A Line in the Sand (27 page)

seared int

the mutter of low voices as the engines of the cars were

He heard

killed. The voices were indistinct.

On his knees and elbows he edged forward, and gently parted the

and leaves of a garden shrub.

branches

173

He felt the shake in his hands... There was a police car, with two men

in it, a dozen metres from him.

Beyond the police car was the open grassland of the photograph, and beyond the open ground were two more cars. Four men stood beside

them.

Two wore civilian clothes. The others wore blue over ails and across their chests they carried machine-guns on straps.

He felt the cold twist in his stomach.

Beyond the cars was the house shown in the photograph. All the

curtains were drawn, and no light showed. He had been told the target was without defence, had no protection. He thought the men in front of

the house were changing shifts. He watched. The car nearest to him started up, and the roving eyes of the marksman and the barrel of

a

machine-gun peeped above the door and out through the opened window as

it edged slowly away. One of the men at the house was stretching, arching his back, as if he had stayed the night in his vehicle.

The two men with the machine-guns went to the door of the house in the

photograph: he saw their wariness and that one covered the back of the

other. When the door was opened there was no light in the hallway.

It

was professional protection. They went inside and the door closed on

them. If he had come a few moments later he would not have seen the machine-guns.

He had the photograph of the man and wanted to look into his face

as he

took the knife or the gun from under his coat: it was important that the man could see his face and the eye of vengeance.

He slipped away. He crawled through the hedgerow, pulled back the length of chicken-wire, climbed the fence and scurried in the growing light towards the scrub and the shelter of Hoist Covert.

He waded the stream, then staggered across the bog among the trees.

It

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was not the threat from the machine-guns to his own life that made his

hands shake and his breath pant. He would be carried as a martyr

to

the Garden of Paradise; he had no fear of death from the bullets.

It

fear of failure. The brigadier, the man who loved him as

was the

a

n, who had replaced his long-dead father, would be waiting in the

so

office high in the building of the Mimstry of Information and Security f his success. Vahid Hossein could not contemplate the

for news o

cloud

passing over the face of the brigadier if the message carried word of

failure.

through the trees on to Fen Hill and stopped dead in his

He came

tracks.

He had seen the bird.

The beak, tugging, and the talons, clinging, were at the rabbit's

carcass. He saw the raw wound on its wing. The bird was at the limit of its strength. Its beak was tearing at the fur but had not the

power

to rip it aside. It was less than five paces away. He saw the wound and the movement of ants in it, and the colour of the flesh at the wing

was not pink and pure but putrefied, like the old wounds of the men in

the Haur-al-Hawizeh. The bird flapped the damaged wing and the good to flee from him but the strength was not there and it

wing as if

only

crippled, a few metres from the carcass. He knew the

hopped,

harriers

from the Haur-al-Hawizeh and from the Shatt-al-Arab and Faw. They were

often with them as they hid up in the marshes and watched for the

aited for the darkness and the opportunity to probe into

Iraqis, w

their

enemy's de fences He had grown to love them, to worship the beauty of

their feathering. They were light, the harriers, in the darkness

of

the killing grounds. He dropped to his knees and crawled forward

to the carcass. The wound would kill the bird if it could

slowly

175

not

feed.

With his fingers, he tore little strips of flesh from the rabbit.

Vahid Hossein believed the hunger would defeat the bird's fear, and that the bird was his escape from failure.

* * *

He took the black felt pen and the clean sheet of paper to his door, ripped off the existing message and fastened on its replacement. He scrawled the words. DAY TWO.

It was seven forty-nine. The traffic had not yet built up on the

Embankment outside Thames House, but already they were at their

desks.

Geoff Markham had come in on the underground before the crush, but they

had beaten him there. Cox was in to supervise the expansion. Fenton was huddled with the American, chuckling, as if they were

conspirators.

Gary Brennard was there from Administration (Resources), organizing the

new team, their new consoles and new telephones. A red-haired woman, sh sections but didn't know

Markham recognized her from one of the Iri

her name, was sitting, scratching her head and wiping her eyes,

looking

like she'd been heaved half awake from her bed. There were two

probationers and one of the old men from B Branch. They were in

early,

as if they feared they might miss the entertainment.

s own place, and there'd been four

He'd slept in his own bed at hi

messages from Vicky on his answer phone How'd it go? Did you do

all

ght?

ri

Was it OK? Did you do enough to get it? He went back into

his

partitioned office room. Overnight, in his own bed, he hadn't

thought

about the interview but about the American with his pen, and whether that constituted a criminal assault, whether it was a sacking

offence,

whether he was just too damn squeamish for the job. He'd make the call

later in the morning. When the new team was bedded down, he'd ring 176

Perry.

He wandered across the open work area towards the new cluster of desks and screens. He went by the woman with the red hair. She seemed

tired

and uninvolved, was flicking the pages of a newspaper maybe nobody had

told her, maybe they'd told her and she didn't think it mattered.

Fenton's laugh was louder.

Fenton said, "Morning, Geoff, just hearing about last night -damn good."

He said it grimly, "What we did was illegal."

"Bollocks."

Fenton strode away.

The American sidled over to him.

"Sleep OK, Mr. Markham? Not so well? If I could say to you, it's a

rough world and rougher when the stakes go high. You get to play

hard

if you want to win. Remember Alamut and then you can judge your

enemy.

Do it by the rules and your enemy will walk over you. They came out from Alamut, two of them in 1192. Their target was Conrad of

Montferrat who was the king-elect of Jerusalem. They caught up with him finally in the city of Tyre, present-day south Lebanon, but they'd stalked him nearly a half of a year. He was guarded close, had the security of the day, and they beat it. They were dressed as

best

Christian monks, the clothes of their enemy. They went right through and knifed their man to death. The way they did it,

the security

they

ndemned themselves, but they reached their target. Go legal if

co

you

to if you do, you won't win against cunning, patience,

want

ruthlessness, dedication... Is there anywhere you can get a decent und here?"

coffee ro

She'd been up early to take the pictures off the bedroom walls, and had

stacked hem,

t

glass down, behind the dressing-tabl2. Everything off

the top surface of her dressing-table had gone into the drawers.

177

Then

she'd crisscrossed the mirror with heavy adhesive tape. Frank had watched her from the bed.

She'd snatched breakfast, and dumped a plate of cereal down in front of

Stephen. She was already late for the school bell.

They'd been changing the shift at home when she had left -nothing

to

say to her, nor to Frank, but the uncles had time to chat with Stephen about his lorries. She'd had to drag him away from them. On their shoulders they'd had machine-guns on webbing straps. She'd thrust Stephen into the car and Frank had stayed inside.

Emma Carstairs had once told Meryl that she had best-friend status.

They'd been to dinner there three months before. Emma Carstairs

would

have said to Barry, she thought, that Frank and Meryl Perry were the right sort of people for the village. Barry had put work Frank's

way

and joked about keeping things close, in a little Mafia. The loss of

the friendship hurt badly.

Meryl hadn't faced up to telling Stephen why they didn't have Sam

in

the car now, had made instead a poor excuse about a grown-ups'

squabble. She'd have to tell him properly, but later. Probably

there

would be

said

things

at school, but she couldn't yet cope with telling

him the complicated truth. A van was parked beside the road, and

she

saw a man reaching up to hammer a sold sign across the middle of the for-sale board outside Rose Cottage.

She wondered who'd bought it and what they'd be like.

She drove fast to the school and had to brake fiercely to avoid a

car

pulling away from the kerb. Most of the kids were already in.

She frowned. Barry Carstairs drove a sporty Audi, provided by his building-suppliers company. It was parked outside the school gate, three vehicles ahead of her. Barry never did the school-run. She phen, and pushed open his door.

kissed Ste

The child ran through the

178

playground gate towards the door of the main building, where he was stopped by Mr. Archer, the deputy head. He had one hand on the

child's shoulder, and with the other he was waving her to come to

him.

Several of those who didn't have jobs with regular hours helped with the painting, the reading and the lunches of the nursery class. She knew Mr. Archer, a little ferret of a man, and the talk was that

he

bitter at being ignored for the headship.

was slyly

She saw Stephen

try to pull away from him, as the bell went inside. Archer's fist, the material of Stephen's anorak, restrained him.

clenched in

She

stamped across the playground.

He didn't look her in the face.

mp would like to see you, Mrs. Perry."

"Mrs. Ke

"Why are you holding Stephen like that?"

He looked at the ground, then at the sky.

"If you could go, please, to Mrs. Kemp's office."

"Why are you preventing Stephen from joining his class?"

"It will all be explained, Mrs. Perry. They're waiting for you."

"You're making Stephen late for class."

"He'll be in the common room I'll be with him."

ds

Ki

knew. They always knew first. Stephen's face was blank. At

home

last night, he'd worked really hard at his writing, was proud of it, before he'd pulled out his lorries and the men had come to his room.

His exercise was in his satchel with his lunch. She told him, ignored the ferret, that she'd sort it out, and fast. She stormed down the didn't knock, pushed her way into Mrs. Kemp's office.

corridor,

door, her eyes roved over the faces.

From the

There was Mrs. Kemp,

trim and grey-haired, the head-teacher; Bellamy, overweight and

, the self-appointed organizer of the PTA; Barry

everybody's friend

Carstairs, the smart-suited businessman who was going places, the

chairman of the governors; and a woman with fiercely bobbed hair and a

179

severe black trouser-suit. The men were either side of the women, and

they were all huddled close against the legs of the desk.

The head-teacher's voice piped at her, "Thank you for coming in, Mrs.

Perry. Please sit down."

"Why am I here?"

"Just sit down, Mrs. Perry, please. You'll know everyone here, except

Miss Smythe from the county's education department."

She remained standing.

"What's going on?"

The head-teacher fixed her with a glance.

"I am afraid I have something difficult to tell you."

"What?"

Bellamy grunted, "It's pretty obvious, Mrs.

rry, after yesterday

Pe

afternoon."

"What's obvious?"

Carstairs tried to look sombre.

"There was a very disturbing ii vident affecting the school

yesterday,

Meryl, which cannot be ignored."

Her child, with the ferret's hand on his anorak, knew. Stephen was in

the common room, and would be scared half out of his wits. She stood her ground, and glowered.

"So, which of you's queuing to use the knife?"

"That's not called-for. We have a responsibility-' "It's a responsibility we're not ignoring."

Barry Carstairs didn't look at her. He was playing with a pencil

and

180

he'd scribbled words on a pad, as if he didn't trust himself without notes.

"This isn't easy for us. As chairman of the governors, after consultations with our head-teacher and bearing in mind the feelings of

the parents' representative, I have taken a most serious decision.