Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 18

He watched the weapon.

Occasionally, if light flickered on it he saw the notches cut. He had tried to count them but the stock was never still for long enough. She had it wedged against her hip and the end of it was firm between her elbow and the curve of her pelvis. Once he had counted seventeen, and for a long time that was the best he’d managed, but more recently he had totted up, off two rows, nineteen. He supposed it a sort of ritual… Shoot. Kill. Open a penknife, or detach a bayonet. Scratch. Flick away loose wood. Feel good. Look to kill again, or be killed. Many owners. A colourful history, caused a bucket of tears.

It came very suddenly. He had not predicted that moment, that reaction. His backside hurt from sitting on the linoleum-covered floor. His face itched from stubble forming but he did not want to scratch, move. He was sitting still, quiet… She exploded. Not at him, at the boy. Passing each other, him going to sneak a look through the window, from the side and masked by the curtains, and her passing the window and fully exposed and they collided. Ridiculous. Hostage-takers in confusion and walking into each other. Almost laughable. The boy swung his foot and kicked her shin. Her reaction was to club him, a short swing, with the body of the weapon, and the magazine would have clipped his chin. And him going to kick her again, and her looking for space to strike a heavier and more significant blow and both missing and both tumbling. A weapon was underneath them, and she was swearing at him and he at her: English words and French words. They wrestled. She was stronger, but he could fight dirtier. She had him pinioned. Beneath her, he lifted his knee into the pit of her stomach. Her hands were on his throat, her knees on his arms. The boy used his kneecap again and she gasped and freed his throat and her weight shifted off his arms and he was scratching at her face, trying to find her eyes.

He watched. He thought it nearly a good time to make his pitch, not yet but nearly the right moment. They broke apart. Were sheepish. Enough light came in for him to see two faces, and their eyes had dropped and their anger was doused, and she pushed back her hair and coughed, and he was snivelling as if the struggle had loosened the muck down in his lungs. The boy was first on his feet and her legs were entangled in the rifle’s barrel, then he bent and helped her up and she used her free hand to push herself from the side of the unmade bed. Light, for a moment, flooded the room. She shrugged away from him, rejected the help. Andy could measure his feelings for her: not lust. Not loving. A degree of pity, something of sympathy. She would not achieve her target as a jihadi courier; she was neutered, no longer represented a danger. His feeling for her, he supposed, was affection – would not be less, could be more… There would be an inquest, in-house and confidential, and his actions would be picked over and he might try to explain that his emotions had been jumbled by events, were not clear-cut. He would look into the interrogators’ pitiless faces, and might just rasp at them, ‘But you weren’t there. Don’t know how it is, was. Your sort, sit in judgement, are never fucking there.’ He thought she had started to crack under the pressure.

She had shown weakness. The boy was not supposed to know that she had no plan, had failed in what it was intended she should do. Pretty damn simple… play the field with a simple guy who drove lorries. Enmesh him, dangle him, get him to drive to the Mediterranean coast and pick up a package and come back to a ferry port where the sleuths and watchers would wave them through. Nice-looking girl with a bit of cleavage hanging out, and a guy who looked like he’d lapped at the cream bowl, and given a thumbs-up by the Border people and the Customs and the security staff who were supposed to ferret out the jihadis coming home, and the weapons they’d need for fighting their bloody war. She was the star girl, and she would have told people near to her cause and dear to it that she could cope with what was asked… Where was she? On the floor, scratching and kicking with a kid from a high-rise block where they dealt in cannabis, and she’d no way out.

He thought she had reason, plenty of cause, to have lost the rag. And, getting near to that moment when self-control was lost and crisis blitzed her. He said nothing.

What he reckoned peculiar was that no link had been established. The kid must have a mobile phone. The girl who watched the game shows, and who sometimes shifted on a noisy chair and sometimes coughed and sometimes moved from the next door room to the bathroom, or opened and closed a fridge door, must have a mobile phone. He would have imagined by now that a hostage negotiator would be in place, busy pouring sweet syrup into Zed’s ear, and the boy’s. He knew something of the negotiation process: it was smooth talk, dripping reason, quiet and patient, trying to build trust and never accepting deadlines and attempting to bore the guys or girls with the hardware into a state of tired surrender. ‘We want cigarettes, or sandwiches, or chocolate, or a passage out… want it, or we start shooting.’ Which was crap, because he was the only person they could kill and that would mean losing their shield and the one bargaining chip they possessed. And the answer would come back that the one official who could authorise the little luxuries had gone home, would not be back until the morning, and they’d delay, obfuscate. No negotiation had started. Next step was the threat that he, star boy on the scene, would be shot. Simple enough. In fifteen minutes, in ten minutes, in five minutes, maybe in half a minute, he’d be dead… Not a good prognosis, because at that point, usually the outer door caved in and the flash-and-bangs rolled down the corridor and the storm squad came calling, and were always trigger happy, and high on adrenaline. The chances were good that he’d stop more than half a dozen rounds. He would have expected by now to hear, very faint, the sounds of a drill’s bit eating through the thin walls, usually from the apartment next door, or the ceiling, so that a probe microphone, better if it were a camera, could be shoved through to give the boss a clear indication of what was happening inside. He had strained to hear the drill and had not.

She started up again. It was part because of what he felt for her – a kaleidoscope of emotions – that he was there… and part from the desire harboured in his stubborn streak, pure obstinacy, to see the Rag and Bone mission to conclusion. Her bark was close.

‘Was it all just deceit, all of it?’

Nothing said, his eyes staying low, finding somewhere on the rug, amongst the boy’s clothes, and amongst the food wrappers. Zed shouted,‘All false, everything?’

From the start, of course. From when she had walked down the darkened street and the thugs had bounced her, and she had been on the pavement and trying to hold the strap of her bag as it was dragged off her, and attempts made to punch and kick her – and him coming from nowhere, a stranger off the street, and what had seemed a ruthless, selfless effort to protect her… all a lie.‘The men who attacked me, pretended to, they were your friends? Police? More deceit?’

And Zeinab remembered being in her room, struggling with an outline for the essay she was supposed to write, and cursing her tutor who had made it obvious that she was an unsatisfactory student, without sufficient interest in her subject… and her phone ringing, and being told to come down. Him being there, and his flowers. First flowers ever brought her. A trick to delude her.‘The flowers were a lie, and the kiss was a lie, and walking with our fingers joined was a lie, and because you were so clever I did not see the lie.’

Anger surged in her. Andy would not look at her.‘You think I am the stupid bitch who will lead you to my brothers? Do you think that? That I am the weak link? I tell you a truth, could have told it while you fucked me, could have yelled it at you while you were grunting, sweating, whispering lies to me… I am a fighter. I am not afraid. I am a fighter, on the front line, I have no fear… My two cousins went to the war. Two streets from me, left their home, went away, were martyred. They fought, knew the beauty of fighting, of the struggle, knew the excitement. My street is filled with small and frightened people who do not know of war. I am learning it… You have taught me to be a fighter, from today. I show you.’

Zeinab turned away from him. She brushed past the boy, like he was not there, was an irrelevance. She went to the window, dragged one of the flimsy curtains and half the hooks broken and it sagged loose in her fist. She snatched at the window handle, twisted it, forced it and felt the flush of air on her hands and wrists, on her face, and then the wet of the rain. She fired. Zeinab held the weapon firmly, and pulled the trigger a second time – and some more.

She had no target. She went after shadows. Single shots. And then she released the trigger, let it ride back and the grating sound followed as the cases were ejected and fell sideways from her and bounced, careered on the linoleum, then hit the wall and spun before coming to rest. She thought it a feeling like no other… in bed with him was secondary. Her shoulder ached from the impact of the stock. At first she had tried to gaze along the length of the rifle barrel, over the V sight and the needle sight and cut a line to dark outlines of bushes beyond the road where the street-lights still burned. She thought herself adult, disciplined and intelligent because she counted the number of times she pulled on the trigger, counted each time the stock thudded into her shoulder. The air around her, in spite of the open window and the driving rain, reeked of the smell that came from firing. Her ears rang with the sound the weapon made.

And thought of her cousins. Nice boys who teased her and called her a ‘swot’, and had never told her where they would head, but had gone and had fought and had died, and had no marked grave… It was said, whispered among the older kids at her school in Savile Town that the suiciders who came from her district, any of them in the armour-plated cars or walking towards checkpoints where the enemy waited and would do inspections, were told they would go to Paradise if they died fighting against the kuffar. If they were men, then a bus load of virgins would await them under an orchard’s fruit trees, always well loaded, always ripe. For a girl, there would be only one boy, handsome and loving and faithful and not caring if she wore pebble-lensed spectacles and if she had a brace over her teeth… and hoped then that her cousins saw her. Once only, she glanced behind her. The boy lay on the bed and had his hands over his ears and seemed to tremble. She looked at Andy Knight, but he did not meet her eye.

Twice more she fired… It was, she thought, a supreme moment in her life: she was now separated from her home, and from her school, and the lecture theatres in Manchester, and from the girls – supercilious and haughty – on her corridor in the Hall of Residence. The quiet fell.

The wind had dropped.

The shots were clear and loud, heard by each and every one of the watchers who huddled or sheltered or endured the strengthening force of the rain. No one stirred, made themselves obvious, drew attention to their position. Some claimed to have seen a shape at a window, and others said they had seen the flashes from the barrel as each round was fired. The pulse of the project beat faster, with growing anticipation. There would be a better show than expected, a performance to be remembered. The balconies were full, the queue held its line, the perimeter cordon remained in place. Some said it was a gesture, and bold. Others said that firing high-velocity rounds without purpose showed growing panic, weakness.

Karym yelled,‘What did you do that for, sister?’

Her answer was spoken without emotion.‘To show them.’

‘What do you think you are showing them?’

‘That I am a fighter.’

‘You try to start a war, you know who you are against?’

‘I show them that I am not afraid.’

‘You have half Marseille’s police out there. You have the best they have. You will have Samson, the executioner.’

‘I am not frightened of them.’

‘You think they will go away now? Leave you to have a fine sleep, after you start a war? Why, sister?’

‘I have new strength, new power. They have no authority over me.’

‘Who makes money out of fighting in a war? I don’t.’

‘What is it to do with money? Nothing to do with money. It is about defiance, about being a soldier.’

‘To make money, you trade. Trade is not war. We made a trade, a very small one. I am astonished that my brother was prepared to be involved. Even more astonishing that a legend, the man who is Tooth, was prepared to do the organisation. Fuck, sister, this is nothing – for us – to do with war.’

‘You are Arabs, Muslims.’

‘No, first we are traders – afterwards there may be time to be Arab, to pray. We buy cargo, break it down, sell it on. We have no interest in war. War would interfere with trade. Sister, did no one tell you?’

‘Just then I felt I was a soldier, a true fighter. I had the weapon, had an aim, squeezed on the trigger, saw a mass of enemies, and saw them in flight. It is extraordinary to feel… You do not understand.’

‘Because I have never fired it… Sister, that is what they say. It is fascinating, it is remarkable, and it kills. Does not just kill the person who is aimed at, is a target. It kills the boy who holds it. It can kill you, sister. Here, whether you are a fighter or a soldier, no one in La Castellane gives a fuck. You inconvenience them. They want to trade, make money, want to survive, not fight some fucking war… I am sorry. I told you the truth.’

He said that he would get her a glass of water. And looked down at her prisoner and saw the raw swelling at the wrists where the restraints were pulled too tight, but the man – the police spy – had not complained and did not draw attention to himself. He went out of the bedroom. In the living-room his sister slept on the settee and he switched off the TV. Before going to the kitchen he walked up the corridor to the front door. It was steel-lined, had two locks, two bolts and a chain. He had not bothered to use the chain or the bolts, and only one of the locks. He opened it and looked across the lobby and down to the first corner of the stairs and saw small bright eyes. Kids’ eyes. If the police had been there he would have seen them and they would have called to him, threatened him. He understood that they stayed back. Why? She interfered with trade, as he had told her. There would be an accommodation, of course. He closed the door, did not activate any of the locks and went to the kitchen to get her water. He thought that the truth he’d told would go hard with her, and believed her incredible, wonderful, but fragile. Every waking moment in his life, inside La Castellane, had been dominated by trade: the only issue, of sole importance. Money flooded from the trade and raised a man’s prestige. His brother would not have comprehended her… she knew nothing of trade, nothing of money, was – yes – incredible and wonderful.

At last, sympathy was shown them. Two rats, three-quarters drowned, were offered mercy.

Pegs said to Gough that it was not personal them being left in the rain, just that they were irrelevant and probably forgotten. It was the same policewoman who had shown her where the bushes were thickest. Now she made a brusque apology for leaving them without shelter, said that they should join her husband in the dry, with the GIPN team, brought them to the wagon. The door had been pulled open and a fog of cigarette smoke had spewed out, and there was a reluctant shuffling of backsides and room was made for them. They were among men heavily kitted. A pistol in a holster was pressed against Pegs’ hip. They were not acknowledged, not greeted, not asked how they were, not offered a stiff gin. Pegs giggled.

‘A proper comedy club in here, Goughie.’

Silly to laugh like a schoolgirl. There had been the barrage of shots fired from the upper window as they had stood, close together and damn near sharing body warmth, and these it seemed would be the men who would deal with a problem, a situation. Gough shushed her. A cigarette packet went round but they were not given the chance to accept or decline. A lighter flashed, and the cigarettes glowed in turn.

They all wore balaclavas. Some had gas guns. Others fingered machine pistols. One, at the bulkhead of the vehicle, had a sniper’s weapon across his thighs, and his head lolled almost to his shoulder, and his breathing was steady and he had a soft and gentle snore. Obvious to Pegs that the burst of shots fired from the upper window had not woken him, nor had any of his colleagues thought it prudent to alert him. She had the feeling, not based on evidence but on intuition, that this was the marksman who had fired the single shot down the darkened street and achieved a head hit that saved a hostage’s life. She allowed her thoughts to cavort off into some ill-defined distance: she and Gough could moan, complain, fret, bicker, and pretend that the weight of the world rested on their shoulders. ‘Guilty, m’lud, of minor exaggeration.’ These were the heroes of the hour, she reflected, and made no fuss and grabbed sleep where, when, it was available, and were at a sharp end that neither she nor Gough knew of, and pretty much any of the others flicking keyboards at Wyvill Road… and in with them, as the cigarette smoke clouded them, she should have placed Andy Knight – whatever the hell his name was – who lived with lies. She let her hand rest on Gough’s leg and wondered how to tell him what she thought.

This one man still slept. The voices were low and she thought from her schoolgirl appreciation of French that they talked about the best socks to go inside their combat boots, also about a football game that would be played the coming Sunday, Olympique against Rennes, and both discussions were without passion and were thoughtful. And one might be called upon to kill that night, and one might confront an assault rifle held by a British zealot and might die… but for the moment socks and football were top of the list.

She shivered, not from the cold nor the damp, or from hunger, but from the thought of what the next hours might carry, what fate. And wondered which of the men was the policewoman’s husband and whether she feared for him… the consensus now was that the German socks used by the Bundesgrenzschutz were the best and that Olympique Marseille would win by three clear goals, and if it would be the sniper. Pegs was humbled, felt small, inadequate.

In Gough’s ear, Pegs whispered,‘Goes against the bloody grain, but I feel a bit of a prayer for our boy is called for.’

Was answered bleakly.‘Already been there, done that.’

Hamid approached the Major.

He had asked who was in charge and had been brought to a control vehicle. The engine ran and fumes belched from the back and inside it was dry and warm, and housed a handful of men and women with computers and phones and radios, and a drop-down desk and a screen with a large street map featuring La Castellane. The Major stood on the top step and the open door flapped behind him.

Difficult to phrase the request. Hamid had rehearsed it many times.

He did not know the Major had not had dealings with him. Rumour spoke of him as being an incorruptible, not accepting arrangements of mutual advantage. The old gangster was rumoured to have owned the criminal investigation department at L’Évêché, and made sufficient profits to have paid them off handsomely. He had seen Major Valery when his brother had been a prisoner of their Somali rivals, but not to speak with. Now, he believed accommodation was necessary. He was met at the bottom of the steps and the door behind was closed. The Major set the tone, seemed to switch off his personal radio.

‘Thank you, sir, for speaking with me. I am Hamid, I am the brother…’

A cold reply.‘I know who you are.’

‘We find ourselves, sir, in a difficult situation.’

‘Do we?’

‘Not a situation that is favourable to the residents of the project.’

‘Explain.’

‘I pick my words with care. I do not wish to offend.’

‘I have many officers here. They would prefer to be in their homes or carrying out useful duties. They are wet, they are tired, they are hungry, but there is a situation I cannot ignore, and at the heart of it is your younger brother.’

‘All true, sir… and with my younger brother is a woman with a Kalash, and an Englishman who has been denounced as a police spy. He is their prisoner… We want your officers to return to their homes and duties.’

‘So that the normal and peaceful life enjoyed inside La Castellane may be normalised? Yes?’

‘You understand perfectly, sir.’

‘There is a red line. It cannot be crossed.’

‘Explain it, please.’

‘It is not possible, in order to open up the essential trading on which the project survives, for the woman involved to be allowed safe passage into the night. It cannot be done. Also, in the short term there would be consequences for your own involvement in this matter. Consequences are difficult to avoid.’

‘I am very frank with you, sir. We have a new delivery for the market of La Castellane. Not just in my hands, but other “traders” in the project are in possession of it. Through the action of my brother – infatuated by this woman – none of us can sell the product, and at a time when it would command the greatest reward, and of course it is already paid for and at a high outlay.’

‘I grieve for you in your dilemma.’

‘I can suggest a programme, sir, by which our mutual problems may be curtailed.’

‘Explain your “solution”, explain also your response to “consequences”, and appreciate that I do not negotiate – but am pragmatic.’

‘I have your word, Major, that you are not wired, and…’

Major Valery lifted his arms. Hamid accepted the invitation and patted him down, as a security guard would have done, under the policeman’s arms, around his waist and inside his legs, then checked that the radio on the clip below the Major’s shoulder was switched off, and stepped back. He then lifted his own arms and was also searched for a bug… There would be no record of their accord.

The first proposition dealt with the situation immediately confronting them, and the second of Hamid’s solutions offered a response to ‘consequences’, and what he would subsequently offer. He was listened to, then given the briefest nod of the Major’s cap, and a little of the water lodged there came down as spray.

‘And now?’

‘I want your hand, sir. I am told of you that is a sufficient guarantee.’

A glove was removed. The hand was shaken, a loose grip but not limp.

They went their separate ways, had arrangements to make.

He thought it was time.

‘Zed, will you listen to me? You should. Should listen.’

She sat on the bed. The boy had gone to the kitchen. He’d heard plates being moved and the fridge opened, and a tap running. He would try, supposed it was owed.

‘Best you can do, Zed, is to chuck it out of the window, and any spare ammunition with it. Get rid of it, and then walk down the stairs and out into the night, and do not try any silly bugger games because they will have eyes on you all the way and image intensifiers which are the lenses that will show you up. Best get it over with, Zed… What I have seen of you is enough for me to make a judgement. You are not a true jihadi, one wrapped up in the faith and yearning for a trip to Paradise. They are few. The many are those who get roped in at an early stage and offer a bit of commitment. In your case it was because of two charismatic cousins, when you were younger and more impressionable – I do not mean to patronise, Zed – and then you met people who could recognise your usefulness, and you went in deeper. I don’t rate you as an extremist, so best now to jack it in.’

He reckoned she was desperate for sleep. Her head rolled, and her eyes blinked, and she tried to fight the exhaustion and he thought she’d fail. Was likely a greater threat to him now than at any time. He stayed very still and his voice was monotonous, quiet, his words were for her only. If the storm squad came for her, and saw the weapon, then they would blast her and she might survive fast surgical intervention, and might not – and it might not be a healthy scene for himself – for whoever he bloody was. Wouldn’t be any ‘Excuse me, sir, just checking, who are you or should I shoot and then go through your pockets?’, or ‘Sorry and all that, sir, didn’t mean anything personal in emptying half a clip into you – and you who we were tasked to save, to release,’, none of that and the boys would not give a flying fuck whether or not he was wasted alongside her.

‘You were on the radar, Zed, long before I pitched up. There are ruthless men in the frame, Zed, and they are manipulative and saw you as a fine opportunity… I was put on the case. What did you mean to me, Zed? Truth, no lie, you meant plenty. I should not have been to bed with you, it was unprofessional and deceitful and not necessary. I apologise.’

Once he had thought she was about to drop away into unwanted sleep, then she’d jerked up and had almost dropped the weapon but now retained it, knuckles tight and her finger inside the trigger guard, which was a bad place for it to be. The boy came back in, and brought a glass of milk for her. He did a last throw.

‘Take the chance offered you, Zed. The weapon out through the window. Maybe find a pillowcase or a towel, something white, and wave it after you’ve dumped the hardware. Like my Christmas, it doesn’t come round on demand. I feel this is a chance while everything out there is calm, quiet. Get it over with, Zed… We’ll all say it was the “other bastards” who pushed you into this stage of an armed insurrection – not your fault, and that will count for you. Get rid of the rifle, that’s the first step, and stay alive – dump it.’

She pushed herself up from the bed. Did not look at him but went towards the window. The wind ruffled what was left of the curtains and the rain blew into her face. She stopped there, seemed to want to think, and the weapon was now looser in her hand and against her leg, and her hair danced in the draught.

January 2019

‘You want quality?’

‘I just want one – quality or junk.’

‘Not quality. Junk would be agreeable?’

‘And just one, one only.’

The man who ran the warehouse was cautious. Unusual in those troubled days in Libya – his country, described as a ‘basket case’ on CNN, and a ‘failed state’ on BBC World – for him to receive a visitor from Europe. A small squat bearded man had arrived in a pick-up, unannounced, and with a minimal escort, and had seemed confident, not intimidated by Benghazi’s reputation, and its marauding gangs. The windows had no glass, the air-conditioning unit was punctured with holes from bullets that had pierced it from the outside. What was new was a safe screwed down to the floor, and an Apple laptop on the desk: they were enough for most businesses to thrive, particularly in valuing weapons, quality or junk.

‘So, you come from France, and wish to purchase one AK-47, just one… I could do you a weapon in that sort that belonged to a dictator’s son, or a warlord’s grandson. Could have gold plate, gold paint, platinum inlay, but you want just one, and it could be junk?’

‘One, and it can be junk.’

‘I have something that might interest you. I could give it to you and not charge. However, if I make a gift then I believe that is insulting to you. You expect to pay a price and you shall. To you it would be one hundred dollars American and a further fifty dollars American for sufficient ammunition to load two or three magazines, which would come with it. It is agreeable, one hundred and fifty dollars?’

‘Most agreeable.’

‘You wish to see it – of course you do.’

They left the office. A phalanx of guards formed around them, most belonging to the dealer, not the Frenchman. Their feet crunched over broken glass. The wind lifted sheets of corrugated iron, loosened by a previous barrage of mortar shells. The dealer told his story as they walked. A Bedouin party had come to him. He had been recommended to them. They had brought fresh dates, and camel skins, and communications equipment in good condition from a military vehicle out of fuel and abandoned in the sands, and a rifle that had been given them by an Egyptian on the road between Sidi Barrani and Alexandria. They had firearms of their own, had no need for this vintage weapon, had offloaded it and the whole package was paid for with five $20 bills. Probably they had then gone to other traders to purchase what they might need before returning to the lonely, but perhaps satisfactory, life among the dunes. The weapon itself?

‘I would call it “junk”. Who would want it? I can see from the serial number that it is Russian and one of the first to come from the new production line at Izhevsk. I think it is 1955 or 1956, so it is old. The working parts are reasonable, and it was test fired by my own nephew. I would not have allowed him near it if I had doubted its reliability. It can still do what it was built for. Sixty-five years and it can kill as well as the day they shipped it off the line. I think, my friend, it has many stories to tell because the stock is well scraped. Perhaps one scrape for every killing, but that is my imagination playing with me. If you do not take it then it will go to make up numbers at the bottom of a crate for central Africa. I think, also, and this may be of some advantage, the history of the weapon is not recorded, it would have no trace.’

The dealer mopped his face with a handkerchief already sweat-stained, but the Frenchman did not seem concerned with perspiration nor with the colonies of flies that followed them. The place had once been a camp for the military of the deposed leader, Gaddafi, the colonel who had become a tyrant and whose overthrow had destroyed the country: the dealer, for one, would have welcomed him back, and the security prisons the old régime had controlled. They entered a former barracks, the roof gone and the rafters open to the skies. Guards rose from chairs. The wide double doors were open. The camp had been thoroughly looted after the dictator’s death, and sufficient dislodged panels had been taken from other roofs to make a section of the building weatherproof. They walked past filled crates of weapons: assault rifles, missile and grenade launchers, pistols, machine-guns, sniper rifles…

‘This time, just the one?’

‘We examine a new route. We are not interested in the Serbian highway which is no longer secure, and Bulgaria and Albania are exhausted and the people there would sell you to the spies of the western countries. The next time would be a substantial cargo, and the time after that would be a major opportunity for you – and for me. I have heard much of you and look forward to a satisfactory agreement, for you and for me.’

The dealer, fidgeting incessantly with his set of red sandalwood prayer-beads, led his customer into the shed. It was not difficult to find. It lay alone, ugly, unwanted, but still dangerous.

‘That is it.’

The dealer bent and lifted it, careful to cover his fingers with his handkerchief so that his prints would not be left on its barrel. He balanced it across his arms and took his spectacles from his nose and held them for magnification closer to the metalwork and read out the digits of the individual serial number for this particular rifle… . 16751. It was from Izhevsk, a piece of history. If that were what was wanted it would be driven to Misrata, a slightly functioning port city, then shipped on by sea.

‘Old, yes? But still lethal. Look at the stock and the marks there, and see how many lives it has taken – and capable of adding to its toll. Not pretty, but it can kill. What else, my friend, do you want from a rifle?’

Reaching home, having stayed too long in a bar and finding no one to reminisce with over a juice drink, Tooth was in poor humour. Which turned for the worse. Out of his car, into the kitchen, making coffee, and the wife of his Corsican minder, approached him. She kept house in the villa and had been making beds, and had found a sock and a used pair of underpants under the one used by Crab: should she wash them and find a bag for them so they might be posted to his friend?

He snapped at her.‘Not my fucking friend. No. Burn them.’

The couple were used to his mood swings and no offence at his language was taken. He took his coffee to the terrace. He sat in the rain. Smoked a dismal cigar that was quickly damp and hard to relight. Pondered… The man who had been his guest was no longer his friend – had been his friend, but not now. The rain was on his face, on the peak of his small tartan cap, across the tinted lenses of his spectacles. Had never known it before, the moment when it was clear to him that his world had crumbled… a bad time to have lost a friend.

He considered… any other friends? He was uncertain if there were other friends he could claim. Those he had grown up with, his rivals or allies in the carving up of sectors of interest in Marseille, were now either dead or in care homes. The policemen he had bribed and who had preserved his liberty, kept him outside the walls of Baumettes, would not have taken his call, would have crossed a street so as not to meet him. The hoteliers and restaurant managers who had favoured him with the best suites, the premier tables, would not have given him the time of day. He had never before felt such despair… what was he left with? Tooth believed himself reduced to naming as a friend a boy from a project in the north of the city, originating from Tunisia, a small-time dope dealer, who at least bobbed a head in respect to him, and stammered nervously when asked questions, and who he had not yet bothered to pay for his services. Hamid would have to be a friend… He lay on the lounger and a puddle formed under his back and he wallowed in self-pity, and the night pressed on.

She lifted the rifle.

Seemed not to feel its weight. Raised it in two hands above the level of the window-sill, and the rain caught at the metalwork, darkened it, gave it a sheen as if she had polished it for a grand occasion, a parade. He would be behind her, watching her. She had been many minutes by the window and did not turn to face him, and both had stayed silent. She felt ready now to give him her answer.

Few lights burned below. The police vehicles were in darkness, and the guns were out of sight, using the bushes on the far side of the road as cover. She did not doubt that many were aimed at her. She felt no fear and she held firmly to the Kalashnikov, could not be hurt while she had hold of it. It would have been the same for her cousins, no fear but an overriding confidence: she wondered then how many of the people who had taken ownership of the rifle in its history had felt the same as her. It would be fast, sudden and without pain, and she would know nothing of it.

She moved slowly, deliberately, had the rifle up and lodged at her shoulder and felt the rough edge of the stock against her skin, and she closed one eye and peered down the barrel and had the V sight and the needle sight in place. A finger on the trigger. Her name would be spoken of in every street in Savile Town, none would dare to criticise what she had done. If her body was returned for burial in the cemetery it would not be done in the dead of night as if people should feel ashamed of her. The finger squeezed. She had no target, but would shoot into the black inkiness of the slope beyond the road and below the shopping centre above it and at the crown of the hill.

And fired, and fired again, and felt her shoulder rock back each time, and… and waited… and fired again… and waited for the fractional image of a flash on the slope and then the pressure blow of being struck. Her whole chest was exposed to the window and her head and her stomach… and she waited.

She changed her aim, and fired another shot, near to where the stationary column of wagons had been parked.

Stampeding feet behind her, and the boy’s shrill voice.‘What do you do, sister, why that? You want them to kill you? Are you stupid, sister?’ But the boy, Karym, did not dare to come close to her and would have run from the kitchen and through the corridor and into his bedroom, but had stopped on the far side of the bed. Aimed, squeezed, felt the recoil shock, and closed her eyes tightly, straining until they were bruised, and held the weapon like it was her talisman but there was no blow on her body and no explosion of sound from a bullet striking the concrete around the window.

‘Why?’

She did not face the boy. She ignored Andy who had been her lover.

Zeinab said,‘I would be a bird in a cage. I could not fly in the cage. Two flutters of my wings and I am at the cage’s edge. I could not sing in the cage. The cage is death. To be in the prison that is the cage is to be in Hell, there until the end of time.’

She fired twice more. There might have been as many as a hundred rifles or machine pistols or handguns that could have shot back at her, and any of them could have – through skill or with luck – hit her, brought it to an end She was ignored. Not worth the expenditure of a single bullet? An alternative was to sit on the bed, and kick off a trainer and manoeuvre the rifle until the barrel tip was inside her mouth and behind her teeth, and wriggle her toe into the trigger guard, and press on it, and keep pressing, not squeezing… but not satisfactory because then she would not be spoken of with respect, would not be talked of in the library, in the market, in the schools of her town, not on the walkway beside the Calder river… would be dismissed as a coward.

‘I will not go into the cage.’

‘No, sister,’ the boy answered.‘Did you get any hits?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘Did you have any targets?’

‘Not that I could see.’

‘Then you wasted ammunition, sister, for a gesture. Were you set at Battle Sight Zero when you fired?’

‘I don’t know, I did not look.’

‘You should wait until you have a target, then go to Battle Sight Zero. Sister, what is a “bird in a cage”, what does that mean?’

‘He would understand, you would not.’

Behind her, from the wall by the door, no response. Two loves in Zeinab’s life. One stayed silent, and one stayed strong in her hands. One had died, one had remained alive. The kid said he would pour himself water, and fled the room… she saw a bird that fluttered and that beat fragile wings against the cage bars.

Samson saw him and responded.

The Major stood in the wagon’s open doorway and had flicked his fingers, had pointed to him, then had beckoned.

He worked his way down the line of knees and held his rifle in one hand and had his rucksack of spare equipment in the other, and walked easily down the steps and others of the GIPN team followed, and all were huge in their vests and combat clothing. He had rested, felt comfortable and at ease, had enjoyed being with the cheetah family. The plan was explained. The English couple strained to see and hear, to read the map they used and to learn what the Major said, but they were outside the loop and of little importance. The shots had woken Samson and he’d anticipated that an end-game would soon follow.

They were told where they should be, what was planned.

The rifle was left on the bed. Surplus to requirements, a time for stealth, fieldcraft, and intelligence. Him to lead and Zed half a pace behind him. Him holding her hand, and not again, any time soon, going to loosen his grip.

Down the steps. A nod of his head to the kids in the stairwell.

Slipping away into darkness and not impeded. Talking to teenagers, patois language, and a vehicle pointed out and small agile fingers glorying in the opportunity to show their skills. The car might have been a father’s, an uncle’s, a brother’s, but the chance to boast ability took pride of place.

A couple of kids riding on the front, above the wheels and directing them. No road exit but a place where the thin hedge was replaced by a wide strip of plasterboard, and chuckling laughter because this was an unguarded entry point. A fist bumping a slight palm, an indication to ram the board. The kids gone and he gave them a buoyant wave and Zed was close to him and held his arm. Revved the engine, took the barrier at a charge. The car leaping and bouncing, then making it over a pavement and a kerb, and him swinging hard left.

Going down the street like the dogs of Hades were in pursuit, but they were not. So few seconds, and gone from the tower block, from the place where his girl had lost her freedom, had become the bird in a cage, not gilded. Leaving the great darkened shape on the horizon, La Castellane, behind them, and on an open road going to the west where the rain came from and hosed against the windscreen.

Close, inseparable, they would be hunted, having aroused the full fury of their one-time colleagues. Beyond the airport, and the last of the Marseille complex of factories, and heading towards the spiderweb of little roads and tracks that ran down to the harbours used by pleasure craft and fishermen, below villages where most homes were shuttered and locked for the winter. Dumping the car. No time for a kiss or a hug but running full pelt down a sloping slipway. Loosening a rope, freeing an open boat which an owner might have gloried in describing as his third home, or fourth, no criminal tendency, able to leave possessions unchained, unpadlocked, and know they would be safe and undisturbed.

Little fuel left in an outboard, but banking on enough to get clear of the mooring, to weave among the buoys and ropes trailing in the water, and to break out into the open sea.

The engine cutting within an hour, spluttering smoke and then going quiet. Oars up and into the rowlocks, and him pulling hard and her, and he with the skills and her with none and reduced to crab catching, and the craft starting out on an odyssey and not knowing where tides and currents would take them.

Getting into a shipping lane. Imagining the great ships pulling clear from the cranes in the port and starting journeys towards the north African coast, and the straits south of Gibraltar, and the ocean wilderness of the Atlantic. Sweating and heaving and cursing as the spray came high and over them and sloshed at their feet, and the lights receding behind them.

Then the oars stowed, and her head on his shoulder, and soft talk while they drifted, waited for the bridge of a freighter or a tanker or a bulk carrier to spot them. Talking of where they might go, and what life they could make and a wiping of the past… a frightening long climb up a shaky rope ladder.

Standing together, bedraggled, flotsam from the sea but hands held as if each were the other’s only possession, in front of a starchly uniformed captain of the watch. Where did they want to go? Anywhere that was possible, that was beyond reach of others.

When they were there, wherever it was they would, together, live the lie. He would be her mentor, the expert at existing with deceit. In a tiny cabin, all previous guilt erased by both, rejected and behind them, and they lay together, exhausted.

The door opened behind him, not one that was watertight, but one for an apartment bedroom… just a dream. It had been good and he would have wished it true. It was not, was only an indulgence. She still sat on the bed, clutching the weapon. The boy’s face was fraught with fear.

Hamid held a knife with a fine curved and wicked blade and reached down towards him.