The intelligence officer, in his Kensington flat, took the call. The number of the mobile telephone was jealously guarded and changed every month, and he assumed that the land-line telephone was routinely listened to. A voice of great calm spoke of a traffic accident, gave a location of signposts a mile from the accident site, and quietly told of the need for help in moving onwards.
Deniability was the creed of the intelligence officer.
He took the number of his caller and rang off. He threw on basic clothes. He had not the time to consult Tehran, nor to call his colleague's apartment in Marble Arch. It was his decision, against every regulation of his service, that he should take a personal involvement in a situation of emergency.
Often, his Kensington apartment was watched. There might be a car, with the engine idling, on the far side of the road to the front lobby of the block or in the side-street. He went out through the fire door at the back, past the janitor's little locked room and the waste-bins. To further the creed of deniability, he ran for a phone-box. He called a number, waited for it to be answered, heard the sleep-ridden voice, explained what had happened, ordered what was to be done, rang off, walked back to his apartment.
He believed he had not compromised the creed of deniability.
Blake told him that the woman in the house across the green had a big backside and didn't draw the curtains when she undressed, and that was about the limit of his overnight excitement. There were cat's footprints all over the bonnet and Blake told him that he'd had the brute inside with him until it had tried to get into his food-box. Blake stacked the H amp;K back into the case and slotted it behind the rear-seat arm rest.
Davies rang the front-door bell as Blake headed back to the bed-and-breakfast.
The door was opened by the wife and, from her eyes, it didn't seem that she'd slept. She led him into the kitchen. The boy broke from his cornflakes and stared at him. Davies thought he was looking for his gun, but he wouldn't have seen it in the waist holster underneath the fall of his suit jacket. She told the boy to go upstairs, get his books ready, go to the toilet, get his hair combed.
"Morning, Mr. Davies."
And it didn't look to him that Frank Perry, the principal, had slept any better than his wife. There was a dazed tiredness in his face.
"I don't need to trouble you for too much of your time, Mr. Perry, but you had rather an amount to take on board yesterday, and I'd like to confirm a few points."
"Wasn't the easiest of days I've known but, what I've said to Meryl, it could have been worse."
"Always best to be positive, Mr. Perry."
"We could have run away could have turned our backs on all this."
From what he had seen in her face, the hopelessness in the fall of her mouth, he thought the woman was deeply wounded and he wondered if Perry realized it. Not his job… He should have phoned Lily, should have spoken to the boys, should have… He was hardly qualified for marriage counselling, and it wasn't his job to try.
"What I want to reiterate, Mr. Perry, are the procedures, and for the correct application of the procedures I need your co-operation."
"And you should not forget that I worked for my country, Mr. Davies. I am owed protection."
They faced each other across the breakfast table. There was a tight, curled snarl at Perry's mouth.
He smiled, defused.
"Of course, Mr. Perry. If I could just repeat… Please, you don't spring any surprises on me. You tell me who you are expecting as visitors, where you will be entertaining them. That will be very helpful to me."
"It's a village, Mr. Davies, it's not an anonymous damn city. Our friends call by, they don't make appointments, we're not an optician or a dentist."
He was generous. He knew that the snarl was from tiredness and understood the stress. Behind Perry, the woman watched him, her eyes never leaving him.
"And I need to know, Mr. Perry, your intended movements for the day. Are you going out? Where are you going? How long will you be there? Who will you meet? I need specific detail of your planned movements."
"Why?"
He reckoned they were sparring and wasting each other's time. He said it straight, brutally, "We have laid down procedures, they are based on experience. You are at least danger when in your own home. You are in the greatest danger when in transit. There are two points of maximum danger, when you leave your home and are exposed as you go to the car, and when you leave your car and wallz into a building, particularly if that is a regular journey. You are in danger en route, if your journey is predictable. I told you this yesterday and I am sorry that you weren't able to comprehend it. The danger on the pavement, to the car and from the car, is from a sniper at long range or a handgun used at close quarters. The danger during a journey is from a culvert bomb with a command cable or remote detonation or from a parked car bomb. Get me? If it couldn't happen, Mr. Perry, I wouldn't be here."
The woman rocked on her feet, as if caught by a shock wind, but her eyes were never off him.
It was like he'd hit Perry in the solar plexus, and his voice was quieter.
"You can't search half the countryside. What difference does it make if you know my routes?"
He said easily, "I can plan, in the event of an ambush, where to drive to, the nearest safe-house might be a telephone exchange, a government building and I can have worked out where's the nearest hospital."
"Jesus."
"So, if you could just tell me, Mr. Perry, your plans for the day, then there are no surprises."
"Meryl's visiting this morning and she's got a class-' "I'm not concerned with Mrs. Perry's movements."
Perry flared.
"Doesn't she matter?"
"You're the target, Mr. Perry. You're the principal I'm here to protect. That's my instruction. Are you going out today?"
She had an antique-furniture restoration class in the afternoon. Perry was committed to the school pick-up.
"Can you cancel?"
"No, I bloody well can't. And I intend to live a life."
"Of course, Mr. Perry. Let's go over the route."
He was shown in by Fenton, and Cox was hovering behind.
Markham thought the man looked as if he'd just stepped off the Ark.
"It's Mr. Littelbaum, Geoff, from Riyadh. You told him you did the "donkey's load", so he's come to offer you some oats. You're his liaison with us," Fenton said.
Markham stood. It was that sort of depressing morning where the pieces were obstinate and refused to slot. Nothing to report from SB's operations centre on the target, Juliet Seven. There was no trace on Yusuf Khan from Nottingham. The associate, the woman thrown up by Rainbow Gold, had moved from the address listed for her electricity and telephone bills, but he had, small mercies, registration details for her car, about as common a small saloon as any on the road.
The American had wild grey hair, which needed cutting. His tie was stained with food and, from the tight knot, seemed only to be loosened each night so that the noose could be pulled over his head. The shirt was new but already there was grease on it. He wore a brown three-piece herringbone suit, what a solicitor might have worn thirty years back in north Lancashire, and the creases said he'd travelled in it. But he had alive, penetrating eyes. Markham glanced down at his watch.
"I apologize, but I did tell you, Mr. Fenton, I have to be at an appointment over the lunch-hour." And he added limply, "A family business appointment. I can't cut it and I can't be late either."
Fenton said, dry, "I hope the family business is important Mr. Littelbaum has flown three thousand miles so that he can offer us the benefit of his experience. Bring him back to me."
Fenton and Cox were gone.