HOME RUN

by Gerald Seymour

  16

  Houghton did the opening, not that successfully, and the first cork careered into the ceiling of the Director General's office and chipped the plasterwork.

  Champagne, and a good vintage, the PA had been sent out with a wad of notes from the Director General's wallet. Must have run all the way back with it.

  The occasion called for the best.

  "I said he'd surprise us all . . . not quite true, I said he'd surprise a lot of people. I had faith in him. Always the way, yes? Just when life seems darkest the sun blesses us. I tell you what - Furniss is a real hero. You can have your soldiers doing daft things and getting medals for what they've achieved in the heat of battle, no harm in that, but Furniss has done it on his own. Can you just imagine how the chaps are going to be feeling back in Tehran, all of those unshaven baskets? They'll be slitting each other's throats. . . . A toast to Mattie Furniss

  . . . I'll bet he feels like a million dollars right now."

  The Deputy Director General muttered, "He hasn't been on a Fun Run, Director General."

  Ben Houghton said, "I can't get a link through to him. We expect that the Turkish military will have taken him down to Yuksekova, they've a base there. Crisis Management have been trying to patch through a fine, but they can't make it through. Pretty soon now he'll be airlifted to Ankara."

  The Director General beamed, "There's a hand that I am much looking forward to shaking."

  "The debrief comes first," the Deputy Director General said. "He'll be sanitized until his debrief is complete, that's the way things are done."

  "So when do I get to congratulate him?"

  "When he's debriefed, and after the debrief there'll be the Inquest."

  "You are one hell of a killjoy, you know that. You're a real damp rag."

  "It's no more or less than Mattie would expect. We debrief him on what's happened, who held him, and then we hold the Inquest as to how he was in a position that left him so vulnerable. Mattie'll know the form. My view, he's likely to be scarred for rather a long time, that's just my personal opinion."

  "He's done bloody well."

  "Of course he has."

  "And I'll not have him harassed."

  "No question of him being harassed, Director General, just debriefed."

  The Deputy Director General proffered his glass to young Houghton. He refilled his own glass, and then the Director General's and the DDG had the last of the bottle. If the Director General ever stumbled under a Number Nineteen Omnibus, and the Deputy Director General moved into this office, that young man would be out on his neck, damn fast.

  The DDG knew the answer, but he still asked the question.

  "Have we spoken to Mrs Furniss?"

  Ben Houghton said, "She's been out ever since the news came through, no answer on either of her phones. She hasn't been forgotten."

  "Well done, Furniss. This calls for a second bottle, I think, Ben. Damned shame that we aborted the network, but at least we can move Eshraq."

  The Deputy Director General frowned, then the smile caught his face. "Forgive me, I may have sounded churlish

  . . . Good old Mattie . . . he's been terrific. I don't think it would be out of order for you to meet him off the plane if that's what you'd like . . . Director General. Again, forgive me, but I want you to understand that labelling Furniss a hero may well, will almost certainly, be somewhat misplaced. He will have talked, and this whole expedition has cost us a network. Realistically it all adds up to Dunkirk, not to the Normandy landings."

  "I'm wagering that he'll have surprised you."

  "Also, we may not have aborted our people in time. I can show you the photographs from Kermanshah when the M K O

  moved out and the Mullahs came back in, if you would like to see them. The hangings were photographed. Mattie getting himself captured was only one inevitable step away from a death sentence for our field agents, even, you may console yourself, if the signals to bring them out had been sent without delay."

  "They may well come out, and Mattie may well not have talked, in which case perhaps, who knows, they can go back in again."

  "We're not talking about Bond or Biggies, Director General, we are talking about one man against a very sophisticated team of torturers. We are talking about a regime that will do unspeakable things to their own people, and who won't have cared a toss what is done to a foreigner."

  The Director General said, "I am at a loss to know what you want."

  "I would want to know whether Eshraq is compromised before we let him go back."

  "My money is on Mattie, and I'll drink to him."

  And between the three of them they killed the second bottle.

  It might have been the sense of guilt that had dogged the Station Officer ever since he had left Mattie Furniss unprotected in Van, but he most certainly made wheels turn now.

  From the moment that the Military Attache at the Embassy had passed on the news of the refugee Furniss falling into the hands of a patrol near the border in Hakkari province, Terence Snow had wheedled facilities from his contacts. An official in the National Intelligence Agency had earned a handsome gift.

  Mattie sat beside the road.

  He had a paratrooper's smock draped over his shoulders, and a medic had cleaned his feet and then bandaged them, and a colonel had loaned him a stick to help himself along.

  The road was the airstrip. It ran along a shallow valley between Yuksekova and Semdinli. The road was widened and reinforced and provided a facility for fixed wing to land in all weathers, night and day, and had been built to further military operations against guerillas of the Kurdish Workers' Party.

  There were lights laid out, fired by portable generators, and the area where Mattie sat was illuminated by the headlights of military jeeps and trucks. He sat on an old ammunition box. He was a source of interest to the soldiers, they were crowded behind his back, silent and watchful. They gazed at him with a fascination because they knew that he was an Englishman, and they knew that he had walked out of Iran, and they knew from the medic that the soles of his feet were cut and horribly swollen from beatings. He had lost that sense of exhilaration that had gripped him when he had stood on the ridge looking down into Turkey. He was overcome with exhaustion. Of course he was. He could still see in his mind the picture, cruelly sharp, of the Revolutionary Guards coming down the slope and the boys being escorted at gunpoint up the slope. And there was Charlie, and there were his agents.

  He wanted only to sleep, and he declined food. The last food he had eaten, before the ridge, had been the boys' food freely shared with him.

  The Hercules C-130 came down on to the road, a noisy and jolting landing, and the reverse thrust was on from the moment the wheels touched. The aircraft taxied towards the knot of soldiers, and when it turned Mattie had to shield his face from the flying grit thrown up from the hard shoulder by the four sets of propellors. The pilot kept the engines idling while Mattie was helped up the rear loading ramp. It was only when the aircrew had fastened his seatbelt for him that he realized that he had forgotten to thank the paratroop officers for their hospitality. He waved as the loading ramp was raised, but he couldn't tell whether they would have seen. On full power the Hercules lifted off, then banked heavily to avoid a shoulder of the Samdi Dag, then climbed for cruising altitude. They were three hours in the air. He was offered orange juice from a paper carton and a boiled sweet to help his ears during the descent to Ankara, otherwise the aircrew ignored him. They were taking him back from a nightmare, returning him to the world that he knew.

  They were on a military airfield. They were parked beside an executive eight seat jet. On the jet were the roundels of red and white and blue.

  The Station Officer made no secret of his emotion. He hugged Mattie.

  "God, Mr Furniss, you've done magnificently well. . . and the Director General said for me to tell you . . . " H e recited,

  "Warmest personal congratulations on your epic triumph."

  "Very decent o
f him."

  "You came through, Mr Furniss, I can't tell you how pleased I am, how proud I am to know you."

  "Steady, Terence."

  "You're a hero, Mr Furniss."

  "Is that what they think?"

  "Of course. They had the whole army out trying to catch you and you got clean through them. You beat the bastards."

  "Yes. . . . What about my agents?"

  "All I know is that the abort signals were sent."

  "But are they out?"

  "That I don't know. I'm very sorry, Mr Furniss, but I've been ordered not to attempt any sort of debrief on you. That's the usual form, I suppose."

  Snow took Mattie's arm and led him to the steps of the executive jet, and a nurse came down them and took over and grabbed firmly at his arm and hoisted him on board, and when he ducked into the interior there was an R A F corporal to salute him, and through the open door of the cockpit he saw the pilot leaning sideways so that he could wink at Mattie, and give him the thumbs-up. He was strapped into a seat, back to the driver, always the way of R A F flights, and Snow was opposite him, and the nurse was peeling off the bandages from his feet, even before they took off, and there was a look on her face that suggested that no one could be trusted with medical hygiene but herself. The plane had come from Cyprus, from the Sovereign Base at Akrotiri. They roared away into the night, lifted sharply, as if the pilot would have preferred to be at the controls of a Tornado strike plane.

  Terence Snow kept his silence. That was the way of things when a Service man came back from captivity. Nothing should interfere with the debrief, standard operating procedure.

  When the nurse had unwound the bandages of the Turkish army medic, when she had examined the puffed, welted soles of Mattie's feet, then he saw the frown settle on her already stern forehead, and he saw the Station Officer wince. The nurse took off his shirt, tugged it off him, and her lips pursed when she saw the bruising at the base of his shoulders. The swollen feet and the bruised shoulders brought a gentleness to the nurse's fingers, and a gaze of youthful worship from the boy. He could have wiped the gentleness out of her fingers, and the adulation from his eyes. He could have told them that he was a fraud. He could have shouted inside that small aircraft cabin, going home at 550 surface miles per hour, that the Service's hero had cracked and talked.

  They put down at the Royal Air Force base at Brize Norton in the small hours of the morning.

  He was helped down from the aircraft and into a waiting ambulance, a lone vehicle on the huge airfield. He was driven to the Base hospital.

  The Director General was waiting for him, and his hand was pumped.

  "Bloody good show, Furniss. Welcome home. It's a Red Letter day for all of us."

  They ran an electrocardiogram test. They asked him for a urine sample and then put him in the lavatory where there was a bag under the seat because they required his stool to check for typhoid or dysentery. They X-rayed his feet and his chest and his shoulders. They did blood tests on him for signs of vitamin deficiency. They were brisk and methodical and quick, and Mattie saw that the form they filled in with the results of the examination and the tests was blank at the top, at the space provided for the patient's name. Over the new bandages on his feet they gently fitted plastic slippers, and they told him he should see his dentist within the next week.

  The Director General was waiting for him in the reception area. He beamed at him. Mattie grinned back, ruefully, like a man embarrassed by all the attention.

  "Well, Furniss, I don't know what the devil you've been up to since we last saw you. I expect it will make a superlative story and one which the Prime Minister will not want to see published, dear me, no, but you'll dine with us when you're up to snuff, I do look forward to that. Messages of deep esteem from Downing Street. Should have said so at once. And Mrs Furniss. I expect you'd like to put through a call before you leave here. Snow, arrange that will you? Then you'll be off to Albury for a day or so, Furniss, just to get it all off your chest, but you know all about that."

  "My field agents . . . ?"

  "Steady down, old chap. You worry about yourself, leave the others to us. Carter's coming down, he'll tell you what you need to know about your agents. It's been a wonderful show, Furniss. I said you would surprise us all. But I mustn't keep you from the telephone. . . . Well done, Furniss, first class. The Service is very proud."

  From the road outside they could hear the telephone ringing.

  The telephone had rung three times while Parrish and Park had sat in the car.

  It was ringing again as the woman drove past them and then swung sharply to pull into the drive at the side of the cottage.

  And as soon as she had her door open she was hearing the telephone ringing, because she was out of her car like a rabbit, and she hadn't bothered to close the car door, and she'd left her keys in the front door.

  Park started to move, but Parrish's hand rested lightly on his arm.

  "Give her a moment."

  It had been Parrish's initiative, the drive to Bibury. No warning, just pitching up at Park's address, waiting for Ann to leave, then coming to the door. Park had already started on the spare bedroom ceiling, and he hadn't been given time to clean the paint off his fingers.

  "We'll just give her time to answer. I'm out of line, but I might just be past caring. It's all too ambiguous for a simple soul like me. I have a direct order that Tango One is not to be lifted, and yet I am ordered to maintain a low level surveillance on him - I don't know what that adds to . . . I am told that we will get no help in locating Mr Matthew Furniss but the ACIO is not telling me that I cannot approach Furniss. If it adds up to anything it is that on the top floor of the Lane they haven't a clue what we're supposed to be doing. I'm pushing my luck, David, because I don't appreciate being pissed on. So, if I get my wrist slapped, and you get your butt kicked, then it's all in a good cause . . . Come on."

  They stepped from the car.

  "I'll do the talking," Parrish said. "You can give her the keys."

  He smiled, a real hangman's smile. He reached for his wallet in his inside pocket. When he knocked on the door he had the wallet open so that his identification card was visible.

  She came to the door.

  She was radiant.

  Park handed her the keys, and Parrish showed the ID and she grinned at the keys, like a small girl.

  "Mrs Furniss?"

  "Thrilling, isn't it? Do come in. It's quite wonderful. I suppose they sent you down when I wasn't answering the phone.

  I've been at my elder daughter's. . . . You've come all the way from Century, a wasted journey? You'll have a cup of coffee before you go, of course you will. I suppose really I should be opening the champagne, the DG said that he opened champagne last night. He said the whole Service was proud of Mattie, that's a splendid thing to have said of your husband . . . "

  "When will Mr Furniss be home?"

  "You will have coffee, I'm so excited, do come inside . . ."

  She had stepped aside, then stopped, spun. "You should know when he's coming home."

  Parrish asked calmly, "Did you look at my ID?"

  "You're from Century, yes?"

  "Customs and Excise, ma'am, Investigation Division."

  Her voice whispered, "Not Century?"

  "My name is William Parrish, and I am investigating heroin trafficking from Iran. My colleague here is Mr Park."

  Her hand was across her mouth. "I thought you were from my husband's office." She stiffened. "What did you say you want?"

  "I'd like to know when I can interview your husband."

  "What about?"

  "In connection with a guarantee given by your husband to a man now under investigation."

  She barred their path. "We don't know anyone like that."

  "Your husband knows a Charles Eshraq, Mrs Furniss. It's about Eshraq, and your husband standing guarantee to him that we've called."

  She stared up from her eyeline that was level with the knot of
Parrish's tie. "Have you been through Century?"

  "I don't have to go through anyone, Mrs Furniss."

  "Do you know who my husband is?"

  Park could have smiled. Parrish wasn't smiling. He would be later, right now he had his undertaker's calm.

  "Your husband is the guarantor of a heroin trafficker, Mrs Furniss."

  "My husband is a senior civil servant."

  "And I serve my country too, Mrs Furniss, by fighting the importers of heroin. I don't know what threat your husband safeguards us from, but where I work the threat of heroin coming into the UK is taken pretty seriously."

  She was shrill. "You come here, you barge into my house, you make preposterous allegations about a boy who is virtually a son to us, on the morning that my husband has just returned home after breaking out of an Iranian torture gaol."

  "So he's not here at present?"

  "No, he isn't here. I should think he will be in hospital for a long time. But if he were here, Mr Parrish, you would be terribly sorry you had had the disgraceful manners to break into this house. . . . "

  Parrish said, "Maybe it's not the best time . . . "

  She went to the hall table. She picked up the telephone.

  She dialled fast.

  Her voice was clear, brittle. "This is Harriet Furniss, Matthew Furniss' wife. I want to speak to the Director General . . . "

  Park said, "Come on, you disgraceful person, time we barged out."

  They left her. When they were at the gate they heard her voice rise in anguished complaint. They reached the car.

  "Shall I serve my country and drive?"

  "I tell you what, Keeper, that wasn't one of my happiest initiatives, but we did shake the nest."

  He had spoken to the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister had asked after Mattie Furniss and said he must be a quite remarkable man, and the DG bathed in reflected glory. He looked forward rather keenly to the first of the debrief papers that would be coming through in a couple of days, and he would certainly send a digest across to Downing Street. Now he was making a tour, being seen, as he put it to Houghton.