A Line in the Sand (50 page)

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

that, you will have my sincerest congratulations."

you can do

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.

ut I have seen them, I have interrogated them.

"B

I have been with

them

the cells and explained with politeness that the rantings of their in

government and the shouting mobs outside our legation compound in

n

Tehra

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 killed five of the Palestinians of Black September, and

Games, we

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

teemed friends, eventually capture a capo of the Mafia, he is the

es

same. He has been a killer on a grand scale, perhaps murdered a

330

nd consigned their corpses to the Gulf of Palermo or

hundred men a

acid

crete construction pillars, but when he is arrested, when

vats or con

he

ces the guns, he fouls his trousers. They are very human

fa

invincible

ee, pathetic when taken. You should not be intimidated by

when fr

the

trusted man."

so coffee was brought, and small chocolates. The Germar~

Espres

cleared

bbed out a cigarette in the saucer.

them, and stu

aps, when they leave their country, when the mullah's words are

"Perh

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 killers. They are, I believe, addicted to excitement,

other

adrenaline

r narcotic.

is thei

I said to you that they wished to be close, to

see

in their victim's eyes, so they will try to use a knife to

the fear

cut

a throat, or a handgun from a metre. They are disturbed people and ll not gain the same excitement f

they wi

rom a bomb or from a rocket

attack. The bomb and the rocket are the last option, but will not ame excitement.

provide the s

If you take this trusted man, go into

his

try to talk with him. Then I believe you will be sincerely

cell,

disappointed at what you find."

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

box brought

a lonely man. He will seek the admiration of the

"He will be

sympathizers, but will not share with them. He will have the

oia

paran

ve

of the isolated. He is nauseatingly sentimental. Abo

everything, he

will seek praise, always he will want that praise... I think, also, he

he body of a servile woman, not an equal because that would

wants t

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 331

to

praise and adulation. I think, to a psychologist, he is a rather

tedious, pitiful figure. Let me know what you find."

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, 332

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

ut.

importa

guidebook to the village and the neighbourhood around it,

With her

she

had sat on the bench, read it and reread it, then read it again so that

d on the pages and no longer had meaning.

the words dance

d ever told her she was valued.

No one ha

bench she had walked to the bea

From the

ch and gazed out at the sea.

She had been alone on the sand and shingle, and had seen the faraway ed the horizon line.

boats that hugg

The next day, or the day after,

the next night, or the night after that, far further down the coast, r would divert towards the shore and a small boat would run

the tanke

from it, would collect him. She would be left behind, abandoned.

She had walked through the village, as far as the church, then turned 333

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

ance.

her import

She went away from the house. She thought she'd seen his shadow pass 334

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 ng back here again.

never comi

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

satchel.

driver's

He was a big man, two stones overweight, and she

thought it was the blood pressure that reddened his face when he spoke daughter.

of his

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.

r's own parents had wanted her to be a pretty and feminine

Cathy Parke

girl, and she'd fought hard against it; Bill Jones would have wanted aughter to be a boy, with him at home matches, sitting alongside

his d

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."

Jones was a small woman, grimly thin in face and body,

Annie

rematurely greying hair.

with p

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 335

friends here she'd find them there. Perhaps the people she met there ood enough either.

weren't g

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 ntrol of people, but it was so obvious that they didn't

for more co

want

to

w

kno

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 religious thing. She came back once after she'd joined

into that

them.

Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against foreigners having their own

, but it wasn't right for her.

religion

She came back in her robes,

her

covered, and some of the

face half

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