The V A T man said, "Not a bad start to the day."
The repartee insult was rising in Keeper. The interruption, the insult never spoken.
Corinthian into Keeper's earpiece: "April Eleven to April Five, our Tango One is in the lobby, heading for the front door . . . going through the front door, you should be picking him up . . . "
"Your lucky day," the VAT man said.
Keeper saw Charlie come through the swing doors. He felt the relief jar through him. He saw the target walk towards the first taxi on the rank holding the rucksack. It had been Keeper's opinion that Tango One was a rank amateur, but he didn't know why the target had gone back into the hotel, and he didn't know what he had done there, and he didn't know whether they had all shown out, and he was no longer sure how amateur the target was.
They followed the taxi out of the rank. He told the V A T man that he didn't need a running commentary on the splendours of Leeds, thank you, and he had to shout at the joker to let Token through with the back-up car, and neither Token nor Harlech acknowledged them as they went by and took up prime station behind the taxi. They had the message too.
Perhaps the target was not such a rank amateur after all.
Herbert Stone was used to dealing with middle trade businessmen and government representatives. The boy fitted no pattern that he was used to. Middle trade businessmen came to him from Hamburg or Rotterdam or Barcelona because he had earned a reputation for discretion and efficiency, for putting paperwork into place with speed. Government representatives arrived at his office, once a vicarage, because they depended on his discretion in placing hardware in the hands of people they could not acknowledge.
He dealt with corporations and institutions, not with bearded young men who wore yellow socks, and who saun-tered in with rucksacks, for heaven's sake. And the kid seemed relaxed, as if it were the most normal thing in life to take an InterCity north and then come and chat about taking delivery of armour-piercing hardware.
Herbert Stone followed the principles of the Shavian Andrew Undershaft - he would do business with anyone, offer a realistic price, not trouble himself with principles or politics
. . and the young man had given Mattie Furniss' name, and Furniss's office had confirmed the connection. Century put quite a bit of business his way, matters too delicate for public knowledge. There had not been as many Belfast produced Blowpipe shoulder-fired ground-to-air missiles in the mountain valleys of Afghanistan as there had been Californian built Stingers, but the British had been there, their warheads had joined the fireworks, and Stone had been the conduit used by Century to get the missiles into the hands of the Mujahidin, never mind that they generally made a hash of them.
He would be wary, cautious, but never dismissive.
in a neat hand, in pencil, he wrote down the detail of Charlie Eshraq's order. It was a pleasant, airy office. There was no illustration of any matter military on the walls, just watercolour originals of the Yorkshire Dales. He might have been noting the necessary information prior to the issuing of a personal accident policy.
"If I'm to help you, and I'm not at this stage saying that I can, if I'm to help you then there has to be a degree of frankness between us . . ."
"Yes."
"If you lie to me then I might just lie to you. Your problem, you have to trust me. . . . "
"But I am recommended by Mr Furniss, that's your guarantee . . . "
True, that was on the youngster's side, and a surety for him too. "What country do you mean to operate in - where will the weaponry be used?"
"Iran."
No whistle in the teeth, no pursing of the lips. "And the delivery point?"
"Past Turkish Customs, I collect in Turkey."
"What targets for armour-piercing?"
"First target is an armoured Mercedes, 600 series. After that I do not at the moment know."
"Not all to be fired in one engagement?"
Charlie paused, considered. "Each one different. Perhaps more vehicles, not tanks, perhaps buildings."
The scratching of Stone's pencil. "I see."
"So, what should I have?"
For the first time Stone was shaken. A small, puzzled frown escaped him. "You don't know what you want?"
"I'm not a soldier, what should I have?"
Everyone who came and sat in Stone's office knew what they wanted, problem was could they get it. They wanted howitzers, or 81 mm mortars, they wanted white phosphorus shells, or ground-to-air, they wanted attack helicopters, or a Claymore system of ground defence. None of them, his clients, ever asked his advice on what they should have.
"Do you have any military experience, Mr Eshraq?"
"None."
The pencil stopped, hovered . . . but it was none of his business. "Light Anti-Tank Weapon. It's called LAW 80.
How many are we talking about?"
Charlie said, "Three, maybe four."
Stone looked up from his notes. "I see. We are talking about a relatively, ah, small order."
"Yes."
There was a crocodile of barges going down the Thames, and seagulls hovering in chaos over the cargo.
The Deputy Director General was concise. "You won't know this man, this Stone, but he's used by us. He's an arms dealer, reliable sort of fellow. Right now Charlie Eshraq is sitting in his office and trying to place an order for a handful of LAW 80 missiles."
"I was never in the forces, what do they do?"
"They bust tanks. . . . Stone rang through two or three days ago to check on Furniss' reference. Miss Duggan told me this and I asked Stone to ring me as soon as Eshraq uppeared. He's trying to buy these missiles to take back with him into Iran. Does he get them, or not?"
The seagulls swirled in aerial combat over the barges. "It would be an illegal exportation, no doubt."
"Yes, but we're not squeamish. Presumably he brought buck heroin in order to pay for these weapons, as soon as he has the weapons he'll be going back inside."
"Shows extraordinary courage." The Director General had a son at university, studying philosophy, and allergic to the lawn mower. "I like young people with purpose and guts."
"That's Eshraq - in full."
"Give them to him. Give him this anti-tank whatever . . ."
The Deputy Director General grimaced. "Quite, but it ignores the problem."
"What problem?"
"The problem of Mattie Furniss. The problem of Mattie talking, spilling under torture what he knows about his agents and about his young protege. Got me?"
The Director General swung away from the window, swivelled his chair.
"I tell you what I think . . . I think Mattie is a very experienced and dedicated officer. I think he's of the old school. I think he'd go to his grave rather than betray his network."
The Deputy Director General murmured, "That's just not realistic, sir. I am afraid all we know today about interrogation techniques tells us that he will, inevitably, brave as he unques-tionably is, talk. Would it help you to meet with our own interrogators, have them to tell you what, exactly, is being done to Mattie?"
"It would not. . . . It is simply that I have a greater faith in the resilience of an old dog. And furthermore, you stand there lecturing me as though you know for certain that Furniss is in an Iranian torture chamber. Well, you don't. We don't.
We haven't the least idea where he is. He may have been kidnapped by Turkish thugs who haven't the slightest notion who he is. He may be with some freelance outfit who simply want to ransom him. Tell me, if you would, how long it has generally taken for any of the extremist sects in Beirut to announce the capture of hostages. They're on to a telephone to Reuter before you can count to ten, or there is no word for months. There is no pattern about which we can be definite. So we'll just play it my way, if you don't mind."
"So, what is your instruction?"
The Director General said, "Eshraq is to have his missiles.
He is to be encouraged to return to Iran. Give him any help he needs, witho
ut tripping over the Customs people, if you can."
The Deputy Director General, swearing silently, flushed at the cheeks, went back to his office and spoke to Herbert Stone.
Parrish pounded down the fifth floor corridor of the Lane.
Those who saw him, through open office doors, and those who flattened themselves against the corridor walls to give him room, wondered whether he'd got the trots or whether he'd heard the Four Minute Warning. He charged into the ACIO's office, and the ACIO had an Audit team with him, and none of the Audit team complained, just packed their briefcases and left. The door closed behind Bill Parrish. He didn't wait to collect his thoughts, gather in his breath.
"Just had Park on, from Leeds, right? Park is with Eshraq, right? Eshraq is currently sitting in the office of one Herbert Stone. Mr Stone sells weapons. Eshraq is buying weapons.
That's the strength of it. He's using heroin money to buy weapons. . . . This is going too far. Eshraq's run enough, it's time to knock the bugger over."
The ACIO rang through to the CIO and while he was talking Parrish loosened his tie and thought he was too old for this sort of caper, far too bloody old.
The voice was in her ear.
"I'm terribly sorry, Mrs Furniss, I really am sorry, but I just cannot talk about it on the telephone. It's an open line, you see. They haven't been in touch with you? It's a scandal.
I know I shouldn't say this, Mrs Furniss, but the day of the gentleman is past here. . . . Mrs Furniss, please don't ever say to anyone that I spoke to you. . . . They don't know what to do. They know that Mr Furniss was kidnapped in Turkey, they believe that he was then taken into Iran. After that they don't know anything. They've set up a Committee to watch developments, but they've staffed it with fools, people like that old idiot Carter. I mean, Mrs Furniss, those sort of people are not competent enough. I was taken up to see the Director General. He had me in his office. He is not a gentleman, Mrs Furniss, I hold him responsible. What he was interested in was all I knew about Charlie. You see, Mr Furniss kept all his files on Charlie in his personal safe, didn't let them go down to Library, and didn't iet me put them on any computer roll which anyone else could plug into. They were very concerned about Charlie. To tell you the truth, Mrs Furniss, they seemed more concerned about Charlie than they were about Mr Furniss. Mrs Furniss, I don't know what it is, his trouble, but Charlie is in some sort of trouble, very deep, I'd swear on that. It's disgraceful, Mrs Furniss, them not being in touch with you every day, should be in touch with you two or three times a day. I have to ring off, goodbye, Mrs Furniss. Mr Furniss has a great many friends here and they are all thinking of you. Goodbye."
She was grateful to kind Miss Duggan. When she was a child, before she had been sent away to school, her parents had employed a Flossie Duggan as a nanny, a nice, soft woman with a big bosom and a well of loyalty. Mattie used to say that, at Century, life would not be worth living if he didn't have Flossie Duggan to take care of him.
Harriet Furniss would not have called herself a Service wife, rather described herself as a Service widow. The Service had no room for wives. In more than twenty years, since Mattie had come out of the Coldstreams and joined the Service, she had never set foot inside Century. How could she have done?
She had never even been allowed to drive to the corner on the Embankment and wait to collect him after work. She had never been to a social function that involved Century people.
The only person that she knew at Century was Flossie Duggan, because Flossie would once or twice a year come down to Bibury and type up a report over a weekend if it had to be on the DG's desk or the DDG's desk first thing on a Monday morning. The life of the Service was a closed book to her.
Little boys playing secretive games. But dangerous games. So hideously dangerous that Mattie was a prisoner in Iran . . .
and she had good memories of Iran. She remembered when they had been young and together there, when she had been the young mother of two small girls, the swimming trips to the Caspian in the summer and the skiing trips to the Elborz in the winter, when the future was stable and set to last for a millennium. It had been a lovely country, kind and welcoming and comfortable. Infuriating, too, because it had aped Europe and of course she couldn't get a plumber or an electrician, never for love and rarely for money. Endless dinners by candlelight, because as night followed day it was inevitable her social calendar would be dogged by power failures.
She looked out into her garden. It was time to strip the wallflowers from the beds, but the rain was beating on the windowpanes. She loved her garden in summer. . . . She could picture Mattie pacing the lawn and then coming inside to tell her, bluff and stiff because he could never handle matters that were emotional, that Juliette Eshraq had been hanged from a crane in a square in Tabriz. She would never forget that, how he had walked backwards and forwards past the lupins and pinks and stocks before he had come inside to tell her of the execution of the girl she had known as a cheeky and darling child perched on her knee.
And what could Miss Duggan have meant about Charlie being in trouble and why did the Service know anything about Charlie? He was bound to call when he came back from his trip overseas. She would get him down to the cottage and ask him. Straight out. She wasn't going to let Charlie get himself mixed up with Century. That would be unbearable.
She thought of her man. Darling Mattie, everybody's friend, her husband.
Later, she would go down to the Post Office for some stamps, and if she were asked then she would put on a smile and say that Mattie was fine, just abroad for a few days, and before she went to the Post Office there were more circulars to send about the footpath.
She was a Service widow, and she would be good at it.
Mattie would expect that.
Herbert Stone had the brochure on the desk in front of him.
"It's just what you want, Mr Eshraq, and it's the best of British technology. Very much up to date, only been in service with our own forces for a few months. 'Provides an exceptional hit and kill capability for its size and weight. . . outstanding accuracy against both fixed and moving targets is achieved using a built-in spotting rifle . . . high technology warhead provides excellent kill probabilities from all angles of attack
. . . not complicated to teach . . . zero maintenance.' Sounds pretty good, and it is. It'll get through 650mm of armour, it has an effective range of 500 metres, and the whole thing weighs only ten kilos. The beauty of LAW 80, Mr Eshraq, is in the spotting rifle, you fire a tracer round, you get a hit, you depress the main firing button and away you go. If this is designed to take out a main battle tank then it goes without saying, Mr Eshraq, that it will make a frightful mess of an armoured Mercedes."
"What is it going to cost me?"
"Let's have a drink . . . you'd like a drink, Mr Eshraq?"
"What will it cost?"
"Expensive."
"How much?"
"Right, Mr Eshraq, no drink, just the figures. We're talking about a round half dozen, correct?"
"No, four."
Herbert Stone's voice did not waver. There was no apology.
"I'm quoting you £50,000 for four . . . "
"What does that include?"
Herbert Stone had seen that the young man hadn't blinked, hadn't gagged. "Each missile would cost the army £2000, that's for ordinary bulk dealing. You are not ordinary and you are not bulk, and if I had not just spoken to a colleague of Mr Furniss you and I would not be dealing at all. You have a good friend, young man, but even with friends there are complications. You don't want all the seamy details, do you?
You just want delivery through Customs at Istanbul. For that money you get four missiles. Don't worry yourself with the details, Mr Eshraq."
"Four missiles at fifty thousand pounds?"
"Right," said Stone and made a swift note.
Charlie bent over, and he lifted his rucksack on to his knee.
He delved into it. He laid on the edge of the desk a dirty shirt, and two p
airs of dirty socks, and then his washing bag. From the bottom of the rucksack he drew out a plastic bag. He pushed the washing bag and the socks and the dirty shirt to one side, and from the plastic bag he took the first wad of notes, wrapped by an elastic band. Other wads followed. A less experienced businessman might have showed surprise, hut Stone had the first wad in his hand and was counting.
Twenty-pound notes, one hundred notes in each wad. The heaps of notes moved from the side of the desk where Charlie sat with his laundry, across to Stone's side. Twenty-five wads of notes on the desk top, and Charlie lifted the bag back into the bottom of his rucksack, and covered it with his clothes and his washing bag.
"That's it, thank you." The money was shovelled, fast, into Stone's safe.
"Mr Stone, what are the complications that cost so much extra, please?"
It was a reasonable question, and that was how Stone treated it. "You're better off without details, Mr Eshraq, details tend to get messy in the wrong hands. . . . I have to have a cut.
They have to come off the tail of a truck, and someone has to put them on a truck, and someone has to make the paperwork right, and someone has to find a bit of room on a lorry, one or two palms to be crossed at frontiers on the way to Turkey, and someone has to make sure Istanbul doesn't look that closely at what's coming through. There are quite a lot of people who would go to prison for quite a long time, that adds up to the difference, as you think of it, above £2000 per weapon."
Charlie said, "In that price, in the load, I'd like there to be included three wholesale cartons of bath soap, the best there is, whatever Mrs Stone would recommend. Can you manage that?"
"Yes, I believe we can manage that."
"I'll give you my number in London. You'll call as soon as you are ready?" Charlie's eyes narrowed. "If they were tampered with, if they didn't work . . . "
"I think we can let Mr Furniss be our mutual surety, don't you, Mr Eshraq?"
Park said, "If we don't get into Colombia and start to hit the bastards in their own backyard, then we're going to lose. It's the Americans who are at the sharp end at the moment, but our turn's coming. We won't avoid the really big cocaine traffic if we don't act much more positively. The demand's here, for the lunch time snort, and that demand'll grow in London just as it's grown in New York. Do you know that there's a guy in Medellin, that's in Colombia, who has a fortune estimated at two billion dollars? That's cocaine money.
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