Home Run

13

"I am Matthew… Furniss. I am… the Iran Desk…

Head at Century House."

It was said… It was as if they were all exhausted, as if a birth had taken place and Mattie was the mother and the investigator was the midwife and the confession was the child.

He could see into the investigator's face, and there was running sweat on the man's face and red blotches from his exertion, and the breath came hard to the investigator. Mattie lay strapped on the bed. He could see into the face of the investigator as the man reeled away, as if he'd run more distance than he could cope with, and the heavy duty flex sagged from the man's hand. He could not take any more of the heavy duty flex on the soles of his feet. The pain ran up from his feet and into his knees and into his thighs and up into his stomach, in his stomach the pain spread out and burst into every particle of him. The pain was in his mind, and his mind could take nothing more.

It was done.

"Matthew Furniss."

It was as if they had all been on a great journey together.

There was Mattie who had endured, he no longer knew how many days, there were the guards who had started the day playing football with him, blindfolded, punching and kicking him from one to the other and heaving him against the damp scrape of the cellar walls, there was the investigator who sweated because of the force he had used to beat the soles of Mattie's feet. All on a great journey together, and the guards and the investigator had broken Mattie, and Mattie was strapped to the bed and needing to talk to save himself from the pain.

The investigator gripped the side of his table for support, then steadied himself and breathed in a gulp of the cellar's foul, hot air. All the body smells were trapped in the cellar.

He levered himself along the side of the table and threw the switch on the tape recorder.

That morning had been different, as if everything else that had gone before had been child's play. No breakfast brought down to the cellar while it was still dark outside, a long age hanging from the wall hook until the pain in his shoulders had given way to agony, then the football, then the beating with the heavy duty flex. As if they were now bored with him, as if they had other business to be about and could spare Mattie no more time.

So simple to speak the words. The hammering of new pain had ceased, and the tape-recorder was turning, and the investigator was sitting at the table, and the guards had pulled back to the wall and there was the rank sweet smoke of their cigarettes.

At that moment there was no thought in the mind of Mattie Furniss other than the killing of the rising pain. The pain stayed where it was. The guards came from behind and they unstrapped the thongs that held down his legs and his wrists.

They let him he free on the bed.

He must be a pitiful sight. Not Mattie Furniss at all. He had not washed, not after having been brought back from the yard the previous evening. His hair was unkempt and filthy, his lips were parched grey and cracked, his eyes were big and starring and racing. They had broken him. He curled his knees to his chest and tried to control the pain that was all over his body. Broken, but free from the beating.

"Well done, Mr Furniss. That was the hardest, Mr Furniss, mid the worst is now past."

Mattie talked about Century.

He could see from the eyes of the man that little that he said was not previously known. He spoke in a slow wheezing monotone. There was no character, no wit, he was a tour guide at the end of a long season. The investigator had pulled up his chair close to Mattie, and he was hunched forward so that his face dominated Mattie. Sometimes the investigator repeated what Mattie had said as if that way he ensured that the microphone picked up the words with greater clarity. The investigator took no notes, to have written on a notepad would have deflected the concentration that now settled over Mattie.

He talked about the budget that was given to Iran Desk, and he talked about the resources that could be made available to Iran Desk from the Station Officers in Ankara and Baghdad and Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Bahrain.

All the old loyalties, all he stood for, beaten from him.

He heard the drone of his own voice… he'd done them well. He'd stayed silent longer than they could have counted on. There was nothing that he should be ashamed of. He'd given them time to save the field men.

He was given a glass of water. He held it in his two hands, and the water slopped down his shirt front when he tried to drink, and his lips were rigid like plastic sheeting… he'd won them time. They should be thankful for what that precious time had cost him.

Mattie gave the name. "… His business is on Bazar e Abbas Abad."

He could see him clearly. He was hugely fat, sat on a reinforced chair in the back office behind a cave of merchan-dise and held court over cigars and coffee. He was a con-noisseur of carpets and a collector of gossip, and he was a field agent of Century from far back. Mattie had known the merchant for twenty years, and it was Mattie's joke each time they met that he couldn't get his arms round his old friend when they hugged a greeting. There was gossip to be had from the merchant about the rivalries of the army colonels, about the inter-factional fighting amongst the Mullahs, about the industrialists squabbling for foreign exchange with which to buy overseas plant. Every time they met then Mattie laughed, and sometimes the choicest of the gossip, if it were of matters sexual, could even bring a smile to those witheringly dull fellows from the Agency across the ocean. He had known the merchant since he had been a liaison officer in Tehran, and there was a rug in front of the fire in the cottage at Bibury that had cost him an arm and a leg, and the last time he had been seriously angry with Harriet had been when she had put a wet pine log on that fire that had spat a knot on to the rug. Mattie named the merchant, and they brought a damp towel to put across the soles of his feet to quieten the anger of the pain.

Another name. "… he works in the Harbourmaster's office at Bandar Abbas."

When he was Station Officer in Tehran he had once made the long road journey south, and he had been sure that he had thrown off the tail of the S A V A K agents that was supposed to be with him, and he had gone to the home of the official from the Harbourmaster's office. The man had been recruited by a previous Station Officer, and until the Revolution had been of minimal importance, and maintained only because he did not want money. He was pure gold now, a field agent in the office which observed the comings and goings of merchant shipping in and out of the country's chief port. He had gone to the man's small brick house, he had sweated and sat on a floor rug and wondered why the ventilation chimney seemed so inadequate in the blasting Gulf heat. On that occasion, after the wife had scurried in with a tray and glasses holding diluted lime juice and scurried out, the official had told Mattie that he was a democrat, and therefore opposed to the regime of the Shah of Shahs. The Revolution had come, the official had found no democracy from the clerics, he had stayed on the list of active agents and he had begun to grow in importance.

A small, frightened man, who believed that the work he carried out for Mattie was a short step in the long road to bring parliamentary rule to his country. A sandwich with sweet cheese was brought for the prisoner.

Another name given. "… he runs a repair workshop in Tabriz for lorries, and he also has contracts to keep the Revolutionary Guards' vehicles on the road."

A basic and human individual, a man who might have been in Mattie's eyes almost a European. The engineer was the sort of fellow who was always popular, perpetually in demand, and he worked all the hours that his God gave him. The engineer had been recruited in Turkey. A good and active Station Officer, long before this academic boy in the job now, had sought him out in a cafe and talked to him when he was over for the collection of a broken-down lorry that would need a new gear box. That Station Officer had been lucky. The son of the engineer's close friend had been shot in the old gaol in Tabriz after a cursory trial by the Komiteh. The engineer had been ready for recruitment. The engineer's pay went into an account at the Etibank in Van, and it was Mattie's business to know that the credit mounted and was never reduced.

Perhaps there was a day on some far horizon in his mind when the engineer would drive out his truck, with his family hidden amongst a cargo. It was useful, the information provided by the engineer. In any time that approached normality it would have been second grade, but they were not normal times, and Iran Desk were pretty damn thankful to have anything coming out of Iran. Mattie had been given a glass of water and a damp towel again soothed the soles of his feet.

It was a good hotel. Charlie could sleep on the pavements with the dossers when he had to, not for the sake of it. The room was?66.50 a night and the best that Leeds could provide. He locked the door behind him. He went along the landing, he was carrying his rucksack by the straps, the two straps twisted around his wrist. He wore his cleanest slacks, a clean shirt and a navy blazer.

There was a man at the end of the corridor, in jeans and a sweatshirt, polishing hard at the muzzle of a fire hose. He didn't look at Charlie and went on with his polishing. Pretty damn obvious. .. Charlie understood… What could be so compelling about getting a shine on to a fire hose nozzle?

A lift was waiting for him.

He came out into the hotel lobby. Too crowded for him to spot the watchers, and he wasn't hanging around to search them out. He knew what he was at. He strode across the lobby, not looking right and not looking left, went as though he belonged and hadn't a care in the world. He pushed his way through the revolving doors, then hesitated. It was colder up in the north than in London. There were taxis waiting in line, engines off. He paused on the pavement.

He moved sharply. He ducked back through the swing doors and across the lobby to the staircase.

He went up the stairs three at a time. Six flights to climb.

He went up the stairs like there was no tomorrow, and took the last flight that was to the roof, and he put his shoulder against the stiffness of the fire escape door.

He stepped out on to the flat roof. He skirted the air conditioning machinery. He had no interest in a fine view over factories or the brick terraces or the munificence of the Victorian civic buildings and churches.

He went to the edge of the roof. He looked down on to the street below. He could see the line of parked taxis. His eyes roved. He saw a green saloon that was behind the taxis.

He could see that there were two people in the front seats, and there was the exhaust showing that the engine was idling. He saw that the man who had been polishing the nozzle of the fire hose was now across the street, and his lips were moving and there was no one close enough to hear him.

In his bath, Charlie had remembered that he was a friend of Mr Furniss.

He was going to piss on them.

•**

"Where the hell is he?"

"Went back up the fire stairs."

"I know he went up the bloody stairs – where did he go?"

"He was coming out and he just turned round."

"I've got eyes myself – where is he now?"

Harlech was across the road from the front of the hotel.

Corinthian was stranded in the hotel lobby.

Token was round the back. "Not a whistle of him here."

There was the local joker in the Sierra, to drive. Keeper thought he was going to be a disaster because he was V A T, and V A T investigators were the pits. When the Head Office came up from the big city they had to put up with whatever they could get, and they needed a local man for the driving.

The V A T man said, "Not a bad start to the day."

The repartee insult was rising in Keeper. The interruption, the insult never spoken.

Corinthian into Keeper's earpiece: "April Eleven to April Five, our Tango One is in the lobby, heading for the front door… going through the front door, you should be picking him up… "

"Your lucky day," the VAT man said.

Keeper saw Charlie come through the swing doors. He felt the relief jar through him. He saw the target walk towards the first taxi on the rank holding the rucksack. It had been Keeper's opinion that Tango One was a rank amateur, but he didn't know why the target had gone back into the hotel, and he didn't know what he had done there, and he didn't know whether they had all shown out, and he was no longer sure how amateur the target was.

They followed the taxi out of the rank. He told the V A T man that he didn't need a running commentary on the splendours of Leeds, thank you, and he had to shout at the joker to let Token through with the back-up car, and neither Token nor Harlech acknowledged them as they went by and took up prime station behind the taxi. They had the message too.

Perhaps the target was not such a rank amateur after all.

Herbert Stone was used to dealing with middle trade businessmen and government representatives. The boy fitted no pattern that he was used to. Middle trade businessmen came to him from Hamburg or Rotterdam or Barcelona because he had earned a reputation for discretion and efficiency, for putting paperwork into place with speed. Government representatives arrived at his office, once a vicarage, because they depended on his discretion in placing hardware in the hands of people they could not acknowledge.

He dealt with corporations and institutions, not with bearded young men who wore yellow socks, and who saun-tered in with rucksacks, for heaven's sake. And the kid seemed relaxed, as if it were the most normal thing in life to take an InterCity north and then come and chat about taking delivery of armour-piercing hardware.

Herbert Stone followed the principles of the Shavian Andrew Undershaft – he would do business with anyone, offer a realistic price, not trouble himself with principles or politics .. and the young man had given Mattie Furniss' name, and Furniss's office had confirmed the connection. Century put quite a bit of business his way, matters too delicate for public knowledge. There had not been as many Belfast produced Blowpipe shoulder-fired ground-to-air missiles in the mountain valleys of Afghanistan as there had been Californian built Stingers, but the British had been there, their warheads had joined the fireworks, and Stone had been the conduit used by Century to get the missiles into the hands of the Mujahidin, never mind that they generally made a hash of them.

He would be wary, cautious, but never dismissive. in a neat hand, in pencil, he wrote down the detail of Charlie Eshraq's order. It was a pleasant, airy office. There was no illustration of any matter military on the walls, just watercolour originals of the Yorkshire Dales. He might have been noting the necessary information prior to the issuing of a personal accident policy.

"If I'm to help you, and I'm not at this stage saying that I can, if I'm to help you then there has to be a degree of frankness between us…"

"Yes."

"If you lie to me then I might just lie to you. Your problem, you have to trust me… "

"But I am recommended by Mr Furniss, that's your guarantee… "

True, that was on the youngster's side, and a surety for him too. "What country do you mean to operate in – where will the weaponry be used?"

"Iran."

No whistle in the teeth, no pursing of the lips. "And the delivery point?"

"Past Turkish Customs, I collect in Turkey."

"What targets for armour-piercing?"

"First target is an armoured Mercedes, 600 series. After that I do not at the moment know."

"Not all to be fired in one engagement?"

Charlie paused, considered. "Each one different. Perhaps more vehicles, not tanks, perhaps buildings."

The scratching of Stone's pencil. "I see."

"So, what should I have?"

For the first time Stone was shaken. A small, puzzled frown escaped him. "You don't know what you want?"

"I'm not a soldier, what should I have?"

Everyone who came and sat in Stone's office knew what they wanted, problem was could they get it. They wanted howitzers, or 81 mm mortars, they wanted white phosphorus shells, or ground-to-air, they wanted attack helicopters, or a Claymore system of ground defence. None of them, his clients, ever asked his advice on what they should have.

"Do you have any military experience, Mr Eshraq?"

"None."

The pencil stopped, hovered… but it was none of his business. "Light Anti-Tank Weapon. It's called LAW 80.

How many are we talking about?"

Charlie said, "Three, maybe four."

Stone looked up from his notes. "I see. We are talking about a relatively, ah, small order."

"Yes."

There was a crocodile of barges going down the Thames, and seagulls hovering in chaos over the cargo.

The Deputy Director General was concise. "You won't know this man, this Stone, but he's used by us. He's an arms dealer, reliable sort of fellow. Right now Charlie Eshraq is sitting in his office and trying to place an order for a handful of LAW 80 missiles."

"I was never in the forces, what do they do?"

"They bust tanks… Stone rang through two or three days ago to check on Furniss' reference. Miss Duggan told me this and I asked Stone to ring me as soon as Eshraq uppeared. He's trying to buy these missiles to take back with him into Iran. Does he get them, or not?"

The seagulls swirled in aerial combat over the barges. "It would be an illegal exportation, no doubt."

"Yes, but we're not squeamish. Presumably he brought buck heroin in order to pay for these weapons, as soon as he has the weapons he'll be going back inside."

"Shows extraordinary courage." The Director General had a son at university, studying philosophy, and allergic to the lawn mower. "I like young people with purpose and guts."

"That's Eshraq – in full."

"Give them to him. Give him this anti-tank whatever…"

The Deputy Director General grimaced. "Quite, but it ignores the problem."

"What problem?"

"The problem of Mattie Furniss. The problem of Mattie talking, spilling under torture what he knows about his agents and about his young protege. Got me?"

The Director General swung away from the window, swivelled his chair.

"I tell you what I think… I think Mattie is a very experienced and dedicated officer. I think he's of the old school. I think he'd go to his grave rather than betray his network."

The Deputy Director General murmured, "That's just not realistic, sir. I am afraid all we know today about interrogation techniques tells us that he will, inevitably, brave as he unques-tionably is, talk. Would it help you to meet with our own interrogators, have them to tell you what, exactly, is being done to Mattie?"

"It would not… It is simply that I have a greater faith in the resilience of an old dog. And furthermore, you stand there lecturing me as though you know for certain that Furniss is in an Iranian torture chamber. Well, you don't. We don't.

We haven't the least idea where he is. He may have been kidnapped by Turkish thugs who haven't the slightest notion who he is. He may be with some freelance outfit who simply want to ransom him. Tell me, if you would, how long it has generally taken for any of the extremist sects in Beirut to announce the capture of hostages. They're on to a telephone to Reuter before you can count to ten, or there is no word for months. There is no pattern about which we can be definite. So we'll just play it my way, if you don't mind."

"So, what is your instruction?"

The Director General said, "Eshraq is to have his missiles.

He is to be encouraged to return to Iran. Give him any help he needs, without tripping over the Customs people, if you can."

The Deputy Director General, swearing silently, flushed at the cheeks, went back to his office and spoke to Herbert Stone.

Parrish pounded down the fifth floor corridor of the Lane.

Those who saw him, through open office doors, and those who flattened themselves against the corridor walls to give him room, wondered whether he'd got the trots or whether he'd heard the Four Minute Warning. He charged into the ACIO's office, and the ACIO had an Audit team with him, and none of the Audit team complained, just packed their briefcases and left. The door closed behind Bill Parrish. He didn't wait to collect his thoughts, gather in his breath.

"Just had Park on, from Leeds, right? Park is with Eshraq, right? Eshraq is currently sitting in the office of one Herbert Stone. Mr Stone sells weapons. Eshraq is buying weapons.

That's the strength of it. He's using heroin money to buy weapons.

… This is going too far. Eshraq's run enough, it's time to knock the bugger over."

The ACIO rang through to the CIO and while he was talking Parrish loosened his tie and thought he was too old for this sort of caper, far too bloody old.

The voice was in her ear.

"I'm terribly sorry, Mrs Furniss, I really am sorry, but I just cannot talk about it on the telephone. It's an open line, you see. They haven't been in touch with you? It's a scandal.

I know I shouldn't say this, Mrs Furniss, but the day of the gentleman is past here… Mrs Furniss, please don't ever say to anyone that I spoke to you… They don't know what to do. They know that Mr Furniss was kidnapped in Turkey, they believe that he was then taken into Iran. After that they don't know anything. They've set up a Committee to watch developments, but they've staffed it with fools, people like that old idiot Carter. I mean, Mrs Furniss, those sort of people are not competent enough. I was taken up to see the Director General. He had me in his office. He is not a gentleman, Mrs Furniss, I hold him responsible. What he was interested in was all I knew about Charlie. You see, Mr Furniss kept all his files on Charlie in his personal safe, didn't let them go down to Library, and didn't iet me put them on any computer roll which anyone else could plug into. They were very concerned about Charlie. To tell you the truth, Mrs Furniss, they seemed more concerned about Charlie than they were about Mr Furniss. Mrs Furniss, I don't know what it is, his trouble, but Charlie is in some sort of trouble, very deep, I'd swear on that. It's disgraceful, Mrs Furniss, them not being in touch with you every day, should be in touch with you two or three times a day. I have to ring off, goodbye, Mrs Furniss. Mr Furniss has a great many friends here and they are all thinking of you. Goodbye."

She was grateful to kind Miss Duggan. When she was a child, before she had been sent away to school, her parents had employed a Flossie Duggan as a nanny, a nice, soft woman with a big bosom and a well of loyalty. Mattie used to say that, at Century, life would not be worth living if he didn't have Flossie Duggan to take care of him.

Harriet Furniss would not have called herself a Service wife, rather described herself as a Service widow. The Service had no room for wives. In more than twenty years, since Mattie had come out of the Coldstreams and joined the Service, she had never set foot inside Century. How could she have done?

She had never even been allowed to drive to the corner on the Embankment and wait to collect him after work. She had never been to a social function that involved Century people.

The only person that she knew at Century was Flossie Duggan, because Flossie would once or twice a year come down to Bibury and type up a report over a weekend if it had to be on the DG's desk or the DDG's desk first thing on a Monday morning. The life of the Service was a closed book to her.

Little boys playing secretive games. But dangerous games. So hideously dangerous that Mattie was a prisoner in Iran… and she had good memories of Iran. She remembered when they had been young and together there, when she had been the young mother of two small girls, the swimming trips to the Caspian in the summer and the skiing trips to the Elborz in the winter, when the future was stable and set to last for a millennium. It had been a lovely country, kind and welcoming and comfortable. Infuriating, too, because it had aped Europe and of course she couldn't get a plumber or an electrician, never for love and rarely for money. Endless dinners by candlelight, because as night followed day it was inevitable her social calendar would be dogged by power failures.

She looked out into her garden. It was time to strip the wallflowers from the beds, but the rain was beating on the windowpanes. She loved her garden in summer… She could picture Mattie pacing the lawn and then coming inside to tell her, bluff and stiff because he could never handle matters that were emotional, that Juliette Eshraq had been hanged from a crane in a square in Tabriz. She would never forget that, how he had walked backwards and forwards past the lupins and pinks and stocks before he had come inside to tell her of the execution of the girl she had known as a cheeky and darling child perched on her knee.

And what could Miss Duggan have meant about Charlie being in trouble and why did the Service know anything about Charlie? He was bound to call when he came back from his trip overseas. She would get him down to the cottage and ask him. Straight out. She wasn't going to let Charlie get himself mixed up with Century. That would be unbearable.

She thought of her man. Darling Mattie, everybody's friend, her husband.

Later, she would go down to the Post Office for some stamps, and if she were asked then she would put on a smile and say that Mattie was fine, just abroad for a few days, and before she went to the Post Office there were more circulars to send about the footpath.

She was a Service widow, and she would be good at it.

Mattie would expect that.

Herbert Stone had the brochure on the desk in front of him.

"It's just what you want, Mr Eshraq, and it's the best of British technology. Very much up to date, only been in service with our own forces for a few months. 'Provides an exceptional hit and kill capability for its size and weight… outstanding accuracy against both fixed and moving targets is achieved using a built-in spotting rifle… high technology warhead provides excellent kill probabilities from all angles of attack

… not complicated to teach… zero maintenance.' Sounds pretty good, and it is. It'll get through 650mm of armour, it has an effective range of 500 metres, and the whole thing weighs only ten kilos. The beauty of LAW 80, Mr Eshraq, is in the spotting rifle, you fire a tracer round, you get a hit, you depress the main firing button and away you go. If this is designed to take out a main battle tank then it goes without saying, Mr Eshraq, that it will make a frightful mess of an armoured Mercedes."

"What is it going to cost me?"

"Let's have a drink… you'd like a drink, Mr Eshraq?"

"What will it cost?"

"Expensive."

"How much?"

"Right, Mr Eshraq, no drink, just the figures. We're talking about a round half dozen, correct?"

"No, four."

Herbert Stone's voice did not waver. There was no apology.

"I'm quoting you?50,000 for four… "

"What does that include?"

Herbert Stone had seen that the young man hadn't blinked, hadn't gagged. "Each missile would cost the army?2000, that's for ordinary bulk dealing. You are not ordinary and you are not bulk, and if I had not just spoken to a colleague of Mr Furniss you and I would not be dealing at all. You have a good friend, young man, but even with friends there are complications. You don't want all the seamy details, do you?

You just want delivery through Customs at Istanbul. For that money you get four missiles. Don't worry yourself with the details, Mr Eshraq."

"Four missiles at fifty thousand pounds?"

"Right," said Stone and made a swift note.

Charlie bent over, and he lifted his rucksack on to his knee.

He delved into it. He laid on the edge of the desk a dirty shirt, and two pairs of dirty socks, and then his washing bag. From the bottom of the rucksack he drew out a plastic bag. He pushed the washing bag and the socks and the dirty shirt to one side, and from the plastic bag he took the first wad of notes, wrapped by an elastic band. Other wads followed. A less experienced businessman might have showed surprise, hut Stone had the first wad in his hand and was counting.

Twenty-pound notes, one hundred notes in each wad. The heaps of notes moved from the side of the desk where Charlie sat with his laundry, across to Stone's side. Twenty-five wads of notes on the desk top, and Charlie lifted the bag back into the bottom of his rucksack, and covered it with his clothes and his washing bag.

"That's it, thank you." The money was shovelled, fast, into Stone's safe.

"Mr Stone, what are the complications that cost so much extra, please?"

It was a reasonable question, and that was how Stone treated it. "You're better off without details, Mr Eshraq, details tend to get messy in the wrong hands… I have to have a cut.

They have to come off the tail of a truck, and someone has to put them on a truck, and someone has to make the paperwork right, and someone has to find a bit of room on a lorry, one or two palms to be crossed at frontiers on the way to Turkey, and someone has to make sure Istanbul doesn't look that closely at what's coming through. There are quite a lot of people who would go to prison for quite a long time, that adds up to the difference, as you think of it, above ?2000 per weapon."

Charlie said, "In that price, in the load, I'd like there to be included three wholesale cartons of bath soap, the best there is, whatever Mrs Stone would recommend. Can you manage that?"

"Yes, I believe we can manage that."

"I'll give you my number in London. You'll call as soon as you are ready?" Charlie's eyes narrowed. "If they were tampered with, if they didn't work… "

"I think we can let Mr Furniss be our mutual surety, don't you, Mr Eshraq?"

Park said, "If we don't get into Colombia and start to hit the bastards in their own backyard, then we're going to lose. It's the Americans who are at the sharp end at the moment, but our turn's coming. We won't avoid the really big cocaine traffic if we don't act much more positively. The demand's here, for the lunch time snort, and that demand'll grow in London just as it's grown in New York. Do you know that there's a guy in Medellin, that's in Colombia, who has a fortune estimated at two billion dollars? That's cocaine money.

We have to go in, get stuck in on the ground. We can't just be sitting at Southampton and Dover and Heathrow."

The VAT investigator chewed gum and said, "Myself, I never reckoned to change the world between nine and five, five days a week."

"We have to beat the power of these bastards. Did you know that there was a Justice Minister of Colombia, and when he quit he was given the job of Ambassador to Hungary – and he was shot there, in Hungary. That's the power of the bastards, that's what's got to be beaten."

"Good luck," the VAT investigator took the gum from his mouth, put it in the ashtray. "So, you're off to Bogota?"

"If I can get there."

"Me, I'm looking forward to staying in Leeds and sorting out the fiddles of Mr Gupta and the corner shop."

Park said, "Haven't you ever wanted to do anything that mattered?"

"Smart talk. Makes a change. We don't get much smart talk up here."

"Terrorism, that's crap compared with the drugs threat, and that's not recognised… "

"Are you married?"

"What of it?"

The V A T man settled comfortably in his seat and peeled another strip of gum. He said airily, "Your good lady, is she going to Bogota?"

He didn't answer. Park had the camera at the window. He photographed Charlie leaving through the front door, and when he had the photographs then he was on the radio and alerting his team. Corinthian passed them, on foot, and in the mirror he saw Harlech and Token in the back-up motor.

Tango One was walking back towards the centre of the city, and the rucksack was trailing from his hand, and the tail was on him.

David Park had them all keyed.

They couldn't let the target run much more, not now that he was into weaponry, and too damn right he was going to get himself to Bogota when this target was knocked. Been right to let him run up to now, but all changed once he'd started talking hardware. Too damn right he didn't know if Ann would be with him.

"You asked to be kept informed," the ACIO said. "So I am informing you that it is our intention to arrest Eshraq."

"When will this be?"

"Tomorrow at four a.m."

The Home Secretary lowered his eyes. "You could do me a favour."

"What sort of favour, sir?"

"You could allow me to consult."

"Consult, Home Secretary? The case is 2000 per cent rock solid."

"No, no, I don't mean on a point of law. You've run a splendid show. I've nothing but admiration for the way it's been handled. No, it's not that. It's… it's, well, frankly, it's odd, but it's turned political and I need to consult upwards."

"There's nothing odd about that, sir. It started out political.

'Turn the country upside down, chaps, bring in the pusher, bring in the dealer, spare no expense, bring the distributor to book, scrap every other investigation' – and we did – and I rather think my job was on the line if we didn't. Well, Home Secretary, we did. We've got him, this heroin importer, this degenerate killer, the man who carried in the stuff which Miss Lucy Barnes killed herself with – or are the political fortunes of Mr Barnes so wonderfully on the wane that heroin has been struck from the political agenda?"

"Commissioner, I am totally sympathetic to your point of view, believe me."

"I'll believe you, Home Secretary, if, and only if, you fight our corner. You've got, well, I am in danger of revising that, because you are a politician and you have nothing – the country you are elected to serve has got a dedicated, a passionately dedicated Investigation Division. They earn peanuts, they work twice as hard as you do. They get no perks, hardly any holidays, and they deliver. They deliver and you want to consult."

"I take in what you say."

The ACIO took out his small notepad. He wrote down his home telephone number. "Four a.m., sir. You can reach me at home this evening. But we'll be rooting fpr you, sir. Don't let us down."

It was a slow process, getting the messages to the field agents.

Some messages could be sent over coded inserts into broadcasts of the BBC's World Service, but an order to close shop, abandon ship, must be delivered by hand. Terence Snow was to send a low level but reliable man to Tabriz. The Station Officer in Bahrain had to find someone to fly to Tehran. The Station Officer in Abu Dhabi had to find a dhow owner to ferry the message across the treacherous Gulf waters to Bandar Abbas. Of course, it would have been quicker to have enlisted the help of the Agency, but then it would also have had to be explained that Mr Matthew Furniss, Desk Head (Iran), had been lost. And that was news that Century were unwilling to share with the Americans, a matter of dirty linen made public.

Charlie slept in his hotel, the plastic bag under his pillow.

The green Ford Sierra was outside the hotel. The VAT investigator had gone home, and Keeper was asleep across the back seat with the Vodaphone cradled in his arms. Harlech and Corinthian and Token had the room across the corridor from the target, and would be on two-hour shifts watching the door.

Keeper was well asleep when the Vodaphone warbled in his ear.

"That you, Keeper?"

"Bill? Yes, it's me."

"Are you sitting comfortably? No knock tomorrow… Got that? No lift in the morning… "

"For Christ's sake, Bill…"

"I said, no knock tomorrow."

"Why not?"

"David, the tablets just come flying off the mountain, and I pass on the messages."

"I don't fucking believe it. What more do they want?"

"What they do not want is for the target to be lifted."

"I hear you."

"You cuddled up with Token?"

"I am bloody not."

"Good thing… do us all a favour, give your missus a bell, will you? I gave her my promise that you'd be back for the dance. Sweet dreams, Keeper… just ring your missus in the morning, and you do not lift the target."

The boot went in, and the fist.

There was a hand snaking into Mattie's hair in order to pull up his head, so that it was easier to punch him, kick him, so that it was harder for him to protect himself.

He was trying to tell them the name, but his lungs were emptied by the beatings into his stomach pit, and he had not the breath to shout the name. His throat was too raw to speak the name. If he told them the name then the beating and the kicking would stop.

The man was too good to have been fobbed off with three names. Mattie had known why the beating had started again.

He had shown the flicker of success. He thought he had won small victories with three names. The investigator had read him. Buying off the pain of a beating with three names. But three names was the sliding slope. It was what Mattie would have taught at the Fort – once the names start then the walls come tumbling in. He had no more defence. He had used all the tricks that he knew of. The last trick had been the feigning of unconsciousness, and the cigarette end, lit, on the skin under his armpit, tender, had blown away the deceit in a scream of pain.

He knelt on the floor. His arms hung at his side. There was the taste of his blood in his mouth, and there was a tooth socket for his tongue to rest in. He hated the men that he had named. The pain and the shame had been brought down on him because he had known their names. The fist in his hair held his head upright, and they punched and slapped his face, and they buffeted the bridge of his nose so that there were tears in his eyes, and they kicked his stomach and his groin.

For Mattie, the only way of ending the pain was to surrender the name. He had thought he could satisfy them with three names, and he had failed.

His arms flailed around him, as if he tried to drive them back. If he did not drive them back, away from him, then he could not draw the breath into his lungs and the saliva down into his throat, and he could not name the name. He did not see the flick finger gesture of the investigator. He was not aware that the hand was no longer in his hair, and that his body had buckled. He saw only the investigator's face.

His chest heaved. The breath flooded into his body.

"You killed his sister."

"Did I, Mr Furniss?"

"You tortured her, you killed her."

"Who did I torture, who did I kill?"

"His sister… he's going to get you for his sister."

"Where is he going to come from, to get to me?"

"Coming from U K, coming through Turkey, coming through the Dogubeyezit frontier post."

"How is he going to get to me, for what I did to his sister?"

"Armour-piercing missile, for you and the Mullah who sentenced his sister."

"Who is the Mullah who sentenced his sister?"

"I don't know."

"How will he come here, to get to me?"

"Papers, papers of the pasdaran."

"Where do the papers come from?"

"Istanbul."

"Where in Istanbul?"

"From a hairdressing shop, in the Aksaray district, it is just to the right of the Mirelaon church. It is the only hairdresser there."

"When is he coming, with his papers from the hairdressing shop?"

"Very soon."

"Would he be known to me, my hopeful assassin?"

"You knew his sister, you tortured her. There were two Guards that took her to the execution, he shot them in Tehran.

The executioner of Tabriz, he blew him up, bomb on a car roof. You'll know him."

"Mr Furniss, what is his name?"

He knelt at the feet of the investigator. His head was bowed down to his knees. From his clothes there was the smell of vomit, in his nose was the smell.

"God forgive me…"

"What is his name?"

"Harriet… Please, Harriet, forgive me."

"His name, Mr Furniss?"

"Charlie, you can't know what they've done to me… the pain, Charlie… "

"The name?"

"He's coming to get to you, for what you did to his sister.

He's Charlie. His name is Charlie Eshraq."

"We'll get the doctor to you… Thank you, Mr Furniss."