A Line in the Sand (29 page)

do

the

alians. They have submitted to the blackmail. They want to

It

trade,

ey want to offer export credits, and they believe, if they are

th

generous and restructure the debts, that the killer' squads will stay erritory. Prisoners are returned, investigations are

off their t

alled. Have the Germans helped you over Lockerbie? Have they

st

fuck.

all the killers the French have caught within their

What about

jurisdiction? No prosecutions. They appease. And you in Britain,

, on your little island, you do not believe that the problem

Harry

of

187

Iran is real. How can I say that? I say it because of what I see from

my embassy window. You allow, unchecked, on your streets,

flourishing,

such organizations as the Hizb ut-Tahrir, or the Young Muslims who de the cheap charter flights to Iran, or the Al-Muntada

provi

al-Islami

raise for the Algerian fundamentalist butchers who are in

who fund-

their turn trained in Iran. You allow it to happen, Harry. You

refuse

to recognize the cancer in your belly."

The Israeli declined coffee, which was a relief. What had been

served

at the next table, coughed and spluttered over, had looked like

tarmacadam sludge.

"A great meal, Harry, and a great opportunity to talk with you. I say

hit the bastards wherever you find them. It is the only language

they

understand. They are clever and determined, they are not to be

underestimated. Good day to you, Harry."

He stood, the gold Star of David bouncing in the greyed hair of his chest behind his open-collared shirt.

Fenton finished the beer then followed him out on to the street. The is sleeve.

Israeli tugged at h

"Remember what I said. To stop them you must crush the skull, crush it

under your heel, crush the life from it. And then you have to have the

courage to shout it to the world, and fuck the consequences. You

got

the balls, Harry, to tell the world you crushed the skull?"

The Israeli had said, deviously, that he had a man to meet. Fenton was

abandoned.

He walked at least a mile before, thank God, he was able to flag down a

taxi.

188

He told Cox that he'd been networking again. He dropped the name

of

the senior Israeli intelligence officer in London and saw that Cox was

reluctantly impressed. He was tired and his feet hurt, and he

complained that the Israeli policy position was in total

contradiction

to their own.

"I'm supposed to be learning but the pointers conflict. That's where we are, between a rock and a hard place. But, I will press on."

"Of course you will," Cox said.

here for, isn't it?"

"That's what you're

The crane came across the green, past the keep-off-the-grass sign, the

ng a track on the rain-softened ground.

big wheels gougi

Peggy stood

on

nd staring.

the far side of the green, leaning on her bicycle a

The hut, the size of a large garden toolshed, had already been hoisted off the flat-top lorry that had reached the village in slow convoy with

the crane, and now dangled from a cable under the crane's arm.

Frank Perry watched the crane's manoeuvres from the dining-room

window,

with Paget and Rankin. They had asked for, and been given, a spare blanket from the airing cupboard and had draped it over the polished table.

He'd said earlier, "I'm sorry about last night, what I said."

"Didn't hear you say anything, sir."

"Nothing to apologize for, sir."

A pleasant afternoon of watery sunshine threw sufficient glare to

highlight the garish yellow of the crane and the rusty brown creosote seal on the planks of the swinging hut. The crane's engine coughed umes as it powered towards the gap between his house and the

diesel f

Wroughtons'. Davies edged his car clear to make space.

Behind him, Paget and Rankin were discussing kit. They seemed

189

uninterested in the arrival of the hut. On the blanket, with their machine-guns and the small black-coated gas grenades, with a book

of

crossword puzzles, was a kit m*gazine. They turned the pages and

pored

over the advertisements.

His face against the window glass, Perry peered at the crane's

advance,

and heard the scraping noise. He tilted his head, looked up and to the

side. He could see that the hut swayed against the Wroughtons'

plastic

guttering. Wroughton was the deputy bank manager in the town, his wife

was the surgery manager and their twins were in school; a small

blessing that they weren't there to see the destruction of the plastic guttering. The crane hoisted the hut higher, clear of the

Wroughtons'

guttering and roofing tiles. He imagined a crowd cheering as a man swung and twisted from such a crane. The crowd here was just Peggy, Vince, who was out of his van and watching with her, and Dominic,

standing in the shop doorway. Paul held tightly to the leash of his dog, which yapped incessantly and strained forward on its hind legs.

He

could no longer see the slow swing of the hut, but could hear the

shouts of the men guiding it. In Iran, from what he had seen on

television when he was there, they didn't blindfold a man before he was

lifted high for the crowd to see, and they didn't pinion his legs

to

deny the crowd the sight of him kicking.

Behind him, in low voices, Paget and Rankin talked through the brand names of windproof sweaters, thermal socks and rainproof trousers.

They

sat huddled close beside each other. It was more than twenty minutes since the crane and the lorry had come to the village and they'd not passed comment on anything other than the advertisements in the

magazine for kit.

He left them, and went into the kitchen. Meryl didn't look up. She was at the kitchen table with her sewing machine, and her boy was

the lengths of cut net.

feeding her

In the back garden more of the

men

from the lorry were laying heavy planks on the grass lawn, cursing 190

because they were awkward to move and heavy. She'd spent half of

last

summer's evenings working at that grass, digging out the weeds to

make

it perfect. The kitchen, in spite of the long fluorescent

strip-light,

was dark. She was looking at the window and he could see her teeth gnawing at her lower lip. The hut was being lowered past the window to

the shouted instructions of the men, who eased it towards the planks on

her perfect lawn. He'd heard that a man was left hanging dead for a

whole day before they lowered the arm of the crane. The hut jolted, and the cable slackened. Davies was calling their names.

Paget and Rankin came through the kitchen. They had the

machine-guns,

their rucksacks, their food-boxes, their magazine and the crossword book. The tall one tousled Stephen's hair. It was the first time Perry had seen the child half smile since Meryl had brought him home.

They walked out through the kitchen door to inspect their hut. There was the roar from the front of the house as the crane backed out of the

gap between the houses.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes." Her head was down, but her tone was aggressive. She fed the net on to the needle of the machine.

"I was only asking..."

"Why shouldn't I be all right? I've got you, I've got my home, I've got my friends. What have Ito complain about?"

"Look, don't be sarcastic."

Davies rapped at the kitchen door. He was carrying his gear: the

case

achine-gun, his heavy coat, a duf

with his m

fel bag for his sandwiches

and Thermos, a clean shirt on a hanger, and a pair of heavy boots.

Through the window, Perry saw Paget and Rankin taking possession of their hut. They'd dumped their kit inside, and were supervising the link-up of the cables from the house. One of the lorry men brought them two plastic chairs and a kettle; another, a small television

191

set

and a microwave cooker. Outrage had been building with Meryl

oughout the day, but she had held on to her control because of

thr

the

men in her dining room. If Davies hadn't been at the door he thought d have screamed.

she woul

Everything around them was worse for her

than

for him.

"Yes?" He turned on Davies.

Davies said quietly, "It's been decided that I should be inside with you. It's not a matter of comfort or anything like that, it's about my

fety when I'm sitting in the car.

sa

It's because of a reassessment

of

e security threat. The car is too vulnerable, that's the

th

assessment

now. The boys in the hut are behind armour-plated walls. They're proof against low-velocity bullets and there's a good

certainly

chance

they'd stop high-velocity, but the car doesn't have that protection.

me inside."

They want

"I've been asked, again, to run away. I'm staying."

"I've been told that, Mr. Perry. That's your decision, not for me to

comment on. But, the car outside, with the new assessment, is too vulnerable."

The strangers were with them inside the house, and in the hut, which blocked the precious view of their garden. Later, the strangers

would

be all around them as the laminated plastic was fixed to the windows.

It would be late in the afternoon, When Paget and Rankin were safe in

when Davies was safe in the dining room, before the lorry

their hut,

rumbled away and the crane's wheels dug another track across the

green.

And there was nothing he could do, except run. All his life he had r himself the decisions that mattered. He had always been

made fo

self-reliant: at school he, not his parents and not his teachers,

had

decided what subjects he would specialize in; at university ignoring 192

his tutors' advice, he had decided what braHch of engineering he would concentrate on; at the company, his only employer, he had decided

that

the opening he wanted was in the sales division, and he had explored the tentative, difficult trade openings that were possible with Iran.

First his wife, and then Meryl, had left decisions to him. He had been frightened of backing his judgement, and now he was

never

helpless

and snared in a web. It was a new sensation to him. He couldn't, of

course not, go out of the house and man a personal roadblock at the end

e village and check the cars coming in, and couldn't beat across

of th

the common ground beside the road for the people sent to kill him, and

couldn't thrash around in the marshland. No action was open to him, to run. He was neutered, and the men were all around him,

except

inside and outside his house, and they ignored him as if he were an and incapable of independent thought. There was nothing

imbecile

he

but sit and wait.

could do

n't my fault."

"It is

me where and when he had told her to come.

She had co

Farida Yasmin

Jones hung her head, pressed her face against her knees. The damp of

the evening was in the air. She had driven her car down the narrow e off the wider, busier road, and after the bend that prevented

lan

it

om the road she had

being seen fr

parked near to the track that led

to

the tumulus.

riticize you."

"I do not c

"You look as though you do when I came with Yusuf there wasn't protection."

"Perhaps he lived."

"You said he'd die."

lived and talked."

"Perhaps he

han would never talk."

"Yusuf K

193

"All men say they would never talk, and believe it."

"You're insulting him."

"He was stupid, he was like a child. He spoke too much and he could not drive why should I believe he would not talk?"

"You've no right to say he'd talk. What're you going to do?" He had

come from Fen Hill and across Fen Covert and he had sat for close

to

twenty minutes hidden in bushes watching her before he had shown

himself. After twenty minutes Vahid Hossein had gone in a wide loop around her to check that she was not followed, was not under

surveillance. He had seen the men at the house with the guns. He had

no trust in anything he had been told. There had been an Iraqi ruse in

the marshland in front of the Shattal-Arab: an ambush would be set by a

patrol; they would lie up and their guns would cover a raised pathway he reed-banks; a cassette recorder would play a

through t

conversation,

oices, in the Farsi tongue; men of the Revolutionary Guards

men's v

would be drawn towards the voices of their own people. Friends had because they trusted what they heard. He had watched

been killed

her.

She had eaten mint sweets from a packet, and scratched the white skin s above her knees, and looked frightened around her in the

of her leg

quiet.

She had rubbed hard against the softness of her breast, as