The Harry Palmer Quartet. Len Deighton

I turned to face the speaker – my driver from London. He had a hard bony skull, with hair painted across it in Brylcreem. His eyes were black and counter-sunk deep into his face like gun positions. His chin was blue and hardened by wind, rain and monsoon and forty years of shaving hard against the bone. He wore black tie and white shirt and navy blue raincoat with shoulder straps. If he was a crew member he had removed his shoulder badges and taken care to leave his uniform cap elsewhere. If he wasn’t, it was little wonder that he chose to wear the undress uniform of all the world’s airline crews.

      His eyes moved in constant watchfulness over my shoulder. He ran the palm of his right hand hard across the side of his head to press down his already flattened hair. ‘Seat nineteen …’

      ‘Is trouble,’ I completed it in the phraseology of the department. He looked a little sheepish. ‘Now you tell me,’ I said peevishly. ‘He’s already shivved my hand baggage.’

      ‘As long as there is still a tin inside,’ he said.

      ‘There’s a tin inside,’ I told him.

      He rubbed the side of his jaw pensively, and finally said, ‘Be last out at Beirut. Leave that,’ we both eyed the case, ‘for me to take through customs.’ He said good-bye then turned to go, but came back to cheer me up. ‘We’re doing seat nineteen’s hold baggage now,’ he said.

      As I thanked him I heard the Italian voice on the loudspeaker saying, ‘British Overseas Airways Corporation denunca che departe dela Comet volo BA712 a Beirut, Bahrain, Bombay, Colombo, Singapore, Jakarta, Darwin and Sydney a tutto passagere …’

      The Colosseum – Rome’s rotten tooth – sank behind us, white, ghostly and sensational. I slept till Athens. Fatso hadn’t re-embarked. I felt tired and out-gambited. I slept again.

I woke for coffee as we crossed the brown coast of Lebanon. Thin streaks of white crests buffered in from the blue Med. I noticed that there were many tall white buildings built since my first visit here in the days of Medway II.* The circuit over the coast-side airport is generally a bumpy passage, for immediately after the airport the ground rises in blunt green mountains. Everything is hot, foreboding and very old.

      Polite soldier-like officials in khaki uniforms did a line of backwards Arabic in immaculate penmanship across my passport and stamped it. I had cleared customs and immigration.

      I dumped my wardrobe case into a Mercedes taxi – after letting two cabs go by – then gave the driver some Lebanese pounds and told him to wait. He was a villainous-looking Moslem in brown woollen hat, bright red cardigan and tennis shoes. I hurried upstairs. Having coffee near the juke-box was the ‘driver’. He gave me my brief-case, a heavy brown packet, a heavy brown look, a heavy brown coffee. I dealt with each in silence. He gave me the address of my hotel in town.

      The Mercedes touched seventy-five as we passed the dense wood of tall umbrella pines along the wide modern road to the town. Further away on the mountain slopes the cedar trees stood, national symbol and steady export for over 5,000 years. ‘Hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon,’ Solomon had commanded and from them built his temple. But my driver didn’t care.

       6

      [Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) Someone else’s forethought may enable you to surprise a rival.]

Peering between the slats of the wide venetian blind, the yellow and orange stucco buildings conspired to hide the sea. In the warmth of midday I see a black moustachioed villain hitting the horn of a pink Caddie; the cause of his annoyance a child leading a camel with a predilection for acacia trees. Across the road two fat men sit on rusty folding chairs drinking arak and laughing; a foot or so above their heads a coloured litho Nasser is not amused. In economy-sized cafés behind doors artfully contrived to preserve a décor of absolute darkness they are serving economy-sized coffees of similar darkness with exotic pastries of honeysmothered nuts and seeds. Clients – young Turks, Greeks dressed like left bank intellectuals – find their seats by the light of a juke-box inside which Yves Montand and Sarah Vaughan are crowded. Outside in the blinding sunlight, antiquated trams spew out agile targets for the Mercedes taxis. Dark-skinned young men with long black hair parade along the water’s edge in bikinis almost big enough to conceal a comb. Below me in the street two young men on rusty cycles balancing a long tray of unleavened bread between them, are nearly brought down by a frenetic dog which yelps its fear and anger. In the souks men from the desert pass among money-changers – the carpet men and the sellers of saddles for horse, camel and bicycle. In Room 624 bars of sunlight lay heavily across the carpet. The hotel intercom hummed with old tapes of Sinatra, but he was losing a battle with the noise of the air-conditioning. Room 624, which the department had booked for me, came complete with private bath, private refrigerator, scales, magnifying mirrors, softened water, phones by bed, phones by bath. I poured another large cup of black coffee and decided to investigate my baggage. The blue wardrobe bag unzipped to reveal – a light-weight blue worsted suit, a seersucker jacket, a used overall with zip front and more pockets than I knew how to use. In the bag’s side pockets were some new white and plain-coloured cotton shirts, a couple of plain ties, one wool, one silk, a belt, a slim leather and Italian, and a pair of red braces; didn’t miss a trick that Alice. I was going to like working for WOOC(P). In the briefcase was a heavy tin. I looked at the label. It read ‘WD 310/213. Bomb. Sticky’. The heavy packet that the man in the blue raincoat had given me was an envelope inside which was a waterproof-lined brown bag. It was the sort of thing you would find in the pocket of your seat when looking for matches on an aeroplane. It is also the sort of thing that aircrews, loaders, and engineers from Rangoon to Rio use for transporting their little ‘finds’. Cakes, chicken, ball-point pens, packs of cards, butter – the jetsam of the airlines. Inside this one was a hammerless Smith and Wesson, safety catch built into the grip, six chambers crowded with bullets. I tried to remember the rules about unfamiliar* pistols. In an accompanying box were twenty-five rounds, two spare chambers (greased to hold the shells in tight), and a cutaway holster. It covered little more than the barrel, having a small spring clip for rigidity. I strapped the belt across my shoulder. It fitted very well. I played with this in front of the mirror, making like Wagon Train, then drank the rest of my cold coffee. Orders would come soon enough: Orders for a last attempt to grab Raven the biochemist before he disappeared beyond our reach.

      The road inland from Beirut winds up into the mountains; gritty little villages hold on tight to the olive trees. The red earth gives way to rock, and far below to the north lies St George’s Bay, where the dragon got his, way back, that was. Up here where the snow hangs around six months of the year the ground is dotted with little Alpine flowers and yellow broom, in some places wild liquorice grows. Once the heights are crossed the road drops suddenly and there is a route across the valley before the crossing of the next range – the Anti Lebanon, behind which lies 500 miles of nothing but sand till Persia. Much nearer than that, though, just along the road in fact, is Syria.

      At many places the roadway cuts corners, and a shelf hangs almost over the road. A full grown man can, if he keeps very still, perch between two pieces of rock at one place I know. If while in this position he looks east he can see the road for over a hundred yards; if he looks towards Beirut he can see even farther – about three hundred yards, and what’s more, he can, through night glasses, watch the road crossing the mountain. If he has friends up the road in either direction and a small transreceiver he can talk to them. Although he shouldn’t do so indiscriminately in case the police radio accidentally monitors the call. Along about 3.30 A.M. a man in this position will have counted the stars, almost fallen off the rock easing his back-ache and be seeing double through the night glasses. The metal of the trans-receiver will be sending pains of cold through hand and ear, and he will have begun to compile a list of friends prepared to help him in the matter of finding some other type of employment, and I won’t blame him. It was 3.32 A.M. when I saw the headlights coming down the mountain road. Through the night glasses I could see it was