Beyond Recall

Chapter 13

Timofey opened the door, waved them through.

The room stank. He could see where he had slept on the floor and where the old man had been, saw the heap of discarded food wrapping, and noted the grime on the windows where thin sunshine tried to penetrate. Nothing had changed in the room but it seemed to Gaz as if he had never been there before. He had had no clear idea in his head of what was possible and what was beyond the realm of what he could achieve. The old man crawled to his feet and had used the sofa arms to heave himself upright. It was for Gaz to lead. He gestured for a chair to be brought forward. Timofey watched Gaz, did not move. Nor Natacha, but she translated the instruction and the old man lifted a chair out from under the table and carried it awkwardly to the centre of the room.

The old man called the officer ‘sir’. Showed respect for his rank and his uniform, demonstrated nervousness. Gaz thought the plastic blindfold had slipped enough for the officer to see the chair in front of him, and if he could see the chair then he could see the faces; perhaps good thinking of Timofey’s father to address him with deference. In the briefing rooms of the Forward Operating Bases, they often talked of ‘collateral’. The prospect of collateral damage should not stand in the way of achieving success in an end-game. Collateral was an acceptable risk in Helmand and in central Syria on the basis that the perpetrators would be long gone, well clear before the damage kicked in… worrying about collateral was for the squeamish. The officer would know the faces of those who had taken him if his blindfold had slipped. It seemed to have done… the officer knew in what direction he should go as Gaz manoeuvred him towards the chair.

The chair had a tubular metal frame, a hard seat, and a straight back. Was there rope in the apartment? There was not. Was there powerful adhesive tape? There was not. Were there more plastic bags? A handful were brought out from under the sink, some filled with rubbish. Gaz set the officer down in the chair. His head tracked Gaz as he crossed in front of him. Gaz lifted the officer’s arms behind his back and eased them behind his spine, and with a bag smelling of rotting vegetables tied the knot, fastened his arms to the chair. He was uncertain as to the reaction of the kids if the officer lashed out with his polished shoes, caught Gaz in the head or the stomach or the groin, disabled him. Might pile in and save the day, or might back off, or might free the officer and push him out of the door and slam it, shut themselves away from the arrival of ‘collateral’. Best done himself. Did it from the side and the officer would have known that Gaz’s face and belly and privates were beyond kicking reach. He tied both ankles to one chair leg.

Gaz reached at the officer’s face, caught at a corner of the bag used as a gag and tugged it clear. There was spitting, coughing, a near choke, and then quiet. Gaz told the kids to get the officer a glass of water. Again, work for the old man. A tap was run, glass swilled out. The father used the hem of his shirt to dry the glass. The water was brought and Gaz saw that the father’s hand shook and water slopped from the glass and some spilled on the officer’s trousers, and he was addressed again as sir and the water was held to his lips. The glass tilted, too much and too fast, more water was spilled and the father grovelled.

Timofey asked, “What now?”

“I look for time, not much.”

Natacha’s question. “How much time?”

“Until I am ready, that much time.”

The officer could have spoken, did not. Gaz assumed that FSB went on the same courses as his own crowd. This was a situation described by the colour sergeants as ‘arse pucker time’ – so tight a flea wouldn’t get in. He would have been taught to say nothing until he had a clear view of his captors’ competence, and attempt little until he had a comprehension of their qualities: would hide behind the blindfold and would absorb… Would have heard the old man’s grovelling acknowledgement of his rank. Would have heard the kids demand to be told the schedule. Gaz wondered if, yet, he had an inkling. He went to the window. He put the pistol under the belt in the back of his trousers.

Gaz saw the huge monument high on the hill and thought of it with the same respect he had for the memorial to the dead of two World Wars in the centre of the village where Bobby and Betty Riley had brought him up. They went there every anniversary Sunday for the eleventh hour of the eleventh day. No enmity towards their veterans, Russia’s dead, and would have been ashamed of himself if he had felt hostility. Saw the length of the flight-deck of the old aircraft carrier that had limped down the North Sea and English Channel, past Gibraltar and across the Mediterranean, and he had seen Sukhoi–33 attack aircraft – NATO codename Flanker – roaming in the skies over Syria when they had taken off from the geriatric craft. Saw the church where he’d mingled with the funeral party and been shown politeness and consideration and a priest had smiled at him. Saw the back section of the cut-out conning tower… and glimpsed a small cloud of smoke cresting over a tangle of low masts, and knew a boat prepared to get out into the main navigation channel. Saw nothing that was not a distraction. He looked higher, away to the west.

The early sunlight fell on horizons of gradually rising hills, no tower blocks, no pylon lines, no industrial chimneys, only the expanse of tundra. He remembered how it had been when he had crossed a part of it on foot, running with the kids, and more of it when they had circled the roadblock and reached the car. Behind him, the old man gave the officer more water, whining, with a drunk’s slur, his apologies. It was the only way that Gaz thought worth considering… and how to get a prisoner, young and fit, desperate and trussed, on to that landscape. He scratched in his brain for detail. It was a bleak view confronting him, and with no charity: there had been no charity in any of the theatres he’d worked.

He owed it, and the debt had a millstone’s weight. He turned away from his view of the wilderness.

The bear, Zhukov, had come forward and now had its weight on its buttocks and lower back and half of its stomach fur was exposed and one of its front legs was raised above its throat.

Jasha had seen it emerging from its cover. He had not taken the rifle from the wall but knew how long he would need to reach it, and how long it would take to arm it, and his dog lay supine on its sacking bed and growled quietly. Jasha had lived for long enough in the cabin – with no company but that of a dog – to know all the sounds made by animals, large and small, shy and bold. He knew those indicating anger and those that meant an animal was challenged and he should back off, and those when a creature crossed boundaries and regarded him as a companion. He recognised that Zhukov made the same sound, with a chilling and dangerous intensity, as when he had had the wire around its foot and his flesh had been growing over the barbs.

Using his binoculars, the hunter located the source of the bears pain. One leg was a full fifteen centimetres shorter than the one with the long yellow claws and with the roughened dark pads that made the identifying footprint. He studied the stump and his eyes roamed slowly over the skin that had weathered and strengthened. When Zhukov moved, he employed a rolling gait, like that of a bow-legged peasant. There was little grace but his speed was undiminished. In the last days the creature had kept back from him, had stayed hidden, but had tracked him. Jasha had only seen this behaviour once before. When Zhukov had been in intense pain from the wire he had followed and stayed hidden, but had kept company with the hunter. What the binoculars found, Jasha reckoned, was a fencer’s staple. He estimated it to be some five centimetres from point to arch, and almost entirely lodged in the stump. It surprised him that the bear could not put the stump in its mouth and use its teeth to extract it. The bear, Zhukov, did not know how to be free of it… He had come to Jasha for help.

He thought the bear weighed perhaps 350 kilos. On its hind legs it would have stood at more than two metres. With either front leg it could break Jasha’s neck with a casual blow. With one slash of the claws it could disembowel him. With its teeth, old and as darkened as those of a habitual nicotine smoker, it could bite off his head. It was a wild creature; stories of bonding and friendship were few and far, mostly lies or delusions. His aid was required. He removed his binoculars, and pondered. The dog had not moved, not even a flick of the tail.

Every few minutes, the bear uttered the short and soft cry, pathetically quiet for a creature of that size. Jasha’s loneliness, self-appointed, in the wilderness was interrupted by the beast that came to him and trailed him, made demands of him. Two options faced Jasha. Living in the wilderness there were rarely opportunities to fudge an issue of importance. The same as when he had served in the treacherous beauty of Afghanistan. He either killed the enemy or he slipped away unobserved and accepted failure. Both the options were stark. He could go to the far wall of the cabin, could reach up above his dog and could lift down the old Dragunov sniper’s rifle. A single cartridge, 7.62x54R, fired at point-blank range – the same bullet could kill at 800 metres – would end the life of the bear, would close a chapter of suffering. He could then go outside, and use his hunter’s knife carefully to remove the bear’s pelt and hang it out to dry and be cleansed while he dragged away the carcase and dismembered it for easier consumption by the foxes or even have the attention of a pair of lynx. Could sell the skin via his agent in Murmansk, and get a fair price even though a front pad was missing, and be freed of the burden of having the troubled creature tracking him, entering his home and leaving his dog traumatised… The second option was both terrifying to Jasha and compelling.

For an hour or more, he would busy himself inside the cabin. The dog would be fed. He would place the tin with his worldly wealth on the table beside his military identity card. He remembered the two kids running in their ridiculous clothes across the rock and bog of the tundra, and remembered the man with them who struggled to keep pace who was military from his bearing, and they came from the frontier and the barricaded border. The memory was a distraction. He would drink tea first, and dry his eyes, and the dog would have to take its chance.

He supposed it to be a matter of trust, and a time when trust and love merged. He eyed his overflowing toolbox, and put his kettle on the ring.

From a high point, Knacker surveyed a vista.

He and the Norwegian, their vehicle left at the bottom of the slope, had trudged up a rough path and the mud from earlier rain clung to his shoes, buffed that morning by Alice.

A familiar moment for Knacker. A chance to look across what seemed an endless expanse of uniformly dull ground, a scrap of the hinterland of the Russian Federation. Never tired of it. Could have learned more by taking out a subscription to a postcard company, but it still thrilled him to have that chance to gaze towards a long horizon. There was little to learn except that the terrain seemed to be difficult and slow-going: on the side of any fugitive would be the lack of roads and trails and the clumps of granite rock and the stunted forests of dwarf birch. There was one blip on the desolation in front of him… a cluster of high-rise blocks and three industrial chimneys, grey from the smoke they poured out. The place was called Nikel. The reason for the place was the nickel-smelting ovens: seven decades before, it had been a site of ferocious combat as the advancing Germans had fought their way into the complex. Old equipment was still used. The Norwegian said the levels of pollution from sulphur dioxide were way above even Russian standards of safety. The light wind floated the smoke emissions to the south as they had for many years and there the ground had no trace of green.

Knacker said, “You are one of the cleanest and least contaminated countries in Europe and you have to exist alongside this foul mess?”

The Norwegian shrugged. “What else is possible?”

“It is immaterial to them that they poison the air, the ground, the water courses?”

“They require nickel for their armaments programmes and so they must have it, but will not pay the price of modern equipment. They do not care.”

“Do they listen to you?”

“We complain, but we are ignored. And they deny… We believe that town is inside one of the top five most poisoned locations in their country, but they say our data is ‘contrived’. They will not admit to a fault, are scared to take blame. You cannot confront them with logic and argument, but you know that.”

“That analysis, I do not disagree.”

“You have a man there? One man?”

If Fee had been with him, or Alice, they would have expected a slight smile to break on his face, and a little shrug, and a gesture that indicated a conversation straying into such confidences was unwelcome. No smile, no shrug, no gesture. He liked his companion, believed his honesty. “That’s about it.”

“And you have a target?”

“We do.”

“My knowledge of Russians – they are warm, they are generous, they are loyal in friendship, except for one fraternity.”

“They are used to being ruled. Serfs and aristocracy. They are docile. A small minority has a grip on authority.”

“And that is where your target exists, the contemporary aristocracy?”

“In the heart of it.”

“An important man, with status?”

“Not with status but a part of the apparatus. On the lower rungs of the élite. He is a target because of what happened thousands of miles from here, and when he is taken down then I gain advantage, an advantage worth chasing.”

“The man you sent… I was not able to form an opinion of him.”

“Unlikely you would: calm, responsible, quiet. Probably quite dull. No intellect but that is not required of him. Ordinary.”

“What do you look for when you search for such a man?”

“A sense of duty, but more than that. Dull and ordinary, yes. You point him in the right direction, tell him what is wanted, give him a shove and off he goes. That sort of man. Not complicated by moralities and ethics. A bit of obligation pushes him forward. Actually, this one rather needs me to regain lost pride, was on a downhill run till I showed up.”

“Manipulated?”

“Your word, not mine. Offered an opportunity when he was on the floor, had one of those bloody syndromes. Needed his self-respect burnished.”

“This ‘ordinary’ man had little chance to decline whatever you asked of him. I am sure there is no connection but on the police radio in Murmansk city there are reports of a police officer being assaulted and his personal firearm stolen from him. Any connection? But no report of a killing…”

Silence fell on them as if enough confidences, or too many, had been exchanged. Always the same, when the best laid plans were in place, the waiting. All now rested in the hands of an ‘ordinary’ man.

“I hope you have not forgotten, Gaz,” Knacker said to himself, “what he did. I hope you have nailed him. No reports of a body because it’s plastic wrapped and hidden and will not be found before you are clear of that place. You should now be sailing homewards, and I’ll meet you with a glass, bubbling furiously. Of course you won’t have forgotten what he did.”

Delta Alpha Sierra, the thirteenth hour

Gaz had resumed his hold on her arm. Occasionally, she whimpered.

She had told him, all that she had ever said to him, that one of those taken from the huddle of women was her sister. The rain seemed to have eased. Digging had started. The charred houses had been looted for tools. Gaz watched the officer.

The activity was at the football pitch. There had been little grass there and it was flat enough and there seemed a good depth of soil. They dug with spades and shovels and pickaxes and forks. Their commander leaned against a truck, and smoked. Made no contribution. The officer was growing impatient, striding along the line of Iranian militiamen, giving his orders and waving his arms in theatrical exasperation because the pit was not being excavated as fast as he wanted. It was obvious to Gaz that the officer would have had no authority over the IRGC men, would have been there as liaison only. The goons with the officer stayed back. Twice the officer turned and seemed to yell at them, perhaps demanded they put down their own weapons and go and find themselves tools and join the digging frenzy, but was ignored. Some of the perimeter men were called down from the higher ground around the village and from its recreation area and were sent to gather the bodies of those who had been shot, had been hanged, bayoneted. Gaz counted four who were brought from inside the smouldering buildings, rigid, scorched from the fire. Some of the men held handkerchiefs over their faces as they scratched at the ground. The NCOs were blistering the men for their poor work rate, and coming behind them was the Russian, and once he aimed a kick in the direction of a trooper who had dropped his spade, and held a rag in two hands over his face.

Gaz supposed it always played out in this way. A frenzy of killing and destruction and then – before the eagles and vultures came to feast – an attempt to hide what had been done. Not that there was, in Syria, any court before which those responsible for the atrocity might be brought… no panel of judges who would look down into the dock and face the Iranian commander of the IRGC unit, or his Russian colleague who had killed and now helped organise the burial of the evidence. Nor would any tribunal in western Europe or in the United Nations ever get to determine the guilt of those men. But they would have needed to conceal what they had done, and their anger at being fired on by reckless teenagers many hours before would have slid into the mud, and they would have been cold, and sodden and hungry, wanting to be gone from the place. But the dead – the evidence – could not be left to lie in the slackening rain, the dying wind ruffling their garments. The scavenger birds would come in the morning, but the rats would probably have already crept close and sniffed, coming as near as they dared. The pit grew in length and in depth. Some of the bodies were dragged by their hair, some by their clothing, some by a leg. The dead had no dignity, which would not have mattered to them, but he thought the girl would feel an agony. She would have known every one of them, and her sister was among them.

Somewhere behind him, to the north-east, two vehicles protected with steel plate and heavily armed would have stopped. They would have been miles back from the village and from the pick-up. It would have started as ‘You got Gaz?’ and ‘No, we got Arnie and we got Sam.’ ‘Did you not see Gaz?’ ‘Reckoned you had him.’ ‘Didn’t.’ ‘Nor us, we don’t have him.’ Then there would be a volley of oaths that would be spirited away on the wind, and short seconds of contemplation and a coming together of the relief party and of Gaz’s muckers, Arnie and Sam, and a realisation that they had pulled out and left behind one of their number, alone in that fuck-awful place. Arnie and Sam had had different viewpoints and had covered the road leading up from the south and would have heard shooting and would have seen the glow of fires but would only have known the extent of the atrocity from the texts that Gaz had sent. Would have realised he was grandstanding, could not exit a covert location in daylight, but it was night now, no sight of a star or anything of the moon, and it was safe to assume he’d have bugged out… knew they were coming, knew the rendezvous point, but had not reached it. What to do? It would have exercised them, and the messages were going back to the FOB and a spate of questioning that had no answers. Why was Gaz not with them? Who the fuck knew why?

He held the girl. Ant-like activity wriggled below him.

Gaz’s error. His mistake. Was not supposed to make a mistake. Mistakes ended with someone killed. One militiaman had been on the slope, sixty or seventy paces below them, and Gaz had lost sight of and interest in him. The last flare of flames in a building must have ignited a gas cylinder, used for heating a bread oven or making hot water… it exploded. A sheet of flame flew high towards the cloud base, brighter than the sheets of the earlier lightning. It lit the village and the pit being filled with cadavers, and the men who dug, and the strut of the officer, and illuminated the young militiaman on the slope who was hunched down and would have hoped his own commander and his NCOs had not noted his absence from the work fatigue. The country boy who was unwilling to dig a mass grave, and who was now shown up as a part of the tableau as if it were midday. With the thunderclap of the detonation and the brightness of the light, the goats’ final inhibition died. They broke and fled. Scattered to all points, bleating and screaming, and the dogs went after them.

Gaz watched the trooper on the slope. He was alert, half-kneeling. If he had been a country boy then he would have wondered where the animals had come from, who had charge of them – a herd of quality would not have been without a minder, and he listened and he stared around and above him. The cold ran on Gaz’s neck, had the chill of winter ice. The officer looked up and would have seen the chaotic flight of the goats and the one militiaman on the slope.

Gaz held hard on the girl.

He started to speak to the kids, quietly, in Russian.

“Perhaps it is mistaken identity. Perhaps you have the wrong individual. I am Lavrenti Volkov. I am FSB. I do not know who you are but can guarantee that our lives have not crossed. This other man, I have no idea who he is. You have no argument with me, and I have none with you.”

He controlled his voice. Tried to capture a calmness. Held his breathing steady, did not pant or stammer. Spoke slowly as if the matter was simple, just a misunderstanding.

“You can choose one or two directions. One and you will be involved in the murder of a member of state security. From such involvement there is no escape. If you were fortunate you would be ‘shot while escaping’ but that would only be after the most rigorous interrogation but there is also the certainty of going to a penal camp high in the Circle, a harsh regime camp. You are young and would probably endure your middle years and if you have no fortune you might enter your old age. You would never leave, and from the moment your trial process ends you would see each other never again. Don’t go that way.”

Most of the time he spoke, his gaze was towards the kids, simple scumbags. The filth of the gutters. But he also spoke towards the sofa and the old man, where the stench was. The pathetic creature nodded his head fervently at what Lavrenti said, and would join them in the gaol for criminal collaboration. Only rarely did he face the window and the outline of the man’s back, his shoulders and his head, and the pistol now held loosely in the man’s right fist, and the lever was in place for safety but it was armed. He did not understand why he was there, why he had been chosen, and was confused, but had to exercise control, and had to divide.

“The alternative is good for you. I walk from here. I take this foreign adventurer into custody. You are fifteen-minute heroes. Both of you have shown true loyalty towards the state. You can be named and applauded, you can stay anonymous, but you will be granted the extreme generosity of FSB. I imagine a large sum of money will be pushed into your laps. I promise that such action will be well rewarded. Enough for a new car, enough for a new apartment. I cannot imagine you would take the wrong turn.”

Their feet would not touch the cell block floor. Beaten and already bloodied, they would be dragged to the top of the stairwell, pitched down and caught, then pushed into the cells and the doors slammed. Would shout, if they had any energy left, of promises made, and would hear only retreating feet and fading laughter.

“Why a foreign agency has come after me, I do not know. I am employed to protect the Federation from its enemies, but work inside the territory of the state. I have done nothing to hurt you, you have no justification in hurting me. I am a major in FSB, I do not beg. You should free me. Immediately. I offer you the guarantee of the state’s gratitude and in return you free me, you help me take this man to an appropriate location, I suggest the one on Lenin Prospekt, and you will receive the congratulations of my superiors. What do you say?”

He thought he had done well. Reckoned the force of his argument would bend the resolution of an idiot. The man at the window never shifted, stared out, took no part in it.

The girl said, “He’s going to kill you. Going to shoot you. Don’t know why he has not already done it.”

“Why? What have I done?” He could see that the boy slouched, shrugged, seemed indifferent, and that the girl had a tight waist and a flat chest and pretty hair and a sweet smile. Faced the foreigner and made no more pretence that the blindfold still obscured his view. In English, as it had been taught him. “And you, what have I done? I am a junior officer in FSB. How are you affected by me? I have done nothing.”

The answer, as quiet as the rustle of old leaves in a gentle wind, smacked the breath from his chest. “You should recall your visit to a village…”

“… You should remember, Major, your visit to the village of Deir al-Siyarqi.”

He saw the officer flinch. Gaz had turned, only for a moment. He thought that his response to ‘I have done nothing’ devastated more than the blow to the face with the pistol butt, and more than the kneeing by the girl. Gaz had not understood what he had said, but the tone was a mixture of authority and wheedling reason. Would have been the predictable line of making a deal, getting real, being everybody’s friend, and it was all a mistake. What Gaz would have expected. The girl must have answered sharply, behind the cover of her sweet face, because the confidence had drained and the argument had been louder then had spilled into English. First the officer’s head went down and his chin hit his chest, then his head came up and his lips narrowed and, somewhere deep behind the slack blindfold, his eyes would have flickered.

Gaz said, “There was a village. I came because of what was done there.”

Far below him, out in the harbour channel, Gaz saw the fishing boat. She made slow speed and a launch sailed alongside her. The good guys on board, kind men and decent and the sort he’d have known in the unit, would have talked and fidgeted and rustled up excuses and might have delayed the sailing for an hour or so, but had hit the buffer of bureaucracy, and they were on their way. If they lost the attention of the present escort, further up the inlet and beyond the Severomorsk submarine base, Gaz assumed they would try to use the one back-stop procedure that had been talked of. Discussing it in the below-deck cabin it had seemed fanciful, and thinking of it now it seemed ridiculous. They were good enough guys, all of them, for him to assume they would try to fulfil the procedure. It was a fine-looking craft and the water it traversed was calm and it made a useful bow wave. He thought well of the small crew, imagined they’d be gutted that he was not on board… remembered the words of Robbie Burns mouthed when the milking parlour pump went down, or the pin sheared on the field grass topper. Best laid plans o’ mice an’ men, Gang aft a-gley. And the men crewing a small fishing boat would have understood that. Best plans going awry. He might see them again… and might not. He held the pistol. He saw that the kids had made no move towards the officer, that he was still trussed securely to the chair. He had not wasted his time at the window, and did not waste it further as the boat went north up the inlet.

“It is about the village, only the village.”

“Rubbish, shit talk.”

“About the village.”

“Not there, never heard that name.”

“The village of Deir al-Siyarqi. I think you will remember the day you were there.”

“Never heard of such a place. You cannot prove I was there. Show me evidence.”

“I saw you there, Major Volkov. I am a witness.”

“You lie… you could not have seen me because I was never there, have never heard of such a place. I was liaison, I stayed in a barracks. I played no part in operations, and…”

“A witness, Major Volkov, to an atrocity.”

Like a darkness had come into the room. All eyes were on him. He struggled to break the bags that tied him to the chair, and failed. Wriggled and contorted, and what Gaz could see of his face was flushed where blood ran, and he tried to kick out with his feet but all he achieved was to topple the chair so that he slid onto the floor. No one helped him. The old man stayed back now as if realising, though not understanding the language, that the major’s claim to power had slipped away, and the kids did not move as he thrashed against the chair. Gaz understood them both: Timofey was boot-faced and showed no feeling and would have been considering what he had involved himself with, and the girl had a look of malevolence and smiled through it as though this was entertainment, high grade.

“So, I was there. But I was the liaison. I gave no orders and had no authority. They were savages, the Iranians. They obeyed none of the rules of warfare. None of it was my doing. I still have nightmares because of what I saw that day, I cannot escape them. What tortures me the most is that I was helpless and in no position to influence it. They were like mad dogs, the IRGC, but it was the attack in the night on their camp which provoked their anger. I did not plan the follow-up operation. I went along in the hope that some intelligence material could be accessed from the village. Several times I urged the commander to rein back his militia but always he refused. I am not a psychologist, but from what little I know of that discipline, it was clear that a frenzy of hate enveloped that unit of IRGC. They were beyond control. I had no part in the killings or the abuse, what was done to the women. I was a bystander. The weather added to the awfulness of the day, and into the night – rain, gales, thunder. I have no guilt. Do you not understand war? It is what happens in war. I have been honest with you, but I do not believe you were an eyewitness – perhaps you were there afterwards. Whoever you are, and from whatever agency, you should free me. I am an innocent man… there were no witnesses.”

“I was there. I saw everything you did.”

There was a tone of finality in Gaz’s voice, as though by trying to excuse himself of blame the major merely wasted breath. He looked again from the window and no longer saw the boat, only the ends of its bow wave and some gulls hovering over its wake. He had needed a plan and the quiet in the apartment had given him the scope to think of it. A workable plan? Not sure, would not be certain for twenty-four hours. It was the only plan he knew. He gestured to Timofey and the kid went forward and took the weight of the chair, and his father helped, and they straightened it. He said that he needed some food and a hot drink, and he peeled off notes from a wad in his pocket and gave them to the girl. He trusted her more than he trusted her lover, but had no right to burden either of them with his trust. She went out, and would have skipped away down the stairs. She could, of course, use her phone and call a police number, or could head off into the city centre and pitch up on the Prospekt and denounce him, and a storm squad would be kitted in bulletproof vests and wear balaclavas under their helmets and carry assault rifles and gas and flash grenades and would break through the flimsy door to the apartment, and she could then claim the rewards he imagined the major had offered… But it would not happen, that at least he was sure of.

It was a quality wake. Most of those that were organised in celebration of the life of a Round Table member were good occasions. They mixed anecdotes and what they saw as truisms, and laughter, and powerful doses of criticism were always directed at the new guard, the analysis geeks. Upwards of twenty were in the first-floor room of the Kennington Road pub and on the central table lay the theatrical sword. One founder member was a notable absentee – Knacker – and it was said that his rooms down the road were still locked up and showing no lights; so, not just him away but also his girls. Only a revered death could beat the excitement of the members when one of their own was running a show. Not that secrets were hawked round but small nuggets were talked of with evident joy. At the heart of the occasion was the true veteran, Arthur Jennings, always with a crush of colleagues round him and listening to the observations of the arch enemy of the geek gang.

“Miss him if he’s not with us, don’t we, old Knacker?”

“First-class man. No formal education but razor sharp. He’ll be up on some part of that bloody place’s endless border, and they’ll know about it, but not until he’s ready.”

“Serious, a meticulous operator, thorough, with an eye for advantage.”

“And a decent nose for ferreting out the sort of asset he can usefully employ.”

“I enjoy it when he saunters in here and gives us nothing, except that somehow it always leaks out, delicious canapés of detail.”

And the drink flowed and a good friend was remembered, gone on the long journey to the safe house in the skies, and the entry of the Coldstreamer was barely noticed. They believed themselves to be an old élite, whose life span was essential to the safety of the realm. They were confident and cheerful.

The Coldstreamer crouched beside Arthur Jennings’ chair. “So sorry, sir, for the disturbance. A summons from the DD-G, sir. You are required to attend, immediate. A car waiting outside.”

The officer’s rucksack was retrieved. His personal weapon found at the bottom.

Up the stairs, two at a time, Mikki leading. He could have said, or Boris, that the world had no worse outcome up its sleeve than when personal protection lost its ‘principal’. Irrelevant whether they despised him. Unimportant if they detested him. On their watch, they had lost the major.

The old cow had locked herself inside her apartment, had barred or bolted the door. They kicked the door and shouted. No response. Then they put their shoulders to it.

Mikki, from Kamchatka in the far east of the Federation was the tougher, stronger, and Boris from Irkutsk in Siberia was the brighter. It was Mikki’s efforts that collapsed the door, then Boris had hold of the old woman. Her shopping bags were not yet unpacked. She was on her knees. Nothing subtle in the efforts of Boris. She was a fellow citizen of the Federation. Her late husband had worked loyally for the state. He twisted the lobe of an ear. In between her bleating cries, like a ewe’s, he whispered his questions. Each time she did not answer it was Mikki’s turn to sweep china from a cupboard and pictures from the walls, and soon the room was trashed.

Done steadily, without impatience, and she was given the impression that the two of them had time to spill, could keep the pain coming without needing to hurry. Could hurt her more than she had ever been hurt, could break pretty much everything she possessed. Weeping and holding her ear, she spat out what she knew. The girl who had carried her bag was the girl who had kissed the man on the step by the front door. The boy who had sat in the car. The car that had taken the officer away. The man who kissed was not of that city, and not Russian. They left her.

Outside, pieces of the puzzle started to interlock, and connections were made.

A car might have followed them the previous evening when they had brought the major back from the Prospekt. The boy who had gone into the bar and had emerged with two vodka bottles had had a foreigner with him. Through the window of the bar they had seen the ‘foreigner’ go close to the major, then abruptly turn away. The boy who had come to the gate of the headquarters building on Prospekt and had carted away a drunk and been ingratiating and polite. The drunk had been demanding access to an officer to make an accusation of treachery. Work to be done, and fast, at that building.

First, unwelcome business. A telephone call to be made. Mikki behind the wheel and starting the engine and needing to burn rubber, and Boris scrolling through his phone for a stored number. Keys pressed. Face creased in anxiety, dialling tone and ringing out. A clipped military tone answered. Boris gave his name. What did he want? The brigadier and his wife were soon to leave for the airport to celebrate the return of their son from duty in the far north. Why did he call?

Well, for a start – shit – not great news to give. Had lost their son, not mislaid, not like a fucking wristwatch or a pair of spectacles put down, but lost like he and Mikki were mugged and had ‘lost’ their wallets. Called him ‘sir’ and his voice would have been hard to hear and his jaw trembled. Lost like it was a kidnap. An intake of breath. Where? At the front door of the block where he lived. Where was the car, where were they? Round the corner, just – very briefly – out of sight, which was a lie but necessary. What had they done so far? They had interrogated an eyewitness to the abduction… They had a siren going and had a slap-on blue light on the roof… What possible reason was there for his being taken? Boris could not answer, but would have to – knew it. Was his son not a middle-ranking officer, principally involved in desk work? He was, Boris was able to reply. Was a fucking nobody, was fucking useless, was a time-server – agreed? No reply from Boris, and the voice ranted on and detailed Lavrenti Volkov’s failings, and culminated.

“It could not have been a foreign agency.”

A big breath from Boris. It was owed to the man who had saved his life, who’d had the guts, courage, balls, to call down the air strike on to their position as they fought hand to hand and with ammunition low or finished. He blurted.

“It could be about Syria…”

“What about Syria? What about that fucking hornets’ nest?”

There was a village, there was a day the Iranian militia came to that village. There was that day when the major accompanied an Iranian commander to the village. The village was destroyed on that day. People died. Men, women, children died… Boris said it.

“But that was Iranians. My son was liaison. He had no authority, no command.”

Mikki was approaching that sector of the Prospekt where the headquarters building was sited. He nodded, encouraged Boris.

“He took part in it, Brigadier. He was at the front of it. Maybe a hundred people died, maybe more. He was active. We thought everyone had been killed so that no witnesses were left to testify. He was – forgive me, Brigadier – like a mad dog there. I know of no other reason for a foreigner to come and seize your son off the street.”

He thought he had crushed a man whom he had always respected beyond all others. Had broken the spirit of a man he would have followed anywhere, into the teeth of any battle. He thought the brigadier a man of discipline and of integrity. Who would have been wounded to learn that his boy, disliked and treated with near contempt, but his own blood, had been involved in a matter of such squalid violence. The silence hung on the line.

“We will do all we can, I promise you, to find him and recover him. We do that for you and your wife. We have a start but need a few hours before a general alarm is raised. That way scandal is suppressed. I am confident.”

He cut the call. They pulled up at the gate and flashed a card. A camera watched them.

“You said, ‘I am confident’ – what are you confident of?”

“Confident of fuck-all. I thought he was about to weep. I did not want to hear him weep. What the fuck else should I have said?”

They loosed his ankles, then took him down the inner stairs.

Just before they left the apartment, the boy found his father’s phone and chucked it from a window and it would have fallen in the scrub above the conning tower memorial. He had locked the door after him.

The girl led, and the boy held the officer’s arm and Gaz was behind them and kept the pistol within an inch of the back of the officer’s neck, but touched it with the barrel and foresight often enough to remind him it was there. They went down at scrambling speed. Brushed out of the way was a woman who worked part-time in the Fleet museum, the kids told him, and who would have been on her way to work. Next to be pitched back against a wall was the man who did translation work and was also a tour guide when the cruise liners, rarely, came to Murmansk. In the lower hallway, two young teenagers smoked and scuttled away as if lives were at risk. All of them would have known Timofey and Natacha, and would not rush to a phone. Seen nothing, heard nothing, known nothing, all survivors.

Outside, a little fresh sunshine came with the breeze and fell on Gaz’s cheeks. Their prisoner would have assumed this was the start of his last journey. When his feet hit the smoothed dirt beyond the slab in front of the step, he stiffened and tried to drop his weight. But Gaz shoved him from the back and Timofey propelled him from the side. It was only half a dozen paces and the officer was docile. He’d have believed this was the journey that led to a killing site, where there was waste ground and where a body might lie for days, weeks, or months. They had not gagged him again and the blindfold was further down than before. He could have shouted but did not, and he was manhandled along the path, then down to the pavement, then up the hill to where the car was parked.

No further attempt to slow them down, and no yell for help. They used to watch the videos of the killings by the ISIS people in Syria. After, they would go to their bunk rooms and lie in the darkness and wonder how they would be if it were them wearing the jumpsuits, being led out on to the sand, forced to kneel, hair pulled back and their throats exposed, the blade coming closer and laughter circling them. Wondered if they would go to their deaths with bravery – whatever that meant – and defiance. Struggling to make it difficult for the butchers, or just dumbly docile. They had no trouble with the officer. He did not threaten, went with them, and would have believed the man behind him, with the firearm, was the killer who would end his life. Cars went past, and a bus dawdled at a pedestrian crossing, and people on the pavement seemed not to see them.

They wriggled their way into the car. Timofey and Natacha in front, Gaz and the officer in the back. They headed for the bridge and the start of the long route into the tundra, the E105 highway, and he reckoned the Russian prayed silently though his lips moved. Gaz could not say whether he would succeed, or what would be the cost if he failed.