A Line in the Sand

by Gerald Seymour

  Paget called out, "And you, Mr. Perry got to keep body and soul together."

  They did it for Stephen, forced their cheer down his throat.

  "Just going to the toilet start without me."

  The window in the lavatory had an anti-thief lock, and the key was in the small wall cupboard. He bolted the door behind him. They were his only friends and the mark of their regard for him was that they tried to clear the mind of her boy from what he had seen, heard, the night before. They tried hard, had to, because what he had seen would have been so hideous, brain-scarring. He heard the banter and the laughter round the table as he unlocked the window. He crawled out through it, took the one fast step across the narrow concrete path, climbed Jerry and Mary Wroughton's fence and dropped into their garden. He had to be alone.

  Chapter Nineteen.

  He'd hoped, on the way out from London, that there wouldn't be anything sentimental. Littelbaum climbed out of her car and hoisted his bag from the rear seat. Gruffly, he wished her well. She told him it was only a drop-down zone, asked him to check that he'd his ticket, and said that she couldn't stop. Cathy Parker didn't offer her cheek to him, or her hand. He watched her drive away and she didn't wave or look back. By the time he was inside the turmoil of the terminal, she was far from his thoughts.

  He was early for the flight back to Riyadh and he would have a decent time to search among the air side shops for chocolates for Mary-Ellen and something, maybe a scarf, to post to his wife. He always took chocolates back to Mary-Ellen, and Esther had a drawer filled with the tokens he'd sent her.

  He queued at the check-in.

  "Morning, Duane."

  He turned. Alfonso Dominguez took the chore of administration work at the Bureau's offices in the London embassy.

  "Hi, Fonsie, didn't think you'd make it."

  "Apologies for not being able to drive you down here, but the good news, I've gotten you an upgrade. It's the least you deserve. Have you been in con tad the last hour?"

  "No, wasn't able to thanks for swinging the upgrade."

  The embassy man shouldered forward to lift the bag on to the scales and was smarming the girl at the ticket desk. He liked to think he had a reputation as a fixer, and eased the formalities. His arm was round Littelbaum's shoulder as they walked together across the concourse, and his voice had the hushed whisper of confidentiality.

  "I hear you done really well, Duane, that's why I bust my gut to get you the upgrade. You're not up to speed on the news? I just got it. State Department's lining up, trumpets and drums, the briefings. Everything'll come out of Washington. It's gonna be our show. There's decks being cleared. I reckon you'll have a personal call from the director tonight, that's what Mary was saying, could even be a call from the secretary. It's our shout, and we're going to milk it."

  "Do the Brits know?" Littelbaum grinned.

  "They'll be told, when they need to be."

  "I did well better, actually, than I thought."

  "You're too modest, Duane."

  He enjoyed the admiration.

  "Good of you to say that, Fonsie. I said at the start it would take a week, and this is the seventh day, and it's pretty much all wrapped up.~ "Soon as the State Department get the word he's in chains or a body bag it'll be the big blast, coast to coast, round the world, live

  TV..."

  Littelbaum said gently, "I've been working for this for so long. What I've finally achieved, Fonsie, what nobody else has achieved to the same degree, is the fracturing of the code of deniability. Tehran's deniability is crucial in their operations, and it's broken. It's been the screen they've hidden behind and we're taking the screen down."

  "And going public."

  "And hold on to your seat, Fonsie, hold on tight, because the repercussions can be ferocious. What I'm saying, we have the mullahs by the balls."

  "Too right, Duane."

  "Whether the Tomahawks fly, whether it's resolutions and sanctions at the Security Council backed by teeth, it's going to be a hell of a rough ride but we've the evidence of state-sponsored terrorism, we've gotten the smoking gun. But you know what? The massive repercussions of the breaking of deniability have turned on events in some shitty backwater Fonsie, you wouldn't believe that place. It's been played out among folk with clay on their feet, Nowheresville."

  "I think I have your meaning, Duane. Shame about the casualties... "Irrelevant, you got to look at the big picture. You don't have casualties, you don't win. I kicked the Brits in the right direction -what surprised me, they bought the crap I gave them, ate it out of my hand. What I say, for what was at stake, the casualties came cheap."

  "You'll be top of the pile, Duane."

  "I think I will be do we have time for a drink?"

  The slick in the water lapping against him was an ochre mix from the mud he disturbed and the blood he dripped.

  Vahid Hossein had gone to the limit of his strength to reach his hiding-place. A filthy handkerchief from his pocket had been used as a field dressing to staunch the wound when he had left her.

  After the woman had screamed and her dogs had snarled, when the beam of her torch had found him then bounced away as she had fled, he had pushed himself up from her body. He had not realized he had bled on her until the torch showed him the blood. He had gone away into the night and pressed the handkerchief into the wound but it had pumped blood on to his vest, his shirt, his sweater and his camouflage tunic. He had known that he must absorb it, not permit it to fall on the ground he crossed, because there would be a trail for dogs to follow. In the darkness, he had gone though the pig-fields, skirted between their half-moon huts, smelt the disgusting odour of the creatures. Guiding him was the call of the sea-birds and the soft motion of water ahead. It was as he reached the water, went down into it, that the numbness of the 4 wound gave way to the pain in his chest, and with the pain came the exhaustion.

  There had once been a track leading through the heart of the marsh, an old pathway long since flooded. Under the pathway, in dense reeds, a culvert drain had been built of brick. Lying on his side, Vahid Hossein kept the wound above the level of the water.

  The pain came in rivers now. If the marshes had been at the Faw peninsula or on the Jasmin Canal, if he had been with colleagues, with friends, the pain would have been lessened by morphine injections. There were no colleagues, he was far from the Faw and the Jasmin, there was no morphine. The pain sucked the strength from his body.

  If he lost consciousness, he would sink lower in the drain's water and drown. He reached into his pocket for the muddied, soaked photograph, held it in his hand and gazed at the small, distorted face of his target.

  The sun shone on the water at the entrance of the drain, dappling among the reed stems. If he drifted to sleep, if he sank into unconsciousness, he would drown; if he drowned he would never look into the face. But, sleep unconsciousness would kill the pain. The bullet had been from a handgun. One low-velocity bullet, fired at the extreme of range was still, misshapen and splintered, somewhere inside the cavity of his chest. The entry wound was low under his armpit and he had not found an exit wound. The bullet had struck the bones of his ribcage and been diverted deeper into the chest space.

  He coughed. He could not help himself. It came from far down in his lungs. He writhed in the confines of the drain. He needed space, air, and couldn't find it. He held his sleeve against his mouth to muffle the sound of his cough and he crawled towards the segment of bright light at the mouth of the drain. He saw the blood on his sleeve and it eddied from the coarse, soaked material into the flow of the water.

  Vahid Hossein did not know how he would survive through the sunlit hours. He prayed for the darkness and prayed to his God for strength. With darkness, with strength, he would go for the last time to the house. The blood and the mucus ran from his hand and over the photograph he clutched, and into the water... They would be waiting to hear of him, and learn of what he had achieved. He thought of Barzin, and her body in darkness, the awkwardnes
s with which she held him, and he wondered if she would weep. He thought of the brigadier with the bear-hug arms, and the laughter that was between them, the trust, and he wondered if the tears would come to the cheeks of his friend. He thought of Hasan-iSabah and the young men who had gone down on the narrow,

  steep rock path from the fortress at Alamut and who would never return. He thought of them and they all, each of them, succoured his strength.

  The image of the young woman, living or dead, was never on his mind. She was past. The sun was on his face. Protected from sight by the waving reed-banks, he eased his head, and the shoulder above the wound, out into the light. He was so tired. He wanted so desperately to sleep. It was not an option. He recognized the delirium that snatched at his concentration, but could not resist the call for him to show strength and courage. They were all around him, the people he knew in his heart and in his mind. He heard their words, and they cried to him from close by. He reached above the drain, his fingers groping in soft mud against the reed-stems, for the launcher. The voices, near to him and shrill, told him he must hold the launcher through the sunlight hours, and never sleep, hold it until night came... It was blurred, small.

  The bird cried out above him and flew its search over him. The pain was back, the dream was over. He saw the bird searching for him and heard its cry in the silence. It was the same silence he had felt before, when he had believed a man watched for him. He struggled to get back into the recess of the mouth of the drain, but he did not have the strength, and his fear was the same as hers had been when she was under him and choked and scratched at his face. The bird hunted him.

  Chalmers saw the bird dive.

  The man, Markham, slept beside him, lying on his back with the sun bathing him, sheltered from the wind, and the dogs were close to him. Andy Chalmers had heard the bird call and it had not been answered. He saw it tuck its wings against its body and plummet, a stone in freef all, bright light shimmering on its wings.

  He watched it, for the briefest moment, pull out from its dive and spread its wings to cushion the impact of the fall. He heard its cry. For a few seconds, it hovered over the reeds, then dropped. As a marker, he took an old, withered tree that rose above the flood marsh, dead branches with a crow perched on it. The bird came up, sky danced over the reeds, then dropped again. A faraway tree draped in ivy, which was alone among the willow saplings on the distant extreme of the marsh, was his second point. His mind made the line between the perched crow and the ivy tree. The bird stayed down, and he knew its search was over.

  Chalmers leaned across the sleeping man, ruffled the hair of his dogs' necks, murmured his order to them, and slipped into the water. He moved away from the shore-line, where Markham slept and the dogs watched, without sound. He had the line to guide him. He half swam, half walked and although the water was icy against his body he was not aware of it. He kept the line in his mind. He felt no anger, no passion, no hatred. The shore was behind him, hidden from him by the reed-banks. He went quietly, slowly, along the line his mind had made.

  Cathy Parker said to Fenton and Cox, "He's complacent and conceited. It's not what he said but it's his body language. Littelbaum thinks he's walked all over us like we're the hired help."

  Twice he had flapped his arm at the bird, the second time more feebly than the first. He could not drive the bird away from him. If Vahid Hossein could have reached it, the bird he loved, he would have caught it, held it while it clawed his hand and gouged at his wrist, and he would have throttled the life out of it, but he could not. When his hand came close, the bird fluttered further away, eyeing him, and flew and circled him, but when it came down it was always beyond his reach. To survive, he would have killed the creature he loved, and all the time the silence grew around him. Again, digging for strength, the pain surging, he lunged. He was on his knees and groping at air. The bird mocked him, danced in front of him.

  As he sagged back, his face screwed in pain, he saw, in the far distance, the man walking towards him. On the raised pathway, coming closer, alone and unprotected, was his target. The photograph had fallen from his hand when he had reached for the bird, floating on the muddy water near to him. He gripped it, looked once more at the crumpled photograph and at the man. The pain in his body told him it was not the delirium that comes to the wounded before sleep and then death. The man walked towards him. Vahid Hossein thanked his God and grasped the launcher in his hands as firmly as he could.

  "Is that you, Fenton? Penny Flowers here. Did you know our esteemed American allies were already counting their chickens? They're planning to go public as soon as there's a corpse or a prisoner. They reckon, a little bird tells me, that it's going to be their day, which is in direct contradiction of what I understand to be our policy on this. Thought you should know... He walked in the beauty of the landscape and did not believe he deserved to.

  Meryl was dead, the woman he had slept with, loved with, bickered with, lived with, was lying on a tray in the mortuary's racks. Because of him... When they had walked on that path together, after going to the beach, she was always on his right side so that she could better see the water-birds in the marshland. His right arm dangled at his side and his hand was open, as if she were about to take it and hold it, as she did when they were alone and together.

  The sun warmed his cheeks, but his body was cold, insensate. He had not taken a coat out through the toilet window, but had escaped in the pullover that had been warm enough for the house. As he'd walked on the beach, the self-pity had dropped away from him and now, on the path going towards the marshland, he remembered only what he had done to friends... For Frank Perry, friends had been the rock of life. And she was gone because of what he had done to friends, burned them to death. He could remember each meeting with them, and how he had bought them. He had purchased his friends, and they were burned to death because of him. And Meryl had paid the final price.

  In a quiet, private voice, he asked for her forgiveness, and the agony of his crime distracted him from the beauty all around him.

  Poor Meryl innocent, ignorant Meryl - Meryl who knew little of the world beyond her door, for whom Islam was a mystery. Into her home, he had carried history and Faith, terror, warheads and a killer, and he tried to ask for her forgiveness.

  She had been innocent and ignorant, and happy with it.

  It was a country and a culture, a people, an aspiration of power of which she had known nothing and wanted to know nothing, and he had dragged it into her life, and that nothing had killed her. His friends, too, were in his mind, their faces, their kindnesses, their laughter and their burned bodies, and she was dead and she had not known them. She was gone from him.." too late to ask for her bloody forgiveness. Life went on.

  He said it out loud to make it real.

  "Life goes on... The dogs pounced at him from hidden ground below the pathway, came through the old sagging fence beside the water where it turned towards the church tower.

  "Life bloody goes on.

  The dogs tripped him from his dream state. He lashed at the nearer one with his shoe and it danced clear of him. He peered over the fence and saw the sleeping minder, Markham. He could have walked on. The man lay and slept in the sunshine and breathed easily. Markham had told him the consequence of his actions. Enough of asking for forgiveness and enough of thinking on friends, because life bloody well went on, like it or not. He stepped over the fence, slipped down past the leafless willows and crossed the short-cropped grass. The dogs snarled and cuddled down beside the sleeping man, Markham. He crouched, shook the man's shoulder. Eyes opened, the face contorted in astonishment.

  "What the hell what the fucking hell are you doing here?"

  Markham looked around him fast the empty grass, the still water, the unmoving reed-beds and he reached up and dragged Perry down.

  "I could ask you the same question. Nothing better to occupy yourself? What are you doing?"

  "Shit .. . because he's here .. ." Markham stared out into the impenet
rable mass of slow-swaying reeds, then glanced down at the dogs.

  "Because the tracker's gone in there after him .. . Get down.~ The sarcasm was wiped from his lips. Perry lay on his stomach beside Markham.

  "Here? So where are the guns?"

  "There are no fucking guns, there's just an unarmed civilian tracker in there searching for him," Markham spat.

  "What the hell are you doing out of the house?"

  He said weakly, "I wanted to be alone. I went out through the toilet-'

  "You're serious?"

  "I wanted to think."

  "That is about as irresponsible as is humanly possible."

  "I'm just a parcel, nobody cares."

  "You're a bloody symbol. Men protect you because of your status as a symbol. Christ, you weren't idiot enough to think it was personal, were you? We're not here because we bloody like you. It's our work, it's what we do. What were you thinking of?"

  "I thought you were as much my friends as the men who burned to death. Where is he?"

  "Somewhere out there, being hunted."

  He lay on his stomach. Nothing moved ahead of him to disturb the peace. He closed his eyes and pressed his head down on to the short-cropped grass. The sun was on his neck, and he felt only the chill of regret. In his mind, he saw the burned bodies.

  Cox said to the secretary of state, "If our American friends, our dear and closest allies, are allowed to run with this, then we sail on uncharted waters and among unknown reefs. We will be sucked into their vortex. Do we want that? Are we prepared to be tugged along by the nose, at their beck and call and in the interests of their propaganda coup? It's a huge step.." so often the quiet passing of a covert signal achieves more than the beating of cymbals. But, sir, it is your decision..."

  Pandemonium broke loose.

  In the domestic routine, plates clean, food finished, washing-up done, the principal had been forgotten.

  Where in God's name was he?

  The kid had been the centre of attention and the requirement to distract him, and the military were doing their thing and that had softened the alertness. It was only when the nanny policewoman had gone to the downstairs toilet, and shouted back that it was locked from the inside, that he had been remembered.