He'd hoped, on the way out from London, that there wouldn't be anything sentimental. Littelbaum climbed out of her car and hoisted his bag from the rear seat. Gruffly, he wished her well. She told him it was only a drop-down zone, asked him to check that he'd his ticket, and said that she couldn't stop. Cathy Parker didn't offer her cheek to him, or her hand. He watched her drive away and she didn't wave or look back. By the time he was inside the turmoil of the terminal, she was far from his thoughts.
He was early for the flight back to Riyadh and he would have a decent time to search among the air side shops for chocolates for Mary-Ellen and something, maybe a scarf, to post to his wife. He always took chocolates back to Mary-Ellen, and Esther had a drawer filled with the tokens he'd sent her.
He queued at the check-in.
"Morning, Duane."
He turned. Alfonso Dominguez took the chore of administration work at the Bureau's offices in the London embassy.
"Hi, Fonsie, didn't think you'd make it."
"Apologies for not being able to drive you down here, but the good news, I've gotten you an upgrade. It's the least you deserve. Have you been in con tad the last hour?"
"No, wasn't able to thanks for swinging the upgrade."
The embassy man shouldered forward to lift the bag on to the scales and was smarming the girl at the ticket desk. He liked to think he had a reputation as a fixer, and eased the formalities. His arm was round Littelbaum's shoulder as they walked together across the concourse, and his voice had the hushed whisper of confidentiality.
"I hear you done really well, Duane, that's why I bust my gut to get you the upgrade. You're not up to speed on the news? I just got it. State Department's lining up, trumpets and drums, the briefings. Everything'll come out of Washington. It's gonna be our show. There's decks being cleared. I reckon you'll have a personal call from the director tonight, that's what Mary was saying, could even be a call from the secretary. It's our shout, and we're going to milk it."
"Do the Brits know?" Littelbaum grinned.
"They'll be told, when they need to be."
"I did well better, actually, than I thought."
"You're too modest, Duane."
He enjoyed the admiration.
"Good of you to say that, Fonsie. I said at the start it would take a week, and this is the seventh day, and it's pretty much all wrapped up.~ "Soon as the State Department get the word he's in chains or a body bag it'll be the big blast, coast to coast, round the world, live TV…"
Littelbaum said gently, "I've been working for this for so long. What I've finally achieved, Fonsie, what nobody else has achieved to the same degree, is the fracturing of the code of deniability. Tehran's deniability is crucial in their operations, and it's broken. It's been the screen they've hidden behind and we're taking the screen down."
"And going public."
"And hold on to your seat, Fonsie, hold on tight, because the repercussions can be ferocious. What I'm saying, we have the mullahs by the balls."
"Too right, Duane."
"Whether the Tomahawks fly, whether it's resolutions and sanctions at the Security Council backed by teeth, it's going to be a hell of a rough ride but we've the evidence of state-sponsored terrorism, we've gotten the smoking gun. But you know what? The massive repercussions of the breaking of deniability have turned on events in some shitty backwater Fonsie, you wouldn't believe that place. It's been played out among folk with clay on their feet, Nowheresville."
"I think I have your meaning, Duane. Shame about the casualties… "Irrelevant, you got to look at the big picture. You don't have casualties, you don't win. I kicked the Brits in the right direction -what surprised me, they bought the crap I gave them, ate it out of my hand. What I say, for what was at stake, the casualties came cheap."
"You'll be top of the pile, Duane."
"I think I will be do we have time for a drink?"
The slick in the water lapping against him was an ochre mix from the mud he disturbed and the blood he dripped.
Vahid Hossein had gone to the limit of his strength to reach his hiding-place. A filthy handkerchief from his pocket had been used as a field dressing to staunch the wound when he had left her.
After the woman had screamed and her dogs had snarled, when the beam of her torch had found him then bounced away as she had fled, he had pushed himself up from her body. He had not realized he had bled on her until the torch showed him the blood. He had gone away into the night and pressed the handkerchief into the wound but it had pumped blood on to his vest, his shirt, his sweater and his camouflage tunic. He had known that he must absorb it, not permit it to fall on the ground he crossed, because there would be a trail for dogs to follow. In the darkness, he had gone though the pig-fields, skirted between their half-moon huts, smelt the disgusting odour of the creatures. Guiding him was the call of the sea-birds and the soft motion of water ahead. It was as he reached the water, went down into it, that the numbness of the 4 wound gave way to the pain in his chest, and with the pain came the exhaustion.
There had once been a track leading through the heart of the marsh, an old pathway long since flooded. Under the pathway, in dense reeds, a culvert drain had been built of brick. Lying on his side, Vahid Hossein kept the wound above the level of the water.
The pain came in rivers now. If the marshes had been at the Faw peninsula or on the Jasmin Canal, if he had been with colleagues, with friends, the pain would have been lessened by morphine injections. There were no colleagues, he was far from the Faw and the Jasmin, there was no morphine. The pain sucked the strength from his body.
If he lost consciousness, he would sink lower in the drain's water and drown. He reached into his pocket for the muddied, soaked photograph, held it in his hand and gazed at the small, distorted face of his target.
The sun shone on the water at the entrance of the drain, dappling among the reed stems. If he drifted to sleep, if he sank into unconsciousness, he would drown; if he drowned he would never look into the face. But, sleep unconsciousness would kill the pain. The bullet had been from a handgun. One low-velocity bullet, fired at the extreme of range was still, misshapen and splintered, somewhere inside the cavity of his chest. The entry wound was low under his armpit and he had not found an exit wound. The bullet had struck the bones of his ribcage and been diverted deeper into the chest space.
He coughed. He could not help himself. It came from far down in his lungs. He writhed in the confines of the drain. He needed space, air, and couldn't find it. He held his sleeve against his mouth to muffle the sound of his cough and he crawled towards the segment of bright light at the mouth of the drain. He saw the blood on his sleeve and it eddied from the coarse, soaked material into the flow of the water.
Vahid Hossein did not know how he would survive through the sunlit hours. He prayed for the darkness and prayed to his God for strength. With darkness, with strength, he would go for the last time to the house. The blood and the mucus ran from his hand and over the photograph he clutched, and into the water… They would be waiting to hear of him, and learn of what he had achieved. He thought of Barzin, and her body in darkness, the awkwardness with which she held him, and he wondered if she would weep. He thought of the brigadier with the bear-hug arms, and the laughter that was between them, the trust, and he wondered if the tears would come to the cheeks of his friend. He thought of Hasan-iSabah and the young men who had gone down on the narrow, steep rock path from the fortress at Alamut and who would never return. He thought of them and they all, each of them, succoured his strength.
The image of the young woman, living or dead, was never on his mind. She was past. The sun was on his face. Protected from sight by the waving reed-banks, he eased his head, and the shoulder above the wound, out into the light. He was so tired. He wanted so desperately to sleep. It was not an option. He recognized the delirium that snatched at his concentration, but could not resist the call for him to show strength and courage. They were all around him, the people he knew in his heart and in his mind. He heard their words, and they cried to him from close by. He reached above the drain, his fingers groping in soft mud against the reed-stems, for the launcher. The voices, near to him and shrill, told him he must hold the launcher through the sunlight hours, and never sleep, hold it until night came… It was blurred, small.
The bird cried out above him and flew its search over him. The pain was back, the dream was over. He saw the bird searching for him and heard its cry in the silence. It was the same silence he had felt before, when he had believed a man watched for him. He struggled to get back into the recess of the mouth of the drain, but he did not have the strength, and his fear was the same as hers had been when she was under him and choked and scratched at his face. The bird hunted him.
Chalmers saw the bird dive.
The man, Markham, slept beside him, lying on his back with the sun bathing him, sheltered from the wind, and the dogs were close to him. Andy Chalmers had heard the bird call and it had not been answered. He saw it tuck its wings against its body and plummet, a stone in freef all, bright light shimmering on its wings.
He watched it, for the briefest moment, pull out from its dive and spread its wings to cushion the impact of the fall. He heard its cry. For a few seconds, it hovered over the reeds, then dropped. As a marker, he took an old, withered tree that rose above the flood marsh, dead branches with a crow perched on it. The bird came up, sky danced over the reeds, then dropped again. A faraway tree draped in ivy, which was alone among the willow saplings on the distant extreme of the marsh, was his second point. His mind made the line between the perched crow and the ivy tree. The bird stayed down, and he knew its search was over.
Chalmers leaned across the sleeping man, ruffled the hair of his dogs' necks, murmured his order to them, and slipped into the water. He moved away from the shore-line, where Markham slept and the dogs watched, without sound. He had the line to guide him. He half swam, half walked and although the water was icy against his body he was not aware of it. He kept the line in his mind. He felt no anger, no passion, no hatred. The shore was behind him, hidden from him by the reed-banks. He went quietly, slowly, along the line his mind had made.
Cathy Parker said to Fenton and Cox, "He's complacent and conceited. It's not what he said but it's his body language. Littelbaum thinks he's walked all over us like we're the hired help."
Twice he had flapped his arm at the bird, the second time more feebly than the first. He could not drive the bird away from him. If Vahid Hossein could have reached it, the bird he loved, he would have caught it, held it while it clawed his hand and gouged at his wrist, and he would have throttled the life out of it, but he could not. When his hand came close, the bird fluttered further away, eyeing him, and flew and circled him, but when it came down it was always beyond his reach. To survive, he would have killed the creature he loved, and all the time the silence grew around him. Again, digging for strength, the pain surging, he lunged. He was on his knees and groping at air. The bird mocked him, danced in front of him.
As he sagged back, his face screwed in pain, he saw, in the far distance, the man walking towards him. On the raised pathway, coming closer, alone and unprotected, was his target. The photograph had fallen from his hand when he had reached for the bird, floating on the muddy water near to him. He gripped it, looked once more at the crumpled photograph and at the man. The pain in his body told him it was not the delirium that comes to the wounded before sleep and then death. The man walked towards him. Vahid Hossein thanked his God and grasped the launcher in his hands as firmly as he could.
"Is that you, Fenton? Penny Flowers here. Did you know our esteemed American allies were already counting their chickens? They're planning to go public as soon as there's a corpse or a prisoner. They reckon, a little bird tells me, that it's going to be their day, which is in direct contradiction of what I understand to be our policy on this. Thought you should know… He walked in the beauty of the landscape and did not believe he deserved to.
Meryl was dead, the woman he had slept with, loved with, bickered with, lived with, was lying on a tray in the mortuary's racks. Because of him… When they had walked on that path together, after going to the beach, she was always on his right side so that she could better see the water-birds in the marshland. His right arm dangled at his side and his hand was open, as if she were about to take it and hold it, as she did when they were alone and together.
The sun warmed his cheeks, but his body was cold, insensate. He had not taken a coat out through the toilet window, but had escaped in the pullover that had been warm enough for the house. As he'd walked on the beach, the self-pity had dropped away from him and now, on the path going towards the marshland, he remembered only what he had done to friends… For Frank Perry, friends had been the rock of life. And she was gone because of what he had done to friends, burned them to death. He could remember each meeting with them, and how he had bought them. He had purchased his friends, and they were burned to death because of him. And Meryl had paid the final price.
In a quiet, private voice, he asked for her forgiveness, and the agony of his crime distracted him from the beauty all around him.
Poor Meryl innocent, ignorant Meryl – Meryl who knew little of the world beyond her door, for whom Islam was a mystery. Into her home, he had carried history and Faith, terror, warheads and a killer, and he tried to ask for her forgiveness.
She had been innocent and ignorant, and happy with it.
It was a country and a culture, a people, an aspiration of power of which she had known nothing and wanted to know nothing, and he had dragged it into her life, and that nothing had killed her. His friends, too, were in his mind, their faces, their kindnesses, their laughter and their burned bodies, and she was dead and she had not known them. She was gone from him.." too late to ask for her bloody forgiveness. Life went on.
He said it out loud to make it real.
"Life goes on… The dogs pounced at him from hidden ground below the pathway, came through the old sagging fence beside the water where it turned towards the church tower.
"Life bloody goes on.
The dogs tripped him from his dream state. He lashed at the nearer one with his shoe and it danced clear of him. He peered over the fence and saw the sleeping minder, Markham. He could have walked on. The man lay and slept in the sunshine and breathed easily. Markham had told him the consequence of his actions. Enough of asking for forgiveness and enough of thinking on friends, because life bloody well went on, like it or not. He stepped over the fence, slipped down past the leafless willows and crossed the short-cropped grass. The dogs snarled and cuddled down beside the sleeping man, Markham. He crouched, shook the man's shoulder. Eyes opened, the face contorted in astonishment.
"What the hell what the fucking hell are you doing here?"
Markham looked around him fast the empty grass, the still water, the unmoving reed-beds and he reached up and dragged Perry down.
"I could ask you the same question. Nothing better to occupy yourself? What are you doing?"
"Shit… because he's here…" Markham stared out into the impenetrable mass of slow-swaying reeds, then glanced down at the dogs.
"Because the tracker's gone in there after him… Get down.~ The sarcasm was wiped from his lips. Perry lay on his stomach beside Markham.
"Here? So where are the guns?"
"There are no fucking guns, there's just an unarmed civilian tracker in there searching for him," Markham spat.
"What the hell are you doing out of the house?"
He said weakly, "I wanted to be alone. I went out through the toilet-'
"You're serious?"
"I wanted to think."
"That is about as irresponsible as is humanly possible."
"I'm just a parcel, nobody cares."
"You're a bloody symbol. Men protect you because of your status as a symbol. Christ, you weren't idiot enough to think it was personal, were you? We're not here because we bloody like you. It's our work, it's what we do. What were you thinking of?"
"I thought you were as much my friends as the men who burned to death. Where is he?"
"Somewhere out there, being hunted."
He lay on his stomach. Nothing moved ahead of him to disturb the peace. He closed his eyes and pressed his head down on to the short-cropped grass. The sun was on his neck, and he felt only the chill of regret. In his mind, he saw the burned bodies.
Cox said to the secretary of state, "If our American friends, our dear and closest allies, are allowed to run with this, then we sail on uncharted waters and among unknown reefs. We will be sucked into their vortex. Do we want that? Are we prepared to be tugged along by the nose, at their beck and call and in the interests of their propaganda coup? It's a huge step.." so often the quiet passing of a covert signal achieves more than the beating of cymbals. But, sir, it is your decision…"
Pandemonium broke loose.
In the domestic routine, plates clean, food finished, washing-up done, the principal had been forgotten.
Where in God's name was he?
The kid had been the centre of attention and the requirement to distract him, and the military were doing their thing and that had softened the alertness. It was only when the nanny policewoman had gone to the downstairs toilet, and shouted back that it was locked from the inside, that he had been remembered.
They scattered: Blake upstairs to check the bedrooms, Paget going out to search the garden, Rankin hustling through the ground floor, Davies scanning the green and the road and not a sniff of him. As they pounded around her, the nanny policewoman told the kid it wasn't anything to worry about.
Paget broke down the toilet door. The window was open, the sunlight streaming in. They were gathered behind him to look.
"The bastard's done a runner.
The~cacophony of voices filled the hallway.
"After all we've bloody done for him… Bloody put ourselves on the line for him… Sort of thanks you get from a selfish bloody bastard… What the fuck is he thinking of?"
Forgotten in the silence, the child shouted, "Don't, don't you're his friends."
They stood for a moment, heads hung, shamed.
Fenton said, into the telephone, "So good to speak to you. Of course, I feel I know you although we've never met. Let's put that right. Lunch today, I think. I apologize if you've something in your diary but I promise you it would be worth your while to scratch it out. There's a nice little place off St. James's, on the right, third street up from Pall Mall, Italian one o'clock? Excellent. I've heard so much about you… What's it concern? Try remembering a man known as Frank Perry… One o'clock? I look forward to it hugely."
The chance was given him by his God. The bird was above him, sometimes coming down into the reeds to perch and watch him, but always beyond his reach. One final chance was given him by his God, to take him to the Garden of Paradise. He thought of the great men who had gone before him, slipped from the mountain at Alamut, made long journeys, stalked their target, and he would meet them as an equal in the Garden of Paradise, and sweet-faced girls would wash the wounds on his body under trees of fruit blossom and take the pain from him. He was weak and could move only slowly. He had seen where the target had come down off the high pathway, and he had not seen him climb back. He knew where he would find him and prayed that he had the strength to take him.
He smelt the burning of the bodies as the flesh melted on the bones.
He heard the terror of the screams. He saw the women weeping.
He had been in their homes and they had cooked celebratory meals for him and their husbands.
Frank Perry jerked up his head from the ground.
"What's happened?"
"Nothing's happened," the minder, Markham, whispered sourly.
"What about the tracker?"
"Don't know, haven't sight nor sound of him."
"And for him, the hunter, is it just a job or does he care?"
"You wouldn't understand."
"I understand what I did."
"You were convenient they used you every inch of the way."
"Does he care, the man out there, the man who killed Meryl?"
"He's professional, doing a job for his country, as we're doing a job for ours. As a person, he doesn't care."
"Dying for his country?"
"Let me tell you something, Mr. Perry, that might help you to comprehend… The Islamic activists in Egypt blow up tourist buses, but it's not personal. They get caught, they get tried in courtroom cages, and are sentenced to hang on the gallows. You and I would beg for mercy, but they don't. When the judge passes the death sentence they jump up and down in excitement, and they are smiling and laughing and praising their God. He won't give a shit, but you cannot comprehend that."
"Would he know about the bus? Would he know what I did?"
"He'd know."
"Could you live with that, the sight of the bodies and the smell?"
"I don't have to. It's not my problem."
"But I do, and it's my torment."
He pushed himself up, on to his knees, on to his feet, and stood at his full height. The minder, Markham, was tugging at his trousers and trying to drag him down, but he braced himself and stood straight. He saw the birds gliding in the dark water pools, and the gentle motion of the wind in the reed-heads, and the calm, unbroken reflections. He saw the harrier swoop low over the reeds. There was an awesome beauty in the sunlight, and peace. He identified the corruption that had led him to the crime of responsibility for the burned bodies and the smell. He had been 'somebody'; he had been the man who was valued, who was met at the airport with the chauffeured car, who was taken into the room in the house behind the Pall Mall clubs, who talked to a quiet audience and explained the detail of the satellite photography.
He had rejoiced in the attention of being 'somebody', as if a corporate badge hung from a neck chain on his chest. He had thought himself important, but he had only been used. He shouted, "I am here. I am worthless. It is what I deserve."
The minder, Markham, struggled to pull him down.
"I know what I am. I am nobody."
The harrier danced on the reed-heads at the edge of his vision and the sunlight caught on the barrel of the launcher.
"Do it, because I deserve it!"
In the depth of the reeds there was the dazzle of fire. With the fire was the grey belch of smoke and the tell-tale gold-thread signature climbing away from it. The sound thundered towards him. The birds rose screaming, threshing, shrieking from the pools between the reed-banks. The trail of fire rose high above his head, away into the blue denseness of the skies, then seemed to hover as the harrier had, and then it fell. A white line of smoke marked its passing. There was a dull explosion away on fields to the north. The birds quietened and circled.
"And who would have looked after the boy, Mr. Perry?"
"I didn't think…"
"Then start thinking get down."
He dropped to his knees.
Ahead of him, the reeds erupted as if spitting out what before had been hidden. The young man stood. He was small and thin. The water ran from his shoulders and from his face.
He reached behind him and lifted up the launcher tube and without hesitation he threw the tube far from him, over a bank of reeds, and it splashed down in clear water. Then, he bent before reappearing. Frank Perry could see the dangled legs across his chest and the lolling head behind his shoulder, and he came slowly as if a great weight burdened him.
Frank Perry watched.
The young man carried the body of Vahid Hossein through the reed-banks and out of them.
The minder, Markham, went into the water when they were close and made to help the young man, but the weight of the carcass was not to be shared.
The young man stepped from the mud and on to the cropped grass. The water and mud cascaded off him, and off the corpse. He climbed the bank, grunting at the effort of it, and straddled the fence of rusted barbed wire. He whistled for his dogs. He went up on to the high pathway with the weight of the body on his shoulders.
Frank Perry noticed the harrier soar above, and wondered whether the bird was watching them.
They walked in file back towards the village, led by the young man with his burden.
The villagers had heard the explosion. Some pretended they had not. Some broke from the link of their conversation, listened, then talked again. Some heard it and crept away to a corner of privacy. It was not possible to escape the sound of the explosion… Davies heard it, and Blake, Paget and Rankin, and the nanny policewoman clutched the child to her in the moments after the windows had rattled at the house. The soldiers working through the Southmarsh towards the snipers' rifles heard it.
Gussie brought the news to the pub. He had run at full pace from the pig-fields overlooking Northmarsh.
"They've got him. They're bringing him in. He's dead."
At the edge of the village, Geoff Markham hurried to keep up with Chalmers, who carried the body easily, moving with a fast, loping walk. Perry was behind, and it was as if it were nothing to do with him. He saw the crowd gathered on the green across the road from the house, standing loosely, watching and waiting. When Markham caught up with him he walked beside Chalmers, and the head of the carcass lolled lifelessly against his arm.
"Why did you do it?"
There was no answer, no turn of the head, no attempt at explanation. Markham thought he understood the gesture of respect for the beast.
"How did you kill him?"
Chalmers's lips were set tight… Markham looked into the dead eyes of the corpse and saw the pallor on the face. There was a clean cut bullet-hole in the tunic and a great bloody stain discolouring the material round it. At the neck, there was the mark of a bruise, a deeper colour, just below the ear. He saw them together, very close, two filthy, soaked, wild creatures. There would have been no fear on the hunted man's eyes in those last moments, and there would have been a gentleness on the hunter's face as he had readied the heel of his hand. The same gentleness on the moor and the mountain when he came close to the wounded beast and its pain.
"Did he say anything?" No answer.
"Did he fight?" No answer.
"Did you feel anything?"
Geoff Markham thought that Andy Chalmers wouldn't be feeling sadness or remorse. It was what was owed to a wounded beast. It was not about a quarrel, it was about ending the misery of pain… He had no more questions, there was nothing more that he could think to ask… And, maybe, it was right that he should have no answers to the last moments of the life of Vahid Hossein. He thought of his commitment to the ideology he believed in, and of his untamed defiance and he thought of the death of Meryl Perry and of Gladys Eva Jones… He thought of those who had milked the access knowledge of Gavin Hughes, and those who had put the launcher in the killer's hand… He thought of those who had tied the rope to the ankle of Frank Perry, tethered him, and armed the guns, and waited for the predator to close on him… He had no answers. It seemed unimportant, at that moment, to Geoff Markham that he would never know what had happened in those last few seconds as the launcher was fired high into the sky and away from the target, never know of the confrontation between the two dripping, dirty men in the marsh.
The crowd edged back as Andy Chalmers walked across the green with his burden.
Davies was at the open door, and Blake, and Paget with Rankin, watching.
The young man came to the front gate of the house and dropped his shoulder so that the body fell easily from it. It crumpled, twisted, on to the grass.
The crowd stared down at the death mask and the bloodied uniform, as if at a creature from the darkness. The water oozed from the uniform and the last of the blood. Markham reflected that, somewhere, a woman would weep for Vahid Hossein.
The crowd stayed back, as if they were still in fear of this intrusion into their lives, who had made them make choices, as if he still might sting, might bite, as if he still possessed the power to hurt them.
The first of the soldiers to come said it, "Come on, you bastards, it's not a flicking peepshow. Show him some dignity…"
Geoff Markham said quietly, "If we went now, Andy, I think we could make the afternoon train to get you home."
He walked towards his car, unlocked it, opened the door for Chalmers and his dogs. Before he climbed in, he walked with purpose to the shop where the post-box was. He wanted to be the solitary, private man, the man who sat alone in the corner of a bar or a train carriage. He wanted to be a part of the strange, neutered, unshared life of a counter-intelligence officer. He wanted to walk into people's lives and be able to walk out again. He wanted to be lonely, like the woman with the red hair who was a legend… He took the sodden letter from his pocket and dropped it into the post-box.
As he drove away, with Chalmers sitting expressionless beside him and the smell of the marsh water filling his car, Markham saw the crowd reluctantly dispersing, and he saw Paget spreading a bedroom blanket over the carcass of the beast.
He had welcomed his guest at the restaurant's door, smiled, and held out his hand in greeting. Harry Fenton had seen the rank suspicion on the intelligence officer's face. He had led him to the corner table. Fenton had grinned before they sat and, his back to the restaurant's clients, he had quickly unbuttoned his shirt, lifted his vest, had exposed his chest, as if to convince the guest that no recording device was strapped to his body.
"I thought it was good that we should meet, because misunderstandings can so damage our mutual relations."
He had laid his mobile telephone on the tablecloth, taken the menu cards and he'd told the intelligence officer that he would order for him. He had thought the intelligence officer would have cleared the short-notice invitation with his head of section, with his ambassador, and ultimately with his Tehran control. The man had been wary but not nervous, and Fenton had thought him an experienced professional.
"There are four names that I wish to throw at you, my friend, and you should listen most carefully to what I say, because the implications of our conversation are a matter of some importance."
They ate, Fenton heavily and the intelligence officer with little enthusiasm. The mobile telephone had lain silent beside Fenton's place.
"It's a question of deals. We are into the business of negotiation.
Let us begin with the names. There is the name of Brigadier Kashef Saderi. For the mission mounted into this country, we have ample evidence of his involvement. Yusuf Khan, formerly Winston Summers, currently under armed guard in hospital. Farida Yasmin Jones, now dead, strangled… There is Vahid Hossein."
Each time he had given a name, Harry Fenton had smiled and looked up into the intelligence officer's eyes. The man didn't blink, or turn away. Himself, confronted with names, he would have wanted to puke up his food. Of all those he knew at Thames House and worked with, he'd thought only little Miss Prim Parker would have held her composure as well as the intelligence officer had. Of course she would; it was Cathy who had come back from the airport with the idea of shafting the bastards, the esteemed allies. Smiling into his guest's face, he let the names sink, then resumed eating. He cleared his plate. He had ordered gelati for them both, and requested espresso coffee to follow.
"Around Vahid Hossein a net is currently tightening."
The tables around them had cleared. Bills were paid. The restaurant staff found coats, umbrellas and shopping bags for their clients. Fenton admired the calm of the intelligence officer. The coffee was brought.
The mobile telephone bleeped.
Fenton sipped at his coffee.
He let the telephone ring.
He returned the cup slowly to the saucer.
He lifted the telephone and listened. A smile played on his face. He thanked his caller. The intelligence officer watched him for a sign. He drank again from his coffee cup, wiped his mouth with his napkin then leaned forward.
"Vahid Hossein is dead my condolences. He was brought out of the marshes like a stinking, slime-ridden rat, dead. It's the way these things end, I suppose, without decency. We are faced1 because of the weight of evidence, with a most serious situation involving relations between our two countries yes?"
Harry Fenton raised his hand, flicked his fingers imperiously for the bill to be brought him.
"Allow me to answer my own question. No it can be that it never happened, but "never happened" comes at a price."
Astonishment spread, for the first time, on the intelligence officer's face, and he bit his lip.
"It never happened, and therefore it never happens again. I repeat, it never happened. And your agents never again threaten the life of Frank Perry. It's an attractive solution to both of us."
The intelligence officer reached out and grasped Harry Fenton's hand. The deal was done with their locked fists.
He paid the bill and carefully pocketed the receipt. It was the last of Harry Fenton's lunches. A few minutes later, after the close whispering of details, they were out on the pavement and he waved down a taxi for his guest. He started to walk back towards Thames House. The body would go from a closed van into the cargo hold of the aircraft. The threat against the life of Frank Perry would not be renewed. The Americans, arrogant shits, were shafted and their staffers would have no brief to spell out in front of the cameras. Peace was preserved, deniability ruled, and the bridges remained in place. The bottles would be broken out of Barnaby Cox's cabinet to celebrate a good, most satisfactory show.
He walked at a breezy pace, and he laughed out loud.
It had never happened.
Back at Thames House, he told Cox what he had achieved and the raid on the cabinet began.
Fenton was downing his second drink, might have been the third, when an assistant director wandered into the office.
"I've just heard well done, Barney. Up on the top floor we're all very pleased, but then we always had confidence that you'd get it right. My congratulations, Barney."
The body had been taken.
Davies had gone.
Paget and Rankin had left before him, loaded their kit into the car and driven away.
Geoff Markham had stayed as little time as possible.
The workmen had dismantled the poles and the screens hanging between them; the crane would be there in the morning to lift out the hut, and the technical people to disconnect the electronics. The workmen had carried out the sandbags and had helped to manhandle the mattresses back to the beds upstairs.
Only Blake, the last of his friends, remained, but would leave at dawn.
The dusk fell. He had opened every heavy curtain in the house and the lights blazed out over the green. He had torn out all of the net curtains, peeled the sticky tape from the mirrors and placed their pictures back on the walls. He had pushed his easy chair, in the living room, away from the fire and into the window. He sat in his chair and the brightness of the lights lit the path, the front gate and the fence. He saw them come Jerry and Mary first, then Barry and Emma.
They came out of the darkness beyond the throw of the lights and they laid the flowers against the gate and the fence. The gang from the pub followed them with more flowers. A few minutes afterwards it was Mrs. Fairbrother, Peggy and Paul. The call had come from London. A drink-slurred voice, against a background of laughter and bottles clinking with glasses and music, had told him that the danger was past and would not return, that he was free to live his life.
The boy, her child, sat at his feet and watched with him as the cluster of flowers grew the vicar brought fresh-picked daffodils. The voice had said that what had never happened was over.
Early in the morning, after Blake had gone, he would ring for a van, and after he had fixed for it to take away their possessions he would make the arrangements for the funeral, and after the funeral he would drive away from the village with her child. He would drive to a place where he and her d~ild could remember her and give her love, a place where they were safe together from guns and friends.
He sat in the chair, his fingers gripping the boy's shoulders, and watched the stream of shadowy figures come in silence from the darkness, pause by the gate, before hurrying back to the safety of their homes. Together they listened to the distant sound of waves breaking relentlessly against the shore and stared out, beyond the floral penance, into the emptiness of the black night.