Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 6

‘Phil, would you come in here.’ Always a mistake, going to sleep, failing to stay awake. Memory time, vivid.

‘Yeah, just finishing up.’

‘No, Phil. Now, Phil. Not after the fucking washing up.’

The door off the kitchen was open. All the rest were in the communal room in the front of the house, terraced and in an old quarter of the west country town of Plymouth, and by a miracle of fortune the street had avoided the local blitz. Phil had been washing up the plates from their lunch. Most were vegetarians, and the meal was a pizza without meat, but the vegans amongst them had just nibbled salads… the lettuce leaves had been rinsed under a cold tap but a spider had hunkered down and survived the sluicing and had ended up on its way into the mouth of one of the girls, then had fallen off the leaf and dropped on to a slice of tomato. Was she going to squash it, kill it, cull the poor bloody spider? No. She had picked it up in a tissue, handled with delicacy, had taken it to the back door, had put the spider into an over-grown flower-bed, and had come back to resume her meal… He might have giggled. Not a fun laugh, but something closer to a sneer: the girl was pathetic, didn’t everyone see that? He was washing up. There were times in the day when Phil needed to be away from them, have his own space.

One of the guys was in the doorway, and barked at him.

‘Leave that. Get in here.’

‘Yes, coming, yes.’

Buying time, and drying his hands, and pulling the plug in the sink, and his mind had started to sprint because of the tone. Not a request that he might care to join them when he had finished. A demand. Phil was not the newest to be accepted; there was a blonde girl with big glasses and short hair who had come after him but she’d joined after reaching Plymouth from west of Birmingham where her group had been decimated by arrests. Phil was the last ‘outsider’ to join them, starting at the bottom with leaflet hand-outs, and manning the table with flyers on the evils and cruelties of animal experiments in laboratories. Not something that could be hurried and he must have been at it a full year – which was a hell of a commitment for SC&O10 before he was let into the house: might have been that the auburn-haired girl fancied him, might have smoothed the way. That was a half year back, but he was one of them in name, not a part of them. The rest, except for the Birmingham girl, were the founding fathers and mothers of the group. Still, some of the guys would stop talking if he came into the room, or would slide papers away. He left the kitchen, went into the communal room. The atmosphere cut. Worse than sneering when a girl took the trouble to save the life of a spider and give it a new home among the weeds in the flower-bed. Some looked at him and some dropped their heads so as not to meet his eyes. Two of the guys were standing and one slipped behind him and had guardianship of the door. There was a rug on the floor, threadbare, the pattern faded, and he was waved to the centre of it. They were still on a high, had been to a kennels two nights before, had let loose a pack of young beagles, the favoured breed for the laboratories, and the little blighters had headed off into the woods. Pointless, ridiculous, and they’d be half starved by now but… perhaps better than being close up to a hypodermic. Anyway… that was good. Next up was an address in the Portsmouth area where a scientist lived with his family, and he did research in a laboratory and was going to get the full focus of a visit, and they were at the planning stage.

Phil stood in the centre of the room.

Sarcasm. ‘Hope this isn’t inconvenient, Phil, dragging you off the chores.’

Shrill. ‘Just a few things we’re not understanding, Phil.’

Hectoring. ‘’Cos you don’t fit, Phil. Don’t seem right.’

Cold as ice. ‘Some questions, Phil, that need answering.’

The bloody obvious. ‘We’d be upset, Phil, if you weren’t what you said – were a stooge, a plant. Bad times would follow us getting upset.’

He had a car parked down the road. The car had a clapped-out engine and the requisite three different makes of tyres, and the engine was shit, and put down a smokescreen on any cold morning, and it had a dash cupboard. Deep in the dash, behind an old manual, and stuff about the insurance, was what seemed to be a discarded pocket radio, out of date and out of fashion. It could still do broadcasting, could also do an alarm call. Press two of the buttons for pre-set stations and the signal was sent. State of the art technology. And, a two-mile radius for the pick-up. It would sound out in the Hampton Street police station. They were supposed to come running. The alarm meant curtains for the infiltration, also meant that he – Phil Williams – was in danger of a bad experience. Would they come? How fast? Mob-handed? Didn’t really matter because it was in the car, and the car was down the road, and the alarm in the dash had been there since they’d been out to the beagle puppy farm. He always drove. He was the one with the car, was also the one with a job as an Amazon delivery driver. He drove and that way the group were supposed to become dependent on him. The signal would go to Hampton Street and then to a particular annexe office off the CID section, had to be picked up by one of the people – not many of them – who knew there was an Undercover doing the animal group. He did not say anything. Phil tried to look confused, a bit stupid and astonished that they came at him this way, no warning and from the big blue.

‘Things that don’t fit.’

‘Too eager. Always there. Nothing too much trouble.’

‘You come in off the street and you’re a best friend.’

‘You might be a cop, Phil. We can’t just put a cop out through the door, Phil.’

‘You thought it very funny, Phil, when Bethany saved the spider’s life, took care of it. I am telling you flat, Phil, that if the spider had been a cop it would have had each leg pulled off it, then would have gone in the flower-bed – dead.’

Whoever he was, whatever his name, he had left home as a pretty straightforward kid, a bag on his shoulder and Mum and Dad quiet, not making speeches. He had gone, had joined up which was not easy, the failure rate was high. He was a Royal Marine, had done all the stuff. Was in a high state of physical fitness. Could do rope and balance work. Could do speed marching, and speed scrambling over rough ground. Could do assault courses and could do the 30-mile march on Dartmoor with his feet raw and blistered but inside the eight hours and with a pack on his back, and had endurance. Some of the NCOs had suggested he might go for officer training, and a captain had said he should apply for Special Forces. All glamour, and all massaging the ego… the rabbit had intervened. It was the rabbit’s fault. There were eight of them in the room. There was a bay window at the front and he would have to go through the glass. He heard the quiet click behind him as a key was turned. If he made a run that would be the same as saying, ‘Fair and square, well done, guys, bright of you’. Admitted. Like bending over and confessing. They would pummel him first, then it would get to be a frenzy, and he had been gone from the Marines long enough for his strength to have dissipated, and he had the injury from the rabbit’s digging, and the aggression was diluted. He had heard them talking about what the future would be for the scientist when they paid the visit, late at night. They’d all be on him, and scratching each other for the chance to punch, kick, bite.

‘Great cover, Phil, the job. We don’t know where you are, don’t see who you meet.’

‘No background to you, Phil. Nothing spelled out. Where were you before coming to us, and what other group did you work with? Are we the only ones, a late convert?’

‘Spit it, Phil, your version.’

‘Good answers, Phil, or it gets bad, and bad hurts.’

He thought the girls would be worst, would do the big damage. He looked for a friend, found none. He did not know whether he had ‘cop’ written on him in big letters across his forehead.

The questions started. Following fast on each other. Hard to think, register. Pummelling him with questions, and waiting for the slip-up, the mistake. Not knowing how he would make it out.

Lying on the hostel bed, tossing, but asleep and unable to wake.

The guys picked her up.

The one Zeinab knew as Scorpion drove. The one who called himself Krait sat beside him. She had the back seat with her bag.

The text to the tutor had been sent: she had to be away, family business, the essay was delayed; a perfunctory apology, it would be completed when she was back. Dark, a spit of rain: foul and dispiriting. She was not greeted as a friend, nor as an equal. When it was Andy who met her, he’d be out of his car and round the side, seeing her coming towards him across a pavement, and he’d open the door for her and see her settled in, like she was special. Perhaps to them she was not remarkable, not pretty, not able, not a part of the team, just a convenience. To the tutor she was not remarkable. Perhaps he had a kid at home who was crying, who had woken him, and his mood might have been soured by the messages he found on his phone. The tutor was not supposed to have read the feeble excuse until she was well clear and had given her phone to the guys, had it replaced. Not remarkable and not greatly valued.

Dear Zeinab, Regret your essay is delayed and hope the family business is both pressing and soon dealt with. Just a formal thought – if your course work is anything to go by then your interest in that aspect of your degree course is only partial in my estimation. If you are not interested you could always give up your place, not be a version of a ‘bed-blocker’. I note your recent offerings to me have been satisfactory at best, poor at worst. Some people, we find, are not well suited to the rigours of university education and move on towards other directions. Enjoy your ‘business’, and we should talk on your return and when your essay is delivered. Best, Leo (Tutor, Social Sciences, Met Manchester). Like a kick in the teeth, what Andy had done to the attacker on the pavement. She had read it, had not deleted it; had tried to juggle and was failing. They went fast, on an empty road, towards the outskirts of the city.

Was failing to keep up with her work, was increasingly drawn into the world of Krait and Scorpion, spent more time with Andy and the sealing of a relationship on which a plan now depended… could not do it, keep the necessary balls in the air. She did not tell them. Three times she had read the message, which seemed a politely phrased call that she should quit, go home to Savile Town, be the little girl who fell short and was not the clever bitch she had thought herself. The guys would have cursed her for removing a brick in the construction of the plan. Her parents would have shouted abuse at her for tarnishing their reputation, first in the family to go to university – first in the street to go to university – and it would have been boasted of at any opportunity. She sat and bottled it. She was drawn in, assumed it was like quicksand. Each step and sinking deeper. Zeinab could remember the heady times when she had first been recruited, in love with the memory of two cousins, dead, could remember every shop window with the careful displays from the last visit to the shopping mall – and the images and the blood – and could recall an old longing to be a part of that army… Turning towards her, Krait – whose venom was fatal – eyed her in the light of oncoming traffic, and clicked his tongue for her attention.

‘It is about security.’

‘Yes.’

‘You understand what is the alternative to security?’

‘Always I am careful.’

‘The alternative?’

‘To be arrested.’

‘It is not, Zeinab, just to be arrested. It is to sit in a prison cell for ten years or twenty years. I assume the boredom of it is suffocating. You achieve nothing, make nothing change. To be arrested is to have failed, and you are arrested because you have ignored security. Or, Zeinab, you may be dead. If they arrest you, or me, or… They will come with guns. They would like to kill you. Who complains if they shoot you? No one complains. Perhaps it is better to be killed than to exist in a cell. If you attack them and are shot then they have to buy your life dearly and the cause is served. If they shoot you when they arrest you, and say your hand went to a pocket and they feared for their lives, then everything about you is wasted. It matters to us, Zeinab, security. Always you must have suspicion.’

‘Yes.’

They hit an outer road, left the city.

Karym watched.

The kid was brought for the barbecue.

A car had been chosen, an old Citroen, with bald tyres and scrapes on the paintwork. The car was owned by a man whose eyesight was failing and who had been told by the clinic that he should no longer drive. The car was in a convenient place, not too near any occupied building. The car was not chosen because it was spare to the old man’s needs, but because it suited.

Karym had no role in the barbecue. He had seen several. The first he had witnessed had been when he was fourteen years old. He remembered it clearly: a barbecue in any of the projects was not quickly forgotten, lessons were usually well learned. His brother had organised it as a response to an infringement of discipline. The smell had lingered in Karym’s clothes for days. He understood. Everyone in the project understood that discipline was integral in any project, would be enforced. The kid might have thought that he was to be brought out for a public beating, perhaps with an iron angle bar, perhaps with a baseball bat or pickaxe handle. Or he might have thought, possibly hoped, that he was being taken to an area of wasteland to be thrown down among the shit and the weeds and then a pistol fired into his kneecap which would mean hospital for a month and a limp for a lifetime. If he were lucky, Karym thought, then he would not have considered the prospect of a barbecue awaiting him. It was a refinement of his brother that Hamid, himself, did not bring the kid from the building where he had been held most of the night. The job was given to the kid’s associates. In La Castellane loyalties switched fast.

Karym imagined the kid’s mother sitting on a chair in her kitchen waiting for news of her son and hoping that she would learn before first light of a beating or a pistol shot and hear the cry of an ambulance siren; she would not have considered calling the police, not earlier and not now. With the night’s trade over and the project quiet, there was little movement except for the flitting shadows that skirted the buildings, hugged the walls, barely visible, and the kid was led towards the Citroen. A progression made in silence, and the kid cooperated and did not scream and did not fight, did not resist, and might still have hoped. The bad moment would have been when the little procession came to the last corner to be rounded before reaching the car. Quickly, and with expert efficiency by a youth who hoped to take a favoured position in the organisation of Karym’s brother, a tightly folded cloth was hooked up over the kid’s head, allowed to fall below his nose, pulled taut and past the kid’s teeth and into his mouth, gagging him. Round the corner, where the wind buffeted the alleyways of the project, would be the vomit-making stench of spilled gasoline. Now the kid reacted. No baseball bat, no pickaxe handle, no pistol noisily cocked, but the stink of the slopped fuel. A crowd was there – not the old people, but some of the younger women who would have put off their bedtime to come out for the show. They were the ones who knew the colour of the balaclava worn by the policeman who had the name of the executioner of more than two centuries before, and they had elbowed their way to vantage-points, had a clear view. Most of the watchers, joined now by Karym, were the teenagers who had no work other than in the evenings when they supervised aspects of the hashish trade. The smell of the gasoline would have been in the kid’s nose.

Closer to the car he began to struggle. Karym’s brother was there, at the back, showing no authority, no emotion, and claiming no involvement. It was the life of the project.

Arms trussed behind his back, legs tied at the ankles. A rear door opened. Thrown inside. The window open. He would have fallen on to a seat soaked with fuel. Tried to scream and could not; tried to kick open the door and could not. The kid would have heard the click of a cigarette lighter, would have seen the flame catch at the rag held over the flame, seen it carried close. Then the kid would have cowered as the rag was tossed casually through the window. Unable to shriek, his voice a gurgle, and no one helped him, but many watched.

The car exploded in flames and that was the moment a barbecue, Marseille-style, was lit… It was serious punishment but so also was the flaunting of a firearm and the breaking of discipline. Few, at that time, were asleep in La Castellane and the blaze climbed and the acrid smoke soared towards upper windows. When they could no longer see the kid, and his death throes, the crowd dispersed as if reluctant to accept it was finished.

Many slept, not heavily, and some were fortified with alcohol, which dulled awareness, and some were uneasy: none knew what was called the sleep of the good.

In the arms of Marie, her brightly painted nails playing patterns on his back, Tooth snored: he was exhausted from the physicality of their bed play, and had felt slight chest pains but had carried on because he never – from anything – backed off.

Undressed to his underwear and with his wife long gone to bed, the DIGN marksman, Samson, snored in a chair. The television had shown a film of elephant seals in some distant continent, and now displayed a meaningless snowstorm. He loved the world of the wild, its violence and simplicity. In a few hours an alarm would wake him and his wife in the apartment off the Rue Charras in the 7th arrondissement but until then he would sleep deeply, untroubled by conscience pangs.

And the Major – the response that he would make to the English visitors forgotten, expecting him to jump and liable to disappointment – was in his bed, his wife’s back against him, and the difficulties of the projects were banished, but his sleep was restless.

Hamid slept. Had not wanted the attention of his mistress, had left the couch for her. He wheezed from phlegm on his chest – he had smoked too often that day – but sleep took him, aided by a dosage of quality whisky. The sights of the evening did not register, he never dreamed, and sleep was a black void for him.

And far away, in the better suburbs of the Manchester area, with the tickets for his flight in the pouch on the dining-room table, and his bag packed, Crab slept. Even the excitement and pleasure of taking up arms again – in a way – or going back to war, being with a comrade and imagining combat, could not stifle his rhythmic grunting.

Pegs slept in the bedroom of the shoebox apartment they rented in the Vauxhall area and close enough to Wyvill Road. But Gough paced and smoked in the living-room, would feel worse than death in the morning, had a surveillance operation – two vehicles – running, and on a table was his mobile… He knew the target had left Manchester, knew the tail was in place. The stress factor always built when a Tango was tracked, when the pace quickened… but, if the tail maintained contact and the phone did not ring he would hope to sleep in the chair, not disturb Pegs, get a trifle of rest before the start of another day.

In a fast, violent manoeuvre, Scorpion took the car from the centre lane on the southbound motorway route, across the slow lane and into the feeder stretch for the service station. They would do it double-handed.

With a sheet of notepaper against her handbag and a pencil in her fingers, Zeinab did as she had been instructed and noted the registration numbers of vehicles following them out of their lane and into the feeder. Krait, in front of her, had his own sheet of paper, own pencil. Few cars and vans were on the road, and if they were tailed – as Krait had tersely explained in a further lecture on security, what he called ‘counter surveillance’ and ‘going into a choke’ – if the cop or spook vehicle followed them, they’d have a list of the numbers because halfway down the feeder and before the turns to the Food and Toilets and the Fuel and the Long Distance Parking, they would slow to a crawl. Any vehicles that followed them would have to come off the motorway, track them on the feeder, then avoid passing them. Simple, the way Krait explained it. Zeinab peered into the darkness at the following headlights and screwed her eyes to read and record registrations, then… acceleration. They took the exit… already she had noticed new precautions; nothing said to her as if at that stage she had not mattered sufficiently for breath to be wasted on her, and Scorpion had gone over the car with a handset, run it along the flanks and the wheel hubs and lain on his back and held it under the chassis. Between themselves they spoke in a Balochi dialect; she understood a little but had never admitted it. Krait had been told by Scorpion that the car was clean, not bugged. What did she have? She had two registration numbers. One was for a Transit van with a plumbing logo on the side, a driver and a passenger – men, and the other was for a saloon car, an old BMW 5 series, a man and a woman in the front and another man behind them; she had noted the BMW’s driver had both hands on the wheel, classic pose. They bypassed the facilities, drove fast for the exit.

She started to tell them what she had written down. She was waved to silence, like she was an interruption.

They careered back on to the motorway, and a car in the slow lane flashed them and a horn blasted behind them. They made for the central lane, and almost immediately for the outside, and the needle climbed. She sensed their stress, then abruptly the guys relaxed and their hands came together, like they were kids and it was football, and they made little squeals of excitement.

She was not part of them; they did not include her. What numbers had she written down? Told them, and expected praise. They said nothing, stayed within the speed limit. Scorpion flicked the radio’s buttons, found Asian Sound Radio, let it play softly, music. They thought they had done well, thought they had done better than well when they passed the transit crawling in the slow lane, then passed a BMW and she matched its registration and it was crawling too. It was what they had expected, and they were laughing, but she was not part of their celebration.

Phil slept, still dreamed, tossed and sweated.

They were more aggressive. Questions came from behind and in front of him.

Some shouted, others whispered close to his ears.

His hair, sparse and cut short, was held, nails gouging his scalp, and his head was dragged back that he might listen better. Fingers jabbed him, a knee that was small and sharp cannoned into the back of his leg and he nearly toppled. He was beyond bewilderment, astonishment. He tried to answer the questions. Attempted to cling to the legend he and the instructors had put together, sanctioned by his Control.

He felt coherence drifting. Where had he been two years before? What town? What street and what number? What job? Where had he lived two years before, what sort of house? What colour of house, what colour of front door? The girl, Bethany, had her mobile phone and was clocking the keys, waiting for an answer. Describing the house where he said he had lived two years before, and it was the first time that Phil realised that he was slipping, could not sustain the lie. The instructors said how to react: ‘Hit back’. The common refrain was to go for the big bastard, for the top man. Louder and louder, the circle round him, and he was digging into the limits of the legend and starting to blurt and he thought his defences were pretty much shredded. Had the instructors ever done it, the work that they lectured on, ever been part of it? Might ask them one day… He slapped a hand away from his hair, stood his full height. The big boy in the group was Dominic. Dominic got to shag most of the girls, had them on a roster. Right now, pretty much every night, Dominic was taking Tristana to bed, and making a hell of a noise of it, and Bethany was sulking because she had been stood down. Dominic was the big man… it was what the instructors said.

He caught hold of Dominic’s chin, got some fingers into his thin beard, heard the howl, pulled again. Phil called it.

‘Pretty old one, old as the hills. Like a bad B movie. Blame someone else.’

‘What is your shit?’

‘Put attention away. Turn it away. Clever, what the police told you?’

He was hit full in the face, but he noticed the chance. Like ice on a thaw, starting slow, but the moment of doubt was laid. It was the same as making a breach in the wire round a defended sangar anywhere in the Middle East, and had to be exploited and fast. The hold on him had slackened and the questions were drying, and his eyes smarted from the blow. He would not hit back, could have put the guy, Dominic, back into the Stone Age. He was jabbering accusations.

‘Go out every morning. Say it’s for fags… Who goes with you? Nobody is with you… Don’t send anyone to get your fags, have to do it yourself.’

The guy readied for another punch, and Phil would parry it. He kept belting out the accusations. Spittle in each of their faces and voices rising, and the guy seeming to realise that a table had been turned, that the high cards had changed hands.

‘Which pigs pay you… Hooked up with local CID, or hooked up with Branch… When were we last raided? You made this an off-limits safe house, Dommy? Leave it nice and tidy and they don’t need to search because it’s all given them, word of mouth, that you, Dommy… Are you their “chissy”, Dominic? Know what a “chissy” is? Course you do. Tell them all what a Covert Human Intelligence Source is… tell everybody. You are shit, Dommy. Line me up and protect yourself. You are a fucking snake.’

One more blow was swung. Easy to weave away from it. The current girl was Tristana and the passed over goods was Beth, and they no longer tugged at Phil’s hair, nor poked him, nor kneed him, nor had their mouths curled in fury, nor looked to do him harm. What Phil did was to offer a short silent prayer of gratitude to the instructors and what they preached. He had the guy by his shirt front and Dominic had gone limp and the punch was his last effort. He made no effort to defend himself, might have been too shaken to think on his feet.

A little voice: ‘You think you are so clever. You pull the big stunt.’

‘Do I?’

‘Don’t fool me.’

‘That right?’

‘I’ll have you, have you bad.’

‘Careful how you go.’

‘You think you’ve done well – just get the fuck out.’

Phil gave a final shake of the guy’s clothing, dropped him, let him slide into a chair.

Dominic hissed into his face, ‘I’m going nowhere – a “chissy”, a tout, a plant – I’m watching you. You are scum. Watching you.’

Phil stood his ground, had to. They drifted away, shaken, low voices. A survival, but close run.

And he still slept, could not wake or lose it.

The driver, Scorpion, repeated the procedure, the same manoeuvre. The stretch of motorway had been checked out on the road atlas. Few sections of the motorway had two service stations within a few miles of each other, and accessible on the southern route. A little chuckle from behind the wheel, and time enough for Krait to put his hands, defensively, on the dash, and the brake pedal was stamped on, the briefest use of an indicator light, and they crossed from the fast lane to the centre lane and over the slow lane and into a feeder.

Not expected by Zeinab, neither had bothered to warn her. She was thrown across the seat and her bag took her weight. She might have gasped, might even have sworn, and provoked fuller laugh. Then, a snapped instruction. Paper and pencil. She scrabbled for them and Krait turned round in his seat and grinned. The car slowed as it went up the feeder.

She knew what to do.

Easy enough, nothing interesting came after them. A long-distance haulage lorry with an address in Krakov, and an empty coach, and a tiny Italian car with the back stuffed with plastic bags and bedding. Zeinab did not need to be told… In the distance between the two service stations, they would not have had time to call up another vehicle, and a slow performance Fiat 500 had not the legs for following them on a motorway. She remembered the plumber’s transit and a number for an industrial estate outside Stafford, and remembered the BMW with two passengers. Neither came through. She said there was nothing. Krait had made the same decision and murmured it to Scorpion, and they did a brief punch of their fists and repeated the tactic from the first service station, but then took a different exit and crossed over the motorway by the bridge and went north.

She didn’t ask, but was told.

They would go north for two exits, then come off again, then use cross-country roads. Why? On the motorway and the main arteries there were police cameras for ANPR. Which meant? Automatic Number Plate Recognition. First, they had not been tailed, were not under surveillance. Second, they had thrown the system’s computers. Was that good? It was good. Both guys were laughing and punched closed fists, one against the other.

‘The transit and the BMW – could they have been?’

‘Could, but they would have to have followed into the second – simple.’

The headlights lit narrow roads and spray kicked up from rain puddles and the car shook from pot-hole impacts. Zeinab was a child of the urban sprawl: knew Savile Town across the Calder river, and the big stores round Dewsbury’s centre, and the high spires of the churches she had never been into, and the higher minaret of the Markazi Masjid, and knew the fast food places and the narrow streets of the old town, and the Town Hall that had been smartened up by the council, and the bus station and the train station, and the streets of terraced houses. On the train from Dewsbury to Manchester, she sometimes looked at the desolation of the moors through the grime-caked windows but usually she studied. Zeinab had been out of Manchester and up the coast with Andy; they had parked on the dunes walked at low tide miles along damp sand. It had been useful in the association with the boy: showing gratitude for what he had done, his rescue – then a closer intimacy, holding hands and sometimes kissing, and his arm around her back and against her hip, as she had built up to recruiting him; her driver, her cover when coming back into UK with the package stowed in his car. She did not know the countryside or wild coastal places, would have said she thought them hostile, and had seen in the headlights the badger’s corpse with its innards splayed where tyres had disembowelled it. Scorpion drove fast and Krait called the turnings which kept them on the minor routes.

Tiredness overwhelmed her, and the motion of the car was so soporific. She dozed.

The phone rang. Eyes still closed, Gough groped for it, could not locate it, flicked it over the table’s edge. On his hands and knees, and the call clamouring for him, and starting to swear. She was beside him, had found it, answered it.

‘Yes, the office, where else? Of course we are. You on the road, a target on the move, the only place we’d be.’

He thought she had done well. In the upper echelons of counter-terrorism, relationships with colleagues were frowned on: bonking, screwing, shafting, shagging – whether inside office hours or at the end of a day – was regarded as a quick route to a transfer out. He grimaced at her. He was half dressed and she was half naked, her pyjamas sagging open. He took the phone, cleared his throat.

‘Gough here.’

And he was told.

And answered, ‘No, I am not criticising, nor am I querying the decision.’

Was told some more. He assumed at the other end of the call was a night-duty staffer who would be poorly briefed on the implications of what he relayed.

Gough said, ‘So they aborted. Very good. I am sure it was for sound operational reasons. But they aborted.’

The manoeuvres were set out, what the target car had done. He listened.

Gough answered, ‘Had to abort, understood. Pulled back in the face of a tactic first used by the Provisionals, no doubt learned from them. To show out is a disaster, accepted… just repeat the end line for me, please.’

It was explained. Gough rang off. He had a sombre face, like death had come to the family. Pegs was no longer beside him, and he heard the shower start, and her splashing. He went to the bathroom door, opened it, saw her flesh pinking from the scalding level at which she always set the water.

‘Doesn’t get much worse, does it? An abort and a back-off, and they do a clever bit – we think – and go up the motorway in the wrong direction, north, then take an exit. Right now there is no ANPR on them. We’ve lost her. We are blundering,… which is worse than worse.’

He threw her the towel. One that they’d nicked from a Travel Lodge or a Holiday Inn, skimpy but adequate. He put on the kettle, would shave and wash after he had made coffee, strong coffee. Always a desperate time when a target was lost and an operation seemed to shudder to a halt, desperate and bad.

June 1971

A post had been sunk in a freshly dug hole that morning. The bone-hard ground at the edge of the camp had needed brute force and a swinging pickaxe to make the hole. The post inserted in it was not exactly vertical, but the best they could do, and the cavity had been filled and the excavated stones stamped down. The post stood alone and behind it was a clear view of gradually rising foothills on which sunlight shimmered. There were few trees and rare patches of shade on the slopes where goats grazed.

Watching the arrival of the firing squad was the intelligence officer of that section of that faction of the umbrella organisation, Fatah. They were late, usually were late on any schedule set them. It had been decided that the squad, of half a dozen, should wear uniform for the event. They did not have a common kit so some of the camouflage clothing was American, some was Soviet, and for the younger participants there were trousers and shirts in the dun colour that was close to that of the sand and scrub beyond the camp’s perimeter. They marched past the officer. Few had an understanding of drill and how to carry a rifle while moving in step. Some tried to copy those in front, but two had no comprehension and walked easily, briskly, and made no pretence at being part of a disciplined force. An older man, who once would have had a fine carriage, but now was paunchy, and had an exaggerated moustache, called the tempo of the march, and had been in the camp for 22 years, there since the first of the shanty town buildings had gone up. Everyone in the squad carried Kalashnikov rifles, held them across their chests, and strutted. They were formed into a line – at first ragged and then kicked into shape by the drill man – and commands were given as if that would increase their legitimacy. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and waved it towards the gate leading through the wire and into the alleys of the camp. He was ready, they could bring her.

The IO, a good-looking man of Palestinian origin, in his late twenties, and wearing a scruffy uniform that showed he had little interest in military theatre, lit a cigarette. He felt calm, had reason to. The post, by rights, should have been for him. Should have been his arms bound behind it, and the blindfold lying at its base should have been going round his head, masking his eyes. He had deflected attention, and had used what opportunities were presented to shift evidence away from himself and on to the girl. He felt no guilt. He was an asset. Those who controlled him believed that his importance was such that his survival was paramount. He would be protected. He smoked the cigarette casually, while the crowd gathered behind him, and other young men, all armed, held back the spectators. He had believed he had begun to attract attention, and the Internal Security were efficient, and his position as intelligence officer was of value to those who controlled him, and two of the young fedayeen had been about to cut the wire and head into the northern territory of Israel when the flares had been fired and they had frozen in the lights, had been cut down by gunfire. If they had been allowed to go farther, the matter could have been explained as an accidental contact with a patrol, but this was obvious betrayal. He had known he would have been the first on whom suspicion fell, except that the girl had, in the hours before the infiltration, been to the city of Tyre, west from Tebnine where the camp was, and it had been easy to insert US dollar notes in her clothing. She had gone by bus, was unwilling to give a reason, then under fierce interrogation had spoken of a boy. Perhaps there was, perhaps not. She was condemned, and the intelligence officer attracted no more attention.

She was brought out, men hemmed around her. She would find no kindness in the last moments of her life. A spy was hated, a traitor was loathed, betrayal was the ultimate crime. He thought she walked well.

She faced the squad. One among them caught the intelligence officer’s attention. A boy, sixteen or seventeen years old, trying to stand to attention and with the poorest combination of make-do uniform, a camouflage tunic in sand colours and olive-green trousers that would have looked well in dense vegetation. He carried an old weapon, held it rigidly as if it were the most important possession in his life: no doubt it was. The sun played on the boy’s face and accentuated his youth; his cheeks gleamed and the officer realised that he was weeping.

They brought the girl forward. Some of the men had hold of her. Her wrists were tied loosely with cord and her arms hung down by her sides. She was dressed in black, a generous robe that showed none of the lines of her body. Some of her face was visible, but a scarf was tight across her head. She did not blink but looked ahead and around her… and gazed straight at him. He offered nothing. He looked through her – should, probably, have been grateful to her for stepping forward, however unwillingly, and taking a place he might have filled, deservedly. She walked past him and his eyes followed her and she would have seen the teenage boy who shed tears, who carried the old rifle with the damaged stock. Any other make of weapon, of that obvious age, was likely to jam. Except… that the rifle was the AK-47, an old version but of that pedigree. The intelligence officer wondered if the boy would miss the target.

She was taken to the post.

Her hands were freed, then pulled behind her, the same cord used to tie her wrists to the post. A man bent and picked up the cloth but she shook her head violently and seemed to try to pull away. It was the first moment that he had noted genuine agitation. They did not know what to do. There was talking, shouting, and she yelled that she would not wear the blindfold. The intelligence officer believed that none of them had ever executed a woman, certainly not one so pretty with a blazing anger in her eyes. Had reason to be angry, was innocent, her life was considered less important than his, an asset of importance to the Israeli Defence Force beyond the frontier to the south. They did not want to touch her, handle her, and seemed ashamed and stepped back. She regained composure. A white cloth was roughly fastened with a safety pin to her chest, where they estimated her heart to be. The squad, in line, was twenty paces from her.

The moment of importance and prestige had arrived for the old guy, the one with the moustache, and he yelled a command. There was a scrape as the weapons were armed. Aim was taken. He held out his handkerchief and the squad waited for his signal. A good girl, and pretty, with the bravery of a lioness, and without guilt and giving them – the rabble around her – no satisfaction. The handkerchief was raised.

She was dead. The kid who wept had fired. He broke the drill. He cried and heaved back his trigger. As the handkerchief landed on the dirt there was a ripple from the other rifles but she was already sagging and some might have missed. Not the first shot. The cloth on her chest had a drilled hole in its centre and blood seeped.

The intelligence officer walked away. He assumed another notch would soon be scratched on the wooden stocks. It was predictable that an AK-47, old and without maintenance and likely rarely cleaned, had performed at the top of its power. No surprise to him… he lived a dangerous life, on the edge, alone and without support – and another had died in his place – and he was vulnerable, every hour of every day.

The car braked. She was jolted forward, went as far as the seatbelt allowed. They were in the suburbs of a town, residential but with warehouses. Zeinab looked at her watch, saw they were still deep in the night.

‘Were we followed?’

Krait said, ‘Not now, maybe earlier. If we were, we broke it. It was a good trick we did, and if they were behind us, two cars, they would have noted our professionalism, then backed off. They would have had to.’

Scorpion said, ‘I believe we have their respect, they are professional and trained. We have to be. It is important to be good enough to earn respect.’

Krait said, ‘Believe nothing, believe nobody, or you will not see Savile Town again… The boy who died, he tried too hard, was not believed. They are all around us, watching. They look for weakness: the boy pushed too often. You believe no one who comes with an offer of friendship. Believe no one.’

‘We have been deservedly promoted to this dizzy height, where our incompetence is easy to see.’

Pegs had typed it, printed it, stuck it with adhesive to the front of their office door. It might raise a laugh, and any degree of humour would be welcome that day, not that the night cared to go fast. They had carried out an inquest, which wasted time, and irritated. He was alone. She had gone for supplies, for the fortification of morale.

In the inquest, taking the advocate of the devil’s role, Gough had remarked that they were guilty of underestimating the qualities of the adversary. Did not understand them, gave too little credit for their tradecraft skills: their opponents were not enrolled in a bloody kindergarten. He thought he might suggest to her that there was space enough on the frosted glass of their door for another slogan to be added under the one explaining Peter’s Principle: ‘Parkinson’s Law is practised inside, is compulsory in an area of bureaucratic free-range thinking.’ Or, and they would discuss it, they might follow with the Dunning-Kruger Effect: ‘Those with low ability rarely recognise their ineptitude.’ The others, who sat at an octagonal table, each with their own computer screen and only low partitions for privacy, might sense that the levity came out of crisis. The target was lost, the Undercover was adrift, and Gough had acknowledged that the skills of adversaries were rarely underestimated and the outcome happy. Too old? Perhaps. Past it, and should be put to grass? Maybe… He sat, the responsibility burdening him, and… she came back.

Pegs brought with her, from a depot café down the Embankment, two plates of full English, enough sausage and bacon and black pudding, and mushrooms and hash and a sunny side egg, to keep a navvy going through a day. Or should they go for Murphy’s, Law. Murphy reckoned that if anything could go wrong then it would. Cutlery and paper napkins and coffee in a beaker.

Gough said, ‘Damage done, yes. Trouble with damage is that it takes time to repair. If it’s not repaired then…’

With a mouth full, and spluttering, she said, ‘Then the people we rely on are fucked. People at the sharp end, but that’s how it always plays out.’

Still sleeping, deep, but dreaming.

The two cars were pulled off the road. It had been a squeeze but eight of them had come. It was two weeks after the crisis, and Dominic was with them but less a part of them, and the auburn-haired girl had taken over the leadership, was first among equals. Tristana had not been back to the former leader’s room, nor had Bethany. There were a few lights on in the house, and they waited for the one in the downstairs hall to be doused, and the one in the bathroom upstairs to come on. The dog, a yappy spaniel, had already been out, and had peed and been called back in. A warm night, no moon and only a few stars.

He could not be a perpetrator and could not be a provocateur. Instructions were clear on the limits of his engagement. Phil was able to commit a criminal act, but not be a principal player, nor be party to any serious injury being handed out. The two cars were side by side in a field gateway and the scientist’s house was a hundred yards farther on… The hall went dark, and lights had come on upstairs. They’d need a little time to get the clubs out of the car boots, and the paint sprays, and the pepper that they’d squirt at anyone in the family who intervened. Last out would be the battering ram: a considerable investment at £200 and care taken in disguising the purchaser’s identity. Bethany was out and Tristana, and the guys with them. The auburn-haired girl had had her hand on his thigh most of the time since they had left Plymouth, had put it there before it was dark, had made her statement and would have been seen. She would expect to be high, like it was a big spliff smoked, by the time they were back and would expect to get what she wanted. After standing up for himself, he had become a more attractive package. Phil Williams knew how it would end, and it would not be with her hand on his thigh, as they made the return journey – all bubbling at the success and the violence meted out to a ‘horrible bastard’ who put animals in the path of misery.

There were car headlights coming towards them down the lane and another car’s lights appeared behind them. Phil had stayed inside his car while the gang cleared the boots of what they needed, and all were caught. The lights, at full power, beamed hard at them and some protected their eyes, and Bethany swore, and the first to realise – of course – was Dominic. Cops poured out of the cars and a van came up behind the lead vehicle. Not the local people, but a specialist team and fearsome in overalls, with Tasers drawn and batons extended.

Very quick. Handcuffs on, and everybody down on their faces. A torch shone full into Phil’s face.

‘You all right, mate?’

‘Fine, yes, I’m good.’

He unfastened his seatbelt and stepped out of the car. The uniforms around him were polite but no praise was given. It might have been that these men and women understood he operated in a world of shadows and of deceit, lived off a diet of lies, might not have liked what he did. He was told that a cop would drive his vehicle, and that a squad car was round the corner and would take him to a safe place. A ‘safe place’? Hardly needed it now, but had needed it two weeks back… There was enough light on them, on the ground, for him to read their expressions: anger, contempt, shock, loathing.

Dominic said, ‘Rot in hell, you bastard. One day, I swear it, I’ll fucking find you.’

The girl with the auburn hair said, ‘Find you and burn your balls off. You broke our trust. Happy?’

He walked past them. Did not feel good, only numb. Before dawn he would no longer be Phil Williams, like that legend had never existed.

Still slept, and hated the length of the night.