Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

"What they intend is to gain a triple arm of weaponry with which they may dominate the oilfields of the region. For the development of the nuclear site at Bushehr, and they already have small quantities of plutonium, they will beggar their own people and bankrupt the state. They are scouring the Asian continent for the necessary chemical agents for an independent poison-gas manufacturing industry. What is the work the scientific community of Iran is given? The means to deliver a warhead containing the most revolting disease known to man anthrax, foot-and-mouth, any bio-toxin, any of the peasants' Weapons of Mass Destruction. Where are they putting these weapons and the missiles to deliver them? In tunnels. They bury them where they are beyond the reach of conventional attack. Only once have we been able to strike at such targets. Do you know how we achieved that, Harry, with whose help? Were you never told, Harry? If not, it's not for me to tell you."

The meat on the plates laid in front of them was unrecognizable as part of any animal Fenton knew. He assumed it had been a young lamb, ritually slaughtered. The thought of what had happened to it was sufficient to stifle his appetite.

"The Iranian programme for the manufacture of Weapons of Mass Destruction gives me, and the rest of our intelligence community, bad nights. It's the big picture. It's what the people of Israel will face in the future. The Mossad and the general staff have to plan the defence of our state against nuclear devices, against nerve gases, against toxins, but that is in front of us. The present… Ignore the denials, ignore the protestations of fluent, gentle diplomats who make your foreign-affairs officials feel comfortable. The present is that every attack abroad by the Iranian killer squads has the authorization of the highest echelons of government. It's only the appeasers who say otherwise. Government provides the training for the killers, the weapon~s via diplomatic pouches, the digital secure-phone links, the passports, the finance. Every operation abroad is laid before the foreign minister, the interior minister and the defence minister sitting in the National Supreme Security Council. It is authorized, sanctioned, on one condition only. The condition? There should be no smoking gun in Iran's hand… Look in your files, Harry, it is there if you wish to see it. Is there something wrong with your food, Harry?"

Fenton had barely touched his meat, hardly eaten enough to offer a pretence of politeness. He grimaced, and signalled for more beer.

"If you don't eat, Harry, you'll just fade away… The Germans have done deals, appeased them, looked for the easy life and the French, the Italians. They have submitted to the blackmail. They want to trade, they want to offer export credits, and they believe, if they are generous and restructure the debts, that the killer' squads will stay off their territory. Prisoners are returned, investigations are stalled. Have the Germans helped you over Lockerbie? Have they fuck. What about all the killers the French have caught within their jurisdiction? No prosecutions. They appease. And you in Britain, Harry, on your little island, you do not believe that the problem of Iran is real. How can I say that? I say it because of what I see from my embassy window. You allow, unchecked, on your streets, flourishing, such organizations as the Hizb ut-Tahrir, or the Young Muslims who provide the cheap charter flights to Iran, or the Al-Muntada al-Islami who fund-raise for the Algerian fundamentalist butchers who are in their turn trained in Iran. You allow it to happen, Harry. You refuse to recognize the cancer in your belly."

The Israeli declined coffee, which was a relief. What had been served at the next table, coughed and spluttered over, had looked like tarmacadam sludge.

"A great meal, Harry, and a great opportunity to talk with you. I say hit the bastards wherever you find them. It is the only language they understand. They are clever and determined, they are not to be underestimated. Good day to you, Harry."

He stood, the gold Star of David bouncing in the greyed hair of his chest behind his open-collared shirt.

Fenton finished the beer then followed him out on to the street. The Israeli tugged at his sleeve.

"Remember what I said. To stop them you must crush the skull, crush it under your heel, crush the life from it. And then you have to have the courage to shout it to the world, and fuck the consequences. You got the balls, Harry, to tell the world you crushed the skull?"

The Israeli had said, deviously, that he had a man to meet. Fenton was abandoned.

He walked at least a mile before, thank God, he was able to flag down a taxi.

He told Cox that he'd been networking again. He dropped the name of the senior Israeli intelligence officer in London and saw that Cox was reluctantly impressed. He was tired and his feet hurt, and he complained that the Israeli policy position was in total contradiction to their own.

"I'm supposed to be learning but the pointers conflict. That's where we are, between a rock and a hard place. But, I will press on."

"Of course you will," Cox said.

"That's what you're here for, isn't it?"

The crane came across the green, past the keep-off-the-grass sign, the big wheels gouging a track on the rain-softened ground. Peggy stood on the far side of the green, leaning on her bicycle and staring.

The hut, the size of a large garden toolshed, had already been hoisted off the flat-top lorry that had reached the village in slow convoy with the crane, and now dangled from a cable under the crane's arm.

Frank Perry watched the crane's manoeuvres from the dining-room window, with Paget and Rankin. They had asked for, and been given, a spare blanket from the airing cupboard and had draped it over the polished table.

He'd said earlier, "I'm sorry about last night, what I said."

"Didn't hear you say anything, sir."

"Nothing to apologize for, sir."

A pleasant afternoon of watery sunshine threw sufficient glare to highlight the garish yellow of the crane and the rusty brown creosote seal on the planks of the swinging hut. The crane's engine coughed diesel fumes as it powered towards the gap between his house and the Wroughtons'. Davies edged his car clear to make space.

Behind him, Paget and Rankin were discussing kit. They seemed uninterested in the arrival of the hut. On the blanket, with their machine-guns and the small black-coated gas grenades, with a book of crossword puzzles, was a kit m*gazine. They turned the pages and pored over the advertisements.

His face against the window glass, Perry peered at the crane's advance, and heard the scraping noise. He tilted his head, looked up and to the side. He could see that the hut swayed against the Wroughtons' plastic guttering. Wroughton was the deputy bank manager in the town, his wife was the surgery manager and their twins were in school; a small blessing that they weren't there to see the destruction of the plastic guttering. The crane hoisted the hut higher, clear of the Wroughtons' guttering and roofing tiles. He imagined a crowd cheering as a man swung and twisted from such a crane. The crowd here was just Peggy, Vince, who was out of his van and watching with her, and Dominic, standing in the shop doorway. Paul held tightly to the leash of his dog, which yapped incessantly and strained forward on its hind legs. He could no longer see the slow swing of the hut, but could hear the shouts of the men guiding it. In Iran, from what he had seen on television when he was there, they didn't blindfold a man before he was lifted high for the crowd to see, and they didn't pinion his legs to deny the crowd the sight of him kicking.

Behind him, in low voices, Paget and Rankin talked through the brand names of windproof sweaters, thermal socks and rainproof trousers. They sat huddled close beside each other. It was more than twenty minutes since the crane and the lorry had come to the village and they'd not passed comment on anything other than the advertisements in the magazine for kit.