The Levanter Read Online Free PDF Page A

boots. I was handed a fur-lined anorak belonging to her father that was uncomfortably tight across the shoulders. The Buick had been put away and we travelled now in a Volkswagen fitted with snow tyres. She had a haversack with her. I carried the tape recorders on my knees. The two kilometre journey over weather-scoured tracks took twenty minutes.
    We stopped just short of the village by a ramshackle stone barn that smelled strongly of animals.
    “From here we must walk,” she said and produced a flashlight from her haversack.
    It was still light enough to see the outline of the fort; a squat, ugly ruin perched on a ledge of rock jutting out from the hillside above. It wasn’t far, but the way up to it was rough and we needed the flashlight. In some places there were stone steps and these were dangerous because most of them were broken or loose. Unimpeded by having to carry tape recorders, Miss Hammed bounded ahead, however, and was obviously impatient when I failed to keep up with her. Finally, as the track straightened out and we approached the scrub-covered glacis of the fort, she told me to wait and went on alone. At the foot of the glacis she made some sort of signal with the flashlight. When it was answered from above she called to me that all was well. I plodded on up. By then I didn’t much care whether all was well or not. My chief concern was to avoid spraining an ankle.
    The stone archway which had been the entrance to the fort had long ago collapsed, and stunted bushes grew in the rubble. There was, however, a path of sorts through it, to which she guided me with the light. There was an Arab in a black wool cape waiting. He motioned me forward with the lantern he carried.
    Inside there was more rubble and then a clearing. One of the old walls was still intact, and against it had been built, probably by some local goatherd using stone from the ruins, a lean-to. It had a roof made of bits of rusty iron sheeting patched with tar paper, and a door with cracks in it through which light filtered. In the clearing beside the hut were tethered three donkeys.
    “I will go first,” said Miss Hammad. “Give me the recorders, please, and wait here.”
    She said something in Arabic to the man in the cape, who grunted an assent and moved up beside me as she went to the hut. When the light spilled out from the opening door he peered at me curiously and licked his lips. He had a gray stubble on his jaw and very bad teeth. He smelled bad, too. He asked me in halting, guttural French if I spoke Arabic. I said I didn’t and that was that. Two minutes went by, then Miss Hammad reappeared and beckoned to me.
    The light in the hut came from a kerosene pressure lamp standing on a battered oil drum. The only other furniture consisted of a crude bench-like table and two stools; rags had been spread to cover the earth floor for the occasion and a smell of cigar smoke almost masked those of kerosene and goat.
    As I entered, the cigar-smoker, who wore a sheepskin coat and a knitted wool cap, rose from one of the stools and inclined his head.
    “Mr. Prescott,” Miss Hammad announced with awe. “I am permitted to present to you the commander of the Palestinian Action Force, Comrade-leader Salah Ghaled.”
    He was not handsome; he had a beak of a nose that was too big for his head and a thin moustache that emphasized the disproportion, but in his hawk like way he was impressive. The eyes, heavily lidded, were both keen and wary. Although I knew that he had only just turned forty, he seemed to me to be a much older man. A very fit one, however; every movement he made was precise and economical, and those of his hands had a curious grace about them.
    He inclined his head fractionally and then straightened up.
    “Good evening, Mr. Prescott,” he said in strongly accented, hesitant English. “It is good of you to make this journey. Please sit down.” His cigar hand motioned me to the second stool.
    Thank you, Mr. Ghaled,” I replied.