'I'm in Washington for a week, won't be back until the day before the funeral. I'm going home now, pick up my bag, then the airport.. . what can I tell Libby? I have to tell her something.'
'It is a police investigation, George. They've got it going.'
'What do I tell Libby?'
The Home Secretary said softly, 'You can tell her that we have the pusher, that we have a good line into the dealer. You can tell her that the Yard, the National Drugs Intelligence Unit, and Regional Crime Squads are all involved. You may also tell her that one of Customs and Excise's rather useful heroin teams is watching developments in the hope that the dealer will lead us on towards the distributor. If one word of this got out, George, one word, I would be severely embarrassed… '
'That will be a great comfort to her… we cannot shake it off, the guilt. Why didn't we notice things at the start? It's as if the disintegration of a happy child just passed us by, Libby's taken it all fearfully… '
'I hope to have more positive news by the time you come back.'
The conversation was ended. The Chancellor and Energy and Education were spilling from the Cabinet room, full of good humour at the latest Opinion Poll which gave government a six point lead, and in mid-term.
Another meeting finishing, another conference table in Whitehall left with empty cups and filled ashtrays, the weekly session of the Joint Intelligence Committee had broken. There had been no politicians present. The Committee was the purlieu of civil servants and permanent officials. Had a politician been present then the meeting would have been severely con-strained. Amongst these men there was a feeling that those who were reliant on the voters' whim were not altogether to be trusted with the nation's fortunes. Present had been the Directors General of the Secret Intelligence Service, the Security Service, Military Intelligence and Government Communications Headquarters, Foreign and Commonwealth officials, and in the chair had been a Deputy Under Secretary with the formal title of Co-ordinator of Intelligence and Security. This Committee decided what the politicians should see, what they should not.
The Co-ordinator had waved back into his chair the Director General from Century, a barely observable gesture to indicate that he should stay behind after the others had gone to their cars and their bodyguards.
'Between ourselves, and I didn't want to express this thought in front of the others, I had no wish to embarrass you, I think you've done rather well,' the Co-ordinator beamed. 'You were put in to do a job of work at Century, and I'd like to say that I reckon you're at grips with the problems there. From the Prime Minister downwards, we wanted that place shaken out of its complacency, and you are achieving that.'
'It would be easier to manipulate a brick wall, but we're getting there,' the Director General said grimly.
'It was time for fundamental changes in attitude and direction. We have agreed to get away from the dinosaur belief that the Cold War is still the focus. Agreed?'
'I'm shifting resources from the East European Desks and into all Mid-east areas. There's a measure of resistance…
Do you know Furniss?'
'Doesn't everybody know Mattie Furniss, good fellow.'
The Director General was hunched over the table. 'He's a very good man, and he's seeing the light.'
'Iran is critical to our interests.'
'That's why I've packed Mattie off down to the Gulf. I've told him what I want.'
'Have you now… ' The Co-ordinator rolled back in his chair. 'You brought some good stuff to the meeting. Is that Mat tie's stuff?'
'He's running a new agent. Keeping the fellow tight under his wing.' The Director General chuckled. 'Typical of Mattie. I tell you what, I gave him a good kick up the arse, and he's been good as gold since. He's running a new agent, and he's gone down to the Gulf to sort out those that he has in place inside, and to breathe some fire into our watchers on the perimeter.'
'Excellent. The Iranians believe, quite literally, they can get away with murder these days. I think the Pentagon taught the Libyans a lesson, and we have done the same to the Syrians. They're both better mannered now. In my opinion, it's time the Iranians were given a short sharp shock of their own… Why don't you stay and have a bite of lunch here?'
In Bahrain, Mattie had met the carpet merchant from Tehran.
The man brought in foreign exchange, and his family were left behind, and he had two sons conscripted, so he could usually get a visa to fly out and back. And in Bahrain he had talked with his Station Officer. And he had picked up a tail.
Mattie had flown from Bahrain to Dubai to see the junior in place there, and he had been watched on to the aircraft and watched off it. He had dealt with the junior in a bit over four hours, given him the pep talk, told him to chuck out his University essay style, and to get himself down to the docks more often, to ingratiate himself more with the shipping fraternity.
Had he taken the road from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, had he been driven the hundred miles from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, past the cars left to rust in the desert because the oil rich could not be bothered to fix another starter motor or whatever, then he might have noticed the tail. Travelling by air, watched through an airport, watched out of an airport, he did not see the tails.
And little opportunity here in the Gulf for him to lay a trail as an archaeologist. He found these communities with their air-conditioned Hiltons, their chilled ice rinks that were proofed against the 100 degree outside temperature, their communities of tax-avoiding British engineers, rather tedious.
Van would be different, the Urartian ruins would be blissful.
He lost the tail that he did not know he had picked up in Abu Dhabi. He employed his standard procedures. He had checked into the hotel, been given a room on the 20th floor of an architectural monstrosity, and then slipped down the fire escape service staircase and out through the work force entrance. He had entered the hotel wearing his dun-coloured linen suit, left it in jeans and a sweatshirt. And he sweated hugely as he walked the few hundred paces through the city to the small office that was nominally base for a firm of international marine surveyors. In a first floor room, the Venetian blinds down, he met the man who worked in the Harbourmaster's office in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.
Mattie had to hug the man. That, also, was standard procedure. He was not fond of overt displays of affection, but it was the way of these things that a man who had come secretly by dhow across the waters of the Gulf must be hugged like a prodigal returned. The man kissed him on both cheeks, and Mattie could smell the man's last meal. It must not concern Mattie Furniss, Head of the Iran Desk, that the man had perspired his fear of discovery while lying amongst the nets and hawsers of a dhow that had ferried him from Bandar Abbas to the wharfs of Abu Dhabi. If the dhow had been hoarded, if the man had been discovered by the Guards, if the man had been taken before a Revolutionary Court, then the man would have been tortured, would have screamed for the release of execution. And yet Mattie must, as a pro-lessional, keep himself emotionally aloof.
They sat down. They sipped tea. The man listened, and Mat tie gave him the prepared lecture.
'It is detail that we want. Hard facts… I don't just want to know that a Portugese or Swedish or Cypriot registered ship is coming in to Bandar Abbas with containers on the deck, I can get all that from satellite photography. I want the contents of the containers. I want the markings on the containers…'
He watched the man, saw that his fingers were twitching at the string of beads that he held over his lap. If over the years he had become emotionally involved with the man then he would have found these demands well nigh impossible to make.
'… There is an international arms embargo on Iran. No weapons of war are supposed to be shipped into Bandar Abbas or any other port of entry, yet we understand that the Iranians are spending 250 million dollars a month on hardware. We want your country, your regime, strangled of arms supplies.
Without the arms supplies the war effort will fail, and if the war effort fails then the clerics are gone. That's the incentive for you.'
Not, of course, for Mattie Furniss to share with an agent Century's exasperation at the government of the United States of America who had dispatched 2,086 tube-launched optically-tracked wire-guided missiles to the clerics along with a plane-load of spares for their old F – 4 Phantoms. He could have reeled off the roll of honour of countries shipping arms to Iran: USSR, China, UK (anything from anti-aircraft radar to military explosives), Italy, Spain, Greece, North and South Korea, Taiwan, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, the Czechs, the East Germans, the Japanese, Brazil, Argentina, the Netherlands, Israel, Portugal, Belgium, even the Saudis… Where a buck was to be made…
