A Line in the Sand

by Gerald Seymour

  When he came to a small stream feeding the marsh it was necessary for him to wade up to his waist, the sediment clawing at his boots and his legs. The higher ground of Hoist Covert, the name he had read from his map, was ahead of him, and the faint outline of the church tower loomed beyond it.

  He moved fast. Once he was out of the bog land and the marsh, he did not stop to unfasten the laces of his boots and empty out the stale dark water and the mud. It was all familiar to him. He crossed the ground as if he were again in the Haur-al-Hawizeh reeds. It gave him comfort to be on familiar ground. He did not move as a trained soldier would, working from instructions and manuals, but used instead the innate skills of a predator. He did not have to consider the dangers of silhouette, of breaking cover, of leaving a scented track behind him. It was natural to Vahid Hossein that he should go as a stalking animal searching for a prey.

  He had kept a steady pace and broke it only once when he had seen a single man come with binoculars and sit on a bench between Hoist Covert and a path that led back to the church. He stopped then and checked the ground ahead of, behind, and to the side of the man and watched the traverse of his binoculars. He was only twenty metres from the man when he passed him, in scrub cover. He assumed that the man had come to the bench to watch for birds from the viewpoint that overlooked the marshes; it was a point squirrel led in his mind for future attention.

  He moved on past high fences and garden hedges and a sign marking a narrow worn path towards the village.

  He climbed a fence and used garden shrubs to mask his movement He crawled on his stomach through a gap in a hedge, lifted a length of chicken wire to go under it, and replaced it. Twice he was within five metres of a house and could hear voices inside, but he kept from the arc of light thrown from the windows. Once he stopped and retraced his steps because a back door opened and a dog, bouncing and barking, was put out to run on a patch of grass. He needed to know where the dogs were: they were a greater enemy than the people.

  The houses he went by were of old brick. Some were the homes of artisans, with wilderness gardens stacked with rubbish bags and discarded kids' bicycles, as they would have been in south Tehran. Some were the homes of the affluent, with little tended squares of lawn, heaps of raked leaves and the smell of dead bonfires, as there would have been around the villas on the slopes above Jamaran where the tagt-ut-tee lived, the idol-worshippers who only pretended to re sped the teachings of the Imam.

  It was for reconnaissance. It was to find the way in and know the way out.

  He heard the noise of cars ahead, slowing and changing down through their gears. He was beside a fence and hidden by ornamental bushes from a small path. It was well timed .. . He had arrived at his vantage-place when it was light enough for him to see ahead, and dark enough to preserve his cover. It was the few minutes of the point between night and day. He could not yet see the vehicles because bushes were blocking his view. He lay very still. A woman in a night-robe came out of her door and he heard the clink of the bottles she carried. The light above her door flooded the path as she went to the gate. The empty bottles rattled onto the concrete and she went back inside, slamming the door behind her. He saw the lights of cars rolling across the houses ahead of him, and illuminating the open ground.

  He crawled on. The photographs of the house and the target man were seared into his memory.

  He heard the mutter of low voices as the engines of the cars were killed. The voices were indistinct.

  On his knees and elbows he edged forward, and gently parted the branches and leaves of a garden shrub.

  He felt the shake in his hands... There was a police car, with two men in it, a dozen metres from him.

  Beyond the police car was the open grassland of the photograph, and beyond the open ground were two more cars. Four men stood beside them. Two wore civilian clothes. The others wore blue over ails and across their chests they carried machine-guns on straps.

  He felt the cold twist in his stomach.

  Beyond the cars was the house shown in the photograph. All the curtains were drawn, and no light showed. He had been told the target was without defence, had no protection. He thought the men in front of the house were changing shifts. He watched. The car nearest to him started up, and the roving eyes of the marksman and the barrel of a machine-gun peeped above the door and out through the opened window as it edged slowly away. One of the men at the house was stretching, arching his back, as if he had stayed the night in his vehicle.

  The two men with the machine-guns went to the door of the house in the photograph: he saw their wariness and that one covered the back of the other. When the door was opened there was no light in the hallway. It was professional protection. They went inside and the door closed on them. If he had come a few moments later he would not have seen the machine-guns.

  He had the photograph of the man and wanted to look into his face as he took the knife or the gun from under his coat: it was important that the man could see his face and the eye of vengeance.

  He slipped away. He crawled through the hedgerow, pulled back the length of chicken-wire, climbed the fence and scurried in the growing light towards the scrub and the shelter of Hoist Covert.

  He waded the stream, then staggered across the bog among the trees. It was not the threat from the machine-guns to his own life that made his hands shake and his breath pant. He would be carried as a martyr to the Garden of Paradise; he had no fear of death from the bullets. It was the fear of failure. The brigadier, the man who loved him as a son, who had replaced his long-dead father, would be waiting in the office high in the building of the Mimstry of Information and Security for news of his success. Vahid Hossein could not contemplate the cloud passing over the face of the brigadier if the message carried word of failure.

  He came through the trees on to Fen Hill and stopped dead in his tracks.

  He had seen the bird.

  The beak, tugging, and the talons, clinging, were at the rabbit's carcass. He saw the raw wound on its wing. The bird was at the limit of its strength. Its beak was tearing at the fur but had not the power to rip it aside. It was less than five paces away. He saw the wound and the movement of ants in it, and the colour of the flesh at the wing was not pink and pure but putrefied, like the old wounds of the men in the Haur-al-Hawizeh. The bird flapped the damaged wing and the good wing as if to flee from him but the strength was not there and it only hopped, crippled, a few metres from the carcass. He knew the harriers from the Haur-al-Hawizeh and from the Shatt-al-Arab and Faw. They were often with them as they hid up in the marshes and watched for the Iraqis, waited for the darkness and the opportunity to probe into their enemy's de fences He had grown to love them, to worship the beauty of their feathering. They were light, the harriers, in the darkness of the killing grounds. He dropped to his knees and crawled forward slowly to the carcass. The wound would kill the bird if it could not feed.

  With his fingers, he tore little strips of flesh from the rabbit.

  Vahid Hossein believed the hunger would defeat the bird's fear, and that the bird was his escape from failure.

  * * *

  He took the black felt pen and the clean sheet of paper to his door, ripped off the existing message and fastened on its replacement. He scrawled the words. DAY TWO.

  It was seven forty-nine. The traffic had not yet built up on the Embankment outside Thames House, but already they were at their desks. Geoff Markham had come in on the underground before the crush, but they had beaten him there. Cox was in to supervise the expansion. Fenton was huddled with the American, chuckling, as if they were conspirators. Gary Brennard was there from Administration (Resources), organizing the new team, their new consoles and new telephones. A red-haired woman, Markham recognized her from one of the Irish sections but didn't know her name, was sitting, scratching her head and wiping her eyes, looking like she'd been heaved half awake from her bed. There were two probationers and one of the old men from B Branch. They were in early, as if they feare
d they might miss the entertainment.

  He'd slept in his own bed at his own place, and there'd been four messages from Vicky on his answer phone How'd it go? Did you do all right? Was it OK? Did you do enough to get it? He went back into his partitioned office room. Overnight, in his own bed, he hadn't thought about the interview but about the American with his pen, and whether that constituted a criminal assault, whether it was a sacking offence, whether he was just too damn squeamish for the job. He'd make the call later in the morning. When the new team was bedded down, he'd ring Perry.

  He wandered across the open work area towards the new cluster of desks and screens. He went by the woman with the red hair. She seemed tired and uninvolved, was flicking the pages of a newspaper maybe nobody had told her, maybe they'd told her and she didn't think it mattered. Fenton's laugh was louder.

  Fenton said, "Morning, Geoff, just hearing about last night -damn good."

  He said it grimly, "What we did was illegal."

  "Bollocks."

  Fenton strode away.

  The American sidled over to him.

  "Sleep OK, Mr. Markham? Not so well? If I could say to you, it's a rough world and rougher when the stakes go high. You get to play hard if you want to win. Remember Alamut and then you can judge your enemy. Do it by the rules and your enemy will walk over you. They came out from Alamut, two of them in 1192. Their target was Conrad of Montferrat who was the king-elect of Jerusalem. They caught up with him finally in the city of Tyre, present-day south Lebanon, but they'd stalked him nearly a half of a year. He was guarded close, had the best security of the day, and they beat it. They were dressed as Christian monks, the clothes of their enemy. They went right through the security and knifed their man to death. The way they did it, they condemned themselves, but they reached their target. Go legal if you want to if you do, you won't win against cunning, patience, ruthlessness, dedication... Is there anywhere you can get a decent coffee round here?"

  She'd been up early to take the pictures off the bedroom walls, and had stacked them, glass down, behind the dressing-tabl2. Everything off the top surface of her dressing-table had gone into the drawers. Then she'd crisscrossed the mirror with heavy adhesive tape. Frank had watched her from the bed.

  She'd snatched breakfast, and dumped a plate of cereal down in front of Stephen. She was already late for the school bell.

  They'd been changing the shift at home when she had left -nothing to say to her, nor to Frank, but the uncles had time to chat with Stephen about his lorries. She'd had to drag him away from them. On their shoulders they'd had machine-guns on webbing straps. She'd thrust Stephen into the car and Frank had stayed inside.

  Emma Carstairs had once told Meryl that she had best-friend status. They'd been to dinner there three months before. Emma Carstairs would have said to Barry, she thought, that Frank and Meryl Perry were the right sort of people for the village. Barry had put work Frank's way and joked about keeping things close, in a little Mafia. The loss of the friendship hurt badly.

  Meryl hadn't faced up to telling Stephen why they didn't have Sam in the car now, had made instead a poor excuse about a grown-ups' squabble. She'd have to tell him properly, but later. Probably there would be things said at school, but she couldn't yet cope with telling him the complicated truth. A van was parked beside the road, and she saw a man reaching up to hammer a sold sign across the middle of the for-sale board outside Rose Cottage.

  She wondered who'd bought it and what they'd be like.

  She drove fast to the school and had to brake fiercely to avoid a car pulling away from the kerb. Most of the kids were already in.

  She frowned. Barry Carstairs drove a sporty Audi, provided by his building-suppliers company. It was parked outside the school gate, three vehicles ahead of her. Barry never did the school-run. She kissed Stephen, and pushed open his door. The child ran through the playground gate towards the door of the main building, where he was stopped by Mr. Archer, the deputy head. He had one hand on the child's shoulder, and with the other he was waving her to come to him.

  Several of those who didn't have jobs with regular hours helped with the painting, the reading and the lunches of the nursery class. She knew Mr. Archer, a little ferret of a man, and the talk was that he was slyly bitter at being ignored for the headship. She saw Stephen try to pull away from him, as the bell went inside. Archer's fist, clenched in the material of Stephen's anorak, restrained him. She stamped across the playground.

  He didn't look her in the face.

  "Mrs. Kemp would like to see you, Mrs. Perry."

  "Why are you holding Stephen like that?"

  He looked at the ground, then at the sky.

  "If you could go, please, to Mrs. Kemp's office."

  "Why are you preventing Stephen from joining his class?"

  "It will all be explained, Mrs. Perry. They're waiting for you."

  "You're making Stephen late for class."

  "He'll be in the common room I'll be with him."

  Kids knew. They always knew first. Stephen's face was blank. At home last night, he'd worked really hard at his writing, was proud of it, before he'd pulled out his lorries and the men had come to his room. His exercise was in his satchel with his lunch. She told him, ignored the ferret, that she'd sort it out, and fast. She stormed down the corridor, didn't knock, pushed her way into Mrs. Kemp's office.

  From the door, her eyes roved over the faces. There was Mrs. Kemp, trim and grey-haired, the head-teacher; Bellamy, overweight and everybody's friend, the self-appointed organizer of the PTA; Barry Carstairs, the smart-suited businessman who was going places, the chairman of the governors; and a woman with fiercely bobbed hair and a severe black trouser-suit. The men were either side of the women, and they were all huddled close against the legs of the desk.

  The head-teacher's voice piped at her, "Thank you for coming in, Mrs. Perry. Please sit down."

  "Why am I here?"

  "Just sit down, Mrs. Perry, please. You'll know everyone here, except Miss Smythe from the county's education department."

  She remained standing.

  "What's going on?"

  The head-teacher fixed her with a glance.

  "I am afraid I have something difficult to tell you."

  "What?"

  Bellamy grunted, "It's pretty obvious, Mrs. Perry, after yesterday afternoon."

  "What's obvious?"

  Carstairs tried to look sombre.

  "There was a very disturbing ii vident affecting the school yesterday, Meryl, which cannot be ignored."

  Her child, with the ferret's hand on his anorak, knew. Stephen was in the common room, and would be scared half out of his wits. She stood her ground, and glowered.

  "So, which of you's queuing to use the knife?"

  "That's not called-for. We have a responsibility-' "It's a responsibility we're not ignoring."

  Barry Carstairs didn't look at her. He was playing with a pencil and he'd scribbled words on a pad, as if he didn't trust himself without notes.

  "This isn't easy for us. As chairman of the governors, after consultations with our head-teacher and bearing in mind the feelings of the parents' representative, I have taken a most serious decision. Yesterday, your husband came to the school to collect Stephen. He was, we now know, accompanied by an armed bodyguard. It was not his intention that the presence of the bodyguard should be known, and that was an act of deceit. The bodyguard, after a grossly irresponsible incident with his pistol an incident that could have led to the gun firing in a crowded playground in the head-teacher's hearing, spoke to the local police after she, quite rightly, had called them. I~ his explanation to the local police, he spoke of a threat to your husband that necessitates his constant protection from terrorist attack. We feel, after very careful consideration, that a threat to your husband represents, also, a threat against your husband's family-' "You're blathering, Barry. Why don't you say what you mean?"

  Carstairs pushed aside his notes. There was a curl of ang
er at his lips.

  "I was trying to do it the decent way. What Frank's done, what's in his sordid past, I don't know and I don't care. What matters is that his family is exposed to bombs and guns, in our school. The children and staff here are all threatened by terrorists. Their safety is paramount. Stephen, as much as his stepfather or his mother, could be a target. If he is a target, then everyone at this school is a target. He's out, he's no longer welcome here."

  "You can't do that, not to a child."

  The woman, Miss Smythe, leaned forward to intervene, and spoke with a low, intense voice.

  "We can do it, Mrs. Perry, and we are doing it. My department, after full consideration of the facts, has decided to back the governors' recommendation. We're foursquare behind them. As soon as is practical we will communicate with you on proposals for alternative education for Stephen, but I can't say when that will be. A thought, Mrs. Perry. Is it possible for Stephen to move away, stay with an uninvolved relative, and attend school elsewhere?"

  "It is not. We are together, a family."

  "Then he'll have to sit at home," Carstairs said.

  "I'm sure Mrs. Kemp'll loan you some books but he's not coming back here."

  "You are despicable. You are, Barry Carstairs, always have been, a second-rate rat, always will be."

  "As of now, Stephen is no longer a pupil at this school. Take him home."

  "And Frank thought of you, and your stupid wife, as a friend."

  "Your problems aren't ours, they don't concern us, get off back home. And when you get home you should call for a removal van and take your problems away. You're pariahs, you're not wanted."

  There was so much she could have said. Meryl thought, in that moment, that weeping and pleading would have shamed her. She eyed them with contempt and none of them could meet her gaze. Once before she had been through the business of shame, and she would not go there again. No begging, no cringing, not then and not now. Nine years before, she had resigned from the haulage business where she worked the logistics computer, four months after the Christmas party. Hadn't been drunk, incapable, before that party, or since. Too drunk, too incapable, to know which of the men had done it. It could have been any of the thirty-eight drivers, twelve loaders, three managers and two directors. She would have needed DNA testing to learn which was the father of the embryo baby. She turned. Living with Frank, loving him, bringing up her child together had erased the shame. She left them behind her, the silence clinging in the room, and strode down the corridor to fetch her son from the common room.