Beyond Recall

Chapter 14

“Why have you stopped?”

The Fiat had pulled off the main road and parked outside a hardware store. The trade for the day had started and the front area was filled with piles of plastic buckets, lightweight ladders, and forests of broom handles. They were on the outskirts of Murmansk, well past the aircraft carrier and ahead of them was the misted outline of the bridge.

Timofey said, “I need money.”

“For what?”

“Because I need it.”

Gaz had his knees up by his ears in the cramped area in the back of the Fiat and his legs were hard against the back of Timofey’s seat. Beside him, trussed, was the Russian. There had been no talk between them. Gaz held the pistol, still with the safety on, still armed. They braked close to the display of plastic buckets, and the Russian’s weight cannoned into Gaz.

“We don’t have time to lose.”

“Then give me some money.”

“How much?” The sum was named. Gaz had to squirm to get his free hand into his hip pocket and heave clear a wad of notes. Natacha reached back, took the money, flicked off several notes then handed the rest back, and her eyes danced in fun. She was out of the car, walked past the buckets and went inside the hardware store. Gaz fidgeted and his legs hurt and his mind was messed, wondering how he would manage what he intended: and he expected – all the time – to hear sirens and see lights. Other customers at the hardware store walked past the little Fiat. Timofey smoked and the car filled with the nicotine cloud and then the Russian started to cough, like he was choking, and a window was wound down. A buggy was pushed past and a small kid pointed at the back seat and would have seen a man with a plastic bag wrapped around his head and knotted at the back. It was a bad place to wait. Timofey dragged on the cigarette then chucked it from the window, let it gutter on the road. She came out. On her shoulder was a heavy garden spade. Sunlight caught the metal.

She had a jaunty walk, like it was fun to go into a store and buy a spade and carry it out, like it helped to move the day on. Natacha opened her door and squeezed inside and sat with the spade between her legs.

She reached back and gave Gaz the change.

He said, “Why did we stop?”

“Because we did not have a spade where we live. We have no garden there, so no need for a spade.”

They were chuckling.

Gaz said, innocent and uncomprehending, and distracted by what he planned and how it would be achieved, “What is the spade for?”

Timofey was driving fast, and a cloud of fumes belched from the exhaust. “Charge it on your expenses – except that Natacha did not bring you a receipt. You want a receipt… you want to know the cost of everything, do you? How much does a bullet cost, a police bullet? I do not know what is the price of a bullet for a Makarov. Perhaps we give it back afterwards and tell them that we are one bullet short and they will not be concerned. What is a spade for? A spade is to dig a hole. We buy a spade because a hole must be dug.”

“It’s what they do in films,” Natacha said.

“What do they do in films?”

“Do you not go to the cinema, watch gangster films? They make the guy dig his hole. They watch him and he digs and they tell him to get the hole longer and get the hole deeper. He sweats when he digs but they have no water for him. He knows what is about to happen but, in the films, he does not sit down, refuse to dig. We will see if he does. See if he wants to fight or wants to go quietly, quickly to his Maker. We free his hands so that he can work but we keep his legs tied. But we did not have a spade and we cannot make a hole without a spade. Do you understand that?” Colour flushed the officer’s face and he was about to speak but did not.

Natacha said, “He digs the hole and we put him down in it and then tell him to kneel, and perhaps he will do so, and perhaps we have to hit him with the spade, but he is still tied and cannot run. Then it is for you. That is our part complete. Why we have to take you both out of the city you have not explained. We could have found you a place up by the Alyosha, by the monument, where there are bushes, places to hide, where the whores work in the summer. He could have been put to dig there. I think you were a soldier.”

Gaz looked full into her face. His eyes did not waver, nor hers. He had said, take him out, it was what was said in the films, the gangster movies. ‘Take him out’ was the drawled phrase in the American dialogue for a killing… Of course he was a soldier. Would have been a soldier and would have been highly regarded by his commanders, had been sent on a mission of danger. Would be a trained man, resourceful, without weakness: she almost snorted at the thought, not like the idiots that had been sent by her own government to Britain and other places in Europe and who were identified as assassins. This was a professional soldier and he would feel nothing when it came to the moment of looking into the pit and watching the officer slowly lower himself down and kneel. He would line up the pistol on the back of the officer’s neck, or the back of his scalp. Perhaps the officer’s lips would be moving, as if he recited a prayer. Might be allowed to finish the prayer and then be shot, might be getting to the last lines of it, and then the trigger pulled. As a professional he would not hesitate, would do it, and cleanly, would take him out as they said in the movies. She had never named Timofey. Had been offered inducements of early release, had been threatened with abuse, rape, but had not betrayed him. She did not think that Timofey would have been able to look over the open sight of the pistol, aim, squeeze. Not Timofey. This was a soldier and it was his training. They had cleared the bridge. No roadblock in place. Fuck knows what they would have done… scattered, and she and Timofey knowing where to meet eventually, and leaving the other two. Would have been bad if there had been a roadblock, would have been the end of the dream. In the movies, the screen first went to black and the sound was killed and the lights came up. The dream was the money. Because the mission was important enough for the ‘sleepers’ to be woken, Timofey said the reward would be huge. She did not know where they would go, her and Timofey, to spend the money… the officer saw her, and would have heard every word she had said.

Part of the pleasure for her was knowing that the officer heard, understood, what awaited him. Like it would be a small piece of revenge, instituted by her, for the men who choked to death, or drowned, in the sections below the conning tower that she could see each time she looked from the apartment, and revenge for the death of her father. She could have done it, but not Timofey. She could not have relied on Timofey to do it, in what the films called ‘cold blood’. The soldier could do it… The officer had heard, had understood, and he breathed harder and his shoulders quivered and his skin had gone pale. It was a fine spade, a strong one, and she had short-changed Gaz on its purchase.

She was laughing, was happy. They climbed on the E105 highway and the ground grew more bleak and trees rarer and an expanse of rock and lakes was exposed. She thought of the killing, closed her mind to the hunt and chase that would follow.

“I cannot believe it. There has to be an explanation that is more rational.” From the major who had replaced their man, who occupied his office space on Lenin Prospekt.

Mikki and Boris received no succour from the female captain. “You say he is missing. You say he may have been kidnapped. You are two long-retired men who achieved only the rank of starshina. I say that you are juniors and were given some vanity role in protecting Major Lavrenti Volkov. Why did he need protection? Because he was the son of an influential father, or because his mother wanted him put to bed safely each night? Why?”

The replacement echoed the captain’s sneered remarks. “Are you telling us that the major has been abducted from in front of you, that you failed in whatever duty you were given, that he has been taken in a criminal enterprise, should now be listed as ‘missing’?”

“If that is the allegation you make, then the issue goes to the colonel who commands FSB in the Murmansk oblast. He will, I assure you, pass it direct and as a matter of priority to Moscow. There will then be mobilisation of all available forces, the arrival of a responsible person, the closing of the border, and a full analysis of the major’s work here.”

“And an examination of his past duties. He served in Syria and served in Moscow. All of his history over the last five years would need examination.”

“May I offer you guidance? More likely than kidnap is scandal. Open that to public examination and you have no idea where the trail leads – could be a woman of the streets, a prostitute, or could be a boy who sells sex, or could be the result of corruption of fraudulent activity and a bitch fight over the control of the rewards of a roof.”

“There are many jealousies in this service. There are those who would rejoice at the discomfort, when displayed in public, of an officer who was universally disliked.”

“So, do you wish to tell me that – in your opinions – Major Lavrenti Volkov has been kidnapped, abducted and that a substantial rescue operation should be launched? Yes?”

“And wish also that his previous work here, abroad and in Moscow, should be forensically examined in order to pinpoint motive for this crime?”

They left. Mikki murmured ‘Those fucking bastards’, and Boris muttered that ‘He should be hung up by his balls, she by her tits’. They clattered out and closed the door noisily behind them. And agreed that an audit of the major’s recent work, and at the village in Syria, would be a killer blow to the brigadier to whom both owed unquestioning loyalty.

Mikki said, “We do it ourselves.”

Boris said, “For his father, not for the little shit himself.”

Down into the bowels of the building and along a corridor running parallel to the cell block. A room where the noise of the adjacent heating boilers in winter could deafen a man. In the room, housing the computer’s heart and backed up by a considerable archive library, were the recordings from the cameras surrounding the building’s perimeter. Neither had the authority to have the clerks run through recorded footage, but it was demanded. There had been a drunk at the gate. Accusations slurred. A demand for an officer. Yelling about denouncing criminals. A young man coming from across the road, and speaking with respect and politeness, carting the man away. And a similar young man at a bar, and… the picture was found. A blown-up print of his face was made.

Also in the basement area was the armoury. Two assault rifles, 100 rounds for each, two pistols with belt holsters and fifty rounds of ammunition for each, a pair of smoke grenades and also the flash-and-bang type, two bulletproof vests, a set of field dressings. They possessed identification cards, and were well known in the armoury because of their trips to firing ranges – anything to break the boredom. They should have had additional authorisation, at least the signature of Major Lavrenti Volkov… but it was a matter of urgency and they were persuasive, and there was talk of ‘someone coming within the hour to provide the necessary confirmation’. They were gone. The weapons went into the BMW’s boot.

They went back to the bar where the little shit had insisted on going for a drink. They wore their ID cards hanging on lanyards, and their FSB caps and armbands and had the holsters on their belts, and Boris had loaded the magazines while Mikki had driven. The bar was not yet open, and the owner was deep in paperwork, and they started to kick the door in. Had demanded the recording from the camera behind the bar. Prevarication at first and claim that there was no camera, so Boris had gone behind the counter and had seen the lens wink at him and had cleared half a shelf of bottles onto the floor where they broke, and would have started on the second half, but the manager had darted into his office and had set up the recorder and the link to the screen. They saw the film, froze it on the kid who had come in to buy vodka, then had the image printed… and kept going until they had a decent shot of the stranger who had walked in with the kid. Had that printed also… and they were gone.

Police headquarters was next on their list of destinations, time running, and no loitering. Police were secondary in Murmansk, or anywhere in the Federation, to FSB. Only showed the picture of the boy: keen eyes that were set deep, fair hair cut short and pushed forward, a strong nose and thin lips and a jaw that seemed to show a lack of compromise, a show of defiance – similar to 1001 boys in the city who were addicted to small-time robbery, pickpocketing, narcotics dealing. Always, in a criminal records archive, there was a keen little beggar who had no value other than being able to match printouts of faces to files. All done fast, and either of them might have given the guy a kiss on each cheek if it had not been for his acne. He was Timofey and there was a family name… and a bonus: a secondary file was produced and a photograph and name. Natacha, pretty little thing and familiar in a vague way, and then a larger bonus. There had been a robbery the previous night. A girl had ‘deceived’ a police officer in his patrol car, a firearm had been stolen, but the girl’s hair was not blonde. ‘‘Try a fucking wig,’’ Boris had said. Mikki had said, ‘‘It’s a good word that, ‘deceived’. Tell him to keep his bits inside his trousers.’’ Gone again. An address poached from criminal intelligence, that of a small-time drugs dealer and his girl.

They found an old man lying in his own vomit. Would have smacked him around had it been necessary. It was not. Behind them the door hung at an angle from one hinge.

Shown the chair where the shit had been tied. The identity of the foreigner confirmed, and talk of the man coming in through the border and being met… and the pleading that he, the old man, be treated with clemency. And he told them how far ahead of them were the fugitives… They were going to kill the major, that too was thrown at them in the hope of additional clemency. They did not do arguments, nor debates, did not dispute. Could they handle it? Could handle anything, and Boris had heard the brigadier’s shock when Syria and disgrace were spoken of… and investigators would be crawling over his history, maggots on old meat.

“Can we do it?”

“Why not?”

“You happy?” Mikki asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Boris said and slapped his colleague’s shoulder.

They drove, blue light on the roof, and would jump traffic lights and overtake crazily, and took the one road that led towards the Norwegian border.

He recognised that the Fiat was approaching the garrison camp at Titovka, where the roadblock was. He had not answered Natacha, no explanations given.

Broke his silence. “We have a misunderstanding…”

A dilemma had faced him, one that he had not before been asked to confront.

He said quietly, “The misunderstanding is because of what I said to you before…”

There was a track off the road. Further up, above the tree line, were the higher chimneys of the camp and a watch-tower on stilts. Timofey was leaning back in his seat, yawning, but Natacha was out of the car, gripping her spade. A thought sprinted in Gaz’s mind: what about these kids, their future, the danger he propelled them towards, the retribution lining up to sledgehammer them? Considered: Knacker would have said, ‘Not your problem, lad, leave the conscience bit outside your knapsack, and I’ll take care of it.’ Only a fast thought, and other issues chased it away, took precedence. They’d suffer… he shrugged, started to explain.

Gaz spoke with no rancour and no emotion. “What I said to you was ‘take him out’, and that refers to him, to Major Volkov. But we do not need a spade to ‘take him out’…”

There were no recent tyre marks on the track surface and the sound of vehicles was behind them on the E105 highway and was muffled by the dense birch copse. The major now seemed to breathe faster: in the final stage of this journey the movement of his chest had been slower and regular, and Gaz thought the man had prepared himself for the moment of execution-kneeling, eyes closed and a final intake of breath and the click of the safety being moved. Now he was listening, and so were the kids in front.

“ ‘Take him out’ was what I said and what I meant. But not shoot him dead. Could have done that on the step of his apartment block, or could have gone up the staircase in the night, tapped on his door, got him there, shot him. Did not have to take him this far out of the city and shoot him. ‘Take him out’ was what I said and what I intend. I will take him out of the jurisdiction of the Russian state. I will take him over the border. Will take him if I have to carry him there and he kicks and screams and wakes the dead.”

In their own styles, all of them reacted. Timofey’s mouth gaped. Natacha blinked. And the officer gulped.

Gaz spoke, had to. “I was once a soldier, but never a killer. I lay in ditches, in holes, and I watched men and saw them play with their kids and kiss their girls and do their functions, and saw them clean their weapons and had the lenses on them when they had a map and planned where to lay the next anti-personnel bomb. Watched, reported, and moved on and was somewhere else when the heavy men moved into position, lined up the long-range weapon and waited for the schedule to be enacted that I’d told them to look for. Was not a part of it.”

He spoke only to the boy and the girl. Gaz did not look at the officer. They were frowning, and each seemed bewildered as if the definition of involvement – what he was prepared to do, was not prepared to do – was incomprehensible.

Gaz said, “I was an eyewitness to a war crime. I was there and I watched. Major Volkov was a party to what was done. He deserves punishment. I am simply a witness, will appear before a legally constituted court of international law. Will give my evidence and hope to see him convicted. I am not a hangman, I do not play with lives. Perhaps that is an honourable principle, worth upholding, and perhaps it is a coward’s way to avoid responsibility. Perhaps. But it is what I can live with. I will take him out of the country, will hand him into the custody of a lawful organisation.”

Natacha said, “I would have done it, if you were frightened.”

Timofey said, “We should have been better rewarded. You have cheated us.”

She said, “We took big risks for you – the pistol…”

He snapped across her. “He sits with a lawyer, tells them of us. We are taken, locked in a shit camp. Dead, and we are paid big money. Alive and it is us who are condemned.”

He did not argue, had neither the breath nor the strength, and thought they both spoke the truth. They were sleepers, had been woken, were unlikely to sleep again. Assets low on the food chain. He himself, in Knacker’s world, was merely an instrument of policy. They, to Knacker and his team, were irrelevant once the assignment was complete.

He opened the door and pushed his legs out, the pistol in his hand: reached in and caught the tunic of the major and yanked. The blindfold had slipped further and the man gazed at him and seemed to try to read him and failed and his lips moved but no words came. He stood the major against the car.

Timofey asked him, “If he is allowed to live, what sentence would he get?”

Gaz said, “Life, if convicted.”

Natacha said, “Then better dead than for ever… and we are sacrificed for your principle that is so valuable.”

Gaz said limply, “It’s how it is. I am not a killer and not a judge, just a witness.”

The officer stared at him, bit his lip, swallowed.

Delta Alpha Sierra, the fourteenth hour

There were few flames left to light the village homes, but the Iranians had fired up their transport, and worked off the headlights.

Gaz watched two of them. Had the glasses with the image intensifier facility alternately on the Russian and the country boy, as Gaz thought of him. Worried more about the boy – could see the outline of his body on the slope where the vehicle lights did not reach – than about the officer. The goats were scattered; the dogs had tried to round them up and bring them back to the girl but they had been spooked by the gas explosion, and had failed. They were back beside her. If he had tried to pull her into the cavity in the sand where he hid, his own Covert Rural Observation Post, there was a better than fair chance she would struggle and the dogs react. Enough eyes were below them that could glance upwards and see indistinct shapes struggling. They were digging a second pit because they wanted to hide everything they had done. If there had been a witness on the hillside they would come searching. He let her stay where she was.

Bodies were dumped in the twin pits. They were thrown in fast, in vague and distorted lines, landed hard and were manhandled to an available slot, and the work went slower because the men were hungry, had not stopped to drink, and the flush from the killings would have dissipated. The Russian had taken a shovel from the hands of a trooper, had started to dig at the far end of the second pit, to deepen and widen and lengthen it. His goons did not help, stood back. Gaz knew this was a country of mass graves. He had heard an UNHCR aid worker comment that ‘Pretty much anywhere in this country that you bat a tennis ball, where it comes down there will be a mass grave.’ Others said that no grass grew above where bodies decomposed, only weeds. The idea that the pits and replaced earth would hide the evidence of the killing for a day or a month or a year was infantile, but they dug and dumped. The officer seemed to regard it as a matter of pride that he should dig faster, throw up more soil, than any of the militiamen. When he turned or twisted and the headlight beams caught his face, Gaz could see that he was working as if demons overwhelmed him. Behind him, his goons smoked and chatted, and the commander from the IRGC shouted encouragement at his men.

The girl did not move. Her arms were around her knees, her head sunk low. Sometimes he heard her murmur, mostly she was silent. He rested his hand on her arm. The silence clung between them but they would both have heard clearly the shouts and barked orders from below.

He sent another message. Was hunkered down, could not move. Would come out when safe to do so. The airwaves of that country were alive with encoded signals and scrambled talk, and great dishes swept for traffic. Would not give a commentary and would not invite an intercept.

He watched the country boy. Trouble with him, probably used to minding cattle or sheep or goats, was that he’d have the keen eyesight to go with his work. Would not need image intensifiers, nor the lights from the personnel carriers and the trucks… Suddenly, a moment of horror. A body must have moaned or twitched and half a magazine was fired into the pit. Might have been wolves where the country boy came from, or big cats, and with his eyesight would come quality hearing. He was on the perimeter line and would have been positioned because both his vision and hearing were trusted. The country boy should have been watching what was done on the football pitch, but a goat had come to him. Gaz did not know about goats, but knew about sheep and reckoned them contrary, easily scared and wanting to be loved, and the boy’s head twisted and his eyes would have raked the slope.

Gaz thought the country boy had seen her. He stood, holding his rifle in one hand, cupping the other to his mouth and shouted below him. The officer stopped digging and listened, and the commander threw down his cigarette and listened, and a vehicle manoeuvred and its lights lit part of the slope and caught the goats in their glare.

It took Arthur Jennings no more than a cursory glance to realise the scale of the sea change. Little time taken for the new order to move in lock, stock and barrel. He would be the first one facing it, the barrel… The pictures so beloved by his friend were still in place but Jennings doubted they’d last until the evening, and the ornaments had not yet been binned, but the framed photographs of the Director-General with the American President and other, lesser, heads of government had been removed.

A quiet voice, with a squeak in it, like an oil change beckoned. “Good of you to come, Mr Jennings. Gather you had to interrupt one of your little sessions. Hope not too inconvenient… My predecessor, sadly, has health problems, is going under the knife in the next twenty-four hours, won’t be coming back, if he survives the ordeal – as we all hope he will – but can look forward to his retirement after distinguished service. The world moves on.”

No answer required and none given.

“I have no intention of faffing about during any interregnum. I expect sooner rather than later to be named as D-G, have the ‘acting’ scratched out. Am beginning as I mean to continue. Games of charades in a public house will cease to have any relevance to the actions of the Service. If a few of you, past retirement age or nearly there, wish to entertain yourselves with fabricated tales of the ‘good old days’, of course you are free to do so. But not with our support, not with our resources, not utilising any individual on the Service staff. Fanciful stories of legendary activities are ‘yesterday’, and the Service believes in ‘tomorrow’. Understood?”

Those activities cavorted in Arthur Jennings’ memory. Triumphant successes, victory snatched from clamping jaws, the dismissal of an odious functionary in Moscow or Beijing or Tehran for manifest failure. On occasions the perpetrator of a no-argument win would be brought to a Round Table gathering and a little of what had been achieved would be dispensed, and there would be an ovation: confidence that the ethos of the Service was alive, enjoyed rude health. He stared at the usurper sitting in comfort behind his friend’s desk: would probably change the bloody carpet the following day, might even have the decorators in by the end of the week.

“We are a modern outfit. We are, I am proud to say and I’ve played a part in establishing this, a place of excellence. We employ many of the best intellects that Britain produces. We have graduates with first-class degrees queuing to join us. We are not a building where mumbo-jumbo, sorcery, is tolerated. Let us be clear, Mr Jennings, we are not going to continue as if the Russian Federation is the only enemy on our horizons: simplistic, convenient and flawed. You are hearing me?”

Nothing to say. ‘AJ’ was always described as having fine eyes. Not a judgement on his vision capabilities, but his ability to bead on an opponent. Even the little inscrutables, the Chinese from the Ministry of State Security, were said to blink or deflect eye contact when it was lasered on them at rare meetings. It was reported to be fearsome. For a moment the DD-G hesitated, might have considered he had lost face, then pressed on and had a page of bullet points in front of him.

“We have endured the circus of Salisbury and relations between the Federation and the UK have been fraught and reached base camp levels. I do not intend to pursue that agenda. We have to talk, find common areas of interest, cooperate against mutual enemies. The Federation shows justifiable irritation in the way that we harbour opponents of the regime, and the extent to which dissidents and spies are awarded asylum here. I want to reach out, while in no way slackening our vigilance, and have sensible conversations. Unless our national security is directly threatened, I will not authorise hostile acts against Russian territory or interests. Most certainly I will not be permitting, on my watch, missions that have little purpose other than to further dubious policy aims abroad, or are designed only to annoy. You are quiet today, Mr Jennings.”

And would stay quiet, and would consider… too early for sherry but coffee would have been welcome.

“I believe the Service, as it moves forward, will put aside – once and for all – these playground antics. Few of them I believe would survive examination by our risk assessment teams. For heaven’s sake, we are dealing with people’s lives. We have set ourselves up as Lord God Almighty if we cling to ludicrous clichés such as ‘can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs’. I won’t have it. I will not go home at night and consider that – through my dereliction – some wretch faces execution in the morning in Evin gaol, in some hell-hole prison tucked away from sight in China, and for what? For the grotesque amusement of dinosaurs who were once on our payroll. Will not have it. Am I clear? And my predecessor’s links with your Round Table are cancelled with immediate effect. You will appreciate that the clock moves forward so we will be opening discreet channels to agencies we have formerly considered to be hostile. Don’t think this a sign of weakness. Absolutely not. It is pragmatism. Any comment?”

Arthur Jennings shook his head. He gripped the arms of his wheelchair and started to turn but it was a slow movement because of the density of the carpet pile. It was good to turn away because the gimlet in the eyes was distorted by a damp mist, like fine drizzle. His back was to the desk.

“Before you go, please Mr Jennings. Are you aware of any operations running at this time? Are there? A direct question, requiring a direct answer.”

He thought of Knacker, thought of Knacker and his girls, thought of Knacker and his girls and their quarters down from the pub where the wake would be in good heart and good voice on the first floor. He could have mentioned a couple of people who were high in the foothills adjacent to the Iranian border with Turkey and who had an asset inside. Could have summoned up the face of a woman, ugly as sin and as crafty as a ferret, who had her asset loose in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. Seemed to forget them. Called to his mind Knacker and the girls who stayed close to him and the little office suite, the Yard… Within a few hours the usurper would be in contact with those parts of VBX dealing in funding and travel arrangements, and liaison with Norwegian agencies, and there would be a record of Knacker’s paper – what could be achieved, and how, and in the briefest time-frame because of the inevitable hazard of information leakage. He never had a running commentary from Knacker, but it was likely one of his girls would have a line into Operations and that brief résumés would be received in London. But the DD-G would have to know what code-name was attached to the mission, might find it hard to expose Matchless before the end of the day.

“How would I know, useless old fart like me?”

He steered himself towards the closed door, rammed it with his wheelchair and it opened. As he remembered the schedule, Knacker’s man would have been beyond reach by now and the wild men from the refugee camp should have been wriggling through a border fence… would have been, should have been. He brushed aside offers of help, passed through the office suite and headed for the elevator.

One of the marine engineers caught her eye.

Faizah was back at work in the Hamburg bar, and it was another busy lunchtime. They had come in, the same group, and had parked themselves at the same table, and on the walls were pictures of old sailing boats, and pieces of antique navigation equipment, and the menu was the same. And their laptop was open on the table.

It would have been easy for her to avoid serving them, leave it to the other girl on duty, but contact had been made and the menu was waved at her. Would have been hard to avoid. All of them peered at her as she reached the table and fished out her notepad and pencil stub. They had fired up the laptop and one of them flicked the keys. A picture erupted in front of her. Remembered him, would not forget him. Then in foul and soaked fatigues and with his skin running with rainwater; in this image, smart and confident and in a pressed uniform, with his cap perched jauntily on his head. The memory was of a man beyond the limits of self-control; the laptop showed someone who believed himself inherently superior to those around him. And they ordered the same as she remembered they had eaten before, and the same beer. She scribbled on her pad and was about to turn away.

One of them said, “We were wondering if it were you.”

Another said, “Caused us hassle.”

And another, “Found ourselves with security policemen when we got home.”

From the last, “An interrogation… ‘What was the photograph on the laptop of a Russian? What entry on which website? Why were we at that website?’ Questions, questions, questions. That Russian and that site. Seemed important.”

And another, “Detail on the Russian. As much as possible.”

Another, “We are all related in Kirkenes, our home, where the dockyard is. We lose the intelligence police, then I have a call from my wife’s cousin’s boy, and he works at a website. I am asked, ‘What the fuck – excuse me, I apologise – what the something is going on because we have a picture of a Russian officer, months ago, at a frontier meeting, and now the spy people crawl all over us, and it is about the British, there is a connection.”

One of them said, “And my uncle’s nephew by marriage, he is a fisherman. You know that a fishing boat, a small one, came into Kirkenes two or three days ago and had sailed from the British islands of Shetland, and in Kirkenes the crew had used an agent to buy up all the red king crabs they could get their hands on, and they paid well over the usual price for them. Where did they take the load? They sailed for Murmansk, would go from Kirkenes and east into Russian water, then past Vayda-Guba and on past Zubovka, and so to Murmansk. There was apparently a problem with their own catches of this crab and the boat went to fulfil an order from smart restaurants. Why was it a boat that came all the way across from Britain? It is very confusing…”

She took the order, made no comment. She disappointed them. Remembered the tang of the sea in her mouth and nostrils, and the freshness of the wind on her face, and – as sharp as if it had been in the previous hour – each line and movement of his face. Could see him as he had been before, when she had teased with her eyes and never spoken, and how it had been when he had clung to her as the killing had started in the village and then she had broken the silence and said that one of the women was her sister; saw him as he had been in the small Norwegian port, his face thinner and more drawn, and his eyes tired and almost a shake in his hand. She had held it and had sensed his fear. The people with him had said she would encourage him in his mission, but all he had to do was identify. Would he kill the officer? ‘Absolutely not.’ Would he help to kill the officer? ‘I just do my job.’ She had snorted contempt at him, had whipped him with her voice and had known stress enveloped him. She had bullied, had dismissed him, and felt belittled and the anger was gone.

She wondered if he were out and back over the border, if a killing had been done; thought if the work were finished then the woman from the Consulate would have told her. She wondered if he were still there, was a free man or trapped. As if she had forgotten the officer, remembered only Gaz. She put the order on the counter, went to clear another table.

It would be, for Jasha, an act of faith.

From his toolbox he took an old pair of pliers. He had drunk a mug of tea which he thought would calm him and stay any shake of his hand. He had fed the dog, but the animal was aware of crisis and had merely toyed with the food in its bowl. His money box was on the table and his military identity card, and the dog’s leash: he believed that would be an invitation to anyone who came to the cabin and found it deserted, to pocket the money, take the leash and the dog. It was his fall-back. His narrow single bed was spread with a coverlet, and his dishes and pans were washed and on the board beside the sink, and… he could hear the moaning.

The figure from history that Jasha revered most was the Red Army commander, Georgi Zhukov. The creature from the wild that he respected most was the brown bear with one foot already a stump and now a fencer’s staple wedged deep in it.

Jasha had heard of men who claimed a relationship with a bear, and they likely lied or had inherited one freed from a circus. He left the rifle, the Dragunov with the telescopic sight attached, on the shelf. He did not think he could play two games and have a fall-back position. He would go to the bear, would help it if his intervention were allowed, but he would not rush back to grab the weapon if the fury of the creature, in its pain, were turned on him. There was an old German song that he had learned before going to Afghanistan; it had been almost a dissident crime to whistle it: Lili Marlene. Jasha removed his shirt and vest, folded them and placed them on the table. The song comforted him. He murmured it, tapped his dog’s head, felt it shiver, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He went out of his cabin, the pliers in his hand.

The bear did not move. It held its leg upright, keeping the whine deep in its throat. Jasha whistled his song between his teeth. He thought the first few seconds would be critical. He walked slowly, deliberately towards the bear. He saw the bear’s head tilt towards him. Everything in the animal’s psyche would tell him that Jasha posed a threat by coming close. He should show no fear, should come with a smile and the soothing sounds of the German anthem on his lips, should show the pliers and allow Zhukov to realise that he had no weapon with him. He was within a metre of the bear.

The arch of the staple could be clearly seen. Zhukov could have swiped him and broken Jasha’s vertebrae, could have slashed him with his claws. He assumed that if it wanted to knock him down he would see only a blur of movement before he was struck. Jasha had not witnessed the wounds on a man that a bear’s claws would inflict but he had seen a moose that had strayed too close to a female with a cub: great railway tracks of blood and the thick hide ripped apart. He watched the bear’s eyes and saw a dullness and looked at his teeth, the mouth wide enough to take his head inside, bite it clean off.

Who would care if the bear killed him? Who would remember him after all the years he had lived in the tundra? Jasha was beside the bear. The last steps were at tortoise speed, his eyes always on the bear’s, and there was a moment when he almost flinched because the animal showed its teeth. Jasha did not stop. His life was either within seconds of ending, or… Enough messing. He reached forward and locked the tips of the pliers on to the arch of the staple. It was big and rusty and caked in mud. One more deep breath. He pulled, and was flung back. Had used strength but the grip had failed. He would try again. The bear watched him and his front leg stayed upright and Jasha saw his teeth again… a mad thought, perhaps, but he wondered, had he chickened out and abandoned the job, whether the bear would come after him, whatever the pain… He felt himself committed. Raising the level of his voice, singing all the words in German that he knew, he came back close to Zhukov. He fastened the pliers on the staple, squeezed the handles so that his fist was near cracking and put his elbow across the bear’s chest to gain better traction, and heaved. Nothing moved. He sang louder, full-throated:

Wenn sich die spaeten Nebel drehn,

Werd’ ich bei der Lanterne steh’n

Used every necessary muscle… felt the staple move, and saw it emerge, blood with it.

Wie einst Lili Marlene, wir einst Lili Marlene.

The bear watched him, its breath rancid in Jasha’s face. He eased his body away. He should not hurry. He was glad that what he had done had not been seen, as if it were a private moment between the two of them and he must not show fear. He walked away, unable to loosen his grip on the pliers. Walked steadily as if nothing special had happened.

He went back through the cabin door and the pliers fell from his hand, and the staple clattered free and he felt his head spinning and his legs crumbling, and he fell to the floor.

The harbour launch had left them. The fishing boat sailed alone.

The skipper studied his charts and used satnav and could only hope that the choice of location was indeed a section of the inlet’s coast that was not under the highest levels of surveillance. They were beyond the Northern Fleet headquarters at Severomorsk but were short of the submariners’ garrison city of Vidyaevo. It was a simple plan. All the best plans were. He believed that complicated procedures were generally unsatisfactory, prone to failure. It was the last throw. They had waited and had dared to hope that they would see him at the outer gate, flitting in the shadows, and would then be chatting up the security while the stranger came with his bogus papers, and was waved through. There was an emptiness among them and the bottle of scotch was on the table below. It was what they called a back-stop.

They put up black smoke from the stack and seemed to slow and then to veer from the straight as if their steering was affected along with their reported engine trouble. Daylight, but no other way. There was a navigation marker buoy, attached to a heavy weight by a rope long enough to handle the rising tide and a couple of metres below the buoy was a package wrapped in oiled tarpaulin. Inside, deflated and folded tight, was a dinghy. When they were as close to the rocks and the shore line as the skipper dared, and near to an out-of-date iron frame for a navigation light, the weight and the buoy and the package were heaved over the side. Then, as if the engineer had performed a miracle, the dark smoke dispersed and the steering problem seemed resolved, and course for the open sea was resumed.

Gaz said, “So that a mistake is not made you should know what I intend. I will take you to the border, take you over it or under it, and on the far side you will be put into lawful custody. All of your rights will be observed. You will lead and I will be a pace behind you. If you attempt to break clear, then I will shoot you in the leg. As you know, Major, this is wild and hostile territory. You will be crippled, unable to move other than on your stomach, and you can shout but you will not be heard. You will die alone and in great pain. That is what I intend if you play games with me. Now, we start to walk.”

He did not make either a heartfelt farewell to Natacha, nor an insincere one. Did not acknowledge that she had conjured out of the night a police service pistol for him, nor that she had kicked the officer when it had mattered. Nor did he give a hug or a handshake to Timofey. Might have been because they were kids off the street and nothing in his life mirrored theirs, and might have been because their sense of freedom unsettled him. He bent, his back to them, and flicked open the knots fastening the plastic bag around the officer’s ankles, then reached up and tugged down the blindfold bag… It was the first big step, he supposed, the start of the hard yards that, God willing, would take him back to Westray. He gave his prisoner a prod, like he was a dray horse needing encouragement, and they set off on an animal track, a yard wide. He had his weapon ready, had no illusions about the officer’s compliance.

It was what his own instructors would have said to the guys and girls on the Escape and Evasion stuff. The best chance of getting clear was at the start, and that had not worked for the officer, but they also stressed that any time an opportunity came up it should be taken. The alternative was a jumpsuit if ISIS had him, or a Syrian torture dungeon if it were the government. The sun was high, almost hot, and flies clustered on them, and the prisoner could not get them off his face and shook his head violently. It might take four or five hours to reach the fence. Gaz thought it the beginning of the end… Was it better to die, quick and clean, or to squat in a cell and see the sky through blistered glass and bars, without the chance of tasting the air beyond a high wall?

They started out over hard ground, and climbed. He heard a siren. He had the pistol close to the officer’s neck and twisted his head and saw the blue light through the trees hustling fast up the E105 highway. The prisoner did not slow and the siren passed them.