"So how do you like it here, Hendrik, serving with the United Nations?"
"Are you a Jew?" 1
The young man's face close to his own. "Most certainly not."
"The Jews treat us like filth. They have so great an arrogance. They make many problems for us."
"Ah yes. Is that so?"
His whisky was less than half drunk, but the barman had reached for it, prompted by one of the soldiers. The glass was refilled.
"That's most civil of you. You were saying, Hendrik
"
"I was saying that the Jews make many problems for us."
"Not only for you, my boy," Martins said quietly, the first trace of a slur in his speech.
"Every day they violate the authority of the United Nations."
"Is that so?"
"Every single day they come into the U N I F I L area."
"Indeed? Do they indeed?"
"They come in and they make trouble, but it is us who have to mend the damage."
"Absolutely."
There was an appealing candour to the young man, Martins thought, compared to his own callow son, miserable little brat, without a polite word for his father.
"That's very decent of you… " The whisky glass was gone again. Percy Martins felt the warm careless glow in his body.
"They've always made trouble, the Jews. Since way back, since before you were born, my boy. Part of their nature. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not an anti-semite, never have been, but by God they tax my patience. They always have done, damn difficult people to do business with when you need co-operation."
"Business or holiday?"
Martins leaned forward, avuncular, confiding. "A little more business than holiday."
"What sort of business?"
Martins swayed, "Careful, my boy. Over your young head… "
He seldom drank in London. A pint in the pub or a quick Scotch when he slipped out of Century in the evening to get some fish and chips or a takeaway pizza before going back to work late. He kept no alcohol at home. If he left alcohol in the house it would be drunk by his wife, or by the boy when he was home from college. But this was a first class young man, with a good reading of events, a very level headed young man. God, why did they have to have that bloody music? And why did those bloody Americans have to address each other as though they were in the next state?
"Like last night."
"Sorry, my boy, what was last night?"
"They sent an infiltration team through our lines… "
Martins reeled back. "How did you know about that?"
He was close to losing his footing. He hung on the edge of the bar.
"They sent an infiltration team through last night."
Martins shouted. "I bloody heard you, don't repeat yourself. I asked you a question. How did you bloody know what happened last night?"
He was not aware that his raised voice had quietened the Americans. He did not see the man behind him, the one who wore the leather jacket, slide from his chair, go fast for the door.
"Why do you shout?"
"Because I want an answer, my boy."
"To what, an answer?"
"How you knew about an infiltration team moving off last night."
"Does it concern you?"
"Your answer, I want it."
His vision was blurred. He could not register the curious concentrated interest of the boy Hendrik.
"An Englishman, on holiday – why does an infiltration concern him?"
"It bloody well concerns me, how you knew."
"You are drunk, mister."
In front of him the young man turned away, as if no longer interested. Martins caught at the white T-shirt, spun him round.
"How did you know about the infiltration last night?"
"Take your hands off me."
"How did you know…?"
There was quick movement. As though the Norwegians were suddenly bored with the elderly Briton.
Martins's shout still hung in the air as they pushed past him, away from the bar, out through the swing door.
The music played was ragtime.
The man sitting at the table behind abandoned the two orange juices, hurried out through the door to drag his colleague off the telephone.
There was the sound of the U N I F I L transport roaring to life in the car park.
"What did he say, Hendrik, that pissed fart?"
Hendrik Olaffson drove. "Heh, thanks for pulling the asshole off me."
"What was it about?"
He spoke slowly. "He was English. He said he was a tourist, but he did not dress like a tourist and there is no tourism here, that is the first. Then the second, he went stupid when I said that the Israelis had infiltrated through our sector last night. He said, 'How did you know about an infiltration team last night?', those were his words."
A voice from the darkness in the back of the jeep.
"Hendrik, is it possible that the British have pushed an infiltration group through our sector, going north?"
"Into the Beqa'a? It would be madness."
"Madness, yes. But worth much weed, Hendrik… "
They were laughing, full of good humour.
They were waved through the checkpoint at Metulla.
In the foyer of the guest house of the Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, the receptionist passed the man who wore the frayed leather jacket her guest book. Her finger pointed to the name and the signature of Percy Martins, British passport, government servant.
They were moving on an animal track. He thought it could be a goat track. There were wild goat loose on Exmoor and Holt knew their smell. He reckoned it was a regular track. It was the fifth hour of the night march and the old moon was up, in the last quarter which was the best time for night infiltration according to Crane's bible. Maximum safe light for them to move under, and it was a hell of a job for Holt to follow the track. Would have been impossible for him if he had not had the guiding wraith of Crane ahead. Damned if he could figure how Crane could have been able to identify the animal track from the high-up aerial photographs.
The fifth hour, and the march was now going well.
Two hours back it had not been good, they had scampered across the tarmac road in their path. A bad bit, the road, because they had had to lie up for quarter of an hour before moving into the open, and in the waiting Holt had felt the fear pangs. Gone now, the fear, gone because the road was behind them and below them. The hillside was steep, and much of the time Holt walked crab style going sideways, because that was the easiest way with the weight of the Bergen. The Bergen should have been easier. He was a gallon of water down, ten pounds weight down, didn't seem to make any difference. He was feeling good and the blister hadn't worsened, and he thought he could live with the sores under the backpack straps. He was the son of a pro-fessional man, he had been to private school, he was a graduate in Modern History, he had been accepted via the "fast stream" into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. And no bloody way any of that had fitted him for crab walking along a hillside in south Lebanon, no bloody way it would help him if the blister on his heel burst, if the sores on his shoulders went raw.
He thought he was beginning to move by instinct. He thought he was getting into the rhythm of the march.
He tried to think of his girl. So hard to see his girl in his mind, because his mind was taken up with footfall, and lying up positions, and water rations, and watching and following Crane up ahead. The old goat on an old goat track… Hard to think of Jane. It seemed to him like a betrayal of her memory, of his reason for being there. She was just a flicker in his mind, like the bulb going in a striplight. The good times with Jane, they didn't have anything to do with changing the ammunition twice a day in the magazines, nor with squatting in the lee of a rock after dark using smooth stones to wipe his backside, nor with cleaning his teeth with a pick because paste left a smell signature, nor with carrying a Model FM long range sniper rifle that gave one chance, one shot. He could feel his Jane. She could be against his skin, like the pain of the pack straps was against his skin, like the heel of his right chukka boot was against his skin, he could feel her, but he could not see her.