Gerald Seymour - Home Run

We have to go in, get stuck in on the ground. We can't just be sitting at Southampton and Dover and Heathrow."

The VAT investigator chewed gum and said, "Myself, I never reckoned to change the world between nine and five, five days a week."

"We have to beat the power of these bastards. Did you know that there was a Justice Minister of Colombia, and when he quit he was given the job of Ambassador to Hungary – and he was shot there, in Hungary. That's the power of the bastards, that's what's got to be beaten."

"Good luck," the VAT investigator took the gum from his mouth, put it in the ashtray. "So, you're off to Bogota?"

"If I can get there."

"Me, I'm looking forward to staying in Leeds and sorting out the fiddles of Mr Gupta and the corner shop."

Park said, "Haven't you ever wanted to do anything that mattered?"

"Smart talk. Makes a change. We don't get much smart talk up here."

"Terrorism, that's crap compared with the drugs threat, and that's not recognised… "

"Are you married?"

"What of it?"

The V A T man settled comfortably in his seat and peeled another strip of gum. He said airily, "Your good lady, is she going to Bogota?"

He didn't answer. Park had the camera at the window. He photographed Charlie leaving through the front door, and when he had the photographs then he was on the radio and alerting his team. Corinthian passed them, on foot, and in the mirror he saw Harlech and Token in the back-up motor.

Tango One was walking back towards the centre of the city, and the rucksack was trailing from his hand, and the tail was on him.

David Park had them all keyed.

They couldn't let the target run much more, not now that he was into weaponry, and too damn right he was going to get himself to Bogota when this target was knocked. Been right to let him run up to now, but all changed once he'd started talking hardware. Too damn right he didn't know if Ann would be with him.

"You asked to be kept informed," the ACIO said. "So I am informing you that it is our intention to arrest Eshraq."

"When will this be?"

"Tomorrow at four a.m."

The Home Secretary lowered his eyes. "You could do me a favour."

"What sort of favour, sir?"

"You could allow me to consult."

"Consult, Home Secretary? The case is 2000 per cent rock solid."

"No, no, I don't mean on a point of law. You've run a splendid show. I've nothing but admiration for the way it's been handled. No, it's not that. It's… it's, well, frankly, it's odd, but it's turned political and I need to consult upwards."

"There's nothing odd about that, sir. It started out political.

'Turn the country upside down, chaps, bring in the pusher, bring in the dealer, spare no expense, bring the distributor to book, scrap every other investigation' – and we did – and I rather think my job was on the line if we didn't. Well, Home Secretary, we did. We've got him, this heroin importer, this degenerate killer, the man who carried in the stuff which Miss Lucy Barnes killed herself with – or are the political fortunes of Mr Barnes so wonderfully on the wane that heroin has been struck from the political agenda?"

"Commissioner, I am totally sympathetic to your point of view, believe me."

"I'll believe you, Home Secretary, if, and only if, you fight our corner. You've got, well, I am in danger of revising that, because you are a politician and you have nothing – the country you are elected to serve has got a dedicated, a passionately dedicated Investigation Division. They earn peanuts, they work twice as hard as you do. They get no perks, hardly any holidays, and they deliver. They deliver and you want to consult."

"I take in what you say."

The ACIO took out his small notepad. He wrote down his home telephone number. "Four a.m., sir. You can reach me at home this evening. But we'll be rooting fpr you, sir. Don't let us down."

It was a slow process, getting the messages to the field agents.

Some messages could be sent over coded inserts into broadcasts of the BBC's World Service, but an order to close shop, abandon ship, must be delivered by hand. Terence Snow was to send a low level but reliable man to Tabriz. The Station Officer in Bahrain had to find someone to fly to Tehran. The Station Officer in Abu Dhabi had to find a dhow owner to ferry the message across the treacherous Gulf waters to Bandar Abbas. Of course, it would have been quicker to have enlisted the help of the Agency, but then it would also have had to be explained that Mr Matthew Furniss, Desk Head (Iran), had been lost. And that was news that Century were unwilling to share with the Americans, a matter of dirty linen made public.

Charlie slept in his hotel, the plastic bag under his pillow.

The green Ford Sierra was outside the hotel. The VAT investigator had gone home, and Keeper was asleep across the back seat with the Vodaphone cradled in his arms. Harlech and Corinthian and Token had the room across the corridor from the target, and would be on two-hour shifts watching the door.

Keeper was well asleep when the Vodaphone warbled in his ear.

"That you, Keeper?"

"Bill? Yes, it's me."

"Are you sitting comfortably? No knock tomorrow… Got that? No lift in the morning… "

"For Christ's sake, Bill…"

"I said, no knock tomorrow."

"Why not?"

"David, the tablets just come flying off the mountain, and I pass on the messages."

"I don't fucking believe it. What more do they want?"

"What they do not want is for the target to be lifted."

"I hear you."

"You cuddled up with Token?"

"I am bloody not."

"Good thing… do us all a favour, give your missus a bell, will you? I gave her my promise that you'd be back for the dance. Sweet dreams, Keeper… just ring your missus in the morning, and you do not lift the target."

The boot went in, and the fist.

There was a hand snaking into Mattie's hair in order to pull up his head, so that it was easier to punch him, kick him, so that it was harder for him to protect himself.

He was trying to tell them the name, but his lungs were emptied by the beatings into his stomach pit, and he had not the breath to shout the name. His throat was too raw to speak the name. If he told them the name then the beating and the kicking would stop.

The man was too good to have been fobbed off with three names. Mattie had known why the beating had started again.

He had shown the flicker of success. He thought he had won small victories with three names. The investigator had read him. Buying off the pain of a beating with three names. But three names was the sliding slope. It was what Mattie would have taught at the Fort – once the names start then the walls come tumbling in. He had no more defence. He had used all the tricks that he knew of. The last trick had been the feigning of unconsciousness, and the cigarette end, lit, on the skin under his armpit, tender, had blown away the deceit in a scream of pain.

He knelt on the floor. His arms hung at his side. There was the taste of his blood in his mouth, and there was a tooth socket for his tongue to rest in. He hated the men that he had named. The pain and the shame had been brought down on him because he had known their names. The fist in his hair held his head upright, and they punched and slapped his face, and they buffeted the bridge of his nose so that there were tears in his eyes, and they kicked his stomach and his groin.

For Mattie, the only way of ending the pain was to surrender the name. He had thought he could satisfy them with three names, and he had failed.

His arms flailed around him, as if he tried to drive them back. If he did not drive them back, away from him, then he could not draw the breath into his lungs and the saliva down into his throat, and he could not name the name. He did not see the flick finger gesture of the investigator. He was not aware that the hand was no longer in his hair, and that his body had buckled. He saw only the investigator's face.