Gerald Seymour - Home Run

The routine of travel was no longer second nature to him.

He gave way before the organizational blizzard that was Miss Duggan. He sat on the two-seater sofa in the partitioned office, he had the ripple of her keyboard in his ears. Quietly he read his book. He was stocking his mind with detail. Wonderful people, the Urartians, an extraordinary and flourishing civilization of three hundred years, and then gone. A thousand years before Christ's birth, this stocky people had made their mark across the wedge that was now divided between Turkey, Iraq and north-eastern Iran. He was already an authority of some stature concerning their artefacts, their belts and earrings and bracelets, their cuneiform script that he had seen gouged out on the walls of ruins and caves. Most certainly he would get to the Van Kalesi. The Urartian fortress at Van, safely inside Turkey, was earmarked as the next stop after Tabriz. Very much indeed he would look forward to being there. He summoned up the memory of Van Kalesi, built of dressed stone blocks that weighed up to 25 tons apiece, the canal that brought water to Van from 40 miles away. A civilization reduced by the Assyrians to bronze trifles and pottery shards, and amusement for men such as Mattie Furniss. The book he now read described the excavation in 1936 of a Urartian fortress town in present day Soviet Armenia, the first time that he had come across a readable and unabridged translation of the report. The purpose of his reading was cover. Whenever Mattie travelled in the Gulf and Near Asia it was as an archaeologist. One day he would write his own book on the Urartians. Damned if he knew how he would get it published commercially, but if all else failed Harriet would probably pay for a private printing of his view of Urartian culture.

Miss Duggan was locking her papers into the wall safe, Time for lunch. Time for the canteen queue. He seldom took lunch in his office, he enjoyed the chance to spend the time with colleagues at the formica topped tables of the canteen.

The food was edible, the view across the river was always interesting. He put a marker in his book and followed her out.

Mattie was a popular figure at Century. Not just because of the long time that he had been with the Service, but because no man, young or old, senior or junior, could remember the least discourtesy or pomposity from the Head of Iran Desk.

He had not reached his rank by treading on the prospects of anyone else on the staff. He was generous to any colleague in difficulty, or who sought his advice. Many did. He would never have claimed to be popular, was not even aware of it.

He went down in the lift with Israel Desk.

"Sorry about what happened the other day up there, Mattie.

The DG's no right to speak like that in front of colleagues, nor privately. I didn't reckon at the time it would have helped you had I stood your corner, if it happens again I will. Chin up, eh, Mattie.. ."

Mattie could summon his fluent smile, as if little things like that didn't annoy him.

At the counter he took a full lunch on to his tray because Harriet was out that night, a committee on something or other, and at home he'd be doing for himself. Percy Martins was behind him. Percy Martins ran Jordan, Syria and Iraq.

He had done something worthwhile, and quite insane, a couple of years back and had himself promoted a light year beyond his ability, and the new DG hadn't yet got round to sorting it out.

"Thanks for that about the Sanandaj units, Mattie. We slid it down to the Baghdad chappies, by now it'll be into the Iraqi system. Very grateful… Sorry about your run in with the bossman. My own view is that he's no background and shouldn't have been let past the front desk. If there's any time you need speaking for then I'm your man.. . "

A tiny, warm smile, which said, "wouldn't be necessary, old fellow, but thanks all the same".

He found himself a table. He needed to be alone. He had his knife into the liver when the seat opposite was taken. Old Henry Carter.. . Good God, thought he'd gone in the first reshuffle. Henry Carter, bachelor, prissy old thing, but sharp, had been in place when Mattie was joining. He couldn't imagine what Henry Carter did round the place these days.

Used to be something about safe houses and de-briefs, never quite certain, and it was the way of the Service now that work was specialised that officers were not encouraged to gossip with men and women from unrelated sections. Such a hell of a quiet voice, and it was rude not to listen, but so damned hard to hear what the man was trying to say.

"I can see it in your face, you thought I'd gone. Should have done, I was supposed to have been pensioned off last year, but I managed twelve months' extension. They all think I'm a lunatic, still being here, but what does a retired spookie get up to? I dread retirement, it's the only thing in my life I'm actually frightened of, handing my I/D in and walking out of Century for the last time. Sorry about your problems, that man needs a brain scan… "

It must be all round the building, Mattie concluded, and that was extremely unprofessional… Two others came over and muttered at him, as if to a bereaved husband, before he had finished his treacle tart and custard. He felt that he was being set up as a faction leader. He would not tolerate that.

He would refuse most categorically to become a centre of resentment against new management.

Carter asked, "What are you going to do, Mattie, when you retire?"

"Write a book. The tale of a lost civilization."

"That's very good. Sub-title, A History of the Secret Intelligence Service."

The news from the National Drugs Intelligence Unit was spring water clear.

"Listen, my friend, I have a powerful breath on my collar.

If you can't get a dealer's name off a pusher in the backwoods, just let me know, one hour from now, and I'll send down one of my graduate trainees. Do I make myself plain, old friend?

The name of the dealer or you're off the case."

The telephone purred into the ear of the Superintendent.

He was flushed. His Chief Inspector was head down into his notes and not wishing to witness the discomfort.

"Our local hero, where is he?"

"Still down at the Cole residence."

"Get him here."

The Chief Inspector gagged. "You're not going to hand it over to him?"

"Right now, if it would concentrate that little bastard's mind, I'd hand it over to the dog."

The radio transmitters and the teleprinters were in the guts of the building, and that was where the decipher clerks worked, in a constant air-conditioned breeze. The signal from London was passed to the junior spook.

The junior spook had now to walk up two flights of stairs, and down a corridor that was shared with the Military Attache's office before getting to the secure area from which the Service worked. The original Embassy planners had made no allowances for the fall of the Shah of Iran and the conse-quent upgrading of the mission. That Bahrain would become a listening post, a base for watchers and analysts of events in the country across the Gulf waters, had not been foreseen. To rebuild the Embassy to satisfy the needs of the Service was out of the question. To have moved the Service personnel out of the Embassy and into quarters of their own would have increased their running costs, and denied them the Embassy security umbrella.

The tea boy had carried cups of tea and soft drinks up the Embassy stairs, down the Embassy corridors for 25 years. He had access to any part of the building with his thirst quenching tray except the secure upper corridor beyond the Military Attache's office. The tea boy saw the Station Officer going down the second flight of concrete stairs, his lightweight jacket slung on his shoulders, making for the golf course before the fight went. He recognised the voice of the junior spook. He heard him say, half way down the first flight of stairs, "Just through, 'Dolphin' is on his way. Here next week."