The Walking Dead

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The call was answered. Dickie Naylor held the telephone close to his ear and mouth. Mary Reakes was at her desk in the outer office and he thought she strained to learn who he called, why, and with what message. He whispered, 'Is that Xavier Boniface or Donald Clydesdale? It's so long, I can't remember your voices — what, five years?…Ah, Xavier. It's Mr Naylor.…Yes, I'm well, I'm fine. Xavier, there might be work to be done, for both of you…Not certain, but if you were willing I'd like to put you both on stand-by. Can't say more, not on this phone…It'll be this week if it happens. So grateful. Regards to you both.'

The wail of seagulls was in his ear, the rumble of the sea and the wind's whine.

He returned the telephone to its cradle.

Probably in response to a message on her screen, Mary stood, then used her handbag mirror to check her hair or her lipstick, and was gone.

The photograph of the young man, the son of an electrical-goods salesman, stared smilingly back at him. He had fastened it, with Sellotape, to the glass panelling at the side of his office door. The smile seemed to mock him because it had the power to corrupt. He was a defender of the realm, and the proof of it was on the head of every sheet of notepaper he used, with its Latin words. As a defender he was able, if he twisted morality to a degree that Mary Reakes would not, to justify corruption. The Service, to an old-school warrior with a week's work ahead of him — then forgotten oblivion

was above morality and legal processes…and he had orders. It's a different war and we may have to dirty our hands. A man such as Dickie Naylor needed an order and required leadership, was always happy when given a little nudge forward. I'm sure you know what's necessary. He was a functionary. Men such as Naylor — in uniform and in civilian dress, in democracies and in dictatorships — had always sat behind desks and received orders, had believed that the threat to the state outweighed moral and legal niceties. He was not a Gestapo man, God, no. And not an NKVD official…He heard tapping. It had a regular rhythm and was far down the corridor and came closer…Perhaps he was a man who could justify to himself the bending of due processes.

He had not lost sleep over it in the Aden Protectorate, or in the holding cells of Castlereagh or the barracks at Portadown. Men screamed, blood dripped, bruises coloured — and the likes of Mary Reakes would have wet their knickers — but information had been gained. Information saved the lives of innocents. He did not need a tumbler of whisky or a pill to help him sleep. So he had telephoned a distant island and put two men from his past, proven as reliable, on stand-by to come south…The tapping intruded into his thoughts, was loud, the beat of a stick on the corridor's walls.

Mary Reakes came into the outer office.

A man used one hand to hold her arm, and in the other was a white-painted stick He used Mary and the stick as his guides, and swung the stick forcefully in front of his legs and hers. It rapped the door jambs, desk legs, the backs of chairs. The man was weathered from sunshine, stooped, and had thinning grey hair; he wore tinted glasses.

At Naylor's door, Mary said, 'I've brought up Mr Hegner. I told you he was coming. Mr Josiah Hegner of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, their Riyadh station.'

'I'm Joe,' the voice growled. 'How d'you do?'

Naylor was on his feet. He saw the creases in the clothes, and thought the agent must have come straight from the airport, not cared to take the time to change from what he'd slept in. He was starting forward to move a chair to a more accessible place, but backed off in the face of the swinging stick. A chair leg was whacked. The hand that had been on Mary's arm was loosed and found the chair's back, and the man dropped down into its seat. This was the expert, and he was blind.

'Thank you, Miss Reakes — that's kind of you.'

'Again, I'm going to apologize about the front entrance.'

'Water under the bridge, Miss Reakes, and no offence taken.'

'I was totally ashamed,' she babbled to Naylor. 'They wouldn't let Mr Hegner inside the security barrier until he'd gone through the metal-detector arch. Had his coins from his pocket, his glasses and his watch, his stick because it has a metal tip, and still wouldn't pass him through. It was a disgrace.'

Below the spectacles a grin of mischief formed. 'I still got an ounce, that's an estimate, of a bomber's shrapnel in me. So I said, "You want to see the scars?" He didn't answer so I dropped my pants and lifted my shirt. That seemed to satisfy him. I don't take it badly when a man's got to do his job, but I doubt I look like a goddamn wannabe Islamic martyr.'

'It was quite uncalled-for,' she said. 'I'll make some coffee, proper stuff.'

They were alone.

Naylor stumbled, 'I thought you'd have done the embassy and a hotel first, had a bit of sleep after a night flight.'