and the officers with whom you met. Myself, Mr Furniss, I handed you the coffee… I do not recall a discussion of Urartian forti-fications.'
Like a punch to the stomach. 'I'm afraid you have a case of mistaken identity.'
'When the paper comes, Mr Furniss, it is advisable that you fill it.'
Mattie's head dropped. He heard the shuffle of the sandals on the tiles, and the door opening on oiled hinges, and the turning of a key.
A pale body, sinew under the skin. Park never wore a vest.
In his chest of drawers at home he had vests that Ann had bought him the first January Sales after they were married, and they had never been worn. The girls in the April office didn't look up because none of them was that interested in Park, a cold creature, and anyway they were pretty used to seeing men with their shirts off, strapping on the canvas harnesses for radio transmitter/receivers. It was a harness that could support a Smith and Wesson. 38, but the ID never carried 'pumps'. If the guns were thought necessary, then the marksmen were supplied by the police. Park had the microphone on a cord around his neck, and he shrugged back into his shirt, and put the clear plastic earpiece in place.
There would be two cars and a van in place that morning.
They could follow Tango One wherever he cared to lead them.
The van had a miserable clutch and wouldn't be able to keep up with the cars, but it would get there eventually. Corinthian would be on the Pentax with the 500mm lens, Keeper would be telling him what was wanted on the celluloid, what wasn't worth it.
Parrish had wandered out of his office.
'Still in his pit, is he?'
'He came out for his bun and coffee, went back in… we'll be there in half an hour.'
'Anything on his phone?'
'He hasn't used it.'
'What about the profile?'
'I'm going to do half day in the van, then have Harlech take over. Then I'm going down to shake up the FCO chappies a bit.'
'Ah yes, the best and the brightest,' said Parrish.
Park grinned. The military and the Foreign Office were the officers, the police and the ID were the poor bloody infantry, that was Parrish's unchangeable view. Parrish would never take a six-bedroom farmhouse in Tuscany for his holidays, he was in a caravan at Salcombe… for that matter Park didn't take any holidays at all.
'I was actually quite polite last night. I asked for their personnel officer, I explained that I needed to talk to a Mr Matthew Furniss, and the guy went off, bloody supercilious but perfectly nice, and came back twenty minutes later and just shut a real heavy door in my face. Didn't say he was abroad, nor on holiday, just that he wasn't available. I sprang about a bit, got absolutely nowhere. He looked at me like I'd come in with the cat. Upshot is, I'm back there at four. I promise you, Bill, I'll have an answer then.'
'I'll come down with you,' Parrish said.
'Frightened I might thump someone?'
' To hold your delicate hand, Keeper – now get yourself moving.'
Parrish thought his squad were the pick of the world, and he was buggered if he was going to have them messed around by some creep in the Foreign and Commonwealth. He'd be an interesting fellow, Mr Matthew Furniss, guarantor of a big-time heroin distributor.
The Director General showed himself that morning. He saw himself as the captain of a storm-shaken ship, not that he would have cared to voice that feeling. He believed passionately in the responsibilities of leadership, and so he wandered the corridors and rode the lifts, he even took his coffee in the canteen. He took Houghton with him, the only fairly anonymous courtier, to whisper the name of any officer he didn't know and his job in the Service.
Century was compartmentalized. The North American Desk was not supposed to know of the day-to-day successes or failures of East European Desk. East European Desk was supposed to be insulated from Far East Desk. No other Desk would know of the abduction of Mattie Furniss. That was the system, and it was bust wide open. The Director General found his whole building riddled with rumour and anxiety.
He was asked to his face if there was any news of Mattie Furniss, whether it was true about Mattie Furniss. He sought to deflect all but the most persistent, to reassure them, and to switch talk whenever possible to other matters – the new computer, the cricket match against the Security Service on Gordon Street's ground, the rewiring of the building that was scheduled to begin in the autumn. He decided to call it a day long before he reached Iran Desk's office.
Back in his office he sent for his Deputy Director General.
The man was just back from three weeks in Bermuda and paid for, no doubt, with family money. The sun had tanned the Deputy's face, darkened it to the roots of his full head of blond hair and accentuated his youth. The Director General would finish his career in public service when he left Century, and it was assumed throughout the nineteen floors that the Deputy would follow him into the DG's job. Their relation-ship, twenty years apart as they were, had been at best strained since the arrival of the Director General from Foreign and Commonwealth, because the Deputy had narrowly missed the nod for the job himself, said to be too young and to have time in the bank. The DDG regarded himself as the expert and the DG as the amateur. They worked best when they had clearly distinct spheres within which to operate. But on that morning the Director General was not in any way combative. He needed movement, he would have to suffer a third meeting in two days with the Prime Minister in the late afternoon.
It was agreed that field agents inside Iran should be warned of a possible compromising of their security, but not at this moment advised to flee the country. It was agreed that the World Service of the BBC, English Language, should report, and without comment, that a Dr Matthew Owens, an English archaeologist, was reported missing while on an expedition to north-eastern Turkey. Little thing, but could be a boost to Mattie's cover. It was agreed the Turkish authorities should not for the time being be informed of Mattie's true identity; they might, in limited circles, know from his meetings in Ankara, but it would not go at a government to government level; Station Officer, Ankara, to hack that into place. It was agreed that Central Intelligence Agency should not be informed at this stage. It was agreed that the Crisis Management Committee should be kept in session for the duration.
Iran Desk to report directly to the DDG until further notice The DDG to select a senior officer to go to Ankara and work with the Station Officer to prepare a minutely detailed report on Furniss' time in Turkey. Precious little to take to the Prime Minister, but until they had some indication of who had abducted Furniss – and God alone knew where that was going to come from – there was nothing else that could sensibly be done.
The Director General ticked off the points agreed.
'Did you know that Furniss was running a new agent?
Some very useful material. I had Library run through a check on him this morning. Nothing there. No case history, no biography. That is most peculiar. I mean, Furniss is steeped in procedure… '
'Furniss can't even type.' The Deputy Director General said coldly. 'That woman, his PA, is like a mother hen to him. Flossie Duggan. She types everything for him, she'll have the Case and Biography on the floppies. She'll have them in Mattie's safe. DG, you'll have to fight your way past her.
But that's hardly top concern now. That's just one agent that's now vulnerable, one of several… '
The Director General cut in. He was hunched forward over his table.
'What's the scuttle-butt downstairs, I mean, on this news?
It's clearly not a secret.'
'You want to know?'
'Of course I want to know.'
'They're saying that Mattie warned against it, that he was pressured into going. That the security of a senior member of the Service was put in jeopardy.'
'Perhaps that's the black side.'
An explosion across the table. 'For Christ's sake, with what he knows, they're going to torture it out of him. They may already have started. And we stand to lose the whole of our Iran network, because it's all in Mattie's head. They'll torture him for those names. Do you know about torture, DG?'
