A Line in the Sand

by Gerald Seymour

  Geoff Markham stood by the door and remained silent. It was not his place to intervene when his superior fouled up. He could see Perry's hunched shoulders tighten with each new assault.

  Perry's voice was low and muffled, and Markham had to strain to hear the words.

  "You're not listening to me.. . No."

  "I cannot see what other option you have."

  "My option is to say what I have said... No."

  "That isn't an option.. . Listen, you're in shock. You are also being wilfully obstinate, refusing to face reality-' "No. Not again. I won't run."

  He heard the hiss of his superior's exasperation. He glanced down at his watch. Christ, they had not even been in the house for fifteen minutes. They had driven down from London, come unannounced, had parked the car on the far side of the green on to which the house faced. Fenton had smiled in satisfaction because there were lights on inside. They had seen the face at the window upstairs as they had opened the low wicket gate and gone up the path to the door. He had seen Perry's face and he had thought there was already a recognition of their business before they reached the door. They wore their London suits. Fenton had a martinet's moustache, painstakingly trimmed, a brown trilby and a briefcase with the faded gold of the EIW symbol.

  There was no porch over the front door, and Perry would have recognized them for what they were, a senior and a junior from the Security Service, before they had even wiped their feet on the door mat. He made them wait and allowed the rain to spatter their backs before opening the door .. . Fenton was not often out of Thames House: he was a section head, consumed by the reading of reports and attendance at meetings. In Geoff Markham's opinion, Fenton had long ago lost touch with the great mass of people who surged back and forth each day along the Thames embankment under the high walls of the building on Millbank. To Fenton, they would have been a damn bloody nuisance, an impediment to the pure world of counter-espionage.. . Markham wondered how he would have reacted if strangers had pitched up at his door, flashed their IDs, muscled into his home, started to talk of life and death.

  Fenton snapped, "We have conduits of information, some more reliable than others. I have to tell you, the information we are acting upon is first class. The threat is a fact-' "I won't run again."

  Fenton's right fist slammed into the palm of his left hand.

  "We're not urging this course of action lightly. Look, you did it before-' "No."

  "You can do it a second time."

  "No."

  "I have the impression that you wish to delude yourself on the strength of the threat. Well, let us understand each other. I am not accustomed to leaving my desk for a day, journeying into this sort of backwater, for my own amusement-' "I won't run again final."

  Fenton brayed, at the back of Perry's head, "There is evidence of a very considerable danger. Got me? Hard evidence, real danger From where he stood at the door, Geoff Markham thought that Perry's silhouetted shoulders drooped slightly, as if he'd been cudgelled. Then they stiffened and straightened.

  "I won't run again."

  Fenton ground on relentlessly, "Look, it's a pretty straightforward process. Getting there is something we're expert at. You move on, you take a new identity... A cash sum to tide you over the incidental expenses. Just leave it to us. New national insurance, new NHS number, new Inland Revenue coding-' "Not again. No."

  "Bloody hell, Mr. Perry, do me the courtesy of hearing me out. They have your name, not the old one, they have Frank Perry get that into your skull. If they have the name, then I have to examine the probability that they have the location..."

  Perry turned from the window. There was a pallor now to his cheeks, and his jaw muscles seemed to flex, slacken and flex again. There was weariness in his eyes. He didn't cower. He stood his full height. He gazed back at Fenton. Geoff Markham didn't know the details on Perry's file, had not been shown it, but if he deserved the threat, then there was something in his past that required raw toughness.

  "It's your problem."

  "Wrong, Mr. Perry. It's your problem because it's your life."

  "Your problem and you deal with it."

  "That's ridiculous."

  The voice was a whisper: "Men like you, they came, they told me of the threat, they told me to quit, run. I listened, I quit, I ran. I'm not spending the rest of my life, every day that remains of my life, like a chicken in a coop wondering if the fox has found me. It is your responsibility, it's owed me. If the fox comes, shoot it. Understand me? Shoot it.. . What did you ever do for your country?"

  Geoff Markham heard Fenton's snort, then the cut of the sarcasm.

  "Oh, we're there, are we? Playing the patriot's card. A man of letters once said that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."

  "I worked for my country. My head was on the block for it."

  "While lining a damn deep pocket..."

  "I am staying, this is my home."

  It was a good room, Geoff Markham thought. There was decent furniture, a solid sideboard and a chest of dark wood, low tables. It suited the room, which was lived-in. He could see it was a home. When he was not sleeping at Vicky's, he lived in an anonymous, sterile, one-bed roomed apartment in west London. Here, a child's books were on the floor, an opened technical magazine, and a cotton bag from which peeped a woman's embroidery. Invitations to drinks and social functions stood on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. If it had been Markham's, he, too, would have tried to cling to it... But he had seen bodies, in Ireland, of men who had not covered their tracks, had made themselves available to their killers. He had seen their white, dead faces, the dried blood pools below their cheeks, and hair matted with brain tissue and bone fragments... They could whistle up the removals company; there were people who did discreet business for them. They could have him loaded within twenty-four hours, gone, lost.

  Fenton jabbed his finger at Perry.

  "You won't get the sources from me, but I can tell you they have given this matter your life, your death a very considerable priority. Are you listening?"

  "I am not leaving my home."

  "They are starting on a journey. We don't know when they began it, could be a couple of weeks ago. For them, Mr. Perry, it is a long road, but you can be certain that at the end of it you are their target..."

  The dhow had brought dried fish and cotton bales across the Gulf. The cargo for the return journey was boxes of dates, packaged video-cassette recorders and television sets from the Abu Dhabi warehouses, cooking spices bought from Indian traders, and the man. The dhow's large sail was furled, and it was driven by a powerful engine. The man was the important cargo and the engine was at full throttle. He sat alone at the bow and stared down into the foaming water below. The previous night, each of the five crewmen had seen him come aboard in the darkness, slipping silently down the quay side ladder. Only the boat's owner had spoken with him, then immediately given the order for the ropes to be cast off, the engine to be started. He had been left alone since the start of the journey. The call to his mobile telephone had come just after the crewmen had seen him lean forward and peer down to watch the dark shape of a shark, large enough to take a man, swimming under the bow wave before it dived.

  None of the crew approached him except to offer him a plastic bottle of water and a bag of dried dates. Then the man had lifted his face. The scarred redness around his eyes, the upper part of his cheeks and his forehead were raw. The crewmen, swabbing the deck, stowing ropes, taking turns at the wheel, understood: he had come through the stinging ferocity of a sandstorm. He had talked quietly into his telephone and none of them could hear his words in the several minutes the call had taken. It would be late afternoon before he would see the raised outline of the city's buildings, the mosque minarets and the angled, idle cranes of the port. They did not know his name, but they could recognize his importance because they had sailed with their hold half empty, at night, to bring him home.

  He wore the torn, dirtied clothes of a tribesman, he smelt of camel
s' filth, but the crewmen and the owner simple, devout men who had sailed through the worst gale storms of the Gulf waters -would have said that they held this quiet man in fear.

  Later, when they had a good view of the buildings, minarets and cranes of Bandar Abbas, a fast speed boat of the pasdaran intercepted them, took him off and ferried him towards the closed military section of the port used by the Revolutionary Guards.

  They felt then as if a chill winter shadow was no longer on their dhow, and they tried to forget his face, his eyes.

  "The last time I did what I was told to do."

  "For your own good. You were sensible, Mr. Perry."

  "I had only two suitcases of clothes. I even cleared out the dirty washing from the bathroom basket and took that with me."

  "Self-pity is always degrading."

  "The men in bloody raincoats, they packed all my work papers, said I wouldn't need them again, said they'd lose them. Where did my work life go into a landfill?"

  "Dredging history rarely helps."

  "I had six hours to pack. The men in raincoats were crawling all through my house. My wife-' "As I understand, about to divorce you, and with a "friend" to comfort her."

  "There was my son. He's seventeen now. I haven't seen him since - I don't know what exams he's passed and failed, where he's going, what he's doing..."

  "Always better, Mr. Perry, not to sink into sentimentality."

  "I had damn good friends there, never said goodbye, not to any of them, just walked away... "I don't recall from the file that you were under duress."

  "It was a good company I worked for, but I wasn't allowed to clear my desk. The raincoats did that."

  Fenton sneered, "The directors of that company were lucky, from what I've read, not to face a Customs and Excise prosecution, as you were lucky."

  "You bastard!"

  "Obscenities, Mr. Perry, in my experience are seldom substitutes for common sense."

  "I gave up everything!"

  "Life, my friend, is not merely a photograph album to be pulled out each Christmas Day for the relations to gawp at. Little to be gained from wallowing in the past. Life is for living. Your choice -move on and live or stay and write your own funeral service. That's the truth, Mr. Perry, and the truth should be faced."

  The rain was heavier outside, beating a drum roll on the window-panes. The darkening cloud came out of the east, off the sea. Geoff Markham stayed by the door. He could have reached beside him to switch on the lights to break the gloom, but he did not.

  Markham knew his superior's performance was a disaster. He doubted Fenton had the sensitivity to appreciate the castration of a life Perry had run away from a wife who no longer loved him, a son, friends and neighbours, even his office, the banter and excitement of the sales section, everything that was past. Frank Perry was a damned ordinary name. If there had been six hours for him to quit his house, then the time allotted to choosing a new name would have been about three short minutes. Maybe the raincoats had saddled him with it.

  Perry had turned back to the window, and Fenton paced as if he did not know what else to say... Markham wondered whether Perry had gone, a year or two later, to watch a school gate, from the far side of the street, to see the boy come out from school, a leggy youth, with his shirt hanging out, his tie loosened. Maybe the kid would have been alone, still traumatized, from his father's disappearance. The raincoats would have told him that kids couldn't handle secrets, that they blabbed, that he endangered himself and the kid if he made contact... They would have tracked Frank Perry's former footsteps, his one-time life, until they were convinced that the trail was broken. Fenton wouldn't have understood.

  "You have to face facts, and facts dictate that you move on."

  "And my new home, new family, new life, new friends?"

  "Start again."

  "Dump my new home, put my new family through the hoop?"

  "They'll cope. There's no alternative."

  "And in a year, or three years, do it all again? And again after that, and again. Do it for ever peer over my shoulder, wetting myself, keeping the bags packed. Is that a life worth living?"

  "It's what you've got, Mr. Perry." Fenton rubbed his fingernail against the brush of his moustache. Despite the gloom, Markham could see the flush on his superior's cheeks. He didn't think Fenton was an evil man or a bully, just insensitive. He'd do a memo they liked memos back at Thames House to Administration, on the need for counselling courses in sensitivity. They could set up a sensitivity sub-committee and they could call in outside consultants. There could be a paper "Sensitivity (Dealing with Obstinate, Bloody-minded, Pig-headed "Ordinary" Members of the Public)'. There could be two-day courses in sensitivity for all senior executive officers.

  Fenton beat a path between the toys and the embroidery.

  "I won't do it."

  "You're a fool, Mr. Perry."

  "It's your privilege to say so, but I'm not going to run, not again." Fenton picked up his coat from the arm of a chair, and shrugged himself into it, covered his neatly combed hair with his hat. Geoff Markham turned and quietly opened the living-room door.

  Fenton's voice was raised: "I hope it's what you want, but we're going into an area of unpredictability..."

  It would be in the third week of its migration. The bird would have left its sub-Saharan wintering grounds around twenty days earlier, have stored weight, strength and fat in the wetlands of Senegal or Mauretania. It would have rested that last night in the southern extreme of the Charente Maritime, and hunted at dawn.

  He sold insurance for a Paris-based company annuities, fire and theft, household and motor, life and accident policies, in a quadrangle of territory between La Rochelle in the north, Rochefort in the south, Niort and Cognac in the west. The trade to be gained at a weekend, when clients were at home and not tired, was the most fruitful, but in March and October he never worked weekends. Instead, early in the morning, he left his home at Loulay with his liver-white spaniel and drove a dozen kilometres into the winter-flooded marshland of the Charente Maritime. In the boot of his car was his most prized possession: an Armi Bettinsoli, over and under, shotgun. Every Saturday and Sunday morning, in the early spring and the late autumn, he parked his car and carried the shotgun, wrapped in sacking, a kilo metre away. His sport, as practised by his father and grandfather, was now opposed by the city bastards who claimed to protect the birds. It was necessary to be covert, to move after each shot, because the bastards looked for men enjoying legal sport, to interfere. In the remaining months, he shot pheasants, partridges, rabbits and foxes, but the sport he craved was in March, when the birds migrated north, and October, when they returned south to escape the winter.

  That Sunday morning in late March, he saw the bird first as a speck and swung his binoculars up from his chest to make the distant identification. He had already fired and moved twice that morning. The dog had retrieved a swallow, crushed by the weight of shot, and a spotted redshank, which had been alive. He had twisted its neck.

  The swallows flew in tight, fast groups and were easy to down. The spotted red shanks came in clusters and were not too difficult to shoot. But the bird coming now, from the south, low over the reed-beds, was a true target for a marksman. He knew the markings of the harrier, could recognize them with his binoculars at half a kilo metre distance. It was a worthy target: those birds always flew singly, low, at near to fifty kilometres per hour, a ground speed of 140 metres in ten seconds. A marsh harrier would pay for his weekend's cartridges: his friend, Pierre, the amateur taxidermist, always paid well for a raptor, and top price for a marsh harrier. He crouched, his breath coming in short spurts. The bird had such good sight, but he was low down and hidden by the marsh fronds.

  He rose and aimed. The bird was straight ahead and would pass directly over him. He could see the ginger-capped crown of the bird and the ruff at its neck. It would be a juvenile, but it had fed well in the African winter. He fired. For a moment the bird dipped, bucked, then fell. The
dog bounded forward, splashing into the marsh water. He fired the second barrel and shouted, urging the dog forward into the wall of reeds. He was still reloading when the bird came past him, within five metres. Its flight was level to his head, and then it was past. It had a laboured, fractured flight, the wings beat unevenly. His hands shook and a cartridge dropped from his fingers into the water. He howled in frustration. When the gun was loaded and the dog was back beside him, he swung. The bird was beyond range but he heard its scream. He watched it for a long time, with his eye, then with the binoculars. It went north, for La Rochelle. If it had the strength, it would pass by the estuary at Nantes and the river at Rennes, then reach the Channel coast. He thought his pellets had hit the muscle, ligament or tendons in the wing, but not the bone: bone fracture would have brought it down. From the look of it, the bird would not survive a crossing of the Channel to an English landfall.

  * * *

  They were crowded in the hallway~ pressed close together against hanging coats. The family's boots were scattered on the tiled floor. There were tennis rackets in the corner, a bright plastic beach bucket and spade, a chaos of stones from the shore. It was the same comforting clutter that Geoff Markham knew from his own parents' home.

  Perry reached past them and pulled the door open. There was an old bolt on it and a new lock. Geoff Markham shuddered in Belfast the psychopaths had sledge hammered through doors to do their killing.

  Fenton tried a last time.