A Line in the Sand (20 page)

in the fragile light, had then turned his attention to the

The man,

squat form of the rifle. Yusuf Khan had never seen a man take apart a

firearm, and was amazed at the seemingly casual way that the weapon disintegrated into pieces. Each round had been examined before two magazines had been filled, and the pressure of the coil tested. By the

time he had started up the car his fingers had been stiff and his

legs

taut, and he had lurched through the manual gears. The sausage bag with the weapons had been on the floor behind him within the man's reach as if, already, he was prepared for war, to kill. The man had leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

He was lost, stressed, when he came too fast over the bridge and into the hidden right-hand bend beyond it. As he swerved to hold the

centre

of the road, the wheels failed to grip, and Yusuf Khan stamped on

the

brake pedal. At that moment the 5-series BMW was out of control.

The car slewed on shrieking tyres across the width of the road. He saw

the pole that carried telegraph wires. Short of it was the ditch, looming towards him in the headlights' glare.

Yusuf Khan saw everything, so clearly, so slowly.

wing

Plunging into the ditch, the bonnet going down the ditch thro

the

back of the car upwards the man's arms went up to cover his forehead, but he made no sound the car standing on its nose no fear on the man's 124

face the roof of the car impacting against the telegraph pole.

There was a wild pain in his leg, a fleeting sensation, as the car came

down, crazily angled in the ditch. His skull hit the point where

the

roof met the windscreen.

around him, and peace.

Blackness

His partner, Euan, would be in the shop, cleaning the floor and the windows, stocking the shelves, putting out the ice-cream sign, taking a

list of the postcards that needed replacing.

was a precious time to Dominic Evans.

The early morning

He loved his partner

,

deeply

but he also loved the early-morning walk,

on his own, out of the village and towards the Southmarsh. Left

behind, in Euan's care, was his dog because the sweet little soul

would

disturb the glory of the early-morning's tranquillity. He was

forty-nine, had come to the village and bought the shop fifteen years back with the money from his mother's estate. For twelve of those fifteen years Euan had been his partner. He thought the villagers, with their Neanderthal minds, accepted him and did not jeer at him because he had integrated carefully and made it his ambition to write down the old history of the community. Through learning the

y,

histor

explaining it, sharing it, he had won acceptance, and he was discreet.

It was a good place to gain the sense of history's inevitability,

to

recognize the futility of man's efforts to combat the power of nature.

In time the sea would claim all of it:

everything that man had built would crumble off these soft cliffs

and

be lost to the waves.

In the half-light, he walked past the narrow, silted stream that had once been a great waterway where skilled artisans built big ships.

That

summer, he would write a special pamphlet on the ship-building from Viking to Cromwellian times, publish it at his own expense and lecture on it to the Historical Society. But that morning, each morning for a

istory did not intrude on his thoughts.

month, h

125

miracle month of survival and navigation, the month when

It was the

the

rds completed the migration from the south seaboard of the

bi

Mediterranean and the west coast of Africa. Each morning in the dawn the shop opened and each evening in the dusk after it closed,

before

he

went to watch for the arrival of the birds on the Southmarsh. That from so far, that they could find their way to this

they came

particular area of water channels and reed-banks, was truly

ble

incredi

to Dominic.

He settled on the damp ground, at his watching place. Usually he

went

to the Southmarsh, more rarely to the Northmarsh. There were

godwits~

s and avocets, but they had not come from Africa, nor the

war bier

elducks, nor the geese.

sh

It was a few minutes from the time that

he

ould return to the village and open th

sh

e shop when he saw the bird

he

ing for.

was wait

The tears pricked in his eyes, and the sight made this gentle man

cry

out in anger.

er flew low in tortured flight. A pair had come back to

The harri

the

three evenings before and their wing-beat after the

Southmarsh

urney

jo

of thousands of miles was firm, true; they had left the next morning ation further north.

for a destin

It was as if this bird flew on one

wing.

ng Dominic

For all his anger, for all his gentleness, there was nothi

uld do to help the bird.

co

come home, it was injured. The infection would be in the

It had

wound.

uld die a starved, agonized death.

It wo

He lost sight of it as it

came

to the reeds.

down in

He wiped his eyes. The harrier, Circus aeruginosus, rust and copper 126

feathering, was the most beautiful bird he knew. It would be in pain, in hunger, in exhaustion, and he was helpless.

He went back to open his shop.

Vicky slept as Geoff Markham dressed. While he did so he played in his

mind with the words she had written down for him, made sentences for them. I believe in the totally ethical use of finance... A bank,

in my

opinion, should never deny the participation of the investor in the handling of his or her affairs... Money is for the benefit of the

whole

of the community, not just for the wealthy... Finance stands at the interface of society and should be used to create general wealth and not narrow affluence... Vicky had said that he must use the modern idiom, not the cobwebbed language of Thames House.

He put on the new tie she had bought, thin, woven, with brightly

coloured stripes.

* * *

The intelligence officer, in his Kensington flat, took the call. The number of the mobile telephone was jealously guarded and changed

every

month, and he assumed that the land-line telephone was routinely

listened to. A voice of great calm spoke of a traffic accident, gave a

location of signposts a mile from the accident site, and quietly told of the need for help in moving onwards.

Deniability was the creed of the intelligence officer.

He took the number of his caller and rang off. He threw on basic

nor to call his

clothes. He had not the time to consult Tehran,

colleague's apartment in Marble Arch. It was his decision, against every regulation of his service, that he should take a personal

in a situation of emergency.

involvement

Often, his Kensington apartment was watched. There might be a car, with the engine idling, on the far side of the road to the front lobby lock or in the side-street. He went out through the fire

of the b

door

at the back, past the janitor's little locked room and the waste-bins.

the creed of deniability, he ran for a phone-box. He

To further

127

lled

ca

a number, waited for it to be answered, heard the sleep-ridden voice, hat had happened, ordered what was to be done, rang off,

explained w

tment.

walked back to his apar

He believed he had not compromised the creed of deniability.

ake told him that the woman in the house across the green had a

Bl

big

ckside and didn't draw the curtains when she undressed, and that

ba

was

out the limit of his overnight excitement. There were cat's

ab

footprints all over the bonnet and Blake told him that he'd had the e with him until it had tried to get into his food-box.

brute insid

e case and slotted it behind the

Blake stacked the H&K back into th

ar-seat arm rest.

re

vies rang the front-door bell as Blake headed back to the

Da

bed-and-breakfast.

The door was opened by the wife and, from her eyes, it didn't seem that

she'd slept. She led him into the kitchen.

from his

The boy broke

rnflakes and stared at him.

co

Davies thought he was looking for his

gun, but he wouldn't have seen it in the waist holster underneath

the

fall of his suit jacket. She told the boy to go upstairs, get his ady, go to the toilet, get his hair combed.

books re

orning, Mr. Davies."

"M

n't look to him that Frank Perry, the principal, had slept

And it did

any better than his wife. There was a dazed tiredness in his face.

of your time, Mr.

"I don't need to trouble you for too much

Perry,

t

bu

you had rather an amount to take on board yesterday, and I'd like

to

nfirm a few points."

co

he easiest of days I've known but, what I've said to Meryl,

"Wasn't t

it

uld have been worse."

co

ys best to be positive, Mr. Perry."

"Alwa

128

have turned our backs on all this."

"We could have run away could

From what he had seen in her face, the hopelessness in the fall of her

mouth, he thought the woman was deeply wounded and he wondered if

Perry

hould

realized it. Not his job .. . He should have phoned Lily, s

have

or

spoken to the boys, should have... He was hardly qualified f

marriage

counselling, and it wasn't his job to try.

"What I want to reiterate, Mr. Perry, are the procedures, and for the

correct application of the procedures I need your co-operation."

"And you should not forget that I worked for my country, Mr. Davies.

I

am owed protection."

They faced each other across the breakfast table. There was a tight, curled snarl at Perry's mouth.

He smiled, defused.

se, Mr.

"Of cour

Perry. If I could just repeat... Please, you don't

spring any surprises on me. You tell me who you are expecting as

rs, where you will be entertaining them. That will be very

visito

helpful to me."

"It's a village, Mr. Davies, it's not an anonymous damn city. Our call by, they don't make appointments, we're not an optician

friends

or

."

a dentist

nerous. He knew that the snarl was from tiredness and

He was ge

understood the stress. Behind Perry, the woman watched him, her eyes aving him.

never le

"And I need to know, Mr. Perry, your intended movements for the day.

Are you going out? Where are you going? How long will you be there?

ou meet? I need specific detail of your planned

Who will y

movements."

"Why?"

129

He reckoned they were sparring and wasting each other's time. He

said

it straight, brutally, "We have laid down procedures, they are based on

experience. You are at least danger when in your own home. You are in

the greatest danger when in transit. There are two points of maximum danger, when you leave your home and are exposed as you go to the

car,

and when you leave your car and wallz into a building, particularly if

that is a regular journey. You are in danger en route, if your

journey

is predictable. I told you this yesterday and I am sorry that you weren't able to comprehend it. The danger on the pavement, to the car

and from the car, is from a sniper at long range or a handgun used at

close quarters. The danger during a journey is from a culvert bomb with a command cable or remote detonation or from a parked car bomb.

Get me? If it couldn't happen, Mr. Perry, I wouldn't be here."

The woman rocked on her feet, as if caught by a shock wind, but her eyes were never off him.

It was like he'd hit Perry in the solar plexus, and his voice was

quieter.

"You can't search half the countryside. What difference does it make if you know my routes?"

He said easily, "I can plan, in the event of an ambush, where to drive to, the nearest safe-house might be a telephone exchange, a

government

building and I can have worked out where's the nearest hospital."

"Jesus."

"So, if you could just tell me, Mr. Perry, your plans for the day, then there are no surprises."

"Meryl's visiting this morning and she's got a class-' "I'm not concerned with Mrs. Perry's movements."

Perry flared.

130

"Doesn't she matter?"

"You're the target, Mr. Perry. You're the principal I'm here to protect. That's my instruction. Are you going out today?"

She had an antique-furniture restoration class in the afternoon.

Perry

was committed to the school pick-up.

"Can you cancel?"

bloody well can't. And I intend to live a life."

"No, I

, Mr. Perry. Let's go over the route."