A Line in the Sand (18 page)

Tehran komiteh.

a south

He had been on the roof of the Alawi Girls'

of the SAVAK was half hanged, cut down,

School when the last chief

aten so that his leg bones splintered, mutilated with knives, lit

be

by

evision lights, killed, and he had felt no pity. He had been

tel

inducted into the pasdars, joined with pride the unit of the

tionary Guard Corps that safeguarded the Imam at his simple

Revolu

home

in Jamaran. He had gone into the embassy of the Great Satan, into the

Den of Spies, into the rooms where the shredders had failed and the collaborators and traitors were to be found, and he had

files on

hunted

The war had come. The military could not be trusted. The

them.

war

Iraq

with

was his transient route from teenager to man. He had become

an elusive, skilled master of the flooded death ground that was the Faw

peninsula and the Haural-Hawizeh marshland. He had come home, his first leave in two years, to find the dried heap of rubble with the 111

small tunnel through which the bodies of his parents had been

extracted. After praying at their grave in the Behesht-e-Zahra

cemetery, he had taken the next bus back to the front line.

The Scuds were fired with American help. American satellite

photography was passed to the Saudis, who forwarded the images to

Baghdad. The hatred grew. When the war was over and the Imam had sued

for peace and had spoken of taking a decision more deadly to him than drinking hemlock, when he had come home, he had been taken under the wing of a brigadier in the Ministry of Information and Security, as if

by a foster-parent. And his talents were let loose, and killings

followed in his footprints. From what he had seen, suffered,

experienced, survived, there was no place in his mind for fear.

"This is the perception which creates the desire for martyrdom among Muslims..."

He began to cover his nakedness. He wriggled into ankle-length

thermal

under-trousers, then a thermal vest. He struggled into the rubber suit. He had worn such suits in the probing fast craft they had used in the swamps of the Faw peninsula, and he had been in such a suit when

he had first gone ashore on the coast of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. He put his watch back on his wrist. Later,

he would synchronize the time on it with the time on the master's

watch. Later, the master would send a radio message of seeming

innocence to his employer, the National Iranian Tanker Corporation, in

Tehran, and his watch would be synchronized with a clock at the NITC, and the clock there with the master clock in the room at the Ministry of Information and Security where the brigadier waited. Later, the ock would be synchronized on a secure voice-link with the

master cl

embassy in London. Finally, the intelligence officer at the embassy would synchronize his watch with that of the courier on the shore..

.

Everything was planned to the smallest detail, as always. He waited for the master to come to take him to the stern deck. On his bare feet, below where the wet suit sealed his ankles, he slipped a pair of

casual trainer shoes. He waited for the master and thought of his wife,

in,

Barz

and their small home, and he wondered whether she missed

him. They had no children perhaps it was his fault and perhaps it 112

was

hers but the doctors they visited would not tell them. She asked

nothing f

o

him except that he should serve the revolution of the Imam.

The tanker churned its way north up the Channel. He took comfort

again

from the words of the ayatollah from the college at Qom. He was Vahid Hossein. He was the Anvil.

pretext, but the first and there would be more.

It was a

The rain, as promised, had come on harder. Davies sat in the car.

He

didn't need to wind down the window and let in the damp air. He had senger seat,

the monitor screen on the floor in front of the empty pas

d the headset over his ears.

an

Two cables led from the car to a small

junction box screwed to a side wall of the house. He was parked right the wall, filling the alley.

up against

He could see, in black and

white, on his screen, the neighbour on the front doorstep, and hear ted speech from the button microphone secreted in the porch.

distor

t seemed innocent enough.

The pretex

orry, Frank, for disturbing you.

"S

You got a Philips screwdriver?

Can't seem to find one anywhere."

"Sure, Jerry, won't take me a minute."

"Everything all right?"

"Everything's fine. Just wait there, I'll get it."

He saw the neighbour's grimace. He'd have expected to be invited

he principal had learned fast and left him at the door.

inside, but t

The neighbour's eye line roved over the front of the house and checked bles, the broken plants where the ladder had been, and looked

the ca

into the camera. He wouldn't have seen the button microphone because the

n

me

from London were skilled in positioning them had to be because

not even the principal knew about the audio surveillance. People

nd outside cameras but they were generally difficult about

didn't mi

microphones. He could hear, adequately, anything said in the front of

the house, ground floor, and on the stairs; it was good technology and

necessary.

"There we go, one Philips screwdriver."

113

"Brilliant."

"No hurry for it back."

"Great. Frank, Mary said you had a new alarm system fitted today."

"Yes."

"Something I don't know?"

"I doubt it, Jerry."

"Don't think me inquisitive, Frank, not me, but there hasn't been a

burglary this end of the village in four years, not since the Doves'

place. Mary said you'd put in the full works, chaps like chimps

running up ladders. Friend to friend, what do you know that I don't, eh?"

"Just taking sensible precautions, Jerry. You're getting soaked."

pissing, who's that joker in the car?"

"Frank, no

"I'm right in the middle of a bit of work. Bring it back when you've finished with it, no hurry."

The door closed and the neighbour retreated. He'd have been sent

by

his wife, neighbours always were. He'd report that he hadn't really learned nything. That

a

wouldn't satisfy the wife, and she'd be round

in the morning to beg a half-pint of milk or borrow a half-pound of flour. And they'd fret through the evening, the neighbour and his t the cables and the camera, and whether a wave of thieving

wife, abou

was about to strike their small corner of heaven.

The boy came home, and the woman who drove him gave Davies a grinding glance before she pulled away. He doubted this little place could thout knowing every soul's business. His lunch-box was

survive wi

finished, except for the apple he always kept till last. It would be

another hour before Leo Blake turned up to do the night shift. He e apple on his sleeve and listened. He'd made his

polished th

suggestion, how they should tell the boy. They might have been at the

bottom of the stairs or just inside the kitchen. His mother did it.

114

There were faint voices.

used to work for the government abroad. He'd made some

Frank

enemies.

He did secret work, and it was still secret, and Mummy's secret and Stephen's. Frank's going to be protected by the police just for a few

days... "Are we going to have to go? Will we have to leave here?"

"No." Her clear voice.

"There's nothing to worry about we aren't leaving our home."

Davies put the apple core in his lunch-box.

The evening had come.

The car was parked in a deep lay-by used in the summer by tourists for

picnics. It was hidden from the road by trees and evergreen bushes.

Yusuf Khan had reclined his seat and dozed. The small bedside alarm in his pocket, synchronized to the watch of the intelligence

clock

officer, would rouse him thirty minutes before it was time to move.

It was the most comfortable car seat he had ever sat in, a BMW 5-series itre injection engine, high power, high technology, high

with a 2.6-l

luxury. His own, left behind in Nottingham, was an eleven-year-old erra, 1.6-litre, under-powered and under-maintained; the

Ford Si

ked on the 150-mile journey to the north-west.

carburettor had cho

They

had needed to call out a mechanic to fix it and had sweated to get to

the hospital in time to see the target, Perry, the car he used, and the

logo of the salesroom that had sold it to Perry. Farida Yasmin's

car

ine-year-old Rover Metro, cramped and with a small engine,

was a n

good

enough to get them to the car salesroom in Norwich where a story had been told and information received, and good enough to get them into the village by the sea where the photographs had been taken

and out of

that had lit up the eyes of the intelligence officer.

Yusuf Khan's car was unreliable, Farida Yasmin Jones's car was too e

small. Th

cash float given him by the intelligence officer included

enough for him to hire a fast, reliable, comfortable vehicle when

115

he

had come off the train. It was fantastic, the BMW, but difficult

to

handle: once, he had been off the road and a tyre width from a ditch because he had underestimated the speed into a corner. There was

caked

mud on the driver's-side doors. He didn't use the radio because all the stations on the pre-tune buttons played degenerate, corrupting music.

He imagined the man he had been sent to meet, who would come out of the

darkness. The sausage bag was behind his reclined seat, on the

oor.

carpeted fl

He felt a sense of pride that he had been shown such

trust, and Yusuf Khan dozed, waiting.

He tried to concentrate but the words mocked his efforts. They

registered then they blurred, their message was lost.

sat on the rug in front of the electric fire in Vicky's

Markham

apartment. She didn't like the word flat, it was an apartment but the

problem with it was the size. Smart but small, as his was dingy and small. Neither's home was big enough for two, so he read the books she'd bought in her lunch-hour and left for him in a neat pile.

about the room was neat, organized, like his Vicky.

Everything

Vicky was with a girlfriend at aerobics, and then they would be going une,

on for a pizza. The books, they'd have cost her a small fort

were

on business management, self-expression, leadership and finance he'd have gone down to a library and borrowed, if he'd had time. He tried to

r

remembe

what she had told him. For the interview he was Geoffrey.

not Geoff, his father was in banking, not a high-street deputy manager out on his neck last year with downsizing, his mother organized one of

the princess's causes, wasn't a two-days-a-week helper in a charity clothes shop; he was ambitious, he carried ambition round in

wheelbarrow loads... But the thoughts strayed back to Frank Perry.

There had been enough of them in Ireland, bloody-minded Presbyterian rs, running beef stock over poor land, doing evenings in

hill farme

the

rt-time military, who were threatened by the Provos' policy of

pa

ethnic

The obstinate old beggars had stayed put and taken a

cleansing.

y went to muck-spread,

sub-machine-gun out in the tractor cab when the

116

uldn't have considered quitting and running.

wo

He'd admired their

courage.

What Vicky had drilled into him... He wanted responsibility. What y Markham wanted more than anything was the responsibility

Geoffre

of

g the investment of clients' savings.

handlin

rash, but the careful placing of their money and the

Nothing

safeguarding of their pension schemes. He was not frightened of

sibility. Nor, if the markets slumped, of crisis.

respon

And Geoff Markham couldn't cling to the interview's strands. Always rightening when a player went missing, and Yusuf Khan

bloody damn f

was

e he had been bloody frightened in Ireland when a Provo

missing lik

player disappeared and they had no word, had to wait for the Semtex to

detonate or the blood to drip on the pavement and they had lost the of the girl who was the only associate thrown up by Rainbow

trail

Gold.

Wavering back with his concentration... And he expected to work hard, hard, had always believed physical fitness went hand in hand

play

with

logical stability weekend hiking, after-work weights and

psycho

tennis... He was to decline the offer of a drink, old trick, with

a

friendly refusal, and he was to be polite but not smarm deference...

And they shouldn't know it was the only shortlist interview in his locker. He was to wear the new tie she'd bought him, and his best suit

but he could take the jacket off if they suggested it, though not