
"'Wish me luck, as you wave me goodbye, Wish me luck, wish me luck, wish me luck… ' "
And he seemed to hear her voice.
"Don't be childish, Holt."
He thought that he hated himself. He could have seen the boy knifed to death. He had never seen the face of the boy, he did not know the name of the boy. He was totally ignorant of the boy, and he could have cheered if Crane had felt the need to slide his short-bladed knife into the stomach of the boy, if Crane had drawn the sharp steel across the throat of the boy. If the boy had turned off the path, if the boy had come to see why his dog growled, then Holt would have cheered the boy's murder. As if a sea change had passed through him, as if he were no longer the man who had complained to Noah Crane about the torture of a Palestinian. He was dirtied in his soul.
He could remember, like yesterday, when he was ten years old, three days past his tenth birthday, and he had been walking with a holiday friend beside the river that ran close to his home. He had found a fox with a hind leg held by the thin cutting wire of a rabbit snare. There had been a blood smear around the wire, a little above the joint of the hind leg of the dog fox where the wire had worked deep through the fur and skin. Below the wire the hind leg hung at a silly angle. He had known, and he was only three days past his tenth birthday, that the dog fox was beyond saving because the leg was impossibly damaged. And he could not have freed it anyway because the dog fox snarled its teeth at him and at his friend, and would have bitten either of them if they had come close enough to release the other end of the wire from the hazel stump around which it was wound. They had taken smoothed rocks from the river shore, and they had thrown them at the fox until they had stunned it, could approach it, and with more stones they had battered the fox to death. All the time that he had killed the fox he had cried out loud. He could still remember how he had cried, childlike, in his bedroom that night. And now he could have cheered if the boy had been knifed.
He followed Crane. More of the Crane bible. He kept his eyeline to the right of Crane so that the moving shape was in the periphery of his vision. Crane had said that that way he would see better.
He was learning. He was changing.
Every late spring and every late autumn the ambassador of the United States entertained the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to dinner in the splendour of the official residence in London's Regent's Park. For those two evenings of the year the lights blazed, the drink flowed, the hospitality was warm. It was the style of these two evenings that the Prime Minister would attend in the company of selected Cabinet ministers with responsibilities particularly affecting relationships
"across the drain", along with principal industrialists with commercial links to the United States. On the American side a secretary of state would make the flight across the Atlantic. They were social occasions primar-ily, but permitted the free exchange of ideas and views.
A warm damp night. A fog rising from the park's grasslands. The mist outside was thickened in the drive-way by the exhaust fumes of the chauffeur-driven cars.
The night air was rich with good humour, noisy with guests making their farewells.
The Prime Minister warmly shook the hand of the ambassador.
"A wonderful evening, as always."
"A good night for a celebration, Prime Minister."
Below the steps the Branch men surrounded the Prime Minister's car, the lit interior beckoned. There was the warble of the radio link in the police back-up car. If there was a weakness in the make up of the evening it was that the ambassador and the Prime Minister had sat at dinner at opposite ends of the table, had barely exchanged words.
"You have the advantage over me, what is there in particular to celebrate?"
"An American triumph in the war against terrorism.
We're very proud, I've wanted to tell you all evening."
"What triumph?"
"We have an Air Force base at Vicenza in northern Italy. Two nights ago our base security, American personnel, picked up a Lebanese male on the perimeter fence. He was in a hide and checking out the wire security with a PNV pocket 'scope. Sorry, that's Passive Night Vision. Our guys whipped him straight inside, straight into the guard house."
The Branch men fidgeted. Other guests stood respectfully out of earshot and in line to offer their thanks.
"What do the Italians say?"
"There's the beauty of it. About now my colleague down in Rome will be informing the Italians that our captive is currently on a USAF transporter and heading Stateside. No messing this time. But I'm jumping… I haven't got to the choice part."
The guest line grew. The Prime Minister's driver switched off the engine of the Rover.
"The choice part is this… T W A flight 840, Rome to Athens in the spring of '86, an explosion at 15,000 feet takes a hunk out of the fuselage through which four passengers are sucked. Three of those four are American citizens. The source of the explosion was under a seat occupied by a Lebanese woman who had hidden the explosives before getting off in Rome. Okay, you're with me? Choice bit. That woman boarded at Cairo for the leg to Rome. She was seen off by a male, tagged as Palestinian, we have his description, we have his finger marks on the ticket stubs left at Cairo T W A check-in.
We have him as the organiser, and the woman just as the courier. That man is one and the same as the joker on the fence at Vicenza. The prints match. That bastard is up in a big bird right now, Prime Minister, he's going to Andrews base then a tight little military cell. That's why you can join me in celebration."
"Remarkable," the Prime Minister said softly.
"You'll remember what the President said. He said to these swines, 'You can run, but you cannot hide'. That's what we're proving. It's the first time we're able to put deeds to words, make action out of talk. We reckon this to be the turning point in the war against international terrorism. You're not cold, Prime Minister…?"
"Not cold."
"It's the first time this has happened, and it's the first time that counts. Sam leads the way, Sam is first in, that's our celebration."
"A fine stroke of luck," the Prime Minister said distantly.
"In this game you earn your luck. Look, we've known for a year this man was in and out of Lebanon, in Damascus or in the Beqa'a valley. We went through all the military evaluations about getting a force into the Beqa'a to drop him there. Can't be done, no way. The Beqa'a would swallow a marine division, that was our best advice, and even if we got in we'd never get out."