A Line in the Sand

by Gerald Seymour

  "Get there."

  There had once been ambition in Mr. Hackett's ministry, but that was long gone. He existed now in this coastal parish, believing his congregation and his community were beneath his talents, on a diet of godless weddings, hurried funerals and a continuing~nxiety about the maintenance of the fabric of his church. His welcomin1 smile, his proffered friendship were shams. He was lonely, he was better; his wife lived away and the fiction that explained her absence involved her need to care for an elderly, bedridden mother, but she had left him. He lived out his life in the village, kept trouble from his door and the bishop off his back, and waited for retirement, blessed release. The ambition of the Reverend Alastair Hackett, then an inner-city curate on a fast-promotion track, had ended twenty-seven years earlier in the north Welsh mountains when he had taken a party of deprived children, with volunteer helpers, from their Manchester tower blocks for a camping holiday. It was the sort of expedition blessed by bishops, the sort of trip that was good for advancement.." and an eleven-year-old boy had died in a fall. Such a long time ago, but there was no forgiveness in the file that passed from bishop to bishop each time he had applied for subsequent promotion. The file held the muted criticism, unspecified but hinted at, of the police evidence at the subsequent inquest why had the child been alone, why had the child not been better supervised?

  His career had never recovered, and the bitterness lingered still. Its target was sometimes the bishops, who did not seem to understand the problems of watching over eighteen hooligan youngsters, but most particularly the police. That bitterness verged on detestation. When he should have been explaining the circumstances of the accident to his bishop, and comforting the bereaved parents, he had been incarcerated in a bare interview room in the police station at Conway, treated like a felon, quizzed relentlessly by men seeming determined to find inconsistencies in his account. The career gone, ambition fallen, he had moved from Manchester to mid-Devon, then taken this Suffolk parish. It was a blighted life, no fault of his own, and empty.

  They were in the village. If Geoff Markham spoke, he won a grudging response. If he didn't speak there was silence.

  Did he want to go up the church tower, use it as an observation point? A grunt, a shaken head. Did he want to take a look at the house? Again, a similar response.

  While he had driven, Chalmers had spread across his knees the map on which a red-ink line marked the trail the police dogs had found, and the riverbank where they had lost it. By Chalmers's boots, the dogs chewed noisily at the car's floor mat. Markham was pretty damn certain that one, maybe both, had peed during the journey.

  The smell reeked through the car. He stopped near to the hall, down the road from the green. Chalmers's brow was furrowed in concentration as he studied the detail of the map.

  A young woman with a guidebook was sitting on a bench, her back to them. An older woman was coming out of the shop with a wheeled shopping bag. He ignored the slow life of the village around him and busied himself with putting new batteries into the second radio then checked the transmission between the two... Shit, the stress snatched at Markham. Hadn't rung Vicky, and he didn't know the terms of employment offered him. Hadn't spoken to Bill Davies, didn't know whether they were still on their feet or down on the floor. Hadn't remembered the picture. Chalmers eased out of the car, took a little of the smell with him, but not enough. The mat was chewed and puddled and he seemed not to notice. Markham took the picture out of his briefcase, locked the door after him.

  "Sorry about that sorry I didn't give it you earlier you should have had it before."

  He didn't know why he should be frightened into abject apologies to this stinking kid. He passed over the picture. It was the first time he had seen anything other than hostility in Chalmers's eyes. He had once been to a boxing match, when he was at college, for a middleweight title. He remembered the first sight of the men when they had come into the ring with the hype blaring over the loudspeakers, and it was supposed to be a grudge match. There had been no hate in their eyes, only respect, and the fight had started. Each had done his bloody damnedest to batter the other to the canvas. The bout had been brutal and merciless, and he'd hated it.

  He took back the picture, and they walked away, following the map's trail.

  Chalmers unpicked a piece of cotton thread from a strand of barbed-wire topping a garden fence and said that the man wore a camouflage tunic.

  Where the path narrowed, Chalmers stopped, hunched down and studied the ground beside the path's mud. Half hidden by squashed nettles, a boot print was just visible. Chalmers said the man was size eleven, and added casually that he was hurt, handicapped.

  They were beside the river. Chalmers unhooked the twine from the dogs' throats but cooed softly to them. They stayed at his heel.

  Ahead were the marshes. The grey cloud was low on the reed-beds. The rain spat on their faces. Chalmers gestured to his right, a contemptuous short motion of his arm, and Markham saw the movement of the policemen in bushes away on higher ground. The marshes stretched ahead to the mist-line and the far, dull shape of the trees. There was the slow thunder of the waves on shingle beyond the sea wall.

  "Get lost," Chalmers growled.

  "When'll I see you?"

  "Some time, when I'm ready. Go away."

  Geoff Markham walked back down the path alongside the river. He turned once, looked round, and the path behind him was empty.

  Bill Davies flushed the downstairs lavatory, and came back into the hall. Nothing for him to do but drink coffee and ruminate on the catastrophe of the evening before, which he'd been doing all morning. Perry had been looking like chilled death when Davies had come in first thing to relieve Blake and was now pacing the living room. Meryl was in the kitchen, quiet, and she'd only been out the once, to hang her washed dress on the line. Paget had been with her, scanning the bottom fence all the time she'd pegged it up, and the rest of the clothes from the machine. He heard a sudden clatter of sound from the kitchen and knew that with a numbed mind and clumsy fingers she'd dropped a plate, broken it. He glanced out through the window, through the new net curtains. There was a spit of rain misting the glass but he saw the tall, wiry man's clerical collar. He moved aside the curtain for a better glance. Mr. Hackett's name hadn't been scratched off the list by the kitchen telephone.

  It was reflex, not thought through.

  He spoke on his radio to the hut, said he'd be outside, to the front of the house.

  He went out into the light rain. He ran across the green, past the new tree and the new post, towards the clergyman.

  "Excuse me."

  The man stopped in mid-step, turned, the wind catching his greying hair.

  "Excuse me are you Mr. Hackett?"

  "He is me." A piping voice and a thin smile of greeting.

  "Please, have you a moment?"

  "A moment for what?"

  "I'm with Frank and Meryl Perry."

  The caution clouded his face.

  "Which means you're a policeman, which means you're an armed policeman. Why would you want a moment of my time?"

  Why? Because Frank Perry was told last night of his responsibility in the death of a coach load of Iranian military scientists. Because he had drunk two bottles of wine and been sick twice. Because he and Meryl were at home alone, and needed a friend.

  "I just thought, if you'd the time it's rough for them. A visit from a friend would help."

  The clergyman took a step forward.

  "I have appointments. People are expecting me."

  Bill Davies caught his arm.

  "What they need, please, is for someone to show them some charity."

  "Be so kind as to take your hand off me. Another time, perhaps..."

  Davies's hand was shaken off, and the clergyman quickened his stride.

  "You are a leader in this community, Mr. Hackett."

  "I doubt it, but I do have a filled appointments diary."

  "Your example is important. Please, go and ri
ng the bell, go and smile and make some small-talk. Better still, walk up this road with Meryl Perry, with Frank we'll protect you. Show everybody here that they have your support."

  "Another day, perhaps. But I cannot promise."

  "They need you."

  "There are many who need me. I don't know your name and I do not need to, but we did not ask for your guns to be brought into our community. We did not ask for our children and our women to be endangered. We are not a part of whatever quarrel Frank Pejry is enmeshed in. We owe him nothing. He should go what he owes us is his departure from here. I have a wider responsibility to the majority. I do not condone the ostracism of this family, but I cannot condemn it. But we are a God-fearing and law-abiding community, and I doubt that observance of God's teaching and the rules of society have brought Perry to his present situation. In your search for a friend to Perry, I suggest that you look elsewhere."

  "Thank you, Mr. Hackett, for your Christian kindness."

  "Good day."

  Bill Davies walked slowly back to the house.

  The Italian owner of the restaurant, from Naples, eyed the many-layered stomach of the German and murmured, with quiet discretion to Fenton, "The full menu, Mr. Fenton, not the two-course luncheon special?"

  They were eased into their seats, and immediately the German ordered decisively, as if to feed himself for the rest of the week. Fenton's guest was from the BfV, attached to the embassy, an old hand at counter-terrorism, and a friend of sorts. As was his habit, Fenton set an agenda. He was confused, he admitted, and in search of enlightenment. The Foreign Office preached appeasement of Iran, the Israelis demanded they be beaten with lump hammers, the Islamic movement claimed there was American-inspired unwarranted hostility towards the Muslim world. Where lay the truth?

  The German talked and ate, drank and smoked.

  "So, you have one of their excrement loose on your territory otherwise it would be sandwiches and Perrier in your office. You wish to know how seriously to take that threat. My government, as you well know because you have leaked your criticisms, has taken a conciliatory attitude towards Iran, has rescheduled debts, has given out visas, has pushed for stronger trade links, and has still provided the venue for Iranian assassins to meet their targets. It won us nothing, so we have considerable experience of their tactics. That is what I should talk about our experience of their murder tactics?"

  A heaped plate of antipasti was followed by a wide, filled bowl of pasta with fungi. The German left his cigarette burning. The smoke made Fenton's eyes smart.

  "They aim to be near, to kill at close quarters. But the beginning the beginning is from the top in Tehran, from the peak of government, and the authorization for the allocation of hard-currency funding and the provision of weapons through diplomatic pouches. A trusted man is appointed and he will be backed by local sympathizers, but he takes the responsibility for success or failure. He will have no contact point with his embassy, there is the creed of deniability. He will not be helped by diplomats or intelligence officers. Our experience is that the trusted man is most hard to capture or kill. It is the sympathizers who reconnoitre and drive the cars who sit in our prison cells. It is a great triumph to take or eliminate the trusted man if you can do that, you will have my sincerest congratulations."

  When the steak was brought, the German took the majority of the vegetables, the greater part of the potatoes, and lit another cigarette.

  "What is he like the trusted man? I tell you, very frankly, he is the same as the people in our Rote Armee Faktion, the same as the people in your Irish groups. The less you know of him, the more impressive you will believe him to be. Our ignorance lifts his reputation. He is dedicated, fanatical, he is skilled, he is prepared for martyrdom, he is elusive that is what ignorance tells us."

  The German chose ice-cream with pistachio flavouring, and asked the waiter to bring a double portion.

  "But I have seen them, I have interrogated them. I have been with them in the cells and explained with politeness that the rantings of their government and the shouting mobs outside our legation compound in Tehran will not affect the length of a prison sentence. I have talked with those men of the Bundesgrenzshutz who have dragged them from cars at gunpoint, spreadeagled them on the road, laughed about shooting off their testicles. The trusted man, then, is the same as you, or me. You know, at Fustenfeldbruck, at the airbase, at the time of the Olympic Games, we killed five of the Palestinians of Black September, and three surrendered. Did they then wish to die, go to the Garden of Paradise? Did they hell! They knelt and wept for mercy. When the Italians, our esteemed friends, eventually capture a capo of the Mafia, he is the same. He has been a killer on a grand scale, perhaps murdered a hundred men and consigned their corpses to the Gulf of Palermo or acid vats or concrete construction pillars, but when he is arrested, when he faces the guns, he fouls his trousers. They are very human invincible when free, pathetic when taken. You should not be intimidated by the trusted man."

  Espresso coffee was brought, and small chocolates. The Germar~ cleared them, and stubbed out a cigarette in the saucer.

  "Perhaps, when they leave their country, when the mullah's words are still fresh, they believe they are a sword of Islam, a soldier of the faith. My experience, they forget... So soon they are like all the other killers. They are, I believe, addicted to excitement, adrenaline is their narcotic. I said to you that they wished to be close, to see the fear in their victim's eyes, so they will try to use a knife to cut a throat, or a handgun from a metre. They are disturbed people and they will not gain the same excitement from a bomb or from a rocket attack. The bomb and the rocket are the last option, but will not provide the same excitement. If you take this trusted man, go into his cell, try to talk with him. Then I believe you will be sincerely disappointed at what you find."

  When the wine was finished, they drank brandy. Fenton had the cigar box brought for him.

  "He will be a lonely man. He will seek the admiration of the sympathizers, but will not share with them. He will have the paranoia of the isolated. He is nauseatingly sentimental. Above everything, he will seek praise, always he will want that praise... I think, also, he wants the body of a servile woman, not an equal because that would frighten him. What is most dangerous about him, he is terrorized by the thought of failure he wants to go home, of course he does, but to praise and adulation. I think, to a psychologist, he is a rather tedious, pitiful figure. Let me know what you find."

  They left the table, eased into their coats.

  On the pavement, the German caught Fenton's arm and whispered close in his ear, through a fog of cigar fumes.

  "But hear me. Ali Fellahian, who controls the trusted men, who sanctions their journeys, was invited by my superiors to visit us. For some of us it was a shameful day in the history of our Service to play host to a criminal, and our lips bled because we bit so hard on them to maintain our composure. He took our hospitality and he threatened us. We were left with no area for misunderstanding the economic and diplomatic consequences of publicizing the activities of his killers on our territory. Should you destroy or capture this piece of excrement now bothering you, you should consider very carefully the implications of triumphalist statements... A wonderful meal we should do it more often."

  Fenton took a taxi back to Thames House.

  Cox was poring over a leave chart, but pushed it away.

  Yes, Fenton told him, lunch had provided a most valuable opportunity to quiz a distinguished German anti-terrorist officer. He had gained a good insight into the mind of their enemy. But how much further forward were they? Fenton gazed at the ceiling and found no relief there.

  "What worries me, whichever way we jump will be the wrong way."

  "I did hear you, Harry, unless my ears deceived me, take responsibility..."

  At the nearest point the bird was a hundred metres from his cover, at the furthest it was two hundred metres. It was a hunter, and quartered the stretch of water and reed-bed between. The si
ght of it made him lose the ache in his hip. Through his care, the bird could fly, could hunt... Many times, in the Haur-al-Hawizeh and off the Faw peninsula, he had watched these birds flying overhead. When they flew, hunted, had no sense of danger, he knew no enemy approached him. The pain in his hip was lessening, and he thought that by the next morning he would have regained his mobility and be strong enough to go back for his target.

  The bird flew in long, slow lines, still handicapped but able enough, glided, the gold and brown of its neck bent to study the land below and it dived. In a sudden moment, the wide wings were tucked in, and the bird fell. When it came up, flapping hard for height, he saw the flailing legs of the prey, held in a talon's grip. The bird, the wild creature, came back to him and set down on the grass in front of his cover. He saw the last writhing movements of the frog as the curved beak hacked at it. The bird ripped at the frog's carcass until only scraps were left.

  In the life of Farida Yasmin, no one had ever told her she was importaut.

  With her guidebook to the village and the neighbourhood around it, she had sat on the bench, read it and reread it, then read it again so that the words danced on the pages and no longer had meaning.

  No one had ever told her she was valued.

  From the bench she had walked to the beach and gazed out at the sea. She had been alone on the sand and shingle, and had seen the faraway boats that hugged the horizon line. The next day, or the day after, the next night, or the night after that, far further down the coast, the tanker would divert towards the shore and a small boat would run from it, would collect him. She would be left behind, abandoned.

  She had walked through the village, as far as the church, then turned and retraced her steps and come back past the pub, the hall, and the shop where she had bought postcards that would never be sent and a salad-filled bread roll, and the green. She had stood on the far side of the green, the guidebook opened, and looked around her.

  She saw the cars come and go from the house. She saw the detective at the door, and the armed police, huge men in their bulging vests. She watched the pattern of their day. Earlier, the detective had run from the house and had spoken with a priest. She couldn't hear what was said, but the body language was of rejection. She noted the camera above the door at the house, and believed as the afternoon darkened that she saw the red wink-light of a sensor... She wanted his body under her, in the position she had seen on television films. She wanted to ride over him, dominate him, and hear him cry out that she was important, valued, essential and critical, as no one had ever done. Before he went off the beach into the small boat and out to sea to board the tanker,