Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 17

‘You betrayed me, bedded me and betrayed me.’

He was against the wall beside the door, in a corridor, and his hands were high above his head.

‘You tricked me, deceived me.’

The rifle was held one-handed. She used it as an actor’s prop, and jabbed at him with the barrel tip, and the weapon’s selector lever was lodged on ‘single shot’, and her finger was on the trigger guard, and he believed that she had no idea how simple it was for a bullet to be fired if the weapon was waved around like a damn magician’s wand.

‘I thought you were my friend. I…’

He doubted that the kids behind him, a little cluster of them on the stairs, with their medley of firearms, would have understood a word said in a foreign language with the accents of sub-continent and Yorkshire, but the sight of the veteran rifle, and its prominent fore-sight wobbling between ceiling and floor, via his knees and his stomach and his chest and his forehead meant big entertainment. They did little whoops of giggling as her voice rose steadily in pitch, and she grew close to hysteria.

‘…I thought I could trust you, thought I could believe what you said to me. All the sweet words and no meaning in any of them. You bastard…’

The kids had climbed the stairs behind him. The smell was unchanged, the air fetid with decay, the graffiti depressing, and the lights sporadic, and there were only small windows, like gun slits, for the sunshine to come through, and he had rapped the door. Not a hesitant knock. As if it were a demand. A girl had let him into the hall area where he was hit with a barrage of game show music and canned applause and the scream of a compère. Quite a pretty girl except that her face was scarred by indifference and tiredness: she had opened the door, eyed him briefly, then seemed to reflect that he was not her business, no one she should be involved with, and she went back inside and slumped on a settee and was again engrossed in the television. She’d called once, then again, then had bawled, then had regarded her business as done, obligation finished.

‘You are a liar, a bastard liar.’

The boy had come first, then had yelled over his shoulder and she’d emerged. Might have been weeping, or might just have had reddened eyes from the sprint away from the scooter. She looked, not that it mattered, quite simply terrific. Always did, his opinion and from the scantiest of knowledge… a woman in a temper and losing it, with her chin out and upper lip trembling, a flush in the cheeks and shoulders thrown back, and spitting accusations – that sort of woman always, he reckoned, was a sensation. She had the rifle. He’d lifted his arms, gone to surrender posture. He started to move forward. Not in a hurry, taking it easy, and like any fair to middling boxer, he rode the verbal blows and showed no sign of being hurt by them; but had not started to counter punch, just came on inside.

‘I should kill you, what you deserve, and hurt you.’

Would she? He doubted it. Dangerous to be certain of his opinion because the Kalashnikov was two, three yards from him and had an effective killing range of 200, 300 yards, and she had spittle at the side of her mouth. He did not answer her, but came along the narrow corridor where paint was needed and he eased past rubbish sacks, and they both backed off in front of him. He was allowed into a bedroom, would have been the boy’s, and realised she now had a soul mate, and could talk endlessly to the boy about the Kalashnikov series and its copycat versions. He saw the books. All the time that he moved he kept his hands high. The bed was not made, there was food – a rice and sauce meal half consumed – on a plate. Biker magazines carpeted the floor, and on top was one with a photo on the cover that showed the Piaggio MP3 Yourban, and at an angle that demonstrated the tilting front wheels, and that would have been his aspiration, not the wrecked Peugeot that was by now being loaded up for a journey to the breakers, and a photograph of an older woman who had three kids with her: one would have been the game show audience girl, and one was the boy half a pace behind Zed and one would have been the eldest and the owner of a Ducati Monster. He was good at noting what was around him, part of his training, what might be used in evidence in a courtroom when he faced her, had a clear view of the dock where she’d sit with the guards, screened from the public gallery but not from her, and described how he had deceived, betrayed, lied to her, and at the end of it, after she’d been sentenced, left pole-axed by the severity, chances were he’d be called back into the judge’s chambers and personally congratulated, and told what a debt he was owed by society – unless the case was waived out. Compromise and entrapment. Deniable. An experienced police officer’s relationship with a naive student. Never happened. She might broadcast that she had been seduced by him: about her only chance, but a poor bet… The boy waved him down. The big irony: she felt no guilt, in his assessment, of her lies to him, all one-sided. But did not dwell long on it because irony went poorly with a situation such as he faced. He slid his spine on the wall, sank to his haunches. The boy wanted his hands.

Zed aimed the rifle barrel at him.

The weapon might have been with Noah in the Ark. Was the oldest that he had ever seen, certainly more of a museum piece than anything they’d had in the collection at Lympstone. Scratched and scraped and scarred. There were moments when she tilted it and he could see the stock and the evidence of its history… Would have expected a modern and unmarked version coming into the courier service. It was almost antique, would have seen service, and the notches on the stock were proof of an enduring effectiveness. He saw the setting of Battle Sight Zero on the rear of the weapon, for close quarters fighting… He did not think she would fire.

He held out his hands.

A restraint came from the boy’s hip pocket. It went round his wrists, was jerked tight and the boy stepped back. The boy’s expression told him that a mistake, big or up the scale to catastrophic, had been made in coming back here, too fast a decision taken, and unable to reverse it. She had gone to the window, had gazed out, then had flattened herself against the wall beside it. He could hear sirens and it would be that time in an operation when the cavalry arrived and would dismount, bivouac, and put a perimeter in place. A mistake to come here because they, the boy and Zed, were now trapped, had nowhere to go, and about all they had as a chip to bargain with was him, the People’s Hero, Phil or Norm or Andy, or whoever he had once been before living the lie. He supposed himself a kind of a hostage… what would they pay for him? If the question were asked of the Detective Inspector, Gough, or his faithful and foul-tongued bag carrier, then they’d have chorused in unison: ‘What, money? Pay for him or give her free passage? Not effing likely. Forget it, sunshine…’ And, why was he there? Not quite sure, but working on it.

He said nothing, allowed the rant to build. Later he might, not yet.

‘Should let you sweat, then hurt you, then fucking kill you – do it like they’d have done with a traitor in Raqqa, Mosul – saw your head off with a blade. Shooting’s too good.’

She might do it, shoot him. His judgement might have been mistaken, but he thought she would not. Be a shame if he was wrong, always was the problem for an Undercover, making an error.

He never answered. No response and that angered Zeinab the most.

Neither argued with her nor pleaded but sat on this pit of a room’s floor and kept his eyes off her, had not looked her in the face since the boy, Karym, had fastened his wrists together… She supposed that was what a druggie dealer always carried, not a handkerchief because he always snivelled, but something easy that disabled an enemy. No denial, no squirming with excuses, and what she shouted at him seemed like shower water running off him. He looked round the room, and at the ceiling, and at the floor, and never at the weapon and never at her face. She went closer.

‘To go to bed with me, was that a part of your work? Do you draw a bonus because you screwed me, screwed me and might get some pillow talk? They pay you more for that? You are so hateful which is why it is better that I shoot you, shoot you now.’

She raised the rifle. She stared down the barrel, over the V and the needle, and beyond was the shirt he wore and the loose top over it and she let her finger run from the outside of the trigger guard, inside it, into the trigger itself and her finger nestled on it. There were more sirens outside.

‘Shoot you, I should do it, should…’

She did not know how much pressure was needed to draw back the trigger. Her finger came off it and she closed fast on him and lashed out with her right foot and kicked his ankle and did it hard. The same foot as she had used to kick the man who had come alongside her, riding his motorcycle, and her on the slow-moving scooter which was pathetic and rusted and stank of fuel fumes. Had hurt herself when she kicked the man, and hurt herself again. Dare not show it, could not… he gave no sign. He denied her satisfaction, did not reply, did not cry out, did not snarl, did not show pain, so she kicked him again, and limped away. The kid had an arm around her shoulder.

‘Don’t hurt him, Zeinab, and don’t shoot him. He’s all you have. You have nothing except him.’

Which was gasoline on a fire to her. She swung the rifle and aimed for his chin, wanted the weight of the wooden part on the end to strike his jaw and aimed and heaved it and waited, closed eyes, for the impact, and blinked, and saw that his head moved – not far and not fast – and she had missed. She felt the room darkening. Not her imagination, but the girl watching the TV had turned the sound higher and that would have been the response to her shouting, and the audience applause cracked across the bedroom…

She screamed, ‘Talk to me. Tell me I meant something, was not just more money in your wage packet. Fucking man, who are you?’

The sunset, away over the water from La Castellane was spectacular that evening. From gold to blood-red, and rippling on a disturbed sea, and seeming highlighted by banking clouds that gathered to the west, above Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhone and Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and the shadows over the Camargue hurried towards the housing estate. It was January when the weather could change fast and was unpredictable. There could be thunder, hail, lightning, and crisp evenings and sunsets that were spectacular over the tower blocks, but the weather in all its vagaries had little effect on trade.

An orderly queue had formed. The queue, a snake of persons of many ages and with varied indications of affluence, was there each night as dusk collapsed over La Castellane. Seven evenings a week, seven nights, and the queue would always be hungry, demanding to be fed. But that night, the stomach of the queue remained empty. The queue was formed and waited patiently. Beyond the queue, restless and growing aggressive, were the lookouts and the escorts and the security for the differing franchises that tried, for profit, to satisfy the market-place. But could not. In stairwells, and in various apartments ‘owned’ by the dealers who had authority, was an importation of fresh merchandise, touted as being of high quality, but it could not be sold. Between the head of the queue and the kids who lived off the dealers was a cordon of police. No person was permitted to enter, and none to leave. It was a lockdown. Anxiety burdened Hamid. He was responsible. In his brother’s apartment was a woman, armed, and a foreign policeman, and while they were there, all routes of entry and exit were blocked – and trade was lost, and trade was profit, what La Castellane thrived on, survived by. Like a tap had been turned off.

‘It’ll end in tears.’

‘When it comes to optimism, you are a bucket full of holes.’

She was back beside Gough and he sensed her mood swing had taken her towards the gallows idea of fun, black stuff and larded with pessimism. She had been led away by a female police officer and they had trekked in the half-light towards some dense cluster of bushes. Himself, he would not have welcomed squatting down there, with the fair to middling chance of lowering a cheek on to an addict’s hypodermic. Could in a weak moment have sympathised with her, but not made a habit of it over the years.

‘I state the obvious.’

‘What I don’t see is why? Why did he follow her inside that place?’

‘You are so naive.’

‘Perhaps, but…’

‘There’s an itch down there in the lower regions. A bitch on heat and a following dog, oldest game in the park. Can’t dump her.’

‘Vulgar, Pegs, and beneath you.’

They were, both of them, the sort of vagrants that their type of work spewed out. The freaks that populated the corridors of the differing sections of the Counter-Terrorist business. Never home in the evenings, seldom present at breakfast because they were staying away or had already left for the train. Noses to the grindstone because that seemed best proof against a cock-up, the level of failure that sent a man, or a woman, out of a back entrance and fast, so that acute failure did not contaminate. He dreamed of reaching the magic retirement age, and then the chance to live close to his mother in a village between Loch Awe and Inverary, in the west of the Highlands, where no one – not even a passing predator in a salmon pool and listening to a lonely monologue – would know who he had once been, what he had once done. Not even a bloody otter.

‘And true – wait till it plays out, and come back to me. No other reason for anyone with an ounce of sanity to go where he has gone.’

‘He’s a professional and you sell him short.’

‘An attractive thought. Be real, Gough. We know nothing of him. He was a present at Christmas from the well-known distant aunt, that sort of thing, and you don’t know what you’re getting. Might be useless, might be valuable – a waste of space or what makes a complex operation run with well-oiled cogs. In the lap of the Gods. We expect to, and fail to, control him and prod him into the directions that suit us. It’s a pipedream. What I said, know nothing about him. No name, no history in his rucksack, only the legend cooked up by the people in his office. No file available, no record for us of what he’s achieved before. It is, Gough, a disaster recipe.’

‘I always like to imagine a good outcome.’

A young officer offered them wrapped rolls and little mugs of strong coffee, and she’d smiled at him. There was an innocence to her face, and an obvious pleasure with her work that rather captivated Gough. But then, she would not be fielding brickbats, would not face a probing inquiry by those who practised hindsight to an art form, and the bill would be questioned. He had not caught a salmon on that river, tried for one every year and illegally, no licence, since he was a teenager and with a spoon on a fly only water… it would be good to get there again, and soon. Would Pegs be sitting on the bank behind him as he cast? Probably not.

She bored on. ‘What I’m saying, he’s put himself in harm’s way. Idiotic and impetuous. What sends a man as a volunteer into that sort of place? Can only be the itch… why I say it’ll end in tears, and there won’t be a ride in a hearse through Royal Wootton Bassett for him: he’ll go in the dead of night… there’ll be tears, but not mine.’

‘If you say so, Pegs.’

He heard a peremptory whistle. The Major strode towards them.

With sufficient problems to exercise him, he did not need them. Did not require the presence of two passengers with nothing to contribute.

Major Valery had already asked for his principal captain on the ground, who had the notebook and the pencil, to be briefed on the Undercover and had been brushed away. ‘Sorry and all that, not intended as disrespect, we know nothing of him – well, next to nothing. Not inside the loop. Whether he’s gone rogue, or is doing the Stockholm bit, can’t say… Don’t know whether he has a wife, a partner, a boyfriend, a caravan full of kids, where he comes from, his experience level, his stress tolerance. No idea, don’t know him, cannot help.’ He came back to lay down red lines, not to be crossed.

‘The situation as I see it… First, your man is inside, has been denounced as a covert agent, is in a place of maximum danger through his own actions, but I am obliged to consider his wellbeing. I have a security perimeter around the project. Second, one of your nationals has purchased an AK-47 rifle, presumably with the intention of smuggling it into the UK, and that is a very small priority for me. Thirdly, we deal with suppliers of narcotics, those in the Class B category and I have no interest in them; if they were not here the economies of places such as La Castellane would collapse. There would be a crime wave of endemic proportions as a substitute for that economy. Last, and important, this is not a Disney theme park. You do not walk around, ask questions, get in the way. I will do my best to get your man into a place of safety. If I am successful, you and your colleague and your agent will be driven at speed to the airport and put on a plane, destination immaterial, and taken off my patch. There are no questions from you, of course. But one from me.’

‘Fire it,’ the man said and the woman glowered at him.

‘The girl in there, how will she be? Can she kill? Without an audience and without cameras, will she shoot him?’

The woman answered, ‘Have to wait and see, won’t we? Which will make for an interesting evening. My promise, Major, if you fuck up then we’ll make double damn certain you field no blame, no recrimination. Just so as we understand each other.’

He thought it would rain soon, and be dark sooner, and the added complications screwed each other in his mind.

December 2018

He came out of the Consulate building, clasping the print-out given him, and began to dance a clumsy jig.

Then collected himself and regained his outward calm, unable to harness his inner elation, only disguise it, and walked across the car park, then went through a gate in the concrete walls deemed necessary to protect any United States of America mission abroad, then weaved through the concrete anti-tank teeth that were another layer of defence for the few American nationals in the recently opened building on the outskirts of his home city, Alexandria. Next was the long walk in the stifling heat to the distant area where visitors – applying for entry visas – were permitted to park.

His cup, brimful and slightly overflowing, contained good news, the best news, and was relayed to him in the dry language of the print-out. As a Christian Egyptian national he was to be awarded refugee status: he and his family were to be welcomed in that distant country. They would go quickly, without fanfare, no farewell parties and no wringing of hands with neighbours. Would pack a few of their choicest possessions, would leave the rest in the apartment – furniture, fittings, unexceptional pictures, out-dated clothing, and the keys would go to a cousin and he would dispose of the remnants of their Egyptian life: if he was lucky there would be work for this harbourmaster’s office pilot in a port along the Atlantic seaboard, or on the Great Lakes in the north, and the children would have education and the family could worship on a Sunday morning without fear of death, mutilation, any atrocity weapon detonated by the fanatics of his city. He did not go straight home, nor did he phone his family.

The pilot had other pressing business.

Near to his home on the eastern side of Alexandria was a line of poorly constructed lock-up garages and storerooms. Most were used by men who traded in fruit and vegetables in the open-air markets of the city, but he had one on which his father had long ago taken a lease. He had failed to find the courage to bring the weapon into his own home. The risk of its discovery, or of the children finding it and gossiping to others, was too great. Still in the wrapping in which it had been given him by the navigating officer; he warily took it from the garage and stowed it in his car, under his own seat, and drove away.

He went west. He felt a conspirator and his mind was clouded in guilt and nervousness, because he carried the weapon.

Went out on the international coastal road, followed the signs for Alamein and Marsah Matruh and Sidi Barrani. For his work as a pilot he needed certainty and precision. Professional disciplines. Through the middle of that day, in the glare of the sun and against a backdrop of endless, featureless desert, he drove away from all he knew, and all of the people who knew him. He could not go as far as the Libyan border, five hours’ drive, but he went for a clear hour and 40 minutes until he spied the caravan. They were a part of the great Bedouin tribe. They had camels. They had desert tents and cloaked women, and still moved across frontiers in search of grazing. Their world was pressured by Japanese-built pick-up trucks, and by the ‘sophistication’ of TV, by narcotics, by the bureaucrats who needed them corralled into the authority of the state… They moved languidly at the pace the camels wished to go under the burden of their load.

He stopped the car beside the road.

The pilot lifted out the weapon in its packaging. Hopefully, in years to come, inside the safety of the United States, he would remember what he had done and might try to explain to new friends how great had been the fear he’d carried both as a Christian and as a man owning an illegal weapon. One might have brought a lynch mob down on him, the other might have had him climb the scaffold’s steps. He covered the rifle with the cloth always in the car which he draped over the windscreen when the vehicle was parked in sunlight. To other drivers on the road, past the battlefield cemetery of the British and their allies, forty minutes out of Alamein, he would have looked like a man hurrying towards a dip in the sand where he could hide and relieve his bowels.

He should never have accepted it, should have refused the gift. It had never been in his house. Now, with his visa granted, there were no circumstances when he might have needed its protection. He would be glad to be rid of it.

Kids came running towards him, might have wanted to see if he carried sweets or would give them coins. His shoes had filled with sand which grated on his socks and if he went farther he would start blisters.

No comment, nothing said, he gave up the package, his burden, let it slide into hands that might not yet have lost an innocence, without explanation, and he waved them away. He stood and watched the swarm of youngsters sprint barefoot back to the line of camels and adults. A cluster of men examined what had been brought them, were now 200 metres from him. An arm was raised, to acknowledge the gift, and shoulders shrugged but the stride of the camels never shortened. He watched them go, the package buried in a beast’s load, and soon the heat’s haze claimed them. He had lost the thing, and thanked his God for it, and went back to his car. In a few days the caravan would have crossed into Libya, well south of the border crossing.

The pilot shook the grains from his shoes, massaged his feet and took more sand from his socks. He would drive home and in the evening when the children were in their beds he would tell his wife of their new future, show her the print-out from the Consulate… he believed that their days of living with terror were almost over, that he had no further requirement for a killing machine, a Kalashnikov.

‘What did you want?’ It was the motorcycle rider, who had exchanged the money belt for the weapon. He did not answer. ‘You came here because you wanted something, what?’

He sensed this was a man who made decisions that affected a cash flow of tens of thousands of euros, who would have – in a limited space – the power of life and the power of death over opponents. He would have snapped instructions and lesser creatures would do his bidding: there had been people at the heart of the courier conspiracy when he was Norm Clarke and busy betraying them who would have had such power. If this man decided him better dead and gone, then it would happen, and he would leave the apartment in a body bag, and it would be hard going for the mortuary people to get him down the stairs. He did not help, no answer given. He would speak when he was ready, not wheedle, give nothing… his way.

‘The old man, he is a grand figure. He is a legend in the city. He said you were a cop. I did not know, but he did. Why does a cop come here, into our life?’

The evening had come down and outside the cloud had thickened, and the power of the wind had slipped. No lights shone in the bedroom. The man was two feet from him, and his breath stank of chillis, and he still had patience, but it would not last. The boy with the wrecked arm stood in the doorway and had a knife in his hand but seemed more interested in looking across the hallway and into the living area and catching some of the game show. Zed sat on the bed. He thought by now she would have realised she had entered a cul-de-sac, and did not know how to retrace her steps, and the rifle was across her lap… Long ago, with an identity now shelved, he had apparently idolised a worn and frayed bear and had carried it through the day, and to nursery, and only released it when he was in the bath, then carried it to bed. She had the rifle, held it that way… There would have been weapons instructors at Lympstone who could talk about the way in which a Kalashnikov empowered those whose voices had never been heard before. She might not have known how to break out of the tower block, but she would not have doubted that the rifle was her salvation, a protector.

‘I do hashish. I do well with hashish. A cop from abroad does not care about hashish in the north of Marseille. Why?’

He could barely see the dealer’s face. But enough light came up from the street lamps for some to fall on her cheeks and nestle over her nose and into the small lines at the side of her mouth, and the caverns in which her eyes were set… places where a young man and a young woman could lose themselves, be strangers in a community and not hunted down. Not everyone had to belong and have roots, have a granny in the cemetery, to be accepted on certain terms – live and let live… he thought her beautiful, stubborn, but beautiful.

‘What can satisfy you?

There were no more sirens outside, but sometimes a vehicle moved and then the blue lights climbed the walls of the block and filtered into the bedroom and shone on the ceiling or slid over the walls, once covering the poster of the rifle; the only other light was the flicker of the technicolour from the TV.

‘I understand. You do not have to speak… You came for the girl. Yes?’

He did not think he was about to die, but had no complacency. Tiredness would build, and with it would come impatience, exasperation, anger, all of them increasing the danger factor. But he said nothing, was not ready to argue his corner.

‘It is not romance, no. It is because you are a cop and she is a fugitive, yes?’

He was offered a cigarette, declined. He had noted that the man addressed only him, ignored the others, as if they had no importance, were worthless… might have been a wrong judgement because she had the rifle, was the only one of them equipped to kill, as far as he knew.

‘You know what? I understand everything… The girl is a fugitive, and the girl has a weapon, an automatic rifle, big deal. I have seven under my control. In this project alone there might be twenty-five. And now, I tell you what you are, you are a nuisance to me. You are an obstruction.’

Zed now hovered close, had not relaxed her grip on the rifle, seemed calmer and more settled as if her mind were made up. Andy watched. The man, Hamid, turned towards her as if at last acknowledging her place in the sun, perhaps her right to be consulted.

‘And you, what do you want?’

Wanted what she would not have admitted to. Not shared what she wanted. Almost frightened of what she wanted. Would like to have told Andy, snuggled in bed together, bare-skinned and warm and wet, and him loving her, told him as he slept and the rhythm of his breathing was regular, that she wanted to be known. Have her name shouted.

Nobody outside Savile Town knew the names of the boys, her cousins, who had gone from Dewsbury on the bus, or by train, to go and fight in Syria, or in Iraq. And to die there. Only a few could recall their faces: ‘a quiet boy, and very serious… always polite, always helpful… do anything for anybody’. Forgotten now. It shamed her. She had had to struggle to recall the names of the suicide people, and more often now the faces of her two cousins became blurred and merged and it was harder for her to see two individuals. She did not know if the last two had carried Kalashnikovs similar to the one she now held when they’d gone to detonate themselves, driving an armour-plated vehicle, reinforced sides and an engine covered with tempered steel sheets so that they could manoeuvre through defensive fire and stay in control right to the target area. Had felt that power, and the strength given them by the rifle, peering through a slit in the armour plate and hearing the drumming of rifle fire. She did not know whether the cousins, two names and one face, had been armed with them – or had been asleep in a makeshift barracks, or had been grunting through sex with one of the child girls who went there with the fervent adoration of converts, and a bomb or a missile had struck their building. She thought it would have been a cruel fate to have died at the hand of the enemy and without an AK to hold, as she had, in his hand. The answer to the question? She yearned for a form of recognition.

Never listened to at home. Never really shone at school, except for a minimal pass grade for the entry into the university in Manchester, and a heavy hint, a suggestion put on her lap, that she ticked enough boxes for entrance and that another candidate for the course, cleverer and with better grades, had been elbowed. Never listened to by either Scorpion or by Krait, nor by the men she had met in the park in London. Might have been listened to by Andy, or thought he had listened to her… then betrayed.

An image played in her mind. She had walked into the heart of the city where she supposedly studied. No laptop, no notepad and pencil, no textbooks in a bag. Heavy against her body as she went down the long street was the assault rifle… the first to be brought down would be the security guard at the checkpoint. One shot in the chest and she would run forward. She would hear, each time she fired, the clamour of screaming and might catch the terror in the faces of those cowering in the corridors, trying to pretend they were helpless and innocent and had no hatred of her. Wonderful to see the terror and the begging. All because she carried the gaunt shape of the weapon. Not to do with her personality, and the power of her spoken message, but because she had it in her hand. She would shoot and shoot again, keep shooting through the first magazine, and spin them over and lock in the second that was taped to the first, and would shoot with that, would keep firing, keep knocking over the dolls and the bears and the mannequins until she heard the click and the trigger no longer fired and then all around her would be quiet. She would walk forward and would step around and through the casualties. She doubted she would hear them approach from behind, their weapons already cocked. She would know nothing when they fired. Her photograph would be in the papers. Her name would be broadcast. That was what she wanted.

She shook her head sharply. ‘You have no right to ask what I want – and you would not understand if I told you.’

Nor would she tell him that she would shoot Andy before it was over. Not yet because he must suffer… it hurt badly that he did not beg her, show any weakness. No balance – his betrayal of her and her deceit in manipulating him… no guilt for her, she alone had grievances, was wronged. She did not know how long there would be until the end played out or in what form. Nor would have answered the question had it been put differently: was she getting there, towards what she wanted? The rain came fast, arrived on a wave of cold wind.

Two gusts following close on each other heralded the opening thrusts of the storm. As if a tap had abruptly been turned on. Spots of rain pattering first, then a single thunderclap, then what seemed the tipping of a myriad of buckets. Dogs howled into the growing darkness. Not a night to be out, not for the old or the young, the uniformed or those in flimsy sweatshirts and jeans, those who worked and those who stood in line and looked to buy.

There was little cover from the elements around the project of La Castellane. A foul night and a dirty night, but many braved it. Police huddled under capes and the rain dripped from their headgear, and their focus was on keeping their weapons dry. Alongside them were those standing in the queues, uneasy as bedfellows who waited to be admitted so they might purchase quality Moroccan, a new shipment and well spoken of. Also soaked were those attempting to return to the project after a day of menial employment in the city, and those waiting to leave so that they could work at bars and clean shopping centres.

And there were the women who had emerged on to the narrow balconies butting off some of the apartment windows. Some wore waterproof hats, some had hitched plastic bags on to their heads, some allowed the rain to wash through their hair. The situation was a stand-off, and from the east-facing windows of La Castellane there was a good view of the bare open space under the walls, and the rocks ahead of them to impede access, then the road and finally the slope of scrub leading up to the shopping centre, where marksmen might gather. If there were marksmen, and the situation came to a blood-spattered head, then it was a fair and reasonable bet he would be there Only one star-studded figure attracted the attention of the women of the project. Spectacles were regularly wiped, eyes blinked often to dislodge rainwater… they did not know who he was because always he performed the death dance with a balaclava covering his features, and they knew his name only from that of a former executioner, and few of them would have known the significance in their adopted country’s history of the Place de la Concorde and the work of Charles-Henri Samson.

Sheltering in a police wagon, along with other marksmen, Samson dozed. The Styr SSG was balanced across his thighs, loaded but not cocked. Partly it was his imagination and some of it was the product of dreams: he was in the Tanzanian park of Serengeti and he seemed to see a family of cheetahs. The big female had come effortlessly down from a kopje, a small hillock of stones and bushes, and would have hidden her cubs there while she hunted. He had seen this first on television and now it was implanted in his mind, and he would not forget a frame of it. Led by their mother, the family crossed a flat area of arid grassland and headed for a green-painted long wheelbase Land Rover. The boldest of the cubs was the first to jump and skidded up on to the engine covering and then settled and switched a tail, and the mother came next and climbed on to the roof and lay easily down on the metalwork on which the sun had shone all day, and the others romped under the vehicle and round the wheels. A blonde and tanned woman sat at the wheel and must have sweltered because every window was firmly closed. She was, Samson knew, a prominent British expert on the species, and she had written a piece on the trust, the bond, between herself in her vehicle and this one family, and they came to her if she was close by and climbed on to this one zoologist’s roof and bonnet to catch the warmth of the metalwork. The dream or the thought of them gratified him… His rifle was clean, dry, and he awaited an order from the Major which might come and might not. He might shoot that evening, or perhaps another of the men close to him would, or perhaps none of them would. He was not restless, would not be concerned if he did not fire, or if he fired and killed… it would concern him if he fired and missed. Just before he had started to dream or imagine the advance of the cheetah tribe, Samson had received a text, from his wife: Drafted in. Getting wet. On the perimeter. First one home puts the supper on. What a happy place! Xxx He had not replied. It would all be connected, the call out. A weapon exchanged for money, and a clever old-school thug, known by the self-gratification name of Tooth, had noted the presence of the English detective, no doubt good at his work but in a location where ‘good’ was inadequate, and a girl who was moderately attractive but not in comparison to his own wife and his own daughter, and a mess… Most of his work involved mopping up after mistakes and errors of judgement – all similar to situations in the Serengeti where wildebeest or gazelles paid with their lives for mistakes. Some talked in the van but Samson held his peace, was quiet and waited.

‘Happy, Gough?’

‘Mildly delirious.’

The rain fell on them, dripped off them, and nothing changed and little moved. Maybe they’d have been better in the customer queue that was building steadily. Too many years since, as a teenager, she’d enjoyed a rebellious joint, Moroccan or other, but a smoke now might have been welcome. Had they been in London, or just in the UK, all would have seemed straightforward, and the weight would have been shared.

‘Sorry and all that but it’s writhing round my head. You and me, what we achieve. Apologies if out of order but it’s bitching me. Start with you. Satisfied you make a difference?’

‘Never doubted it.’

‘An assessment of where we are?’

‘Where we are not wanted, not respected, regarded as an interfering nuisance. The Major regards us as a pain, hardly disguised, our own man has freelanced and is out of control, a runaway cannon, and…’

They were alone. They were fed no information and there was no more food or coffee. She could remember the face of the would-be agent, drowned, with the smiling anxiety to please scrubbed from his face, and remember the girl at the heart of Rag and Bone who had seemed an innocent marionette, dancing to others’ tunes, and remember the sight of their boy, Andy Knight, hugging and holding the girl at the bridge in Avignon, and turned against Gough and her. And could see a marksman expertly killing a youth in a street. Nothing in her memory gave her satisfaction.

‘In this job, Gough, do we ever meet, mingle, cooperate, with decent folk?’

‘Never intentionally.’

‘Not ever?’

‘Only by accident.’

Pegs said, ‘I am serious, Gough… “making a difference” is about all we have to cling to if we’re to keep our peckers up. Otherwise, what the hell are we here for… It’s never-ending, we’re on a treadmill, and the threat is driving it faster. It’s the present and it’s the future, and I do not see an escape route… Sorry and all that, but I’m in the dumps.’

He put his arm around her. They were in the shadow of a small tree, the sort that landscapers would have planted in the hope of bringing ‘civilisation’ to this bleak place, and it would not have been noticed by any but a serious voyeur. He was a ‘good old boy’, Gough was, and needed to be because he was all she had… and nothing was permanent, in her jaundiced experience of life. It was a strong arm, and welcome.

Gough said, ‘Regrets for my gloomy view, but I think the rain has come on heavier.’

It had taken Crab several minutes of kneeing and elbowing to get through the clutch of passengers at the desk, their tempers steadily fraying.

He knew the flight was delayed. The hold-up, he gathered, was indefinite. Other aircraft with other destinations had now climbed above it on the departure board.

Life should run smoothly for a man such as Crab. His money and his heritage and his prestige were supposed to ensure that the stresses of ‘ordinary’ people were avoided. Around him were passengers off a cruise liner, who had gone in search of a wafer of winter sunshine and had been well doused between the coach and the airport, and irritation had spawned. He wouldn’t have looked much himself. God knows why… but a shortage of taxis, an argument about the fare which had ended with him scooting when threatened with a call to the police, a trek towards the terminal doors and the rain at its heaviest. He was soaked, and his jacket and his trousers and his shoes, and a grip of chill damp was on his skin… and the fucking flight seemed delayed without word of when he might board along with this crowd in their vacation gear. He did not do holidays. Crab did not do beaches, or cocktails at dusk, and did not do the tourism of traipsing round ruins, and now was going nowhere. What he did do was long-standing friendships, alliances, networking with a few people who were trusted, valuable, who respected him. It was like there was a prop that held up a good piece of his life, and it was like Tooth had got hold of a sledge and had whacked the prop, flattened it, and brought a ceiling down on him.

Always been a street fighter, and knew when to kick and punch to get through a close crowd, and ignored the protests, and was panting, quite breathless, when his stomach barged against the front of the desk where a girl sat, flustered.

A mirror reflected his appearance. He saw himself, saw what she saw. His question must have been garbled, and she looked at him as if she were dealing with an idiot. Something about ‘engine trouble’, and something about ‘malfunction’ and she was looking over his shoulder and waiting for the next passenger’s query; she had told him fuck all. Did she not know who he was? Not know who Crab used to be? Not know that men’s chins used to go slack if they’d annoyed him? He was pushed aside. No apologies and no requests for him to move. Shoved out of the way, like he was old garbage: wet old garbage. All a disaster. The board flickered, the announcement was made.

The flight had a new schedule, would take off in three hours… trouble was that nobody knew, any longer, who he used to be.

‘You should know what happens… When we find a police spy, it is what happens. My brother will do it…’ Karym hissed at the man who sat on the floor, back against the bedroom wall, and who never met his eye. He felt a growing frustration. Behind him, Zeinab paced, backwards and forwards across the window where the curtains were still not drawn, and there would have been sufficient light from the corridor and the TV for Zeinab to have made a silhouette. He could not tell her, imagined that if he criticised her she would have snarled at him. Wanted so much to help her, and did not know how and it was dark outside and the rain came hard.

‘…If there is a police spy, and he is identified and taken, then he is dead. His mother can scream and his aunts and his sisters, but they waste their words. His father may send an imam to plead for his life, but my brother will be deaf. And not just Hamid, but any leader in the project will be the same. A police spy is a dead man… That will be you.’

His brother had gone. Not hostile but seeming confused. Karym would have liked his brother to go rough on the police spy, beat him and kick him, spill blood, make him cry out. The spy had not replied to any of his brother’s statements, which was an astonishing display of contempt and should have been rewarded: real pain, and real injury should have been done to him… It annoyed him that the girl – the most extraordinary person he had met in his life, though he had barely spoken to her, and the best looking and far ahead of any teenage kid he knew in La Castellane – paced across the room, but he had not the courage to risk her anger: she should not show herself. Would Samson be there by now? Might be, likely to be. He threatened, in the hope of seeing weakness in the spy. He had no reason to hate or despise him, but it would satisfy.

‘We take a car. My brother will send people to find one, then to hotwire it, then to drive it down to the back wall of the school, where the rubbish is stored. The owner may complain, cry that he needs his car for work. He will not be heard. Then fuel. We will have gasoline ready. When my brother is ready, he will send for you. Send boys to bring out the police spy.’

He knew the procedure of the ‘barbecue’, knew it because several times he had watched it, and the smell of it had stayed with him, in his mind and on his body and over his clothes, for days. He took especial care with his language, spoke slowly and he believed he was clear, so that his threat was understood. She stayed on the move and he wondered if Samson had arrived and had adjusted his sight, followed her each time she crossed the window space, was on Battle Sight Zero. He tried a last time to win a reaction.

‘Bound and needing the boys to drag you, and a gag in your mouth, but no cloth across your eyes, and you will see where they take you, then you will smell the fuel. You will be put inside the car, across the back seat, which is already soaked. You will see the flame which is brought to the car. A big crowd watches. The flame is thrown in. It is what my brother arranges for a police spy… Do you say nothing? You will burn and nobody will care… What do you want of us?’

His voice beat back from the walls and ceiling, he understood the depths of his failure. She walked behind him and carried the weapon, and he heard the game show on the TV and the patter of the rain and the beat of her feet.

He was settling in for a long night. Had few other options. Had to wait and take what he thought the best chance for survival. He studied the bedroom, but it was hard to concentrate because of her restless movement, and the boy nibbled at his resolve, with talk of the ‘barbecue’. In the centre of the ceiling, was a single light flex holding a low-wattage bulb and cheap shade, brittle plastic already cracked, with no pattern to relieve its boredom. Parts of it were more stained than others, and they’d have been immediately above where the boy might have sat when he smoked, fags or dope. It needed paint, was shabby and tired.

‘Even with the gag you will scream after the fuel is lit. Everyone hears the scream but no one comes to help. If the police have a patrol car going by and hear the scream they will not come into the project. You burn and many will come to watch but no one will weep for you. My brother will organise it.’

On the shelves were volumes on the Kalashnikov rifle… he knew about people who were fanatic collectors of libraries detailing the working parts of a firearm, and perhaps they played weekend games with decommissioned weapons, or went on paint-ball manoeuvres, or collected the memorabilia that American companies marketed on the internet: underpants with an AK image printed across the crotch, or mugs and pins, ashtrays and posters that might show North Vietnamese soldiers holding them in a jungle, or Iraqi forces in a desert, or Soviet military exercising in the Arctic, or ISIS people who were bodyguards for an executioner in Raqqa. He did not read such stuff, thought it puerile. He had no requirement to fantasise on a war and rubber-neck from the sidelines… He was a paid-up member, had the season ticket for the proper business – as had Norm and Phil. And he saw places where there had been adhesive fastenings on the walls but what they held up had been ripped off, out of date or because of a mood swing, and left behind were the scabs where the plaster had come away, and the blue lights from the street caught those places and highlighted them.

‘It is what you want, yes? I tell you, you will get what you want.’

The boy was close enough to him. Could have kicked him, maybe felled him… but had no reason to. Only a little voice droning on, and unlikely to affect the outcome. Could have felt sorry for the boy. Was not supposed to have sympathies for either targets or those who strayed into the lines of the cross-hairs – also, was not supposed to take targets to bed, and feel affection for them, nor try to find a way out which left them free, clean, with a future worth living. Much that SC&O10 rule books would have said was outside the limits.

‘You will get the fire because you are a spy and because my brother will…’

The voice faded. Perhaps, at last, enthusiasm for describing the fate of a police agent had palled, and perhaps he had turned towards Zed for endorsement and she had mouthed – her face in shadow – something like ‘shut the fuck up’. The boy buttoned it, and turned away. He thought both of them, the boy and Zed, were close now to the mix of exhaustion and fear, knowing the plot was lost, and looking to the irrational. The psychologists who swarmed like a rash over the Undercovers always predicted that a hostage situation deteriorated rapidly, and then was most dangerous to a trussed prisoner. Likely to be close now, the crisis moment, but he stayed quiet.

He thought Rag and Bone was near the end.