Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 4

He left an envelope on the bedside table. On the mattress were the sheets and duvet, all neatly folded. In the envelope was a month’s rent, and an unsigned note of thanks. He’d be long gone when a phone call was made to the landlord announcing that the room could now be treated as vacant. It was the way Andy Knight, who he was that day, operated. No more checks to be done, and dawn was coming up, and he closed the door quietly behind him. There had been sex in the night on the floor above, discreet and quiet. Later, he’d heard footsteps on the stairs, and no doubt the guy who had that room had seen her to the street door, and she might have had to walk to look for a taxi rank.

Zed had never been in his room. Celibacy, of a sort, went with his job. He could have a girlfriend who was not under investigation, quite separated from the targets, and could do something with her, but it was frowned on and would load him with complications… and no queries about what was possible for a guy who was inside the small élite group of Level One Undercovers. Level One was the pick of the bunch and was hedged around with regulation. To have brought Zed here, turned the light low, maybe lit a candle, and started with kissing and slipping the buttons, was just about the most heinous crime he might commit… The professional standards body stipulated – no ‘perhaps’ and no ‘maybe’ – that it was never acceptable to bed anyone who was targeted. An unequivocal statement, a ban. The journey now was for the two of them: hotels, maybe narrow beds and a warm belly against his flat stomach. He went down the stairs carrying the grip and the plastic sack, and closed the front door quietly, and would have disturbed nobody. He had been through Foundation level, had passed those hurdles as Phil Williams, had been moved on to Advanced stage and had survived as Norm Clarke. He was one of the best, and psychologists queued up to meet him, evaluate him. Analysis said that he was the model product, what they all should strive to be. He was thought to have the personality that inspired trust, seemed incapable of deceit, and had in the past infiltrated a group working to sabotage medical experiments involving animals, had seemed a genuine and committed activist. Had also become integral to a gang bringing in Class A through the ferry port of Plymouth and then flogging the stuff along the M4 motorway corridor, and had been trusted. The ones who found him ‘genuine’ were still banged up with plenty time to serve, and the ones who had ‘trusted’ him would not walk freely before their kids were adults. Done, dusted, and behind him.

He went to his car. He drove a VW Polo. The registration said it was eight years old, had about a hundred thousand on the clock, and he’d bought it at auction for close to £3000, and the boys in the depot might fix him some better tyres, do retreads for him. He could not be seen to splash money, and the Polo would get to Marseille and he wouldn’t be on a French autoroute hard shoulder with fumes seeping out.

For this operation, codenamed Rag and Bone, there would have been an examination of three principal parts. Did it have Proportionality to the potential threat? Was there Justification in launching it? Could Necessity be lined up with the danger posed by the target? It would have gone, with the pitiful relevant information available, to the Office of Surveillance Commissioners, and the case would have been put with all the emotion of a guy going down to the High Street bank and pleading for a mortgage. A judge would have warbled about ‘intrusion’ and the sins of ‘trawling’ but he’d have nodded, signed on the dotted line – then gone to lunch. Then the talent contest… Clutching their authorisation, they’d have gone to Specialist Crime and Operations 10. Who was available, who was suitable, who could say what the time parameters might be for Rag and Bone. The chances were that SC&O10 would have had to evaluate the competing bids, and juggle rosters, and decide which of the Level One people was best for what was asked. He had been chosen. Had taken the new name, had gone into the purdah world while a legend of his life was concocted, and the psychologists would have had their say: how to get a white-skinned boy up close and personal with an ethnic sub-continent girl from Savile Town in the depressed little Yorkshire community of Dewsbury. That was how it was done, and he was tasked, and they held him up, the Controller and the Cover Officer, as the best man they could have had… and knew so little.

He went to the car.

Some truths were bigger than others. Truths existed around the area of backup. The biggest truth, up for argument but peddled by every controller, said that backup – guns and intervention, the cavalry coming over the hill – was not negotiable and was guaranteed. A pretty story, and wheeled out often enough, and not believed. For Andy Knight in the little VW Polo and about to head off for foreign parts with the girlfriend, Zed, there would be nominal protection but no intervention if he flagged up suspicion. The smallest truth, not talked about, shrugged at: the thought of leaving an Undercover up the creek, no paddle. Wear a wire? Too easy, and any sort of microphone built into a shirt button or a belt, or posing as a pattern in a tie, sent off a signal, as did any sort of bug worn in a shoe’s heel. Every shop doing security stuff, sold the hoovering kit that could locate microphones and bugs, and any people who were serious about what they did would sweep a room before they met in it. He would be alone. Better accept it. Somewhere down the road and round the corner would be the cars and a van where the boys would be with the H&Ks and the Glocks, and the fags and the coffee flasks, and a bucket to piss in… down the road but too far. Alone and beyond reach. It would take just one slip. Forgetting bugs and microphones, and heading into the territory of the legend, and saying one thing about where he had been to school and then, four months later, contradicting himself, and the school was somewhere else… Saying he had a sister one time but not the next… Claiming he had met someone a year back and it had not featured on the ‘legend’ that a hood had been kept on in prison for assault on an officer and had not been released… Too many times when mistakes could trip off the tongue, and the firearms too far away. And another truth: people on the other side who were targeted did not take kindly to the thought that a guy they might have liked, believed in, joked with, cuddled, was a fraud. The animal people would likely have laid hands on butchers’ cleavers and the druggies would have gone in search of a friend who could rustle up a chain-saw. Zed’s people? He doubted they were short of imagination. A mistake would go badly for him, and he was alone, beyond reach.

It was difficult, impossible – however hard the effort he put in – to lose sight of truths.

Andy Knight was where he was – there because of a rabbit, would have been a big bastard because it had dug a big hole, but hadn’t the time to curse the rabbit because he was in the traffic and this was the last stage of the journey that was predictable. Nothing else would be. She was a good-looking girl, and could be fun when she lightened up, and he would betray her because that was the job – take it or leave it. Had belief in the job? Did, didn’t he? He squeezed his eyes shut, risky when driving but the only way to lose the question, and it was worse in the night when the darkness was around him – worse than bad. When she knew, she would spit at him, curse, hate him, and meantime would kiss him. He drove to the depot.

Krait and Scorpion flanked her. Zed walked in the shopping mall, wide and open, music playing.

She knew the place. Anyone who lived in the city was familiar with it, visited, talked of its good bargains. She knew what the Irish had done to it years ago and how it had been rebuilt. Not that day, but on others, she had seen armed police suddenly materialise out of the crowds, looking at her, into her, past her, then gone. She carried with her the memory of their laden belts of equipment and the weight of the vests covering their chests, and their accessories – worn as easily as a handbag or rucksack or a furled umbrella – were machine pistols while holstered pistols flapped against their thighs.

The guys with her were those who had first briefed her, who had told her, while she was in Manchester, to bin the traditional garments favoured by her father and mother. They had known those distant cousins…

One of them would carry the rifle, not her.

Zeinab could not have picked out either as being more suitable, had no idea who would be more efficient. The crowds were light. It would not be done on a morning such as this, but on a Saturday afternoon, or on the Sunday of a public holiday, or on the last late shopping night before Christmas. She could imagine it… Perhaps they would dress in black, the colour favoured by the defenders of Mosul or Raqqa or any collection of concrete block buildings that was an oasis of sorts in the desert sands of Iraq or Syria. Black was the colour of fear, recognised as a signature of the martyrs. So also was the profile of the rifle, with its curved magazine and distinctive fore-sight. She had never seen an AK-47, had never held one, felt its weight. She did not know whether it was easy to lift, whether the shots needed to be fired with the stock at the shoulder… She looked into the faces that swam past her. Ordinary people… Asians and Africans and swarthy south Europeans. It would not be an opportunity to choose who was innocent and who was guilty. Who lived, who died. Inside the mall the hot air was blown the length of the corridors and she felt sweaty, uncomfortable. Outside it was cold and clean and the wind purged dirt from her skin. Religion, in Zeinab’s mind, was a straitjacket that refused flexibility. When the rifle was brought to this floor of the shopping centre, or another in the city, or carried across the Pennines to Leeds – it would be about her sense of freedom. She thought the guys harboured the same motivations. They did not pray at prescribed intervals throughout the day, get out their mats, face towards the estimate of the direction to the places in Saudi Arabia, did not go to the mosques, as far as she knew, even on the designated days. She was in a commercial shopping zone, not in a seminar presided over by a tutor whose attention would likely have been on the curve of her arse and the weight of her boobs… nothing about religion. In the seminar, she’d have articulated a view of a degree of liberty, with the weight of white persons’ domination off her people’s backs. She could imagine the raw, throat-stripping exhilaration as she pushed towards a bank of TVs in a shop and saw the aftermath. Heard sirens, sobbing eye witnesses, screams and hysterical yelled instructions from security, and maybe even heard the double tap of a weapon – then the silence. Would be a place like this… She gazed into the faces of the shoppers, the old and the young – some used sticks to balance better and some ran and skidded and chorused their shouts. It would be one of the two guys, or a man she had never met, and perhaps he would leave behind, whichever one it was, a recorded message that shouted defiance. And it could not happen without her. Because she knew it, she walked with a firmer stride and the guys sometimes needed to scurry to keep up with her. It did not have to be said. Zeinab understood… and Andy, her besotted lorry driver Her evaluation of him was ‘unimportant but useful’: nothing more. Attractive? Perhaps. She had been brought here, to be in the corridors, pass the huge brightly lit caverns of goods and displays, in order that she might reflect on the high value of a target. That she was brought here was a mark of the reliance they had on her. She wondered which of the two guys it would be, dismissed the idea of another and wondered if they would feel fear, and… round a sharp-angled corner.

Close to a toilet door. Beyond a Bella Italia and close to a Pound Store, two of them. Weapons across their chests, their belts sagging under the burden of handcuffs and gas canisters and ammunition, their trousers floppy and creased, and neither was shaved, and… they carried all the paraphernalia of their trade. They might have eyed the guys who walked with her, run the rule over them and lost interest, and both saw her. She would not back off, look demure and shy: she stared back at them, and straightened her back and pushed out her chest, and was rewarded: one smiled at her, the other grinned, and when they moved on down the corridor she was certain they’d have chuckled. ‘Right little fucking goer’ and ‘Bloody come-on eyes, gagging for it’.

She turned to the guys, said she’d seen enough. Could picture how it would be amongst the blood pools and the glass shards and the sliding chaos of the flight, and the islands of those on the floor who could not move. Zeinab did not need to see any more. She left them, a flick of her wrist to indicate they should stay. She felt control, authority. They should stay where they were and wait for her. She knew what she would buy, looked for the display, found what she wanted: like silk, and the right size. Paid, left, rejoined them… Needed to see nothing more.

It was about a rifle. One rifle. To start with.

‘You will do the close support, I watch. You will be rewarded.’

An old man had done the equivalent in his world of snapping his fingers for attention, and the younger man, like an obedient dog, had come running.

‘You take care of it, the transfer. Small business I accept, but it will grow.’

In the world that Tooth occupied, his instructions were rarely ignored, and any idiot who did not accept what was ‘requested’ of him, would suffer. The reputation of Tooth still counted in Marseille and its environs. The years when he was a familiar figure seated in the cafés on the narrow side-streets off La Canebière, always facing the door, were long gone. Most of his time was now spent in the quality suburbs to the south of the city, at the villa he had built – still regarded as extraordinary that building permission had been granted for construction on that headland – looking out across the Mediterranean and towards craggy islands. He was the last of the Corsican era, as criminologists liked to call it, the big men who had run the drugs scene, and the girls, before the Arabs – savages from north Africa – had elbowed them aside, trampled on them.

‘If it is satisfactory, this route and these people, then much will follow. You have my word: my word is the best currency.’

If he looked at himself in the mirror, the large one with the gilt frame in the hallway of the villa – which he never did – he would not have easily understood how it was that a small man, thick bearded but tidy, usually wearing a tartan cap on his greying hair, could create both fear and obedience. But, had he paused before the mirror and examined himself, he’d have been denied the sight of his eyes. Always he wore dark glasses. When he came out of the bathroom in the morning, they went on along with his socks and underpants, and only when he changed into his pyjamas did they come off. His eyes were pale blue, a lighter colour than the sea, and cold, cold as if frozen. The reputation that had lasted into his old age was fearsome, the reason why the younger man had come from the north of Marseille when told to. His name came from the Bible – Exodus 21–24 – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and could have been a ‘hand’ or a ‘foot’ or a ‘burn’ or a ‘wound’, but Tooth was the name that had stayed with him. Anyone who crossed him risked serious reprisal: many teeth had been extracted, without a whiff of anaesthetic, because of stupidity, refusal to acknowledge the obvious. He had been told of this young man by a policeman who he paid well, had gone to visit La Castellane to seek him out. Tooth had walked past the kids who had challenged him, seemed about to threaten an elderly guy, lining up to jostle and challenge an intruder. He had told them to ‘go fuck your mothers’ had not backed off – never had. The kids had: would have recognised authority. He had not been armed, never carried a weapon, but he was known, and his reputation was alive. Having failed to find the man he wanted he had left the instruction to summon him, then had walked back through the kids and seen that they stayed warily clear of him. Most of those who had gone in the generation before him, the big men of Marseille, were dead – the Belgian, the Roaster, the Big Blond – shot in cafés while enjoying strong coffee, doing deals. He survived because he was discreet.

‘It is one weapon. What do you have yourself, of the Kalashnikov, five or six, seven? This is one. We look for a new route. If successful we have the contract to bring many. Not from Serbia, or overland from Spain, but by sea. I believe it an opportunity.’

His best investment had been the filtering of cash into the serious crime squad working from L’Évêché, close to the cathedral, the name all Marseille gave to the headquarters offices of the police. With his back well covered he had been regarded as the Emperor of the 3rd District, his authority total either side of the autoroute from the St Charles railway terminus and almost to the airport. He was an institution in the city, could command tables in any restaurant or at the better hotels.

‘Your name was given me. I’d not want trust abused.’

The meeting was in a park off the wide and busy Boulevard Charles Livon. Lawns were enhanced with well-tended beds, and the shrubs would soon be sprouting after the winter pruning. The view across the harbour, down on to the Fort Saint-Jean, was superb, and on this clear and sunny day, with a scouring clean wind, Tooth could see beyond the ferry terminal and container docks as far as the indistinct and hazed image – white buildings crushed close together – of the La Castellane project. They were sitting on a bench and behind them was a statue dedicated to local seamen lost in the Mediterranean. It had a realism in the work that might have created anxiety for any who might be about to sail in gale force conditions: he had no fear, and the work was meaningless to him. He had let the young man park his motorbike, go toward the bench, had checked he was alone, then had joined him. Nothing was challenged, everything was agreed.

‘You will put the people in place, do what is necessary. Understand also that if your work is satisfactory you will find you are given access to those in significant positions who can advance you. I think that is very clear. I ask you one question, just one.’

A smile might have slipped across his face. Difficult to ascertain because of the thickness of his beard. ‘My question – how do you respond to a man or a boy who cheats on you, who breaks the trust you have shown?’

He was answered. Nodded, seemed satisfied, said how and when the next contact would be made. The younger man was dismissed and started to walk away across the grass, skirting the mothers and nannies who had brought the children out after school and nursery… and he was pleased.

The life of a person with the status of Tooth was based on friendships: very few but of a lasting quality. He would be with Crab… At home he lived with his long-term mistress, Marie. They had been in a restaurant, Nice, on the Promenade des Anglais, and beside the Plage Beau Rivage. She had played the bitch, complained, irritated, raised her voice. Another couple, same age, were at an adjacent table. Marie had acted out a scene, would not have done anything like it at the villa or would have found herself out on the step with her clothes in a heap at her feet. It was about a bracelet in a jeweller’s window that he had not bought her. She had made theatrically for the door. The guy from the other couple, a frown knitted in sympathy but grinning widely, had voiced his opinion, in regional English but Tooth had understood. ‘Can’t live with them, can’t live without them’. He had scowled, then smiled, then let himself go and his laughter had pealed through the restaurant, and he had joined them. The start… him and Crab. Together, Tooth and Crab. After half an hour, Marie had come back. He had not welcomed, nor acknowledged her; he had made a new friend. Tooth had a strong nose. He recognised Crab’s trade. They would hug, do business, laugh and drink. Make a good profit. They would eat well and talk of old times. They would feel blessed that they, old men, could still broker deals.

Tooth pushed himself up from the bench and the wind lifted his cap. He looked across the fortresses of Marseille and the city’s terminals and docks, and saw the indistinct white outline of what they called La Castellane where the new generation came from, some of them… He liked what he had been told was the fate of a boy who broke his word, could no longer be trusted. Enjoyed that. He missed business, it hurt him not to trade; he was lost if he could not.

The younger brother, with the damaged arm, remained at the principal entrance to the project.

A couple kissed, sitting on one of the rocks that restricted entry to La Castellane. They made no effort to seek out privacy. Karym knew the boy. Both had been pupils at the huge Lycée Saint Exupéry, both drops-outs, leaving on their sixteenth birthdays. A teacher had told Karym that it did not have to be this way, that he was too bright to walk away from education. The boy had his hand under the girl’s coat and she had draped her thighs over his legs, and the kissing was hard: the boy had already fathered a kid, by another girl… Karym had no girl. He did not have a pretty girl, a girl with a model’s waist, a fat girl or an ugly girl. No girl, not even one with an itch who wanted it each day. In La Castellane, girls looked for a boy who could fight with a knife, who had the patronage of a dealer, was able to act as an enforcer. Any boy who could fight. Not a boy who was crippled, and who only had a scooter because his weakened arm was not strong enough to handle a serious bike… He would ride his Peugeot later, when his shift was done, round the nearby streets, go painfully slowly… What he wished to own and what he saved for was a Piaggio MP3 Yourban, and one day he would be able to afford it, and hoped his arm would allow him to ride it. The kissing couple did not see him.

The kid’s mother came into the project. She walked heavily, like her feet hurt, and her face was puffed where there had been tears. Karym thought she would have been rewarded only with vagueness, had received no promises. No imam or school teacher could guarantee protection for her son, and the gendarmerie would not have listened to her because her son was worthless to them and had no barter value… The girl had removed the boy’s hand from under her clothing and the kissing had stopped and she chewed hard on gum and he lit a cigarette. For a moment the mother’s eyes met Karym’s, and her anguish welled, but he looked away… he had no influence. Karym was without a girl, could not fight, had never fired a Kalashnikov, was worthless. He thought the mother decided the same. She would have known his name, and who was his brother. She trudged past him, went towards her stairwell, and would then climb slowly up the staircase. All the elevators were broken. No one respected him but he was, without grace, protected by his brother. The girl flicked her gum, and the wad hit Karym in the throat, and he turned.

The girl called out. ‘When will it happen?’

Karym’s head was sunk on his chest. ‘Will what happen?’

Her boy shouted. ‘Where will it be?’

‘What, or where, I don’t know.’

‘Doesn’t he tell you, your brother? Doesn’t tell you?’

A crowd had materialised. That was the way of the project. One moment empty walkways and deserted lanes between buildings and under the flapping washing, and the next a crowd gathering and squeezing close to hear better.

‘When is the barbecue?’

He did not know, said he did not know.

‘But there will be one, a barbecue? Yes…?’

He heard someone say that he was ‘fucking useless’, a ‘deformed cripple’. He did not know if there would be a barbecue, what his brother planned. It was usual if a stranger came to the project, or to any of the others where hashish was sold on the north side of Marseille, that the chouffes, the look-outs, would hem him in, quiz him, and intimidate. An old man arrived, pushed them aside, told them to go screw their mothers, had asked for his brother. Karym spoke to the man, seen no tremble in his hand, no twitch at his mouth above or below the beard and the moustache. He told him his brother was not there. Karym had been entrusted with the message, spoken quietly, as to when and where he should be across on the far side of the city – where Karym had never been. A name had been given and the man had walked away and when he had reached the outer barricade of big stones he had stopped purposefully, then spat into the ground. Karym had told his brother, and the instruction was obeyed, which had puzzled Karym.

There would be a barbecue, he assumed it. His brother would do a barbecue.

Astride the motorbike, hearing and feeling the power of its engine, Hamid, returned from his meeting.

Checking his mirrors frequently, staying within the speed limits to avoid police attention, he rode his Ducati Monster 821, with a horsepower of 112, towards the vieux port. He passed the Irish bars, O’Malley’s and O’Neills, but did not know where Ireland was and why its bars were considered important, and went by the McDonalds, and returned to La Castellane. It seemed necessary to get the business of a barbecue done before he was taken on for work by Tooth: he knew the man’s reputation… knew not to fail, and knew of the potential for rewards.

He wore a helmet; he was anonymous.

The meeting had made him both nervous and elated. Nervous because it was the first time that a legendary member of one of the old gangs had come to seek him out, and much would be expected of him, and he would be watched and bad consequences would follow if his standards were found wanting. Elated because it was remarkable that such a man had travelled all the way to La Castellane, had parked his car, had walked in and ignored the kids who had milled about him, had come to look for only one man, Hamid, which was a mark of his new-found success… where might his name have come from? He thought it most likely that a detective, one of the investigators working in the northern suburbs would have been owned by Tooth, would have spoken of him. It was about the future… If the future succeeded for him then he would not be riding a Ducati Monster 821, but would be in a Porsche, could be a Ferrari. With successful patronage he would move on from dealing hashish: he saw horizons unlimited and would ditch living in La Castellane. But he loved his bike. The ride was smooth, oozed power.

He turned on to the Boulevard Henri Barnier, did it with a swagger and a howl of his tyres, what was expected.

But, several matters confused him. Why was the packet to be delivered so small? Why was only one item, initially, to be delivered? Why these complicated arrangements for the transfer of a single weapon? He had not interrupted Tooth, not queried him, but he, himself, could have provided six rifles, and ammunition, and at a very acceptable knock-down price. He had been told a man and a woman would come from England to take delivery of just one AK-47. Confusing, but not for him to worry. Time first to arrange a barbecue which was necessary because authority could not be challenged.

‘And where’s it taking you?’

‘Somewhere south of Keele services.’

‘Word is there’ll be a passenger.’

‘Never rely on what you hear.’

Andy could not see the face, nor the shoulders, the head or the back of the mechanic because they were under the VW, but he’d heard the scrapes that meant shit and dirt and filth were being cleaned off cables and joins and from time to time a hand reached out to change kit. It was good of them to have found the time to look over his VW Polo: they were fine guys and he was grateful… but would give nothing.

‘And the chatter says that it’s a week’s holiday you’re grabbing.’

‘Shouldn’t listen to chatter, can give you gut ache.’

‘What I was told, no one else would have squared it with the boss, no other driver.’

‘Something came up.’

He was the newest of the driving team. Normal rules dictated that the last in was the bottom of the food chain, and given the crap work. It was a heavy time of the year and after the Christmas break the sites they supplied were coming up to speed, and the weather didn’t matter. He’d joke, sound relaxed… but they’d get nothing.

‘Boys are wondering how you swung it. One of our old guys, retired last year, he’s coming back in as cover.’

‘Probably pleased to swap sitting in his greenhouse, watching seeds germinate.’

‘What I’m saying, Andy, is you have influence. More than I do, or anyone.’

‘I don’t suppose any time is ever convenient.’

It was the skill of an Undercover, a Level One, that he would not weaken when talking to one of the good guys, salt of the earth, dependable and the sort you’d always want minding your back. Would give them no more than to a stranger in a pub. Other than when he met the Controller or the Cover Officer, everyone he met was the subject of deceit. There were times – not now, too gentle – when questions were asked and he would act, seem to throw a tantrum. ‘What’s my past to you, what fucking business is it of yours, how do I know who you are – piss off.’ Could do that, or just deflect. Behind everything he was supposed to achieve was the Mission Statement, the Aims and the End Game, and the detail of hour by hour was left to Andy Knight – or to Norm Clarke, or to Phil Williams. It hurt, and the hurting took a toll. Always did, why he had shivered on the bed last night, squeezed his eyes shut, felt weakened.

‘And going off with a girl.’

‘So they say.’

‘For a week.’

‘I expect the nation will survive, and the city of Manchester, while I flop around and get pissed up.’

The mechanic came out from underneath. Looked long at Andy, and hard, and was puzzled, didn’t hide it, then he ducked his head down into the engine parts. An apprentice kid was whistled over, and was told to sit behind the wheel and do the pedals to turn the engine over. There was plenty more in the workshop that the mechanic could have been at, and plenty that was more useful for an apprentice… Andy was not a crusader, not a crime fighter for the glory of altruism, but he was addicted to the adrenaline – not the psychologists. Ordinary folks called it ‘buzz’; the challenge of it kept him upright, going forward. A big challenge; bigger than with the animal people and bigger than with the predictable druggies.

‘Where’s not good enough? It’ll not be Morecombe Bay, not Blackpool.’

‘And my motor?’

‘Motor’s fine now, after me sweating on it. Right, Andy, how far’s it going?’ The eyes pinioned him. A truth at last was to be coughed up. The mechanic wiped his hands on a rag and readied to hear the destination and detail about the ‘totty’ that was going to be in the passenger seat. Time for a crack, never time for a truth. When he was gone and it was clear he was not returning, then every word he had said would be subject to analysis, and the boss who had given him the time away would be castigated as a dupe. No other way. Never was. ‘Hope to die, cross my heart, soul of discretion.’

‘Big secret – but I’ll let you in.’

‘Good boy, where?’

‘South of Keele Services.’

The rag hit him in the face. He assumed the matter had come to a head, like a boil stretched by a bag of yellow pus and ready to burst. Most of the animal people were quite honest and very passionate and if he’d stayed alongside them another half year, he might have joined up. And the girl with auburn hair had set sights on him, and another six months would have been a problem. A hell of a mess when it was over and seven or eight ruined lives, and a hell of a lot more beagles getting syringes embedded below their skins. The mechanic and the apprentice had looked after him and put the VW Polo ahead of at least two of the big lorries that were showing grief… He thanked them, smiled – did not confide. They’d have loved the story that he was off on his travels, driving down through Europe, and a pretty girl would be alongside and might have a hand on his thigh, and might have felt tired and dropped her head and let it rest on his shoulder with her hair wafting on his cheeks, loved it and fed it round the canteen at the next scheduled meal break. He gave nothing.

November 1969

The cranes at Constanta, along the quayside of the Romanian port, swung the crates high and out, and then lowered them with no particular care on to the freighter’s deck.

Twenty crates, each containing 50 weapons, and five more for magazines, and three more for 7.62 × 39mm ammunition; surplus to requirements where they had been. They would no longer clog up space in a Hungarian police warehouse, were being given away. Given, but still with a price.

They had been certified fit for action, had been testified, and with familiar bureaucracy the details of serial numbers, stamped into the metalwork at a factory in remote Izhevsk, were listed on the papers that would accompany the shipment. The particular weapon with a last five-digit identification of 16751 languished, in the ninth crate to be hoisted on board. That AK-47, it had been said in Budapest, was damned. Because it had been buried for so long it had failed to polish up like the other consigned for export, it had no sheen, could not be burnished, and the wooden stock was scarred with two notches and a deep groove. It was at the bottom of the crate and the officer in charge of the storage was pleased to see the back of it. It was a clement day in the Black Sea city, with a light wind, good sunshine and shirtsleeve warmth. The loading was supervised by a member of the Hungarian AVH unit who, when it was complete, would be taken by a Romanian colleague, from the Departamentul Securitatii Statului, to a night club then a brothel because the network of colleagues functioned across international borders. Secrecy was observed. Only nominally were the weapons a gift.

When the last crate was in place, and covered by the principal cargo, Romanian refined auto-fuel, the freighter would sail. Its destination – acceptable between fraternal allies – would be Latakia, the Syrian port on the Mediterranean. Lorries would be waiting there, and local stevedores would first remove the oil drums, then get the crates off and into lorries whose canvas sides would prevent their contents being viewed, and they would drive off with a full-blown military escort of Syrian paratroopers. Why, if they had no value, if they were a gift? Because the thousand assault rifles represented an expression of foreign policy. They would buy approval, cement friendship. Had the cargo been identified, then an Israeli Air Force strike could be expected. It travelled in secrecy.

The gift was only possible because the Hungarians had taken delivery of a newer model of the Kalashnikov, with metal parts milled by machine tools for greater efficiency, not using pressed steel. Only the previous year, Hungarian forces had gone to a state of alert because of an insurrection in neighbouring Czechoslovakia, in which Soviet tanks had been deployed to restore the alliance between Moscow and Prague. More modern weapons were demanded and had been obtained for the secret police. The ‘gift’ would sail that night, and would thread through the Bosphorus and into the Mediterranean under cover of darkness. It was destined for a Palestinian group, based in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon, and the leaders of the faction were thought to be most at ease with the Kremlin’s aims. The price of the gift would be loyalty to Soviet instructions. The weapons, far in advance of what the group already possessed, would be used against Israeli territory when that course was directed, and not before. They were eagerly awaited, would be there within a week. Gratitude would be great, even for a weapon that had no lustre to its body, had a disfigured wooden stock, that looked to be a makeweight and there to ensure numbers were tidily rounded up.

Hawsers loosed, the freighter eased from its berth.

They’d reached London. A clean shirt, and clean knickers, fresh socks and a fresh blouse. Neither had been home.

Gough talked to customers. Pegs had a line into Marseille.

The customer was Counter-Terrorist Command. Clear aims were given to Gough. The dead boy fished out of the water was past history, a warning to others on the price of betrayal, a casualty, and unimportant. The priority, top of the heap, was the conclusion that a piece of kit was to be collected in Marseille, likely to be an automatic weapon with proven killing power, and run back as a test for a new route, one earmarked as ideal for the customer, the jihadi group in the north. During its transit, an opportunity was to be manufactured for the weapon to be put in the care of the boffin people and they’d do the insert of the tracker, somewhere in the stock. It would be followed, would see where it ran, and the swoop would net the whole damn lot of them, the conspiracy. It was what a year and more of work had been about, and why the Undercover was in place. The customer was very hopeful and Gough was warned that SNAFU was not acceptable. If he had to report that it was a case of Situation Normal All Fouled Up – or ‘Fucked’ – it would mean that one or more weapons had been introduced to the country, an assault rifle or several, and the consequences were unacceptable. His head would be on the block, and the blade might not be sharp, and decapitation might take a bit of time and cause a bit of hurt. But, of course, the customer was confident in his ability.

Pegs did schoolgirl French. Normally a matter of liaison went through the Europol bureaucracy in Holland, or via the appropriate London-based embassy. She had pleaded lack of time, could not observe protocol. She had been given numbers to call, and a name… and it descended, along with her smart school accent, into a matter of trust. At the other end of the line was a police major. She did not want Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure which would have dumped her into a spider web of competing camps, did not want their full security surveillance units – wanted only a friendly face and a handful of cops who would sit in a van down the road round the corner and ask no questions and make no suggestions as to how the mission should be handled. Do traffic routes, give local geography knowledge, and leave the rest to her.

She’d launched in French when a call had been answered and the name confirmed. Good enough French… a crisp answer in English. A man who sounded in a hurry, and had taken a minimum of his lunch break, who seemed to expect to be regarded as a collaborator, not talked to on a Need To Know basis. He was Alfred Valery. When was she coming? She didn’t know. When did she need the backup for an Undercover? She didn’t know. She doubted that she would have spilled facts on to his desk to his face; down a telephone line it was impossible. When she did come he would be in his office, and a mobile was given for night hours, and she could call, and Major Valery would see, with his available resources, what was possible. He had finished with, ‘We are quite busy here, madame. Much as we look forward to welcoming you, it should be understood that we have pressing matters that involve us.’ Call ended. Fuck you, Major. She turned on Gough.

‘You know, we don’t even have his bloody name. Only know Andy Knight. Know nothing of him. We meet him, no idea whether he is a star performer, or whether he’ll crumple. He is what we were given. What did he think of us? Useless bum scratchers? Top of the tree and efficient? Just average, just middling, what they call “premier mediocre”. What I’m saying, Gough, would you put your life, happily and with confidence, into our hands? Do we deserve that amount of faith? What do you say?’

Gough said, ‘We’re what he has. We’re where we are and that has to be good enough. Not important, what he thinks of us. We do our best, can’t do more.’

She told him how it would be.

‘Is that so, Zed?’

‘That’s how it is, and will be.’

She gave him the envelope, told him that he’d take the ferry out of Plymouth, would be going alone to Roscoff… Wasn’t a usual route but the ferry company were trying out a winter sailing schedule, but they’d be coming back from Caen into Portsmouth, and he must have looked bewildered. Part of the astonishment was that they’d be going out singly, and part of his surprise was the degree of subterfuge she’d gone for. They were in the same park as before, and it was the same light but driving drizzle as before and they’d both been cold. Should have been in a café and the warm, should have been in the car with the heater on, but she had led and he had followed, and they’d come to the bench. He wondered if her minders watched, had not seen them. Probably the minders were there and watched him a final time, evaluated him: last chance to ditch him. He thought her strained, speaking as if from a rehearsed text.

‘How do you go? I don’t understand.’

‘What is the problem? I fly. You drive.’

‘If you can fly, for family business, why involve me?’

‘We have a holiday.’

‘It’s a great holiday, Zed, you and me. Pity we’re not together. What do we do, send texts to each other? Nice where I am. How is the weather with you? Love and kisses – sorry, but imagine them. That’s how it’ll be.’

She was flushed, unhappy. It could have been the first time that he had been sharp with her. Proper domestic stuff. A spat. They always said, the instructors that groomed the Undercovers, that a situation should not be entered when the outcome was uncertain. He pushed her… He was the guy who had been invited for a naughty week, some nookie was on the cards – a different problem and one to be faced later – and he was supposed to be the obsessed boy who had fallen under her spell, and… he heaved her into a corner because that was the reaction expected of him. Could not go docile. He thought her tough, no panic showing, and she might have frowned and her lips might have narrowed, and her eyes blazed. She reckoned she controlled him.

‘I cannot get away now when I intended. You drive, I meet you, and we retain our schedule. Accept it. Live with it. You want to argue?’

‘Just surprised, just upset.’

She trumped him. Gave credit to her, it was bold. Threw his whine back in his face. ‘You don’t approve, then you walk away. That’s it, Andy, goodbye, good luck, been nice?’

He crumpled, had to. ‘It’s what you want, Zed. That’s good enough.’

Andy had let her know he had worked hard to get the time off, not easy, and let her know that going away with her was important to him because of his feelings for her – admiration, respect, affection, or something more – and he could not fight her, could not take the risk of her marching away, dumping him. He thought it said much of her that she did not apologise, did not excuse herself. She had arrogance, self-belief. More than the animal people and certainly more than the druggies. And her mood apparently changed. Some might have bought it. Not Andy. She kissed him. That was supposed to buy him. She must have thought he came cheap, as a lorry driver would, and a warm kiss was his reward. It was a good kiss and he wondered if it were all play-acting. And the way he responded? Was that also play-acting? A long kiss. Light flashed: her anorak was open, her sweater pulled wide, her T-shirt had slipped down, and the skin on her chest was exposed, and the beam caught the stone on the chain that he had bought for her… not exactly, but she’d told him what she’d seen, and how much it was, and he’d given her cash. He did not often see it, and she never flaunted it, didn’t use it as an actor’s prop. First time in weeks she’d worn it, far as he knew. He saw it, supposed it meant something – something to her, perhaps something to him… And she broke, said quietly that work had to be done, an essay, murmured about the risk of being chucked out: first time that excuse had surfaced. She said when she would see him, where.

She was gone. Not a backward glance, not a wave.

He called after her, ‘You’re looking great, Zed, fantastic.’

She would have heard him but didn’t stop, did not turn, went beyond a pool of light, and he lost her. Andy sat on the bench, let the rain patter on him. He needed time to consider and absorb, reflect. He had seen the flash of anger when he had – mildly – challenged her and he remembered when she had had the chance to lash out at the guy on the pavement, unable to defend himself. Vicious… how it would be if she learned the truth of an Undercover squirming inside her life… .

He had no more business in the city; and the pace had quickened, and the stakes had risen.