A Line in the Sand

by Gerald Seymour

  He'd sat the Civil Service examination, done adequately, and been called to a shapeless interview in an anonymous London building. His parents had been told by the neighbours, murmured over the garden fence and in their street, that they'd been asked questions about young Geoff. No skeletons had been found in the positive vetting because there weren't any. He'd been accepted. He had done three years, as a probationer and dog's body, of excruciating boredom in front of computer screens, with occasional days for surveillance training and tracking East-bloc trade attaches across London; everyone said it would get better when the probation time was completed. Three years of similar frustration on the Russia Desk, but the Cold War was over and the team had the lethargy of yesterday's crisis; everyone said it would improve when he was transferred to Ireland. Three years in Belfast had turned up interesting and occasionally frightening work; everyone said he should wait for promotion. He'd come back from Ireland and been put on the Islamic Desk, and in London his salary chit seemed to go less far every month.

  Islamic Desk was hardly the stuff of Defence of the Realm, and ran a poor third to the obsession with Ireland and the East European culture. He'd met Vicky. Vicky and he were engaged, and she'd found the advertisement in the newspaper and urged him to go for it. He hadn't yet faced up to the big problem of when to tell his parents that he wanted to jack in the Security Service and go for a life in the uncertain world of finance. They were so pathetically proud of what he did because he never told them about mediocrity and paper-pushing. It would have been cruel to disillusion them, tell them that nothing he did mattered or affected an individual's life. He could recognize the change in himself since he'd applied for the job. He was spar kier and more daring, and quite prepared to ask the blunt questions that raised Fenton's eyebrow.

  "If it's any business of yours, I'll be in my room arranging lunch dates I'll scalp you if there isn't a full transcript... Remember what I said, young man, about us going into an area of unpredictability. It's looking like it might be a good deal worse than that."

  The great leviathan shape of the tanker, monstrous in the thinning mist, crossed at right angles ahead of the course of the ferry. It was huge against the size of the closing car ferry. She glanced at it, saw it merge again into the mist wall, then turned away. From the cross-Channel ferry, Charmaine, disappointed by another romantic cul-de-sac, pointed at the speck in the sky.

  The bird flew low over the churning mass of the sea, only just beyond the white whip of the ferry's bow wave.

  The unsuitable object of her imagined affection shrugged.

  "Just a bloody bird what's special about that fucking thing? Come on, come on back down..."

  "Piss off," she said, and turned to watch the bird.

  Its wing-beat should have been perfect in its symmetry. Charmaine watched it through a film of tears. Its right wing rose and fell in a tired and flailing way, and the left wing flapped harder as if to compensate. She was on a high deck, where she'd hoped the amour would not find her, and the line of the bird's flight was beneath her. She did not understand how the crippled bird had the strength to make the great sea crossing.

  It was down near the breaking crests and the spume of the bow wave. The bird dropped and the talons, startled and outstretched, would have splashed and skimmed the water. She heard its agony cry, and saw the frantic effort to climb again, to survive. She did not believe it could make the landfall. If it fell again, if the water covered its wings.. . She wept uncontrollably. The ferry sailed on, fast, and the bird, even when she screwed her eyes to see it, was lost in the bank wall of the mist.

  "Stop."

  The driver braked, then crawled forward again.

  "Do it. Stop. Stop the car."

  The eyes of the driver flickered uncertainly, as if an illegality was demanded of him. But he had worked nine years for Duane Littelbaum and knew better than to question. He stamped again on the brake pedal, then coasted the Jeep to the kerb. They were on AlImam Torki Jbn Abdulla Street.

  "Don't look where I look, Mary-Ellen. Take a point in the other direction, fix on it. Don't look."

  Out of her window, she took a point as instructed: the telephone office at the far end of Al-Dhahirah Street. He kept his eyes on the square between the central mosque, the Palace of Justice, the big souvenir shop and the mud-brick Masmak fortress. All the old embassy hands called it Chop-chop Square.

  There was a good-sized crowd. Word would have spread fast. It was never announced first, but the sight of men bringing out plastic bags of sawdust was enough to gather a crowd. He had seen the man pitched out of the back of the closed van. He recognized the prisoner, and the colonel beside him. He doubted that his ambassador had made the promised telephone calls, or had bothered to pull rank. In the long distance he saw the drawn, frightened eyes of the prisoner, and the easy stride of the colonel as if he were going to a picnic lunch on the beach. It was the square where the crowds had gathered to see the beheading of the Princess Mishaal, and of some of those fanatics captured after they had invaded the Grand Mosque at Mecca. It was where they beheaded Yemeni thieves, Pakistani rapists and Afghan drug-dealers.

  He lost sight of the prisoner behind the wall of heads and with him went the last chance to put a name and a face to the footprints. They would never understand in the Hoover building, the assistant directors who flew to Saudi Arabia not more than twice a year, and the desk analysts who never left DC, why co-operation was denied him. He dictated reports, endlessly, that were typed up by Mary Ellen cataloguing the Saudi deceit and vanity that denied him co-operation. On Mary-Ellen's insistence, they had gone to buy new shirts, which now lay wrapped in paper on the floor of the Jeep, between his shoes. He saw a television camera held up to get a better view over the heads of the sword. The sword-point would prick the base of the man's spine and the instant reflex of the man would be to extend his neck. He saw the flash of light, the rakban held high, before it fell. He heard the soft groan of many voices before the crowd began to thin, and then the corpse was dragged away. Another man carried the head by the hair. They would have had a confession and it would lie in a file; the bastards would play their dignity and not share. Sawdust from a plastic bag was scattered.

  He told Mary-Ellen that she no longer needed to look at the telephone office and instructed the driver to head on back to the embassy.

  There was a message on his fax requesting his availability for a secure hook-up. He glanced at it, felt nothing. Littelbaum had only old footprints to follow.

  She broke the quiet. She threw back her head, and the auburn of her hair flashed. She threw a stone, savagely, ahead of her towards the tide-line.

  "Who are you?"

  "I am, will be, Frank Perry. You never met Gavin Hughes. This time, I am not running."

  "What did they say?"

  She stared in front of her. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She allowed him to take her limp hand.

  "For what I did, the consequence of my actions, the Iranians would kill Gavin Hughes. He disappeared, ceased to exist. A new name, a new identity, a new home. He would have been hunted, but the trails had dried out, were lost. I am not trusted enough to be told how the Iranians found my new name. What I was told if the Iranians have the name then in probability they've the location where I live. The men who came yesterday wanted me to move out, offered me a removal van, said I quote the words "There is evidence of danger." But, I'm not doing it again, not running. This is my home, where you are, and our friends. I don't have the strength for more lies. I am staying... It's like I've drawn a line in the sand."

  "But they're experts. They're policemen or intelligence people. Don't they know what's best?"

  "What's convenient, that's what they know, what's cheapest and simplest for them."

  "And you're right, and all their experience is wrong, is that what you're saying?"

  "All they've done is send me a book about being sensible. It's not that bad or they'd have done more. I know these people, you don't. They look for an easy
ride..."

  "And me?"

  "I don't know what it means, saying that I will stay, for you or Stephen. I do know it's better than running. I've done that."

  "It hurts that you kept the truth from me."

  "For fear of losing you..."

  The sea was grey dark in front of them. The gulls hovered over them, screaming. Her grip on his hand tightened, and their fingers locked together. and I told them what was owed me."

  Once before, he had asked for what he said was owed him. Nine months after they had cut him off, three months before he had met Meryl, exhausted by the loneliness of his life, he had taken the train from Croydon to central London, and walked along the river to the monolith building at Vauxhall Bridge Cross. He had reached the gate, been stopped at the glass window of the outer reception building, and he'd asked to see Ms Penny Flowers. Did he have an appointment? He did not. Did he know that it was not possible to come off the street and ask to see an officer? He did not. He'd been told there was no procedure for such a visit. He'd said, "Do you want me to sit down here till you call Ms Flowers? Do you want to call the police and have them cart me off, and me tell them what I did and what I want?" The call had been made from the reception desk, and inside ten minutes she'd been there.

  She was slighter than he'd remembered her, and had seemed older than in the heady days when she'd bought him drinks and meals and made him feel that he mattered. She'd taken him to an interview room, and sat him down, and brought him a beaker of coffee, and looked at him with distaste. What did he want? He wanted to belong. Did he want more money? He didn't want money, but to feel that he was a part of something.

  Did he want a job found for him? He didn't want to be found a job, but to feel some pride in what he'd done. She'd looked at him across the surface of the plastic-topped table and said, "You don't belong with us, Mr. Perry. You are not a part of us and never will be. On any given day there are, on our books, fifty men like you, and when they've outlived their usefulness, we forget them. You're past history, Mr. Perry." She'd shown him the door and told him that she didn't expect to see him or hear of him again, and he'd walked out into the winter sunshine the better for the crisp six-minute exchange.

  He'd shrugged his shoulders, straightened his back and strode away. He had broken the link and believed his dependence on them was cut. He'd taken the train back to Croydon and reached the library in time to start his first trawl through the engineering magazines on the shelves. Turning the pages of advertisements, his mind had raced with opportunities and plans for a new life. For what he'd done, they owed him that new life, which her rejection had sparked.

  Her eyes were closed. His fingers played with the ring he had given her. He did not know what more he could say, and he waited for her to tell him whether she would go or whether she would stay.

  Classification: SECRET Date: 31 March 1998 Subject: Gavin HUGHES (UK national) assumed identity of Frank PERRY 2/94.

  Transcript of telephone conversation (secure) between GM, G Branch, and Duane Littelbaum, FBI Riyadh.

  GM: Hello, can I speak please to Mr. Duane Littelbaum?

  DL: This is he.

  GM: This is Geoffrey Markham, G Branch of the British Security Service.

  DL: Pleased to talk to you, Mr. Markham. How can I be of help? GM: You produced the name of Frank Perry I'm sure you're a busy man, I won't go off on sidetracks.

  DL: Sometimes busy, sometimes not so busy, I've all the time you want. Correct, I found the name of Frank Perry on a sheet of paper, burned.. . We had a raid down in the Empty Quarter. We got less than I'd hoped for. I sent the burned pieces of paper to our Quantico lab not that anyone's had the courtesy to come back to me in two months... Sorry, I'm griping, it's that sort of day. Is Frank Perry yours?

  GM: When your people had drawn blank on the name it was sent to us. We have a Frank Perry.

  DL: You have my attention, Mr. Markham.

  GM: Frank Perry is an identity given a man after it was considered his life was under threat from Iranian hit squads. Perry was formerly a British engineering salesman, Gavin Hughes. What I need to know... DL: Come again, that name.

  GM: Gavin Hughes.

  DL: [Expletive] GM: What I was saying, we are into threat assessment. I need to know where the name was found, in whose possession.

  DL: You got him secure of course you have.

  GM: Actually, he's at home.

  DL: What's his home? Is it Fort Knox? You got his home in a basement at the Tower of London?

  GM: We offered to relocate him he refused.

  DL: [Expletive] What did you tell him?

  GM: He was told that they had his new name, that in probability they would have the location of his present home that they might come after him... DL: [Expletive] Might? [Expletive] GM: Please, explain.

  DL: He's coming, he's on his [expletive] way God knows why it's taken him so long. He is a top man, alpha quality. You'd better believe it, he's coming... What have you done for him, for Perry! Hughes? You got a unit of Marines round him? GM: We sent him our Blue Book.

  DL: Is that a Bible? Is that a joke?

  GM: Not a joke, a sort of Bible. The Blue Book is a guide to personal security, sensible precautions... DL: [Expletive] GM: He should look under his car, vary his routes... The same as in any FBI manual.

  DL: The top man there was once a code name for him I heard of in Dhahran, it was, literal translation, the Anvil. My dictionary,

  that is (open quote) a heavy iron block on which metals are hammered during forging (end quote) it's the entry below Anus it's the same meaning in Saudi Arabic where I've heard it, and has the same meaning in Persian Farsi. The people who go with him, what I've heard, they regard him as indestructible. To me, he's a hard man. Before you ask, Mr. Markham, I don't have his name and I don't have his face. What I have is a pattern of digital calls that we have failed to break into, but from which we get, when the computer is allowed time to work on it, locations. Before each hit he goes to Alamut. It's spiritual for him. He was there just over two weeks ago. That's why I say he's coming. GM: Sorry, what's Alamut?

  DL: You know about Vetus de Montania, the Old Man of the Mountain?

  GM: Afraid not.

  DL: You know about the Fida'is?

  GM: No, sorry.

  DL: So, you don't know about Raymond the Second of Tripoli, not about Conrad of Montferrat. [Expletivel You don't know what was shown to King Henry of Champagne... It's about Alamut. If you don't know about Alamut, then, my friend, you're lexpletive] with your threat assessment. [Pause] Where are you located, Mr. Markham?

  GM: G Branch, Thames House, Millbank, London why? Shorthand is Box 500.

  DL: Are you in charge of this guy's safety?

  GM: I seem to be getting the donkey's load.

  DL: Tell me, if the pressure grows on him, will Perry/ Hughes crumple? In words of one syllable, if the crap comes thicker, will he accept the relocation offer?

  GM: I wouldn't have thought so. He talked about home and about friends. He ran once, says he won't again. Why?

  DL: How do I reach you?

  [DL given my personal extension number, personal fax number.

  GM]

  DL: I'll come back to you. Oh, Mr. Markham... GM: Yes, Mr. Littelbaum.

  DL: Forgive me, and it's not my style to patronize, but you sound to me to be at the bottom of the heap. At the top of your heap are the guys who know to what use was put the information supplied by Gavin Hughes on the project at Bandar Abbas. When you've been told that, I promise you'll be in a position to make a very fair guess at the threat assessment, and get Alamut into your head. Can I offer advice? My advice, put some hardware adjacent to our friend.. . I'll come back to you... Fenton read the transcript and his nails worried at his moustache. His brow was furrowed as if a plough's blade had cut it.

  Geoff Markham stood in Fenton's room and looked at the vinyl floor, then at the ceiling, where the cleaners had missed a spider's web, then at the walls, which were bare excep
t for the leave chart for the section, then at the desk and the photograph of Fenton's family. He thought the transcript made poor reading: when he had typed it up from the tape supplied him by the Grosvenor Square people, he had thought he came across as an ill-informed pillock, a kid in an adult world.

  Fenton paced with the transcript.

  Geoff Markham blurted, "Do you know about Alamut?"

  Fenton nodded as if it was basic for anyone working the Islamic road to know about Alamut.

  "And do you know to what use was put the information supplied by Perry/ Hughes

  Fenton shook his head didn't know, and had no wish to.

  "What do we do now?"

  Abandoning the rape of his moustache, Fenton laid down the transcript pages and picked up his telephone. He dialled his PA in the outer office, gave the name and extension number for the superintendent from Special Branch, held the telephone loosely against his ear and waited.

  Markham felt so tired. He wanted to be back in his own space and clear of Fenton's room where there was, he thought, all the fun of a mortuary chapel. He had known bad times in Ireland, when the weight of responsibility had seemed to crush him, but hadn't known it before at Thames House. In his mind was the pichire of Frank Perry. Defiant, bloody-minded, awkward, obstinate, like a vixen with cubs deep in the darkness when the hounds and the terriers came to her earth. It would be different at the bank -pray to God that he pulled it off at the interview different and better. When he'd stood by the door in that gloomy living room, looking out of the window towards the rooftops and the sea, he hadn't quite believed that the threat was real. He could not conjure the image of a man, of alpha quality, coming. He headed for the door.