Home Run

20

The car crunched on the drive, scattered the gravel.

Mattie heard it and he saw Henry's flickering eyebrow register the arrival of the car. Mattie coughed, as if he tried to draw attention to himself and away from the car that arrived at the country house at past ten in the evening, and Carter wasn't having it, Carter was listening for the car, and for the slammed door, and for the suburban chime on the bell in the porch. Mattie did not know what was to happen, only that something was to happen. He knew that something was to happen because Henry had been back four hours from London, and had not said what had happened in London, and had said precious little about anything else. Mattie understood. Henry's silence through the evening was because he was waiting, and now the waiting was over.

To Mattie it was absurd, the pallid smile of apology as Henry let himself out of the drawing room. He thought that it was possibly the end of the road for them both and he reckoned that he had Henry's measure. Another night, another day, survived, and he would be on his way to Bibury, and back to his desk at Century.

Of course, Mattie had not asked what Henry had been up to in London. To have asked would have been weakness.

Weakness was no longer a part of Mattie's world. Weakness was the villa at Tabriz and the hook on the wall and the electrical flex and the firearm that was not loaded, and that was all behind him. Weakness was scrubbed away by the trek across the mountains to the slopes of Mer Dag. On that evening, after the long silences over supper, there was a part of Mattie's mind that could no longer remember with any clarity much of the days and nights in the villa. If he had tried, and there was no damn way that he was going to try, then he might have been able to recall fragments, moments.

No damn way that he was going to try… His name is Charlie Eshraq… No damn way at all.

The door opened.

Henry stood aside, made room.

The man was sturdy. The hair on his head was close cut, barely tolerating a parting. He wore a suit that was perhaps slightly too small and which therefore highlighted the muscle growth of the shoulders. His face was clean shaven bar the stub brush moustache.

Mattie couldn't help himself. "Good God, Major, this is a surprise. Grand to see you… "

"I hear we've a little problem, Mr Furniss," the man said.

The moonlight was silver on the snow peak of Ararat. When he tilted his head, dropped his gaze, then he could see the outline shadow of the Transit. The heavy gates of the hotel's yard were padlocked for the night. The lorry and its driver were long gone, they would be in Erzerum tonight, he'd heard that said when he had watched from the window and seen Eshraq pay the driver off, seen him pay him off with the money that had once belonged to a Greek. Christ, and that was simple, watching the house of a Greek, with Token in tow, and doing the things that came easy to him. Nothing came easy for Park in a shared hotel room in Dogubeyezit.

Eshraq was sitting behind him, on the bed that he had chosen.

Eshraq had taken the bed further from the door.

Eshraq ignored Park. He had laid out on the bed a series of large scale maps of northern Iran.

Eshraq hadn't spoken for more than an hour, and Park had stood by the window for all of that time, and stared over the unmoving, unchanging vista that ran towards the distant summit of Ararat.

"Get up."

The voice rattled in Mattie's ears. There was no place of safety.

"Get up, Mr Furniss."

But there had never been a place of safety. No safety here, no safety in the cellar of the villa in Tabriz. They merged.

There was the carpet of the lounge, and the tiled floor of the cellar. There were the pictures on the wall of the lounge, and there was the hook on the wall of the cellar. There were the armchairs with the faded floral covers, and there was the iron bed frame with the straps and the stinking blanket. There was the rasp of the Major's voice, and there was the hushed clip of the investigator's voice.

The hands reached down for him.

"I said, Mr Furniss, to get up."

The hands were at the collar of Mattie's jacket, and grasping at the shoulders of his shirt, and the jacket was too loose and did not make a good fit and was climbing up his arms and over the back of his head, and the shirt was too tight and could not be fastened at the collar and was ripping. He didn't help. He lay as lead weight.

He was pulled upright, but when the grip weakened, because his jacket was coming off him and the shirt was too torn to hold, then Mattie collapsed back on to the carpet.

He was lifted again, and the Major was panting, just as they had panted in the cellar. He was lifted to his feet, and he was held, and he was shaken, as if he were a rug. He was thrown backwards. His arms were flailing and found nothing to catch, and he cracked down on to the carpet, and the back of his head hammered the floor. He gazed up. Henry stood in front of the fireplace, looking away, as if he wanted no part of this.

Mattie no longer knew how long it had been since the Major had first slapped his face. Out of the blue. A question, a deflecting answer, and the slap homing on to his cheek. The smarting at his eyes, the reddening of his cheek. But the slap across the face had been only the start.

He had been slapped, he had been kicked, he had been punched. It was not vicious, the pain was not inflicted on him for the sake of it. The pain was a humiliation and a progression.

They did not want to inflict pain on him, they only wanted him to talk. The blows were harder, the kicks fiercer. They wanted to do it with the minimum… The bastards.

He lay on the carpet.

Mattie let his head roll to the side.

Oh, yes, Mattie had learned from the cellar in Tabriz. Kids' play this, after the cellar and the hook on the wall and the electrical flex and the unloaded weapon. He looked at Henry, and Henry had his hand over his face. Mattie let his head sag.

He lay still.

He heard Carter's voice, the whinny of apprehension.

"They said that he wasn't to be abused."

"He's only faking. Do you want an answer or do you not want an answer?"

"For Christ's sake, it's Mattie Furniss… I want the answer, of course I want the answer, but I'll be minced if he's hurt."

"So, what's at stake, Mr Carter?"

"A mission – God, what a mess – the life of an agent is at stake."

He was splayed out on the carpet, and he was trying to control his breathing, as a man would breathe when he was unconscious, slow and steady. The blow came between his legs. He had no warning of the kick. He cried out, and he heaved his knees into his stomach, and he rolled on the carpet, and his hands were over his groin. His eyes were squeezed shut, watering.

"Good God, Major… " The tremor in Carter's voice.

"He was faking, told you." And the Major had dropped down beside Mattie. Mattie felt his head lifted. He opened his eyes. He saw the Major's face a few inches from his own.

His name is Charlie Eshraq.

"Mr Furniss, don't be a silly chap. What did you tell them?"

The merging of the face of the Major and the face of the investigator. Christ, they must think he was pretty piss poor.

They were the same face, they were the same voice. Mattie Furniss did not talk, Mattie Furniss was Desk Head (Iran).

And he had the second chance. He had lost the first chance, talked, cracked, broken. But he had the second chance. The pain was through his stomach, and the retching was writhing in his throat. He had the second chance.

"My name is Owens. I am an academic. A scholar of the Urartian civilization."

And he was sliding, slipping, and the blackness was closing around him.

Charlie lay on his bed. The light was off. He was close to the window and the moon silver filtered the cotton curtains. He knew that Park was awake. Park's breathing told him that he was still awake. He was packed, he was ready. He was going at the dawn. At the foot of the bed, beside the soap box, his rucksack was filled, and in the yard outside the Transit was loaded with drums of electrical flex for industrial use, and under the drums were three wooden packing crates. He was going in the morning, and Park hadn't spoken since the light in the hotel room had been turned off. There was the bleat of animals in the night air, the call of the goats and the cry of the sheep, there was once the wail of a jandarma siren, there was the drone of the hotel's generator, there was the whirring flight of a mosquito. He was Charlie Eshraq. He was 22 years old. He was the man with the mission and with the target. He was not afraid of death, not his own and not the death of his enemies… And why couldn't the bastard talk to him? Why in hell's name not? In the moon darkness, in the hotel room, he wanted to talk. If he had been with the dossers under the arches of Charing Cross station then he would have had someone to talk to. He was going back inside. He knew how to fire the weapon, and he knew the faces of his targets, and he knew the routes that he would use, and he was going back inside alone, and he wanted to talk.

"David, I want to talk."

"I want to sleep."

"David, is that why your wife went?"

"Why?"

"Because you have no love."

"I have no love for heroin traffickers."

"The heroin was for money, the money was for weapons, the weapons were for the killing of evil people."

"In my book, the evil people traffic in heroin."

"There was no other way."

"That's an excuse, Eshraq, and excuses don't make rights out of wrongs."

"David, who do you love?"

"None of your business."

"Anyone, anyone in the world?"

"I want to sleep, and I want to get out of this shit hole in the morning."

"Do you love your wife?"

"That's my business."

"My sister, David, she was my business…"

"I don't care."

"I will tell you what they did to my sister. They took her from the gaol at Evin, they flew her to Tabriz. They drove her to the centre of the town. They had brought a crane into the centre of the town. They stood my sister on a table and they put a rope around her neck. There were many hundreds of people there to watch her die, David. I am told by people who were there that when my sister stood upon the table and looked down on to the people who had come to watch her die that she smiled at them. She made the smile of a girl who was not yet a woman. It was talked about for many weeks afterwards, the way that my sister smiled… They kicked her off the table and they hoisted the crane up. That was how she died. They tell me that she died in great pain, that she did not die easily. There were two men who held her on the table as the executioner put the rope around her neck, I killed them as I killed the executioner. If it had been your wife, David, and not my sister, would you not have wanted money for weapons?"

"Running heroin is wrong, for me that's the beginning and the middle and the end of it."

"Because you have no love?"

"Because I have no love for people who run heroin."

"Your father is alive?"

"My father is alive."

"Do you love your father?"

"I want to go to sleep."

"Is it shaming to say that you love your father?"

"My feelings for my father, that's not your concern."

"My father was in the gaol at Evin. He was a soldier. He was not a policeman, he was not in the S A V A K, he never commanded troops who were used to put down the revolt of the masses. He was an enemy of no man, and he was my father. I know about my sister, David, her last hours, and I know also something of the last hours of my father. I know that he was taken from his cell at dawn one morning out into the killing yard at Evin. He was tied to a stake in the yard, and shot there. When that has happened to your father, and your uncle has been butchered, is it wrong to want weapons?"

"You can talk all night, Eshraq. Me, I'll be sleeping."

He heard the heaving of the bed. He saw the shadow of Park's body toss as the back was turned to him.

He thought that by the next nightfall he would be far inside.

He thought that at the next dusk he would be approaching the stone hovel of Majid Nazeri on the frost cold slopes of Iri Dagh. He would be where there were eagles, and where there were wolf packs, and where as the light came or as the light went there was the chance of seeing the fleeting passage of a leopard. Perhaps that was his world. Perhaps he did not belong, never had belonged, in the world of David Park.

"David, may I ask a favour?"

"I doubt you'll get it, what?"

"That you take back a letter for me."

"Just a letter?"

"To a very fine man, a very kind man, a man who knew about love."

There was the grated concession. "I'll take it."

Charlie crawled from his bed, and he went to his rucksack and took out the envelope. The envelope had been bent while it had been lying amongst his clothes and his map charts in the rucksack. He laid the envelope on the table beside Park's bed.

He stood at the window. Carefully, slowly, he edged aside the curtain. He looked down at the Transit. He saw the jutting nose of a Mercedes car, and he saw the white light flash. He felt the thunder roar in his ears, and he felt the hot heat back draught of the LAW 80.

"You should try to find love, David. Without love then life is empty."

He had waited all evening for a call to be routed through to the nineteenth floor.

His chauffeur was in the car park below. Houghton was yawning.

The Director General dialled the number, and they were a long time answering.

"Carter – is that you, Carter? Have you any idea of the time? It is past midnight, I have been waiting for two and a quarter hours for your call. What has Furniss said?"

The voice was faint, tinny. The scrambler connection had that effect. And the scrambler could not disguise the hesitancy of the far away metallic voice.

"He hasn't said anything."

"Then you've a problem, Carter, by Christ you have."

"I'm aware of the problem, sir."

"My advice to you, Carter, is that you have one hour…

I want to speak to Furniss."

He heard the telephone put down, clumsily. He heard the tramp of departing footsteps. He waited. What was the bloody man at? He didn't know how he would ever again face Furniss.

He heard the footsteps returning.

"Not possible at the moment, sir, to speak to Mattie."

"Carter, understand me… understand your position.

I'll see you gutted if harm has come to Furniss, if you turn out to be wrong. I'll have you skinned. You have one hour."

He thought that he had betrayed Furniss. He felt deep shame. He strode out of his office, and he had no word for his Personal Assistant who padded behind him. He thought that he had betrayed a very good man.

The Station Officer could no longer stay awake.

On a pad beside the telephone in the bedroom was written the code of Dogubeyezit and the number of the Ararat hotel.

The call from London, if it came, would be in clear. There was no difficulty in that. The codeword for a halt, a postponement, had been agreed via the teleprinter in his office before he had shut up shop for the evening. In an ideal world he should not have been snuggling against his wife's back, in his own bed, he should have been close to that wretched frontier, up in north-eastern Anatolia. He should have been hugging the Iranian border, not his wife's slim back. No question of him being there. The frontier was out of bounds, the border was closed territory after the lifting of the Desk Head (Iran).

He had not been told the reason that there might, possibly but not probably, be a hold put on Eshraq's movement. He had no need to know why there might conceivably be a hold… If there were a hold then he would communicate it. He drifted towards sleep. He had rather enjoyed the company of the young man who had come to the park in Ankara. A bit wild, of course. Any man going inside Iran with LAW 8os was entitled to be a bit bloody-minded. But they had thrashed out their lines of communication. Not that he would last. Not possible that he would survive.

"Terence, is that 'phone going to ring tonight? There'll be murder if it does."

"Don't know, love, I really don't know."

They had not slept. They had lain on sleeping bags on the concrete floor inside the inner hall of the Guards' barracks at Maku. The investigator was amongst the last to push himself back up to his feet. There were some amongst them who prayed, and some who worked with clean cloths at the firing mechanisms of their automatic rifles. The investigator wandered out of the inner hall in search of the latrine, and after the latrine he would be in search of the Communications room and news from the men who watched a hotel across the border.

It was sensible of him to leave the inner hallway for the latrine and the Communications room. If he had stayed then it would have been remarked that he had not prayed. It was hard for him to pray because the words of the Qur'an held no place in his mind. He had no time that early morning because his mind was filled with the vision of armour-piercing missiles and a Transit van and the man who had been named by Matthew Furniss.

He would enjoy his meetings with Mr Eshraq. He thought that he might enjoy conversing with Charlie Eshraq more than he had enjoyed talking to Matthew Furniss.

The clock was striking in the hall.

And the dog was restless, and sometimes there was the heavy scratching at the kitchen door, and sometimes there was the clamour of the animal shaking the big link chain on its throat. The dog wouldn't sleep, not while there were still people moving in the house and voices.

Mattie heard the clock.

The light was in his eyes. He was on the sofa and they had stripped his shoes off and they had heaved his feet, too, on to the sofa. His tie was off, and the shirt buttons were undone down to his navel. He could see nothing but the light. The light was directed from a few feet so that it shone directly into his face.

It was a long time since they had hit him, kicked him, but the light was in his face and the Major was behind him and holding his head so that he could not look away from the light, and the bastard Henry fucking Carter was behind the light.

Questions… the soft and gentle drip of questions. Always the questions, and so bloody tired… so hellishly tired. And the hands were on his head, and the light was in his eyes, and the questions dripped at his mind.

"Past all our bedtimes, Mattie. Just what you told them…?"

"A young man's life, Mattie, that's what we're talking about. So, what did you tell them…?"

"Nobody's going to blame you, Mattie, not if you come clean. What did you tell them…?"

"All that barbarian stuff, that's over, Mattie, no more call for that, and you're with friends now. What did you tell them…?"

Too tired to think, and too tired to speak, and his eyes burned in the light.

"I don't remember. I really don't remember."

"Got to remember, Mattie, because there is a life hanging on you remembering what you told them… "

Park watched the peace of Charlie Eshraq's sleep.

He wondered how it would be, to live with love. He was alone and he was without love. He was without Parrish, and Token, and Harlech, and Corinthian. He was without Ann.

He was away from what he knew. What he knew was behind him, back at the Lane. What he knew had been stripped from him on the nineteenth floor of Century House.

He did not know how to find love.

He thought that going to Bogota was a journey to escape from love

…

There was the sharp bleep of the alarm on Eshraq's wrist.

He watched as Eshraq stirred, then shook himself. Eshraq was rubbing hard at his eyes, and then sliding from his bed and going to the window. The curtain was dragged back.

There was a grey wash of early light in the room. Eshraq stretched.

"Pretty good morning to be starting a journey."

There was a glass of Scotch and water beside him. The Major sat on the sofa beside him. Henry was at the window. He had his ear cocked and he stared outside, and probably he was listening to the first shouted songs of the blackbirds.

It was the third Scotch that had been given to Mattie, and each had less water than before.

The Major had his arm, shirt-sleeved, loosely around Mattie's shoulder.

The Major smiled into Mattie's face.

"You know where you're going, Mattie, in a few hours?

You know where you'll be by lunch time? Do you know, Mattie?"

The slurred response. "I want to see a doctor, I want to go to bed and sleep, and then I want to go home."

"A magistrate's court, Mattie."

"Bollocks."

"The charge will be conspiracy to import heroin."

"Don't be so fucking silly, Major. It's too late at night for games."

"Charlie ran heroin. Heroin subsidized him. You ran Charlie. You're going down, old boy, going down for a long time."

And the arm was round his shoulder, and Mattie was trying to push himself up from the sofa and away from the calm of the voice in his ear, and he hadn't a prayer, hadn't the strength.

"Nothing to do with me."

"Fifteen years you'll get. Very hard years, Mattie."

"Not me."

"You'll be in with the queers and the con artists and the GBH lads, in with them for fifteen years. It's all sewn up, Mattie. How's Mrs Furniss going to cope with that? Is she going to traipse up to the Scrubs every first Tuesday in the month? And your daughters. I doubt they'll come more than once or twice."

"I don't know anything about heroin, nothing, not at all."

"Ask the magistrate to believe you, Mattie… Ask him to believe that you didn't know how Charlie Eshraq, more or less a son to you, funded himself… and ask Mrs Furniss to believe that you didn't know. It'll break her, Mattie, you being inside. Think on it."

"It's just not true."

"She won't have a friend in the world. Have to sell up at Bibury, of course. Couldn't face the neighbours, could she?

Your neighbours'll be a bit foul, Mattie, the jokers in your cell, they have their pride and heroin they don't like."

"It's a lie, I know nothing about heroin."

"It's all been a lie, Mattie. It starts with the lie that you didn't name Charlie Eshraq… Did Eshraq fuck your daughters?"

The pause, the silence. Henry had turned. Henry looked at his watch, grimaced. The Major nodded, like he thought that he was nearly dry, close to home.

"Mattie, Charlie Eshraq was running heroin out of Iran when he was fucking your daughters. Do you reckon heroin came with the service, Mattie?"

"It's not, tell me that's not true."

There was the first shrill call of the birds.

"It's what I hear."

"God… "

"Pushed heroin to your daughters, Eshraq did."

"The truth;…? "

"It's you I want the truth from."

"Charlie gave that filthy stuff to my girls?"

"You've just had bad luck, Mattie, a long run of terrible luck."

There were tears running down Mattie's cheeks, and the hands that held the glass shook. The Major had raised his head and Henry could see his eyebrows aloft.

Carter said, from the window, "You named him, Mattie?"

"It wasn't my fault."

"No, Mattie, it wasn't. And nobody will hold it against you."

Henry came to the sofa. He had his notepad in his hand.

He wrote a single sentence and he put a pencil in Mattie's hand, and he watched the scrawled signature made. He buffeted off the hall table on his way to the telephone and there was pandemonium in the kitchen.

The Major was at the door of the lounge, on his way out.

It did not seem necessary for them to shake hands. Henry went back into the lounge. He went to Mattie. He took his arm and hoisted him, unsteady, to his feet.

"Can I go home?"

"I think that's a good idea… I'll drive you myself."

"Tell me that it wasn't true."

"Of course not, Mattie. It was an unforgivable trick. I am so very sorry."

Dawn was coming, and at first sight the day looked promising.