Beyond Recall

Chapter 11

“The gun, when must you have it?”

She had a good stride and Gaz was stiff in most joints and his muscles ached and his head reeled from tiredness.

“Before dawn.” A glance at his watch. “In two hours or three.”

“You don’t run fast.”

“I can run when I have to. Not more than three hours.”

“Then you have to run faster.”

Her laughter trilled and she quickened the pace. They went up a steep hill, past blocks of uniform apartments where lights burned and TVs shouted. Few cars passed them, fewer pedestrians. She was reaching into the hip pocket of her jeans and dragging out her phone.

“It is not just a joke, you need a gun. Because he is going in the morning and early, you need a gun… not to make a joke?”

“No.”

“And he is FSB?”

“He is a major with FSB.”

“And he is guarded, two men?”

“Yes. It has to be here before he leaves, after that he is beyond reach.”

“Not very much time…” Again she laughed and the sound was clear, sharp, like the crackling of breaking glass “… and only a pistol?”

“You can do that? Find a pistol?”

“Why not? You want me to use it, or Timofey?”

“Not you and not Timofey. I am the dog and it is my fight. What I mean, the job is mine, but I need a pistol.”

They had come off the street and were now into a darkened park area and there were wide, steep steps and he realised they had done something of a circle because the church was in front of them… They had made a loop and he realised that a foot surveillance team would have been confused, even lost. She had her phone jammed against her ear, close to her mouth, and she was giggling as she spoke. Gaz assumed she spoke with Timofey, her lover and her business partner. One day, if – biggest word that Gaz knew, if – it worked through, if he was back on Westray and then able to make the long journey south and get to Hereford and take a taxi to the barracks gate, and if he were met at the security check by one of the current instructors, if time was found for him, he would speak about a girl. Tell them about a girl who understood how to use tradecraft to throw off possible foot surveillance or vehicle surveillance, who had never been on a course, attended a lecture, or sat an examination, for whom failure carried a penalty of six months, or a year, in a lock-up. She had inbred suspicion, an understanding of survival. Would tell the instructor that they could not have drawn a better stereotype for an SRR trooper than this girl: jailbait, fun, not complaining, a nightmare for the leader of a team of watchers. She might have done his job, equalled him or been better, Gaz reckoned. She clicked off her phone, buried it back on her hip.

They were close to the severed shape of the submarine’s conning tower. Gaz reckoned she spent time here, thinking about her father. She would have learned to hate by staring at the tower, and knowing that authority had condemned those in the crew who lived through the first explosion. Known the grievances of the families whose men were abandoned in darkness, breathing toxic fumes, oily water steadily rising, the cold sapping them, and abandoned because if foreigners rescued them then national face was lost. Gaz’s resolve hardened.

“Where do we go?”

“We go to our home. Leave you with his father. Timofey and I go out.”

“Go out?”

“We go to get the gun. We do not have a gun ourselves. Only gangsters have a gun, the Chechens do. Guns cost money in Murmansk. Don’t have one, don’t buy one, go to find one…”

“You can find one?”

“Of course. Come on, you are slow.”

They went up a track that climbed above the conning tower and a block loomed above them. The people that Knacker worked for, the ‘suits’ in the huge building by the Thames – not that Gaz had ever been inside because people at his level in the pecking order did not get invitations – would have to pay big for a gun ‘found’ at two hours’ notice, maximum three. He had stumbled but she had jerked him back to his feet. They came out of the bushes on the hillside and in front of them was a walkway of decayed concrete. Went along it, then into the dimly lit entrance of the block.

“Are you too tired for the stairs?” she mocked, giving his hand a squeeze.

“I am not.”

He would have liked to have broken the grip she had on him, but did not think she would allow it. An old man came down the flight of stairs and they almost lurched into him but they avoided the collision; he looked at them and ducked his head away: would have recognised her and thought she brought a client home. Almost what he was, a client. One who would pay well for a quick-delivery firearm. They went up the five flights of stairs and he was reeling when she turned off into a high-ceilinged lobby. He thought she had made him walk up as an entertainment to her. She rapped on a door, used a code drumbeat.

They were let in and the smell hit Gaz. A few words and he was elbowed aside and they were gone, clattering down the stairwell, and her laugh was loud, and he closed the door.

“Just as it would have been,” said the engineer to the skipper. “The old men, gone and at rest now, would understand what we face. We look at the clock in the wheelhouse, and the faces of our watches, and the time does not help us. They had the schedule for the Bus back to Shetland, and waiting for a hunted agent to get to the pick-up. Perhaps the snow had closed a road, or he’s punctured or there was a roadblock, but he is delayed, and the sailing schedule says the crew cannot wait long for him. A little but not much. Minutes, not hours. Perhaps he comes on foot. I liked him. I am allowed to say that? Probably resourceful, but I thought him also naive, without the killer instinct. A decent man. But… but… I cannot contemplate losing the slot and waiting too long for him. I won’t do it. What if we leave without him? I never asked him if he had a secondary plan to get clear, anything else that is possible. I liked him well enough to promise. Will be sorry if we leave without him.”

The skipper had no answer, and together they watched the gate and the security hut beside it and the guards under the street light, brilliant and sharp, and the empty road.

He sat at the table in the kitchen of the safe house. No hobbies cluttered Knacker’s waking hours, nor was he obstructed by the rigours of crosswords and brain-teasers. Books rarely amused him unless they fortified his prodigious knowledge of the workings and personalities of the Russian Federation.

Usually when he was alone and with quiet around him, except for distant night sounds from the town, and the gentle contented snores from the second bedroom, he relied on summoning up ‘problems’ to relax him. And relaxed well because ‘problems’ always came past him. The hitters topped his list. Three who would have gone over the frontier in a week’s time and were now, with their facilitator, not required. It would take a charter flight to take them out, and fly them direct to a European hub… Might need deceit to get them on board, dollops of it. Might demand brazen lies because he was told all three were ready to chew carpet tacks for the chance to confront the officer in that atrocity village. Get them on a plane, and somewhere high in the distant void let them discover they were in fact down in Stockholm or Copenhagen, and in time to connect with the Amman leg, or to Beirut, and leave them to rant and shout, and stuff cash into their pockets and… It was a problem but people who mattered would be well clear, and the boy back in his island refuge.

The boy, of course, was also a problem. He did not know the detail of the sailing time for the fishing boat but worked on the principle of ‘where there’s a will there’s a way’. He assumed the boat would delay its departure for long enough, and the boy would get himself into position, wait for his moment, confront the officer as the man lugged his case out through the front door, line up on him – club him with an angle iron, whatever was available, and leg it, use the sleepers to do the ferrying, and get to the docks and on board, head for the open sea… But it all seemed to Knacker that the problem might have ‘potential’. Murphy’s Law was old, tested, never seemed to come up short. It was a perverse rule, and it burdened him too often and the only safeguard that Knacker knew of when confronted with Murphy was simplicity. Was it dutifully simple? A man into Murmansk, a sleeper to help him, stand back-stop for him. A change of plan but a military man on the ground and one used to taking decisions for himself. A weapon, club or firearm, whatever… To Knacker it could not be simpler.

A simple plan and a simple man to execute it. He disliked complication, and was wary of intellect. Thought the damaged individual he had recruited on that Orkney island was ‘simple’ to the point of boredom, and yet… It was the way with the agents put over frontiers and dumped over borders and wandering, lost souls, in Smolensk or Saratov, in Novgorod or Archangel, in any of those hideous cities into which the oligarchs had not yet invested their loot, that locals would put their necks on the block to help. Useful idiots. His man, Gaz, would now be muddling through alongside the usual misfits and malcontents that seemed always to have a place on the mission expense sheet. But, Knacker was unsettled and a pencil snapped between his fingers. Before his time as a Sixer, before his birth, a politician had been respectfully asked what he feared most in life in government and had replied, ‘Events, dear boy, events’. Good enough for Knacker. Could have done with more coffee, for a clearer head – and the snoring was firmer, but regular – and was about to fill the kettle. His personal phone rang softly.

His wife, Maude, from her dig site guest house. Was he all right?

“Fine, thank you.”

A pause, and he wondered if a crisis beckoned, or whether she had drunk too much at dinner with her fellow excavators: well, actually something relevant to him, and might have seemed moderately tipsy.

“Very good, what’s that?”

He was one of the frumentarii and they were originally collectors of the wheat stocks needed to feed the army.

“Yes, Maude. Except that we are not short of wheat where I am. Anything else?”

She continued and, rare for her, there was an edge of mischief in her voice. On the dig that day, the last, they had found part of a gravestone of such a wheat collector, and there had been considerable excitement. The wheat collectors, travelling far and wide, were the most sophisticated of Rome’s intelligence gatherers.

“Pleased to hear it. Quite late here. Safe journey tomorrow.”

But told there was more. Another group on the dig had found layers of ash, carbonised material, undisturbed for nineteen centuries, and the professor with them had claimed this as proof that the barbarians had broken the wall, had pulverised the defences of a fort, would have swarmed across it, would have slaughtered the legion troopers and their families, and the only survivors would have been taken north, into the dark lands, as slaves. Was that not interesting?

“Tell me, Maude.”

She told him. As she explained it, all the might of Rome could be bested when the tribesmen had come, no doubt in secrecy but with detailed planning, had identified a flaw in the Wall, had attacked, had destroyed, had won.

He was cheered. He thought Murphy’s Law a relegated negative. God, and if he had owned a pot of woad paint he might just have stripped off and daubed himself… He imagined the panic and anger that would have spread along the length of the Wall when it was obvious that the savages had come across, done their will, had gone home. She should not have telephoned, that was a rule of their lives, but love and respect existed between them, was not exhausted, and she had cheered him. “Thank you, Maude, grateful.”

He turned the lights off, had almost a cheerful step as he went towards the room allocated him, just a single bed. They were in the main bedroom, in the double, undressed and rather sweetly in each other’s arms, both snoring. He would have liked to have woken them, Fee and Alice, and told them of the wheat collector, bivouacked on Lenin Prospekt, and of the wily old beggar in his paint and skins, operating from a safe house across the fence, who had just won the day, or the night. He tiptoed past their door.

It was the hallmark of Knacker that he never doubted his instinct, never stopped in mid-stride to tell himself, ‘too damned dangerous, too much of a risk, better to back off’. Had not, would not. Had he ever questioned those instincts, subjected them to forensic examination, then the chances were high he would have ended up as a snapped reed. Would sleep well, and on the dressing-table was the silver coin that Fee had cleaned, quite bright and easy to see.

The sofa was free.

Gaz sat on it. He thought the old man, Timofey’s father, had rolled off and was now asleep on the floor, half-wrapped in a threadbare blanket. Only one side light was switched on, a bare bulb. It was a dismal room and no effort had been made to smarten or tidy it. It had no mementoes, no little pieces of china or pottery that might have reminded the occupants of ‘good times’, however far back. The father puffed and gurgled and spittle ringed his mouth. He held an empty bottle by the neck and the second bottle, unopened, stood on a kitchen unit at the far side of the room, opposite the door. He imagined Aggie here… she would have come in and sworn, then would have looked for a bucket and cloths and any sort of disinfectant, would have rolled up her sleeves and hitched up her skirt, would have started at the sink and the cooker and steadily worked her way through the whole apartment. Then, while it dried she would have carted the furniture – what there was of it – out of the door and on to the landing. Would have tipped it item by item down the flights of stairs, then out into the open, would have piled it high. She would, Gaz knew it, if allowed, have turned his own home into a place for both of them, not just a place to sleep, with clothes heaped on the floor and a sink full of unwashed plates. Aggie had tried to put pride back into his life. She would not have known why, only that he was short of it. The smell around him was of dirt, sweat and staleness, and the place was quiet and the father stayed asleep and the kids had not returned.

Where would they go in Murmansk, in the small hours of the night, to find a pistol? No idea… Would not be bought from the deeper underworld because they would have asked him for cash. Exhaustion crawled over him. Needed to eat but would not have dared open the small fridge and look inside… Nodded, leaden-eyed, and sank back into the uneven surface of the sofa cushions, and slept. He slept well. Needed to. A creed of the unit was always to grab sleep where it was available.

He felt oddly warm. And drifted… and heard feet slithering on the floor, and the bottle toppling, and the crack of a breaking plastic seal, and heard the hiss of the man relieving himself in the sink. Felt a hand on his shoulder and the bottle touch his face, and Gaz thought that it was not his place to fight, to protest. He was the interloper. He slid off the sofa.

His place was taken. The springs of the sofa sang as the man slumped. The bottle might have the top back on or it might not. And the alcohol might have drained into the fabric and padding of the furniture or it might not. Not Gaz’s business… The man had an account in a Channel Islands bank, one of those discreet buildings back from the esplanade lining the harbour. The account accumulated cash, could have bought a decent flat down near the Prospekt, or a fine cabin across the frontier in Norway. He would never get to draw from it. Best he could hope for was an annual printout that displayed for a half-minute on a mobile phone screen, then vanished. The man had no international passport and his opportunity to get to the Channel Islands was minimal… This was the man who had gone to the headquarters building on the Prospekt. To what purpose? To play the tout and the snitch, and to denounce… He forgot about sleep.

On the hard floor, Gaz reflected. The man was not his enemy. He had no right to blame him, let alone harm him. A degree of guilt seeped into him. And uncertainties. He could remember so clearly how it had been in the village below him, and he wondered about his duty, how far it should take him… Very soon, he expected to see the officer and to have a pistol in his hand, loaded…

Delta Alpha Sierra, the eleventh hour

The light always went fast there.

Dusk becoming night, hastened along by the low rain clouds that the wind blustered. The short horizon darkened. In front of Gaz, homes still burned, shadows flickered, but the smoke aggravated what light was left. He knew how it would be…

…would have sent two vehicles, rough terrain types and armour-plated at the sides, big beasts. A driver and a navigator in the front, though he would have a general purpose machine-gun on a mounting in front of him, and behind them would be the guy with ready access, down by his feet, to an anti-tank missile and the .50 calibre weapon. They would be in darkness and, night-vision goggles to guide them, and would have to reach a set of given coordinates. Would not want to hang around and would not know if they were within seconds of being blasted and an ambush sprung. Would be hoping, fervently and with expletives to amplify it, that the boys would be there, waiting and ready to go. Once they had the boys, they’d burn rubber. The name of the game was exfiltration, never straightforward, depending on cool heads, and nerve. Worst was having to hang about because one of the guys was late to the pick-up: when he showed, a late guy would get a bollocking, and singing an aria of excuses didn’t gain sympathy. How it would be…

…Arnie and Sam would emerge from separate scrapes in the ground and hustle forward. No ceremony, nothing said, slinging in the Bergens, grabbing a heave-up. A message goes out over the radio between the two vehicles, pick-up completed. And they know that a force of 100+ IRGC is two miles down the road, and it was what instructors called ‘the fog of war’. Another of the instructors’ favourites was ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy’, and this one, Gaz’s instincts, would not. No one actually saying that Bravo Charlie vehicle had two on board, not three, and no one drawing attention as the engines revved again that Bravo Foxtrot vehicle had not three, not two, had none on board, and both of them – Bravo Charlie and Bravo Foxtrot wanting to be out of a bad place, and both cutting corners and they’d be gone. Somewhere, across a big void of dirt, they’d likely find a deserted concrete box of a building, and pull up and think of a brew, and find they were one short: ‘Where’s that arsehole, that Gaz? Where the fuck is he? Thought you had him… We thought you did… Holy shit.’ Thinking about it and attempting to shut out the sights and sounds from down by the village, and seeing the officer striding right, left, any way, a man who has unfinished business to achieve.

He held the girl’s arm. The agony for Gaz was that he held her to save her life, and had not factored whether it was a life that wanted saving.

The first time she had spoken. “That is my sister.”

Gaz took his hand off the rifle. Her first words.

Said it again, “That is my sister.”

The dogs moaned in unison beside her and the goats were close and some of them nuzzled against her head. She spoke as if the outrage and anger had drained from her. He could remember the mischief of the days when she had come close and brought the goats and her dogs, and pretended that she did not know he was there, except for the fun in her eyes. And all that day, all the hours since the convoy had powered up the road, she had maintained the stoic silence: and he had too.

Said it again and without passion. “That is my sister.”

What to do, Gaz? Nothing to do. Imagined telling the debriefer at the Forward Operating Base – in the event he made it out – there was a nice girl, quite pretty, who used to come and sit near him, and he knew her goats and dogs. No talk until the village was occupied by a company-sized unit of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps militia, and there was a Russian officer there. Tell them that she had finally broken her silence and had said that next in line for martyrdom, after the rape was concluded, would be her sister. First puzzlement, then irritation. ‘What the fuck has that to do with you, Gaz?’ He clung to her. He was uncertain whether, at any moment, she would bolt. Scream to raise the dead and charge at them.

Felt a weight of shame. Could, or should, have looked away.

But he watched and the stillness of the girl in front of him, not struggling to break his hold, fazed him. Down in the village, a half-clothed girl was dragged by her hair across the football pitch and past the broken crossbar and off towards the gully. She could not have walked tall and proud, but had to scramble, because her hair was held. Three more followed her and before they slipped from view, up the gully and behind the big rocks of the water course, Gaz saw that the officer followed. One of the men trailing the girl had already started unbuckling his belt, and stumbled and tripped and needed to be held up, and there was raucous laughter among his group. The officer walked steadily after them, did not touch his waist, ignored the rain on his shoulders. The goons stayed back, like it was not their business to interfere. The girl did not scream, nor her sister as Gaz held her. He waited. Gaz hoped that the girl could not see beyond the football pitch as the light faded. He had the binoculars, he saw. He thought the goats would soon break because they would have been used to returning to their corral when evening came and the dogs gave them no indication of what they should do. When the goats broke ranks then she would be exposed on the hillside. Nothing he could do. He heard two shots.

She did not have to say, ‘That is my sister.’

He tried to sleep, but three more texts arrived.

His mother. Normally, at that hour, she would have been asleep. Had Lavrenti received her text with the photograph of her friend’s daughters? He deleted it. Twenty minutes later, the message was repeated – again deleted. And after fifteen minutes, the suggestion that he was out on the town, in Murmansk, with senior officers from the FSB being feted on his last night there, but when he reached his apartment, could he please respond – deleted.

Sleep avoided him, like he had some plague, shunned him. He was no longer restless but lay still and stared at the ceiling, watching a spider progressing across the surface. He wondered where the bastard hid himself away in winter: he had done two in Murmansk, had survived, had worked with a restless energy, had chased environmentalists out of town and then had moved on and been involved in the risks of foreign agents infiltrating the ranks of the Northern Fleet crews and support staff. The reward was that the bastards had created sufficient drama for the fishing fleet to be temporarily confined to harbour while a cosmetic clean-up was done… Had he been another month in Murmansk the bastard environmental teams would have been in the cells, facing years of detention – no longer his concern. No longer his worry if hostile spies were attracted to the fleet. Also, not his worry, lying on his back on the camp bed, whether his mother entertained a friend who had brought two daughters for inspection. His mother would not have understood. His father might have understood but would not have admitted that such events had ever taken place when he had charge of a unit. No serving officer in FSB, unless they had been posted to Syria, sent to liaise with Iranian savages, would have understood. Not often, now more than six month ago, he had spoken about it to the four walls and the ceiling of his bedroom. Now he hectored the spider.

“If you had not been there you would not know how it was. You had to have been there. The enemy were vermin. As bad as Afghanistan, and the mujahidin, or worse. Not just the terrorists, but any people in any village. Not grateful for what we did. Treacherous. Smile at your face, put a knife into your back. What happened that day should have been done months before. Not just there but any village where they hid enemies of our mission. And less trouble came afterwards because the word spread. Other villages refused to harbour terrorists or the hostile elements of the Americans and the British. The whole fucking place, all of that country, should be given up to our missile forces and used as a range. We owe them nothing. We never received thanks. Nothing was done that day for which I have to feel shame. Yes, we inflicted harsh punishment on them, but that village was a nest of snakes. Not just men, young men, the whole population of the village supported those who came and attacked our bivouac camp. They did not come afterwards. We did only what had to be done. I carry no blame.”

He said it out loud, and while he had spoken – lying on his back, in the darkness and staring at the ceiling – the spider had moved on and was steadily approaching a crack in the plaster where, perhaps, it had made a home… a better fucking home than he, Major Lavrenti Volkov, had. Of course, he carried no blame, need not accept an iota of shame. But he could not sleep.

They were two old military men.

Could once have been in a Spetsnaz unit, or in a KGB outfit, or with a paratroops, or just the bloody miserable mechanised infantry. Mikki and Boris did that night what any guys did when the end of a mission was called. Went out to find a bar. Not a smart place, not one with carpets on the floor and padded upholstery: they went to look for a drinking hole where the floor was scraped and stained planks, with crude furniture, and where they were not known. Could do it because their charge – the major – was in his apartment and would be lying on the camp bed, alone, and they had no need to hang around and wait on his whim.

The bar was for veterans. Combat pictures on the walls and a ferocious gang of guys against the bar, and the music was the anthems of marching soldiers, and the place glorified the past. Both men would have cursed that they had only found this glory-pit at the end of the posting to Murmansk: it did beers and spirits and the prices were good and the big guys who served were fast with replacements. They drank well, kept pace with each other and with those around them, and the bar would have been used to welcoming strangers who seemed to fit whatever mould it was that veterans were washed out of. Pasty complexions, little tyres for stomach lines, and an ability to mix, to slot in. A drunk, more taken than they had yet lowered into their throats, quizzed them: what was their business in this crap place?

Easy to answer: on a mission for a senior officer, and Mikki had tapped his nose to indicate confidentiality, and Boris had touched a finger to his lips. Two gestures, enough to satisfy the drunk. And one drink followed another, and bank notes flitted over the counter, and neither had eaten… They were not booked on the major’s flight but on a later schedule. Their own apartment nearby, one shared bedroom, was already cleared and their own gear all gone on the same van as the officer’s. Where to sleep? Who the fuck cared? They were Afghan veterans and here were Syria veterans, and unnecessary to speak of connections to FSB. One of the last coherent statements made by Boris was that, in the hotel they would open off the highway from Moscow to St Petersburg, it would be good to have a themed bar area for armed services memorabilia… .

They were free of the shit major from early morning. Good enough reason to celebrate. Would have walked out on him months before – could have been straight after the return of the aircraft ferrying them all back from Latakia a few weeks after the ‘incident’ at a village close to a highway, and never spoken of. Would have done if their loyalty to his father, to the brigadier general, was not paramount.

It would be far into the small hours, not long before the idiocy of a dawn on a summer morning in Murmansk, that Mikki and Boris staggered out into the fresh air, and a taxi driver fleeced them, and they slept in the BMW. How would they wake to be in time for the shit major’s airport run? Well, they would, because they always woke early… if they didn’t wake then the shit major could rouse them. Not a problem.

Timofey said where they should go. Natacha said what she would do. He drove. Up the hill from the Prospekt, on the Sofi Perovskoy, was a narrow cul-de-sac down the street from the Regional Science Library, and at the far end was the best hamburger outlet in all of Murmansk.

All cooked on site, nothing brought in. All done by a heavily built proprieter who did the shift from mid evening into the small hours, and who had gained a reputation for quality. Good meat, the best onion slices and powerful chillis, and sauce if wanted, and at a decent price. The van ‘borrowed’ power from the local government building. No tax paid, and no civic permission required, because the business was near enough to the police station and close enough to the headquarters of FSB to ensure their patronage. Hardly a night went by, unless there was driving snow at blizzard proportions or the summer’s occasional torrential rain, when men and women doing late shifts would not slip away from desks and screens and vacate the custody suites, and turn up at the counter and place an order. The owner, who doubled as chef and wore an outsize white apron, would then cook the order, wrap it, and charge below-list prices for those in uniform or who wore an ID card hanging on a lanyard from their necks. It was a place of confidences between agencies, and of gossip, and a location where deals were done and favours earned. Always there were queues of men and women. The business had its own ‘roof’ in place, paid the necessary dues and was free of the attention of predator gangs.

Natacha and Timofey had found it and realised that, late into the night and early into the morning, kids gathered here, and were happy to take away a wrap for smoking once they had eaten. They had done good trade. A decent slice of business was available in the shadows beyond the light from the van. Then, change. The new FSB headquarters had been sufficient to drive away the kids. In most weathers, Timofey and Natacha had learned, the FSB people would walk from the back entrance of their building and come with an order: often five portions or even ten, then scurry back. Police used to draw up in their patrol cars at the top of the road and one would go for the order and the other would stay in the car, the radio playing light music, read a magazine or do word puzzles. Other police would come from the central block where they worked. It would be those in the patrol cars that the boy and the girl would target.

“Where will he shoot the officer?” Timofey asked.

“He did not say,” Natacha answered.

“If we do this and he shoots and a major in FSB is dead on the pavement and we are linked with the gun, then…”

“Then a wall of shit falls on us. I know.”

“Did he say they would pay big, extra?”

“Didn’t.”

“You have been with him – you trust him?”

Natacha’s laugh was soft, not a snigger or sneer. “An innocent, troubled. I don’t know how he will walk to his target, look into his face. Contact with the eyes, give the target a moment of terror, then shoot. Don’t know. But he asked for the gun.”

They passed the cul-de-sac and she saw a short queue, and a flash of light as a cigarette was lit.

“It will be good to watch,” and the laughter hooted. She had no fear of the involvement and could have talked of the nights in the communal cells, the brutality of the uniforms, and the system… Same uniforms, same system, that had left the boys on the submarine to die in darkness, abandoned… She lowered the window, spat through it, then flexed her hands, made her fingers supple. Nothing more to be said, and time running. The lights of a patrol car blinded him momentarily, then it parked in the street and the headlights were killed. One cop out and the other staying in, predictable. One cop walking into the cul-de-sac to join the queue and order, and the other content with Elton John.

He edged closer to the mouth of the cul-de-sac, and switched off the lights. He would not smoke in the car and show the glow of a cigarette, and he would duck his head low and keep it in shadow and the street lights were weak. She reached in the back of the Fiat, and pulled a plastic bag from the flap behind her seat, took it on her lap and dragged the tangled mess from it, and swore, and tried to make sense of the wig. Her blonde hair became chestnut and she reached into the shallow glove slot in front of her knees and found the spectacle case. Clear glass, heavy tortoiseshell frames, once used by a theatre group, and thrown out… She used the forward mirror to check the positioning of the wig, and put on the spectacles and contorted herself so that she could wriggle out of her light poplin coat and reverse it.

She stepped out of the car, and fingered the buttons of her blouse, loosening the top two and pulling the material a little apart, and swung her hips, and did her walk, and went to the patrol car. Behind her, Timofey would wait, his fingers hovering close to the ignition key. He knew what she would do, and neither dissuaded her nor encouraged her: it was their partnership. It would not take long; she might have five minutes or as much as seven or eight. She approached the patrol car, came from behind, and her footsteps would have been enough to alert the man who would have been soothed by his music, looking forward to his meal, and he would have seen thin legs and a loose top and a flash of skin and the outline of shallow breasts and a cascade of auburn hair, and the distinctive spectacles. She could see the back of his head and the shine of his bald scalp… It would be done fast, without negotiation, no time for him to consider, imagine when his partner would be back from the burger bar and what his wife, likely fat as a barn, would say if she knew. Just a little moment of shock and awe, and wonder. She had not done it before, but had imagined it. Did not seem a problem to her, nor a problem to Timofey who slept with her.

His window was wound down. She reached it, leaned on the frame.

He would have seen her face. No lipstick, no scent, no jewellery; she would have appeared little more than a child, with big academic glasses on her nose. He would have seen the grin, and might have read the offer. She moved fast. Leaning in and showing her cleavage, and the old beggar half jumping from his seat, but restrained by his seat belt. She unfastened it. Natacha reached down, manipulated him. Looked into his face and grinned. He started to pant, might have yelled, might have grappled for his radio microphone and pressed the switch to transmit, might have shouted for his partner, or might simply have thought himself the luckiest bastard in that precinct of Murmansk. All the time keeping her head only a few centimetres from his eyes and his mouth, and only reaching up to remove the spectacles and pocket them, then returning her hand to find the second belt, his own, and feeling him and chuckling. No time to waste.

One hand inside his trousers, and the bastard gasped: would have been her luck if he had seized up, had a coronary. A gasp and a groan, and that was for one hand, and feeling him, and the bastard wriggling and making strange noises like he was fitting. The most important factor in the procedure was that the Murmansk police, who thought themselves the finest in the whole of the Federation’s territory, armed their firearms when they left the police stations, went out on patrol. Had a magazine loaded, standard practice. She knew it, and Timofey knew it. She had a hold of the cop and this was the start of the bit, not for long, perhaps two minutes, where her hand should be warm, soft, and caring, and the cop snorted, a bull heading for the abattoir helpless and noisy. He made so much noise that she was fearful of waking half the street. Her eyes never left his. One hand doing the necessary, the other gently moving on him. The ‘necessary’ was to locate the pistol’s handle, and find the clip that held the holster strap in place. He was gone to the world, and Natacha found the pistol.

Her hand closed on it, let the other one squeeze, and slid it past his belly and wormed it down and into her waist, and she thought the bastard was about to spill on her, and used her two hands quickly. She worked the seat belt inside the fastening of his trouser belt, and was satisfied. A little master stroke. Both hands free, a last look into the popping eyes, and she pouted a kiss, was gone.

Natacha was fast, it was only pure shit luck that a cop had caught her the last time. Ran well, 100 metres to cover. Behind her came a belated and furious eruption of anger, like a man woken from a dream into the cool of the night with a mess on his stomach, his flies open and the holster at his belt empty. Bellowed and would have tried to spring up from his seat and fling open the door and chase the bitch, the whore… but could not until he had groped in the darkness and undone his trouser belt fast and freed the seat belt.

She was into the car. It pulled away.

Timofey asked, “You good?”

Natacha answered, “Yes, good. It’s a Makarov he’ll be getting. Yes, I’m fine.”

They went away into the night, and fast, and no sirens chased them.

He was woken by the their excited laughter outside the door, trouble getting the key in the lock. And Gaz had that moment when he did not know where he was, and why he was not in a bed. He was sitting upright, and light spilled in from the hall.

He was on the floor. The old man owned the sofa, still snored and wheezed. They came inside and the light was extinguished. He’d had a moment to see the elation on the girl’s face, and the look on the boy’s that was not triumphant but confident. Timofey had been closing the door when she was reaching into her trouser’s waist, and pulled out the pistol and her blouse rode up and must have caught on the foresight. He reached out, an automatic reaction for any military guy, and she passed it to him and her finger was too damned close to the trigger. The boy watched him: he reckoned Natacha looked for plaudits but would not get them, not yet.

Other than on the Unst ranges Gaz had not had a firearm in his hand since the day at the village… not when they had shifted him out and ‘his feet hadn’t touched the ground’ which was the hackneyed quote for the speed of their accomplishment. Colleagues, had queued to say what a star was Gaz, how competent and how level-headed. Not had one since he had been shifted on by an obliging magistrate. A few farmers had shotguns on Westray, but he had no need for one and no wish for the contamination of one. It nestled in his hand. Because of where he had been, in Helmand and in that sector of Syria, he knew it as a Makarov PM, an optimistic firing range of fifty-five yards, based on the German Walther PPK – none of which she needed to know – and an eight-round magazine… and there was one in place and he made it safe. Detached the magazine, discharged the bullet in the breech, aimed it up at the ceiling and cleared it, was satisfied. The old man behind him had woken, stared at the weapon with saucer eyes, then seemed to crumple as if a nightmare had captured him. Gaz had asked for a weapon, had given a tight timeline, and it had been delivered and the schedule was kept to. They deserved congratulation and he was now ready to give it.

“This is brilliant, really good. It is what I needed and I am grateful.”

Instructors at the Hereford place said that a Makarov PM, old as the hills, was as good as anything on the market, another fine design coming off the Izhevsk production line. She pirouetted, he smiled sardonically, as if it were good to be praised but not necessary.

Gaz said, “Not my business and you don’t need to answer me: how did you get it?”

She grinned, chuckled. “A cop gave it me.”

“What did you have to do to make him so generous?”

Timofey said, “You should not ask, don’t need to know… You have the gun.”

He had started to strip it, used a handkerchief to clean the parts, and then would empty the magazine and reload it, and he reckoned the kids were gold dust, and they’d warrant hefty remuneration, nothing niggardly. Better by far than kids with the passion of ideology…

Natacha said, “So, when do we go to kill your officer? I think a quarter of an hour, and then you will be ready, ready to shoot him?”

Gaz did not give her an answer but worked to sanitise the parts, to be certain the weapon would be effective, not jam. It felt good in his hand, and familiar, and there was no backing out.