Home Run

He had waited in his office at the Ministry building.

He had waited for the final message to be telexed to the Communications rooms in the basement.

In place were the arrest at sea of the official who worked in the Harbourmaster's office at Bandar Abbas. In place were three teams of men from the Revolutionary Centre for Volunteers for Martyrdom, settled into a Guards Corps barracks at Maku that was close to the main overland crossing point from Turkey. In place were three men who had tracked Eshraq from the airfield at Van to Dogubeyezit.

There was one aspect of the situation that still puzzled the investigator as he cleared his desk, shovelled the maps and the briefing notes into his case. Furniss had named Charlie Eshraq, and yet Eshraq was in Dogubeyezit. Eshraq was in the Ararat Hotel in Dogubeyezit. Why was he not warned off?

At this time, he did not concern himself with the man who had accompanied Eshraq from Istanbul to Ankara to Van to Dogubeyezit. Time enough for that, but later.

His car waited. At the military airfield, an aircraft waited.

He was a coming man. When he had Eshraq at the border he would be a man who had arrived… If Eshraq came to the border. Very confusing.

He had started early, certainly before Mattie Furniss was on the move. He had gone to his flat, one bedroom and a large living room and all the usuals, which was plenty for him, fixed rent, too, and they couldn't get him out, to collect his post.

He sat on the bench in front of the spinning soapy window.

He had raised a few eyebrows. There weren't many who came to the launderette and stuffed into the cavern an armful of clean, ironed shirts. He'd paid for a double rinse, which he thought would be sufficient to sort out the starch once and for all. He gazed at the maelstrom in front of him. He was a regular and sometimes there were people there who knew him and talked to him. Quite a little social club on a Thursday evening.

He doubted there was a man or woman in the building who would want to hear what he had to say. Certainly not the Director General, who was giving him fifteen minutes. And it was bad news for him that the DDG was on his way that morning to Washington.

When his shirts were washed, rinsed and dried, he folded them carefully and carried them back to his flat and gave them a quick iron.

His car was on a good parking place, too good to lose, and so he took a bus from Putney Bridge along the river route to Century.

No one loved the bearer of evil tidings. But what choice did he have? He believed that Mattie was lying.

The dog was chained to the leg of the one solid garden seat. Mattie strode behind the mower. He had George at the wheelbarrow for the cuttings. He made neat lines.

He knew where Henry Carter had gone. Poor old Henry, and not half as clever as he'd thought, he had seen to it that the telephone in the hall was removed, but he had forgotten the telephone in Mrs Ferguson's bedroom.

He did the croquet lawn, close cut. He assumed that George was prepared to be outside with him, ferrying the cuttings to the compost heap, because George had been instructed to mind him.

His name is Charlie Eshraq…

Mattie mowed, pure straight stripes, and he scrubbed from his mind the echo of his own words.

"… But he has told you nothing… "

"That is quite correct, sir, he has admitted absolutely nothing."

The Director General's smile was withering, "But you don 't believe him."

"I wish I could, sir, and I cannot."

"But you have no evidence to substantiate your distrust?"

"I have the conviction that a man who is driven by days of torture to name his field agents is not going to be allowed to stop there."

"But why do you think he didn't make his escape before giving Eshraq's name?"

"Ah, yes. That, sir, is a hunch."

"And you are prepared to damn a man because of your hunch."

"On the basis of what I might rephrase as a lifetime of listening to debriefs, sir, I would simply avoid sending this young man into Iran until we are certain. No one has explained to me the reason for the haste."

"There are all sorts of things that you don't know, Carter."

There was a light knock. Houghton walked in like a man who has been told that his banker has defaulted. He didn't seem to notice Henry Carter. He laid a single sheet of paper on the Director General's desk. There was the moment of quiet while the Director General ferreted in his breast pocket for his reading glasses.

"From our naval friends in the Gulf. You'd better hear what it says, Carter. It's timed at 0700. Message: No, repeat no, rendezvous. Subject craft intercepted by Iran Navy Boghammer missile boat. Believed all crew of subject craft taken on board before subject craft sunk. Boghammer returned to base, Bandar Abbas. We resuming escort duty…

Message ends."

The Director General placed the sheet of paper back on to his desk. He removed his reading glasses.

"What would Furniss say?"

"Mattie would say that he had been through a hell that neither you, nor I can comprehend in order that we would have had the time to get those three men clear. Mattie would say that our lack of resolution condemned our network to death."

"He admits the names came from him?"

"Yes, but only after withstanding what I reckon to be anywhere between five and seven days of torture."

"If he admits that, why then can he not admit to naming Eshraq?"

"Pride," Carter spoke the word as if it were an obscenity, as if he should now go and wash out his mouth with soap.

"What in God's name has pride got to do with it?"

"Eshraq is more or less part of his family. He cannot bring himself to admit that to save himself from pain he would betray his family."

"Are you really telling me, Carter, that Furniss would sacrifice Eshraq for his pride?"

"Just my opinion, yes."

The Director General went to his safe. He obscured the combination from Henry Carter's view. He played the numbers, he opened the safe. He took out a file. The file was old, worn. The writing on the outer flap was faint, faded. "Since he was taken I've been looking into Furniss' history. I've come across nothing that indicated any vestige of vanity. I have found only a man of outstanding loyalty and steadiness. Did you know that he was in Cyprus during the Emergency, in the Guards with a platoon, very young? Did you know that?

I'm not surprised, because I gather that period is not on his general biography. He was on a search mission on the Troodos slopes. Some idiot decided that the brushwood should be fired so that an EOKA gang would be smoked out and driven towards the positions where Furniss' unit were waiting for them. The wind got up. The fire ran out of control. Furniss' platoon was surrounded by a wall of fire. The report I've read is from his Company Commander, who watched it all through field glasses. Furniss held his men together, kept them calm, waited until their clothes were damn near burned off their bodies. He waited until he saw a break in the fire wall, and he led his guardsmen through it. And all this time the platoon I was under enemy fire, they lost six men. I haven't come across anyone in Century who knows that story. Obviously Furniss has never mentioned it. Does that strike you, Carter, as symptomatic of a vain or proud man?"

Carter smiled, tired, wearied. "That was about winning, sir, this is about losing."

"Well, tell me. What do you want?"

"I need some help with Furniss, sir. If you will be good enough to authorize it."

He had the number of the lorry and he had photographed the driver – that would wait, that was other business. Park looked down from the hotel room into the back yard. He saw the driver and Eshraq transfer the crates, one at a time, and heavy, from the lorry to the tail doors of the Transit.

The evening was closing on Dogubeyezit.