HOME RUN

by Gerald Seymour

  We have to go in, get stuck in on the ground. We can't just be sitting at Southampton and Dover and Heathrow."

  The VAT investigator chewed gum and said, "Myself, I never reckoned to change the world between nine and five, five days a week."

  "We have to beat the power of these bastards. Did you know that there was a Justice Minister of Colombia, and when he quit he was given the job of Ambassador to Hungary - and he was shot there, in Hungary. That's the power of the bastards, that's what's got to be beaten."

  "Good luck," the VAT investigator took the gum from his mouth, put it in the ashtray. "So, you're off to Bogota?"

  "If I can get there."

  "Me, I'm looking forward to staying in Leeds and sorting out the fiddles of Mr Gupta and the corner shop."

  Park said, "Haven't you ever wanted to do anything that mattered?"

  "Smart talk. Makes a change. We don't get much smart talk up here."

  "Terrorism, that's crap compared with the drugs threat, and that's not recognised . . . "

  "Are you married?"

  "What of it?"

  The V A T man settled comfortably in his seat and peeled another strip of gum. He said airily, "Your good lady, is she going to Bogota?"

  He didn't answer. Park had the camera at the window. He photographed Charlie leaving through the front door, and when he had the photographs then he was on the radio and alerting his team. Corinthian passed them, on foot, and in the mirror he saw Harlech and Token in the back-up motor.

  Tango One was walking back towards the centre of the city, and the rucksack was trailing from his hand, and the tail was on him.

  David Park had them all keyed.

  They couldn't let the target run much more, not now that he was into weaponry, and too damn right he was going to get himself to Bogota when this target was knocked. Been right to let him run up to now, but all changed once he'd started talking hardware. Too damn right he didn't know if Ann would be with him.

  "You asked to be kept informed," the ACIO said. "So I am informing you that it is our intention to arrest Eshraq."

  "When will this be?"

  "Tomorrow at four a.m."

  The Home Secretary lowered his eyes. "You could do me a favour."

  "What sort of favour, sir?"

  "You could allow me to consult."

  "Consult, Home Secretary? The case is 2000 per cent rock solid."

  "No, no, I don't mean on a point of law. You've run a splendid show. I've nothing but admiration for the way it's been handled. No, it's not that. It's . . . it's, well, frankly, it's odd, but it's turned political and I need to consult upwards."

  "There's nothing odd about that, sir. It started out political.

  'Turn the country upside down, chaps, bring in the pusher, bring in the dealer, spare no expense, bring the distributor to book, scrap every other investigation' - and we did - and I rather think my job was on the line if we didn't. Well, Home Secretary, we did. We've got him, this heroin importer, this degenerate killer, the man who carried in the stuff which Miss Lucy Barnes killed herself with - or are the political fortunes of Mr Barnes so wonderfully on the wane that heroin has been struck from the political agenda?"

  "Commissioner, I am totally sympathetic to your point of view, believe me."

  "I'll believe you, Home Secretary, if, and only if, you fight our corner. You've got, well, I am in danger of revising that, because you are a politician and you have nothing - the country you are elected to serve has got a dedicated, a passionately dedicated Investigation Division. They earn peanuts, they work twice as hard as you do. They get no perks, hardly any holidays, and they deliver. They deliver and you want to consult."

  "I take in what you say."

  The ACIO took out his small notepad. He wrote down his home telephone number. "Four a.m., sir. You can reach me at home this evening. But we'll be rooting fpr you, sir. Don't let us down."

  * * *

  It was a slow process, getting the messages to the field agents.

  Some messages could be sent over coded inserts into broadcasts of the BBC's World Service, but an order to close shop, abandon ship, must be delivered by hand. Terence Snow was to send a low level but reliable man to Tabriz. The Station Officer in Bahrain had to find someone to fly to Tehran. The Station Officer in Abu Dhabi had to find a dhow owner to ferry the message across the treacherous Gulf waters to Bandar Abbas. Of course, it would have been quicker to have enlisted the help of the Agency, but then it would also have had to be explained that Mr Matthew Furniss, Desk Head (Iran), had been lost. And that was news that Century were unwilling to share with the Americans, a matter of dirty linen made public.

  Charlie slept in his hotel, the plastic bag under his pillow.

  The green Ford Sierra was outside the hotel. The VAT

  investigator had gone home, and Keeper was asleep across the back seat with the Vodaphone cradled in his arms. Harlech and Corinthian and Token had the room across the corridor from the target, and would be on two-hour shifts watching the door.

  Keeper was well asleep when the Vodaphone warbled in his ear.

  "That you, Keeper?"

  "Bill? Yes, it's me."

  "Are you sitting comfortably? No knock tomorrow . . . Got that? No lift in the morning . . . "

  "For Christ's sake, Bill . . ."

  "I said, no knock tomorrow."

  "Why not?"

  "David, the tablets just come flying off the mountain, and I pass on the messages."

  "I don't fucking believe it. What more do they want?"

  "What they do not want is for the target to be lifted."

  "I hear you."

  "You cuddled up with Token?"

  "I am bloody not."

  "Good thing . . . do us all a favour, give your missus a bell, will you? I gave her my promise that you'd be back for the dance. Sweet dreams, Keeper . . . just ring your missus in the morning, and you do not lift the target."

  The boot went in, and the fist.

  There was a hand snaking into Mattie's hair in order to pull up his head, so that it was easier to punch him, kick him, so that it was harder for him to protect himself.

  He was trying to tell them the name, but his lungs were emptied by the beatings into his stomach pit, and he had not the breath to shout the name. His throat was too raw to speak the name. If he told them the name then the beating and the kicking would stop.

  The man was too good to have been fobbed off with three names. Mattie had known why the beating had started again.

  He had shown the flicker of success. He thought he had won small victories with three names. The investigator had read him. Buying off the pain of a beating with three names. But three names was the sliding slope. It was what Mattie would have taught at the Fort - once the names start then the walls come tumbling in. He had no more defence. He had used all the tricks that he knew of. The last trick had been the feigning of unconsciousness, and the cigarette end, lit, on the skin under his armpit, tender, had blown away the deceit in a scream of pain.

  He knelt on the floor. His arms hung at his side. There was the taste of his blood in his mouth, and there was a tooth socket for his tongue to rest in. He hated the men that he had named. The pain and the shame had been brought down on him because he had known their names. The fist in his hair held his head upright, and they punched and slapped his face, and they buffeted the bridge of his nose so that there were tears in his eyes, and they kicked his stomach and his groin.

  For Mattie, the only way of ending the pain was to surrender the name. He had thought he could satisfy them with three names, and he had failed.

  His arms flailed around him, as if he tried to drive them back. If he did not drive them back, away from him, then he could not draw the breath into his lungs and the saliva down into his throat, and he could not name the name. He did not see the flick finger gesture of the investigator. He was not aware that the hand was no longer in his hair, and that his body had buckled. He saw only the investigator
's face.

  His chest heaved. The breath flooded into his body.

  "You killed his sister."

  "Did I, Mr Furniss?"

  "You tortured her, you killed her."

  "Who did I torture, who did I kill?"

  "His sister . . . he's going to get you for his sister."

  "Where is he going to come from, to get to me?"

  "Coming from U K , coming through Turkey, coming through the Dogubeyezit frontier post."

  "How is he going to get to me, for what I did to his sister?"

  "Armour-piercing missile, for you and the Mullah who sentenced his sister."

  "Who is the Mullah who sentenced his sister?"

  "I don't know."

  "How will he come here, to get to me?"

  "Papers, papers of the pasdaran."

  "Where do the papers come from?"

  "Istanbul."

  "Where in Istanbul?"

  "From a hairdressing shop, in the Aksaray district, it is just to the right of the Mirelaon church. It is the only hairdresser there."

  "When is he coming, with his papers from the hairdressing shop?"

  "Very soon."

  "Would he be known to me, my hopeful assassin?"

  "You knew his sister, you tortured her. There were two Guards that took her to the execution, he shot them in Tehran.

  The executioner of Tabriz, he blew him up, bomb on a car roof. You'll know him."

  "Mr Furniss, what is his name?"

  He knelt at the feet of the investigator. His head was bowed down to his knees. From his clothes there was the smell of vomit, in his nose was the smell.

  "God forgive me . . ."

  "What is his name?"

  "Harriet. . . Please, Harriet, forgive me."

  "His name, Mr Furniss?"

  "Charlie, you can't know what they've done to me . . . the pain, Charlie . . . "

  "The name?"

  "He's coming to get to you, for what you did to his sister.

  He's Charlie. His name is Charlie Eshraq."

  "We'll get the doctor to you . . . Thank you, Mr Furniss."

  14

  It was morning. There was enough of a knife line of light at the edge of the plywood over the window to tell Mattie that it was morning, another day. He rolled a little on the bed and his knees were hunched against his stomach as if he still needed to protect himself from the boots and the fists. He could feel the tightness of the bandages around his feet, and there was the irritation of the stitch that the doctor had put into his lower lip. At first he was too frightened to move, because he believed that any movement, any slight movement, would hurt him. With the movements of his muscles and his limbs he was like a man walking in a darkened room, hesitating and testing. He went from his side to his back, and he lay on his back and looked at the ceiling light. The ceiling light was always brilliant, bright enough for him to have to sleep with the blanket pulled over his head. From his back he manoeuvred himself across to his other side. All of his concentration, his determination, had gone into those movements. He had managed the movements. . . . He rolled back until his spine was against the mattress. He gazed at the light bulb that was recessed into the ceiling, and that threw a trellis of faint shadows through the mesh that protected it. He closed his eyes. Not bloody much to show for it, a couple of bandages and a single stitch and aches all over his body . . . not bloody much for cracking, for talking. His eyes were squeezed shut.

  He tried to shut out all that was around him.

  Pretty damn easily he'd talked.

  More easily than he'd have believed.

  Less hurt than he'd have thought possible.

  He could move from his side to his back and to his other side and on to his stomach. The pain was . . . to have cracked and not been hurt, that was agony. What had he said? A hazed memory. The memory was of the face of the investigator, and with the eyes of the investigator seeming to plead with him for the telling of it. The memory was of the hair-covered hands of one guard, and the nicotine stains of another guard's fingers, and of the stale sweat smell of their fatigues, and of the rough dirt of their bootcaps. What had he said? There were sounds in his mind. The sounds were of his own voice speaking names. Good names, the names of old friends . . .

  God, the shame of i t . . . God, the bloody disgrace of it . . .

  It was faint, he could not be sure that he heard the voice. The voice seemed to say the name of Charlie Eshraq. Couldn't be certain, but the voice amongst the confusion seemed to be the voice of Mattie Furniss.

  "His name is Charlie Eshraq."

  No, no, couldn't be certain, and the memory was misted.

  "His name is Charlie Eshraq."

  For years in the Service he had used them. They were almost friends to him, almost family, and he'd named them

  . . . and they hadn't even hurt him so that it lasted. He had his fingernails, and a back he could straighten. He had not been hurt as the Gestapo gaolers had hurt that Lutheran pastor who had come to the Fort and talked of his faith. Shame and disgrace and failure. . . . He rolled off the bed. Gently, as if he were frightened, he lowered his feet to the tile floor. He put the weight of his body on his feet. It was as if he wanted to feel pain, as if the pain in his feet would justify his having talked. Of course there was pain, but not enough pain. The pain was sustainable when he put his weight on to the soles of his feet. They wouldn't understand in Century. They had a routine in Century for those who came back - if he ever came back - those who'd talked under interrogation. A debrief and a goodbye. No one wanted to know about a man who had talked. All the successes forgotten. And the irony was that it had been Mattie who had contradicted the Embassy's reports in the late '70s, Mattie who had said the Peacock throne was on shifting sand and would sink. Good reporting, and all for nothing. A debrief for damage limitation and then a goodbye that was cold and without emotion.

  He heard an engine revving outside. He struggled to get up from the bed and he pressed his ear against the plywood at the window. The engine dulled the voices, but he recognised the voice of the investigator. There was a place in hell for that man. Mattie Furniss would never forget the voice of the investigator. Then the scrape of the tyres on chip stones and the squealing of a gate. Mattie understood. The investigator would be setting up the surveillance on the field agents. He would return. Mattie tried to calculate how long it would have taken to abort the field agents. He knew the system because he had drawn it up himself. He couldn't keep track of the days any more, should have done, should have scratched a marking for each day on the wall beside his bed. He didn't know whether he'd given them enough time. What he'd been through, that would be a suite at the Ritz compared with what the field agents would suffer in the interrogation rooms at Evin.

  Mattie would have whetted the appetite of the investigator, he knew that. He'd be back. They would strip him and gut him of all he knew, and then they would kill him. Stood to reason, they would take their fill of him, and they would dispose of him. They would take him through the kitchen and across the yard, and they would put him against the concrete block wall where the other poor bastards had been put.

  In his life he had never known such agony of failure.

  If he didn't make it b a c k . . . in time, they'd hear at Century that their man had cracked. Just as the Agency had heard that Hill Buckley, good guy and brave guy, had cracked. The bastards had tortured Buckley and then they sent the tapes of Buckley screaming to Langley. The shit pigs had made sport with Bill Buckley's pain.

  He went to the wash basin and he ran the tap, and when the water came it did not matter to Mattie that it was foul-tasting and ditchwater brown.

  While the water still dripped from his beard growth he sat on his bed. He waited for them to bring him his breakfast.

  He would watch each movement of the guards when they brought him his breakfast.

  Past six, and Charlie sang in his shower. He felt good. He knew what was the source of his soaring spirits. It was his meeting
with Mr Stone, gun runner By Appointment. Stone had taken Charlie's money, and would deliver, because Charlie was the friend of Mr Furniss. He began to realize that the friendship of Mr Furniss was a protective shield to him.

  He dressed and packed his rucksack.

  He came out of his room quickly. He walked on the corridor carpet on the balls of his feet, and he went quietly, and he could hear the scramble of movement behind the door across the corridor, and he heard the static and the squeal of a radio hurriedly activated. He ran down the fire stairs.

  In the lobby he went briskly to the swing doors. He drifted into the street.

  Charlie turned, and he went past the line of taxis. At the end of the line was the green Sierra.

  The call on the radio, fed into his earpiece, had battered Keeper awake.

  Still in the back of the car. He was wrenching the sleep out of his eyes and shaking his head clear. Harlech telling him that Tango One had come out of his room. Corinthian telling him that Tango One had crossed the lobby.

  He sat upright. He saw Tango One coming down the line of taxis, and behind Tango One was Corinthian spilling out through the swing doors, and then behind Corinthian was Token, fumbling to get her blouse into her jeans. Why the hell was Token tucking her blouse in? Why the hell did it ever get untucked when she was mounting night surveillance in a hotel room with Harlech? Harlech would be at the back, in the car park, getting the back-up on to the street. Of course Token had to sleep, like he'd slept, silly thought, and fast because the target was closing on his car, striding up past the taxis. It happened, it wasn't desirable, but it sometimes happened, that a target would walk right past the surveillance position, within spitting distance. The routine was to look away, get your face out of his field of vision. Make it look like there was nothing there out of the ordinary.