The wind whipped about her and could not move her. The sea swell bucked beneath her and did not shake her.
She was out of the Kharg Island terminal, the property of the National Iranian Tanker Corporation. Her call sign was EQUZ. Her length, bow to stern, was 332 metres; her beam, port to starboard, was 58 metres; her draught, the waterline to the lowest point of the hull, was 22.5 metres. She was loaded with 287,000 tonnes of
Iranian crude. Her speed through the water, regardless of weather conditions, was a constant 21 knots. She had been at sea for thirteen days, routed from Kharg Island, past the port of Bandar Abbas, through the Straits of Hormuz, north up the Red Sea to the canal, away from Port Said and into the Mediterranean. After navigating the Straits of Gibraltar, her last reported position had her giving a wide berth to the sea lanes leading to Lisbon. She was two days' sailing from the western approaches of the English Channel. Her crew complement was always thirty-two Iranian and Pakistani nationals, and the master would give that number, in truth, to the immigration authorities at the Swedish refinery. She was a monster, carving her way forward, moving remorselessly towards her destination.
"Just read it, Mr. Perry, it's all in here. I can't say it's anything that pushes back the frontiers of science. It just states what's sensible."
When she walked out of the front door Meryl had been crying. She'd tried not to cry in the house, but she'd cried when she was on the step, and going down the path. Perry had seen her dab her eyes when she reached the car and then he'd closed the door. He was not ready to tell her. It would have been easier if she'd confronted him. He had been leaning against the hall wall, head in the coats, when the bell had rung. A card had been proffered, Home Office Central Unit, and a smiling, middle-aged man had been following him into the house.
"It's all in the pamphlet what we call the Blue Book, because it's blue. Vary your route to and from your home, keep a constant watch for strangers whom you might suspect of showing a particular interest in the house. You haven't a garage, I see. Car parked on the street, that's a problem. Well, you look like a handyman, get an old car wing-mirror, lash it to a bamboo pole and check under the car each morning, under the main chassis and especially that naughty little hidden bit above the wheels, doesn't take a moment. Imagine anywhere under the car, or under the bonnet, where you could hide a pound bag of sugar, but it's not sugar, it's military explosive, and a pound of that stuff will destroy the car, with a mercury tilt switch. Always best to be careful and do the checks, doesn't take a minute."
They wandered through the house, as if the man were an estate agent and the place was going on the market but it wasn't, he was staying. No quitting, no running. The furniture was eyed, and the ornaments and the pictures, and the fittings in the kitchen. He'd made them both a mug of tea, and his visitor had taken three biscuits from the jar, munched them happily and left a trail of crumbs behind him.
"It's mostly about the car. You shouldn't think you're alone. I don't get many days in the office. So many Army officers who were in Northern Ireland, they all need updating. I've a lovely list of gentlemen I visit, and judges and civil servants. You shouldn't get in a flap nothing's ever happened to any of my gentlemen. But what I tell all of them, watch the car… I'll be leaving brochures of the locks on offer, doors and windows, all fitted at our expense. You know, we spend five million pounds a year on this, and me and my colleagues, so don't get depressed and think you're the only one. They didn't tell me, never do, who you'd rubbed up the wrong way… They came down the stairs. The biscuits were finished and the mugs were empty. The man darted back into the living room. There was a grimace on his face, as if he had forgotten something and that was a personal failure.
"Oh, the curtains."
"What's wrong with them?"
"Dreadful of me not to have noticed. There are no net curtains. There should be your wife can knock some up."
"She hates net curtains."
"Your job, Mr. Perry, not mine, to make her like them. I'm sure that when you've explained it-' "Do you have net curtains at home?" He hadn't thought, and realized his stupidity as soon as the question was asked.
"No call for them. I'm not at threat, I've not trod on anyone's toes. Net curtains, you see, absorb flying glass from an lED, that's improvised explosive device a bomb, to the layman."
He was grateful for the time and advice. He wished him a safe journey back to London.
"Final advice, be sensible, read the Blue Book, do what it says. Don't think that from now on, what I always say to my gentlemen, life ends, you've got to live under the kitchen table. If there were a specific danger, say threat-level two, they'd have moved you out of here, feet wouldn't have touched the ground or, God forbid, there'd be armed police crawling all over your home… Good day, Mr. Perry, thanks for your hospitality. Let my office know what locks you want, and don't forget about the net curtains. I'll call again in about six months, if it's still appropriate. Good day… It's not that bad or you'd have the guns here or you'd have been moved out…"
After he had read the pamphlet, he hid it among his work papers where she never looked. Frank Perry still did not know what and when he would tell Meryl.
A jam my old number, the Branch men in London called it, a proper trolley ride for the geriatrics, and let them try it. He cursed. He was fifty-one years old, working out the time to retirement, and too damned old for this caper. His problem, he was trying to do singlehandedly the work that should have been given to a four-man detail.
It had been fine at the terraced house where he'd picked up his target easily enough. The target had walked, and the detective sergeant had trailed him on foot into the centre of Nottingham. Into a camping-equipment shop. The detective sergeant had fingered wet-weather coats while the target had selected then paid cash for a sleeping-bag, heavy-soled walking-boots, wool boot socks, camouflage trousers and tunic that were ex-military stock. He might have been old, near to retirement, but the detective sergeant still registered his target's height and the size of the boots, which were at least two sizes too small for the target's feet.
All the university cities in the country had a pair of Branch men attached to the local police station. Used to be Irish work, not any longer. It was the Islamic thing that preoccupied the detective sergeant and his partner, Iranian students studying engineering, physics, chemistry, metallurgy, and the zealots who recruited among the campus kids. It was work for a dozen men in this city alone, not for two poor bastards. The Security Service provided the names and addresses, and bugger all else, leaving the detective sergeant to tramp the streets and type the bloody reports.
The target was careful and had twice ducked into shop doorways and let him come past. His shoes, new, hurt his feet, and he was bursting for a leak. The detective sergeant was trained in surveillance, but it was damn difficult to make the tail when it was down to one man. They had ended in a bookshop. He'd eyed the paperback thrillers while the target had been searching, very specific, on shelves across the shop.
He had not had this man before. There were usually so many targets that they came round on a rota every four weeks or so. It was only three months since the young fellow, wet behind the ears and up from London, had given the sparse detail of the Security Service interest in Yusuf Khan, Muslim convert, formerly Winston Summers. One of many, the tall, wide-shouldered Afro-Caribbean was under surveillance around one day in thirty, nine in the morning to seven in the evening. He did not know why this thirty-year-old cleaner at the university was on the list for sporadic surveillance… His was not to reason why, his but to do and bloody die and bugger all glory for his pinched feet and aching bladder.