A Line in the Sand (24 page)

driving it should have checked his mirror, seen whether the escort car

was clear to follow, but he hadn't. No bloody option for Paget but to

break the red light and follow across the junction. Rankin hit the siren button and the cars coming at them across the junction from

right

and left were braking and swerving to avoid them, all except one.

The

car heading straight for them was a battered old Cavalier with a

toothy, grey-haired black at the wheel. They were two, three seconds from a disabling, side-on collision.

153

ndow down, the siren scream in his ears, and the

Rankin had his wi

H&K

up. The gun was racked, bullet in the breach, and Rankin's thumb

was

resting on the lever at safe. As the escort team, they should have been right up behind the prison van. The guy in it was important, a

plier and a bad bastard, on the daily run between the Old

drugs sup

Bailey and the Brixton gaol remand block. He had the contacts and cash

resources to buy a rescue bid, which was why armed police escorted him

ch day from his cell to the court and back.

ea

The bullet was in the

breach, Paget and Rankin were not there for the ride, and they knew it.

The old Cavalier was coming right for them, on target for the driver's door.

med

If the bad bastard had bought a rescue, the copper-botto

certainty was that the armed escort car would be isolated and rammed, taken out. Rankin was close enough to see, through the Cavalier's grimy windscreen, the gold teeth in the black's wide open mouth and the

big mahogany eyes. Rankin's aim, held steady in the swaying escort car, was on the black's forehead. His thumb hardened on the safe

lever.

If he

t

sho

to kill the law was bloody vague. Section 3 of the Criminal

Law Act, 1967, would back him if it were a genuine escape attempt

and

crucify him if it was only a traffic accident. They were on collision course and closing, and Paget was wrenching the wheel to avoid the old

ght succeed, might not.

Cavalier, mi

It'd take Rankin about half a

second to depress the lever from safe and put a double tap, two

bullets, through the man's forehead. He'd get a commendation if it was

a rescue bid and a murder charge if it was not..~ And they were

through, the junction cleared. Paget was ~~celeratmg like a mad

idiot,

wrong side of the road, to get back up behind the prison van, and

in

their wake, the old Cavalier had careered into a traffic bollard.

The

H&K was back on Rankin's lap.

154

"Where were we, Joe?"

No fast breathing, no taut hands, like it was a weekend run-out with the wife.

"We were on about who was in charge, Dave Box "What I said, totally fucking useless. Who's the principal?"

"Civilian, ordinary, an obstinate sod because they offered him the chance to bug out and he wouldn't."

"What's the opposition?"

'fran -he's up the mullahs~ noses.~ "That's bloody choice, that's not

clever. When do we get there?"

"Go down tonight, recce, take over in the morning from the half-arsed locals."

They had left a minor traffic accident behind them and were

comfortably

cosied up behind the prison van. Constables Joseph Paget and David Rankin were a team and inseparable. The driver, Paget, was a

toadlike

man, short and squat, bald with a thick Zapata moustache, and he had been changing the oil, checking the tyre pressures and vale ting the interior during the long wait at the court, while his colleague had been given the new assignment's briefing. With the H&K resting loose on his thighs, Rankin was a wafer-thin willow of a man with a brush of

on of a child, and a

cropped dark hair, the smooth-skinned complexi

moustache identical to his colleague's. Anyone meeting them for the first time and noting their language and gait would have believed

they

made conscious efforts to ape each other. They were both forty-nine years old, lived in adjacent streets in north London, went on holiday together with their wives, and grumbled with each other like a married couple. They would retire on the same day. Both Joe Paget and Dave Rankin were considered expert marksmen. But they'd never done it.

Been

the courses, been endlessly on the range, been on every exercise,

on

but never actually done it. For all of their training and with a

total of thirty-two years' service with firearms, neither

combined

had

r real.

fired fo

155

ey saw the prison van go through the big gates of the gaol, and

Th

swung

ay.

aw

They stopped

at a news agent and Paget went in. He bought three books

of crossword puzzles, some soft-drink cans and two packets of

sandwiches.

had come back up from the canteen and his supper, but before

When he

he

nt to Fenton's room to collect the American, Geoff Markham took

we

a

et of white paper and the roll of Sellotape from his desk.

single she

He

e paper to the outer face of his door, then scrawled on

fastened th

it,

th a black marker pen, DAY ONE.

wi

The FBI man had said it would be

o the end of the first day.

over within a week. It was near t

The American had gone off with Markham, and the fax purred on. to n's machine.

Fento

He thought of Markham, like a worrying dog at the

heels of a sheep as he'd rounded up the American, made sure he had his

ons of his waistcoat

coat, gently chided him for fastening the butt

t

ou

upid and

of kilter and done them correctly himself. Sheep were st

lful, a bloody nuisance, and necessary... He read the fax from

wi

Special Branch operations.

Incredible, an eighth wonder, remarkable. SB had done a deal with the

local

Must

force.

have been the angle of the moon, or some such crap,

for SB and a local force to have done a deal.

d

He would have predicte

an on-going, entertaining dispute. SB would provide the

close-protection detail and had liaised with 5019 of Scotland Yard for

a static uniformed presence. The local force would offer armed

vehicles to watch the single road into the godforsaken dead end and to

cruise the area.

There was, had to be, a little scorpion's sting. At the tail of the message: "SB, on own behalf and that of local force, will negotiate with Security Service for budget funding during operation concerning en, with view to reimbursement of expendihire." It was

Juliet Sev

156

the

bare,

basic level for protection, and it would cost a goddamn fortune,

and the resources bucket was not bottomless. He pondered how to

limit

the extent of the commitment. He put on his coat, picked up his

and switched off the light in his room.

briefcase

e budget ruled his life and would until the day he filed his

Th

application to join the Portcullis Society, until he joined the rest of

e Christmas reunion, reminiscing and carping

yesterday's spooks at th

out days gone by. The commitment could not be endless,

ab

e cursed the bloody obstinate fool who had refused a most

and h

reasonable offer of help in moving on.

As if with a sudden afterthought, Fenton went back into his darkened nd dialled the home number of their duty solicitor.

room a

re, G Section, sorry to, call you this late, Francis.

"Harry he

Can

I

n this past you? We have a man who we consider to be an

just ru

ppears and we've

assassination target. We've suggested he disa

offered

the means to do that. He won't take our advice, says he's staying s. Does the law provide us with powers to remove him

where he i

forcibly from his domicile, against his will, and place him in

protective custody?... I see.. . Assault, civil liberties, yes...

Not

on, eh?.. . It's just that these things are so bloody expensive.

our time, Francis, and regards to Alison..."

Thanks for y

e crossed the silent, deserted work area, Fenton saw the sheet

When h

of

paper fastened to young Markham's door. DAY ONE.

There had to e

b

a containment on the commitment or the operation would

eed his section dry. He went out into the night.

bl

He had

ked

wal

quickly along the hedgerows and into what the map called

Sixteen-acre Wood and, from the safety of the trees, watched her drive away.

h his back against a big trunk, Vahid Hossein used the last

Wit

light of the day to study and memorize the map.

When darkness came, and he could no longer see the trellised patterns per branches, he had again moved forward.

of the up

157

The map was in his mind. He took a length of dead branch from the ground, and used it as a blind man would. He had friends who were blinded in the marshes by mustard-gas shells, and he used the stick in

the darkness as they used their white wands in daylight. The stick told him where were the desiccated lengths of wood that he could have stepped on, broken, left a trail. He walked carefully from

Sixteen-acre Wood into Big Wood, then on to Common Wood. From Common Wood he skirted open fields and then he sheltered by a road, and

watched and waited and listened. The caution was instinctive. He had

crossed the road and passed what the map called a tumulus but did

not

know what the word meant, and then he slipped into Fen Covert.

It was in Fen Covert that he first smelt the salt of the sea, and

that

he first heard the screaming.

The smell was soft, the same as the tang off the Shatt-al-Arab

waterway

and at the Faw peninsula. Then the screaming had come again.

At the Shatt-al-Arab and the Faw, when the salt scent had been in

his

nose, he had heard the screaming of a man wounded or gassed and left behind in the retreat. It had been his duty, then, inescapable, to go

back into the marshes to find a man with a shrapnel-severed leg or with

the gas droplets on his skin and in his eyes. He moved towards Fen Hill, cat-like and quiet, where the scent was stronger and the

screaming louder. Ahead of him, dappled by thin moonlight, was the open expanse called Southmarsh on the map.

At the slight slope of Fen Hill he angered himself. His mind had

been

on the scent and the screaming, and on the ribbon of lights that he estimated to be three kilometres away, when he set up a pheasant.

If

mong the marsh reeds of the Shatt-al Arab or the Faw,

he had been a

he

would have given his enemy his position. It would have been a fatal error. He stopped, and stood motionless against a tree-trunk so that his body made no silhouette, smelling the sea and listening to the 158

screaming.

The distant sound of a car's horn, among the ribbon of lights, carried over the Southmarsh.

He found the rabbit, its throat caught by a snare. He did not use his

torch, but felt it first with his stick and then with his hand. His fingers brushed the fur of the animal's back and then came to the

restraining wire. The movement of his fingers, caressing it, had

quietened the terror of the rabbit. He held it by the fur at its

neck

and loosened the fine wire. He could not see it, could only sense it

hanging supine from his grip.

Because of his mistake in disturbing the pheasant, his anger and

self-criticism, he felt a need to reassure himself. He killed the rabbit with a chop from the heel of his hand against its neck, one blow. He reset the snare and covered the ground where his feet had been with loose brushwood because at first light someone would come to

check the snare.

dead and warm, and moved

He pocketed the rabbit,

on.

He came to rest in the heart of a thick tangle of bramble on the edge of Foxhole Covert. Not for hunger, but to purge himself of his

, he tore a leg from the rabbit carcass, pulled the skin from

mistake

it, and ate it. He chewed on the raw sweet meat. It was important to

el no revulsion, to be strong.

him to fe

He chewed at the leg until

his

rcass beside him and the

teeth scraped on the bone, then put the ca

cleaned bone, and wiped the blood from his mouth. The act of killing and the eating gave him strength.

The sausage bag was beside him. Through the bramble branches he saw se-set lights across the Southmarsh.

the clo

He had the photograph

of

nd the man.

the house a

His hand, stained with the rabbit's blood,

rested on the bag and sometimes found the shape of the launcher and sometimes the outline of the automatic rifle. He thought that it

would

be as easy for him to kill the man as it had been to chop the rabbit's neck and eat its leg.

159

He tried, lying on his back in the silence, to think of his wife,

Barzin, and of the home that they shared, and of the rooms they had decorated and of the possessions they had gathered together, and of the