This small section of the embassy building that he used with Mary-Ellen and the larger area in an adjacent corridor, the Agency's place, were not served by the building's main air-coolant system. The pipes had been cut off and sealed. A security review, two years back, had decided that the Bureau and the Agency should be protected from the possible hazard of lethal gases being fed into the system, so they had their own air-conditioners, a nightmare of noise and unreliability that needed the back-up of electric fans.
The local-language news bulletin was usually a catalogue of the King's palace meetings and the public appearances of the prime princes. The picture was awful, the sound worse, and the content negligible, so he let her monitor it. Even above the clatter of the air-conditioner and the whine of the fan, he heard her gasp. Littelbaum swung in his chair.
The man's head was down, his voice a monosyllabic whisper. Goddammit… The man was dressed in a white robe, like a long shirt. dress, was round-shouldered as if the hope had gone from him. Under the loosely draped gutra, the scarf covering his head, his eyes had lost their light. Damn, shit, damn… The man mouthed a rehearsed confession. Littelbaum listened as he confessed to terrorism and subversion of the kingdom. He was shrunken, as if dehydrated, from when Littelbaum had last seen him, dragged in the sand towards the waiting helicopters. The bastards, the lying, deceiving, double-talking bastards… He grabbed his herringbone jacket, and ran, a fast waddling gait, for the door, the corridor, the grille gate where the Marine stood guard, the elevator, and the ambassador's floor.
He stood to his full squat height, and his body shook with anger as he hammered his complaint.
'It is just obstruction. I have been blocked at General Security six times and I have made two dozen, more, calls to General Security, the ministry, God knows who else. I have not only been denied the chance to talk to this man myself, I have not been permitted to read the interrogation dossier. They are supposed to be fucking allies -I know, sir, about their delicate sensibilities, and I know they are a proud and independent people, and please don't tell me to humour them, but I don't give a shit what happens in this country. The place is a cess-pit, it is corrupt, devious, lying, complacent. Americans died in Dhahran and Riyadh. If this man is on TV and making a confession, then he has been tried, convicted, condemned. Three Americans died in Riyadh, nineteen in Dhahran. Finding the killers of Americans is my job. This man, sir, was in contact with an organizer who I am paid to track and find. This man could give me the name and the face of that organizer, but I am blocked. When he has been, one-way ticket, to Chop-chop Square, I have lost the chance to get from this man that information. I was so goddamn close. So what the fuck are you going to say to our good sweet allies? I have been working more than two years for this one chance so I can hunt the bastard down. What are you going to say?'
The ambassador wrung his hands and said he would make telephone calls, which was what he always said. Littelbaum went back to his section. The fan blew the papers on his desk and Mary-Ellen put a decent slug of 'brown' in his coffee.
The coffee, laced with whiskey, might just make him forget that he had no face and no name to work towards, and that he did not know where the footprints led.
The wind whipped about her and could not move her. The sea swell bucked beneath her and did not shake her.
She was out of the Kharg Island terminal, the property of the National Iranian Tanker Corporation. Her call sign was EQUZ. Her length, bow to stern, was 332 metres; her beam, port to starboard, was 58 metres; her draught, the waterline to the lowest point of the hull, was 22.5 metres. She was loaded with 287,000 tonnes of
Iranian crude. Her speed through the water, regardless of weather conditions, was a constant 21 knots. She had been at sea for thirteen days, routed from Kharg Island, past the port of Bandar Abbas, through the Straits of Hormuz, north up the Red Sea to the canal, away from Port Said and into the Mediterranean. After navigating the Straits of Gibraltar, her last reported position had her giving a wide berth to the sea lanes leading to Lisbon. She was two days' sailing from the western approaches of the English Channel. Her crew complement was always thirty-two Iranian and Pakistani nationals, and the master would give that number, in truth, to the immigration authorities at the Swedish refinery. She was a monster, carving her way forward, moving remorselessly towards her destination.
'Just read it, Mr. Perry, it's all in here. I can't say it's anything that pushes back the frontiers of science. It just states what's sensible.'
When she walked out of the front door Meryl had been crying. She'd tried not to cry in the house, but she'd cried when she was on the step, and going down the path. Perry had seen her dab her eyes when she reached the car and then he'd closed the door. He was not ready to tell her. It would have been easier if she'd confronted him. He had been leaning against the hall wall, head in the coats, when the bell had rung. A card had been proffered, Home Office Central Unit, and a smiling, middle-aged man had been following him into the house.
'It's all in the pamphlet what we call the Blue Book, because it's blue. Vary your route to and from your home, keep a constant watch for strangers whom you might suspect of showing a particular interest in the house. You haven't a garage, I see. Car parked on the street, that's a problem. Well, you look like a handyman, get an old car wing-mirror, lash it to a bamboo pole and check under the car each morning, under the main chassis and especially that naughty little hidden bit above the wheels, doesn't take a moment. Imagine anywhere under the car, or under the bonnet, where you could hide a pound bag of sugar, but it's not sugar, it's military explosive, and a pound of that stuff will destroy the car, with a mercury tilt switch. Always best to be careful and do the checks, doesn't take a minute.'
They wandered through the house, as if the man were an estate agent and the place was going on the market but it wasn't, he was staying. No quitting, no running. The furniture was eyed, and the ornaments and the pictures, and the fittings in the kitchen. He'd made them both a mug of tea, and his visitor had taken three biscuits from the jar, munched them happily and left a trail of crumbs behind him.
'It's mostly about the car. You shouldn't think you're alone. I don't get many days in the office. So many Army officers who were in Northern Ireland, they all need updating. I've a lovely list of gentlemen I visit, and judges and civil servants. You shouldn't get in a flap nothing's ever happened to any of my gentlemen. But what I tell all of them, watch the car… I'll be leaving brochures of the locks on offer, doors and windows, all fitted at our expense. You know, we spend five million pounds a year on this, and me and my colleagues, so don't get depressed and think you're the only one. They didn't tell me, never do, who you'd rubbed up the wrong way… They came down the stairs. The biscuits were finished and the mugs were empty. The man darted back into the living room. There was a grimace on his face, as if he had forgotten something and that was a personal failure.
'Oh, the curtains.'
'What's wrong with them?'
'Dreadful of me not to have noticed. There are no net curtains. There should be your wife can knock some up.'
'She hates net curtains.'
'Your job, Mr. Perry, not mine, to make her like them. I'm sure that when you've explained it-' 'Do you have net curtains at home?' He hadn't thought, and realized his stupidity as soon as the question was asked.
'No call for them. I'm not at threat, I've not trod on anyone's toes. Net curtains, you see, absorb flying glass from an lED, that's improvised explosive device a bomb, to the layman.'
He was grateful for the time and advice. He wished him a safe journey back to London.
'Final advice, be sensible, read the Blue Book, do what it says. Don't think that from now on, what I always say to my gentlemen, life ends, you've got to live under the kitchen table. If there were a specific danger, say threat-level two, they'd have moved you out of here, feet wouldn't have touched the ground or, God forbid, there'd be armed police crawling all over your home… Good day, Mr. Perry, thanks for your hospitality. Let my office know what locks you want, and don't forget about the net curtains. I'll call again in about six months, if it's still appropriate. Good day… It's not that bad or you'd have the guns here or you'd have been moved out…'
After he had read the pamphlet, he hid it among his work papers where she never looked. Frank Perry still did not know what and when he would tell Meryl.
A jam my old number, the Branch men in London called it, a proper trolley ride for the geriatrics, and let them try it. He cursed. He was fifty-one years old, working out the time to retirement, and too damned old for this caper. His problem, he was trying to do singlehandedly the work that should have been given to a four-man detail.
It had been fine at the terraced house where he'd picked up his target easily enough. The target had walked, and the detective sergeant had trailed him on foot into the centre of Nottingham. Into a camping-equipment shop.
