Gerald Seymour - Home Run

"I have the impression that there was more interest, more interest even than in the safety of the field agents, in whether Eshraq was compromised… "

Mattie swung his shoulders. His eyes fixed on Henry.

"What do you know about Eshraq?"

"That he is of very considerable importance."

"While I was away my safe was rifled, yes?"

"Rifled? No, Mattie, that is unreasonable. Of course we went through your safe. We had to know about Eshraq… "

Henry paused. The silence weighed. He looked up at Mattie.

There was the attempt at kindness, and understanding, and friendship. "I gather that Charlie Eshraq is not just important for his potential in the field, but also that he is very close to your family."

"So my safe was gutted."

"Mattie, please… we had to know everything about the boy, and now we have to know whether he is compromised."

"So you burrow about in my private files and you find that he is close to my family, is that it?"

"That's right."

"Here you assumed that I would talk to my torturers about a young man who is like a son to me?"

"I'm sorry, Mattie, that has been our assumption."

"Your assumption, but not the Director General's?"

"Correct."

"But all the rest of you?"

"The Director General said he thought that you would go to the grave before you named names."

"You, Henry, what do you think?"

"I've seen the medical reports. I know the extent of your injuries. I have an idea of what was done to you. To have escaped after all that argues a phenomenal constitution, phenomenal courage."

"I killed three men getting away. I broke the neck of one, I strangled one, I drove one down."

"If there were doubters, Mattie, they will obviously keep their doubts to themselves. I didn't know that, of course, and I am horrified to hear it. One has no idea what one may be capable of in extremis."

"Am I capable of betraying Charlie, that's what you are asking yourself."

"To me, Mattie, God's truth, you are one of the finest men that I have known in my lifetime with the Service, but no one, no one in the world, is capable of withstanding torture indefinitely. You know that and nobody in the Service is holding it against you. Everyone thinks it was wrong to send you – my God, I hope the DG doesn't listen to this tape – and, well, to tell you the truth, quite a few people think you were a fair old chump to be gallivanting about on your own near the border. That's what comes of being an archaeologist, I suppose."

Mattie smiled at the irony. He walked to the window. He did not need to hold on to the chair backs. He walked as if there were no pain in his feet, as if he could straighten his back and there was no pain in his chest. He stared out. There was a brisk sunshine lighting the lawn.

"I may have named the field agents, I can't be certain.

There were times that I was unconscious, I might have been delirious. There were times when I thought I was dead and certainly prayed I would be. But that was, oh Christ, after days of agony. If the agents were not aborted immediately then I won't accept the blame for that… "

"And Eshraq, did you name Eshraq?"

The dog was barking in the kitchen, frustrated at being denied the run of the house. Mattie turned, stared levelly across the hearth rug at Henry.

"No, Henry, I couldn't have done that. I'd much sooner be dead than have done that."

"Mattie, truly, I take my hat off to you."

The lorry began the journey from the north of England to the port of Dover. Midday Saturday, and the lorry observed strictly the speed limits set for it. The driver would not approach the Customs checks at Dover until the evening of the following day. Lorry movement through the port of Dover was always heaviest on a Sunday night, when the drivers were jockeying to get a good start on the Monday morning on the through routes across Europe. The volume of traffic on the Sunday night sailings dictated that the Customs checks on outgoing cargo were lightest. And the early summer was a good time, also, for the sale of machine parts. The ferries' vehicle decks would be jammed with both commercial and holiday traffic. The chances of the lorry's cargo being searched, of the containers being stripped out right down to the four wooden packing cases, were very slight. The haulage company also took care to check whether there was any form of tail on the consignment. The lorry had been followed away from the warehouse at the loading depot by a car that checked to see whether it was under surveillance. The car varied the distance between itself and the lorry; at times it was a mile back, and then it would speed up and catch the lorry. The purpose of this was to pass the cars travelling in the wake of the lorry, and to look for the tell-tale evidence of men using radios in the cars, or vehicles that were too long in the slow lanes.

It was a wasted exercise.

The Investigation Division had no tail on the lorry.

Not yet six o'clock and she had already had her bath. She was at her dressing table. She could hear him in the next room, working at the final touches. It was the trip out with Bill Parrish that had set him behind. He hadn't told her where they had gone, and she hadn't asked. He might not have told her where he'd been, what he'd done, with Bill Parrish, but at least when he had returned he had peeled out of his work clothes and put on the old jeans and the sweatshirt and headed back to his decorating. He was pretty quiet, had been ever since he'd come back from the north of England, and she was almost sorry for him. More vulnerable than she'd ever known him. She thought he must have been wanting to please her, because he had set out to decorate the spare bedroom. Not that David would ever have admitted to a living soul, let alone his wife, that his case was up the river and no punt. She didn't care what he said. She'd liked coming home from work and finding the flat smelling of paint and wallpaper paste. It was a big change in her experience, that her husband had gone down to the DIY and had managed the best part of a week without referring to Bogota or the Medellin cartel.

"Who am I going to meet there?" she called out.

"A gang of complete morons."

She yelled, and she was laughing, "Will it all be shop talk?"

"Absolutely. Blokes all up at the bar, wives sitting down by the band."

"You'll dance with me?"

"Then you'd better wear boots."

He came into the bedroom. She could scent the paint on his hands that were on her shoulders. Christ, and she wanted them to be happy. Why couldn't they be happy? In the mirror, his face looked as though the light had gone from him. Her David, the Lane's Keeper, so crushed. It was a fast thought, she won- dered if she didn't prefer him when he was bloody minded and confident and putting the world into its proper order.

He bent and he kissed her neck, and he was hesitant. She took his hands from her shoulders and she put them inside her dressing gown, and she held them tight against her.

"I love you, and I'm just going to dance with you."

She felt his body shaking against her back and the trembling of his hands.

Past six o'clock, and a Saturday evening, and the magistrate sat at his Bench in a yellow pullover, and his check trousers were hidden under the desk top.

The convening of the court on that day of the week, and at that time of day, guaranteed that the public gallery and the press seats would be empty.

Parrish, in his work suit, stood in the witness box.

"I understand you correctly, Mr Parrish? You have no objection to bail?"

Boot-faced, boot-voiced. "No objection, sir."

"In spite of the nature of the charges?"

"I have no objections to bail, sir."

"And the application for the return of the passport?"

"I have no objection to the passport being returned, sir."