Saving yourself was pretty important to you. Saving yourself was more important to you than speaking up for those kids who had carried you to the border."
The hoarse rasp in Mattie's voice. "One minute you want me to hang on long enough in the victim's chair and get every bone in my body broken, fingernails tugged out, all that, and the next minute you want me to have got myself booted back across the border."
"I want to know what you would have done to save yourself from the pain of torture."
"Why don't you refresh your memory with a glance at my medical report? Or would you like me to take my socks off?"
"I need to know if you named Eshraq to save yourself from the pain of torture."
"I might have named them all the minute the interrogation began."
"No call for that, Mattie… " There was a grimace from Carter, as if he had been personally wounded. "… When I was down here, must have been a couple of years back, there was an old croquet set in the cellar. I've told that lazy blighter to mow a bit of the lawn. Would you fancy a game of croquet, Mattie, after we've had our lunch?
… To save yourself, your own admission, you let those kids be herded to a firing party.
What would you have done to save yourself from the pain of torture?"
"I've told you."
"Of course… Eshraq's going back over, very soon."
They went to their lunch, and through the open windows there was the coughing drone of the old cylinder mower out on the lawn, and the pandemonium of the dog at George's heels.
The route of the lorry had been through Calais, Munich, Salzburg, Belgrade, and then the poor roads of Bulgaria.
Nineteen hundred miles in all, and a run of 90 hours. Sometimes the driver worried about the tachograph, sometimes his employer took care of his lorries and paid him extra money for hammering across Europe. There was the potential that the tachograph would be examined at a border post, but that potential was slight, and the driver, with extra funding, could live with that slight potential. The driver was skilled at negotiating the overland Customs point at Aziziye. It had been his habit for years to telephone ahead from Bulgaria to his friend at the Customs at Aziziye, to warn of his arrival. The driver called the Customs officer his friend, to his face, but in fact had similar friends at most of the entry points to European countries where he might be ending his journey and requiring Customs clearance. The bribe that was given to the Customs officer at Aziziye was not so much to prevent search of the containers on the lorry and its trailer, more to ensure a smooth passage for the cargo. A present, a gift, for the Customs officer was an essential part of any swift movement of goods. His vehicle was well known at the Aziziye crossing point. There was no reason for him to attract attention, and with the gift to his friend he ensured speed. It was a healthy arrangement, and paid for on this occasion by a carton of Marlboro cigarettes, a Seiko watch, and an envelope of US dollar bills.
The lorry travelled through. The seals of the containers had been legally broken. He had his manifest list signed, stamped.
The driver was free to drop off at an assembly of addresses the contents of his containers. He had brought into Turkey, quite illicitly and quite easily, four LAW 80 armour-piercing missiles, and he carried in his wallet a passport-sized photograph of the man to whom he would deliver four wooden crates, and he'd get a holiday with the wife and the kids in Majorca on the bonus he was promised for the successful shipment of the particular cargo that was stowed at the bulkhead of the container that was immediately behind the driver's cab.
A piece of cake, the Customs point at Aziziye.
The lorry headed for Istanbul.
The envelope contained a dog-eared and well-scuffed Shenass-Nameh Recognition Paper, and a Certificate of Military Discharge following injury, and a Driver's Licence for a commercial vehicle. Included also in the envelope was a letter of authentication from a factory in Yazd that produced precision ballbearings and would therefore be classified as important to the war effort. And there were bank notes, rials.
As he took each item out of the envelope, Charlie held it against the light that hung down from the ceiling of the room at the back of the barber's shop. He looked for the signs of overwriting and overstamping. It was right that he should check carefully. His life depended on them. He paid cash, he paid in sterling,?20 notes. He thought that the forger could have bought a half of the Aksaray district with what he made in documentation provided for the refugee exiles. He thought that he was a case of interest to the forger, because the forger had told him, not the time before, but the time before that, had confided in Charlie, that he was the only customer who looked for documentation to go back inside Iran. The barber's shop was in the centre of the Aksaray district that was the Little Iran of Istanbul. To the room at the back of the shop there came, by appointment, a stream of men and women seeking the precious papers which were required for them if a new life were to be born out of exile. And he charged…
He charged what he thought he could get, and those from whom he could get nothing received nothing from him. For a Turkish passport he charged $500, and this was the bottom of his range and full of risk to the bearer because the number would not tally with any of the records maintained on the Interior Ministry computer. For a British or a Federal German passport, with entry visa, he would expect to relieve his customer of $10,000. Most expensive, top of his range, was the American passport, with multiple entry visa, and there were very few customers who had managed to secrete that sort of cash, $25,000 in used notes. Sometimes, but only occasionally, the forger took diamonds in lieu of cash, but he was loth to do that because he had no knowledge of precious stones and then he must go and put himself at the mercy of the young Jew in the Covered Bazaar that was a thousand metres away down Yeniceriler Caddesi – and he might be cheated. With fast and busy fingers he counted the cash.
When they shook hands, when Charlie had pocketed the brown envelope, when the forger had locked away the money, then Charlie noticed the tic flicker on the right upper eyelid of the forger. Charlie did not consider that the tic flicker might have been caused by fear, apprehension; he thought the twitching came from an over indulgence in close and painstaking work.
Charlie Eshraq walked out into the sunshine.
He looked up the street for his shadow. He saw Park. He was at least 150 yards up the street. Charlie was about to wave a curt acknowledgement when he saw the shadow turn away from him.
He had first seen the tail in the Aksaray district, where the walls were covered with posters that rubbished Khomeini, where the kids gathered to plot crimes that would bring them the money to get out of Turkey and onwards into Europe. He had first seen the tail when Eshraq had come out of the doorway of the barber's shop and started to walk towards him.
He wasn't sure whether there were two cars, but he was certain that there was one car. There were three men, on the hoof. There was the man in the forecourt of the cafe who stood and then came after Eshraq as soon as he emerged into the sunshine; he was a tail because he left three quarters of a glass of cola undrunk. There was a man who had been leaning against a telephone pole and who had been busy cleaning his nails, and his nails didn't seem to matter once Eshraq was out. There was a third man, and when the car had pulled level with him then he had spoken quickly into the lowered front passenger window.
He knew a tail when it was in front of him.