HOME RUN

by Gerald Seymour

  "We're not in the best of form."

  She said drily, "I gathered."

  "We've lost a nice juicy one."

  "He told me a bit."

  "We got fucked up - excuse me - your man, trouble with him is that he cares."

  "Don't you?"

  He had strong eyes. When she looked at Harlech then it was into his eyes. She had nowhere else to look. It was only from the side of her eye that she saw Bill's empty chair.

  "Not a lot bothers me, that's because of where I used to work. I used to be at Heathrow . . ."

  "So was David."

  ". . . He was front of house . . . me, I was back stage. I was on the stuffers and swallowers drill. You know what that is? 'Course, you don't. Nobody tells a nice girl about swallowers and stuffers. . . . I used to be on the duty that checks the daily in from Lagos - I never found anything else that the Nigerians were good at, but, Christ, they can stuff and swallow. Do you want to know all this? You do? Well, the women stuff the scag up their fannies, and the men stuff it up their arses, and they both swallow it. Are you with me?

  They put it in condoms and they stuff it up and they swallow it down. We have a special block for the suspects, and that's where I used to work before I came to ID. We shove them in a cell, and we sit and watch them, and we feed them on good old baked beans, and we wait. God, do we wait . . . Has to go through, law of nature. Everything has to come out except from where the women stuff theirs, but that's a job for the ladies. You have to be like a hawk, watching them, and every time they go in then it's out with the plastic bag and on with the rubber gloves and time for a good old search around. They train by swallowing grapes, and they dip the condoms in syrup so they travel more comfortably, and they use something called Lomotil, because that's a binder. You know, once we had a flight in from Lagos and we pulled in thirteen, and we had every bog in action that we could lay our hands on. We were swamped, and just as well, because half of them were positive. When you've sat, hours and hours, watching guys crap, after that not a lot seems to bother you. Got me?"

  "He doesn't tell me things like that."

  "Complaining?"

  She didn't answer. Bill was back, talking urgently into David's ear. She heard her man swear, quiet, then he turned to her.

  "I'm sorry, I've got to go with Bill. It may take an hour or two. Duggie, will you look after Ann? Will you get her home?"

  "You're joking." She didn't believe it.

  Bill shrugged. He was standing at David's shoulder.

  "I'm sorry, love, I'll see you when I do."

  He was gone, and Bill was trailing after him. No, she didn't believe it.

  " D o you like dancing?" Harlech asked.

  • * •

  The investigator reported to the Mullah.

  A veteran in survival, the investigator had determined the necessity of reporting in person twice every day to the Mullah.

  Twice every day he drove through the traffic jams to the expropriated villa where the Mullah held court. He held the cards in his hand, not as high cards as he had hoped, but cards of value. He had in those cells at Evin that were reserved for political prisoners of great sensitivity an engineer from Tabriz and a carpet merchant from Tehran.

  He had a tail on an official of the Harbourmaster's office in Bandar Abbas, to see where the man would run, what else could be trawled.

  He had the plan in his mind of the show trial at which confessions would be made. Confessions, their extraction and their presentation in court, were the great pride of the investigator. A confession was the closing of a book, it was the finishing of the weaving of a carpet, it was orderliness. The confessions of the engineer and the carpet merchant were near to being in place, and that of the official in the Harbourmaster's office would follow when he was ready to receive it.

  On that evening, late, in the office of the Mullah, he reported on all these matters, and he received permission to continue the surveillance in Bandar Abbas. Later, sipping freshly pressed fruit juice, he talked of Charlie Eshraq. He was very frank, he kept back nothing.

  "Mattie, I don't want to go on about this, not all night, but you are quite sure?"

  "I'm getting very tired, Henry."

  "The investigator was a professional, yes?"

  "Old S A V A K man, knew what he was at."

  "And it went on being pretty violent?"

  "Henry, if you knew how ridiculous you sounded

  . . .'pretty violent' for Christ's sake. If you've got any heavy duty flex in the garage here we'll see, if you like, if we can elaborate the distinctions. Violent, pretty violent, or we'll try twelve hours of continuous violence and see what that becomes. Or haven't we been through this all before . . ."

  "Yes, Mattie, yes, we have . . . It's so important that we are absolutely clear on this. Your investigator is a SAVAK

  man, the worst of the breed, and violence was used against you, quite horrifying violence, on and on. . . ."

  "How many times do you have to be told, Henry? I did not name Charlie Eshraq."

  "Easy, old chap."

  "It is not easy to break out of Iran and then to come home to an inquisition."

  "Quite right, point taken. Mattie, there were times that you fainted, other times when you were semi-conscious. When you were really groggy, could you have named him then?"

  The room was shadowed and dingy. The light came from a ceiling triple, but one of the bulbs had popped early in the evening and George had stated that he had no replacements and would not be able to buy more bulbs until Monday. The furniture was old but lacking in quality, a Sotheby's man wouldn't have given the room a second glance, not as good a room as the dining room.

  "When you're in a place like that, Henry, you cling to anything that's sacred. You hold on to your family, to your Service, your country, your God if you have one. Any damned thing that is important in your life you hold on to. When the pain's so bloody awful, the only things you can hold to are the kernels of your life. You have that feeling that if you broke, you would be giving them all that is sacred to you."

  "I just have to be sure, that I understand you."

  And it was such a damn shame. . . . He thought that old Henry, tatty old Henry Carter who wouldn't have known a thumb screw from a bottle opener, might just be a better interrogator than the investigator in Tabriz.

  • * *

  Park drove, and Parrish was beside him with the directions written on a sheet of paper. He'd asked where they were going, and Bill had said that the building was called Century House. He'd asked why they were going there, and Bill said it was because the Chief had told him to present himself with Keeper in tow. No point in any more questions, because Bill hadn't any more answers.

  They came down the Albert Embankment, and the tower blocks loomed against the night skyline. There was only one block alive with light.

  Parrish waved for Park to pull into the forecourt. The Chief Investigation Officer was on the steps, and looking at his watch, and the ACIO was beside him, and then coming forward to organize the parking space. They climbed from the car, and Park locked the doors. They walked towards the main entrance. He saw a small brass plate for Century House.

  The Chief Investigation Officer nodded curtly at Parrish then moved to stand in front of Park.

  "Inside, your opinion isn't wanted, you just listen."

  They were offered drinks, and on behalf of all of them the Chief declined.

  Not an evening for social pleasantries, Park thought, just an evening for learning the realities of power.

  He stood in front of the desk and the Chief Investigation Officer was beside him, and the ACIO was on the other side and a half pace behind, and Parrish was out in the secretary's office with a young twerp watching over him. Parrish hadn't even made it inside. The lesson was delivered by two men.

  One sat in an armchair, and did the talking, and was called DDG, and the other sat on the front of the desk. The one in the armchair drawled and the one on the desk, with his s
ocks held up by suspenders, had a voice that was silk and honey.

  He heard it from the armchair.

  "You don't have a right to the detail, Park, but I will tell you what I can, and you should understand that everything I propose has been considered and approved by your immediate superiors. . . . In your work for Customs and Excise Investigation Division, you are a signatory to the Official Secrets Act. That signature of yours is an obligation to life-long confidentiality, whatever recent events may have suggested to the contrary. What you hear in this room is covered by the Act. Between your superiors and ourselves, Park, there is a deal. You are being volunteered . . . "

  "That's nice. What have I done to deserve this?"

  "Just button it, Park," the Chief said, side of mouth.

  " . . . Charlie Eshraq runs heroin. He is also a field agent of some value to the Service. Mr Matthew Furniss is one of the finest professional officers to have been reared by this Service in the last two decades. That's all fact. Eshraq, for reasons that are not your business, is about to return to Iran and he will be taking across the frontier a certain amount of hardware, purchased, as I am sure you will have deduced, with the proceeds of the sale of his last load of heroin. He is going back into Iran, and he will be staying there. He will be told tomorrow that should he renege on an agreement with us, should he ever return to the United Kingdom, then he will face prosecution on the basis of the evidence that you and your colleagues have collected against him.

  "You will join Eshraq on Monday, you will accompany him to Turkey, and you will satisfy yourself and your superiors that he has indeed travelled back into Iran. Following your return to the U K , it has been decided by your superiors that you will then be posted as DLO to Bogota in Colombia. I can assure you that it will be my intention to make certain that you have there the full cooperation of Service personnel in that region. That's the deal."

  "All neatly wrapped up between you, no loose ends. And if I tell you that it stinks, that I don't believe it? He doesn't belong to your outfit and if he does I'd like to know what's the point of my going to Bogota if you lot are running the stuff in the back door from Iran?"

  "Watch it, Park."

  "No, Chief, I won't. . . . Just to get Mr Furniss' young friend off the hook and just to get me out of the way. That's it, isn't it?"

  "Quite right, Park, we may just have to get you out of the way. Do you remember a Leroy Winston Man vers. An early morning interrogation, unsupervised, quite outside the book . . . ? You do? I gather the file isn't closed yet, some ugly first shots across the Division's bows from his solicitor.

  Isn't that so, Chief?"

  "I think you're shit, sir."

  "Five years' imprisonment, minimum. You could bet money that we'd know the judge. For the beating of a helpless black prisoner, it could be a bit more than five. Goodnight, Park. You'll enjoy Bogota. It's full of your type. Goodnight, gentlemen."

  Park went for the door.

  If he had looked into the face of the Chief Investigation Officer then he might just have put his fist into the man's teeth, and if he had looked at the ACIO then he might just have kneed the bugger.

  "By the by, Park, a little note of warning . . ." The voice drawled behind him, an incoming tide over shingle. "Don't play any clever games with Eshraq, I think he'd give you more of a run for your money than Man vers did."

  The dog slept in a wicker basket beside the Aga in the kitchen, on its back with its legs in the air, and wheezed like a drayman.

  The sound of snoring filled the night quiet of the house. He thought that a burglar would have to have kicked over the kitchen table to have woken the brute. But it was not the Rottweiler's growled breathing that kept Henry Carter awake.

  He would have been asleep by now, well asleep because it had been a hard enough day and rounded off with a good malt, if it had not been for the nagging worry.

  The descriptions of the torture had been so wretchedly vivid. The telling of the brutality had been so cruelly sharp.

  Never, not ever, would Henry have accused Mattie of telling

  "war stories". Nothing was volunteered, everything had to be chiselled for, but in his own laconic way Mattie had transported Henry into a world that was deeply, desperately, frightening.

  He understood why he had been chosen for the debrief.

  Quite impossible that the Director General would have permitted any of those aggressive youngsters that now seemed to fill the building to be let loose on a man of Mattie's stature.

  Perhaps the Director General had been wrong. Perhaps one of the young men, brash and cocksure, would have been better able to understand how Mattie had survived the pain, had survived and kept Eshraq's name safe.

  God forbid that he should be selling Mattie short, but Henry, coward that he was and without shame of it, could not understand it.

  18

  Sunday morning, and the light catching the east side of the Lane. Empty streets around the building, no rubbish wagons, no commuters, no office workers. The buses were few and far between, there were taxis cruising without hope.

  The bin beside Park's desk was half filled with cardboard drinking beakers. He had long before exhausted the dispenser, which would not be filled again until early on the Monday, and he had been reduced to making his own coffee, no milk left over the weekend. Stiff black coffee to sustain him.

  Some of it he had read before, but through the night he had punched up on to his console screen everything that the ID's computer had to offer on Turkey and Iran. That was his way.

  And a hell of an amount there was. . . . And he read again what little had been fed into CEDRIC on Charlie Eshraq. It was his way to arm himself with information, and it was also his way to dig himself a pit when circumstances seemed about to crush him. He couldn't have gone home, not after the visit to Century. Better to get himself back to the Lane, and to get his head in front of the screen. He'd been alone until dawn, until Token had shown. She'd shown, and then she'd gone heaven knew where and come back with bacon rolls.

  She sat at the desk opposite him. He was latching the plastic sheet over the console.

  "I spoke to Bill last night, when he'd got home."

  "Did you now?"

  "He said you'd had a pretty rotten evening."

  "And he was right."

  "He said that Duggie took your wife home."

  "I asked him to."

  "He said that you might be in need of looking after."

  She didn't wear make-up, and she hadn't combed her short hair, and her anorak was slung on the hook on the wall between the windows that looked down on to New Fetter Lane. She wore a sweatshirt that was tight over her radio transmitter. He thought that he knew what she was saying, what Parrish had said to her.

  "Have you finished?"

  "I've finished with the computer, I don't know what else I've finished with."

  "Another day, another dime, David."

  "You know what . . . ? Last night they walked all over us.

  We were the little chappies who had stepped out of their depth, and we were being told how to behave, and the Chief took it . . . I still feel sick."

  "Like I said, another day. Do you want to come home with me?"

  "What for?"

  "Don't be a cretin . . . "

  "I'm going home, got to change."

  "Might be best to give home a miss."

  She was the girl he ought to have married, that's what he thought. He knew why she offered her place, her bed. He knew why she was on offer, if she had spoken to Bill Parrish on the phone.

  "Thanks," he said.

  He came round the desk and when she stood he put his arms around her shoulders and he kissed her forehead. It was a soft kiss, as if she was his sister, as if she could only ever be a friend.

  "Don't let the bastards hurt you, David."

  He slung his suit jacket over his shoulder. Still in the buttonhole was the red rose that Ann had said he should wear for the dance. He walked out on Token, who woul
d have taken him home to her bed. He started up the car. It was a fast drive through the desert that was the city and it took him little more than an hour to reach home, and he'd bought flowers at a railway station stall.

  She'd left the lights on.

  The lights were on in the hall and in the bedroom and in the bathroom.

  She had left the wardrobe door open, and inside the wardrobe there was a chasm, her dresses gone. The bed wasn't made, and the envelope was on the pillow, the pillow, for God's sake.

  He went into the bathroom because he thought that he was going to throw up, and her dressing gown was on the bathmat and her bath towel, and beside her bath towel was his.

  Perhaps that was the way it always was, that a marriage ended. The flowers were in the kitchen sink and he didn't know how to make a display of them.

  There was a light knock at the door. Mrs Ferguson, beckoning Carter out. He went, and smiled an apology at Mattie.

  If there was a way back then Mattie did not know it. He paced in the room. He faced the alternatives, and his future.

  There was no going back. To go back, to admit the lie, that was resignation. He was a member of the Service, and if the lie were admitted then he would be out of the Service.

  "Sorry, Mattie, so sorry to have abandoned you. The telephone is one of the great tyrannies of modern life. Things are a little more confused. Our message to our man in Tehran, the message for him to abort, it didn't get through."

  "Why not?"

  "Seems that our man had disappeared, couldn't be traced.

  That's a shame."

  A long sad silence in the room. And Henry's eyes never left Mattie's face. He walked across the carpet and he stood in front of Mattie.

  "What I've always heard, and you know that I've no personal experience, when you start talking under pressure then you cannot ration yourself. If you start then you have to finish," he said.

  The explosion. "Damn you, how many times do I have to tell you?"

  "I think we'll have a walk down to the pub, you'd like that, wouldn't you, Mattie? I'll ask George to tether the hound."

  The message was very faint.