Home Run

11

"How are we this morning, Mr Furniss?"

Nothing to say. Mattie took in the greater heat in the airless cellar.

"The doctor came, yes?"

Nothing to say. It was a ritual. Of course the investigator knew that the doctor had been to examine him, because he had sent the doctor. The doctor had been sent to make certain that no serious damage had been done to the prisoner. A slob of a man, the doctor, and his eyes had never met Mattie's because the bastard had betrayed his oath. The doctor had glanced at the feet, taken the pulse, above all checked that his heart would last, stretched up the eyelids to see the pupils, and checked with a stethoscope for Mattie's breathing pattern.

"How are your feet, Mr Furniss?"

Nothing to say. He could stand, just. He had leaned on the shoulders of the guards who had brought him down, but his feet could take some weight.

"Please, Mr Furniss, sit down."

He sat, and the pain sang into his legs as the weight came off the feet.

"Mr Furniss, it has been broadcast on the World Service of the BBC that Dr Matthew Owens, an archaeologist, is missing in Turkey… " The smile was winter water. The voice was powder snow soft. "They are trying to protect you, and they cannot. Do you understand that, Mr Furniss?"

Nothing to say.

"They cannot protect you."

Stating the bloody obvious, dear sir. Tell me something I don't know… Through all his mind was the memory of the pain, and the memory of the dying that seemed to come each time he had lapsed towards unconsciousness. That was yesterday. The art of resistance to interrogation, as taught by Professor Furniss, was to take it one day at a time, one step at a time. Yesterday had been endured, survived. .. but they had not questioned him. Yesterday was gone, so forget yesterday's pain. Yesterday's pain was what they wanted Mattie to remember. The "old school" had been put through the full works on the Resistance to Interrogation courses at the Fort – the old school in the Service reckoned that they were a tougher breed than the new intake – resist at all costs, never crack, hang on to the bitter bloody end, and some fearful disasters there had been on simulated interrogation sessions. Queen and Country, that's what the old school believed in.

If he cut the pain from his memory, then the mind was voided, then filled with other matter. The other matter was the names. He tried to find the guards beyond the brilliance of the light in his eyes.

"What were you doing in Van, Mr Furniss?"

"I've told you, repeatedly, I was visiting the fortress of Sardur the Second."

"That is particularly idiotic, Mr Furniss."

"I cannot help the truth."

"It is idiotic, Mr Furniss, because you deny reality. Reality is this cellar, reality is the power at my disposal. Yesterday was amusement, Mr Furniss, today is the beginning of reality.

If you go on with this fabrication, then it will go badly for you, Mr Furniss."

Stick to the cover, cling to the cover at all costs.

"A long time ago, yes, it is possible that you saw me in Tehran. I've been out of that sort of thing for years. I am an academic now. I am an authority on the Urartian civilization."

"That is your sole interest."

"The Urartians, yes."

"In Turkey?"

"The Urartian civilization was based in north-eastern Turkey and across the frontier of modern Iran as far as the western shore of Lake Urmia. That was the scope… "

"Did the Urartians, Mr Furniss, travel to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain? Is it necessary for an academic, an authority in this rather limited field, to be escorted around the Gulf by the various Station Officers of the Secret Intelligence Service?"

The light was in his face. The guards were behind him. He could just make out the rhythm of their breathing. They would have been told to be still, to offer to the prisoner no distraction from the questions of the investigator.

"I am an academic."

"I think not, Mr Furniss. I think you are Dolphin. Desk Head for Iran at Century House in London. You were a regular soldier and posted to Iran to liaise over arms sales to the former regime. You were the Station Officer in Tehran from 1975 to 1978. In 1982 and 1983 you were the senior Station Officer in Bahrain with responsibility only for Iranian affairs. In 1986 you spent four months in Ankara. You were promoted to Desk Head on January 1st, 1986. You are a senior intelligence officer, Mr Furniss. Understand me, I do not want to hear any more about your hobby. One day, perhaps, I shall have the pleasure of reading your published work. For today we shall put away hobbies, Mr Furniss, and just talk about what you were doing on this journey around our borders."

The names were in his head, swirling. He was a man under water and trying to hold his breath, and his breath was the names. In time, as night follows day, the lungs would force out the breath, the pain would spit out the names. Even the old school knew that. It was a question, simply, of how many nights. How many days. The agents should have been warned by now… But was it known who held him? Would Century flush out its best men before they had confirmation that Mattie was in Iran?

What would he have done himself, in their place? He thought of the complications of the structure for getting the necessary signals inside Iran. He knew how complicated it was, he had set the system up. Far more complex than bringing the agents out to the prearranged rendezvous meetings that he had just had. Oh, a lifetime of complications if the agents were to be aborted, and no going back. London would not be hurrying to destroy its network. He swept the names from his mind. He lifted his head. There was escape from the white bright light only in the face of the investigator.

"It is quite scandalous that an innocent scholar… "

The investigator gestured with his arm. The guards came forward, ripped Mattie up from his chair.

Charlie made his call. The same telephone box, after the same night's sleep under a cardboard blanket.

After the call, after he had helped the dossers pile away the packing cases, he went to the left luggage inside the ticket hall of the Underground station, and he took out his rucksack.

They had a fine view of the Greek's house.

Parrish had smoothed it. Keeper reckoned that Parrish was gold-plated when it came down to sweet talking for window space. It was a great window. The early summer foliage was not yet thick enough on the trees to obstruct the vision across the garden and across the road and across the Greek's garden and on to the front porch of his house.

It was an old Victorian house that Parrish had fixed, weathered brick three stories high with an ivy creeper thick enough to have held the walls together. They had chosen the top floor for the camera position and from there their sight fine went well clear of the high paling fence opposite. Keeper and Token knew her life history by now. She came upstairs on the hour, every hour, with a pot of tea and biscuits. She was a widow.

Her late husband had been a brigadier general. She had lived alone in the house for nineteen years, and every year she resisted another try by the developers to put a cheque in her hand – this year it was for three quarters of a million pounds

– so that they could bulldoze her property and replace it with a block of flats. She didn't think her cats would want to move.

She had no love for her neighbour across the road. His dogs were a threat to her cats. Anything that threatened the owner of the dogs was fine by this lady. From the upper window they could see the dogs. Dobermanns, lean and restless, wandering, and cocking their legs against the wheels of the midnight blue Jaguar outside the front porch. She was an artful old girl, the general's widow. Keeper had seen her giving them both the coy look, and checking the ring on his finger, and observing that Token's finger was bare.

He was comfortable with Token. She let him talk about Colombia, about targetting the problem at its source. There had been other cars come and go at the house across the road.

They had photographed all the movements, but they hadn't seen the Greek. They had the mug shots done by the plods of when he was last in custody. It was a hell of a house that the bastard lived in. Half an acre, heated swimming pool, hard tennis court, five, maybe six bedrooms.

The general's widow was telling them that when her husband had first purchased The Briars they had been able to look across fields, real countryside…

The radio crackled to life.

"April One to April Five, April One to April Five… "

"April Five, come in April One… "

"Tango One has been on the telephone to your location.

Text of call coming… Tango One: It's Charlie here…

Your location: Same place as yesterday, same pick-up. Bring it all

… Tango One: Right… Did you get that, April Five?"

"April Five to April One. Received, understood, out."

His head shook, and his knees.

Token said, "Keeper is back from the dead."

"What's Keeper mean?" the general's widow asked.

"It's a very solid person, Ma'am, and very vulnerable."

Token smiled.

"Those brutes got out once, they killed one of my cats.

They tore Disraeli to shreds."

"George, a word in your ear."

The Secretary of State for Defence paused in the corridor outside the Cabinet room.

"The distributor. A strange thing has happened and I may need your help."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Customs and Excise have a suspect. He has a vague profile.

They are trying to get into that profile, and they reckon that a chap called Matthew Furniss, listed as FCO but in reality SIS, could help them. The spooks won't wear it. Mr Furniss is being kept under wraps. The Customs investigation officers i an't get at him." The look of pure rage on George's face was worth all the humiliations of the past weeks. As he slipped into the doorway, he said, "Just thought you'd like to know."

Parrish sat hunched forward at the console on the top floor of the Lane, co-ordinating a raft of radio signals competing for attention. This was big enough for the investigation of which Harlech was Case Officer to be sidelined, and for Corinthian's to be relegated out of sight. Big enough to soak up all of April's resources.

Parrish to Keeper: "April Five, just keep remembering that your single responsibility is Tango One. Our brothers look after every other Tango but Tango One."

Harlech to Corinthian: "April Seven to April Eleven…

Heh, ugly nose, this is just fantastic, this is just brilliant.

What they're doing is this. They've Tango One in the white van and there's another van about 50 yards behind, that's the green one. They're taking Tango One's stuff from the white to the green, that must be where they're running the spot checks. You got me? They're doing it all on site. The Jag's parked between the two, the Jag Tango is in the white van with Tango One. This has to be Christmas. It's the best I've ever seen."

Keeper to Token: "April Five to April Nine. Try another walk past. You got the canvassing board. Do another run down, those houses you missed out the first time. I want to know if the Tango One van has the engine running. I have to know when those wheels are about to go."

Corinthian to Keeper: "April Eleven to April Five. Just to keep your knickers dry, Keeper, this is the layout. Tango One is in the white van, plus the Greek. The stuff is taken from the white van to the green van, probably running the checks on it. The guy who takes it to the green van then comes back empty and reports through the rear doors. Dangerous looking creep in blue overalls. So, the stuff is in the green van. The green van is for the plods. Are you clear, April Five?"

Parrish talking to all April call signs: "Keep it going, very cool, very calm. Any bugger shows out, he's in uniform for the rest of his natural. Tango One is to run… That is confirmed. Tango One will run. We are only concerned with Tango One."

A quiet road running beside the brick perimeter wall of Richmond Park. Two vans parked in the road, and a Jaguar car separating them, and a girl calling at the houses on the park side and asking questions on the doorsteps about which washing powder the occupants used. A 500mm lens in an upper room 175 yards north of the green van. Three more cars parked in the road, two of them facing the direction that the white van would come if it didn't do a three point.

"This is great stuff… "

"I watched it packed myself."

"And there's more…?" The Greek could not hide the greed.

"I'll be coming back with more, a couple of months,"

Charlie said.

The hand of the Greek rested lightly on Charlie's arm. "You get lifted and you talk and you get the knife, wherever. You won't know how to hide."

Charlie said, "My friend, you get lifted and you talk and you get the bullet, your head blown. Take it as a promise, I'll find you." Charlie flicked his fingers through the wads of?20 notes. They went into his rucksack.

There was a handshake, of sorts.

"You be careful there, when you go back."

"Watch yourself across the road," Charlie said.

There was a flash of light as the van door opened. The Greek gave him his mirthless, twisted smile and stooped out.

As the van pulled away Charlie heard the big thunder cough of the Jaguar's engine.

In a side street in Hammersmith, near the river, a police Landrover rammed the white van, front off-side wing, crashed it and jammed the driver's door tight.

In Shepherds Bush, detectives of the Drugs Squad boxed the green van.

An hour later, across the city in the Essex suburb of Chigwell, the Greek had been back in his house three minutes.

A police marksman put down his cup of tea in the house opposite, asked the general's widow please to stand well back, and shot both Dobermanns clean through the heart, four seconds between shots. The marksman spoke briefly into his radio and shut the window, and was very much surprised to be kissed, just under his ear, by the old lady. They were still at the window when a Landrover with a ramming guard attached drove fast into the high wooden gates, smashing them. A few seconds later the pseudo-Georgian front door splintered open at the second massive blow of a policeman's sledgehammer.

On the Underground, starting at Wimbledon station, Keeper and Token and Harlech tracked their Tango One, and above them, through the traffic, Corinthian drove as if his life depended on it to stay in touch.

He was dropped with his bodyguard, as always, at the door of the Cabinet Office, and he walked through that building and down steps, and then through the deep corridor linking the Cabinet Office to Downing Street. At the final door, the security check, before entry to Downing Street, he was greeted like an old friend by the armed policeman. He had known that policeman since forever. God alone knew how the man had wangled the posting, but he seemed never to have been more than 100 yards from Whitehall all his working life.

Always the sort of greeting that put him in a better mind frame.

His bodyguard peeled away from him. He'd be in the Waiting Room, and he'd be brought a cup of coffee by one of those haughty, leggy kids who hit the word processors down the corridor. A good life his bodyguard had, nearly as cushy as the policeman's on the tunnel door. The Director General was shown into the Prime Minister's office.

Gerald Seymour