A Line in the Sand

by Gerald Seymour

  Frank Perry stared into Geoff Markham's face, and in his eyes was the fear, as if he lived it again.

  "You told Penny Flowers, just happened to mention it, that they'd changed the schedule for your next meeting, brought it forward a week she'd not have looked that interested, it's a handler's skill never to seem interested in what an agent says but she'd have probed deeper, done it in easy conversation. If you'd understood the way a handler works, the few extra questions, and always the studied indifference, then the alarm bells would have rung. Just before you flew to Iran that last time you would have known it was the danger time. A debriefing the night before you travelled, not just Penny Flowers but hard-faced bastards telling you what was wanted. It was about a party, yes, a celebration dinner for heads of section?"

  Frank Perry, grim, sobering, nodded.

  "You would have gone back the last time, to all those people who welcomed you. I doubt you slept on any of those nights because you'd have been going over every question you'd asked where was the party, who was going, when was the bus leaving? and wondering if the mistake had been made. They were the heads of section for the chemical-warfare programme, and the designers of the warhead. They were the big people in the big picture, and you were just a bloody ant by comparison. Your only importance was that you had access... They'd have hanged you, not so that your neck broke but so that you strangled and kicked the air.. . I couldn't have done it myself, Mr. Perry, I wouldn't have had the courage. I would have crumpled with the fear. I sincerely admire what you did. I don't mean to embarrass you, but I haven't ever met anyone of such raw bravery... Do you still want to know?"

  Frank Perry mouthed his answer ~ softly that Markham couldn't hear it.

  "The Jews do the dirty work for us. They understand about survival better than we do. They won't, again, go naked into the sheds and have cyanide crystals drop on them. They are, in modern jargon, proactive. The Israelis wouldn't have needed much persuasion because those warheads could fall on them. A squad was put on shore after being ferried across the Gulf. They landed up the coast from Bandar Abbas. They intercepted the bus on its way to the restaurant. A piece of charity fell off Penny Flowers's desk, probably the only time it has. What happened to the bus was an accident, you understand me. It created confusion and bought you time to build a new life before the Iranians realized the enormity of the crime and at whose door it lay..."

  The music played on. Markham felt so sorry for the man.

  "The bus was stopped, then burned. It was made to look, before a detailed examination produced the truth, like an accident. There were no survivors. The director, the engineers, the scientists, all died in the fire."

  Frank Perry jerked the weight of his body up, his lips gibbering, but he could not speak.

  "You wanted to know. It is why the Iranians will hunt you, track you, try to kill you, and all those with you. There'll be files on you that are stacked high enough to eat lunch off. They will never forget you. What you did was buy time. I'd like to say that the time was well used, that the programme was seriously delayed. I can't - I don't know. I don't know whether the time you bought with your courage, Frank, was well used or was frittered.." but I recognize your bravery because it humbles me."

  Meryl was crying quietly. Markham pulled back the table and let Perry stagger to his feet. The rain had started outside and the street glistened. He took Perry's arm gently and steadied him through the door and across the pavement. Davies held Meryl close to him. Her dress, from the spilled wine, was stained red like a wound. Markham thought it was what Perry was owed, and he was glad he'd done it.

  * * *

  He climbed the stairs slowly.

  It had been a distressing evening for Simon Blackmore. Two months earlier, a surveyor had checked Rose Cottage, and described the damp as minimal. Late that evening, without an appointment, a man who described himself as a builder and decorator had prised his way into the cottage. He called himself Vince, and explained that he always dropped by on new people moving into the village. He'd walked around and pointed out at least half a dozen places where the wallpaper peeled and the plaster work was stained, tut ting and frowning at the cost and his schedule. But the work needed doing, must be done. He'd spoken of Mrs. Wilson's rheumatism and laid the blame for it on the damp. He'd settled immovably at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee. They were both so tired, exhausted from the unpacking of boxes, but they had listened with courtesy as he'd talked of the village, his lifetime home, and his central place in it. And he'd told them, as if it were a kindness to them, that they should keep away from the green at the far end of the village because there were armed police there, guarding a family that no one in their right mind wanted to know... "But they've got the message, there's no one'll speak to them, they'll be bloody frozen out of here." It had been an age before he'd finished his coffee, insisted that he would send in an estimate for necessary work, and left.

  Simon went up the stairs and into their bedroom, where Luisa was undressing. They hadn't yet unpacked the shades for the ceiling bulbs. The garish, harsh light fell on his wife and highlighted the old burn marks on her breasts and stomach before the nightdress covered them.

  The train hammered on the track, jerking and rolling.

  Andy Chalmers lay on his side on the bunk bed, on the clean white sheets and the blankets. He had not undressed. His dogs, alert, were curled against his body and gave him warmth. Behind him, distanced, were the birds and their eyries on the crag cliffs, and the bog heather uplands where the deer grazed, and the mount am lochans that held the small brown trout, and the glens that were home to the plovers and wheat ears and curlews. Ahead lay an unfamiliar terrain.

  Andy Chalmers came south, to track a man.

  Chapter Fourteen.

  He was into Thames House early, had limped from a photo-development kiosk to the building, shown his temporary accreditation at reception and hobbled into the third-floor work area. His feet were blistered from a long day's walking; the deep bath and the salts in it hadn't lessened the pain.

  Duane Littelbaum had walked, the previous day, right round the Tower of London the Jewel Tower, the White Tower, Traitor's Arch, the grass-centred square where the state's enemies had been beheaded, and all the places of death and imprisonment. Once he'd giggled, attracted attention, because he'd wondered why his Saudi friends hadn't bought the whole damned place lock, stone and axe and transferred it to Riyadh. He had gone round on a tour, led by a costumed guide, then gone round again, on his own, and taken a whole roll of film. From the Tower of London he had walked to St. Paul's Cathedral, then hiked through the Sunday empty streets towards the Palace and Parliament. When he was half dead, and on the third film for Esther, he had weakened and taken a taxi back to the embassy's service flat and the bath.

  A probationer told him that his office in Saudi Arabia had called, that he should ring back. The young man fixed the secure link for him because Duane Littelbaum was adept at demonstrating technological incompetence when the situation necessitated. He listened to the distant, tinny, concerned voice.

  Mary-Ellen bur bled at him, asking about his domestic arrangements, and he wondered whether she was missing him.

  "It's been hellish hot here, Duane, 110 plus Fahrenheit, and the cooling system in here's zapped again, it's awful. One of the visa-section guys went out in the parking lot, Saturday, and cracked an egg on the paving to see if he could fry it. He couldn't, the egg dehydrated. Seriously..."

  He saw Cathy Parker come in. She had a bounce in her walk. She stopped in front of Markham's door and scribbled through the writing on the paper stuck to the door. She wrote, boldly, DAY FIVE.

  "What I thought you should know, Duane, we had a briefing, at short notice, from the Agency people. There was a proper fracas about me being admitted in place of you. Was I cleared for a briefing from the Central Intelligence goddamn Agency? Ambassador, heads of section, and me. They are such seriously pompous people. Anyway..."

  She sat beside him
and laid a closed envelope on the table.

  "You still there, Duane? Look, the guy said that the Saudi intelligence people admitted to him that the "outsider hired guns", you know what I mean, came in during the last Ha]], with all the pilgrims, and are still in place inside the Magic Kingdom. Also the Army's come clean and said that four believe me four 81mm mortars have been stolen from one of their bases up north. How can you defend against that sort of scenario? A dump truck pulls up on the median just outside of a major enclave of ours, the tarp is pulled back, the rounds fly, and the Agency say they could have chemicals in them.. . and the Agency have gotten the name of your pal, Duane, A is for Anvil, away now but coming back... The commercial attache you know, that lanky idiot had to be told why one man was so important, why they'd wait for one man's return before launching. He seemed to think that quality men, like Anvil, came off a production line as if they were General Motors products. He was put right. When Anvil comes back it's time to go into the shelters, that's what the Agency people are saying. There's real fear here, those mortars and the name of Anvil. It sort of, kind of, makes you cold..."

  Beside him, Cathy Parker pulled two photographs out of the envelope. He saw a young man holding a Kalashnikov rifle at a roadblock of Revolutionary Guards, and the picture was lifted away. The second photograph showed an older man in combat fatigues with his back to the water and t1~e reed-banks. She reached again into the envelope.

  "I came away from that briefing and, I tell you, I was quite spooked. Well, that's it. I'll meet you Wednesday night off the flight oh, sorry, how's it going? Nowhere? I'll cook you supper Wednesday night. Would you have done better to stay here? There's someone at the door.

  "Bye."

  He replaced the receiver. A slow smile was spreading across Cathy Parker's face. She took a blown-up picture from the envelope. He recognized immediately the work of computer enhancement, the ageing process, a fattening at the face, a thickening at the neck, more lines at the eyes, shorter hair with bleached, greying, thinner lips. She took a pen from the table and wrote, in big capital characters, the place of birth, Tehran, the date of birth, 28.7.1962, the name, only the goddamn name, Vahid Hossein. He gazed at it, then at her and into the brightness of her eyes. He kissed her on the mouth, kissed her hard.

  What they would have noticed, everyone else in the work area, Cathy Parker kissed him back, lip to lip.

  Fenton was gathering up his coat" saying he had a train to meet, but he paused long enough to lead the applause, and to call for a copy, post haste, to be sent to Geoff Markham.

  Duane Littelbaum stared down at the face, at a stranger who had become familiar, and could still feel the taste of Cathy Parker's wicked, groping tongue.

  "Why isn't he coming?" Sam Carstairs howled.

  His mother, distracted and trying to put on her makeup for the day in the solicitors' offices, told him not to worry his head with such things.

  "He's my best friend. Why isn't he coming to school?" the child bellowed.

  His father, trying angrily to put the papers together that he'd been working on the previous evening, told him it was none of his business.

  "If he isn't ill, why isn't he coming to school?" In a tantrum, little

  Sam started to rip pages from the book they'd bought him only the week before, and stamped on them.

  If Emma hadn't caught his arm, Barry would have hit his son. The row had gone on since the child had woken and sensed the tension. It was convenient for neither of them to take Sam into Halesworth for school. Emma, the legal executive, was in court that day with the senior partner, and Barry had the annual sales conference. It was the sort of day when they could have relied upon Meryl Perry's help: she was always prepared, with a smile, to alter the schedule of the shared school-run. Sam and Stephen had always been close friends, good for each other. Barry grabbed the child by the collar of his school coat and frog marched him to the car. Emma had said her job was as important as his; because of the row she'd be late meeting her senior partner, and he'd be bloody late at the conference. He put Sam into the back of his Audi, then ran back to the house because he'd forgotten, damn it, his briefcase.

  Emma was throwing on her coat in the hall.

  "We've done the right thing, haven't we?"

  "What on earth do you mean?"

  "With Frank and Meryl." Until that moment, through all the weekend, neither had spoken of it, as if it were forbidden territory.

  "They must be so isolated, without friends."

  "Their fault, not mine."

  "You don't think that we should make a gesture?"

  "What did she call me? A second-rate rat? What sort of gesture do I make in response to that?"

  "I suppose you're right." She touched her hair in front of the mirror.

  "Of course I'm right."

  "Please, tell Sam in the car why they're not our friends any longer. He doesn't understand, hasn't a clue, why he's lost his best friend. Please do it, Barry."

  "You wait, a week after they've gone we'll have forgotten they were ever here."

  He set the alarm, she locked the house, and they ran for their cars, to live their busy lives.

  Ten minutes earlier, Geoff Markham had gone out into the parking area behind the town's police station. The arrival time had been given them in the crisis centre and others had drifted after him to stand in the light rain, and wait.

  Aside from Markham, glancing at their wristwatches, were a uniformed superintendent and the inspector from the Branch, detectives and the people who manned the radios and the computers; away in the corner of the (ar-park were the military from Special Forces, denied involvement but permitted stand-by status. They were all out in the rain to see the arrival of the Scottish tracker. The local uniforms would have thought they were be~st equipped to search their own area, had the feel for it. Th.~detectives from London, and the Branch, would have thought they bad the trained surveillance specialists, had the necessary expertise The military would have thought they owned the territory of stalk and track, had the right to crack the problem. They were all interested to see the man dragged out from the north by Five, the man given the job that should have been theirs. Geoff Markham felt an atmosphere around him of acid curiosity edging on malevolence.

  The car, big, black and sleek, driven by a chauffeur, swept into the parking area and braked hard. All eyes were on it.

  Harry Fenton pushed himself out of the front passenger seat, mischief in his eyes. He called a cheerful greeting to the watchers. It was his show, and that mattered to him. He caught Markham's glance, and there was the slightest, faintest wink of his eye, then he opened the rear door.

  The dogs came first. They were squat, scurrying creatures, held by leashes of fodder-bale twine, bright orange. They yapped.

  He came after them, wriggled clear of the car.

  What Markham had expected was an old man, ruddy and weather-skinned, a man with the lore of the countryside in his face and a lifetime of experience in his eyes.

  He was small. He looked barely out of his teens. His visage was pale, and his cheeks and chin were speckled with light stubble. His build was slight, looked as if the wind could blow him away. More than that, he was filthy.

  The gathered audience gazed at him with astonishment.

  At ten paces Markham could smell the dank dirtiness of his clothes. He wore boots, khaki trousers and a tweed coat, all liberally smeared with mud; Markham thought the coat was a bigger man's cast-off. Its buttons were gone and it was held tight at the narrow waist by the same twine. The man stood beside Fenton and glowered at them.

  A titter of laughter rippled behind Markham.

  An old man, Markham thought, would have merely ruffled feathers, but this pallid, grimy, stinking youth disjointed noses. The dogs, heaving at their leashes, coughing, had seen a police Alsatian God, and the little verminous bastards would probably try to roger it if they were free but the young man grunted at them, almost inaudibly, and they sat at his boots, their teeth bared
. He didn't back off from the laughter but stared back at them. They were, Geoff Markham thought, the most frightening eyes he had ever seen.

  From the back seat of the car, the chauffeur was lifting out sheets of newspaper and shaking the mud off them.

  Fenton strode to Markham. He said, in a loud voice as if to be certain he was generally heard, "What a stink. Had the window open all the way down I thought I was going to throw up. Like being shut in a cellar with a well-hung duck. I'd like you to meet Andy Chalmers, Geoff. It's your job to see he goes where he wants to go, has what he wants. I see that his appearance creates amusement. I want to see that amusement wiped off their faces and shoved far up their backsides. Got me? You'll brook no obstruction from any bastard in a clean shirt or I'll break his bloody neck and yours. I've lunch to be getting back to. Keep to the windward of him. Good luck, and good hunting."

  Fenton was gone, without a backward glance. The car swept out of the parking area.

  The theatre over, the uniforms, the detectives and the military trooped back into the police station. Geoff Markham thought that if the young man failed it would be Fenton's neck for breaking. As the car disappeared down the road, he realized that no bag had been dumped with the tracker and his dogs.

  "Damn, your bag's still in the car."

  "Don't have a bag."

  "Clean clothes and so on."

  "Don't have a bag."

  Markham laughed out loud. Who needed clean socks, who wanted fresh underwear, who had to wash?

  "Do you like something to eat?"

  "No."

  "Do you want anything?"

  "No."

  "What would you like to do?"