'Are you really telling me, Carter, that Furniss would sacrifice Eshraq for his pride?'
'Just my opinion, yes.'
The Director General went to his safe. He obscured the combination from Henry Carter's view. He played the numbers, he opened the safe. He took out a file. The file was old, worn. The writing on the outer flap was faint, faded. 'Since he was taken I've been looking into Furniss' history. I've come across nothing that indicated any vestige of vanity. I have found only a man of outstanding loyalty and steadiness. Did you know that he was in Cyprus during the Emergency, in the Guards with a platoon, very young? Did you know that?
I'm not surprised, because I gather that period is not on his general biography. He was on a search mission on the Troodos slopes. Some idiot decided that the brushwood should be fired so that an EOKA gang would be smoked out and driven towards the positions where Furniss' unit were waiting for them. The wind got up. The fire ran out of control. Furniss' platoon was surrounded by a wall of fire. The report I've read is from his Company Commander, who watched it all through field glasses. Furniss held his men together, kept them calm, waited until their clothes were damn near burned off their bodies. He waited until he saw a break in the fire wall, and he led his guardsmen through it. And all this time the platoon I was under enemy fire, they lost six men. I haven't come across anyone in Century who knows that story. Obviously Furniss has never mentioned it. Does that strike you, Carter, as symptomatic of a vain or proud man?'
Carter smiled, tired, wearied. 'That was about winning, sir, this is about losing.'
'Well, tell me. What do you want?'
'I need some help with Furniss, sir. If you will be good enough to authorize it.'
He had the number of the lorry and he had photographed the driver – that would wait, that was other business. Park looked down from the hotel room into the back yard. He saw the driver and Eshraq transfer the crates, one at a time, and heavy, from the lorry to the tail doors of the Transit.
The evening was closing on Dogubeyezit.
20
The car crunched on the drive, scattered the gravel.
Mattie heard it and he saw Henry's flickering eyebrow register the arrival of the car. Mattie coughed, as if he tried to draw attention to himself and away from the car that arrived at the country house at past ten in the evening, and Carter wasn't having it, Carter was listening for the car, and for the slammed door, and for the suburban chime on the bell in the porch. Mattie did not know what was to happen, only that something was to happen. He knew that something was to happen because Henry had been back four hours from London, and had not said what had happened in London, and had said precious little about anything else. Mattie understood. Henry's silence through the evening was because he was waiting, and now the waiting was over.
To Mattie it was absurd, the pallid smile of apology as Henry let himself out of the drawing room. He thought that it was possibly the end of the road for them both and he reckoned that he had Henry's measure. Another night, another day, survived, and he would be on his way to Bibury, and back to his desk at Century.
Of course, Mattie had not asked what Henry had been up to in London. To have asked would have been weakness.
Weakness was no longer a part of Mattie's world. Weakness was the villa at Tabriz and the hook on the wall and the electrical flex and the firearm that was not loaded, and that was all behind him. Weakness was scrubbed away by the trek across the mountains to the slopes of Mer Dag. On that evening, after the long silences over supper, there was a part of Mattie's mind that could no longer remember with any clarity much of the days and nights in the villa. If he had tried, and there was no damn way that he was going to try, then he might have been able to recall fragments, moments.
No damn way that he was going to try… His name is Charlie Eshraq… No damn way at all.
The door opened.
Henry stood aside, made room.
The man was sturdy. The hair on his head was close cut, barely tolerating a parting. He wore a suit that was perhaps slightly too small and which therefore highlighted the muscle growth of the shoulders. His face was clean shaven bar the stub brush moustache.
Mattie couldn't help himself. 'Good God, Major, this is a surprise. Grand to see you… '
'I hear we've a little problem, Mr Furniss,' the man said.
The moonlight was silver on the snow peak of Ararat. When he tilted his head, dropped his gaze, then he could see the outline shadow of the Transit. The heavy gates of the hotel's yard were padlocked for the night. The lorry and its driver were long gone, they would be in Erzerum tonight, he'd heard that said when he had watched from the window and seen Eshraq pay the driver off, seen him pay him off with the money that had once belonged to a Greek. Christ, and that was simple, watching the house of a Greek, with Token in tow, and doing the things that came easy to him. Nothing came easy for Park in a shared hotel room in Dogubeyezit.
Eshraq was sitting behind him, on the bed that he had chosen.
Eshraq had taken the bed further from the door.
Eshraq ignored Park. He had laid out on the bed a series of large scale maps of northern Iran.
Eshraq hadn't spoken for more than an hour, and Park had stood by the window for all of that time, and stared over the unmoving, unchanging vista that ran towards the distant summit of Ararat.
'Get up.'
The voice rattled in Mattie's ears. There was no place of safety.
'Get up, Mr Furniss.'
But there had never been a place of safety. No safety here, no safety in the cellar of the villa in Tabriz. They merged.
There was the carpet of the lounge, and the tiled floor of the cellar. There were the pictures on the wall of the lounge, and there was the hook on the wall of the cellar. There were the armchairs with the faded floral covers, and there was the iron bed frame with the straps and the stinking blanket. There was the rasp of the Major's voice, and there was the hushed clip of the investigator's voice.
The hands reached down for him.
'I said, Mr Furniss, to get up.'
The hands were at the collar of Mattie's jacket, and grasping at the shoulders of his shirt, and the jacket was too loose and did not make a good fit and was climbing up his arms and over the back of his head, and the shirt was too tight and could not be fastened at the collar and was ripping. He didn't help. He lay as lead weight.
He was pulled upright, but when the grip weakened, because his jacket was coming off him and the shirt was too torn to hold, then Mattie collapsed back on to the carpet.
He was lifted again, and the Major was panting, just as they had panted in the cellar. He was lifted to his feet, and he was held, and he was shaken, as if he were a rug. He was thrown backwards. His arms were flailing and found nothing to catch, and he cracked down on to the carpet, and the back of his head hammered the floor. He gazed up. Henry stood in front of the fireplace, looking away, as if he wanted no part of this.
Mattie no longer knew how long it had been since the Major had first slapped his face. Out of the blue. A question, a deflecting answer, and the slap homing on to his cheek. The smarting at his eyes, the reddening of his cheek. But the slap across the face had been only the start.
He had been slapped, he had been kicked, he had been punched. It was not vicious, the pain was not inflicted on him for the sake of it. The pain was a humiliation and a progression.
They did not want to inflict pain on him, they only wanted him to talk. The blows were harder, the kicks fiercer. They wanted to do it with the minimum… The bastards.
He lay on the carpet.
Mattie let his head roll to the side.
Oh, yes, Mattie had learned from the cellar in Tabriz. Kids' play this, after the cellar and the hook on the wall and the electrical flex and the unloaded weapon. He looked at Henry, and Henry had his hand over his face. Mattie let his head sag.
He lay still.
