Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

Beside him, Cathy Parker pulled two photographs out of the envelope. He saw a young man holding a Kalashnikov rifle at a roadblock of Revolutionary Guards, and the picture was lifted away. The second photograph showed an older man in combat fatigues with his back to the water and t1~e reed-banks. She reached again into the envelope.

"I came away from that briefing and, I tell you, I was quite spooked. Well, that's it. I'll meet you Wednesday night off the flight oh, sorry, how's it going? Nowhere? I'll cook you supper Wednesday night. Would you have done better to stay here? There's someone at the door.

"Bye."

He replaced the receiver. A slow smile was spreading across Cathy Parker's face. She took a blown-up picture from the envelope. He recognized immediately the work of computer enhancement, the ageing process, a fattening at the face, a thickening at the neck, more lines at the eyes, shorter hair with bleached, greying, thinner lips. She took a pen from the table and wrote, in big capital characters, the place of birth, Tehran, the date of birth, 28.7.1962, the name, only the goddamn name, Vahid Hossein. He gazed at it, then at her and into the brightness of her eyes. He kissed her on the mouth, kissed her hard.

What they would have noticed, everyone else in the work area, Cathy Parker kissed him back, lip to lip.

Fenton was gathering up his coat" saying he had a train to meet, but he paused long enough to lead the applause, and to call for a copy, post haste, to be sent to Geoff Markham.

Duane Littelbaum stared down at the face, at a stranger who had become familiar, and could still feel the taste of Cathy Parker's wicked, groping tongue.

"Why isn't he coming?" Sam Carstairs howled.

His mother, distracted and trying to put on her makeup for the day in the solicitors' offices, told him not to worry his head with such things.

"He's my best friend. Why isn't he coming to school?" the child bellowed.

His father, trying angrily to put the papers together that he'd been working on the previous evening, told him it was none of his business.

"If he isn't ill, why isn't he coming to school?" In a tantrum, little

Sam started to rip pages from the book they'd bought him only the week before, and stamped on them.

If Emma hadn't caught his arm, Barry would have hit his son. The row had gone on since the child had woken and sensed the tension. It was convenient for neither of them to take Sam into Halesworth for school. Emma, the legal executive, was in court that day with the senior partner, and Barry had the annual sales conference. It was the sort of day when they could have relied upon Meryl Perry's help: she was always prepared, with a smile, to alter the schedule of the shared school-run. Sam and Stephen had always been close friends, good for each other. Barry grabbed the child by the collar of his school coat and frog marched him to the car. Emma had said her job was as important as his; because of the row she'd be late meeting her senior partner, and he'd be bloody late at the conference. He put Sam into the back of his Audi, then ran back to the house because he'd forgotten, damn it, his briefcase.

Emma was throwing on her coat in the hall.

"We've done the right thing, haven't we?"

"What on earth do you mean?"

"With Frank and Meryl." Until that moment, through all the weekend, neither had spoken of it, as if it were forbidden territory.

"They must be so isolated, without friends."

"Their fault, not mine."

"You don't think that we should make a gesture?"

"What did she call me? A second-rate rat? What sort of gesture do I make in response to that?"

"I suppose you're right." She touched her hair in front of the mirror.

"Of course I'm right."

"Please, tell Sam in the car why they're not our friends any longer. He doesn't understand, hasn't a clue, why he's lost his best friend. Please do it, Barry."

"You wait, a week after they've gone we'll have forgotten they were ever here."

He set the alarm, she locked the house, and they ran for their cars, to live their busy lives.

Ten minutes earlier, Geoff Markham had gone out into the parking area behind the town's police station. The arrival time had been given them in the crisis centre and others had drifted after him to stand in the light rain, and wait.

Aside from Markham, glancing at their wristwatches, were a uniformed superintendent and the inspector from the Branch, detectives and the people who manned the radios and the computers; away in the corner of the (ar-park were the military from Special Forces, denied involvement but permitted stand-by status. They were all out in the rain to see the arrival of the Scottish tracker. The local uniforms would have thought they were be~st equipped to search their own area, had the feel for it. Th.~detectives from London, and the Branch, would have thought they bad the trained surveillance specialists, had the necessary expertise The military would have thought they owned the territory of stalk and track, had the right to crack the problem. They were all interested to see the man dragged out from the north by Five, the man given the job that should have been theirs. Geoff Markham felt an atmosphere around him of acid curiosity edging on malevolence.

The car, big, black and sleek, driven by a chauffeur, swept into the parking area and braked hard. All eyes were on it.

Harry Fenton pushed himself out of the front passenger seat, mischief in his eyes. He called a cheerful greeting to the watchers. It was his show, and that mattered to him. He caught Markham's glance, and there was the slightest, faintest wink of his eye, then he opened the rear door.

The dogs came first. They were squat, scurrying creatures, held by leashes of fodder-bale twine, bright orange. They yapped.

He came after them, wriggled clear of the car.

What Markham had expected was an old man, ruddy and weather-skinned, a man with the lore of the countryside in his face and a lifetime of experience in his eyes.

He was small. He looked barely out of his teens. His visage was pale, and his cheeks and chin were speckled with light stubble. His build was slight, looked as if the wind could blow him away. More than that, he was filthy.

The gathered audience gazed at him with astonishment.

At ten paces Markham could smell the dank dirtiness of his clothes. He wore boots, khaki trousers and a tweed coat, all liberally smeared with mud; Markham thought the coat was a bigger man's cast-off. Its buttons were gone and it was held tight at the narrow waist by the same twine. The man stood beside Fenton and glowered at them.

A titter of laughter rippled behind Markham.

An old man, Markham thought, would have merely ruffled feathers, but this pallid, grimy, stinking youth disjointed noses. The dogs, heaving at their leashes, coughing, had seen a police Alsatian God, and the little verminous bastards would probably try to roger it if they were free but the young man grunted at them, almost inaudibly, and they sat at his boots, their teeth bared. He didn't back off from the laughter but stared back at them. They were, Geoff Markham thought, the most frightening eyes he had ever seen.

From the back seat of the car, the chauffeur was lifting out sheets of newspaper and shaking the mud off them.

Fenton strode to Markham. He said, in a loud voice as if to be certain he was generally heard, "What a stink. Had the window open all the way down I thought I was going to throw up. Like being shut in a cellar with a well-hung duck. I'd like you to meet Andy Chalmers, Geoff. It's your job to see he goes where he wants to go, has what he wants. I see that his appearance creates amusement. I want to see that amusement wiped off their faces and shoved far up their backsides. Got me? You'll brook no obstruction from any bastard in a clean shirt or I'll break his bloody neck and yours. I've lunch to be getting back to. Keep to the windward of him. Good luck, and good hunting."