A Line in the Sand (17 page)

crea

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

unched.

la

ran is on the move.

"I

Don't believe all that garbage the Americans

anian, behind

peddle about a dark, bloodstained hand, Islamic and Ir

ery vicious little guerrilla war in the world, it's just not true.

ev

Iran is going modern. There've been fair elections, a new moderate

, a breaking down of the taboos of Muslim life.

president

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 to sober you up.

whipping

The woman's role, in government and the

rvice, is advancing fast.

civil se

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 105

nctions they would be going even faster towards a viable economic

sa

infrastructure I'm a fan."

She chewed on the breadsticks with the same enthusiasm with which

she

talked. Fenton, watching her and listening, didn't think research lmed with invitations.

analysts were overwhe

much greater internal stability now. They've wiped out

"There is

e

th

Mujahiddin-e-Khalq. Very few bombs explode in Tehran. The

Monarchist

faction is gone. I accept that they are paranoid about opposition, and

l

that'll last a bit longer, but if we break their isolation they'l

get

quickly. The Americans forever bleat about

respectable

state-sponsored

when a bit of hush and encouragement will do a quicker job

terrorism

than a stick. We believe the importance of their guerrilla training overemphasized. We think they offer more training in

camps is

theological correctness than in bomb-making. Every time a bomb goes America they shout about Iran. Remember the knee-jerk

off in

accusation that Iran was responsible for Oklahoma City? Ouch .. .

ber every American commentator insisting that Iran had knocked

Remem

TWA

to the sea.

800 in

You.. . Remember, Iran had organized the attacks

in

t's nowhere near proven. We think they give

Saudi, but i

encouragement,

al support, offer a safe haven to dissident groups, but that

financi

is

t of controlling them. The Americans need an enemy right

way shor

now,

an is available, but the facts don't support the need."

Ir

e was grey-haired, severely dressed, with only a small

Sh

sterling-silver brooch for ornament, but there was a twinkle of light in her face.

e, Iran has ambitions. Iran demands recognition as a

"Of cours

gional

re

power and believes she has the economic, cultural and military clout to

ve that status. The current leaders detest the image abroad

deser

of a

106

pariah state,

they

and

say they received no credit for a statesmanlike

neutral posture during Desert Storm. They deny they export

n.

revolutio

They say that all they export is oil, carpets and pistachio nuts.

They

practise good neighbourliness. At the bottom line they

say they

nnot

ca

afford to offend the West because the West is the purchaser of their and without that revenue the country simply folds. Actually,

crude,

they rather respect the British, admire us, give us credit where it y

ma

not be due. They have a saying, "If you stub your foot on a stone you

can be sure an Englishman placed it there." London's awash with dissidents but they're alive, aren't they? They're not

Iranian

being

shot dead and blown up. We don't think they want to offend us, quite ite.

the oppos

Believe me, the Shah was more neurotic about British

intelligence and meddling than the present lot. The Shah said, "If you

lift Khomeini's beard you will find printed under it, "Made in

'."

Britain

Go to the trade fairs, go to the Queen's birthday party

at

residence, you'll find great friendship for the British."

our summer

They ate pasta. The end of the Cold War had been a career disaster for

nton. He was of the old school at Five; a former tank

Harry Fe

squadron

in Germany eyeballing Soviet armour, he had found it a

commander

straightforward move into counter-espionage when soldiering lost its ttraction.

glitter a

He'd been on major spy investigations and found

that work totally fulfilling. But the bloody Wall had come down,

the

enemy was now to be treated as an ally and, after years of dogged

ance, he'd been shuffled to the Islamic Desk.

resist

For the first

time

that move he felt a fris son of excitement.

since

y old favourite is Weapons of Mass Destruction, which

"Another hoar

gets

in a proper lather.

everyone

Our assessment goes against the grain.

They're way behind in the production of a microbiological capability.

facilities, yes, but they're not there. On the chemical

Research

front, and they have cause to develop such hideous weapons after the ng the Iraqis gave them, they were making fast progress until

gassi

107

five

hen we don't know why everything seemed to stop. It

years ago. T

was

peculiar and I don't have the answer. They're back on track now but several years.

they lost

"Top of the list for horror stories is the ayatollahs' nuke, makes the

Americans wet their Y-fronts, but we think it's ten years away, that it

n years away in

was ten years away five years ago, that it'll be te

ve

fi

years' time. Yes, they have missiles for delivery, they can reach the

Saudi oilfields, but they've nothing that matters to put in the

Anyway, they're not idiots, they cannot compete on

warheads.

military

the Americans and they know it.

terms with

They're not going to hit

Saudi and get a bashing they can't defend themselves from. Is this a

disappointment to you? God, look at the time! My little white neck block when I wobble

will be on the

in smelling of your booze as if

it

matters."

thusiastic agreement when he pointed to the empty first

She nodded en

bottle, then raised his hand to the waiter for another to be brought.

lamb and he had veal.

She had

with me.

"Bear

I'm getting there... As I said, the dissidents here

are

alive.

still

How long since we last expelled one of their lOs for

sniffing round a target? Six years. OK, OK, there are plenty of

disparate groups, factions of their intelligence agencies that are not

under specific control, they moonlight, but not on a big one. Would they come into Britain and attempt to assassinate a guarded target?

No.

Absolutely not. Am I a kill-joy? But I would urge considerable

you in the event that my assessment is wrong. Please,

caution on

if I

am wrong, don't go into the pulpit and denounce that country because you would set back years of quiet diplomacy and cut the legs off those elieve are moderates. We're not dealing with school-brat

we b

vandals,

ould be made an example of, but with a nation state we have

who sh

108

to

Damn good lunch, thanks."

live with.. .

back to Thames House and put his head round Cox's door.

He walked

He had, of course, a network of high-level contacts; he had been with a

d respected official of Foreign and Commonwealth Office,

senior an

and

very illuminating it had been.

The eyes of Cox, the bureaucrat, beaded on him.

"Do they believe Iran is on the march, coming to Suffolk?"

"They don't, no and if they are on the march then the FCO pleads for a

soft line."

"Difficult to take a soft line with an assassin."

Fenton boasted, "I've several more sources that I'll be milking. If there's more to know, I'll find it."

"The motivation that makes people fight in a holy war is that death does not represent the end of life for a human being..."

The words were in his mind. He had prayed for the last time that

day,

the fifth time, an hour and a half after dusk. He had slept well

and

was rested. He had eaten a small portion of the rice and boiled

chicken brought him by the master. He had sat for many minutes on the

lavatory in the corner of the cabin until he was satisfied that his bowels and bladder were cleaned, emptied, because that was important.

He had stripped, washed himself with soap in the tiny shower cubicle that had been installed for the privacy and personal use of the

master's wife. He had dried himself, then shaved.

"On the contrary, immortal life begins after death, and the kind of salvation that a man has in the next world is dependent on the kind of

life he lives in this world..."

In his mind were the words of the ayatollah who taught at a college 109

in

the city of Qom. He stood naked in the cabin. The clothes he had worn

when he had boarded the tanker off the port of Bandar Abbas, and on the

voyage, with the wedding ring and the gold chain from his neck, were now folded in the cupboard with the chadors and rou push trousers

left

by the master's wife. He was a tall man, 1.87 metres. He was well se,

muscled yet weighed only 86 kilos. His hair was dark, clo

short-cut, but with a neat parting that he combed to an exact line.

He

s pale-skinned for an Iranian, as if he did not come from the Gulf wa

but from the sunbathed countries and islands of the Mediterranean; it

was a reason he had been chosen. The texture of his skin was the

gift

of his mother, along with the jutting chin and the determination.

From

he took his eyes, deep-set, shrouded in secrecy.

his father,

He was

thirty-six years old.

"Taking part in a holy war is a way of assuring oneself that one's immortal salvation in the next world is guaranteed..."

His English-born mother had been the daughter of an oil worker at

Abadan, who had married the young Iranian medical student against

the

bitter opposition of her family. She had not wavered and had been cut

off from all contact when her father and mother had returned to their Yorkshire home. There had never been reconciliation. She had

embraced

the Faith, become a good Muslim wife. The determination of his

mother

to follow the road of her love lived on in the jaw shape of her son.

, had qualified as a doctor and they had

Her husband, his father

settled

in Tehran with their child.

remember the unannounced visitors coming late at night to

He could

the

the

house, and the murmur of voices. As the blinds went down in

surgery room, he, the child, kept watch for the SAVAK thugs, the scum

, behind the lowered

men of the Shah's secret police. At night

blinds,

110

patriots who had been tortured by the SAVAK

his father treated the

in

by the SAVAK in street

the cells, and who had been beaten

monstrations. He could remember when the SAVAK had broken into

de

their

me, and taken his father away.

ho

He could remember when his father

had

e home, bleeding and bruised, and he'd learned to despise and hate com

he

the countries that had supported the corrupt Shah and trained t

SAVAK

n. Now they were dead, suffocated in the rubble of their

policeme

Tehran home after the explosion of an Iraqi Scud missile.

"It is natural that a man would wish to be killed seventy times and e back to life to be killed all over again... He stood naked.

still com

would wear that night was laid o

What he

ut on the tidied bunk bed.

en

Wh

on the streets, and the

the revolution had come, when the tanks were

le

ru

of the Shah was in its death throes, he had dropped out of school.

s, running across open streets to

Going forward with the Molotov

trieve those shot by the soldiers, he had been noticed. He had

re

felt

and it was seen.

no fear

When the Imam Khomeini at last came home

he

s, at seventeen years old, given a Kalashnikov rifle and drafted

wa

into