'Wasn't the easiest of days I've known but, what I've said to Meryl, it could have been worse.'
'Always best to be positive, Mr. Perry.'
'We could have run away could have turned our backs on all this.'
From what he had seen in her face, the hopelessness in the fall of her mouth, he thought the woman was deeply wounded and he wondered if Perry realized it. Not his job… He should have phoned Lily, should have spoken to the boys, should have… He was hardly qualified for marriage counselling, and it wasn't his job to try.
'What I want to reiterate, Mr. Perry, are the procedures, and for the correct application of the procedures I need your co-operation.'
'And you should not forget that I worked for my country, Mr. Davies. I am owed protection.'
They faced each other across the breakfast table. There was a tight, curled snarl at Perry's mouth.
He smiled, defused.
'Of course, Mr. Perry. If I could just repeat… Please, you don't spring any surprises on me. You tell me who you are expecting as visitors, where you will be entertaining them. That will be very helpful to me.'
'It's a village, Mr. Davies, it's not an anonymous damn city. Our friends call by, they don't make appointments, we're not an optician or a dentist.'
He was generous. He knew that the snarl was from tiredness and understood the stress. Behind Perry, the woman watched him, her eyes never leaving him.
'And I need to know, Mr. Perry, your intended movements for the day. Are you going out? Where are you going? How long will you be there? Who will you meet? I need specific detail of your planned movements.'
'Why?'
He reckoned they were sparring and wasting each other's time. He said it straight, brutally, 'We have laid down procedures, they are based on experience. You are at least danger when in your own home. You are in the greatest danger when in transit. There are two points of maximum danger, when you leave your home and are exposed as you go to the car, and when you leave your car and wallz into a building, particularly if that is a regular journey. You are in danger en route, if your journey is predictable. I told you this yesterday and I am sorry that you weren't able to comprehend it. The danger on the pavement, to the car and from the car, is from a sniper at long range or a handgun used at close quarters. The danger during a journey is from a culvert bomb with a command cable or remote detonation or from a parked car bomb. Get me? If it couldn't happen, Mr. Perry, I wouldn't be here.'
The woman rocked on her feet, as if caught by a shock wind, but her eyes were never off him.
It was like he'd hit Perry in the solar plexus, and his voice was quieter.
'You can't search half the countryside. What difference does it make if you know my routes?'
He said easily, 'I can plan, in the event of an ambush, where to drive to, the nearest safe-house might be a telephone exchange, a government building and I can have worked out where's the nearest hospital.'
'Jesus.'
'So, if you could just tell me, Mr. Perry, your plans for the day, then there are no surprises.'
'Meryl's visiting this morning and she's got a class-' 'I'm not concerned with Mrs. Perry's movements.'
Perry flared.
'Doesn't she matter?'
'You're the target, Mr. Perry. You're the principal I'm here to protect. That's my instruction. Are you going out today?'
She had an antique-furniture restoration class in the afternoon. Perry was committed to the school pick- up.
'Can you cancel?'
'No, I bloody well can't. And I intend to live a life.'
'Of course, Mr. Perry. Let's go over the route.'
He was shown in by Fenton, and Cox was hovering behind.
Markham thought the man looked as if he'd just stepped off the Ark.
'It's Mr. Littelbaum, Geoff, from Riyadh. You told him you did the 'donkey's load', so he's come to offer you some oats. You're his liaison with us,' Fenton said.
Markham stood. It was that sort of depressing morning where the pieces were obstinate and refused to slot. Nothing to report from SB's operations centre on the target, Juliet Seven. There was no trace on Yusuf Khan from Nottingham. The associate, the woman thrown up by Rainbow Gold, had moved from the address listed for her electricity and telephone bills, but he had, small mercies, registration details for her car, about as common a small saloon as any on the road.
The American had wild grey hair, which needed cutting. His tie was stained with food and, from the tight knot, seemed only to be loosened each night so that the noose could be pulled over his head. The shirt was new but already there was grease on it. He wore a brown three-piece herringbone suit, what a solicitor might have worn thirty years back in north Lancashire, and the creases said he'd travelled in it. But he had alive, penetrating eyes. Markham glanced down at his watch.
'I apologize, but I did tell you, Mr. Fenton, I have to be at an appointment over the lunch-hour.' And he added limply, 'A family business appointment. I can't cut it and I can't be late either.'
Fenton said, dry, 'I hope the family business is important Mr. Littelbaum has flown three thousand miles so that he can offer us the benefit of his experience. Bring him back to me.'
Fenton and Cox were gone.
He shuffled, tried to tidy his desk space, merely confused the papers and his notes.
'Would you like a coffee, Mr. Littelbaum?'
'Only if you can put whiskey in it.'
'Can't,' he said sheepishly.
'At the donkey level it's not permitted to keep alcohol in the work area. I'd get a reprimand and it would go on my record.'
'Not to worry. Where I come from it's a capital crime, Mr. Markham.'
'In here I'm Geoff please, feel free.'
'Then you'll have to forgive me I'm not familiar with people who aren't friends. I take it as a lack of respect and common courtesy. Right now, Mr. Markham, and I'm sure you know it, you're sitting on the big one.'
'Right now it's all ends, frayed and not tying. I don't know what I'm sitting on.'
'OK, OK. The target, Hughes/ Perry
'We've call-signed him as Juliet Seven.'
'OK, Juliet Seven. Is he still refusing relocation?'
'Yes.'
'What have you done for him?'
'We have given him specialist police protection.~ 'They got howitzers?'
'They would have machine pistols and handguns.'
'How many?'
Markham said, dispirited, 'There are two, each doing a twelve-hour shift.'
'Fuck.'
'It's a matter of resources.'
'Are you listening, Mr. Markham? This is the big one. I know him as the Anvil. I don't have another name for him. I don't have his face. He was in Alamut. Did you read, like I told you to, about Alamut? Of course you didn't. Donkeys don't have time to read, donkeys just get the shit piled on them. The Anvil was in Alamut – I hate that name, it's crass and comic-book, but it's the name that's whispered in the souk, in the mosque and in the theological colleges throughout Saudi Arabia, so it's real enough for me. The Anvil goes to Alamut, each time, before he travels for the hit. I know so little of him, but he's the best, and he's dedicated. That he goes to Alamut is important because it is the small window I have into his mentality. Please, Mr. Markham, when I'm talking to you don't look at your wristwatch. And now he is travelling and his target is your Juliet Seven.
'Before you rush away to whatever is important, take time out for a little history. Alamut is a few kilometres north-west of Quasvin where there is a terrorist training camp run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. At Alamut, nine hundred years ago, Hasan-i-Sabah founded the sect of Assassins. The modern word is from the same root core as 'hashish' Western scholars believed the killers were drugged or they would not have gone forward
