Home Run

12

The gale from the rotor blades flattened the robes of the Mullah against his chest, buried the material into the crotch valley between his legs. With one hand he clung to the brilliant white onion shape of his turban, with the other he steadied the spectacles on his nose. There wasafull loadfor the helicopter. There was a Divisional Commander and two staff officers, there were casualties, and there was the Mullah and his bodyguards. The light was up on the landing zone, harsh and clear, and it would be several hours later and when the sun had climbed that the pastel haze would settle over the battlefield. By then the sentences would have been carried out.

They lifted off. It was a French helicopter, and new, and mounts had been welded on at the open doorways to take heavy machine guns. To avoid ground-to-air missiles from their enemy the helicopter pilot flew low over the rear area of the battlefield. It was a killing zone to the east of the Iraqi town of Basra, much fought over. The Mullah, strapped in his canvas seat, his back against the hull, was a young man in anguish. There had been that morning, as the red sun had slipped above the flat horizon, an artillery barrage. Some of the worst of the casualties were on the deck of the helicopter, their stretchers against his feet, and medical orderlies holding drips, but the casualties were only those who had been hit close to the landing zone, the fortunate few. When he twisted his head the Mullah could see through the dust-smeared portholes of the helicopter, and when he looked straight ahead he could see past the torso of the machine-gunner in the open doorway. They hugged the flat and featureless ground. He saw the old trench lines that had been disputed four, five, six years before, where that dawn's shells had burst. He saw the angular dead, and he saw the stricken faces of the wounded and he saw the stretcher parties running towards them. He could see the tanks hull down, sheltered in revetments, that would stay hull down until there were spare parts.

Nothing grew upon this battlefield. Where there had been fields there were now just the patterns of the armour tracks.

Where there had been trees there were now only the shell-broken stumps. Where there had been marsh weed there was now only a yellow mat because the weed had been sprayed with herbicides to kill potential cover for an enemy. The helicopter scurried over a rear camp, tents and bomb-proof bunkers, and it flew sufficiently low for the Mullah to see the faces of the troops who squatted on the ground and stared up.

They were the same faces that he had seen further forward at the front the night before. The sullen gaze that had greeted his speech of exhortation. Pressed troops, afraid to ask with their voices, bold enough to demand with their eyes: where is the air support, where are the tank parts, where is the victory, when is the end?

That same morning he had sat in judgment of fifteen recruits who had held back in the last assault on enemy lines. Young men, eyes downcast, denounced in monotone by their officers and sentenced by the Mullah to field execution. There could be no tolerating cowardice.

The Mullah had won his spurs in the service of the Imam as one of the investigators of the coup attempted by air force officers of the Nouzeh barracks at Hamadan. He had seen the tears and the pleading of the pilots, and he had not been diverted.

He had achieved good results, satisfactory enough results for him to be chosen above many to unravel the plot woven around the Great Satan's attempt to fly a commando force into the country for the release of prisoners from the Nest of Spies. So many traitors to be found, and he had found so many. He had found those who would have driven the lorries, and those who would have made the airbase available, and those who had switched off the defensive radar. For himself, he thought the plan of the Great Satan was an absurd plan, bound to fail.

The Mullah was a devotee of the Revolution, a child of the ferocity of the Revolution. He knew no other way.

When they were out of range of the Iraqi ground-to-air missiles, the helicopter climbed. It would fly first to a field hospital. After that, with two further stops for refuelling, the helicopter would fly on to Tabriz. At the front, close to the artillery exchanges, he had slept badly. On the way to Tabriz he dozed fitfully, and the straggling thoughts in his mind were of a man known as Dolphin.

Brian Venables was late leaving home. He was late because the guest had been in the bathroom when it should have been clear for him, and he was late because his wife had forgotten his breakfast. Too busy scrambling eggs for the guest. And to top it all, the look on his Polly's face across the kitchen table had been shameless, damn near brazen.

Brian Venables had not brought up his daughter to have her bring home a foreigner and then have that foreigner creep in the small hours across the landing into his Polly's room.

That was clean out of court, and they would talk it out this evening. Oh yes.

He went down his neat front path to the newly-painted wrougt-iron gate. The last of the blossom was still on the trees in the road. Once Wellington Street had been a quiet and respectable street, but the riff-raff were closing in. He slammed the gate shut behind him.

He walked down the pavement.

He saw the two scruffs inside the car. Brian Venables was a founder member of Neighbourhood Watch in his road. Two scruffs sitting in a car and watching the houses. He had listened to every word that the WPC had told them when the Neighbourhood Watch had been introduced. They wait for the man to go to work, for the children to go to school, for the wife to go shopping. Well, those two youngsters were in for a shock. He swung on his heel.

They were watching the house. They had seen the man come out on to the pavement, with his raincoat and his briefcase, then stop, turn to go back inside. Corinthian had said that he had probably forgotten his sandwich box. The patrol car came up fast alongside them, from behind.

Park swore softly. There was the rap on the driver's window.

"Driving licence… "

"Piss off," Corinthian mouthed.

" O K, laddie, out."

Corinthian just reached inside his anorak and lifted clear his Customs and Excise I/D card. He held it up to the uniformed constable's face. "Do get lost."

The constable stiffened, full height, full authority of his uniform. "Down at our Division, have they been informed you are on our patch?"

"Please, just go back to your canteen," Corinthian said.

The constable tried for a long, hard stare, didn't find it easy, but he went back to his patrol car.

Park had his radio against his mouth. His voice was terse.

"April Five to April Nine and April Seven… I don't know how bad it is, we may have shown out, may not. On your bloody toes for Christ's sake. Out."

"What do you reckon?" Corinthian asked.

Keeper was thinking what Bill Parrish would have to say to his little Keeper if they were blown by the plods. He wasn't liking what he was thinking.

Charlie came down the stairs.

He had heard the telephone ring while he was packing the rucksack. He felt pretty good. Not having slept too well, that didn't matter. She was a great girl, and her Mum was good, and the breakfast had been brilliant. Not as brilliant as Polly, Polly was marvellous, and her father was a pig. He hesitated at the bottom of the stairs because he'd thought Polly's father had left, and now he could hear his voice on the telephone, ending a conversation.

He heard Polly's mother querying Polly's father. He put down the rucksack and listened.

Polly's father said, " N o, the police were not complaining, and they had no cause to complain. That's what they're there lor, that's what crime prevention is all about. Two men sitting in a car watching our street, that certainly entitles me to know what is going on. They have our street under surveillance, that's what the police said, the Health and Social Security have our street under surveillance, looking for those loafers who work on the black, cleaning windows and such, and then draw unemployment. That's what the police said. I'm off, then. And I trust that your gentleman friend will be gone by this evening."

Charlie beamed at Polly's father as they passed in the hall.

He thought the man was pretty shaken when he knew he'd been overheard. The door banged. Polly's mother, starting to wash up, said, "That's quite ridiculous. You can't get a window cleaner round here for love nor money."

The smile was gone from Charlie's face. Polly's father had said surveillance. He felt he had been kicked in the stomach.

She came into the hall and she had a happy light in her face.

He felt the shiver in his legs and the sweat on his stomach.

Surveillance. He heard the clatter of the dishes.

"What's at the back?"

" The garden and the garage."

"And there's another road?"

"Has to be another road, dumb head, or there wouldn't be a garage – why do you want to know?"

She was owed it and she wouldn't get it, an explanation.

He carried the rucksack into the kitchen. Formally, because that was the way he had been taught as a child, he thanked Polly's mother for her hospitality. He opened the kitchen door and walked through into the garden.

She followed him.

She caught him down by the small vegetable patch, her father's joy.

"Are they watching for you, Charlie?"

"It doesn't help you to know."

"It is for you. Why, Charlie?"

"It's a long story, and there isn't enough time."

He should have been gone. If they were watching the front, then they might have the back covered.

She had hold of his hand. "What have you done wrong?"

"Nothing, everything."

"Mr Shabro told me what had been done to your family.

He said that you weren't capable of friendship."

Gently, he took away his hand from her. "Perhaps one night we'll go dancing, dance till it's morning. You have to believe that I'd like that."

"Is that a lie, Charlie?"

"No, it's not… sweet Polly, the more you tell someone the more you involve someone, the more you involve them then the more you open them to hurt… it's best left unsaid."

"Will I see you again?"

Charlie caressed her cheek. "We'll dance all night. Promised."

"Am I not old enough to know? Is that it?" A bitterness, a choke, in her voice.

"It would hurt you to know."

He kissed her.

He felt the sweetness of her.

Perhaps one night they would go dancing…

He ran out of the back of the garden.

There was a grim satisfaction in it for Keeper. They'd all sweated, each of them on the track that had lost the Tango, then found him again. Token had done well when he'd come out of the garage and gone fast to the right and then turned in mid-stride. Token had done well to keep walking and go straight past him. Token said she'd been close enough to rub the sleepy dust out of the Tango's eye and she'd said that she found him quite dishy. Harlech had done well, because the Tango had climbed on a bus, and then hopped off at the lights and doubled back. Harlech had done a terrific job because he'd been fast enough on the radio for the car to pick the Tango up. Corinthian had tracked the Tango down on to the Underground, and stayed with him for the train jump, predictable but tricky. Then Token's turn again, in her reversible anorak with headscarf and the glasses with no power in the lenses. Between them they'd held on to him, all the way to King's Cross main line station.

It was Keeper's opinion that the Tango was trying what he thought were good evasion tactics, and Keeper reckoned he was a rank amateur, good instinct and poor training, but he wasn't complaining.

He sat on the InterCity. He could see the back of the Tango's head. Harlech was way down the carriage and he would be able to see the top of the Tango's forehead, and Token was in the carriage behind Keeper, and Corinthian was in the carriage ahead. Going very smooth, hammering at a hundred miles an hour plus on the rails heading north.

David reckoned that the Tango might have nodded off, his pillow the rucksack which had to hold the best part of a quarter of a million pounds in cash. Unless Mr Venables had it, and that didn't seem likely, not if he was tipping off the constabulary. Better get Statesman in to give the gnomes the once over after dark.

• •*

Mattie Furniss knew it was late at night.

It seemed an age since they had carried away the tray on which his supper plate had been, and the glass of water.

They came for him when he was lying on his bed, when he had taken off his trousers, and he had pulled the blanket over his body to hide his nakedness from the peephole. His underpants were hanging over the bottom of the bedframe to dry.

It had been a hideous day. He had been waiting for the rattle of the door, and the sight of the men come to take him down to the cellar. There had only been the tray with his food in the early morning, and the tray for his food in the early evening. He had heard a car come in what he had judged to be the middle of the day, and he had heard voices outside, and he thought that he had heard the voice of the investigator, but they had not come for him.

He could walk, just about, on his own. The soles of his feet were heavily swollen, but he had learned a rolling gait that would take him over a short distance. He was hunched from the strain that had been put on his shoulders.

When at last they came, they had not allowed him time to put on his trousers, nor the pants, nor his socks. Between his guards, Mattie Furniss went down the stairs. He wore only his shirt. He was hobbling and bent. He was beyond reach of help, he was going towards pain.

Down the stairs and into the hallway, and his instinctive turn was to the left, towards the doorway to the cellar. He was pulled to the right.

He stumbled and fell. They let him go down, and his knees felt the coolness of the tiled floor. They jerked him up and on to his feet and the pain shivered through him.

They took him through a kitchen. There were moths arcing around the light bulb that had no shade. There were two large metal pots on an electric cooker and on the table there were plates laid out with salads at the side. He saw the food that was unlike anything that was brought on the trays to his prison room. He was frog-marched through the kitchen and out into the glare of the lights in what he thought must be the yard at the back of the house.

The light came from the headlamps of a Mercedes car. The lights threw a bright wash across the yard and against the wall of concrete blocks. He thought the height of the wall was a foot or so above the height of his own head had he been standing erect and not been bent by the pain in his shoulders and ribs. That, too, was instinctive, that he checked the height of the wall. Many scenes now, all fast in his mind.

He saw the pockmarks where bullets had struck the wall, and the holes were in a group that was only three, four, feet across. He saw the guard who cradled a rifle, probably a Soviet AK-74, across his elbow. He saw the investigator standing with his hands deep in the pockets of his trousers. He saw a young cleric with the turban of brilliant white and the camel hair cape and the thin-rimmed spectacles.

It was done as if it were a routine in which the only character who didn't know his part was Mattie. And he was learning, so fast. No talk. The sounds of the engine of the Mercedes tilling and of the scrape of Mattie's feet across the hard earth yard. The feet scraped because he was losing the power to walk, going jelly in the legs. Across the yard to the place in the wall with the bullet holes.

They had to drag him.

The use was gone from his legs. Thinking of Harriet who was his wife. Thinking of the cottage that was his home.

Wanting to plead, and wanting to cry, and the voices strangled In his throat. Against the wall the guards loosed his arms. He collapsed. The dirt was on his knees, and on his arms and on his chest. Death was grovelling in the dirt yard of a villa on the outskirts of Tabriz. Death was choking in the night air, beyond the reach of help. Death was feeling the slackening of the gut muscles… Death was the metallic crack as a Soviet rifle was cocked. There was a hand in his hair and his head was wrenched upwards and his body weight was taken so that he was left in a kneeling position and the cold damp dirt of the yard cloyed on his privates. Too frightened to pray, like that Lutheran pastor would have prayed. Thinking of all those who were too far from him to help him, but closer than the God he hadn't troubled to know. Thinking of the men at Century and Flossie Duggan. Thinking of Harriet alone in the cottage at Bibury where the spring was over and the summer was coming, and of Will, who would be coming soon to cut the grass around the apple trees. Thinking of the agents in Tehran and Tabriz and the Harbourmaster's office in Bandar Abbas. Thinking of Char he who should have been his son. They would all see the morning, they would all know the freshness of another day. The morning, and another day, they were beyond his reach.

Against the back of his neck, where his hair thinned out, was the pressure of the barrel of the rifle. There was a pain prick from the fore-sight.

No questions.

No demand for names.

He opened his eyes. He saw the face of the investigator and the face of the cleric, expressionless.

He was shaking, and as his neck rolled so the muzzle of the weapon followed.

There was the firing click.

His ears exploded. His stomach failed.

He rolled, fell, collapsed.

He was on the dirt in the yard, and his mouth gaped and bit at the filth.

Mattie heard the low chuckle of the investigator. His eyes opened. He gazed into the cleric's face. He saw a silently mirthless smile.

He was pulled to his feet. His urine had run down the length of his thighs and had stained the dirt. He couldn't speak, couldn't help himself up. He made no attempt to cover himself as they took him back into the kitchen and past the cooker where a meal was in preparation, and up the stairs, and back to his prison room.

He was their toy.

On his bed he wept. The names were in his mind. In his mind were the names of the agents and the name of Charlie Eshraq.

Mattie could recognise it all, the shredding of his will to light.

From his room he could see the west face of the clock. Big lien showing a couple of minutes past midnight. He had slept on the decision, and he had killed a whole day on the decision.

He had taken advice, but the decision was his. He could keep his options open no longer.

He went down to the thirteenth floor.

He didn't knock, he went straight into the room. A very strange noise in the room stopped him in his tracks. Past midnight in Central London and the sounds were of the countryside at dawn. They'd put old Henry Carter on night duty. Finding a job for Henry in the twilight of his service at Century was putting him on night duty in the room used by the Crisis Management Committee. There was a camp bed over by the window. The man wore long combination underpants and a woollen vest with short sleeves and buttons at the throat. Typical of Whitehall, typical of government service, that a Crisis Management Committee should wind up once it was past midnight as a solitary individual, past retirement if he wasn't mistaken, sitting in ancient underclothes, and listening to God knew what… The man was quick off the bed, and was straight into his suit trousers, and was hooking on the braces over his vest. Didn't bother with his shirt. There was an expensive radio on the floor and a cassette was playing through it. A sharp note on the track amongst what, to the Director General, was a clatter of noise, and he saw the attention of Henry Carter waver, then disappear. A moment of bliss on his face. He switched off the machine.

"Sorry, sir, bless you for your patience… phylloscopus inornatus, that's the Yellow-Browed Warbler, a little beauty.

I did the tape in Norfolk last weekend. I thought I had her, never can be sure. Very intense, very penetrating call. Did you hear it, sir? Just off to Siberia for the summer, remarkable little lady… Apologies, you didn't come in here to listen to a Yellow-Browed Warbler."

The Director General handed over a single sheet of paper, in his own hand, his own signature. Carter read it. He hadn't his close work glasses on and he had to hold his spectacles away from his face to get a clear focus.

"You'll not mind me saying it, sir, but it's a wee bit late."

"You don't have a drink in here, do you?"

Henry took a bottle of Scotch from a cupboard, and two glasses, and he poured two liberal scoops.

The Director General drank deep.

"I know we've warned them, sir, but we've taken an awful time to tell them to run."

"Big step, Carter, dismantling a network. A bigger step when that network is down to three agents and will take years to rebuild."

"I just pray to God they've got time."

"Furniss, he's trained to withstand pressure."

"Interesting usage, pressure… sir."

"For Christ's sake, we are talking about the dismantling of a network."

"No, sir, if you'll excuse me, we are talking about pressure."

"He's been trained… Please, I'll have the other half."

The glass was taken, filled, handed back.

"Oh yes, sir, he's been trained. He was very good at the Fort. One of the best lecturers they've had there. But my experience is that training and the real thing are wholly different."

The Director General shuddered. His hands were tight on the glass.

"How long can he hold out, that's what I need to be sure of."

"He's a man I've been proud to know for more than twenty years, but if he's in Iran it's asking rather a lot of him that he hold out this long."

The Director General headed for the lift and his car home.

He left Henry Carter to the business of sending the messages that would instruct the three agents to take flight.