He had lived his life for the study of Iran.
Those who did not know him, the embassy staffers who passed him in the corridors or saw him in the parking lot or at the ambassador's functions, would have reckoned him an academic, eccentric and gentle. They would have been wrong. He played the dangerous game of counter-terrorism. It was a solitary, work-driven life, where victims held little relevance, where the requirement for victory was paramount.
Duane Littelbaum had a light, bouncing step as he left his office and went on down the corridor, cheerfully slapping the arm of the Marine at the grille. His stride was almost a skip of pleasure.
His purpose in life, through all of twenty years, had been to put a smoking gun into an Iranian hand. If the chance came, he would act with a ruthlessness unrecognized by those who did not know him well.
His finger hovered over the names he had written on his paper pad. Fenton stood over him.
Geoff Markham recited, "Yusuf Khan, disappeared off the face of the earth. SB have beefed up Nottingham from Manchester and Leeds, but they don't have him. He's not been home since he was lost, and has not showed at work. The one associate we have listed is Farida Yasmin Jones, the convert, but that's a problem because she's dropped out, doesn't go to the mosque now and has moved out of her bed sit I can't trace her electricity, telephone and gas bills for a new address, like it's covering a trail and intentional which is to me both interesting and worrying. The protection officer given to Perry hasn't called back to his co-ordinator. It's a slow haul."
"Keep pushing, keep kicking bums. I'll be at lunch."
He nibbled at the fringes of impertinence.
"That's nice, enjoy it."
Fenton grinned.
"I will. Need to get up to speed. I have a good feeling about this one. In my water, I've the feeling this might even be exciting. I'm preparing for a jump on to the learning curve."
His superior had been transferred from the Czech! Slovak I Romanian/ Bulgarian desk only fourteen months before, which was why Cox had been able, effortlessly, to win promotion over him. Markham thought Fenton should have been on his learning curve a year ago. He stepped over the fringes.
"I am sure that Mr. Perry would be pleased to hear that he's providing a bit of excitement."
"You want to make anything of this job? My advice, take the heat."
"I'll be here."
"Where I would expect you to be."
Markham did not look up. Fenton was going to the door, whistling happily, and he steeled himself.
"Mr. Fenton."
The whistling stopped.
"Mr. Fenton, I know we're in unpredictable times, but I need to be out tomorrow afternoon, for one o'clock, be about an hour."
Fenton would have been looking at the photo on his wall of Vicky, the one where she wore the short skirt. He asked, "Going to get a little cuddle in, to see you through the day?"
"I am entitled to an hour at lunch, Mr. Fenton." Vicky would maul him if he didn't put his foot down. He said doggedly, "I'm not obliged to work right through a night, but I did."
"No call for claws, Geoff. If you can be free then you will be."
"Sorry, Mr. Fenton, it's not "if". I have to be out of here for one o'clock tomorrow."
"Clock-watching, Geoff, does not fit the Service ethos. May be all right in a bank… but secret work, security work, makes a bad bedfellow with a clock face
Fenton was gone. Geoff Markham sat at the console and hammered out the text, giant format, then printed it. He took a roll of Sellotape from his drawer and stuck the paper to the outside of his door.
"This Project is so SECRET even I DON'T KNOW what I'm doing."
The principal and his wife were subdued, out of sight, when the van arrived with the men from London. Davies jumped out of his car to meet them. He took the foreman down the narrow track at the side of the house and showed him the rear garden, the facade of old stone, and gave him the sketch map he'd drafted of the layout for the property, and its interior.
Two more men were at the front now, unloading the cables and boxes from the van, and unhitching the ladders' stay ropes from its roof. He had his own key to the front door now, and took the foreman inside. He'd leave the kitchen, where the principal was with his wife, until last. The foreman hadn't wiped his boots and left a trail of wet earth round the rooms. They went through the house, and the foreman never lowered his voice as he discussed arcs of surveillance for the cameras and the sighting of the infrared beams and through which upper window-frames they would drill the cable holes, and which ground-floor windows and doors should be alarmed. They came to the kitchen last. She sat with her back to them, didn't acknowledge them. Perry tried to make small-talk but the foreman ignored him. It was usually like that, when the gear was put in, and there was no easy way of riding out the shock.
Outside, the ladder scraped as it was extended. The kitchen window darkened as a man's body settled on the lowest rung to test its reliability. The wife had her head down and her lunch half eaten in front of her.
Perry said, "I thought I had the choice on the new locks."
"It's a bit more than locks, Mr. Perry. It's cameras and infrared and tumbler wires and-' "What's going on?"
They were always worse, more aggressive, in front of the lady, as if they felt the need to make a stand and pretend they were in charge. The principal was not in charge, not any more, of his house, and certainly not of his life.
"I can't tell you, Mr. Perry, because I don't know and if I did I couldn't tell you."
He went outside. There was a light rain falling and the sky threatened more. Another ladder was up against the front wall, the cables dancing as they were unrolled. An electric drill was whining through the wood of an upper window-frame. It wasn't the job of the detective sergeant to feel sympathy, but already, inside their home, their lives were being violated and this was merely the beginning.
There would be some who would say afterwards that this had been the War of Fenton's Belly. They were the bureaucrats of the first floor (Administration Sub-Branch Accounts), tasked with the study of expense receipts and entertainment bills. Five bills in a week for expenses and entertainment handed in by the head of Section 2, G Branch, and the handwritten demand for reimbursement. They would call, after the business was completed, for explanations and would receive only the vaguest information of what had happened, what had been at stake, and its outcome.
Harry Fenton would have preferred to walk on nails rather than go to Vauxhall Bridge Cross with an invitation to Penny Flowers to join him for lunch. He said it to whomever would listen, often enough, that the Secret Intelligence Service treated the Security Service as lesser creatures. He would not go cap in hand to Ms Flowers for help and information. So, the first step on his learning curve was to offer a good meal to the senior Mid-East (Terrorism) analyst of the Foreign and Commonwealth's research division. They ordered, and then she launched.
"Iran is on the move. Don't believe all that garbage the Americans peddle about a dark, bloodstained hand, Islamic and Iranian, behind every vicious little guerrilla war in the world, it's just not true. Iran is going modern. There've been fair elections, a new moderate president, a breaking down of the taboos of Muslim life. Look, you want a drink in Tehran, you can get it you'll have to be discreet, but you can have it. Only three, four years ago, you'd have had a public whipping to sober you up. The woman's role, in government and the civil service, is advancing fast. Women now have power, and there are fashion boutiques for clothes to be worn at private parties. They are modernizing at speed, and if it was not for the bloody stupid American sanctions they would be going even faster towards a viable economic infrastructure I'm a fan."