HOME RUN

by Gerald Seymour

  He had left his motorcycle a hundred yards behind where t he man that he followed had parked his paint scraped Hillman Hunter. He had trailed the man through the alleyways of the closed bazaar, past the steel shuttered doors, and towards the Masjid-i-Jomeh. He walked on, ignoring the pain of the pebble taped under the ball of his right foot. He watched as the man passed the guards at the outer doorway of the mosque, entering the dark shadow beneath the linked domes. When the man was lost to him, Charlie veered away, and crossed between the sparse traffic to the far side of the street. For years now there had been heightened security at Friday prayers, all across the country, ever since the bomb hidden beneath a prayer mat had exploded at Friday prayers at Tehran University. Charlie watched and waited. The Guards at the entrance to the mosque had seen the young man who now sat on the cracked pavement across the street from them. They had seen his limp, and they waved to him, and smiled a comrade's greeting. A veteran, they would have supposed, of the great marshland battles on the perimeter of Basra far to the south, maybe a casualty of the fierce fighting around Halabja on the mountain road to Baghdad. Charlie knew that men in uniform, and with guns in their hands, and who were stationed far behind the lines, always had respect for a wounded veteran.

  He would cross the street and listen to the Mullah's words from the loudspeakers high on the domes of the Masjid-i-Jomeh, and he would talk to the Guards.

  Charlie had not been brought up to respect the faith of modern Iran. It had been his father's concession to his American-born wife. His mother had had no religion, Charlie had been raised without the teachings of the Ayatollahs, and without the teachings of the Christian priests who had served the expatriate community in Iran. The children he had played with, been taught with before he went to the American school, they had taught Charlie enough of the Moslem faith for him to be able to pass as a believer. He would want to talk with the Guards. Talking was what Charlie did well, and he was better at listening.

  He listened to the Guards. He let them talk. Duty rosters,

  "hypocrite" outrages, troop movements. To questions about himself he was modestly reticent, his wound was a small thing, he hoped that soon he would be fit to return to the service of the Imam.

  Charlie saw the man come out of the mosque. At one moment he was listening attentively to their talk, at the next he had made his farewells, pleading weariness, he must rest, and he had drifted away.

  He had known the name of the man for two years, and he had known his address for seven weeks, since he was last home. He knew the age of the man and the name of his wife, and the number of his children, and he knew the man's work.

  He knew by heart the case histories of at least a dozen of those executed by this man since the Revolution. He knew that, depending upon the order of the Islamic Revolutionary Courts, sometimes the man made his executions by hanging and sometimes by shooting.

  The man was at peace, safe after communication with his God, safe in his home city, safe in the service of his Imam.

  The man had hanged a teenager of the Baha'i faith who had refused after torture to recant his heresy. He had shot the 94-year-old former Captain Iraj Matbu'i, who had been helped to the execution post, sentenced for leading the Gendarmes against the Mullahs in the Mashad revolt of 1935. In public, he had hanged Juliette Eshraq.

  Charlie had known the man's name for two years, since he had first returned to Iran, since he had scraped away at the story of his sister's death. It had taken longer to find the names of the two Guards who had lifted her on to the table, beneath the crane, in front of the Guards' barracks in Tabriz. These two he had now hunted and killed. He knew the name of the investigator who had tortured his sister. He knew the name of the Mullah who had tried and sentenced his sister.

  He saw the man climb into his old car. He rode behind him across the bridge, over the broad river that was swollen by the melting mountain snows from the north, along the straight road beside the cemetery and the gardens that once had been the city's pride. The midday heat, trapped in the valley, Mistered the squat concrete buildings. Charlie felt the warmth of the air on his face as he rattled in the wake of the Hillman Hunter, bouncing over the coarse paving of the old road.

  The car ahead of him pulled off the road, no signal, wound up a dry dust lane. Charlie braked, cut his engine, dismounted and seemed to be adjusting his chain. He watched the children stream out of the house, and the man laugh with them, reach lor them, and lift them.

  He had seen enough. Charlie remounted and powered the motorcycle away.

  Young Darren had been left to sit in an Interview Room, watched over by an expressionless policewoman, and sweat.

  His two juniors reported to the local detective, and in the Chief Superintendent's office, sitting back easily, feigning the indifference of rank, were the big shots from Constabulary Headquarters. The local detective liked what he heard. Young Darren had been lifted outside his address, taken on the pavement as his hands were busy with the keys and door handle of his car. Two arresting officers approaching from different directions, and the suspect taken unawares, and without the chance to dispose of the evidence.

  The detective heard them out, then muttered a lukewarm congratulation. He could play politics with the best of them.

  Nothing too fulsome, because that way he gave the impression that it wasn't a miracle that they had done it right. When they had finished, and bowed their way out of the presence, the detective addressed himself to his seniors. He had the file. He glossed through the prime detail. Cole, Darren Victor. Age, 24 years. Address . . .Previous: Possession (fined), Possession (fined), Possession (6 months). Common-law wife, two babies.

  Income: No visible means. Upsum: Hick, second-rate villain, pusher and user . . . Young Cole was what would be expected in a country town. Small time, small beer, not the sort of chummy who would ever expect to be confronted in the interview room by big shots from headquarters.

  They left the local detective with no doubts. He was working to them, they were in charge, they had taken over. He would do as he was told and be thankful for it. He didn't complain, had never in his police career tried to buck the system. He was to go back to Darren Cole's address with his two juniors and a dog, relieve the uniformed constable who had been left to watch over the woman and her brats, and take the place apart. He would not be required for the interview with chummy, and God help him if he came out of that house with at least one evidence bag not filled.

  In the interview room they dismissed the policewoman. They introduced themselves, a Superintendent and a Chief Inspector. They sat and tilted their chairs back as if that were more comfortable. They looked at Darren Cole like he was filth, like they'd want a good wash after being in the same room with him.

  Their chummy's eyes flickered, hovered from one to the other.

  They let him soak it in, they wanted him soft.

  "It's Darren, right? Darren Cole, is that right?" The Chief Inspector said softly.

  Their chummy pursed his lips, stayed quiet.

  The Superintendent said, "I am going to assume, Darren, that you are not wholly retarded. I'm going to give you the benefit that you are not completely dumb. Now it's not every day that the likes of my colleague and I miss our breakfast to get down here to talk with a shit bag such as yourself, Darren.

  Have you got me?"

  Young Darren nodded, nervous and showing it.

  "Can we start again, Darren?" The Chief Inspector passed his pack of cigarettes across the table, and Darren Cole fished one clear and his hand was shaking as he held the cigarette to his mouth. It was lit for him. Neither of the big shots took a cigarette. "You are Darren Cole, is that right?"

  A feeble reed reply. "Yes."

  "Good boy, Darren . . . I said to my colleague that Darren Cole was cute enough to know what's good for him. I said that Darren Cole would know how to behave. You push scag, chummy."

  "Might have done . . ."

  "You push it regular."

  "Maybe."
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  The Chief Inspector's voice hardened. "Regular."

  "So, I do."

  "You pushed to Lucy Barnes."

  "I don't know the names."

  "To Lucy Barnes."

  "Perhaps."

  "Getting silly again, Darren . . . To Lucy Barnes."

  "Yes."

  "You gave Lucy Barnes her scag."

  Darren shrugged.

  The Superintendent said, "Lucy Barnes is dead, chummy.

  On the slab. Don't tell me that you didn't know. Christ, is this bloody cow town so bloody slow . . . ?"

  There was a quiet knock at the door. A uniformed policeman came in and handed the Superintendent a folded message sheet. He read it slowly, he smiled slowly, then he handed the message sheet to the Chief Inspector. Another smile and then the fast look of satisfaction between the two of them. Darren Cole saw the signs. He was shrivelling in his chair.

  "The dog's been down at your place, Darren. I tell you what, when you get through this, when you've done whatever's coming your way, then I'd learn to hide things a little better.

  I mean that approximately 400 grammes of what we are presuming to be a prohibited substance, namely heroin, could be better hidden than under the bloody mattress. That's making it easy for the dog, Darren, oh dear, oh dear me . . . "

  "That's not very clever, chummy," the Superintendent shook his head.

  They had the well oiled routine, they had been working in tandem for more than a decade. Straightforward, this one, a roll over.

  "You are looking at a bad scene, Darren," the Chief Inspector said it as if it hurt him.

  "I didn't know she was dead."

  "You've only done an open prison, Darren. Closed prison isn't the same. The Scrubs, Pentonville, Winson Green, Long Larton, Parkhurst, they're not the same as where you were.

  They are nasty news, Darren. Do you know what you're looking at, Darren?"

  Cole did not reply. His head was sinking.

  "You could be looking at a tenner, Darren, because of who and what Miss Lucy Barnes was. God's truth, Darren, a tenner. A very hard time in those places, Darren, if we weren't speaking up for you."

  The voice was muffled through the hands, pathetic. "What do you want?"

  "We don't want_yow, chummy, that's for sure, we want up the chain from you. We'd speak up for you, if you gave us the name of the dealer."

  A long silence in the Interview Room.

  The Superintendent said easily, "Just the name of your dealer, chummy."

  Cole's head burst upwards. He was actually laughing. His shoulders and upper body were convulsed, like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. His mouth was frothing.

  "You trying to get me blown away? I don't get less than a lenner if I grass, I get stiffed. You get a name and they don't ever forget. Shove it, mister."

  For the next hour Darren Cole stared fixedly ahead of him.

  His mouth never opened.

  The big shots from Constabulary Headquarters seethed, shouted, bribed, and won nothing. The local detective had a quiet chuckle around lunchtime when he heard how well they had done.

  In cumbersome longhand, using a thick-nibbed pen, in handwriting that only Miss Duggan could decipher, Mattie wrote out the signals. There were those to the Station Chiefs around the Iranian frontiers and sea boundaries, where the watchers of events inside that closed country operated, and there were those that would be received inside Iran. The Station Chiefs in Dubai, Bahrain and Ankara were informed by coded teleprinter messages beamed by the aerials on the roof of Century House to a radio farm in Shropshire and then on to a booster clinging to the summit point of the Troodos mountains in Cyprus, that Codeword Dolphin was coming. Signals to inside Iran were drafted for transmission on the evening Farsi language commentary as broadcast by the World Service of the BBC from Bush House. Those signals would be received by a man who worked in the Harbourmaster's Office at the newly developed port of Bandar Abbas, by a man who had a carpet business in the close and covered alleyways of Tehran's bazaar, and by a man who repaired heavy goods vehicles in a yard behind the old railway station at Tabriz.

  When she had sent down the messages and signals to the basement, his PA reverted to form. She began to fuss him with detail. Were Mr Furniss' inoculations up to date? When could he manage an appointment with the medical staff for malaria pills, stomach pills, sleeping pills for the aircraft? She would go to the third floor for his travellers' cheques, but would he sign this authorization? And for his tickets. Please sign here, here and here. And would he be wanting the car to collect him for the airport directly from home, or from Century? Should a final appointment be arranged with the Director General? And inside the passport was a folded slip of paper as a reminder not to forget the girls, nor Mrs Furniss, of course. "I don't suppose she was taken in for one moment by that cardigan I found in the Strand the last time you came back."

  The routine of travel was no longer second nature to him.

  He gave way before the organizational blizzard that was Miss Duggan. He sat on the two-seater sofa in the partitioned office, he had the ripple of her keyboard in his ears. Quietly he read his book. He was stocking his mind with detail. Wonderful people, the Urartians, an extraordinary and flourishing civilization of three hundred years, and then gone. A thousand years before Christ's birth, this stocky people had made their mark across the wedge that was now divided between Turkey, Iraq and north-eastern Iran. He was already an authority of some stature concerning their artefacts, their belts and earrings and bracelets, their cuneiform script that he had seen gouged out on the walls of ruins and caves. Most certainly he would get to the Van Kalesi. The Urartian fortress at Van, safely inside Turkey, was earmarked as the next stop after Tabriz. Very much indeed he would look forward to being there. He summoned up the memory of Van Kalesi, built of dressed stone blocks that weighed up to 25 tons apiece, the canal that brought water to Van from 40 miles away. A civilization reduced by the Assyrians to bronze trifles and pottery shards, and amusement for men such as Mattie Furniss. The book he now read described the excavation in 1936 of a Urartian fortress town in present day Soviet Armenia, the first time that he had come across a readable and unabridged translation of the report. The purpose of his reading was cover. Whenever Mattie travelled in the Gulf and Near Asia it was as an archaeologist. One day he would write his own book on the Urartians. Damned if he knew how he would get it published commercially, but if all else failed Harriet would probably pay for a private printing of his view of Urartian culture.

  Miss Duggan was locking her papers into the wall safe, Time for lunch. Time for the canteen queue. He seldom took lunch in his office, he enjoyed the chance to spend the time with colleagues at the formica topped tables of the canteen.

  The food was edible, the view across the river was always interesting. He put a marker in his book and followed her out.

  Mattie was a popular figure at Century. Not just because of the long time that he had been with the Service, but because no man, young or old, senior or junior, could remember the least discourtesy or pomposity from the Head of Iran Desk.

  He had not reached his rank by treading on the prospects of anyone else on the staff. He was generous to any colleague in difficulty, or who sought his advice. Many did. He would never have claimed to be popular, was not even aware of it.

  He went down in the lift with Israel Desk.

  "Sorry about what happened the other day up there, Mattie.

  The DG's no right to speak like that in front of colleagues, nor privately. I didn't reckon at the time it would have helped you had I stood your corner, if it happens again I will. Chin up, eh, Mattie . . ."

  Mattie could summon his fluent smile, as if little things like that didn't annoy him.

  At the counter he took a full lunch on to his tray because Harriet was out that night, a committee on something or other, and at home he'd be doing for himself. Percy Martins was behind him. Percy Martins ran Jordan, Syria and Iraq.

  He ha
d done something worthwhile, and quite insane, a couple of years back and had himself promoted a light year beyond his ability, and the new DG hadn't yet got round to sorting it out.

  "Thanks for that about the Sanandaj units, Mattie. We slid it down to the Baghdad chappies, by now it'll be into the Iraqi system. Very grateful. . . . Sorry about your run in with the bossman. My own view is that he's no background and shouldn't have been let past the front desk. If there's any time you need speaking for then I'm your man . . . "

  A tiny, warm smile, which said, "wouldn't be necessary, old fellow, but thanks all the same".

  He found himself a table. He needed to be alone. He had his knife into the liver when the seat opposite was taken. Old Henry Carter . . . Good God, thought he'd gone in the first reshuffle. Henry Carter, bachelor, prissy old thing, but sharp, had been in place when Mattie was joining. He couldn't imagine what Henry Carter did round the place these days.

  Used to be something about safe houses and de-briefs, never quite certain, and it was the way of the Service now that work was specialised that officers were not encouraged to gossip with men and women from unrelated sections. Such a hell of a quiet voice, and it was rude not to listen, but so damned hard to hear what the man was trying to say.

  "I can see it in your face, you thought I'd gone. Should have done, I was supposed to have been pensioned off last year, but I managed twelve months' extension. They all think I'm a lunatic, still being here, but what does a retired spookie get up to? I dread retirement, it's the only thing in my life I'm actually frightened of, handing my I/D in and walking out of Century for the last time. Sorry about your problems, that man needs a brain scan . . . "

  It must be all round the building, Mattie concluded, and that was extremely unprofessional . . . Two others came over and muttered at him, as if to a bereaved husband, before he had finished his treacle tart and custard. He felt that he was being set up as a faction leader. He would not tolerate that.