HOME RUN (35 page)

Apparently he doesn't wear his shoes at night when he's on duty "

"How extraordinary."

"Indeed, that's rather the tenor of things here nowadays.

Oh dear . . . sorry, sorry . . . what'll you be thinking of me.

What I meant to say was, yes, that he's escaped, Mrs Furniss.

He's on the run, that's what Carter went to tell the DG. It's been picked up by the monitoring people abroad, they listen to everything, they've heard the messages on the radios inside Iran. Mr Furniss has escaped. They're all searching for him of course but the main thing is, he's free."

"But he's still inside?"

"But he's not in his prison, Mrs Furniss. That's wonderful news, isn't it?"

"Miss Duggan, you are very kind to call. I am so grateful.

What would we do without you?"

Harriet put down the telephone.

She closed the front door behind her. She didn't remember to lock the front door, nor to take with her a raincoat.

She walked down to the church, old and lichen-coated stone.

* * *

He came out of his stupor because a boot was in his rib cage and was pushing him over from his stomach to his back. The boot was in his ribs as if he were a dog, dead in the road.

Mattie saw the gallery of faces above him. They were all young faces, except for one. The one face was cold, without sympathy. A tribesman's face, heavily bearded, and the man wore the loose shirt and the all embracing leather waistcoat and the baggy trousers of the Kurdish mountain people. There was an ancient Lee Enfield on his shoulder. The look on his face seemed to say that if the body had not been on the path, in the way, it would have been ignored. Eight young faces.

They were all boys, early twenties, late teenagers. They gazed down on him. They carried packs on their back, or there were sports bags in their hands. He lay on his back, then struggled to push himself upright. He understood. Mattie knew who had found him. A young smooth hand ducked down and pulled the pistol from his waist. He did not try to stop it.

Because he knew who had found him he had no fear of them, not even of the tribesman who would have been their guide on the last stage towards the frontier.

Mattie spoke in Farsi.

Would they have the kindness, in the name of humanity, to take him with them?

Would they help him because he had no footwear?

Would they share food with him, because it was more than two days since he had last eaten?

They were nice enough, the boys, they were tense as if it were an adventure, but they welcomed Mattie amongst them, and the guide just spat and grunted in the Kurdish patois that Mattie had never mastered. The guide now had the pistol.

Mattie was given bread and sweet cheese, and he was allowed to sip from a water bottle before the impatience of the guide overwhelmed the anxious care of the boys. Two of them helped him to his feet and supported him, his arm across their shoulders. Damn good kids. And heavy going for the kids, with Mattie as their burden, and the track was wild, difficult, damn bloody awful. He saw butterflies, beautiful and vivid, beside the path, on flowers that he did not know from England. He saw high above them the winter snow that was still not melted. They passed through thick forest that had taken root where there seemed to be only rock and no soil. They went down into gullies and waded through ice cold torrents, and they climbed razor rocks out of the gullies.

Mattie was no skeleton. They were struggling, all of them, and particularly those two who supported Mattie. The guide didn't help them. The guide was always ahead, scouting the route, sometimes whistling for them to come forward faster.

Without them he would have been finished. Probably would have frozen to death, carrion for beasts of the mountain.

They wanted to know who he was, of course, and at first he had made a joke of it and told them that he was in Iran to sell tickets for the World Cup finals, and then he had said quietly and between the spurts of pain when his feet hit the rocks on the track, that he was like them, that he was a refugee from the regime. Some of them spoke English, some came from the sort of household in Tehran where English could be taught with discretion. They were dodging the draft.

He knew that long before they told him. They were the kids from rich families who couldn't bear to give their offspring up to the butchery in the trenches outside Basra. They'd have paid through the nose for the guide, and some would have more money in belts around their waists for after they had an entry visa to California or Paris from Turkey. They'd learn, Mattie thought. They'd join the wretched flotsam in the refugee camps, and they'd learn the hard way that Turkey didn't want them, that America and France didn't want them.

One thing was pretty damn certain in Mattie's mind. The two boys who had manhandled him up the rock slope, levered him down the track, carried him across the fast streams - he'd do his uttermost to get them visas into the United Kingdom.

They told him, those who carried him, that they were going to make for Hakkari, that they had heard there was a refugee centre at Hakkari administered by the United Nations. They said that once they had reached the camp there they could send telegrams to relatives who were already living in the United States. They thought that their relatives would be able to fix the visas. Had their friend ever been to America?

They came to a ridge. The snow-peaked summit of Mer Dag was away to their right. The guide had stopped, was crouched down. They struggled the last paces to reach him, and Mattie had swung his arms off the shoulders of the two boys.

The sun was crisp in an azure sky above them.

The bandages, mud brown, trailed from Mattie's feet. No pain now in his feet.

The guide pointed below.

There was a path snaking down from the ridge and in the far distance was the sprawl of a small town, and running further away from the town was a twisting road. It was Turkey.

And the guide was gone. He gave them no farewells. There was no hugging, no slapping of hands oh the back of the guide. He was just gone, loping away down the path that they had just climbed. Mattie felt the moistness in his eyes. He had taken his luck, and he was within sight of home. The tears came, rolled on his bearded cheeks. And around him the elation bubbled.

"Wait, wait . . . wait . . . " His arms were around the shoulders of two of the boys and they had his weight between them. He spoke slowly, so that he could be translated by those who understood him. Too important, he didn't trust himself in Farsi. "How are you going from here?"

"We are going down the hill."

"We are going to the refugee centre."

Mattie said, "You must, you must absolutely go down the hill by night."

"We have nothing to be worried of, Mister."

Mattie said, "You must wait until nightfall." He tried to summon his authority.

"And you?"

"Different, I'll get down on my own . . . now be good lads." Mattie said.

"Mister, you cannot even walk."

"I'll roll down if I have to, but you should go by night. Let me go ahead and prepare the people on the other side to expect you - their army patrols."

They were all giggling at him, and they were no longer listening to him. They were the children that he knew so well from his own house, and from the homes of every one of his contemporaries, children who thought their parents were half-witted. He was hoisted up.

"I really do urge you . . . " But they had no patience for him. They were too happy. They went down the slope. The wind cut at their clothes, deadened their ears. The pain welled in his legs, but he shrugged away the hands that offered to help him. He had started on his own and he would damn well finish on his own. There you are, Major, we made it and we will have a long night's carousing over this adventure, you and I. They were coming down the slope fast. Darling, he thought he heard Harriet cry out. Darling. They were strung out in a line.

"Dur . . . "

The shout in the clear air.

Mattie saw them.

"Dur ..."

He thought they were paratroops. Toughened, hard men.

Weapons that were aimed as if their use was second nature.

He saw five at first, blocking the track down the slope. He knew a little Turkish, and the word to halt would have been clear enough if he had known nothing. He didn't have to be a linguist. There were more of the patrol at the flanks now.

Guns covering them. Mattie raised his hands. His hands were high above his head. His mind was clear. There might be officials of the United Nations at Hakkari, but there would be no officials of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees on the upper slopes of Mer Dag. He looked for the officer.

He pushed his way past a rifle barrel. He had the authority now. He was filthy and he could barely hobble without support, but he had been commissioned in the Coldstream Guards, and for a few weeks in his life he had been a junior commander of the Sovereign's guard at Buckingham Palace.

He knew how to deal with soldiers.

He saw the tabs on the officer's shoulder, the American-style bars. He would understand English if it were spoken slowly and loudly.

"Good afternoon, Lieutenant. My name is Furniss. I am an official of the government of Great Britain. I am in flight from Iran, and I ask for your help. Should you wish to confirm my identity then you should radio back to your headquarters and tell them to contact my Embassy in Ankara, Mr Snow . . ."

He was waved forward. He was trying to walk upright, with dignity. He thought the officer had a good bearing, might have been on a NATO exchange course. He passed each of the young men, the draft dodgers, the refugees, the flotsam.

"Now, most important, any help that you can afford these boys, Lieutenant, my government will be grateful for it.

Without their assistance I would not have been able to cross your frontier. I ask you to treat them with compassion."

The officer looked through him. He gave orders, sharp and clear commands. A corporal was at Mattie's arm, and leading him further down the slope. When he looked back he saw that the boys had been corralled by rifle barrels and were sitting hunched on the track. Mattie was taken forward, whether he wanted to go or not. At the edge of the track, Mattie stopped. He resisted the tug of the corporal's hand on his sleeve.

"What are you going to do with them?"

The officer gestured, in annoyance, to his corporal. Mattie was forced off the track and into thorn scrub. He had been taken from sight. He sat on the earth, and his head was buried between his knees.

He saw the officer take from his belt a Very pistol. He saw the burst of colour high above him. Afterwards he heard the officer shouting on the radio.

It might have been fifteen minutes later, it might have been half an hour, it might have been his lifetime, and between the foliage and sprigs of the thorn Mattie saw the patrol of Revolutionary Guards approach carefully down the slope. The refugees were prisoners, they were given into the custody of their own people. They didn't struggle, no one broke away and ran. They went meekly.

"They are scum," the Lieutenant said. "And they bring into my country drugs and crime."

"They saved my life, goddammit," Mattie said.

"You could have gone back with them."

He had not argued. He had not jeopardized his own safety.

He thought that it would be a long time before he forgot the laughter of the boys at the warnings of an old man, and he thought that the Major would have wondered what all the fuss was about.

An hour later the radio crackled to life. Orders from headquarters. The biggest man in the patrol, a giant of a man, lifted Mattie on to his shoulders and tucked Mattie's thighs over his arms, and carried him like a child under the sinking sun, away down the slopes of the Mer Dag.

16

Houghton did the opening, not that successfully, and the first cork careered into the ceiling of the Director General's office and chipped the plasterwork.

Champagne, and a good vintage, the PA had been sent out with a wad of notes from the Director General's wallet. Must have run all the way back with it.

The occasion called for the best.

"I said he'd surprise us all . . . not quite true, I said he'd surprise a lot of people. I had faith in him. Always the way, yes? Just when life seems darkest the sun blesses us. I tell you what - Furniss is a real hero. You can have your soldiers doing daft things and getting medals for what they've achieved in the heat of battle, no harm in that, but Furniss has done it on his own. Can you just imagine how the chaps are going to be feeling back in Tehran, all of those unshaven baskets? They'll be slitting each other's throats. . . . A toast to Mattie Furniss

. . . I'll bet he feels like a million dollars right now."

The Deputy Director General muttered, "He hasn't been on a Fun Run, Director General."

Ben Houghton said, "I can't get a link through to him. We expect that the Turkish military will have taken him down to Yuksekova, they've a base there. Crisis Management have been trying to patch through a fine, but they can't make it through. Pretty soon now he'll be airlifted to Ankara."

The Director General beamed, "There's a hand that I am much looking forward to shaking."

"The debrief comes first," the Deputy Director General said. "He'll be sanitized until his debrief is complete, that's the way things are done."

"So when do I get to congratulate him?"

"When he's debriefed, and after the debrief there'll be the Inquest."

"You are one hell of a killjoy, you know that. You're a real damp rag."

"It's no more or less than Mattie would expect. We debrief him on what's happened, who held him, and then we hold the Inquest as to how he was in a position that left him so vulnerable. Mattie'll know the form. My view, he's likely to be scarred for rather a long time, that's just my personal opinion."

"He's done bloody well."

"Of course he has."

"And I'll not have him harassed."

"No question of him being harassed, Director General, just debriefed."