A Line in the Sand

Chapter Six.

e went too fast on to the bridge and, too late, saw the twist in the road beyond it.

Yusuf Khan had met the man, stood in awe of him. He had come out of the darkness in response to the flash of the headlights, just as the intelligence officer had told him. He had babbled greetings to the man and tried to please him with the warmth of his welcome. Nothing had been given him in return. He had been told sharply, in good but slightly accented English, that he talked too much.

He was in a myriad web of narrow side-roads and he was lost and did not wish to show it. The first light was already a smear in the east. He went too fast over the bridge unaware of the right-hand bend immediately beyond it.

First the man had peeled off his wet suit, then stood in his longtrousered underclothes and had clicked his fingers irritably at Yusuf Khan, who watched. He had been caught idle and felt keenly the criticism of the snapped fingers. He had dragged the newly bought clothes from the bag, and the man had cursed softly because the shop labels were still on them. Yusuf Khan had torn them off before handing them back. He had held the torch and passed the man the camouflage trousers, the tunic and the thick socks. The fact that the new boots were not laced provoked another savage glance.

When he had set out the schedule in his mind, he had not expected that the clothes would be worn now; he'd assumed the man wouldn't be using them from the start. And he had not expected that the man would demand the opening of the tubular bag. With only the torch beam to guide him, the man had been meticulous in his examination of the weapons. He had broken open the mechanism of the launcher and examined each of the working parts~ studied them, cleaned some with the window rag from the car, and reassembled it. Because it was only a small torch beam Yusuf Khan had recognized that the man had worked virtually blind. He had leaned forward, anxious to please, held the torch closer but had abruptly been waved back. The schedule had gone.

The man, in the fragile light, had then turned his attention to the squat form of the rifle. Yusuf Khan had never seen a man take apart a firearm, and was amazed at the seemingly casual way that the weapon disintegrated into pieces. Each round had been examined before two magazines had been filled, and the pressure of the coil tested. By the time he had started up the car his fingers had been stiff and his legs taut, and he had lurched through the manual gears. The sausage bag with the weapons had been on the floor behind him within the man's reach as if, already, he was prepared for war, to kill. The man had leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

He was lost, stressed, when he came too fast over the bridge and into the hidden right-hand bend beyond it. As he swerved to hold the centre of the road, the wheels failed to grip, and Yusuf Khan stamped on the brake pedal. At that moment the 5-series BMW was out of control.

The car slewed on shrieking tyres across the width of the road. He saw the pole that carried telegraph wires. Short of it was the ditch, looming towards him in the headlights' glare.

Yusuf Khan saw everything, so clearly, so slowly.

Plunging into the ditch, the bonnet going down the ditch throwing the back of the car upwards the man's arms went up to cover his forehead, but he made no sound the car standing on its nose no fear on the man's face the roof of the car impacting against the telegraph pole.

There was a wild pain in his leg, a fleeting sensation, as the car came down, crazily angled in the ditch. His skull hit the point where the roof met the windscreen.

Blackness around him, and peace.

His partner, Euan, would be in the shop, cleaning the floor and the windows, stocking the shelves, putting out the ice-cream sign, taking a list of the postcards that needed replacing.

The early morning was a precious time to Dominic Evans.

He loved his partner deeply, but he also loved the early-morning walk, on his own, out of the village and towards the Southmarsh. Left behind, in Euan's care, was his dog because the sweet little soul would disturb the glory of the early-morning's tranquillity. He was forty-nine, had come to the village and bought the shop fifteen years back with the money from his mother's estate. For twelve of those fifteen years Euan had been his partner. He thought the villagers, with their Neanderthal minds, accepted him and did not jeer at him because he had integrated carefully and made it his ambition to write down the old history of the community. Through learning the history, explaining it, sharing it, he had won acceptance, and he was discreet. It was a good place to gain the sense of history's inevitability, to recognize the futility of man's efforts to combat the power of nature. In time the sea would claim all of it: everything that man had built would crumble off these soft cliffs and be lost to the waves.

In the half-light, he walked past the narrow, silted stream that had once been a great waterway where skilled artisans built big ships. That summer, he would write a special pamphlet on the ship-building from Viking to Cromwellian times, publish it at his own expense and lecture on it to the Historical Society. But that morning, each morning for a month, history did not intrude on his thoughts.

It was the miracle month of survival and navigation, the month when the birds completed the migration from the south seaboard of the Mediterranean and the west coast of Africa. Each morning in the dawn before the shop opened and each evening in the dusk after it closed, he went to watch for the arrival of the birds on the Southmarsh. That they came from so far, that they could find their way to this particular area of water channels and reed-banks, was truly incredible to Dominic.

He settled on the damp ground, at his watching place. Usually he went to the Southmarsh, more rarely to the Northmarsh. There were godwits~ war biers and avocets, but they had not come from Africa, nor the shelducks, nor the geese. It was a few minutes from the time that he should return to the village and open the shop when he saw the bird he was waiting for.

The tears pricked in his eyes, and the sight made this gentle man cry out in anger.

The harrier flew low in tortured flight. A pair had come back to the Southmarsh three evenings before and their wing-beat after the journey of thousands of miles was firm, true; they had left the next morning for a destination further north. It was as if this bird flew on one wing.

For all his anger, for all his gentleness, there was nothing Dominic could do to help the bird.

It had come home, it was injured. The infection would be in the wound. It would die a starved, agonized death. He lost sight of it as it came down into the reeds.

He wiped his eyes. The harrier, Circus aeruginosus, rust and copper feathering, was the most beautiful bird he knew. It would be in pain, in hunger, in exhaustion, and he was helpless.

He went back to open his shop.

Vicky slept as Geoff Markham dressed. While he did so he played in his mind with the words she had written down for him, made sentences for them. I believe in the totally ethical use of finance… A bank, in my opinion, should never deny the participation of the investor in the handling of his or her affairs… Money is for the benefit of the whole of the community, not just for the wealthy… Finance stands at the interface of society and should be used to create general wealth and not narrow affluence… Vicky had said that he must use the modern idiom, not the cobwebbed language of Thames House.

He put on the new tie she had bought, thin, woven, with brightly coloured stripes.

The intelligence officer, in his Kensington flat, took the call. The number of the mobile telephone was jealously guarded and changed every month, and he assumed that the land-line telephone was routinely listened to. A voice of great calm spoke of a traffic accident, gave a location of signposts a mile from the accident site, and quietly told of the need for help in moving onwards.

Deniability was the creed of the intelligence officer.

He took the number of his caller and rang off. He threw on basic clothes. He had not the time to consult Tehran, nor to call his colleague's apartment in Marble Arch. It was his decision, against every regulation of his service, that he should take a personal involvement in a situation of emergency.

Often, his Kensington apartment was watched. There might be a car, with the engine idling, on the far side of the road to the front lobby of the block or in the side-street. He went out through the fire door at the back, past the janitor's little locked room and the waste-bins. To further the creed of deniability, he ran for a phone-box. He called a number, waited for it to be answered, heard the sleep-ridden voice, explained what had happened, ordered what was to be done, rang off, walked back to his apartment.

He believed he had not compromised the creed of deniability.

Blake told him that the woman in the house across the green had a big backside and didn't draw the curtains when she undressed, and that was about the limit of his overnight excitement. There were cat's footprints all over the bonnet and Blake told him that he'd had the brute inside with him until it had tried to get into his food-box. Blake stacked the H amp;K back into the case and slotted it behind the rear-seat arm rest.

Davies rang the front-door bell as Blake headed back to the bed-and-breakfast.

The door was opened by the wife and, from her eyes, it didn't seem that she'd slept. She led him into the kitchen. The boy broke from his cornflakes and stared at him. Davies thought he was looking for his gun, but he wouldn't have seen it in the waist holster underneath the fall of his suit jacket. She told the boy to go upstairs, get his books ready, go to the toilet, get his hair combed.

"Morning, Mr. Davies."

And it didn't look to him that Frank Perry, the principal, had slept any better than his wife. There was a dazed tiredness in his face.

"I don't need to trouble you for too much of your time, Mr. Perry, but you had rather an amount to take on board yesterday, and I'd like to confirm a few points."

"Wasn't the easiest of days I've known but, what I've said to Meryl, it could have been worse."

"Always best to be positive, Mr. Perry."

"We could have run away could have turned our backs on all this."

From what he had seen in her face, the hopelessness in the fall of her mouth, he thought the woman was deeply wounded and he wondered if Perry realized it. Not his job… He should have phoned Lily, should have spoken to the boys, should have… He was hardly qualified for marriage counselling, and it wasn't his job to try.

"What I want to reiterate, Mr. Perry, are the procedures, and for the correct application of the procedures I need your co-operation."

"And you should not forget that I worked for my country, Mr. Davies. I am owed protection."

They faced each other across the breakfast table. There was a tight, curled snarl at Perry's mouth.

He smiled, defused.

"Of course, Mr. Perry. If I could just repeat… Please, you don't spring any surprises on me. You tell me who you are expecting as visitors, where you will be entertaining them. That will be very helpful to me."

"It's a village, Mr. Davies, it's not an anonymous damn city. Our friends call by, they don't make appointments, we're not an optician or a dentist."

He was generous. He knew that the snarl was from tiredness and understood the stress. Behind Perry, the woman watched him, her eyes never leaving him.

"And I need to know, Mr. Perry, your intended movements for the day. Are you going out? Where are you going? How long will you be there? Who will you meet? I need specific detail of your planned movements."

"Why?"

He reckoned they were sparring and wasting each other's time. He said it straight, brutally, "We have laid down procedures, they are based on experience. You are at least danger when in your own home. You are in the greatest danger when in transit. There are two points of maximum danger, when you leave your home and are exposed as you go to the car, and when you leave your car and wallz into a building, particularly if that is a regular journey. You are in danger en route, if your journey is predictable. I told you this yesterday and I am sorry that you weren't able to comprehend it. The danger on the pavement, to the car and from the car, is from a sniper at long range or a handgun used at close quarters. The danger during a journey is from a culvert bomb with a command cable or remote detonation or from a parked car bomb. Get me? If it couldn't happen, Mr. Perry, I wouldn't be here."

The woman rocked on her feet, as if caught by a shock wind, but her eyes were never off him.

It was like he'd hit Perry in the solar plexus, and his voice was quieter.

"You can't search half the countryside. What difference does it make if you know my routes?"

He said easily, "I can plan, in the event of an ambush, where to drive to, the nearest safe-house might be a telephone exchange, a government building and I can have worked out where's the nearest hospital."

"Jesus."

"So, if you could just tell me, Mr. Perry, your plans for the day, then there are no surprises."

"Meryl's visiting this morning and she's got a class-' "I'm not concerned with Mrs. Perry's movements."

Perry flared.

"Doesn't she matter?"

"You're the target, Mr. Perry. You're the principal I'm here to protect. That's my instruction. Are you going out today?"

She had an antique-furniture restoration class in the afternoon. Perry was committed to the school pick-up.

"Can you cancel?"

"No, I bloody well can't. And I intend to live a life."

"Of course, Mr. Perry. Let's go over the route."

He was shown in by Fenton, and Cox was hovering behind.

Markham thought the man looked as if he'd just stepped off the Ark.

"It's Mr. Littelbaum, Geoff, from Riyadh. You told him you did the "donkey's load", so he's come to offer you some oats. You're his liaison with us," Fenton said.

Markham stood. It was that sort of depressing morning where the pieces were obstinate and refused to slot. Nothing to report from SB's operations centre on the target, Juliet Seven. There was no trace on Yusuf Khan from Nottingham. The associate, the woman thrown up by Rainbow Gold, had moved from the address listed for her electricity and telephone bills, but he had, small mercies, registration details for her car, about as common a small saloon as any on the road.

The American had wild grey hair, which needed cutting. His tie was stained with food and, from the tight knot, seemed only to be loosened each night so that the noose could be pulled over his head. The shirt was new but already there was grease on it. He wore a brown three-piece herringbone suit, what a solicitor might have worn thirty years back in north Lancashire, and the creases said he'd travelled in it. But he had alive, penetrating eyes. Markham glanced down at his watch.

"I apologize, but I did tell you, Mr. Fenton, I have to be at an appointment over the lunch-hour." And he added limply, "A family business appointment. I can't cut it and I can't be late either."

Fenton said, dry, "I hope the family business is important Mr. Littelbaum has flown three thousand miles so that he can offer us the benefit of his experience. Bring him back to me."

Fenton and Cox were gone.

He shuffled, tried to tidy his desk space, merely confused the papers and his notes.

"Would you like a coffee, Mr. Littelbaum?"

"Only if you can put whiskey in it."

"Can't," he said sheepishly.

"At the donkey level it's not permitted to keep alcohol in the work area. I'd get a reprimand and it would go on my record."

"Not to worry. Where I come from it's a capital crime, Mr. Markham."

"In here I'm Geoff please, feel free."

"Then you'll have to forgive me I'm not familiar with people who aren't friends. I take it as a lack of respect and common courtesy. Right now, Mr. Markham, and I'm sure you know it, you're sitting on the big one."

"Right now it's all ends, frayed and not tying. I don't know what I'm sitting on."

"OK, OK. The target, Hughes/ Perry

"We've call-signed him as Juliet Seven."

"OK, Juliet Seven. Is he still refusing relocation?"

"Yes."

"What have you done for him?"

"We have given him specialist police protection.~ "They got howitzers?"

"They would have machine pistols and handguns."

"How many?"

Markham said, dispirited, "There are two, each doing a twelve-hour shift."

"Fuck."

"It's a matter of resources."

"Are you listening, Mr. Markham? This is the big one. I know him as the Anvil. I don't have another name for him. I don't have his face. He was in Alamut. Did you read, like I told you to, about Alamut? Of course you didn't. Donkeys don't have time to read, donkeys just get the shit piled on them. The Anvil was in Alamut – I hate that name, it's crass and comic-book, but it's the name that's whispered in the souk, in the mosque and in the theological colleges throughout Saudi Arabia, so it's real enough for me. The Anvil goes to Alamut, each time, before he travels for the hit. I know so little of him, but he's the best, and he's dedicated. That he goes to Alamut is important because it is the small window I have into his mentality. Please, Mr. Markham, when I'm talking to you don't look at your wristwatch. And now he is travelling and his target is your Juliet Seven.

"Before you rush away to whatever is important, take time out for a little history. Alamut is a few kilometres north-west of Quasvin where there is a terrorist training camp run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. At Alamut, nine hundred years ago, Hasan-i-Sabah founded the sect of Assassins. The modern word is from the same root core as "hashish" Western scholars believed the killers were drugged or they would not have gone forward against guarded and near impossible targets. I doubt they were drugged, they just weren't scared. For two hundred years the Assassins, the living cult of political murder, created terror from

Syria down through Lebanon and Palestine and into old Persia because they had no fear of death, and worshipped the notion of martyrdom. He goes there, to what is now a few stones on a mountainside, unrecognizable as a fortress, to gain the courage that will push him forward. Pretty damn easy to guard against a killer who's looking to keep the skin intact on his back but pretty hard, Mr. Markham, to block the killer who has no concern for his own survival and he's coming after your Juliet Seven. Maybe you don't believe me, maybe you need the Alamut case histories to crank up my credibility…"

Markham hated himself for saying it, but said it anyway.

"Don't think I'm being rude, Mr. Littelbaum, but I really do have to go."

He was skilled at finding cover.

It was the skill that had dictated his survival in the flood plains around the Faw peninsula and the water channels between the reeds of the Haur-al-Hawizeh marshlands, and in the mountains of Afghanistan, and in the desert wilderness of the Empty Quarter, and in the forest near to the village in southern Austria. He could find cover and use it.

At the edge of a small group of trees was dense, thorned scrub. He had gone so quietly into the trees that he had not disturbed the roosting pheasants, and then crawled on his stomach into the depth of the scrub. A rat had passed within three metres of him and not seen him. If a farmer came into the field he would find no trace of him. The rain dripped rhythmically down on him from the thorn branches of the scrub. Beside him was the sausage bag. In it was what he had thought he could carry across country and still retain the speed of movement.

The cover was well chosen. He had a clear view across a hundred metres of grassland field to an open gateway, and through the gateway to the signpost at the crossroads. He waited. His stomach rumbled with hunger, but a few hours without food did not concern him: food was for sustenance, not for enjoyment. He waited.

He had seen a police car come down the road with a blue light flashing in the dawn, then an ambulance. His driver's pulse had been faint, the breathing erratic and gasping, the head wound bleeding. It had not been necessary to finish the man's life. He would not regain consciousness, would be dead by the end of the day. He had thought the man foolish, and had then corrected himself, because the man had achieved the state of martyrdom in the service of the Faith. He should not think badly of him. The ambulance had come back through the crossroads with the bell going and the light brilliant against the dark rain clouds Later he had seen a towing truck pull away the wrecked car.

There were only bruises and small scratches on his own body and he took that as a sign. His life was in God's hands. His work was God's work. God watched for him. There had been setbacks before, however thorough the planning, and he had overcome them. He would do so again.

He had waited three hours and fifty-one minutes when the car finally came.

It was a small car, old. He could not see the driver at that distance. It drove past the signpost and disappeared behind the hedgerow, then reversed back into his vision. The car stopped in the field gate. The brake-lights flashed twice.

He breathed hard. There were times in the life of Vahid Hossein when his safety, his life and his freedom rested in his own hands only, and God's. There were times, also, when he must give his trust to the intelligence officers who controlled him.

It had been written, "Once you engage in battle it is inexcusable to display sloth or hesitation."

He crawled from the thorn scrub.

"Take no precautions for your own life."

He hurried through the trees and the pheasants clattered in flight above him.

"He that is destined to sleep in the grave will never again sleep at home."

He ran along the hedgerow towards the gate. He reached the small car. He flung open the door and heaved the weight of the bag into the back. The engine was turning. He dived for the seat, slammed the door shut, and the car jerked forward. He swivelled in his seat.

He sat beside a woman.

He sat beside a woman with the skin of her face exposed, and her forearms, and the skin of her thighs above her knees and below her tight skirt.

He sat beside a woman whose body was scented with soap and lotion.

She said, "It's what they told me to do. They told me I should give up the clothing of decency. I'm sorry to offend you."

He stood on the pavement and looked around him. There were no concrete posts outside the building to prevent a car bomb being left under the facade. The building was glass-fronted, not heavy stone, with small, laminated windows.

He went inside and a pleasant young woman directed him to the lift. She had no guards beside her and there would not have been hidden guns within reach under her desk.

He came out of the lift and pushed through an unlocked door. There was no requirement for a personal security card.

It was what Geoff Markham wanted.

Long after the ambulance had gone, and after the recovery vehicle had towed away the wreck, the two traffic policemen worked with their cameras and tape measures. From what they'd seen it would go to the coroner's court and an inquest, and there were a hell of a number of questions to be answered a young black paying cash for the hire of a 13MW 5-series and not being able to handle it, writing it off and himself and the technical investigation looked to be the best last chance of finding the answers.

The two traffic policemen stopped work for a sandwich lunch. One, after he'd eaten, the elder one, complained of his bladder and slipped through a hedge hole.

He didn't notice the canvas sack, rammed down into the base of the hedge, until he'd finished and was shaking himself. He would not have seen it if he hadn't been standing almost on top of it. He bent and pulled it open.

The traffic policeman shouted to his colleague to come, and bloody fast, and showed him a black rubber wet suit, a pair of trainer shoes, and some squashed sales dockets, before pointing down into the bag at the hand grenades.

She drove well, confidently. She was not intimidated by the heavy lorries. His own wife, Barzin, did not drive. He admired the way she drove, but he was ashamed that each time she punched her foot on the brake or the accelerator he could not keep his eyes from the smooth whitened skin of her thighs. She would have seen him flinch and flush.

"They called me when I was asleep, told me it was urgent. I just took the first clothes that came to hand I didn't find any stockings. I suppose it's what you'd call bad he jab yes?"

There was a mullah, he had heard, who had stayed inside his house for thirty years, never gone outside his house, never dared to, for fear that he would see a woman improperly dressed, bad he jab and be corrupted… She kept in the slow lane of the wide motorway skirting London. Never in his life had he been driven by a woman. The diesel fumes of the lorries came and went, but constant in the car was the soft scent of soap and lotion.

She saw the twitch of his nostrils.

"I went out last night with some girls from work. One of them's getting married next weekend. We went out for some drinks no, I don't drink alcohol, but I can't tell them it's for my belief. I have to tell a little lie, I say I don't drink for a medical condition. They've told me to be like everyone else, and that way I can better serve my Faith and the revolution of Iran. I have to use women's soap and eau-de-toilette if I'm to be like everyone else. They tell me that God forgives little lies."

Because of the persecution of his Faith, throughout history, her Faith, it was acceptable for the Shi'a peoples to tell the khod'eh, the half-truth, in defence of the true religion… He believed, as did his wife, so Barzin told him, that the place for a woman was in the home and rearing children. She would be in their home, cleaning it, always cleaning it because they had no children to divert her. His mother had been different: dressed in good he jab she had come out of her home to help his father on his sick visits. His wife, Barzin, only undressed in his presence if the room were darkened.

When she changed the gears, her body shook and her breasts swung loosely, and he had flushed the most when he had seen the cherrystone shape of her nipple he would have picked the fruit from a tree in the Albourz hills and sucked it, turned the stone on his tongue and cleaned it, then spat it out and then he stared straight ahead at the spinning wheels of the vehicle in front, and the grinning idiot face of a child in the vehicle's back window.

She knew.

"I had the call, I was out of my room in four minutes.

I told you, I didn't have the chance to dress properly, decently. My name's Farida Yasmin."

It was said that the Imam Khomeini, on the drive from his French home in the village of Neauphle-le-Chateau to the airport at orly for his flight home and the triumphal return, had never looked from his car's windows on to the decadence of the Parisian streets, had kept his head lowered to avoid the sight of impurity.

"You've seen the man's photograph, Perry's? Of course, you have. I took it. You've seen the picture of his house? Yes? I took that as well. I think I'm to be trusted."

He jolted. Under the law that was the basis of the state, the sharia, the testimony of a woman was worth half that of a man. They were not of half value, the crucial photographs of the man and his house. She was beside him and her thighs were bare and her breasts bounced under a thin sweater. It was written that exposure of the flesh 'without Islamic cover can invite foul looks from men and invite the devil's lusting'. He was dependent on her.

She told him when she had seen the man and about his house. In the planning of an attack he had never before talked to a woman as his equal.

She looked into his face, caught his eyes.

"What happened to my friend, to Yusuf?"

He said what he knew, and offered her no sympathy. She was strong. He had known so many who had died young, gone early to the Garden of Paradise. She looked ahead.

"You talk well, Geoffrey," the man said.

"You say the right things, but I am not yet convinced of your commitment to them."

"We get a lot of sincerity these days," the woman said.

"What we have to look for is when the sincerity is larded on like greasepaint."

Markham swallowed hard.

"Anyway, that's as maybe, that's our problem to evaluate, not yours…" The man hesitated, as if for effect.

The interview had lasted twenty-five stilted minutes. He had used all the words that Vicky had written out for him, woven them into answers, and twice he had seen the little mocking glint in the woman 5 eyes.

"Let's press on. Let's explore a bit more… We're not with the civil service, we're not able to rely on government's safety net, we're in a hard, commercial environment. A man works for a company, does all that it asks of him, takes his work home and frets over it, is a good colleague and a pimple-faced creep who knows nothing of anything hands him a letter of dismissal, without warning, and a second letter of redundancy terms, and he's cleared his desk and gone in ten minutes, on the scrap-heap for the rest of his life. Could you be the pimple-faced creep and do that?"

The woman leaned forward.

"Are you up to that, Geoffrey, screwing good employees' lives?"

He took a deep breath.

"I've done it, I know about it. It got to be pretty much every day. I was in Northern Ireland, I ran informers that's playing God. You make a mistake with an informer and you get him killed it's not just killed like in a road accident, it's torture first with electricity and beatings and cigarette burns, and then it's the terror of a kangaroo court and then it's a bin-bag over the head and a kick so that he goes on to his knees, and the last thing he hears is a weapon being cocked… They're not good guys, they're scum-bags, and they're so damned scared that they get to lean on you like you're a crutch. You know how it will end and they do, but you don't let them quit. It's expensive when they quit, and they're damn all use once they're out of it. So you keep your player in place, and you sleep at night and put him out of your mind. It's your work and you don't worry about it… I've played God with people who won't be getting a good pension and won't have only their ego bruised I've played God with men who'll have the back of their heads blown off and whose women will be spat on as the wife of a traitor and whose parents will disown them and whose kids will be ostracized for their lifetime. Does that answer your question?"

The bleeper went at his waist. The woman stared at him, her mouth slack. The man looked blankly down at his notepad.

He read the message: "MARKHAM/G RE JULIET 7 GET BACK SOONEST. FENTON

He said, "I'm sorry, I'm called back."

The woman asked, "To play God?"

The man looked up from his notepad.

"You'll hear from us."

Markham was out of the chair.

"Thank you for your time."

He left the office and waved down a taxi.

He was dropped on the corner, and went into the building that had housed the last ten years of his life, past the desk where they had the hidden guns, through the security locks, and ran up the stairs with the laminated windows.

He came to the door of Fenton's office and heard the American's quiet voice.

"You'll have a week, and you should take this as the first day of the week. In a week either he'll have reached his target and goner or you will have him dead or in your cells. A week, not more, believe me. Your countdown, gentlemen, has started. And -can I say? you've had the luck of a break the like of which I've never had. The question is, can you use your luck?"

The police, uniformed and wearing bullet-proof vests, their handguns on their hips but their machine-guns secreted in cases, filed into the cubicle area at the far end of the ward for the hospital's emergency cases. Away from the sight of the patients, close to the bed, they unpacked the cases, produced and loaded their machine-guns. The nurses came and went, checking the purring equipment and dials on the rack beside the bed, and glanced at them with raw distaste. They found chairs, and settled in. Their role, the guns across their laps, was simple. The problem was away down the corridor where the detectives met the duty physician and the arguments began.

He turned his head and saw the cottage with the for-sale sign, and thought what it would cost to buy and repair. It was the sort of home that Lily would have loved, and the village was the sort of place where the boys would have flourished. But it was an empty thought because his job was in London, and it was beyond the bounds of possibility that he could have afforded it. It was the sort of place that some high-flying bastard out of London bought as a second home, for occasional weekends, and they were the people he detested.

They were out of the village, and soon into the narrow roads. Davies had the map on his knee. Perry drove.

If there was just the one protection officer, the principal always drove. He had jerked his coat back so that the butt of the Glock was clear for his hand to reach. He had the road-map open and on it were marked the regional hospital, fifty-two miles away, and the two local hospitals with Casualty and Emergency, twenty-four and thirty-one miles away; by now all of them would have been discreetly requested to hold plasma stocks of the principal's blood group. Also on the map were airforce bases to the north and the south-west, and a telephone exchange in the destination area; all designated as safe areas of refuge.

"It's nice countryside it's fabulous, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is."

Bill Davies knew the countryside round the Prime Minister's bolt-hole, Chequers, and round the Oxfordshire home of a onetime Northern Ireland minister, round the estate of a Saudi fat-cat, and the countryside round Windsor Great Park where the Jordanian king had a mansion. He knew about the countryside and loathed it. He called it a hostile environment.

They'd come out of the village on the one long, straight road and were now in the close, high-hedged lanes. His eyes were on the hedges, on the ditches, on the concreted culvert entries, on the trees back from the lanes. It was the nature of the job, and he regarded himself as professional and dedicated to it, that the warning time might be two seconds or three, and the principal wasn't trained to drive, wouldn't have known how to perform the bootlegger turn, wouldn't have known how to get to maximum speed. He'd half frozen just before the last junction, his hand hovering over the Glock, when they'd come to a Transit van half filling the road with the bonnet up and a man working on the engine. They'd had to slow almost to a stop before passing it. His eyes raked ahead.

"You get out into the countryside much, with your family?"

"Not often."

"You've got a family?"

"Yes."

"Boys, girls, both?"

"Boys."

"What age are they?"

"If you don't mind, Mr. Perry…"

He stared through the windscreen. He should have cleaned it. They all wanted to talk, to unburden themselves with their protection officer and it was the route to disaster. He was not tasked to offer a sympathetic ear.

Ahead, there were men and warning bollards and a heap of excavated road tarmac. The road was clear beyond, but one of the workmen held the stop sign facing them. Perry was slowing, but

Davies shouted for him to keep going and they went through to a volley of rich local obscenities. Friends fell Out, and the rule was to keep it as a job. The tools of the job were the H amp;K in its case with the magazine attached, at his feet, and the Glock on his hip. He loved the job. The pity was he might just love the job more than he loved Lily.

"How long have you been at it, doing this?"

"Quite a time."

"Good shot, are you?"

"Adequate."

"Don't you have to be better than adequate?"

"It's about planning, Mr. Perry, boring planning. Planning is the best defence against attack if there is an attack then the planning has failed."

"What do you know about the Iranians?"

"Enough to respect them."

It was final, and dismissive with it. What he knew, and wouldn't say, was that the Iranians were a different league from the Provos.

The Provos would back off from a guarded target, find something softer. He had studied the case histories of Iranian hits: not many killers made it away, for too many the reward was martyrdom. The message from the case histories would make any conscientious bodyguard nervous. He read all the detail he could find on political killing. It was his job.

They were outside a school, and in a line of cars waiting at the gate. It was a school like any other, an old brick turn-of-the-century building and a mass of raised prefabricated huts, like the school his children went to.

Parents were milling at the gate and inside the playground where kids ran and screamed, skipped and swarmed after a football. If he could, he went to Donald and Brian's school to pick them up, but it still wasn't often enough.

"Am I allowed to go and get them?"

"Don't see why not."

Sarcasm, like that was his defence.

"You don't think I'll be shot?"

"Shouldn't think so."

He could have told him, but didn't, that the Irish were gold medal standard at killing off-duty policemen, prison warders and magistrates on the church steps or in hospital wards, or at the school gate. They had no qualms about blasting a man when he wasn't taking the necessary precautions.

He said he would come with Perry, into the asphalt playground, that they must lock the car because of the H amp;K, that he must have Perry and the car in his sight at all times.

They walked through the gate. The loose change clinked in his suit-jacket pocket. Beneath it the holster was tight against his upper thigh. He hung back and watched his principal before turning twice, in complete circles, to observe the faces of the mothers and fathers, the grandparents, the kids chasing the football. He saw the way that men and women came to his principal, slapped his back, shook his hand and laughed with him. The other boy, the one they were getting home, stood by the principal. They came round Perry like they were flies to jam and he heard the roar of the laughter.

A kid, would have been the same age as his Brian, kicked the football high in the air.

The swarm followed the spiralling ball.

He'd ring that night, find out how Donald's game had gone, when he'd done the shift with Juliet Seven.

The ball landed and bounced. The bounce would take the ball over the playground fence, out into the road and the traffic.

He jumped. It was his instinct to keep a bobbing, chased ball out of the traffic. He was grinning at his own athleticism, his back arched with the leap, his fingertips pushing the ball back towards the pack of kids. There was the lightness, emptiness, at his waist.

The gun, the 9mm Glock pistol, fell from the waist holster. As he landed he snatched for it. It was beyond his grasp. It fell away from him. The gun clattered on the asphalt playground, cartwheeled, and came to rest away from the grope of his hands. The kids' shouts and yells died and the black shape of the Glock lay on the asphalt beside the white-painted lines of a net ball court.

The parents' laughter and talk withered. He walked forward, half a dozen paces. He saw the rolling, abandoned football and the young, old, numbed faces. He picked up the gun, and the screaming started. He saw the parents grabbing kids, going down on to the asphalt and sheltering them with their bodies, hugging them, guarding them. He held the gun in his hand, the tool of his job, and did not know what he should say. Perry stared at him, blank and uncomprehending. A great space was widening around him. Through a glass window, he saw the grey, lined face of the head4eacher as she lifted the telephone. He put the gun into his waist holster.

The first cars were already charging away from the school gate. He took a deep breath, then strode towards the school building and the sign for the head-teacher's room.

It took fifteen minutes to sort it. He showed his warrant card, made a telephone call to turn back armed-response vehicles and another to verify his identity for the head-teacher. His explanation to her of his principal's need for police protection was economical and bland.

He walked back across the empty playground.

They were all gone, his principal's friends and their children.

He slipped down into the front passenger seat.

Davies said stiffly, "I owe you an apology, Mr. Perry. That was unforgivable, unprofessional. You are perfectly entitled to ring my guvnor to request a personnel change."

"But I'm a beggar, Bill, so I can't be a chooser. What I'd get might be worse than you." The principal laughed, with a hollowed echo.

"Thank you. If you don't mind, it's Mr. Davies… I don't know what the consequences will be."

"None.." forgotten… just a little dose of excitement. I have to tell you, I saw the gun. The gun was real, but it's the only part of anything that seems believable."

"It's all real, Mr. Perry, and you shouldn't forget that."

The mobile telephone went in his inside pocket. Could Bill Davies talk? No. When could he talk? In fifteen minutes. Would he call back soonest, when he could talk? In the guttering light they drove back to the village.

It was the second time he had asked the distance to the village she said it was six and a half kilometres by road. He told her to stop, then told her when he would see her again at this precise place. He took her map, large-scale at four centimetres to a kilo metre and the sausage bag. There were trees close to the road and he went for them. He did not look back and he did not wave. Farida Yasmin Jones wondered what she would have to do to earn his trust and watched him until the trees hid him.