HOME RUN

by Gerald Seymour

  The message from the short wave transmitter, that was in itself hardly larger than a cornflakes packet, was carried the 90 miles from Bandar Abbas, across the shipping lanes of the Straits of Hormuz to the listening antennae on the summit of the Jebal Harim in Oman.

  Only the height of the Jebal Harim, 6,867 feet above sea level, enabled the message to be monitored. It was known by the Service that the transmitter could reach the antennae with short messages, and it had been given to the official who worked in the Harbourmaster's office for use only in emergency.

  He knew his situation was critical, he knew he was being watched.

  He sent the one short message.

  He was a man filled with fear that spilled towards terror.

  And that afternoon he prayed to his God that he would have the protection of Mr Matthew Furniss, and the colleagues of Mr Furniss.

  Park was waved forward by the Military Police corporal.

  There was no salute. A Ford Escort didn't warrant a salute from a corporal who was losing Sunday at home. Park drove forward, bumping over the rutted dirt track, and he parked beside the Suzuki jeep. On the far side of the jeep was a black Rover, newly registered and the driver was quietly polishing the paintwork and minding his own business. Park had changed at home. After he had tidied the bathroom and made the bed that Harlech had been in, then he had stripped off his suit and put the rose from his buttonhole in water, and put on jeans and a sweater.

  He walked towards Charlie Eshraq. Eshraq stood with the man, the supercilious and drawling creep, who had lectured Park at Century.

  He walked towards them, and their conversation didn't hesitate.

  " . . . So, that's it?"

  "That is it, Mr Eshraq. Mr Park will accompany you to the border. You will not attempt to impede his job. You don't fool with him and he has been told not to play silly buggers with you. Got it?"

  "And I get the weapons?"

  "Mr Eshraq, if you were not getting the weapons then this afternoon's exercise would be somewhat pointless."

  "I don't get to see Mr Furniss?"

  "You will be handled from Ankara, good chap there."

  "Why do I not see Mr Furniss?"

  "Because from inside Iran you will need to deal with someone else. All that will be explained to you once you are in Turkey. Good luck, we'll be rooting for you."

  The driver had finished his polishing, and had started up the Rover. There were no farewells. The car drove away.

  In the cause of duty . . . Park walked to Charlie Eshraq.

  "I'm David Park."

  "No, you're not, you're April Five, but you may call me Charlie."

  "I'll call you any name I want to. . . . Probably, like me, you reckon this set-up stinks."

  Eshraq was Tango One, trafficker in heroin, always would be. There was no handshake. Charlie turned his back on him and walked away towards the army Landrover. Park followed, and behind him the Military Police corporal reckoned that it was safe to light a cigarette. There was an officer standing beside the Landrover, and squatting on the low seats in the back were two sergeants. David saw the olive-painted case lying on the floor between their feet.

  The officer said, "Which of you is it? I was told the instruction was for one."

  "For me," Charlie said.

  The officer looked him up, down. "The LAW 80 is pretty straightforward.''

  "Oh, that's good, you'll be able to manage the tutorial."

  Park thought the officer might have cracked Charlie. He heard the sergeants laugh aloud.

  They went out on to the range. The officer led. They'd given Charlie a tube to carry, and the sergeants each carried one. They seemed to walk a hell of a distance, past red flags, past warning signs, until they came to a place where the heather ground sloped away. There were tank tracks, and ahead of them was the burned, black hull of an armoured personnel carrier.

  "Where are you going to use this, young man?"

  "Is that your business?"

  "Don't fuck me about, Mr Eshraq . . . On where you are going to use it depends my briefing. Are you going to use it in a battlefield condition? Are you going to use it over open ground? Are you going to use it in an urban environment?

  You don't have to tell me, but if you don't then you are wasting my time and you are wasting your time. Got me?"

  The officer smiled. He reckoned he had the upper hand.

  "The first one will be fired on a street in Tehran. That's in Iran."

  And the smile died on the officer's face.

  "All I can say is that I am not totally confident at the moment,"

  Henry said. It was the scrambled phone. "He's peculiarly aggressive when I attempt to pin down detail. . . .Yes, it bothers me very much that I may be selling him short . . . I suppose we just have to soldier on. Thank you."

  It was quiet in the house. They had indeed been to the pub, but that had not been a good idea, because the two pints of ale and Mrs Ferguson's lunch had given Mattie the excuse to retire to his room for a siesta. And it was Sunday afternoon, and the Director General was in the country, and the Duty Desk weren't quite sure where the Deputy Director General was, and the man who had taken the call from Carter was only a minion and Carter was a tedious fusser, and Mattie Furniss was a hero. Nothing would happen, not until Monday morning.

  He crouched. His left knee was bent forward, his right knee was on the ground.

  There were the steel gates ahead of him.

  There was the derelict house behind him.

  The oleanders were in flower and gave him cover, and he had elevation from the ruined and overgrown gardens and he could see over the wall that fronted the derelict house and he could see across the road and to the high sheeting of the security gates. There was a cramp settling in his legs, but he did not respond to it, and he struggled to hold the tube steady on his shoulder. The tube was well balanced and its weight of 18 lbs kept it firmly in place on his collar bone. His left hand gripped tight at the cradle under the tube, holding it, and the index finger of his right hand was on the smooth plastic of the trigger and the thumb of his right hand was against the switch that would change the firing mechanism from the spotting round to the main projectile. His right eye was locked on to the sight and in the centre of his vision were the steel gates to the Mullah's home. He knew that the Mullah was coming because he had heard the revving of the engine of the big Mercedes. The traffic in the road was continuous and the Mercedes would have to stop before it could nose out.

  So hard to be still, because the adrenalin flowed, and the thrill of revenge stampeded in him. The gates opened. He saw two guards running forward and across the pavement, and they were gesturing for the traffic to stop, and the whistles in their mouths were raucous. The snout of the Mercedes poked through the gates. He had a clear view of the radiator grille and the front windscreen. The head-on target was not the best, side shot was better, but the side shot would be against an accelerating target . . . even better would have been the magnet bomb that Mr Furniss had given him, and the motorcycle, and the chance to see the face of the Mullah as he pulled away, as the pig knew that he rode underneath death - not possible, not with the escort car behind. . . . He could not see the Mullah, he would be in the back, and through the sight he could only see the radiator and the windscreen and the face of the driver and the face of the guard who sat beside the driver. A boy pedalled past on his bicycle, and was not intimidated by the whistles and the shouts and the flailed hand weapons of the guards who were on the road, and the driver waited for the boy on the bicycle to clear the path ahead. The spotter rifle first. The flash of the red tracer round running flat, and the impact against the join of the bonnet of the Mercedes and the windscreen, and the windscreen had a clouded mark at the base, nearly dead centre. Thumb to the switch, push the switch. The finger back to the trigger.

  Holding the tube steady, ducking it back into the fine of sight because the kick of the tracer round had lifted the aim fractionally. Squeezing a second time on t
he trigger . . . and the blast, and the recoil, and the white heat flash roaring behind him, behind his crouched shoulder. A shudder of light that moved from the muzzle of the tube at a speed of 235

  metres in a second, and the range was less than forty metres.

  The explosion on the front of the Mercedes, the copper slug of the warhead driven into the body of the car, and the debris scabs following it, and the car rocked back, and lifted, and the first flicker of fire. . . . What he had waited for. The car burned, and the road was in confusion.

  "Move yourself, Eshraq."

  The shout in his ear, and his hands still clasped the tube, and the voice was faint because his ears thundered from the firing.

  "Get yourself bloody moving."

  And the officer was dragging at his collar, and snatching the tube from his grip.

  "You don't stand around to watch, you move as if all the demons in hell are on your tail, and about half of them will be."

  The officer had flung the tube aside, and Charlie was on his feet. He saw for one last time that the smoke billowed from the armoured personnel carrier target. He ran. He was bent low, and he ran for more than 100 yards up the shallow slope of the hill and away from the officer and the sergeants and the three discarded tubes and the target. He ran until he reached Park.

  At his own pace the officer walked to him.

  "That wasn't bad, Eshraq."

  He was panting. The excitement throbbed in him. "Thank you."

  "Don't thank me, it's your skin that's on offer. You have to move faster in the moment after firing. You do not hang about to congratulate yourself on being a clever kid. You fire, you drop the tube, you move out. You were wearing ear protectors, no one else in the target zone will be and they will be disorientated for a few seconds. You have to make use of those seconds."

  "Yes, understood."

  "You won't have realised it, time goes pretty fast, but you were four seconds and the rest between the rifle aiming round and the missile discharge. Too long. The target today was stationary, that's kids' play."

  "Inside an armoured Mercedes . . . ?"

  "I'd rather not be the passenger. The LAW 80 is designed to take out main battle tanks up to 500 metres. No car, whatever the small arms protection, has a chance. Don't lose any sleep over that. Are you happy?"

  "I will remember your kindness."

  "Just give my love to the Ayatollah . . ."

  Charlie laughed, and he waved. He walked away and Park followed him. He thought Park was like the labrador dog that Mrs Furniss had owned when the girls were still at school, and which had been detested by Mr Furniss. He thought the officer was great, because there was no bullshit about the man and he had given him the depth of his experience, and freely.

  He reached the jeep.

  "I am going back to London, are you coming with me?"

  "Those are my instructions, that I stay with you, but I've my own car."

  He heard the tang of dislike in the brittle voice. "Then you can follow me."

  "I'll do that."

  "I'm going to my flat."

  "I know where your flat is."

  "I'm going to my flat and I am going to take a shower, and then I am going out to dinner. I am going to have a very good meal. Perhaps, you would care to join me?"

  He saw the snarl on Park's face, his face was almost amusing.

  "I'll eat with you because I have to be with you, and I'll pay my own share. So we understand each other -1 don't want to be with you, but those are my orders. I'll tell you where I'd like to be with you. I would like to be sitting alongside the dock in Number Two, Central Criminal Court, and I'd like to be there when a judge puts you away for fifteen years."

  Charlie grinned. "Perhaps you'll win some other ones."

  He had stayed in his room all afternoon, and when Henry had come to the door and knocked and told him that supper was ready he had said that he had no appetite and that he would skip the meal. It had been late when he had come down. He had been driven downstairs by his growing loneliness that had become keener as the light fell over the trees in the garden.

  They were in the drawing room. For that time of year it was unusual for it to have been so cold, and Mattie stayed close to the fireplace, which was idiotic since there was no fire, but he felt the chill of his loneliness and he could not shrug the warmth back to his mind. Henry wasn't communicative. It was as though he was watching the clock, had decided that Sunday evening was his free time and that the debrief would continue in the morning. Henry had brought him a whisky, sat him in a chair with back editions of the Illustrated London News and Country Life, and returned to the study of a brochure advertising holidays for ornithologists. He craved to ask the question, but Henry was far from him, lost in the Danube's marshes. He held the drink. He hadn't spoken to Harriet, not since the phone call that was their reunion, three quick minutes, and stiff lips, and both too gushing because they were too old and too regimented to have cried down the lines, and he wouldn't speak to her again, not until this was over.

  Harriet would have known what he should do. And equally certainly Henry would turn down any request that he call her.

  Oh yes, he'd do it politely, but he'd do it. Carter had a calculator out, and must have been adding up the damage because just after he had made the final punch a frown ploughed his high forehead. Mattie saw that Henry did nothing by accident. He also realized that for all his seniority at Century, here he was subordinate. Old Henry Carter, Century's vacuum cleaner for gathering up the odds and sods of administration, was running the show, and had determined that Mattie Furniss would be left through that evening to sweat.

  Henry smiled. Melting butter. A wrinkled choirboy's smile, such innocence.

  "Too damned expensive for me. It'll be the Fens again."

  Mattie blurted, "Eshraq, Charlie Eshraq . . . he was due to go back inside. Did he go?"

  Henry's eyebrow lifted. Deliberately he put down the calcu-

  lator and closed the brochure. "Any day now, going in the next few days . . . I must say, it sounds as if he's taken on more than he can possibly chew."

  Mattie thought a knife could have been sharpened on Henry's voice.

  "He's a fine young man."

  "They're all fine young men, Mattie, our field agents. But that'll keep till the morning."

  The Director of the Revolutionary Centre for Volunteers for Martyrdom was still in his office because on many evenings the office doubled as his bedroom. He was in an easy chair and reading a manual of the US Marine Corps on base security procedures, and he was happy in the discovery that they had learned nothing, the authors of this study.

  They took coffee, thick and bitter, and with it was served orange juice. They were two men of cultures that were chasms apart. The Director had spent six years in the Qezel-Hesar gaol in the times of the Shah of Shahs, and he had spent six years in exile in Iraq and France. If a young Mullah who was a rising star had not offered the investigator his protection, then, in great probability, the Director would have used the pistol, holstered and hanging from a hook behind his door, on the back of the neck of the one time S A V A K man.

  The investigator spoke of a watch that was now maintained on a barber's shop in the Aksaray district of Istanbul. He told of a man who would come to the shop. At the back of the shop, Charlie Eshraq, the son of the late Colonel Hassan Eshraq, would collect forged papers that he would use when he came back into Iran. He asked a great favour of the Director. He said that he would have this Eshraq under surveillance from the moment that he left the shop. His request was for a small force of men who would be in position on the frontier to intercept Eshraq at whatever crossing point he used. Would he come over at a crossing point? Of course

  - and the investigator had researched the matter - because of the weight of the armour-piercing missiles he was known to be bringing and their packaging he would have to come by road. He asked for the service as if he were a humble creature at the feet of a great man.

&nbs
p; He asked for nothing. The Director would be most pleased to make such a squad available, in the name of the Imam.

  The Director said, "Consider the words of the martyred Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali: 'Those who are against killing have no place in Islam. Faith requires the shedding of blood, we are there to perform our duty. . . .' He was a great man."

  And a great butcher, and a hanging judge without equal.

  His patron, the Mullah that he served, was but a boy in comparison with Khalkhali, the unlamented protector of the Revolution.

  "A great man, who spoke words of great wisdom," the investigator said. And he asked the second favour. He asked that after Charlie Eshraq had collected his papers from the barber's shop, that the shop be destroyed by explosives.

  Profusely, he thanked the Director for his cooperation.

  It was necessary for him, business completed, to stay another hour in the company of the Director. The Director was pleased to report the details of the killing in London of Jamil Shabro, traitor to the Imam, traitor to his faith, and guilty of waging war against Allah.

  When they parted, in the quiet of the dark, on the steps outside the old University, their cheeks brushed each other's lips.

  If the restaurant had been half empty, and not full, then Park would have sat at a separate table. There was only their reserved table, so he had to sit with Eshraq if he wanted to eat. And he did want to eat.

  Eshraq made conversation, as if they were strangers who had crossed paths in a strange city and needed company. And he ate like he was starting a hunger strike in the morning. He ate fettucine for starters, main course bowl, and he followed with the fegato, and took the lion's share of the vegetables they should have shared, and he finished with strawberries and then coffee and a large Armagnac to rinse down the valpolicella of which he had drunk two thirds of the bottle.

  Park hadn't talked much, and the first real exchange was when he had insisted on halving the bill when it came. He took his time, Eshraq, but he pocketed the money, and he paid the whole bill with an American Express card.

  Park said, "But you won't be here, not when they bill you."