Their valley wall, on which jutted the occasional rock outcrop, shelved away to the floor. He could see that the rock of the sides gave way to good soil at the bottom, The fields were neatly laid out, delineated by the differing crops. The valley walls were yellowed, browned, the valley floor was a series of green shades, and Holt could make out the flow of the Litani winding, meandering, in the middle of the valley, and he could see also the straight cut ditches that carried the irrigating life run of water from the river into the fields. He played a game to himself and tried to make out the produce of the handkerchief fields. He could see the posts supporting the vines that were just beginning to show their spring shoots, and the cutback trees of the fruit orchards, and the hoed-between lines of the grain crop, and the more powerful thrusting traces of the marijuana plants, and the white streamers of the plastic tunnels under which the lettuces flourished.
Holt thought that luxury was a warm bath, and a razor, and a tube of toothpaste…
What few trees there were, pine or cypress, were in small clumps on the valley floor. He reckoned the village of Saghbine was about a mile away below them. The village was clear enough through the binoculars, but it was hard for him to make out the individual buildings when he relied only on his eyesight. He was interested in the village because in his imagination he exchanged the village houses for the aerial photograph he had seen of the camp, and he tried to imagine how it would be when they came to lie up a thousand yards from the camp. Terrifyingly open… If the camp had been where Saghbine was… if they had had to manoeuvre to within a thousand yards of Saghbine and rest up through long daylight hours… he couldn't see how it could be done.
And Crane, snoring and nestling against him, just slept, slept like tomorrow was another day, another problem.
The village was a sprawled mess of concrete block homes and older stone buildings with a mosque and minaret tower in the centre. The high pitched chanted summons to prayer from the minaret tower reached him.
"Fancy a brew?"
Crane had an eye open. Snoring one moment, thinking of tea the next. Holt thought that Crane might just turn over and give up the ghost if the crop failed in Assam and Sri Lanka.
"Wouldn't mind."
"Done the magazines?"
"Done them."
"What's new?"
"Place is like the grave."
Crane stretched himself full length. Holt heard his joints crack.
"Then you're a danger to me, youngster."
"How come?"
"Because, youngster, when you start thinking the Beqa'a is quiet as the grave then that's the time you start to get careless."
"I just said the place was pretty peaceful, which it is."
Crane took the binoculars. Tea was going to have to wait. Holt bridled, and Crane didn't give a damn.
Crane started by looking south.
"Pretty peaceful, eh, that what I heard? Back where you kicked the stone last night, where they fired the flares, there's troops out there. Pretty blind if you didn't see them, but they're there…"
His head turned, his gaze moved north.
"… There's a kiddie with some sheep, or didn't you see him? He's a mile back, not much more, he's about four hundred feet below us. He'll be watching for hyena because he's got lambs with him. If he sees anything that adds up to hyena then he'll yell, bet your backside…"
Again the twist of the head. Crane peered down at the village.
"Gang of guys going into the mosque for a knees down, or didn't you see them? They're in fatigues, or didn't you see that? They'll be Hezbollah, or didn't you know that? If the troops find a trail, if that kiddie spots you when you go to scratch your arse, then the God men'll be up here, too damn right."
"I hear you, Mr Crane."
"So, don't go giving me crap about it being quiet."
"It looked quiet."
"Looked? Heh, watch the kiddie…"
Crane passed the binoculars to Holt. He gestured where Holt should look. To himself, Holt cursed. When the boy and the sheep were pointed out he saw them.
Could have kicked himself. The boy with the sheep wore flopping dun-coloured trousers and he had a grey blanket over his shoulders, and the sheep and the lambs were dirty brown-white with black faces. He hadn't seen them, wouldn't have seen them without the prompting.
"I'm sorry."
"Doesn't help you, youngster. Waking up is what helps."
Holt watched the boy with the sheep. It was as if he were dancing to the music of a flute. Private dancing, because the boy was sure that he was not watched. The boy tripped in the air, and his arms circled above his head, skipping from foot to foot, bowing to something imaginary.
Crane whispered, "If he stops his act, if he starts running, then I get the shits. Do I piss you off, youngster?"
Holt grinned, "Why should you do that?"
"I'll give you a lecture. The troops back there, they hate you. The kiddie with the sheep, he hates you. The guys in the mosque, they hate you. Out here, I'm the only one on your side. Don't get a clever idea that somehow because you're a Brit, because you're not Yank and not Jew, that the troops and the kiddie don't hate you. Our problem was, before we came here in '82, that we never worked out just how much they'd hate us.
When they started to mess with us we kicked their arses, we blew up their houses, we carted their guys away to prison camps. They hate us pretty deep. They're dangerous because they've this martyr crap stuck in their skulls, aren't afraid of biting on a. 762 round. Fight them and you're in a no win, you kill them and you've sent them to the Garden of Paradise which they don't object to. They go in hard. Kill 'em, and more come, there are more queuing up to get to that Garden. They made our life a three-year misery for sinners when we were in the Beqa'a. They sniped us, they mined us, they never let go of us. Bombing them is the same as recruiting them. And they don't fight by your nice rules.
When I'm in the Beqa'a I forget everything, every last thing, that I learned about Hearts and Minds when I was in the British Paras. Treat each last one like he's an enemy, like he wants your throat, that's what I learned here. Don't ever hesitate, just kill, because they have no fear. The girl with the donkey, she had no f e a r…
"
"Do you have fear, Mr Crane?"
"Only when I've got you hanging on my tail, telling me it's all peaceful."
The chanting from the minaret had stopped. In the fields work was resuming. Holt could see the women with their hoes, forks, spades, shovels.
Crane grabbed the binoculars from Holt.
He gazed down at the approach road into Saghbine.
He seemed to smile.
There was a billow of dust on the road. Crane passed the binoculars back to Holt.
Holt saw the car with the dust streaming from its wheels.
"Don't ever forget what that car looks like."
"Why?"
"Because I say don't ever forget that car."
The car was an ancient Mercedes. Holt thought it not much less than a miracle that it still moved. The panels were rusty ochre. The front wing looked to have been in an argument. There were white smears of filler in the roof. He could see packing cases in the back, that the seats behind the driver had been stripped out. At his angle he could not see the face of the driver, only the width of his gut.
"I see the car."
"About time you learned how to make a brew. Get on with it."
The phone trilled on Major Zvi Dan's desk. Rebecca picked it up.
She listened, she passed it to him.