Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 8

‘Say it again… Don’t recollect the name.’

Andy Knight knew the sergeant, but the sergeant did not know him. He had come off a slow, stopping train running down the coast of the Exe estuary – the station served the Commando Training Centre. Pegs had rung him, suggested that he might do a half-day there on his way to the ferry, and that she’d fix the welcome party. There would not have been much trading in the deal: someone would brief him on the ‘weapon of choice’ but his cover name would apply and what he did and who he worked for was off limits. He had left his car farther down the line, a couple of stations back, so the registration would not be listed at the barracks.

‘I was here, but it’s not important.’

‘I believe you, but reluctantly. I was told you were one of us and needed a refresher. Don’t recall the name we’ve been given… also went on the website, looked up the name. Doesn’t tally.’

‘Life’s rich tapestry, moved on.’

‘Which tells me things I needn’t know. Right, let’s go to work.’

The sergeant, as Andy Knight remembered him, was rarely amused, but managed a dry grin, raised an eyebrow. Who he had with him would likely tease him most of the day. He thought little had changed. The same buildings, some newly painted and some looked tired, and the same mess-rooms and the same cramped parade ground where he had not been the best, nor the worst. He assumed that a mass of the new intake were away out on the moor or up on the common, on exercise or doing ball-crunching cross-country running or were out on ‘stealth and survival’. The place had a strange quiet to it.

A quiet and a familiarity, and Andy Knight felt a homecoming.

It was said of the Marine recruits who were shipped in here – raw eighteen- and nineteeen- and twenty-year-olds – that most came from car-crash backgrounds, and domestic circumstances described as ‘difficult’, and few had ever before been confronted with ‘standards’ to be reached. The barracks – some of it modern and some of it out of date – became a home for so many. Gave them a sense of family: the first time. He disliked thinking about his previous life, before becoming a Level One, reckoned it an indulgence that endangered him, tried to erase memories, attitudes, from his thoughts. Reflected briefly that his own childhood had not been a motor vehicle accident, that he had been brought up in a distant and dignified and gently loving atmosphere, and they had all been at the front gate of a semi-detached property to wave him off when the taxi had driven him away to the station. What was true was the feeling of belonging, had come at Lympstone. This same sergeant had lectured them, first day or second: ‘It’s more than just a green beret, it’s a state of mind’, and: ‘First to understand, first to adapt and respond, and first to overcome’. They had taught him those aims, drummed into him the need to be inquisitive and adventurous, and that being ‘close to, near to, success, is inadequate’. He had loved it, might have been made for him. When he had left, he had gone into one of the Commandos, had been thought well of, had been a standout for the speciality tasking of a marksman, a sniper, and was thinking with only minimal apprehension of a deployment in the dog-days of the Afghan commitment.

The sergeant walking briskly beside him might not now have the fitness required for the 30-mile trek. Might not be able to stand at the bar in his Mess all night, and down them and walk in a straight line back to his billet, but was the man – Andy would have said – that you would most want watching your back when on patrol in the maize fields of Helmand, or where he was going. A man who would protect you, no fuss and no drama, in any darkened alley, round any bad corner. No one would be at his back in the alleyway with no lighting, and no one would be watching for him round every bad corner. Somewhere, far down the road and sitting on a radio would be some protection but unlikely to be able to preserve his life if he cracked the mould, made the mistake. They came to a doorway, paused at it. There was an old catchphrase that the Marines’ sergeants used to trot out to the kids with ‘crusader’ tendencies, looking to make a name for themselves in a fire-fight: ‘heroes make poor leaders’. He was no hero, neither had Norm Clarke been, and the title did not apply to Phil Williams, nor could he have said that what he had done, where he had been, had changed the situation of the world around him, nor what he would do where he was going. He’d walked reasonably well but the sergeant – gimlet-eyed in the old days and probably still blessed – would have noted the disability, seen the almost, not quite, hidden limp.

‘Where I’m to drop you off.’

‘Thanks.

‘They’ll ring me when they’re ready to chuck you out.’

‘One thing, can I ask one thing?’

‘Ask, I’ll try.’

Andy did, said what he wanted before leaving them. Funny old thing to ask for. Nobody now watched his back but then he had left the family.

Zeinab stepped off the train, trailed her bag. She walked at a good pace down the length of the platform, across the concourse, had seen the signs for the escalators to the Underground. The boys, all of whom had known Dewsbury, would have walked those steps… She had been ten at school and the day barely started, then older kids talking, hushed, fearfully, of explosions in London. Later, at home, her parents had watched the big television, and the boys had been referred to as ‘idiots, lunatics, fools’ but she had thought that was for her to hear and did not know what had passed for real inside their minds… Did they pause at the top of the steps? Did they hug, kiss, shrug under the weight of the rucksacks, mouth a prayer? Or did they just keep walking towards the Underground? It was likely that they had walked past her home, on the same pavement with the cracks and the weeds at her front gate, on their way to the Merkazi… Teenagers, five years younger than she was now, who had gone to Syria and had no known graves… and they had been her cousins. They were owed her loyalty, and her stomach ached from hunger, and she glanced at her watch, and reckoned she had the time, and went to a fast-food counter.

Humiliated, could not immediately pay for it. Had not enough money in her purse to buy the two buns she had chosen and the latte, and her teeth ground in anger. Cash she had been given was in her passport, zipped securely in her bag. People behind were pushing her, trying to buy and still catch their train. Confused and panic fuelling embarassment. She was groping in the pockets of her jeans and finding screwed-up paper handkerchiefs, and her ticket, and there was £3.78 in her purse and she needed £7.08, and she heard behind her a man’s voice, accent smart and southern and English: Oh, for fuck’s sake… Then… Take it out of this, please. A note was on the counter, pushed towards the girl. Zeinab flushed. The till was rung, the coffee was capped, the buns were bagged. Embarassment soared. She was a nuisance, in the way, and the inconvenience could be bought by the man for £7.08, and he was ordering a croissant and a regular cappuccino. Her package was in front of her, pushed towards her, she stammered gratitude but was ignored… she flared.

Anger soared. The feeling was sharp as a nail. She was an obstruction, ethnic, easy to buy out, patronised. It was not about a belief in the caliphate, and not about the Gardens of Paradise. She was third-Class or fourth. A dreary little creature who stood in a queue and did not have enough to pay for what she wanted. She snatched up her bag, turned on her heel and strode away. The two buns and the coffee left behind. She heard it clearly: Stroppy little cow, that’s thanks for you. And kept walking, had now regained the route of the boys who had all known Dewsbury, and her street.

Fury engulfed her. She had been told what station she was to head for, and by what line. She wondered how long each of the three of them who had taken a train had waited for the lights to spear out of the tunnel and the clanking carriages come to a halt. They would have had anger, fury, and the fourth – later – would have found his train cancelled and gone up into the fresh summer air and have looked for a crowded bus at that rush-hour time, and she thought him the bravest of all of them… She wondered where Andy Knight was, bit her lip, tried to slide him out of her thoughts. She stood on the packed train and it rocked on uneven tracks… She would fight them; uttered a single silent prayer that she would have the chance… somewhere on this stretch of tunnel one of them had pressed a button, had gone to his God, was at peace. She was not.

Karym’s phone went. His brother.

The project was quiet. The few with outside work were gone, some women had left with their shopping bags to spend the money filtered to them through the tentacles of La Castellane’s nightly trading – guarding money and weapons and hashish, getting a percentage of the profits from dealing and enforcing which paid well, watching the perimeter of the project which was rewarded less generously. Late morning and a brittle sunshine and the wind scouring the ground and bending the few surviving trees in what had once been proud landscaping. The police and the forensic technicians had pulled out, and the burned car had been hoisted on to a flat-bed and taken away. The smell still hung close to where the fire had been, but that was from the tyres, not the burning flesh. School would soon be finished and the young kids would spill back into the project, and the older ones who still bothered to attend the big lycée down the road towards the city. Karym was owed some respect because of the blood-line to his brother: had his brother not owned his stairwell business then Karym, with his weakened arm, would have been a pitiful creature, hounded and bullied. As long as his brother lived, he had protection… He would talk to him again, to Hamid, about his wish for them to go together into the hills, where the scrub was dense, and place some bottles and some cans on a rock, and have an AK-47 with two filled magazines, and fire them at Battle Sight Zero range, close enough for him to hit and feel the sucking of pride in his chest, and have his ears ring with the sound of it. He would not beg, would request, and would hope… he had no girl or the chance of one, had no rifle or the opportunity to fire one. He would ask his brother.

He answered. Karym was told what his brother wanted. He agreed, of course.

Karym did not ask about a session in the mountains, with the rifle: another occasion. He was told at what time that afternoon he should do the run. It was part of what was regular in Karym’s life. Every four or five days, he took the satchel from his brother and rode on his small Peugeot scooter out of the project and along the back roads, not the main highway, to St Exupéry, to a Credit Union branch. He would bank the cash, receive a chit, lodge it, and within a few hours his brother would have transferred it electronically out of that branch and away into the cyber world of lost money. The cash was usually measured in tens of thousands of euros. Sometimes he went alone and sometimes he would have an escort of kids, his age, riding close to him on their scooters… about the only time that Karym felt important. It was said that stocks were low in the project, that a new shipment was coming that afternoon. The events of the previous evening were gone from his thoughts, and the smells, and very soon – within hours – the place would await the next bout of theatre, to which the community was addicted.

He wandered and the wind was on his face… He saw her. She walked heavily. She carried a shopping bag. He could not see her face because of the shadows thrown by the sunlight. He thought it likely that his brother, through an intermediary – an imam or a school teacher or a social worker – would send her money. Her son’s funeral would be the next day and there would be a good attendance from the project, and some flowers. Karym did not think that she would have seen the brilliance of the flames from the torched car or that the smell would have reached her windows. It was the way of the place, and she would accept it… A nice morning, and little in his life changed and he did not wish for anything to alter that. He went to buy a cake. There was one area of change that bothered him, was unfamiliar. His brother had been across the city, had ridden his Ducati Monster down to the centre of Marseille and through it and out on the far side; had gone to a meeting with a man of prominence, otherwise would not have bothered, and Karym did not know why. He was unsettled when he did not know the immediate future, even on a pleasant morning.

‘Can a woman fire it, shoot with it easily?’ Andy Knight’s question.

‘No problem – should there be?’ A corporal’s answer.

‘The shape of it, the recoil, whatever?’

‘A woman can shoot with it, period.’

He was off the main armoury. He had been told that most of the weapons that had been captured on active service had now been shipped out, but the guys who ran the place had managed to squirrel away some prize parts of the original collection, and reasons had been given that satisfied those above, enough to square a circle. At his feet were half a dozen AK-47s from Serb factories and Iraqi-made, an Egyptian version, one from a Chinese factory, and what was laughed at as a museum piece, five decades old from a Soviet era production line and picked up in prime working order from an Afghan fire-fight. He was alone with the corporal, and a Do Not Disturb note was pinned to the outer door. The corporal, long past his retirement date and it would have required a flame-thrower to shift him from this cramped area, was a veteran of most of the recent conflicts where the UK had pitched up.

‘I thought I needed to know.’

‘Look at the Kurd battles, Mosul and Raqqa. There were women enough on the front parapets, and most had crap AKs from Iraqi stocks, or Syrian, and they were efficient, brave… some say they are harder.’

‘Explain.’

‘What sort of stereotype do you want? All of them… ‘‘deadlier than the male’’, or ‘‘hell hath no fury’’, any more? Go into a safe house at four in the morning and the blokes are likely to be sleeping off the booze or still high on hash, not the women: see the woman, shoot her, what they taught us.’

‘And the AK is a good weapon for a woman?’

‘Good size, good weight, good accuracy at close quarters, for Battle Sight Zero which would be a hundred metres, it’s as good as any, better. Does not jam, does not fail to eject, does not require housekeeping, cleaning. Is this a ‘‘one trick pony’’ briefing, just about women using a Kalashnikov? Are you asking me if a woman could have handled an AK attack such as the Paris concert, could do that in any shopping centre? No reason why not. We feel that a woman can certainly be an equal as a sniper, look at the faraway eyes of a target and be happy to take it down: the stereotype explanation would be that a woman can ‘‘dehumanise’’ that target. Have you ever stripped one? The weapon, not…’

A low chuckle, but Andy stayed boot-faced.

‘No.’

He was taught. The different versions used the same basic parts. The corporal showed him how to take it apart, how to reassemble. Took a full minute the first time, and then around thirty seconds for the second and his hands were a blur of movement as the guts of the beast were extracted and then placed back inside. He was passed the first one and the lights were full on over his head, and he managed it, the strip-down, but hesitated in getting it together the first time round – not the second time. Had an ache in his head from a dream-filled night; had not recharged, had evaded rest. Did it faster the second time… The corporal walked away, left him kneeling, surrounded by the weapons, went to the door, threw the switch. Darkness surrounded him but a sliver of light came under the door; he could barely see a hand in front of his face and the rifles were shadows. He was told to do two of them. And did. Sweated on it, took a bit of time, but managed. His fingers felt clumsy, awkward, and he did it by touch. Andy cleared the mechanism and heard the click of metal scraping together. Some would have punched the air, not his way. The light came back on. The colours of the room flooded round him.

‘You’ve cracked that?’

‘I think so.’

‘You don’t need to know the history?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘A hundred million have been made, same principles but different models, might at a high point have been killing quarter of a million every year.’

‘Thank you, no.’

‘The weapon of protest and revolution, of the massacre of innocents, of the worst of the bullying thugs of our world, the authority it gives an illiterate kid who can blow away his school teacher, a notion of invulnerability, you won’t understand until you have fired it – want a speech?’

‘Not on the list.’

‘You know what the inventor said, over ninety years old, revered and honoured, the man whose name it carried, what he said?’

‘No.’

‘Would have preferred to invent a machine that helped farmers, for instance, a lawn mower… It’s what he thought when close to death.’

‘Sounds as if he felt some grief.’

‘Had cause. And one word of advice – don’t hesitate, shoot the bitch. It’s what it’s about, I’m assuming. Drop her. No fucking about, do it.’

The corporal rang for the sergeant to pick up the visitor… He waited outside. He saw her face and knew the taste of her tongue, and felt her nose nuzzle against his ear, and her fingers at the back of his neck. He saw her down what the corporal had called Battle Sight Zero, and her chest would hide the vital organs that would be aimed at. He saw, also, the worry lines on her forehead and guessed at the stress factors that dominated her, and doubted she could be free of them… doubted that he could be. A vehicle arrived and he walked to it. The weapon he had handled, dismantled and put back together had felt good, comfortable.

September 1974

He waited for the dawn.

He held the old rifle tightly, fearful it would slip from his grip and that he would have lost control of it when the moment came.

It would come, the moment.

The boy scratched a notch on the wooden stock of the weapon and closed the blade of his penknife. He knew nothing of its history, where it had been, what lives it had taken since the one he had claimed. The boy was one day short of his eighteenth birthday, in the camp for Palestinian refugees at Tibnine, and was the youngest of the four in the third-floor apartment of the housing block. Also with them, waiting for first light, were the occupant and his wife. One of his friends was in the kitchen where there was a fire escape door; another was in the bedroom which had a view of buildings to the west; and one was in the corridor and behind the main door of the apartment, splintered and with gunshot punctures and with the lock broken. The boy was in their living-room where the windows were already shattered from the first sprays they had fired when bursting inside, and he did guard duty. Two sons had already escaped through the window and had landed three floors below and, screaming for help, had crawled away. The parents had attempted to block the entry, give their kids a better chance of freedom, had pushed a table against the inner door. The boy guarded them, not that it was necessary. The man lay on his back and had taken two or three bullets to the stomach, and moaned sometimes and his eyes were opaque. The old woman’s leg was shattered by a bullet that had impacted against her thigh bone. Her life was concentrated in her eyes. Her nightdress was rucked up where she had fallen, much of her stomach above the bloodied wound was exposed, and she cared for nothing other than to show her hatred of him, the boy. Her eyes blazed. She said nothing, did not need to.

The notch on his rifle stock was for the man who had wandered, half-asleep on to the first landing of the building, perhaps going to drive an early bus or a dust cart in Beit Shean, and who had turned to shout a warning up the steps and had been cut down. The boy had fired the last shot that killed him, or perhaps he was already dead. In faint light he had aimed at the nape of the man’s neck… Truth was, and the boy knew it, they had already failed: they had not achieved their objective. Should have a room full of residents under their control, needed a dozen or more Jews with which to bargain. They had only two elderly people, both grievously injured.

Where the boy sat, hunched down and far from the window, and seeing only the first wisp of light, and against the wall and close to the family’s comfortable, worn sofa bed, was the rucksack that held the leaflets and the loudspeaker and the bull-horn and the typed list of demands that should give their captives freedom. A long list containing the names of many fighters held in the Israeli gaols. They should have scattered their leaflets and had not done so; they should have taken more prisoners but had not done so. The commander who had recruited them, trained them, prepared them, had spoken of initial Israeli prevarication, then capitulation and a bus being driven to the door and them all climbing aboard with their chips, like the people won or lost in a card game, and a journey to the border where they would be met by many more buses that brought the brothers from the gaols, and the swap would take place, and a victory would be gained, and cameras from across the world would be there: it was what they had been told.

The boy was not a fool. Since his selection, he’d been lectured on the likely tactics of the enemy’s commando force, the Sayaret Matkal knew, also of their reputation.

The boy did not wish to die, but he had volunteered and now sat on a cold floor, before the sun was high enough to warm the room through the broken glass. Was it worse to be captured or to die? The boy wondered whether his name would be spoken in the camp at Tibnine, whether he would be hailed as a hero, whether he would be forgotten within a week – replaced by another who believed what the commander said. He knew no answers except that they, the enemy, would come at a time of their own choosing, when the moment suited.

The boy called to his brothers. What was happening? What did they see?

One, from the hall inside the main door, swore at him in response. One, whose sister the boy admired and hoped one day to… had a choked voice and was hard to hear, said he saw nothing from the bedroom. One, from the kitchen, with a low-pitched and laconic answer, said that military vehicles had arrived, had parked out of range of their rifles, added that the buildings to the east gave dead ground, and that the sun was rising. The hatred still burned in the mother’s face, and the contempt, and the father’s groans were softer, less frequent, and blood dribbled from his mouth. The boy had two magazines for the AK-47 taped together so that he could more easily, exchange them. The others’ Kalashnikovs were more modern and cleaner, but he would not have been separated from his, and it was a joke amongst the kids on the training courses and often they… Never in his life had he heard such a concentration of noise.

A deafening sound of an explosion, and another, and repeated, and the detonations multiplied and seemed to break through the membranes in his ears, and there were flashes that blinded him, then the hammering of firing.

Should he, should he not?

Blinking hard, the boy saw the outline of the head of the mother, was close enough almost to have touched her. It was as if she had ignored the noise and the flashes… the same messages were in her eyes and at her mouth: hatred, contempt, and the sneer that said he had failed, was dead. He tried to raise his weapon and it cavorted in his hands and the aim wavered between her head, her husband’s and the door, never locked on one. The boy wet himself, felt the warmth of the liquid and swore in frustration at what he perceived to be weakness. His finger was rigid and he could not insert it behind the guard, get it on the trigger, and his tears welled, and the first of them came through the door.

The love of the rifle, serial numbers of ***26016751, had destroyed him. His hands opened. It had broken him. It fell to his lap. The man in the doorway had his weapon up. His last sensation was the weight of the weapon, disowned and unwanted, across his upper thighs… another soldier was behind the first. He felt such fear… knew nothing more.

He did not know that his body, hit by 27 bullets, almost shredded at that range, would be tossed out through the window and would land among a group of savage settlers, residents in the new estate for immigrants to Israel, and would be hacked at with a meat cleaver and butchers’ knives. He would not know that his brothers would follow him and be dismembered, nor know that he would be buried in a hidden grave, nor know that with the reverence of a garbage collector a soldier in the storm team – known in the country’s shorthand simply as The Unit – would disarm the Kalashnikov and carry it away, and dump it as a minor trophy in the back of a jeep.

She met two men.

One could be a schoolmaster, with a Pakistani accent, and wore slacks and a sports jacket and his beard was tidily trimmed, and the other might have been a student and his body stank and his clothes were stained and he had the soft and delicate hands of a Somali, and the older man deferred to him. Zeinab had left the station, followed the directions given her, had come to the park. They had been sitting in the cold, on a bench, and she did not know how long they had watched before deciding it was safe to approach. First she was told that she had been monitored since leaving the station and that she was clean, had no tail. She’d said she was hungry and a boy had been sent away and had come back with a pie, vegetable curry, and they had seemed amused by her. She had eaten ravenously. She was passed a bottle of water, broke the seal and drank.

Then business… was given her route out, and a folded wad of notes that was bound with an elastic band. She had been about to put it into a side pocket of her coat, but the younger man had taken it from her, had pushed aside the coat at the zip, and his hand was against her breast and he seemed not to notice, and his fingers found an inner pocket. The money went there, and the zip was closed. She produced her new passport and it was examined minutely, had passed the scrutiny and was returned along with the money already given her. She was shown a photograph of Andy Knight. She recognised him, and saw the line of lorries behind him. The picture was stolen. Was she sure?

Zeinab said, ‘I am sure. He is besotted with me. He is a driver. He has no politics, only his work and a drink, and being with me.’

And he knew nothing, this driver?

‘He is quite simple, not very bright, not educated. It is because of me that he comes, and he drives well. It is a brilliant solution.’

Was she ‘fond’ of him, and the word rolled on the older man’s tongue.

‘I quite like him, not more. I use him and…’

From the younger one, asked with exaggerated casualness – and she became aware of the hole, poorly patched with a skin graft at the side of his neck and a smaller hole on the other side and presumed him a war veteran – Did she sleep with him, did he screw her?

The blood flushed in her face. ‘I do not. No. I have not slept with him.’

From the older man, an examination of a difficulty because it was hard to understand – in these times of loose morality – how she could hold the loyalty of this fellow, the delivery driver, if he did not receive sexual gratification. Did she understand his query?

‘Because he is almost in love with me, cannot do enough for me, he respects me. He thinks I am virtuous. I am virtuous. He is a good man.’

The younger man peered at her and his face was close to hers and there was a magnetism in the eyes – as there had been in her cousins’ – and the grin played on his face as if he were amused, and the question was simplistic: in France, in a hotel, would she fuck him?

‘I don’t know.’ A stammered answer, never been asked such a question before. ‘I am not a whore. I don’t spread my legs for the cause I follow. I have not…’

Not for them to know what she thought, or planned… She should not lose him, not for the sake of preserving unnecessary modesty. She lied to them… The younger man’s hand rested on her thigh and squeezed hard, as if that were a threat, squeezed until she winced and then slowly relaxed the grip and she could feel – high on her leg – where his fingers had pressed. She should keep him in this state of infatuation, should do what was required. One more thing that they wished to hear her response to, one thing.

‘What thing?’

If she had been wrong, if she had chosen the driver without due care, if she harboured a snake, if the man whose photograph they had was tainted, planted, and she learned this in France… If learned it in England then he was gone, dealt with swiftly like the cauterising of a wound, if in France and close to the pick-up point, what then?

She said it with defiance. ‘I would not be weak. I would spit in his face. I would stamp where I had spat. I would stamp until his face was unrecognisable, until the smile that deceived me was gone, lost forever. I would not hesitate.’

They would have liked what they heard. The older man gripped her hand as if further to strengthen her, and the younger man told her that the monies she carried were for a man who would make indirect contact, and the codeword for him was Tooth… And, she was a brave girl, the younger man said, and the older man nodded fervently, and God would go with her. The result of what she did would be heard across the world, would make kaffirs shiver in their beds… More tickets were given her, and two cheap phones and both had the batteries out, and she gave them hers, and they were gone.

One moment there, the next she sat on the bench alone. She felt pride that she had been chosen. Felt confusion at what had been said to her about her driver, of Andy, and again could taste his tongue and the juices laid in her mouth, and a great cold because of what she had promised, and they’d not know what she had bought in the shopping mall. A spit, a stamp on that face until it was obliterated: it would not happen. Young men escorted her back to the station, formed a distant cordon round her and seemed to confirm her new status.

‘It won’t last an hour,’ Gough said.

‘It’ll be there in the morning.’ Pegs winked. ‘Twenty quid on it.’

He did not take her bet, seldom accepted a wager with her. She had her coat on, as he did. Their passports and tickets were in her bag, and their float for this next stage of Rag and Bone. They would not stop at Three Zero Eight’s door and seek a brief audience, but would slip away, shadows down a gloomy corridor. The car was waiting… She began to stick the sheet of paper on the outside of the door. Fixed it securely, approved, and the door was closed and they had their bags and the key was turned.

It was behind them, their message to the world and the third floor of the building on Wyvill Road.

Not a backward glance.

Pegs told Gough that the weather forecast for the next several days in Marseille was good: little rain, a powerful mistral wind, and a pleasant temperature, and suggested it would be a good trip – forgetting that they had lost their target, were far up a creek and no paddle, and had a lively suspicion that their man was softening, going ‘native’.

Gough said, nodding to Security on the front door, ‘It had better be a good trip, or they might be mowing the grass and sweeping up the leaves in Vauxhall Park for a well-attended public hanging, you and me and turned off together. I think it’ll be that sort of trip – champagne or sackcloth.’

They were on their way, heading for the airport, and Rag and Bone had now climbed beyond serious, and too much of it was out of their hands… but nice of her to tell him that the weather forecast was good.

‘I don’t think you’ll get any rain, Crab, but you should take a coat, be prepared, just in case.’

Beth had packed Crab’s bag, some of his smarter clothes and included was a box of fancy chocolates that she had bought in a supermarket, best quality and difficult to know what to take Tooth that was appropriate. He felt alert, bouncy and was cheerful over his breakfast and would get a sandwich at the airport… not much money in the deal and some unpleasant people to be dealing with, obscure and remote from him, but business was business and always exciting. The daily costs of life were met by the little gang of geek kids who hacked for him, used an upstairs room in an internet café and were currently milking a hotel chain for credit card details and a firm of Newcastle-based solicitors that had shedloads of client money: decent trading, but not compared with what he and Tooth were currently at… enough cash in the bank to tide him over happily, and his sons when they were eventually freed. Beth fussed round him and Gary carried the bag… Beth had done a good performance the night before, and likely would be repeating it with Gary once he was gone, not that it mattered. There was a sharp wind on his face as he left his home, and rain might be following along in the afternoon. When would he be back? Not sure, three or four days and not as long as a week… he saw it as routine in his life, not as anything particular and special, not as a game changer. Crab had not, in truth, thought it through or given it too thorough an examination, but business was business.

‘You’ll be careful,’ Beth called to him.

Of course he would, always was, but nothing to be careful of. It was an easy run to the airport for a flight to Marseille.

She tried to call him. He did not pick up.

What would Zeinab have said? ‘Hi, Andy, how’s it going?’

She heard the ring tone. Might have said, if he had answered, ‘Just wanted to speak, missing you.’ Might have said, ‘So alone, want to be with you.’ Zeinab let it ring. He was usually good at picking up… but he’d not recognised this number. She had said that she would spit in his face, then stamp on it, remove all trace of him, and could hear her own voice saying it, but did not hear him.

‘A dog peed on you.’

‘Did it?’

The sergeant said, ‘Took me a bit of time, but I remembered it. Remembered it while having my lunch, and remembered your name, young ’un. Went into the adjutant’s office and checked the records. The name wasn’t there. Either my memory was banjaxed or the name was deleted. What I’m not short of is the memory of the dog peeing on you.’

‘Did it?’

Always, the instructors preached a lesson of caution concerning a conversation with an older man, a father figure, who had sussed some truths. Tempting to throw in the towel and confide, driven by the loneliness, and say things and believe in the strength of confidences and promises. Should never be done, the instructors said, whatever the temptation and whatever the trust. They were on a common, dull gorse and dead bracken. Andy Knight, or whoever he had been then, had come back to Lympstone, down the hill and against the estuary shore, for a sniper course, had done a stint with 43 Commando and was on the nuke bomb convoys going up from the Thames valley to Scotland, but it had seemed tame, and sniping would be his chosen field. Here was the place to learn it, the dark art. That day was clear enough to him. Each of them had to cross a half-mile of ground while a pair of senior NCOs sat in comfortable canvas chairs and scanned with big-lens binoculars, and the guy who was spotted failed… Not ‘nearly managed to stay concealed’, not ‘almost managed it’, but failed. Like it was life and death… to a Marine who wanted to be a sniper, be in the isolated and feared élite. He had to get within 200 yards of the spotters, and it was a hell of a way to the finish line. The common was shared between Marines and dog walkers and pony riders. The kids on the ponies stayed on well-worn tracks, but the dogs roamed free and went after rabbits. It was a big retriever, handsome chap, that had found him, had lifted a leg, had doused him, then had skipped off to get back to its mistress, and he had not been seen and had not moved. The woman might have known but they were good ladies and would never snitch on the boys in the undergrowth. He had won through, had reached the final point, had passed and would receive his badge, and the dog’s urine was in his hair and across the back of his neck, and all of them had had a good laugh.

‘God, and how you stank.’

‘Did I?’

He knew where he wanted to go. It was weakness that had brought him here, and a bigger weakness that he had allowed the sergeant to drive him to the common. It was bare, featureless, and hostile in winter to the guys on the sniper course, and the NCOs knew – over the years – every gully and every ditch where a man in a ghillie suit could advance. He did not think that Phil Williams or Norm Clarke would have felt the need to come here, but Andy Knight was a different kettle, and might be closer to burn-out, and needed comfort: would find it and something of his past… They said that most rabbits failed to survive in the wild for more than a year. The big beggars, dominant males, might do a bit better. He’d always assumed that it was one of them that had wrecked him. This one – probably a Thumper – had dug the hole wider but had also been cunning enough to get a bit of an old tree root lodged across the width of the entrance which would have given cover from a high-flying predator, a buzzard. He had been going fast, his exam already wrapped up, had been crossing ground, and crouched at the waist, and his right leg had gone into the hole and his impetus had moved forward but his boot was trapped. Wrecked ligaments and a cracked bone, a poor first operation in an A&E which had too great a pressure on it and a novice doing the work… He’d be all right, of course, would walk pretty well, would run after a fashion but not far, would be grand for normal life: would be a Marine reject. Sad stuff and all that. Life’s tough, that sort of epitaph. Told he would be missed but that life moved on, and briefly wished well. The big rabbit had done him, and he had gone to the police and been recruited and had successfully disguised the worst of the injury. Had been bored, had looked for something special, had been told about SC&O10. He found the hole. Could have been home to a fox, might have later on. It was no longer in use and was stuffed with leaves. He stood by it, gazed into it, and something of the dedication was further shed, but Andy Knight was good – as they all were – at shielding real life from the psychologists who cast a rule over them. Who wanted to quit? Nobody did. Who should have quit? Pretty much all of them… He shook his head, like he was trying to dislodge an unwelcome fly. He started to walk away.

The sergeant fell in beside him, spoke quietly, like an uncle. ‘Rather you than me, young ’un. Don’t think I’d manage it.’

‘Manage what?’

‘Manage being away from this family, I dread that. Living the lie, existing in deceit, not owning a friend. Trying to remember who you are, not who you were. Being alone. I hope to God they protect your back.’

He did not answer.

‘Funny old thing. The dog that peed on you was quite young then… I was here a couple of weeks ago. The woman’s still grand, slower, but fit for her age; the dog’s a bit downhill, looked as if arthritis was setting in. Hope we’ve been of use here, and good luck. Stay safe.’

It would be a short train journey back to his parked car, then an easy run to the ferry.