the jutting nose of a Mercedes car, and he saw the white light flash. He felt the thunder roar in his ears, and he felt the hot heat back draught of the LAW 80.
'You should try to find love, David. Without love then life is empty.'
He had waited all evening for a call to be routed through to the nineteenth floor.
His chauffeur was in the car park below. Houghton was yawning.
The Director General dialled the number, and they were a long time answering.
'Carter – is that you, Carter? Have you any idea of the time? It is past midnight, I have been waiting for two and a quarter hours for your call. What has Furniss said?'
The voice was faint, tinny. The scrambler connection had that effect. And the scrambler could not disguise the hesitancy of the far away metallic voice.
'He hasn't said anything.'
'Then you've a problem, Carter, by Christ you have.'
'I'm aware of the problem, sir.'
'My advice to you, Carter, is that you have one hour…
I want to speak to Furniss.'
He heard the telephone put down, clumsily. He heard the tramp of departing footsteps. He waited. What was the bloody man at? He didn't know how he would ever again face Furniss.
He heard the footsteps returning.
'Not possible at the moment, sir, to speak to Mattie.'
'Carter, understand me… understand your position.
I'll see you gutted if harm has come to Furniss, if you turn out to be wrong. I'll have you skinned. You have one hour.'
He thought that he had betrayed Furniss. He felt deep shame. He strode out of his office, and he had no word for his Personal Assistant who padded behind him. He thought that he had betrayed a very good man.
The Station Officer could no longer stay awake.
On a pad beside the telephone in the bedroom was written the code of Dogubeyezit and the number of the Ararat hotel.
The call from London, if it came, would be in clear. There was no difficulty in that. The codeword for a halt, a postponement, had been agreed via the teleprinter in his office before he had shut up shop for the evening. In an ideal world he should not have been snuggling against his wife's back, in his own bed, he should have been close to that wretched frontier, up in north-eastern Anatolia. He should have been hugging the Iranian border, not his wife's slim back. No question of him being there. The frontier was out of bounds, the border was closed territory after the lifting of the Desk Head (Iran).
He had not been told the reason that there might, possibly but not probably, be a hold put on Eshraq's movement. He had no need to know why there might conceivably be a hold… If there were a hold then he would communicate it. He drifted towards sleep. He had rather enjoyed the company of the young man who had come to the park in Ankara. A bit wild, of course. Any man going inside Iran with LAW 8os was entitled to be a bit bloody- minded. But they had thrashed out their lines of communication. Not that he would last. Not possible that he would survive.
'Terence, is that 'phone going to ring tonight? There'll be murder if it does.'
'Don't know, love, I really don't know.'
They had not slept. They had lain on sleeping bags on the concrete floor inside the inner hall of the Guards' barracks at Maku. The investigator was amongst the last to push himself back up to his feet. There were some amongst them who prayed, and some who worked with clean cloths at the firing mechanisms of their automatic rifles. The investigator wandered out of the inner hall in search of the latrine, and after the latrine he would be in search of the Communications room and news from the men who watched a hotel across the border.
It was sensible of him to leave the inner hallway for the latrine and the Communications room. If he had stayed then it would have been remarked that he had not prayed. It was hard for him to pray because the words of the Qur'an held no place in his mind. He had no time that early morning because his mind was filled with the vision of armour-piercing missiles and a Transit van and the man who had been named by Matthew Furniss.
He would enjoy his meetings with Mr Eshraq. He thought that he might enjoy conversing with Charlie Eshraq more than he had enjoyed talking to Matthew Furniss.
The clock was striking in the hall.
And the dog was restless, and sometimes there was the heavy scratching at the kitchen door, and sometimes there was the clamour of the animal shaking the big link chain on its throat. The dog wouldn't sleep, not while there were still people moving in the house and voices.
Mattie heard the clock.
The light was in his eyes. He was on the sofa and they had stripped his shoes off and they had heaved his feet, too, on to the sofa. His tie was off, and the shirt buttons were undone down to his navel. He could see nothing but the light. The light was directed from a few feet so that it shone directly into his face.
It was a long time since they had hit him, kicked him, but the light was in his face and the Major was behind him and holding his head so that he could not look away from the light, and the bastard Henry fucking Carter was behind the light.
Questions… the soft and gentle drip of questions. Always the questions, and so bloody tired… so hellishly tired. And the hands were on his head, and the light was in his eyes, and the questions dripped at his mind.
'Past all our bedtimes, Mattie. Just what you told them…?'
'A young man's life, Mattie, that's what we're talking about. So, what did you tell them…?'
'Nobody's going to blame you, Mattie, not if you come clean. What did you tell them…?'
'All that barbarian stuff, that's over, Mattie, no more call for that, and you're with friends now. What did you tell them…?'
Too tired to think, and too tired to speak, and his eyes burned in the light.
'I don't remember. I really don't remember.'
'Got to remember, Mattie, because there is a life hanging on you remembering what you told them… '
Park watched the peace of Charlie Eshraq's sleep.
He wondered how it would be, to live with love. He was alone and he was without love. He was without Parrish, and Token, and Harlech, and Corinthian. He was without Ann.
He was away from what he knew. What he knew was behind him, back at the Lane. What he knew had been stripped from him on the nineteenth floor of Century House.
He did not know how to find love.
He thought that going to Bogota was a journey to escape from love
…
There was the sharp bleep of the alarm on Eshraq's wrist.
He watched as Eshraq stirred, then shook himself. Eshraq was rubbing hard at his eyes, and then sliding from his bed and going to the window. The curtain was dragged back.
There was a grey wash of early light in the room. Eshraq stretched.
'Pretty good morning to be starting a journey.'
There was a glass of Scotch and water beside him. The Major sat on the sofa beside him. Henry was at the window. He had his ear cocked and he stared outside, and probably he was listening to the first shouted songs of the blackbirds.
It was the third Scotch that had been given to Mattie, and each had less water than before.
The Major had his arm, shirt-sleeved, loosely around Mattie's shoulder.
The Major smiled into Mattie's face.
'You know where you're going, Mattie, in a few hours?
