HOME RUN (16 page)

The crossing point was at the apex of a salient of Iran territory to the west of the village of Lura Shirin. Each time he had taken this route he had travelled alone. He was north of the sector through which the refugees usually tried to escape, with the help of Kurdish villagers who would lead them to the frontier if the money were right. With his life, Charlie Eshraq trusted no other person. He had heard from the exile community in Istanbul many stories about the crossing of the frontier. In the cafes, in the bars, he had spoken with those who had come through, stripped of their money by the guides, their nerves shredded by the patrols on either side. He knew that the Guards Corps regularly patrolled the Iranian side and were committed to hunting down those that they hated most, the draft dodgers. He knew that Turkish paratroopers were set out in strength on the west of the border with night vision equipment and with helicopter gunships. He knew that a boy, running from conscription, running from a place in the trenches outside Basra, could evade the Guards Corps patrols only to be caught by the Turks and handed back. The first time he had crossed he had chosen a route that was well away from the paths used by the Kurdish guides.

When he had forded the stream, he felt a small sense of sadness. He remembered the wetness in Majid Nazeri's eyes, and he thought of him polishing the motorcycle. He thought of the girl. He knew he would not be happy until he was back.

He moved forward as quickly as he dared. It was a steep rock climb up a feeder gully, the rucksack was heavy on his back. His hands were cold and slippery and he worked hard to get away, up out of the stream bed. He wanted to be over the line of the ridge before the sun had risen behind him, before he could be silhouetted on its back.

* * *

Araqi flew to London on a jumbo of IranAir. During the flight and on disembarkation he wore the blue livery of a cabin steward. By chance he was known to one of the Guard Corps who travelled the route as a sky marshal. They silently acknowledged each other and made no occasion to exchange greeting. Araqi knew the skymarshal, one of four on the aircraft, because they had been together at Manzarieh Park.

He would not see the skymarshal after the crew had left the aircraft because it was the job of the guards to stay with their charge at all times. The skymarshal would sleep on board, while Araqi travelled with the incoming and outgoing crews to the hotel in West London where there was a permanent block booking for IranAir personnel.

Araqi rode in the airline bus to the hotel. Whereas many of the crew, excepting the Captain and Second Officer, would double up, he had been allocated a room to himself. It was a small point, but it should have been noted by the Anti-Terrorist squad personnel that watched over matters Iranian in the British capital. A number of factors led to this oversight: there was intelligence on the movement of an Active Service Unit from West Belfast; there had been a diversion of manpower following the planting of incendiary devices in two Oxford Street department stores by the Animal Liberation Front; the squad's guard was perhaps a degree down since there had been no Iranian terrorist action in the United Kingdom for eleven months; and to cap it there were casualties from the virulent influenza sweeping the city. Later there would be an inquiry as to how that small point had been missed, but that would be the familiar if painstaking slamming of the stable door.

The materials would be delivered to Araqi; he would manufacture the bomb, he would put it in the killing place, and (hen he would get himself back to the hotel and leave the country in the same way as he had arrived. Those were his concerns. The provision of the explosives and the reconnais-sance of the target would be handled by others, they were not his concern.

Araqi was a dedicated man. He had brought with him the map of the world from the aircraft's inflight magazine, and he had in his case a small compass. So when he knelt in prayer he could be certain that he faced the shrine of the black Kaaba building at Mecca.

After his prayers, behind his locked door, waiting to be contacted, he read verses from the Qur'an.

He recognised the wide sweep of the shoulders, and the wisping hair that ranged over the collar of the old linen jacket.

And the voice was unmistakable. Ancient Britons nearly always shouted when they spoke to a person whose native tongue was other than English. The whole of the reception area was aware that Mr Furniss was visiting one more fortress, would be handing over the car at noon the next day, and would then be checking out.

To Charlie Eshraq, tired and dirty himself, it was quite wonderful to have walked into the Akdamar, in search of a hot bath, and found Mr Furniss.

He stood back. There were mud stains on the trousers of Mr Matthew Furniss, as if he had been kneeling in the earth, and his shoes were mud-caked. He waited until Mr Furniss had finished at his desk, and slung his camera bag on his shoulder, and had headed for the staircase. He thought that he knew which camera would be in the bag. It would be the old Pentax, everything manual, that had photographed him on the grass lawn behind the cottage. His mother, in California, had a picture of her son taken on the lawn at Bibury with that camera. He followed his father's friend up the stairs and on to the first floor.

When Mr Furniss had stopped outside a door, when he was scrabbling in his pocket for his room key, Charlie spoke.

"Hello, Mr Furniss."

He saw the man swivel. "I'm Dr Owens," he said. Charlie saw the astonishment and the recognition. "Good God . . . "

"It is a real surprise."

"Fantastic, dear boy. Quite amazing. What on earth are you doing here?"

"Looking for a bath, Mr Furniss."

"You'll be extraordinarily lucky to find some hot water, but you're very welcome to the bath."

"And you, Mr Furniss, what are you doing here?"

He should not have asked that question. The question was cheek. He saw the fun streak in Mr Furniss' eyes. Mr Furniss had long ago told Charlie that he could make an old man feel young.

"Turning over some old stones, what else?"

So natural . . . the door was opened. Charlie was hugged, like a son, and his back was slapped as if he were a large dog.

The room was chaos. The only patch of order was the bed which had been made. No one had tidied the clothes, clean or dirty, and the guide books, and the handwritten notes, and the drawings of sections of the Van Kalesi lay scattered on and about the dressing table.

"An extreme form of liberation, dear boy, a man staying in a hotel on his own . . . Good heavens, Charlie, you've just walked out today? Forgive me meandering on. You must be done in. Can I send for something for you to eat and drink?

Meantime, run a bath. What would you like most?"

After a stone-cold bath and a trolley of food, Charlie set out to tell Mr Furniss all that he was clearly impatient to hear.

Charlie told him first of his crossing of the frontier. The bus ride from Tabriz around the shores of Lake Urmia to Rezai-yeh. Moving at night, on foot, into the hills and then on into the mountains. Crossing . . . Slipping the Turkish army patrols, getting to the main road. Hitching to Van.

And then he talked of unit movements between Tehran and Tabriz. He talked of a meeting on the bus with a sergeant in artillery who complained that on the front line Dezful sector the 105mm howitzers were restricted to seven shells a day.

He talked of the Mullah that he had shadowed, and how the bazaar gossip had told him that the Mullah was climbing high in the faction that was radical. He talked of a mechanic in the Engineers who had told him in a cafe that an armoured regiment positioned at Susangerd was about to be mothballed because every one of the 72 British-built Chieftain tanks had a mechanical failure and the unit was without spare parts. He talked of the feelings that had been expressed to him about the
Mojahedin-e Khalq
and their operations into Iran from behind the shelter of the enemy Iraqi army. ". . . they're dead. They cannot exist inside the country. They do nothing outside the border areas, believe me. There is no resistance inside the country. The resistance has been crushed . . . "

For two and a half hours Charlie talked and Mr Furniss covered every sheet of the hotel notepaper that was left in the room. The interruptions were few. When they came they were nudgings of Charlie's memory, prompting him to recall further what he had seen, what he had heard.

"First class, dear boy . . . "

"What are your own movements now, Mr Furniss?"

"Tragic but true, business has overtaken recreation. I've fixed myself a military pass into the Toprakkale army zone.

Quite pleased about that. It's a closed area, but there's a fort inside the perimeter. I meant to go this afternoon, but it'll have to wait until tomorrow. Always work first, eh?"

"Is that why you are in Van, to visit ruins?"

Charlie smiled at Mr Furniss' frown. Then the grin, as if the mischief were shared. He believed he could see a glow of happiness in the older man's face.

"Did you use my little cracker?"

"I did it just as the instructions told me."

"Tell me, Charlie."

"The motorcycle, the drawing up alongside, slamming it on the roof. I saw his face before I drew away from him. He didn't know what it was, but he had fear. There was nothing he could do because he was boxed around by lorries. He couldn't stop, he couldn't get out. He had nowhere to go."

"I will never forget what a fine child was your sister."

"When I go back again, inside, I have to have armour-piercing."

"One step at a time, dear boy."

"What else, sir?"

"Well, just remember what a fine girl Juliette was. Put the rest of it out of your mind. You've done enough."

"With armour-piercing weapons I can take out the Mullah who sentenced her, and I think that I can get also to the investigator who tortured her. I have identified both of them."

He saw that Mr Furniss was staring out of the window. He thought he understood why Mr Furniss had turned his head away. The view from the hotel room window was nothing more than a mass of different, improvised roof tops. It had been Mr Furniss who had told him the detail of his father's execution and the hanging of his sister. Each time, then, Mr Furniss had turned away his face.

"But if I don't have the armour-piercing it would be much harder. In fact, I don't know how it could be done."

"I think it would be better, Charlie, if you didn't come down to Bibury again . . . more professional that way."

"Is that going to be a problem, that sort of weapon?"

"Dear boy, I've told you where to go. You can buy anything if you have the money. Do you have the money?"

"The money is no problem, Mr Furniss."

Parrish wasn't surprised to find that Keeper had beaten him into the Lane.

He poured himself coffee from the percolator.

"Nothing . . . ?"

Park shook his head.

" . . . What have we got?"

"Surveillance on Manvers' place. The name and type at ports, airports . . . nothing's showing."

"Something'll show, it always does."

"Well, not yet it hasn't."

"What I always say . . . Fortune favours the patient."

"It's bloody hard," Park snapped. "I don't think I was cut out for Fortune."

Mattie was tired. He had slept badly because the young man with a blanket bed on the floor had tossed, rolled, right through the night, and then been gone at first light.

He was elated. This visit to the ruins in Toprakkale military was the zenith of his whole journey. But he was running late.

That was inevitable, given the fascination of the ruins, and he had to get the car back to Van, pack up his bags, settle his hotel bill, and catch the flight to Ankara.

Because he was exhausted, excited and in a hurry, he was not aware of the Dodge pick-up closing on him from behind.

He had not thought twice about the tractor hauling a trailer from a sheep pen by the roadside ahead of him. He had not planned his route from Van to Toprakkale, merely followed the map. He did not react well. . . The tutors at Portsmouth would have been disgusted. All those hours teaching him AOPR: Awareness, Observation, Planning, Reaction. If it had been Mattie's class and a youngster had let himself into that mess at the training centre, Mattie would have roasted him in front of all the others.

A straight stretch of road was all he saw. The road ahead empty except for the tractor and its long trailer stacked high with bales of fodder. It was empty behind him, and he wasn't checking, except for the pick-up.

Mattie should have been in a performance car. He should have been using a professional driver. He should have seen the block ahead, and the block behind.

The tractor stopped.

And that should have triggered the alarm bell for Mattie.

He should have gone off the road, risked a soft verge. He should have tried the "bootlegger turn", hand brake on and wheel spin to throw him round.

He was like a lamb to the slaughter. He pumped the brake gently, he brought the Fiat 127 to a stop. He pressed the horn, once, politely.

There was a violent shuddering crash as the Dodge pick-up smashed against the boot of the Fiat. Mattie was flung back, skull against the head rest. He twisted, heart-racing, sickening fright welling into him, to look behind.

Men running from the pick-up towards him, one from either side, and a man coming at him in front, charging towards the car. He saw the handguns and the machine pistol.

Three men coming at him, all armed. His engine had cut when he had been rammed.

The door beside him surged open. Christ, and he hadn't even locked his door . . .

He shouted loudly, in English, "I haven't got much money, I'll give you . . ."

He was pulled out, thrown onto the road surface, a boot went into his face, his wrists were heaved to the small of his back and he felt plastic ties going sharply into his flesh. He was dragged towards the rear door of the pick-up.

Mattie understood. He would have been a bloody fool not to have understood.