Matthew Furniss, Desk Head (Iran), had been lost. And that was news that Century were unwilling to share with the Americans, a matter of dirty linen made public.
Charlie slept in his hotel, the plastic bag under his pillow.
The green Ford Sierra was outside the hotel. The VAT investigator had gone home, and Keeper was asleep across the back seat with the Vodaphone cradled in his arms. Harlech and Corinthian and Token had the room across the corridor from the target, and would be on two-hour shifts watching the door.
Keeper was well asleep when the Vodaphone warbled in his ear.
'That you, Keeper?'
'Bill? Yes, it's me.'
'Are you sitting comfortably? No knock tomorrow… Got that? No lift in the morning… '
'For Christ's sake, Bill…'
'I said, no knock tomorrow.'
'Why not?'
'David, the tablets just come flying off the mountain, and I pass on the messages.'
'I don't fucking believe it. What more do they want?'
'What they do not want is for the target to be lifted.'
'I hear you.'
'You cuddled up with Token?'
'I am bloody not.'
'Good thing… do us all a favour, give your missus a bell, will you? I gave her my promise that you'd be back for the dance. Sweet dreams, Keeper… just ring your missus in the morning, and you do not lift the target.'
The boot went in, and the fist.
There was a hand snaking into Mattie's hair in order to pull up his head, so that it was easier to punch him, kick him, so that it was harder for him to protect himself.
He was trying to tell them the name, but his lungs were emptied by the beatings into his stomach pit, and he had not the breath to shout the name. His throat was too raw to speak the name. If he told them the name then the beating and the kicking would stop.
The man was too good to have been fobbed off with three names. Mattie had known why the beating had started again.
He had shown the flicker of success. He thought he had won small victories with three names. The investigator had read him. Buying off the pain of a beating with three names. But three names was the sliding slope. It was what Mattie would have taught at the Fort – once the names start then the walls come tumbling in. He had no more defence. He had used all the tricks that he knew of. The last trick had been the feigning of unconsciousness, and the cigarette end, lit, on the skin under his armpit, tender, had blown away the deceit in a scream of pain.
He knelt on the floor. His arms hung at his side. There was the taste of his blood in his mouth, and there was a tooth socket for his tongue to rest in. He hated the men that he had named. The pain and the shame had been brought down on him because he had known their names. The fist in his hair held his head upright, and they punched and slapped his face, and they buffeted the bridge of his nose so that there were tears in his eyes, and they kicked his stomach and his groin.
For Mattie, the only way of ending the pain was to surrender the name. He had thought he could satisfy them with three names, and he had failed.
His arms flailed around him, as if he tried to drive them back. If he did not drive them back, away from him, then he could not draw the breath into his lungs and the saliva down into his throat, and he could not name the name. He did not see the flick finger gesture of the investigator. He was not aware that the hand was no longer in his hair, and that his body had buckled. He saw only the investigator's face.
His chest heaved. The breath flooded into his body.
'You killed his sister.'
'Did I, Mr Furniss?'
'You tortured her, you killed her.'
'Who did I torture, who did I kill?'
'His sister… he's going to get you for his sister.'
'Where is he going to come from, to get to me?'
'Coming from U K, coming through Turkey, coming through the Dogubeyezit frontier post.'
'How is he going to get to me, for what I did to his sister?'
'Armour-piercing missile, for you and the Mullah who sentenced his sister.'
'Who is the Mullah who sentenced his sister?'
'I don't know.'
'How will he come here, to get to me?'
'Papers, papers of the pasdaran.'
'Where do the papers come from?'
'Istanbul.'
'Where in Istanbul?'
'From a hairdressing shop, in the Aksaray district, it is just to the right of the Mirelaon church. It is the only hairdresser there.'
'When is he coming, with his papers from the hairdressing shop?'
'Very soon.'
'Would he be known to me, my hopeful assassin?'
'You knew his sister, you tortured her. There were two Guards that took her to the execution, he shot them in Tehran.
The executioner of Tabriz, he blew him up, bomb on a car roof. You'll know him.'
'Mr Furniss, what is his name?'
He knelt at the feet of the investigator. His head was bowed down to his knees. From his clothes there was the smell of vomit, in his nose was the smell.
'God forgive me…'
'What is his name?'
'Harriet… Please, Harriet, forgive me.'
'His name, Mr Furniss?'
'Charlie, you can't know what they've done to me… the pain, Charlie… '
'The name?'
'He's coming to get to you, for what you did to his sister.
He's Charlie. His name is Charlie Eshraq.'
'We'll get the doctor to you… Thank you, Mr Furniss.'
14
It was morning. There was enough of a knife line of light at the edge of the plywood over the window to tell Mattie that it was morning, another day. He rolled a little on the bed and his knees were hunched against his stomach as if he still needed to protect himself from the boots and the fists. He could feel the tightness of the bandages around his feet, and there was the irritation of the stitch that the doctor had put into his lower lip. At first he was too frightened to move, because he believed that any movement, any slight movement, would hurt him. With the movements of his muscles and his limbs he was like a man walking in a darkened room, hesitating and testing. He went from his side to his back, and he lay on his back and looked at the ceiling light. The ceiling light was always brilliant, bright enough for him to have to sleep with the blanket pulled over his head. From his back he manoeuvred himself across to his other side. All of his concentration, his determination, had gone into those movements. He had managed the movements… He rolled back until his spine was against the mattress. He gazed at the light bulb that was recessed into the ceiling, and that threw a trellis of faint shadows through the mesh that
