A Line in the Sand (19 page)

loosen the tie. And be sure to thank them for fitting him in during a

lunch-hour... The interview was the next afternoon and he couldn't read

the pages in front of him, or remember what she'd told him .

ow Gold was gone cold on them.

Rainb

Without this job there was no

home

for him and Vicky, no bright ambitious future. An armed protection officer was at Frank Perry's home.. Of course Geoffrey Markham

wanted

a career in banking.

117

It might have helped relieve the frustration of his work if Markham had

d a really good friend at Thames House.

ha

It had been better in the

early days when the probationers had hung around together and made a

social life inside their own restricted, secretive clan. He had no nds now.

frie

The probationers who had lasted were dispersed in the

building and inter-Section friendships were discouraged. The

ety

soci

was a mass of hermetically sealed cells; it was not appropriate for c personnel to fraternize with Irish or narcotics personnel

East blo

loose talk followed, the old hands said. The former friends were

anyway, had babies and didn't go to the pub after work

married off

but

hurried home. He'd taken Vicky to one insider dinner party, which had

been a disaster:

ught the men were under-achieving and the women were little

she'd tho

mice. Actually, thinking about it, the Fentons of Thames House were y ones.

the luck

They had no expectation of changing the world and

used

stem as a personal fiefdom for fun and entertainment. Set

the sy

around

th rules, regulations and procedures, Geoff Markham believed

wi

himself

irrelevant cog.

a small,

He would never matter and never be noticed.

He wanted out.

He jolted awake at the sound of Vicky's key in the apartment door.

l Davies handed over to DC

At the end of his twelve-hour shift Bil

Leo

Blake, checked him through the inventory, took him over the camera controls, the radio channels and the chart with the red lines marking the infrared beams.

"How is he?"

"Fine, so far."

"And her?"

not spoken, not a bloody word."

"She's

n his call sign?"

"Come agai

118

"He's Juliet Seven."

"Bit light-handed, aren't we?"

"Maybe, maybe not."

Davies crawled out of the driver's seat, and wished his colleague

a

good night, with a wry smile. He saw Blake already pulling up the arm

rest in the centre of the back seat.

In the small hours, and Davies couldn't blame him, Blake would be

cuddled up with the cold grip stock of the H&K, what the trade called the Master Blaster. Davies had been promised that the next day he would be given a realistic threat-level assessment, but Blake, who was

going to be alone through the night, wasn't waiting for it.

He drove back towards the bed-and-breakfast and the room where he

would

use one twin bed for the night and Blake would use the other for the day, and he'd have to square that with Mrs. Fairbrother, lie his

way

out of it. He'd have a shower, then find a pub in another village for

his supper. It made it a proper bastard when there wasn't a decent threat-level assessment.

The master hugged him, gripped the thick rubber arms of the wet suit, kissed his cheeks and pressed against his life jacket The second

officer and the engineer officer flanked him. He had not seen them since he had come aboard fifteen nights before. While he was kissed, the master went again through the timetable of the drop-off and the schedule of the pick-up.

He broke free, stepped into the Zodiac inflatable and settled on its floor of smoothed planks. The whole craft was only four metres in length and he crawled forward so that the engineer officer had the space at the back beside the outboard engine. The engineer officer ut to him, squeezed his arm and said that the wind was

reached o

growing, which was good.

It was good, too, he had been told, that they were able to make the from the tanker when it was fully loaded and lower in the

drop-off

119

water. The master and the second officer turned the wheel of the

crane, and the cable was drawn up further on the drum. The four ropes from the inflatable to the cable hook took the strain, then lifted them. The pilot, on the bridge with the navigation officer, would have

no view of the stern deck and the crane, and what the crane lifted.

ayed up above the rail and then the crane's arm lurched them

They sw

out

rkness. They clung to the holding ropes of the

into the da

inflatable.

ar. He was in the hands of his God, ten metres above

He had no fe

the

the crude holds had been empty, it would have been a

water. If

21-metre drop.

They went down the black-painted cliff of the hull slowly. The

tanker

was now past the Bassurelle light ship, close to the sand ridge that the Channel into the northern and southern

divided

traffic-separation

es, and under the monitoring watch of the radar at Dover

schem

Coastguard to the west and Griz Nez Traffic to the east. The tanker, pilot's direction, would hold steady course and steady speed

on the

at

nd would arouse no suspicion from the men who watched the

14 knots a

sweep of the radar screens. They bounced on the water, sank as the sea

d surged up. As the cable tension

splashed over their feet, an

ackened, the moment before they were dragged along and then under, sl

the engineer officer unfastened the cable hook from the ropes. They The cable swung loose over their heads and clattered

were clear.

against the plate steel of the hull. They were tossed in the white water of the engine's screws and he did not understand how they

foam

were not dragged down into that maelstrom. The tanker ploughed on, a

great bellowing shadow in the night.

He had been told that it was good when the wind increased and the

swell

was greater, and that British seamen used the word 'poppling' to

such waves.

describe

He knew the English language, had learned it

from

but he had not known that word.

his mother,

When the sea pop pled

it

g the radar screens to see the

was impossible for the men watchin

120

signature of a craft as small as a four-metre inflatable. The

outboard

engine coughed to life at the second pull. Three kilometres back, they

could see the lights of a following ship. The bow rose from the water as their speed grew.

They crossed the sand ridge. Higher waves there, more spray slashing them.

They approached the westerly funnel of the traffic-separation

scheme.

There was a line of navigation lights ahead. The engineer officer throttled back, paused and meandered. The inflatable was lifted,

fell,

and corkscrewed in the waves before he was satisfied. He was like a

kid crossing the wide freeway road going south out of Tehran for

Shiraz

or Hamadan, but waiting for the gap in the traffic, then running.

The

engine screamed, they bounced forward.

They went for the darkened space of the beach between the lights of New

Romney and Dymchurch, near Dungeness. He could have gone by plane or

ferry or on the train through the tunnel, but that would have exposed gaze of immigration officers and security policemen.

him to the

No

papers, no passport photographs, no questions, no stamps. He saw, white ribbon of the surf on a shingle shore.

ahead, the

The engineer officer, perhaps because tension now caught him, or

because there were only sparse minutes before they parted, told of how

he had been on the tankers when the Iraqi planes had come after them missiles, and of the terror on other tankers when the

with Exocet

missiles detonated and the fireballs erupted. He said that he hated those who had helped the Iraqi fliers, and he had reached forward, with

emotion, grasped the hand offered him, wished his passenger well,

and

God's protection. In the last minute before they reached the beach, he

told the engineer officer of a birthday party at a seashore restaurant rried the guests there, a long time ago.

and the bus that ca

121

They hit the shore.

The bottom of the inflatable squirmed on the pebbled beach. He tore off the life jacket the cold whipping his face. He slid over the

the craft, into the water of a gentle, shelving

ballooned side of

beach. He ran forward, kicking his stride against the sea,

struggling

until he was clear. He heard the roar of the inflatable's engine.

When

he was at the top of the beach, and looked back, he saw the

disappearing bow wave of the inflatable. He was alone.

n stopped and stood stock still against

He walked forward blindly, the

a

small wind-bent tree-trunk. Seven minutes later, on the hour, as

if by

synchronization, the brief, twice-repeated flash of a car's

s

headlight

pierced the darkness.

He couldn't sleep.

by the red eye of the alarm, he lay on

Watched

his

back.

Frank Perry knew that he had to live with the past because the

nces

conseque

of his former life were inescapable. There was no dusty

cloth with which to wipe clear the words written on the blackboard.

The

past could not be erased. He had attempted it. Quite coldly, he

had

changed his attitudes.

rk,

The salesman, Gavin Hughes, focused on wo

had never noticed the people around him. He was now more temperate and

more caring. He had thrown himself into the life of the small village nity, had time for people and seemed to value their opinions,

commu

as

t hard-won popularity was a substitute for his past. He was,

if tha

he

more decent man, and it was natural to him that he should

knew it, a

is engineering background, and

help others with the experience of h

t

cu

the churchyard grass and attend meetings of the community's groups.

But in his mind the words stayed on the blackboard, and a newfound cy was insufficient to expiate the past.

decen

A man had been sent

122

on a

long journey, had travelled with a knife or a gun or a bomb, to kill him. Those who had sent the man would not know, or care, that Frank Perry was a changed man.

He heard the boy toss in the adjacent room, and he heard a car door opening, the sound of a man urinating, the door closing again. Meryl was silent beside him, staring at the ceiling. Like sinners, neither of them could sleep.

Chapter Six.

e went too fast on to the bridge and, too late, saw the twist in the road beyond it.

Yusuf Khan had met the man, stood in awe of him. He had come out

of

the darkness in response to the flash of the headlights, just as the intelligence officer had told him. He had babbled greetings to the man

and tried to please him with the warmth of his welcome. Nothing had been given him in return. He had been told sharply, in good but

slightly accented English, that he talked too much.

He was in a myriad web of narrow side-roads and he was lost and did not

wish to show it. The first light was already a smear in the east.

He

went too fast over the bridge unaware of the right-hand bend

immediately beyond it.

First the man had peeled off his wet suit, then stood in his

longtrousered underclothes and had clicked his fingers irritably at Yusuf Khan, who watched. He had been caught idle and felt keenly

the

criticism of the snapped fingers. He had dragged the newly bought clothes from the bag, and the man had cursed softly because the shop labels were still on them. Yusuf Khan had torn them off before

handing

them back. He had held the torch and passed the man the camouflage trousers, the tunic and the thick socks. The fact that the new boots laced provoked another savage glance.

were not

When he had set out the schedule in his mind, he had not expected

that

ldn't be using

the clothes would be worn now; he'd assumed the man wou

123

em from the start. And he had not expected that the man would

th

demand

g of the tubular bag.

the openin

With only the torch beam to guide

him,

an had been meticulous in his examination of the weapons.

the m

He

had

broken open the mechanism of the launcher and examined each of the working parts~ studied them, cleaned some with the window rag from the

car, and reassembled it. Because it was only a small torch beam Yusuf ecognized that the man had worked virtually blind.

Khan had r

He had

leaned forward, anxious to please, held the torch closer but had

y been waved back. The schedule had gone.

abruptl