They would be watching her from the head-teacher's office as she led the child back across the empty playground towards the car, their faces would be pressed against the glass. She had shown them defiance, but by the time she reached the car the pain and the despair hit her.
With her boy beside her, she drove into the town centre to buy the length of net from which she would make the curtains.
Classification: SECRET.
Date: 4 April 1998.
Subject: JULIET SEVEN
Transcript of telephone conversation (secure using SB mobile at Juliet 7 location) between GM, G Branch, and Juliet 7.
GM: Hello? Mr. Perry? Good, got you. I'm Geoff Markham, I came down to see you with Mr. Fenton.
"Fraid I didn't make much of a contribution. This is a secure call. What I mean is, we can talk frankly. There's a bit to talk about... Are you there?
J7: I'm here. What is there to talk about?
GM: You appreciate my difficulty, the same as before. It's the same difficulty as Mr. Fenton had?
J7: You've a difficulty very funny. Try your difficulty on me.
GM: The difficulty is that I cannot share sources of information available to us.
J7: Join the queue nobody tells me anything.
GM: Let's try to keep calm. That way we make better decisions. J7: What decisions?
GM: This is not easy. Frankly, the situation around you and your family has deteriorated, we believe.
J7: Spell it out.
GM: That's my difficulty. As I've already explained, I cannot 17: Because you don't trust me. Nobody [expletivel trusts me -that's why I intend to make my own [expletive] decisions.
GM: Please, please, listen to me. My judgement, based on information I am privy to, is that you and your family should relocateJ7: Your judgement you can shove it up your [expletivel.
GM: I used the word 'deteriorated' - I'm not using that word lightly. You should go hear me out. We can make all the arrangements within a matter of hours.
J7: I provided information, and I am not trusted sufficiently to be told what use that information was put to.
GM: That, too, is one of my difficulties. I, too, am not need-to-know on that information.
J7: Then stop playing bloody errand boy and [expletive], well, find out Wait.
[Pause of 38 seconds] J7: Meryl's just come home. She took her son to school, and was told at school that they're barring the boy [expletivel bastards. You think I'll run away because of the say-so of those [expletive] bastards? Think again.
GM: It is a situation of grave danger.
J7: I'm not running, not again. This is my home.
GM: Perhaps you would reconsider when matters are less fraught.
J7: I make my own decisions. I am staying. (Call terminated)
The tanker, moored at the offshore jetty, had started to unload its cargo of 287,000 tonnes of crude. The master stood with his engineer officer on the small stern deck behind the tower of the bridge and accommodation block. The inflatable, covered by tarpaulin sheeting, was stowed beside them. They discussed a schedule. It was important for them to plan the length of time the tanker spent there for the crew to take shore leave, and the sailing time back into the English Channel. Time was critica& The great tanker should not reach the point in the Channel too early or too late to make the pickup. Neither man entertained the slightest doubt that he would be on the beach, and that an enemy of their country would, a few hours before, have been justifiably killed. They made calculations:
because they had been delayed in taking their place at the offshore jetty it seemed unlikely that the crew would enjoy more than a few hours of shore leave in the Swedish port.
The restaurant was on no list in good-eating guides that Harry Fenton had ever seen, but it was where the Israeli had said they should meet. It was an unpredictable place for the Mossad station officer to have chosen, and one where it was unlikely his enemies would look for him.
"So, Harry, you are confused. You are confused because you have spoken with your foreign-affairs people who are an apparatus of appeasement. They're telling you that Iran is misunderstood, more sinned against than sinning, and wants only to be permitted to take a rightful place in the affairs of that region. Allow me, because you are paying for this excellent food, to disabuse you of what you have been told and to further your confusion. Before he was killed, Rabin tried to alert the international community to the need to "strike at this viper and crush its skull", and he was a man criticized in his own yard as a peace monger They were strong words from a man vilified for attempting a deal with the Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian enemies. Why?"
They were in the further reaches of east London, under railway arches and facing a line of boarded-up shops. It was small, dingy and, frankly, unclean, but the Israeli said the restaurant served the best Afghan cooking in the city. He ate with enthusiasm. Fenton was less sure.
"Why? Because we, in Israel, understand the real threat. We understand it while many in Europe refuse to open their eyes. Everywhere a bomb explodes or a bullet impacts we find the fingerprint of Iran. They pay for, equip and train the Hizbollah in the Lebanon, and Hamas for the Palestinians. The bombs on our buses, in our vegetable markets, are placed by proxy but they are theirs. Yet what they're doing now is only a pinprick, Harry, in comparison with what they intend."
The Israeli pushed the cleaned plate away from him, wiped his mouth vigorously with the paper napkin and laid the palm of his hand over his glass. Fenton masked the taste of the spiced baked vegetables, and sauces, with beer and was now on his third bottle.
"What they intend is to gain a triple arm of weaponry with which they may dominate the oilfields of the region. For the development of the nuclear site at Bushehr, and they already have small quantities of plutonium, they will beggar their own people and bankrupt the state. They are scouring the Asian continent for the necessary chemical agents for an independent poison-gas manufacturing industry. What is the work the scientific community of Iran is given? The means to deliver a warhead containing the most revolting disease known to man anthrax, foot-and-mouth, any bio-toxin, any of the peasants' Weapons of Mass Destruction. Where are they putting these weapons and the missiles to deliver them? In tunnels. They bury them where they are beyond the reach of conventional attack. Only once have we been able to strike at such targets. Do you know how we achieved that, Harry, with whose help? Were you never told, Harry? If not, it's not for me to tell you."
The meat on the plates laid in front of them was unrecognizable as part of any animal Fenton knew. He assumed it had been a young lamb, ritually slaughtered. The thought of what had happened to it was sufficient to stifle his appetite.
"The Iranian programme for the manufacture of Weapons of Mass Destruction gives me, and the rest of our intelligence community, bad nights. It's the big picture. It's what the people of Israel will face in the future. The Mossad and the general staff have to plan the defence of our state against nuclear devices, against nerve gases, against toxins, but that is in front of us. The present... Ignore the denials, ignore the protestations of fluent, gentle diplomats who make your foreign-affairs officials feel comfortable. The present is that every attack abroad by the Iranian killer squads has the authorization of the highest echelons of government. It's only the appeasers who say otherwise. Government provides the training for the killers, the weapon~s via diplomatic pouches, the digital secure-phone links, the passports, the finance. Every operation abroad is laid before the foreign minister, the interior minister and the defence minister sitting in the National Supreme Security Council. It is authorized, sanctioned, on one condition only. The condition? There should be no smoking gun in Iran's hand... Look in your files, Harry, it is there if you wish to see it. Is there something wrong with your food, Harry?"
Fenton had barely touched his meat, hardly eaten enough to offer a pretence of politeness. He grimaced, and signalled for more beer.
"If you don't eat, Harry, you'll just fade away... T
he Germans have done deals, appeased them, looked for the easy life and the French, the Italians. They have submitted to the blackmail. They want to trade, they want to offer export credits, and they believe, if they are generous and restructure the debts, that the killer' squads will stay off their territory. Prisoners are returned, investigations are stalled. Have the Germans helped you over Lockerbie? Have they fuck. What about all the killers the French have caught within their jurisdiction? No prosecutions. They appease. And you in Britain, Harry, on your little island, you do not believe that the problem of Iran is real. How can I say that? I say it because of what I see from my embassy window. You allow, unchecked, on your streets, flourishing, such organizations as the Hizb ut-Tahrir, or the Young Muslims who provide the cheap charter flights to Iran, or the Al-Muntada al-Islami who fund-raise for the Algerian fundamentalist butchers who are in their turn trained in Iran. You allow it to happen, Harry. You refuse to recognize the cancer in your belly."
The Israeli declined coffee, which was a relief. What had been served at the next table, coughed and spluttered over, had looked like tarmacadam sludge.
"A great meal, Harry, and a great opportunity to talk with you. I say hit the bastards wherever you find them. It is the only language they understand. They are clever and determined, they are not to be underestimated. Good day to you, Harry."
He stood, the gold Star of David bouncing in the greyed hair of his chest behind his open-collared shirt.
Fenton finished the beer then followed him out on to the street. The Israeli tugged at his sleeve.
"Remember what I said. To stop them you must crush the skull, crush it under your heel, crush the life from it. And then you have to have the courage to shout it to the world, and fuck the consequences. You got the balls, Harry, to tell the world you crushed the skull?"
The Israeli had said, deviously, that he had a man to meet. Fenton was abandoned.
He walked at least a mile before, thank God, he was able to flag down a taxi.
He told Cox that he'd been networking again. He dropped the name of the senior Israeli intelligence officer in London and saw that Cox was reluctantly impressed. He was tired and his feet hurt, and he complained that the Israeli policy position was in total contradiction to their own.
"I'm supposed to be learning but the pointers conflict. That's where we are, between a rock and a hard place. But, I will press on."
"Of course you will," Cox said.
"That's what you're here for, isn't it?"
The crane came across the green, past the keep-off-the-grass sign, the big wheels gouging a track on the rain-softened ground. Peggy stood on the far side of the green, leaning on her bicycle and staring.
The hut, the size of a large garden toolshed, had already been hoisted off the flat-top lorry that had reached the village in slow convoy with the crane, and now dangled from a cable under the crane's arm.
Frank Perry watched the crane's manoeuvres from the dining-room window, with Paget and Rankin. They had asked for, and been given, a spare blanket from the airing cupboard and had draped it over the polished table.
He'd said earlier, "I'm sorry about last night, what I said."
"Didn't hear you say anything, sir."
"Nothing to apologize for, sir."
A pleasant afternoon of watery sunshine threw sufficient glare to highlight the garish yellow of the crane and the rusty brown creosote seal on the planks of the swinging hut. The crane's engine coughed diesel fumes as it powered towards the gap between his house and the Wroughtons'. Davies edged his car clear to make space.
Behind him, Paget and Rankin were discussing kit. They seemed uninterested in the arrival of the hut. On the blanket, with their machine-guns and the small black-coated gas grenades, with a book of crossword puzzles, was a kit m*gazine. They turned the pages and pored over the advertisements.
His face against the window glass, Perry peered at the crane's advance, and heard the scraping noise. He tilted his head, looked up and to the side. He could see that the hut swayed against the Wroughtons' plastic guttering. Wroughton was the deputy bank manager in the town, his wife was the surgery manager and their twins were in school; a small blessing that they weren't there to see the destruction of the plastic guttering. The crane hoisted the hut higher, clear of the Wroughtons' guttering and roofing tiles. He imagined a crowd cheering as a man swung and twisted from such a crane. The crowd here was just Peggy, Vince, who was out of his van and watching with her, and Dominic, standing in the shop doorway. Paul held tightly to the leash of his dog, which yapped incessantly and strained forward on its hind legs. He could no longer see the slow swing of the hut, but could hear the shouts of the men guiding it. In Iran, from what he had seen on television when he was there, they didn't blindfold a man before he was lifted high for the crowd to see, and they didn't pinion his legs to deny the crowd the sight of him kicking.
Behind him, in low voices, Paget and Rankin talked through the brand names of windproof sweaters, thermal socks and rainproof trousers. They sat huddled close beside each other. It was more than twenty minutes since the crane and the lorry had come to the village and they'd not passed comment on anything other than the advertisements in the magazine for kit.
He left them, and went into the kitchen. Meryl didn't look up. She was at the kitchen table with her sewing machine, and her boy was feeding her the lengths of cut net. In the back garden more of the men from the lorry were laying heavy planks on the grass lawn, cursing because they were awkward to move and heavy. She'd spent half of last summer's evenings working at that grass, digging out the weeds to make it perfect. The kitchen, in spite of the long fluorescent strip-light, was dark. She was looking at the window and he could see her teeth gnawing at her lower lip. The hut was being lowered past the window to the shouted instructions of the men, who eased it towards the planks on her perfect lawn. He'd heard that a man was left hanging dead for a whole day before they lowered the arm of the crane. The hut jolted, and the cable slackened. Davies was calling their names.
Paget and Rankin came through the kitchen. They had the machine-guns, their rucksacks, their food-boxes, their magazine and the crossword book. The tall one tousled Stephen's hair. It was the first time Perry had seen the child half smile since Meryl had brought him home. They walked out through the kitchen door to inspect their hut. There was the roar from the front of the house as the crane backed out of the gap between the houses.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes." Her head was down, but her tone was aggressive. She fed the net on to the needle of the machine.
"I was only asking..."
"Why shouldn't I be all right? I've got you, I've got my home, I've got my friends. What have Ito complain about?"
"Look, don't be sarcastic."
Davies rapped at the kitchen door. He was carrying his gear: the case with his machine-gun, his heavy coat, a duffel bag for his sandwiches and Thermos, a clean shirt on a hanger, and a pair of heavy boots. Through the window, Perry saw Paget and Rankin taking possession of their hut. They'd dumped their kit inside, and were supervising the link-up of the cables from the house. One of the lorry men brought them two plastic chairs and a kettle; another, a small television set and a microwave cooker. Outrage had been building with Meryl throughout the day, but she had held on to her control because of the men in her dining room. If Davies hadn't been at the door he thought she would have screamed. Everything around them was worse for her than for him.
"Yes?" He turned on Davies.
Davies said quietly, "It's been decided that I should be inside with you. It's not a matter of comfort or anything like that, it's about my safety when I'm sitting in the car. It's because of a reassessment of the security threat. The car is too vulnerable, that's the assessment now. The boys in the hut are behind armour-plated walls. They're certainly proof against low-velocity bullets and there's a good chance they'd stop high-velocity, but the car doesn't have that protection. They want me inside."
&nbs
p; "I've been asked, again, to run away. I'm staying."
"I've been told that, Mr. Perry. That's your decision, not for me to comment on. But, the car outside, with the new assessment, is too vulnerable."
The strangers were with them inside the house, and in the hut, which blocked the precious view of their garden. Later, the strangers would be all around them as the laminated plastic was fixed to the windows. It would be late in the afternoon, When Paget and Rankin were safe in their hut, when Davies was safe in the dining room, before the lorry rumbled away and the crane's wheels dug another track across the green.
And there was nothing he could do, except run. All his life he had made for himself the decisions that mattered. He had always been self-reliant: at school he, not his parents and not his teachers, had decided what subjects he would specialize in; at university ignoring his tutors' advice, he had decided what braHch of engineering he would concentrate on; at the company, his only employer, he had decided that the opening he wanted was in the sales division, and he had explored the tentative, difficult trade openings that were possible with Iran. First his wife, and then Meryl, had left decisions to him. He had never been frightened of backing his judgement, and now he was helpless and snared in a web. It was a new sensation to him. He couldn't, of course not, go out of the house and man a personal roadblock at the end of the village and check the cars coming in, and couldn't beat across the common ground beside the road for the people sent to kill him, and couldn't thrash around in the marshland. No action was open to him, except to run. He was neutered, and the men were all around him, inside and outside his house, and they ignored him as if he were an imbecile and incapable of independent thought. There was nothing he could do but sit and wait.
A Line in the Sand Page 18
