Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

She hid her face from the other women tapping at their keyboards. The virgin Farida Yasmin always felt pleasure flush her cheeks when he spoke to her, because they shared the secret of their Faith and the secret of their work against God's enemies.

"Tell me you're right, and it's not real."

"They try to frighten you… If you're frightened then you're compliant… If you're compliant then it's easier for them… What's easiest for them is when you run."

"If it was real, bad real…?"

"What they want is convenience. I stood my corner and they backed off. Because they backed off, I can't believe it's bad real."

"What's going to happen?"

"I don't know. When I sent you out God, I'm sorry, I was foul – a man came, a creepy little bastard. He came into our house and he looked around like he was wondering what sort of price he could get for everything that's special to us. He left a brochure of locks and bolts and alarm systems. We've to choose what we want and they'll be fitted. There's a pamphlet he gave me with all the things we have to do it's like being sick and listing all the pills you should take and how far you should walk, that kind of thing. Look under the car with a mirror each morning, don't establish patterns over regular journeys, after dark go into a room and don't switch the light on till you've first drawn the curtains, look for strangers watching the house, and there'll be a panic button. You've got to make net curtains…"

"I hate net curtains."

"I said you hated them. Please, Meryl, we've got to have them."

"Why?"

"Because.." because.." net curtains absorb flying glass."

"It's not much, Frank, what we have to do."

"It's what he said."

"You want to know what I think?"

"I want to know if you're going to stay."

"You're brought up always to believe a policeman or an official. I think, as you said, it's a scare and they're doing what comes convenient. You've convinced me, Frank. They've got all the powers they want and if it was really serious I think they wouldn't have listened to what you said, they would have shifted you… It's my home too."

"And Stephen's… Are you going to stay?"

"I won't find another home."

"I won't make another home, not another home where thete's love, where there's friends."

"I think you were right, Frank. It was just to scare you, so's you'd make it easier for them."

"Are you going to stay? Whatever you want, I'll do. I can make a phone call. I can have the removal van here tomorrow and we can pack the bags. No goodbyes, nothing, scuttle out in the dark. Leave everybody who's important to us, no explanation. Fear all the waking hours, and no sleep because of the fear. Don't get to know anyone again, not ever, because you'll be moving on, running, rootless. I can make a phone call and it will happen, and it will be convenient for them… What do you want to do?"

"It's our home… If it were real they would have moved you. You'd have been kicking and screaming, but they'd have shifted you."

The wind was freshening and the sea lashed the beach stones. He wanted, so desperately, to believe her. To believe her was to be given courage. She held his hand.

He was in his cabin when the master brought him his one meal of the day, a plate of rice and boiled mutton, a bowl of spiced cooked vegetables, an apple and a glass of fruit juice.

Only the master had access to the locked cabin. It was a woman's space, with bright decorative curtains, a cheerful woven carpet, and the photographs on the walls were of pretty views from home. The master's wife would have used the cabin as her day room, where she could sew and read and pray beyond the sight of the Iranian officers and the Pakistani crew.

As the master talked he ate calmly. The next night, out in the Channel, he would leave the ship. He did not hurry over his food, was at peace, as the master again reiterated the procedures that would be used. He knew they were planned with meticulous care. He had been told in the airless room high in the Ministry of Information and Security of the many people involved in tracking down his target, and the thoroughness of their work. Nothing had been left to chance.

He had been shown the photographs, and had been talked through the schedules. It was the way of his people and he had complete confidence in the plan drawn for him. It was the work of many effortful months, and his own role was simply to conclude it. Later, when the darkness had come around the tanker, he would again slip down the corridor and out on to the deck space, and he would walk far from the bridge lights, sit alone, and think of his wife, of the mission that had been given to him and his homecoming.

When he had finished the food he passed the tray back to the master, thanked him curtly. Then he sat in his chair, and studied the enlarged photograph of the face of the man he would kill. He had no cause for fear, he had been told that the man was unprotected.

Sergeant Bill Davies should have been watching his boy play football. But it had been a pig of a day, starting at half past midnight when Lily had thrown two pillows and a blanket down the stairs and screamed at him that the sofa was where he'd sleep or she was leaving.

Four bad hours of sleep, then out from home in south-west London and across all the bloody traffic streams to beyond east London. Half awake, jazzed to hell, he had been in the worst possible frame of mind for shooting. If he'd failed with the Glock and the H amp;K, failed to make the necessary score, then he was out on his arse for a month until the next slot came round, with his personal weapon withdrawn. He'd forgotten, until late the last evening, to tell Lily that he was in a shooting slot, that he wouldn't be there to see his elder boy, Donald, play central sweeper, and she'd screamed that it was the last straw, that he was more married to the Branch than to her.

He'd never been a crack shot, good enough on the Heckler amp; Koch, had the necessary score there, but he'd gone down the first time round on the Glock. He was the only one in the group who had failed with the handgun. They'd put him through it a second time. The instructors wanted to pass him, willed him to get the score, and the guys and girls from armed-response vehicles and Static Protection and Special Escort Group, they'd all rooted for him, but he had failed again mid-morning. The instructors had told him to get a coffee in the canteen, that they'd try one last time before the lunch-break. If he failed the last time then he'd have to hand in the gun, and it would be a month behind a desk until the next chance. If they knew back in the office about Lily throwing the pillows downstairs and yelling about leaving, it could be handing in the gun for all time because they'd have said his emotional stability was unproven.

He took the Isosceles stance, readied for double-tap shooting; walking squares, swinging to aim when the damn target swivelled, drawn-weapons position and shooting. The last shot, a 9mm bullet, was on the line of the target circle in the figure shape, ten metres range. Some instructors said that on the line was failure and some said it was good enough. He had needed the last shot, and they'd given it him. He was thirty-seven hits out of fifty shots, the bare minimum. The bullet-hole on the line had saved him… He'd sweated. There had been one little bastard, off an armed-response vehicle, arrogant sod, who had gained maximum score first time round and who had watched his final scrape through with a smirk… Damn all use as a protection officer if he couldn't shoot straight. He'd been toying with a bacon sandwich in the canteen, his hands still shaking, when he'd been called to the telephone.

And the day hadn't finished with Bill Davies. The superintendent wanted him back in London, on to the Branch floor at Scotland Yard. A file was thrown at him. He'd been given two hours to digest it; should have been two days. He had speed-read it, "Techniques of Iranian Terrorism (Europe)', when he ought to have been on the touchline watching his son. Then they'd thrown him the principal's file and given him thirty minutes when it should have been a full day. And when he should have been at the flower stall at Victoria Station shelling out for the biggest peacemaker bouquet they could put together, he'd been with his signed authority down in the basement armoury, drawing the kit, the Glock, the Glock's ammunition and the heavier firepower. And there wouldn't be a call to a restaurant to reserve a corner table with lit candles.