He heard Carter's voice, the whinny of apprehension.
'They said that he wasn't to be abused.'
'He's only faking. Do you want an answer or do you not want an answer?'
'For Christ's sake, it's Mattie Furniss… I want the answer, of course I want the answer, but I'll be minced if he's hurt.'
'So, what's at stake, Mr Carter?'
'A mission – God, what a mess – the life of an agent is at stake.'
He was splayed out on the carpet, and he was trying to control his breathing, as a man would breathe when he was unconscious, slow and steady. The blow came between his legs. He had no warning of the kick. He cried out, and he heaved his knees into his stomach, and he rolled on the carpet, and his hands were over his groin. His eyes were squeezed shut, watering.
'Good God, Major… ' The tremor in Carter's voice.
'He was faking, told you.' And the Major had dropped down beside Mattie. Mattie felt his head lifted. He opened his eyes. He saw the Major's face a few inches from his own.
His name is Charlie Eshraq.
'Mr Furniss, don't be a silly chap. What did you tell them?'
The merging of the face of the Major and the face of the investigator. Christ, they must think he was pretty piss poor.
They were the same face, they were the same voice. Mattie Furniss did not talk, Mattie Furniss was Desk Head (Iran).
And he had the second chance. He had lost the first chance, talked, cracked, broken. But he had the second chance. The pain was through his stomach, and the retching was writhing in his throat. He had the second chance.
'My name is Owens. I am an academic. A scholar of the Urartian civilization.'
And he was sliding, slipping, and the blackness was closing around him.
Charlie lay on his bed. The light was off. He was close to the window and the moon silver filtered the cotton curtains. He knew that Park was awake. Park's breathing told him that he was still awake. He was packed, he was ready. He was going at the dawn. At the foot of the bed, beside the soap box, his rucksack was filled, and in the yard outside the Transit was loaded with drums of electrical flex for industrial use, and under the drums were three wooden packing crates. He was going in the morning, and Park hadn't spoken since the light in the hotel room had been turned off. There was the bleat of animals in the night air, the call of the goats and the cry of the sheep, there was once the wail of a jandarma siren, there was the drone of the hotel's generator, there was the whirring flight of a mosquito. He was Charlie Eshraq. He was 22 years old. He was the man with the mission and with the target. He was not afraid of death, not his own and not the death of his enemies… And why couldn't the bastard talk to him? Why in hell's name not? In the moon darkness, in the hotel room, he wanted to talk. If he had been with the dossers under the arches of Charing Cross station then he would have had someone to talk to. He was going back inside. He knew how to fire the weapon, and he knew the faces of his targets, and he knew the routes that he would use, and he was going back inside alone, and he wanted to talk.
'David, I want to talk.'
'I want to sleep.'
'David, is that why your wife went?'
'Why?'
'Because you have no love.'
'I have no love for heroin traffickers.'
'The heroin was for money, the money was for weapons, the weapons were for the killing of evil people.'
'In my book, the evil people traffic in heroin.'
'There was no other way.'
'That's an excuse, Eshraq, and excuses don't make rights out of wrongs.'
'David, who do you love?'
'None of your business.'
'Anyone, anyone in the world?'
'I want to sleep, and I want to get out of this shit hole in the morning.'
'Do you love your wife?'
'That's my business.'
'My sister, David, she was my business…'
'I don't care.'
'I will tell you what they did to my sister. They took her from the gaol at Evin, they flew her to Tabriz. They drove her to the centre of the town. They had brought a crane into the centre of the town. They stood my sister on a table and they put a rope around her neck. There were many hundreds of people there to watch her die, David. I am told by people who were there that when my sister stood upon the table and looked down on to the people who had come to watch her die that she smiled at them. She made the smile of a girl who was not yet a woman. It was talked about for many weeks afterwards, the way that my sister smiled… They kicked her off the table and they hoisted the crane up. That was how she died. They tell me that she died in great pain, that she did not die easily. There were two men who held her on the table as the executioner put the rope around her neck, I killed them as I killed the executioner. If it had been your wife, David, and not my sister, would you not have wanted money for weapons?'
'Running heroin is wrong, for me that's the beginning and the middle and the end of it.'
'Because you have no love?'
'Because I have no love for people who run heroin.'
'Your father is alive?'
'My father is alive.'
'Do you love your father?'
'I want to go to sleep.'
'Is it shaming to say that you love your father?'
'My feelings for my father, that's not your concern.'
'My father was in the gaol at Evin. He was a soldier. He was not a policeman, he was not in the S A V A K, he never commanded troops who were used to put down the revolt of the masses. He was an enemy of no man, and he was my father. I know about my sister, David, her last hours, and I know also something of the last hours of my father. I know that he was taken from his cell at dawn one morning out into the killing yard at Evin. He was tied to a stake in the yard, and shot there. When that has happened to your father, and your uncle has been butchered, is it wrong to want weapons?'
'You can talk all night, Eshraq. Me, I'll be sleeping.'
He heard the heaving of the bed. He saw the shadow of Park's body toss as the back was turned to him.
He thought that by the next nightfall he would be far inside.
He thought that at the next dusk he would be approaching the stone hovel of Majid Nazeri on the frost cold slopes of Iri Dagh. He would be where there were eagles, and where there were wolf packs, and where as the light came or as the light went there was the chance of seeing the fleeting passage of a leopard. Perhaps that was his world. Perhaps he did not belong, never had belonged, in the world of David Park.
'David, may I ask a favour?'
'I doubt you'll get it, what?'
'That you take back a letter for me.'
'Just a letter?'
'To a very fine man, a very kind man, a man who knew about love.'
There was the grated concession. 'I'll take it.'
Charlie crawled from his bed, and he went to his rucksack and took out the envelope. The envelope had been bent while it had been lying amongst his clothes and his map charts in the rucksack. He laid the envelope on the table beside Park's bed.
He stood at the window. Carefully, slowly, he edged aside the curtain. He looked down at the Transit. He saw
