meet with our own interrogators, have them to tell you what, exactly, is being done to Mattie?'
'It would not… It is simply that I have a greater faith in the resilience of an old dog. And furthermore, you stand there lecturing me as though you know for certain that Furniss is in an Iranian torture chamber. Well, you don't. We don't.
We haven't the least idea where he is. He may have been kidnapped by Turkish thugs who haven't the slightest notion who he is. He may be with some freelance outfit who simply want to ransom him. Tell me, if you would, how long it has generally taken for any of the extremist sects in Beirut to announce the capture of hostages. They're on to a telephone to Reuter before you can count to ten, or there is no word for months. There is no pattern about which we can be definite. So we'll just play it my way, if you don't mind.'
'So, what is your instruction?'
The Director General said, 'Eshraq is to have his missiles.
He is to be encouraged to return to Iran. Give him any help he needs, without tripping over the Customs people, if you can.'
The Deputy Director General, swearing silently, flushed at the cheeks, went back to his office and spoke to Herbert Stone.
Parrish pounded down the fifth floor corridor of the Lane.
Those who saw him, through open office doors, and those who flattened themselves against the corridor walls to give him room, wondered whether he'd got the trots or whether he'd heard the Four Minute Warning. He charged into the ACIO's office, and the ACIO had an Audit team with him, and none of the Audit team complained, just packed their briefcases and left. The door closed behind Bill Parrish. He didn't wait to collect his thoughts, gather in his breath.
'Just had Park on, from Leeds, right? Park is with Eshraq, right? Eshraq is currently sitting in the office of one Herbert Stone. Mr Stone sells weapons. Eshraq is buying weapons.
That's the strength of it. He's using heroin money to buy weapons.
… This is going too far. Eshraq's run enough, it's time to knock the bugger over.'
The ACIO rang through to the CIO and while he was talking Parrish loosened his tie and thought he was too old for this sort of caper, far too bloody old.
The voice was in her ear.
'I'm terribly sorry, Mrs Furniss, I really am sorry, but I just cannot talk about it on the telephone. It's an open line, you see. They haven't been in touch with you? It's a scandal.
I know I shouldn't say this, Mrs Furniss, but the day of the gentleman is past here… Mrs Furniss, please don't ever say to anyone that I spoke to you… They don't know what to do. They know that Mr Furniss was kidnapped in Turkey, they believe that he was then taken into Iran. After that they don't know anything. They've set up a Committee to watch developments, but they've staffed it with fools, people like that old idiot Carter. I mean, Mrs Furniss, those sort of people are not competent enough. I was taken up to see the Director General. He had me in his office. He is not a gentleman, Mrs Furniss, I hold him responsible. What he was interested in was all I knew about Charlie. You see, Mr Furniss kept all his files on Charlie in his personal safe, didn't let them go down to Library, and didn't iet me put them on any computer roll which anyone else could plug into. They were very concerned about Charlie. To tell you the truth, Mrs Furniss, they seemed more concerned about Charlie than they were about Mr Furniss. Mrs Furniss, I don't know what it is, his trouble, but Charlie is in some sort of trouble, very deep, I'd swear on that. It's disgraceful, Mrs Furniss, them not being in touch with you every day, should be in touch with you two or three times a day. I have to ring off, goodbye, Mrs Furniss. Mr Furniss has a great many friends here and they are all thinking of you. Goodbye.'
She was grateful to kind Miss Duggan. When she was a child, before she had been sent away to school, her parents had employed a Flossie Duggan as a nanny, a nice, soft woman with a big bosom and a well of loyalty. Mattie used to say that, at Century, life would not be worth living if he didn't have Flossie Duggan to take care of him.
Harriet Furniss would not have called herself a Service wife, rather described herself as a Service widow. The Service had no room for wives. In more than twenty years, since Mattie had come out of the Coldstreams and joined the Service, she had never set foot inside Century. How could she have done?
She had never even been allowed to drive to the corner on the Embankment and wait to collect him after work. She had never been to a social function that involved Century people.
The only person that she knew at Century was Flossie Duggan, because Flossie would once or twice a year come down to Bibury and type up a report over a weekend if it had to be on the DG's desk or the DDG's desk first thing on a Monday morning. The life of the Service was a closed book to her.
Little boys playing secretive games. But dangerous games. So hideously dangerous that Mattie was a prisoner in Iran… and she had good memories of Iran. She remembered when they had been young and together there, when she had been the young mother of two small girls, the swimming trips to the Caspian in the summer and the skiing trips to the Elborz in the winter, when the future was stable and set to last for a millennium. It had been a lovely country, kind and welcoming and comfortable. Infuriating, too, because it had aped Europe and of course she couldn't get a plumber or an electrician, never for love and rarely for money. Endless dinners by candlelight, because as night followed day it was inevitable her social calendar would be dogged by power failures.
She looked out into her garden. It was time to strip the wallflowers from the beds, but the rain was beating on the windowpanes. She loved her garden in summer… She could picture Mattie pacing the lawn and then coming inside to tell her, bluff and stiff because he could never handle matters that were emotional, that Juliette Eshraq had been hanged from a crane in a square in Tabriz. She would never forget that, how he had walked backwards and forwards past the lupins and pinks and stocks before he had come inside to tell her of the execution of the girl she had known as a cheeky and darling child perched on her knee.
And what could Miss Duggan have meant about Charlie being in trouble and why did the Service know anything about Charlie? He was bound to call when he came back from his trip overseas. She would get him down to the cottage and ask him. Straight out. She wasn't going to let Charlie get himself mixed up with Century. That would be unbearable.
She thought of her man. Darling Mattie, everybody's friend, her husband.
Later, she would go down to the Post Office for some stamps, and if she were asked then she would put on a smile and say that Mattie was fine, just abroad for a few days, and before she went to the Post Office there were more circulars to send about the footpath.
She was a Service widow, and she would be good at it.
Mattie would expect that.
Herbert Stone had the brochure on the desk in front of him.
'It's just what you want, Mr Eshraq, and it's the best of British technology. Very much up to date, only been in service with our own forces for a few months. 'Provides an exceptional hit and kill capability for its size and weight… outstanding accuracy against both fixed and moving targets is achieved using a built-in spotting rifle… high technology warhead provides excellent kill probabilities from all angles of attack
… not complicated to teach… zero maintenance.' Sounds pretty good, and it is. It'll get through 650mm of armour, it has an effective range of 500 metres, and the whole thing weighs only ten kilos. The beauty of LAW 80, Mr Eshraq, is in the spotting rifle, you fire a tracer round, you get a hit, you depress the main firing button and away you go. If this is designed to take out a main battle tank then it goes without saying, Mr Eshraq, that it will make a frightful mess of an armoured Mercedes.'
'What is it going to cost me?'
'Let's have a drink… you'd like a drink, Mr Eshraq?'
'What will it cost?'
'Expensive.'
'How much?'
'Right, Mr Eshraq, no drink, just the figures. We're talking about a round half dozen, correct?'
'No, four.'
Herbert Stone's voice did not waver. There was no apology.
'I'm quoting you?50,000 for four… '
'What does that include?'
