In the last minutes of the night he moved like a wraith.
He came off Fen Hill and kept inside the tree-line, skirting the end of the marshland. The high winter tides, blown by storms, and the heavy winter rainfall, had made the ground he covered into a swampy bog. The water was always above his ankles and sometimes above his knees but he left no visible track of his advance, and he was hidden by the tree-line. He left behind him the carefully concealed sausage bag and the weapons because, at this time, he had no need of them.
When he came to a small stream feeding the marsh it was necessary for him to wade up to his waist, the sediment clawing at his boots and his legs. The higher ground of Hoist Covert, the name he had read from his map, was ahead of him, and the faint outline of the church tower loomed beyond it.
He moved fast. Once he was out of the bog land and the marsh, he did not stop to unfasten the laces of his boots and empty out the stale dark water and the mud. It was all familiar to him. He crossed the ground as if he were again in the Haur-al-Hawizeh reeds. It gave him comfort to be on familiar ground. He did not move as a trained soldier would, working from instructions and manuals, but used instead the innate skills of a predator. He did not have to consider the dangers of silhouette, of breaking cover, of leaving a scented track behind him. It was natural to Vahid Hossein that he should go as a stalking animal searching for a prey.
He had kept a steady pace and broke it only once when he had seen a single man come with binoculars and sit on a bench between Hoist Covert and a path that led back to the church. He stopped then and checked the ground ahead of, behind, and to the side of the man and watched the traverse of his binoculars. He was only twenty metres from the man when he passed him, in scrub cover. He assumed that the man had come to the bench to watch for birds from the viewpoint that overlooked the marshes; it was a point squirrel led in his mind for future attention.
He moved on past high fences and garden hedges and a sign marking a narrow worn path towards the village.
He climbed a fence and used garden shrubs to mask his movement He crawled on his stomach through a gap in a hedge, lifted a length of chicken wire to go under it, and replaced it. Twice he was within five metres of a house and could hear voices inside, but he kept from the arc of light thrown from the windows. Once he stopped and retraced his steps because a back door opened and a dog, bouncing and barking, was put out to run on a patch of grass. He needed to know where the dogs were: they were a greater enemy than the people.
The houses he went by were of old brick. Some were the homes of artisans, with wilderness gardens stacked with rubbish bags and discarded kids' bicycles, as they would have been in south Tehran. Some were the homes of the affluent, with little tended squares of lawn, heaps of raked leaves and the smell of dead bonfires, as there would have been around the villas on the slopes above Jamaran where the tagt-ut-tee lived, the idol-worshippers who only pretended to re sped the teachings of the Imam.
It was for reconnaissance. It was to find the way in and know the way out.
He heard the noise of cars ahead, slowing and changing down through their gears. He was beside a fence and hidden by ornamental bushes from a small path. It was well timed… He had arrived at his vantage-place when it was light enough for him to see ahead, and dark enough to preserve his cover. It was the few minutes of the point between night and day. He could not yet see the vehicles because bushes were blocking his view. He lay very still. A woman in a night-robe came out of her door and he heard the clink of the bottles she carried. The light above her door flooded the path as she went to the gate. The empty bottles rattled onto the concrete and she went back inside, slamming the door behind her. He saw the lights of cars rolling across the houses ahead of him, and illuminating the open ground.
He crawled on. The photographs of the house and the target man were seared into his memory.
He heard the mutter of low voices as the engines of the cars were killed. The voices were indistinct.
On his knees and elbows he edged forward, and gently parted the branches and leaves of a garden shrub.
He felt the shake in his hands… There was a police car, with two men in it, a dozen metres from him.
Beyond the police car was the open grassland of the photograph, and beyond the open ground were two more cars. Four men stood beside them. Two wore civilian clothes. The others wore blue over ails and across their chests they carried machine-guns on straps.
He felt the cold twist in his stomach.
Beyond the cars was the house shown in the photograph. All the curtains were drawn, and no light showed. He had been told the target was without defence, had no protection. He thought the men in front of the house were changing shifts. He watched. The car nearest to him started up, and the roving eyes of the marksman and the barrel of a machine-gun peeped above the door and out through the opened window as it edged slowly away. One of the men at the house was stretching, arching his back, as if he had stayed the night in his vehicle.
The two men with the machine-guns went to the door of the house in the photograph: he saw their wariness and that one covered the back of the other. When the door was opened there was no light in the hallway. It was professional protection. They went inside and the door closed on them. If he had come a few moments later he would not have seen the machine-guns.
He had the photograph of the man and wanted to look into his face as he took the knife or the gun from under his coat: it was important that the man could see his face and the eye of vengeance.
He slipped away. He crawled through the hedgerow, pulled back the length of chicken-wire, climbed the fence and scurried in the growing light towards the scrub and the shelter of Hoist Covert.
He waded the stream, then staggered across the bog among the trees. It was not the threat from the machine-guns to his own life that made his hands shake and his breath pant. He would be carried as a martyr to the Garden of Paradise; he had no fear of death from the bullets. It was the fear of failure. The brigadier, the man who loved him as a son, who had replaced his long-dead father, would be waiting in the office high in the building of the Mimstry of Information and Security for news of his success. Vahid Hossein could not contemplate the cloud passing over the face of the brigadier if the message carried word of failure.
He came through the trees on to Fen Hill and stopped dead in his tracks.
He had seen the bird.
The beak, tugging, and the talons, clinging, were at the rabbit's carcass. He saw the raw wound on its wing. The bird was at the limit of its strength. Its beak was tearing at the fur but had not the power to rip it aside. It was less than five paces away. He saw the wound and the movement of ants in it, and the colour of the flesh at the wing was not pink and pure but putrefied, like the old wounds of the men in the Haur-al-Hawizeh. The bird flapped the damaged wing and the good wing as if to flee from him but the strength was not there and it only hopped, crippled, a few metres from the carcass. He knew the harriers from the Haur-al-Hawizeh and from the Shatt-al-Arab and Faw. They were often with them as they hid up in the marshes and watched for the Iraqis, waited for the darkness and the opportunity to probe into their enemy's de fences He had grown to love them, to worship the beauty of their feathering. They were light, the harriers, in the darkness of the killing grounds. He dropped to his knees and crawled forward slowly to the carcass. The wound would kill the bird if it could not feed.
With his fingers, he tore little strips of flesh from the rabbit.
Vahid Hossein believed the hunger would defeat the bird's fear, and that the bird was his escape from failure.
He took the black felt pen and the clean sheet of paper to his door, ripped off the existing message and fastened on its replacement. He scrawled the words. DAY TWO.
It was seven forty-nine. The traffic had not yet built up on the Embankment outside Thames House, but already they were at their desks. Geoff Markham had come in on the underground before the crush, but they had beaten him there. Cox was in to supervise the expansion. Fenton was huddled with the American, chuckling, as if they were conspirators. Gary Brennard was there from Administration (Resources), organizing the new team, their new consoles and new telephones. A red-haired woman, Markham recognized her from one of the Irish sections but didn't know her name, was sitting, scratching her head and wiping her eyes, looking like she'd been heaved half awake from her bed. There were two probationers and one of the old men from B Branch. They were in early, as if they feared they might miss the entertainment.
He'd slept in his own bed at his own place, and there'd been four messages from Vicky on his answer phone How'd it go? Did you do all right? Was it OK? Did you do enough to get it? He went back into his partitioned office room. Overnight, in his own bed, he hadn't thought about the interview but about the American with his pen, and whether that constituted a criminal assault, whether it was a sacking offence, whether he was just too damn squeamish for the job. He'd make the call later in the morning. When the new team was bedded down, he'd ring Perry.
He wandered across the open work area towards the new cluster of desks and screens. He went by the woman with the red hair. She seemed tired and uninvolved, was flicking the pages of a newspaper maybe nobody had told her, maybe they'd told her and she didn't think it mattered. Fenton's laugh was louder.
Fenton said, "Morning, Geoff, just hearing about last night -damn good."
He said it grimly, "What we did was illegal."
"Bollocks."
Fenton strode away.
The American sidled over to him.
"Sleep OK, Mr. Markham? Not so well? If I could say to you, it's a rough world and rougher when the stakes go high. You get to play hard if you want to win. Remember Alamut and then you can judge your enemy. Do it by the rules and your enemy will walk over you. They came out from Alamut, two of them in 1192. Their target was Conrad of Montferrat who was the king-elect of Jerusalem. They caught up with him finally in the city of Tyre, present-day south Lebanon, but they'd stalked him nearly a half of a year. He was guarded close, had the best security of the day, and they beat it. They were dressed as Christian monks, the clothes of their enemy. They went right through the security and knifed their man to death. The way they did it, they condemned themselves, but they reached their target. Go legal if you want to if you do, you won't win against cunning, patience, ruthlessness, dedication… Is there anywhere you can get a decent coffee round here?"
She'd been up early to take the pictures off the bedroom walls, and had stacked them, glass down, behind the dressing-tabl2. Everything off the top surface of her dressing-table had gone into the drawers. Then she'd crisscrossed the mirror with heavy adhesive tape. Frank had watched her from the bed.
She'd snatched breakfast, and dumped a plate of cereal down in front of Stephen. She was already late for the school bell.
They'd been changing the shift at home when she had left -nothing to say to her, nor to Frank, but the uncles had time to chat with Stephen about his lorries. She'd had to drag him away from them. On their shoulders they'd had machine-guns on webbing straps. She'd thrust Stephen into the car and Frank had stayed inside.
Emma Carstairs had once told Meryl that she had best-friend status. They'd been to dinner there three months before. Emma Carstairs would have said to Barry, she thought, that Frank and Meryl Perry were the right sort of people for the village. Barry had put work Frank's way and joked about keeping things close, in a little Mafia. The loss of the friendship hurt badly.
Meryl hadn't faced up to telling Stephen why they didn't have Sam in the car now, had made instead a poor excuse about a grown-ups' squabble. She'd have to tell him properly, but later. Probably there would be things said at school, but she couldn't yet cope with telling him the complicated truth. A van was parked beside the road, and she saw a man reaching up to hammer a sold sign across the middle of the for-sale board outside Rose Cottage.
She wondered who'd bought it and what they'd be like.
She drove fast to the school and had to brake fiercely to avoid a car pulling away from the kerb. Most of the kids were already in.
She frowned. Barry Carstairs drove a sporty Audi, provided by his building-suppliers company. It was parked outside the school gate, three vehicles ahead of her. Barry never did the school-run. She kissed Stephen, and pushed open his door. The child ran through the playground gate towards the door of the main building, where he was stopped by Mr. Archer, the deputy head. He had one hand on the child's shoulder, and with the other he was waving her to come to him.
Several of those who didn't have jobs with regular hours helped with the painting, the reading and the lunches of the nursery class. She knew Mr. Archer, a little ferret of a man, and the talk was that he was slyly bitter at being ignored for the headship. She saw Stephen try to pull away from him, as the bell went inside. Archer's fist, clenched in the material of Stephen's anorak, restrained him. She stamped across the playground.
He didn't look her in the face.
"Mrs. Kemp would like to see you, Mrs. Perry."
"Why are you holding Stephen like that?"
He looked at the ground, then at the sky.
"If you could go, please, to Mrs. Kemp's office."
"Why are you preventing Stephen from joining his class?"
"It will all be explained, Mrs. Perry. They're waiting for you."
"You're making Stephen late for class."
"He'll be in the common room I'll be with him."
Kids knew. They always knew first. Stephen's face was blank. At home last night, he'd worked really hard at his writing, was proud of it, before he'd pulled out his lorries and the men had come to his room. His exercise was in his satchel with his lunch. She told him, ignored the ferret, that she'd sort it out, and fast. She stormed down the corridor, didn't knock, pushed her way into Mrs. Kemp's office.
From the door, her eyes roved over the faces. There was Mrs. Kemp, trim and grey-haired, the head-teacher; Bellamy, overweight and everybody's friend, the self-appointed organizer of the PTA; Barry Carstairs, the smart-suited businessman who was going places, the chairman of the governors; and a woman with fiercely bobbed hair and a severe black trouser-suit. The men were either side of the women, and they were all huddled close against the legs of the desk.
The head-teacher's voice piped at her, "Thank you for coming in, Mrs. Perry. Please sit down."
"Why am I here?"
"Just sit down, Mrs. Perry, please. You'll know everyone here, except Miss Smythe from the county's education department."
She remained standing.
"What's going on?"
The head-teacher fixed her with a glance.
"I am afraid I have something difficult to tell you."
"What?"
Bellamy grunted, "It's pretty obvious, Mrs. Perry, after yesterday afternoon."
"What's obvious?"
Carstairs tried to look sombre.
"There was a very disturbing ii vident affecting the school yesterday, Meryl, which cannot be ignored."
Her child, with the ferret's hand on his anorak, knew. Stephen was in the common room, and would be scared half out of his wits. She stood her ground, and glowered.
"So, which of you's queuing to use the knife?"
"That's not called-for. We have a responsibility-' "It's a responsibility we're not ignoring."
Barry Carstairs didn't look at her. He was playing with a pencil and he'd scribbled words on a pad, as if he didn't trust himself without notes.
"This isn't easy for us. As chairman of the governors, after consultations with our head-teacher and bearing in mind the feelings of the parents' representative, I have taken a most serious decision. Yesterday, your husband came to the school to collect Stephen. He was, we now know, accompanied by an armed bodyguard. It was not his intention that the presence of the bodyguard should be known, and that was an act of deceit. The bodyguard, after a grossly irresponsible incident with his pistol an incident that could have led to the gun firing in a crowded playground in the head-teacher's hearing, spoke to the local police after she, quite rightly, had called them. I~ his explanation to the local police, he spoke of a threat to your husband that necessitates his constant protection from terrorist attack. We feel, after very careful consideration, that a threat to your husband represents, also, a threat against your husband's family-' "You're blathering, Barry. Why don't you say what you mean?"
Carstairs pushed aside his notes. There was a curl of anger at his lips.
"I was trying to do it the decent way. What Frank's done, what's in his sordid past, I don't know and I don't care. What matters is that his family is exposed to bombs and guns, in our school. The children and staff here are all threatened by terrorists. Their safety is paramount. Stephen, as much as his stepfather or his mother, could be a target. If he is a target, then everyone at this school is a target. He's out, he's no longer welcome here."
"You can't do that, not to a child."
The woman, Miss Smythe, leaned forward to intervene, and spoke with a low, intense voice.
"We can do it, Mrs. Perry, and we are doing it. My department, after full consideration of the facts, has decided to back the governors' recommendation. We're foursquare behind them. As soon as is practical we will communicate with you on proposals for alternative education for Stephen, but I can't say when that will be. A thought, Mrs. Perry. Is it possible for Stephen to move away, stay with an uninvolved relative, and attend school elsewhere?"
"It is not. We are together, a family."
"Then he'll have to sit at home," Carstairs said.
"I'm sure Mrs. Kemp'll loan you some books but he's not coming back here."
"You are despicable. You are, Barry Carstairs, always have been, a second-rate rat, always will be."
"As of now, Stephen is no longer a pupil at this school. Take him home."
"And Frank thought of you, and your stupid wife, as a friend."
"Your problems aren't ours, they don't concern us, get off back home. And when you get home you should call for a removal van and take your problems away. You're pariahs, you're not wanted."
There was so much she could have said. Meryl thought, in that moment, that weeping and pleading would have shamed her. She eyed them with contempt and none of them could meet her gaze. Once before she had been through the business of shame, and she would not go there again. No begging, no cringing, not then and not now. Nine years before, she had resigned from the haulage business where she worked the logistics computer, four months after the Christmas party. Hadn't been drunk, incapable, before that party, or since. Too drunk, too incapable, to know which of the men had done it. It could have been any of the thirty-eight drivers, twelve loaders, three managers and two directors. She would have needed DNA testing to learn which was the father of the embryo baby. She turned. Living with Frank, loving him, bringing up her child together had erased the shame. She left them behind her, the silence clinging in the room, and strode down the corridor to fetch her son from the common room.
They would be watching her from the head-teacher's office as she led the child back across the empty playground towards the car, their faces would be pressed against the glass. She had shown them defiance, but by the time she reached the car the pain and the despair hit her.
With her boy beside her, she drove into the town centre to buy the length of net from which she would make the curtains.
Classification: SECRET.
Date: 4 April 1998.
Subject: JULIET SEVEN
Transcript of telephone conversation (secure using SB mobile at Juliet 7 location) between GM, G Branch, and Juliet 7.
GM: Hello? Mr. Perry? Good, got you. I'm Geoff Markham, I came down to see you with Mr. Fenton.
"Fraid I didn't make much of a contribution. This is a secure call. What I mean is, we can talk frankly. There's a bit to talk about… Are you there?
J7: I'm here. What is there to talk about?
GM: You appreciate my difficulty, the same as before. It's the same difficulty as Mr. Fenton had?
J7: You've a difficulty very funny. Try your difficulty on me.
GM: The difficulty is that I cannot share sources of information available to us.
J7: Join the queue nobody tells me anything.
GM: Let's try to keep calm. That way we make better decisions. J7: What decisions?
GM: This is not easy. Frankly, the situation around you and your family has deteriorated, we believe.
J7: Spell it out.
GM: That's my difficulty. As I've already explained, I cannot 17: Because you don't trust me. Nobody [expletivel trusts me -that's why I intend to make my own [expletive] decisions.
GM: Please, please, listen to me. My judgement, based on information I am privy to, is that you and your family should relocateJ7: Your judgement you can shove it up your [expletivel.
GM: I used the word 'deteriorated' – I'm not using that word lightly. You should go hear me out. We can make all the arrangements within a matter of hours.
J7: I provided information, and I am not trusted sufficiently to be told what use that information was put to.
GM: That, too, is one of my difficulties. I, too, am not need-to-know on that information.
J7: Then stop playing bloody errand boy and [expletive], well, find out Wait.
[Pause of 38 seconds] J7: Meryl's just come home. She took her son to school, and was told at school that they're barring the boy [expletivel bastards. You think I'll run away because of the say-so of those [expletive] bastards? Think again.
GM: It is a situation of grave danger.
J7: I'm not running, not again. This is my home.
GM: Perhaps you would reconsider when matters are less fraught.
J7: I make my own decisions. I am staying. (Call terminated)
The tanker, moored at the offshore jetty, had started to unload its cargo of 287,000 tonnes of crude. The master stood with his engineer officer on the small stern deck behind the tower of the bridge and accommodation block. The inflatable, covered by tarpaulin sheeting, was stowed beside them. They discussed a schedule. It was important for them to plan the length of time the tanker spent there for the crew to take shore leave, and the sailing time back into the English Channel. Time was critica amp; The great tanker should not reach the point in the Channel too early or too late to make the pickup. Neither man entertained the slightest doubt that he would be on the beach, and that an enemy of their country would, a few hours before, have been justifiably killed. They made calculations: because they had been delayed in taking their place at the offshore jetty it seemed unlikely that the crew would enjoy more than a few hours of shore leave in the Swedish port.
The restaurant was on no list in good-eating guides that Harry Fenton had ever seen, but it was where the Israeli had said they should meet. It was an unpredictable place for the Mossad station officer to have chosen, and one where it was unlikely his enemies would look for him.
"So, Harry, you are confused. You are confused because you have spoken with your foreign-affairs people who are an apparatus of appeasement. They're telling you that Iran is misunderstood, more sinned against than sinning, and wants only to be permitted to take a rightful place in the affairs of that region. Allow me, because you are paying for this excellent food, to disabuse you of what you have been told and to further your confusion. Before he was killed, Rabin tried to alert the international community to the need to "strike at this viper and crush its skull", and he was a man criticized in his own yard as a peace monger They were strong words from a man vilified for attempting a deal with the Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian enemies. Why?"
They were in the further reaches of east London, under railway arches and facing a line of boarded-up shops. It was small, dingy and, frankly, unclean, but the Israeli said the restaurant served the best Afghan cooking in the city. He ate with enthusiasm. Fenton was less sure.
"Why? Because we, in Israel, understand the real threat. We understand it while many in Europe refuse to open their eyes. Everywhere a bomb explodes or a bullet impacts we find the fingerprint of Iran. They pay for, equip and train the Hizbollah in the Lebanon, and Hamas for the Palestinians. The bombs on our buses, in our vegetable markets, are placed by proxy but they are theirs. Yet what they're doing now is only a pinprick, Harry, in comparison with what they intend."
The Israeli pushed the cleaned plate away from him, wiped his mouth vigorously with the paper napkin and laid the palm of his hand over his glass. Fenton masked the taste of the spiced baked vegetables, and sauces, with beer and was now on his third bottle.
"What they intend is to gain a triple arm of weaponry with which they may dominate the oilfields of the region. For the development of the nuclear site at Bushehr, and they already have small quantities of plutonium, they will beggar their own people and bankrupt the state. They are scouring the Asian continent for the necessary chemical agents for an independent poison-gas manufacturing industry. What is the work the scientific community of Iran is given? The means to deliver a warhead containing the most revolting disease known to man anthrax, foot-and-mouth, any bio-toxin, any of the peasants' Weapons of Mass Destruction. Where are they putting these weapons and the missiles to deliver them? In tunnels. They bury them where they are beyond the reach of conventional attack. Only once have we been able to strike at such targets. Do you know how we achieved that, Harry, with whose help? Were you never told, Harry? If not, it's not for me to tell you."
The meat on the plates laid in front of them was unrecognizable as part of any animal Fenton knew. He assumed it had been a young lamb, ritually slaughtered. The thought of what had happened to it was sufficient to stifle his appetite.
"The Iranian programme for the manufacture of Weapons of Mass Destruction gives me, and the rest of our intelligence community, bad nights. It's the big picture. It's what the people of Israel will face in the future. The Mossad and the general staff have to plan the defence of our state against nuclear devices, against nerve gases, against toxins, but that is in front of us. The present… Ignore the denials, ignore the protestations of fluent, gentle diplomats who make your foreign-affairs officials feel comfortable. The present is that every attack abroad by the Iranian killer squads has the authorization of the highest echelons of government. It's only the appeasers who say otherwise. Government provides the training for the killers, the weapon~s via diplomatic pouches, the digital secure-phone links, the passports, the finance. Every operation abroad is laid before the foreign minister, the interior minister and the defence minister sitting in the National Supreme Security Council. It is authorized, sanctioned, on one condition only. The condition? There should be no smoking gun in Iran's hand… Look in your files, Harry, it is there if you wish to see it. Is there something wrong with your food, Harry?"
Fenton had barely touched his meat, hardly eaten enough to offer a pretence of politeness. He grimaced, and signalled for more beer.
"If you don't eat, Harry, you'll just fade away… The Germans have done deals, appeased them, looked for the easy life and the French, the Italians. They have submitted to the blackmail. They want to trade, they want to offer export credits, and they believe, if they are generous and restructure the debts, that the killer' squads will stay off their territory. Prisoners are returned, investigations are stalled. Have the Germans helped you over Lockerbie? Have they fuck. What about all the killers the French have caught within their jurisdiction? No prosecutions. They appease. And you in Britain, Harry, on your little island, you do not believe that the problem of Iran is real. How can I say that? I say it because of what I see from my embassy window. You allow, unchecked, on your streets, flourishing, such organizations as the Hizb ut-Tahrir, or the Young Muslims who provide the cheap charter flights to Iran, or the Al-Muntada al-Islami who fund-raise for the Algerian fundamentalist butchers who are in their turn trained in Iran. You allow it to happen, Harry. You refuse to recognize the cancer in your belly."
The Israeli declined coffee, which was a relief. What had been served at the next table, coughed and spluttered over, had looked like tarmacadam sludge.
"A great meal, Harry, and a great opportunity to talk with you. I say hit the bastards wherever you find them. It is the only language they understand. They are clever and determined, they are not to be underestimated. Good day to you, Harry."
He stood, the gold Star of David bouncing in the greyed hair of his chest behind his open-collared shirt.
Fenton finished the beer then followed him out on to the street. The Israeli tugged at his sleeve.
"Remember what I said. To stop them you must crush the skull, crush it under your heel, crush the life from it. And then you have to have the courage to shout it to the world, and fuck the consequences. You got the balls, Harry, to tell the world you crushed the skull?"
The Israeli had said, deviously, that he had a man to meet. Fenton was abandoned.
He walked at least a mile before, thank God, he was able to flag down a taxi.
He told Cox that he'd been networking again. He dropped the name of the senior Israeli intelligence officer in London and saw that Cox was reluctantly impressed. He was tired and his feet hurt, and he complained that the Israeli policy position was in total contradiction to their own.
"I'm supposed to be learning but the pointers conflict. That's where we are, between a rock and a hard place. But, I will press on."
"Of course you will," Cox said.
"That's what you're here for, isn't it?"
The crane came across the green, past the keep-off-the-grass sign, the big wheels gouging a track on the rain-softened ground. Peggy stood on the far side of the green, leaning on her bicycle and staring.
The hut, the size of a large garden toolshed, had already been hoisted off the flat-top lorry that had reached the village in slow convoy with the crane, and now dangled from a cable under the crane's arm.
Frank Perry watched the crane's manoeuvres from the dining-room window, with Paget and Rankin. They had asked for, and been given, a spare blanket from the airing cupboard and had draped it over the polished table.
He'd said earlier, "I'm sorry about last night, what I said."
"Didn't hear you say anything, sir."
"Nothing to apologize for, sir."
A pleasant afternoon of watery sunshine threw sufficient glare to highlight the garish yellow of the crane and the rusty brown creosote seal on the planks of the swinging hut. The crane's engine coughed diesel fumes as it powered towards the gap between his house and the Wroughtons'. Davies edged his car clear to make space.
Behind him, Paget and Rankin were discussing kit. They seemed uninterested in the arrival of the hut. On the blanket, with their machine-guns and the small black-coated gas grenades, with a book of crossword puzzles, was a kit m*gazine. They turned the pages and pored over the advertisements.
His face against the window glass, Perry peered at the crane's advance, and heard the scraping noise. He tilted his head, looked up and to the side. He could see that the hut swayed against the Wroughtons' plastic guttering. Wroughton was the deputy bank manager in the town, his wife was the surgery manager and their twins were in school; a small blessing that they weren't there to see the destruction of the plastic guttering. The crane hoisted the hut higher, clear of the Wroughtons' guttering and roofing tiles. He imagined a crowd cheering as a man swung and twisted from such a crane. The crowd here was just Peggy, Vince, who was out of his van and watching with her, and Dominic, standing in the shop doorway. Paul held tightly to the leash of his dog, which yapped incessantly and strained forward on its hind legs. He could no longer see the slow swing of the hut, but could hear the shouts of the men guiding it. In Iran, from what he had seen on television when he was there, they didn't blindfold a man before he was lifted high for the crowd to see, and they didn't pinion his legs to deny the crowd the sight of him kicking.
Behind him, in low voices, Paget and Rankin talked through the brand names of windproof sweaters, thermal socks and rainproof trousers. They sat huddled close beside each other. It was more than twenty minutes since the crane and the lorry had come to the village and they'd not passed comment on anything other than the advertisements in the magazine for kit.
He left them, and went into the kitchen. Meryl didn't look up. She was at the kitchen table with her sewing machine, and her boy was feeding her the lengths of cut net. In the back garden more of the men from the lorry were laying heavy planks on the grass lawn, cursing because they were awkward to move and heavy. She'd spent half of last summer's evenings working at that grass, digging out the weeds to make it perfect. The kitchen, in spite of the long fluorescent strip-light, was dark. She was looking at the window and he could see her teeth gnawing at her lower lip. The hut was being lowered past the window to the shouted instructions of the men, who eased it towards the planks on her perfect lawn. He'd heard that a man was left hanging dead for a whole day before they lowered the arm of the crane. The hut jolted, and the cable slackened. Davies was calling their names.
Paget and Rankin came through the kitchen. They had the machine-guns, their rucksacks, their food-boxes, their magazine and the crossword book. The tall one tousled Stephen's hair. It was the first time Perry had seen the child half smile since Meryl had brought him home. They walked out through the kitchen door to inspect their hut. There was the roar from the front of the house as the crane backed out of the gap between the houses.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes." Her head was down, but her tone was aggressive. She fed the net on to the needle of the machine.
"I was only asking…"
"Why shouldn't I be all right? I've got you, I've got my home, I've got my friends. What have Ito complain about?"
"Look, don't be sarcastic."
Davies rapped at the kitchen door. He was carrying his gear: the case with his machine-gun, his heavy coat, a duffel bag for his sandwiches and Thermos, a clean shirt on a hanger, and a pair of heavy boots. Through the window, Perry saw Paget and Rankin taking possession of their hut. They'd dumped their kit inside, and were supervising the link-up of the cables from the house. One of the lorry men brought them two plastic chairs and a kettle; another, a small television set and a microwave cooker. Outrage had been building with Meryl throughout the day, but she had held on to her control because of the men in her dining room. If Davies hadn't been at the door he thought she would have screamed. Everything around them was worse for her than for him.
"Yes?" He turned on Davies.
Davies said quietly, "It's been decided that I should be inside with you. It's not a matter of comfort or anything like that, it's about my safety when I'm sitting in the car. It's because of a reassessment of the security threat. The car is too vulnerable, that's the assessment now. The boys in the hut are behind armour-plated walls. They're certainly proof against low-velocity bullets and there's a good chance they'd stop high-velocity, but the car doesn't have that protection. They want me inside."
"I've been asked, again, to run away. I'm staying."
"I've been told that, Mr. Perry. That's your decision, not for me to comment on. But, the car outside, with the new assessment, is too vulnerable."
The strangers were with them inside the house, and in the hut, which blocked the precious view of their garden. Later, the strangers would be all around them as the laminated plastic was fixed to the windows. It would be late in the afternoon, When Paget and Rankin were safe in their hut, when Davies was safe in the dining room, before the lorry rumbled away and the crane's wheels dug another track across the green.
And there was nothing he could do, except run. All his life he had made for himself the decisions that mattered. He had always been self-reliant: at school he, not his parents and not his teachers, had decided what subjects he would specialize in; at university ignoring his tutors' advice, he had decided what braHch of engineering he would concentrate on; at the company, his only employer, he had decided that the opening he wanted was in the sales division, and he had explored the tentative, difficult trade openings that were possible with Iran. First his wife, and then Meryl, had left decisions to him. He had never been frightened of backing his judgement, and now he was helpless and snared in a web. It was a new sensation to him. He couldn't, of course not, go out of the house and man a personal roadblock at the end of the village and check the cars coming in, and couldn't beat across the common ground beside the road for the people sent to kill him, and couldn't thrash around in the marshland. No action was open to him, except to run. He was neutered, and the men were all around him, inside and outside his house, and they ignored him as if he were an imbecile and incapable of independent thought. There was nothing he could do but sit and wait.
"It isn't my fault."
She had come where and when he had told her to come. Farida Yasmin Jones hung her head, pressed her face against her knees. The damp of the evening was in the air. She had driven her car down the narrow lane off the wider, busier road, and after the bend that prevented it being seen from the road she had parked near to the track that led to the tumulus.
"I do not criticize you."
"You look as though you do when I came with Yusuf there wasn't protection."
"Perhaps he lived."
"You said he'd die."
"Perhaps he lived and talked."
"Yusuf Khan would never talk."
"All men say they would never talk, and believe it."
"You're insulting him."
"He was stupid, he was like a child. He spoke too much and he could not drive why should I believe he would not talk?"
"You've no right to say he'd talk. What're you going to do?" He had come from Fen Hill and across Fen Covert and he had sat for close to twenty minutes hidden in bushes watching her before he had shown himself. After twenty minutes Vahid Hossein had gone in a wide loop around her to check that she was not followed, was not under surveillance. He had seen the men at the house with the guns. He had no trust in anything he had been told. There had been an Iraqi ruse in the marshland in front of the Shattal-Arab: an ambush would be set by a patrol; they would lie up and their guns would cover a raised pathway through the reed-banks; a cassette recorder would play a conversation, men's voices, in the Farsi tongue; men of the Revolutionary Guards would be drawn towards the voices of their own people. Friends had been killed because they trusted what they heard. He had watched her. She had eaten mint sweets from a packet, and scratched the white skin of her legs above her knees, and looked frightened around her in the quiet. She had rubbed hard against the softness of her breast, as if there was irritation there. She had snapped her fingers together in impatience. All the time he had watched her. He had no trust in her and yet he was yoked to her.
"Think, plan."
"Think about what? Plan what?"
"Think and plan."
"Don't you trust me?"
"I have faith only in myself."
Her face was against the white skin of her legs and her hair cascaded over her knees. He thought that she might be crying.
"I'll do whatever you want."
"You cannot think for me and you cannot plan for me."
"Is that because I'm a woman?"
"Because…"
"What is your name?"
"You have no need to know my name. You have no need to know anything of me."
She gazed into his face and the half-light made shadows at her mouth and her eyes, but the eyes held the brightness of anger.
"Then I'll tell you my name and everything about myself, because that shows you my trust. I take the chance, the trust, that you'll not talk."
"You believe that? You believe I would-' She mimicked, "All men say they would never talk, and believe it"."
His hand went instinctively to her shoulder, caught it, gripped it to the bone.
"You play a trick with me, a trick of words." I too had felt her body, gazed into her uncovered face. He snatched away his hand and looked at the ground between his damp, muddy boots. He had been wrong: there were no tears in her eyes.
"I trust you," she said.
"Before I converted, I was Gladys Eva Jones. I come from a town in the middle of England, not much of a place. My father drives a train. He's fat, he's ugly, he likes newspapers with pictures of girls without swimsuit tops, he dislikes me because I'm not a boy. My mother's empty, stupid, and she dislikes me because I'm not married and breeding actually, the married bit might not even matter to her, it's not having kids to push round in a pram that upsets her. They both, equally, dislike me because I was clever enough to go to university. It was the most miserable time of my life, and I'd had some. I was nothing on campus, no friends, lonely as sin. I met Yusuf and through him I went to the mosque of Sheik Amir Muhammad, and I was taken into the true Faith, and became Farida Yasmin and happier than I'd been in my life. I'd found respect… I was asked to drop my Faith, to hide it, to go to the hairdresser and beautify myself. I was told that was the way I could best serve the memory of the Imam. I was trusted. I was sent with Yusuf to identify this man, Perry, at a hospital in the north of England when he was visiting. His father was ill and the doctors thought he might die. His parents didn't know how to call for him because he'd cut all the family links when he changed his name. There was an appeal on the radio for him, using the old name, and it was heard by Perry and by the people at the Iranian embassy, and it said where the hospital was. We went there, Yusuf and I, but it was I who actually went into the ward and asked the nurse which patient was his father. I saw him by the bed. We waited outside and noted the car he was driving, and it was I who walked past it and took down the name of the garage that had sold it. We went to the garage and I chatted up the salespeople, gave them a story I flirted, I did what was disgusting for my Faith and I was given the address of the man who'd bought it. I did all of that because I was trusted. Then I was trusted enough to come down here, to Perry's home, to photograph him and his house. And I was trusted, when Yusuf crashed, to drive south, collect you and bring you here. How much trust do you need?"
He gazed at his boots, at the crossed laces and the mud.
She bored on.
"Is it too difficult for you now?"
"What?"
"Because he is protected, is it too difficult?"
"You believe…" He had never before been interrogated by a woman then lectured, not even as a child by his mother.
"Are you giving up, going home?"
"No… no… no..
She had angered him. She smiled as if his anger pleased her, as if she had finally reached him.
"What are you going to do?"
"Think and plan."
"It's possible?"
"In God's hands, everything is possible."
"How can I help?"
He said, "I need bread and cheese and bottled water, and I need raw minced meat. Please, bring them for me tomorrow."
"Same time tomorrow bread, cheese, water, minced meat yes." He pushed himself up. The damp of the ground had seeped through the material of his camouflage trousers, stiffened his hips. He stretched. She reached up with her hand. He hesitated. She challenged him. He took her hand and she used the strength of his grip to pull herself to her feet. The blood flushed in his cheeks. She rubbed the skin at the back of her legs as if to give them warmth. He looked away from her and began to brush the ground on which they had sat with sticks to lift the flattened grass.
"I don't know your name and you don't trust me," she said softly.
"But you can't do without me, can you?"