Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

Vahid Hossein shifted slightly, so that he could reach out with his hand beyond the tangle of thorns. The bird pecked at it as if he might have held a last piece of rabbit flesh… A lack of patience had caused him to make mistakes: trying to break into the house without sufficient preparation; taking the assault rifle… He criticized the bird for its laziness it should hunt, it was strong enough now… He should have taken the rocket launcher, it would be the RPG-7 next time, he told the bird. His fingers found the neck and crown of the bird's head and smoothed the silky feathers. He hoped it would hunt in the dawn light and that he would see its power and beauty as it dived to kill.

He trusted the bird as his friend.

They sat at a corner table.

Frank Perry was drunk.

"What did I do?"

The restaurant had cleared, and he had taken on a drunk's aggression.

"Will some bugger tell me what I did?"

The principal was in the angle of the corner, his wife was to the right of him and the detective to the left, with a clear view to the door. Markham had his back to the room. The evening was a disaster, he thought, of titanic proportions.

Perry snatched at the bottle and poured again.

"I've the bloody right to know what I did."

One of the cars was out at the front with its driver, but its passenger sat with his gun across his knees close to the glass door. The other car was at the rear of the car-park, covering the outer entrance to the kitchens. A policeman was sitting by the swing doors through which the waiters had brought the French food. The customers who had been there when the late party had stampeded in, seven of them, at three tables, had stuffed themselves, gulped their drinks, paid up and were long gone.

Perry swilled the wine, the most expensive on the list. Drops dribbled from his mouth and ran on his jaw.

"Why can't I be told what I did? Why won't any bastard tell me?"

Meryl hadn't spoken a word through the meal. Twice, after wiping her lips with the napkin, she had dabbed her eyes. The detective's contribution had been to ask for various condiments to be passed him. The waiters had brought the coffee and retreated to the kitchen.

Frank Perry belted his hand on the table.

"Right, no one tells me, then we're off. We get the hell out and that's that, end of story."

The principal was trying to push back his chair but he was wedged in the corner. Then he tried to shove the table forward, driving it into Markham's stomach. Bill Davies was snapping his fingers at the policemen by the main door and the kitchen swing doors, and they were adjusting the straps that held their machine-guns and mouthing into their microphones… Geoff Markham thought how it would be on the telephone that night to Harry Fenton. He'd failed, the principal was running. The failure would be the marque to end his career at Thames House. However many years he lived, decades, he would be dogged by that failure… He took out his wallet and extracted a credit card. The owner came hurrying God, he'd be glad to see the back of them and took it. He straightened his tie, then rammed the table away from him, trapped the man.

"You want to know?"

"I've the bloody right to know!"

The bill was waved under his nose. It must have been prepared and ready. Without checking it, he scrawled his signature on the docket and took back the card. He waved the owner away, gestured for him to retreat and give them space.

"What did I do?"

There was at Thames House, and it would be the same at the bank, a culture against honesty. No advancement ever came from telling it as it was. He was hemmed in at work, and it would be the same in the future, by men and women who weighed their words for fear of giving offence. It had been the same at home, and the same at university. He had drunk nothing but carbonated water, he was utterly sober. For the first time in his life, Geoff Markham thought the moment had come for sheer honesty, the whole truth.

He spoke quietly, "You were a second-rate salesman. You were a grubby little creature on the make. You were into illegality, fraudulently writing out false export declarations for Customs and Excise. You were greedy, so avaricious for the commissions you were getting that the chasing of the money became more important to you than that your wife was screwing on the side and your marriage was gone-' Perry swung a wayward fist at him and missed the target, Markham's chin, but hit the bottle's neck and toppled it.

"You were on a fast ride and going nowhere, but the greed held you and you wouldn't back off. To hell with the wife opening her legs, the money kept rolling in, and then, one day, comes the morning after, the dawn hangover, and there's a call from a lady and most persuasively she's asking for a meeting. You thought you were in control until you sat down with Penny Flowers. Do you remember her, Frank? I hope you do, because where you are now is down to her. You dangled from her little finger…"

In the background romantic piano music played serenely. The wine stained a path across the tablecloth from the toppled bottle.

"She was asking you for a little bit of help and if you didn't care to do so, she was offering you a big bit of a prison sentence, like seven years and, of course, you chose to help. When you walked away from that first meeting with Penny Flowers you'd have thought you could handle it, without breaking sweat, and you were wrong. She's a tough bitch, but you know that now. You don't get clear of Penny Flowers's claws. It starts easily enough, always does. It's the classic way, Mr. Perry, of agent handling. Did she tell you that she liked you, that you were really important? She would have regarded you as cheap dross, because that's the way all controllers regard all agents."

The wine stain reached the edge of the table and the first drip fell into Meryl's lap.

"At first, it would have been sketch-maps of the plant, then character profiles of the prime personalities. After that, it's documents, later it's photographs with a supplied camera. Cheap dross you may be, but not an idiot. You understand now that you're into espionage, and you know the penalty in Iran for espionage. The sweat's started. The sweat becomes colder each time you fly there, and you're looking over your shoulder because it only takes one mistake to alert the security there. Each night in your hotel room, you'd have wondered whether you'd made that mistake. But you couldn't shake clear of Penny Flowers, and there was always one more trip back, always one more question she wanted answered…"

Frank Perry stared into Geoff Markham's face, and in his eyes was the fear, as if he lived it again.

"You told Penny Flowers, just happened to mention it, that they'd changed the schedule for your next meeting, brought it forward a week she'd not have looked that interested, it's a handler's skill never to seem interested in what an agent says but she'd have probed deeper, done it in easy conversation. If you'd understood the way a handler works, the few extra questions, and always the studied indifference, then the alarm bells would have rung. Just before you flew to Iran that last time you would have known it was the danger time. A debriefing the night before you travelled, not just Penny Flowers but hard-faced bastards telling you what was wanted. It was about a party, yes, a celebration dinner for heads of section?"

Frank Perry, grim, sobering, nodded.

"You would have gone back the last time, to all those people who welcomed you. I doubt you slept on any of those nights because you'd have been going over every question you'd asked where was the party, who was going, when was the bus leaving? and wondering if the mistake had been made. They were the heads of section for the chemical-warfare programme, and the designers of the warhead. They were the big people in the big picture, and you were just a bloody ant by comparison. Your only importance was that you had access… They'd have hanged you, not so that your neck broke but so that you strangled and kicked the air.. . I couldn't have done it myself, Mr. Perry, I wouldn't have had the courage. I would have crumpled with the fear. I sincerely admire what you did. I don't mean to embarrass you, but I haven't ever met anyone of such raw bravery… Do you still want to know?"