weeping.
He watched the gulls flying lazily over the sea, and felt jealous that such matters did not trouble them.
His life, many times, in those three days, played in Frank Perry's mind. He remembered his many friends at Shiraz, where the gases were mixed, before the project's move to Bandar Abbas, where the warheads were constructed, and more friends there. They had entertained him and kissed his cheeks when he gave them gifts, and were deceived. At the thought of his betrayal, he screamed silently across the winter-yellowed grass of the green, and the rooftops where the first smoke of the day crawled from the chimneys, and the open depth of the sea. It was not his fault: he hadn't been given a chance to do otherwise.
Emma Carstairs drove up, smiling and chirpy. She pushed the door open and belted her horn. Stephen ran past, without looking at him, and dived for the car as if to escape.
Frank heard Meryl's brisk shout behind him. The car drove away. There was a call for him. The Home Office in London. He went back into the house and heard her washing up the breakfast things. She hadn't asked him why the Home Office had rung. He picked up the telephone.
He felt like a Philby or a George Blake. Bettany, who had rotted in gaol on an Official Secrets Act sentence, would have felt like this when he'd made his first communication with the Soviets. He took the phone card from his wallet. Geoff Markham had come out of Thames House, doubled back behind the building, scurried up Horseferry Road for the first bank of telephones. The brewery answered, through to Marketing, a shout for Vicky. He felt he was breaking faith, and the furtiveness exhilarated him. He told her that the bank was giving him an interview for a place in investment brokerage; his application had been short listed down to the last three. She squealed, she said he was brilliant. He gave her the details. She growled that she would bloody murder him if he blew it and started on about her teaching him interview technique. She had wanted him out of what she called that creepy job and into proper work since they'd first shared a bed. He rang off. He wouldn't have dared make that call inside Thames House. He felt elation that he had been short listed and the same sense of shame as when he'd sent off the application to the bank with the necessarily limited personal background. It was what Vicky had told him to do she had torn the job advertisement from the Situations Vacant.
He took the back-streets to the bridge, crossed over. The great building, the home of the Secret Intelligence Service, the green and cream and tinted-glass monstrosity, was enemy territory to most of his seniors at Thames House. When Cox or Fenton went across the river to Vauxhall Bridge Cross, they always said, after they'd legged it back, that they felt they ought to wash their hands. He asked for Ms Flowers, and the security staff at Reception looked at him and his Security Service ID as if they were both worthless.
She took him into a bare interview room on the ground floor. She laid a file in front of her on the table, and leaned her elbows over it, covered it with her bosom.
He talked.
'We went down under prepared to see him, went with big holes in what we knew. We knew that his new name and identity were blown open how and where is what we did not know. We told him his life was under threat, but we didn't know the extent of the threat… It was difficult to assess who was the blind and who the one-eyed. We're sending him the Blue Book. We need help and have to have answers to questions.'
She snorted derisively.
'Ask away. Whether I'll answer, that's a different matter. And you should know the importance we give to the Iranian weapons programme. Attention, among the ill informed was directed towards Iraq, which is just comic cuts, cartoon-strip stuff. Iran is the big player. Iraq has no global following, Iran is a focus point for billions of Muslims. Iran matters.' She guarded the file with her elbows.
'Who was Frank Perry?'
'His name was Gavin Hughes. He was a pushy young salesman in an engineering manufacturing company at Newbury. He sold commercial mixing machines, mostly for export.'
'What was the Iran link?'
'The Iranians wanted mixing machines for their programme WIVID development. You know what that is, don't you? Weapons of Mass Destruction, microbiological, chemical and nuclear.'
'But the export to Iran of those machines is blocked by legislahon, enforced by Customs and Excise. Isn't that right?'
'The machines are dual-purpose you were informed of that, and the Customs interest. The same machine can be legally exported to mix chewing-gum or toothpaste to industrial quantities, and illegally exported to mix explosives and the chemical precursors for nerve gases and bio-toxins, which are the anthrax or suchlike end of the business. His company's machines, with falsified export declarations, were for the equipment of military factories.'
'What was his importance?'
'He's a sharp salesman, as I said, everybody's good guy. People warm to him, people want to be his friend. The man who is liked and makes friends, he gets access. The access was disproportionate to the importance of the product he supplied. No need to go to Tehran to meet him, have him down to Shiraz or Bandar Abbas, sort the problem out there and save time. He's a popular man and not stupid. He doesn't push his luck, just keeps his ears and eyes open, and he oils the friendships with gifts. It gets so that he's hardly noticed when he's there. I'm not exaggerating he was remarkable, one of the most valuable assets we've ever had.'
'Who was the controller running him?'
'Ran him a bit myself at the end, when it was leading up to the sensitive time. We were into him about eighteen months before it finished. We'd picked up the illegality bit. He faced a Customs and Excise investigation and he'd have gone to prison. We had him well stitched, and he knew it. He was always very co-operative. You don't need to know who recruited him, did the heavy stuff and pulled him on-side they wouldn't give you the time of day.'
'What happened 'at the end'? What finished it?'
'We and other agencies became aware of the pace of the development of chemical warheads. We needed to obstruct, or at least impede, that progress. Necessary action was taken.'
'What was the action taken?'
'You should never try to run, Mr. Markham, before you've learned to walk. That's not your concern.
'Sorry, but it is my concern if I'm to be in a position where I can assess the contemporary threat level.'
'If you've ever rammed a stick into a wasps' nest then you make the wasps angry. They want to sting you. At which point you're advised to get the hell out. That'll have to be good enough for you.
'How would the Iranians have known that he was the source of information?'
'They're not idiots, certainly not in our eyes. At the same time they were clearing up the debris, he'd disappeared, left home and work. Yes, they could put that together. They would have been very angry.
'Has he been looked after?'
'What you already know new life, no Customs and Excise feeling his collar, new identity. We treated him well and expensively.'
'That's a minimum of five years ago. Would their anger have lasted?'
'With the action that was taken, yes. The anger might have matured, but it wouldn't have diminished.'
'What are we supposed to do now?'
'God, why'd you ask me? Water under the bridge, as far as we're concerned. He's no earthly use to us or anyone now, just another engineer doing whatever engineers do.'
'But if he was brilliant and remarkable, we owe him.'
'Understood you've done that, offered help. I know his reaction too. He's made his bed. We don't acknowledge debt to civilians, businessmen. They work for us, we explain the risks, they stand on their own feet. Actually, we were surprisingly generous in this case. Nothing is owed.'
'One last thing. What was the quality of the information on the renewed threat?'
'There's an American in Riyadh, a funny little fellow from the FBI. He's their Iran guru. He dug up Perry's name, a little consolation on a failed raid. If you call him, don't have a pending appointment and don't expect him to draw breath and let you get a word in. Get the message Perry or Hughes is a spent cartridge, he's of no importance. At the reception they'll show you the lavatory. The American in Riyadh is Littelbaum…'
The electric fan always distorted the television picture, and the cranking air-conditioner set in the wall did the damage to the sound. Mary-Ellen was responsible for catching the local-language news programme because Littelbaum found it hard to remember schedules. He was at his desk, the fan blast riffling the papers in front of him.
