A Line in the Sand

by Gerald Seymour

  He wiped his eyes. The harrier, Circus aeruginosus, rust and copper feathering, was the most beautiful bird he knew. It would be in pain, in hunger, in exhaustion, and he was helpless.

  He went back to open his shop.

  Vicky slept as Geoff Markham dressed. While he did so he played in his mind with the words she had written down for him, made sentences for them. I believe in the totally ethical use of finance... A bank, in my opinion, should never deny the participation of the investor in the handling of his or her affairs... Money is for the benefit of the whole of the community, not just for the wealthy... Finance stands at the interface of society and should be used to create general wealth and not narrow affluence... Vicky had said that he must use the modern idiom, not the cobwebbed language of Thames House.

  He put on the new tie she had bought, thin, woven, with brightly coloured stripes.

  * * *

  The intelligence officer, in his Kensington flat, took the call. The number of the mobile telephone was jealously guarded and changed every month, and he assumed that the land-line telephone was routinely listened to. A voice of great calm spoke of a traffic accident, gave a location of signposts a mile from the accident site, and quietly told of the need for help in moving onwards.

  Deniability was the creed of the intelligence officer.

  He took the number of his caller and rang off. He threw on basic clothes. He had not the time to consult Tehran, nor to call his colleague's apartment in Marble Arch. It was his decision, against every regulation of his service, that he should take a personal involvement in a situation of emergency.

  Often, his Kensington apartment was watched. There might be a car, with the engine idling, on the far side of the road to the front lobby of the block or in the side-street. He went out through the fire door at the back, past the janitor's little locked room and the waste-bins. To further the creed of deniability, he ran for a phone-box. He called a number, waited for it to be answered, heard the sleep-ridden voice, explained what had happened, ordered what was to be done, rang off, walked back to his apartment.

  He believed he had not compromised the creed of deniability.

  Blake told him that the woman in the house across the green had a big backside and didn't draw the curtains when she undressed, and that was about the limit of his overnight excitement. There were cat's footprints all over the bonnet and Blake told him that he'd had the brute inside with him until it had tried to get into his food-box. Blake stacked the H&K back into the case and slotted it behind the rear-seat arm rest.

  Davies rang the front-door bell as Blake headed back to the bed-and-breakfast.

  The door was opened by the wife and, from her eyes, it didn't seem that she'd slept. She led him into the kitchen. The boy broke from his cornflakes and stared at him. Davies thought he was looking for his gun, but he wouldn't have seen it in the waist holster underneath the fall of his suit jacket. She told the boy to go upstairs, get his books ready, go to the toilet, get his hair combed.

  "Morning, Mr. Davies."

  And it didn't look to him that Frank Perry, the principal, had slept any better than his wife. There was a dazed tiredness in his face.

  "I don't need to trouble you for too much of your time, Mr. Perry, but you had rather an amount to take on board yesterday, and I'd like to confirm a few points."

  "Wasn't the easiest of days I've known but, what I've said to Meryl, it could have been worse."

  "Always best to be positive, Mr. Perry."

  "We could have run away could have turned our backs on all this."

  From what he had seen in her face, the hopelessness in the fall of her mouth, he thought the woman was deeply wounded and he wondered if Perry realized it. Not his job .. . He should have phoned Lily, should have spoken to the boys, should have... He was hardly qualified for marriage counselling, and it wasn't his job to try.

  "What I want to reiterate, Mr. Perry, are the procedures, and for the correct application of the procedures I need your co-operation."

  "And you should not forget that I worked for my country, Mr. Davies. I am owed protection."

  They faced each other across the breakfast table. There was a tight, curled snarl at Perry's mouth.

  He smiled, defused.

  "Of course, Mr. Perry. If I could just repeat... Please, you don't spring any surprises on me. You tell me who you are expecting as visitors, where you will be entertaining them. That will be very helpful to me."

  "It's a village, Mr. Davies, it's not an anonymous damn city. Our friends call by, they don't make appointments, we're not an optician or a dentist."

  He was generous. He knew that the snarl was from tiredness and understood the stress. Behind Perry, the woman watched him, her eyes never leaving him.

  "And I need to know, Mr. Perry, your intended movements for the day. Are you going out? Where are you going? How long will you be there? Who will you meet? I need specific detail of your planned movements."

  "Why?"

  He reckoned they were sparring and wasting each other's time. He said it straight, brutally, "We have laid down procedures, they are based on experience. You are at least danger when in your own home. You are in the greatest danger when in transit. There are two points of maximum danger, when you leave your home and are exposed as you go to the car, and when you leave your car and wallz into a building, particularly if that is a regular journey. You are in danger en route, if your journey is predictable. I told you this yesterday and I am sorry that you weren't able to comprehend it. The danger on the pavement, to the car and from the car, is from a sniper at long range or a handgun used at close quarters. The danger during a journey is from a culvert bomb with a command cable or remote detonation or from a parked car bomb. Get me? If it couldn't happen, Mr. Perry, I wouldn't be here."

  The woman rocked on her feet, as if caught by a shock wind, but her eyes were never off him.

  It was like he'd hit Perry in the solar plexus, and his voice was quieter.

  "You can't search half the countryside. What difference does it make if you know my routes?"

  He said easily, "I can plan, in the event of an ambush, where to drive to, the nearest safe-house might be a telephone exchange, a government building and I can have worked out where's the nearest hospital."

  "Jesus."

  "So, if you could just tell me, Mr. Perry, your plans for the day, then there are no surprises."

  "Meryl's visiting this morning and she's got a class-' "I'm not concerned with Mrs. Perry's movements."

  Perry flared.

  "Doesn't she matter?"

  "You're the target, Mr. Perry. You're the principal I'm here to protect. That's my instruction. Are you going out today?"

  She had an antique-furniture restoration class in the afternoon. Perry was committed to the school pick-up.

  "Can you cancel?"

  "No, I bloody well can't. And I intend to live a life."

  "Of course, Mr. Perry. Let's go over the route."

  He was shown in by Fenton, and Cox was hovering behind.

  Markham thought the man looked as if he'd just stepped off the Ark.

  "It's Mr. Littelbaum, Geoff, from Riyadh. You told him you did the "donkey's load", so he's come to offer you some oats. You're his liaison with us," Fenton said.

  Markham stood. It was that sort of depressing morning where the pieces were obstinate and refused to slot. Nothing to report from SB's operations centre on the target, Juliet Seven. There was no trace on Yusuf Khan from Nottingham. The associate, the woman thrown up by Rainbow Gold, had moved from the address listed for her electricity and telephone bills, but he had, small mercies, registration details for her car, about as common a small saloon as any on the road.

  The American had wild grey hair, which needed cutting. His tie was stained with food and, from the tight knot, seemed only to be loosened each night so that the noose could be pulled over his head. The shirt was new but already there was grease on it. He wore a brown three-piece herri
ngbone suit, what a solicitor might have worn thirty years back in north Lancashire, and the creases said he'd travelled in it. But he had alive, penetrating eyes. Markham glanced down at his watch.

  "I apologize, but I did tell you, Mr. Fenton, I have to be at an appointment over the lunch-hour." And he added limply, "A family business appointment. I can't cut it and I can't be late either."

  Fenton said, dry, "I hope the family business is important Mr. Littelbaum has flown three thousand miles so that he can offer us the benefit of his experience. Bring him back to me."

  Fenton and Cox were gone.

  He shuffled, tried to tidy his desk space, merely confused the papers and his notes.

  "Would you like a coffee, Mr. Littelbaum?"

  "Only if you can put whiskey in it."

  "Can't," he said sheepishly.

  "At the donkey level it's not permitted to keep alcohol in the work area. I'd get a reprimand and it would go on my record."

  "Not to worry. Where I come from it's a capital crime, Mr. Markham."

  "In here I'm Geoff please, feel free."

  "Then you'll have to forgive me I'm not familiar with people who aren't friends. I take it as a lack of respect and common courtesy. Right now, Mr. Markham, and I'm sure you know it, you're sitting on the big one."

  "Right now it's all ends, frayed and not tying. I don't know what I'm sitting on."

  "OK, OK. The target, Hughes/ Perry

  "We've call-signed him as Juliet Seven."

  "OK, Juliet Seven. Is he still refusing relocation?"

  "Yes."

  "What have you done for him?"

  "We have given him specialist police protection.~ "They got howitzers?"

  "They would have machine pistols and handguns."

  "How many?"

  Markham said, dispirited, "There are two, each doing a twelve-hour shift."

  "Fuck."

  "It's a matter of resources."

  "Are you listening, Mr. Markham? This is the big one. I know him as the Anvil. I don't have another name for him. I don't have his face. He was in Alamut. Did you read, like I told you to, about Alamut? Of course you didn't. Donkeys don't have time to read, donkeys just get the shit piled on them. The Anvil was in Alamut - I hate that name, it's crass and comic-book, but it's the name that's whispered in the souk, in the mosque and in the theological colleges throughout Saudi Arabia, so it's real enough for me. The Anvil goes to Alamut, each time, before he travels for the hit. I know so little of him, but he's the best, and he's dedicated. That he goes to Alamut is important because it is the small window I have into his mentality. Please, Mr. Markham, when I'm talking to you don't look at your wristwatch. And now he is travelling and his target is your Juliet Seven.

  "Before you rush away to whatever is important, take time out for a little history. Alamut is a few kilometres north-west of Quasvin where there is a terrorist training camp run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. At Alamut, nine hundred years ago, Hasan-i-Sabah founded the sect of Assassins. The modern word is from the same root core as "hashish" Western scholars believed the killers were drugged or they would not have gone forward against guarded and near impossible targets. I doubt they were drugged, they just weren't scared. For two hundred years the Assassins, the living cult of political murder, created terror from

  Syria down through Lebanon and Palestine and into old Persia because they had no fear of death, and worshipped the notion of martyrdom. He goes there, to what is now a few stones on a mountainside, unrecognizable as a fortress, to gain the courage that will push him forward. Pretty damn easy to guard against a killer who's looking to keep the skin intact on his back but pretty hard, Mr. Markham, to block the killer who has no concern for his own survival and he's coming after your Juliet Seven. Maybe you don't believe me, maybe you need the Alamut case histories to crank up my credibility..."

  Markham hated himself for saying it, but said it anyway.

  "Don't think I'm being rude, Mr. Littelbaum, but I really do have to go."

  He was skilled at finding cover.

  It was the skill that had dictated his survival in the flood plains around the Faw peninsula and the water channels between the reeds of the Haur-al-Hawizeh marshlands, and in the mountains of Afghanistan, and in the desert wilderness of the Empty Quarter, and in the forest near to the village in southern Austria. He could find cover and use it.

  At the edge of a small group of trees was dense, thorned scrub. He had gone so quietly into the trees that he had not disturbed the roosting pheasants, and then crawled on his stomach into the depth of the scrub. A rat had passed within three metres of him and not seen him. If a farmer came into the field he would find no trace of him. The rain dripped rhythmically down on him from the thorn branches of the scrub. Beside him was the sausage bag. In it was what he had thought he could carry across country and still retain the speed of movement.

  The cover was well chosen. He had a clear view across a hundred metres of grassland field to an open gateway, and through the gateway to the signpost at the crossroads. He waited. His stomach rumbled with hunger, but a few hours without food did not concern him: food was for sustenance, not for enjoyment. He waited.

  He had seen a police car come down the road with a blue light flashing in the dawn, then an ambulance. His driver's pulse had been faint, the breathing erratic and gasping, the head wound bleeding. It had not been necessary to finish the man's life. He would not regain consciousness, would be dead by the end of the day. He had thought the man foolish, and had then corrected himself, because the man had achieved the state of martyrdom in the service of the Faith. He should not think badly of him. The ambulance had come back through the crossroads with the bell going and the light brilliant against the dark rain clouds Later he had seen a towing truck pull away the wrecked car.

  There were only bruises and small scratches on his own body and he took that as a sign. His life was in God's hands. His work was God's work. God watched for him. There had been setbacks before, however thorough the planning, and he had overcome them. He would do so again.

  He had waited three hours and fifty-one minutes when the car finally came.

  It was a small car, old. He could not see the driver at that distance. It drove past the signpost and disappeared behind the hedgerow, then reversed back into his vision. The car stopped in the field gate. The brake-lights flashed twice.

  He breathed hard. There were times in the life of Vahid Hossein when his safety, his life and his freedom rested in his own hands only, and God's. There were times, also, when he must give his trust to the intelligence officers who controlled him.

  It had been written, "Once you engage in battle it is inexcusable to display sloth or hesitation."

  He crawled from the thorn scrub.

  "Take no precautions for your own life."

  He hurried through the trees and the pheasants clattered in flight above him.

  "He that is destined to sleep in the grave will never again sleep at home."

  He ran along the hedgerow towards the gate. He reached the small car. He flung open the door and heaved the weight of the bag into the back. The engine was turning. He dived for the seat, slammed the door shut, and the car jerked forward. He swivelled in his seat.

  He sat beside a woman.

  He sat beside a woman with the skin of her face exposed, and her forearms, and the skin of her thighs above her knees and below her tight skirt.

  He sat beside a woman whose body was scented with soap and lotion.

  She said, "It's what they told me to do. They told me I should give up the clothing of decency. I'm sorry to offend you."

  He stood on the pavement and looked around him. There were no concrete posts outside the building to prevent a car bomb being left under the facade. The building was glass-fronted, not heavy stone, with small, laminated windows.

  He went inside and a pleasant young woman directed him to the lift. She had no guards beside her and there would not have been hidden
guns within reach under her desk.

  He came out of the lift and pushed through an unlocked door. There was no requirement for a personal security card.

  It was what Geoff Markham wanted.

  Long after the ambulance had gone, and after the recovery vehicle had towed away the wreck, the two traffic policemen worked with their cameras and tape measures. From what they'd seen it would go to the coroner's court and an inquest, and there were a hell of a number of questions to be answered a young black paying cash for the hire of a 13MW 5-series and not being able to handle it, writing it off and himself and the technical investigation looked to be the best last chance of finding the answers.

  The two traffic policemen stopped work for a sandwich lunch. One, after he'd eaten, the elder one, complained of his bladder and slipped through a hedge hole.

  He didn't notice the canvas sack, rammed down into the base of the hedge, until he'd finished and was shaking himself. He would not have seen it if he hadn't been standing almost on top of it. He bent and pulled it open.

  The traffic policeman shouted to his colleague to come, and bloody fast, and showed him a black rubber wet suit, a pair of trainer shoes, and some squashed sales dockets, before pointing down into the bag at the hand grenades.

  She drove well, confidently. She was not intimidated by the heavy lorries. His own wife, Barzin, did not drive. He admired the way she drove, but he was ashamed that each time she punched her foot on the brake or the accelerator he could not keep his eyes from the smooth whitened skin of her thighs. She would have seen him flinch and flush.

  "They called me when I was asleep, told me it was urgent. I just took the first clothes that came to hand I didn't find any stockings. I suppose it's what you'd call bad he jab yes?"

  There was a mullah, he had heard, who had stayed inside his house for thirty years, never gone outside his house, never dared to, for fear that he would see a woman improperly dressed, bad he jab and be corrupted... She kept in the slow lane of the wide motorway skirting London. Never in his life had he been driven by a woman. The diesel fumes of the lorries came and went, but constant in the car was the soft scent of soap and lotion.