The patient now seemed unmoving, unconscious. The detectives turned away.
Markham said, "He's fooling you."
"You're a doctor? Familiar with this case history, are you?"
Markham persisted, "He's alert, listening. He's feigning."
"You're an expert on concussion? You know about the effects of pain-depressant drugs?"
"What I am telling you-' "No. I do the telling on my ward, and I am telling you to get out." Markham spat, "There could be blood on your hands."
"I doubt it."
"A man could be murdered because of your refusal-' "Get out."
He had failed to exploit the break. The faces of the uniformed policemen were expressionless, as though they didn't need to tell him that he'd made a right idiot of himself. Geoff Markham turned angrily and walked up the central aisle of the ward towards the low light at the far end where the night sister sat at her table. The detectives were alongside and he could hear the soft pad of the doctor behind him. He saw the American sitting on a visitor's chair, in deep shadow, against a patient's locker. The patient was passing him a grape, and before he took it the American had his finger on his lips. Markham kept walking.
Beyond the ward's swing doors, there was a last snapped question: "How long?"
The doctor said that it might be two days and it might be three, or it might be a week, before his patient could be interrogated.
He walked on down the empty corridors. The Branch men were with him, said they were looking for a coffee machine. His footfall stamped to the stairs.
There was a fight in Casualty reception. A drunk with blood streaming from a forehead wound swung a fist at the security people. He didn't care and threaded his way past them.
He went to the parking area and his car.
He wished he smoked. He wished he had a hip flask. He wished he was warm and wet-sweaty with Vicky. He wished he worked for a fucking bank.
He sat in the car.
The wail of a siren approached, and he watched the staff gather at the door to meet it, the flurry as the stretcher was hurried inside. He waited. He was cold, tired. He had seen how the bastard had watched them, listened to them, fooled them, and the first day of the week was ten minutes off its end. And he couldn't imagine why Littelbaum had found it important to stay behind.
He was slumped in self-pity, and wondered whether the bank would turn him down by letter or by telephone. Damn sure they wouldn't accept him. He wouldn't tell Vicky what he'd said, about playing God, or tell her how her buzz phrases had been sneered at… The American eased the car door open and lowered himself into the seat.
"First, thanks for being so on the ball and giving me space. You did well. God, what depressing places hospitals are… You see, Mr. Markham, it's all about Alamut… the sort of places we'll all end in, not able to do a lot about it… Alamut is the key… Markham began to drive away, and had to swerve out of the path of another ambulance.
"I'd need convincing I did anything well. Right, Mr. Littelbaurn, tell me why Alamut is relevant."
"If he had known Alamut, been there, then he wouldn't have talked to me."
Markham gasped, then laughed out loud.
"Why, Mr. Littelbaum, did he talk to you?"
"The policemen were very co-operative, heard what you said, about blood and murder. One needed to piss so the other took his place in the corridor."
"Why?"
"I fancy he talked to me because I poked the tip of my pen into the middle of the three femur fractures."
"Didn't he scream?"
"He probably did, but I had my handkerchief and my fist over his mouth. He wanted to talk more than he wanted the poke of my pen if he'd been to Alamut then he wouldn't have cared about the pain."
"What did he say?"
Markham drove recklessly fast on the open road.
"Heh, Mr. Markham, would you slow down, please? I don't want to be going back to that place on my back ease it off, please. He said the guy came off a boat, and I told him we knew that. I hadn't a name, and neither had he. I hadn't a face, but he had. The face is interesting, it's pale-coloured, it's what I imagine to be the edge of Caucasian, and there's no facial hair. English, English accent, not American. Tall but not exceptional, hair not black matt, didn't get the eyes… Age would be late thirties. He crashed the car because the guy sort of frightened him."
"Weapons?"
"He started to tell me I think he was trying to talk about a launcher. Yes, he wanted to tell me the lot, I had the pen right in front of his face, but he didn't. I think he wanted to tell me, but he fainted."
"Associates?"
"The faint wasn't acted. He got another poke, but he was gone cold, like Smoky Joe had hit him and the law came back from its piss."
"So what do we have, Mr. Littelbaum?"
"Enough to think on. May I, first, educate you on Alamut? With education, you get to understand the Anvil, what he'll do, the sense of sacrifice, the danger he poses, the dedication to his orders. In the year 1152, Mr. Markham, two of the fida'is were sent from Alamut to kill Raymond the Second of Tripoli, that's the port city in present-day northern Lebanon. Raymond the Second was the Christian crusader king. They chose the most public place in his city to kill him, where he would be surrounded by the maximum security. The place they chose was the main gate of the city. Imagine it, crowds, traders, travellers, guards, the greatest audience in front of which to demonstrate their power and their commitment. They stabbed Raymond the Second to death at the gate of his own city, and they would have known that within moments they would be chopped into small pieces by his guards. That's Alamut for you, Mr. Markham, that's what you're up against."
He pretended to sleep and made a pattern of his breathing.
Her breasts and stomach were against his back and his buttocks. They were naked in the bed, but for comfort's sake not for loving. Sometimes he heard the engine of the car parked beside the house, as if Blake boosted the heater. Sometimes he heard a car coming slowly by and stopping; then there were quiet voices and chuckled laughter. Sometimes there was the empty whistling of the wind, and the distant ripple surge of the sea on the beach.
If he pretended to sleep and his breathing was regular then he hoped it would be easier for her to sleep.
He lay on his side with her warmth against him and he played the television's quiz game in his mind. The grinning show host asked the questions, and bright-eyed Frankie answered them.
Where was Iran?
"Iran, with a territory of 1.68 million square kilometres and a population estimated in excess of sixty million, is at a pivotal geopolitical position between the Middle East and the Asian subcontinent where it cannot be ignored and is unlikely to be humoured."
What was the government of Iran?
"Iran is ruled by Islamic clerics categorized as fundamentalist and conservative in the extreme, but the government has loose relationships with the organizations of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the autonomous private armies of clerics boasting vengeful actions against Western cultures."
What was WMD?
"Weapons of Mass Destruction, chemical and microbiological and nuclear, are all the subject of urgent research programmes in Iran."
What was the requirement for mixing machines?
"The manufacture of the chemical air droplets to be included in the warhead, and for the lining material of the interior of the missile body that must withstand extreme temperature, require dual-purpose mixing machines sold on fraudulently prepared export dockets."
What was the fate of a spy in Iran? What did they do with a spy in Iran?
"A spy in Iran is either hanged in secret on the gallows at the Evin gaol, or hanged in public from a crane in a Tehran square and hoisted so high that the crowd can better see his death dance."