"It isn't my fault."
She had come where and when he had told her to come. Farida Yasmin Jones hung her head, pressed her face against her knees. The damp of the evening was in the air. She had driven her car down the narrow lane off the wider, busier road, and after the bend that prevented it being seen from the road she had parked near to the track that led to the tumulus.
"I do not criticize you."
"You look as though you do when I came with Yusuf there wasn't protection."
"Perhaps he lived."
"You said he'd die."
"Perhaps he lived and talked."
"Yusuf Khan would never talk."
"All men say they would never talk, and believe it."
"You're insulting him."
"He was stupid, he was like a child. He spoke too much and he could not drive why should I believe he would not talk?"
"You've no right to say he'd talk. What're you going to do?" He had come from Fen Hill and across Fen Covert and he had sat for close to twenty minutes hidden in bushes watching her before he had shown himself. After twenty minutes Vahid Hossein had gone in a wide loop around her to check that she was not followed, was not under surveillance. He had seen the men at the house with the guns. He had no trust in anything he had been told. There had been an Iraqi ruse in the marshland in front of the Shattal-Arab: an ambush would be set by a patrol; they would lie up and their guns would cover a raised pathway through the reed-banks; a cassette recorder would play a conversation, men's voices, in the Farsi tongue; men of the Revolutionary Guards would be drawn towards the voices of their own people. Friends had been killed because they trusted what they heard. He had watched her. She had eaten mint sweets from a packet, and scratched the white skin of her legs above her knees, and looked frightened around her in the quiet. She had rubbed hard against the softness of her breast, as if there was irritation there. She had snapped her fingers together in impatience. All the time he had watched her. He had no trust in her and yet he was yoked to her.
"Think, plan."
"Think about what? Plan what?"
"Think and plan."
"Don't you trust me?"
"I have faith only in myself."
Her face was against the white skin of her legs and her hair cascaded over her knees. He thought that she might be crying.
"I'll do whatever you want."
"You cannot think for me and you cannot plan for me."
"Is that because I'm a woman?"
"Because..."
"What is your name?"
"You have no need to know my name. You have no need to know anything of me."
She gazed into his face and the half-light made shadows at her mouth and her eyes, but the eyes held the brightness of anger.
"Then I'll tell you my name and everything about myself, because that shows you my trust. I take the chance, the trust, that you'll not talk."
"You believe that? You believe I would-' She mimicked, ""All men say they would never talk, and believe it"."
His hand went instinctively to her shoulder, caught it, gripped it to the bone.
"You play a trick with me, a trick of words." I too had felt her body, gazed into her uncovered face. He snatched away his hand and looked at the ground between his damp, muddy boots. He had been wrong: there were no tears in her eyes.
"I trust you," she said.
"Before I converted, I was Gladys Eva Jones. I come from a town in the middle of England, not much of a place. My father drives a train. He's fat, he's ugly, he likes newspapers with pictures of girls without swimsuit tops, he dislikes me because I'm not a boy. My mother's empty, stupid, and she dislikes me because I'm not married and breeding actually, the married bit might not even matter to her, it's not having kids to push round in a pram that upsets her. They both, equally, dislike me because I was clever enough to go to university. It was the most miserable time of my life, and I'd had some. I was nothing on campus, no friends, lonely as sin. I met Yusuf and through him I went to the mosque of Sheik Amir Muhammad, and I was taken into the true Faith, and became Farida Yasmin and happier than I'd been in my life. I'd found respect.. . I was asked to drop my Faith, to hide it, to go to the hairdresser and beautify myself. I was told that was the way I could best serve the memory of the Imam. I was trusted. I was sent with Yusuf to identify this man, Perry, at a hospital in the north of England when he was visiting. His father was ill and the doctors thought he might die. His parents didn't know how to call for him because he'd cut all the family links when he changed his name. There was an appeal on the radio for him, using the old name, and it was heard by Perry and by the people at the Iranian embassy, and it said where the hospital was. We went there, Yusuf and I, but it was I who actually went into the ward and asked the nurse which patient was his father. I saw him by the bed. We waited outside and noted the car he was driving, and it was I who walked past it and took down the name of the garage that had sold it. We went to the garage and I chatted up the salespeople, gave them a story I flirted, I did what was disgusting for my Faith and I was given the address of the man who'd bought it. I did all of that because I was trusted. Then I was trusted enough to come down here, to Perry's home, to photograph him and his house. And I was trusted, when Yusuf crashed, to drive south, collect you and bring you here. How much trust do you need?"
He gazed at his boots, at the crossed laces and the mud.
She bored on.
"Is it too difficult for you now?"
"What?"
"Because he is protected, is it too difficult?"
"You believe.. ." He had never before been interrogated by a woman then lectured, not even as a child by his mother.
"Are you giving up, going home?"
"No .. . no .. . no ..
She had angered him. She smiled as if his anger pleased her, as if she had finally reached him.
"What are you going to do?"
"Think and plan."
"It's possible?"
"In God's hands, everything is possible."
"How can I help?"
He said, "I need bread and cheese and bottled water, and I need raw minced meat. Please, bring them for me tomorrow."
"Same time tomorrow bread, cheese, water, minced meat yes." He pushed himself up. The damp of the ground had seeped through the material of his camouflage trousers, stiffened his hips. He stretched. She reached up with her hand. He hesitated. She challenged him. He took her hand and she used the strength of his grip to pull herself to her feet. The blood flushed in his cheeks. She rubbed the skin at the back of her legs as if to give them warmth. He looked away from her and began to brush the ground on which they had sat with sticks to lift the flattened grass.
"I don't know your name and you don't trust me," she said softly.
"But you can't do without me, can you?"
Chapter Nine.
~We're stuck with him."
"Don't know how we can shift him."
"Whichever budget it's coming out of will be facing a black hole." It was where they found comfort at Thames House: a meeting around a table, an agenda, and a stenographer parked in a corner to record conclusions.
Barnaby Cox, once, had gestured discreetly to the stenographer with the palm of his hand, an indication to her that a particular area of discussion was not to be recorded for posterity; no hack trawling in future years through the archives in library would learn how information was extracted from a hospitalized patient.
Fenton was beside him. Next to him was the senior warhorse from B Branch, former Army with a history going back to Cyprus and Aden. Beyond him, was Littelbaum, in his crumpled tweed suit and creased shirt, then the red-haired woman. Opposite Cox was the Branch superintendent with the maps on which were drawn the lines covered by the sensor wires and the arcs watched by the cameras and the fields of defensive fire .. . and Geoff Markham was isolated at the end of the table and watched and said nothing.
The agenda had covered the threat; the guarded prisoner; the evid
ence of the presence in the United Kingdom of a killer with the coded name of Anvil good laughter at the top end of the table at that; the possibilities of putting a name to Anvil; the missing associate thrown up by Rainbow Gold no laughter there because Rainbow Gold was a sacred Grail, cost an annual fortune and was beyond criticism; and the mobile surveillance and taps on the movements and communications of the lOs at the Iranian embassy. The agenda had reached the transcript provided by Geoff Markham.
"The call, Geoff's call, wasn't authorized..." Cox fretted.
"All Geoff's done, not that we needed it, is provide further confirmation that Perry's a stubborn fool," Fenton said reassuringly.
"He should have cleared it first," Cox complained.
"The bloody trouble is, and Perry knows it, we cannot abandon him. If the Iranians drop him in the gutter, with half his head missing, they've won, and that is unacceptable." The Branch man gazed at the table.
Cox huffed, "Sounds as if he's deranged, all this rubbish about home and friends."
Fenton said, "I think we should call him up to London, with his wife, give him lunch and the treatment. Plant the doubts in him, scare the daylights out of her. Soften him up."
The Branch man relaxed and grinned.
"Spell it out in words of one syllable that even an engineer can understand."
"A good lunch, a good wine and a good dose of fear should crack him," Fenton pressed on.
"The cost of protection, with no end date, is simply unacceptable." Cox pummelled his hands together.
"But I like what I'm hearing now."
Fenton rocked back in his chair, smiled broadly.
"Get some photographs from the Germans, the French, a few of their corpses courtesy of the Iranians for her to look at while she's eating. Always best to go through the little woman works every time."
"Right, agreed." Cox rapped his pencil on the table.
"We're not criticizing Geoff for his initiative, he was following the agreed line. It's just that he didn't have sufficient weight in his punch. Handle it, will you, Harry?"
The stenographer scribbled briskly. At the far end of the table,
Markham felt like a child brought in to the adults' dinner, not expected to contribute but to be washed, neat and silent. The red-haired woman yawned. The American, who hadn't spoken since his precis of the hospital-bed interview, coughed.
Cox gathered up his papers and stood, content.
"Thank you all for your time the main priority, get him out. A good lunch and lashings of gore to help it down Harry to make the arrange~nents. Thank you.~ The American coughed again, in a more stagy fashion.
"Sorry, Mr. Littelbaum, have we ignored you?" Cox grimaced.
While they were on the move around him, Littelbaum remained still and sitting.
"Just something I'd like to say."
Cox glanced at his watch, then said patronizingly, "Any further contribution you wish to make will be, of course, greatly valued."
Littelbaum smoothed, unsuccessfully, the tangle of his hair. Markham reckoned his hesitation was a good act. He thought the American was as hard as granite.
"That's gracious, much appreciated. It follows on from Mr. Markham's transcript. Quote, "You think I'll run away because of the say-so of those [expletive] bastards? Think again. Get it into your head I make my own decisions. I am not running away", end quote. That's good, excellent, that should be encouraged. The best place for him is at home. What I would urge on you, don't give him lunch and wine and show him photographs, keep him where he is, at home. There are rare occasions, too few for my liking, when we have the chance to win. This is such an occasion.." and I think you should take the opportunity as it presents itself."
Cox was back in his chair. The rest of them listened in silence.
"If you like, I am a surrogate child of Iran. Iran, my parent, feeds me, clothes me, provides my reason for living. Without that parentage I have no life. A child watches every move of its parents. So, I watch Iran.. . Iran is at war with the United States, with my government, and, if you'd care to recognize it, at war with you too. The weapons they have are stealth, deceit, the probing for weakness. My government, and I believe rightly, calls it state-sponsored terrorism, and every year puts Iran top of the world list. The war, most currently, is being fought on Saudi Arabia's territory. Iran's war aim is, via destabilization, to bring down the government of the kingdom and replace the administration of an ally that irritates us with that of an enemy actively hostile to us. The road to destabilization is through the bombing of the United States' military infrastructure now settled in Saudi Arabia. They are trying to force us out, and if we go the kingdom falls.. . I don't have to give you the statistics of oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. That country is a vile place, a police state, characterized by medieval cruelty, but it is important to us hear me, important. And it is a most challenging environment for an enemy to operate in. To survive there, to continue to kill, the enemy must be of the highest calibre. Our man rates up there. Each time he strikes he creates further government repression which, night following day, creates further destabilization. He organized the bombing of the National Guard barracks at Riyadh, five Americans dead, and the attack on the Kobar Tower barracks, nineteen Americans dead. Three Americans killed on the road between Dhahran and Riyadh. A Saudi general working with Americans was targeted and killed last year. We had a chance to take him last month, and we missed him. Missing him hurt, because we categorize him as the principal terror criminal confronting us. He was called home from Saudi Arabia, and sent here."
Geoff Markham thought him masterful. Littelbaum's voice was never pushed, he used his hands only rarely and then for the supreme moment of emphasis.
"It bleats, cannot hide, cannot escape. It cries out, attracts the predator, is stalked by the predator. It is watched, dragging at its rope, by the marksmen in the hide. It is the tethered goat..."
Fenton's breath whistled in his teeth. The red-haired woman gazed at the American in fascination.
"If you go with your rifle into the bush or the jungle or the desert then you have very little chance, the slimmest of possibilities, of searching out your predator. But the predator has to be killed. So you find a goat. You put a stake in the ground and a rope around its neck. It will attract the predator. You tie the rope to the stake and you sit in your hide with your rifle, and you watch your tethered goat."
They sat in hushed quiet around the table as if, Markham thought, none of them dared to interrupt the bravado of the proposal.
"Afterwards, when you have shot the predator, you will receive the thanks of the community and you will walk with pride. You don't have to put the body on show. Others won't come, predators learn quickly, others will stay away. Forget your lunch, wine and photographs. Leave Frank Perry in place, where the predator knows he can find him. Make the hide, put good men in it.. . You are lucky, so lucky, that you have a bait available."
Fenton and Cox spoke at once.
"That is fraught with danger."
"It's brilliant."
The Branch superintendent said there would be minimal risk to his people because the beast would have eyes only for the goat.
The red-haired woman chuckled, said nothing, but she patted the American's hand lightly.
Cox murmured nervously, "But the consequences of such action, they could be dire..."
"Not if the matter is handled with discretion. With the necessary discretion there are no consequences. But, believe me, the necessary message will reach the Ministry of Information and Security -discretion avoids consequences."
"We'll buy that, if there's discretion," Cox said.
"I'll take responsibility for running it," Fenton rasped.
"At the moment we're drifting. This way we have purpose."
"Our discretion is guaranteed, my word on it." Littelbaum spoke with sincerity.
"It's what we'd do, if we'd had the luck that's given to you."
Geoff Markham wanted to ask, and didn't: how
long would the marksmen wait before they fired? He held his silence. In the interests of a better shot, would they sacrifice the goat? The American had turned away from his audience and rubbed his poorly shaven chin. Only Markham saw the satisfaction of his smile.
He hadn't asked his question because he already knew the answer, had seen it in their eyes. He slipped out of the room and left behind him the clinking glasses and the pop of a drawn cork.
Jerry and Mary Wroughton had lived in the next house with their five-year-old twins, Bethany and Clive, before Frank and Meryl had arrived in the village.
They were able to buy the house of pink stucco, four bedrooms, overlooking the green, with upstairs views out across the sea because the bank offered favourable mortgage terms to employees. Without that they wouldn't have had a sniff at it and with it Jerry had to be everybody's friend at work while Mary had to have a full-time job as a receptionist in a local surgery. In truth, they lived behind their front door as semi-paupers. Appearances, for Jerry and Mary Wroughton, were deceptive and their poverty was hidden. To the outside world, they presented an aspect of cheerful, friendly affluence. Jerry Wroughton liked to be thought of as a bank manager, dropping 'deputy'; Mary gave her job description as a practice manager, not mentioning the word 'receptionist'.
Just as Jerry, at work, acquired customers, and Mary, at work, acquired patients, so both, in the village, acquired friends. Friends went with the territory.
And they were, of course, careful in the acquisition of their friends.
Friendships, as with everything else in their lives, were planned. Friendships were useful, important, should not create stress. Friendships should not provide unpleasant or jarring surprises. Both hated surprises. They were close to the Carstairs, on good terms with the vicar, relaxed with the Fairbrothers, but their best friends were in the next house. There were never any surprises from Frank and Meryl Perry... not until that evening.
What Jerry and Mary liked about Frank and Meryl was that they listened. Jerry could talk all night round the kitchen table and Frank always seemed to find what he said interesting. Meryl was so kind, always ready to help out in a crisis, having the twins round if Jerry and Mary were kept out late, always prepared to shop for them if work were too pressing. They had never had any cause for complaint about their closest neighbours.
A Line in the Sand Page 19