Beyond Recall

Chapter 15

He would try to get close – without the guidance of the kids – to the lake that he had skirted and then the fence where he had come through. They were making good progress, and the prisoner did not fight him.

A handgun had an effective range of ten paces. Gaz would have been rated, on the range with a Glock, above average, but that had been two years ago. To achieve a good shot, a stopper, at ten paces in the chaos of a man breaking away and trying to run, with bushes to deflect a bullet and obscure the target, would have drawn praise from the instructors. A man with his wrists tied at his back was still able to duck and weave.

He had been given no reason to use force against him. Everybody had seen the internet-peddled version of Saddam’s hanging, with guys in the shadows bawling abuse at the dictator as he stood upright, steady, on the trap. All the young squaddies had voiced that it was ‘out of fucking order’, whatever the magnitude of the man’s crimes. He did not abuse the officer, nor use violence, just prodded him forward along the animal trails. And the sun was burning through a veil of cloud, and Gaz gave a curt instruction each time he reckoned they should veer right or left.

When he spoke, a necessary few words, he did not use an obscenity, nor call him by his first name, he was Major Volkov. Others would judge the major, but he would go to the end of any road to bring him to a court of law.

Unable to protect himself from the whip of low branches and of bramble stems, the major was beaten across the body and thorns caught at his clothing. Easier for them to move faster if the bag binding his wrists were removed and he could use his hand to shield his skin. There was blood on his cheeks from small cuts. Each time Gaz saw the smears he looked at the line of the scar that ran from near to the ear and almost to the side of the mouth and remembered. He would shoot if the man tried to belt him, struggle with him, or bolted. Would shoot him; but afterwards regard it as failure. Messed-up thoughts careered in his mind and every two or three minutes he needed to blot them out and concentrate on the direction they took and the climb that brought them to the plateau of the tundra. Almost open ground, only sparse low trees.

Gaz knew that complacency was a killer. It was going too well, and anxiety built. There were long silences: he could not read the major. Was he close to springing the trap? Might he pretend to stumble and twist as if falling, then turn and use his head – the weight of the forehead was as destructive as a knot of wood or a rounded stone – to crash into Gaz’s face, to break his nose? A sudden movement. Gaz stretched, had the pistol barrel hard against the man’s neck and saw the indentation it made, and twisted the foresight so that the skin was caught and blood dribbled. But he said nothing. Remembered the fifteenth hour because that was the one that had collapsed Gaz, changed his life. The fifteenth hour was why he was there, plodding across tundra, bringing home a prisoner.

Delta Alpha Sierra, the fifteenth hour

Gaz watched the country boy.

He shouted and gestured, attracting attention. One of the drivers responded. An APC was swung round, had a searchlight mounted. The country boy was caught first, using an arm to cover his eyes. With his other arm he pointed up the hill. The light threw his shadow on the slope, sharp all the way until it rested in the girl’s lap, a yard short of Gaz’s position in his scraped-out hide. The light edged up the hill – military grade, designed to search out infantry up to 400 metres away. Bizarrely, the Russian officer was the only one left working at the pits, rearranging the new cadavers, the rim higher than his waist. His goons stood behind him. The commander left him there and strode forward, wanting to know why the militiaman was on the slope and yelling for troops.

The searchlight wobbled, steadied, was off course, then found her. A shout of triumph from below. And it found the dogs and they cowered.

The commander might have shouted for the men to come back inside the perimeter line, might have sent his NCOs scrambling up the slope and using their rifle butts to send the militiaman back… Or might have thought that this long after it had started, and this late into the evening, it was better to let the business take its course. He would have seen what the militiaman saw: a woman, in wet clothing clinging to her body, wisps of her hair escaped from under the flattened scarf on her head, the long skirt that hid her legs. The country boy was advancing up the slope, the gang of militia coming after him. Some would have wanted to get to her because she was probably the sole witness to have survived… some because they had not been on the detail that had taken the village women away from sight and into the gully and the dried-out river-bed. Those who had formed the perimeter line duty had not enjoyed what others had… and the light fastened on her.

No chance for Gaz to ask advice… no officer to quiz, no senior guy back at the Forward Operating Base, no sergeant who had ‘been everywhere, done everything’ to challenge for a solution. His legs were locked and his breath came in gasps. He could drop the country boy but another twenty men came behind him and where the light was mounted was also a heavy machine-gun. There would be fleet-footed kids among the militiamen, tired and hungry and cold, but enlivened by this circus ring of excitement. Gaz was stiff, his gut ached with lack of food, and his mouth was dry.

He was about to speak… about to make some damn great hero speech. Waste of time, waste of effort, stuff about ‘going down fighting’. Did not speak, did not have to.

She was on her feet, brushing off his hand, a slow and considered movement. The light was full on her and the dogs hid behind her skirt.

In front of her, like a pack that had spotted prey, there was first a pause, and then the country boy was flicking at the belt of his trousers, and Gaz saw a grin playing on his face, and he would be the first to reach her.

She hitched her skirt and began to sprint down the hill and would have known it better than her hand, and chose a narrow track, made by her goats over the years. Her dogs galloped with her.

Had never had a conversation with her, only eye contact and long days of it since he had first come to the village. He had worked the duty roster with the people who did the tasking, made certain that he always went to the village to replace the batteries in the camera and to collect film. He saw her run and he saw the pack following her.

An English master at school had been besotted with Dickens: It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have… Had loved those words when the teacher had declaimed them: now understood them.

The searchlight stayed on her as she ran. He did not know her name, knew only that once a happiness had bounced in her eyes, and she was a peasant girl from a remote village who had bonded with a foreign soldier and had seen it as her duty to protect him. He blanched at the depth of her loyalty, and saw her fall. Maybe her skirt caught at her ankles and tripped her, maybe a stone on the track was enough to pitch her forward. She was down and he saw the dogs had gone to her. Saw that the country boy had his trousers already flapping at his knees and saw others snatching at buttons and belts, and lost sight of her because of the crush around her, and heard a dog yelp. He was a soldier, presumed strong, and he blubbered like a child. He saw the country boy come back through the crush, lifting his trousers and feeling for his belt, and others pushing closer and making an untidy queue… He wept until no tears were left.

From the trench, the officer watched, his goons behind him. A pistol out, perhaps another movement in the pit, and another shot fired… and he went back to his digging, and the last bodies were dumped, and he shovelled earth, and was alone. And darkness fell as the searchlight by the hatch of the personnel carrier was switched off.

“Who are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“What status do you have?”

“My own status, Major Volkov, that of a witness.”

“What name?”

“I don’t have to give you a name.”

“I wish to address you. What do I call you?”

“When I was a witness I was a corporal. You can call me that – Corporal.”

“But you have an officer with you, of course you do?”

“I do not answer any questions on the mission, Major.”

“You were there?”

“I told you that I was a witness.”

“Is that a witness to a satellite transmission? Or was there a drone up even in that weather? Perhaps you dream of what you think you saw.”

“A hillside south-west of the village. I had a hide in the lip of the hill. Was there from the time you reached the village. I saw the killings, the destruction of homes, I saw…”

“You were a reconnaissance soldier? A British army reconnaissance soldier? You were by the goats?”

“By the goats, and the girl.”

“We thought them formidable troops, the British reconnaissance unit. Why were we opponents? We had the same job, killing the terrorists. Why?”

“Above my grade, Major, those decisions.”

“Were you romancing the girl?”

“I was not.”

“Just a village girl, all she was.”

“As you say, just a village girl.”

“Only a girl. What happened, it is what soldiers do.”

“You have no need to tell me. Tell a judge. If it is your defence against a war crime that she was ‘just a village girl’ then you must say so. And there were many ‘just village mothers’ and ‘just village old men’ and ‘just village children’. Say that to the judge.”

“By now they will be looking for us. A big force will be out. A cordon…”

“I do not hear the helicopters, Major.”

“And I do not, Corporal.”

Through days, nights, weeks and months it had been welling in him. No one to tell. Only the loneliness of his own company to hear his whispers so that walls and doorways would not betray him. Here, he had only his gaoler to share his thoughts. His head rocked at the thought of this man, a pace behind him and holding a pistol, mannered and courteous and without anger, but with determination. He thought of the Iranians unlucky enough to be captured, taken alive, and thought of the long passageways in the Lubyanka and the men and women who ruled there, and how prisoners, some of them he had sent there, were treated: dehumanised, broken.

“Can I say something, a truth, Corporal?”

“You don’t bargain with me. Nothing is on the table for negotiation.”

“I have shame, Corporal. I live with it and it is more persistent than the malarial microbe. For that I can take medicine, which may work. For shame I cannot find the antidote. It is guilt… I make the excuse that it is just war, that war breeds crimes. Back there I said ‘just a village girl’. I live with it, Corporal, the guilt and the shame.”

“We keep going, Major. If you try to trick me then I will shoot you. Do not try to deceive me.”

“No one else. I have told no one else.”

He did not know if he was believed. Nor did he know whether it had been good to speak with this junior, whether the burden was lifted.

Timofey was in front, Natacha a pace behind.

They never disagreed on tactics. The officer could be taken into custody, or he might break free and run; either way he would be at the head of the queue to denounce them. The reckoning was that more money would be on offer if the officer was dead.

Timofey had said, “He stays alive and the FSB will be at our home. How do you run here, where do you go? Nowhere to run to… Imagine we have the money and we cross the border, and the money is useless, has no value. We have to do it.”

Natacha had said, “No future, no hope, not if he denounces us. I will do it.”

“We both do it.”

Like a bonding, like the blending of blood, both stopped the pursuit and crouched down, using their fingers to gouge through the lichen of the trail, to scrape and dig for stones, to prise them from the dirt. They were heavy stones, hardened from the eruptions of millennia before. Not as good a weapon as the pistol would have been, but the best available. It was not difficult to follow the trail because foot prints and broken twigs and crushed weeds were markers. She would have said that he had the stronger will for survival. He would have said that she had the better instinct for avoiding danger. Natacha thought that he would want to strike the first blow on the officer’s head. Timofey would have said that she would demand to hit first.

At times they could skip from stone to stone, miss the patches of bog where water lay till far into the summer: at other moments they sank in the pits and he had to lie on his face and reach into the dark mud and drag out her shoe. Would not have said so and would not have shown it, but the girl was more important to him than flight over the border, the escape to a life beyond Russia… he would lose her if they went. He would appear gauche, awkward, and she would dance for a new music player, and they would be lost and helpless and always running, and she would drift from him. Both were city kids and knew Murmansk and could trade in any of its districts and had friends of a sort there who hung out with them and drank sparingly with them, and dealt dope and ’phets on neighbourhood pitches. They would not go. To stay they had to destroy the chance of the major naming them, identifying where they lived.

He saw them first, and she had them in view a moment later. They sank down on their knees. The pair were less than 100 metres ahead and going slowly. The Russian had stumbled, and it was clear to Timofey and Natacha that the younger man had heaved him up. Not a kick and a punch but a helping hand. They crept forward, and he had his stone behind his back and she had shoved hers down her anorak. He was twenty-two years old and she was twenty… and he thought that if he were not leading her she would slip away from him and be gone towards brighter lights. She thought him reliable and dependable but also beginning to be predictable. Both would have said that, for reasons known only to them, they needed this moment of violence and authority. They started to run.

They were on a stretch of drier ground and they could go fast and the gap closed.

Natacha was jostling to get past Timofey, to be the first to strike. The shock was wide on the stranger’s face and his prisoner was cowering. She held her stone high and was clear of Timofey, realised that momentum was important in any attack: could be out in the middle of tundra, unseen, or could be in a dark corner by the Kirov statue, or among the trees behind the Kursk’s conning tower. She seemed to have a fury about her and her arm was up, the stone bigger than her fist.

Gaz reacted in the way he had been taught.

Retaliate and do not back off. No other options, no place he could run to. His prisoner was on the ground: could not escape. The pistol was in his ‘wrong’ hand and it would have cost time to swivel and aim. He used his spare arm as a shield and deflected her blow. She recoiled. Timofey came after her. Gaz caught his wrist and pushed the boy back, and Timofey’s feet were entangled and he fell backwards. She came again at him. Gaz was from a culture where fighting women was degrading, would not have expected to use his full defence techniques: the heel of his hand across the throat, fingers extended and reaching for the eyes, a hard knee jerk up and into the lower belly, grabbing an ear lobe and twisting it… belting her across the face with the pistol as a last resort – or, the big call, aiming at her. She pounded at him and wriggled like an eel. He wasn’t her target so she fought, scratched, tried to reach the officer. He would take blows and bruises and blood, but would not permit her to harm his prisoner. He fought with one hand. The other held the pistol.

Timofey was back on his feet and lurching towards them and she had registered the pistol, and went for it. Hard against his body, writhing, difficult to hold unless he grabbed a fist of blonde hair and yanked it back, but she could survive pain. Had absorbed it all her life, had the pallor of Arctic nights, tower block life and prison cells. He had been forced to his knees and covered the prisoner, who was helpless, his hands tied behind his back. He supposed, vaguely, as the blows rained on him, hers with feeling and his with less enthusiasm, that he would give his life to protect the Russian major, and it would only take for him to lose hold of the Makarov pistol, or one blow of the stone in his hand or hers… if he were concussed, knocked unconscious, then the prisoner was dead.

He remembered the arguments. More money as a reward for them if Major Lavrenti Volkov was dead because that was the aim of the mission that had sent him to scout out the location for a murder. More chance of them sliding back into the anonymity of dope peddling if the life of the man who could identify them was terminated. Gaz could not fault the arguments, but rejected them. One blow, and he had failed in his responsibility, might as well have stayed on the island, kept up his little chain of jobs, kept space in his home for the black dog.

He hit her. She squealed, fell back. Without hurting her he would never get off the tundra, reach the border, cross to the safety of Norwegian territory, all tantalisingly close. He lashed with his boot at Timofey’s leg, and doubled him. Gaz did not know what happened in the next two, three seconds. Perhaps when her fingers had been groping for the pistol, one had found the lever for the safety and had shifted it. Perhaps, when he hit her or kicked the boy, his grip had altered and a finger had gone inside the guard. He was reeling, pushed himself up and the prisoner was still, barely breathing and face down. She had hatred in her eyes and part of her face was flushed from his blow. She glanced behind her and caught the eye of her boy, and it would have humiliated him that she led, not him, that she challenged him, and Gaz knew that the next time they came for him it would be… .

They did not do wounding shots on the range when SRR practised combat shooting, nor in the field. The card they sometimes carried spoke of justifying lethal force in the belief that their lives or those of others under their protection were now at risk. They did not do wounding shots because then an adversary might pull a grenade pin, detonate an Improvised Explosive Device, or have the strength to use a knife. The training was for killing shots, those that ended life. She would have taken the first two bullets, mid-chest or centre of the forehead – either where her thin anorak was torn open and her blouse had lost buttons in the struggle, or above the blaze of her eyes. He stumbled as he readied himself, and the prisoner was trying to turn and the officer’s feet caught in Gaz’s.

Only one shot fired. The crash of the firing in his ears and a moment of lost hearing, and the smell of the discharged bullet, and the flash of the ejected round.

Timofey dropped his stone, stepped back, raised his hands. Natacha froze. Not a surrender, but she ducked her head and knelt. The prisoner had jack-knifed into the foetal posture. His hearing sang with the sound of the discharge, but the quiet and the emptiness had come back to the tundra. Gaz pulled the officer to his feet.

Gaz said, “I understand, Natacha and Timofey, that you feel you would be paid more if this man were dead because that was the purpose of the mission. I understand that my prisoner has seen your faces and can identify you and I do not know how to protect you from that risk. I understand the gravity of the risks you have taken but Major Volkov is in my custody. I have to guarantee his welfare. I cannot feed him because I have no food, and I cannot give him water because I have none. But I can defend him, and will. I will go to my grave to defend him so that he can be delivered to a court and go in front of a judge. That is the way it is and your hopes of payment, and your anxieties about identification, are secondary. That is where we are.”

Gaz walked tall, the prisoner a pace in front, and gritted his teeth; sweat ran in his eyes, and he felt the pain where she had hit him with the stone, and where her teeth had bitten.

He heard them following. He did not look back at them and had the pistol tight in his fist with another round ready to fire but with the safety lever raised. A sort of peace fell, and the intrusion of a shot being fired seemed long past, as if forgotten.

He lifted down the Dragunov, checked the magazine, armed the rifle.

Jasha had been asleep. Exhausted, he had lain across the front step of his cabin, his head on the bottom of the door jamb. He did not know how long it had been before he had lost the trembling in his hands, had put out of his mind the size of the teeth and the strength of the claws. And it was not just Jasha who had collapsed under the weight of the stress, but the bear also. Zhukov had lain on his back, his stump still raised, had not yet stuffed it into its mouth to suck the wound clean. Both man and beast shattered.

He put on his vest and shirt and slung the rifle on his shoulder. It would have been the same for both of them. First sleep, then slowly waking, then disbelief that it had happened, then the sound of a single shot. Near to the door was the debris of the experience. Spatters of blood, the rusted staple, and the pliers. He stepped over them. The dog did not follow him. Both Jasha and Zhukov had a rooted suspicion of intruders on their territory. Uppermost in his mind was the memory of seeing the two city kids skipping among rocks and bogs with a military man struggling to keep up with them.

The sun on his face, Jasha looked for Zhukov. He might have seen the bear’s haunches between low trees. But they were still heavy with leaf and it could have been the back of the bear’s head. He set off. He could go fast across this terrain, and the bear would likely follow him. He went towards the place where he believed he had heard a pistol discharged.

Alice reached Fee.

“How is he?”

They stood together on the coast line, could see past the repair yard and the quays for the cruise boats and up the inlet, almost to the open Barents Sea.

Alice answered, “Just quiet, as when stuff stacks against him. Focused.”

“And said?”

“Don’t think he really said anything.”

“End of an era.”

“End of fucking everything as we know it… It was pretty specific what came to us. That Operations Group Executive didn’t mince it. Back home, and soonest. Seems there’s been a coup d’état, and that the D-G’s gone off to meet a surgeon’s knife and the DD-G has his hands on power. All the pantomime stuff, the Round Table, it’s gone to the trash can. And Matchless is for the fairies, the Service won’t go up that road any more. Dominic told me all that, more than he should have, along with the ‘homeward bound’ bit.”

“Wants to get his hand in your knickers.”

“That is disgusting,” Alice pouted. “Probably true…”

They made a point, Fee and Alice, of discretion. Their relationship was not an open secret. Had it been, they’d have likely received overtures to join up with splinter groups bent on advancing the cause of their sexuality: and fuck-all business of anyone. But they were not observed in Kirkenes, and Alice had slipped her hand into the crook of Fee’s arm, had a hold of that muscular elbow. A couple of relaxed lovers… not a pair of girls who had heard that the purpose of their professional lives was disintegrating, that their boss was surplus to requirements.

“… Dominic says that the best Knacker can hope for is a berth in Finance and Resources. No more fieldwork. No chance of him being where he is now, on a border and staring into the haze and the mist, and waiting.”

The message had come through. Alice had taken it. She had gone to find Knacker up on the border, watching the fence, escorted by their Norwegian guide. Had passed it on… Had been greeted with an impassive face, something of a shrug: no obscenities, no collapse of the shoulders, barely a twitch at the sides of his mouth… It was payback time for Knacker, the D-G’s protective parasol under which he had thrived, now gone.

“We’re casualties, poppet, go down the plug with him.”

“I will fucking miss it, really will.”

Fee had the fags out and Alice lit them. They would stay put and wait for the arrival of the small fishing boat, and the Harbour-Master’s Office had told Fee it was out of the main shipping channels and at the north end of the inlet, and they’d see it within an hour. No indication of whether their man was aboard. That was their vigil. Alice threw away her cigarette and it buried itself in fresh seaweed dumped from the last high tide.

Alice said, “We’re doing a vigil and so is he. He’ll stay up there until we know where our man is, and whether it’s been win or lose. He’ll work until they cut his legs off at the knees… Tell you something – all of those guys and girls that he recruited, then put in harm’s way, exploited and used, never let them cop out while they were still functioning, they never complained. Bizarre. Why not? They’d cause to… If not dead, they could have queued right across Vauxhall Bridge, and marched on VBX, then slagged him off. Didn’t. Never bitched about him, seemed almost grateful to him. Funny old world.”

They gazed out at the sea, focused on the headland around which the trawler would come, and, held each other tight.

Mikki said, “That is a pistol shot.”

Boris said, “It would be nine mills, a Makarov.”

“One was stolen, a Makarov.”

“Stolen from a cop, taken off an idle fucker.”

“And being pleasured?”

“Good chance it’s the one from the cop. Where was the shot?”

“Towards the border, where else?”

Quietly spoken and with a minimum of fuss they put a call through to the barracks at Titovka, and their presence in the ranks of FSB was repeated to a duty officer, and the advice that intelligence indicated an attempt would be made later that day to breach the fence dividing their Federation from the NATO country of Norway. Not specific, but emphasised that FSB did not expect their warnings to be discounted. A map had been dragged out and spread wide. Boris said where he thought the shot had been fired. Mikki stood at his full height and sniffed the air. They would both identify where the sound had come from, could factor in wind strength and direction, estimate how far from the road the pistol had been fired. They parked off the road.

Mikki said, “We’re having two platoons up on that sector of the fence. The line we’re going would give us a two-kilometre probability zone, where they’d be looking to cross. Two platoons and vehicles on the patrol track.”

They went forward at a good pace, and had the fire-power drawn from the armoury.

Mikki said, “As long as this is understood, we do not walk through this shit-hole territory in the interests of that bastard. Not for him… Could have been that shot sent him on, and not a wet eye from anyone I know.”

“His mother might weep but not for long. And nothing from his father. We are here on this fuck-awful piece of ground to do things for the reputation of the brigadier. We had the contract to watch for him.”

“Had the contract and were pissed.”

“Pissed and asleep, and the contract paid us well.”

“Were asleep when he was lifted.”

“Which is?”

“Which is not something to be shouted from the rooftops.”

Two peals of laughter, but both grim and shorn of humour. They moved fast and their legs pounded the rough ground like they had decades before when they had trained to go to Afghanistan. Tiredness would kick in later… Nothing to do with rescuing the young FSB major and nothing to do with the possible, or probable, incursion of a team from a hostile state. Only to do with the loyalty felt for the brigadier.

Gaz had realised the change. The kids were behind them, at a distance, but keeping pace. No one spoke. Gaz did not talk to his prisoner about the weight of responsibility, nor about what he had seen from his position on that day more than two years before, made no accusations. The major had denounced himself, declared his guilt and shame, but said no more of it. Did not complain about the lack of food or water, did not try to free his arms, or speak of the kids’ attack. Gaz reckoned that soon they would break away and might shout a farewell and might not, but would head back, would want to be in their dealing zones when the peculiar half-light of the Arctic summer came to their city.

Soon they would be, if his navigation was proven, at the lake, and they might rest there, and he would be wary and have the pistol ready, and consider how they would do the last leg to the fence perhaps an hour and a half away. His concentration roved. Knew it and could not stop it.

Part of his mind dribbled in the direction of what would follow his crossing – after he had climbed high, and to hell with the barbed wire on the top, and no concern for the alarms that would be shrieking in some control centre. Where would Knacker be? How would it be received, bringing back a prisoner? The man in front of him kept his own counsel, did not query where they went, how they would go across the frontier. Would have wanted a corpse and the ability to filter word to a broken community that vengeance of a sort had been inflicted on those responsible. Not able to get at the Iranians, their commander and militiamen beyond reach, but a Russian officer was a bigger prize. Except they would not have that: instead they must make do with a man – ordinary and seeming harmless, respecting the instructions of the court guards, standing in front of robed lawyers. Would have wanted a body, and were not going to have one. Thought also, accessing a different section of his mind, of the danger of the lack of concentration and his inability to create a full sense of danger. Knew of men who had been in Afghanistan and who had done long-range patrols or had been in the business of defusing the IEDs, and who had been either careless or too tired to register what was around them, and had died – like the devils stalked them and watched for weakness. And switching back in his mind, the people on the other side – Knacker and his girls – would have to make do with what they were given.

A big bird circled high over them, and sometimes he heard the kids talking, and did not know why they followed. He listened for sirens and for a helicopter, heard neither. Sometimes Gaz was aware of wheezing noises and thought it was the kids, and sometimes a twig snapped, and he thought that was the kids’ feet. And he tried to up the speed but was too tired and the ground too rough, and they managed only a plodding progress on the old animal trails.