A Line in the Sand

DAY THREE.

He went off on a wander down the corridor to the coffee machines. The building was hushed quiet. Weekends in Thames House were like a plague time. The corridor was darkened, every second light was off as a part of the newest economy campaign. The doors were shut. The notice boards for cheap holiday advertising, through the civil-service union, for rentable cottages in the country and second-hand cars were in shadow. Perhaps he should ring Vicky's mother with an apology, but later, and maybe send some flowers… He swore softly: he hadn't the right change for two cardboard cups of coffee, only for one, and he didn't know whether she took sugar, whether she took milk. The first big decision of Geoff Markham's morning: milk and no sugar. He stamped back down the corridor, his footfall echoing past the locked doors.

The American, in the same suit and a clean shirt, was sitting opposite her now. He had a newspaper in front of his face and his chair was tilted back, his scuffed shoes on the table.

He felt a youngster's hesitation.

"I thought you might like a coffee."

She looked up.

"If I want coffee, I am capable of getting it."

"I've brought a milk-and-no-sugar."

"I don't take milk in coffee." She was at her screen, typing briskly. The American grinned, "Mr. Markham, I could murder for coffee."

Flushing, Markham slapped the cardboard cup on to the desk in front of him, spilling it.

"You're most kind, Mr. Markham. Miss Parker tells me you're going down to your Juliet Seven's territory?"

"Did she?"

"And I'd like to hitch a ride."

"Would you?"

"So's we get the hassle out of the system good and quick, may we just establish some minor points? If you had a problem getting out of bed that is not a concern of mine. If you have a problem with working weekends, I don't because I work every weekend. OK? You have been tasked as my liaison, and I think us going down to Juliet Seven's territory is a good idea, and a smile helps to start the day."

Littelbaum spoke with the same quiet, relaxed tone with which he had laid out the notion of the tethered goat the image had stayed with Markham through the night. Littelbaum swung his shoes off the desk and reached for the coffee.

Markham said shrilly, "If that's what you want, then that's what you'll get."

He headed back to his cubicle for his coat and the American trailed behind him.

"She is, Mr. Markham, a very fine young woman, a very attractive young woman… Ah, Day Three…" The American had paused in front of the door, and the smile rippled at his face. ~I believe that we've four days remaining. He will move, and very soon. He will want to strike as soon as is practical. I assume, by now, he or his collaborators will have gone close for reconnaissance and he will already know that the target is protected. That will not deter him, only delay him. Don't get a comfortable, dangerous illusion into your head, Mr. Markham, that he will see the protection and back off. He has the spirit of Alamut, where it was all about blind obedience and discipline. Let me tell you a story about old times at Alamut…"

Markham snatched up his briefcase, shrugged into his coat, slammed the door shut behind him. He went fast, and sourly, towards the corridor. The American was at his shoulder.

"In the time of the Old Man of the Mountain, Hasan-i-Sabah, Alamut was visited by King Henry of Champagne. That was a big prestigious visit. Hasan-i-Sabah needed to put on a show that would impress the King with the dedication of the fida'is. The show he put on was the death leap. Centuries later Marco Polo, on his travels, heard about it and chronicled it. Hasan-i-Sabah had some of his people walk to a cliff-top, a high cliff, then jump off to their deaths. They weren't pushed, they were volunteers. That's obedience and that's discipline. I'm telling you, Mr. Markham, so you understand better the commitment of your opposition. They just walked off the cliff because that's what they'd been told to do."

He held out his hand and felt the beat of the rain.

Vahid Hossein's arm was at full stretch. In his fingers was one of the last pieces of chewed rabbit meat.

The bird watched him. The rain made a spray of jewelled colours on its collar feathers and on its back. It was beside his hand and he saw the wild suspicion in its eyes. He thought the suspicion fought with its exhaustion and hunger.

Each time it hopped closer, he could see the darkening flesh of the wound under the wing and he knew the bird would die unless he could clean it.

He made small sounds, slight whistling noises, the cries he had heard long before in a faraway marshland, like a hen bird to chicks. The beak of the bird, with the power to rip at his hand, was beside his fingers and the chewed meat. He saw the talons that could gouge his flesh.

He had woken and crawled from his bramble den. The bird had been watching him and he'd taken comfort from it. Once again, he had skirted the marsh, cut through Old Covert into Hoist Covert and crossed the river. For a final time, he'd gone over the ground he would use at the end of that day. He had approached the house from the side and had found a tree in a garden under which the grass was covered with a carpet of blown-away blossom. He had sat motionless in the tree for an hour. From it he could see the back and the side of the house, across three gardens. He saw the soft light in the hut and the curtained black windows. He watched the policemen, back-lit when they opened the door of the hut, emerge and walk the perimeter of the garden, and he saw the guns they carried.

The car cruised past every twenty minutes, as regular as if a clock timed it. That night, he would return in the darkness at the end of the day, and he would use the rifle.

The harrier, in a darting movement, took the chewed meat from his fingers. He could have wept with happiness.

There was caked blood and yellow mucus on the wound.

Carefully, as if he moved forward on a target, Vahid Hossein took another scrap of meat with his free hand, chewed on it and laid it on his wrist. The bird flapped, jumped. He felt its talons strike into his arm and then the prick of the beak as it took the chewed meat from his wrist.

The bird perched on his arm and, with great gentleness, he stroked the wet feathers on the crown of its head.

"It's Saturday."

"I really think, Mr. Perry, we should talk this through."

"It's what I do every Saturday."

"You have to accept, Mr. Perry, and I am picking my words with care, that the situation has changed."

"I haven't been out, not even into the garden, of my house in two days."

"Which has been sensible."

"I am bloody suffocating in here. Enough is enough, I go out every Saturday lunch-time."

"Mr. Perry, I am not responsible for the situation."

"Oh, that's brilliant. I suppose I'm responsible. Blame me, that's convenient."

It was another of those moments when Bill Davies thought it necessary to assert his authority.

"You are, in my opinion, totally responsible. You told my colleague, Mr. Blake, last night about your read ion to a radio appeal that gave your former identity. Probably half of the adult population of the country heard that appeal, and the name of the hospital you were directed to. Don't you think that the Iranian embassy listens to the early-morning news bulletins on the radio, which follow directly after such appeals? I'm not a high-flying detective, but I'm bright enough to put that together. They'd have picked you up there, then hung on to the trace. It was your mistake just as the weapon in the playground was mine. Don't get me wrong, Mr. Perry, I'm not one of those people who'll say you've brought all this on yourself through emotional carelessness, but I know plenty who would. That was just to set the record straight brought all this on yourself."

But the principal had a streak of obstinacy, which Davies found mildly attractive. Perry blinked, absorbed what he was told, gulped, then said, "It's Saturday, and I'm going."

"Your last word?"

"Last final word. I can't take it, another whole day, like a rat in a cage."

"I'll make the arrangements."

"What arrangements?"

"It's not straightforward, Mr. Perry, getting you out for a Saturday lunch-time drink, then back from the pub."

His principal had swung out of the dining room, and shut the door noisily, petulantly, behind him. Bill Davies sat again at the dining-room table reading the paper. He'd rung home that morning, hoped one of the boys would pick it up, but Lily had. He'd tried to be pleasant, to make reasonable noises, and she'd asked him when he was coming home, but he couldn't answer her, hadn't been able to think of anything else to say. She'd put down the phone on him. In seventeen weeks he had had nine complete days off work, and for four of them he had been so tired he had slept through till midday. His marriage was going down the drain and he didn't know what he could do about it. He'd seen it often enough, with other guys, who all put on the brave front and moved out of their homes to shack up with barmaids and slags. Some were taken off SB protection, and some smooth-talked the counsellor and kept the job and the firearm, had the meetings in parks and at McDonald's with the kids every third weekend, and they all talked about the new woman in their lives as if it were heaven. He could never find the time to think about it, he was too busy, too stressed. If it happened if- Bill Davies would have two or three seconds to react, top estimate. Should his mind be on his wife, his kids, in those seconds he would lose his principal, if it happened. All the case histories he knew were about mistakes and distractions.

He pushed up from the table and went to the window. The dining-room window was next on her list for net curtains. He stood back from the glass and peered out. He could see the neat homes, the tended gardens, the shop, more homes, and then the village hall with waste ground at the back.

It had been raining earlier and the road glistened; there was thin sunshine now but the rain was threatening from the sea. At the end of the road, on the corner, was the pub. From the window he could see only the end gable of the building. He counted eighteen houses on the left side, between the house and the pub, and the parked cars, and fifteen on the right side, with the shop… At the shooting range they used was Hogan's Alley, a row of plywood houses, and in front of them were derelict gutted cars. Behind the plywood and in the cars were cardboard shapes that could jump into vision. When to fire, when not to fire, was the reason for Hogan's Alley. They used 'simunition' there, paint-tipped 9mm plastic bullets. The target might have a weapon or be holding a baby against her chest. No escape when walking Hogan's Alley: hold the fire and the instructor would tell you drily, "You're dead, mate, he got you." Fire too soon and you'd be told, "You killed a woman, mate, you're charged with murder." The road, the houses, the parked cars, was Hogan's Alley, all the way to the pub.

She came into the dining room and brought him a mug of coffee.

"That's very kind of you, Mrs. Perry, but you didn't have to."

"I was doing one for myself. You're going to the pub?"

"That's what Mr. Perry wants, so that's what we're going to do."

"It's not about a drink, it's about finding his friends."

"I appreciate that."

"He has to have his friends."

"Yes."

She was close to him. He could smell the scent and warmth of her and could see the worn-down strain at her eyes. It was always worse for the women. She held a handkerchief in her hand, pulling and worrying at it. Had he put his arm around her shoulder then her head would have gone to his chest and he thought she would have wept. It was not his job to offer comfort. He thanked her for the coffee and began to make the arrangements to visit the pub at lunch-time.

They were at the last stages of the discharge of the crude. The weather at the offshore jetty was too fierce to permit his crew to work with paint rollers on the superstructure and hull plates of the tanker. The master's crew were employed on small maintenance jobs in the accommodation block below the bridge and in the engine housing; unnecessary work, but something had to be found for them. The master's greater concern, more than finding work for his crew and occupation for his officers, was the failure of the people in Tehran to provide him with a time for sailing. He still expected to leave the waters of the terminal port that night, but the coded confirmation had not reached him. The man who had gone over the side of his tanker was never far from his thoughts. It was not possible for the master to believe this man was blocked. He demanded of his radio technicians that they maintain a watch through every hour of the day. He waited.

"Hello can you put me through to Theft Section, thanks… Hello, who's that?… Tracy, it's Gladys yes, Gladys Jones. I've still got flu. Yes, that's what I heard, a lot of it about. I'm not coming in, not passing it all round… Yes, bed's the best place. Can you tell them in Personnel? Thanks… What?… Police?… What sort of police?… What did they want?… Thanks, Tracy, it'll just be something silly… Thanks… I'll sort it when I've got rid of the flu… No, I'm not in trouble… "Bye…"

She pocketed the handkerchief through which she had spoken to give the sound of illness to her voice and put down the receiver of the payphone. A woman beat her knuckles impatiently on the glass screen beside her. She felt faint, worse than if she had influenza. Detectives had been in that morning, a Saturday morning when only a half-strength staff worked till lunch-time, had searched through the drawers of her desk and asked where she was. If they knew her name they would know, also, her car. She staggered away from the payphone, barging past the woman. She had been told there were four detectives. She was an intelligent young woman, she could assess the scale of the crisis that faced her.

But it did not cross the mind of Farida Yasmin that she should run, hide and abandon him. He needed her.

Martindale kept the Red Lion in the village.

He was a brewery tenant, and every penny of cash ever saved by him and his wife was now sunk in the pub, along with the bank's overdraft. It had been a mistake. The mistake had been in coming to the village on a warm, crowded August day two summers back, seeing the visitors parading on the beach and queuing for ice-creams at the shop, and believing that he could do profitable trade where his predecessor had failed. He had thought the market was in visitors wanting cheap meals and fruit machines. But last summer it had rained in torrents and the visitors had stayed away. It had been their dream, through all the years they'd owned a corner news agent in Hounslow, to have a busy, pretty pub on the coast. Now the dream was going sour, and the bank manager wrote more often.

His winter trade was entirely local not gin and tonics, not sherries, not whiskies with ginger, but the brewery's beers and lagers, on which the mark-up was least profitable. He had enough locals to make a darts team, and they came in wearing their work clothes to prop themselves against his bar. If he alienated his few regulars, he would not be able to meet the brewery's dues and keep the bloody bank off his back.

He quite liked Frank Perry.

Martindale owed Frank Perry. Frank Perry had helped him sort out, at minimal cost, the central-heating boiler in the cellar. If he'd gone to the trade it would have been maximum expense. The far side of the bar, the previous night, the talk had been of Frank Perry, the school and the policemen with guns.

He scraped open the bolts on the front door, against which the rain lashed, and waited for his Saturday lunch-time drinkers.

"I'll look ridiculous."

Davies said firmly, "In matters of protection, Mr. Perry, please do me the courtesy of accepting my advice."

"It weighs half a ton."

"Mr. Perry, I am asking you to wear it."

"I can't."

"Mr. Perry, put it on."

"No."

Meryl exploded, "For Christ's sake, Frank, put the bloody thing on."

They were in the kitchen. The boy, Stephen, was in the shed with Paget and Rankin, out in the garden. It would be worse if the kid heard the parents rowing. Davies held the bullet-proof vest.

"What does it matter what you bloody well look like?" she added.

"Put it on."

His principal took off the anorak and scowled, but he'd been chastened by the fury of her outburst. She turned, went out, crashed the door shut after her and they heard her stamping up the stairs. His principal dropped his head and Davies slipped on the vest. It was navy blue, kevlar-plated, and the manufacturers said it was proof against a handgun's bullets, flying glass and metal shrapnel. It covered Perry's chest, stomach and back. Davies pulled the Velcro straps tight and fastened them. She came back in, carrying a grotesquely large sweater. Perry was foul-faced, but she just threw it at him. Davies kept a wry little smile hidden because the sweater fitted comfortably over the vest.

"And what about you?"

"What I do, Mr. Perry, is not your concern."

"I hope you find them," Meryl said.

"Find what?"

"What you're looking for I shouldn't expect too much."

Perry led, followed by Davies.

He held his radio up to his face and told Paget and Rankin that he was leaving the location in the company of Juliet Seven. Through the front door, the wind and rain whipped at them. They walked briskly. The house was now a gloomy bunker, and he thought it was precious for his principal to get out of it. Davies's eyes raked each of the front gardens to his right and left, and the parked cars. Since he had given the instruction, the unmarked mobile had gone up and down the road seven times between the house and the pub. It was what it took to get a man his Saturday lunch-time drink. They had started at walking pace, then they jogged. Davies held the hem of his jacket so that his Glock in the waist holster would not be exposed. The rain came on harder, and they ran. Going to the pub was an idiotic, unnecessary risk.

Before he had left the bed-and-breakfast, a call to the duty officer had told him they were now categorized as threat-level 2: The principal is confirmed on a death list, the enemy intend to kill the principal; the security co-ordinator does not have the method or the time at which the attempt will be made. Davies knew it by heart.

He had done protection officer on threat-level 2 years back when he had guarded the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, but he had never been with a principal categorized as threat-level 1. As they sprinted across the car-park in front of the pub, he was thinking that it would be worse for her, left behind in the bunker, lights out, curtains drawn.

They reached the porch. Davies used his sleeve to wipe his face, then smoothed his hair. He heard laughter from inside, and canned music.

In front of him, the principal stiffened momentarily, as if gathering his nerve, before shoving open the door.

A man was leaning against the bar, talking. Perry said, almost diffident, "Hello, Vince."

Another younger man at the bar stopped laughing.

"All right, then, Gussie?"

Another man, older, was perched on a stool.

"Good to see you, Paul."

Round the corner was a larger bar with more drinkers. Davies wasn't concerned with them. He stared around him at the fruit machines, tables and chairs, reproduction photographs in sepia tint on the walls and bits of ship brass, the smoking fire burning wet logs. The story had stopped, and the laughter; the older man held his glass against his privates and beer was frothed on his lip. The landlord was a skinny, whey-faced weasel with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Davies thought it a pitiful place. Everything around him was fake. He noticed a chair at the side of the bar, away from the drinkers, where he could face the door and also see round the corner.

"What's it going to be, Mr. Davies?"

"Orange juice, thanks."

He eased down into the chair.

The west Middlesex whine of the landlord's voice cut the silence.

"Before you go asking, I'm not serving you. Far as I'm concerned, the sooner you turn round and get back out of here the better."

"Oh, yes, very funny. Mine's a pint, and an orange juice, thanks." Perry was fishing for coins in his pocket. Davies glanced down the blackboard on which was chalked the menu for the day -sausage and chips and peas, burger and chips and peas, steak and chips and peas… "I'm not having you in here it's within my rights. I'm not serving you."

"Come on, a pint and an orange juice."

"You want it spelled out? I am not serving you. I've my custom to think of. That man with you, he's carrying a gun. I'm not having that on my premises, and I'm not having you. Got it? Bugger off."

Davies stood up from the chair, saw the stunned shock spreading on his principal's face and the cold hostility of the men he'd called Vince, Gussie and Paul, and the landlord's smirk. His principal clenched his fists and the blood flushed his cheeks. Davies kicked back his chair and strode towards the bar. He caught his principal's sweater and propelled him out through the door, left it open, let the rain spatter in. He heard the laughter behind him.

The rain ran on Perry's face. He seemed dazed and in shock.

"I thought he was a good man ignorant, a bore, but a good man… Jesus, I just don't believe it."

Davies said, "Let's get the hell out."

"Can't credit it, the bloody man… When I was low, last night, didn't think I could get lower, Blake said I should ask for the Al Haig story."

"When you're further down, that's when you'll get the Al Haig story."

They were standing in the middle of the road. Away ahead, wipers flailing, headlights on, was the unmarked car. There was a sign, Public Footpath, to the left. Davies took the principal's arm and headed for it. They walked between the banks of nettles and brambles, stepping over the dog shit, towards the rumble of the sea. They crossed a wooden bridge. The rain was in his hair, in his eyes, wg~ighting his jacket, wrapping the sodden trousers against his legs. He radioed the Wendy house and told them they were going to the beach.

The marshland began a thousand metres to his right. They scrambled up the loose, tumbling stones of the sea wall, clawing their way to the top into the teeth of the wind and the rainstorm. The tide was out. The pebble- and shell-pocked beach ran down to the sea in front of them. Beyond the tide-line were the white crested waves, then the shroud of the mist. His principal shrugged his arm clear. They walked together. The rain plastered his hair across his forehead, and Davies shivered in the cuffing cold of the wind.

His principal stopped, faced the sea and the emptiness, sucked the breath into his lungs and shouted, "You bastards, you fucking bastards! I thought you were my friends."

"What did he do?"

"Why do you need to know?"

"I have to know what he did, and the consequences of it, otherwise I cannot evaluate the reality of the threat."

"Didn't anybody tell you what the end game was?"

"Nobody's told me, and nobody's told him."

Geoff Markham drove. It had taken an hour of the journey to clean the detritus from his mind. Only when they were out on the open road did he begin to push.

"Why ask me?"

"I believe, because you are here, that you were a part of it."

"You need to know?"

"Unless I know, Mr. Littelbaum, I cannot do my job."

The American sighed.

"It's not a pleasant story, Mr. Markham. It's about greater and lesser evils."

One of the room's walls was covered by the big-scale maps.

The largest showed western Iran's seaboard, the Gulf, the eastern coastline of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. A second map showed a city plan of Bandar Abbas and the road going west-north-west, past the docks, past the Hotel Naghsh-e Jahan, towards Bandar-e Khoemir. Tilted against the opposite wall were two display-boards on which were pinned the photographs of selected personnel from the bogus petrochemical plant. Although it was early on a bright morning the blinds of the room's windows were drawn. Hanging in front of them was the blown-up satellite photograph of the manufacturing plant. They waited. They had received the call from the airport, which told them he had arrived safely off the flight. They smoked, sipped coffee and nibbled at biscuits. In the room were two men and a woman from the Secret Intelligence Service, three Americans representing the Agency and the Bureau and the military, and the two Israelis. They waited for him to be brought to the discreet back door, normally used as an entry and exit point for kitchen staff and vetted cleaners. If it had not been for the most recently received intelligence briefings, none of the men and the one woman in the room would have countenanced the plan that was now set in place. They made desultory conversation. None would willingly have given such a pivotal position in the plan to a low-grade engineering salesman, but it was accepted that the choice was not theirs. He was the access point. Only he could tell them whether the plan could be launched or should be aborted. They waited in the room, just as officers of the Israeli Mossad waited in secrecy in the American huts of an Egyptian airbase with the pilots who would fly them south, just as the officers and crew of a United States Navy fast patrol boat waited off the Emirates port of Shaijah. All of them waited for the arrival of the one individual who could give them the information required to launch or abort. He was led in. He was wan, strained, swaying on his feet with tiredness. His hands trembled as he gulped orange juice.

They all knew the risk he had taken. They let his nerves steady. He was sat in a chair and he told them, in a stumbling monologue, all that he knew about the restaurant, about the bus, about the invitation list to the celebration meal. When they had finished with him, teased out of him the precious information on which the plan depended, he was taken out by Penny Flowers to be told of the new life offered him. After he was gone, after the final assessment of his information, the cypher messages were sent and the mission was launched.

"What do you mean the "greater evils"?"

"Try the missile programme."

"Five years ago yes? how far along that line were the Iranians?"

"We were getting a mess of reports on the warheads but all contradictory, on when they'd be ready with nuclear, chemical and microbiological. We could handle that, live with it."

"Explain that, Mr. Littelbaum."

"We thought we had a little time, but not with missiles."

"They weren't contradictory on the missiles?"

"Very clear, very precise. Without missiles, warheads don't count. They were up to speed with the missile programme, maybe two years away."

"You cannot launch a warhead until you've a missile."

"Go to the top of the class, Mr. Markham. We needed to buy the time, to slow the programme. But the installations are underground, bomb-proof, have air defence, with an army round them."

"Enter Juliet Seven."

"He gave us the way in. We couldn't reach the hardware, so the option we had was with their personnel."

The director was in the front of the bus, a double seat to himself. Behind him sat the project managers, the scientists and the foreign engineers. He was relaxed and felt a sense of happy satisfaction. Behind him he heard the gentle, joking banter of the men who had made possible the advancement of Projects 193, 1478 and 972, and the babble of Farsi, Russian, Chinese and the North Koreans' dialect. It was a worthy occasion, the retirement party for his colleague who controlled Project 972, and he had personally taken time to oversee the arrangements in the restaurant, down to the detail of the menu that would be served and the music that would be played. He rocked contentedly in his seat. He had believed, ever since his education in mechanical engineering at Imperial College, London University, that a happy team was a productive team.

The bus sped down the narrow road beyond the docks and left the city behind. He was lighting a cigarette, the flame close to his nostrils, when the driver stamped on the brake. He saw the man peering ahead. Through the cigarette smoke and the windscreen, a red light waved in the night's darkness. The bus slowed as the driver pumped the brake. He leaned forward, to make out a shadowed figure behind the light, and then a road-works emergency sign. He disliked lateness and glanced at his watch. He saw, thought he saw, a figure pass beside the bus carrying something, but could not be certain. The barrier was pulled aside and the bus powered on past the man holding the light. He eased back into his seat. Above the cackle of accents and laughter, the director heard the single thud from the side of the bus behind him and twisted instinctively towards the source of the noise. The last thing that registered clearly in his mind was the sight of the wall of fire coming like a torrent in spate through the bus. In the final moments of his life, the fire surged against his clothes, the skin of his hands and face, and beating in his ears were the screams of the scientists and foreign engineers. Trapped in the bus, with the flames and the screams, there was no possibility of escape.

"The personnel burned to death. Christ."

"We delayed the programme.~ "But the missile factories were the same the morning after."

"Not the same. Yes, bits of metal remained in underground workshops, but the team was gone. Take the team away and you screw the projects. Men matter. It's simply not possible to fly in replacements and carry on as if nothing had happened."

"The missile programme was the greater evil?"

"In three years they would have had the capability of striking against any country in the Middle East, including Israel even the possibility of reaching southern Europe. We bought five years.

"What was the lesser evil?"

For three consecutive days the satellite photography showed the skeletal shape of the burned-out bus. On the first day the movement of rescue workers retrieving bodies could be clearly seen from the enhanced pictures, with fire engines and ambulances. Radio Tehran carried reports of a tragic road accident in which twenty-four men involved in the petrochemical industry had died. The next day the photography showed a small group of forensic experts, identified by their white overalls, crawling through the gutted bus, and Radio Tehran made no mention of the accident. On the third day the pictures beamed from the satellite showed the bus being loaded on to a flat-top lorry, and Radio Tehran's bulletins had brief reports of local funerals. By that third day, the United States Navy fast patrol boat had returned to normal duties, and the United States Air Force had flown five agents of the Mossad to Israel and the life of Gavin Hughes had been painted out.

"Twenty-four men killed did I hear right, Mr. Littelbaum? Is that what you're telling me? I can barely believe what you're saying."

"What you heard a programme was delayed."

"That was the greater evil?"

"Their Weapons of Mass Destruction threatened our interests."

"And what the hell was the lesser evil?"

"The involvement of Juliet Seven Gavin Hughes. The mission was done skilfully, and they'd a poor forensic infrastructure. It was days, going on two weeks, before they could confirm the initial suspicion of sabotage, and by then Gavin Hughes had ceased to exist."

"I'm damn near speechless, it was pure savagery."

"We were looking after our backs, and we did it well."

"You were involved?"

"To a small degree, liaison yes, I was involved."

"Did you consider the human misery the widows, the children?"

"We considered the effect of the missile programme. I don't really find emotion helps me get through the day."

"What about the little, awkward matter of state-sponsored terrorism?"

"Not applicable."

"If the Iranians kill one of their Kurds in Berlin, wherever, or a man anywhere in Europe who's planning murder, mayhem, in Tehran, we shout, scream, recall ambassadors, impose trade sanctions. We call it state-sponsored terrorism."

"Correct."

"If we roast twenty-four Iranians-' "We call it looking after our backs."

"Forgive me, but that is mind-bending hypocrisy."

"You are driving too fast again, Mr. Markham."

"And if the Israelis go into Jordan to murder an activist?"

"That is justifiable self-defence. You should slow down a bit, Mr. Markham. I would suggest to you that the prime objective of an intelligence agent is to further by clandestine means the objectives of the tax-payers who put food in his gut and a roof over his head."

"I believe in morality."

"I don't get to mix with people who use that word often… That's a better speed, thank you."

"I hope you sleep well at night."

"I sleep excellently, thank you. If we all talked about morality, Mr. Markham, we'd none of us finish a day's work."

"You used that poor bloody sales engineer."

"What the lady, Miss Parker, said, your work took you to Ireland. Unless you were completely useless at your job, I would have to assume that you "used" people, were competent at running agents, manipulating them, exploiting them. Then you let them go… They did a job of work for you… Did you go and see your line manager and bleat about your unhappiness at the ethics of running informers?"

"When does the marksman shoot, Mr. Littelbaum?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Does the marksman shoot as the predator approaches the tethered goat or when it's on the goat?"

"He shoots when he has the optimum chance of a clean kill. It's nice country out here. It's a little bit like west Iowa country."

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"For telling me."

"Do you feel the better for it?"

"I'm devastated… but yes, I'm the better for knowing it."

"Would your Juliet Seven be the better for knowing it? Will you tell him?"

"I don't know I feel like throwing up. He was betrayed, treated like shit."

"I think we're going to hit the rain, which is a shame… Listen, Mr. Markham, we went to a hell of a lot of trouble to do your Juliet Seven a favour. The Israelis could have machine-gunned the bus and left their calling-card, bullets and grenades. We insisted on the fire and gave the Mossad the hardware, which guaranteed slow, difficult progress for the Iranian investigators. We bought your man time for his disappearance. He should have been safe, beyond their reach I imagine, if you ever have the chance to look for it, it was his error that led them here. We did enough for him. Do you think there's time to stop for a pork pie and a beer?"

The beach seemed endless, stretching to the horizon where the cloud was poised over the grey stones of the wall behind which was the marshland. The wind and rain beat relentlessly on their backs.

Not until they turned for home did his principal start to talk. Davies stayed a pace behind him.

"Look at this place. It's as good as dead, it's condemned. Everything here is for nothing. The sea rules and eats at the place, like it's rotten and decayed. Seven hundred years ago this place was alive. It had a great fleet for trade, fishing and boat-building.

The Saxons, the Vikings and the Normans settled here, where we are now. It had wealth. Their boats sailed after fish as far north as Iceland and they traded as far south as Spain and east to the Baltic. The sea killed this place, that same sea. In January 1328, there was a storm and a million tons of sand and stone was washed across the river mouth. The wealth went and the land began to follow it. The sea has the ultimate power. It eats at the cliffs and at the beach every minute of every day. Right here, where we are, it's a yard a year. Up the coast, not far, it's four hundred yards in the last five years. The fucking place, and everyone who's here, they're all doomed. Little people, fucking pygmies, living their lives, thinking they can change things. They've bulldozed sea walls, concreted the base of the cliffs, put in groynes and breakwaters, but it doesn't make a damn of difference. The sea keeps on coming. A couple of miles down the coast was the tenth biggest town in England, five churches, built by people who thought that they'd last for ever. Now they're all gone into the sea. They were pygmies then and pygmies now. The sea cannot be resisted. We're all dead here, doomed, we have no future. We build little houses, little gardens, make our little lives and for what? For flicking nothing. People paid masons to carve gravestones so that the lives of their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters would be remembered but the stones are under the sea, like they'd never existed. We worry about the present but we're just too small. The future is the sea coming in, taking, snatching, in spite of our little efforts to protect ourselves. There is nothing we can do because there is no defence… Will you tell me, when do you think the bastard will come?"

In the distance on the sea wall, wrapped in a dark anorak and waterproof leggings, watching them, facing into the thrust of the wind and the drive of the rain, was one of the policemen from the unmarked car. He cradled his gun close to his body, as if to protect himself against the onslaught of the gathering storm, now and in the future.

What Davies, drenched wet and frozen, had been told was that the killer would come soon, but he didn't say it.