when he was in his car. One step at a time… and he ought to teach the words to Park, if the youngster hadn't gotten himself run over crossing Holborn and not looking. He rang the ACIO's extension, and was told he was in a meeting. He rang the Bossman's extension, and was told he was in conference. One step at a time, sweet Jesus… it was only heroin.
He sat on the floor of his prison room beside the door. He had worked out the angles of vision from the peephole in the door, and he believed that where he sat he was hidden if his guards checked at the peephole before entering. He sat on the floor in his underpants and his vest and his socks. He had used the pillow on his bed and his rolled up shirt and his bunched together trousers to make a shape under the blanket.
He always slept with the blanket over his head, to shut out the ceiling light. He had put his shoes at the end of the bed and half covered them with the blanket. A long time he had listened at the door before making the preparations, long enough to satisfy himself that he was not watched.
They had shamed Mattie Furniss, humiliated him. To break that shame he would kill. He would try, damned hard, to kill.
Eventually the Mullah remembered Juliette Eshraq. Not well, of course, but he remembered her.
He had to remember her. If he had not remembered her then he would have been the only living being amongst close to two thousand present at the hanging who had forgotten Juliette Eshraq. The investigator thought it a great spur to memory, his information that the brother of Juliette Eshraq was coming to Iran with an armour- piercing missile on his shoulder, and revenge in his mind.
'But you are assured, Excellency, of my best endeavours.
It is in my interests, also, that the brother of Juliette Eshraq be found. If he is not found then it is me that he will come lor, after he has gone to you.'
When he left the Mullah, now very clear in his recollection of Juliette Eshraq who had smiled at the crowd who had come to see her lifted high on the crane's arm, he went to his own office in the capital and there he made the arrangements for the watching of an official in the Harbourmaster's office at Bandar Abbas, and of a merchant in carpets, and of an engineer who repaired broken lorries.
It would be late in the evening before he could catch a military flight back from Tehran to Tabriz.
Go for it, that was the Major's oft-repealed injunction at the Fort. Go for it.
'You go for it, gentlemen, because if you're going to be all namby-pamby then you'll fail, and after you've failed then you'll wish to Christ that you'd never tried. If you like living then you go for it, because if you don't go for it then you won't be living.'
Mattie sat on the floor behind the door and he gazed at his made up bed, and he listened for the footfall of the guards bringing him his evening food.
The Major was from Hereford. The Major had grown tired of lying on his belly in ditches in Northern Ireland and branched into consultancy, which paid better and which was safer. It was said of the Major that he had once spent two clear weeks living rough on the fringe of the Creggan Estate in Derry, and that was not a friendly place. The Major advised multi-national companies in the security of their overseas executives, and he came down to the Fort to let the Service know the current thinking on Escape and Evasion. He said that a prisoner must look for the opportunity of escape from the moment of capture. He said that it didn't matter how often the circumstances of imprisonment changed, the captive must be prepared to rip up his plan and start again. And there was another story about the Major. A new high-security gaol in Worcestershire, and the first convicts due to arrive on a Monday morning. The Friday before there had been an escape prevention drill. The Major had been the guinea pig, and he'd been out by the evening; problem was, the Major said he'd been paid to get out, not to tell how he'd done it. Never did tell them… Mattie thought of the Major and scratched his memory for every last nugget of what he had been told.
There were low voices on the stairs, and the soft shuffle of sandals.
The bolt was withdrawn, the key was in the door.
15
There was the numbing shock spreading from the heel of his hand. And the body was at his feet.
There was his food tray on the table.
Go for it…
Mattie went. Fast and cold, just as the Major had told them.
He went out through the heavy door. He went straight at the second guard standing back from the doorway. He saw the surprise wheeling across the face of the second guard, and Mattie's hands were at his throat and his knee rose sharply with all the force Mattie had into the man's groin. No going back because the body of the guard who had carried the food tray was on the tiled floor behind him. The second guard crumpled to his knees. Mattie let go of his throat and brought his knee swinging back into the man's face. His head flew back, struck the wall. One more jerk with the knee to the head now slumped against the wall, and he was almost gone.
Mattie dragged him into the prison room and then his hands were closing on the man's throat. The guard picked feebly at Mattie's wrists, and his eyes bulged, and his tongue arced, and his voice choked, and his breath died. The Major had always said it would be easy, if they went for it. Nothing easier than chopping the heel of the hand on to the nape of a man's neck. Nothing simpler than locking the fingers around a man's throat, and taking the pressure on to his windpipe, so that it sealed. His fingers were a tourniquet, and the voice and the breath and the life of the second guard were dying. He felt no fear. He felt only a determination to carry out all that he had been told. The second guard was sinking to the tiled floor, and all the time he looked up and into the face of his killer.
Wrong place, dear boy, to come looking for mercy. It had been the second guard who had always smoked and seemed so casual and so indifferent when the real pain was being worked into Mattie's body down in the cellar. Never any mercy in the cellar from you, dear boy. The second guard had his hands on Mattie's wrists, and the stupid, pathetic creature had not had the wit to let go of the hands and to go for the pistol in the holster at his belt. Bad mistake, dear boy. Mattie heard the last choke shudder, and his fingers on the second guard's throat had the weight of the man's corpse.
He dragged the body of the second guard across the tiles and towards the bed.
A hell of a weight, and the tiredness was flooding into Mattie. With his foot he pushed them both under the iron framed bed.
He took the tunic and plimsoll shoes off the bigger of the two guards. The man was taller than Mattie and had the bigger feet, and his plimsolls went on to Mattie's feet over the bandages, and he took the holster belt, and when he had retrieved his own trousers from under the blanket, then he threaded the belt through the loops and put on the tunic. He had the pistol. He checked the breech and the magazine. It was East bloc manufacture and it was a hell of a time since he had last seen a pistol made in Czechoslovakia. He took bread from the food tray, forced it into his trouser pocket along with a chicken piece and a fistful of rice.
Mattie stepped out on to the landing.
He listened. There was a radio playing. He recognized a news bulletin on the radio, the Tehran Home Service, and he could hear low voices. There was no other way. The way out was down the stairs. The pistol stayed in his holster. If he had taken it out then he would have had to spend time learning its mechanisms, he had not that time. The Major had always said that the initial movement was what gave you the chance of escape. He went down the stairs. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. It was a good house for him. The house had concrete floors under the tiles, and a concrete staircase. No sound as he came down the stairs. The hallway ran the length of the villa, from the front door, and into the kitchen at the back. He paused again, he kept himself flat against the hall wall. Ridiculous, but he was actually listening to the news broadcast, something about the price of long-grained rice.
Come on, Mattie, get on with it. He saw the poster of Khomeini in front of him, across the width of the hallway, sellotaped to the wall.
… Up yours, dear boy… The voices that he heard were low, relaxed, and came with the radio from behind a nearly closed door that was opposite to him. The Major had said that the guards who most mattered were the guards that had never been seen by the prisoner.
