HOME RUN

by Gerald Seymour

  He would refuse most categorically to become a centre of resentment against new management.

  Carter asked, "What are you going to do, Mattie, when you retire?"

  "Write a book. The tale of a lost civilization."

  "That's very good. Sub-title, A History of the Secret Intelligence Service."

  The news from the National Drugs Intelligence Unit was spring water clear.

  "Listen, my friend, I have a powerful breath on my collar.

  If you can't get a dealer's name off a pusher in the backwoods, just let me know, one hour from now, and I'll send down one of my graduate trainees. Do I make myself plain, old friend?

  The name of the dealer or you're off the case."

  The telephone purred into the ear of the Superintendent.

  He was flushed. His Chief Inspector was head down into his notes and not wishing to witness the discomfort.

  "Our local hero, where is he?"

  "Still down at the Cole residence."

  "Get him here."

  The Chief Inspector gagged. "You're not going to hand it over to him?"

  "Right now, if it would concentrate that little bastard's mind, I'd hand it over to the dog."

  The radio transmitters and the teleprinters were in the guts of the building, and that was where the decipher clerks worked, in a constant air-conditioned breeze. The signal from London was passed to the junior spook.

  The junior spook had now to walk up two flights of stairs, and down a corridor that was shared with the Military Attache's office before getting to the secure area from which the Service worked. The original Embassy planners had made no allowances for the fall of the Shah of Iran and the conse-quent upgrading of the mission. That Bahrain would become a listening post, a base for watchers and analysts of events in the country across the Gulf waters, had not been foreseen. To rebuild the Embassy to satisfy the needs of the Service was out of the question. To have moved the Service personnel out of the Embassy and into quarters of their own would have increased their running costs, and denied them the Embassy security umbrella.

  The tea boy had carried cups of tea and soft drinks up the Embassy stairs, down the Embassy corridors for 25 years. He had access to any part of the building with his thirst quenching tray except the secure upper corridor beyond the Military Attache's office. The tea boy saw the Station Officer going down the second flight of concrete stairs, his lightweight jacket slung on his shoulders, making for the golf course before the fight went. He recognised the voice of the junior spook. He heard him say, half way down the first flight of stairs, "Just through, 'Dolphin' is on his way. Here next week."

  "What the hell for?"

  "Something about reassessment of aims and means."

  "That's bloody inconvenient. . . . "

  The junior spook hurried on up, past the first floor corridor and towards the secure upper storey.

  An hour later, his cups, saucers, and glasses washed and laid out on a draining board with a tea towel covering them from flies, the tea boy left his place of work, and walked out into the dry glare heat of the late afternoon.

  The local detective lit a cigarette. As an after-thought he tossed one to Darren across the width of the cell. They were alone. The smoke curled between them. There was the smell of damp and vomit from last night's drunks.

  "Let's understand each other, Darren, so that no mistakes are made which might later be regretted. We've got you for a miner because you have volunteered the information that you pushed to Lucy Barnes. That and possession of 428 grammes of scag. That's all wrapped up. Trouble is that it's gone beyond that. You see, Darren, and you have to look at these tilings from our point of view, we find 428 grammes of scag tinder the mattress of the bed that you share with your lady love. I don't think I'd find it difficult to persuade any dozen good men and true, women would be easier, mind you, that your lady knew the stuff was there. I'm marching on, Darren, and you must stop me if you're not following me: so now we have an accomplice in your trading. That's not going to be nice for her, Darren. I'll put it another way: that's going to he very unpleasant for her. I reckon we do her for a fiver . . .

  See it from our point of view, Darren - you haven't helped us, and we're getting you a tenner. You haven't helped us, and we're getting your lady a fiver. So, what happens to your kids, Darren? They get Care. They get Care orders. They get to be scooped up into council care. By the time your lady comes out they'll be fostered off, nice couple of kids, and God knows, it's not always a disaster, fostering. But she won't get them back, you won't get them back. That's looking at it from the bad side, Darren. Look at it from the good side. You know me, you trust me. You know I'm straight. What I say I'll do, I bloody well do. Straight swap, as far as I'm concerned.

  I get the dealer's name and detail. You get a great write up from us for the judge and no charge against your lady, and no council care order for the kids. I'm leaving you a piece of paper, Darren, and a pencil, that's the brown item here with the lead in it, and I want you to write that name down, and every last thing you know about that man. Don't think you'll be helping me, Darren, think that you'll be helping y o u r s e l f . . . "

  Half an hour later the detective carried upstairs four sheets ol paper covered by a sprawling hard worked handwriting, and a name.

  "Bloody well done," the Chief Inspector said hoarsely.

  "Won't be forgotten," the Superintendent said.

  "If you don't mind, sir, I'll be off. Bit past the time I usually get home."

  He started out of his sleep.

  He heard the latch door close. He was awake, but there was a long moment when he could not gather where he was, when his own sitting room seemed a stranger. He heard the footfall beyond the door. It was all there in front of him, there was the vase on the mantelpiece that his parents had given them for Christmas two years back, there on the sideboard was the photograph of himself and Ann, marrying. There was her sewing basket beside the fire grate . . .

  Park called out, "Is that you?"

  He could hear her shrugging off her coat. He heard her voice. "Who else would it be?"

  He had his mind clear. The wall clock told him it was seven.

  Seven what? Which seven? He shook his head. Christ, and he had been so tired. The plate on which he had taken his lunch was on the arm of the chair, bucking as he moved. It must be evening. He must have been asleep six hours. All of April had a day off, courtesy of William Parrish, and none of the hours lost going through the Civil Service time sheets. He hadn't changed two bulbs, he hadn't fixed the washer on the kitchen sink tap, he hadn't tacked down the carpet in the hall, he hadn't even made their bed.

  She came into the sitting room.

  "What are you doing here?" As if she were astonished. "I didn't think you'd be here . . . "

  "We were given a day off." He stood, he felt ashamed that she should see the plate on the arm of the new chair. She had bought the chair. He had said they couldn't afford it, she had said that she refused to live in a slum and that while she was working she would bloody well spend her money how she pleased.

  "Why, why did you have a day off?"

  " There was a trial finished yesterday. We had a good result.

  We were given a day off."

  She picked up the plate. There was no mark on the chair's arm but she flicked it with her fingers anyway. "There was a trial yesterday that ended at early afternoon, I know that because I heard it on the car radio coming home. I sat here until past nine . . . I am a dim little thing, aren't I, but I didn't understand how it would take you more than five hours to get from the Old Bailey, Central London, to here."

  "We had a celebration."

  "Nice for you." She headed for the kitchen. He followed.

  She spat over her shoulder, "A pity about the tap."

  ''I m sorry.''

  "David, if there is a choice between April, the Lane, or your home, me, I know where the apple falls. Please, don't tell me you're sorry."

  She was
a great looking girl. She had been a great looker when they had first met, when he was on uniform duty at Heathrow, and a great looking girl in white at their wedding day, and a great looking girl when he had come home to tell her, all excitement, that he had been accepted into the Investigation Division. She was still a great looking girl, shovelling his dirty plate into the dishwasher. Ann had bought the dishwasher. David had said they didn't need a dishwasher, Ann had just gone out and bought it in the sales. She was as tall as him in her heels, and she had flaxen blond hair that she drew up into a pony, and she had fine bones at her cheeks and a mouth that he thought was perfect. She worked in the outer office of a prosperous architect, and she dressed to impress the clients.

  "So, you all went off to the pub, where there was, of course, no telephone . . . and I presume you took the opportunity to tell them how they were getting it all wrong."

  "I told Bill what I thought we should be doing . . . "

  "Great way to celebrate."

  He flared, "I said that I thought we weren't winning. I said that we should be more aggressive, work overseas more, I said that the men we put away yesterday were laughing at us when they were sent down . . . "

  "God, they must think you're a bore."

  "Do you know that last year our cocaine seizures were up by 350%? Do you know that means that three and a half times as much stuff came in last year as the year before . . . "

  "What I care about is that my husband works 70 hours a week, that he's paid what a probationer constable in the Met gets. I care, used to care, that my husband is never at home when I want him, and when I am privileged to see him all he wants to talk about is filthy, sleazy, nasty drugs."

  His breakfast plate, and his breakfast mug followed his lunch plate into the dishwasher.

  "It's a disease that'll kill this country - AIDS, that's nothing in comparison. Ann, there's a billion pounds spent on drugs in this country each year. It's the principal reason for mugging, burglary, assault, fraud . . . "

  "I don't know anyone, David, who is a junkie. No one in our block is, that I know of. No one in my office. I don't see junkies when I'm shopping. Drug addiction is not a part of my life, except when you bring it into our home."

  "It's not something you can just turn your back on," he said flatly. "Whether it's me you're married to or anyone else."

  She turned. She came towards him. She put out her arms and looped them around his neck. Her mother had told her to come back, and not just to collect her suitcases, her mother had told her to try again. One last bloody time, she had told her mother, she would try again. "Are they all like you, in April?"

  "Yes."

  "All on 70 hours a week, seven days a week?"

  "When it's hot, yes."

  "Do all their wives bitch?"

  " Those that have stayed, yes."

  "I bought some steak, and a bottle."

  She kissed him. He couldn't remember when she had last kissed him. He held on to her, and the telephone rang. He picked the telephone off the wall bracket.

  "Yes, it is, hello Bill . . ."

  He felt her arms coming away from his neck. He saw the sadness flood her face. He was listening. He saw her grab inside her bag, and slap the meat down on to the kitchen table.

  "The Lane tomorrow. Eight sharp. Look forward to it. . .

  Ann, she's great, she's in great form. Thanks, Bill, see you in the morning."

  He could see that she was crying. Park did not know how to stop his wife's tears. He did not know how to tell her of his excitement because the April leader had called him for a meeting, eight o'clock in the morning, at Investigation Bureau's offices on New Fetter Lane, and promised a good one.

  The teaboy's message was carried by a passenger from Bahrain to Abu Dhabi on the Gulf, and then flown on, having been passed to a member of an IranAir cabin crew, to Tehran.

  The message reached the desk of a counter-subversion investigator in an office on the fourth floor of a small office block, close to Bobby Sands Street, once Churchill Street.

  The block was not identified in any way, but was a part of the Ministry of Information and Intelligence. To the investigator the transcript of a briefly heard conversation was a source of amazement.

  The investigator had read the message several times. He knew "Dolphin". There would have been a dozen men in the section who knew the codename of Matthew Cedric Furniss.

  He had known the codename from far back, from times that were not referred to when he had worked for a different master, before the Revolution. He was astonished that the same codename was still maintained over so many years. In the Islamic Republic of Iran the British Secret Intelligence Service was hated with a loathing second only to that reserved for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Spies for the Great Satan. The investigator was not a man to initiate action, too great a survivor for that. To have survived a career with the Sazman-e Amniyat Va Attilaat-e Keshvar, the Organisation of National Security and Intelligence, to have found a safe haven in an organisation dedicated to rooting out all traces of S A V A K , that was survival indeed. His way was to assemble information and present it to those few people in the regime who had the power to act. To many, the investigator was a valued tool.

  On his computer, IBM state-of-the-art, he punched up the entry on Matthew Cedric Furniss, and composed a brief note on the information that the British head of Iran Desk was travelling in the region to pass on a reassessment of intelligence aims and means.

  The investigator always worked late in his office. He liked the cool and calm of the evening, the silent shadows in the corridors. He made his decision, he lifted his telephone. When he talked it was against the distant thunder of an air raid striking the west of the city.

  He travelled on a false passport in his wife's maiden name, and with the occupation of "Academic".

  Harriet had seen him off, which was unusual, but then it was wholly unusual for a Desk Head to journey abroad. They had had their little nuzzles at each other's cheeks, and he had told her to get back to the Bibury cottage and keep on giving that city farmer hell, double-time, over the rape of the footpath.

  Actually Mattie was rather pleased to be airborne, in harness again, but he hadn't said that to Harriet. Good to be on the road, not pushing paper.

  4

  The car had coughed to life, and thick fumes poured from the exhaust. He let the engine run while he thanked his neighbour for the loan of the charged battery that had been attached to the leads. He could ask any small favour of his neighbour and it would be granted. His neighbour knew his work. Most men, in fact, who knew his work, treated him with respect.

  No man in his company offered him offence or cursed him.

  Perhaps no man in Tabriz could feel with certainty that he would never look across the space of a cell at the deep brown eyes that would peep from the slits of the tight-fitting black mask that he had taken to wearing when he performed his work. The highest in the land, and the lowest, would all walk in the fear that they might, one day, feel the grip of his thick fingered fist upon their arm. It had not been done by himself, but he knew the man who had carried out the sentence of the Special Court of the Clergy on Mehdi Hashemi, and Hashemi had been the protege of the man named by the Imam as his successor. Likewise, he knew the man who had put Sadeq Ghotzbadeh to death, and Ghotbzadeh had been the Foreign Minister of the nation and the favourite of the Imam. No man in Tabriz trifled with the executioner. He was adept in hanging and shooting and lashing and organising the casting of stones at women taken in adultery, and in the handling of the newly arrived machine that was powered by electricity and that could slice with a guillotine knife through the fingers of a thief. He would use it this day: a thief who had stolen from a vegetable grower. And three executions, all in the city: a trafficker in narcotics, a Kurd who had aided the "hypocrites", a rapist of small children.

  His wife was scrubbing shirts in the yard behind the house.

  She hardly acknowledged his shouted farewell from the
back door. His children, all four of them, were playing with a deflated ball around their mother's legs, too intent on their game to hear him. Inside the house, from a cupboard beside the bed in the room he shared with his wife, he took a 9mm Browning pistol - old, well cared for, accurate. He heard the car engine running sweetly beyond the open door.

  He walked out into the morning. He tiptoed between the rain puddles because he had earlier shined his shoes. He climbed into his car, and laid the Browning, that was loaded but not cocked, on the seat beside him, and he covered the pistol with yesterday's Ettelaat.

  As he drove away he hooted his horn. He smiled briefly, he did not think that the sound of the horn would interrupt the game of football.

  He tacked up the lane, avoiding the deeper holes, going slowly so as not to damage the suspension of the old Hillman Hunter. He rolled to a halt at the junction with the main road.

  There was a flow of lorry traffic heading towards the centre of the city. He waited for the gap.

  He saw a young man a little down the far side of the main road, facing towards the city centre, astride his motorcycle.

  The young man was stopped at the side of the road. The young man wore a blue tracksuit, and was well bearded and bare headed, and he carried a satchel bag slung around his neck.

  He saw the gap open for him, a small space, and he lurched the Hillman Hunter forward, seized his opportunity. He heard the high long blast of a horn behind him, but the Hillman Hunter had little acceleration and the lorry's brakes seemed to punch the air as the huge grille closed on his rear view mirror. Another howling blast on the lorry's horn and then he was under way. It was always a difficult manoeuvre, getting out of the lane in which he lived, and joining the highway into Tabriz.

  He was boxed in. There was a central reservation to his left. There was a Dodge pick-up to his right, filled with construction labourers. There was a cattle lorry to his front, there was a lorry with refrigerated cargo behind him. He could not go slower, he could not go faster. No matter that he could not pass the livestock lorry. He was not late for his work.