The Persian Price (22 page)

‘It's a very strange experience. You feel completely cut off. As if nobody in the world knew or cared what happened to you. Did you feel like that?'

‘No,' Peters said. ‘I had friends. I knew they'd get me out.'

He was thinking of a filthy cell in Santiago, where he had been held on suspicion without trial. A bomb explosion had released him. That had been the first time he was arrested. The night he was beaten up in the police station at Kent State was in a special category. He knew what Eileen meant by feeling isolated but he had never experienced it in that sense. He had been isolated from society in the mass for nearly seven years.

‘You have plenty of time to think,' she said.

He was leaning back in the chair, his eyes half closed. He was close enough to grab hold of her if she made a move. It was very warm and drowsy under the shade. A large yellow butterfly sped lazily past them, pirouetting on the way to a hibiscus bush. Eileen watched it. She could see the villa through the trees. From her memory of the front when they arrived in the car, there was a wall around it and the gates to the road were down a short drive from the front door. She was wearing the caftan Peters had bought in Nice. Under the long skirts she slipped out of her high heeled shoes. Coming down through the garden she had plotted the way round to the gate in her mind while she walked beside Peters, his hand holding her arm. There was no specific plan in her mind, only an instinct that clamoured for her to take this opportunity because there might not be another. In bare feet she could run fast. He wasn't carrying a gun. The casual dress of shorts and a sweat shirt told her that. If she could reach the gate and the road … she was sure there was a villa not more than fifty yards away on the left.

‘I'm sleepy,' she said.

He turned his head towards her.

‘Go ahead,' he said. ‘It's getting very hot.'

She shut her eyes and let herself relax. Her arm was resting near to his; the lounging chairs were side by side. She let it slip onto her lap. She stayed quite still, keeping her eyes closed. The effort was agonizing. She began to count under her breath, marking off the minutes. After she had calculated a quarter of an hour, Eileen opened her eyes enough to glimpse him. He was lying back, his arms folded across his chest, his head turned away from her. She waited for some minutes, watching him. He didn't move. She slid one leg to the side and followed it with the other. One foot on the ground. Again she waited. She couldn't see his face but he seemed to be asleep. The chair didn't creak as she moved. She eased herself upright, watching him in terror in case his head suddenly turned and he should find her poised to run away. He stayed still. Very slowly and carefully she levered herself by her hands until she was half out of the chair with both feet on the ground. She felt as if she were suffocating, her heart beat was so rapid. He seemed to be breathing heavily; his posture in the chair was completely relaxed. She was on the ground. She turned and fled to the right, towards the avenue of trees and the front of the villa.

Peters was not asleep. He thought that she was. He didn't hear her creep out of the chair; he was in the twilight when the mind is blank and the body relaxed. She had almost reached the gates when he turned round and saw that she had gone.

The driveway was gravel and sharp under her feet. The surface was also very hot; as she ran she felt the sting of burning. She was gasping for breath, fighting the weakness of confinement without exercise, seeing the gates in front of her. Twenty-five yards and she would reach them. Peters was superbly fit. He ran like a stag and he caught her as she was wrenching at the locked gates in despair, tears streaming down her face. She started to scream wildly as he pulled her back, holding onto the bars. He heard a car approaching down the road. He slammed his hand over her mouth and hurled her bodily into the bushes out of sight. He held her there, pinned to the ground, until the car had passed them. Then he pulled her onto her feet. She stood, dishevelled and weeping. He pushed her round to the back and into the villa. They went upstairs and he unlocked the door, still holding her.

‘You fool,' he said. ‘I trusted you.'

She turned in the room and faced him. The reproach was suddenly more than she could bear.

‘I had to try,' she cried out. ‘Don't you see? He's never going to give you what you want. He doesn't want me back!'

‘Shut up!' Peters shouted at her. He slammed the door behind him and advanced upon her. He was angry enough to hit her. ‘Shut up!'

‘Tell me what you've asked for,' Eileen said. ‘I've got a right to know.' The moment of collapse was past. She had never had a chance of getting out. He had known the gates were kept locked. ‘Oh God,' she said, ‘I wish you'd get it over.'

‘You could have been killed out there,' Peters said. ‘If Ahmed or Resnais had seen you, they'd have shot you dead.'

‘That's going to happen anyway,' she said. ‘I know it. That's why I tried to get away.'

‘It isn't going to happen,' Peters said. ‘You keep on saying that. I know he'll give it up. Nothing's going to happen to you.'

‘Give up what?' Eileen asked slowly. ‘What have you asked Logan in exchange for me?'

He didn't want to tell her; she should have been kept ignorant either way. But he was losing hope himself because of her despair.

‘Imshan,' he said. ‘He's got to pull out of the oil-fields. That's why it's taking time.'

‘I see.' She turned away and sat on the edge of the bed. She pushed her hair back and there was a streak of dirt across her cheek from where she had clung to the gates.

‘Now I understand why you wanted to kidnap Lucy. He might have done it for her. But you've asked the one thing in the world that my husband will never do for me.'

‘You're his wife,' Peters said. ‘He won't let you die.'

‘He wants to marry someone else,' she said and her voice was flat and calm. ‘I came back from Tehran because he'd asked me for a divorce. You took the wrong person.'

Outside a distant aeroplane hummed like an angry bee. It was the only sound.

He stared at her. She was sitting very still. The caftan had been torn when they struggled by the gate. Logan Field wanted a divorce. They had kidnapped her instead of the child and all the time she had no value as a hostage. Field was going to discard her anyway. He couldn't believe it. He refused to accept what she said. There was a slow dejection about her as she sat on the bed that was unbearable to watch. He came and caught her by the shoulders.

‘You're not lying to me? You're telling the truth?'

‘Janet Armstrong is his assistant,' Eileen said. ‘That's who he wants to marry. I mentioned her in the message.'

‘Oh Christ,' Peters said very low. ‘Oh Christ, what a mess.' He was holding her so tightly that it hurt.

‘I wish you'd told me before,' she said quietly. ‘I've gone on hoping, thinking it was money. He'd pay money for me, I know that. But never Imshan. It's the most important thing in his life. He'd never give it up for anything or anyone in the world. Except Lucy. Never for me.'

Peters looked down at her; her face was upturned, with the dirty smudge on the right cheek and the stains of tears around her eyes.

‘How many people know about this?'

‘Only the director in Tehran. I told him about it before I left.'

Peters lifted her off the bed. He held her a little way away from him.

‘If it's not common knowledge, it doesn't matter,' he insisted. ‘Logan may think better of it. He can't live with himself if he walks out on you now. We've got to keep hoping that he'll crack. So long as our people don't find out …'

If Damascus discovered that she wasn't any use to them, he knew what the order would be. Execute her. He had been insisting to himself that if Field accepted the terms, Eileen would be released, but he had begun to doubt that too. Now her life wasn't worth a spent match. He suddenly drew her close to him. He didn't kiss her but for a moment his hand came round and stroked her hair.

‘I can't let you go,' he said slowly. ‘I can't do that. But I promise you, nobody's going to hurt you. Whatever the outcome, I'll see nothing happens to you. Will you trust me?'

Eileen leaned against him. She felt very tired, as if the will to resist had emptied itself in that attempt to escape. When she reached the gates and found them locked it was the end. Even before she knew that the price for her survival was the one that Logan Field would never pay. The man holding her cared, as her husband did not. He was promising her something which she knew meant his betrayal of his friends and his political beliefs. ‘Nobody's going to hurt you.' For almost three weeks she had been holding out against the temptation of all prisoners to form an emotional attachment to a captor who was kind to them. She had lived with fear, uncertainty and physical assault, and somehow kept her courage and her hope. Now all she could feel was his strength and the warmth of his body. He wanted her and she could feel the tension growing in him as he held her. She had no friend in the world left but him. The mental and physical temptation to give in to him was the strongest feeling she could remember. Beyond him was the outside world. She had no contact with it. It had forgotten her. She had lived in the villa, preserved in her isolation and captivity like a fly in amber. Only Peters was real. Peters had saved her from Resnais. He was promising to save her again.

‘I'll make it as easy as I can for you,' he was saying. ‘You can't get away and you know it now. Do as I tell you and we'll just have to hope it turns out right.'

Eileen lifted her head and looked up at him. The message was clear.

‘I've got to go down,' he said. ‘I've got to keep the others sweet. They mustn't suspect anything.' He stepped away from her.

‘Come back,' Eileen said.

‘Only if you want it,' Peters answered. ‘You don't have to. It's not part of the deal.'

‘I never thought it was,' she said. And she repeated it. ‘Come back.'

The party at the French Embassy was to celebrate Bastille Day. There was a reception in the garden. James Kelly had arrived early and he was talking to a group of French Embassy officials. He had been
en poste
in Paris for two years during his Foreign Office career and formed a deep attachment to France. His appreciation of French culture had made him many friends; an introduction to the Ambassador in Tehran had come from one of them as soon as his arrival in Tehran was known. He had come early because he couldn't stand being alone in the house. He had met Saiid Homsi that morning. The rendezvous was in the Bazaar in South Tehran. He had faced Homsi in a dingy little office behind one of the shops selling brassware to the tourists. And he had delivered Logan's demand. Proof that Eileen was still alive or no deal on Imshan would be considered. The interview was brief and the Syrian was just as smooth and hypocritical as he had been with Logan. He had expressed alarm at Logan's trip to Tokyo, but James had reassured him that it was only undertaken to block the negotiations begun by his subordinates. He had added a brief of his own. ‘Tell the PLF that I personally will ensure that Imshan comes to nothing, side by side with Mr Field.' The Syrian had smiled a little, showing a gleam of gold teeth, as if he understood how personal James Kelly's motives were. James had gone to the office and somehow got through the day. He didn't want to work; he wanted to call everyone together and tell them that the company wasn't going through with Imshan and they could start packing up to go home.

He didn't trust Logan. He believed, quite wrongly, that Janet Armstrong was influencing him from sinister motives and that Logan was willing to be influenced. He could sense the hesitation, the open-ended option in Logan's mind. He wanted the oil-field; he had already rejected Eileen before there was a choice between them. Above all he was ruled by ruthless logic; even his admirers described him as an arch pragmatist; catfooted in his ability to leap from one position to another as a situation changed. He was trying to convince himself, not that he couldn't make the decision in Eileen's favour but that it wouldn't help her if he did. James was not inclined to violent feelings. His nature was steadfast and deep in affection, reserved and disinterested in dislike. But for Logan he experienced real visceral hate.

He showered and changed and fled from his house and the torment in his mind to the relief of human company which was not connected with Imperial Oil.

The wife of the First Secretary was chatting to him. She was a charming woman in her late thirties, endowed with a wit and chic which attracted him, and she had managed to make him laugh and relax a little. He felt a touch on his elbow.

‘Good evening, Mr Kelly.'

‘Good evening, Colonel. Is Madame Ardalan with you?'

The Colonel shook his head.

‘Unfortunately she has a fever. Some small thing … She was looking forward to coming this evening.'

The garden was filling with people. The Frenchwoman excused herself and James was alone with Ardalan.

‘You look tired, Mr Kelly,' he said. ‘Have you been working hard?'

‘Yes, fairly hard. Mr Field likes to keep things moving pretty fast.'

The Colonel offered him a cigarette.

‘And how are the negotiations going?' He glanced up for a fraction of a second from lighting it and saw the change of expression on Kelly's face. It was only a glimpse, a sudden tensing of the facial muscles, but it told him that the answer wouldn't be the truth.

‘Not too well,' James said. ‘We're a bit worried about things at the moment.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that,' Ardalan said. ‘Mr Field must be very anxious. I have heard that he is very enthusiastic about the field.'

‘Oh yes.' James's diplomatic training wasn't proof against his terror for Eileen. He abhorred discussing the oil-field and he couldn't hide his reluctance.