Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

Frank Perry mouthed his answer ~ softly that Markham couldn't hear it.

"The Jews do the dirty work for us. They understand about survival better than we do. They won't, again, go naked into the sheds and have cyanide crystals drop on them. They are, in modern jargon, proactive. The Israelis wouldn't have needed much persuasion because those warheads could fall on them. A squad was put on shore after being ferried across the Gulf. They landed up the coast from Bandar Abbas. They intercepted the bus on its way to the restaurant. A piece of charity fell off Penny Flowers's desk, probably the only time it has. What happened to the bus was an accident, you understand me. It created confusion and bought you time to build a new life before the Iranians realized the enormity of the crime and at whose door it lay…"

The music played on. Markham felt so sorry for the man.

"The bus was stopped, then burned. It was made to look, before a detailed examination produced the truth, like an accident. There were no survivors. The director, the engineers, the scientists, all died in the fire."

Frank Perry jerked the weight of his body up, his lips gibbering, but he could not speak.

"You wanted to know. It is why the Iranians will hunt you, track you, try to kill you, and all those with you. There'll be files on you that are stacked high enough to eat lunch off. They will never forget you. What you did was buy time. I'd like to say that the time was well used, that the programme was seriously delayed. I can't – I don't know. I don't know whether the time you bought with your courage, Frank, was well used or was frittered.." but I recognize your bravery because it humbles me."

Meryl was crying quietly. Markham pulled back the table and let Perry stagger to his feet. The rain had started outside and the street glistened. He took Perry's arm gently and steadied him through the door and across the pavement. Davies held Meryl close to him. Her dress, from the spilled wine, was stained red like a wound. Markham thought it was what Perry was owed, and he was glad he'd done it.

He climbed the stairs slowly.

It had been a distressing evening for Simon Blackmore. Two months earlier, a surveyor had checked Rose Cottage, and described the damp as minimal. Late that evening, without an appointment, a man who described himself as a builder and decorator had prised his way into the cottage. He called himself Vince, and explained that he always dropped by on new people moving into the village. He'd walked around and pointed out at least half a dozen places where the wallpaper peeled and the plaster work was stained, tut ting and frowning at the cost and his schedule. But the work needed doing, must be done. He'd spoken of Mrs. Wilson's rheumatism and laid the blame for it on the damp. He'd settled immovably at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee. They were both so tired, exhausted from the unpacking of boxes, but they had listened with courtesy as he'd talked of the village, his lifetime home, and his central place in it. And he'd told them, as if it were a kindness to them, that they should keep away from the green at the far end of the village because there were armed police there, guarding a family that no one in their right mind wanted to know… "But they've got the message, there's no one'll speak to them, they'll be bloody frozen out of here." It had been an age before he'd finished his coffee, insisted that he would send in an estimate for necessary work, and left.

Simon went up the stairs and into their bedroom, where Luisa was undressing. They hadn't yet unpacked the shades for the ceiling bulbs. The garish, harsh light fell on his wife and highlighted the old burn marks on her breasts and stomach before the nightdress covered them.

The train hammered on the track, jerking and rolling.

Andy Chalmers lay on his side on the bunk bed, on the clean white sheets and the blankets. He had not undressed. His dogs, alert, were curled against his body and gave him warmth. Behind him, distanced, were the birds and their eyries on the crag cliffs, and the bog heather uplands where the deer grazed, and the mount am lochans that held the small brown trout, and the glens that were home to the plovers and wheat ears and curlews. Ahead lay an unfamiliar terrain.

Andy Chalmers came south, to track a man.

He was into Thames House early, had limped from a photo-development kiosk to the building, shown his temporary accreditation at reception and hobbled into the third-floor work area. His feet were blistered from a long day's walking; the deep bath and the salts in it hadn't lessened the pain.

Duane Littelbaum had walked, the previous day, right round the Tower of London the Jewel Tower, the White Tower, Traitor's Arch, the grass-centred square where the state's enemies had been beheaded, and all the places of death and imprisonment. Once he'd giggled, attracted attention, because he'd wondered why his Saudi friends hadn't bought the whole damned place lock, stone and axe and transferred it to Riyadh. He had gone round on a tour, led by a costumed guide, then gone round again, on his own, and taken a whole roll of film. From the Tower of London he had walked to St. Paul's Cathedral, then hiked through the Sunday empty streets towards the Palace and Parliament. When he was half dead, and on the third film for Esther, he had weakened and taken a taxi back to the embassy's service flat and the bath.

A probationer told him that his office in Saudi Arabia had called, that he should ring back. The young man fixed the secure link for him because Duane Littelbaum was adept at demonstrating technological incompetence when the situation necessitated. He listened to the distant, tinny, concerned voice.

Mary-Ellen bur bled at him, asking about his domestic arrangements, and he wondered whether she was missing him.

"It's been hellish hot here, Duane, 110 plus Fahrenheit, and the cooling system in here's zapped again, it's awful. One of the visa-section guys went out in the parking lot, Saturday, and cracked an egg on the paving to see if he could fry it. He couldn't, the egg dehydrated. Seriously…"

He saw Cathy Parker come in. She had a bounce in her walk. She stopped in front of Markham's door and scribbled through the writing on the paper stuck to the door. She wrote, boldly, DAY FIVE.

"What I thought you should know, Duane, we had a briefing, at short notice, from the Agency people. There was a proper fracas about me being admitted in place of you. Was I cleared for a briefing from the Central Intelligence goddamn Agency? Ambassador, heads of section, and me. They are such seriously pompous people. Anyway…"

She sat beside him and laid a closed envelope on the table.

"You still there, Duane? Look, the guy said that the Saudi intelligence people admitted to him that the "outsider hired guns", you know what I mean, came in during the last Ha]], with all the pilgrims, and are still in place inside the Magic Kingdom. Also the Army's come clean and said that four believe me four 81mm mortars have been stolen from one of their bases up north. How can you defend against that sort of scenario? A dump truck pulls up on the median just outside of a major enclave of ours, the tarp is pulled back, the rounds fly, and the Agency say they could have chemicals in them… and the Agency have gotten the name of your pal, Duane, A is for Anvil, away now but coming back… The commercial attache you know, that lanky idiot had to be told why one man was so important, why they'd wait for one man's return before launching. He seemed to think that quality men, like Anvil, came off a production line as if they were General Motors products. He was put right. When Anvil comes back it's time to go into the shelters, that's what the Agency people are saying. There's real fear here, those mortars and the name of Anvil. It sort of, kind of, makes you cold…"