A Deniable Death

Chapter 11

They had drunk water, two mouthfuls each, and it had been Foxy’s turn to finish the bottle. He had held it longingly to his mouth and sucked the final drops. One bottle remained. The silence wouldn’t last through the night.

The moon climbed. Foxy, Badger realised, was exhausted and close to breaking point. He couldn’t sleep. Not until the house lights were put out and conversations were stilled would Foxy pass over the headset and close his eyes. The anger each felt for the other was raw, of course. Badger was labelled a moron and ignorant, and Foxy was accused of being the cheat who stole water.

The light had gone; the moon was on the climb. The target, the Engineer, was out, smoked and walked, but he was alone.

There were birds in the water ahead, splashing, and Badger thought that once he heard the convulsion of a pig and wondered if the wound he had made in the nostril was infected.

He sensed Foxy would break the silence first, felt him to be increasingly restless. It was worse to be branded a cheat than to be called an idiot without education. Was he certain that the water level had been lower than it should have been? ‘Certain’: a big word. Foxy could not move from the hide and go into the reed bed to crap or piss. It was two full days since the new suitcase had gone inside the main door. It would not have been bought to be shoved into a corner but because travel was imminent. There would be – if fortune favoured them – one remark, half a sentence, or a throwaway comment.

He didn’t think Foxy could last much more than the night and another half-day, and didn’t reckon he himself had the strength to go on past the end of the following day… He hadn’t seen Foxy’s skin. He assumed it would be the same as his own, mottled with tick scabs and mosquito bites. Not possible to lie still because the itching was so great, and the flies came for their ears, noses and mouths, could burrow under the scrim net. Never again would Badger complain about a Welsh hillside: rain, a low mist, night frost, a view of a farmhouse with a field for campers would be paradise – if there ever was an again. He had twice punched a fellow officer, another croppie, and had allowed himself to be niggled by rank and personality. If it were ever revealed by his oppo that twice he had thrown punches, and had accused a colleague of cheating and stealing, there would not be an again.

The thought jagged his mind. What did a croppie do with himself after he was booted out for gross misconduct? For assault? For screwing up in the field and going unprofessional? He’d go to work for a local authority, tailing disability-benefit guys who did half-marathons and played golf twice a week after limping down to collect the hand-out dosh… He’d be on the phone, burning the ears of former policemen who ran PI firms and found evidence of marital infidelity, or did in-house security on companies that were leaking petty cash and equipment… He would have nowhere to go that was anything like satisfactory to him. Would he jack it in? He wouldn’t grovel. He’d lose his job before Foxy broke. There was a trace of a whine: ‘There was no call to hit me…’

Badger gave him nothing.

‘… and no call to make that accusation.’

Badger thought Foxy had broken because, having barely moved since the hide was made, he would not be able to get out and do the legging back to the extraction point.

‘I’ve tried to do a good job in extraordinarily difficult conditions and…’

Worth thinking about. The retreat from the hide – because the mission was fucked and the target had been driven away, or was complete because the information had been radioed out – was well worth consideration. A repetition in his mind of what he dreaded most: the car came, the new suitcase was loaded, and there might be a label on it they could not – with a ’scope or binoculars – read, and the Engineer and his wife, the goon, the wife’s mother and the kids didn’t say where they were going. To have done this for nothing would be the humiliation of his life, and he would stand accused of misconduct and professional failure because Foxy would nail him. Badger would make no apology, would not help in going to the extraction point in exchange for two punches being forgotten, and a cheating call being wiped off a slate.

‘… and I’ve had no co-operation from you, no support, no comradeship.’

Badger watched the Engineer. Could have been his fourth cigarette. He was still alone and walking, no longer in silhouette from the lights behind him, thrown from the house, but moving away from the little pier where the dinghy was tied. He passed an old iron crane that in daylight seemed rust-coated – it was beside the water and might have dated back to a time when the water was the main highway – and went on towards the duller lights that fringed the area round the barracks. He was heading for the bund line to the right.

‘Of course, I shouldn’t have expected more from you. Too easy for you newcomers. And “too easy” makes for arrogance, and arrogance makes a kid useless. What did I say you were?’

Badger raked the shore with the binoculars, which were good for watching the house, but had the night-sight ready for when the Engineer was walking towards the raised track of the bund line. He could have scripted the line that would follow.

It did. ‘I said you were moronic and ignorant. I had that right, double time.’

Hours of building resentment were over; a dike had been breached. Foxy had the verbal shits, Badger thought. He himself felt calmer and was not about to hit him again. It was likely that the water had been drunk out of hours.

‘Did I say without good cause that you’re moronic and ignorant? Are you fool enough to think that?’

His head was nine inches from Foxy’s. Their shoulders touched, and their hips. Their smell mingled. The compulsion to scratch the scabs on his stomach was worse now, and the mosquitoes swarmed. If they made it out, reached the extraction point, loaded up the Pajeros, and ‘Foxy’ Foulkes – pompous, old-world – did not put in a career-killer report on him, his life would resume alongside Ged in hides, sodden ditches and damp hedgerows. He would tell the stories with relish. He followed the Engineer with his binoculars, then laid them down and took up the night-sight. The moon climbed higher and the birds were noisier on the water.

‘How much of a moron? Enough of a moron to buy the shit they gave you?’

The goon, the officer, was out of the barracks and walking towards the house. The flash of a cigarette lighter burned out the night-vision image. He watched the security officer, used the binoculars. He felt tension coming in his shoulders, a tightening in his gut, and was confused.

‘You bought it and believed it. They must have pissed themselves – Gibbons, the Yank and the Jew – laughing at you because of your ignorance. Back of the classroom, were you? Put your hand up, did you? “Please, sir, what’s interdiction?” They gave you a bucket of shit, and you swallowed it. Want to know what “interdiction” means? Want to know that it doesn’t mean an “approach” and turning an enemy? Want to know what you’ve signed up for, young ’un?’

All the muscles had stiffened, and his stomach had knotted. Cold had settled on the back of his neck and he held his breath.

‘You volunteered for a spook-sponsored stake-out on what is bloody near enemy territory without the finesse of a war declaration. The target for surveillance is the man who makes the bombs that kill our boys, and he’s right for interdiction, and you think that means some sort of cosy approach, a buttering-up in the hope the bastard will fall into our arms? You’ve all this shit about sitting in the countryside, wildlife around you, joys of bloody nature, and maybe you get to have a little cry because a deer’s snagged on barbed wire, a rabbit’s choking in a snare or a fucking rat has a thorn in its pad. A wanking dreamer, that’s what you are… The military use of the word “interdiction” is about taking down with the use of fire power. It’s the destruction of the enemy’s potential to fight. How does it relate to this guy, the Engineer, builder of bombs? “Interdiction” for him means that he’s killed. It’s why I’m here, and why you ’re here. .. Difficult when you’re ignorant, maybe a moron, to know what’s real. He’s for killing, taking down, and you’re a part of the process, a big part.’

It was as though he had been hit in the stomach. But he held onto the binoculars and could see the goon near to the house speaking to a guard, an arm pointed away towards the bund line.

‘In your education, the little of it you had, did they tell you about killing? We use fancy words. We harvest fish, cull deer. When we bomb a village and get the wrong target, that’s not a screw-up but collateral damage. It’s bollocks, intended to soften actuality. He’s going to be killed. Didn’t you know that, smartarse?’

The officer was striding out of the light, going at pace…

He could have been sick. It was that sort of blow that he’d taken, the one that made a man double up, then heaved the puke into his throat. He didn’t know, now, how he could have swallowed what he’d been told. He almost cringed.

Foxy warmed, would have sensed he’d hit home. ‘It’s deniable. We finger the man. They move in a hit team because we’ve told them where to look. He’s stabbed or strangled, poisoned or shot, and you’re a part of it. Does that put you, young ’un, outside your comfort zone?’

He had the binoculars down and held the night-sight hard at his face. His eyeline took his head away from Foxy’s mouth, but the voice dripped on, and there was triumph in it. ‘Don’t think it bothers me, young ’un, because I’m an old bastard and there’s not much can happen to me. Different for you. Your age, that stage in a career when you reckon you’re the dog’s bollocks. Instead you might just be in shit. An integral part in an extra-judicial killing, which is at least accessory to murder. You’re a part of it and your defence is that you didn’t know what interdiction meant. Reckon they’ll be queuing up to believe you? Extra-judicial is what you’re into.’

He came level with him. For Mansoor, with the muscle wastage in his leg from the wound, it was a struggle to catch the Engineer.

It should not have happened. He had hurried, as best he could, from the house and past the barracks, then onwards until he saw the silhouetted figure in the moonlight high on the elevated bund line. The struggle to get the breath into his lungs, the pain from his leg and anger fuelled his aggression.

‘You should not be here.’

Defiance from the Engineer, lit by Mansoor’s torch: ‘I walk where I care to walk.’

‘My responsibility is to protect you. You ask me where you walk and when.’

Said softly, and with no trace of resentment: ‘You forget yourself, Mansoor.’

‘I do not.’

‘You forget who you are and who I am.’

‘I do not forget that it is my duty to protect you. I do my duty as best I can. I cannot protect you if you walk far from your home in the night and I am not warned.’

‘Here – at my home – there is a threat?’

‘There are thieves. There could be smugglers bringing drugs. There are the marsh people who would slit your throat for a packet of cigarettes or the coins in your pocket.’

‘You are dutiful, and I am grateful. Do such imaginary threats equate with the threat to my wife’s life? Call it a matter of perspective.’

‘It is my duty.’

‘And tomorrow – for how long I cannot say – you are relieved of that duty.’

‘It is wrong that I will not be there. I should go with you.’

‘Security, I think, is the smallest problem that faces Naghmeh and me. I wanted to walk and think. Now, to please you, Mansoor, we will walk back together.’

They did. The Engineer had lit another cigarette and Mansoor stayed a half-pace behind him. The moonlight was on the reeds and reflected in silver lines off the water; birds splashed and there were ripples from an otter’s hunting. He apologised – it could go badly for him if the Engineer reported his rudeness. It was accepted and hand slapped his shoulder. It irritated him that he was not permitted, on the ground of cost, he had been told, to travel with them.

‘And when we are gone tomorrow, Mansoor, what will you do?’

‘Be certain that the old lady does not want for help… and I will watch for the ibis. I hope to see it… and my prayers will be with you. I will look for that bird. What else?’

It was, thought Harding, a master class from her in avoidance and evasion.

He was the only one of the Boys close enough to hear. He didn’t understand everything because they flitted between English and local Arabic. The rest were back, relaxed now, and would have let their weapons hang loose across their legs.

It was a strange way to do business: he used English and most of her answers were in Arabic, but it helped Harding that he repeated most of what she’d said, translated it. In the business, she represented a charity from Europe of eco-freaks who wanted nothing more or less from their money than to have the most complete survey of flora and fauna in the marshes, with particular emphasis on the bird life. He did not contradict her, but pointed out that the area of the marshes she had chosen for her valuable, welcome research was not inside the triangle that had as its apex the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and was the widest, most accessible part of the wetlands, but was hard up against the Iranian border. She spoke of the importance of the habitat. He spoke of the sensitivity of the frontier zone. She told him of the value placed on the wildlife of the marshes, its uniqueness and also its vulnerability. He told her of the suspicion, if her presence were known, of the Revolutionary Guards who patrolled a few kilometres down the bund line. She said she carried references and letters of introduction from people who were in the elite of government. He said it was ‘interesting’ that none had accompanied her on her research journey.

She held her line, Harding reckoned, and he held his.

She said she was trained in the preservation of wildlife. He did not accuse her of being in the employ of Britain’s intelligence service.

She sparkled and flattered. He had mischief in his eyes and humour.

She remarked that the charity backing her could be generous to those who smoothed paths. He responded that the marsh people would always be grateful to those who showed meaningful generosity.

It was, to Harding, obvious that her cover story wasn’t believed, nothing of it.

They liked each other. The sheikh let her know he had a brother who sold real estate in California, and that another brother had been hanged by order of the old regime in the Abu Ghraib gaol, that he himself had been imprisoned, then released, and allowed to return to lead his people but – of course – had never willingly served Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athists. Harding watched the dance played out. The sheikh could drive away, head for the army camp at al-Amara, report her presence and earn credit for future favours. Also, he could send someone across the border to the first road-block on the Ahvaz road and tell the men manning it that he had brought a message for an officer of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. That would earn him money and he’d be repaid also with safe passage for smugglers bringing him opiate paste for onward selling.

Harding, seven years with Proeliator Security and fourteen with the American marines, did not play cards for money – never had. The aunt who had raised him regarded any form of gambling as the devil’s work. Card games, he assumed, were about bluff and trickery. Who, now, tricked whom? Who could depend on a bluff not being called? He watched, listened, and his mind flitted from the sheikh sitting on the crate and his Jones lady now cross-legged in the dirt. His thoughts had moved on… Strange guys, neither to his liking. He didn’t think that the older man or the younger one would have joined him on the whore hunt in Dubai, or would have been with him when he shivered at night on street corners or shared the lie he lived. Neither would have made him laugh or drunk with him until they were unable to stand, but he would go to his Maker defending them. Why? Loyalty was the creed he lived by. As loyal as the men from a marine platoon had been who’d fought their way through towards four of them holed up in a house as crowds gathered and cut off a retreat route. Loyalty was a duty. Whether they could stay in place and exercise the loyalty owed to the two men who were forward depended on her ability to negotiate.

The radio stayed silent, and the guys up ahead had nothing to report. Hours ticked by and little time was left. He could imagine a scrape, the weight of the camouflage gear, the flies, ticks and mosquitoes, the smells, hunger and thirst.

The sheikh might sell them to his own military or to the Iranians across the border, and be well rewarded by either. She might buy them time. They negotiated: a local leader of education and authority over a swarm of peasants and an officer of an intelligence agency; they were equals. He didn’t play card games but had watched others: she had only a fistful of dollar bills and a sweet, girlish charm.

He couldn’t say how the game would play out. He thought hard on the guys up ahead and the moon had risen high, and the mosquitoes had gathered in droning clouds. If the sheikh reckoned a better deal lay elsewhere, pushed himself up off the crate and walked back towards his car, then it was over for all of them, and loyalty to the guys, far forward, was well fucked and bust.

‘It is deniable because…?’

‘It is deniable because it is illegal.’

‘Who sanctioned it?’

‘From high up, someone sitting on the top of the mountain, but don’t look for a written minute, young ’un. You’ll not find an electronic trail, and don’t imagine there’s schedules of meetings. Look back at it.’

‘What am I looking back at?’

‘Start with the people you met, the transport there and the place, then focus on the people. The transport was unmarked and you can lay good money, or bad, that somehow the flight records have been mislaid, and no flight path was filed or can be found for the chopper, and the big house takes guests but nobody signed a register. Anyone goes back to that house and tries to prove we were there in the face of bland denials, it won’t be provable. Their grandson was killed by one of those bombs, side-of-the-road IEDs, and they’d rather like the bastard who built it to be killed, put on a flat slab of granite in a wilderness, left as carrion for the birds. Are you getting the picture?’

‘What about the people?’

‘Was there anybody of seniority, anybody who cut the mustard – had authority, was natural with power, expected to be listened to? If this had been a police operation there would have been a commander, perhaps an assistant chief constable. They weren’t there. Nobody of rank was. .. Had one of them been allocated he would have called in sick. Any bastard with a career worth preserving, a pension to look after and the hope of a gong, would have stayed away – and they did.’

‘You called him Gibbons and I called him “Boss”. What was he?’

‘A journeyman. They’re stacked shoulder to shoulder, that type, at the Box and Six. They’ve reached a plateau of promotion, going no higher and too bloody frightened to quit, walk out and find a job in the marketplace. They hang about, do what they’re told. They thank God they’re still coming up to London on a commuter cattle truck, allowed to have a bloody briefcase with EIIR in old gold on it and still – just about – belong. Maybe, in his time – forgiven, not forgotten, held in the files – there was one of those messy little matters that he could be reminded of when they wanted someone to go down into the sewers. The American was Agency, would provide the cash and be looking for one last hurrah before heading to Florida and condominium life. Then there was the Israeli, humourless little bastard, the liaison for the hit – it’s sub-contracted out and the Israelis are happy to slot Iranians of sufficient sensitivity, likely queue up for the chance. The major is exactly that, not a general or brigadier but a man who will have dirtied his hands in the sand defusing those bombs. What I’m saying, young ’un, is that these are the people who fight wars, not the ones who start or finish them. Then there’s us.’

‘What are we?’

‘We’re deniable. We never existed and never came here, and there’s no record of us… And then there’s only the lovely Alpha Juliet. I wouldn’t hold your breath.’

‘Hold my breath for what?’

‘For the belief she’s different from any of the rest.’

‘Explain.’

‘It’s her shout. Miss Alpha Juliet’s the instigator. Put it together. Give you a good ride, did she, young ’un?’

‘None of your business.’

‘My business, that she handled the recovery of a device from which DNA could be extracted, and put assets on the ground to verify that this target matched the sample. Why not have those same folk keep hanging round there and listening for the gossip, whatever? Because they’re dead, and because the likes of them have fast burn-out. Luckily dead because they were thieved from, could have been worse. There’s a security apparatus in Ahvaz, down the road from here, where they’re skilled at doing things to fingernails and testicles. They know where the body shows up most for pain. In case you listened to the rubbish talked at home about torture, truth is that it works. Locals don’t have fieldcraft – they don’t have the backbone of training and skills, so they bring in you and me. I’m vain and like to be asked, and you’re an idiot who doesn’t know what questions to put. The whole operation is down to pretty Miss Alpha Juliet, who’s hard as pig metal and would lie through her teeth for the cause.’

‘What’s the cause?’

‘We came to Iraq looking for flower petals thrown under the tracks of the tanks. We were liberators. The politicians basked in it, and it lasted a few weeks, but we hung around a few years. We destabilised and put a new kid on the block as far as power went. We handed influence to Iran. They, the good mullahs, didn’t want Caucasian troops right up close and personal on their borders and set their clever people to work on shifting us out. Their bombs did it. They reduced us to regiments of men and women cowering in barracks, and our military operations ended up as “force protection”, which is army jargon for looking after your own arse and your own base and searching for an “exit strategy” with a whiff of respectability. But when that’s inflicted on you it’s predictable that you’ll hate. Hate who? Hate the bastard that tweaked the old lion’s tail. The lion now is moth-eaten, has bad teeth, and fleas crawl over him. The target had a hold of the tail and abused it. The lion wants to show it still has some useful claws.’

‘Nothing to do with turning a scientist, bringing him over, getting him to switch sides and provide intelligence?’

‘Nothing.’

‘About revenge?’

‘An act of vengeance. Some caution against, and others revel in it. But we’re not, young ’un, in the hands of the cautious. The ones who’ve won the day would talk of “the long arm” and “making the bastards look over their shoulder”. Most of all they talk about “sending a message”, and the Israelis like sending them, and that’s why they’re on board.’

‘You know all this because?’

Foxy growled, ‘Because I’m smart enough to listen – and while you’re chatting her up in the vehicle, then screwing her, I’m talking to her guards, rather sad guys who are growing old but don’t know how to, who’ve gone out of the military family and can’t replace it. They like to talk. I don’t suppose you did much talking or listening while you were screwing her.’

‘It’s illegal?’

‘Of course it is.’

‘Under international law?’

‘Under international law, and likely under the law practised on the High Street in Wolverhampton, Warrington or Weymouth.’

‘That wasn’t explained,’ Badger said, flat.

‘You seemed up for it, a chirpy volunteer.’

‘I was.’

‘Sow the seed and reap the whirlwind.’

‘Yes. Thank you, Foxy.’

‘Pity you never had an education, young ’un, and ended up so ignorant.’

It was time to open the last water bottle.

He packed the case. She sat on the end of the bed.

There was little talk between them. She spoke only when she needed to indicate to him which clothing he should take from the wardrobe, and which underwear from the chest. Earlier she had asked him what she should take, and he had replied that it would be better if she did not parade her faith: she should be modest but within limits. She had allowed him to choose what was appropriate. It was the only time in their married life that he had decided what she should wear. He was concerned that she had lost the will… Her last decision had been concerning the children. He was quiet as he moved about the room and his voice was subdued. The children, Jahandar and Abbas, were in his and Naghmeh’s bed: he and his wife would sleep that night till dawn, when the car would come, with their children between them. It had been her decision. He had not argued.

The blinds were up and some of the glow from the security lights played through the open windows. She should have had the windows closed, the air-conditioning switched on, the flies and mosquitoes kept out – she would have slept better. He had not challenged her. A mosquito flickered close to Jahandar’s face but she did not swat it away. He had suggested Naghmeh undress and get into bed, but she had shaken her head. It was because he, in the consulting room at the hospital in Tehran, had demanded more expert attention. Perhaps he refused to accept the inevitable, perhaps he denied dignity to her and heaped stress on her.

It was past midnight.

He closed the suitcase and applied the small padlock. He carried it outside the bedroom and put it by the front door. He looked out. There was purity in the silver strips of the moonlight, and crudeness in the bellowing of the frogs. It was said that the marshes, the waters and the reed beds were the cradle of civilisation. He felt humbled – and unworthy. It was the place of great artists and great scholars, great scientists and great leaders: he was the maker of bombs that killed young men.

He went back into their room.

She asked, ‘How will it be in that town?’

‘It is where they make the sweet that is marzipan, with the almond taste. They have been making it there for two hundred years. I saw it on the net. It is very famous, the marzipan they make there. We will bring some back for the children.’

He could say no more. He would have choked on his sobs. He turned from her so that she should not see tears on his face, and she held him.

It should have been a night of triumph but, with the food barely eaten, conversations hardly started, introductions not completed, the consultant had pleaded a headache.

He could not have said that his wife, Lili – elegant in a gown of understated expense – showed any sympathy. He said he wanted to go home, to the villa on Roeckstrasse. There was no headache. It did not concern him that she had entered this reception in her social diary some four months earlier, that friends and peers were there, and that it was an opportunity for her to show off her husband in an atmosphere of wealth and privilege. He held her hand tightly, said that the headache destroyed his enjoyment of the occasion and demanded that she accompany him home. She stood her ground, dug her stilettos into the Rathaus floor.

He did not belong. Never would and never could. In the afternoon, or early evening, of the following day it would be demonstrated to him that his life was not berthed in the pretty, affluent city of Lubeck, capital of the historic Hanseatic League of celebrated traders, home of the writer Thomas Mann, given the accolade by UNESCO of a World Heritage Site. It was not his home. It was where he lived courtesy of marriage, and where his name had been altered to make it more acceptable, his ancestry disowned. The next afternoon he was to be ‘called back’, as if a long unused door had been opened again. His home was not Lubeck – the restaurants, the beer, the river trips, the quaint passageways and homes so lovingly restored from war damage, the boutiques and the university – but was across continents. The man who had come from the embassy in Berlin, his cheeks encrusted with stubble, had dragged him back from the dream. He had no place here. He was from Tehran. His father and mother were martyrs of the war with Iraq, had given their lives to the Islamic Republic, killed in the front line while helping the wounded. He had been educated in Tehran; the state had trained him. A professor of oncology at the University of Medical Sciences had given him love and a family. He had shown his devotion to the state by working in the slums of south Tehran. He thought that a rope was tied around his ankle and he had been allowed a degree of freedom, as a horse was allowed to graze. Then the rope had been jerked and he was dragged back into a compound.

His wife, Lili, had started a strident conversation with the wife of a property developer who had big sites and big contracts for holiday homes up the river and at Travemunde on the coast. His headache mattered little. He could forget it, manufacture a smile and return to her shoulder, or he could walk out on her.

He went to his car. He had turned a last time in the hope that she would be hurrying after him, but her back was turned and her laughter rang out. He drove towards home and did not know how, if ever, he would regain his liberty. He did not even know the name of the fucking patient… and there was no headache, only anger.

The ring of the telephone would sign a warrant on a man’s life – condemn him.

Gibbons yearned for it to ring, as if he was pleading for permission to kill the man himself. There were a few still left at Vauxhall Bridge Cross – a little rheumatic in the joints, from a long-gone age – who would have understood his feelings. Not many. They were the unreconstructed warriors of the Cold War, and saw the bloody mess that was the Middle East as a self-inflicted wound that had bred many uncertainties. This band of brothers was left in the shadows of the corridors at the towers, and a younger generation – dressed down, more often than not, in jeans or chinos, shirts without ties or revealing blouses – preached an ethical manifesto, as if such a thing were appropriate in the new world order. Gibbons doubted it. Some shared his view; many did not. The arrangement for the communications was complex, but that was to hide them behind smoke. A message from the forward surveillance men would be sent on shortwave radio – brief transmission because to linger was to leave a footprint – to Abigail Jones and her back-up location. She would communicate with an Agency cell in Baghdad, who would onpass to the NATO base at Vicenza in the foothills of the Italian Alps. From there the message would go to technicians answerable to the Cousin in his service apartment behind Grosvernor Square. He would taste the message. A negative report would be transmitted electronically but an affirmative enough to kick-start the operation, would come through on the telephone. Complicated, but necessary for the process of denial.

He watched the telephone.

She had argued, but he had insisted. Len Gibbons had ordered Sarah to take his room key at the club and use the bed booked there. He had felt, increasingly that day, a point was about to be reached of success or failure, and he wanted to be present when the dice rolled, rattled, came to rest. He was now fifty-nine. His wife, Catherine, would have been disarmed to know that her bed partner, soul-mate, craved for a telephone to ring and therefore to consign a man to his death – not a fancy one in hospital with pain-relief drugs available, but in a street, spluttering blood as passers-by hurried on their way. She would not have believed it of him, that he tried to achieve anything so intrinsically vulgar as state-sponsored murder. She didn’t know him, which was as well. If his children, at college, had known their father plotted a killing they might have disowned him and slunk away, ashamed. The neighbours, in a quiet road of semi-detached mock-Tudor homes on a suburban estate in Motspur Park, on the Epsom to Waterloo line, would have winced had they known what was done in their name, as would the members of the gardening club, and the choir he hoped to join at some future date. He willed the phone to ring.

He had a sandwich to eat and a Coke to drink. He sat at his desk and his universe was the telephone in front of him and its silence.

It had been a dream but was unfulfilled. He would have liked to visit ancient, historic Rome. He dreamed of walking on the old stones and being among the floodlit temples and squares; it would have been a pilgrim’s journey for Gabbi.

He could not. Some of those attached to the unit who were sent abroad would have slipped out and taken a fast taxi into the centre of the old city, then walked to the tourist trail. He would not. The magnificence of a great civilisation was a forty-five minute ride down the road, a wonder of the world, but he was a mere functionary. So he did not leave his room, go to the lobby and shout for a taxi.

A message had been put under his door. He had not seen the courier. Neither had the courier seen Gabbi. From midnight, because time drifted fast, an executive jet aircraft was on standby. If it were needed, he would be told.

He sat in the darkness of his room, on the unmade bed, and waited.

She had said, with the light of the fire in her face, ‘It’s very important for the integrity of the survey, and its science, that we are able to work here undisturbed for three more days, maybe two, certainly one.’

He had said, the brightness of the flames bouncing on his jacket, ‘What is “undisturbed”? How is that important?’

Abigail Jones said, ‘The arrival here of a military unit would disturb the wildlife we’re observing, and would obstruct our efforts at serious study.’

The leader of a marsh tribe, the sheikh, said, ‘And your proximity to the border with the Islamic Republic of Iran, your work close to the border, does that require the co-operation of our Iranian friends?’

‘Better that co-operation is not requested.’

‘And better that information on your presence, as you seek the “integrity of the survey”, is not passed?’

‘Better.’

‘So many of my people here are confused by your presence. Some who came innocently close have been injured, and some resent strangers near to their villages. These are difficult times for them, times of great hardship. I try to give leadership, but there will be some – younger than myself, with hot tempers – who will say that the military will pay for information about this expedition that surveys our wildlife, and others will believe that the Iranian authorities would also pay handsomely for knowledge of armed men coming close to their border for the purpose of evaluating the flora and fauna of the marshes. I have to lead, and I cannot lead if I am an obstruction to the young.’

Harding came past her with more wood, from broken packing cases, for the fire. She heard the bleating of sheep. The animals were behind the wall of men waiting close to the sheikh. There would be a signal from their leader. A knife waited in the hands of a man near to the front. Abigail Jones thought the operation hung now on a sheep’s throat. If the signal were made that it be butchered, according to halal methods, negotiations had been concluded satisfactorily. If the sheep was led away, throat intact, and the knife was sheathed, the negotiations had failed and she doubted they would last there through the night. She was not about to back off, and there was in Abigail Jones a powerful sense of the value of retribution. She had served in Amman and Abu Dhabi, but also in Sarajevo as the second officer on the station. She knew the stories of the siege of Sarajevo and the atrocities inflicted, the massacre at Srebrenica and the close-run thing that had been the holding of the Muslim lines at Gorazde; she had been involved with the teams of special forces who hunted down the war criminals. There was, familiar to her, a small Serb town named Foc? a. She’d operated there openly and searched for the mean-minded bastards who had done the bulk of the killings: two had been arrested, not important enough to go to The Hague but convicted in local courts. She thought it good that they whiled away their days and nights in cold damp cells… There had been a fling with a Bosniak artist down in Mostar, who had thought she was an aid worker. He had painted well, but she no longer had any of his work – the last had gone to the Christian Aid shop down the road from her maisonette. ‘Retribution’ did not cause her any difficulty. He was a man who made bombs. That was enough.

She asked, ‘What is the cost?’

‘The cost of what?’

She slapped her hands together as if the play-acting was over and business was to be settled. She thought the change of mood necessary. ‘How much for allowing us to complete our survey without interference from the military at al-Amara and al-Qurnah, and without the knowledge of the Revolutionary Guard Corps across the border? What will that cost me?’

The sheikh wetted his lips and the sheep bleated harshly – she reckoned they had bloody good cause to. She might, then, have killed for a beer.

Not much more to say, so neither had said anything.

Foxy slept now. Badger lay beside him and the other man’s light snoring was soothing, little more than the wind on the reeds. If he grunted he made less noise than when the birds splashed. Best to think about anything else… About the scabs on his hip, the back of his thigh and his stomach, under which the wounds oozed and might be infected. About the long and earnest-seeming talk between the Engineer and the goon, which had been too far away to be picked up. A little had: ‘And when we are gone tomorrow, Mansoor, what will you do?’ Gone where? Not said. Foxy had typed it onto the small screen he carried, his notebook, and pushed it towards Badger for him to read. And under it was written, ‘Look for a Sacred Ibis [whoever that is, whatever].’ The suitcase had been packed in the front bedroom and a lamp had been on beside the big bed. Badger could see the children asleep in it. The gear was good, but it wasn’t magic and they had no Merlin. The parents had kept their voices down so as not to wake their children. Nothing went onto the screen of Foxy’s notebook. Twice Badger was passed the headset and was able to listen through the earpiece where he’d broken the plastic coating, but he couldn’t make out the voices. The parents whispered, murmured, and the children slept.

It was the saddest thing Badger had ever seen. Nothing in his life compared with it. The parents had packed their case and made ready to fly – somewhere – in the morning, and she was dying and the children were being left behind. They had decided – the mother and father – to have the kids in their bed with them this last night. He could look through his life, like a drowning man was supposed to, and he could not recall anything as gut-wrenching as what he saw in the lit bedroom. His mother and father, Paul and Debbie Baxter, had good health except that he’d had a hernia operation four years ago and she had pain in a knee if she walked more than a couple of miles. A grandfather had died on one side and a grandmother on the other, but they’d had good years, good lives, and it had been welcome at the end to both. No car accidents in the family, and no cancers. He had no best friend, so no one he was close to with a crisis to face, and Ged, his best oppo, was fit, and Fran, whom he’d lived with, was in good nick and her father worked out at the gym three days a week. He had been out of general uniform duties too long to remember how it was when he’d been sent, blue lights and sirens, to an RTA and found a guy’s head splattered across the windscreen, or a woman thrown off a bicycle. What was different when he had been at the roadside was that he hadn’t seen the victim before, hadn’t witnessed the man kiss his woman on the step, hug his kids and drop down into his car. He hadn’t had the ringside seat when the woman came dripping out of the shower and her man was giggling, tickling and flicking at the knot that held up the towel. He hadn’t seen them wolf breakfast or make sure that the bills were out of sight and not spoiling their precious time together. They, the bomb-maker and the bomb-maker’s woman, were the saddest couple he had ever watched.

He could see the hands of his watch. If the case was packed they were going early. When they had gone, it was over. Nothing to stay for. Failure. If they went and there was no destination, it was down the pan – and had failed. The message would be sent. He would retrieve the microphone and draw in the cable. The Bergens would be packed and he would likely carry Foxy half the fucking way to the extraction point. What would he remember of her? Maybe when she’d sat on the bed, the kiddies slept and the case was filled – or when the committee of de-miners had come to the house, sat in the shade to say farewell, and some had cried… or when she’d stood alone in the light by the pier and the dinghy, leaning on the stick and watching the birds. Perhaps she saw an otter or followed the pigs with her eyes and enjoyed the peace.

It was illegal.

Danny ‘Badger’ Banks had put up his hand, volunteered, had signed up, and it was deniable, outside the law. Not about harvesting and not about culling, and not about the blank images, unseen, between the animals in the market pens and the meat hanging from hooks in a butcher’s shop. About an illegal murder. They had talked of the bombs in the shit beside the road, and the mutilations. The major had said, The improvised explosive device is the weapon that has snatched victory from the coalition and replaced it with a very fair imitation of defeat… There is a small number of clever, innovative men capable of wrong-footing us so consistently that the body-bags keep coming home and the injured with wounds they’ll carry to their graves

… We call an enemy a Bravo. Rashid Armajan is a big bad Bravo and we should take every opportunity to locate him and… It would be murder, and those helping in the killing would be charged as accessories.

The night was quiet around him.

The lights inside the house were out, and the curtains were drawn at that bedroom window. He had not seen her undress, didn’t know with what intimacy her husband might have helped her with straps and fastenings. The man was not a jihadist who would explode himself in a carriage in an underground tunnel, and he was not a smuggler of Class-A stuff, polluting streets and youngsters and breeding addicts. He was not a break-off from a splintered Irish republican team. The man, the Engineer, did not threaten Danny ‘Badger’ Baxter, or anyone he knew.

They had talked about the town the coffins came through, the military wing of the Selly Oak hospital, of the place in Surrey where the prosthetics were fitted and mobility was taught again. It was not his agenda.

Badger reckoned he walked at others’ beck and call. Like he was a dog and a whistle blew. Foxy had told him he was deniable and an accessory, that it was illegal, and he had answered, ‘Thank you.’ What to do?

His mind churned, and his eyes hurt from exhaustion. The scabs hurt worse, and the last water bottle was dry. The mosquito bites itched and his guts were full but he couldn’t empty them. He didn’t know where to find answers.

It was the last morning. He had the headset on and waited for the first light to be switched on in the house. Then he would wake Foxy, whom he had thanked. He saw the flash of a cigarette lighter to the right and the goon came out of the barracks. There was a slight smear on the horizon, and the day started.