A Line in the Sand

by Gerald Seymour

  They scattered: Blake upstairs to check the bedrooms, Paget going out to search the garden, Rankin hustling through the ground floor, Davies scanning the green and the road and not a sniff of him. As they pounded around her, the nanny policewoman told the kid it wasn't anything to worry about.

  Paget broke down the toilet door. The window was open, the sunlight streaming in. They were gathered behind him to look.

  "The bastard's done a runner.

  The~cacophony of voices filled the hallway.

  "After all we've bloody done for him... Bloody put ourselves on the line for him.. . Sort of thanks you get from a selfish bloody bastard ... What the fuck is he thinking of?"

  Forgotten in the silence, the child shouted, "Don't, don't you're his friends."

  They stood for a moment, heads hung, shamed.

  Fenton said, into the telephone, "So good to speak to you. Of course, I feel I know you although we've never met. Let's put that right. Lunch today, I think. I apologize if you've something in your diary but I promise you it would be worth your while to scratch it out. There's a nice little place off St. James's, on the right, third street up from Pall Mall, Italian one o'clock? Excellent. I've heard so much about you... What's it concern? Try remembering a man known as Frank Perry... One o'clock? I look forward to it hugely."

  The chance was given him by his God. The bird was above him, sometimes coming down into the reeds to perch and watch him, but always beyond his reach. One final chance was given him by his God, to take him to the Garden of Paradise. He thought of the great men who had gone before him, slipped from the mountain at Alamut, made long journeys, stalked their target, and he would meet them as an equal in the Garden of Paradise, and sweet-faced girls would wash the wounds on his body under trees of fruit blossom and take the pain from him. He was weak and could move only slowly. He had seen where the target had come down off the high pathway, and he had not seen him climb back. He knew where he would find him and prayed that he had the strength to take him.

  He smelt the burning of the bodies as the flesh melted on the bones.

  He heard the terror of the screams. He saw the women weeping.

  He had been in their homes and they had cooked celebratory meals for him and their husbands.

  Frank Perry jerked up his head from the ground.

  "What's happened?"

  "Nothing's happened," the minder, Markham, whispered sourly.

  "What about the tracker?"

  "Don't know, haven't sight nor sound of him."

  "And for him, the hunter, is it just a job or does he care?"

  "You wouldn't understand."

  "I understand what I did."

  "You were convenient they used you every inch of the way."

  "Does he care, the man out there, the man who killed Meryl?"

  "He's professional, doing a job for his country, as we're doing a job for ours. As a person, he doesn't care."

  "Dying for his country?"

  "Let me tell you something, Mr. Perry, that might help you to comprehend .. . The Islamic activists in Egypt blow up tourist buses, but it's not personal. They get caught, they get tried in courtroom cages, and are sentenced to hang on the gallows. You and I would beg for mercy, but they don't. When the judge passes the death sentence they jump up and down in excitement, and they are smiling and laughing and praising their God. He won't give a shit, but you cannot comprehend that."

  "Would he know about the bus? Would he know what I did?"

  "He'd know."

  "Could you live with that, the sight of the bodies and the smell?"

  "I don't have to. It's not my problem."

  "But I do, and it's my torment."

  He pushed himself up, on to his knees, on to his feet, and stood at his full height. The minder, Markham, was tugging at his trousers and trying to drag him down, but he braced himself and stood straight. He saw the birds gliding in the dark water pools, and the gentle motion of the wind in the reed-heads, and the calm, unbroken reflections. He saw the harrier swoop low over the reeds. There was an awesome beauty in the sunlight, and peace. He identified the corruption that had led him to the crime of responsibility for the burned bodies and the smell. He had been 'somebody'; he had been the man who was valued, who was met at the airport with the chauffeured car, who was taken into the room in the house behind the Pall Mall clubs, who talked to a quiet audience and explained the detail of the satellite photography.

  He had rejoiced in the attention of being 'somebody', as if a corporate badge hung from a neck chain on his chest. He had thought himself important, but he had only been used. He shouted, "I am here. I am worthless. It is what I deserve."

  The minder, Markham, struggled to pull him down.

  "I know what I am. I am nobody."

  The harrier danced on the reed-heads at the edge of his vision and the sunlight caught on the barrel of the launcher.

  "Do it, because I deserve it!"

  In the depth of the reeds there was the dazzle of fire. With the fire was the grey belch of smoke and the tell-tale gold-thread signature climbing away from it. The sound thundered towards him. The birds rose screaming, threshing, shrieking from the pools between the reed-banks. The trail of fire rose high above his head, away into the blue denseness of the skies, then seemed to hover as the harrier had, and then it fell. A white line of smoke marked its passing. There was a dull explosion away on fields to the north. The birds quietened and circled.

  "And who would have looked after the boy, Mr. Perry?"

  "I didn't think..."

  "Then start thinking get down."

  He dropped to his knees.

  Ahead of him, the reeds erupted as if spitting out what before had been hidden. The young man stood. He was small and thin. The water ran from his shoulders and from his face.

  He reached behind him and lifted up the launcher tube and without hesitation he threw the tube far from him, over a bank of reeds, and it splashed down in clear water. Then, he bent before reappearing. Frank Perry could see the dangled legs across his chest and the lolling head behind his shoulder, and he came slowly as if a great weight burdened him.

  Frank Perry watched.

  The young man carried the body of Vahid Hossein through the reed-banks and out of them.

  The minder, Markham, went into the water when they were close and made to help the young man, but the weight of the carcass was not to be shared.

  The young man stepped from the mud and on to the cropped grass. The water and mud cascaded off him, and off the corpse. He climbed the bank, grunting at the effort of it, and straddled the fence of rusted barbed wire. He whistled for his dogs. He went up on to the high pathway with the weight of the body on his shoulders.

  Frank Perry noticed the harrier soar above, and wondered whether the bird was watching them.

  They walked in file back towards the village, led by the young man with his burden.

  The villagers had heard the explosion. Some pretended they had not. Some broke from the link of their conversation, listened, then talked again. Some heard it and crept away to a corner of privacy. It was not possible to escape the sound of the explosion... Davies heard it, and Blake, Paget and Rankin, and the nanny policewoman clutched the child to her in the moments after the windows had rattled at the house. The soldiers working through the Southmarsh towards the snipers' rifles heard it.

  Gussie brought the news to the pub. He had run at full pace from the pig-fields overlooking Northmarsh.

  "They've got him. They're bringing him in. He's dead."

  At the edge of the village, Geoff Markham hurried to keep up with Chalmers, who carried the body easily, moving with a fast, loping walk. Perry was behind, and it was as if it were nothing to do with him. He saw the crowd gathered on the green across the road from the house, standing loosely, watching and waiting. When Markham caught up with him he walked beside Chalmers, and the head of the carcass lolled lifelessly against his arm.

  "Why did you do it?"

/>   There was no answer, no turn of the head, no attempt at explanation. Markham thought he understood the gesture of respect for the beast.

  "How did you kill him?"

  Chalmers's lips were set tight... Markham looked into the dead eyes of the corpse and saw the pallor on the face. There was a clean cut bullet-hole in the tunic and a great bloody stain discolouring the material round it. At the neck, there was the mark of a bruise, a deeper colour, just below the ear. He saw them together, very close, two filthy, soaked, wild creatures. There would have been no fear on the hunted man's eyes in those last moments, and there would have been a gentleness on the hunter's face as he had readied the heel of his hand. The same gentleness on the moor and the mountain when he came close to the wounded beast and its pain.

  "Did he say anything?" No answer.

  "Did he fight?" No answer.

  "Did you feel anything?"

  Geoff Markham thought that Andy Chalmers wouldn't be feeling sadness or remorse. It was what was owed to a wounded beast. It was not about a quarrel, it was about ending the misery of pain.. . He had no more questions, there was nothing more that he could think to ask... And, maybe, it was right that he should have no answers to the last moments of the life of Vahid Hossein. He thought of his commitment to the ideology he believed in, and of his untamed defiance and he thought of the death of Meryl Perry and of Gladys Eva Jones... He thought of those who had milked the access knowledge of Gavin Hughes, and those who had put the launcher in the killer's hand... He thought of those who had tied the rope to the ankle of Frank Perry, tethered him, and armed the guns, and waited for the predator to close on him... He had no answers. It seemed unimportant, at that moment, to Geoff Markham that he would never know what had happened in those last few seconds as the launcher was fired high into the sky and away from the target, never know of the confrontation between the two dripping, dirty men in the marsh.

  The crowd edged back as Andy Chalmers walked across the green with his burden.

  Davies was at the open door, and Blake, and Paget with Rankin, watching.

  The young man came to the front gate of the house and dropped his shoulder so that the body fell easily from it. It crumpled, twisted, on to the grass.

  The crowd stared down at the death mask and the bloodied uniform, as if at a creature from the darkness. The water oozed from the uniform and the last of the blood. Markham reflected that, somewhere, a woman would weep for Vahid Hossein.

  The crowd stayed back, as if they were still in fear of this intrusion into their lives, who had made them make choices, as if he still might sting, might bite, as if he still possessed the power to hurt them.

  The first of the soldiers to come said it, "Come on, you bastards, it's not a flicking peepshow. Show him some dignity..."

  Geoff Markham said quietly, "If we went now, Andy, I think we could make the afternoon train to get you home."

  He walked towards his car, unlocked it, opened the door for Chalmers and his dogs. Before he climbed in, he walked with purpose to the shop where the post-box was. He wanted to be the solitary, private man, the man who sat alone in the corner of a bar or a train carriage. He wanted to be a part of the strange, neutered, unshared life of a counter-intelligence officer. He wanted to walk into people's lives and be able to walk out again. He wanted to be lonely, like the woman with the red hair who was a legend... He took the sodden letter from his pocket and dropped it into the post-box.

  As he drove away, with Chalmers sitting expressionless beside him and the smell of the marsh water filling his car, Markham saw the crowd reluctantly dispersing, and he saw Paget spreading a bedroom blanket over the carcass of the beast.

  He had welcomed his guest at the restaurant's door, smiled, and held out his hand in greeting. Harry Fenton had seen the rank suspicion on the intelligence officer's face. He had led him to the corner table. Fenton had grinned before they sat and, his back to the restaurant's clients, he had quickly unbuttoned his shirt, lifted his vest, had exposed his chest, as if to convince the guest that no recording device was strapped to his body.

  "I thought it was good that we should meet, because misunderstandings can so damage our mutual relations."

  He had laid his mobile telephone on the tablecloth, taken the menu cards and he'd told the intelligence officer that he would order for him. He had thought the intelligence officer would have cleared the short-notice invitation with his head of section, with his ambassador, and ultimately with his Tehran control. The man had been wary but not nervous, and Fenton had thought him an experienced professional.

  "There are four names that I wish to throw at you, my friend, and you should listen most carefully to what I say, because the implications of our conversation are a matter of some importance."

  They ate, Fenton heavily and the intelligence officer with little enthusiasm. The mobile telephone had lain silent beside Fenton's place.

  "It's a question of deals. We are into the business of negotiation.

  Let us begin with the names. There is the name of Brigadier Kashef Saderi. For the mission mounted into this country, we have ample evidence of his involvement. Yusuf Khan, formerly Winston Summers, currently under armed guard in hospital. Farida Yasmin Jones, now dead, strangled... There is Vahid Hossein."

  Each time he had given a name, Harry Fenton had smiled and looked up into the intelligence officer's eyes. The man didn't blink, or turn away. Himself, confronted with names, he would have wanted to puke up his food. Of all those he knew at Thames House and worked with, he'd thought only little Miss Prim Parker would have held her composure as well as the intelligence officer had. Of course she would; it was Cathy who had come back from the airport with the idea of shafting the bastards, the esteemed allies. Smiling into his guest's face, he let the names sink, then resumed eating. He cleared his plate. He had ordered gelati for them both, and requested espresso coffee to follow.

  "Around Vahid Hossein a net is currently tightening."

  The tables around them had cleared. Bills were paid. The restaurant staff found coats, umbrellas and shopping bags for their clients. Fenton admired the calm of the intelligence officer. The coffee was brought.

  The mobile telephone bleeped.

  Fenton sipped at his coffee.

  He let the telephone ring.

  He returned the cup slowly to the saucer.

  He lifted the telephone and listened. A smile played on his face. He thanked his caller. The intelligence officer watched him for a sign. He drank again from his coffee cup, wiped his mouth with his napkin then leaned forward.

  "Vahid Hossein is dead my condolences. He was brought out of the marshes like a stinking, slime-ridden rat, dead. It's the way these things end, I suppose, without decency. We are faced1 because of the weight of evidence, with a most serious situation involving relations between our two countries yes?"

  Harry Fenton raised his hand, flicked his fingers imperiously for the bill to be brought him.

  "Allow me to answer my own question. No it can be that it never happened, but "never happened" comes at a price."

  Astonishment spread, for the first time, on the intelligence officer's face, and he bit his lip.

  "It never happened, and therefore it never happens again. I repeat, it never happened. And your agents never again threaten the life of Frank Perry. It's an attractive solution to both of us."

  The intelligence officer reached out and grasped Harry Fenton's hand. The deal was done with their locked fists.

  He paid the bill and carefully pocketed the receipt. It was the last of Harry Fenton's lunches. A few minutes later, after the close whispering of details, they were out on the pavement and he waved down a taxi for his guest. He started to walk back towards Thames House. The body would go from a closed van into the cargo hold of the aircraft. The threat against the life of Frank Perry would not be renewed. The Americans, arrogant shits, were shafted and their staffers would have no brief to spell out in front of the cameras. Peace was preserved, deniabil
ity ruled, and the bridges remained in place. The bottles would be broken out of Barnaby Cox's cabinet to celebrate a good, most satisfactory show.

  He walked at a breezy pace, and he laughed out loud.

  It had never happened.

  Back at Thames House, he told Cox what he had achieved and the raid on the cabinet began.

  Fenton was downing his second drink, might have been the third, when an assistant director wandered into the office.

  "I've just heard well done, Barney. Up on the top floor we're all very pleased, but then we always had confidence that you'd get it right. My congratulations, Barney."

  The body had been taken.

  Davies had gone.

  Paget and Rankin had left before him, loaded their kit into the car and driven away.

  Geoff Markham had stayed as little time as possible.

  The workmen had dismantled the poles and the screens hanging between them; the crane would be there in the morning to lift out the hut, and the technical people to disconnect the electronics. The workmen had carried out the sandbags and had helped to manhandle the mattresses back to the beds upstairs.

  Only Blake, the last of his friends, remained, but would leave at dawn.

  The dusk fell. He had opened every heavy curtain in the house and the lights blazed out over the green. He had torn out all of the net curtains, peeled the sticky tape from the mirrors and placed their pictures back on the walls. He had pushed his easy chair, in the living room, away from the fire and into the window. He sat in his chair and the brightness of the lights lit the path, the front gate and the fence. He saw them come Jerry and Mary first, then Barry and Emma.

  They came out of the darkness beyond the throw of the lights and they laid the flowers against the gate and the fence. The gang from the pub followed them with more flowers. A few minutes afterwards it was Mrs. Fairbrother, Peggy and Paul. The call had come from London. A drink-slurred voice, against a background of laughter and bottles clinking with glasses and music, had told him that the danger was past and would not return, that he was free to live his life.