hadn't troubled to know. Thinking of the men at Century and Flossie Duggan. Thinking of Harriet alone in the cottage at Bibury where the spring was over and the summer was coming, and of Will, who would be coming soon to cut the grass around the apple trees. Thinking of the agents in Tehran and Tabriz and the Harbourmaster's office in Bandar Abbas. Thinking of Char he who should have been his son. They would all see the morning, they would all know the freshness of another day. The morning, and another day, they were beyond his reach.
Against the back of his neck, where his hair thinned out, was the pressure of the barrel of the rifle. There was a pain prick from the fore-sight.
No questions.
No demand for names.
He opened his eyes. He saw the face of the investigator and the face of the cleric, expressionless.
He was shaking, and as his neck rolled so the muzzle of the weapon followed.
There was the firing click.
His ears exploded. His stomach failed.
He rolled, fell, collapsed.
He was on the dirt in the yard, and his mouth gaped and bit at the filth.
Mattie heard the low chuckle of the investigator. His eyes opened. He gazed into the cleric's face. He saw a silently mirthless smile.
He was pulled to his feet. His urine had run down the length of his thighs and had stained the dirt. He couldn't speak, couldn't help himself up. He made no attempt to cover himself as they took him back into the kitchen and past the cooker where a meal was in preparation, and up the stairs, and back to his prison room.
He was their toy.
On his bed he wept. The names were in his mind. In his mind were the names of the agents and the name of Charlie Eshraq.
Mattie could recognise it all, the shredding of his will to light.
From his room he could see the west face of the clock. Big lien showing a couple of minutes past midnight. He had slept on the decision, and he had killed a whole day on the decision.
He had taken advice, but the decision was his. He could keep his options open no longer.
He went down to the thirteenth floor.
He didn't knock, he went straight into the room. A very strange noise in the room stopped him in his tracks. Past midnight in Central London and the sounds were of the countryside at dawn. They'd put old Henry Carter on night duty. Finding a job for Henry in the twilight of his service at Century was putting him on night duty in the room used by the Crisis Management Committee. There was a camp bed over by the window. The man wore long combination underpants and a woollen vest with short sleeves and buttons at the throat. Typical of Whitehall, typical of government service, that a Crisis Management Committee should wind up once it was past midnight as a solitary individual, past retirement if he wasn't mistaken, sitting in ancient underclothes, and listening to God knew what… The man was quick off the bed, and was straight into his suit trousers, and was hooking on the braces over his vest. Didn't bother with his shirt. There was an expensive radio on the floor and a cassette was playing through it. A sharp note on the track amongst what, to the Director General, was a clatter of noise, and he saw the attention of Henry Carter waver, then disappear. A moment of bliss on his face. He switched off the machine.
'Sorry, sir, bless you for your patience… phylloscopus inornatus, that's the Yellow-Browed Warbler, a little beauty.
I did the tape in Norfolk last weekend. I thought I had her, never can be sure. Very intense, very penetrating call. Did you hear it, sir? Just off to Siberia for the summer, remarkable little lady… Apologies, you didn't come in here to listen to a Yellow-Browed Warbler.'
The Director General handed over a single sheet of paper, in his own hand, his own signature. Carter read it. He hadn't his close work glasses on and he had to hold his spectacles away from his face to get a clear focus.
'You'll not mind me saying it, sir, but it's a wee bit late.'
'You don't have a drink in here, do you?'
Henry took a bottle of Scotch from a cupboard, and two glasses, and he poured two liberal scoops.
The Director General drank deep.
'I know we've warned them, sir, but we've taken an awful time to tell them to run.'
'Big step, Carter, dismantling a network. A bigger step when that network is down to three agents and will take years to rebuild.'
'I just pray to God they've got time.'
'Furniss, he's trained to withstand pressure.'
'Interesting usage, pressure… sir.'
'For Christ's sake, we are talking about the dismantling of a network.'
'No, sir, if you'll excuse me, we are talking about pressure.'
'He's been trained… Please, I'll have the other half.'
The glass was taken, filled, handed back.
'Oh yes, sir, he's been trained. He was very good at the Fort. One of the best lecturers they've had there. But my experience is that training and the real thing are wholly different.'
The Director General shuddered. His hands were tight on the glass.
'How long can he hold out, that's what I need to be sure of.'
'He's a man I've been proud to know for more than twenty years, but if he's in Iran it's asking rather a lot of him that he hold out this long.'
The Director General headed for the lift and his car home.
He left Henry Carter to the business of sending the messages that would instruct the three agents to take flight.
13
'I am Matthew… Furniss. I am… the Iran Desk…
Head at Century House.'
It was said… It was as if they were all exhausted, as if a birth had taken place and Mattie was the mother and the investigator was the midwife and the confession was the child.
He could see into the investigator's face, and there was running sweat on the man's face and red blotches from his exertion, and the breath came hard to the investigator. Mattie lay strapped on the bed. He could see into the face of the investigator as the man reeled away, as if he'd run more distance than he could cope with, and the heavy duty flex sagged from the man's hand. He could not take any more of the heavy duty flex on the soles of his feet. The pain ran up from his feet and into his knees and into his thighs and up into his stomach, in his stomach the pain spread out and burst into every particle of him. The pain was in his mind, and his mind could take nothing more.
It was done.
'Matthew Furniss.'
It was as if they had all been on a great journey together.
There was Mattie who had endured, he no longer knew how many days, there were the guards who had started the day playing football with him, blindfolded, punching and kicking him from one to the other and heaving him against the damp scrape of the cellar walls, there was the investigator who sweated because of the force he had used to beat the soles of Mattie's feet. All on a great journey together, and the guards and the investigator had broken Mattie, and Mattie was strapped to the bed and needing to talk to save himself from the pain.
The investigator gripped the side of his table for support, then steadied himself and breathed in a gulp of the cellar's foul, hot air. All the body smells were trapped in the cellar.
He levered himself along the side of the table and threw the switch on the tape recorder.
That morning had been different, as if everything else that had gone before had been child's play. No breakfast brought down to the cellar while it was still dark outside, a long age hanging from the wall hook until the pain in his shoulders had given way to agony, then the football, then the beating with the heavy duty flex. As if they
