A Deniable Death

Chapter 3

To Foxy, it was choreographed: nothing was here by chance. It was as if they had both – himself and Badger – been manoeuvred towards the proposition. And it had been done quickly, like he supposed a good hanging was, with a pretence of casualness.

‘Times have changed. Things are different,’ the Cousin said.

‘Who can be trusted? Never many, but now the number has shrunk,’ the Friend said.

‘What I’ve learned, you want a job done well, you get your own people to do it. Then you know you’re in the best hands,’ the Boss, Gibbons, said.

They had been together in the afternoon, and the Cousin had talked – an accent that was distant tyres on gravel, pronounced but not harsh – and had shifted awkwardly on the chair. He seemed to come alive when he spoke of the marshlands east and west of al-Qurnah, and north and south of the town, the drought there, the dried, cracked mud and stagnant pools where water no longer flowed because of the great dams built far to the north in Turkey, Syria and Iran. He spoke of a cradle of civilisation and the location of the Garden of Eden – did it well – of cultures that stretched back several millennia and a people who had been bombed, gassed, hit with napalm jelly and driven from their homes. Then on to ‘rat-runs’ and the smugglers’ trails along which the padded crates brought the bombs into Iraq. Through doors left ajar, and along corridors with stone floors, came the wail of a kettle boiling. That would have been the signal to the triumvirate – Boss, Friend, Cousin – that business should have been done.

Praise from the Boss: ‘You’re both the best in your field, excellent and professional.’

Admiration from the Friend: ‘Your files tell us you’re of high quality. This is not work for men at the second level.’

The proposition from the Cousin: ‘We can identify, gentlemen, the target’s location. He’s about two kilometres inside Iran. He’s protected – but he’s about to travel away from his guards. We don’t know where or when he’s going. We think – are pretty sure – that you are the guys who’ll give us the answers. That’s what we’re asking of you. Be there, watch, listen, and tell us what you see and hear.’

He was the older man. Predictable that their eyes should bead on him first. He could see, had adequate eyesight and wore glasses only for close work or with binoculars; he could listen because Six and the Agency, and whatever gang the Israeli was signed up to, would have top-of-the-range audio equipment; and he was almost fluent in Farsi, not interpreter standard but the level down from that. It would have been the language that had ticked boxes when they had trawled the files. He had also, rusty but never forgotten, the skills of a man trained in the techniques of covert rural surveillance. He had served a few days less than four months on attachment to the Joint Forces Intelligence Team at the Shaibah Logistics Base, where the questioning had been ‘robust’ or, in more legal phrasing, had involved ‘coercive interrogation techniques’. His breath came harder and almost, he realised, whistled through his teeth. Did he want to go? Did he hell. Where did he want to be? The map was fastened with drawing pins to the board, then propped against the back of the chair. A dull ceiling light, economy bulbs, fell on it. Nowhere near east or west of Highway 6, or near the Hawr al Hammar marshes, or within spitting distance of those turgid, stinking cess-pool rivers, and the towns that smelt more of human excrement than of donkey shit.

He wriggled on the hard seat of the chair. He was given no help. Would have gone down on his knees in gratitude if he’d heard, ‘Of course, Foxy, this is just a fishing exercise and if you don’t want to bite we’ll forget you were ever here.’ In the Cousin, the Friend and the Boss, he saw no mercy. If he had been given further explanations, perhaps on the physicality of the operation, he might have been able to peddle excuses about the state of his hips, his ankles or the cramps he was subject to at night – but his file would have stated that his condition was first class, the product of gym work and, once a week, an hour’s cross-country. He would have liked to be at home, with a malt in a crystal glass and Ellie in the kitchen, maybe humming to herself… He would have liked to be at a seminar, in a mess or at a conference, maybe, in Wiesbaden, or Madison, Wisconsin, with a spotlight on him and his words heard respectfully.

He wondered how long they would let him writhe before coming to his aid – ‘Look, Foxy, if you’re not up for crawling in the shit across the Iraq and Iran border with a directional microphone, your language skills, and that little creep alongside to carry the gear, you only have to say so, and there’ll be no criticism of you.’

The room was at the corner of the building and the wind caught against the stone and howled. The branches of an overgrown shrub lashed the windowpanes. The wind came through and lifted the curtains, and there was the sound of waves on shingle. Two small truths gnawed at him. First, Ellie, his wife of six years, was less often in the kitchen now and his dinner was more likely to come from the microwave; also, the chance of sex had become remote. The second truth was that the invitations to talk and lecture and address were fewer and now he never had to concern himself with two clashing on one date. Allowing a pall of silence to hover was a tactic used at the Logistics Base by the interrogators of the Joint Forward Intelligence Team. Foxy, as the interpreter, had played the game. Silence disturbed men. He didn’t know how to break clear.

Beside him, the quiet was broken.

The voice of the young man fucked Foxy: ‘I’m assuming I’m next to be asked. So’s we don’t mess around till Christmas, I’m on. That’s it.’

Smiles broke their faces and there was light in their eyes as they reached to shake Badger’s hand – the Cousin and the Boss had to stretch across Foxy. If the bastard had asked about the positioning of back-up, what fee would be paid and how much up-front, what the insurance aspect would be, Foxy might have been able to keep the wriggle going and find a sticking point. Too late.

‘Sounds important, sounds necessary.’ He thought himself truly skewered, managed a thin smile. ‘I’m taking it that the ground work’s been done. I’m on board, of course.’

His hand was shaken: the heavy fist of the Cousin, the light, lingering touch of the Friend, and the cursory grip of the Boss. None of the bastards thanked him. It was like he’d jumped a river and there was no going back. He assumed they were unable to put a drone over a house and a barracks inside Iran, and that they didn’t trust locally employed assets, or didn’t have them. The three sat back, and Badger’s arms were folded across his chest. He seemed relaxed.

Gibbons said, ‘I think we might take a break now. Tea and, hopefully, cake. Plenty after that to push on with-’

‘I said I was accepting your offer, but there are matters outstanding.’

‘What matters?’

He hesitated – could have done with Badger’s support, but was denied it. No damned response. Felt the loneliness. ‘For a start, what’s the back-up?’

‘Very adequate, and you’ll be well briefed on it before you’re inserted.’

‘Is that all I’m getting?’

‘It’s enough at this stage. Tea will be waiting.’

He blurted, ‘The business of remuneration. Well, where we’re being asked to go… am I not entitled to know the recompense?’

The Cousin said, ‘We were under the impression that you were still, Foxy, a serving police officer, therefore salaried and liable for full pension if you care to quit and take it. Probably there’s an overseas per diem allowance, disability stuff and widow’s entitlements in the package. I’d say you’re well looked after.’

The Friend said, ‘Your remuneration is a great deal healthier than anything my government wants to or would be able to pay.’

The Boss said, ‘If you’re having trouble in the cash area, Foxy, I can always arrange for a diversion, on the way to the airport, via Headley Court. You’ll get a chance to talk to amputees, victims of IEDs and EFPs, and see them learning to walk again or eating with artificial aids. You can discuss disability payments, your money and a soldier’s wage.’

Badger gazed at him. No contempt there, but a dry smile.

‘I was just checking because of my wife – because of Ellie. Tea would go down well. Thank you for your understanding. I suppose I’ll want to learn about the target, his security and…’

He touched her hand. There were few gestures of intimacy between them when they could be observed. He did not care then that her mother watched as he let his fingers fall on her wrist. He saw the thinness of her arm under his fingers. He didn’t care that Mansoor, the security officer, eyed them. Dark thoughts flitted in his mind. He could imagine her mother making love to her father when he was still alive – she had comforting weight about her hips and stomach, warm against a man, a sparkle in her eyes.

He couldn’t imagine this for Mansoor, who limped from the rocket fired by the Americans’ drone. Mansoor’s wife worked as a typist for the intelligence officer in the Guard Corps barracks, the Crate Camp Garrison off the Ahvaz to Mahshar road – he had never seen her without her burqah. Mansoor seemed devoid of tenderness and without the need for a woman.

Rashid, the Engineer, yearned to celebrate triumphs with his woman underneath him, her nails in his back and her small squeals in his ear – not loud enough to wake the children – when his work in the factory and on the testing ground went well, or when she cleared a minefield sown three decades earlier or gained new funding from the provincial government. They would not lie again together. He did not believe that medical success could be snatched abroad… but he had demanded it. He smiled weakly. He said that very soon he would have the detail of where they would travel and the name of the expert she would visit.

He went again to read to their children and tell them more of the three princes. The story was about lions that terrorised a farmer’s oxen and how Prince Korshid took the harnesses from the oxen, captured the lions, harnessed them to the plough, worked them and freed them. They went back to the hills and left the farmer in peace. It was a story his children loved. He saw the sad way Naghmeh watched him, sitting in her chair with her mother beside her, her eyes never off him. There had once been a girl, in Budapest where he had studied, who had terrified him with her openness. Memories of her and of that time reared more often now that he could only watch his wife’s growing fragility. He would do what he could – he would fight, bluster and argue – for her, but he had no faith in the miracle required when they travelled.

It was ‘interdiction’. Badger had heard the word spoken twice.

The evening session had been given to the Friend. The Israeli had talked of the al-Quds Brigade, its place in the ranks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, its influence in Gaza and south Lebanon, its authority throughout Iran, the discipline, commitment and elitism of its members. He had talked like an academic, a schoolmaster, and had not used the rhetoric of an enemy combatant. It was relevant, hugely so, because the home of the target was under the protection of both the Border Guards and the al-Quds crowd. They lived beside the small garrison barracks because his wife, Naghmeh, was influential on a steering committee dedicated to mine clearance along the frontier. Her work would suffer if she was shut away in a guarded compound far from the ground where the personnel and tank mines had been laid, where children and adults died, or were mutilated, as regularly as once a week. He talked well, was interesting, and did not demean his enemy: he spoke of him with dislike but not contempt, vilified his cruelty, admired his commitment and gave respect. And if they, whatever organisation the Friend represented, knew so much, why did they not themselves provide surveillance expertise?

Badger had been to a moderate-performing school on the outskirts of Reading and had left with qualifications only slightly better than mediocre. He had been idle and unmotivated, had not gone to university. Lack of formal education did not make him a fool. Why did not the Friend’s crowd do it themselves? Simple. They would have wanted a broad church, a coalition of the willing: they were akin to bookmakers who laid off the risk of financial calamity by slicing up big wagers. It had been a good talk. Then supper, no alcohol: a meal that must have chilled in the kitchens because it was hardly edible. It was brought in by the house owner – the grandfather of a dead soldier – and left on a sideboard. Most had not finished their plate of the main dish – stringly beef, boiled vegetables and heavy gravy. Some had toyed and the Boss hadn’t tried, but Badger had done well. He wasn’t fussy about his food. He’d heard little hisses of dissatisfaction from Foxy. While they ate, the Cousin had returned to the marshes, and the Major to the sophistication of the bomb-maker. Later the Boss had led them back to the lounge and the fire had been made up. Badger had done what he was good at, had sat, listened and watched. Twice he had heard the word ‘interdiction’.

The Major had said to the Friend,’… care about passionately is interdiction. I used to lie awake at night, at the Basra Palace, dreaming of it. Better than a wet one. What needs to be done and.. .’ The Friend had nodded in fierce agreement.

The Cousin had said to the Boss, ‘… every time it has to be interdiction so the mother-fuckers get the message…’ And the Boss had sagely inclined his head.

It was a word beyond Badger’s vocabulary.

Later, when Foxy talked to the Cousin about heat exhaustion when wearing gillie suits in the temperatures of the marshes, Badger had sidled towards the Boss, and asked what ‘interdiction’ was.

The Boss had said he thought it had stopped raining, and he wanted fresh air and the wind on his face.

They were outside, had taken faded old coats from hooks by the door. The wind had come on as a gale – there might have been hail in it – the seas crashed on the rocks, and he could make out the shape of a sheep flock huddled at an angle in the fence.

The hand pointed to the outline, indistinct, of the ruined castle keep. ‘You know, Badger, there’s history here and violent history at that. That place was the seat of clan mafia, gangsters and thugs, and they’d been there since the fourteenth century. There was a banqueting hall inside and, sunk in the floor of an annex, a dungeon that had a water level of three metres. There was a round stone in the centre that topped the surface. A prisoner consigned there had to sit on the stone and pray he didn’t fall asleep after two days or five. He might stay awake for a week, but it was inevitable that he’d drown. I fancy they wouldn’t have screamed, the victims, or begged. They wouldn’t have given the bastard up above that satisfaction… A serious place, and damn-all to do with this operation.’

‘Yes, Boss.’ Badger wanted to trust, to believe. ‘What is interdiction?’

A pause. Badger couldn’t see the Boss’s face, and couldn’t imagine why he had been brought outside to shiver.

The answer came. ‘Latin stuff – something about hitting communication lines in a military context. But I think you’re asking, Badger, what this plan means for our target, and what your role in this is leading up to. Am I about right there? A very fair question and one that deserves answering.’

‘What it’s about, yes.’

‘I’m being very frank, Badger, and probably going past my remit. But where you’re going and what you’re doing entitles you to total honesty. We hope to track Rashid Armajan to a place where we can approach him. We can’t do it where he is.’

‘Have I been naive, Boss?’

‘Not at all. With your help, Badger, we get up close. That’s an approach. You understand?’

They’d bung him, cart him to a safe-house and turn him. The Engineer would sing. ‘I understand. Thank you.’

‘That was indiscreet, and I’d get my wrist slapped. It’s time to get back inside, and tomorrow’s a hell of a day. What a dreadful wind.’

‘You did absolutely right, Mr Gibbons.’ He and the Major were in the hall, out of earshot.

‘An untruth, but justified. He seemed to swallow “approach”. ’

The Major murmured in his ear, ‘He’s a young man, hasn’t been where killing and mayhem are. Maybe he’s good at his job, but he’s not hardened in the way the older man is. He’s going to be staring through a ’scope and binoculars at a target and he’ll bond with him after a fashion. They all do. He’ll get caught up in the trivia of the target’s life, and the medical condition of the wife. There are kids, aren’t there? He’ll see them. He’ll get to be, by proxy, a part of that family… at home, at his work. He’s looking at a man who’ll be arrested and sent to gaol. We’re talking ‘interdiction’, zapping the bastard. Our Badger might not cope too well with that. You did right.’

‘Which was why I did it. Serious business, killing a chap, don’t you know.’ A smile flickered at Gibbons’s mouth.

Some days it was hard for him to remember his name. That day, his identity hovered between Gabbi who worked, occasionally, as an investigator into tax avoidance from an office near the Ministry of Finance, and Zak, and Yitzak, which was how the sailors on a freighter had known him, as well as the embassy people who had seen him out of the airport at Catania, in Sicily. He had many names. In the last year he had used Amnon, Saul, Peter, David and Jakob, and had seemed to have many places of work. On occasions his hair was blond but it could also be jet black or mouse, and cut short or topped with a flowing wig. The debrief would be the next day, and he had gone home and would sleep until he was woken by the clatter of keys in the door, the tap of her stick and her footfall.

He had been met at a military airfield. No trumpets. He had come down the short steps of an executive twin-engine plane and the unit’s driver had had the front passenger door open. The woman, in an adjutant’s role, was on the apron, her hand out for the passport with his last, now discarded, name and the photograph with the light hair. She had also taken from him the unused float for incidental expenses on Malta, and a mobile phone that had been operational. She had returned his own and asked if he was well. He’d said he was, and she had told him at what time he was expected at the unit in the morning. He had been driven to their home in the suburb of Ramat Gan. He’d made one call on his own mobile and had left voicemail for Leah, telling her he was back.

In the apartment – one living room, one decent bedroom, a small bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen – he sprawled on the sofa with the bamboo frame. He had eaten yoghurt from the refrigerator and some cheese, and drunk juice. He might read later if he had slept and she hadn’t come back from her desk at the defence ministry in the Hakira district. On the stairs to his second-floor door he had met Solly Stein and his wife, Miriam. They would have noted he was back and would have known that the apartment had been empty for four days. They would have thought he had been away on Revenue business, chasing a fat-cat crook who was – perhaps – a politician. The apartment was always empty when he was abroad because Leah slept at her mother’s. Solly Stein did not know, never would, that the hand of their neighbour across the second-floor landing, the one Miriam held as they’d talked briefly – the weather, the price of milk – had the previous day fired two killing shots into the head of a Hezbollah strategist. If they had known, she would have kissed his cheeks.

He did not endure agonies of conscience as he lay on the sofa. He never had. Nor was he cold, unfeeling. He had been told that the resident psychiatrist attached to the unit regarded him as unique among his colleagues. Without remorse, rabid xenophobia, regret or triumphalism: like a man who worked in an abattoir and earned a monthly wage. An enigma, and not understood, but depended upon. There were some in clinics and others who beat their women, and a few who thought themselves so above the law that they hit banks and were now locked up.

He heard the tap of her stick against the door, must have dozed but was immediately awake. He rolled off the sofa and his bare feet slithered across the tiled floor. He heard the key go into the lock. She knew what he did, but never spoke of it, or of her own work at Camp Rabin, in Military Intelligence. She had been blinded in Lebanon by the shrapnel scattered in the explosion of an Iranian-built missile. The wounds inflicted were beyond the skill of surgeons, and she lived in a world of black and grey shadows. They hugged and the love shone.

‘You’re good?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘I brought supper.’

‘Wonderful.’

They clung and kissed.

‘Are you home for long – if you can answer?’

It was possible, in what she did at the ministry, that she helped choose the targets allocated to him. She might have worked on the selection of individuals of Hamas, Hezbollah or the Fateh Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade who were thought of sufficient importance.

‘Perhaps, and perhaps not. Soon I will know. I am home tonight.’

They were lovers, and she was Leah. She could not have said what name, in their bed, he would answer to.

The pool in the Zone had a bad end-of-season look about it. If she had been a holidaymaker and paying good money to lie beside it, with her book, she would have thought the place was up for sale, or that the maintenance money had run out, or that this was yesterday’s destination.

There was a better-kept pool in the embassy’s garden but she preferred the dowdiness of this one. The weeds that grew between the tiled and paved surfaces gave it more of an office feel and negated any guilt at apparently skiving off for the day. She was happy, anyway, to be far from her office in the secure section, distanced from the interminable gossip of the diplomats and their support staff. Her guards were not permitted at the pool and had to sit in an air-conditioned shed by the entrance to that sector of the Zone. The book, actually, was interesting.

On one side of her, quietly snoring, a towel across his face, was Hamfist, his flak vest beside him with the rucksack in which his gear was stowed, and an AK-47 assault rifle, with a magazine loaded and another taped to it. Her mobile lay on her thigh, the back smeared with sun cream. She took breaks from the book to make calls and check texts. Hamfist was a Scot, a ‘clumsy sod’ – as she called him – with any refined equipment other than one that fired a high-velocity shell. He had been in a Scottish infantry unit, had done nine years that included a spell in al-Amarah up on Highway 6. He had come through a mild load of post-traumatic stuff – better than the clap – but civilian life had not welcomed him. Instead he had signed for Proeliator Security and close protection for a Six officer. She thought he took more pride in wearing the newly washed and ironed T-shirt with the logo of the Jones Boys Band than almost anything else. She read about the birds in the marshes, on either side of Highway 6, that stretched in places to the border dividing Iran from Iraq. Pretty birds, majestic birds, endangered birds, some so small she’d need a telescope to spot them.

On her other side was Corky, not from the south-west of Ireland and County Cork but from the Andersonstown quarter of west Belfast, but there was no logic in acquired military names. He had been mentioned in despatches for his reaction in an ambush in Basra seven years back, and was in awe of her, but he allowed her to help him choose birthday and Christmas gifts for a son in Colchester aged eleven, and a daughter in Darlington, aged five. Her phone vibrated, and she raised her eyebrows – gold, the colour of her hair – lifted it, read the message and cleared it. She had organised the paperwork by which part of his salary was paid by Proeliator Security to each of the mothers. He had the same gear as Hamfist except that his rifle was an M16A1, with a muzzle velocity of 3,200 feet per second and a catastrophic hydrostatic shock effect on tissue when it hit, which Cork swore by. He wore a rumpled T-shirt, camouflage trousers, big wraparound shades, his boots, and was always a tousled mess.

Somewhere behind her, out of view, Harding and Shagger would be on plastic chairs or hunkered on their haunches, ready to go. She knew she merely had to hitch a leg off the lounger and drop the book – Field Guide to the Birds of the Middle East – into her bag, on top of Birds of Iraq, and they would be on their feet. By the time she had draped the towel around her legs and knotted it at the waist, all four would be wearing their flak vests and rucksacks, with their weapons in their hands. When she stood and lifted the bag, Shagger would come forward with her own vest and hold it up so that she could shrug into it. When she quit Baghdad, at the end of this show, took the Six shuttle flight down to Kuwait, then headed for the Towers, she reckoned they would be devastated. Not her problem, but it nagged. She thought often – with relief or ruefully – that the Jones Boys ensured her celibacy. It would be a rare bastard who ambled towards her and began a chat-up routine: Hello there. Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by you again? Or, Excuse me, I’ve left my wallet behind. Do you mind if we share an armoured personnel carrier home? If an officer, American or British, Latvian or Australian, a diplomat or an administrator, had tried to get his hand in her pants, most likely he’d have ended in a Casevac tent. There were times when she ached for She had long legs, tight waist, fair bumps, pretty mouth and a good sun-kissed complexion, but no man. She called quietly, ‘Guys, can you come over? Guys, please.’

She had the four around her. ‘Don’t get me wrong, this is serious and not bull. We’re concerned about the survival prospects of the Basra Reed-warbler – smart name is Acrocephalus griseldis – the Black-tailed Godwit, the Greater Spotted Eagle, the Sacred Ibis, Threskiornis aethiopicus, and a few others, how they’re dealing with drought and what effect renewed oil exploration in their habitat will have. Two supposed surveillance experts are taking off tonight and will hit here tomorrow. The ecogame is the cover. Questions?’

There never were. They relied on her to tell them what they needed to know, and she gave them more than was necessary, which showed her trust in them. In their world, and hers, trust was a big factor, sometimes the biggest.

‘And there’s people we have to see and bits of paper we have to collect. What do I think of it? Doesn’t matter. We’re back, they’re forward and over the frontier, at what you guys call the ‘sharp end’. We’re supposed to be their support, but easier said than done. Rather them than me. It’s all a bit old-fashioned, a bit of a shout from the past – but I’m up for it. Anyway, if the birds get oil on their wings, they’re bollocksed.’

She went to get dressed in the female changing area, where they wouldn’t follow her, and now felt challenged. She sensed she was heading, roller-coaster, towards an end-game more hazardous than anything she had experienced before, and that the risk factor had ratcheted.

The piper played what he assumed was a lament. Their host and his wife were on the front steps. In their foreheads, the positioning of their eyes and the push of their jaws, Foxy Foulkes thought he could read something of the grandson in the photograph. The old man and woman had shaken hands as they’d left. By chance Foxy was last out of the door, and they had gripped his. Might have been because he was the last, or that small morsels had dropped from the table and they knew a little of what was planned in the Iraqi marshlands. Maybe intuition told them that in their home an act of revenge was plotted against someone, anyone, who had worked to kill the grandson who might one day have taken over this pile of damp grey stone. It was grim stuff that the piper played. A light rain fell on his shoulders, and there was a stag in the field that seemed forlorn, lost. The dogs ignored the helicopter and chased furiously after crows that flew away from them. The grandmother held Foxy’s hand and shook it. Foxy didn’t know whether he should thank them for their hospitality or… They willed him forward. A murmur of ‘God keep you safe’ from her and a growl from him: ‘Remember us, and go after them wherever you find them.’ It was all theatre, had a majesty to it – decayed but there – and the piper’s cheeks puffed with his efforts and the dirge was fit for a funeral but went mostly unheard as the rotors gathered speed.

He raised his voice: ‘We’ll do what we can.’

It was rare for Foxy Foulkes to feel that his words, drowned by the helicopter’s engine and the piper’s efforts, were utterly vacuous. Felt it then, could have bitten his lip. What he thought of as banal was a beacon to the couple. He saw their eyes blaze and wetness formed in the grandfather’s. She stood tall and kissed his cheek – roughly shaven that morning in tepid water. He freed his hands and scurried past the piper. The crewman waited on the lawn for him, near to an old rose bed. The others had boarded. He thought the American would have paid in cash for the privilege of using the house and that there would be no paper trail. The helicopter’s flight plans would have been listed as ‘training exercises’ and the flying logs would have perpetuated the lies. There would have been, Foxy realised, elderly men and women the length and breadth of the country who mourned grandsons cut down by the bombs left at the side of a straight road traversing a desert, men and women who had lost children, young women whose husbands had come home in coffins, and children taken to full military funerals who had no father. He was as trapped as if they had taken him to a pathology theatre at the John Radcliffe in Oxford where the corpses were brought, to the military hospital in Birmingham or the Headley Court rehabilitation clinic. He could never have refused. The crewman put a gloved fist under Foxy’s arm and heaved. He flopped into the cabin.

The others were already belted to their seats, and he saw the looks of impatience because he had delayed them – for a minute and a half.

He wondered what he would tell Ellie, what sort of phone call was permitted, how long and how detailed… where the kit would come from, and what the duration of the operation would be. He knew so little and there was an almost infuriating calm about the little beggar sitting across the cabin from him. They were airborne, and there was a view of the once grand house, the couple on the steps who waved, the castle keep, the grey sea, the grey rocks and the shingle beach. Then they smacked into the grey clouds – and the little beggar showed no sign of letting the lack of information fester in him. Of course, he hadn’t been there.

The helicopter shook and the pilot made no concessions to the comfort of his passengers. If ‘Badger’ Baxter had been to Iraq, he might not have been slumped in his seat, apparently relaxed about close support, how near they were expected to get and – Foxy’s knowledge of the language raced in his mind – what the quality of the directional audio would be. Had he been able to reach across the width of the cabin, he might have kicked the little beggar’s shin and wiped the calm off his face. It was his language skills that had done for him.

They powered through dense cloud. The Cousin and the Friend talked into each other’s ears, protectors lifted. Foxy could not read their averted lips. The Boss, Gibbons, sat upright, hands tight on the frame of the canvas seat. Foxy met Badger’s glance. Hadn’t intended to. Was rewarded with a brief smile, as if they were equals and shared authority, responsibility. He wouldn’t tolerate that. They were not equals.

He shivered. Couldn’t help himself. He hoped the thick coat wrapped round him would mask it. He shivered at the thought of the reed beds, the water in the lagoons and channels, the heat and the hatred – and saw again the faces, some bloodied but not pleading, some bruised but not begging, in the interrogation rooms of the Joint Forward Intelligence Team. God help them if they were taken because of the hatred that had been incubated in that fucking place.

He was walking with his daughter when the mobile phone warbled. He let Magda’s hand go, reached into an inner pocket, saw the number and did not recognise it. Few people had his personal phone details, and the majority of those he worked with did not. It was a way to protect his privacy. Had the number been generally available his phone would have controlled his life. He answered.

‘Yes? Steffen…’ There was a pause. A wrong number? He spoke again. ‘This is Steffen.’

It annoyed him. He was a busy man, sometimes almost overwhelmed by the volume of work that his success and reputation brought him, and he valued the moments he spent with his daughter, who was seven. She had been talking about her day at school, the art lesson.

His own number was given by the caller, but not in German: the man spoke in the Farsi of his past. The caller waited.

He repeated, in German. ‘This is Steffen, yes.’

The caller persisted, again in Farsi. Was he not Soheil, the Star? Was his name not Soheil? He called himself Steffen. He was married to Lili, who had been a theatre nurse at the Universitatsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf. From the day of their wedding, he had cut his links with an old world and his history. Lili and her parents had expected it of him, and his patients did not wish to be treated – at a time of personal crisis – by a specialist who was obviously an Iranian immigrant. He had a pale complexion and his German was excellent; the habits and culture of the new identity had been easy to acquire. His wife was blonde and pretty, and his daughter was not obviously mixed-race. They had settled well into the prosperous society of the city they had chosen as their home. His daughter tugged at his arm, wanted his attention.

Again, was he not Soheil, the Star?

It was fourteen years since he had left Tehran. On the day he took the flight to Europe, he had recently qualified at the Tehran University medical school. His talents were such that he had been sent to the neuro-surgery wing of the UKHE to study under the tutelage of a Chefarzt. He had not gone home. He had married, changed his name, had believed he was forgotten – it was now four and a half years since the embassy in Berlin had last contacted him to make certain he was ‘happy and content’ and to tell him that his achievements were watched with pride by those who had provided him with the opportunity to go abroad. Magda tugged harder. He let go of her hand and she sagged back – he thought she might fall.

He could have cut the call. He could have switched off the phone, taken his daughter’s hand, walked on beside the Hansahafen and put the contact out of his mind. He was asked if it was convenient to talk. There was an edge to the voice.

His thoughts meandered: to speak in German or Farsi? To answer to Soheil or demand to be called Steffen?

‘The professor of oncology in Tehran, almost your foster-father, asked to be remembered to you. He is old now, and his wife is in poor health. Times at home are difficult, in what is their country and yours, Soheil. There is violence, and there are difficult people who exercise authority in some areas. The taint of treason is attached to those who befriend the few who distance themselves from the Islamic revolution. Is it convenient to talk?’

He asked for the identity of the caller, and was told he was just a humble functionary at the embassy in Berlin. Magda had gone to the edge of the quay, where there was a drop of three metres to the waterline. She was beside a gap between two traditional sailing boats. He could not shout at her because she might flinch and trip. He remembered the professor who had reared him from the age of nine after his parents, both doctors, had died in a forward medical post, under mortar attack during the battle to liberate Khorramshahr, when tending the wounded. The professor and his wife, childless, had taken the orphan into their home… He understood the nature of the threat to them. He did not contradict and give his German name… He had qualified with the highest marks, was the son of martyred parents and had practised for a year in a slum district of the capital. He had therefore been permitted to study abroad – but had not returned. He answered in his native language. His wife and daughter, his colleagues at the Klinik in Hamburg and the medical school in Lubeck, between which he split his time, understood no Farsi. His daughter reached into his overcoat pocket for the bread they always brought when they walked beside the harbour.

The blunt question: ‘You work in the field of brain tumours?’

‘I do.’

‘There is a procedure called “stereo-tactic”?’

‘It is in my field.’

‘There are cases where a condition is inoperable in conventional surgery, but where stereo-tactic is an alternative?’

‘There are.’

‘You have a high reputation, but you have not forgotten your family’s roots – your parents’ heroism, your foster-father’s sacrifices, the state’s generosity?’

‘What do you want of me?’ His daughter threw bread into the air. Gulls flew close to her, screaming. They had huge predatory beaks.

‘That you see a patient.’

‘For whom nothing can be done in Tehran?’

‘Nothing.’ It was a cold voice. He presumed the patient, terminally ill without a procedure that was always a last resort and fraught with complication, would be a senior man in the clerical or revolutionary hierarchy. ‘We are talking to you because nothing further is possible in Tehran.’

‘The patient would come here or to Hamburg?’ The bread was gone and the child was at his side, tugging his sleeve, and saying loudly that she wanted to go home. She started to pull him towards the Burgtorbrucke, and he let her take him.

‘It is intended the patient would travel.’

‘There are more experienced consultants in Frankfurt, Vienna, Paris and London, men better qualified than I.’

‘We would not have the discretion that we gain from you, the confidentiality. There will be no electronic messages, only brief telephone communication. I will come to visit you, Soheil, when the travel arrangements are complete. I am so glad that I can report your co-operation.’

The call ended. He understood. Discretion and confidentiality were the keys. Perhaps it was a prosecutor with blood on his hands, who now faced his God, would imminently be with Him, and was important enough to demand the full resources of the state to buy him a few more months, or a general in the Revolutionary Guard Corps, or an imam. He could not run from them. He held tight to the little girl’s hand as they crossed the bridge and headed for the fine villa that was their home.

His daughter – also perhaps vulnerable and a weapon to be used against him – sprinted ahead. He shouted at her to slow down, and she turned, wide-eyed, shocked by his anger. He accepted that even here, in his adopted town, he could not be free of them – ever.

He let himself into the office, closed the door behind him and locked it.

She was at her desk. Len Gibbons noted that, in his absence, she had turned her room and the one allocated to him into something that was as much a home as a workplace. She had arranged two small vases of flowers, one on his desk, which he could see through the open connecting door, and one on hers, and a tray for tea-making lay beside the electric kettle, with a biscuit tin. On a wall away from the photographs of bombs, the featureless picture of a target and the enlarged map of the marsh region between the confluence of the rivers and the frontier, she had hung a picture. He smiled as he dumped his bag down and shrugged off his coat. There was a big sky in which birds flew and a long meadow between forests, in which an elephant wandered, a scarlet parrot perched and a deer grazed. In the background, far down the meadow, a robed man led two naked – or near naked – figures.

‘Enlighten me, Sarah.’

‘It’s the Garden of Eden. God’s there with the two innocents. It’s by Jan Brueghel the Elder, painted in 1607. Adam and Eve before the apple upset the cart. Appropriate, I thought. How did it go?’

‘Well.’

‘Are they all right?’

‘We call them Foxy and Badger. They’re probably just about all right.’

He was leaning over his desk, checking the notes she had left him and pitching them into the shredder.

‘Is “all right” good enough?’

He looked up sharply. ‘Has to be. We make do with what’s given us. I must cut my cloth according to my means. Very thoughtful of you, Sarah, as always, and such an appropriate image.’

They were in business class. Foxy said that ‘they’ would have pulled a heavy one – a favour required – with the carrier. They would be up for around six hours on a non-stop flight to Kuwait City. Badger said nothing.

They took off.

Gibbons had seen them into the terminal, then shaken their hands and left. They had carried their bags of one change of clothes – dirty – and washbags to Check-in. Badger reckoned he was expected to carry Foxy’s while the older man did the talking at the desk. He did his own talking, interrupted to make the point, left the bag on the floor and Foxy had had to go back for it.

They went up into the night, and Badger felt more gut knots than he’d ever known. Beside him Foxy was biting hard at his lip and was close to drawing blood. Badger didn’t like to be afraid: it unsettled him.