HOME RUN (47 page)

"Just clearing up the room."

"Did I hear our phone go?"

"Front desk, confirming we were leaving today. Probably thought you were running out on them."

He saw the big smile on Eshraq's face. "I suppose you paid."

"Yes, I paid."

He saw the big smile and the big buoyancy of young Eshraq.

Park didn't smile, himself, often, and it was rarer for him to know happiness. And Eshraq was smiling and he looked as though he had found true happiness.

And the big smile split.

"You hate me - yes?"

"Time you went for the border."

"Your problem, you're too serious."

"Because I've a plane to catch."

"And you'll do my letter?"

"It'll be posted."

"What I'm doing - don't you think it's worth doing?"

"Thinking about you makes me tired."

"Don't I get a goodbye and a kiss."

"Good luck, Charlie, brilliant luck."

He said that he would see Eshraq in front of the hotel. He walked back through, and out of the front doors. As he pushed them open he heard the farewell greeting from the Reception Clerk, and he didn't turn. He unlocked the car, and when he was inside he wound down the windows to dissipate the heat.

Keys into the ignition. It was slow starting, he thought that the plugs needed cleaning. There was the blast of the horn behind him. The Transit came past him. He didn't think that he would see Eshraq's face again. He thought that the last that he would see of Charlie Eshraq was a grin and a wave.

He pulled out into the traffic. By the time that he had found a space there were two lorries between himself and the Transit.

A wide and straight and pot-holed bone shaker of a road. Two lorries ahead of him he could see the Transit. He drove slowly. As far as he could see ahead there was the column of commercial vehicles heading for the Customs post.

Mattie stood in the hallway.

He could hear their voices. It was typical of Harriet that she should have walked back to the front gate with Henry Carter. She had that inbred politeness, it was a part of her.

Sweet scents in his nostrils. He could smell the polish on the walnut hall table. He could smell the cut chrysanthemums that were in the vase on the shelf of the window beside the front door. Sweet sounds in his ears. He could hear the passage of the honey searching bees in the foxgloves that lined the path between the house and the front gate, and he could hear the whine of the flies against the panes, and he could hear the purring of his cat as it brushed against his legs.

The car left.

She came back inside. She closed the front door. She latched the door and made him safe from all that had happened to him. She came to stand against him and her arms were loosely around his waist. She kissed his cheek.

"You need a jolly good shave, Mattie."

"I expect I do."

"What a dear man, that Carter."

"I suppose he is."

"He spoke so well of you, how you'd come through it all."

"Did he, darling?"

"And he said that you needed looking after. What would you like most, Mattie, most and first?"

"I'd like to sit outside in the garden, and I'd like
The Times,
and I'd like a mug of coffee with hot milk."

"He said it was pretty rotten where you'd been."

"We'll talk about it, but not yet."

"He said they're all talking about it at Century, your escape

. . . Such a nice man, he said they were all talking about what they call 'Dolphin's Run'."

"I'll go and sit in the garden."

The sun was hardly up. There was still dew on the grass.

He heard the first tractor of the day moving off to cut silage.

* • •

The road was quite straight and it ran bisecting a wide green valley. To his left was Ararat, magnificent in the sunlight. To his right was the lower summit of Tenduruk Dag. There were grazing sheep alongside the road, and when they were clear of the town they passed the folly palace of Ishak Pasha. He glanced at it. The building was above the road, dominating.

He had read in the guide book that a Kurdish chieftain in the last century had wanted the finest palace in the wide world, and he had had an Armenian architect design it and build it.

And when it was completed then the chieftain had had the Armenian architect's hands cut off, so that he could never design another that was as fine . . . Rough old world, Mr Armenian architect. . . Rough old world, Mr Charlie Eshraq.

Far ahead, where the haze of the shimmered heat had begun to settle, he could see the flat-roofed buildings of the Turkish Customs building, and he could just make out the blood red of the Turkish flag.

Amongst the fields stretching to the foothills of Ararat that was to his left and Tenduruk Dag that was to his right, he could see the brilliant scarlet oases of poppies. Where the poppy flowers were, that was a good place for the burying of Charlie Eshraq.

He eased down through the gears.

The Turkish Customs post was one old building of two stories and a sprawl of newer, more temporary, buildings. A wind lifted the flag. There were troops there, pretty lackadaisi-cal bunch, too, and there was a Customs official in the centre of the road who seemed to stop, briefly, each lorry, speak to the driver, then wave it on. On the other side of the road was the queue of vehicles travelling the other way, coming out from Iran, stopped and waiting for clearance. No delays for the lorries going into Iran. The Transit was two lorry lengths ahead of him. And the going was slower. One hand on the wheel, and his thumb was inches from the horn. One hand on the gear stick, and his fingers were inches from the arm that could have flashed his lights.

The Transit was stationary.

The Customs official was walking down the length of a lorry and trailer, and heading for the cab of the Transit. Park watched. It was what they had sent him to do. He watched the Customs official peer into the driver's window, then nod his head, then step back, then cheerfully wave the Transit forward.

The lorries in front of him nudged forward. Park swung his wheel. He drove off the metalled surface and on to the stone grit of the hard shoulder.

He walked away from his car. He walked towards the buildings and the soldiers who were already seeking what shade was offered. His shirt stuck to his back, there was the shiver in his legs as he walked. He took as his place the flagpole. The wind pushed his hair across his face.

He estimated that the Iranian flag and the Iranian buildings were 500 metres down the road. He thought that the border was at a point that was halfway between the two where a small stream crossed under the road through culvert tunnels. The road fell on its way to the tunnels, then climbed on a gradual gradient towards the Iranian buildings and the Iranian flag.

The Transit was slipping away down the slope, going steadily for the dip where the culverts were set under the road. The wind in his hair, the sun in his eyes, the roar of the heavy engines in his ears.

A young officer, regular army, had strolled to stand beside him, would have seen a foreigner at the post, and wondered, been interested. There were binoculars hanging loosely at his neck. Park didn't ask. A fast, sharp smile, his finger pointing to the binoculars. He knew nothing of the Turkish, nothing of their generosity. His gesture was enough. He had the binoculars in his hand.

The Transit was climbing up the slope from the stream.

His vision roved ahead.

He saw the buildings of the Customs post, and huge on the wall facing the oncoming road was the image of the Imam.

Past the buildings, uniformed and armed men held back a line of lorries from further movement towards Turkey. From a side door in the largest of the buildings he saw three men duck out and run, crouching and doubled, to take up positions behind parked cars. On the far side of the road, the far side to the buildings, was a heap of sandbags, inexpertly stacked and no more than waist height. With the glasses, through the power of the binoculars, he saw the sun flash on belted ammunition. There was a man standing beside the building closest to the roadway. He wore sandals and old jeans and his shirt tails weren't tucked in. He was not a young man. He was talking into a personal radio.

The Transit was into Iran, heading up the shallow slope of the road.

There was the crash of the gunfire.

He started up. He clasped his hands to halt the shaking.

"It's alright, dear, just the Pottinger boy . . . I don't mind him shooting pigeons, and I suppose I can't object at carrion crows, but I do think that killing rooks is the limit. I hope that you'll have a word with his father . . . Here's your coffee.

Mattie, darling, you look frozen. I'll get you a warmer sweater, and when you've had your coffee, you're coming straight in."

The sun was sharp on his forehead. There was the distortion of the binoculars and from the heat on the ground, but he could see well enough.

The road was clear ahead and in front of the Transit, and a man in dun uniform had emerged from the ditch that ran alongside the road as soon as the Transit had passed him and he was waving down the following lorry. There was a moment, as the Transit came to an easy and unhurried stop beside the building, that it was the only vehicle within 100 yards in front or behind.

Quick, fast movements. The van surrounded. He saw the men who ran forward towards the back of the van, and he saw their weapons raised to their shoulders and aimed at the Transit. Carried on the wind, must have been a megaphone, he heard a shouted order. They were closing on the cab. He saw the door of the cab open. He saw the barrel shape, the tube shape, jutting out from the opened door.

There was the fire squirt.

There was the following thunder hammer of the recoil of the LAW 80.

Smoke and fire, and the building ravaged, and toy doll figures laid out in crazy posture under the galloping spread of black smoke and brilliant flames of the fire.

He saw the Transit burst forward. He wondered when in hell Charlie had taken the launcher from the crates in the back of the T r a n s i t . . . He had seen the flash of the brass cartridge cases. He knew where it would come from. He knew where the stopping fire would come from.

He thought the van might have made 25 yards. It was lurching forward, as if the driver was trying to hit the higher gears too fast. The Transit might have made 25 yards when the machine-gun behind the sandbags opened fire, belting the Transit. The van swerved, he saw that, he followed the swerve through the glasses. The van straightened. He was cold. He was not willing the escape of the van and nor was he cheering for the death of the van. He was the witness and he was watching. The Transit had swerved and it had straightened and it had swerved again. It was across the road. It was against the pole that carried the telephone line from the Customs post back into the interior. The hammer of the drum, the belt of the machine-gun, and the target was stationary, crippled.

There was a shouting in his ear. It was the Turkish soldier, insistent but courteous. He held out his hand for his binoculars.

There was little more for him to see. There was the bright orange glow of the ultimate explosion. He watched a dream's destruction. He thanked the officer, who was lost in concentration on the scene unfolding across the valley, and he turned and walked back towards his car. He thought that if he hurried he would still be in time to catch the flight from Van. He turned only once. When he had opened the door of the hire car he looked behind him. The sun was a high white orb, its brilliance shed by the rising pillar of smoke. Park drove away.

He drove back along the straight road to Dogubeyezit, and past the sheep flocks, and past the shrill patches of scarlet. A job done, a man going home.

22

She was first out of the Chapel and Belinda and Jane were close at her back. She had dressed rather boldly and that had been her decision and without the prompting of the girls. She wore a suit of navy and a matching straw hat with a crimson ribbon. Perhaps the girls would not have approved. She had worn the same suit and hat only once before, nearly two years ago, and then she had sat in the Gallery and looked down on to the Investiture Room. She had watched with pride as Mattie had gone forward to receive from his sovereign the medal of the Order of the British Empire. She thought it right, on this autumn morning, when the leaves cascaded across the road from the plane trees in the park, to wear the same clothes as on that day. Mattie would have approved, and he would have liked the way that she held herself.

She took her place a few yards from the doorway and there was a fine spit of rain at her back, and behind her the traffic streamed on Birdcage Walk. The girls were on either side of her. They were sentries positioned to protect their mother.

Not that Harriet Furniss was in need of protection. There would be no choke in her voice, no smear on her cheek.

She had been a Service wife, and now she was a Service widow. She understood very clearly what was expected of her.

She thought that the Director General had aged, that his retirement had not given him a new lease of life. His morning coat seemed too large and his throat had thinned.

"It was kind of you to come."

It was he who had insisted on Mattie's immediate retirement.

"To pay my respects to a very gallant gentleman, Mrs Furniss."

She knew that he had resigned from the Service on the day the report of the internal inquiry had reached Downing Street.

"You're looking well."

"Good of you to say so . . . I've a little to occupy me . . .

I shall remember your husband with nothing but admiration."

It gave her strength to see his fumbling walk towards the parade ground, the man who had sent her Mattie to his doom.

She had made it clear that she had wanted none of them to make the journey from London for the funeral. The funeral, three weeks earlier, had been family and in Bibury, she had insisted on that. Two hard years they had been, from the time that he had come home to her to the time of death and release from his personal agony. Two wretchedly hard years they had been as the will to survive had ebbed from Mattie. The new Director General stood in front of her. His face was a little puffed as though he ate too much too often at lunchtime.