Gerald Seymour: A Line in the Sand

"I could ask you the same question. Nothing better to occupy yourself? What are you doing?"

"Shit… because he's here…" Markham stared out into the impenetrable mass of slow-swaying reeds, then glanced down at the dogs.

"Because the tracker's gone in there after him… Get down.~ The sarcasm was wiped from his lips. Perry lay on his stomach beside Markham.

"Here? So where are the guns?"

"There are no fucking guns, there's just an unarmed civilian tracker in there searching for him," Markham spat.

"What the hell are you doing out of the house?"

He said weakly, "I wanted to be alone. I went out through the toilet-'

"You're serious?"

"I wanted to think."

"That is about as irresponsible as is humanly possible."

"I'm just a parcel, nobody cares."

"You're a bloody symbol. Men protect you because of your status as a symbol. Christ, you weren't idiot enough to think it was personal, were you? We're not here because we bloody like you. It's our work, it's what we do. What were you thinking of?"

"I thought you were as much my friends as the men who burned to death. Where is he?"

"Somewhere out there, being hunted."

He lay on his stomach. Nothing moved ahead of him to disturb the peace. He closed his eyes and pressed his head down on to the short-cropped grass. The sun was on his neck, and he felt only the chill of regret. In his mind, he saw the burned bodies.

Cox said to the secretary of state, "If our American friends, our dear and closest allies, are allowed to run with this, then we sail on uncharted waters and among unknown reefs. We will be sucked into their vortex. Do we want that? Are we prepared to be tugged along by the nose, at their beck and call and in the interests of their propaganda coup? It's a huge step.." so often the quiet passing of a covert signal achieves more than the beating of cymbals. But, sir, it is your decision…"

Pandemonium broke loose.

In the domestic routine, plates clean, food finished, washing-up done, the principal had been forgotten.

Where in God's name was he?

The kid had been the centre of attention and the requirement to distract him, and the military were doing their thing and that had softened the alertness. It was only when the nanny policewoman had gone to the downstairs toilet, and shouted back that it was locked from the inside, that he had been remembered.

They scattered: Blake upstairs to check the bedrooms, Paget going out to search the garden, Rankin hustling through the ground floor, Davies scanning the green and the road and not a sniff of him. As they pounded around her, the nanny policewoman told the kid it wasn't anything to worry about.

Paget broke down the toilet door. The window was open, the sunlight streaming in. They were gathered behind him to look.

"The bastard's done a runner.

The~cacophony of voices filled the hallway.

"After all we've bloody done for him… Bloody put ourselves on the line for him… Sort of thanks you get from a selfish bloody bastard… What the fuck is he thinking of?"

Forgotten in the silence, the child shouted, "Don't, don't you're his friends."

They stood for a moment, heads hung, shamed.

Fenton said, into the telephone, "So good to speak to you. Of course, I feel I know you although we've never met. Let's put that right. Lunch today, I think. I apologize if you've something in your diary but I promise you it would be worth your while to scratch it out. There's a nice little place off St. James's, on the right, third street up from Pall Mall, Italian one o'clock? Excellent. I've heard so much about you… What's it concern? Try remembering a man known as Frank Perry… One o'clock? I look forward to it hugely."

The chance was given him by his God. The bird was above him, sometimes coming down into the reeds to perch and watch him, but always beyond his reach. One final chance was given him by his God, to take him to the Garden of Paradise. He thought of the great men who had gone before him, slipped from the mountain at Alamut, made long journeys, stalked their target, and he would meet them as an equal in the Garden of Paradise, and sweet-faced girls would wash the wounds on his body under trees of fruit blossom and take the pain from him. He was weak and could move only slowly. He had seen where the target had come down off the high pathway, and he had not seen him climb back. He knew where he would find him and prayed that he had the strength to take him.

He smelt the burning of the bodies as the flesh melted on the bones.

He heard the terror of the screams. He saw the women weeping.

He had been in their homes and they had cooked celebratory meals for him and their husbands.

Frank Perry jerked up his head from the ground.

"What's happened?"

"Nothing's happened," the minder, Markham, whispered sourly.

"What about the tracker?"

"Don't know, haven't sight nor sound of him."

"And for him, the hunter, is it just a job or does he care?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"I understand what I did."

"You were convenient they used you every inch of the way."

"Does he care, the man out there, the man who killed Meryl?"

"He's professional, doing a job for his country, as we're doing a job for ours. As a person, he doesn't care."

"Dying for his country?"

"Let me tell you something, Mr. Perry, that might help you to comprehend… The Islamic activists in Egypt blow up tourist buses, but it's not personal. They get caught, they get tried in courtroom cages, and are sentenced to hang on the gallows. You and I would beg for mercy, but they don't. When the judge passes the death sentence they jump up and down in excitement, and they are smiling and laughing and praising their God. He won't give a shit, but you cannot comprehend that."

"Would he know about the bus? Would he know what I did?"

"He'd know."

"Could you live with that, the sight of the bodies and the smell?"

"I don't have to. It's not my problem."

"But I do, and it's my torment."

He pushed himself up, on to his knees, on to his feet, and stood at his full height. The minder, Markham, was tugging at his trousers and trying to drag him down, but he braced himself and stood straight. He saw the birds gliding in the dark water pools, and the gentle motion of the wind in the reed-heads, and the calm, unbroken reflections. He saw the harrier swoop low over the reeds. There was an awesome beauty in the sunlight, and peace. He identified the corruption that had led him to the crime of responsibility for the burned bodies and the smell. He had been 'somebody'; he had been the man who was valued, who was met at the airport with the chauffeured car, who was taken into the room in the house behind the Pall Mall clubs, who talked to a quiet audience and explained the detail of the satellite photography.

He had rejoiced in the attention of being 'somebody', as if a corporate badge hung from a neck chain on his chest. He had thought himself important, but he had only been used. He shouted, "I am here. I am worthless. It is what I deserve."

The minder, Markham, struggled to pull him down.

"I know what I am. I am nobody."

The harrier danced on the reed-heads at the edge of his vision and the sunlight caught on the barrel of the launcher.

"Do it, because I deserve it!"

In the depth of the reeds there was the dazzle of fire. With the fire was the grey belch of smoke and the tell-tale gold-thread signature climbing away from it. The sound thundered towards him. The birds rose screaming, threshing, shrieking from the pools between the reed-banks. The trail of fire rose high above his head, away into the blue denseness of the skies, then seemed to hover as the harrier had, and then it fell. A white line of smoke marked its passing. There was a dull explosion away on fields to the north. The birds quietened and circled.