A Line in the Sand (9 page)

Authors: Gerald Seymour

that pushes back the frontiers of science. It just states what's

sensible."

When she walked out of the front door Meryl had been crying. She'd tried not to cry in the house, but she'd cried when she was on the step, and going down the path. Perry had seen her dab her eyes when d the car and then he'd closed the door.

she reache

He was not ready

It would have been easier if she'd confronted him. He

tell her.

had

been leaning against the hall wall, head in the coats, when the bell had rung. A card had been proffered, Home Office Central Unit, and a

owing him into the house.

smiling, middle-aged man had been foll

"It's all in the pamphlet what we call the Blue Book, because it's blue. Vary your route to and from your home, keep a constant watch for

s whom you might suspect of showing a particular interest

stranger

ouse.

the h

You haven't a garage, I see. Car parked on the street,

that's a problem. Well, you look like a handyman, get an old car

r, lash it to a bamboo pole and check under the car each

wing-mirro

morning, under the main chassis and especially that naughty little n

hidde

bit above the wheels, doesn't take a moment. Imagine anywhere

under the car, or under the bonnet, where you could hide a pound bag of

sugar, but it's not sugar, it's military explosive, and a pound of that

stuff will destroy the car, with a mercury tilt switch. Always best to

be careful and do the checks, doesn't take a minute."

They wandered through the house, as if the man were an estate agent and

taying.

the place was going on the market but it wasn't, he was s

quitting, no running. The furniture was eyed, and the ornaments and the pictures, and the fittings in the kitchen. He'd made them both a

mug of tea, and his visitor had taken three biscuits from the jar, them happily and left a trail of crumbs behind him.

munched

y about the car. You shouldn't think you're alone. I

"It's mostl

don't

get many days in the office. So many Army officers who were in

Northern Ireland, they all need updating. I've a lovely list of

I visit, and judges and civil servants.

gentlemen

You shouldn't get

a flap nothing's ever happened to any of my gentlemen. But what I tell

all of them, watch the car.. . I'll be leaving brochures of the locks on offer, doors and windows, all fitted at our expense. You know, we

spend five million pounds a year on this, and me and my colleagues, so

don't get depressed and think you're the only one. They didn't tell me, never do, who you'd rubbed up the wrong way... They came down

the

stairs. The biscuits were finished and the mugs were empty. The

man

darted back into the living room. There was a grimace on his face, as

if he had forgotten something and that was a personal failure.

"Oh, the curtains."

"What's wrong with them?"

"Dreadful of me not to have noticed. There are no net curtains.

There

should be your wife can knock some up."

"She hates net curtains."

"Your job, Mr. Perry, not mine, to make her like them. I'm sure that

when you've explained it-' "Do you have net curtains at home?" He hadn't thought, and realized his stupidity as soon as the question was

asked.

"No call for them. I'm not at threat, I've not trod on anyone's toes.

Net curtains, you see, absorb flying glass from an lED, that's

improvised explosive device a bomb, to the layman."

He was grateful for the time and advice. He wished him a safe journey back to London.

"Final advice, be sensible, read the Blue Book, do what it says.

Don't

think that from now on, what I always say to my gentlemen, life ends, u've got to live under the kitchen table.

If there were a specific

danger, say threat-level two, they'd have moved you out of here, feet ve touched the ground or, God forbid, there'd be armed

wouldn't ha

police crawling all over your home.. . Good day, Mr. Perry, thanks ospitality.

for your h

Let my office know what locks you want, and

et about the net curtains.

don't forg

I'll call again in about six

months, if it's still appropriate. Good day... It's not that bad

you'd have the guns here or you'd have been moved out..."

After he had read the pamphlet, he hid it among his work papers where she never looked. Frank Perry still did not know what and when he would tell Meryl.

A jam my old number, the Branch men in London called it, a proper

trolley ride for the geriatrics, and let them try it. He cursed.

was fifty-one years old, working out the time to retirement, and too damned old for this caper. His problem, he was trying to do

singlehandedly the work that should have been given to a four-man

detail.

his target

It had been fine at the terraced house where he'd picked up

easily enough. The target had walked, and the detective sergeant

had

him on foot into the centre of Nottingham. Into a

trailed

camping-equipment shop. The detective sergeant had fingered

er coats while the target had selected then paid cash for

wet-weath

ag, heavy-soled walking-boots, wool boot socks,

sleeping-b

camouflage

trousers and tunic that were ex-military stock. He might have been old, near to retirement, but the detective sergeant still registered et's height and the size of the boots, which were at least

his targ

two

o small for the target's feet.

sizes to

All the university cities in the country had a pair of Branch men

attached to the local police station. Used to be Irish work, not

any

longer. It was the Islamic thing that preoccupied the detective

sergeant and his partner, Iranian students studying engineering,

physics, chemistry, metallurgy, and the zealots who recruited among the

campus kids. It was work for a dozen men in this city alone, not

for

two poor bastards. The Security Service provided the names and

addresses, and bugger all else, leaving the detective sergeant to

tramp

the streets and type the bloody reports.

The target was careful and had twice ducked into shop doorways and let

him come past. His shoes, new, hurt his feet, and he was bursting for

a leak. The detective sergeant was trained in surveillance, but it 55

was

damn difficult to make the tail when it was down to one man. They had

ended in a bookshop. He'd eyed the paperback thrillers while the

been searching, very specific, on shelves across the shop.

target had

ot had this man before.

He had n

There were usually so many targets

that they came round on a rota every four weeks or so. It was only months since the young fellow, wet behind the ears and up from

three

London, had given the sparse detail of the Security Service interest in

Yusuf Khan, Muslim convert, formerly Winston Summers. One of many, the

s under surveillance around

tall, wide-shouldered Afro-Caribbean wa

day in thirty, nine in the morning to seven in the evening. He did not

r at the university was on the

know why this thirty-year-old cleane

for sporadic surveillance... His was not to reason why, his but to do

and bloody die and bugger all glory for his pinched feet and aching r.

bladde

had taken a book, gone quickly to a vacant cash desk, and

The target

paid in notes and loose change before heading out into the street.

The

detective sergeant was good at his work and conscientious. He

checked

the shelves where the target had searched: UK Travel and Guide

The

man was out on the street now. A woman was at the cash desk, with a

child in tow, choosing a gift-token card. He'd lost half a minute e'd used his shoulder, shown his warrant card, and demanded

before h

the assistant what book her previous customer had purchased. The

dumb

girl had forgotten, had to check back in the point-of-sale computer.

He stood on the pavement outside the shop and cursed.

ow arcades led off both sides

He could not see his target and narr

the main street.

He swore.

He quartered the arcades and the precinct, checked the bus stops and cinct, but could not find the bobbing head he sought, or the

the pre

bright-coloured shopping-bags. As his son would say, when hi

rthday

came round, when the detective sergeant had to dig in his wallet to pay

for the amplifier or the tuner, "Pay peanuts, Dad, and you get s." They paid for one man to do a surveillance once every

monkey

thirty

y eleven o'clock in the morning the monkey had lost its

days and b

target.

He would find a place to leak, then walk back to the dismal street of

little terraced houses to sit in his car, fashion the excuses,

compose his report, and have not an idea why Yusuf Khan, formerly

ummers, had purchased boots, camouflage trousers and tunic

Winston S

too

m, heavy wool socks, a sleeping-bag, and a guidebook to

small for hi

the

rth Suffolk.

coastal area of no

What the policeman knew of that area

from a wet, cold and miserable caravan holiday twenty-two years back ss grey seas and marshes. But it would go in his report

was endle

for

something better.

want of

owed?"

"Were you foll

Khan did not think so.

Yusuf

e you done anything to create suspicion?"

"Hav

an knew of nothing.

Yusuf Kh

intelligence officer was a man of sophistication and poise.

The

came from a childhood spent after the revolution in a villa of quality set in the foothills of the Albourz. The previous owner had fled

1980 and his cleric father had been awarded the property, which looked o Tehran's smoggy sprawl.

down on t

He w~s fluent in German, Italian,

abic and English, and could pass in casual London society for

Palestinian, Lebanese, Saudi or Egyptian. To the unaware he might be

the deep south of Italy, perhaps Calabrian or Sicilian.

from

He had

been three years in London and believed he understood the heartbeat of

the British psyche ... and that understanding had led him to recruit Yusuf Khan, formerly Winston Summers, Muslim convert. He was a

religious man himself, prayed at the given hours when it was possible, and the obsession of the converts to the Faith was something he found ridiculous but useful. He preyed on the converts, trawled for them in

the mosques of the splinter communities who set themselves aside from the traditions of the Sunni and Shi'a teaching.

ched for them

He sear

in the universities. The best he found, those who displayed a

fervent

of the Imam Khomeini, he recruited.

adoration

Yusuf Khan had been subject to police investigation in Bristol,

following a knife attack on

an Arab businessman who had kissed a white

woman on the street outside a nightclub. Unemployed, embittered and alienated, living in the East Midlands city of Nottingham, attending the mosque of Sheik Amir Muhammad, Yusuf Khan had been identified

three

lier for the intelligence officer. Twenty-three months

years ear

before, with the trust already built in their relationship, the

nce officer had told Yusuf

intellige

he might best serve the memory of the Imam. It had been

Khan how

long evening of persuasion. The following day, Yusuf Khan had walked away from the Faith, taken a job as a cleaner at the university. He the attitudes, friendships, conversations of Iranian

monitored

students

in the engineering faculty. He found and befriended a girl who was now

converted to the Faith, and was useful. The trust grew.

The intelligence officer met his man in the car-park of a restaurant by

the river. There were too many high cameras in the streets of the city

entrances to the multi-storey car-parks.

and at the

The engine ran,

the interior heated, the windows misted. They were unseen and alone.

"You will not be missed from work?"

eported his