A Line in the Sand (22 page)

my

Faith and the revolution of Iran. I have to use women's soap and

eau-de-toilette if I'm to be like everyone else. They tell me that God

forgives little lies."

Because of the persecution of his Faith, throughout history, her

Faith,

it was acceptable for the Shi'a peoples to tell the khod'eh, the

half-truth, in defence of the true religion.. . He believed, as did his wife, so Barzin told him, that the place for a woman was in the home and rearing children. She would be in their home, cleaning it, eaning it because they had no children to divert her.

always cl

His

mother had been different: dressed in good he jab she had come out of

her home to help his father on his sick visits. His wife, Barzin, only

undressed in his presence if the room were darkened.

When she changed the gears, her body shook and her breasts swung

and he had flushed the most when he had seen the cherrystone

loosely,

shape of her nipple he would have picked the fruit from a tree in

the

Albourz hills and sucked it, turned the stone on his tongue and

cleaned

it, then spat it out and then he stared straight ahead at the spinning 138

wheels of the vehicle in front, and the grinning idiot face of a child in the vehicle's back window.

She knew.

"I had the call, I was out of my room in four minutes.

I told you, I didn't have the chance to dress properly, decently.

My

name's Farida Yasmin."

It was said that the Imam Khomeini, on the drive from his French home in the village of Neauphle-le-Chateau to the airport at orly for his flight home and the triumphal return, had never looked from his car's windows on to the decadence of the Parisian streets, had kept his

head

lowered to avoid the sight of impurity.

"You've seen the man's photograph, Perry's? Of course, you have.

I

took it. You've seen the picture of his house? Yes? I took that as

well. I think I'm to be trusted."

He jolted. Under the law that was the basis of the state, the sharia, the testimony of a woman was worth half that of a man. They were

not

of half value, the crucial photographs of the man and his house. She was beside him and her thighs were bare and her breasts bounced under a

thin sweater. It was written that exposure of the flesh 'without

Islamic cover can invite foul looks from men and invite the devil's lusting'. He was dependent on her.

She told him when she had seen the man and about his house. In the planning of an attack he had never before talked to a woman as his equal.

She looked into his face, caught his eyes.

pened to my friend, to Yusuf?"

"What hap

what he knew, and offered her no sympathy.

He said

She was strong.

He

own so many who had died young, gone early to the Garden of

had kn

Paradise. She looked ahead.

139

"You talk well, Geoffrey," the man said.

of your

"You say the right things, but I am not yet convinced

mmitment to them."

co

lot of sincerity these days," the woman said.

"We get a

"What we have to look for is when the sincerity is larded on like greasepaint."

swallowed hard.

Markham

hat's as maybe, that's our problem to evaluate, not yours..

"Anyway, t

." The man hesitated, as if for effect.

The interview had lasted twenty-five stilted minutes. He had used all

the words that Vicky had written out for him, woven them into answers, he had seen the little mocking

and twice

glint in the woman 5 eyes.

"Let's

press on. Let's explore a bit more... We're not with the civil

service, we're not able to rely on government's safety net,

we're in a hard, commercial environment. A man works for a company, ll that it asks of him, takes his

does a

work home and frets over it,

is

olleague and a pimple-faced creep who knows nothing of

a good c

anything

him a letter of dismissal, without warning, and a second letter

hands

of redundancy terms, and he's cleared his desk and gone in ten

minutes,

on the scrap-heap for the rest of his life. Could you be the

aced creep and do that?"

pimple-f

an leaned forward.

The wom

u up to that, Geoffrey, screwing good employees' lives?"

"Are yo

breath.

He took a deep

one it, I know about it.

"I've d

It got to be pretty much every day.

I

s in Northern Ireland, I ran informers that's playing God. You

wa

make

mistake with an informer and you get him killed it's not just killed a

140

like in a road accident, it's torture first with electricity and

beatings and cigarette burns, and then it's the terror of a kangaroo court and then it's a bin-bag over the head and a kick so that he

goes

on to his knees, and the last thing he hears is a weapon being

.. They're not good guys, they're scum-bags, and they're so

cocked.

damned scared that they get to lean on you like you're a crutch. You w it will end and they do, but you don't let them quit.

know ho

It's

expensive when they quit, and they're damn all use once they're out of

it. So you keep your player in place, and you sleep at night and

put

him out of your mind. It's your work and you don't worry about it...

layed God with people who won't be getting a good pension and

I've p

won't have only their ego bruised I've played God with men who'll

have

e back of their heads blown off and whose women will be spat on

th

as

e wife of a traitor and whose parents will disown them and whose

th

kids

ized for their lifetime. Does that answer your

will be ostrac

question?"

The bleeper went at his waist.

n stared at him, her mouth

The woma

slack. The man looked blankly down at his notepad.

He read the message: "MARKHAM/G RE JULIET 7 GET BACK SOONEST.

FEN TON

"I'm sorry, I'm called back."

He said,

an asked, "To play God?"

The wom

ooked up from his notepad.

The man l

hear from us."

"You'll

as out of the chair.

Markham w

u for your time."

"Thank yo

the office and waved down a taxi.

He left

dropped on the corner, and went into the building that had

He was

housed the last ten years of his life, past the desk where they had 141

the

hidden guns, through the security locks, and ran up the stairs with the

laminated windows.

He came to the door of Fenton's office and heard the American's quiet voice.

"You'll have a week, and you should take this as the first day of the

week. In a week either he'll have reached his target and goner or you

will have him dead or in your cells. A week, not more, believe me.

Your countdown, gentlemen, has started. And -can I say? you've had the luck of a break the like of which I've never had. The question is,

can you use your luck?"

The police, uniformed and wearing bullet-proof vests, their handguns on

their hips but their machine-guns secreted in cases, filed into the cubicle area at the far end of the ward for the hospital's emergency cases. Away from the sight of the patients, close to the bed, they unpacked the cases, produced and loaded their machine-guns. The

nurses

came and went, checking the purring equipment and dials on the rack beside the bed, and glanced at them with raw distaste. They found chairs, and settled in. Their role, the guns across their laps, was simple. The problem was away down the corridor where the detectives met the duty physician and the arguments began.

He turned his head and saw the cottage with the for-sale sign, and as the sort of

thought what it would cost to buy and repair. It w

home

that Lily would have loved, and the village was the sort of place

where

the boys would have flourished. But it was an empty thought because his job was in London, and it was beyond the bounds of possibility that

have afforded it. It was the sort of place that some

he could

high-flying bastard out of London bought as a second home, for

al weekends, and they were the people he detested.

occasion

They were out of the village, and soon into the narrow roads. Davies had the map on his knee. Perry drove.

142

If there was just the one protection officer, the principal always

. He had jerked his coat back so that the butt of the Glock

drove

was

his hand to reach.

clear for

He had the road-map open and on it were

nd the two local

marked the regional hospital, fifty-two miles away, a

spitals with Casualty and Emergency, twenty-four and thirty-one

ho

miles

ow all of them would have been discreetly requested to hold

away; by n

plasma stocks of the principal's blood group. Also on the map were e bases to the north and the south-west, and a telephone

airforc

exchange in the destination area; all designated as safe areas of

e.

refug

countryside it's fabulous, isn't it?"

"It's nice

, it is."

"Yes

Bill Davies knew the countryside round the Prime Minister's

e,

bolt-hol

Chequers, and round the Oxfordshire home of a onetime Northern

nd

Irela

of a Saudi fat-cat, and the countryside

minister, round the estate

und Windsor Great Park where the Jordanian king had a mansion.

ro

He

knew about the countryside and loathed it. He called it a hostile t.

environmen

d come out of the village on the one long, straight road and

They'

were

the close, high-hedged lanes.

now in

His eyes were on the hedges,

on

the ditches, on the concreted culvert entries, on the trees back from the lanes. It was the nature of the job, and he regarded himself

as

ofessional and dedicated to it, that the warning time might be two pr

n't

seconds or three, and the principal wasn't trained to drive, would have known how to perform the bootlegger turn, wouldn't have known how

to get to maximum speed. He'd half frozen just before the last

junction, his hand hovering over the Glock, when they'd come to a

Transit van half filling the road with the bonnet up and a man working on the engine. They'd had to slow almost to a stop before passing it.

His eyes raked ahead.

"You get out into the countryside much, with your family?"

143

"Not often."

"You've got a family?"

"Yes."

ls, both?"

"Boys, gir

"

"Boys.

age are they?"

"What

"If you don't mind, Mr. Perry..."

He stared through the windscreen. He should have cleaned it. They all

wanted to talk, to unburden themselves with their protection officer s the route to disaster. He was not tasked to offer a

and it wa

sympathetic ear.

Ahead, there were men and warning bollards and a heap of excavated road

tarmac. The road was clear beyond, but one of the workmen held the sign facing them. Perry was slowing, but

stop

shouted for him to keep going and they went through to a volley

Davies

of rich local obscenities. Friends fell Out, and the rule was to

keep

it as a job.

se with the

The tools of the job were the H&K in its ca

gazine attached, at his feet, and the Glock on his hip.

ma

He loved

the

The pity was he might just love the job more than he loved

job.

Lily.

"How long have you been at it, doing this?"

"Quite a time."

"Good shot, are you?"

"Adequate."

"Don't you have to be better than adequate?"

"It's about planning, Mr. Perry, boring planning. Planning is the best defence against attack if there is an attack then the planning 144

has

failed."

you know about the Iranians?"

"What do

"Enough to respect them."

What he knew, and wouldn't

It was final, and dismissive with it.

say,

was that the Iranians were a different league from the Provos.

The Provos would back off from a guarded target, find something

softer.

He had studied the case histories of Iranian hits: not many killers way, for too many the reward was martyrdom. The message

made it a

from

ase histories would make any conscientious bodyguard nervous.

the c

He

l the detail he could find on political killing.

read al

It was his

job.

ey were outside a school, and in a line of cars waiting at the gate.

Th

It was a school like any other, an old brick turn-of-the-century

g and a mass of raised prefabricated huts, like the school

buildin

his

o.

children went t

Parents were milling at the gate and inside the playground where kids ran and screamed, skipped and swarmed after a football. If he could, to Donald and Brian's school to