Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 13

They were together, warm, damp, holding each other tight, bodies locked.

The bed shouted for something to be done about the springs. Andy had pain in his back from the scratches her nails had made on his skin, open wounds, like he had been whipped.

It was a sacking offence: an appearance before a disciplinary tribunal, a predictable outcome… some grave-faced guy or an angry woman chairing the hearing. No sympathy, no talk about ‘how difficult it must be for you people, in the circumstances of close proximity, to keep your zipper fastened and your dick hidden away’, no leeway for a caution and a rap on the knuckles. Out, gone, dumped on the street.

It had started slowly, as if both were frightened, coming from opposite horizons. He broke each and every regulation laid down by the SC&O10 bosses. Never discussed with Gough and his woman, never defined how the relationship should play out, and studiously ignored once the trigger had come – him meant to be driving her to the south of France. Had he raised it then, an answer might have been, ‘If that happens we’ll give advice, but not dealing with a hypothetical, better just kick that can down the street until we have to confront it… use your judgement.’ She drove the old cart and horse through the culture wall of her parents, then of her cause – neither Krait nor Scorpion would have factored it into their decision that she was reliable on the mission as a courier. Had begun with the sensation, both of them, that they tasted forbidden fruit. Her first time? Of course. She could have shouted, that bloody obvious. It had come to that stage, do it or get off the pot, and he was shown that him and her, that bed, was calculated. Yes, she had gone into a chemist in Avignon and he had stayed outside, had not followed her because she had waved him away, and then she must have bought the small pack of condoms. Could have been 5 euros for that size of pack. They had blundered towards the first start.

Not the first time for Andy, or any of the alternate identities he’d assumed. But not done many times. A girl in Exmouth, down the road from the Lympstone barracks, seemed to have enough of an itch to want it from any recruit needing a trip to adulthood: fast, perfunctory, in the back of a car. A girl in the town where his parents lived, name and address exorcised from his mind, and pretty much everybody of his age knew her. A leaving dance at school, and some of the kids had left bottles, alcohol, under the shrubs closest to the gym hall, and she could barely stand, nor him, and both had confided dread afterwards, no protection. Another girl in the office, used to do the opposite shift to Prunella… All in common with one aim: get it, have the T-shirt, forget it… he would not forget her, his Zed.

She had started to writhe and him to grunt, and sweat sheened them… He had wanted to shout it into each room of each floor of the hotel, then little squeals from her… He would go before the hearing, she would be taken into an interview room off the cell block, and she would spill out the detail of the liaison, be encouraged into graphic detail, and the end-game would have her brief declaiming in court, between theatrical questions delivered with a tone of manufactured disgust. He was the man, and older. He was an experienced officer. At best she was ignorant of the criminal conspiracy in which she was involved, at worst she had been encouraged deeper into the plotting, used as a crude Trojan horse. She was a simple girl, without sexual experience, and the seduction was little more than ‘entrapment’. Were the undercover officer’s superiors responsible for encouraging him to step outside the parameters of his duty? Did he act without authority? A judge would send the jury out, hear submissions, call them back in, refer to irregularities and dismiss the charges, and would write a note of complaint to the Crown Prosecution Service for their handling of Crown v Zeinab… Out on his neck, disgraced. She would walk free but would be despised in her own community, deplored for providing rich pickings for the popular press, dismissed by the university, after spending months locked up. It was that big, for each of them, what they did.

She nibbled at his ear. He sucked and bit at the moist skin of her throat.

The wind fluttered the curtains, and a bin was blown on the square, and noisy gangs of youths were returning through the old part of the city as the clubs closed… she screamed. He called out, pushed a last time, accepted that it was an animal instinct that gave him the last strength left to him. A shuddering, an end to a career… something so unprofessional that it shocked him. Her hold on him loosened. He subsided, rolled away from underneath her.

What would he say in court? Deny it. A defence fabrication. His word against hers. An experienced officer against a dangerous and motivated terrorist, an easy choice for a jury: there would be files full of evidence of her proven lies. Deny it, wash his hands of her. Where had he slept? ‘On the floor, sir.’

Another couple, below, had started up. He chuckled… Heard the rhythm of the springs. Had to laugh. She asked him why, little panted gasps breaking up the question. He said it was because of them, they led the way, maybe now half the street would get going, like it was with the Mexican Wave. But they had been the first – and said also what he thought of her… Might have meant it.

‘Zed, hope you listen to me, hope you believe what I say… you are fantastic. You are the best.’

Enough light came into the room for him to see her skin, and the shape of her when he eased back, gazed at her. The bedding had slipped. She did not cover herself, as if he had snatched away any modesty, had given herself. The great almond eyes gazed up at him… nothing like this in his life before… he could remember how it had been at the start. Him doing the Galahad stuff, riding to the rescue. Handing out a sustained beating to the ‘thugs’ who had attacked her. All play-acting, and her buying into the sham. The pendant, usually hidden and private only to them, hung from its chain, nestled in the cleft; a small stone that reflected the limited light, and he had charged for it on his expenses sheet, filled in each month, and it had not been queried. ‘Cheap at the bloody price – bit skinflint’, the woman would have said as she shuffled the paperwork and what few scrawled bills he could include.

She took his hand. Held it softly. Pulled it towards her. Laid it on the hair, gazed at him, gave trust. It was, he might have said if challenged, ‘in defence of the state’, but his mind stayed silent.

It had been, for Zeinab, a supreme moment.

She did not know how it might have been bettered… not if she had followed any pathway laid down for her by her mother and father, and gone from the little house and the little street and taken the PIA flight to Karachi and Islamabad, and the feeder to Quetta. Met the boy who was to be her husband, seen her parents haggle with his parents, endured an arranged match, gone through it, been fucked that night and hard because that was how his brothers and uncles would have urged him to be. ‘Dominate, set a tone…’ Fucked hard, oblivious to how she felt, and no protection. Nor if she had gone with a boy at the university – with drink or without drink – or a boy from her own culture, and him wanting a notch to scratch on a table in his room, or on a bedpost, hurried and fumbled. No chance of it being better if it had been Krait or Scorpion, or either of the men she had met in London, had done it with her in a car, on the backseat and her across whichever of them and pretending to be expert, and it hurting, and it being fast… The girls on the corridors of the Hall of Residence spoke of it usually as too quick, coming too soon for the men, not coming at all for them, and sometimes it was a reward they expected for buying dinner, for getting the cinema tickets, for the club entry fee. Like none of those. His hand moved, was gentle, explored again where it had been before. She took off what he wore, replaced it… she could not see her precious nightdress, bought to impress, chucked off the bed and on to the floor.

There would be a cottage, hidden away, remote, where sea birds shouted and the sea ripped at the base of the cliffs, and he would be there and a fire’s flames would flicker over the skin of her body and his chest, his legs… she would need that, to be hidden. When Krait or Scorpion, or whoever it was decided should have the rifle, that responsibility, and walk into the shopping mall, cocked the weapon, aimed it, fired with it, she would need to be far from the place… unless it were she who was chosen. And felt his fingers stroke the skin, and tangle nails in the hair, and ease again across her. Already she had been made a woman, was fulfilled. She pushed him back, was above him, and the pendant fell between her breasts. She lowered herself. Was supreme and had power.

Her phone fidgeted on the table at her side of the bed. He did not see it, did not respond as it shook.

It was good again, better than the first time. He was a useful boy, she thought she had chosen him well. They matched the other couple. The two beds made an orchestra. And she hurried him, tried to tire him, pushed for him to be faster, then to explode, then to sag in exhaustion, would need him to sleep. He called out her name, as if that proved his love… useful and well chosen, and his expertise growing, and her now – the first night – controlling. Then he would sleep.

As the fishing boat slowed, so the rolling increased and the pitch became – to Hamid – more awful. He had already been sick more times in the last hours than in the whole of his life. First he had been able to get to the side and vomit over it, and allow the spray to blister against his cheeks. Then he’d thrown up on the deck, and the last time his anorak was splattered with thin liquid, all that his stomach still held.

The boy moved cat-like behind his father. He was offloading fenders, putting them over the side of the small craft and then lashing the attached ropes to hooks. Hamid had only in the last few seconds understood why. In spite of the wind and white crests there was only faint cloud out and abroad that night. Traces of milky moonlight and views of star formations, not that Hamid knew one constellation from another. Now a section of the skies had lost those light pricks and there was a high wall close to them. He heard the shouts and, above the crash of waves around him, realised that a cargo ship – no low portholes as there would be on a cruise boat or a roll on/off ferry – was manoeuvring close to them. The captain shouted close to him, above the pitch of the waves, that he was trying to find a location where they might be able to use the sides of the boat as shelter. The wall towered over him, then they struck the hull, just above the waterline, and Hamid was thrown back, tossed away across the deck. He had lost feeling in his shoulder where the impact had been, but was revived by the water on his face. If the fisherman and his son had noted his collapse they showed no sign. The side of the fishing boat thudded against the freighter. Yells from above and responding shouts from the wheelhouse. A hatch opened, level with the soaked roof of the wheelhouse.

A man stood at the hatch, holding a package. Hamid thought him blessed with the nimbleness of an ape. Hamid had imagined that the matter he had been sent on, personal courier to Tooth, would be of great financial importance – many kilos of refined heroin or expertly cut cocaine. The boy came over to Hamid, grinned, then dragged him upright by the straps of the life-jacket. Grinned again, then speared him back across the deck. The package was thrown to him. It must have been taken by the driving wind. In a moment of desperation, Hamid jumped and his hands clasped at air, spray, then caught it, lost it, snatched again, missed. It soared over him, then down, and he lost sight of it as it dropped into the sea and splashed.

Hamid reached the side of the deck, could just – in the frail moonlight – make out the diminishing bubbles of the air trapped in the bag. He screamed. His voice was beaten back by the force of the gale, by the high side of the freighter as the hatchway was dragged shut, by the howl of the fishing boat’s engine each time the propeller end climbed high and out of the water. Hamid seemed to see that face… as clear an image as if the man, Tooth, stood beside him: flat cap, narrow brim, and under it the tinted glasses, and the wizened face and the thickened beard and the grey of the moustache which had the texture of his father’s shaving brush. Saw it, and shivered in front of it, and tried to explain. Not his fault. The fault of a seaman from a freighter, open hatch, perhaps losing his footing in the moment that mattered. Misjudging the distance, too much force; a sudden gust, the package evading him, going into the water. Had anyone who had ever failed him, ever shrugged at Tooth, ever expected him to understand that it was merely an accident, no blame due? If he came back and had failed – had been given an opportunity to succeed by a man of the legendary status of Tooth and had not taken it – then Hamid thought his future slight. He would be cut down on a dark street, perhaps in a week, perhaps a month. He could not have run, hidden, to escape Tooth’s anger. The thoughts cavorted in his mind. He looked back… he did not think the boy had realised the package – what they had come to collect on this shit night, in this shit weather – had not been caught. Nor his father, who had jerked the wheel and started to swing the rudder.

Hamid saw the package, the air in the bag almost gone, a pale faint shape, now a metre below the surface, and it was lifted in the swell.

He jumped. Had not intended it, nor regretted it. He could not swim. He went in and went under, then was forced back to the surface by the buoyancy of his jacket. The boy had a flashlight on him. At the bottom of the cone of light, where it was feeble and deeper than Hamid’s feet, was the package in the plastic bag. It was hard to contort his body, get his legs above his head, and kick, drive with his arms and power himself into the depth of water, to chase after it… It was hard, but it would be harder to survive when it was obvious he had failed Tooth… It was said of Tooth that in his youth he had always taken back full interest on a slight, chopped off hands or legs merely as retribution for disrespect. This would be worse, an example made… A boy in the project had been barbecued for lack of respect and he could remember the thunder of the igniting petrol tank and the blast of the hot air… He could not see. He groped right and left and felt the pain in his lungs, and was touched at the waist and snatched, and caught. His fingers clung to it, difficult to hold the slippery surface of plastic. He had no more air. He kicked.

Hamid broke the surface. The flashlight’s beam was many metres away. He tried to shout, could manage only a choking cough, and he reckoned the boat was moving away. If he did not cling to the package then he would have to face Tooth, explain, see his life distroyed. He was sure of it, as he drifted farther from rescue, from the torch’s reach, and they seemed not to hear him. The weight of the bag increased and he needed more strength to hold on to it.

He thought himself going, did not know how much longer he would be able to last.

Karym eased out from La Castellane on his scooter. There was good trade that night, and taxis brought buyers to the entrance off the Boulevard Henri Barnier, and waited for clients to be taken into the depths of the blocks, to be supplied, and to pay in old notes, emerge and be driven away.

He left the project, and headed off down the road towards the lights of Marseille.

The instructions he had been given had been memorised, had then been burned. Anxious to please his brother, who had shown some small faith in his ability, he left early, gave himself time.

He woke.

He had always slept well, at school, at Lympstone. Before exams he had been dead to the world whether it was in the struggle for school results or getting through the tough examinations for the marksman’s rating, and when he had been on the induction course for the police SC&O10 unit. Not now… had not slept fully as Phil or Norm or Andy: never lasted a night, was up and dressed, whether a courier driver or a jobbing gardener or driving a heavy goods vehicle, by six or earlier. It meant that a situation could alter without notice. He did not carry a weapon. Nothing he could reach for. His eyes open, he lay rigid, held his breath and listened. He expected to hear her breathing. He had to know where he was, why he was there, with whom. Easy enough to forget ‘where’ and ‘why’. He might have grimaced, because it had been good: she was a new experience in his confused and nameless life. No breathing beside him but he could make out the sounds of the night: occasional vehicles, the grind of an engine that powered, probably a street cleaning truck… and still at it on the floor above. Heard all that, did not hear her breathing.

He reached across. His hand did not touch her shoulder, nor her waist, nor the expanse of her back. He groped further. The sheet was folded back on her side. He sat up, alert, and eyed the bathroom door. No light under it… in the Marines, with the reconnaissance teams, with the unpredicted – behind the lines and without close support – they called it ‘a train wreck’… No sound from the bathroom.

And heard her. A few words. She had barely said a word when she had been in his arms, under him or over him, fitting the rubber and… had hardly spoken, allowed only short, sharp squeals, not simulated. Recognised her voice, and heard also someone who struggled to put together a sentence in English but tried. He slipped off the bed.

‘You want to come, why not? You see the real Marseille. I can do that.’

He saw a slight young man, grubby clothes that were the imitation of something smarter, and saw the acne scars on his face, and saw a scooter beside him and one arm seemed strong and took the weight of the machine, and the other looked weak. The light was full on the boy and his eyes were bright, and he grinned, and reached out with his damaged arm

She hesitated. ‘There’s a man upstairs, he’s sleeping, he’s…’

She was half dressed, he reckoned. Most of her clothes were still in the empty bathroom. Just wore her jeans and trainers and a T-shirt, and her arms were folded across her chest, as if for warmth, and avoiding the wind that flicked rubbish in her face.

‘You have a boy to fuck you? That’s good. Will he beat you if you come with me and see where I live, the true experience of Marseille? Will he?’

‘No, he will not. He thinks he loves me. I do not have to explain, I…’

‘But you do have to trust. That’s good, trust. You have to trust me, it is necessary. I would like to show you where I live, and show people there that a woman comes to see me, my guest, a beautiful woman – please.’

‘Why not? Yes. I have to be back before he wakes.’

‘You have made him tired?’

She giggled, the guilty girl and proud of it. Her head was back and she stifled laughter. She swung her leg, was astride the pillion. The boy used his feet to push the scooter across to the far side of the square, then the engine snapped alive, and the last Andy saw of her was through a haze of fumes coming from the exhaust.

He was supposed to be close to her, and again he had failed. He dressed, as she had, jeans and a shirt and trainers, and what they had done together – and what was done above them – had dulled his head, and he felt cursed.

He had been barely conscious when they heaved him out of the sea.

If he had been able to shout, the rescue might have been quicker. He could only croak. It could have been that the fisherman had realised the risk of going back to the harbour without him, leaving his son to rope up the boat and swab the decking of the passenger’s vomit, and gone to the parked car and ducked his head in respect to the man who’d have lowered his window – and apologised, and said that there had been a misfortune, an accident, a loss. The loss of the passenger, and the loss of a cargo. Could have been that the search had only continued for so long because the fisherman dreaded that admission. Instead, Hamid received help from the fisherman and his son as he stepped off the boat, on to the rocking pontoon. One on either side of him, taking his weight. They would have carried the packet had he allowed it.

At first Hamid had bobbed in the water, strong enough to stay upright, his head clear and his body lifted by the waves then dropped into troughs. The salt taste had stuck in his throat but he had lost the will to try to hack it out, cough it clear. The great bulk of the freighter had disappeared within moments, but the torchlight search from the fishing boat had been obvious. He’d heard them shout for him: didn’t know his name but yelled into the night, into the wind and the waves. And, neither of them had explained about the life-jacket, had told him that it carried both a whistle and a beacon light on straps to be tugged… It was fear of the small man with the trimmed beard, Tooth, that kept him alive, as if he believed that he could still be hurt, face retribution, even when dead, drowned, his lungs emptied of air, filled with seawater.

His grip on the package had never loosened.

They had brought him into the boat after sticking a hook, fastened with whipping to a long pole, under the straps of the jacket. The fisherman had brought him to the boat’s side, and his son had leaned out and clasped the package, then had tried to free Hamid’s hand from the plastic. He had not released his grip, nor had he done so when back in the boat. Water cascaded off him and chilled his skin, and his clothes and shoes were sodden weights. He had not allowed them to break his hold on the plastic bag. They gave him coffee from a flask, then poured brandy from a bottle into the flask and gave him more, and he spluttered as the warmth ran like fire in his throat.

He managed the pontoon, then shook them clear. He walked in a good line towards the car and the headlights came on. If they blinded him he did not show discomfort. The window came down. He heard the gravel voice, and the question.

‘It was in the sea?’

‘And I went in after it.’

‘You dived for it?’

‘Before it sank.’

Only then did Hamid free his grip on the bag. Tooth, the great man, was out of the car, at the boot, took the package, then drained off the water, took a towel from the back of the baggage area.

‘You went into the water to find the package? Why?’

‘For you, it was for you.’

He heard a growl of laughter, then it was translated and the Englishman too, laughed.

‘For me? Incredible… Perhaps because you knew who I used to be. Get your clothes off. Dry yourself.’

Hamid stood beside the car, hopped from foot to foot, stripped himself bare, and the cold lathered his skin. He rubbed hard with the towel and brought sensations of heat and chill to his body. He put his clothes into the plastic bag that had held the package.

‘Will it still work, after that time in the water?’

He sat on the back seat and the heater was turned high. The doors were slammed. The fisherman and his son stood on the end of the pontoon, did not wave but gazed impassively into the headlights.

Through chattering teeth, Hamid answered. ‘It will work, as normal. It is an assault rifle. I can feel it, the shape of it, distinctive. It will work as well as the day it was made because it is a Kalashnikov.’

He was so thin she thought she could have snapped him in half. It did not matter how much Karym ate, he never put on weight. His sister was always fussing about her clothes size, sometimes near to tears. At first her hands had not explored him. Because of the way he rode the old scooter, hardly clear of the Saint Charles railway station, and going west, she did. Prompted by him. At first she had tried to sit upright and hold on to the bar at the back of the pillion seat, and she had shrieked twice, once when he swerved past a slow vehicle and the other when he had hit a pothole. Her arms now were around his waist, her fists clenched over the button on his stomach. She held him tight.

Hot breath on the nape of his neck. A strange smell on her body which he did not recognise. No helmet, and he thought her hair would have careered out behind her. The scooter was not a Ducati 821 Monster, did not have the thrust of 112 horsepower: it chugged at up to 65 kilometres an hour, throttle full… The girls on the project, up until the time of his new fame, would not have considered riding behind him, enduring the hard seat, going at such pathetic speed. He had been surprised that she had said she would come with him, fancied it a delusion of excitement. He thought she was naked beneath her T-shirt. He gave her a hard ride and her hold over his stomach was tight.

Zeinab saw the bright lights ahead.

It had been a moment of madness – the second in one evening. Sleeping – for part of the night – with the driver, her dupe boy, was one. Allowing herself the stupidity of swinging a leg over the seat of the kid’s scooter was the second… And she was exhilarated, allowed the pleasure to ripple in her. Half-dressed, she was caught by the wind that seemed to scour her body, liberated.

Did not need to have gone to bed with Andy Knight. Did not need to have gone into the deserted streets of Marseille on the back of a pathetic underpowered scooter and did not need to have clung to his waist… a madness and a freedom. His English was hesitant, accented, but understandable. He twisted his head, with his eyes off the road, shouted at her that the lights were where he lived, and gunned the engine and coaxed minimally more speed from it. They came to a wide entrance that seemed to be defended by heavy stones. Youths came forward.

There were parts of Manchester where she would have been advised not to be when the light fell. She thought this one an equal. Most of the youths wore balaclava masks, or had scarves tied over their faces. She dug her fingernails into the boy’s stomach, felt the scrawny flesh below his shirt. She had not known freedom before. Could have called out into the night, at the sporadic street-lights and high blocks, ‘Why not?’ All of her life, school in Dewsbury, carted to the mosque, disciplined at home – at the university, and under the strictures of academic work and timetables for producing essays and passing exams – with the little group and struggling to be accepted past the prejudice wall of Krait and Scorpion – never free. She held the stomach of the boy, felt feeble muscles cramped in knots. He shouted at the youths, and they backed off, as if disappointed that he had brought home a girl.

He parked. She lifted her leg, swung it over the pillion. Wind blasted her face, her chest and thighs. She was eyed, a stranger, as would any man, or woman, brought late at night into Savile Town. He took her hand. She was older than him, taller than him, stronger than him: he held her hand and she allowed it. He led her up a dried mud path and they passed shrubs, and their shadows were thrown, and a hundred televisions seemed to blast them, then a pool of darkness and then the hallway of a block. She smelt faeces and urine and decayed food. A queue stood here. A man came from a doorway, clutching fifteen or twenty kilos of merchandise, wrapped in newspaper and wedged into a hessian shopping bag. Two kids stood at the doorway – the door was ajar, a voice sounded from inside, and one of them waved forward the man next in line – and each had his face covered and each carried a gun. Both had slender bodies, would have been younger than the boy who had brought her… all part of a liberation, the new-found freedom.

He said the elevator did not work. They climbed together. Too many stairs and she had started to pant. He held her hand, helped her. She smelt cooking, she heard arguments, vivid laughter, her breath wheezed. Up three flights, and came to a landing. No paint on the walls, but graffiti in Arabic, different to what she knew of the symbols used in Quetta, in Pakistan, and her hand was freed, and a key was produced, and a door unfastened, and her hand taken again.

A girl sat on a sofa, had washed her hair and had a towel round her head. Had an empty plate beside her, held a can of juice. The TV showed a singer. The boy nodded to her, and she shrugged. What did it matter to her if he came home with a girl? Zeinab supposed she was regarded as a symbol of success, an object to be displayed. She was led across the room and he pushed a door open. His bedroom was lit by a small lamp beside the bed. The bed was unmade. Clothes, unwashed, crumpled, covered half the floor. A TV was on the wall. A poster of a singer, female, a view of a cliff edge in mountains with a village tucked under the escarpment. In a cheap frame was a photo of a middle-aged man and a woman, probably his mother and father. The image that dominated, stopped her dead: an AK-47 rifle… she stared hard at it, then looked around and fastened on the bookcase. She read the titles of the books on the top shelf… AK-47 Assault Rifle, the Real weapon of Mass Destruction and The Gun, the AK-47 and the Evolution of War and AK-47 The Story of a Gun and The Gun that Changed the World… The boy had a library, more than 50 volumes and most of them hard-backed and therefore expensive, and lived in a foul tower block that would be raddled with addicts and drug customers, and all he read was about the gun that she had been recruited to courier back to the UK… Everything else in the room was disgusting, dirty, nothing was treated with pride except for the book shelves and their contents. And, she should not have come, and she reckoned she would be late returning, and the boy spoke.

‘You are looking at them?’

‘Should I call you an expert, on the Kalashnikov?’

‘Almost, perhaps… I read about it, I hope one day to have one. My confession, I have never fired one. My brother will not let me even hold one. He says that only boys ready to die, wanting Paradise, have a Kalashnikov. I can strip one, can clean one, can…’

‘Why is it so special?’

‘You want to know? Have you not come to purchase a supply route for hashish? It is narcotics that you want?’

‘Why is it so talked of?’

‘Because it makes a man strong, walk with pride, cannot be defeated. The gun of the humble man, a peasant – the best. Both the fedayeen, anywhere in the world, fight with the Kalashnikov, and we do. It is the rifle of the citizen, not just the élite troops they employ – it is so special. I can get you one, a few minutes and a boy will come who keeps them for my brother. I can, if you want, and…’

‘I need to go back to my hotel. Thank you. Thank you again.’

‘This is my room – a nice room?’

‘A lovely room.’

He had her hand again. He tried to lead her from the room but she gazed at the poster on the wall, at the weapon they said, all of them, was supreme. He tugged… down the stairs, he babbled about how nice his room was and what a good apartment he and his sister lived in, and she absorbed the outline of the weapon, soaked herself in its image. They paused in the stairwell, and the queue was still there as another man was called forward, and she brushed against one of the kids and his weapon, and understood. The boy grinned, spoke in a sort of patois, was handed the rifle, put it in her hand, let her cradle it, just for a moment, like something new-born in her mind. It was snatched away. She was taken to the scooter and the engine was gunned, and she was driven out into the night. He was grateful to her for coming to his home. She thought herself unique in his life, and that her very presence imported status into his home, unknown before… and he treated her with such respect, and brought her to a world of new experience which she drank from eagerly.

She held his waist and the skin was there for her fingers, and she thanked him for letting her touch the rifle, so precious, so cold, so available.

January 2014.

‘I’m a fair man, Dazzer, always have been, and trust to God that I always will be.’

Reuven was a fixture now on the corner of the island of Cyprus that was closest to the Sovereign bases operated by the British military. He was well known as a potential conduit for the off-loading of ‘souvenirs’ illicitly carried home from the Afghan war.

‘A fair man who does a fair deal. Not a man who would cheat, defraud. A fighting soldier who looks for a small reward, in cash, after the trauma and desperate stresses of that brutal place.’

The private military contractor, his stint of duty exhausted, had flown to the garrison airfield with a flight full of UK infantry squaddies. It was normal for the PMC boys to be given a free ride home, courtesy of the military, as if a concession was due because the regular forces could not survive in that hostile environment, the hellhole of Helmand, without the support and logistics of the pseudo civilians. Not a pleasant flight to the eastern Mediterranean because the transporter had been bucked by crosswinds, and for all to see were two flag-draped coffins in the cargo sector. The troops were allowed 48 hours in the sunshine to swim, drink, fornicate if they could find a performing harridan, so that they did not get back to Brize Norton and go home to wives and girlfriends and parents while still reeling from the tensions of the conflict zone. It meant that fewer women were beaten up on their return, fewer pubs trashed to ruin… two days was the allotted safety valve period. Checks for contraband were minimal on departure from Afghanistan, would be rigorous at the Oxfordshire airfield and few would breach the security screening.

‘And honest, quite honest. If you believe you can find a better price from another merchant in such goods then, Dazzer, you should seek him out and trade with him. The price I offer is – quite truthfully – the best I can manage.’

Reuven was from the Baltic coast of Russia but had moved a decade before to Cyprus. Ethnic Jewish, with good English, a voice that was quiet and seemed to mince goodwill: he was the calling point for those who had smuggled out hardware, ammunition, ordnance, and then had been too frightened to risk confrontation with the Customs men at the UK end – merciless bastards. He operated from a bar that was Greek-themed, that served over-priced food, that played incessant Mouskouri or Roussos tracks. His table was deep in shadow. Beside him on the bench was the package that Dazzer had brought him to make a bid for, unwrapped, still seeming to carry the smell of war, of decayed dirt.

‘It is the best I can manage. I am not a charity, but I am not a charlatan. I pay what it is possible to pay. I am aware of the limited potential of myself finding a buyer for this item, very limited. We must be realistic, Dazzer, we must consider who might wish to purchase it, and why. I believe that the opportunity for re-sale hardly exists. Be very frank with you, tell you that it is, almost, worthless.’

They drank, lager for Dazzer and mineral water for Reuven… The contractor had enthused to himself about the value of the AK-47, and had done the sales pitch of the old man – and Father William was a good name for him – who was a freedom fighter when he should have been a pensioner, not that there was a good system of care for the elderly in up-country Afghanistan. All the time he had talked, Reuven had kept his face as still and unanimated as a poker player’s. Dazzer had little fight left in him – and the dreams in his life seldom had happy endings. A shrug, then the look of keen sincerity.

‘Do you know, my friend – my good and trusted friend – how many of these weapons, the different variants on them, have been manufactured, how many? How many millions? Tens of millions? Perhaps a hundred million… The value is trifling, even for one of this vintage that has been cared for with love, or that has a history of notoriety.’

He knew. Herbie had told him, but had also painted a pretty portrait of some dick-head who would pay a small fortune for the beast, and would have played up a history of fire-fights and pointed out the old scratched notches of those who had died from bullets shot from this AK-47’s magazines, but Herbie had been clear in his telling of the scale of the production line. Then a pause, and there must have been eye contact from Reuven to the bar and more sparkling water came and another beer with a decent head on it. Bad news would follow, but would be put with the reasonableness of a guy who knew he held the cards. There was no competition. It was a monopoly and Reuven owned it.

‘If you had brought me, Dazzer, the weapon that had been in the bolt-hole with Saddam when the Americans pulled him up into the daylight, and if you had the rifle used in the assassination of the Pharaoh of the Egyptians, Sadat, by the lieutenant – Khalid Islambouli – then I would say to you, again in honesty, that I might manage a more decent return on the item. There is no celebrity attachment to what you bring to me.’

Just another rifle. The beer was good in this bar. Somewhere up at the counter, almost out of sight but able to watch, was Reuven’s minder. He’d be jacketed, and his coat would hang loose to disguise the bulge of the Makharov pistol in a shoulder holster. Not that Dazzer was liable to make a scene and shout, maybe throw a punch because the fantasy of good money was now running in the drains. He’d pointed out the bloodstain that darkened the old wood of the stock, and the notches were now harder to distinguish and the place where the sliver had been was harder to see.

‘So, and we should not waste the time of busy people such as yourself, such as myself, the best I can offer to you is one hundred American dollars… probably I make a loss on that. But we are old friends, men with understanding and men with a relationship… a hundred dollars. Will you refuse it, Dazzer, and then attempt to bring the weapon through the Customs investigators at your British airport of entry, and risk ten or fifteen years in a gaol, or take it? Which?’

Nothing to argue with. Not a seller’s market, but a buyer’s. He thought the rifle would end up in the arms trade equivalent of a car-boot sale. Not dissimilar from those his parents patronised most weekends in the hope of a bit of a bargain, but never finding anything of value. He looked for a last time at the outline of the weapon. It had been with him in his quarters for close on three months and he had played mind-games with where it had been, who had held it, what stories it had… he supposed it might as well, now, have been dumped in the dirt and a main battle tank run its tracks over it, squash it, obliterate it. Did it have a future? Not too sure. An ugly looking old thing, not the rifle that anyone – any more – would covet. He nodded acceptance.

‘A good choice, a sensible choice. A hundred American dollars does not represent the true value of this rifle. I will be the loser, but will not regret having been honest with an old friend… and for you there is sufficient money to go to the bars in Akrotiri, even to Limassol, and you will find that a hundred American dollars goes far, quite far – not as far as buying a woman, but very quite far. A pleasure always to see you, Dazzer, and God speed you home.’

A single note was passed him. Reuven’s face seemed to betray a sort of personal pain as if he had merely helped an old and distant friend, had forsworn all his normal commercial instincts. A bit of kindness… Dazzer slipped the note into his wallet… he would fly the next day, then in the evening would meet some of the guys who had missed on this tour of duty and they’d swap anecdotes and drink miserably. The morning after, Dazzer would be back at the agency that hired him out, and would try to seem spirited and keen and be looking for another mission back to Helmand and the fag-end of the campaign… The rifle? Bloody near already forgotten. Out of sight, on the bench, was the rustle of the paper and the wrapping being refastened, then Reuven flicked almost noiselessly with his fingers and his minder came close behind Dazzer, took the parcel and was gone. A last smile from Reuven, a dismissal. Just a piece of junk… Dazzer went out into the warm evening air… wondered where it would go, who would have it next. He had seen, the final glimpse of it, that the rear-sight was still at an extremity position, perfect for close quarters, almost hand to hand, where the killing grounds were: Battle Sight Zero. An old warrior’s piece of kit, but with tales to tell – and no one wanting to hear them or to pay for them. He’d not get a woman for what he was paid, but the rifle would buy him sufficient beer and shorts to knock him into oblivion. Could have dumped it on the road where Father William had died for the trouble he had gone to… and sort of missed it.

Pegs had not slept again. She sat in the chair of her room. In the next room down the corridor was Gough. A part of the conspiracy of their relationship, not advertising the ‘man and mistress’ roles, she made it a point to get back to her room before dawn, get in the bed, rumple the sheets, make the pretence. She thought the time might come, sooner than later, when the brilliance of a spotlight would be aimed at her. Then, powerful forces would seek to show that her attention, and Gough’s, had slipped, almost a dereliction. The substance for her gloom was the brief message passed to her via her mobile.

Not a bag of laughs at my end. Sorry and all that. I assume the transfer happens tomorrow, and we head off then if we are to make that ferry, that schedule. I am not inside her loop, don’t know where she will collect. Don’t know where she is right now, which is not helpful. I saw her in the square outside the hotel – not having a fag but in conversation with a young male, likely north African, and she went away on his scooter. Best you put me under surveillance, and with back-up close by, closer than the Golden Hour. Sleep tight.

More than a year of work put in, a successful bid for the quality resource of an Undercover, and it came to climax, and the target had gone walkabout. Just bloody depressing – a potential cluster-fuck. She had put off waking Gough, now did so. She wore the sort of pyjamas, thick and buttoned to the throat, which would have been respectable in a practising convent, went out, locked her door, knocked on his, waited. The building was quiet, had that night-hour emptiness. Inside, she sat on the end of his bed, let him blink out the tiredness in his eyes, told him and watched him sag, wince as if it were personal. They’d go down together, walk the plank, the sharks congregated underneath, dorsal fins breaking the surface.

She asked, grim, ‘That club of yours, they take new members?’

‘What club?’

‘Where I said you were signed up, a founder member… because, Gough, I don’t think we’re good enough.’

‘What’s the club?’

‘For God’s sake, you old goat, what you lectured me on – the Maudlin Club, and I rubbished it. I’m ashamed. I fear for us.’

‘We do our best.’

‘Not enough – another day, another dollar. See what it chucks up. Dog shit or rose petals but I’ll get my application off, Gough, to your club… See you.’

He and Tooth were off to bed late. Crab had been told they would rest in and take a bit of leisure on the patio if that bloody wind eased off.

He’d recognised the respect for his long-time friend that the young man had shown when offloaded from the fishing boat. Bloody near drowned rather than admit he’d failed in his job. Good for a senior man to have respect, not to be treated like filth on the uppers of his shoes… He’d look forward to the late morning exchange, money for hardware. Would get the old juices flowing, and only the start of the business plan which would make more juice, more money, and keep his hand in.

But he was a long time getting to sleep and the wind stayed fierce, and noisily shook the villa… He seemed to be on the pavement, face down, and his wrists were pinioned with plastic stays, and he heard the fucking gun cocked, and around him were screams, shouts, sirens, and the sobbing of those alive, or half dead. He yelled up at the cop for him not to shoot… not to do an execution as formal as those done in his youth on the Strangeways scaffold. ‘Nothing to do with me. It was just business. I didn’t know what…’ A bit of an untruth, but the best he could do, and he closed his eyes and tried not to see the boot of the cop, or the tip of the barrel, and hear the scrape of the safety going off. ‘… I didn’t know what the fucking thing would be used for. I just do business.’

Hard going to sleep that night. Harder to erase the sight of that drowned rat coming off the boat, up the pontoon, carrying the package in the plastic bag.

He pretended sleep.

She had left the room door unlocked, and he had too when he had gone down to use the reception desk phone – left his mobile clean. He lay on his side and saw through narrow lidded eyes that she came in on tiptoe. Floating across the room, soundless, she stripped and dumped the clothes where they had been before.

He wondered what he would be told… She came to the bed and eased in beside him. A grunt, a cough, seeming to come alive, and he started up. Her hand touched his shoulder, as if to calm him.

‘You all right?’ she murmured.

‘I’m good, and you?’

‘And me, but I could not sleep. I dressed, went out, walked a bit. Just me and the street cleaners, and they were setting out the fruit and vegetable stalls, just walked… I didn’t disturb you?’

‘Not at all…’

He thought she lied well. She was snuggled up close and her fingers worked on his chest. He thought she might, probably had, gained a taste for it, like making up for lost time… might have said the same of himself. But each were the other’s plaything. He could have quizzed her as to where she had been, what she had seen, and might successfully have picked a hole in the lie, proven the untruth: no advantage gained. I didn’t disturb you?… Not at all. He had taken the opportunity, back in the room, listened in the quiet, then worked through her bag, found the money belt. Had unzipped it, had counted, found the value of what he was supposed to take to the ferry port and drive home. Big money… Not anything else. He would have been more skilled than her in the art of covert searching, but he carried nothing that was remotely incriminating. The couple below had started again, getting value for their bed, and their springs sang.

‘…and what’s today’s schedule?’

‘Maybe a walk this morning, then my business, then we hit the road.’

‘The business – in the city?’

‘I’m collected and…’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Not necessary, and you don’t have to.’

Their hands were lower, searching and moving with gentleness but increasing pace, and their breathing was faster.

‘Not letting you out of my sight. Won’t argue with you. I am with you. Too precious to me, Zed, to have you loose here – a difficult city. I am with you. Don’t care what you’re doing… heard the old one? “Hear nothing, see nothing, know nothing”. That’s my promise. I will be there.’

She squirmed under him. Who led? Both did. The dawn was outside the curtained window. The other couple were quiet. Replacing the sounds of the bed springs were the preparations for the day’s market, and the first scrapes of metal as the overnight shutters were lifted… He had busted the rules of the house, SC&O10’s, and he let the wonder of it happen, and did not know where he would be when he next slept, or where she would be.