A Line in the Sand

by Gerald Seymour

  Holding his wife's hand, looking up at the policeman, Simon Blackmore drew a deep breath. He said, "We heard him speak last night. We were in the crowd but not of it... We haven't met him, we're newcomers, so he won't know us. He said his wife would leave but that she had nowhere to go, and that she would need to find an hotel. We live at the far end of the village, near to the church, at Rose Cottage. It's only our third day here. We have come to offer the lady, and her child, a place in our home, a refuge."

  Surprise clouded the policeman's face. He told them to wait there, on the step.

  He came back a couple of minutes later, after a hushed conversation inside, and said they'd be visited, and he told them that the Perrys were grateful.

  They walked home.

  "Do you think she'll come, Simon?"

  "I don't know, but, for both our sakes, I hope so.

  The bird flew above him. It glided with him as if escorting him.

  Vahid Hossein moved, very slowly, through the reed-banks. Sometimes the bird would wheel and fly back past him, and sometimes it would hover over him. The wing-beat seemed stronger each time it flew. In the depths of the marsh he went so carefully to be certain that he did not disturb the nesting birds. When he waded the mud clogged up to his knees and he had to use his strength to drag himself forward through the reed-stems. When he swam, the weight of the rocket launcher and the missiles on his back pushing him down, he did so with great caution. He was never in the open water. He never broke the reed-stems.

  He sensed that a man watched for him.

  When he rested, exhausted from the mud and the weight of the launcher in the bag on his back, he was relieved to realize that the bruised hip now caused him less difficulty. In the cold of the water there was no pain, and the restriction on his movement was less marked. He was sufficiently fit to go forward, to move against the target.

  Only when he was near to the shore-line, when it circled over him, did he talk softly to the bird. He was in dense reeds and he moved them aside singly, and he passed close to geese.

  "I wish you well, friend, and I regret that I did not find you at the Jasmin Canal or at the Faw marshes or at the Haur-al-Hawizeh. There were good birds there, but they were not your equal. I would have been grateful there, friend, for the comfort of your company as I am grateful here. I will remember you... Vahid Hossein did not believe it stupid or sentimental or childlike to talk to the bird.

  "Will you remember me? I think so. You will not forget the man, the soldier, who cleaned your wound and fed you. I believe that when you come back next year, from wherever you go in the cold winter, you will look for me."

  In his exhaustion, Vahid Hossein did not recognize the danger to him of rambling and incoherent thought. He was weakened and hurt, and he did not know it. He dragged himself across the mud of the shore-line, through the last of the reed-stems. He was still and gasped for breath.

  "Goodbye, friend, look for me, search, do not forget me."

  A sparrow flew away, cheeping, as he scrambled the few yards for the cover of the trees and undergrowth on Fenn Hill to meet Farida Yasmin. They would shout his name, in the streets, when he was home. He did not feel the exhaustion. He had the love of the bird and believed himself supreme.

  The great anchor chain rose from the sea. The power of the huge engines edged the tanker away from the mooring buoys. Its cargo gone, the deck of the tanker and the bridge were high above the water.

  It would be a long climb... They would have sailed two hours before but for the late arrival back on board of seven of his crew. They had claimed they were lost ashore, and the master had believed they smelt of women's bodies. They always went with whores when allowed ashore, and they were all good Muslims, and they brought back on board foul magazines that would be thrown into the sea when the tanker, days later, reached the Straits of Hormuz and the last leg for home. They would make full speed, twenty-four knots, and be near to the port of Rotterdam in the late evening where they would collect the pilot before sailing into the separation zone. They would reach the waters off Dungeness in the hour before dawn the next morning. It was still possible for his instructions to be changed and for him to pick up the man under the cover of darkness, lift him off the beach.

  But it would be a long climb for the man, if his orders were changed, on a bucking rope-ladder, from the sea to the deck and safety.

  Farida Yasmin sat on the bench and watched the muted life of the village pass her by. She could see the green and the far end of the house. Today, the police cars cruised more frequently on the one road. She had been through the village twice, gone to the sea twice and up to the church. She hated those times, when she was away from the bench, when she could no longer see the end of the house, but she thought it important to break any pattern she set. She should not spend too long on the bench. A woman with a brightly coloured coat had come and sat with her and had talked about the village. She seemed lonely and bored, soFar ida Yasmin had smiled sweetly and fed the questions that had kept the woman talking. The woman had been with her for an hour. It was a valuable hour. In the police cars, going slowly by, the men would have seen her listening earnestly, and would have thought she belonged. While the woman had talked, looking at her with interest, smiling, laughing with her, Farida Yasmin had been able to see the end of the house over the stupid bitch's shoulder. She glanced, too often, at her watch. Time was passing. She sat on the bench and she thought of the smooth skin of his body, the discolouration of the bruising, and she held her fingers against her lips because the fingers had touched his skin and hair and the bruising... But she had nothing to tell him that would help him.

  "Excuse me, miss."

  Under his cap, he had a dull, pudgy, middle-aged face. Below his face was the top of the bullet-proof vest against which he held his machine-gun.

  "Hello." She made her voice calm, pleasant.

  The car was parked behind her, and the driver watched them. It was bright daylight and she had no weapon; he was protected and armed.

  "Can I ask what you're doing, miss?"

  She grinned. Imperceptibly, she opened her legs, and she straightened her back to emphasize the fall of her chest.

  "What you wish you could be doing, officer, letting the rest of the world take the strain."

  "You've been here a long time, miss, doing nothing."

  "My good luck, to have the time to do nothing."

  A small rueful smile slipped his face. He'd have seen the shape of her thighs and the outline of her breasts, as she'd intended.

  "So what are you doing here?"

  She still grinned, but her mind raced at flywheel speed. It was the moment at which she was tested. It came to her very fast, and she clung to it. She had no time to consider what she said. She must follow her instind. There might be an old photograph of her, but she believed she looked sufficiently different.

  "I'm at Nottingham University we're doing a study on rural problems. I chose here. Didn't I do well?"

  "You don't seem, if I might say so, to have done much studying."

  "Watch me tomorrow, if you're still here, officer. You won't see me for dust."

  "What's your name, miss?"

  "I'm Carol Rogers. Geography at Nottingham."

  "Do you have identification, Miss Rogers?"

  "I don't, actually. I left everything like that where I'm staying, in Halesworth does it matter?"

  She'd given the name of a popular girl, a right bitch, at the university. The policeman could take her to the car and sit her in the back, and radio through the details and wait for confirmation of her identity. If Carol Rogers was still at the university, going after a masters, and was called from the library, then Farida Yasmin had failed. If she failed, when the light shone into her face and the questions hammered her, she might break as Yusuf had broken. Her hand touched her breast. She thought it was just routine, that he was doing his job and was undecided.

  "Don't you have anything driving licence, cash card?"

&nbs
p; The voice boomed from the car.

  "Come on, Duggie, for Christ's sake..."

  He turned away and walked back to the car. When they drove past, he looked at her hard. She bit her lip. She wouldn't tell him that she had been questioned. She thought of her future, when he had gone; anxiety about the future had gnawed increasingly at her through the day. She would be hunted, and looking over her shoulder, always waiting for a policeman to ask her for identificahon. But she could not leave the village, not while she had nothing to tell him that would help him. And then the pride flushed in her because she had come through the first test of her skill.

  Davies ended the call and he finished scribbling notes on his pad. They were waiting on him. The principal had his arm around his wife's shoulder.

  Davies said, "Two officers in uniform went round to see them. Maybe they hit the door a bit hard, but it took Blackmore five minutes to get her to come out of the kitchen and talk to them. They got it out of her eventually, who she was and what had happened to her. It's not a pretty story. Control ran it through the computer. They're what they say they are... I don't know whether it's the right place for you or the wrong place. We couldn't have you visit there, Frank nor you, Meryl, come back here. You'd be a mile apart, but it might as well be a hundred. It's your decision, both of you. You'd stay there, Meryl, until the conclusion. I think we're close to that, hours from it, but I don't know, and I don't know what's afterwards. I can't tell you how long is "afterwards"..."

  Perry said, "Listen, afterwards I'll go in my own time. Of course I'll go. But it's not them, the people here, who decide when."

  Davies said quietly, "They check out. He was British Council in Santiago, capital city of Chile. First posting abroad for Simon Blackmore. He would have been running a library at the embassy, bringing out the odd slice of Shakespeare, chucking British culture around, and finding a girlfriend. It was late in 1972. The girlfriend was Luisa Himenez, and she wasn't suitable for a young fellow from the British Council not at all, left-wing political, the ambassador wouldn't have liked that, one little bit. In 1973 there was a military coup that deposed and killed the neo-Communist president, Salvador Allende, then a round-up of sympathizers. She went into the net, she'd have been screened first in that concentration camp they set up in the football stadium, then faced the heavy stuff. The interrogators probably we trained them, we usually did gave her a hard time. A "hard time" is an understatement. Blackmore would have badgered his ambassador for action, and that would have been a waste of his time, and then he went direct to Amnesty International. By his efforts, she was adopted as a prisoner-of-conscience. There are very few who get to that status, and sometimes it can make a small difference. The military were bombarded with letters, it meant hassle for them. For her, it reduced the chance of the old one-liner, "died of medical complications". Without Simon Blackmore's efforts she would have disappeared into an unmarked grave. She was quietly released four years later when the government was whipping up interest in a trade fair. Before she received prisoner-of-conscience status, the interrogators had tortured her no fingernails, did you notice? Did you see her walk away, limping? They broke the ligaments in her right knee, and surgery wasn't on offer. There are slashes at her wrists, attempted suicide when she thought she was going to break. Oh, what we didn't see, she's got burns on her breasts, which they used as an ashtray .. . The Blackmores have experienced persecution and isolation, which is why they're offering a hand of friendship, and they can't be frightened any more. Their understanding of living and suffering is different from what you've found here. But, Meryl, I can't tell you what to do, go to them or go to a hotel. They might be right for you, they might be wrong. It's your decision."

  He came to the hiding-place.

  Andy Chalmers hadn't slept in the night, nor in the day.

  He could control tiredness, had contempt for it and for hunger, but he had biscuits in his pocket for the dogs. In the night he had listened to the silence, and in the day he had watched the flight of the bird.

  To stay awake, and keep alert, he had chosen to concentrate his thoughts on the big birds of his home under the mountain slopes. The bird he watched was half the size of the eagles, pretty and interesting but without majesty... If he had been home, that day, he would have gone to the eyrie on a crag face of Ben More Assynt, scrambled on the scree then climbed and taken cut hazel branches from down beside the loch with him, to repair the eyrie from the storm damage of the winter.

  At first, watching the bird in the early daylight, Andy Chalmers was confused. The bird hunted. It dived on a young duck and carried it to the heart of the reed-beds. He understood that. He could see that the bird had no grace in its flight, but was able to hunt. It was recovering from injury, could have been a strike against a pylon's cables or a shotgun wound. After it fed, the bird circled one area at the heart of the reed-beds. It was too immature, without the width thickness in the wing-span, to have a mate nesting below, and at first he had been confused.

  He watched that place.

  He waited for some reaction from the other birds: for the ducks to rise screaming, or swans and geese to clatter for open water, but he saw only the circling bird, until the afternoon.

  Then, a single curlew had flown, startled, from the place he watched. It had taken him minutes to re~Iize that the bird was no longer over that same place and could not have stampeded the curlew. In his mind, he made a central point for the arcs the bird flew, and that point changed, moved gradually away. If he had not been so tired, Andy Chalmers would have understood sooner. The central point for the arcs of flight neared the far shore-line of the marsh, where the trees and scrub merged with the reeds. He did not know why the curlew had crashed out of the reeds, only that its flight had been a moment of luck and had alerted him.

  There was a pattern here that he was struggling to understand. At the limit of his vision, he had seen a sparrow break cover from the scrub.

  The bird no longer circled, wheeled, but climbed. It was a distant speck when Andy Chalmers moved from his cover and went down into the mass of reeds.

  He took the dogs with him, would not be separated from them. It was only when he reached the focus of the harrier's arcs that he realized it was a hiding-place, and as such it was well chosen. Many years before, enough years for it to be before his birth, the marsh waters had rotted a tree's roots. The tree had fallen, the branches had decayed. An empty oil drum had been driven by the winds and tides against the remaining branches and had wedged. It was a refuge, a safe place. Where the trunk peeped above the water was the stripped carcass of a duck, and in the drum was the faint smell of a man. The bird had shown him the place. He could have passed within two yards of the tree's trunk and the almost submerged drum and would not have seen the biding-place.

  He had the line. The bird had given him the line to the shore.

  Wading through the mud and carrying his dogs, swimming and having them paddle after him, he found not a trace of the man he tracked. He had followed men who had come on to the mountain to raid the eyrie nests, and those men took precautions, faced prison and had cause to be careful. This man was better than any of them. He had the point on the shore-line from which the sparrow had flown. He had the marker.

  At the edge of the reeds he lay still in the water, and listened. There was a tangle of bramble a few paces away. He could smell him, but couldn't see him. The dogs were against his body with only their heads above the water. He held his breath and waited. He did not have a profile of the man, could not be inside his mind to know how he would react and how he would move... It was more interesting, there was more unpredictability, in tracking a human than a deer. The tiredness had left him. He lay in the water, was fulfilled, and listened.

  The dogs would have told him if the man was close.

  The dogs smelt him, as Andy Chalmers did, but knew he was no longer there. He came out of the water and the dogs bounded forward, splashing clear.

  He found rabbit's bones and the rear le
g of a frog. He knew the man had gone, moved on.

  Meryl kissed him. She had her coat on and she held her Stephen's hand. There was another coat over her arm, and four suitcases behind her.

  Davies was at the back. Perry couldn't read Davies's face as Meryl kissed him. Rankin was closer: he tousled Stephen's hair and his machine-gun flapped loosely on the webbing when he bent to pick up the child's football.

  "You'll be all right?"

  "I'll be fine."

  "Bill's going to shop for you."

  "I'll manage."

  The bell rang.

  "You won't worry about us."

  "I won't."

  "I'm just so frightened."

  At the third blast of the bell, Rankin peered into the spy hole then nodded to Davies. The key was turned, the bolts drawn back. Davies watched them. Were they ready? Had they finished? It hadn't been there before, but Perry saw compassion in Rankin's face. And he noticed the sharp movements of Davies's jaw as his teeth bit at his lip hard bastards, and they were moved. He had not been upstairs while she had packed. He had not found the quiet corner in the house, away from the microphones. She kissed him one last time her boy wore a new England football shirt that Paget and Rankin had given to him. God alone knew how they'd obtained it, must have had a shop in the town opened up at dawn. Perry felt helpless, as if the eyes, the micrc~hones and the watchers ruled him. He wanted it over, her gone, before he wept.

  "You should go, Meryl."

  "I'll see you."

  "Some time soon."

  "Keep safe. Be careful. Don't forget, ever, our love, don't-' "Time you were gone, Meryl."

  He could hear the cars outside, the engines starting up.

  Davies said, calm voice, "Don't stop, Mrs. Perry. We believe that the area outside is secure, but still don't stop. The pavement time is the worst. Straight out and into the lead car. There's no going back for anything. Keep moving directly to the lead car."

  Rankin pulled the door open. Davies hustled them forward, past the two men who waited on the step. They went at a charge. Perry saw his Meryl go, and Stephen with the football, pushed forward by Davies towards the door of the lead car. The two men came behind them with the suitcases and pitched them into the rear car. Rankin snapped the front door shut. He didn't see them go, didn't have the chance to wave. He heard the slam of the doors and the roar of the engines.