A Line in the Sand (3 page)

ed shoulders drooped slightly, as if he'd been cudgelled.

silhouett

Then

iffened and straightened.

they st

"I won't run again."

ground on relentlessly, "Look, it's a pretty straightforward

Fenton

process. Getting there is something we're expert at. You move on, you

identity... A cash sum to tide you over the incidental

take a new

expenses. Just leave it to us. New national insurance, new NHS

new Inland Revenue coding-' "Not again. No."

number,

"Bloody hell, Mr. Perry, do me the courtesy of hearing me out. They name, not the old one, they ha

have your

ve Frank Perry get that into

your skull. If they have the name, then I have to examine the

ity that they have the location..."

probabil

Perry turned from the window. There was a pallor now to his cheeks, and his jaw muscles seemed to flex, slacken and flex again. There was

weariness in his eyes. He didn't cower. He stood his full height.

He

gazed back at Fenton. Geoff Markham didn't know the details on

Perry's

file, had not been shown it, but if he deserved the threat, then there was something in his past that required raw toughness.

ur problem."

"It's yo

, Mr. Perry. It's your problem because it's your life."

"Wrong

13

our problem and you deal with it."

"Y

ulous."

"That's ridic

oice was a whisper: "Men like you, they came, they told me of The v

the

they told me to quit, run.

threat,

I listened, I quit, I ran. I'm

not

spending the rest of my life, every day that remains of my life, like a

chicken in a coop wondering if the fox has found me. It is your

ility, it's owed me. If the fox comes, shoot it.

responsib

Understand

.. . What did you ever do for your country?"

me? Shoot it

Geoff Markham heard Fenton's snort, then the cut of the sarcasm.

"Oh, we're there, are we? Playing the patriot's card. A man of ters once said that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."

let

worked for my country. My head was on the block for it."

"I

e lining a damn deep pocket..."

"Whil

ying, this is my home."

"I am sta

was a good room, Geoff Markham

It

thought. There was decent

furniture,

a solid sideboard and a chest of dark wood, low tables. It suited the

om, which was lived-in.

ro

He could see it was a home. When he was

not

eeping at Vicky's, he lived in an anonymous, sterile, one-bed

sl

roomed

artment in west London.

ap

Here, a child's books were on the floor,

an

ened technical magazine, and a cotton bag from which peeped a

op

woman's

embroidery. Invitations to drinks and social functions stood on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. If it had been Markham's, he, too, ld have tried to cling to it... But he had seen bodies, in Ireland, wou

of men who

had not covered their tracks, had made themselves available

their killers. He had seen their white, dead faces, the dried

to

blood

ow their cheeks, and hair matted with brain tissue and bone

pools bel

fragments... They could whistle up the removals company; there were 14

o did discreet business for them. They could have him

people wh

loaded

n twenty-four hours, gone, lost.

withi

jabbed his finger at Perry.

Fenton

get the sources from me, but I can tell you they have given

"You won't

this matter your life, your death a very considerable priority. Are istening?"

you l

not leaving my home."

"I am

ng on a journey.

"They are starti

We don't know when they began it,

could be a couple of weeks ago. For them, Mr. Perry, it is a long t you can be certain that at the end of it you are their

road, bu

target..."

The dhow had brought dried fish and cotton bales across the Gulf.

The

rgo for the return journey was boxes of dates, packaged

ca

video-cassette recorders and television sets from the Abu Dhabi

cooking spices bought from Indian traders, and the man.

warehouses,

The

dhow's large sail was furled, and it was driven by a powerful engine.

man was the important cargo and the engine was at full throttle.

The

He sat alone at the bow and stared down into the foaming water below.

ious night, each of the five crewmen had seen him come aboard

The prev

in the darkness, slipping silently down the quay side ladder. Only the

boat's owner had spoken with him, then immediately given the order for

the ropes to be cast off, the engine to be started. He had been left since the start of the journey. The call to his mobile

alone

telephone

e just after the crewmen had seen him lean forward and peer

had com

down

e dark shape of a shark, large enough to take a man,

to watch th

swimming under the bow wave before it dived.

None of the crew approached him except to offer him a plastic bottle of

water and a bag of dried dates. Then the man had lifted his face.

The

scarred redness around his eyes, the upper part of his cheeks and

his

forehead were raw. The crewmen, swabbing the deck, stowing ropes, 15

taking turns at the wheel, understood: he had come through the

stinging

ferocity of a sandstorm. He had talked quietly into his telephone and

e call

none of them could hear his words in the several minutes th

d

ha

ised

taken. It would be late afternoon before he would see the ra

tline of the city's buildings, the mosque minarets and the angled, ou

idle cranes of the port. They did not know his name, but they could gnize his importance because they had sailed with their hold half

reco

to bring him home.

empty, at night,

of a tribesman, he smelt of camels'

He wore the torn, dirtied clothes

lth,

fi

but the crewmen and the owner simple, devout men who had sailed

the worst gale storms of the Gulf waters -would have said

through

at

th

they held this quiet man in fear.

Later, when they had a good view of the buildings, minarets and cranes of Bandar Abbas, a fast speed boat of the pasdaran intercepted them, off and ferried him towards the closed military section of

took him

the

rt used by the Revolutionary Guards.

po

elt then as if a chill winter shadow was no longer on their

They f

dhow,

ey tried to forget his face, his eyes.

and th

"The last time I did what I was told to do."

ible, Mr. Perry."

"For your own good. You were sens

ses of clothes.

"I had only two suitca

I even cleared out the dirty

shing from the bathroom basket and took that with me."

wa

ays degrading."

"Self-pity is alw

in bloody raincoats, they packed all my work papers, said

"The men

I

d them again, said they'd lose them.

wouldn't nee

Where did my work

life go into a landfill?"

redging history rarely helps."

"D

six hours to pack. The men in raincoats were crawling all

"I had

through my house. My wife-' "As I understand, about to divorce you, 16

th a "friend" to comfort her."

and wi

ven't seen him since

"There was my son. He's seventeen now. I ha

- I

don't know what exams he's passed and failed, where he's going, what g..."

he's doin

ter, Mr. Perry, not to sink into sentimentality."

"Always bet

"I had damn good friends there, never said goodbye, not to any of them,

ed away... "I don't recall from the file that you were under

just walk

duress."

"It was a good company I worked for,

d to clear

but I wasn't allowe

my

id that."

desk. The raincoats d

Fenton sneered, "The directors of that company were lucky, from what ve read, not to face a Customs and Excise prosecution, as you were I'

lucky."

"You bastard!"

"Obscenities, Mr. Perry, in my experience are seldom substitutes for

common sense."

"I gave up everything!"

"Life, my friend, is not merely a photograph album to be pulled out each Christmas Day for the relations to gawp at. Little to be gained ng in the past.

from wallowi

Life is for living. Your choice -move

on

d live or stay and write your own funeral service. That's the

an

truth,

. Perry, and the truth should be faced."

Mr

The rain was heavier outside, beating a drum roll on the window-panes.

cloud came out of the east, off the sea.

The darkening

Geoff Markham

ayed by the door.

st

He could have reached beside him to switch on

the

ghts to break the gloom, but he did not.

li

rkham knew his superior's performance was a disaster.

Ma

He doubted

eciate the castration of a life

Fenton had the sensitivity to appr

17

rry

Pe

had run away from a wife who no longer loved him, a son, friends and even his office, the banter and excitement of the sales

neighbours,

section, everything that was past. Frank Perry was a damned ordinary name.

ere had been six hours for him to quit his house, then

If th

the

time

tted

allo

to choosing a new name would have been about three short

minutes. Maybe the raincoats had saddled him with it.

Perry had turned back to the window, and Fenton paced as if he did not

know what else to say... Markham wondered whether Perry had gone,

a

year or two later, to watch a school gate, from the far side of the t, to see the boy come out from school, a leggy youth, with his

stree

shirt hanging out, his tie loosened. Maybe the kid would have been still traumatized, from his father's disappearance. The

alone,

raincoats would have told him that kids couldn't handle secrets, that ed, that he endangered himself and the kid if he made

they blabb

contact... They would have tracked Frank Perry's former footsteps, his

one-time life, until they were convinced that the trail was broken.

't have understood.

Fenton wouldn

ave to face facts, and facts dictate that you move on."

"You h

y new home, new family, new life, new friends?"

"And m

gain."

"Start a

"Dump my new home, put my new family through the hoop?"

"They'll cope. There's no alternative."

a year, or three years, do it all again? And again after

"And in

that,

gain. Do it for ever peer over my shoulder, wetting myself,

and a

packed. Is that a life worth living?"

keeping the bags

erry." Fenton rubbed his fingernail

"It's what you've got, Mr. P

against the brush of his moustache. Despite the gloom, Markham could see the flush on his superior's cheeks. He didn't think Fenton was an

evil man or a bully, just insensitive. He'd do a memo they liked

memos

back at Thames House to Administration, on the need for counselling 18

courses in sensitivity. They could set up a sensitivity

sub-committee

and they could call in outside consultants. There could be a paper

"Sensitivity (Dealing with Obstinate, Bloody-minded, Pig-headed

"Ordinary" Members of the Public)'.

ourses

There could be two-day c

in

sensitivity for all senior executive officers.

Fenton beat a path between the toys and the embroidery.

"I won't do it."

"You're a fool, Mr. Perry."

"It's your privilege to say so, but I'm not going to run, not again."

Fenton icked

p

up his coat from the arm of a chair, and shrugged himself

into it, covered his neatly combed hair with his hat. Geoff Markham quietly opened the living-room door.

turned and

Fenton's

ice

vo

was raised: "I hope it's what you want, but we're going

into an area of unpredictability..."

It would be in the third week of its migration. The bird would have b-Saharan wintering grounds around twenty days earlier,

left its su

have

ht, strength and fat in the wetlands of Senegal or

stored weig

Mauretania. It would have rested that last night in the southern

t dawn.

extreme of the Charente Maritime, and hunted a

He sold insurance for a Paris-based company annuities, fire and

theft,

household and motor, life and accident policies, in a quadrangle of territory between La Rochelle in the north, Rochefort in the south, Niort and Cognac in the west. The trade to be gained at a weekend, nts were at home and not tired, was the most fruitful, but

when clie

in

d October he never worked weekends.