Thames House so fast his feet wouldn't touch the ground. How would it be, a year later, ten years later, when he walked down the Embankment and went past the bullet-proof windows and the concrete bollards? Would he feel fulfilled, streaming with the commuter hordes into the City? He had played God before, with agents' lives, and was playing God now. He wondered how it would be playing God with savers' investment accounts and pension holdings. If he hadn't met Vicky, he would know sweet nothing about investments and pensions. He heard the anger in Frank Perry's voice.
'What do you mean, you're not coming? Is it you can't come, or won't? It's nothing to do with your father, nothing to do with anyone but yourself. Listen here, we've been damn good to you. We're about the only bloody people in this place who have been. I thought better of you.'
Perry's hand trembled as he tried to return the telephone to the wall-fitting. Then, he took a pen and scratched out Donna's name and number from the list on the wall. Over his shoulder, Markham could see the list. Donna was inked out along with most of the others. There were pitifully few names and numbers left unscathed.
At the kitchen door, Bill Davies took the radio away from his face.
'Dave Paget and Joe Rankin will stay on. They've had kids themselves, God help the poor blighters. They can do child-minding.
Meryl came down the stairs.
If her eyes hadn't been red and puffed, Markham thought, she would have looked marvelous. The poor damn woman had made the effort. He noticed Bill Davies take her hand and murmur something in her ear, but he didn't catch what was said. When they'd gathered in the hall, the detective told Paget and Rankin that there were sausages and mashed potato on the stove for their supper. The two men, in their boiler suits and vests, with their pistols hanging from their waists, thanked him balefully.
Blake came through the front door, carrying five fire extinguishers. He dumped them down noisily, then went to the car again, retrieved a heavyweight blanket from the boot with a box of gas grenades, and staggered back into the house. Markham thought it predictable that there should be more fire extinguishers inside, one for each room; the additional bullet- and shrapnel-proof blanket was for draping over a chair to make a wider protective barrier; the gas grenades were standard. But he wished that Meryl Perry hadn't seen them.
She asked where Donna was, and was told.
She wasn't given time to think about it. She was made to run to the open car door, her heels clattering down the path. There was an escort vehicle in front and another behind. Their front windows were down and Markham could see the machine-guns. Well done, Harry Fenton, another great idea. As he helped to hustle her through the gate and pitch her into the car, he thought it was all, already, unravelling. Bill Davies came after him and seemed to be shielding Perry.
Markham drove. Beside him, the detective sat awkwardly because he'd twisted his body so that his hand could rest free on the pistol in his waist holster. Off for a night out with friends well done, Harry bloody Fenton.
The helicopter had been over at last light, and Vabid Hossein had gone into the water at the first sound of its approach. Long after it had disappeared he had returned to the marsh shore. He lay in the darkness in the depth of the cover.
The policemen who watched the marsh, from the village side, on the higher ground of Hoist Covert and East Sheep Walk, had been replaced by fresh men, and he had noted their positions.
The harrier was close to him but he could not see it, could only hear its movements as it scratched in the ground for the last scraps of meat.
The girl had come to the rendezvous point in the late afternoon, bringing food and ointments for the bruising. She had been withdrawn, subdued. When he had told her what she should do the next day, she hadn't argued.
He was curled up on his side in the bramble thicket to keep the weight of his body off the bruising. The skin was bared at his waist and hip, and he could feel the soothing cool of the ointments. He'd thought she wanted to smooth on the ointments herself and he'd refused her. He could not allow himself to be dependent on a woman. He heard the sounds of the bird and tried to shut from his memory the softness of her fingers, seeking instead to recall the sight and touch and feel of Barzin, who was alone in their bed in the house at Jamaran… Each time he summoned the image of her and the touch of her hands, the image dissolved and was replaced always it was her fingers, the girl's… He called to the bird.
The bird was his truest friend, and would not corrupt him. It did not challenge him, was his equal. His love of it did not make him weak.
When it was finished and he was home, he would never talk to Barzin about the bird. She would not understand. He was alone; he was in darkness; he was sodden wet from immersing himself in the water, sucking his air through the reed tube he had fashioned, when the helicopter had circled overhead. He spoke soft, gentle words to the bird, hushed so as not to frighten it, told it what he was planning to do.
Vahid Hossein shifted slightly, so that he could reach out with his hand beyond the tangle of thorns. The bird pecked at it as if he might have held a last piece of rabbit flesh… A lack of patience had caused him to make mistakes: trying to break into the house without sufficient preparation; taking the assault rifle… He criticized the bird for its laziness it should hunt, it was strong enough now… He should have taken the rocket launcher, it would be the RPG-7 next time, he told the bird. His fingers found the neck and crown of the bird's head and smoothed the silky feathers. He hoped it would hunt in the dawn light and that he would see its power and beauty as it dived to kill.
He trusted the bird as his friend.
They sat at a corner table.
Frank Perry was drunk.
'What did I do?'
The restaurant had cleared, and he had taken on a drunk's aggression.
'Will some bugger tell me what I did?'
The principal was in the angle of the corner, his wife was to the right of him and the detective to the left, with a clear view to the door. Markham had his back to the room. The evening was a disaster, he thought, of titanic proportions.
Perry snatched at the bottle and poured again.
'I've the bloody right to know what I did.'
One of the cars was out at the front with its driver, but its passenger sat with his gun across his knees close to the glass door. The other car was at the rear of the car-park, covering the outer entrance to the kitchens. A policeman was sitting by the swing doors through which the waiters had brought the French food. The customers who had been there when the late party had stampeded in, seven of them, at three tables, had stuffed themselves, gulped their drinks, paid up and were long gone.
Perry swilled the wine, the most expensive on the list. Drops dribbled from his mouth and ran on his jaw.
'Why can't I be told what I did? Why won't any bastard tell me?'
Meryl hadn't spoken a word through the meal. Twice, after wiping her lips with the napkin, she had dabbed her eyes. The detective's contribution had been to ask for various condiments to be passed him. The waiters had brought the coffee and retreated to the kitchen.
Frank Perry belted his hand on the table.
'Right, no one tells me, then we're off. We get the hell out and that's that, end of story.'
The principal was trying to push back his chair but he was wedged in the corner. Then he tried to shove the table forward, driving it into Markham's stomach. Bill Davies was snapping his fingers at the policemen by the main door and the kitchen swing doors, and they were adjusting the straps that held their machine-guns and mouthing into their microphones… Geoff Markham thought how it would be on the telephone that night to Harry Fenton. He'd failed, the principal was running. The failure would be the marque to end his career at Thames House. However many years he lived, decades, he would be dogged by that failure… He took out his wallet and extracted a credit card. The owner came hurrying God, he'd be glad to see the back of them and took it. He straightened his tie, then rammed the table away from him, trapped the man.
'You want to know?'
'I've the bloody right to know!'
