A Deniable Death

Chapter 16

It was like an afterthought. The goon, Mansoor, paced a path back and forth in front of where Foxy lay and lashed the wood against the wall. Once a guard had flinched away but had been belted on the shoulder and cried out. The pacing had gone on, the blows had been struck and paint chipped off the concrete. Then had come, no warning, the assault, and a new level of violence.

Different: the lashing with the wood first, not the questions. He tried, logic scrambled and confused, to anticipate where the next show would strike him, what part of his body. Foxy no longer had the ability to plot the patterns, and he couldn’t wriggle, curl himself into the foetal position, because the blows were random.

There was more blood and another tooth had dropped from his mouth. The wood had to lash through the swarm of flies that now flew over him. Between each blow they came in to settle – each time bolder – on the newest wound.

How long? He was hit across the cheek. How long needed to be bought? The little air in his lungs was knocked out. He was bent and winded. He remembered… He was hit on his right kneecap, then on the left ankle. The beating had reached a frenzy and the goon grunted.

He saw light on the hook: the hook had caught the sunlight that filtered through the windows and spread across the auditorium, and Foxy remembered the words of a Code… and no one in the room had taken seriously what was said. There had been an almost audible titter, laughter behind hands, when the American had spoken of the Code. An awkwardness, because each time the SERE man had talked of the United States of America, there had been a pause and then the sentence had been remade with ‘United Kingdom’ inserted; where there had been ‘American’ there was ‘British’. It was resurrected. He could focus on a sentence that survived the beating and the pain, had it sharp: I am British, fighting in the forces that guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defence… I will never forget that I am British, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles that made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United Kingdom. Some had said the man was naff, others that he spoke crap. One had stated the little guy had the relevance of a Disney cartoon cut-out… More blows landed. None of those who had sniggered were here and hurt, not knowing how much time needed to be bought.

He had gone through too much to lose now. The questions came.

Different questions.

Shouted. What did he know about the Engineer and his travel? Yelled. Did he know the destination of the Engineer? Shrieked. Was he with Mossad or the CIA or the British agencies? Hoarse. What had he learned of the Engineer? What had he reported? They dinned into Foxy’s head. Then there was quiet and he could hear the goon panting. The two men by the door fidgeted, barely breathed, and the hush settled. Foxy couldn’t say where in his body there was no pain. He heard the strike of the match, and it was repeated – as if the first strike had not ignited the cigarette. There was the rustle of the foil being loosened, then the noise of the pack dropping back onto the table. Foxy knew there were more than two cigarettes in the pack and knew he couldn’t survive, and hold to the Code, if he were to be burned more than twice. He cringed. The men and women who had used him as a terp in the JFIT team at Basra had liked to say there was a certain way of breaking the strongest man, the one most determined to fight.

The environment was where no hope of rescue existed, or liberation, but most important was that no sympathiser was on hand to witness and give comfort. The degradation of aloneness broke men and women. Foxy couldn’t feed off another prisoner – no name necessary, no prior contact required – in an adjacent cell who went through similar hell. He had no clothes to cover himself so his shrivelled penis and shrunken testicles couldn’t be hidden. He could scream with the pain of the cigarettes and no one would come. So alone… He remembered the little man who had told the guys how they should behave, respond – and had been there, done it and survived – and could recall the flash of light on the hook, hear again the titters.

It was as if Foxy reached out to the stunted guy, hoped the hook would close on his hand and grip it. The whiff of the burning cigarette was closer again, and he awaited the pain. There was blackness.

In the blackness, no noise in his ears, no cigarette smoke in his nostrils, he couldn’t see the glowing end coming closer to his stomach. And the sense of time, bought at such a price, was lost.

‘You are Iranian. That is such a comfort to us. We need comfort. .. At home it is now past midnight and we were awake at five this morning, had hardly slept. Three flights, a train journey, we are so tired. It is a great comfort to know that we are with an Iranian, speaking our own language, and meeting a man who has the support of important people. Are you from Tehran? Or Shiraz – or, perhaps, Isfahan? We packed so quickly that I never thought to bring you something from home, some cake or-’

‘So that there is no misunderstanding, I am now German. I live in Germany, my wife is German. I do not expect, ever, to return to Iran.’

‘But if you are born Iranian you are always Iranian – and not one of the traitors, the monarchists, or we would not be here. I do not understand.’

‘What you should understand is that I, too, have had a long day. I am tired as your wife is tired. I do not want to sit here and gossip about life today in Iran, and how many demonstrations have been broken up this week by the Basij, how much tear gas has been fired by the Guard Corps in Tehran this month and how many have been arrested on the university campus.’

‘Why are you seeing us?’

‘Because threats were issued, and I feared for my family. Because the regime in which you, no doubt, have a senior position, with influence, is known in Europe for its brutality and its long arm. We do not, whatever the blood connection of nationality, have any bond other than that I am a man of medicine and your wife is to be examined by me. You will guarantee the remuneration that is necessary under German practices.’

The consultant turned to the wife. He thought her an attractive woman, but bowed with exhaustion and illness. He reckoned her to be around forty. He smiled and asked her quietly, ‘Is there a name I can use?’

‘I am Naghmeh.’

The man interrupted, ‘We have been forbidden to travel under our own names.’

He said, the smile hardening, ‘I could ask what is the nature of your work that prohibits the use of your own name but it would shame me. You are not the patient. Your wife is. Naghmeh, you have brought documents, X-rays? Yes?’

His wife was about to answer but the man’s intervention was faster. ‘We have the X-rays from Tehran, from the university hospital, and the most recent haemoglobin checks from the laboratory. The name has been cut off, but they are ours.’

An envelope was passed. The consultant did not open it, but laid it aside on his desk. ‘They are giving you steroids to combat the headaches?’

‘They increased the dose for her last month, but last week when we went again to Tehran they confessed they were not expert enough to offer further treatment and-’

‘Have they told you, Naghmeh, what condition they believe you suffer from?’

‘They have not told her. They did a biopsy, then told us that new procedures were not possible and-’

He said, ‘Would you, the anonymous man, wish to be afflicted with a brain tumour? It’s about the size, I imagine, of a pigeon’s egg. Would you care for it to be inside your skull? If not, please allow your wife to answer when I address her.’

‘You insult me.’

‘In Germany women are entitled to speak for themselves. Please.. . Naghmeh, the procedure is this-’

‘You show me no respect.’

‘I speak to my patients with great respect – and with little respect to those too frightened to give me their names.’ The consultant, feeling he was now Steffen, and not Soheil, was conscious of victory, a cheap one. He said, ‘Naghmeh, we will need to do more X-rays and also an MRI scan – that is, magnetic resonance imaging. It identifies the hydrogen atoms that lie in soft tissue, and will show what is there. For that you go into a scanner and lie full length. You do not move, very important, and will have removed all jewellery and metal objects. We are told then what we need to know. Naghmeh, I am being frank. We will look and see. I know my skills and what is beyond them. There are two stages. On the basis of what I find tonight I will know whether I can operate. I may believe I can but I offer no guarantee of success if I decide to do so. If I do not feel I have anything to give you, I will tell you so, with honesty. They are waiting for you. Maria will escort you. I assume, Naghmeh, that you do not speak English or German.’

She shook her head. He tried to smile, and reassure her. Why? They came through his consulting rooms at the university in Lubeck every week, people who were frightened, defiant, clinging to some small hope and trusting in him. Why? It was about the dignity of her face, about courage, and there was something of the Madonna in her features, as depicted in the statue that his wife and daughter knelt before each Sunday during services at the Marienkirche. There was depth in her eyes, and majesty. He had no mother or anything of her to treasure beyond vague memories from when he was a small child; a few photographs had been left behind in Tehran and would now be lost. He thought Naghmeh was how he would have wanted his mother to be.

The nurse came, took the wife’s arm and led her out of the room. The husband began to follow but was brusquely turned away by the nurse. The door closed.

He said, with aggression, ‘What work do you do in Iran that warrants such secrecy – or am I not to be told?’

Already he knew part of the answer. The man did not have the stature of a soldier. He was not old enough for high rank in the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and did not possess the chill in the eyes that the consultant presumed would be evidence of work in intelligence. When he himself had spoken of MRI scans and hydrogen atoms, there had been no confusion on the man’s forehead. He was a scientist or an engineer.

‘My work is to ensure the successful defence of my country – of our country.’

The patient would be gone for three-quarters of an hour. The consultant sensed he kicked an open door. ‘Nuclear work? Are you a builder of a nuclear weapon?’

‘Not nuclear.’

‘Chemical, microbiological? Do you work with gases, diseases?’

‘No.’

‘What is left? What is so sensitive that you travel across Europe with false papers and have no name, with embassy people running errands for you? What else is there?’

‘My wife is a good woman.’

‘Obvious.’

‘She heads the committee responsible for clearing minefields in the sectors of Ahvaz and Susangerd.’

‘Fine work.’ He had not expected to confide, was drawn to it. The Farsi bred confidence and suspicion ebbed. ‘My father and mother were killed during the recapture of Khorramshahr. They were together, both doctors, treating front-line casualties. They were martyrs. Your wife does noble work… And you?’

The man hesitated. The consultant had noted his fingers, the stains. He asked the man if he wanted to smoke, accepted the nod – there were days when he himself yearned for the scent of fresh tobacco smoke – and led him out of the office, past the empty desks of the support staff. He took him to the back fire escape and let him out onto a steel-plate platform. A cigarette was lit and smoked. Sleet spattered their shoulders and ran on their faces.

‘What do you do?’

A simple and unemotional answer: ‘I make the bombs that are put beside the road.’

‘Good bombs? Clever bombs?’

‘I am told the counter-measures, electronics, are difficult, that I am ahead of the American scientists, and the British. I am told I am the best.’

‘I understand why you travel in secrecy, then, and have no identity.’

‘To what purpose to be the best while my wife is dying?’

‘You are right to go in secrecy, without a name. Iraq and Afghanistan?’

‘More sophisticated in Iraq, but we teach the Afghan resistance about basic devices. There, they do not need such advanced devices as I made for the Iraq theatre, my best work, but I have influence on what is used in Afghanistan.’

‘And we see on the television many funerals in NATO countries because of the bombs beside the road. If they knew of you they would kill you. Do I approve, disapprove, of what you do? I do not interfere in matters I cannot influence. You should have no fear that I will allow any feelings to dictate my decisions concerning your wife. Thank you for allowing me to breathe the smoke.’

The moon was at its height and there was good light over the clear ground. Badger caught two rats on the periphery of his vision, extreme right side of the 150-degree arc he was capable of. When the moon went down past the horizon, Badger would take the two bergens and leave nothing to show he had been present, a witness to the place. The rats came from the reed beds to his right and straight towards him.

There were people who did not like rats, and people who were scared shitless by them. There were people who saw rats as vermin, to be slaughtered.

Badger did not feel strongly about them. They scurried towards him and the one behind gave slight squeaking sounds. He couldn’t have said if it was twenty minutes, half an hour, longer or shorter, since he had last heard the scream – it had been weaker the last time. The lights in the house were out, but the security ones were lit. There was no movement beyond the pacing of the two guards who watched the single-storey building, and another guard – uniform and assault rifle – who sat under a tree. One more leaned against the outer door of the barracks. He could see the guard at the door clearest because he was in the range of the most powerful light, which beamed down from the lamp-post.

They came towards him.

The smaller one, greyer than the other, came to Badger’s side, skipped onto the small of his back and was over him and gone without a backward glance. He had barely felt its weight. The other had a more russet coat and a longer tail, well scaled and as long as its body. It was down to training that Badger could observe and note every moment of an event that seemed, at the time, insignificant. They said that, in the world of the jihadists and of the high-value targets in organised crime, the little moments that seemed to hold no significance were those that might put a puzzle piece in place. Unlikely that there would be importance in the movement of a rat across his body, but he noted it. It came on a slightly altered track and had veered towards his shoulders. It came onto Badger’s arm, went over his armpit with a brief sniffing stop, was on his right shoulder, then the nape of his neck. It paused there, was close to his ear, and there were the sounds, faint, of its breathing. It went forward, crossed the crown of Badger’s head and a claw seemed to catch in the netting of his headpiece. It came down onto his forearms, then his hands, covered with camouflage cream, which held the binoculars. It stopped there, he saw the glint of its eyes, a yellowed amber. Perhaps it was aware, at that moment, of larger eyes watching it or felt the beat of Badger’s heart, but it was not fazed. It moved off him and went by the image-intensifier, laid on the ground, and was gone. He had had many such encounters and The scream came.

It didn’t matter to Badger that the sound was even fainter than before. He clutched the binoculars, had nothing else to hold on to.

The rats, together again, were exposed on the open ground in front of him and the moonlight was on them. The difference in colour was lost, their size seemed to merge and the length of their tails. Badger could have sworn that both rats stiffened at the scream, like it was a sound alien in their world.

He listened for the scream to come again, shared the pain a little. And he saw the faraway lights across the lagoon. Then his attention was taken by the rats: they had found the carcass of the bird. It was tugged between them and feathers flew. He watched them maul and mangle it, but another scream did not come.

He understood that he had fainted. He had no sense of time gone. His first image was of the bucket. The goon held it, swung it, and the water doused him. It would have been the second or third bucket because water cascaded off him towards a growing pool in the corner. It was aimed at his head and came in a wall towards him, splashing hard. It went up his nose, into his mouth and some forced a passage into his eyes, which were slitted with the swelling.

Foxy must have lifted his head. An automatic reflex gesture, not one he controlled. His vision was distorted, and although he looked up into the face of the goon he couldn’t see the expression: anger, frustration, panic that his prisoner might have croaked on him? There was laughter. Foxy didn’t know whether it was humour, or manic.

A barrage of questions was thrown at him, none new. He didn’t know how long his fainting had protected him. The questions bludgeoned him, but he had no chance to reply. He thought the goon as weak as himself and… The cigarette was on the table, laid across the packet. A match was out of the box, and on the piece of wood he had been clubbed with. He would have fainted as the cigarette was about to be lit – as if he had been granted a stay, because the pain was not worth inflicting if he was unconscious.

Questions, and their answers: I am Sergeant Joseph Foulkes of the Metropolitan Police Service. I am on a deniable mission put together by the Secret Intelligence Service of Great Britain. As an expert in covert rural surveillance, I was tasked to observe Rashid Armajan, the Engineer. I have a good working knowledge of Farsi and deployed a microphone directed at Armajan’s home. I heard it said that Armajan, the Engineer, travelled to the German city of Lubeck with his sick wife. I relayed that information to my back-up team who are across the frontier in Iraq. I do not have a schedule, but in the next few hours an operation will be launched to kill Armajan in Lubeck. I am told that the killing is justified because of Armajan’s talent in constructing the electronics of roadside bombs. They were the answers he had not given, would give. There was a threshold.

He saw the cigarette picked up, the filter lodged in the goon’s mouth. A match was raised and the box was lifted.

He had been to the threshold of pain, and could not go there again. Through the swollen lids, tears ran… They would be in an officers’ mess, after dinner had been served with drinks: What I heard, not for repeating, we had their stellar IED boffin in our sights in Europe after a clandestine operation on the Iran border, and that guy, Foulkes – self-styled surveillance wizard – was captured, interrogated, only had to hang on a few hours, keep his mouth shut, but spilled the lot. We didn’t get the boffin, which would have been worth popping corks for. A variety of the theme would have passed between beds and cubicles in a ward at Selly Oak where the military casualties were cared for: What I was told, the bastard was damn near in the gun sight, but this guy talked… And in a gymnasium at the place south of London where they taught the amputees a degree of mobility: He talked a good talk about himself, but he spat it out and didn’t give our people the time they needed. That was what they would say and where they would say it.

The match flashed and the cigarette was lit. The goon had taken a handkerchief from his pocket, stained, and Foxy knew it would be used to wipe a place on his privates, make it dry, so that the cigarette was not extinguished by the water that had been thrown at him.

Foxy did not cringe and didn’t attempt to bury himself in the angle between the concrete of the floor and the cement blocks of the wall. He knew the threshold would be crossed when he was burned. Everything he would say when the pain scorched his skin was in his mind.

The goon came close, limp prominent, and bent over him.

Foxy’s arms were tied behind his back and his right ankle was fastened by rope to a ring in the wall. He was very calm. Foxy was on his back and seemed to spread out his left leg. It was as if he exposed himself further, was more naked, could not defend himself and was close to the cracking point, the threshold and denial of the Code’s principles. He needed only to be tipped.

The goon was over him. Damn little strength left, and all of it so precious. The bruising, the cuts, the burns, the insect bites, now infected and raw, seemed less alive. He flexed the muscles of his left leg. The goon, Mansoor, crouched, and the handkerchief came down towards a place an inch or so above the hair at the pit of Foxy’s stomach. His skin was rubbed hard, dried and smoke poured from the goon’s mouth. The handkerchief went back into the pocket. The cigarette was taken from the lips and went down towards the skin.

It touched. Foxy reacted.

Didn’t feel the pain, not that time. It took all of his strength, and more, from reservoirs he hadn’t known existed any longer. His leg came up straight. Then he swivelled as best he could on his backside, the leg bent sharply at the knee, and the impact pitched the goon over. His weight would have gone onto the damaged leg and he stumbled. The cigarette dropped, he lost his balance and sprawled.

Foxy locked him with his leg.

He had no weapon. His arms were behind his back so he couldn’t punch. His ankle was roped so he couldn’t kick. He couldn’t grapple with the goon’s belt or get to his throat. He did the head-butt.

A young policeman, called to closing-time fights in pubs and late-night brawls in the streets, had learned that back-street combat was with a broken bottle or the bone at the front of the skull. He had seen it done, and known of the pain it inflicted on hard men. He held the goon close with his legs around the man’s waist and slammed his head into his face. He heard the squeal.

The pub and street fighters he had seen as a young policeman went for the nose.

Foxy hit again and again. The guards had come from the door and his ears were gripped. The small of his back was unprotected and boots lashed the bottom of his spine. For a moment the goon’s ear was close to Foxy’s mouth.

It was hard for Foxy to speak through the split lips, swollen gums and the gaps where teeth had been. He spoke in good, correct Farsi into the ear: ‘Who is fucking your mother tonight, Mansoor? Who is riding her? Is there a queue round the block waiting to fuck your mother? What do you do, Mansoor, while your mother is fucking the street? Do you get kids to suck you off?’ Vile language, learned well. He was dragged clear and his face was hit. His leg was bent back so that the goon could be pulled off him. He knew those sentences, in Farsi, by heart and had often spoken them. It was under instruction by the interrogators of the Joint Force Intelligence Team, when he’d done terping, that he had mastered the lines guaranteed to make an Arab prisoner or captured Iranian lose any vestige of cool. The interrogators knew their work, and Foxy had seen its success many times.

The goon was on his feet. He flailed his arms to drive back the guards, his chest heaved and blood flowed from his distorted nostrils. His feet stamped, and the bar of wood was in his hand.

The first blow struck him – Foxy would have been at the threshold if there had been another cigarette – and more deluged down on him. He saw nothing in the cell. The table was gone, and the cigarette packet, the matchbox, the chair, the guards at the door and the light in the ceiling. There was darkness. Foxy no longer fought the beating. He was overwhelmed, and his strength had gone.

He saw, at the last, a man in a darkened street. He wore a black frock coat and carried a top hat in one hand, a cane in the other, and walked proudly. It was the last thing Foxy saw – and the man’s head was lowered in respect.

‘Still a good turn out, is there, Doug?’ he was asked.

They were lucky in his village to have their own British Legion branch and the building was adequate, in need of repairs but the fabric was sound. Doug Bentley always came for a drink, or three, on the evening before a repatriation.

There were four beers in his round, all low-strength, which reflected the ages of his friends. He was standing and collecting the glasses to take them back to the bar. They couldn’t afford a paid steward any longer, and it was accepted that glasses were reused, not clean ones for when each drink was poured. ‘Still plenty there. It’s held up well.’

‘Third in a fortnight? Right, Doug?’ From an old Pioneer Corps man.

He paused. ‘That’s right, the third. It’s five have come through. Anyone want any crisps or peanuts?’

‘My Annie won’t watch it.’ From a paratrooper who had done Cyprus and Aden. ‘Upsets her. I used to watch regular, but I don’t now. It’s bad enough seeing it on TV, but it must be pretty difficult, Doug, week in and week out – for you, I mean. Yes, nuts, thanks.’

It wasn’t talked about much in the bar – it was in the early days, but it had been running for three years now. Doug Bentley had carried their standard for all of that time, and no one else had jostled him for the job. He didn’t talk about it unless another raised the subject of Bassett and the hearses coming up the High Street. He would have liked to share it more often – not just with Beryl – and the opportunity yawned. He took it. ‘It’s a damn sight less upsetting for us than for the parents and the grannies, the brothers, the nephews, all the kids from the family. One last week, a woman cried her heart out. All quiet except for her sobbing. It went right through to your guts. She was weeping her eyes out in the road. We all felt it, all of us in our line. What I remember, the week before, was all the hands that were just laid on the glass of the hearse, the nearest they could get to the coffin with the flag on it, and that same one – a big family and friends group had come over from the east of England – an older man shouted, “Well done, boys,” for the two of them going through, and others picked it up. “Well done, boys,” and they were all clapping. It gets in your bones, like rheumatism does. I wouldn’t miss it. I say that in honesty.’

‘I’m the crisps, the bacon ones, Doug.’ He was a veteran of Suez, artillery. ‘Do they really like it, being out there and having the world watching them? Nothing like that in our day – were popped down out there. Seems unnatural to me, like it’s a spectacle – I’m not criticising you, Doug.’

‘Fair enough. I was chatting with a sergeant from a unit last month, and he said the military and the families appreciate people being there – like it’s recognition. Could be called appreciation. It’s what’s said… I tell you, when they finish coming through Bassett I don’t know what I’ll do with myself… Right, four pints, one crisps and we’ll have two nuts.’

He went to the bar.

His neighbours thought it was morbid, and had told Beryl so, him and her going off so regular on the first bus to Swindon, the second bus to Wootton Bassett, and the long reverse journey. While he was down at the Legion, the night before a repatriation, she would be running the iron over his charcoal slacks to get a decent crease and brushing the shoulders of his blazer, the one with the Pay Corps badge. If she’d time she’d polish his three medals, and before he’d come out he’d do his shoes so that they gleamed and put the whitener on his formal gloves. Last thing, she’d check there were no crumples in the black ribbon she tied with a flourished bow at the top of the standard pole. His neighbours had empty, vacant lives and nothing to lift them. Doug Bentley thought himself blessed, and also that a hole, wide enough for a volcano to spew from, would be left in his remaining years when the repatriations stopped coming into the Lyneham base, and the hearses no longer drove up the hill into the town.

He brought the drinks back to their table, with the crisps and the nuts, and the artillery veteran asked if there was time for a cribbage game, and the paratrooper – who had last jumped thirty-nine years before – said there was; the Pioneer Corps man, who had spent two years digging latrines on tank ranges in Germany, agreed. Then they’d all three looked at Doug Bentley for his opinion: time for a cribbage game? They had to nudge him.

He’d been far away, just down the High Street from the Cross Keys, waiting for the command to raise the standards and… He said he’d enjoy that.

Len Gibbons watched.

Too many years since he’d been in a long raincoat and a trilby, hugging shadows in a doorway and listening: it was enough to make a new man of him. He saw the target, the target’s wife and the medical man. They paused on the step and the sleet had eased. He saw also the car across the width of the pavement close to the kerb. The driver reached back and flicked open the rear passenger door.

The car had been there, on a restricted-parking line, all the time Gibbons had been in place, but the opening of the door, and the flooding of the interior with light, enabled him to see the driver: hardly a taxing identification. Dark-haired, swarthy, stubble, and a shirt buttoned to the throat without a collar. The car, an Opel saloon and granite grey, did not have Corps Diplomatique plates, but Gibbons reckoned it was an embassy vehicle. He had, of course, done his discreet walk round the block, the cafe across the campus street. The car was all the security offered to the target and his wife. He used a little of a veteran’s tradecraft. He had good ears, could hear – Catherine said – every cat that came into the garden to scratch up the new bedding plants; he wore a hearing aid. It was a tip he’d picked up from the Provos: they had worn them when their hit teams advanced on potential attack sites and needed to know if they were covered by military or police guns; with an aid, they could hear better when a weapon was cocked. Gibbons had borrowed one from the technical people in the basement annex. It fitted comfortably, and was good value.

It was said first in German, as if the consultant made his point in that language, then repeated in English, but not in Farsi. The consultant had personally escorted them to the doorway, and said, ‘I shall look at the MRI and the X-rays overnight. Tomorrow I can tell you what is possible and what is not. Please, your appointment with me is at eight thirty. You understand that I can promise nothing.’

He was gone. The target supported his wife down the one step and across the pavement, then helped her into the car. Gibbons saw her face, haggard, and saw the target’s, numbed. The door slammed, the light was cut, and the car drove away, no ceremony… Incredible. The lack of security, the absence of a full escort, astonished Gibbons. It told him that as yet the authorities had not reacted to a capture in the marshes. Extraordinary. He didn’t follow the car and had no need to know where the target would sleep that night. He didn’t want to test the professionalism of the driver and give him the opportunity to recognise a tail in place. But it had been a satisfactory evening that nothing had blighted. He had gained the knowledge that would facilitate a killing, its location and time. His step was almost jaunty as he walked to his own vehicle.

The Cousin was across the street and low in his car – it was near to the bus stop where parents were waiting for their youngsters to get back to Roeckstrasse. He attracted no attention. He saw the big car, symbol of an individual’s triumph in his chosen field, sweep off the road into the driveway, the tyres scattering gravel. The house was dark, obviously empty, and offered no welcome. The car door was swung shut.

The breadwinner was home and no one greeted him. That stirred a chord with an old warrior from the Agency: he was now, most of the time, out to grass, and would only be dragged back – not, of course, inside the Langley complex – when deniable work was called for. In his own life, before she’d finally quit, there had been times enough when he had come home late, tired, to find she’d decamped to her mother, her best girl friend, her worst girl friend, any fucking place. He understood. Woman trouble: couldn’t live with them, and couldn’t live without them. He saw the consultant, who hadn’t drawn the curtains or dropped a blind, pace in a room on the ground floor and eat what looked like a slice of cold pizza. He had no more, there, to learn.

The Friend took the young man into the city, parked near to the cathedral, then invited him to walk.

Had he had a good journey on the ferry? He had. Had the weather been bad in the Baltic? Not a problem. How had he passed the long hours? On the deck, reading. What had he read? Just a magazine. That had settled the Friend’s opinion that the spear-carriers of the state were best left to themselves, and that banal conversation was meaningless.

Both wore caps with deep peaks and both had scarves over their faces, but that was natural in the cold cloaking the city that night, with the threat of the first severe snowfall. They went past the cathedral, with its massive floodlit sharp-tipped spire. The streets were narrow, and old houses pressed close to them. Little side turnings went into brief cul-de-sacs with small homes that might have dated back four centuries, when his own country had been sand, camels and migrant Bedouin. He did not tell the man that the apparent age of the streets they walked was bogus, that the British bombers had come at the start of an Easter feast and destroyed the city with incendiaries: that Lubeck had been rebuilt with care for its history. They went by the modernised church of St Anne, a Franciscan building, and he stopped to gaze for a moment through an iron-barred gate that was unlocked and slightly ajar. At the end of a paved path was the door to a brick building and above it a dull light burned. He said it was the synagogue of Lubeck, and led the way.

At the door, he rapped the knocker, then pressed the bell. Feet padded noisily towards the door, a bolt was drawn back, a key turned. Sparse light fell on them, and they were admitted to a wide hall.

The Friend said, ‘Anyone you see here is Russian. There are no German Jews in Lubeck, only Russians. Yeltsin sold the Jews to the German government. They are here and few speak German. They have made another ghetto, where we are. The few who know you are coming believe you are a political activist of the Jewish faith, hunted by extremists and needing refuge. A man will arrive from Berlin later tonight and bring… well, he will bring what you need. I will collect you in the morning. What you do and how is for you to decide. Then we get the fuck out. I shall be here at seven. Sleep well.’

The caretaker, an old man, had directed them to an office where a camp bed had been left, with two folded blankets and a pillow. The Friend touched the young man’s shoulder. It might have been a gesture of encouragement, of support, but that was so obviously unnecessary. He had met – in his life with the unit – many men and women who killed for the state: some talked incessantly, others were silent, as if their tongues had been torn out; some were restless and fidgeting, others coldly still. All were touched by what they did, altered. Not this young man. There was a nod, a murmur of thanks, Hebrew spoken, then the back was turned, as if an audience was completed.

The Friend let himself out, walked away down the street towards Konigstrasse and the pension where he would sleep, if it were possible. He did not doubt the killer would sleep well on the collapsible bed with the wire frame and the wafer mattress.

Harding said, ‘They’re back again, ma’am, and the numbers are building.’

She answered with irritation: ‘I’ve eyes, I can see.’

In truth, Abigail Jones could see little beyond the broken gate. Shadows flitted forward. There was thin moonlight, which gave the shadows a wash of pale colour. The American had the best eyesight of them all and probably knew how many were armed with rifles or shotguns and how many had come back with clubs or the spears they used for fishing where the lagoons weren’t drained. She should have apologised for her tone, did not. He did not seem to take offence. Maybe he understood how the tension swarmed in her head.

‘We could be getting into problems when the time comes to get out of here, ma’am.’

Obvious. At that time, past midnight and well into another day, she alone carried responsibility in this little corner of the world – her sphere of influence. She had responsibility for herself and the four men paid to protect her, and for the situation further forward – a black hole of information, cut off from contact. She had helicopters on stand-by that could be utilised once only. She couldn’t call up the Station in Baghdad and request guidance: Sorry, Abigail, don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s nothing that’s flown across my desk. What to do? The best you can. And neither could she make a sat link with London and the Towers. Call her home desk: I’m just the lowly minion, the night duty officer, and I’m not permitted to contact your HDO before 06.00 local… Anything I can help with, or will it keep for the next seven hours? And she could hardly raise Len Gibbons, likely in Germany and leading the charge on a target: No way I can contribute, Abigail, because you’re there and I’m not, which means your judgement will be the one that counts. I’m sure whatever decision you take will be the right one and will stand up to scrutiny. If she asked for the advice of Corky or Shagger, or went to Hamfist and dropped the matter in his lap, if she looked up into Harding’s face and asked what she should do, she would lose authority.

‘If they’re in the way when we need to get out, we’ll go over or through them – whichever.’

He shrugged, acceptance. These men were happiest when told what to do and when. They would drive hard and shoot straight, and it would be for her – Abigail Jones – to face the wrath of the aftermath. Fuck it. The problem was that the money had been handed over and had bought a few hours but not enough. The radio stayed silent and she had no word from forward, the other side of the border. She could rail, stamp, blaspheme and swear, but the radio stayed quiet. The number of men from the marshes now outside the gate had increased through the night, and by the morning they would again be boxed in, and the dollar bills were exhausted. It had been a short window and they hadn’t used it. Fuck it was about the best answer she could muster.

‘If that’s what you want to do, ma’am, that’s what we’ll do.’

She smiled, grim. ‘Settled, then. Harding, one of your Rangers told me when I first came here that his father had been with a paratroop unit of the South Vietnamese army and had done time as an adviser in the Central Highlands. The old guy had told his son that what made the early days there ‘comfortable’ was the certain guarantee that if he had been wounded or killed, heaven and earth would be moved to lift him out, on a stretcher or in a bag. Might take the services of a platoon that needed reinforcing with a company that then had to call on a battalion to be moved, and a flight of helicopters with a wing of air support. Whatever it took, it was available, and the guys on the ground knew it, so they were ‘comfortable’. I can’t go and get Foxy, and can’t go as far as Badger likely is, but I’ll sit on the extraction point for him – and we’ll move before dawn whether I’ve heard from him or not. Like I said, ‘‘over or through them’’. A coffee would go down well.’

It was fraying, might already be unravelling.

‘I’ll get you a coffee, ma’am.’

‘And we can-’

He interrupted her, almost kindly, like he tried to share – but could not. ‘Packed and ready to burn some rubber. We’ll go when you say, ma’am.’

‘Hang him up, like a pig, hang him high.’

The officer gave his order. He thought his men barely recognised him. Not long before, he had led the killing of the Arabs who had crossed the frontier in search of abandoned military material, and his men – from the ranks of the Basij – had shown no hesitation or emotion in shooting, then digging the pits. They were frightened of him now. He was down on his haunches and his back was against the wall. The prisoner was on the far side of the table and chair. He realised that so much would have confused them. Why were senior men from Ahvaz not here? Why had they not been given custody of the man? Why had the man been beaten so savagely that he lay prone, unmoving? Why was the top sheet on the notepad clean, and the pencil laid neatly beside it? Why did they not know who they had captured and why had they not been praised for the success of their efforts? Why did their officer hug the floor and the wall, his head bowed? He was panting in spurts, and he clasped his hands together but could not stop them trembling. Why? The enormity of what he had done engulfed the officer, Mansoor. He did not turn towards the men who crowded in the doorway.

‘Get him out. Hang him up.’

They hesitated. All of them, not merely those who had guarded the doorway, would have heard the prisoner’s screams, and his own shouted questions, the thudded blows with the wood, and the water splashed from the bucket. The Basij were the arm of the regime: they broke up demonstrations against the authority of the state; they made the cordons on arrest operations; they kept back the crowds at executions; they enforced the edicts on dress and music. They hesitated to go close to the man. Mansoor did not know who he was. The man wore no chains, no rings; his one boot had no label and the one in his underpants had been cut out. Only at the end had he spoken and then with such insults that… His head was on his knees and he recognised the enormity of disaster brought on him by his loss of temper. The man, prone, terrified them.

His hands scratched at the wall. His fingernails gouged the plaster over the concrete blocks and he pulled himself upright. He went past the table and kicked the chair from his path. He stepped over his prisoner and did not know if the chest moved but he saw no bubbling in the blood at the mouth. He could not look into the man’s eyes because the swelling above and below had closed them. As he bent to reach past the man and loose the rope from the ring on the wall, he saw the wounds and bruises he had inflicted, the scars of the insect bites and the sores that ticks had caused. The man had destroyed him. He felt – almost – wonderment, a confusion. His face was very close to the man’s and he murmured the question he needed answering more than any other: ‘Why did you come to this place, which is nothing? Why were you here? Why was it worth it for you?’ He freed the rope, dragged on it and the man slid across the floor, through the blood, urine and water, on his back and buttocks. His other leg was bent but he did not cry out. Mansoor threw the end of the rope into the doorway, where it was caught by a guard, and gave his order again. The body was heaved past him and jammed in the door. It was freed, and then had gone down the corridor.

He slumped again, and his hands held his head.

Badger watched. Perhaps the coots did too, the frogs and the pigs. He hadn’t slept, eaten or drunk. He had been without sleep, food and water for more hours than he could calculate. He was close to delirium, on an edge.

They brought Foxy out. There were two on the rope and they went at a good pace, Foxy bouncing along behind them. They had come out of the main door into the barracks and had turned towards the water. They went into the pool of light thrown from the high lamp. When a stone caught at Foxy’s shoulder or hips and he got stuck, he was kicked free by those who flanked him. If his trailing leg snagged, he was kicked again. Badger saw it through his binoculars so he lived with each jolt of Foxy’s head. One of those who followed kicked at Foxy whether he was caught or not; another bent every three of four paces to scoop up dirt and pebbles, then threw them hard at Foxy’s face. Badger, with his lenses, could see the wounds, the cuts and the drying blood. He could also make out – among the scabs – the red marks where the skin had been burned. Now he knew why Foxy had tortured the dark with his screams of agony.

He looked for the goon, for Mansoor. He didn’t understand why he, too, had not come outside.

But Badger – on the edge of control – understood little.

The rope was thrown up and looped over the arm of the lamp, a strip of ironwork welded to the main pole. Its free end was caught, tugged down, and a gang of them took the strain. Foxy’s head bounced a last time in the dirt, then the body was up and clear. The light shone on the rope’s knot around his ankle, and onto the leg that took the weight. The other hung angled and crazily. The arms were loose in the shoulder sockets and the wrists brushed the ground. He turned slowly, gently.

Badger watched.

He watched for more than a minute and saw some of the guards punch the body, or kick at the head. He waited until their tiredness took over and they drifted back towards the barracks. The shadow under Foxy turned slowly, then went back on itself. Badger went to the bergens and took from them what he would need. It did not seem to be a matter for debate.