A Line in the Sand (8 page)

him

iew technique.

interv

She had wanted him out of what she called that

creepy job and into proper work since they'd first shared a bed. He

.

rang off

He wouldn't have dared make that call inside Thames House.

He felt elation that he had been short listed and the same sense of when he'd sent off the application to the bank with the

shame as

ed personal background.

necessarily limit

It was what Vicky had told

him to do she had torn the job advertisement from the Situations

Vacant.

He took the back-streets to the bridge, crossed over. The great

building, the home of the Secret Intelligence Service, the green and cream and tinted-glass monstrosity, was enemy territory to most of his

seniors at Thames House. When Cox or Fenton went across the river to

Vauxhall Bridge Cross, they always said, after they'd legged it back, that they felt they ought to wash their hands. He asked for Ms

rs, and the security staff at Reception looked at him and his

Flowe

Security Service ID as if they were both worthless.

She took him into a bare interview room on the ground floor. She

laid

a file in front of her on the table, and leaned her elbows over it, 46

covered it with her bosom.

He talked.

"We went down under prepared to see him, went with big holes in what we

knew. We knew that his new name and identity were blown open how

and

where is what we did not know. We told him his life was under threat, but we didn't know the extent of the threat.. . It was difficult

to

assess who was the blind and who the one-eyed. We're sending him

the

Blue Book. We need help and have to have answers to questions."

She snorted derisively.

"Ask away. Whether I'll answer, that's a different matter. And you should know the importance we give to the Iranian weapons programme.

Attention, among the ill informed was directed towards Iraq, which is

just comic cuts, cartoon-strip stuff. Iran is the big player. Iraq has no global following, Iran is a focus point for billions of

Muslims.

Iran matters." She guarded the file with her elbows.

"Who was Frank Perry?"

"His name was Gavin Hughes. He was a pushy young salesman in an engineering manufacturing company at Newbury. He sold commercial

mixing machines, mostly for export."

"What was the Iran link?"

"The Iranians wanted mixing machines for their programme WIVID

development. You know what that is, don't you? Weapons of Mass

Destruction, microbiological, chemical and nuclear."

"But the export to Iran of those machines is blocked by legislahon, enforced by Customs and Excise. Isn't that right?"

and the

"The machines are dual-purpose you were informed of that,

Customs interest. The same machine can be legally exported to mix chewing-gum or toothpaste to industrial quantities, and illegally

exported to mix explosives and the chemical precursors for nerve

gases

47

and

oxins,

bio-t

which are the anthrax or suchlike end of the business.

His company's machines, with falsified export declarations, were for pment of military factories."

the equi

was his importance?"

"What

sharp salesman, as I said, everybody's good guy.

"He's a

People warm

to him, people want to be his friend. The man who is liked and makes iends, he gets access. The access was disproportionate to the

fr

importance of the product he supplied. No need to go to Tehran to meet

him, have him down to Shiraz or Bandar Abbas, sort the problem out time.

there and save

He's a popular man and not stupid. He doesn't

push his luck, just keeps his ears and eyes open, and he oils the

with gifts. It gets so that he's hardly noticed when

friendships

he's

t exaggerating he was remarkable, one of the most

there. I'm no

ve ever had."

valuable assets we'

"Who was the controller running him?"

"Ran him a bit myself at the end, when it was leading up to the itive time. We were into him about eighteen months before it

sens

finished. We'd picked up the illegality bit. He faced a Customs

and

Excise investigation and he'd have gone to prison. We had him well and he knew it. He was always very co-operative. You

stitched,

don't

ho recruited him, did the heavy stuff and pulled him

need to know w

on-side they wouldn't give you the time of day."

"What happened "at the end"? What finished it?"

"We and other agencies became aware of the pace of the development of

chemical warheads. We needed to obstruct, or at least impede, that ssary action was taken."

progress. Nece

the action taken?"

"What was

"You should never try to run, Mr. Markham, before you've learned to

at's not your concern.

walk. Th

but it is my concern if I'm to be in a position where I can

"Sorry,

assess the contemporary threat level."

48

"If you've ever rammed a stick into a wasps' nest then you make the angry.

wasps

They want to sting you. At which point you're advised

to

ell out. That'll have to be good enough for you.

get the h

e Iranians have known that he was the source of

"How would th

information?"

re not idiots, certainly not in our eyes. At the same time

"They'

they

re clearing up the debris, he'd disappeared, left home and work.

we

Yes,

could put that together. They would have been very angry.

they

n looked after?"

"Has he bee

u already know new life, no Customs and Excise feeling his

"What yo

collar, new identity. We treated him well and expensively."

's a minimum of five years ago.

"That

Would their anger have lasted?"

the action that was taken, yes.

"With

The anger might have matured,

but it wouldn't have diminished."

"What are we supposed to do now?"

e

"God, why'd you ask me? Water under the bridge, as far as we'r ncerned. He's no earthly use to us or anyone now, just another

co

engineer doing whatever engineers do."

owe him."

"But if he was brilliant and remarkable, we

"Understood you've done that, offered

I

help.

know his reaction too.

He's made his bed. We don't acknowledge debt to civilians,

businessmen.

on

They work for us, we explain the risks, they stand

we were surprisingly generous in this

their own feet. Actually,

case.

Nothing is owed."

"One last thing. What was the quality of the information on the renewed threat?"

"There's an American in Riyadh, a funny little fellow from the FBI.

He's their Iran guru. He dug up Perry's name, a little consolation on

49

a failed raid. If you call him, don't have a pending appointment

and

don't expect him to draw breath and let you get a word in. Get the message Perry or Hughes is a spent cartridge, he's of no importance.

At

ception they'll show you the lavatory.

the re

The American in Riyadh

is

ttelbaum..."

Li

e electric fan always distorted the television picture, and the

Th

cranking air-conditioner set in the wall did the damage to the sound.

Ellen was responsible for catching the local-language news

Mary-

programme because Littelbaum found it hard to remember schedules.

He

was at his desk, the fan blast riffling the papers in front of him.

This small section of the embassy building that he used with

n

Mary-Elle

and the larger area in an adjacent corridor, the Agency's place, were not served by the building's main air-coolant system. The pipes had been cut off and sealed. A security review, two years back, had

decided that the Bureau and the Agency should be protected from the possible hazard of lethal gases being fed into the system, so they had

their own air-conditioners, a nightmare of noise and unreliability that

the back-up of electric fans.

needed

l-language news bulletin was usually a catalogue of the

The loca

King's

meetings

palace

and the public appearances of the prime princes. The

picture was awful, the sound worse, and the content negligible, so he

let her monitor it. Even above the clatter of the air-conditioner and

the whine of the fan, he heard her gasp. Littelbaum swung in his

chair.

The man's head was down, his voice a monosyllabic whisper.

Goddammit...

ed in a white robe, like a

The man was dress

long shirt. dress, was

round-shouldered as if the hope had gone from him. Under the loosely draped gutra, the scarf covering his head, his eyes had lost their light.

.

Damn, shit, damn... The man mouthed a rehearsed confession

Littelbaum listened as he confessed to terrorism and subversion of the

ed, from when Littelbaum

kingdom. He was shrunken, as if dehydrat

50

d

ha

last seen him, dragged in the sand towards the waiting helicopters.

ards, the lying, deceiving, double-talking bastards... He

The bast

grabbed his herringbone jacket, and ran, a fast waddling gait, for the

door, the corridor, the grille gate where the Marine stood guard,

the

elevator, and the ambassador's floor.

He stood to his full squat height, and his body shook with anger as he

mmered his complaint.

ha

t obstruction. I have been blocked at General Security

"It is jus

six

I have made two dozen, more, calls to General Security,

times and

the

ry, God knows who else.

minist

I have not only been denied the chance

to talk to this man myself, I have not been permitted to read the

rogation dossier. They are supposed to be fucking allies -I

inter

know,

bout their delicate sensibilities, and I know they are a proud

sir, a

and independent people, and please don't tell me to humour them, but I

don't give a shit what happens in this country. The place is a

pit,

cess-

it is corrupt, devious, lying, complacent. Americans died

in

n and Riyadh.

Dhahra

If this man is on TV and making a confession,

then

been tried, convicted, condemned. Three Americans died in

he has

Riyadh, nineteen in Dhahran. Finding the killers of Americans is

my

job.

id

This man, sir, was in contact with an organizer who I am pa

to

track and find. This man could give me the name and the face of that r, but I am blocked.

organize

When he has been, one-way ticket, to

Chop-chop Square, I have lost the chance to get from this man that ion.

informat

I was so goddamn close. So what the fuck are you going

to say to our good sweet allies? I have been working more than two this one chance so I can hunt the bastard down.

years for

What are

you

going to say?"

The ambassador wrung his hands and said he would make telephone calls, which was what he always said. Littelbaum went back to his section.

ew the papers on his desk and Mary-Ellen put a decent slug

The fan bl

51

of

'brown' in his coffee.

The coffee, laced with whiskey, might just make him forget that he had

no face and no name to work towards, and that he did not know where the

footprints led.

The wind whipped about her and could not move her. The sea swell

bucked beneath her and did not shake her.

She was out of the Kharg Island terminal, the property of the National ll sign was EQUZ. Her length,

Iranian Tanker Corporation. Her ca

bow

to stern, was 332 metres; her beam, port to starboard, was 58 metres; her draught, the waterline to the lowest point of the hull, was 22.5

metres. She was loaded with 287,000 tonnes of

Iranian crude. Her speed through the water, regardless of weather conditions, was a constant 21 knots. She had been at sea for thirteen days,

ted

rou

from Kharg Island, past the port of Bandar Abbas, through

the Straits of Hormuz, north up the Red Sea to the canal, away from d and into the Mediterranean.

Port Sai

After navigating the Straits

of

Gibraltar, her last reported position had her giving a wide berth

to

the sea lanes leading to Lisbon. She was two days' sailing from the western approaches of the English Channel. Her crew complement was always thirty-two Iranian and Pakistani nationals, and the master

would

give that number, in truth, to the immigration authorities at the

Swedish

he

refinery. S

was a monster, carving her way forward, moving

remorselessly towards her destination.

ust read it, Mr. Perry, it's all

"J

in here. I can't say it's

anything