Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

They left the table, eased into their coats.

On the pavement, the German caught Fenton's arm and whispered close in his ear, through a fog of cigar fumes.

"But hear me. Ali Fellahian, who controls the trusted men, who sanctions their journeys, was invited by my superiors to visit us. For some of us it was a shameful day in the history of our Service to play host to a criminal, and our lips bled because we bit so hard on them to maintain our composure. He took our hospitality and he threatened us. We were left with no area for misunderstanding the economic and diplomatic consequences of publicizing the activities of his killers on our territory. Should you destroy or capture this piece of excrement now bothering you, you should consider very carefully the implications of triumphalist statements… A wonderful meal we should do it more often."

Fenton took a taxi back to Thames House.

Cox was poring over a leave chart, but pushed it away.

Yes, Fenton told him, lunch had provided a most valuable opportunity to quiz a distinguished German anti-terrorist officer. He had gained a good insight into the mind of their enemy. But how much further forward were they? Fenton gazed at the ceiling and found no relief there.

"What worries me, whichever way we jump will be the wrong way."

"I did hear you, Harry, unless my ears deceived me, take responsibility…"

At the nearest point the bird was a hundred metres from his cover, at the furthest it was two hundred metres. It was a hunter, and quartered the stretch of water and reed-bed between. The sight of it made him lose the ache in his hip. Through his care, the bird could fly, could hunt… Many times, in the Haur-al-Hawizeh and off the Faw peninsula, he had watched these birds flying overhead. When they flew, hunted, had no sense of danger, he knew no enemy approached him. The pain in his hip was lessening, and he thought that by the next morning he would have regained his mobility and be strong enough to go back for his target.

The bird flew in long, slow lines, still handicapped but able enough, glided, the gold and brown of its neck bent to study the land below and it dived. In a sudden moment, the wide wings were tucked in, and the bird fell. When it came up, flapping hard for height, he saw the flailing legs of the prey, held in a talon's grip. The bird, the wild creature, came back to him and set down on the grass in front of his cover. He saw the last writhing movements of the frog as the curved beak hacked at it. The bird ripped at the frog's carcass until only scraps were left.

In the life of Farida Yasmin, no one had ever told her she was importaut.

With her guidebook to the village and the neighbourhood around it, she had sat on the bench, read it and reread it, then read it again so that the words danced on the pages and no longer had meaning.

No one had ever told her she was valued.

From the bench she had walked to the beach and gazed out at the sea. She had been alone on the sand and shingle, and had seen the faraway boats that hugged the horizon line. The next day, or the day after, the next night, or the night after that, far further down the coast, the tanker would divert towards the shore and a small boat would run from it, would collect him. She would be left behind, abandoned.

She had walked through the village, as far as the church, then turned and retraced her steps and come back past the pub, the hall, and the shop where she had bought postcards that would never be sent and a salad-filled bread roll, and the green. She had stood on the far side of the green, the guidebook opened, and looked around her.

She saw the cars come and go from the house. She saw the detective at the door, and the armed police, huge men in their bulging vests. She watched the pattern of their day. Earlier, the detective had run from the house and had spoken with a priest. She couldn't hear what was said, but the body language was of rejection. She noted the camera above the door at the house, and believed as the afternoon darkened that she saw the red wink-light of a sensor… She wanted his body under her, in the position she had seen on television films. She wanted to ride over him, dominate him, and hear him cry out that she was important, valued, essential and critical, as no one had ever done. Before he went off the beach into the small boat and out to sea to board the tanker, she wanted the memory of it. What would happen to her then, afterwards?

No one had ever told her that she was loved.

Not her father, the bastard, and not her mother, the bitch. Not the kids at school or at college or at any time afterwards. Love was the black hole, without a bottom, without light, in her life. From the bench she saw the villagers coming on foot and by bicycle and in cars, as the afternoon faded, to the hall. Ordinary people, and they didn't seem to notice her sitting on the bench with the opened guidebook, ordinary people who ignored her. She stood, stretched, wiped the rainwater off her forehead and shook it from her shoulders. The lights of the pub were on, the first cars were scraping the gravel, and there was the first laughter. She wondered how long it would be before the ordinary people, gathering in the pub and the hall, knew her name and her importance.

She went away from the house. She thought she'd seen his shadow pass the window, and she determined that she would be there to witness it when the rocket was fired. She drifted slowly up the road towards the side lane near the church where her car was parked.

"I've said all I want to say about her, and that's too much. She's never coming back here again. If she showed up at the door, I'd slam it in her face too right I would…"

Cathy Parker watched him. She leaned against the kitchen door as Bill Jones stamped out into the narrow hall for his coat and his train driver's satchel. He was a big man, two stones overweight, and she thought it was the blood pressure that reddened his face when he spoke of his daughter. The last thing he did, before glowering at her and barging out of the front door, was to hook a football scarf round his neck. He went out to drive a train from Derby to Newcastle, and back. Cathy Parker's own parents had wanted her to be a pretty and feminine girl, and she'd fought hard against it; Bill Jones would have wanted his daughter to be a boy, with him at home matches, sitting alongside him in the workingmen's club, following him into train driving.

"What's she done with her life? She's screwed it, and now she's screwing us."

Annie Jones was a small woman, grimly thin in face and body, with prematurely greying hair. She hadn't spoken while her husband had badmouthed their daughter, and Cathy didn't think she'd have spoken when the detectives had come to the house to search through the few personal things that Gladys Eva Jones had left there before the links were cut. Cathy made a pot of tea while the mother sat at the kitchen table. She had no difficulty in drawing the woman out: it was a skill that went with her job.

"We tried to love her but, God knows, it wasn't easy. She didn't want for anything we haven't money, but we gave her what we could. It didn't satisfy her. You see, Miss Parker, we were never good enough for her, and nor was anyone else round here. She went to the university Bill won't admit it, but he was proud. She was the only kid in the street that had got to university. I thought if she hadn't friends here she'd find them there. Perhaps the people she met there weren't good enough either. The few times she came back, the first year away, I could see how lonely she was. There's not much here, but you don't have to be lonely, not if you'll muck in. Gladys wouldn't do that, nor at the university neither. I think she was always pushing for more control of people, but it was so obvious that they didn't want to know her. It's not nice to say this about your daughter, but she's a stuck-up bitch. Bill can't talk to her, but it's the same for me. I tried but she never came near to half-way to meet me. Then she went into that religious thing. She came back once after she'd joined them. Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against foreigners having their own religion, but it wasn't right for her. She came back in her robes, her face half covered, and some of the kids in the street gave her some lip. She's not been back since. Do you know where she is now? Do you know what she's doing? She's in real trouble now, isn't she? Or you wouldn't have been here and the detectives wouldn't have come. She wants to belong somewhere special, wants control, wants people to talk about her. Is she going to get hurt? Please, Miss Parker, try to see she doesn't get hurt."