Snap Shot

by A. J. Quinnell

  ‘I’d better have a word with the Army Command,’ Sami said with a grin. ‘The northern front has been quiet for months - hardly a skirmish; but if you’re going up there with your camera maybe that’s going to change. How long will you be there?’

  ‘A few days. Maybe a week. I’d like to leave in the morning.’

  ‘No problem,’ Sami said. ‘I’ll make a phone call tonight. You can pick up your papers at the Ministry first thing in the morning. Nassir is going with you?’

  ‘Of course. You know he has to. I don’t mind – he’s a good man.’

  Sami leaned forward and said very sternly, ‘That’s not true and you know it. I know exactly why you want Nassir.’

  Munger felt a moment of panic but then Sami was smiling.

  ‘He’s lazy and useless. You like him because he doesn’t hang around your neck like some of the others would.’

  Munger grinned and quickly changed the subject. ‘When are you off to Beirut again?’

  Sami’s face turned serious. ‘Not for a while. You heard about Janine Lesage?’

  ‘No. I only got in from Basrah an hour ago. What happened?’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Sami took a sip of his orange juice. He looked very sombre. ‘Yes. She was killed in the women’s toilet at Beirut airport yesterday.’

  ‘She had a lot of enemies, Sami, and apart from you, few friends.’

  ‘Yes. It was very brutal. They strangled her to death with her own hair.’

  There was a long silence, then Munger said: ‘I told her she needed a haircut.’

  Walter Blum was camping out in his office. That is to say, his secretary had been evicted and her office turned into a temporary but very comfortable bedroom. The next few days would see the culmination of years of work and he was determined that nothing should go wrong at the eleventh hour. He was also receiving constant signals from General Hofti. A Cabinet meeting would take place in three days and a final decision had to be taken. The election campaign was turning into one of the most bitter in the history of Israel: Shimom Peres, Leader of the Opposition, had been briefed on the possibility of an air strike on the Tammuz I reactor and he was firmly against it. He suspected that Begin’s motives for such a raid would be largely political. So, to obtain the absolute proof of Iraq’s illegal intentions had become even more critical.

  But as Walter sat in his office late at night he did not consider those factors. His thoughts were on Ruth Paget. He had received a signal earlier in the evening that Tamar Feder was going to smuggle her out of the Lebanon from the Christian held port of Jounieh sometime during the night. Within twenty-four hours she would be in Limassol. Walter dreaded the coming meeting. At best she would be coldly disdainful; at worst, violent. He shook his head with awe at the thoughts of her killing Janine Lesage and the method of it. What a woman. What incredible effects love could have. She had almost certainly saved Munger’s life. If Janine Lesage had sent a message before her death he would have been arrested already, but only an hour ago Walter had received word that he had arrived at the Sinbad Hotel in Baghdad and had already met with Sami Asaf.

  Immediately after Misha Wigoda’s kidnapping Walter had drafted more agents into Baghdad. They were little more than ‘fly catchers’ and they would not be able to stay long without arousing suspicion, but for the next few days he would have a twenty-four hour cover watch on the Sinbad Hotel and the various ‘mail drops’ near it. A wireless link had been established with one of the Baghdad ‘safe houses’ so Walter would receive up to the minute reports.

  As he reviewed the overall situation Walter, in spite of his mounting tension, felt a touch of complacency. His agent was in place and about to collect the proof that was needed. The Mukhabarat had no suspicion of him and in fact, through the good offices of Sami Asaf, were even helping. Meanwhile in Israel the Air Force’s top squadron was prepared and waiting to destroy the reactor.

  Everything looked good to Walter, except for his impending meeting with Ruth.

  To Munger it looked like an old airfield and Nassir confirmed it.

  ‘The British built it in the nineteen-twenties. It was during the time they tried to police rebellious areas with their new Air Force - dropping bombs on the peasants. It worked in the flat desert areas but not up here. There was too much cover.’

  Munger studied it through powerful binoculars. It was late afternoon and the light was good. He was sitting in the car parked beside the road to Kalar on a high knoll above the barbed-wire perimeter about two miles away. To the east the mountains rose steeply towards the Iranian border.

  The bonnet of the car had been raised and Nassir was standing beside it with a dirty rag in his hand. Anyone passing would assume that the car had overheated - a common event on the mountain roads in the summer.

  Through his binoculars Munger could just make out the rectangular shape of the old runway. It had long since become overgrown but, from his raised view, he could see the smudged outline. It was obvious why the airfield had ceased to function as such: it was situated along a ridge of the foothills and its length was restricted by the topography. Only light, propeller-driven aircraft could ever have used it. To one side of the old runway was a row of Nissen huts; some were derelict and some had been repaired. As he watched, three men in uniform came out of one and walked towards a larger brick building further down the runway. He surmised that it would be the old officers’ mess and might be serving a similar purpose today. On the other side of the runway was the new installation: two adjoining buildings forming an elongated ‘T’. The upright was long, low and windowless with floor-to-ceiling sliding doors in the middle. The cross piece was two-storied and had many windows. Munger assumed that it was the administration block. These two buildings were circled and cut off from the rest of the installation by a heavy, wire-mesh fence. On top of it he could just make out the rows of distinctive white supports which carried another wire. He had seen such fences before. It was electrified. There was only one gate with a guardhouse beside it and several soldiers holding what looked to be sub-machine guns. That fence represented the second and innermost barrier for, around the entire installation, there were thick coils of barbed wire. It was new; Munger could see the lowering sun glinting on it. At a distance of about fifty yards inside this barrier a single wire ran along the tops of foot-high stakes, and facing outwards were a series of poles holding the skull and crossbones signs denoting a mine field. There was only one route through it from the outer gate, which also had a guardhouse and armed sentries.

  ‘How long will you be?’ Nassir called nervously.

  ‘A few minutes. Keep quiet. Fiddle with the bloody engine.’

  Slowly Munger traversed the binoculars and measured approximate distances. From beyond the outer fence he would not be able to guarantee clearly defined photographs, even using his most powerful telephoto lens. Also the Nissen huts would obstruct his view of the sliding doors where the yellowcake would surely be unloaded.

  However, from the Nissen huts and using a 500mm mirror lens he would be able to get excellent detail, even through the mesh fence. The problem was to get to the Nissen huts. He did not relish the thought of tiptoeing through a minefield in broad daylight, let alone darkness.

  He saw a score or so of men emerging from the administration block. Presumably work was over for the day. He watched as they walked through the gate and then across the old airstrip towards the Nissen huts. Some of them stopped and began to kick a football about. He could see where piles of stones had been laid to represent goal posts. He watched them for a while but then Nassir started whining again and he moved his gaze back to the minefield. It was going to be a real problem.

  For the next few minutes he wrestled with it. He knew the gates would be guarded day and night. He had already seen one car go through and the soldiers had searched it thoroughly, even running a wheeled mirror under the chassis. He was beginning to feel desperate when a movement caught his eye. One
of the footballers had shot for goal and sliced the ball wildly. It bounced across the sun-baked ground, rolled under the single strand of wire and came to rest in the middle of the minefield. Munger was astonished to see one of the players casually hurdle the wire run across the minefield and retrieve it. He started to laugh. The skull and crossbones signs were a decoy - like a scarecrow to frighten away birds. The authorities were saving money by digging a facade. The minefield was only in the mind.

  He swung the binoculars and studied the road which ran outside the barbed wire. There were deep, overgrown storm culverts along both sides. They would give him good cover. He swept his field of vision back to the Nissen huts. Just behind them was a narrow ruined building, the jagged walls jutting up three or four feet. He guessed that fifty years ago it had housed a row of latrines. It too would provide good cover.

  He put down the binoculars, picked up a notebook and pencil and drew a rough plan of the installation, marking off the distances. Nassir’s face showed great relief when he finally told him to close the bonnet.

  It was short-lived relief. As they drove back towards Kifri Munger explained what Nassir had to do. First he was to find and purchase a pair of wire cutters, then, in a few hours, drive Munger back to a precise point on the road. He would drive slowly and, coming into a bend, Munger would tumble out so that the car would not be seen to stop.

  The yellowcake shipment was due to arrive in the early afternoon of the next day. One hour after sunset Nassir was to drive back to the same spot and pick him up.

  Nassir was very unhappy. He did not want to do it but Munger pointed out the facts of life: he was already involved; there was great profit in it. Besides, if Munger were caught he would be tortured and eventually would confess about Nassir’s involvement. He really had no choice. Nassir grumbled all the way to Kifri, but it was true. He had no choice.

  It went well. At 10 o’clock that night there was little traffic on the road. Munger sat in the passenger seat dressed all in black, including a skull cap and scarf. He carried a canvas bag which held his camera and lenses, the wire cutters, khaki camouflage jacket and trousers, A thermos flask full of hot coffee and another of iced water, a packet of chicken sandwiches, a tube of dexedrine tablets and a can of mosquito repellent. He carried no weapons for, if he was spotted, he would have needed a Panzer division to get him out.

  Nassir was quivering with fear but he managed to keep the car at around ten miles an hour as they approached the bend.

  ‘Your only chance,’ Munger told him, ‘is to collect me tomorrow night. Once I’m out of Baghdad you can relax.’

  ‘I would never have done it,’ Nassir moaned. ‘Not if I’d known.’

  ‘Think of the money,’ Munger said, and opened the car door and, clutching the bag, rolled out.

  He did not even lose his footing. For a few paces his momentum carried him down the road after the car, then he slowed and veered away to the side and dropped into the culvert. He watched the red tail-lights disappear round the bend and, in spite of his contempt for Nassir, felt a moment of loneliness.

  There was a sliver of moon, just enough to delineate form a few yards ahead. For ten minutes he waited and listened. There were lights in the mess building and he could hear the faint sound of music. He was about to approach the barbed wire when he heard the low-geared noise of engines on the road. He ducked and stayed down for five minutes while a military convoy passed by a few yards away. He had to control a moment of hysterical amusement: had Sami Asaf really taken him seriously? Were the High Command reinforcing the northern front?

  Then it was quiet again and Munger pulled himself out of the culvert, wound the black scarf around his lower face and carefully approached the barbed wire.

  It took him an hour to cut his way through because he had to arranged the strands behind him so that his passage could not be casually detected in daylight. As he crept across the dummy minefield he still felt trepidation. They might after all have planted a couple of mines. But he reached the single strand of wire and carefully stepped over and then, keeping his body low and using the lights of the mess building as a reference point, scuttled across the open space to the ruined latrines. He found a dark corner where the outer walls rose almost five feet and an inner wall six feet away hid him from the opposite side. First he stripped off his black clothing and sprayed his naked body with the mosquito repellent, then he put on the camouflage clothing, poured coffee into the cover of the thermos flask and washed down a Dexedrine tablet. Then, using his black clothes as a cushion, he wedged himself into the corner.

  It would be a long night but, although she was far away, he had Ruth to keep him company. She was in his mind, his heart and his soul and she kept him warm as the night turned cold. He imagined her up in Platres waiting for him. She would be in bed by now. She told him she always slept early when he was away. He pictured her black hair on the white pillow, her knees pulled up into her soft belly, her hands and arms clutching a pillow to her breast. It was something she always did when he was away. She called that pillow her surrogate Munger. He had joked that at least it never snored and she had smiled ruefully and replied that it did nothing else either.

  So he sat and sipped his coffee and waited out the night, with Ruth in his mind.

  Ruth’s hair was not spread over a white pillow, neither was she clutching one to her bosom. She was sitting on the other side of Walter Blum’s desk, listening as he talked of his duty and his dilemma. She was very composed and he was amazed at it. Apart from a plaster on her cheek and scratch marks on her neck she could have just returned from a weekend excursion. Only when he looked into her eyes did he see the strain.

  He talked about Israel and the future, about Israel and the past. About the sacrifices that had been made, and must be made in the future. He candidly admitted that he had been prepared to sacrifice Munger for that future. She might not believe him but he was prepared to make the same sacrifice himself.

  She did believe him and told him so, but it was now irrelevant. She had killed for her man and the only thing she cared about was to get him back. She had a baby forming in her belly and she wanted it to have a live father.

  He brought her up to date. Munger had gone north to get his snaps. It was only a matter of a day or two and he would be out. Walter was in constant communication with Baghdad and he would know as soon as the mission was complete. He would call her in Platres immediately.

  She shook her head. She would stay in Limassol. When her man was out, she would go to Larnaca immediately to meet him. Walter was all solicitous understanding. He would book her a suite in the Amathus Hotel.

  Shaking her head she stood up, limped to the door of the secretary’s office, opened it and surveyed Waiter’s temporary and sumptuous sleeping arrangements.

  ‘I’ll sleep in there,’ she said and then gestured at the narrow settee next to his desk. ‘You can sleep there.’

  Walter’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘Or go to the Amathus,’ she said, with a hint of a smile.

  He shrugged in acceptance. ‘Try to get a good night’s rest. I’m sure he’ll be all right.’

  ‘You’re not sure, Walter. You’re just hoping. So am I. Just do one thing for me. Don’t quote from Hamlet - or I’ll strangle you,’ She went through the door and closed it behind her.

  The night had been cold but within two hours of sunrise Munger was hot. He squatted on his haunches and bounced up and down, exercising his cramped leg muscles. Then he opened the other thermos flask and drank a little cold water. He repeated that action every hour on the hour. Just a few sips to wet his mouth and throat. Not once did he look over the low wall. He knew the sound of a Volvo F12 truck and he was not going to risk being randomly spotted by peering over the wall until he had to. He heard several other vehicles during the morning - in fact a surprising amount. Obviously the arrival of the yellowcake was to be a red-letter day at this establishment. Several times he checked the Nikon and the long, fat, telephoto l
ens until finally he scolded himself. He was acting like a novice. If he kept it up he’d forget to take off the lens cover.

  It was just after 2 o’clock when he heard them: a deep-throated rumble from five, 300 horsepower engines. He picked up the camera and, with an inward chuckle, unsnapped the lens cover. Very slowly he raised his head and did a quick three hundred and sixty degree scan. Then he felt sick.

  The five trucks were moving through the inner gate, preceded and followed by army jeeps. However, sitting with their backs to the wall of a Nissen hut fifty yards away, were three soldiers playing cards and smoking cigarettes. It was the same hut that he hoped to hide behind while he took his snaps. He dropped back on his haunches and cursed every soldier who had ever skived off. The question was: how long they would stay there? He could not leave his ruin without them spotting him. Surely to God, with such a shipment arriving, they would be going about their duties?

  He heard distant shouts of command and the hissing of hydraulic brakes being applied, then the metallic grating as the sliding doors were rolled back. He risked another look over the wall. Hallelujah! The three soldiers were getting up and brushing the dust from their backsides and picking up their sub-machine guns. But hell! One of them was walking towards him. Munger ducked down. Had he been seen?