A Line in the Sand (2 page)

As the guards shouted their farewells, the barrier at the gate was lifted and the car powered away on the straight road through the

dunes.

It would be half an hour to the airport and then the feeder flight without formalities to the capital.

If .. . if he made it through the security check, another car, another driver, would be waiting the next morning for him when he came off 6

the

flight at Heathrow, to ferry him to another briefing. If they knew the

depth of his betrayal and were waiting for him at the final security hen they would hang Gavin Hughes, as his controller had told

check t

him, from the highest crane... He didn't know what would happen at this

place in the next few hours or days, and hadn't an idea what his own ld.

future he

apter One.

Ch

contorted to clean the clammy mud from underneath its

The harrier

wing

feathers.

worked hard at the clinging dirt as if its primitive,

It

wild mind demanded cleanliness before the start of the day's long

north. The dawn sunshine glossed the rusted gold of the

flight

feathers. The bird worked at them with its vicious curved, sharpened pecked at the mud, spat and coughed it down into the marsh water

beak,

below the perch on a dead, stark tree. At first light it had hunted.

ed on a brightly crested duck, the bone-stripped carcass

It had div

of

which was now wedged in a fork of the dead tree. The mud had speckled the underneath of the wings when it had fallen, stone fast, on to

the

unsuspecting prey.

Abruptly, without warning, it flapped with a slow wing-beat away from the perch and abandoned its kill. It headed north, away from the

hot

tering grounds of west Africa.

wet win

fly all day, without rest, on an unerring course that

It would

retraced

migratory route. As a killing bird, a predator, the

its first

harrier

ense of threat or hazard.

had no s

had been right over the tent camp, bucking in the strength of

They

the

before they had seen it. They had searched all morning for

gale,

it,

er by the lessening visibility from the whipped-up sand.

forced low

The

of the lead helicopter had been sweating, and he was supposed

pilot

to

7

e best with many hours of desert flying experience, good enough

be th

in

rm to have flown behind the lines into Iraq to supply the

Desert Sto

Special Forces. They had been down to a hundred feet where the wind herous and the wipers in front of him were clogged by

was most treac

grains of sand. Only a minute after he had rapped his gloved fist on

the fuel gauge and muttered into their earphones that they had little time left, the Marine Corps major had spotted the camp, tapped the t's shoulder, and pointed down. The colonel of the National

pilo

Guard

d softly mouthed his thanks to his God.

ha

ttelbaum had heard the excited voices on his headset and

Duane Li

thought this might be a good game for kids, reckoning himself too

old

for this sort of serious shit. They had put down beside the tents.

The

two following helicopters, which were also flown by Americans, were in and disgorged the local National Guardsmen. The rotors

talked

fted

li

away two of the camp's seven tents, but the pilots had refused,

no argument accepted, to cut their engines. They wanted out and

st.

soone

hirty National Guardsmen corralled the camp, the rotors and

As the t

the

ew the fine grains in stinging clouds into their faces.

wind thr

The

of low scrub thorn a hundred

two tents had come to rest in bushes

yards

from the camp, but the bedding that had been with them, and the

were still in loose flight, scudding over the sand. The

clothes,

pilots broke their huddle. They shouted into the ear of the Marine or: the storm was not lifting, the gusting sand would

Corps maj

infiltrate every aperture in the helicopters' engines, they should get

the fuck out not negotiable -now. It was already clear to them, to the

Saudi colonel, to the men of the Saudi Arabian National Guard and

to

Duane Littelbaum that the raid had failed.

The man they sought had evaded them.

t it keenest. He stood in the centre of the camp,

Littelbaum fel

ddled against the wind and the blast of the rotors, the sand

hu

crusting

8

on his face, and gazed around him. The information had been good.

It

had come from the interception of the signal of a digital mobile

telephone. The antennae on the eastern coast had identified the

position across the Gulf from which the call had been initiated, and the position in the Empty Quarter where it had been received. It

should have led them to the man Duane Littelbauifl hunted.

There was one prisoner. The man was heavy-set, jowled, and he lay on

his stomach with his arms bound behind him at the wrist and his ankles tied sharply. He wore the clothes of a Bedouin tribesman, but his physique and stomach were too gross for him to have been from this camel herdsmen.

group of

Littelbaum knew the face of the prisoner

from

the files, knew he came from Riyadh, was a courier for the man he

tracked.

The tribesmen huddled on their haunches around a dead fire surrounded hed stones.

by scorc

The colonel yelled at them, kicked them and they

.

keeled away from him

Twice he whipped them with the barrel of his

stol, but none cried out even when they bled.

pi

They were small men

with twig-thin bodies, impassive in the face of his anger. They

could

be shown the blade of a sword or the barrel of a gun but they never talked.

e camels were hobbled to pegs and kept their heads away from the

Th

force of the wind. Littelbaum thought the nameless, faceless man

would

have ridden on a camel into the blast of the driven sand. There would cks and no chance of pursuit from the air. He knew only

be no tra

the

n's reputation, which was why he sought him as if he were the

ma

Grail.

The patience of the lead pilot was exhausted. He was gesticulating to

the colonel, pointing at his watch, at his helicopter, and back into he storm. The colonel gave his orders. The prisoner

the eye of t

was

less, towards a fuselage hatch. Above the scream of

dragged, help

the

Littelbaum heard behind him the crash of gunfire then

wind, Duane

the

s screaming. Without their animals the Bedouin would either

camel

9

starve or die of thirst or exposure in the wilderness of the Empty Quarter. It was a shit country, to which he was posted, with a shit little war, and he had failed to find his enemy.

Perhaps it was because one of the emaciated tribesmen ducked to avoid the blow of a rifle butt, but for a brief second the dead embers of the

fire were no longer protected against the wind. Littelbaum saw black shreds of paper lifting in the gusts between the charred wood. He scrambled through the Bedouin and the National Guardsmen, fell to

his

knees, whipping out the little plastic bags that were always in his hip

pocket.

Carefully, as he had been taught at the Academy at Quantico more than two decades ago, he slipped the scraps into the bags. As he squinted down, he fancied that there were still faint traces of arabic

characters on the fragments.

He was the last into the helicopter, holding his bags as if they were the relics of a saint. They lifted, and the camp in which he had

uch hope disappeared in the storm of driven sand.

placed s

"No."

ate that this is a difficult moment for you, but what I

"I appreci

am

telling you is based on information gathered within the last month."

"No."

"Of course, it's a difficult situation for you to absorb."

"No."

"Difficult, but inescapable. It's not a problem that can be

ignored."

"No."

"They're serious people, Mr. Perry. You know it, we know it.

Nothing

ged... For God's sake, you were in Iran as often as I'm in

has chan

the

ket.

supermar

I cannot conceive that you are incredulous to what I'm

10

erce, where you would

saying. But this is not accountancy or comm

ve

ha

ts.

the right to expect definitive statemen

I can't give you detail.

It

is intelligence, the putting together of mosaic scraps of

information,

sing the little that presents itself.

then analy

I am not at liberty

to

detail that provided the analysis.. . You have been

divulge the

there,

you know those people... If they find you then they will seek to kill you."

Geoff Markham stood by the door watching Fenton doing the talking

and

recognizing already that Fenton had made a right maggot of it. The n,

ma

Perry, had his back to them and was gazing out of the front window as the late winter rain lashed the glass panes. As the senior

e, Fenton ought to have made a better fist of it.

operativ

He should

have sat Perry down, gone to the sideboard, routed for a whisky

bottle,

poured generously and put the glass into Perry's hand. He should

have

communicated warmth and commitment and concern; instead, he had

ed with the finesse of a buffalo into Perry's home. Now it

trampl

was

.

fast going sour

And as it went sour, so Fenton's voice rose to a

shrilling bark.

ham stood by the door and remained silent.

Geoff Mark

It was not his

ace to intervene when his superior fouled up.

pl

He could see Perry's

hunched shoulders tighten with each new assault.

Perry's voice was low and muffled, and Markham had to strain to hear rds.

the wo

re not listening to me.. . No."

"You'

nnot see what other option you have."

"I ca

ion is to say what I have said... No."

"My opt

sn't an option.. . Listen, you're in shock. You are also

"That i

being

wilfully obstinate, refusing to face reality-' "No. Not again. I won't run."

11

He heard the hiss of his superior's exasperation. He glanced down at

his watch. Christ, they had not even been in the house for fifteen minutes. They had driven down from London, come unannounced, had

parked the car on the far side of the green on to which the house

faced. Fenton had smiled in satisfaction because there were lights on

inside. They had seen the face at the window upstairs as they had opened the low wicket gate and gone up the path to the door. He had seen Perry's face and he had thought there was already a recognition of

their business before they reached the door. They wore their London suits. Fenton had a martinet's moustache, painstakingly trimmed,

a

brown trilby and a briefcase with the faded gold of the EIW symbol.

There was no porch over the front door, and Perry would have

recognized

them for what they were, a senior and a junior from the Security

Service, before they had even wiped their feet on the door mat. He made them wait and allowed the rain to spatter their backs before

opening the door .. . Fenton was not often out of Thames House: he was

a section head, consumed by the reading of reports and attendance

at

meetings. In Geoff Markham's opinion, Fenton had long ago lost touch with the great mass of people who surged back and forth each day along the Thames embankment under the high walls of the building on

Millbank.

To Fenton, they would have been a damn bloody nuisance, an impediment to the pure world of counter-espionage.. . Markham wondered how he would have reacted if strangers had pitched up at his door, flashed their IDs, muscled into his home, started to talk of life and death.

Fenton snapped, "We have conduits of information, some more reliable than others. I have to tell you, the information we are acting upon is

first class. The threat is a fact-' "I won't run again."

right fist slammed into the palm of his left hand.

Fenton's

"We're not urging this course of action lightly. Look, you did it

-' "No."

before

o it a second time."

"You can d

12

"No."

"I have the impression that you wish to delude yourself on the th

streng

of the threat. Well, let us understand each other. I am not

tomed to leaving my desk for a day, journeying into this sort

accus

of

backwater, for my own amusement-' "I won't run again final."

Fenton brayed, at the back of Perry's head, "There is evidence of a

onsiderable danger.

very c

Got me? Hard evidence, real danger From

where he stood at the door, Geoff Markham thought that Perry's