The Glory Boys

by Gerald Seymour

  He heard children playing far away, high-pitched voices carrying to him, and when he moved to peer through a hole in the wooden planking he saw them, bright in their school clothes, and with their satchels on their backs, skipping and playing as they went away up the road.

  Harmless and unseeing, they offered no threat. And he began to rest, body splayed out on the bales. Once he was aroused from his sleep by a dog's sharp bark, and from the same vantage-point he watched the progress of a farmer across his land, with the dog far in front trailing a scent. Otherwise there was nothing to disturb the tranquillity he needed. In his sleep he was far away; in the hills above the town where he had been born, playing on the slopes and rolling stones down at the imperturbable goats, playing at football in the dusty school yard, working beside his father on Saturdays in their ramshackle garage.

  Perhaps it was the evening coming on, as the sun dipped, and the warmth fled from the ageing timbers of his refuge, but his dream switched abruptly in mood from the happiness of his childhood to the day just after his fourteenth birthday when the big tanks had rumbled their way into the square at Nablus. He recalled the echoing machine-gun and rifle fire, the wail of the Red Crescent ambulances, and the fear on the faces that huddled in steel-shuttered doorways. It was the first time in his life he had seen terror on grown men's faces. He would not forget it. He was not asleep much longer, waking quickly but then finding himself confused and needing a minute to work out his situation, where he was, and why.

  It was dark in the barn when he set off. It was difficult to walk at first, as the stiffness and damp of the previous night seemed to have locked the suppleness of his knees. It would be a hard trek again, but at dawn if he pushed himself once more he should be near to the boat, ready to dispose of the muddied, drenched clothes and to substitute the precious, clean garments he carried in his grip. With laundered clothes he could assume his final identity, and take on the name of Saleh Mohammed, Algerian passport Number 478625, born 22 August 1953 at Oran.

  There is a restaurant, specializing in fish delicacies, that overlooks the sea at Sidon. It is roughly half-way between Beirut and the nest of tents far to the south where the General Command maintained its headquarters. Before the Palestinians took their war into Israel, and before the retaliatory air strikes and commando raids that inevitably followed, this was a place in which tourists delighted. But the package holiday-makers, the tour operators discovered, were not seeking any great excitement when they paid out their dollars and francs and marks. They were prepared to give the possible excitement of the war zone a very wide miss. Flights of Israeli Phantoms this far north were rare, but the sight-seers needed more convincing.

  So the restaurant is near-deserted, and the square Cru-sader castle that stands just to the front of the white tablecloths no longer suffers the armies of stilletos and sandals. Out on the terrace is as comfortable and as discreet a place to discuss matters greatly confidential as any in the town.

  The leader of the General Command seldom came to Beirut. His independent stand had won him many enemies inside the overall Palestinian movement, and his presence in the Lebanese capital would make him vulnerable to the attentions of the Israeli agents who at a few hours' notice could call in their country's assassination squads from the sea. He was high on their death list, perhaps given the ranking of Number Three after George Habash and Abou Iyyad. He had received a phone call on a secret unlisted number in the little village close to his tent camp in mid-morning urging him to make the rendezvous. The message was from a journalist who sympathized with the politics of the General Command and who was on the staff of one of Beirut's biggest dailies with its offices and printing works on the chic, well-heeled Rue Hamra in the heart of the most fashionable part of the Lebanese capital.

  As he picked the flesh from a small, bone-packed mullet the journalist passed to the intense-eyed man opposite him a piece of news-agency copy ripped from the teleprinter in his office that carried exclusively the reports of the Agence France Presse. He was aware of basic details in the organization's operations, and had realized the significance of the eight-line story. It was the first news the General Command had had of the progress of their unit since it had flown from Beirut to Athens, and they had started their overland journey to London.

  They are reliable, this Agency?' asked the General Command leader, through a mouthful of fish.

  'One has to believe them. They are taking just the main points from all French sources, but most of this story is taken direct from the Surete statement. There would be little room for error. But the other agencies, Associated Press and UPI, are carrying much the same. In less detail it was carried on the Overseas Service of the BBC as well.

  The facts are not in dispute.'

  'It speaks of road blocks. Road blocks stopping them.

  Of the car being machine-gunned. Now at that time in the morning why are there road blocks, why have countryside police been issued with weapons of the size of sub-machine-guns? There is only one interpretation, I think you will agree. There is only one explanation for such precautions to be taken in circumstances such as these.'

  The journalist nodded, and sipped at the water in the narrow-stemmed glass in front of him. He said quietly: 'It has to be the Israeli service. Our people have been compromised. The French would do nothing on their own. If our people were going right through France they would be allowed to do so. The Israelis have prodded the French, poked them into action. Did they have arms?' It was a bold question for him to ask; normally he would not be privy to such minute mission details.

  The leader smiled. 'Not much, perhaps a pistol, not more than one. No grenades, no explosives, no rifles. They are further on down the road: to be collected. But that is not for your paper. Perhaps you could let it be known from "a high source in the men's movement" that they were not armed. But not identify the group. Yes?'

  'There is no difficulty in that. "Two unarmed Palestinians gunned down by the French police" — that will make good reading. Perhaps the Paris office of our paper can work up the involvement of the Israeli Secret Service, and the two can be married together.' The journalist began to take a quick note in his pocket-sized pad of the form of words he would use.

  The two men attacked their meal, pulling with their fingers at the larger bones, spitting out the smaller ones, and dousing their hands in the bowls provided. The terrace was quite empty, other than the two diners at this one table. When he had finished the commando leaned forward. There was no one within yards who could have overheard what he said, but old habits die hard.

  'The reports speak of two men being found in the car.

  There could be no doubt of that one fact?'

  'No doubt at all. That is common to all the stories.'

  'And if they had captured a prisoner, a third man, would they have released that information?'

  'Most likely,' the journalist replied. 'It is not the sort of thing they are going to hold secret. There is no reason for them to.'

  Again the smile played around the mouth of the General Command's leader, dallied there a little, and then faded.

  He was not one given to conventional humour. One would not expect that from the man who was responsible for a morning's carnage at the bright modern Fiumincino Airport of Rome that left thirty-one dead, nor from the man who ordered his subordinates into the northern Israeli settlement of Kiryat Shmona, an operation that filled seventeen coffins. But irony amused him. And it would be ironic if the death of that man's colleagues were to enhance his own safety. It was no part of the journalist's role in the movement that he should be aware of such interests.

  The leader said: 'I would be interested to hear if there are any further arrests, or sightings, or . . . ' He let it tail away. He had said enough. The journalist waved his arm at a distant figure who hovered at the entrance to the kitchens, gestured a writing motion with his hands to signify that the meal was over and that he wished to accept the bill.

  'Before you leave there is
a message I want you to deliver. It is sensitive. I want it handed only to the man whose name I shall give you. It is in Beirut, and must reach him this afternoon.' The leader drew a sheaf of papers from inside his khaki combat jacket, revealing for a moment the polished, light-brown shoulder holster he wore through all his working hours, and with a ball-point pen began to write. Had he looked the waiter who brought the reckoning for the meal could not have seen what was being written, as the leader protected the message with his hands. The pen moved hurriedly and with bold strokes across the paper, the Arabic symbols firm and decisive.

  While the bank notes were away being sorted out at the cash till he said: it must go straight away to the commercial secretary of the embassy that I have named on the folded paper. I will tell you what it says; you'll want to open it if I don't tell you, and I would rather not have it delivered as if it's been half-way through the souk in Baghdad.' He laughed, and the journalist shuffled in embarrassment, and muttered his protestations. 'No, I know you, you are all the same. It merely says that we go on as before, but at reduced strength. There; that tells you all or nothing. For you, my good friend, I think it tells you nothing. Nothing. And you should be happy that way.'

  And he was away, striding between the tables inside the restaurant towards the car park where his Fiat waited.

  Once he raised his right arm above his shoulder, a final farewell to his luncheon informant. One of his bodyguards had stayed at the front door of the building, and he now fell in behind. Two more were sitting in the car. As the leader settled into his seat the driver engaged the gears, and they moved off.

  'We have to be patient a while,' he said. 'Two of the men on the European operation have been intercepted.

  They are dead. There is no word of the third, nor of whether the French even know of his existence. If there were to be one who has survived, and could go on with the task, which one would you select?' He was speaking with the man who sat beside him, an older man whose judgement he trusted.

  'Of those three?' the other paused for a moment's reflection. 'It would be the one we code-named "Saleh".

  Saleh Mohammed. The one that calls himself "Famy".'

  'That is a good judgement. Pray to God it is that one who lives. They were all fine boys, but he was the best.

  The youngest, but still superior. It is a great problem that he faces, the one who has lived, if that is indeed the case.'

  His companion stroked the sleek, steel darkness of the barrel of the Klashnikov rifle that lay across his lap, his eyes playing on the cars that flashed by them. The leader was talking softly, half to himself, and there were no interruptions.

  'Much will depend on the people that he meets there.

  These Irishmen, they represent an unknown factor, and one man on his own must be more dependent on them than we had planned. More is required now than a simple availability of weapons, explosives, transport and a safe house. The foreigners must provide a different dimension.

  They must become involved.'

  He was silent. The other man said: 'Will they provide that?'

  it is imponderable,' said the leader. 'Probably, but I cannot say with certainty. In Tripoli they were friendly enough. They wanted to co-operate then - were anxious to buy weapons. They were making a gesture towards us then. That was the conception of the plan. They have killed many times in their own struggle, but always have been fearful of the scale of missions that we are prepared to stage. Perhaps their cause is only worth fighting for, not worth dying for. There were promises in Tripoli, endless promises. As I have said, we shall have to be patient.'

  Again the smile.

  After their swim the young man and the girl had taken their towels, draped them on the grass away from the pool and close to the high wooden fence that shut it off from the road and the car park, and sprawled down on them. It was hot that evening in London's south-west suburbs, and facilities were overstretched. But few wanted to be in the shade, far from the water, and so the couple found the privacy they searched for.

  Five-and-a-quarter miles down the road were the main runways of Heathrow Airport, and every few seconds the couple's voices would be drowned, losing the competition with the Rolls-Royce and Pratt and Whitney engines that surged overhead. But in between the cacophony there was time to talk, not of anything special, nothing heady, just the kind of things that were being endlessly repeated by other couples who shared the grass with them but were out of earshot.

  She was seventeen-and-a-half, was called Norah, and punched a cash register in a supermarket from eight-thirty in the morning till five-fifteen in the afternoon. She lived at home, and thought the boy she had met beside the pool the previous evening quite the most interesting she had encountered in her limited experience. She wore last year's bikini, which had been right for Benidorm and the ten days of concentrated Spanish Mediterranean heat, but now seemed tight and restricting, as if unable to cope with the developments of the previous twelve months. He seemed to like it, though; his eyes were seldom off it. Most of the time they lay on their backs, stretched out and relaxed, fingers touching, his short-cut nails searching out the lines on her wrist, the crannies between her fingers, the soft sensitive places on the underside of her knuckles. He'd kissed her last night, quietly and gently in the lane behind her house, after the cinema and the ditching of her friend.

  He'd held her loosely with none of the frantic endeavour she was used to from the series of boy-friends who took her for a coffee and a dance or a film and then believed it their right to maul and explore her afterwards as due return for a pound's expenditure.

  This one was different. No thigh pressed hard between her legs, no fumbling under her blouse, no hand trying to get inside her jeans. The boy had kissed her, long and easily, seemed to think that was what they both wanted, was right, had told her he'd see her tomorrow, same place.

  She'd come to the pool, and he'd been there, where he'd said he'd be, looked happy enough to see her again.

  She had done most of the talking, last night and again this afternoon. He seemed to want that, didn't interrupt, looked interested. He said very little himself as she chattered about her holiday, her friends, her mother and father, her work, the prices in the shops, the television programmes she saw when she was at home, the films she went to on her nights out. He didn't reciprocate. Last night, in her bed at the back of the semi-detached house a mile-and-a-half away, she'd blamed herself for that.

  "Course he didn't say anything, didn't give him much of a chance to get a word in,' she'd said to herself.

  Soon the dew would be forming on the grass, and the coolness of the middle evening was beginning to embrace her bared shoulders. She shivered a little, and reached out for the jersey she had brought with her. She'd come equipped this time to be out late in the open air, uncertain what the next few hours would bring, but excited and expectant.

  'I'll catch my death, dressed with nothing, like this,' she giggled, and turned toward the boy anticipating he would be smiling back at her. But he was sitting up now, his head arched back, neck taut, long fair hair pressed against his shoulder blades, eyes staring and intent on the huge obliterating frame of the Boeing 747 three thousand feet above them.

  'You're late, big bird,' he said soundlessly against the roar of the aircraft. 'Don't be late next week, not for the plucking of the Mushroom Man.'

  'What did you say?' she shouted, wriggling closer to him to hear his reply.

  'Nothing, nothing. Just that they're flying late tonight.'

  Her ear was close to his mouth, and he spoke softly, with his delicate Irish brogue flavouring the words.

  'What plane is that?' she said, watching over his shoulder the vast airborne mass, almost beautiful with its white fuselage and the deep sky-blue livery line running its length, tail erect and crowned with the simple star on the pure background.

  'That, my little girl, is a Boeing seven-four-seven, manufactured at Seattle, in the State of Washington, USA. It's valued at a little more th
an fifteen million pounds, and that one is flying in Israel's colour. El Al, and late again.'

  He got up from the grass, and began to pull on his trousers over the dried-out swim suit. Before he draped his shirt over his shoulders she saw again the reddened disfigurement of the healed wound, in diameter little more than a pencil width, low to the left side of his chest. She had asked about it the day before, and been told of a stumble while carrying a pitch fork, on the farm, many years back.

  'Are we doing anything tonight?' She mentioned it hesitantly, though she'd already told her mother she'd be out late, at her friend's home.

  'I'm sorry,' he said, seeing her face fall open with the disappointment. 'I'm sorry, I really am, but I can't tonight.

  I have to meet a man .. .'

  'About a dog,' she said.

  'No, it's real. I have to meet a man tonight. It's been planned a long time, and he's coming over from abroad to see me. Really. There's some business I have to do, take a few days. I'll see you then, again. Definitely. Definitely.

  Come on, I'll walk you down to the bus stop.'

  She was near to tears when he left her, waiting for a red double-decker to take her back to an early night at home.

  For two hours Ciaran McCoy stayed beside the train departure board at Waterloo Station, waiting for the man he was to meet to come forward and introduce himself.

  He had fulfilled all his instructions. Red tie, light raincoat over his right arm, Avis Rentacar sign displayed in his hand. Endless faces scurried past him, running to catch their trains, running away from them, all anxious not to stay a minute longer in the belly of the great terminus than was necessary. It was futile and frustrating. He'd been buffeted, pushed and shoved by those who saw him as an obstruction in their path, but never noticed, not acknowledged. Close to midnight, he walked across the now near-empty concourse to the battery of telephone booths and dialled the seven-figure number he had been given.