spread from the soft ripped flesh at the soles of his feet and into his ankles, and into his shins and calves, and into his thighs, and into his guts.
It was just their beginning.
Through the long day, into the long night, the investigator had not asked Mattie a single question. Softening him. Beating him and hurting him. Just the start, unless he would scream for the pain to stop. The questions would follow when they thought it opportune, when they judged it best to peel from his mind the names held there.
The pain throbbed in him, welled in him. He lay on the bed and he writhed to escape from the pain, and with his eyes clenched tight he could see all the time the sweat forehead, the exertion, of the man who swung the electrical flex back over his shoulder and then whipped it back on to the soles of his feet.
They had given him nothing. Not even the dignity of refusing their questions.
11
'How are we this morning, Mr Furniss?'
Nothing to say. Mattie took in the greater heat in the airless cellar.
'The doctor came, yes?'
Nothing to say. It was a ritual. Of course the investigator knew that the doctor had been to examine him, because he had sent the doctor. The doctor had been sent to make certain that no serious damage had been done to the prisoner. A slob of a man, the doctor, and his eyes had never met Mattie's because the bastard had betrayed his oath. The doctor had glanced at the feet, taken the pulse, above all checked that his heart would last, stretched up the eyelids to see the pupils, and checked with a stethoscope for Mattie's breathing pattern.
'How are your feet, Mr Furniss?'
Nothing to say. He could stand, just. He had leaned on the shoulders of the guards who had brought him down, but his feet could take some weight.
'Please, Mr Furniss, sit down.'
He sat, and the pain sang into his legs as the weight came off the feet.
'Mr Furniss, it has been broadcast on the World Service of the BBC that Dr Matthew Owens, an archaeologist, is missing in Turkey… ' The smile was winter water. The voice was powder snow soft. 'They are trying to protect you, and they cannot. Do you understand that, Mr Furniss?'
Nothing to say.
'They cannot protect you.'
Stating the bloody obvious, dear sir. Tell me something I don't know… Through all his mind was the memory of the pain, and the memory of the dying that seemed to come each time he had lapsed towards unconsciousness. That was yesterday. The art of resistance to interrogation, as taught by Professor Furniss, was to take it one day at a time, one step at a time. Yesterday had been endured, survived. .. but they had not questioned him. Yesterday was gone, so forget yesterday's pain. Yesterday's pain was what they wanted Mattie to remember. The 'old school' had been put through the full works on the Resistance to Interrogation courses at the Fort – the old school in the Service reckoned that they were a tougher breed than the new intake – resist at all costs, never crack, hang on to the bitter bloody end, and some fearful disasters there had been on simulated interrogation sessions. Queen and Country, that's what the old school believed in.
If he cut the pain from his memory, then the mind was voided, then filled with other matter. The other matter was the names. He tried to find the guards beyond the brilliance of the light in his eyes.
'What were you doing in Van, Mr Furniss?'
'I've told you, repeatedly, I was visiting the fortress of Sardur the Second.'
'That is particularly idiotic, Mr Furniss.'
'I cannot help the truth.'
'It is idiotic, Mr Furniss, because you deny reality. Reality is this cellar, reality is the power at my disposal. Yesterday was amusement, Mr Furniss, today is the beginning of reality.
If you go on with this fabrication, then it will go badly for you, Mr Furniss.'
Stick to the cover, cling to the cover at all costs.
'A long time ago, yes, it is possible that you saw me in Tehran. I've been out of that sort of thing for years. I am an academic now. I am an authority on the Urartian civilization.'
'That is your sole interest.'
'The Urartians, yes.'
'In Turkey?'
'The Urartian civilization was based in north-eastern Turkey and across the frontier of modern Iran as far as the western shore of Lake Urmia. That was the scope… '
'Did the Urartians, Mr Furniss, travel to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain? Is it necessary for an academic, an authority in this rather limited field, to be escorted around the Gulf by the various Station Officers of the Secret Intelligence Service?'
The light was in his face. The guards were behind him. He could just make out the rhythm of their breathing. They would have been told to be still, to offer to the prisoner no distraction from the questions of the investigator.
'I am an academic.'
'I think not, Mr Furniss. I think you are Dolphin. Desk Head for Iran at Century House in London. You were a regular soldier and posted to Iran to liaise over arms sales to the former regime. You were the Station Officer in Tehran from 1975 to 1978. In 1982 and 1983 you were the senior Station Officer in Bahrain with responsibility only for Iranian affairs. In 1986 you spent four months in Ankara. You were promoted to Desk Head on January 1st, 1986. You are a senior intelligence officer, Mr Furniss. Understand me, I do not want to hear any more about your hobby. One day, perhaps, I shall have the pleasure of reading your published work. For today we shall put away hobbies, Mr Furniss, and just talk about what you were doing on this journey around our borders.'
The names were in his head, swirling. He was a man under water and trying to hold his breath, and his breath was the names. In time, as night follows day, the lungs would force out the breath, the pain would spit out the names. Even the old school knew that. It was a question, simply, of how many nights. How many days. The agents should have been warned by now… But was it known who held him? Would Century flush out its best men before they had confirmation that Mattie was in Iran?
What would he have done himself, in their place? He thought of the complications of the structure for getting the necessary signals inside Iran. He knew how complicated it was, he had set the system up. Far more complex than bringing the agents out to the prearranged rendezvous meetings that he had just had. Oh, a lifetime of complications if the agents were to be aborted, and no going back. London would not be hurrying to destroy its network. He swept the names from his mind. He lifted his head. There was escape from the white bright light only in the face of the investigator.
'It is quite scandalous that an innocent scholar… '
The investigator gestured with his arm. The guards came forward, ripped Mattie up from his chair.
Charlie made his call. The same telephone box, after the same night's sleep under a cardboard blanket.
After the call, after he had helped the dossers pile away the packing cases, he went to the left luggage inside the ticket hall of the Underground station, and he took out his rucksack.
They had a fine view of the Greek's house.
Parrish had smoothed it. Keeper reckoned that Parrish was gold-plated when it came down to sweet talking for window space. It was a great window. The early summer foliage was not yet thick enough on the trees to obstruct the vision across the garden and across the road and across the Greek's garden and on to the front porch of his house.
It was an old Victorian house that Parrish had fixed, weathered brick three stories high with an ivy creeper thick enough to have held the walls together. They had chosen the top floor for the camera position and from there their sight fine went well clear of the high paling fence opposite. Keeper and Token knew her life history by now. She came upstairs on the hour, every hour, with a pot of tea and biscuits. She was a widow.
Her late husband had been a brigadier general. She had lived alone in the house for nineteen years, and every
