inside.
Perry said softly, 'I told my wife that the threat wasn't real.'
'Then you'll have to do a bit of explaining, sir.'
When the engine pitch changed he was sleeping. He stirred in the hard bunk bed, closed his eyes again, aware of the swinging turn of the tanker. Then he wiped his eyes, dragged at the floral curtain and peered through the porthole window. Beyond white-flecked sea was a horizon of dark land, browned cliffs, yellowed fields and the greys of a town's buildings. In the sea, bucked and heaved by the swell, was a small boat, its blue hull lost then found as the spray broke over a garish orange superstructure. The small boat closed on the tanker. He was awake, he remembered.
The tanker slowed to allow the pilot's launch to come alongside, turning to shelter it from the bluster of the wind. He pressed his face against the weathered glass of the porthole and watched until the launch was under the sheer wall of the tanker's side. He imagmed the pilot jumping across a void of water from the deck of his boat to the rope ladder cavorting from the bottom of the fixed steps, and if the pilot slipped… In the night, when he went over the side, his God would protect him. From his porthole window, he could not see the pilot come aboard, but he watched the small boat heave away and head back at speed towards the land. He felt the turn of the tanker and heard the throbbing power as the engines regained cruising speed. By the time that the ship, guided by the pilot on the bridge with the master, rejoined the northern lane of the English Channel's traffic-separation scheme, he was asleep again. He needed the sleep because he did not know when next he would have the opportunity. He would sleep until the alarm on his watch woke him at noon, then pray, then sleep again until mid-afternoon, then pray, then sleep again until dusk, then pray, then ready himself.
'They bought it I don't believe it, but it's authorized.' The faithful Mary-Ellen tore the paper off the fax roll.
'That's just incredible. They swallowed it. You've got the clearance, you're on the freedom bird tonight.' She laid the sheet of paper down in front of him.
'Have you enough socks?'
The Special Agent (Riyadh) of the FBI and his personal assistant sat beside each other and made a list of what he should pack, and what he might need to buy in the embassy shop. She wrote down, and underlined, the names of the pills for his blood-pressure problem.
When the list was complete, she made the airline reservation.
'The authorization is for a week is that OK? Book you back in a week?'
He nodded agreement.
She chattered on, 'Don't you worry about me. I'll be just fine. Be glad to see the back of you for a week. We're behind with accounts, filing, all that stuff might just get the place cleaned out. I'll have a dandy time here.'
But he was hardly listening. Duane Littelbaum would not have paused to consider whether his personal assistant could cope with a week of his absence. His wife, Esther, was out in west Iowa, between Audobon, which had been his home, and Harlan Valley, where she had been reared. She was in the world of cattle and corn, had brought up two daughters, and he hadn't lived with her, not properly, for a few months short of twenty-one years. It did not seem to matter to him, or to her. He went home, to the roadside house between Audobon and Harlan Valley, every leave that was given him and every Christmas. He wrote to his wife each weekend that he was away and never forgot a birthday. It was a detached marriage but it stayed alive.
He had lived his life for the study of Iran.
Those who did not know him, the embassy staffers who passed him in the corridors or saw him in the parking lot or at the ambassador's functions, would have reckoned him an academic, eccentric and gentle. They would have been wrong. He played the dangerous game of counter-terrorism. It was a solitary, work-driven life, where victims held little relevance, where the requirement for victory was paramount.
Duane Littelbaum had a light, bouncing step as he left his office and went on down the corridor, cheerfully slapping the arm of the Marine at the grille. His stride was almost a skip of pleasure.
His purpose in life, through all of twenty years, had been to put a smoking gun into an Iranian hand. If the chance came, he would act with a ruthlessness unrecognized by those who did not know him well.
His finger hovered over the names he had written on his paper pad. Fenton stood over him.
Geoff Markham recited, 'Yusuf Khan, disappeared off the face of the earth. SB have beefed up Nottingham from Manchester and Leeds, but they don't have him. He's not been home since he was lost, and has not showed at work. The one associate we have listed is Farida Yasmin Jones, the convert, but that's a problem because she's dropped out, doesn't go to the mosque now and has moved out of her bed sit I can't trace her electricity, telephone and gas bills for a new address, like it's covering a trail and intentional which is to me both interesting and worrying. The protection officer given to Perry hasn't called back to his co-ordinator. It's a slow haul.'
'Keep pushing, keep kicking bums. I'll be at lunch.'
He nibbled at the fringes of impertinence.
'That's nice, enjoy it.'
Fenton grinned.
'I will. Need to get up to speed. I have a good feeling about this one. In my water, I've the feeling this might even be exciting. I'm preparing for a jump on to the learning curve.'
His superior had been transferred from the Czech! Slovak I Romanian/ Bulgarian desk only fourteen months before, which was why Cox had been able, effortlessly, to win promotion over him. Markham thought Fenton should have been on his learning curve a year ago. He stepped over the fringes.
'I am sure that Mr. Perry would be pleased to hear that he's providing a bit of excitement.'
'You want to make anything of this job? My advice, take the heat.'
'I'll be here.'
'Where I would expect you to be.'
Markham did not look up. Fenton was going to the door, whistling happily, and he steeled himself.
'Mr. Fenton.'
The whistling stopped.
'Mr. Fenton, I know we're in unpredictable times, but I need to be out tomorrow afternoon, for one o'clock, be about an hour.'
Fenton would have been looking at the photo on his wall of Vicky, the one where she wore the short skirt. He asked, 'Going to get a little cuddle in, to see you through the day?'
'I am entitled to an hour at lunch, Mr. Fenton.' Vicky would maul him if he didn't put his foot down. He said doggedly, 'I'm not obliged to work right through a night, but I did.'
'No call for claws, Geoff. If you can be free then you will be.'
'Sorry, Mr. Fenton, it's not 'if'. I have to be out of here for one o'clock tomorrow.'
'Clock-watching, Geoff, does not fit the Service ethos. May be all right in a bank… but secret work, security work, makes a bad bedfellow with a clock face
Fenton was gone. Geoff Markham sat at the console and hammered out the text, giant format, then printed it. He took a roll of Sellotape from his drawer and stuck the paper to the outside of his door.
'This Project is so SECRET even I DON'T KNOW what I'm doing.'
The principal and his wife were subdued, out of sight, when the van arrived with the men from London. Davies jumped out of his car to meet them. He took the foreman down the narrow track at the side of the house and showed him the rear garden, the facade of old stone, and gave him the sketch map he'd drafted of the layout for the property, and its interior.
Two more men were at the front now, unloading the cables and boxes from the van, and unhitching the ladders' stay ropes from its roof. He had his own key to the front door now, and took the foreman inside. He'd leave the kitchen, where the principal was with his wife, until last. The foreman hadn't wiped his boots and left a trail of wet earth round the rooms. They went through the house, and the foreman never lowered his voice as he discussed arcs of surveillance for the cameras and the sighting of the infrared beams and through which upper window-frames they would drill the cable holes, and which ground-floor windows and doors should be alarmed. They came to the kitchen last. She sat with her back to them, didn't acknowledge them. Perry tried to make small-talk but the foreman ignored him. It was usually like that, when the gear was put in, and there was no easy way of riding out the shock.
