Beyond Recall

Chapter 9

Through the traffic, an old, scraped and unremarkable Fiat 500, rust showing at the bottom of the doors, tailed a glossy black BMW 5 series saloon that was the vehicle of a man of substance and his protection went with him. The car climbed, and there was a bend where the road swept to the left. In the back, Gaz imagined the old man had passed out, or worse, or merely slept, but every few minutes there was a muttered curse from the girl who was astride him and Gaz did not doubt her venom, and still the stink… The road swung, and Timofey followed the bend and the BMW was fifty yards, three vehicles, in front.

Gaz looked down and out across the Murmansk harbour, and saw the hulk of the aircraft carrier that had been mostly towed on its voyage to the Syrian theatre, and mostly towed back and now had cranes alongside, and could see an ice-breaker tied up at a quay, and small trampers, small tankers and beyond them was open water except for one small craft, ploughing through the water. The rain still fell but the wind had dropped and the water surface barely rippled. She threw out a good wake. Amongst the port facilities’ decay and the broken ships berthed there, she seemed clean, cared for, like there was a pride about her, and Gaz remembered… Passing hot cocoa around in the cabin while the trawler shook in the storm, and rolled fearfully, and listening to the boys talking of grandparents in accented English, and realising what their past meant. Hearing stories of men who had battled storms and enemy aircraft, and some were at the bottom of the North Sea. Realising that long-held loyalties still carried weight: only cynics and those who valued their actions that day, not heritage, would have dismissed them. He thought each member of the four-man crew regarded themselves as fortunate to have been lifted from obscurity and asked to carry out a mission where danger was inherent… Each of them at some future date might sit on a headland, spray dampening their clothes, wind in their hair, and shout into the skies what they had done that day, that night and that tomorrow. Would believe that the men of the Shetland Bus route would note what they did, would be satisfied. He had liked them, had thought them simple men. And the road straightened; and they climbed some more, and he lost sight of the trawler.

Daft, but he felt emotion. Could no longer see the trawler, and could barely make out the roof of the black saloon. It did not matter whether the plan for the mission was excellent, indifferent or crap poor. What mattered was whether they were lucky. Could have had a big team working on it for a month, with a sub-committee overseeing, and a consultancy pulled in for background, and some head-hunting done… could have been thrown together on the hoof. If they were to stay lucky then they would need to obliterate the chance of a ‘mistake’. Everyone agonised about a mistake, and hardest was to recognise it – and the moment it had happened. Gaz dared to think that all of them in the cramped interior of the Fiat were without a mistake, were therefore lucky. Had already scratched his head, chipped into his memory, looked for an error but not found it.

The boy drove well. As a career criminal, drug-pusher and with a girlfriend, fresh out of gaol, Timofey was careful not to get too close to the target vehicle. Had once, on the way to the bend where Gaz had seen the fishing boat, seemed to lose the black saloon and another man might have panicked and accelerated too fast or hesitated at the next junction but the boy had stayed calm. Nothing more than a nibble at his lower lip and they had pulled out to pass a slow-moving bus and the BMW was in front of them. He liked men who were cool, calm… It was a given for the guys, and the occasional girls, in the unit that histrionics were unacceptable. He’d been dependent on the Hereford teams and the Chinook people when there were engine malfunctions and weather calamities, and nobody made a big deal out of it. The boy checked his mirror often, stayed in touch, was an excellent tail… In the scenario used by the instructors teaching vehicle surveillance, there would be two vehicles or three, and linked radio, and a commander sitting on top of the operation and guiding them. If it were pedestrian surveillance then there might be as many as eight of them… He had Timofey who sold ’phets and marijuana, and Natacha who sat on an old drunk’s torso and might strangle him if he complained, and himself. The fishing boat was in place, and where the BMW stopped to drop off the officer was journey’s end for Gaz.

Not for the first time he touched his upper thigh and felt the outline of the doctored papers, and the passport. Reassured. He had memorised where the boat crew would meet him, and they’d stroll together through security, to the quay, board – and sail.

“Do you not talk?”

“Not unless I’ve something to say.”

“Your target, who you go after…”

“Not my concern.”

“You come here, go after one man – that is an FSB officer. What is FSB? FSB is bastards, big-time bastards. They control this place, take what they want, they are the law and the execution of the law. You go after one man, and he wears a major’s uniform but has a German top-range car and a driver, and another. What did he do?”

“Better you do not know.”

“But you know what he did, you are needed to identify him. Then others come… what do they do?”

“I make the identification, I advise the location, and I leave. Simple.”

“And we get paid?”

“Money into your account, generous.”

“The people who come, do I help them?”

“I don’t know. I know very little. That is the way it is done.”

“What did he do?”

“I try not to lie, Timofey. It is good to know little.”

Timofey took a hand off the wheel and punched Gaz’s arm. Not gentle, not playful. A sharp-edged fist, hard, and Gaz flinched. The road had narrowed and a heavy lorry dragging a trailer was in front of the BMW and slowed it. He felt the motion behind him – the old man had woken, belched, probably wanted to piss, and Gaz wondered what would happen to him – but he did not need to know, did he? And that was his creed and adhered to. He did his own job and went no further.

Approaching the end of the street, Knacker saw the flag, and ducked away.

He faced an ordinary enough office building, a flag-pole angled from the wall above the entrance. The flag had red and blue and white strips, was wrapped around the pole, did not fly with any joy. The Russian flag… He had, before setting out on a lone walk, noted on the girls’ map that the Russian consulate was at the upper end of a central Kirkenes street. There would be a camera that scanned the street and recorded those approaching the doorway. He thought his face would not have been shown clearly at the distance where he turned on his heel. He had already walked up that street, past the art shop and the stationer’s and a couple of fast foods, and he had noted the imitation border markers concreted into the pavement. They were painted in red and green bands, the colours the Russians used on the frontier markers, and were plastered with photographs, in colour, of a benign looking chap who was – had been – prominent in this Norwegian town but had made a visit to Moscow. He was now banged up in a cell block in the Lefortovo: an accusation of espionage, and his home community disbelieving and angry and impotent. Knacker had passed the town’s large police building with its intelligence liaison desk, and the big church where parishioners knelt on a Sunday and would have tried to exorcise anxieties about their neighbours, their neighbours’ intentions, and would have failed. Knacker left the consulate behind him, always enjoyed a walk, alone, and could reflect. Could think of motivation, why a single enemy consumed his attention. Was parsimonious with that adversary – did not feel the same cold dedication for conflict with Iranians or North Koreans, or the Chinese who were now labelled by the analysts as engendering the greater threat. He confronted Russia, would do so as long as he was employed.

Why? Difficult to answer. Knacker had never been across the borders, by land, by sea, by air, of the old Soviet Union and of the newer Russian Federation. The only citizens that he knew from behind the former or present versions of an Iron Curtain were fugitive dissidents and recruited defectors. The matter of searching for an opposition target was based on the value it carried. Russians were high end. Men talked long into the night of when they had bested that opponent. Legendary tales were embedded into the Service folklore, epic triumphs – and monumental failures. They were the only ‘enemy’ on the playing field for whom the game’s end result mattered… with, Knacker’s opinion, motivation and going the extra yard. A game with high stakes. They played big, and Knacker had lost men and they had too. He would continue to face collateral as would they… but always the notion of victory softened any conscience pang… He thought himself a man of decency, would gladly write the chit for a one-off payment for a widow, a grieving mother, a daughter, even a mistress. He thought his opponents arrogant, contemptuous of his efforts and so it was worth administering a sharp kick to these shins. As he walked the wide streets of this frontier community, he could consider that the establishment of a small oasis of loyalty where once had been the village of Deir al-Siyarqi was reward enough for casualties taken.

He was in a fine mood. He kept away from the hotel where the Facilitator and his hoods waited to be called forward. He assumed that Gaz, the reluctant volunteer, was by now on the trail, lead dog in a pack and going hard after a bushy tail, and on board the fishing boat within hours… going well.

Not complacent and not chicken counting, but likely soon to be murmured about at a Round Table lunch… Going well enough to be shared amongst that élite where the impossible was boasted as normal, why it existed and why Knacker’s reputation was rarely bested. Going well and the phone in his pocket would only ring if the business headed for the pan. He was pleased that the Round Table’s traditions remained in good hands, was vindicated.

Fingers probed, prodded, used a meld of firmness and gentleness, but went where they were guided and with the required force.

Eyes glanced away from the patient’s chest and upper stomach and scanned the X-rayed image that had been taped to the side of a bookcase above a drinks cabinet. Lips pursed and a frown furrowed a forehead. The doctor was astride a stool and his patient – Dickie, Director-General, God Almighty – was propped up by cushions on the chaise longue that had long been a fixture in that office high above the river, looking out on the seat of government on the other side of the Thames. The patient would have assumed himself indestructible but the doctor would have known better.

“All right, give it me.”

The doctor did.

“Heavy schedule at the moment. I’ll try and fit in the necessary when it’s calmer.”

The doctor’s head shook sharply. ‘Immediately’ was the response, or ‘sooner’.

“Bugger… you don’t look open to negotiation, Freddie. Can’t go this moment, need to put the DD-G in the frame. Allowed that, am I?”

No barter permitted. A few hours, not a full day. If the schedule were abused the chances were high that the destination would be the mortuary, not the clinic. The doctor thought a soothing word might help, ‘nothing’s for ever, and the DD-G’s likely to make a fair fist of things’, and the tidbit of the joys of lasting longer, seeing more of the grandchildren.

“Smooth talk… Problem is I’ve put things in place, but they’re on a fragile base – one running at the moment. Beyond recall… Be here tomorrow, please, and take me in.”

The doctor left. The Director-General, an admirer of Knacker, a supporter of all of that ilk, pushed himself uncomfortably off the chaise longue and felt that irritating stab of pain, and rang his PA in the outer office and asked for a meeting with his deputy, early in the morning. Felt angry, then reflected that it was probably never easily accepted that a potentially terminal condition existed deep in the chest.

“Shit, bloody inconvenient. A show running and all out of reach.”

He parked the pick-up. It might have been in a restricted area, but the hunter, the recluse from the forest, had no address that would register on a traffic office computer. He went to the hotel and carried a heavy bag. Horns jutted from it, and the hooves of two deer, and the tip of the dark tail of an Arctic fox. Jasha had come to town to do business. There was one hotel in the town that his contact cared to use.

The Azimut had a minimalist coffee lounge and lobby. Jasha came here because it was a hotel that permitted him to bring his old dog. Normally he would have sat with the agent who bought the pelts and trophies, and the dog would have been curled by his feet. He accepted the cash offered… not that he needed money. Under his bed in the cabin and screwed down on to the floor’s planking was a combination-locked safety deposit box. Each time that he returned from Murmansk it was harder for Jasha to insert the bank notes, denominations of 100 American dollars and 500 Russian rubles with the image of Peter the Great upon them. Jasha could not have said how much he was worth and had never tipped the notes out of their secure box and counted them. His distraction was obvious, and the agent quizzed him.

“Are you unwell, Jasha?”

A shake of the head and an attempt to dismiss such trivia. “No, I am well.”

“And soon another winter, and you are not younger, and you live without comfort.”

“I am good, and I have pleasant company.”

“You have not lured a woman up there, surely not?”

“I have my own company, have my dog, and outside is nature. It is enough.”

He assumed the agent thought he lived in circumstances similar to a serf in the times of Catherine. He was challenged twice more with efforts at conversation, and was vague. They made their farewells. He had the idea that the agent watched him leave and wore that look an old friend reserves for someone not expected to live long. The money was in his hip pocket and he had shouldered the big bag, now empty. He would visit a supermarket for essentials, then head back up the road, into the wilderness, to rejoin his own world of the dog, the bear and the creatures he stalked… except, the source of his distraction: he had seen the intruders he had noticed earlier on his way to the Azimut hotel.

The old sniper had needed to be certain in his judgements: distance, wind speed, identity of targets – and then act on the evidence displayed. He was not a man of self-doubt. Jasha always used the same route into Murmansk. Climbing the hill before the last drop down to the hotel, he had seen them. A young man with the pallor of a city kid from a tower block, a girl with a stream of blonde hair flying as she skipped over rocks, and a man who Jasha would have said was a soldier. Had seen them among the trees and rocks and heading towards the road below the Titovka roadblock. Had seen them in a small car, a moving wreck, that had struggled up a hill. Had seen the driver clearly, and the ‘soldier’ had been beside him and the girl had been sprawled in the back. Had recognised them… They followed, up to the lights where he was held, a black saloon BMW 5 series, two men in the front in civilian clothes and he thought a uniformed officer in the back, but it had tinted windows. He added together all he’d seen: sufficient to distract him from selling pelts and trophies. He hurried to the supermarket wanted to be home where he had no involvement, was no part of a mystery.

The girl whistled, a sad tune, and Gaz thought her more bored than miserable – and uncomfortable perched on top of the boy’s father.

“He makes it difficult for you, yes?”

“He is my father.”

“And is a danger to you.”

“I don’t slit his throat. My father, yes.” Timofey jabbed Gaz’s rib. “You know about what they call ‘sleepers’, do you?”

Gaz said, “I know little about anything, best for me.”

“You know that a ‘sleeper’ waits, looks to each stranger who comes close?”

“I would not know, not my business to know.”

“Since my grandfather handed to my father, then it was given to me.”

“All beyond my reach, not relevant to me.”

“Where you come from, in the office there, did many people know of the sleepers, my family. Were we talked of?”

“Outside my orbit – but I doubt it.”

“Would people, in that office, have cared about us?”

Gaz weighed him. He was young, had a pretty girl in tow, was a self-employed dealer and probably supplied satisfied customers, and bought wholesale narcotics, and had no politics but dreamed of wealth. Was not stupid, had an obstinacy that came from intelligence… would believe in the right to be told truths and lies would fall flat.

Gaz said, “It depends what you want to hear.”

“What is real. I want to hear that.”

“You were not discussed. Do they care? Do they care whether you succeed with what is asked of you? Absolutely, all rooting for you. Do they care what happens to you afterwards, after the mission? Perhaps, if they think you may be useful for another waking in the future: if so, they will hope you go back to sleep and keep out of sight until the next time. Perhaps if they do not imagine that you will be useful in the future, then they will not care, and there will have been steps taken to manufacture a screen of deniability. They are good at using agents with whom they can deny association. It is the trade they are a part of. What I do is not for my monarch, my country: I do my duty as a minor figure. I was a witness. The duty of a witness is to set right a wrong. You understand me?”

“A little, friend, I understand a little of you. Do they care about you?”

He remembered the force of the rain pummelling his bungalow on Westray, and remembered the battering of the wind and the singing in the wires, and remembered the hunched figure on the gravel of his front path. They would have had a file on the levels of his disability, and then they had soft-soaped Aggie: never a chance to refuse.

“I want to believe that they do, but I am secondary to the greater good of the many. Listen, Timofey, we do not turn down what is put before us, we are the willing Joes, we are hooked on the narcotic of it. Why should they care? Bad news? Go and have a coffee in a canteen, then move on. They are good at that, moving on.”

“I appreciate the honesty. I enjoy this. To take risk is an addiction, and…”

Timofey hit the brake. The little Fiat swerved, skidded, squealed and came to a stop six inches from the vehicle in front, a builder’s van with the back door flapping, and one working tail-light. Natacha’s whistling died. Two cars in front had also stopped abruptly. Nobody complained. No driver lowered his window and exposed a fist to the rain and gave a finger towards the stationary black saloon. What sort of imbecile shouted obscenities at a car, chauffeur-driven, that carried one of the city’s élite? In front of them, traffic rounded the stationary car and gave it a wide berth as a rear passenger door opened. They were in front of a bar, rubbish on the pavement outside its door, weeds growing between the slabs, and graffiti was writ large. Gaz saw the target step out, say something over his shoulder to his goons, then head for the entrance.

A big television screen was showing a football match and in an alcove pop music played off speakers, no one spoke. He’d pushed open the door, paused then heard it clatter shut behind him; the volume from the football was big and the music too loud, and nobody spoke.

He wore uniform. Was Federal’nya sluzhba bezopasnosti, had advantages, privileges, authority that no other person in this dreary bar possessed. The men, some standing and some sitting, hung their heads, held silence and did not wish to challenge him with a direct glance. He imagined some had been mid-sentence, and some had been laughing at a joke. Glasses were held tight as though this stranger might snatch them away. His medal ribbons were bright on his uniform. There might have been veterans among the drinkers, and there might even have been fathers of infantry men stationed at Titovka, returned from a town in Syria as he had arrived. No one spoke to him. Fag-ends on the floor were examined in detail, the football was ignored and no feet tapped the heavy-duty vinyl to the beat of the music. A girl was behind the bar, and concentrated on polishing glasses.

He would get no greeting, no momentary friendship here. In Moscow, if he drank, it would be in cocktail bars. In Syria, if he drank, it would be in the sanctity of the officers’ mess and surrounded by other FSB personnel. When he was in Murmansk he would drink in restaurants, occasionally, and in hotel bars if he were forced to entertain prominent civilians. He did not know this place nor anything like it.

He looked for company, and would not find it. He carried enough rubles in his wallet to have bought the bar’s entire customer base a round of drinks and then keep them in alcohol for the rest of the evening. Behind the bar, above a shelf of bottles containing differing makes of vodka, was a portrait photograph of the President. He, Lavrenti, was a chosen one, and not another man in the confines of the bar could claim that rank. He looked around him. If any had met his glance, had offered him a vestige of a smile, they would have been on his tab and bought a drink. But he had no takers. They would have thought him an enemy… He was the son of his father, examined with suspicion. He ordered a drink.

The girl did not hurry but turned slowly, and reached up for a bottle – the Stoli brand – and poured for him. Not a generous measure. He paid, change was put on the counter. He thought he was over-charged.

Neither Mikki nor Boris had followed him in. He would have challenged the girl if either had been close to him. A frisson of fear… he drank, slapped down the glass and asked for it to be refilled. Still no voices around him, only the football commentary and the music at the back of the bar: he saw there, lit, a photograph of the lost Kursk, a vase of faded plastic flowers beneath it. He needed to drink – fuck them, fuck them all – and leaned on the bar.

Delta Alpha Sierra, the ninth hour

The texts told Gaz that within two hours the Hereford team would do a two-vehicle pick-up, that it would take a twenty-minute hike across the plain and that Arnie and Sam would be at the same coordinates. Not to leave it until the tight end of the schedule, but to be there with slack… Their final message indicated he should leave as soon as there was major distraction down at the village.

But they weren’t here, those who tapped out the texts. Back in an Afghan deployment, a guy out alone, on the edge of an irrigation ditch and looking at a path that skirted a ripening maize field. Seeing in his image intensifier night-sight the white shadow of a man advancing on the path towards him, and screwing the silencer attachment to the end of his assault rifle and watching the figure looming closer. The way his position was sited, he would have to exit the ditch, crawl through a thorn barrier and then leg it away, and he’d make a noise like a buffalo on stampede, and then there was another shadow hurrying behind the first. Had to be a mujahid patrol checking the edges of the compound perimeter. If the guy did a positive identification then the SAS would go in, or a drone would be fired. The noise of the darkness, insects and frogs and distant dogs, was around him, and the slapping sound of approaching sandals. The front shadow had stopped, then had turned to wave the second figure forward. Had seemed the way that a mission finished and a trip through Wootton Bassett beckoned. They had come on together, the two shadows – and the guy had fired. Two shadows prone on the trail and they would have been five seconds from discovering him. Had got the hell out… An inquest had followed. He had killed a teenage girl and a boy who had followed her out of the compound for a kiss and cuddle, and the talk had been of a court martial and a murder trial. Had been a suggestion that a guy in SRR was not above the law, was its servant. The trooper in interrogation had snapped back at his inquisitor. ‘… But you weren’t there, weren’t there and don’t know…’ The investigation had been stopped.

Gaz was there, and the men and women who sent the text were safe in a Forward Operating Base, behind concrete walls and perimeters of razor wire set with claymore mines. He had just replied that he would ‘move when I judge it possible’. Not possible at that moment because when he crawled from his hide the goats would scatter, the dogs would bark, then snarl as they hugged her ankles. He would have said something like, ‘Sorry about this, darling – and sorry I don’t know your name, but I’m going to run for it and the commotion will probably be fatal for you – and sorry also for what is happening in your village…’ And had texted that he expected to meet the pick-up point, but a bland answer would have to satisfy them. Sorry for what is happening in your village was worse than anything he had seen before. What had happened to the men was now visited on their mothers, wives, sisters, daughters. Women were kept inside a diminishing circle and the tips of the bayonets were pressed against their stomachs. Some were pushed hard enough to draw blood. One at a time they were dragged out of the group. Pulled clear, then led away, had their legs kicked out from under them, then shot while they knelt… The village had become an abattoir.

It was the intention, plain to Gaz, that no witnesses should remain alive.

They would have been fighting men, and taken casualties. Had been shot up in the night, would have thought they were deployed against vermin, creatures out of the gutters and the sewers. He watched the Russian officer. The man had a quiff of blond hair and what Gaz could see of his face reflected only the pink hue of sunshine and insufficient protective cream. If a Russian was posted here – so their briefers said – he’d likely have had a decent education. His goons followed him… Did he shoot, the Russian? Not always easy for Gaz, because of the strength of the rain and the force of the wind, to follow each detail of the man’s hand movements, and sometimes the sound of the gunshots was close to his ears and sometimes distant. He thought the Russian had fired his handgun down into the dirt and it might have been, if he had, to blast the back off a head and kill a woman already wounded. The girl was crying hard now. Not noisily, but shaking, near choking on it. Gaz held her arm. Had no idea of any words, in any language he had, that might have edged towards an appropriate response. Said nothing. Gaz had water with him but did not use it and had not passed its container to her. Two more women shot. His grip was broken, his hand shaken clear. She was pushing herself upright.

He snatched at her. Had a hold of her clothing… Could take it no longer, that she would live, perhaps, and others die. She would be the only survivor of the village. The boys who had fled at the start, when the convoy had come, would have looked to save their skins. He thought that the courage she had shown had reached a burn-out point. He clung to her clothing. She wriggled and then lashed out with her foot, kicked behind her.

The force of her heel, held inside a rough strap on her sandals, shook Gaz as it caught him across the nose and lips. His eyes smarted. He clung to her. She kicked again, and then turned to force him. Could not get to his skin and eyes because of the scrim net. What would he have wanted to do? Watch it, or join them? Live or die with them? He would not let her go. If it had not been for the netting she would have had her fingers into his face, and her nails would be in his eyes. She would be free of him and would start to career down the hillside, the dogs running with her. He thought she would be dead in half a minute. He held her and the kicking was more frantic.

Gaz hit her. The sort of smack that might have calmed a child’s tantrum. He released his rifle, reached out and used the palm of his hand to smack her face and his other hand held tight to her long sodden skirt… it ripped. Gaz saw her bare legs and cursed himself, and the moment passed, and he knew then that – better or worse – he had saved her. He let go of her and she huddled down with her dogs. Gaz knew it was not finished.

The light, miserable all day in that weather, had further deteriorated. He watched the officer. Would never forget him.

Sure or not sure? Nearly sure or probably sure?

Gaz had had the binoculars on the face of the Russian officer for the greater part of that day. Rain had been carried on the wind through the scrim net covering the hide’s entry. At times the lenses had misted, but he had seen the face, stubble covered and showing the dirt stains from the road and then from the grit kicked up by the force of the wind when he walked in the village. He had seen the officer come out of the door of the building on the Prospekt, clean and scrubbed and shaved and wearing a laundered uniform, and had known him best because of his recognition of the two guards who watched him. Was sure. Gaz thought about being on board the trawler, going up the fiord and turning out into the open sea, and the bottle appearing and all of them drinking from its neck, and likely all of them, crew and passenger, legless by the time they tied up at Kirkenes, and him on an afternoon flight out. Might get a light punch from Knacker, might get a bone-crushing hug from the woman called Fee. But had to be certain, not nearly certain. Did not want to, but had no choice, and told Timofey what he needed.

No argument, and Timofey said that since he would not slit his father’s throat, he needed the means to make the old bastard cooperative, and gave a grim smile.

“You don’t talk, you never speak.”

“Understood.”

“There are enough fools here – behave like one, understand nothing… can you do that?”

“Have to look in his face – can do the rest.”

The glance over him from Timofey was cursory and there was a dissatisfied hiss between his teeth, but he whipped off his anorak and thrust it at Gaz. He shrugged into it, too small but breaking the khaki and olive colour of his shirt. Natacha started the tuneless whistle, like hope had gone, and Gaz grimaced. Not much else to do… except that he had to be certain and not nearly certain.

They went together. He thought the kid a cocky little beggar. There were enough of them, those kids on the estates he had worked in the Province, the Creggan and the Derrybeg… kids who could strut because they’d shed fear. The target would be killed, might be done cleanly and might be done messily, but not Gaz’s problem because he was only the one who marked the guy – but had to be certain. The rain fell pitilessly on them and they crossed the street and went past the BMW and Gaz didn’t turn to look at it, would have seen nothing anyway because of the tinted windows and the fog on the inside from two cigarettes, They walked to the entrance.

“You been here before?” Gaz asked him, sharp.

“No.”

“Know the lay-out?”

“No.”

“Anyone know you here?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Stay close.”

Gaz followed him inside. It was like a plague had hit. Almost a full bar at the front and a few scattered in the back area but the only voice was that of the football commentator screaming because there had been a goal, but nobody had seen it. A rock band played over speakers at the back but no one danced. A girl behind the bar eyed them. Gaz would have looked like any gofer who walked beside the boy and stood and waited. Timofey spoke to her, grinned, and might once have traded with her. He was just a step behind the slouched figure in smart uniform, half astride a bar stool with a vodka shot glass in front of him. Across the bar was a heap of change. Timofey ordered. The girl bent low behind the bar and brought up two bottles. Gaz looked at the face, first in profile.

This was not a man who was stared at. To gaze at him was more than impertinence, nearer to an offence. The head swung and looked hard at Gaz who was already turning away. A kaleidoscope of memories charged in his mind. Something about the venom of his look at Gaz, and then a dismissive tilt of the head, and something changed… The officer was reaching towards his change and pushing notes towards the girl, and pointing at Gaz. In the Pierowall hotel, on Westray, a Friday night, the query would have been: ‘What can I get you, chief?’ He was certain. He started towards the door, heard Timofey enjoying some banter with the girl before they left together, Timofey passing the bottles to Gaz. They went to the car, stepped into it, and the father was allowed to see what had been purchased and gurgled deep in his throat in response. They drove down the street, past the BMW, and they waited. All that remained for him was to catch up on a location, where the guy slept – where he could be found when the hitters came. Had done well, said so himself, and there was no mistake on his horizon, no chill on his neck.

Mikki and Boris in their car, working their way through a cigarette packet. Mikki had only to make a slight gesture with his finger and Boris would know the significance of what he had seen, what he shared. Not that Mikki had, that early evening, seen the young man, who walked behind the boy, little more than a youth and with the pale skin of everyone from Murmansk. The one carrying the bottles was not noticed, but the boy was. The boy was the cause of Mikki’s small movement of the finger, the equivalent of a raised eyebrow: surprise, and something of relevance.

It did not need to be said between the two great cities of their country, that the boy should be of interest to them. They had seen him before. At the gate on Prospekt when they had awaited the officer. An old drunk on the pavement, muttering of a conspiracy. Pissing himself, and a disgrace, and a guard working him over with a toecap. A boy had come to collect him. A polite and well-spoken boy, who apologised, addressing the guard with respect. Here now. A shit bar in a shit quarter of the city, the same boy… They did not have to speak. Did not have to say that it was ‘peculiar’ that the boy had been at the entrance to the headquarters building, now was at this bar where their officer – no fucking idea why – chose to go to drink. Nothing said, but the matter registered – which was enough.

Ropes were fastened. The boat massaged the old tyres on the quayside. She had come in with the delicacy of a girl negotiating a rough and muddy path, had weaved between the old cargo vessels and local fishing boats.

Waiting for her were the vans for the wholesale trade of red king crabs. Warm greetings for the crew. This was a place for maritime professionals where respect ruled. The disputes of political leaders, either under the NATO umbrella or facing it, carried no weight. A crane would lift out the boxes of crabs and the ice packed around them would have ensured that they lived, after a fashion, and still had wriggle in their pincers, snap in their claws, and they would make good money. An emergency call had gone to a Norwegian-based boat to supply the crabs because of the efforts of a gang of eco-geeks on the Norwegian side of the frontier, and of allies inside the city of Murmansk. Bluster had proved inadequate and Russian fishing was suspended, curtailed for another week, and then the authorities would claim that clean-up procedures were in place to allay the pollution fears. The dock workers would not have noticed that two of the crew’s eyes seemed to rake the high ground short of where the monument stood, and either side of the white walls of a famous church where the road twisted and climbed. Anxious faces, but then remembering where they were, why, and joining the banter of fishermen. All hard men, and brothers of a sort. But a secret divided them.

Out of the bar with not a backward glance.

From the front seat of the Fiat, Gaz had an eyeline on the major. He left the bar and Gaz assumed the talk would have erupted behind him. He knew of such bars in the Province where they could smell out a stranger, would have had Gaz if he had been dumb enough to go in without full back-up alongside him, and no difficulty for the man in this place because he wore uniform. He pondered it… thought he recognised some sort of aching and inescapable loneliness, like there was a ball chained to the man’s ankle. Knew it himself. The officer had gone into a bar where he would not be welcomed and had killed all the talk, morose or cheerful, had probably swallowed a number of slugs… What had been different was the posture of the men waiting for him in the black BMW. At the FSB building they had at least made a play of respecting his seniority and had opened the door for him, but now did not bother to go through the motions of deference. Lavrenti Volkov opened his own door, and closed it himself… like a dynasty was finishing. The car pulled away.

A short journey. Might have been little more than three-quarters of a mile. The traffic had thinned. Gaz saw more men in uniform and some walked briskly and some parked their cars, but this was the only BMW with the status of a driver. The block was as ordinary as any around it. He watched. There was one parking bay and two cars were heading for it; the officer’s in second place until it accelerated and squeezed ahead. The other driver could have taken a collision, and a scrape, or could accept that he missed out – and did. Gaz absorbed the scene. The girl no longer whistled but the old guy she sat astride had found his voice and gurgled protests. The boy turned sharply, caught at his father’s thin hair and jerked his head, was rewarded with a squeal and then quiet. Gaz gestured with his hand, wanted Timofey to stay where he was, slipped out of the Fiat and eased himself towards another bus-stop. They said in his trade that the hardest thing was to do ‘absolutely nothing’. To stand on a street corner and have no reason to be there was to invite what they knew as ‘third-party notice’ when a pedestrian – man or woman, old or young – was suspicious of an outsider on the patch. The bus shelter was good because he could be outside the arc of ‘10 to 2’ vision, was on a periphery… ‘third party’, they were told, accounted for four in five show-outs.

A van arrived. Its bulk swallowed up the space in front of the building’s entrance. There was lettering on the side, painted large, but in the Cyrillic that Gaz did not read. The officer had paused at the step in front of the building and would have seen the immediate chaos, and heard the horns going and the shouts of protest of those who could not move their vehicles from their parking places, those who were double parked and needed to shift shopping… There was an old mantra: If you can see the target then the target can see you but he was well back in the shelter and litter blustered in the wind round his feet. A woman smiled at him and seemed about to start a conversation but he’d looked away, and a toy dog eyed his ankle. The officer greeted the men from the driver’s cab, wheeled out instructions, then the officer waved for his goons to come forward, and one of them went inside the building with three people from the lorry. Timofey was beside him.

“You want bad news, friend, or worse than bad news?”

“Tell me.”

“It is a removals van. You understand? It is the van that you hire to move your possessions when you are leaving. Is that bad or worse?”

Worse than bad. Gaz stood, watched, and Timofey flaked away from him and he saw him back at the Fiat, bent low and talking urgently to his girl; saw her extricate herself from the back seat, stand and stretch and wipe her clothes. She nodded and straightened and started to walk, passing the bus-stop but not looking at him. Gaz felt a helplessness, like the world had conspired to punch him, count him out.