Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

"Please, have you a moment?"

"A moment for what?"

"I'm with Frank and Meryl Perry."

The caution clouded his face.

"Which means you're a policeman, which means you're an armed policeman. Why would you want a moment of my time?"

Why? Because Frank Perry was told last night of his responsibility in the death of a coach load of Iranian military scientists. Because he had drunk two bottles of wine and been sick twice. Because he and Meryl were at home alone, and needed a friend.

"I just thought, if you'd the time it's rough for them. A visit from a friend would help."

The clergyman took a step forward.

"I have appointments. People are expecting me."

Bill Davies caught his arm.

"What they need, please, is for someone to show them some charity."

"Be so kind as to take your hand off me. Another time, perhaps…"

Davies's hand was shaken off, and the clergyman quickened his stride.

"You are a leader in this community, Mr. Hackett."

"I doubt it, but I do have a filled appointments diary."

"Your example is important. Please, go and ring the bell, go and smile and make some small-talk. Better still, walk up this road with Meryl Perry, with Frank we'll protect you. Show everybody here that they have your support."

"Another day, perhaps. But I cannot promise."

"They need you."

"There are many who need me. I don't know your name and I do not need to, but we did not ask for your guns to be brought into our community. We did not ask for our children and our women to be endangered. We are not a part of whatever quarrel Frank Pejry is enmeshed in. We owe him nothing. He should go what he owes us is his departure from here. I have a wider responsibility to the majority. I do not condone the ostracism of this family, but I cannot condemn it. But we are a God-fearing and law-abiding community, and I doubt that observance of God's teaching and the rules of society have brought Perry to his present situation. In your search for a friend to Perry, I suggest that you look elsewhere."

"Thank you, Mr. Hackett, for your Christian kindness."

"Good day."

Bill Davies walked slowly back to the house.

The Italian owner of the restaurant, from Naples, eyed the many-layered stomach of the German and murmured, with quiet discretion to Fenton, "The full menu, Mr. Fenton, not the two-course luncheon special?"

They were eased into their seats, and immediately the German ordered decisively, as if to feed himself for the rest of the week. Fenton's guest was from the BfV, attached to the embassy, an old hand at counter-terrorism, and a friend of sorts. As was his habit, Fenton set an agenda. He was confused, he admitted, and in search of enlightenment. The Foreign Office preached appeasement of Iran, the Israelis demanded they be beaten with lump hammers, the Islamic movement claimed there was American-inspired unwarranted hostility towards the Muslim world. Where lay the truth?

The German talked and ate, drank and smoked.

"So, you have one of their excrement loose on your territory otherwise it would be sandwiches and Perrier in your office. You wish to know how seriously to take that threat. My government, as you well know because you have leaked your criticisms, has taken a conciliatory attitude towards Iran, has rescheduled debts, has given out visas, has pushed for stronger trade links, and has still provided the venue for Iranian assassins to meet their targets. It won us nothing, so we have considerable experience of their tactics. That is what I should talk about our experience of their murder tactics?"

A heaped plate of antipasti was followed by a wide, filled bowl of pasta with fungi. The German left his cigarette burning. The smoke made Fenton's eyes smart.

"They aim to be near, to kill at close quarters. But the beginning the beginning is from the top in Tehran, from the peak of government, and the authorization for the allocation of hard-currency funding and the provision of weapons through diplomatic pouches. A trusted man is appointed and he will be backed by local sympathizers, but he takes the responsibility for success or failure. He will have no contact point with his embassy, there is the creed of deniability. He will not be helped by diplomats or intelligence officers. Our experience is that the trusted man is most hard to capture or kill. It is the sympathizers who reconnoitre and drive the cars who sit in our prison cells. It is a great triumph to take or eliminate the trusted man if you can do that, you will have my sincerest congratulations."

When the steak was brought, the German took the majority of the vegetables, the greater part of the potatoes, and lit another cigarette.

"What is he like the trusted man? I tell you, very frankly, he is the same as the people in our Rote Armee Faktion, the same as the people in your Irish groups. The less you know of him, the more impressive you will believe him to be. Our ignorance lifts his reputation. He is dedicated, fanatical, he is skilled, he is prepared for martyrdom, he is elusive that is what ignorance tells us."

The German chose ice-cream with pistachio flavouring, and asked the waiter to bring a double portion.

"But I have seen them, I have interrogated them. I have been with them in the cells and explained with politeness that the rantings of their government and the shouting mobs outside our legation compound in Tehran will not affect the length of a prison sentence. I have talked with those men of the Bundesgrenzshutz who have dragged them from cars at gunpoint, spreadeagled them on the road, laughed about shooting off their testicles. The trusted man, then, is the same as you, or me. You know, at Fustenfeldbruck, at the airbase, at the time of the Olympic Games, we killed five of the Palestinians of Black September, and three surrendered. Did they then wish to die, go to the Garden of Paradise? Did they hell! They knelt and wept for mercy. When the Italians, our esteemed friends, eventually capture a capo of the Mafia, he is the same. He has been a killer on a grand scale, perhaps murdered a hundred men and consigned their corpses to the Gulf of Palermo or acid vats or concrete construction pillars, but when he is arrested, when he faces the guns, he fouls his trousers. They are very human invincible when free, pathetic when taken. You should not be intimidated by the trusted man."

Espresso coffee was brought, and small chocolates. The Germar~ cleared them, and stubbed out a cigarette in the saucer.

"Perhaps, when they leave their country, when the mullah's words are still fresh, they believe they are a sword of Islam, a soldier of the faith. My experience, they forget… So soon they are like all the other killers. They are, I believe, addicted to excitement, adrenaline is their narcotic. I said to you that they wished to be close, to see the fear in their victim's eyes, so they will try to use a knife to cut a throat, or a handgun from a metre. They are disturbed people and they will not gain the same excitement from a bomb or from a rocket attack. The bomb and the rocket are the last option, but will not provide the same excitement. If you take this trusted man, go into his cell, try to talk with him. Then I believe you will be sincerely disappointed at what you find."

When the wine was finished, they drank brandy. Fenton had the cigar box brought for him.

"He will be a lonely man. He will seek the admiration of the sympathizers, but will not share with them. He will have the paranoia of the isolated. He is nauseatingly sentimental. Above everything, he will seek praise, always he will want that praise… I think, also, he wants the body of a servile woman, not an equal because that would frighten him. What is most dangerous about him, he is terrorized by the thought of failure he wants to go home, of course he does, but to praise and adulation. I think, to a psychologist, he is a rather tedious, pitiful figure. Let me know what you find."