A Line in the Sand (10 page)

before

and collected from left-luggage at the bus station. Everything was checked, the book, the maps, the photographs, and he was passed

another

tight-rolled bundle of banknotes. He was told of the affection for him

of men in high places, far away, whose names he would never know,

of

their gratitude for what he did, and of how they spoke of him with love. The intelligence officer watched the swell of Yusuf Khan's

pride

and smelt the chilli on the man's breath. He reached into the back of

, unzipped a big sausage bag, and revealed the contents.

the car

He

saw

excitement in Yusuf Khan's face. He showed him the

the bright

launcher

ed in a tablecloth, the shells, the automatic rifle with the

wrapp

folded stock and the loaded

e

magazines. H

opened the canvas rucksack

side the bag, revealed the grenades. He held the man's hand,

be

surance, and drove him to the railway

squeezed it to give him reas

ation.

st

d that, in the Farsi language, the Imam was known as Batl

He sai

Al-Mustadafin, and that was the Champion of the Disinherited, and

re he was the champion of Yusuf Khan. He said that

therefo

Yusuf Khan would deserve the love of all those who followed the word of

the Imam Khomeini. The intelligence officer did not tell him that the

cornerstone of his work in London was 'deniability'.

When they reached the forecourt of the railway station, he told Yusuf what the Ayatollah Fazl-Allah Mahalati had said.

Khan

He spoke with

fervour.

59

"A believer who sees Islam trampled underfoot and does nothing to stop

it will end up in the seventh layer of Hell. But he who takes up

a

gun, a dagger, a kitchen knife or even a pebble with which to harm and

kill the enemies of the Faith has his place assured in Heaven..."

He watched Khan into the station, carrying the rucksack and the

sausage

bag, which sagged under the weight of the weapons. On the way back to

London he would call in at a small mosque in the town of Bedford,

to a

cultural association for which his embassy's support was well known, for a meeting that would help create the necessary factor of

'deniability'.

wful had the tax

"Don't mind me saying it, Frank, you look bloody a

man

round? You look like I feel when he pushes his bloody nose in!"

Martindale belly-laughed without enthusiasm. He kept the pub in the village, the Red Lion, and had enough cash-flow problems not to need

.

the burden of his customers' difficulties

"Say nothing, admit nothing. If you have to say anything tell them the

dog ate the receipts. Come on, Frank, don't bring your troubles in here. Trouble-free zone, this bar. Come on..."

Frank looked into the thin face with its dour smile. He had been

nursing a pint for half an hour. The regular gang was in and there had

been whispering before the landlord had come over with the cloth to wipe the spotless table. It had been good of Martindale to fetch

him

up to the bar.

Vince cuffed his shoulder.

"Not right, not that you've got the tax man on your back, not you.

What

about a game of arrows, Frank? Tell you, each time you go for treble twenty you reckon that's the tax man's face. Last time they came

60

sniffing round me, I told them to piss off. Oh, I can get down and do

that chimney of yours next week, don't think I'd forgotten..."

Vince was the local jobbing builder, a one-man band. The previous November's big storm had shifted some of the roof tiles, and he'd

gone

up a ladder in the wind and rain with the sure-foot grip of a mountain goat. If he'd waited for the storm to blow out, the rain would have been in the attic and dripped into their bedroom, and it would have been a hell of a big job. Vince talked too much, played at being

a

hard man but wasn't.

It embarrassed Frank that he'd brought his problems into the pub.

If a

guy was asked here how he was, he was supposed to say he was fine.

If

he was asked if he was well, he was supposed to say he was in good shape.

, came in for a drink to forget

Everyone there had problems

them.

There was a short, awkward silence, then Gussie said, "Shall we throw

"

together?

"Why not, Gussie?"

"You've an education, do you know about Australia, Frank? I'm thinking

of going there, next year. What a team, you and me you take first throw. If it dries up a bit, a

o dig

couple of weeks, I'll be down t

your garden you should be thinking of getting your vegetables in."

Gussie passed him the darts. He was a big, strapping, amiable youth.

Thick as a railway sleeper, not the full shilling, but he kept his mother and the younger children on the pittance he earned as a

labourer

in the piggery. He propped up the bar most nights and talked to the d-winning equal.

older men as a brea

He dug the vegetable garden in

less than half the time it would have taken Frank, and charged too little. Nice boy, but he'd never get to Australia.

Paul took the empty glass from his hand.

"No argument, my shout be a pint, right? You've had one quiet one, e noisy ones right, Frank?"

time now for thre

61

"That's very kind of you, Paul, thanks."

"I'm thinking of co-opting you on to the village-hall committee, you being an engineer. Won't be any problem, they'll do what I tell them.

Place'll fall down if we don't do something, and I'm the only one

with

the wit to realize it. I reckon we'd work well together, being

friends. Of course, I'd take the main decisions. You up for it?"

"Be pleased to help."

Paul was not the chairman of the village-hall committee, or of the parish council, but his way always won through because he was better briefed than any of the others. His life was the village, as had

been

his father's and grandfather's. Inquisitive but harmless. If his ego

was massaged, he gave his friendship without condition, and Frank

Perry, former salesman, could manipulate vanity with the best of

them.

He even quite liked the man.

He played darts with Vince, Gussie and Paul through the evening. He didn't talk much, but let the conversation ripple round him and warm him.

, Paul, what's happened at Rose Cottage?"

"You heard

offer do you know what they were asking?"

"Heard it was under

Gussie chipped in, "I was told it was over a hundred grand, and there's more to be spent."

"The last thing this place needs is more bloody foreigners no offence,

."

Frank

y want people here who know our ways and respect them."

"We onl

restarted, as the pints kept coming, Frank threw

As the games were

more

ately

accur

it was his home, his friends were the publican, the jobbing

the piggery labourer, the big man of the village-hall

builder,

committee and the parish council ... God, he needed friends because there was a blue-jacketed pamphlet hidden among his papers where

Meryl

62

wouldn't find it. He and Gussie lost both their games and it didn't matter to him.

He stepped out into the night.

They were going their own way, and behind him Martindale was switching off the bar lights. His friends shouted encouragement to him.

"Good luck, Frank."

"Keep smiling."

"Frank, I'll be in touch about the hall, look after yourself."

For a year he had been without friends. From the time the last of the

minders had driven away, left him to his own devices, until the day he

had come with Meryl and bought the house on the green with a view

to

the sea, twelve endless months, he had been without friends. He had lived in a one-bed roomed flat in a new block a couple of streets

away

from the centre of suburban Croydon. In all those months, trying

to

wear his new identity, he had never allowed himself more than half a

dozen words on the stairs with any of the other tenants. They might have been good, kindly, warm people, but he hadn't felt the confidence to test them. Fear of a slip, of a single mistake, had isolated him.

The first Christmas had hurt. No contact with his son, he hadn't

sent

a present; no cards hanging from ribbons; no visit to his father and mother in the Lake District for the New Year. Through that

twenty-four

had sat alone in the flat and listened to the televisions,

hours he

the

r, the cheerfulness echoing up the stairwell, and he'd seen

laughte

people arriving, arms loaded with wrapped presents. His company had bottle. When he ventured out to pubs as the evenings

been a

lengthened, he always took a chair and table furthest from the bar and

aderie.

the camar

He had learned that he mattered to no one. He had

sunk, the signs were clear enough to him, and it had taken a supreme effort to shake off the loneliness. He had started to read the trade magazines and look for small freelance work. The second company he'd 63

visited had employed Meryl. He could remember, so clearly, that he had

bounced away from the company's offices with a contract in his pocket and her smile in his mind.

He waved over his shoulder and their laughter, fun among friends,

roared after him. He walked on and wondered where he would find an old

wing-mirror to lash to a bamboo pole.

"What makes you think, Mr. Markham, that you have any of the qualifications required for modern banking?"

"I'm used to high-pressure work. It matters when I make decisions that

I've chosen the correct option. I can work on my own, and I can work with a team."

She sat wrong way round on the chair, leaned on the back of it, splayed her legs either side of the seat so that her skirt rode up.

"Balls, about "high-pressure work", but the right sort of balls. Hit

"team", it's an emphasis word, they like that. Why, Mr. Markham, do

you wish to walk away from the security ha, ha of safe civil-service employment? You could join us, you could be found unsuitable and

out

on your ear with your bridges burned. Why?"

"My present work, and you'll respect that I'm bound by

lity,

confidentia

ing and responsible but, the nature of the beast,

has been challeng

it's

limited. I'm capable of spending more time in the fast lane. I

don't

expect to be found unsuitable."

"Great, that's what they want, arrogance and they want the rounded man.

Mr. Markham, what are your hobbies, recreations? Shit!"

It was the telephone.

"So, they don't want to hear about Herefordshire churches... No?"

The telephone stayed ringing.

64

"Hill-walking give them long-distance hill-walking, exploring the inner

man. You can't move for bloody bankers on Snowdonia or Ben Nevis, for

Christ's sake, and skiing."

He couldn't ignore, any longer, the ring of the telephone bell.

"I'll field it."

It was Fenton, opening with a caustic, savage quip about

hing.

clock-watc

Had he gone on the stroke of five? He was to get

back

oonest. There was no apology for the time of night at which

in, s

he

ummoned back.

was s

He left Vicky. If he'd stayed longer she'd have

killed him or lifted the skirt higher. He drove into central London, meward traffic from the theatres and the restaurants.

against the ho

He

d on a double yellow as the Big Ben clock hammered out the

parke

midnight chimes.

paper, a Special Branch

Fenton showed him the single sheet of

detective

sergeant's report of a routine surveillance. Markham knew Yusuf

Khan:

convert, zealot in the Hizb-ut-Tahrir, pupil of Sheik Amir Muhammad, at Nottingham University, knew him as well as he knew a

cleaner

hundred

others from the files. The report was the familiar story of a

fuck-up.

get had been followed, lost, not found again.

The tar

While he was

followed, before he was lost, he'd been on a shopping jaunt. A

er, no skills, at the university took home not more than 125

clean

a

fter stoppages.

week a

Three weeks' wages gone in an outdoors shop,

cash and out of generosity because the boots wouldn't have fitted.

And

the book... There was a giant wall map in Fenton's room, floor to

which Montgomery would have appreciated or perhaps

ceiling,

Wellington.

used a snooker cue to do the business. Its end rapped the

Fenton

area

by the guidebook, north Suffolk, then stabbed a line where

covered

land

65

came sea, and rested there. The guidebook covered a 'dead-end

be

place', a 'one-street hole'. He held in his hand the routine report pecial Branch, and he felt the night cold.

from S

er if I were you, Geoff, and postpone the nookie and don't