and then it slammed shut. The same at the passenger side. He heard a low conversation beside the driver's cab, but too quiet for him to understand what was said. He saw his captors in the back of the truck move towards him. He didn't flinch. He was not afraid, not yet. Their hands came at his face. He could smell their breath through the masks they wore. He did not try to wriggle away from them, because he thought that would have invited a beating. They fastened a strip of cloth around his eyes.
Mattie was lifted down from the truck. He felt a warm wind on his cheeks. The binding on his ankles was freed. The blood was pounding at the base of his shins, and squeezing down again into his feet. Hands held him upright. He could not have walked by himself, and he was half carried, half dragged up some steps and then manoeuvred into a doorway. They went up a full flight of stairs, and they crossed a small landing, and a door was opened. The strip of cloth was removed from his eyes.
He stood in the centre of the room
The gag was taken from his mouth. The strap was released from his wrists.
The door closed behind him. He heard a key turn.
He stared around him.
The window was barred on the inside, had no glass, and beyond the bars the space had been boarded up with plywood.
There was an iron bed frame, like the ones used by the junior boys in the dormitories of his old school. There was a flush lavatory in one corner and beside it a table on which was a plain ceramic water pitcher and a steel bowl. There was no other furniture in the room. He turned. The door was heavy wood, there was a spy hole at eye level. The walls were freshly whitewashed over plaster. The floor was tiled.
If he had been planning a custody cell for a prisoner such as himself he would have created a very similar room. The kidnapping, the lack of any form of communication, the cell, they were all much as he would have planned them himself.
Mattie Furniss, Desk Head at Century, long time officer of the Service, was a professional, and he could recognise the professionalism of his captors.
He sat on the bed. He massaged his ankles and his wrists.
He forced his mind to work at the detail of his cover. His cover was his only protection.
The Prime Minister sat rigid at the edge of the sitting room chair. The coffee was untouched, the toast had cooled.
'And he's just disappeared off the face of the earth?'
'Not disappeared, Prime Minister. The signs all point to his having been kidnapped.'
'But to have been there at all, that tells me he's not very important… '
'In that theatre of operations, Furniss is of the utmost importance.'
'Then you had better tell me what he was doing all by himself – I suppose he was all by himself? You haven't lost a whole department, have you? – in such an obviously risky enterprise?'
'In my opinion, Prime Minister, the performance of the Service on Iran had been second rate. Upon taking up my position at Century I determined to get that Desk back on course. I told Mattie Furniss, who is incidentally a quite outstanding servant of his country, what I wanted. Obviously affairs inside Iran are at a crucial point. We need to know, very precisely, who is going to come out as top dog in the new Iran. We are talking about a sophisticated and very capable regional super-power, one that controls huge resources of oil inside its own borders and one which has the capacity to destabilize every smaller state on its frontiers, possibly excepting Iraq. We earn very considerable sums of monies from the Gulf states, from the Kuwaitis, from the Saudis. All of those earnings are potentially at risk in the barely disguised warfare between moderate and radical factions for ultimate power in Tehran. The American government has wished to put its markers down in that battle, we more prudently want only to have a better perspective on the end result. For the time being at any rate. Obviously if the radical faction wins out we may have to kiss goodbye to billions invested in that region, billions of future sales. We are talking about the possible perversion of one of the great economic markets currently open to us, along with the loss of great numbers of jobs, if the radicals win and continue to export revolution and Islamic fundamentalism.'
'I don't need a Foreign Office tract, Director General. I just want to know what the devil this obviously senior man is doing all by himself in a very dangerous part of the world.'
'It was I who made the decision that Furniss should travel to the Gulf and Turkey… '
' You made that decision?'
'… to the Gulf and Turkey to visit our watchers and also to hold meetings with some of our principal operatives inside Iran.'
'I suppose this decision flies in the face of long established practice at Century. This is symptomatic of your new broom, is it, Director General?'
'… in order that those with day-to-day responsibility for Iranian intelligence should know more fully what was required of them.'
'Day-to-day Iranian intelligence. Yes, well, you haven't said so in so many words but I take it we may assume that Iranian intelligence will be exactly what Mr Furniss will be dealing with, even now.'
'It hardly bears thinking about, Prime Minister.'
'You sent him, you'd better think about it. You're running a tight ship, Director General. Do all your people go overseas with a Union Jack sewn on the breast pocket? Does his passport say 'Iran Desk, Century'?'
The Director General said, and his eyes gazed back into the Prime Minister's sarcasm, 'Naturally he is travelling under a well-established alias. He is an archaeologist, rather a distinguished one, I gather. A specialist on an early Turkish civilization, I believe.'
'I dare say he is, but archaeologists do not ordinarily disappear an hour's driving time from the Iranian border. Or do they, Director General? I have very little information on archaeologists. It sounds to me as though Furniss' cover was blown, as I think you put it, long before he got anywhere near Turkey. You wouldn't have to be terribly bright to wonder what a specialist in an early Turkish civilization was doing hopping round the Gulf in his Olympic blazer. And if he is inside Iran, if he is identified, then he is going to have a difficult time?'
'Yes, Prime Minister.'
'Well, thank you, Director General. I think that's enough excitement for this morning. Keep me posted, please, and kindly resist the temptation to send in a team of Israeli snipers to se o e if they can find him. I think you have enough of a mess on your hands as it is.'
The car drove away down the lane. Harriet Furniss watched The car drove away down the lane. Harriet Furniss watched it go. The wind was up, and a gale was forecast, and she thought that the blossom would not be much longer on the trees. He had been very nice to her, the young man, and he had emphasized at least three times that it was the Director General who had personally sent him. Not that it mattered, whether the young man was pleasant or unpleasant, the message would have been the same.
Mattie was missing. It was believed that Mattie had been kidnapped. Mattie was an archaeologist… so pathetic. A woman could have run Century better, and still had time for the housework. She was very deliberate in her movements, she bent down to her garden kneeler and went on with the weeding of the border that she had been at when the young man had arrived. There was a surprising amount of groundsel in the border this year… She was numbed. Cleaning the groundsel out of the bed was her safety… She was crying softly. She loved that man. She loved the calmness and the kindness and the patience of Mattie, and she loved his gentleness. No, he was not as clever as she was. No, he could not paint as she could. He did not enjoy the theatre or music as she and the girls did, but she loved that massive and reassuring strength. He was the man she had depended on throughout her adult life. She could not remember the last time that he had raised his voice to her… Those fools in London, fools for what they had done to her Mattie.
She spent the whole morning on the border. She filled a wheelbarrow with weeds. She cried her heart out for the whole morning.
Khalil Araqi walked 200 yards from the hotel's rank, flagged down a taxi and asked for the McDonalds in the Strand. He then walked back up the Hay market, and all along the length of Regent Street, and to any casual observer he would have been seen to spend a long time looking in shop windows. The stops in the windows and doorways of the stores enabled him to check frequently that he was not tailed. He followed exactly the instructions that he had been given in Tehran. He did not expect to be followed, and he could detect no one following him. On the corner of Brook Street and Bond Street, after he had waited at the kerb side for three, four, minutes he was picked up by car. He was taken by the student of the English language south and west across the city. Araqi had
