'Christ, I wouldn't leave anything decent in there, I hope it's alright.'
'It's only a little Suzuki jeep.'
'Can we give you a lift over?'
'Thanks, but I'll take the bus. I'm not in a hurry.'
'Well, it's quite a fine night. Again, my apologies. I suppose you've some luggage?'
'Just a rucksack.'
'Let's go back to baggage reclaim then, Mr Eshraq.'
Harlech and Park ducked away and into an empty office.
Through the door he saw Parrish leading the Tango One out into the corridor. He told Harlech for Christ's sake not to let himself be seen but to watch chummie on to the bus and then wait to be collected by Corinthian by the bus stop. Then he sprinted to get to the Escort in the Customs parking lot.
Keeper found the others, detailed Corinthian to collect Harlech and then join Statesman at the gates of the Long Stay parking lot, one a hundred yards to the west and the other a hundred yards to the east. 'Target in a Suzuki jeep, Keeper's Escort not far behind. Take nothing for granted. He says he lives in Beaufort Street in Chelsea, but he's so fucking cool this one he may just fancy his chances at Windsor Castle.
As soon as the line of flight is established, usual procedures to apply.'
Then he hammered under the tunnel to get to Long Stay parking to give himself time to locate the Suzuki before his Tango One.
He had been held up at Immigration before, but never for so long.
It was not a surprise to him. The Immigration men always took a hard look at stateless persons' documentation. He had learned in Britain that foreigners were always given a hard time at the airport, almost part of an immigration policy.
What had been a surprise was the courtesy of the senior man who cleared the matter up. That man was one in a thousand, and not a well man by the look of him. Wouldn't last, that was certain. He checked his mirror and saw that a dark coloured Ford, possibly a new Escort, was immediately behind him.
He had lived in London for four years, but it had never felt like home to him. He did not think that any of the exiles who had come first to London would have thought of the city as anything other than a temporary refuge. But it had effectively swallowed them all. They would still all dream of going home.
They would dream, but Charlie was going, and he realized that this was his last journey back from the airport. 'Get all the sunshine, do you?' Oh yes, he would be getting all the sunshine. He was off the motorway, and heading past the old Lucozade building. Temperature 5. He looked up into his mirror and saw that he was followed by a Vauxhall, almost certainly a Vauxhall.
There was no tension in his driving. He was controlled, at ease. It had not crossed his mind that he could be busted at Heathrow. He was Charles Eshraq, Stateless Person, but he would not be stateless for long… Charlie Eshraq had taken out two Guards with a handgun. He had blown away the executioner of Tabriz. He was the friend of Mr Matthew Furniss. He was going home with just two more items of business to deal with. And then… then he would be Charles Eshraq, Iranian citizen. Probably no longer the friend of Mr Furniss, certainly no longer the very close friend of the Misses Furniss. He thought of La'ayya and he patted the rucksack and made a wild calculation of what in perfumes and soap seven kilos of first grade heroin would buy. After the small matter of the armour- piercing missiles, of course. He was on the King's Road. He looked up into the mirror as he changed through his gears, as his foot eased on the brake. There was a Maestro behind him.
If he was quick with a shower, he would be in time to get to the pub before closing. Charlie Eshraq would get a great welcome before 'last orders'. He would tell some good stories about dumb tourists losing passports or knickers in the Turkish resorts, and he'd get a good laugh and a good welcome.
He parked.
He didn't look at the car on the other side of the road. He didn't see the couple clinching. He didn't hear Amanda, codename Token and the only woman of April's team, bitching that codename Corinthian, who this year had failed to complete the eighth mile of the London Marathon, could keep his bloody hand out from under her blouse. And he didn't hear Token issue a violent warning when Corinthian whispered that it was just play acting in a good cause.
Charlie humped his rucksack up the stairs to his flat. He threw, street value, more than a million pounds sterling of heroin down on to the floor.
He went to the window and looked out on to the street below. A girl got out of a car opposite, slammed the door furiously and then got into the back seat. Charlie smiled to himself. He thought that La'ayya would have liked the King's Road, and he didn't suppose she'd ever see it.
He ran his shower.
Mattie was trussed tight.
He had lost the feeling below the ankles, and the pain was cutting at his wrists.
He was very alert now. Old training was surfacing, things that he had been taught ten years before, and twenty years.
For Christ's sake, he had even lectured on it, back at the Fort at Portsmouth. He had been a student more than once on the Escape and Evasion courses, and he had been the instructor.
He knew it all. He was lying on the hard and hurting steel ribbing floor of the pick-up. His captors had put a gag of thick leather in his mouth and lashed the thongs at the ends of the gag behind his neck.
The training had told him that the optimum escape moment was at the very moment of capture. That's what he had told his students. Right, he had been looking for the optimum moment, been looking at it from the start, right into the barrel of an automatic pistol. The optimum moment was also the time of the maximum danger – that, also, he had told his students. The time of the lift was the time that the hit squad were most highly stressed, most irrational. He had looked up the barrel of the automatic pistol and been kicked in the head.
His ear had bled, was now congealed. He rationalised that his bleeding ear would have been shot off, with half his head, if he had struggled at the roadside. He was an old man, and there were four of them and none of them looked half his age.
Two of them were in the back section with him, and both now wore cotton hoods with eye slits, and both kept handguns trained on him, and neither had spoken.
He was aware that, at first, the truck had travelled several miles, and that then the engine had been stopped for what might have been three hours. He knew that when they had stopped they had been in a garage or a farm shed because he had heard the doors being shut, and he had heard the echo as the engine was cut, and later restarted, which told him that the vehicle was in a confined space. He lay alone. The pain had come and gone and reached point after point that he thought would be unendurable. He weighed pain against anxiety. He worked to restore the circulation in his hands and feet, told himself over and over that another opportunity to escape would present itself.
The truck doors opened, his bonds were examined by torchlight, and then the outer doors were opened and the truck headed off again, a long drive, over those awful bloody roads. It was part of his training to remember everything possible about his journey after capture, basic stuff that. Easy enough in the New Forest, or the back terrace streets of Portsmouth, damn sight harder after the shock of capture, after being kicked in the head, and when there were two handguns a couple of feet from his ear. A weekly game of squash did not leave a 52-year-old in ideal shape for kidnapping, but he understood that they had driven a good distance.
He had been aware first that the pace of the truck had slowed, and he could hear other vehicle engines around him.
He heard voices, Turkish spoken, and then the truck was accelerating. He thought they were back on a decent road surface. The truck lurched to a stop, Mattie slid forward and into the bulkhead and scraped his scalp.
He heard the driver shout, 'Asalaam Aleikum.'
He heard a voice outside, 'Aleikum Asalaam.'
The truck gathered speed. The words were revolving in his mind.
'Peace be on you.'
'On you be peace.'
Mattie had lived in Iran as a military liaison officer, and he had lived there as the Station Officer. Second nature to Mattie to recognise the greeting and the response.
