Blake already pulling up the arm rest in the centre of the back seat.
In the small hours, and Davies couldn't blame him, Blake would be cuddled up with the cold grip stock of the H amp;K, what the trade called the Master Blaster. Davies had been promised that the next day he would be given a realistic threat-level assessment, but Blake, who was going to be alone through the night, wasn't waiting for it.
He drove back towards the bed-and-breakfast and the room where he would use one twin bed for the night and Blake would use the other for the day, and he'd have to square that with Mrs. Fairbrother, lie his way out of it. He'd have a shower, then find a pub in another village for his supper. It made it a proper bastard when there wasn't a decent threat-level assessment.
The master hugged him, gripped the thick rubber arms of the wet suit, kissed his cheeks and pressed against his life jacket The second officer and the engineer officer flanked him. He had not seen them since he had come aboard fifteen nights before. While he was kissed, the master went again through the timetable of the drop-off and the schedule of the pick-up.
He broke free, stepped into the Zodiac inflatable and settled on its floor of smoothed planks. The whole craft was only four metres in length and he crawled forward so that the engineer officer had the space at the back beside the outboard engine. The engineer officer reached out to him, squeezed his arm and said that the wind was growing, which was good.
It was good, too, he had been told, that they were able to make the drop-off from the tanker when it was fully loaded and lower in the water. The master and the second officer turned the wheel of the crane, and the cable was drawn up further on the drum. The four ropes from the inflatable to the cable hook took the strain, then lifted them. The pilot, on the bridge with the navigation officer, would have no view of the stern deck and the crane, and what the crane lifted.
They swayed up above the rail and then the crane's arm lurched them out into the darkness. They clung to the holding ropes of the inflatable. He had no fear. He was in the hands of his God, ten metres above the water. If the crude holds had been empty, it would have been a 21-metre drop.
They went down the black-painted cliff of the hull slowly. The tanker was now past the Bassurelle light ship, close to the sand ridge that divided the Channel into the northern and southern traffic-separation schemes, and under the monitoring watch of the radar at Dover Coastguard to the west and Griz Nez Traffic to the east. The tanker, on the pilot's direction, would hold steady course and steady speed at 14 knots and would arouse no suspicion from the men who watched the sweep of the radar screens. They bounced on the water, sank as the sea splashed over their feet, and surged up. As the cable tension slackened, the moment before they were dragged along and then under, the engineer officer unfastened the cable hook from the ropes. They were clear. The cable swung loose over their heads and clattered against the plate steel of the hull. They were tossed in the white foam water of the engine's screws and he did not understand how they were not dragged down into that maelstrom. The tanker ploughed on, a great bellowing shadow in the night.
He had been told that it was good when the wind increased and the swell was greater, and that British seamen used the word 'poppling' to describe such waves. He knew the English language, had learned it from his mother, but he had not known that word. When the sea pop pled it was impossible for the men watching the radar screens to see the signature of a craft as small as a four-metre inflatable. The outboard engine coughed to life at the second pull. Three kilometres back, they could see the lights of a following ship. The bow rose from the water as their speed grew.
They crossed the sand ridge. Higher waves there, more spray slashing them.
They approached the westerly funnel of the traffic-separation scheme. There was a line of navigation lights ahead. The engineer officer throttled back, paused and meandered. The inflatable was lifted, fell, and corkscrewed in the waves before he was satisfied. He was like a kid crossing the wide freeway road going south out of Tehran for Shiraz or Hamadan, but waiting for the gap in the traffic, then running. The engine screamed, they bounced forward.
They went for the darkened space of the beach between the lights of New Romney and Dymchurch, near Dungeness. He could have gone by plane or ferry or on the train through the tunnel, but that would have exposed him to the gaze of immigration officers and security policemen. No papers, no passport photographs, no questions, no stamps. He saw, ahead, the white ribbon of the surf on a shingle shore.
The engineer officer, perhaps because tension now caught him, or because there were only sparse minutes before they parted, told of how he had been on the tankers when the Iraqi planes had come after them with Exocet missiles, and of the terror on other tankers when the missiles detonated and the fireballs erupted. He said that he hated those who had helped the Iraqi fliers, and he had reached forward, with emotion, grasped the hand offered him, wished his passenger well, and God's protection. In the last minute before they reached the beach, he told the engineer officer of a birthday party at a seashore restaurant and the bus that carried the guests there, a long time ago.
They hit the shore.
The bottom of the inflatable squirmed on the pebbled beach. He tore off the life jacket the cold whipping his face. He slid over the ballooned side of the craft, into the water of a gentle, shelving beach. He ran forward, kicking his stride against the sea, struggling until he was clear. He heard the roar of the inflatable's engine. When he was at the top of the beach, and looked back, he saw the disappearing bow wave of the inflatable. He was alone.
He walked forward blindly, then stopped and stood stock still against a small wind-bent tree-trunk. Seven minutes later, on the hour, as if by synchronization, the brief, twice-repeated flash of a car's headlights pierced the darkness.
He couldn't sleep. Watched by the red eye of the alarm, he lay on his back.
Frank Perry knew that he had to live with the past because the consequences of his former life were inescapable. There was no dusty cloth with which to wipe clear the words written on the blackboard. The past could not be erased. He had attempted it. Quite coldly, he had changed his attitudes. The salesman, Gavin Hughes, focused on work, had never noticed the people around him. He was now more temperate and more caring. He had thrown himself into the life of the small village community, had time for people and seemed to value their opinions, as if that hard-won popularity was a substitute for his past. He was, he knew it, a more decent man, and it was natural to him that he should help others with the experience of his engineering background, and cut the churchyard grass and attend meetings of the community's groups.
But in his mind the words stayed on the blackboard, and a newfound decency was insufficient to expiate the past. A man had been sent on a long journey, had travelled with a knife or a gun or a bomb, to kill him. Those who had sent the man would not know, or care, that Frank Perry was a changed man.
He heard the boy toss in the adjacent room, and he heard a car door opening, the sound of a man urinating, the door closing again. Meryl was silent beside him, staring at the ceiling. Like sinners, neither of them could sleep.
Chapter Six.
e went too fast on to the bridge and, too late, saw the twist in the road beyond it.
Yusuf Khan had met the man, stood in awe of him. He had come out of the darkness in response to the flash of the headlights, just as the intelligence officer had told him. He had babbled greetings to the man and tried to please him with the warmth of his welcome. Nothing had been given him in return. He had been told sharply, in good but slightly accented English, that he talked too much.
He was in a myriad web of narrow side-roads and he was lost and did not wish to show it. The first light was already a smear in the east. He went too fast over the bridge unaware of the right-hand bend immediately beyond it.
First the man had peeled off his wet suit, then stood in his longtrousered underclothes and had clicked his fingers irritably at Yusuf Khan, who watched. He had been caught idle and felt keenly the criticism of the snapped fingers. He had dragged the newly bought clothes from the bag, and the man had cursed softly because the shop labels were still on them. Yusuf Khan had torn them off before handing them back. He had held the torch and passed the man the camouflage trousers, the tunic and the thick socks. The fact that the new boots were not laced
