Home Run

For a moment he wondered whether a previous meeting had overrun. He nodded coolly to the Secretary of State for Defence. They'd met a few times, but the Secretary of State was too flashy by half for his taste.

"Thank you for coming so promptly, Director General."

As if he had the choice.

"It is much appreciated. You know each other? Yes. I am sorry to say that a most serious complaint has been brought to me by my colleague."

He couldn't help but notice the unease of the Prime Minister, nor the hostility of the Secretary of State.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Prime Minister."

"George's daughter, Lucy, died a short time ago following a narcotics accident… "

The Director General stared back. He read the newspapers.

The girl was an addict.

"… A n investigation is in process by the police and Customs and Excise to try to identify the importer of the narcotics concerned

… "

And then he saw what was coming.

"… Their very strenuous work, as I gather, leads them to a foreign national currently holding a Stateless Person's document which was issued on the guarantee of good character provided by a member of the Service. Customs and Excise quite properly wish to interview that member of the Service, but the Service have pulled down the shutters."

Had the Prime Minister been told who it was? Couldn't have been. Would surely have made the connection.

"It's outrageous," the Secretary of State chimed.

"I think we can get this sorted out quite quickly, don't you, Director General? Before it gets out of hand."

No, obviously hadn't a clue. "In front of a third party, Prime Minister, I am not free to discuss this matter."

"You damn well will." The Secretary of State's voice rose and his jowls were purple.

The Director General looked the man up and down.

He'd learned that from his Classics master at Marlborough, a cutting stare from ankle to Adam's apple. "I am answerable to the Prime Minister, sir, and to the Foreign Secretary.

Matters affecting the Service are beyond the remit of Defence."

"Just let's have this crystal clear. You are saying that the importing of heroin is a matter which affects the Service. Is that it? What the devil is the Service coming to, I should like to know. Are you importing heroin, Director General? Is that it? Is it your Secret Service that I must hold responsible for the death of my only child?"

"George, I believe that's enough."

"No, Prime Minister, it most assuredly is not enough. I demand that the Director General produce this Matthew Furniss, and straight away, and stop wasting valuable police time, Customs people's time, or tell us without all this waffle about matters affecting the Service why he won't."

"We all know how precious is police time, George. I don't think you, of anyone, need labour that, but did you say Matthew Furniss? Was that the name?"

"Yes, Prime Minister. That is the Service man's name. The Home Secretary tells me that the importer is an Iranian called Charles Eshraq."

"Well, Director General, what will you say to all this?"

And there seemed to have evaporated from the Prime Minister the anxiety he had detected earlier.

"I would say this, Prime Minister. I might in different circumstances simply explain to you in what way the Service is affected and in what million-to-one chance lies its connection to the death through narcotics addiction of the Secretary of State's daughter. But I have just observed the hysterical speculations and accusations of a man with whom, unless ordered to do so, I shall share not one iota of information relating to this case or any other. Furthermore it is quite outrageous that a dedicated public servant should be vilified when, as the Prime Minister well knows, he is in no position to defend his good name."

"I'll see you broken."

"Your privilege, sir, to try,"

"Prime Minister, are you going to tolerate that impertinence?"

"I hope, Prime Minister, that I may count upon your support."

A reeded and hesitant voice. "I am going to think about it."

There were many thoughts cavorting through the Director General's mind as he marched back through the tunnel. He thought of Mattie Furniss, prisoner, facing torture. He thought of three quarters of an hour with Miss Duggan, a woman whose loyalty he could only admire, and two glasses of barley water to keep her talking, and the story of Charlie Eshraq. He thought of a girl hanged from a crane. And he thought of the value that Eshraq could be to the Service. So long as he wasn't named by Furniss under torture. So long as he wasn't caught by Customs and Excise first.

"April Five to April One, April Five to April One."

"April One, come in April Five."

"Just a sitrep, Bill. He's in the pub, apparently killing time.

He's had one half pint in front of him for an hour, not had anything since we last called you. What did the boss say?"

"Had his arm twisted half out of its socket, that's what ACIO said. Sold him my line, a good line and I say it myself, we want to see where Tango One leads us, clean up the whole network. Bossman'd be happier if he was in cuffs, but he can stand it because we've the stuff."

"How much was it?"

"Around seven kilos, that's one hell of a load, Keeper. You know what? It's the same markings on the packets as Manvers' load. That sweetened the boss' pill."

" That's the bastard, isn't it, not knowing."

The Deputy Director General sat in the easy chair. "The more noise we make, then the worse it can be for him. I mean, we can hardly ask the Swedes to trot round to the Foreign Ministry and ask the night duty chappie if they're interrogating a British Desk Head who we have reason to believe they've kidnapped across an international frontier.

… No, we've got to sweat on it, and you've to make a decision."

"Aborting the agents? I'll decide in the morning."

"You owe it to them, to give them time to abort. Field agents are brave people. If they're lifted they will be lucky to be hanged."

The Director General seemed to miss his stride. His eyes closed as if he was in pain.

"Didn't you know that, when you took the job?"

"I'll decide in the morning."

"We may have hours, hours, Director General. Mattie is going to be having their names tortured out of him, he's going to be hung up by the fingernails until the names come tumbling out, willy nilly. It is only a question of when, not a question of if or if not."

"In the morning, I'll make that decision… Poor old Mattie."

All day he had been suspended from the wall hook. He had read about it often enough. Everyone who studied the affairs of Iran knew of this method of extracting confessions. He thought it must be a day, but he had gone insensible three times. He had no track of time. The pain in his back, his shoulders, his ribs, was more sharp than had been the pain in the soles of his feet. It was a pain as if he were snapping, as if he were the dry kindling that he put across his thigh at Bibury. His left arm was above his left shoulder and then twisted down towards the small of his back. His right arm was below the shoulder and then turned up to meet his left arm. His wrists were tied with leather thongs, knotted tight.

The thongs were on the wall hook, looped over the carcase hook. Only the toes of his feet were able to touch the floor.

When the strength of his toes collapsed and he sagged down, then the pain was excruciating in his shoulders and his ribs burst. It had been better at first. His feet, swollen, bruised, had been able to take most of his weight. Through the day, however long the day had been, the strength had seeped from his feet. The pressure had built upon the contortion of his arms. He had gone three times, sunk into the foul-smelling heat, unconscious. They hadn't taken him down. They had just thrown water into his face. No respite from the hook on the wall. Ever increasing pain that hacked into his back and his shoulders and his ribs… God… God… couldn't know how his muscles, how his body, survived the weight, or his mind the pain.

"Mr Furniss, what is the point of your obstinacy? For what?"

Answer in not less than 750 words. Bloody good question.

"Mr Furniss, the most resolute of the fighters amongst the

'hypocrites', the MKO, they appear on television and they denounce to the world all of their former comrades, all of their former activities. How does that happen, Mr Furniss?"

"I haven't the least idea… It's not the sort of thing

… an archaeologist would… know about." He heard the scratchy hoarseness of his voice.

"The bravest of the 'hypocrites' betray their comrades and their ideals because of pain, Mr Furniss."

He had seen the photographs. He knew what they did to their enemies. He had seen videotapes of the confessions. Raven-robed women, track-suited men, sitting on a dais and lit by the cameras in a gymnasium at the Evin gaol, and competing with each other to slag off their comrades and their cause, and still not escaping the firing squad or the hangman. It hurt him to talk. Getting air down into his lungs so that he could speak brought more pain stabs in his back and shoulders and ribs.

He mouthed the words. No voice in his throat, only the twist of his hps. He was an academic, and his research was concerned with the Turkish city of Van.

He remembered one lecturer at the Fort. He had been an elderly man and his back was bent as though he suffered from curvature of the spine, and the fingernails had never grown back over the sheer pink pastel skin. He had talked in a thick, proud, Central European accent, guttural. There had been brave pride in the speaker's eyes, and above a faded and shined suit he wore the collar of a Lutheran pastor. They had been told that the speaker had spent the last two years of the Second World War in Dachau. He talked faith, he talked about his God, he talked about prayer and of the strength that his religion had been to him. Mattie was not a regular church-goer, not in the way that Harriet was. When he was in church he bent his knee with the rest of the congregation, and he sang in a good voice, but he would not have called himself close to his God. What a wonderful arm faith had given that speaker in the dreadfulness of Dachau. Mattie was alone, as the speaker had been alone in his Dachau cell, as the disciples had been alone in the face of persecution. Mattie would have said that his religion was based on a knowledge of what was right, what was wrong, and he would have said that he was afraid of death because he did not believe himself yet ready to face his Maker. He wished that he could pray.

He could not pray because the pain diverted his mind. He wondered how that speaker had prayed while the fingernails were ripped off, while his spine was damaged.

"Mr Furniss, you are a gentleman. This should not be happening to you, Mr Furniss. This is the treatment that is proper for the 'hypocrite' scum. It does not have to happen for you, Mr Furniss. Help me, help yourself. Why were you travelling? Who were you meeting? So very simple, Mr Furniss."

In truth, Mattie did not think that at that moment he could have spoken the names. The names were gone. There was only pain in his mind. The light was in his face. The pain soared when he tried to turn his head away from the light and away from the face of the investigator. The investigator sat on a stool not more than four feet from Mattie's cracked, dry lips. He thought the pain was good. He thought that the pain squeezed out of his mind the names of his agents. He could smell the cigarettes of the guards. They seemed to smoke continuously.

Abruptly the investigator flicked his fingers. He slid off his stool, and went to the table and began to push his notepads into his case.

To Mattie, the expression of the investigator was neither that of annoyance nor was it of pleasure. A job of work done.

"Mr Furniss, there is tomorrow, and after tomorrow there is another day, and after that day there is another. Each day is worse for you. For obstinacy you will pay a high price."

"No, Mother, there is no crisis, it's just that Mattie is a little overdue… I am not prepared to discuss Mattie's work with you, Mother… There is no need for you to come, Mother.

You cannot come anyway because you would be missing your bridge on Friday. I am perfectly alright, Mother… I'm sorry, but I really am much too busy to have you come here.

If there was something wrong then I would have the girls here. The girls are not here… Mother, I really do not want to have you come to stay… Will you listen to me, I don't want you here, I don't want anyone here… I am not crying, Mother, I am just trying to get on with my life."

She put the telephone down.

She thought that she had been miserably rude. She turned back to the minutes of the previous evening's meeting of the Conservation Society.

She tried not to think where he was, how he was, her Mattie.

At Century they would not be expecting a fuss from Harriet Furniss. It would have been, she thought, in Mattie's file that his wife was psychologically sound. It would have been noted that her two children had been born in Tehran because she hadn't thought it necessary to come home for the births, and there had never been trouble from her when they were in the Gulf, nor when they were in Ankara on short stay. It would have been entered in the file that she was a good sort, and did well on the Embassy circuit, the right stuff to be a Desk Head's consort.

Even so, to go these last days without a call from anyone at Century was very, very hard.

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

"April Five to April One… "

" O K, Keeper, your location… The occupier is listed as Mr Brian Venables, Christ knows what Tango One is there for… Venables works, middle rank, for Thames Water."

"Understood."

"When do you want relief?"

"Bill, I'm going nowhere… don't argue, Bill, you'll have to burn me off him… In my locker, Bill, there's a battery razor and some socks, I wouldn't mind them."

"What about the others?"

"We'll want back-up at dawn. We're all staying… Bill, Token says that in her locker she has a change of kit in a green plastic bag."

"Sweet dreams, champions. April One to April Five, out."