Read A Line in the Sand Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
him
iew technique.
interv
She had wanted him out of what she called that
creepy job and into proper work since they'd first shared a bed. He
.
rang off
He wouldn't have dared make that call inside Thames House.
He felt elation that he had been short listed and the same sense of when he'd sent off the application to the bank with the
shame as
ed personal background.
necessarily limit
It was what Vicky had told
him to do she had torn the job advertisement from the Situations
Vacant.
He took the back-streets to the bridge, crossed over. The great
building, the home of the Secret Intelligence Service, the green and cream and tinted-glass monstrosity, was enemy territory to most of his
seniors at Thames House. When Cox or Fenton went across the river to
Vauxhall Bridge Cross, they always said, after they'd legged it back, that they felt they ought to wash their hands. He asked for Ms
rs, and the security staff at Reception looked at him and his
Flowe
Security Service ID as if they were both worthless.
She took him into a bare interview room on the ground floor. She
laid
a file in front of her on the table, and leaned her elbows over it, 46
covered it with her bosom.
He talked.
"We went down under prepared to see him, went with big holes in what we
knew. We knew that his new name and identity were blown open how
and
where is what we did not know. We told him his life was under threat, but we didn't know the extent of the threat.. . It was difficult
to
assess who was the blind and who the one-eyed. We're sending him
the
Blue Book. We need help and have to have answers to questions."
She snorted derisively.
"Ask away. Whether I'll answer, that's a different matter. And you should know the importance we give to the Iranian weapons programme.
Attention, among the ill informed was directed towards Iraq, which is
just comic cuts, cartoon-strip stuff. Iran is the big player. Iraq has no global following, Iran is a focus point for billions of
Muslims.
Iran matters." She guarded the file with her elbows.
"Who was Frank Perry?"
"His name was Gavin Hughes. He was a pushy young salesman in an engineering manufacturing company at Newbury. He sold commercial
mixing machines, mostly for export."
"What was the Iran link?"
"The Iranians wanted mixing machines for their programme WIVID
development. You know what that is, don't you? Weapons of Mass
Destruction, microbiological, chemical and nuclear."
"But the export to Iran of those machines is blocked by legislahon, enforced by Customs and Excise. Isn't that right?"
and the
"The machines are dual-purpose you were informed of that,
Customs interest. The same machine can be legally exported to mix chewing-gum or toothpaste to industrial quantities, and illegally
exported to mix explosives and the chemical precursors for nerve
gases
47
and
oxins,
bio-t
which are the anthrax or suchlike end of the business.
His company's machines, with falsified export declarations, were for pment of military factories."
the equi
was his importance?"
"What
sharp salesman, as I said, everybody's good guy.
"He's a
People warm
to him, people want to be his friend. The man who is liked and makes iends, he gets access. The access was disproportionate to the
fr
importance of the product he supplied. No need to go to Tehran to meet
him, have him down to Shiraz or Bandar Abbas, sort the problem out time.
there and save
He's a popular man and not stupid. He doesn't
push his luck, just keeps his ears and eyes open, and he oils the
with gifts. It gets so that he's hardly noticed when
friendships
he's
t exaggerating he was remarkable, one of the most
there. I'm no
ve ever had."
valuable assets we'
"Who was the controller running him?"
"Ran him a bit myself at the end, when it was leading up to the itive time. We were into him about eighteen months before it
sens
finished. We'd picked up the illegality bit. He faced a Customs
and
Excise investigation and he'd have gone to prison. We had him well and he knew it. He was always very co-operative. You
stitched,
don't
ho recruited him, did the heavy stuff and pulled him
need to know w
on-side they wouldn't give you the time of day."
"What happened "at the end"? What finished it?"
"We and other agencies became aware of the pace of the development of
chemical warheads. We needed to obstruct, or at least impede, that ssary action was taken."
progress. Nece
the action taken?"
"What was
"You should never try to run, Mr. Markham, before you've learned to
at's not your concern.
walk. Th
but it is my concern if I'm to be in a position where I can
"Sorry,
assess the contemporary threat level."
48
"If you've ever rammed a stick into a wasps' nest then you make the angry.
wasps
They want to sting you. At which point you're advised
to
ell out. That'll have to be good enough for you.
get the h
e Iranians have known that he was the source of
"How would th
information?"
re not idiots, certainly not in our eyes. At the same time
"They'
they
re clearing up the debris, he'd disappeared, left home and work.
we
Yes,
could put that together. They would have been very angry.
they
n looked after?"
"Has he bee
u already know new life, no Customs and Excise feeling his
"What yo
collar, new identity. We treated him well and expensively."
's a minimum of five years ago.
"That
Would their anger have lasted?"
the action that was taken, yes.
"With
The anger might have matured,
but it wouldn't have diminished."
"What are we supposed to do now?"
e
"God, why'd you ask me? Water under the bridge, as far as we'r ncerned. He's no earthly use to us or anyone now, just another
co
engineer doing whatever engineers do."
owe him."
"But if he was brilliant and remarkable, we
"Understood you've done that, offered
I
help.
know his reaction too.
He's made his bed. We don't acknowledge debt to civilians,
businessmen.
on
They work for us, we explain the risks, they stand
we were surprisingly generous in this
their own feet. Actually,
case.
Nothing is owed."
"One last thing. What was the quality of the information on the renewed threat?"
"There's an American in Riyadh, a funny little fellow from the FBI.
He's their Iran guru. He dug up Perry's name, a little consolation on
49
a failed raid. If you call him, don't have a pending appointment
and
don't expect him to draw breath and let you get a word in. Get the message Perry or Hughes is a spent cartridge, he's of no importance.
At
ception they'll show you the lavatory.
the re
The American in Riyadh
is
ttelbaum..."
Li
e electric fan always distorted the television picture, and the
Th
cranking air-conditioner set in the wall did the damage to the sound.
Ellen was responsible for catching the local-language news
Mary-
programme because Littelbaum found it hard to remember schedules.
He
was at his desk, the fan blast riffling the papers in front of him.
This small section of the embassy building that he used with
n
Mary-Elle
and the larger area in an adjacent corridor, the Agency's place, were not served by the building's main air-coolant system. The pipes had been cut off and sealed. A security review, two years back, had
decided that the Bureau and the Agency should be protected from the possible hazard of lethal gases being fed into the system, so they had
their own air-conditioners, a nightmare of noise and unreliability that
the back-up of electric fans.
needed
l-language news bulletin was usually a catalogue of the
The loca
King's
meetings
palace
and the public appearances of the prime princes. The
picture was awful, the sound worse, and the content negligible, so he
let her monitor it. Even above the clatter of the air-conditioner and
the whine of the fan, he heard her gasp. Littelbaum swung in his
chair.
The man's head was down, his voice a monosyllabic whisper.
Goddammit...
ed in a white robe, like a
The man was dress
long shirt. dress, was
round-shouldered as if the hope had gone from him. Under the loosely draped gutra, the scarf covering his head, his eyes had lost their light.
.
Damn, shit, damn... The man mouthed a rehearsed confession
Littelbaum listened as he confessed to terrorism and subversion of the
ed, from when Littelbaum
kingdom. He was shrunken, as if dehydrat
50
d
ha
last seen him, dragged in the sand towards the waiting helicopters.
ards, the lying, deceiving, double-talking bastards... He
The bast
grabbed his herringbone jacket, and ran, a fast waddling gait, for the
door, the corridor, the grille gate where the Marine stood guard,
the
elevator, and the ambassador's floor.
He stood to his full squat height, and his body shook with anger as he
mmered his complaint.
ha
t obstruction. I have been blocked at General Security
"It is jus
six
I have made two dozen, more, calls to General Security,
times and
the
ry, God knows who else.
minist
I have not only been denied the chance
to talk to this man myself, I have not been permitted to read the
rogation dossier. They are supposed to be fucking allies -I
inter
know,
bout their delicate sensibilities, and I know they are a proud
sir, a
and independent people, and please don't tell me to humour them, but I
don't give a shit what happens in this country. The place is a
pit,
cess-
it is corrupt, devious, lying, complacent. Americans died
in
n and Riyadh.
Dhahra
If this man is on TV and making a confession,
then
been tried, convicted, condemned. Three Americans died in
he has
Riyadh, nineteen in Dhahran. Finding the killers of Americans is
my
job.
id
This man, sir, was in contact with an organizer who I am pa
to
track and find. This man could give me the name and the face of that r, but I am blocked.
organize
When he has been, one-way ticket, to
Chop-chop Square, I have lost the chance to get from this man that ion.
informat
I was so goddamn close. So what the fuck are you going
to say to our good sweet allies? I have been working more than two this one chance so I can hunt the bastard down.
years for
What are
you
going to say?"
The ambassador wrung his hands and said he would make telephone calls, which was what he always said. Littelbaum went back to his section.
ew the papers on his desk and Mary-Ellen put a decent slug
The fan bl
51
of
'brown' in his coffee.
The coffee, laced with whiskey, might just make him forget that he had
no face and no name to work towards, and that he did not know where the
footprints led.
The wind whipped about her and could not move her. The sea swell
bucked beneath her and did not shake her.
She was out of the Kharg Island terminal, the property of the National ll sign was EQUZ. Her length,
Iranian Tanker Corporation. Her ca
bow
to stern, was 332 metres; her beam, port to starboard, was 58 metres; her draught, the waterline to the lowest point of the hull, was 22.5
metres. She was loaded with 287,000 tonnes of
Iranian crude. Her speed through the water, regardless of weather conditions, was a constant 21 knots. She had been at sea for thirteen days,
ted
rou
from Kharg Island, past the port of Bandar Abbas, through
the Straits of Hormuz, north up the Red Sea to the canal, away from d and into the Mediterranean.
Port Sai
After navigating the Straits
of
Gibraltar, her last reported position had her giving a wide berth
to
the sea lanes leading to Lisbon. She was two days' sailing from the western approaches of the English Channel. Her crew complement was always thirty-two Iranian and Pakistani nationals, and the master
would
give that number, in truth, to the immigration authorities at the
Swedish
he
refinery. S
was a monster, carving her way forward, moving
remorselessly towards her destination.
ust read it, Mr. Perry, it's all
"J
in here. I can't say it's
anything