Home Run

15

There was the numbing shock spreading from the heel of his hand. And the body was at his feet.

There was his food tray on the table.

Go for it…

Mattie went. Fast and cold, just as the Major had told them.

He went out through the heavy door. He went straight at the second guard standing back from the doorway. He saw the surprise wheeling across the face of the second guard, and Mattie's hands were at his throat and his knee rose sharply with all the force Mattie had into the man's groin. No going back because the body of the guard who had carried the food tray was on the tiled floor behind him. The second guard crumpled to his knees. Mattie let go of his throat and brought his knee swinging back into the man's face. His head flew back, struck the wall. One more jerk with the knee to the head now slumped against the wall, and he was almost gone.

Mattie dragged him into the prison room and then his hands were closing on the man's throat. The guard picked feebly at Mattie's wrists, and his eyes bulged, and his tongue arced, and his voice choked, and his breath died. The Major had always said it would be easy, if they went for it. Nothing easier than chopping the heel of the hand on to the nape of a man's neck. Nothing simpler than locking the fingers around a man's throat, and taking the pressure on to his windpipe, so that it sealed. His fingers were a tourniquet, and the voice and the breath and the life of the second guard were dying. He felt no fear. He felt only a determination to carry out all that he had been told. The second guard was sinking to the tiled floor, and all the time he looked up and into the face of his killer.

Wrong place, dear boy, to come looking for mercy. It had been the second guard who had always smoked and seemed so casual and so indifferent when the real pain was being worked into Mattie's body down in the cellar. Never any mercy in the cellar from you, dear boy. The second guard had his hands on Mattie's wrists, and the stupid, pathetic creature had not had the wit to let go of the hands and to go for the pistol in the holster at his belt. Bad mistake, dear boy. Mattie heard the last choke shudder, and his fingers on the second guard's throat had the weight of the man's corpse.

He dragged the body of the second guard across the tiles and towards the bed.

A hell of a weight, and the tiredness was flooding into Mattie. With his foot he pushed them both under the iron framed bed.

He took the tunic and plimsoll shoes off the bigger of the two guards. The man was taller than Mattie and had the bigger feet, and his plimsolls went on to Mattie's feet over the bandages, and he took the holster belt, and when he had retrieved his own trousers from under the blanket, then he threaded the belt through the loops and put on the tunic. He had the pistol. He checked the breech and the magazine. It was East bloc manufacture and it was a hell of a time since he had last seen a pistol made in Czechoslovakia. He took bread from the food tray, forced it into his trouser pocket along with a chicken piece and a fistful of rice.

Mattie stepped out on to the landing.

He listened. There was a radio playing. He recognized a news bulletin on the radio, the Tehran Home Service, and he could hear low voices. There was no other way. The way out was down the stairs. The pistol stayed in his holster. If he had taken it out then he would have had to spend time learning its mechanisms, he had not that time. The Major had always said that the initial movement was what gave you the chance of escape. He went down the stairs. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. It was a good house for him. The house had concrete floors under the tiles, and a concrete staircase. No sound as he came down the stairs. The hallway ran the length of the villa, from the front door, and into the kitchen at the back. He paused again, he kept himself flat against the hall wall. Ridiculous, but he was actually listening to the news broadcast, something about the price of long-grained rice.

Come on, Mattie, get on with it. He saw the poster of Khomeini in front of him, across the width of the hallway, sellotaped to the wall.

… Up yours, dear boy… The voices that he heard were low, relaxed, and came with the radio from behind a nearly closed door that was opposite to him. The Major had said that the guards who most mattered were the guards that had never been seen by the prisoner.

There could be guards outside. Mattie had to accept that there might be guards outside the villa and that he had no idea of their positioning. He was listening, but his ears were filled with the radio broadcast, and the words of the men inside the room. He pushed himself away from the wall and walked past the door, trying to make himself upright. He should have brought the tray, either as disguise or something to throw.

He undid the catch on the holster, put one hand on the butt of the pistol and went into the kitchen. No one there. They had already eaten. His own food would have been the last to be prepared. The sink was stacked with plates and with cooking dishes. They'd come soon, perhaps when the radio broadcast was over. They'd wash the dishes and then they'd wonder where were the two guards who had taken the food tray to the prisoner.

Mattie told himself that he was going for the wall in the back yard, he was going and he wasn't stopping. If they were going to stop him then they were going to have to shoot him.

The kitchen was behind him. He had passed through the door and he would have been silhouetted in the doorway. He didn't know a way of going through a doorway, from a lit room and out into darkness, without throwing shadows.

The back yard, beyond the kitchen, was the only area outside the villa that he had seen, and he knew there was a high wall. If there was one guard outside then the likelihood was that he would be at the front, by the gate, but that was the area of chance.

He went on tiptoe across the yard. He had never heard a dog, and he didn't think there was a dog there. The Major had said that dogs were the nightmare of the escaper, but he hadn't heard a dog, not a guard dog nor a pet dog. He went for the wall. He went for the wall where there were the bullet marks in the concrete blocks. If they caught him, if they brought him back, then it would be at the wall that his life would end. He reached up. The palms of his hands and his fingers could just reach the top of the wall.

A terrible pain when he pulled himself up. In his shoulders and his upper back and down to the cage of his ribs. The hurt was from the times that he had been on the hook in the cellar.

He struggled to get his feet off the ground, and he scrambled with his knees to give him purchase up the wall. There was a moment when he had his head and his shoulders above the summit of the wall, and then he was balancing on his chest and the pain was excruciating. He could see into a street, and he could see low bungalows.

There were the headlights of an approaching car. The lights played on the centre of the road and lit up the walls of the buildings, and the lights were rushing closer to the wall of the villa, surging towards Mattie who was high on the wall and working to swing his legs on to the top of the concrete blocks.

Behind him, through the open kitchen door, came the signature music of the end of the news broadcast. He knew the music because most days at Century he listened to the recording picked up at Caversham. He thought that if he fell back from the wall then he would never find the strength again that had carried him to the top of the wall, and the music at the end of the broadcast told him there would in a few moments be guards in the kitchen. He had his elbows over the top of the wall, and he ducked his head as low as was possible, and his legs dangled, and the blood and the pain roared in his feet. He waited for the lights to pass, and it seemed to him impossible that the lights would not search him out for the driver. So bloody long. He seemed to hear the shouting in the kitchen, and the stampeding of feet, and he seemed to feel the hands grabbing at his knees and at his ankles and dragging him down.

The lights passed.

Quiet behind him, grey shadow ahead of him.

He heaved himself up and on to the wall. He levered one leg across. He rolled, he slid and fell.

Mattie tumbled eight feet from the top of the wall and down on to the weed verge at the side of the road, and he was winded.

Go for it. It would have taken more than the breath being knocked from his lungs to hold him. He was up and he ran.

He did not know where he was running. Distance was the name of the game. He hobbled down the street, away from the prison gate. Mattie ran for survival and running was risk.

He did not know whether there was a curfew in Tabriz, and if there was a curfew then at what time it started. He didn't know where in the city he had been held. He only thought he was in Tabriz.

He ran until the stitch cut into his belly lining. When he aaw a cafe, benches outside, chairs and plastic topped tables inside, he had slowed and crossed to the far side of the road.

Where there was a shadow he tried to find it, and he had to skin his eyes to peer ahead of him, hard because his head was shaking from the exertion of running, because it would be fatal to be running and not looking and to barge into a patrol of the Revolutionary Guards.

He ran for a full five minutes. He was 52 years old, and he thought that he had run a mile. He had run on back streets, and he had heard laughter and shouting from inside small homes, and he had heard the voice of a radio announcer inciting verses from the Qur'an.

When he rested, when his legs and his wind had died, he crouched in a concrete storm drain.

Grab any luck that begs to be taken, the Major had said at the Fort. Luck is earned. Luck doesn't show itself that often, and if it's not grabbed then it's gone. He thought of Harriet, and he thought of his girls. The first time this day that he thought of his women tribe at home. They would have expected it of him, and it's for you, my darlings, that I run. No other beacon for Mattie.

A car pulled up in the street, ten paces from him. The driver took a parcel from the back seat of the car and carried it into a house. The engine was left running.

The driver made a gift of a car to Mattie.

Out of the storm drain, into the car. At first very gently away, hardly changing the beat of the motor. And once round the first corner, then he really went at it. He had not driven so fast since the year before he was married, since he had owned the Austin Healey Sprite. No sports car, this, but the bloody thing went, and he drove like there was no tomorrow, and probably there wasn't. He drove away out of the town, until he was surrounded by darkness, and then he stopped and axed the lights. He found a map in the glove compartment.

He was, by his best calculation, between 150 and 200 miles from the Turkish frontier, and by the grace of God, the stars were clear and bright and he was on the north-west edge of the town that he thought must be Tabriz.

The three guards who had been in the house placed the blame in entirety on those two men who had taken no precautions to defend themselves… The investigator would have done the same in their position, in his position he would do the same.

The investigator was told that there had been a period of fifteen minutes between the time that the food had been carried upstairs, and the discovery of two comrades, dead in the prisoner's cell.

Furniss had a start. More important was the fear of the guards who had survived. While they had searched the villa a full hour had passed, and only then had they summoned an ambulance. The police had not yet been informed, neither had the army, neither had the headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. They had waited for the investigator to return.

It crossed his mind that he could do worse himself than make tracks for the Turkish frontier. But there was too much blood on his hands for him to be welcomed into asylum by the western agencies.

It was like a wound to him, the escape of Matthew Furniss.

He had the names of three agents, and the name of an infiltrator, nothing more. He had no detail yet on the running of Century's Iran Desk, on the collaboration between Century and Langley, on the gathering of intelligence from the British listening posts on the frontiers and the American satellites.

He should have had hard information on the passing of information from the Americans and the British to Baghdad, and on the battle engagement instructions to Royal Navy warships on the Armilla patrol. He had taken so little, and he had promised so much to the Mullah, and the Mullah would, no doubt, have repeated these promises to his own patrons. Well, he would start again when Furniss was recaptured, as he must be. No one would shelter an English spy in Tabriz. Deep in his gut was the tremor of insecurity, the ripple of the sensation of his own vulnerability.

When he had pieced together the story, he had himself driven to the IRG headquarters in the centre of the city. He gave the commander photographs of Matthew Furniss. He described what he knew him to be wearing when he escaped from the gaol, warned him that Furniss was armed with a pistol.

He wrote out the messages to be sent by radio.

He sent a terse report to the Mullah in Tehran.

He sent a description of Matthew Furniss to the Army Command of the north-west region.

There was no choice but to broadcast his failure over the airwaves.

Mattie had driven out on the Marand road. He had the map, and he reckoned the petrol tank had a minimum of a hundred miles, perhaps more. He would draw attention to himself if he speeded, and if he dawdled then he faced the greater risk of being trapped inside the gun net when the alarm was raised.

He took the wide bridge across the Meydan Chay. He rattled past factories that had been idle for years now that the war had soaked the resources of the nation; huge unlit ghost buildings. Just after the road crossed the old railway track that had once carried passengers and exports into the Soviet Union, he swung left off the main road. Any time on the main road had been risk, and he was sure that at Marand, the high oasis town, and at Khvoy, that was a centre of agricultural production, there would be road blocks. The road blocks would not necessarily be for him, but he could not afford to be stopped when he had no papers for the car, and no papers for himself.

The road that he chose was metalled for a dozen miles, then petered out into dirt and stone. The car took a hammering but he would not have need of it for long.

When he was high above the northern shore of Lake Urmia, when he could see the lights of the villages where before the Revolution a good wine had been produced, he saw the road block ahead.

Mattie recognized the block because on the road in front there was a line of tail lights, red, queueing, and he could see a torch being waved. There was a queue. It must be half a mile ahead of him. He was slowing, going down through his gears. He killed his lights… he pulled up to a halt. He had used his luck to make good ground away from Tabriz… N o choice now. It was time to walk. No way of knowing whether this was a block in position to halt him, or just there for routine. He swung the wheel hard to turn in the road.

He hadn't reckoned they would have read the manuals. He hadn't rated that there would be a guard stumbling up from the tree thicket at the side of the road, probably been dozing, probably awakened by the scrape of the tyres on the gravel hard shoulder of the tarmac road. He switched his headlights back on and saw the guard lumbering into the centre of the road. The lights blinded the guard. The guard was old, and under his forage cap there were locks of silvered hair and his beard was down to his throat, he seemed to wave at Mattie while the car was twenty yards from him, only realized at the last moment, in time to raise his rifle, aim the barrel into the heart of the light. Mattie drove straight at the guard.

He felt the shudder blow of the impact. He felt the heave of the bouncing wheels. For what felt many seconds Mattie's heart stopped. He drove, every second expecting a machine gun to sweep his life away. No, that was absurd. Not on this back road. And the odds were that the old man was alone.

Should have stayed where he was, fired first, no questions.

Perhaps the old man had children or grandchildren who had run from the guards. Past the next corner he saw a track into the trees. He turned on to it and followed it far enough to be hidden from the road and pulled the wheel hard to the left and sank the car into scrub. Out, Mattie, out. He was drained.

He would gladly rest in this wood. Out, Mattie, the guard's in the road. Right, Major, be right with you.

Mattie took the pistol and the map and got out. He let the dark flood into his eyes. He searched in the car and then in the boot, but there was nothing he could use. He thought of Harriet's boot, first aid kit, blanket, shovel… Mattie, get on with it. Coming, Major, just checking.

There was no sign of lights approaching. He walked cautiously towards the dark shadow in the road. The body was still. He suppressed a little jolt of regret for the old man who had not stayed in hiding and shot him as he turned. It's alright, Major, Mattie's not going soft on you. This was a good guard.

He may be a dead guard, but he did me a favour. Costly favour, oh yes. And he hauled the body into the trees. Five yards in, rest a minute, ten yards in. Fifteen will do.

He found the rifle. The bolt mechanism was crushed. And there were no rounds in the magazine, and not one in the spout. He carried the rifle to where the guard lay. Poor defenceless old man. If he'd had a round, you stupid cunt, Furniss, you'd be dead. Now, get the hell out of here.

His stomach was empty, he had not yet touched the bread and the chicken and the rice squashed into his pocket, damp on his thigh. On his feet were plimsoll shoes. The mountains were ahead of him, dark against the night sky. He reckoned he had four or five hours of darkness left to him. He walked out of the treeline, took his bearings from the stars and began to climb.

She had had the family row, and forgotten it.

Her case was at the foot of the bed, and her dress was on the floor. Polly didn't care that she had stormed out of the house with her father shouting and her mother crying, and she didn't care that the dress that had cost her?199.95 was crumpled on the floor.

His head was across her stomach, and his beard tickled at her skin, and her fingers played patterns across his shoulders.

He had loved her and he'd slept, and he had given her the best evening she had ever had before he took her to his flat.

He was a dream when he danced. Polly had never learned to dance, not properly, not until that night when she had been shown the magic of the tango and the rumba. She knew a bit of quick-step and she could waltz if she wasn't watched too closely. She hadn't known that she could dance as she had danced with Charlie. And the meal had been amazing, and the drink had only been champagne, and his attention had been total.

She had forgotten the family row. She had forgotten what Mr Shabro had told her. Must have been jealous, the old goat…

"Have you traced it?" Corinthian asked of his radio.

The reply was in his ear. "As far as we can go… but there's a problem. Vehicle Registration say they are not permitted to give out any details on ownership of that registration…

That's all."

"So, what do we do?"

"Try pretending it isn't there."

"That's daft."

"And that's the best you're getting."

He shivered. He hadn't the engine running so there was no heating. In the passenger seat Token was asleep, and she'd forgotten herself, or she was so hellish tired, because she had let her head slide down on to his shoulder. But he didn't rate his chances. He didn't rate them because all the skirt seemed to want to talk about was goddam almighty Keeper. In the considered view of Peter Foster, codename Corinthian, Keeper was not long of their world, stood to reason. He could not be long with them because the guy was too intense, too tied down by all the shit about winning the narcowar in Bogota, in the Golden Crescent, that sort of shit. Keeper might be the best they had, but it couldn't last. The guy ran too hard. Himself, he paced himself, he wasn't in a hurry, he did his job and he clocked up the overtime, and he thought that he might, just, grow old in Customs and Excise. Keeper wouldn't… Keeper was a shooting star, bloody brilliant, and then gone.

It didn't bother Corinthian that the light was going out of the investigation, had been on the slide ever since the order had come through from the Lane that Tango One was not to be knocked. No one from Parrish downwards seemed to know what the fuck was going on, and the target was cocky enough to have gone back to his address like there had never been a problem, like importing heroin and being under ID surveillance didn't spoil his day one bit. Great looking fanny he'd with him, and a great looking bill he'd have run up at the swish joint he'd taken her. The light had gone so far down the hill, over the other side, that Keeper had gone home, been sent home, and they weren't told when he'd be back…

She started. She awoke, and then she realized where her head was, and he gave her the evil eye, and she gave him the daggers. She straightened in her seat.

"Bugger… I was just about to rape you," he said.

"Oh, do piss off."

"Quite the lady."

"Is it still there?" She turned to look back down the street at the other car. "What's the news on it?"

"No news is permitted on that registration."

She shook her head, tried to get the sleep out of her eyes.

"What does that mean when it's at home?"

"It's what they tell you when the vehicle is used by either the Security Service or the Secret Intelligence Service. What confuses me is, are they watching the target, or are they watching us?"

The radio messages, relayed from Tehran, went to military and IRG bases on the western side of Lake Urmia, and to the north. But this was wild and mountain country, an area through which a fugitive could with luck pass undetected and over which no security screen could guarantee success. The lake lies as a huge natural barrier between the Iranian hinter-land and the mountain ranges that peak at the Turkish frontier.

The messages were in simple codes. It was not possible to send complicated enciphering to outposts such as Mahabad and Oshnoviyeh and Reza'iyeh and Dilman and Khvoy.

The messages were plucked from the airwaves by antennae at the Government Communications Headquarters outpost at Dhekelia on the island of Cyprus.

He was south of Dilman, too far south to see the lights of the town. Ahead of him were the mountains. His sights were set on Mer Dag, immediately across the border, his 12,600 ft beacon. He had long ago wolfed down the food that he had taken from the prison. Now he was famished. His shoes were disintegrating. He had torn off the sleeves of his shirt, and the sleeves were now bound around the plimsoll shoes to hold them together. He had walked through two complete nights, and when the sun was high, when the lake shore was at siesta, he had walked in the haze heat. All through the daylight hours he could see the summit point of Mer Dag. It was his target… There was the ache of hunger in his stomach, there was a numbed death in the muscles of his legs, there was throbbing pain behind his forehead. Stick to the goat tracks, Mattie, and find water. Very well, Major. He would find water. The mountain summit floated in the moonlight ahead of him. He thought that it was too late now to fail.

The Director General was taking breakfast at his desk, his appetite sharpened by the brisk walk over Hungerford bridge.

The door flew open. The coffee slurped over the rim of his cup.

To the Director General, Henry Carter was a most incredible sight. He wore no tie or jacket, no shoes even. Henry Carter had barged into his office, practically brought the door in with him, and now stood panting, obviously unshaven, in front of the desk. The Director General could see the top of the man's vest at his open shirt front.

"He's on the run, sir… splendid, isn't it?… Dolphin's running."

It was the third consecutive day that Park had been at home, and all of them weekdays. Ann was dressing for work, and late. She hadn't an idea why he had stayed at home, and since he was as tight as a soup tin, she didn't dare ask. He had begun redecorating their spare bedroom – God alone knew why, they weren't awash with overnight visitors. They hardly had any visitors. She thought it was a peace move on his part, and in the evenings she had cooked his meals and tried to remember what he liked, and she'd ironed his shirts, and she'd hidden her feelings in concentration on one television programme after the other.

She had known there was a target, and he had told her that the target was not to be arrested. She didn't know any more than that. And, small mercies, not a squeak about Colombia.

He was still in bed.

They had a sort of routine in bed. She went to bed earlier than him, and she'd pretend that she was asleep when he came in. And he pretended that he acknowledged that she was asleep. The pretence worked until he was asleep, and he wasn't ever long going. She thought that she had never seen him so deeply exhausted. When he was asleep she'd lie half the night on her back with her eyes open, and she could have screamed…

He was still in bed and she was dressing in front of the wardrobe. She hadn't shown it to him yet. The dress had cost her what she earned in a week. It was black, full skirt, bare back, a halter at the neck. The dress was as bold as anything she had bought since they had been married.

It was an impulse.

She took the dress from the wardrobe. She held it against her body. She saw that he was watching her.

"For the dance, David… Is it O K? "

He said, "It's super."

"You mean that, really mean it?"

A quiet voice, as if the strength had been taken from him.

"It's a terrific dress, I really mean that."

"I hoped you'd like it."

"You'll look wonderful."

"We are going, aren't we?"

"Sure, we're going."

"You want to go, don't you?"

"I want to go, I've joined their club."

"David, I'm trying, no riddles, what club?"

He struggled to sit upright in the bed. "The club all the others are in. The club that's worrying about the pension scheme. The club that's ratty about annual leave and days in lieu of Bank Holidays. The club that's serving out time. The club that's given up. I've joined their club, Ann. Entry to the club is when you don't fucking care that a heroin trafficker is running round Central London like he owns the fucking place… Yes, we're going. We're going to have a hell of an evening… Ann, that dress, it's really brilliant."

She went on with her dressing. "Things will get better. You'll see." And she blew him a kiss as she hurried to be at work.

Mattie had walked until he could not put one leg in front of the other.

He had crawled until he no longer knew where he was going, where he was. The sun beat down on him. He had no food and he had no water. The track was of hot, sharp rock, and he had no more strength and he could not walk on rock and the plimsolls were ripped from his feet. He lay on the path.

Don't panic, Major, just getting the old head down. Just leave me in peace. I'll be better when it's cooler.

For a moment Harriet had forgotten her husband. She put down the telephone. He was a sweet man who lived out on the Cirencester road from Bibury, and one of the few people that she knew who lived in the community for seven days in each week, didn't just commute down at weekends. He had some pull, and he could get things done. He had rung to say that the farmer was bending, and was going to agree to roll a strip across the middle of the ploughed field so that the right of way was intact. It was a little triumph for all of them who had contested the ploughing up of the track. Actually there was no good reason why the old route should not have been re-drawn round the outside of the field, but that would have surrendered the principle. The principle said that the footpath ran across the middle of the field, and it had run there for more than a century, and the principle said that if only one person wanted to walk that path a year then the route should stay unploughed. She revelled in her small triumph. Mattie would have enjoyed…

If Mattie had been there, then he would have enjoyed her moment.

So many times they had been separated, and she had never felt such loneliness.

She seemed to shake herself. It was a gesture that was all her own, as if she were shrugging away dust from her shoulders, as if she were hardening her resolve.

She hadn't even told the girls.

The phone rang. The bell was in the hall, recessed into a rafter, and the ringing burst throughout the whole cottage. It was a loud bell so that it could be heard if she and Mattie were out in the garden.

Each time the telephone rang, she expected the worst.

There was a couple in Bibury who had lost an only son, a paratrooper, at Goose Green five years ago and in the final push on the Argentine machine-gun nests. They'd sent an officer down from the depot to break the news. She didn't think they'd send anyone down from Century immediately, but she had supposed that the Director General would at least speak to her on the telephone.

She had shaken herself. She was prepared.

"Mrs Furniss?"

She recognized the voice. "It is…"

"Flossie Duggan, Mrs Furniss, from Mr Furniss' office

… I've only a moment. Have you heard anything?"

"I have not."

"Dreadful, they are… Mrs Furniss, there's some wonderful news. Well, it's nearly wonderful. Old Carter, that idiot, he told me. He's escaped. Mr Furniss, I mean. He'd been night watch in the Committee's room, and he was so up in the air that he went into the DG's office without his shoes on.

Apparently he doesn't wear his shoes at night when he's on duty "

"How extraordinary."

"Indeed, that's rather the tenor of things here nowadays.

Oh dear… sorry, sorry… what'll you be thinking of me.

What I meant to say was, yes, that he's escaped, Mrs Furniss.

He's on the run, that's what Carter went to tell the DG. It's been picked up by the monitoring people abroad, they listen to everything, they've heard the messages on the radios inside Iran. Mr Furniss has escaped. They're all searching for him of course but the main thing is, he's free."

"But he's still inside?"

"But he's not in his prison, Mrs Furniss. That's wonderful news, isn't it?"

"Miss Duggan, you are very kind to call. I am so grateful.

What would we do without you?"

Harriet put down the telephone.

She closed the front door behind her. She didn't remember to lock the front door, nor to take with her a raincoat.

She walked down to the church, old and lichen-coated stone.

He came out of his stupor because a boot was in his rib cage and was pushing him over from his stomach to his back. The boot was in his ribs as if he were a dog, dead in the road.

Mattie saw the gallery of faces above him. They were all young faces, except for one. The one face was cold, without sympathy. A tribesman's face, heavily bearded, and the man wore the loose shirt and the all embracing leather waistcoat and the baggy trousers of the Kurdish mountain people. There was an ancient Lee Enfield on his shoulder. The look on his face seemed to say that if the body had not been on the path, in the way, it would have been ignored. Eight young faces.

They were all boys, early twenties, late teenagers. They gazed down on him. They carried packs on their back, or there were sports bags in their hands. He lay on his back, then struggled to push himself upright. He understood. Mattie knew who had found him. A young smooth hand ducked down and pulled the pistol from his waist. He did not try to stop it.

Because he knew who had found him he had no fear of them, not even of the tribesman who would have been their guide on the last stage towards the frontier.

Mattie spoke in Farsi.

Would they have the kindness, in the name of humanity, to take him with them?

Would they help him because he had no footwear?

Would they share food with him, because it was more than two days since he had last eaten?

They were nice enough, the boys, they were tense as if it were an adventure, but they welcomed Mattie amongst them, and the guide just spat and grunted in the Kurdish patois that Mattie had never mastered. The guide now had the pistol.

Mattie was given bread and sweet cheese, and he was allowed to sip from a water bottle before the impatience of the guide overwhelmed the anxious care of the boys. Two of them helped him to his feet and supported him, his arm across their shoulders. Damn good kids. And heavy going for the kids, with Mattie as their burden, and the track was wild, difficult, damn bloody awful. He saw butterflies, beautiful and vivid, beside the path, on flowers that he did not know from England. He saw high above them the winter snow that was still not melted. They passed through thick forest that had taken root where there seemed to be only rock and no soil. They went down into gullies and waded through ice cold torrents, and they climbed razor rocks out of the gullies.

Mattie was no skeleton. They were struggling, all of them, and particularly those two who supported Mattie. The guide didn't help them. The guide was always ahead, scouting the route, sometimes whistling for them to come forward faster.

Without them he would have been finished. Probably would have frozen to death, carrion for beasts of the mountain.

They wanted to know who he was, of course, and at first he had made a joke of it and told them that he was in Iran to sell tickets for the World Cup finals, and then he had said quietly and between the spurts of pain when his feet hit the rocks on the track, that he was like them, that he was a refugee from the regime. Some of them spoke English, some came from the sort of household in Tehran where English could be taught with discretion. They were dodging the draft.

He knew that long before they told him. They were the kids from rich families who couldn't bear to give their offspring up to the butchery in the trenches outside Basra. They'd have paid through the nose for the guide, and some would have more money in belts around their waists for after they had an entry visa to California or Paris from Turkey. They'd learn, Mattie thought. They'd join the wretched flotsam in the refugee camps, and they'd learn the hard way that Turkey didn't want them, that America and France didn't want them.

One thing was pretty damn certain in Mattie's mind. The two boys who had manhandled him up the rock slope, levered him down the track, carried him across the fast streams – he'd do his uttermost to get them visas into the United Kingdom.

They told him, those who carried him, that they were going to make for Hakkari, that they had heard there was a refugee centre at Hakkari administered by the United Nations. They said that once they had reached the camp there they could send telegrams to relatives who were already living in the United States. They thought that their relatives would be able to fix the visas. Had their friend ever been to America?

They came to a ridge. The snow-peaked summit of Mer Dag was away to their right. The guide had stopped, was crouched down. They struggled the last paces to reach him, and Mattie had swung his arms off the shoulders of the two boys.

The sun was crisp in an azure sky above them.

The bandages, mud brown, trailed from Mattie's feet. No pain now in his feet.

The guide pointed below.

There was a path snaking down from the ridge and in the far distance was the sprawl of a small town, and running further away from the town was a twisting road. It was Turkey.

And the guide was gone. He gave them no farewells. There was no hugging, no slapping of hands oh the back of the guide. He was just gone, loping away down the path that they had just climbed. Mattie felt the moistness in his eyes. He had taken his luck, and he was within sight of home. The tears came, rolled on his bearded cheeks. And around him the elation bubbled.

"Wait, wait… wait… " His arms were around the shoulders of two of the boys and they had his weight between them. He spoke slowly, so that he could be translated by those who understood him. Too important, he didn't trust himself in Farsi. "How are you going from here?"

"We are going down the hill."

"We are going to the refugee centre."

Mattie said, "You must, you must absolutely go down the hill by night."

"We have nothing to be worried of, Mister."

Mattie said, "You must wait until nightfall." He tried to summon his authority.

"And you?"

"Different, I'll get down on my own… now be good lads." Mattie said.

"Mister, you cannot even walk."

"I'll roll down if I have to, but you should go by night. Let me go ahead and prepare the people on the other side to expect you – their army patrols."

They were all giggling at him, and they were no longer listening to him. They were the children that he knew so well from his own house, and from the homes of every one of his contemporaries, children who thought their parents were half-witted. He was hoisted up.

"I really do urge you… " But they had no patience for him. They were too happy. They went down the slope. The wind cut at their clothes, deadened their ears. The pain welled in his legs, but he shrugged away the hands that offered to help him. He had started on his own and he would damn well finish on his own. There you are, Major, we made it and we will have a long night's carousing over this adventure, you and I. They were coming down the slope fast. Darling, he thought he heard Harriet cry out. Darling. They were strung out in a line.

"Dur… "

The shout in the clear air.

Mattie saw them.

"Dur…"

He thought they were paratroops. Toughened, hard men.

Weapons that were aimed as if their use was second nature.

He saw five at first, blocking the track down the slope. He knew a little Turkish, and the word to halt would have been clear enough if he had known nothing. He didn't have to be a linguist. There were more of the patrol at the flanks now.

Guns covering them. Mattie raised his hands. His hands were high above his head. His mind was clear. There might be officials of the United Nations at Hakkari, but there would be no officials of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees on the upper slopes of Mer Dag. He looked for the officer.

He pushed his way past a rifle barrel. He had the authority now. He was filthy and he could barely hobble without support, but he had been commissioned in the Coldstream Guards, and for a few weeks in his life he had been a junior commander of the Sovereign's guard at Buckingham Palace.

He knew how to deal with soldiers.

He saw the tabs on the officer's shoulder, the American-style bars. He would understand English if it were spoken slowly and loudly.

"Good afternoon, Lieutenant. My name is Furniss. I am an official of the government of Great Britain. I am in flight from Iran, and I ask for your help. Should you wish to confirm my identity then you should radio back to your headquarters and tell them to contact my Embassy in Ankara, Mr Snow…"

He was waved forward. He was trying to walk upright, with dignity. He thought the officer had a good bearing, might have been on a NATO exchange course. He passed each of the young men, the draft dodgers, the refugees, the flotsam.

"Now, most important, any help that you can afford these boys, Lieutenant, my government will be grateful for it.

Without their assistance I would not have been able to cross your frontier. I ask you to treat them with compassion."

The officer looked through him. He gave orders, sharp and clear commands. A corporal was at Mattie's arm, and leading him further down the slope. When he looked back he saw that the boys had been corralled by rifle barrels and were sitting hunched on the track. Mattie was taken forward, whether he wanted to go or not. At the edge of the track, Mattie stopped. He resisted the tug of the corporal's hand on his sleeve.

"What are you going to do with them?"

The officer gestured, in annoyance, to his corporal. Mattie was forced off the track and into thorn scrub. He had been taken from sight. He sat on the earth, and his head was buried between his knees.

He saw the officer take from his belt a Very pistol. He saw the burst of colour high above him. Afterwards he heard the officer shouting on the radio.

It might have been fifteen minutes later, it might have been half an hour, it might have been his lifetime, and between the foliage and sprigs of the thorn Mattie saw the patrol of Revolutionary Guards approach carefully down the slope. The refugees were prisoners, they were given into the custody of their own people. They didn't struggle, no one broke away and ran. They went meekly.

"They are scum," the Lieutenant said. "And they bring into my country drugs and crime."

"They saved my life, goddammit," Mattie said.

"You could have gone back with them."

He had not argued. He had not jeopardized his own safety.

He thought that it would be a long time before he forgot the laughter of the boys at the warnings of an old man, and he thought that the Major would have wondered what all the fuss was about.

An hour later the radio crackled to life. Orders from headquarters. The biggest man in the patrol, a giant of a man, lifted Mattie on to his shoulders and tucked Mattie's thighs over his arms, and carried him like a child under the sinking sun, away down the slopes of the Mer Dag.