The White Schooner by Antony Trew

ready to leave they were on good terms, and they had agreed to treat the matter as strictly confidential.
    ‘I’ll write off to him in the next day or so. Then it’s over to him‚’ said Black. ‘Shouldn’t be surprised if he flies out by way of reply. That’s if he’s not in New York or Tokyo or somewhere . He’s always on the move.’
    Haupt expressed his thanks and showed him to the top of the stairs.
    Black went down the lane whistling, pleased with the morning’s work. As he reached the square and turned right to cross to Anselmo’s he saw a big man with a deeply tanned face come up from the opposite pavement and stop outside the entrance. The moment he saw the face, Black’s nerves reacted like a triggered electronic alarm. Stepping behind a Volkswagen, he bent down, put his foot on the rear bumper and fussed with his shoelaces. Through the rear window he watched the man opposite, saw him stand in the doorway, hesitate for a moment, then go into Anselmo’s.
    The Englishman was trembling and it was, he knew, the response to both shock and relief: shock that Ahmed ben Hassan of all people in the world should be on Ibiza at that moment, and relief that the Arab had not seen him. Standing behind the Volkswagen, his mind spewed out thoughts with the speed of a computer: if Hassan recognised him it would soon be known in Ibiza who he really was. In no time the information would reach van Biljon and then all ZID’s carefully laid plans, all the work of past years—particularly of the last eight months—would lie in ruins.
    There were, he knew, two alternatives, but each was equally difficult to contemplate. Either the operation must be called off or Hassan removed—from Ibiza at any rate. How that could be done he hadn’t the vaguest idea. But if there was one imperative it was that he should know where Hassan was staying. Translating the thought into action, he moved from the Volkswagen and took up a position on a side street pavement from which he could watch the entrance to Anselmo’s. He leant against the wall, shielded by a truck, pretending to read the newspaper he’d taken from the shopping basket, and while he waited his mind went back to the night in Rafah. His company had been parachuted in at dusk with orders to cut off any motorised elements which tried to escape along thecoast road. After the drop there had been virtually no opposition . Some of his men had rounded up gangs of demoralised prisoners who threw away their weapons, while others prepared fighting positions. Then they had sat down to wait for an enemy who failed to materialise, and for their own tanks and infantry which were expected some time after midnight. At about ten o’clock, two of his men had brought in a big, handsome, but very frightened Arab. He’d been found in civilian clothes, hiding in a deserted house. He had denied that he was an Egyptian or indeed any sort of fighting man, but in view of his lack of papers and evasive answers he’d been brought in for interrogation. ‘Terrorist or political agent‚’ the young Israeli sergeant had said with withering finality.
    You did not, reflected Black, forget the face of a frightened man you’d been watching at close range under a bright light for over an hour. He could recall every moment of that torrid interrogation in the hot stuffy room which had smelt so overpoweringly of stale sweat. He himself tired, suffering from nervous exhaustion, frustrated and worried because he’d damaged his ankle in the drop—and the big Arab, older than he, frightened, even terrified at times, pleading that he was a civilian caught by chance in Rafah through the fortunes of war which had started only the day before. He was, he claimed, Ahmed ben Hassan, a merchant from Beirut, but he had no papers of any sort to support this. The Egyptian soldiers he said, had beaten him up and taken his wallet—in it all his papers—before they cleared out of Rafah. With pathetic dignity he had