Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 9

He sat in the car, engine ticking over, and waited for the queue to nudge towards the ferry.

Andy Knight felt the pressure build, heavier than it had on Phil Williams and weightier than on Norm Clarke, could not have directly answered why this time was harder. Would have liked a drink, but had not had one since leaving the common and his conversation with the veteran sergeant who had successfully read him, and he would not have one now. Alcohol did not sit easily with those living the lie. Remembered the bar of the pub up the road from the Newbury over-spill, but had not been there since enrolling into SC&O10… He’d assumed that he would be watched into the port and that they would have picked him up approaching the check-in process. They’d have been likely to determine he’d no last minute debrief from controllers, was only a boyfriend with eyes on a long weekend with a girl.

No protection on the boat, of course. No firearm in the car, of course. No baton, no gas and no spray; what he needed to safeguard him was the authenticity of his cover and its ability to withstand scrutiny… He would have a shit drive ahead of him and would try to sleep as much as possible in a recliner – and not dream. It nagged at Andy that the sergeant had ‘pinged’ him. He crawled forward, had the radio on, soft music – what the pub might have played. He rarely drank. Some of them in the animal crowd drank alcohol but most could not afford it and anyway preferred to smoke. The people ferrying dope around the southern counties were rarely drunk and had the wit to stay sober, stay alert, watch their bags, had a paranoia for maintaining security. In both lives he had fabricated a medical reason for staying off hooch, something about an allergy that was half concocted and half downloaded from the net. Did another few yards along the ramp, and the lowered bridge was just ahead. In the Marines he had taken his good share of ‘bevvies’, and in the early police days he had been ‘bladdered’ when coming off shift like all the other young guys and some of the young girls. The abstinence had come down like a guillotine blade… he had never liked to drink in private, alone and solitary, but yearned often enough for the warmth, camaraderie, of the pub up the road from his parents.

That was the Fox and Hounds. The usual cross-section of professionals and tradesmen and loafers with the layabouts. Did a fair cheese sandwich, had a proper log fire, had live music on a Friday. The joy of it was walking inside and not reaching the bar before his name was shouted out and smiles greeted him, and money was on the counter for his first drink of the evening. An old name and no longer used, consigned to a bin. There would be guys there, and the regular bar staff, who might wonder ‘what ever happened to… .?’, and they might see his mother out walking the dog, or might know his father from the school where he taught and ask them ‘Haven’t seen… around, any news?’, and trawl for an answer but not get it. His parents knew no more of him than the clientele of the Fox and Hounds. The drinkers would have been puzzled but his parents would have been wounded. Probably thought that some dispute separated them. The best he had said, one Sunday evening some five years ago, had been a caustic explanation, holding no water: he had been called away to ‘special duties’. He was off and gone. Through the front door, a slap on his father’s back and a peck on his mother’s cheek, and no further explanation and all done with a brusque rudeness because that was a better way of severing the link. Then, to the pub and one big round that had drained his wallet, one drink only and heading for the door on a cold night and feeling the frost forming on his face, and turning round, ‘See you, guys,’ and getting into his car, heading off into darkness. Had never been back and had never phoned his parents. He did not know whether his legends had held so well as Phil and as Norm and as Andy, that no check had ever reached that far, that the cover had stayed strong. Worst of it was the angst that he’d given his parents, who had done nothing that deserved that treatment… not proud, but the job came at a price, a high one. He had heard from the instructors in that long run of preparation that there were a few who tried to – as it was put – ‘run with the hare, run with the dogs’, and had a wife and children at home, had friends down in the town who seemed to accept that one year he was clean shaven and with a tidy haircut, and the next year he had grown a wispy beard and had greased hair staining his shirt collar. Better to make the clean break, could have been tracked, followed and stalked and seen going in through the bungalow’s front door, and then they were at risk, could have been petrol-bombed and could have been beaten. Spared them the risk, and the upset they’d have felt was cheap return for the absence of danger.

He was waved forward, drove slowly into the boat, came close to the loader who brought him the last few inches. He cut the engine. He sat for a moment. Should have felt brighter, livelier, was exhausted.

She walked well, felt confident, important.

She was the little girl from Dewsbury, and she came off the Eurostar and hitched her bag on her shoulder, had her shoulders back and her stride long, and she headed for the Metro. She would need the link to Gare de Lyon. A soldier stared at her, and raised his eyebrow a fraction, then looked away.

A puff of pride filled Zeinab.

There were four in the patrolling group. They threaded through the swarm of passengers on the concourse. They had camouflaged uniforms, and carried lightweight infantry rifles and one had a radio set strapped on his back and it was topped with a wobbling aerial. Their heads, all of them, were close shaven and berets were precariously balanced on their skulls. Their battle helmets were hooked to their belts. The soldier might have been from a north African background, and the texture of his skin was the same as hers. He had caught her eye, made contact, and had thought her worth the gesture of the cocked eyebrow, then had looked away, had resumed scanning the people hurrying about their business, eating, gazing at information boards, keeping children happy. The soldier knew nothing… it was the extent of her deception that bred the pride… might have been close to arrogance.

It was always said in Dewsbury, whispered among women in the privacy of their homes, that the parents of the children who had volunteered themselves as martyrs – or had taken the long journey through Turkey to enlist in the caliphate forces – did not know. It was the perceived truth that parents, uncles and aunts, family friends, school teachers – and the imams – had no suspicion as to what their kids were learning on the internet, what they intended for their future. She had seen, in streets close to home and under the shadow of the great minaret of the Merkazi, doors that had been broken down at dawn by the police arrest teams. Long after the wagons had gone, taking the teenagers or young men, neighbours, friends and relatives had called to offer solace, sympathy, support, and would have had the same answer – with tedious repetition – that they did not know. The pride, what gave the spring in her step, was because she had deceived her mother and father, the student kids on her landing, her tutor, all of them and had a mask across her face that served her well. The extent of the deception thrilled her, and she found the entrance to the correct Metro line. There had been armed police wandering among the benches and past the shop fronts at the London end of the Eurostar, but the sight of regular soldiers was security taken to a different level… she had no idea how it would be. She flashed a ticket and went down an escalator and followed signs.

No idea what it would be like to face troops down the length of a station corridor, or across a concourse at an airport, along the aisles in the shopping centre in Manchester. She imagined that above the noise of screaming shoppers or passengers, would be the shouting of the soldiers. The young one who had raised an appreciative eyebrow at the sight of her, would have had a good voice coming from a strong chest, would have tried to dominate her with its authority. The chance that he – any of them – had ever fired in anger before, shot to kill, was negligible. Nor would she have if it were her, Zeinab from Savile Town who nobody knew of, if she had the Kalashnikov. She sat on a train and it rolled into the darkness of a tunnel. Shouting and screaming around her, and the hammer of her heart and the panting of her breathing, and the finger on the trigger… it was that sense of excitement that gripped her. And she was trusted… not just by Krait and Scorpion, but the older man and the one with the scars on his neck… and she was the enemy that was not recognised.

She remembered how it had been at home. Weeping from her mother, abuse from her father, and doors slammed in their fury, impotent, when she had announced that she would leave home and go to university across the Pennines, and neither had realised that it was part of her march towards this new role, chosen by her, to be a fighter… With the weapon in her hand, could she have aimed at that soldier, seen his face, seen his eyes, seen the shake of the barrel’s tip, and fired at him? She had no doubt of it.

Liberated… in good time for her train to the south… free.

‘I will treat you, of course, with respect, and listen to your requests, but…’

They had been escorted to the second floor of the city’s police headquarters, L’Évêché, and might have come from another planet, a different civilisation, from the way their ID and passports had been scanned at the ground-floor reception desk.

‘… I have a full schedule, and your approach comes outside the correct protocols. I run the affairs, criminal, of the northern sector of France’s second city. Am I supposed to end normal duties, and go back to them when you have finished your assignment?’

In the taxi from the airport, Pegs had suggested some initial ‘bluster’ was predictable, and the man they’d meet would soon soften. She had launched into her schoolgirl French, and made a fair fist. He was a major, and had replied in flawless English, and both she and Gough had ducked their heads in appreciation. So it had started on a poor footing.

She said, ‘Any help that we can have would be gratefully received.’

They had been brought up to the office via a creaking elevator and then along gloomy painted corridors; men and women, some in uniform gazed at them as if they were an alien force… probably justified. Gough was familiar with French investigators coming to London who received short shrift in terms of welcome, and cooperation with the Italians was rationed more tightly, barely existed for the Germans. The Major was behind a small desk in a spartan office and both of his visitors were perched on hard chairs. There was a family photograph on a wall, him with a wife and a child, another of the Republic’s current President, and a map that his eyes had wandered to that showed the northern sector of the city. On his desk were a screen and a keyboard and model cars in the livery of the carabinieri and the New York City police, and a toy wagon in the colours of the Guardia Civil. Against a wall was a hatstand that doubled as a coat-hanger, and it was skewed at an angle under the weight of a harness for a shoulder holster, pistol included, and a flak-jacket… at Wyvill Road there were no firearms on display, and protective vests were issued from stores in the cramped basement. No coffee offered but Gough thought that was an oversight, not rudeness. By his feet was the duty-free bottle in a plastic bag that he had protected through the journey, and the building’s security procedures.

The Major answered her. ‘I have delayed a meeting this afternoon to see you. When we have finished I go to that. Then we have the end of the day – I go home. Perhaps tomorrow we can look more fully at the situation confronting you… Where are we? You are working on codeword “Rag and Bone”, you believe a weapon is to be brought by a new route into this city, you believe also that this is a test run for future shipments. You have an Undercover trailing a female target – except that he and you have lost her. You are confident of regaining contact. It is vague, yes? One weapon, yes? Perhaps only one – or two or three. A very few. A trial, and the hope that if the system is satisfactory more will be ordered, and you are nervous that extremely potent weapons will replace knives on your streets. We know about such firearms, we have that experience, and Marseille is awash with assault rifles… But you do not know the contact with whom the female target deals. You don’t…’

Gough said, never good with words and not crisp, not slick, ‘We want to – hope to be able to – have the target and our boy take delivery, then drive it across your country to a ferry port in the north, and our intention is to have people, our people, on the boat who can fix a tracker, a tracking bug, inside the stock – or several, whichever – and we will then follow it. We intend, hope, to uncover – through the bug – a network.’

Pegs said, to the point and brief, ‘Getting the bug in represents success for us… We have a duty of care.’

‘As we do.’

‘We must provide protection.’

‘And myself also… Recently, I had investigators inside one of the housing projects and to get them there, with the possibility of making a significant narcotics arrest, we had those officers, men, dressed in the female style, a burqa full veil, but behind them I had a fast response unit, a dozen men from the GIPN. Never more than four hundred metres away, and a limited incursion into that area. But you understand the manpower required to safeguard an officer. You appreciate?’

‘I appreciate it.’

‘Any trade in weapons involves the senior echelon of a principal crime clan… It may be that you do not know our city. We have serious players, they have a reputation for grave cruelty, excessive violence, and they settle disputes in a barbaric way. Last night a boy who had transgressed the rules of his gang was burned alive in a vehicle fire. Horrific… Do we have informants who tell us who was responsible, where there is evidence to be gathered? We do not. Not even the kid’s mother will talk to us… The people your target will need for association, to take delivery, are spare with morality, live in districts known for their barbarity… That is where your target may go, and your Undercover, I presume, will not be far behind. I cannot provide the necessary force, open-ended, for you… and anywhere in the city, any place, they have the arm’s reach to touch. I am sorry but…’

‘Well, fuck this for a game of dominoes.’

She interrupted. He stopped in mid-flow, and a frown broke on his forehead and he looked across at her as she ducked down below the level of his desk. Gough felt her hand grope at his socks, his shoes, then there was a rustle as her grip caught the plastic bag. She heaved it up.

‘Going nowhere,’ she said. Round in circles and nowhere.

The plastic bag was slapped down on the table. It had been paid for from the float of petty cash received from the accountant down the corridor and beyond Three Zero Nine. Good quality whisky, ten years old.

She mimicked a formal response: ‘Don’t want, “I really cannot accept that, it is against our code of ethics to accept gifts in return for favours done. I am sorry, I cannot.” Don’t want that shit.’

Gough said, ‘We are all professionals, all trying to do a bloody difficult job. The old saying, “Better we hang together than hang separately.” We did a bit of work, know about you, know why you were transferred down here, know of endemic corruption in the Brigade anti-criminalité, know all that. Know how difficult it is, and that it’ll all get worse before it gets worse. I understand your position.’

Pegs said, ‘It’s called Rag and Bone because the target comes from a town that used to be the capital market-place in UK for the rag trade. Great heaps of stained or filthy or discarded rags, a couple of centuries ago – back in history. Where we are today, living in the past, and hemmed in with bloody regulations. Guarding our precious territory… Come on, Goughie, getting nowhere and bloody fast.’

Gough said, ‘Sorry and all that for wasting your time, Major. Hope your meeting goes well.’

Pegs said, ‘We don’t intend, not on our watch, if we can possibly help it, to let the bastards win. Have a nice evening, Major, and enjoy the drink.’

The telephone rang and was picked up. Pegs was standing, taking her coat off the back of the chair. The Major listened, impassive. Gough stood, saw the dusk coming fast through the window, and saw also that uniformed men – overalls, vests, firearms, helmets – were running from the building to their vehicles. The phone was put down.

The Major was behind them, had dragged on his harness and holster, then his coat, then his vest, and was pushing Gough to the door and using a free hand to pull Pegs along with him.

Out in the corridor, and more men and women stampeded ahead and behind them. The Major said, ‘Whatever is “fuck this for a game of dominoes”, I would like to show you how matters play in our city, and maybe where you wish to put your Undercover, and why I am a busy man.’

A smile had broken on his face, and they moved well and Pegs hitched up her skirt higher so that she went faster. Didn’t bother with the lift, careered down the stairs. Gough panted but kept up. In the yard, no ceremony, they were pitched into a wagon. No explanation. The sirens started.

Why? Because a gang in Saint-Barthélemey had screwed up. A car had speared from a side turning and come into the traffic flow, scattering a group of scooter riders.

How? The gang had screwed up by losing the cash required for payment of a consignment already delivered. How was it ‘lost’? The sum of 120,000 euros, which would meet the necessary payment to a Morocco-based group, had been in the hands of the gang treasurer and he had vanished, was a memory, a fleeting shadow, and might now be in the north of France or anywhere in Germany or might be in the Netherlands where there was a sizable and well-established Somali community. When? Had all happened in the last 72 hours, and the very minimum that the Somalis remaining in Saint-Barthélemey needed – by that evening or dawn the following morning at the very latest – was a clear 100,000. What? The answer, as determined by the Somalis, was to get their hands on that sort of money in that sort of time-frame: not easy, required good planning and good intelligence. Which? It was important they understood, without doubt, which gang of Moroccan suppliers had delivered and was now waiting for payment. They would not be easily fobbed off with a promise of meeting the debt ‘as soon as was possible’. The Somalis would be dead. Death would not be easy. Dying would be hard and painful… A way out was finding cash, bank notes – credit was not issued to those Somalis – and taken to a rendezvous up beyond Saint-Antoine at a viewpoint in the hills that overlooked the city and the harbour. Had to be there… or face war. The Somalis did not have the fire-power to survive such a feud.

The car had skidded to the far side of the road and a back door had opened and one guy out fast, armed with a pistol, and sprinted towards a scooter, a Peugeot that seemed on its last legs, ready for a breakers’ yard.

Who else had that amount of money that might be available? Which other group? Not ring-fenced in security, vulnerable? Gossip, rumour, masquerading as intelligence, identified a guy in the neighbouring project of La Castellane who ran a good stairwell, made a decent profit, and moved his takings either himself by powerful motorcycle, or using his crippled brother to take a satchel to a Credit Union. To fight another gang was high risk, but the alternatives for the Somalis were probably harsher. Those escorting the Peugeot, seeing the pistol, fled down the street.

The scooter was on its side and, under it, its full weight pinioning him, was the courier, the strap of a satchel over his shoulder and the bag, bulging with cash, beneath him.

The Somali with the pistol had reached the boy trapped under his Peugeot scooter, the boy did not have the strength in his free arm to shift the machine’s weight, to extricate himself and try to make his escape, with the satchel. Down the road the Somali’s car waited, the door still open. It was not a part of the northern sector of Marseille, the 14th arrondissement, where another motorist would intervene; certainly no pedestrians on the pavement would be so lunatic as to involve themselves.

The boy pinioned to the road was Karym.

It was one of those moments when any individual – young or old, brave or not, heroic or cowardly – was faced with two options and must make a choice. The pistol was waved at him. The satchel was demanded. The Somali stood above him. It was a Somali confronting a Tunisian, no one else’s business. Now the pistol was aimed at him. The boy was thin, with a concave chest, brittle legs and skeletal arms, and a gaunt, unhealthy narrow face, no spare flesh and his belt loose at the waist, and no evidence of strength. The options beckoned at him. The Somali might have been five years older than Karym, with a fuller fatter face. Traffic was going round them, hooters blasting, and the sound of the horn of the car parked down the road outside the internet café. No one, no school teacher who had ever had charge of him, had ever accused Karym of stupidity; everyone acknowledged a keen mind that could focus attention on what interested him, like a pistol did. The Somali was shouting and his free hand reached towards Karym and took hold of the strap. Looking into each other’s eyes, snarling, full of loathing and defiance. Karym managed to get traction with his feet, but could not lift the bulk of the Peugeot scooter. But he could propel it up and over with the use of his feet.

He pushed and heaved, and could see every stitch in the collar of the Somali’s shirt, and the design of his track-suit bottoms and the embossed badge of Real Madrid on his fleece, and the scratches on the barrel of the pistol, and the nails of the fingers clutching it, and the forefinger wrapped on the trigger, inside the guard. He could see all that, and thrust with his legs… and could see the face of his brother, and the pride spreading and the praise, and the respect that would come to him in his quarter of La Castellane, and would walk tall… he saw all that. The bike rose, then slewed over and wavered, and the Somali dived to get a better grip on the strap, and the Peugeot fell again, and two-stroke fuel was sloshing on the tarmac. The weight of the scooter, well in excess of a hundred kilos, came down on the Somali’s ankle, and the snap was as clear as a lightweight gunshot, and the break would have been complete. The protruding bone lifted the track-suit leg, there was blood, and the boy howled.

The car that was to have taken away the Somali, happily clutching the stolen satchel, pulled out and disappeared down the hill. The kids on the scooters who had been given the job of escorting Karym, were close enough to see the pistol, and to hear the scream, and stayed back. The Tunisian and the Somali were entwined. Might have been a couple of kids enjoying an illicit coupling. Arms and legs were spread and locked, and the scooter’s bulk crushed them, and the pain must have been too acute for the Somali boy to shout for long. Neither moved. The pistol was steady, its fore-sight lodged in a slim fold of skin on Karym’s throat. The street had cleared.

There were no men and women hurrying past on the pavement, and no cars, buses, vans; just the scrape of metal shutters being pulled down, and then silence as radios and TVs were switched off; a crowd watched from both ends of the street, from windows and from darkened doorways. The pain must have come in surges along the Somali’s leg, and he would have writhed because he could not contain the agony of the break, and his hand holding the pistol began to shake and the sharp fore-sight gouged deeper into Karym’s flesh but he did not dare struggle… as if the courage he had mustered to kick over the scooter and pitch it on to the Somali’s leg was all that he could manage and his bravery was exhausted.

It was a groan melded with a whisper. ‘Call them, the car.’

No response from Karym.

‘Call them, I told you, call my brothers.’

Karym looked. It had been a blur of movement when the car had come out of the side street and had ploughed into the little pack of scooters heading down the hill towards the Credit Union branch. They did the same journey three or four times a month; on other occasions it was done by Hamid on his Ducati Monster. Hamid would have assumed that no one from another project would know how he stashed his money, and that no rival group inside La Castellane would have threatened his cash. Karym had seen the car come out, and expected it to brake hard, had expected to give the driver a taste of his tongue and a finger of derision, and it had kept on coming and its fender had nudged his rear wheel… They would have to shoot him to get their hands on the satchel. He looked down the street, along the deserted pavement and the empty road. He seemed to remember what model the car had been, what colour, but could not find it.

‘Call them. I told you, call them.’

Looked again, and did not see it.

‘What I fucking told you, shout for them, wave for them.’

The Somali’s face was a few centimetres from Karym’s and he thought he struggled to hold back tears, and the pain would have come in rivers. Would have been like the pain felt by the kid in the car, trussed, seeing the flames around him and feeling the scorching heat. Karym thought he tried his best, and pushed his head up for a better view but that motion would have shifted the Somali’s leg and made the agony worse. He could not see the car.

‘There is no car.’

‘Call it.’ A gasped voice in his ear.

‘Can’t. It’s not there. Gone. Run out on you.’

The Somali fired the pistol. The bullet would have impacted on the road close to Karym’s head, then ricocheted away, and the secondary sound was its impact into metal shutters. A world of silence fell around Karym. The guy still shouted but Karym heard nothing. The face confronting him was contorted, and he was hit with the pistol across the face, but he did not hear what was shouted at him. Spittle frothed at the Somali’s mouth as he yelled.

The sound that Karym could hear was faint, distant, but all his life in the La Castellane project he had known the sounds of police sirens. The Somali fired again, towards the noise. Very slightly, Karym moved his head and could see up the street and the cars and vans with blue lights blocking each direction. He held tight to his satchel, to his brother’s money.

The Margarethe pitched and rolled but made progress.

The captain called for a greater effort from his engineer, reminding him that he had a schedule to keep to. Far out in the Mediterranean sea the visibility was poor and there was a vicious wind from the south causing the Margarethe to buck among the white-capped waves. Would the engine take the strain of the speed needed? The engineer was not a man who committed himself lightly. Watching his pounding machine, clinging to a handrail, he gave an answer that he reckoned was unwise, but which was welcome.

‘It will be all right. We will be there. Off that coastline west of Marseille. It is not a problem, but it will be a rough ride.’

And spat on the deck, and did not know what was so important in a general cargo that an exact timetable must be met… had an idea that contraband would figure in any answer. And it would be good to reach, after the earlier rendezvous in darkness, the harbour of the city, where they were to due spend 36 hours – where there was a good cat-house, Scandinavian kids and clean, near the market and off the Canebière – and then they would sail for Cadiz… but the only tight time reckoning was for the following night. Two of the crew were vomiting, would be useless if they came to sail the Biscay. It was good to carry contraband because then bonuses were paid.

They were alone, no other ships’ lights in sight, when the captain turned them to the north where the weather would be more challenging, but give them the most direct route to the French coast.

August 1982

‘Is this crap one fit for purpose, Shlom?’

‘We were asked for five hundred, and that’s what you’re getting.’

One was from the junior ranks of the Mossad, Shlomo, and the other was from the Agency, Dean. The Israeli and the American were in a hangar of the air force base that was located far out in the sand and at the back end of nowhere, south of Beersheba. Together they were loading wooden crates with Kalashnikov rifles, with empty magazines and filled ammunition boxes. Their work constituted an act of foreign policy and one seen to benefit the governments of both nations. Their supply would tweak the nose of a familiar adversary, a more appropriate analogy might be the lighting of a firework under the ample arse of the Soviet Union. The Israelis were the suppliers, and the weapons had come the previous evening from Defence Force reserve stocks, and the Americans were the purchasers, generous, and they were headed for distant Afghanistan, where a mujahideen force was in full-scale combat with the military power deployed by Moscow. The American queried one in particular.

‘Looks like it came out of the Ark.’

‘We fell back on some creative accounting, but it was test fired.’

‘You saying it’ll work, do the business?’

‘Not pretty – but it performed. It works and it’ll kill.’

The great majority of them might never have been used in any life and death fight, might have been chucked away or dropped in the sand as troops, short of food and desperate for water, retreated only to find they faced the barrier of the Suez Canal and had not the kit to cross it. White flags had been hoisted. Most had not a mark on them. One was different, the equivalent, the American thought, of a well-used spade from his parents’ garden shed. He imagined they’d have been short of the contracted numbers and had scoured the store for the last few, rubbish, but still able to shoot. And they were required to make a full inventory of the goods.

‘What number we got for it? Do you understand why I need to have the serials of each one of these? I mean what crazy mother said we had to list the numbers?’

‘Try this – some guy’s handwriting is shit – try something, something, something, 260, then 167, then 51. You have it?’

As they went into the opened crate, three already filled, the Israeli sang out the necessary digits and the American wrote them down. This was basic foot soldiers’ kit, and already rumours had splayed out that there might in the future be suppliers of sophisticated stuff going in the same direction: ground to air man-portable missiles that would interrupt the safe flights of the attack helicopters that the Soviets flew, but in the meantime it would be assault rifles in the hands of fighters and a message sent that their true friends were the American people… A delightful irony that the accusation of collusion was masked by the supply of Soviet-made and designed hardware… choice, and amusing.

‘Have it. I mean, think what’s happening to them, where they’re going, and imagine a bean counter in Langley, Virginia, keeping a watch, making sure that our investment is put to proper use. That the only one of the museum pieces?’

‘The rest are Egyptian, from the Yom Kippur. There’s a bigger stock of them but they’re being held back for further shipments. You people want to see the guys getting them are staying onside.’

‘I seen them close up – no lie, they are fearsome.’

The television showed them occasionally, but the American had been there. Had been a bag carrier, protection for one of the Agency’s senior staffers who was lifted into Afghanistan, not far but over the border, and had made a rallying speech. The American could remember the hard, hairy, tribesmen who had squatted on their haunches and had listened without expression as they were urged to get stuck into a war – a proxy one – and he thought he had recognised men to whom mercy in the field was not considered. Had actually said to the big cheese: ‘Thank the good Lord it’s not us that’s facing that lot and getting them angry, miserable sons of fuckers.’ And his senior had responded: ‘But that’s not going to happen, and they’ll do a good job for us.’

‘Awesome, bad people to mess with.’

‘Enough people have fouled up there. You’d have thought the Soviets would have read history. I’m not weeping tears.’

‘They’ll survive the journey in?’

‘They get a hell of a ride before they start hitting for real. The same with the mortars and machine-guns we had off you.’

The aircraft that the Agency were using had landed at the base a couple of hours earlier, and would now be refuelled and ready for the next leg. A long loop would take it through Saudi air space, and then over Pakistan where it would veer north and cross the southern Afghan border above the mountains of Tora Bora. It would then start a corkscrew descent and come to a pre-designated plateau and flares would guide it and radio signals from guys already on the ground. The crates and medical equipment would be heaved out of the tail of the transport and would flutter down on parachutes.

‘The Kalashnikov has a powerful reputation, and earned . .’

‘Heh, that old one… you see the stock, what’s on it?’

‘What am I looking at?’

‘There’s a gouge out of it, look below that, look at those marks… Those are kills. This rifle, it’s done a bit of heavy lifting. Done its business.’

On the ground, the crates would be split up into lighter loads, put on to the backs of sure-footed, pig-obstinate mules and would go farther north where the mountains were inhospitable to Russian infantry forces, and impassable to heavy armour. The tribesmen would attempt to evade the high-flying helicopters, and along the trail of precipitous paths the weapons would be distributed. The new business would likely involve ambushes of Soviet caravans moving along the narrow, winding roads that linked their base camps.

‘Too right, and where it’s going it’ll do some more.’

The top was fastened on the last crate and the nail hammer sealed it. A fork-lift would carry it out to the aircraft where straps would go round it, and a parachute attached, and if the landfall was good then the kit would be ready to go, do some killing.

‘Do you need to answer it?’ Menace in the voice.

Hamid said that he did not.

‘If you need to answer it, you do that. What you do not do is dither with me, listen to what I say, look at your phone, answer what I say, look at your phone. Always your fucking phone. Do I look at my phone?’ Tooth had an ability, considerable, to speak softly, as if in conversation and to imply infinite threat.

The texts were jumping on to Hamid’s phone screen. The gutless little shites who had ridden with his brother – useless and incompetent – were sending them. Nothing from Karym.

Tooth had summoned him to a small open space overlooking the north side of the harbour, beyond the fortified position of Saint-Nicolas. The garden was named after the Resistance fighter, Missak Manouchian, who had been betrayed, arrested and shot by firing squad with 22 colleagues at a gaol in Paris. His bust was on a plinth. Hamid believed, had no reason to doubt it, that Tooth did very little that was not planned and thought out. The meeting in the garden was not by chance, or convenience. Tooth had explained. The fighter had not been captured because of the skill of the Gestapo officers, but because of treachery, one of his own. Hamid understood. As clear as any lecture, was the message that treachery and betrayal was the greatest crime. A traitor, a betrayer, had nowhere to run, would be hunted down, would die badly. The message was simply put… they had then talked about the arrangements to be made.

He had been listening, simultaneously examining the bird droppings on the head of the executed fighter, when his first text had come. The kids with Karym had fled. They had abandoned his brother, had also abandoned the satchel his brother carried, full of cash. To be in the presence of a man of the reputation such as Tooth’s was a matter of esteem for Hamid. To have been chosen by Tooth was a step forward in his career that Hamid had not dreamed of, and he was being scolded as his mother might once have done. He would not have taken the soft-spoken criticism from any other man in the city, certainly not from the biggest personality in La Castellane. Tooth was on a higher level.

He shrugged, said vacantly, ‘They come the whole time. A message and another message and another and… I had a problem.’

‘Always better if a problem is shared. You wish to tell me?’

‘I have a brother, a kid.’

‘You have a brother, and you go to a meeting that is important to you, and you are on your phone which is insulting – and you have a kid brother.’

‘He was ambushed, in the fourteenth arrondissement.’

‘Why was he ambushed?

‘He was carrying money. He was knocked off his scooter by a car. He was in the road. The people who ambushed him are Somalis and from Saint Barthélemey. But the scooter fell on one of them, and has broken his leg.’

‘And now?’

‘My brother is in the road, still has my money. On top of him is a Somali with a pistol but he cannot move. On top of them both is a scooter. The street is blocked by the police. The kid with the pistol is hysterical. Look… please…’

Hamid showed pictures from his phone. Blurred, indistinct, a mess of legs and arms and what could have been a head, and an empty road and a scooter on its side with one wheel sticking up.

‘How much is the money?’

‘A hundred thousand euro. It is half a week’s trade.’

‘Are you more concerned for your brother’s life, or for your money?’

He did not answer, did not wish to lie. His arm was punched, surprisingly painful because the fist was bony and angular, and it was meant to hurt.

‘It is in place, what will happen, our business… I like a man who understands what is a priority – you should hope that your brother survives, and you should do what you can to safeguard your money, and there is me, myself – Tooth. Above all, you delay going to your brother, and you delay concerning yourself with your money because you have to talk with me, you show flattering respect.’

Hamid stood, turned away, and heard a mocking cackle of laughter behind him.

They were left. Ignored, not brought coffee nor bread rolls, nor told what was the plan, not given any real indication as to why they were there.

Pegs shared her peppermints with Gough. She said that she found the situation ‘stimulating’ and he said – chewing his mint – that it ‘set the juices flowing’. They did not complain, nor seek to attract attention.

It was, to Gough, a classic scene… The kid who was underneath, spine wedged down on the road, moved every few minutes but only very slightly, and sometimes was shouted at and sometimes received a cuffing from the pistol when he did so. He was alive, seemed unhurt and did not cry out and had taken the wise course of simply staying still and silent and waiting for others to take action. Gough had done sieges before as a young man, standoffs when a hostage taker had a weapon at the head of an unfortunate: Irish sieges and those in London with PIRA men, also a bank situation, and he could fault neither the actions of the police as he saw them, nor those of the youngster at the bottom of the pile. Different position for the youth above him and squashed down because of the weight of the scooter. The youth, with the smooth chocolate skin of a Somali, was suffering. He shouted often and Pegs translated what she understood – the obscenities graphically repeated – and had cause to shout because his track-suit was rucked up on his right leg and the wound was clear to see. If the kid were to be treated as a human being then he needed to chuck away the pistol and get a shot of morphine, and if he needed to be treated as vermin then he needed finishing, the way a motorist would go to his car boot having stopped after hitting a deer or a badger on a country road and extract from the tool-box the heaviest wrench and bash it on the head and end the misery.

Pegs said, ‘I’m cold, Goughie, and I’m hungry, and need to piss… The kid says that he wants a car out, no police tricks, no prosecution, and he’ll let his prisoner go free, wants a guarantee of immunity – or he’s going to shoot, kill his prisoner. Sounds as if he might just do that… hopefully it won’t happen while I’m looking for that piss.’

The scene was easy to monitor because the police had brought up floodlights, taken power from a first-floor apartment, dropped cables from a window, and had made daylight. She’d gone. Gough was wrapped in his thoughts and supposed there was a benefit in being given a front row, stalls view, and he heard a murmur behind him. Started soft and grew. Like the rumble of water on a shingle beach and repetitive but louder as the time advanced. He tried to identify it – then reckoned it was a name. A car door slammed, he heard boots on the tarmac behind him… the kid down the road was calling louder and with a shriller voice and the message seemed the same, but he did not have Pegs to interpret. The Major came past him, made no contact, and there was a soft exchange of voices. He had identified the murmur, and thought the name repeated was ‘Samson’. He could not comprehend why there was importance in that name, what was signified. Gough didn’t care to rubber-neck, but he turned his head with discretion. The murmur was a whisper, was a call, and it spread among the police who manned the cordon, and from the upper windows where the residents hung out to seek a better view down the street, and from those who were kept back on the pavement but would have a garbled view. And Samson…

… Gough watched him. Boots tied tight in a hurry with the laces out of kilter. Crumpled overalls and a vest that was not fastened close to the body, and a balaclava that was blue, not the uniform black, and he carried a rifle easily as if it were no more important to him than a handbag to a woman. Gough did not have the knowledge to identify the type or its origin, but mounted on it was a telescopic sight. The sound of the kid’s shout reached them, and the Major was deep in conversation with the marksman, with Samson. He nodded curtly and he left the Major, and his head twisted and his eyes would have been roving for vantage-points.

Peggy was back at his side. She had ended up in an alley, in darkness, best she could manage and still no food or drink. She cocked her head, listened, heard the screams of the kid with the pistol, told Gough it was about more threats to send his prisoner off to his maker.

She said, ‘Beats staying in and watching television. He’s something of a celebrity, apparently. Has a list of kills to his name. I asked a plod when I came out of the alley… Samson did the head-chopping during the Revolution, was an executioner… we’re being shown what’s real here, Gough, getting the lesson force-fed. So that we know our place. Don’t chuck our weight around and expect them to jump.’

They waited. The kid with the pistol made more threats and fired in the air… and the lone figure, Samson, had slipped away, not hurrying, had disappeared into dense shadow, and they’d lost him. Would he actually do it, aim the pistol on to his prisoner’s forehead, pull the trigger, leave himself without a shield, or would he cop out? The kid would have to gamble, like Gough did. He gambled all the time, and with other lives… and he wondered how they did, the girl and his Level One, and where they’d reached.

Zeinab slept.

She had a backpacker beside her. He was a New Zealander and had a badge of his country’s flag stitched on the upper sleeve of his jacket. Probably her age, within a few months, and wanting to talk, and he had not enjoyed a shower that day, might not have had one for two days or three, and he had offered her water from his bottle. He told her – whether she wanted to hear or not – that he was between Heidelberg and Lyon, and after a few days in the south of France would be going to London, then the north where his family had relations, and… she declined his water. Was she a frequent traveller, did she know the French rail system, had she been to Germany, or to Athens, or Buda-Pest, Prague, the concentration camp at Auschwitz, did she want something to eat because he was going to the buffet? Did not tell him that far from skitting around Europe she had never been further by train than the one-hour journey from Dewsbury to Manchester, had never been to London before this journey, and had been nervous of negotiating the Metro system in Paris, said none of that. He was built big and overlapped his seat and his elbow was across her armrest, and the carriage was fully booked… was he an enemy?

They had pulled out from Gare de Lyon. He had gone for food from the buffet, and had seemed moderately hurt that she wanted nothing.

He had the window seat and she had the aisle. She could hardly pretend to be asleep and then be woken to let him ease past her. He might have been walking in a mall when he came to the north of England, buying socks or underpants, and be confronted with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, and neither she, nor Krait nor Scorpion, could stop and eliminate him from the line of fire – big New Zealand boy who was likely a drop-out from a chemistry or geography course at a local college. Everyone, each last one, walking along the aisle of the mall was an enemy. Could not look into their faces, not engage them and make a judgement, shoot straight or aim off. Could not… He came back.

She shifted, and the backs of his thighs were close to dropping into her lap, and his arm brushed her chest, and his jeans had slipped and showed the skin of his lower back and the start of cleavage, and he dropped into his seat, and thanked her for showing patience. He had a happy look on his face because he had found a girl to sit with, and one who spoke his language. He presented her with a bar of chocolate, just a gift, and it came with a bovine, silly smile. They were all enemies, had to be. If some were not enemies then she had lost the necessary determination, was a fraud, should not have been chosen – and had betrayed the cousins she had known in Savile Town.

She refused the chocolate. She turned away from him and closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, and he ate from a bread roll of ham and salad, and crumbs fell on her arm, which he clumsily wiped off. The train went south, at speed.

Andy Knight had the seat tilted back, his eyes closed, and the radio was tuned to a European station that played soft jazz, and he nearly slept.

The VW had driven well and he had held a steady but not excessive speed on the A13 route and had sidelined the Rouen turning and kept heading for Paris, then had skirted Versailles and transferred on to the A6 and headed south-west. Gone as far along the Autoroute de Soleil as a service station, Achères-la-Forêt, and had stopped in a far corner of the parking area, had locked his doors, had crashed out. He had thought himself too tired to dream. One of his last thoughts, dozing deeply… the VW had been sweet tuned by the mechanics at the depot. Good guys. They’d not get the thanks they deserved because he would not be coming back to work there, drive a lorry, exchange banter with them and crap talk about the football teams, and ask vacuous and insincere questions about their wives, kids, mums and dads, and would no longer be the decent joker who was liked and had his car given a thorough and professional service check… But he had left his customers in the lurch when he had done jobbing gardening and landscaping and they’d have been expecting him next week and some of the projects were half-completed, but he had not been there to finish what he had started. Had had a small delivery business, out of a rented van, and people would have been hitting their phones and trying to raise him, and wondering why such and such a pick-up was not made, and were left angry, let down. It was what he did… Came into people’s lives, used them, and then eased out. Never went back and did a contact with those who had helped him, had sustained in ignorance his cover; there would be no postcard thanking them sent to the guys in the depot garage.

It sort of hurt. But not enough to stop him sleeping, or from thinking about her, and her touch and her taste, and had a rug over himself to keep him warm into the night… and he did not know how it would be there, in Marseille, far to the south, and beyond pretty much all of his experience.