Gerald Seymour - Home Run

"We got his ticket off him, and the baggage tag was stapled.

We collected the bag off the trailer and let the dog close.

Damn near pulled the handler off his feet." The senior uniformed officer had been Park's guv'nor at the airport. He didn't like the boy, but he'd seen his quality and he had written a fulsome recommendation for transfer to ID. "… The bag is a rucksack, the ticket is from Istanbul. Listen, the dog tells you a fair amount when it gets going. The way that dog went then, our chummie is carrying one hell of a load. We haven't opened anything up, we haven't touched anything. So, it's your baby."

Parrish wasn't saying anything, still shaking his head like he were trying to get rid of the bad dream of the Escort's wheel caps touching the wheel caps of a taxi. Park would not have been able to remember when he had last been so elated at the contact with a suspect. He was the Case Officer. Like the man said, his baby.

"I'd let him run." He knew that there were two other cars on the way to Heathrow, April team members summoned without apology from home. "Just as soon as we've the back-up."

The lift of Bill Parrish's eyebrows told him of the concern.

Normal practice would have been to bust the chummie, and if the chummie wasn't to be busted, then the second most obvious procedure would have been to open the rucksack, empty the contents and substitute dross for the real thing.

Parrish's raised eyebrows were a warning to him.

"Sorry, Bill, but what I'm saying is to let him run."

It was Parrish's style to trust to the flair of the young men in the ID. If he had a deep disliking inside the civil service office where he worked it was for those of his contemporaries, the old lags, who believed that only age and experience counted when decisions were taken. Parrish backed his youngsters, he gave them their heads, and he sweated blood over it. He went to a telephone. He leafed through his diary. He dialled the home number of the ACIO. He was brief. He didn't tell the ACIO that the dog had gone berserk when confronted with the rucksack, that they were sitting on a major haul. He reported that there were thought to be traces of narcotics in the suspect's baggage. He said that a man of Iranian birth, and travelling on a UK-issued Stateless Person's document, the right sort of age, would now be carrying the April team's tag of Tango One. He said that Tango One would be released from the airport as soon as he was satisfied that a sufficient number of personnel had gathered for effective surveillance.

Perspiration on his forehead, not blood… by Christ, there would be blood if Keeper fouled up. Nothing in this world surprised him, not since an archbishop had been stopped by his Customs colleagues at Rome and waved his arms about in protest and thereby dislodged three packets of heroin that had been stuck in his belt under his cassock. Nothing surprised him, not even that a young man should try to walk through Heathrow with a heavy load of stuff in a rucksack. Most of them tried the clever way. Most of them used carefully hol-lowed out Samsonite cases, or chess pieces fashioned from solidified cocaine, or they stuffed it up their backsides, or they swallowed it in cellophane packets. They'd try any bloody thing. It did not surprise Parrish that Tango One had it loaded in a rucksack where even the most casual search would have found it. And yet, what did they stop? They stopped one PAX in a hundred, or one in two hundred. A fair risk, a chance worth taking…

"It's okayed, David. You can let him run… "

He took Keeper out into the corridor, out of range of the men in the room.

Only Harlech heard the ferocity of his whisper into Park's car. "If you screw up, David, I'm gone, and the ACIO who has backed you will be gone with me, and we'll bloody well hang on to your legs to make sure, damned sure, that you go down with us."

"I hear you, Bill."

"Too right, you'd better hear me."

The telephone rang, and it was passed to Parrish, and he listened and then told Park that the two other April cars had arrived, were outside Terminal 3, v/aiting for instructions.

They set off down the corridor. The man from Immigration, and Parrish and Keeper and Harlech, and a uniformed Customs man caught them up carrying a khaki rucksack. Parrish would have sworn that he could see flecks of the dog's saliva on the rucksack's flap. The rucksack was grimed with dried mud. They didn't open it. That sort of bag was much harder to unpack and repack than a suitcase. No need, really, because the dog had told them what they would find. They transferred from Customs and Excise territory to Immigration. A new set of corridors, another set of duty rosters pinned to notice boards.

In the door of the room where Tango One had been sat, and where he was watched, there was a one way window.

Keeper went close to it, nose against it, stared through the glass. There was the slightest quickening of his breath. He had the break and he had the luck, and he had not really believed in either. He looked through the window at Charlie Persia. Charles Eshraq, now Tango One. He saw a well-built young man with a strong head of dark hair, and a beard of a couple of months, and he saw that the man sat quietly and flicked ash from his cigarette into the tinfoil ashtray. He saw that the man was calm. He wouldn't go in himself. He motioned Harlech to the window. Wrong for either of them to show their faces. He gave a wry smile to Parrish.

"Better we hang together than hang separately, Bill."

Parrish wasn't in the mood for banter. He shouldered past Harlech, opened the door.

Park stood close to the door. He could hear everything.

Something massively reassuring about old Parrish's competence when it came to keeping the suspect at ease.

"I am really sorry about the delay, Mr Eshraq."

"What was the difficulty?"

"No real difficulty other than you happened to hit a desk man who was less than knowledgeable about Stateless Persons documentation."

"Is that all?"

"They're changing the form of the documentation and that young fellow had it in his head that the change had already taken place.. . You know what it is, late at night, no one to set him right until they called me."

"It's taken a long time."

"I'm very sorry if you've been inconvenienced… can I just have the details, Mr Eshraq? Everything that happens in Civil Service work, there has to be a report. Name…?"

"Charles Eshraq."

"Date of birth, and place of birth…?"

"August 5, 1965, Tehran. It is in the document."

"Never mind… Address in the UK…?"

"Flat 6, 24, Beaufort Street, SW3."

"Very nice, too… Occupation, Mr Eshraq?"

"Freelance travel courier."

"Get all the sunshine, do you?"

"Eastern Mediterranean mostly, yes."

"We've delayed you horribly, were you being met?"

"No, I have my wheels in Long Stay parking."

"Christ, I wouldn't leave anything decent in there, I hope it's alright."

"It's only a little Suzuki jeep."

"Can we give you a lift over?"

"Thanks, but I'll take the bus. I'm not in a hurry."

"Well, it's quite a fine night. Again, my apologies. I suppose you've some luggage?"

"Just a rucksack."

"Let's go back to baggage reclaim then, Mr Eshraq."

Harlech and Park ducked away and into an empty office.

Through the door he saw Parrish leading the Tango One out into the corridor. He told Harlech for Christ's sake not to let himself be seen but to watch chummie on to the bus and then wait to be collected by Corinthian by the bus stop. Then he sprinted to get to the Escort in the Customs parking lot.

Keeper found the others, detailed Corinthian to collect Harlech and then join Statesman at the gates of the Long Stay parking lot, one a hundred yards to the west and the other a hundred yards to the east. "Target in a Suzuki jeep, Keeper's Escort not far behind. Take nothing for granted. He says he lives in Beaufort Street in Chelsea, but he's so fucking cool this one he may just fancy his chances at Windsor Castle.