There weren't many of them, the old brigade, left at Century these days, and it was obvious that the Director General would have wanted one of the long servers to be down at Albury to take Mattie's debrief. He would not have called himself a friend of Mattie Furniss, rather a colleague.
He looked back through the front door. He had heard the call. He was festooned with his gear. He saw the bird. Picus Viridis. The Green Woodpecker was halfway up a dead elm across the lawn. There would be gaps in the debrief for him to set his camera on a tripod, and to rig his microphone. He went inside. It would be something of a reunion for him, coming back to the country house in the woodland of the Surrey hills. Mrs Ferguson greeted him. She was rather a dear woman, the housekeeper, and there had been a time when he had actually thought of making a proposal of marriage to her, but that was quite a long time ago and he had been at the house for weeks on end. It was her cooking that had settled it. It was awful. She pecked his cheek. He saw George behind her, hovering at the kitchen door. George touched his cap.
He wore a cap always now, since the baldness had set in, wore it even in the house. A loyal fellow, George, but lazy, and why not, with so little to do. Through the kitchen he could see that the outside door was closed, and the door shook and there was ferocious scratching from the far side of it.
'Am I not to be greeted by old 'Rotten'?'
George grinned. 'Your gentleman doesn't like dogs, and he certainly doesn't like Rottweilers.'
Not many did. Henry had a fear of some men, and of most women, but of no animal, not even an animal that weighed more than a hundred pounds and was famously unpredictable.
'Then make sure the brute's kept clear of him.'
He had to smile… Wouldn't do for Mattie Furniss to have fought his way out of an Iranian prison only to find himself savaged by the safe house Rottweiler. He looked around him. He could see the glimmer of fresh paint on the woodwork and the carpet in the hall had been cleaned. Things were looking up.
'Where is he?'
'He's just come down. Been asleep ever since he got here.
He's in the library.'
He left George to carry the bag and his kit upstairs. He hoped that he would have his usual room, the one that overlooked the vegetable garden where the songbirds gathered to feed off the groundsel and dandelion seeds.
He walked through to the library. His feet echoed on the bare board floor. It had been a bare board floor since the pipes had burst in the freeze of three winters before and the carpets had been ruined and not replaced. He opened the door. He was almost obsequious. He went on tiptoe into the room. To call the room the library was somewhat overstating the case.
Of course, there were books on the shelves, but not many, and few of them would have held anyone's interest. The books had been a job lot when a local house had been cleared out on the death of a maiden lady without surviving relations.
Mattie was in a chair by the empty hearth.
'Please, don't get up, Mattie.'
'Must have just nodded off.'
'You deserve a very long rest… I mean, what a change … where were you, Mattie, 24 hours ago?'
'Walking out of Iran, I suppose. It's pretty strange.'
'You've spoken to Mrs Furniss?'
'Had a few words with her, thank you. Woke her up at first light, poor thing, but she was in good form… Flapping a bit, but don't they all?'
'There's grand news through from the medics. A very good bill of health, no bugs.'
'I just feel a bit shaken.'
Henry looked into Mattie's face. The man was completely shattered.
'I'll tell you something for nothing, Mattie… In twenty years' time, when the DG's been forgotten, when no one at Century will know my name, they'll still talk about 'Dolphin's Run'. Dolphin's run out of Iran is going to go into the history of the Service.'
'That's very decent of you, Henry.'
'Don't thank me, you did it. The fact is that the Service is buzzing with collective pride. You have given us all, down to the tea ladies, one hell of a lift.'
He saw Mattie drop his eyes. Perhaps, he had been over the top, but he knew the psychology of the debrief, and the psychology said that an agent back from abroad, where he'd had a rough time, needed praise, reassurance. A colleague of Henry's, with a brood of children, had once likened the trauma of return to a woman's post-natal depression. Henry couldn't comment on that, but he thought he knew what the colleague had meant. He had told the Deputy Director General when he had been given his marching orders, before finding that his carburettor was playing up, that he would take it gently.
It would have been scandalous to have taken it otherwise, after a man had been tortured and broken… oh yes, the DDG had been most sure that Mattie would have been broken.
'Thanks, Henry.'
'Well, you know the form. We'll hammer through this over the next few days, and then we'll get you back home. What you've been through is going to be the basis of study and teaching, no doubt, at the Fort for the next decade… Shall we get down to things some time this evening? Mattie, we're all very, very excited by what you achieved.'
'I think I'd like to be outside for a bit. Can't walk too comfortably just yet, perhaps I'll sit in the garden. Can you keep that ghastly dog at bay?'
'By all means. I'll ask George to put him in the kennel.
And I'll see if Mrs Ferguson can find us something rather special to drink this evening. I don't think we can hold out much hope for the meal itself.'
17
A good early start, because Henry Carter thought that Mattie would feel stronger at the beginning of the day. They ate breakfast of tepid scrambled eggs and cold toast. They discussed the possible make-up of the team for the first Test.
They had a chuckle over the new switch in the Socialists' defence policy. Henry told Mattie about Stephen Dugdale from Library who had been laid low last week with throm-bosis. It was a good room, the old dining room, fine sideboards, and a glasses cabinet, and a carving table, and the main table could have seated twelve in comfort. The worst thing about eating in the dining room and at the big table, in Carter's opinion, was that Mrs Ferguson having polished the table then insisted that it be covered with a sea of clear polythene.
'Shall we make a start then, Mattie?'
'Why not?'
He settled in the chair by the fireplace. Across the hearth rug from him Carter was fiddling with a cassette player. It was the sort of cassette player that Harriet had bought the girls when they were teenagers. He saw the spools begin to move on the cassette player. He could see the investigator, he could see the cellar walls, he could see the bed and the leather thongs, he could see the hook on the wall, he could see the length of electrical flex wire…
'How long is this going to take?'
'Hard to say, Mattie. Depends on what you've got to tell me. My immediate target is to get home.'
'Goes without saying… Where shall we begin? Shall we start in Van?'
Mattie told the tape-recorder everything about the way the attack on his car had been carried out. He felt uncomfortable describing his carelessness. Henry looked rather schoolmarm-ish but didn't interrupt. Mattie's account was perfectly lucid.
He seemed to Henry to take pleasure in the clarity of the narrative, in the orderly compilation of details that would one day be of value at the Fort. At eleven Mrs Ferguson knocked and came in with coffee and a packet of chocolate digestives.
