Home Run

21

He was looking down from the window and into the yard.

There was a kid, ten or eleven years old, scrubbing at the windscreen, and Eshraq was hunched down by the front radiator screen and he already had the Turkish registration off and he was holding the Iranian plate in place while he screwed it tight. There were lights in the kitchens that backed on to the yard, and they threw shadows into the yard.

He was dressed and he was shaved when the telephone bell rang in the room. He was zipping shut his bag, and he had his passport and his wallet on the bed beside him, and the ticket for the flight back to Istanbul. The telephone in the room had not rung since they had arrived in Dogubeyezit.

Below him, Eshraq had the front plate secure, and was moving to the rear of the Transit. He was moving easily and casual in old jeans and trainer shoes and a service blue cotton shirt. And the telephone was still ringing.

He picked it up. He heard the clicking of big distance connections. He heard a small voice and far away.

"Is that room 12?"

"This is room 1 2. "

"Is that David Park?"

"Park speaking."

"I want to speak to Charlie."

"He's not here."

"Bugger… I've been cut off twice on your switchboard.

Can you get him?"

"Take me a bit of time."

"And we'll get cut again, God. Name's Terence, I met him in Ankara."

He remembered the Genclik park. He had been 400 yards back, and Eshraq and the man had walked, and there had been a tail. He remembered it very clearly. He could picture Terence. Terence was pale skin, almost anaemic, with fair hair and a missing chin, and he looked to have come from a good school.

"If you give me the message I'll pass it."

"You can reach him?"

"If you give me the message I can reach him."

"The telephones in this country are bloody awful… You guarantee he gets my message?"

"I'll pass it."

"This is an open line."

"That's stating the obvious."

"He's not to go… That is a categorical instruction from my people. He is not to approach the border. He is compromised, can't say more than that. He is to return to Ankara.

Do you understand the message?"

"Understood."

"Most grateful to you."

"For nothing."

"I might see you in Ankara – and many thanks for your help."

He replaced the telephone. He went back to the window.

The rear plate was in place and the kid was scrubbing dust off the Transit's headlights. There had been the tail in Istanbul, and the tail in Ankara. He assumed they had been better in Dogubeyezit, because he had not been certain of the men on the tail, not certain as he had been in Aksaray and the Genclik park. He was a long time at the window. There were many images in the mind of David Park. There was, in his mind, Leroy Winston Manvers back in the corner of the cell, and he was at safe haven in Jamaica. There was the wife of Matthew Furniss at the door of a cottage in the country, and her husband was the guarantor of a heroin trafficker, and he was on safe wicket back in the United Kingdom. There was Charlie Eshraq sitting on the bonnet of a Sierra saloon and mocking him, and he was on safe passage out. There were images of Ann and wet towels on the bathroom floor, and images of the supercilious creature who had done the big put down at Foreign and Commonwealth, and images of Bill Parrish stuck in an ante-room outside the office of the power and the glory at Century. He knew what was right and he knew what was wrong. He had to know. Right and wrong were the core of his life. He moved around the room. He checked each drawer of the chest and each shelf of the cupboard, and he frisked the bathroom. He made sure that they had left nothing behind. He slung on his jacket and put his passport and his airline ticket into the inner pocket with his wallet, and he threw his grip bag over his shoulder.

You will satisfy yourself that he has indeed travelled back into Iran.

At the Reception he paid for the room. They had made out a joint bill, and he paid it. He folded the receipt carefully and put it into his wallet. He didn't give the porter a tip, because he couldn't claim on tips, and anyway he preferred to carry his own bag. He put his bag in the small hire car, locked it away from sight. He went back inside the hotel and took a side door beside the staircase, and then the corridor that led into the yard at the back. The tail doors of the Transit were open and David could see the drums of electrical flex piled to the roof and stacked tight.

"What kept you?"

He started. He hadn't seen Eshraq at the front of the Transit, he'd lost him. He was looking at the drums and he was wondering how successfully they hid the wooden crates.

"Just clearing up the room."

"Did I hear our phone go?"

"Front desk, confirming we were leaving today. Probably thought you were running out on them."

He saw the big smile on Eshraq's face. "I suppose you paid."

"Yes, I paid."

He saw the big smile and the big buoyancy of young Eshraq.

Park didn't smile, himself, often, and it was rarer for him to know happiness. And Eshraq was smiling and he looked as though he had found true happiness.

And the big smile split.

"You hate me – yes?"

"Time you went for the border."

"Your problem, you're too serious."

"Because I've a plane to catch."

"And you'll do my letter?"

"It'll be posted."

"What I'm doing – don't you think it's worth doing?"

"Thinking about you makes me tired."

"Don't I get a goodbye and a kiss."

"Good luck, Charlie, brilliant luck."

He said that he would see Eshraq in front of the hotel. He walked back through, and out of the front doors. As he pushed them open he heard the farewell greeting from the Reception Clerk, and he didn't turn. He unlocked the car, and when he was inside he wound down the windows to dissipate the heat.

Keys into the ignition. It was slow starting, he thought that the plugs needed cleaning. There was the blast of the horn behind him. The Transit came past him. He didn't think that he would see Eshraq's face again. He thought that the last that he would see of Charlie Eshraq was a grin and a wave.

He pulled out into the traffic. By the time that he had found a space there were two lorries between himself and the Transit.

A wide and straight and pot-holed bone shaker of a road. Two lorries ahead of him he could see the Transit. He drove slowly. As far as he could see ahead there was the column of commercial vehicles heading for the Customs post.

Mattie stood in the hallway.

He could hear their voices. It was typical of Harriet that she should have walked back to the front gate with Henry Carter. She had that inbred politeness, it was a part of her.

Sweet scents in his nostrils. He could smell the polish on the walnut hall table. He could smell the cut chrysanthemums that were in the vase on the shelf of the window beside the front door. Sweet sounds in his ears. He could hear the passage of the honey searching bees in the foxgloves that lined the path between the house and the front gate, and he could hear the whine of the flies against the panes, and he could hear the purring of his cat as it brushed against his legs.

The car left.

She came back inside. She closed the front door. She latched the door and made him safe from all that had happened to him. She came to stand against him and her arms were loosely around his waist. She kissed his cheek.

"You need a jolly good shave, Mattie."

"I expect I do."

"What a dear man, that Carter."

"I suppose he is."

"He spoke so well of you, how you'd come through it all."

"Did he, darling?"

"And he said that you needed looking after. What would you like most, Mattie, most and first?"

"I'd like to sit outside in the garden, and I'd like The Times, and I'd like a mug of coffee with hot milk."

"He said it was pretty rotten where you'd been."

"We'll talk about it, but not yet."

"He said they're all talking about it at Century, your escape

… Such a nice man, he said they were all talking about what they call 'Dolphin's Run'."

"I'll go and sit in the garden."

The sun was hardly up. There was still dew on the grass.

He heard the first tractor of the day moving off to cut silage.