Not long… He was naked except for his socks. His arms were knotted behind his back; a rope shackled an ankle to a wall ring. He had wet himself and lay in a pool of it. Mucous stuff dribbled from his backside, and among the mosquito bites and tick sores there were the new burn marks from the cigarettes.
The packet came out, was shaken, the filter ends bouncing up…
Foxy cringed away and hugged the wall, twisting his stomach to keep his privates from the goon. He tried to remember what the man with the insignia on his arm – the knife and the split barbed wire – had said of Resistance. He could not, and struggled.
… and the filter went between the lips. The matchbox was out. Foxy felt the scream welling. He was pressed hard against the wall, which gave him no sanctuary. The match flared and the cigarette was lit. The glow came, the smoke billowed, and Foxy saw that the man panted, with anger, tiredness and frustration. He came forward and the bad leg trailed on the floor. There was rage in the eyes. The man, Mansoor, crouched. There was no pity. A big drag on the cigarette and the tip burned. Foxy didn’t have the strength to fight, couldn’t worm clear.
The hand came low. Foxy screamed before the pain, and the scream still had a voice when the pain flushed in him. He didn’t think the scream was heard, and didn’t care.
He’d come late, bad traffic on the road and a meeting that had overrun. The rain had been sluicing on the path. Ellie had shrugged, explained, and he did what was asked of him.
She’d told him where Foxy had stacked the logs when they’d been delivered last August, behind the garage, and she’d given him the basket to fill. When he’d done that, she’d told Piers to fill the coal bucket from the bunker Foxy had spent an afternoon putting together on the far side of the garage. She’d explained she would have done it herself but the rain had been so fierce.
The fire burned.
What had changed that evening was that his car was not down the side of the garage, near the coal and out of sight from the lane. He’d told her he’d have been half drowned if he parked where he had last night. She’d said it didn’t really matter.
There was a meal for two from the supermarket on the table. Foxy didn’t like pre-cooked, packaged meals and bitched if they were offered him and she hadn’t cooked his supper. The bottle had come from the wine store Foxy kept topped up. A pair of candles had been lit. It didn’t really matter if the Noakes woman from down the lane walked her dog last thing, saw the extra car and only a light on upstairs, or if the Davies man went out with his, saw Piers’s car and knew she was being screwed. It didn’t matter: Ellie wasn’t staying.
Would she be going with Piers? Setting up home with him? Maybe, maybe not.
It was a decent Chilean wine: Foxy rated Chilean vineyards and said they were sensibly priced. They ate and drank; their tongues loosened. The storm brewed and rain lashed. Twigs, from the leafless trees, were blown onto the slates and rattled as they fell to the paved path. She said where she would be in the morning and that she’d already phoned them at work, pleaded the throat infection that was her most used excuse, and he’d asked whether they still bought it. She’d shrugged, like it wasn’t important.
Piers asked, ‘You going to pack it in, the job?’
‘I might.’
‘If you wanted out, you could transfer internally. I could – end up at the same place.’
‘Like where?’
‘Edinburgh, Preston, Plymouth? Two wages. Wouldn’t be a place this size. You’d be shot of him.’
‘Worth thinking about.’
‘You could tell him. What’s he going to do? Bite your head off? Just tell him.’
‘When?’ She gazed at the front door and the wind rattled it. For a moment she listened hard, as if expecting the crunch of tyres on the gravel. ‘I might and I might not.’
‘When? When he comes back? Do you know how long it’ll be until.. .’
‘Don’t know when he’s back, or where he is, or why… Are we going to talk about him all night? That what you want?’
Her eyes danced. The candle flames lit them and she held her glass across the table. He filled it and she raised it as if in a toast. It seemed a waste to have lit the fire, then abandon it. She left the plates on the table and led him by the hand to the stairs. She might stay with Piers and she might not. What was certain for Ellie, she would be on the pavement tomorrow, mourning the homecoming of a hero. It seemed important to be there each time, as if it was a drug. She was not ready to wean herself off it. She took him up the stairs and he was pushing her. They almost ran the last few strides into Foxy’s bedroom.
Had there been a fly on the wall, it might have noted that Len Gibbons, at a corner table of a restaurant down by the Holsterhafen – one bottle killed, another damaged – Len Gibbons said, ‘I just cannot credit it. We set up a most successful operation, and the whole thing is put at jeopardy because one of them is idiotic enough to go back to collect a microphone and some cabling. I’m almost apoplectic. We get back, garbled, an interpretation that says it would be unprofessional and against regular procedures to leave the gear behind. Does it bother the Iranians if their DNA is on the bombs that mutilate our soldiers today, and have done for the last eight years? Of course not. They couldn’t give a toss. One would have thought, given a modicum of common sense, that they’d have upped sticks and done the fastest possible runner, but that’s not the case. Result: disaster. The other is hanging about there, can’t do anything, and should have high-tailed it hours back. I tell you, whoever gets back from this is going to have their arse kicked the length of Whitehall. How could they do it to us? And I’ll you something else, my friends, it won’t be Len Gibbons – faithful dog in Her Majesty’s darker affairs – who takes the rap for it. Sorry to rant, but I just cannot comprehend how such imbecilic things can happen… Well, it’s what comes of using increments, getting in casual labour. So much work done and all of it wasted.’
Had there been a bug in the socket beside the table, it would have been able to pick up and pass on the quieter tone of the Cousin. ‘I would hesitate, of course, Len, to gainsay you, but, forgive me, I will. Where are we? We’re in Lubeck. Also in the town, or soon to be, are Herr Armajan, the bomb boffin, and his Frau. Now, halfway to the other side of the world it’s the middle of the night, and in some bog a group of peasant militia have their hands on a high-importance target. They get on the phone, are connected to some idiot manning the switchboard, who knows his commander will kick his balls in if he’s disturbed. What I’m saying is that the local man will fail, during the night, to raise anyone of real import. That’s the way those places work. Some time tomorrow morning, there’s a possibility that it might land on the desk of a man who knows who Armajan is, where he is, who is responsible for him. Very few in VEVAK will know, and perhaps only one man in the embassy in Berlin. My analysis, if we get close tomorrow, we’ll have a clear run in.’
Had there been a waitress who hovered at a table further out in the restaurant and who was blessed with sharp hearing, she would have eavesdropped on the quiet voice of the man called the Friend, who said, ‘I’m more inclined towards the optimist than the pessimist, the glass half full rather than half empty. I think we’ll have him tomorrow morning. We go, gentlemen, and stake out. We’re old men but a bad evening in Lubeck is a good enough opportunity for old skills to be dusted off. I’m confident we’ll locate him and then the opportunity will present itself for the strike. The morning, tomorrow, would be best. I would like to say that it’s been a real pleasure to be a colleague of both of you. If we travel tomorrow, early, there will be no chance of farewells. I do it now, gentlemen.’
They went out into a bitter night: one to go to Roeckstrasse, one to the medical school on the university campus, and one to meet the ferry from Telleborg to greet a man considered expert at his work.
They came to Lubeck. It had been a slow train with stops, and the carriage had been crowded. For part of the journey he had stood and she had sat. For the first twenty-five minutes out of Hamburg she had been sandwiched between a black-skinned girl, who ate pastries, scattering crumbs, and managed to talk continuously on a mobile phone, and a youth with orange-dyed hair in a standing strip over the crown of his head, the sides shaven, metal rings in his ears and eyelids. When they’d left the carriage, the girl had brushed the remainder of the crumbs off her lap, but the boy had said something politely that she did not understand as he had stepped over her feet.
She was exhausted. He had looked for a lift to take her from the platform to the concourse, but there was none, and it had been a laborious effort for her to climb the steps.
The Engineer had sufficient English to ask for the hotel, at an information kiosk. He said that the hotel into which he was booked with his wife was on Lindenstrasse. The woman had been filing her nails and looked at him as if he were an interruption; she had pointed out where they should go, and passed him a small map with the street heavily underlined.
