Beyond Recall

Chapter 16

Close enough now to the lake to see the reflections bouncing off it, and silver ripples.

It was the biggest, best, marker point since he had started to walk the prisoner across the empty landscape. Felt almost proud – not about the mission, not about its success, but about the simplicity of navigation… didn’t think many would have been able to locate it. Getting close to the lake deflected what was more serious – the border. But, still surprising, there were no helicopters and no drones, and no baying dogs. The kids followed them and he did not know why, were just a distant tail… At the water, fish were leaping, leaving increasing circles. He stopped and motioned that the prisoner sit on a rock, and was refused. The prisoner pointed to his flies. Gaz had the role of gaoler which he took seriously. Half the men he had known in the military, maybe even Arnie and Sam who were the last he had worked with, and maybe even ‘Bomber’ Harris who piloted the Chinook when they had been taken to the village, would have told him to go ‘piss his pants’. Not Gaz. He fiddled with the officer’s flies, and worked the necessary gap in his pants, and might have grinned sheepishly. It came in a flood and some went down into the lake. He thought it was an obligation, and the prisoner finished, and shook his backside and let the last drop go, and Gaz put him back inside and zipped his flies, then motioned to the rock.

His prisoner sat. “Thank you.”

Gaz grunted. It had seemed the right thing to do, and he had done it, and nodded to acknowledge the gratitude, and reckoned it was genuine.

“And I do not know your name.”

“ ‘Corporal’, just that.”

“And I am ‘Major’. Why did they give this work, this mission, to a man so junior, to a corporal?”

“Because I was there and because I could identify you.”

“Why did they not send trained men with you, men from the special services?”

“I cannot discuss operational planning.”

“You are very formal, Corporal.”

“I think that is as it should be, Major.”

As an afterthought, Gaz pushed the Makarov down the back of his belt. He went to the edge of the lake and stood on pebbles, crouched and leaned forward and cupped his hands. He filled them with water. Then went back to the rock and his prisoner lapped at the water, wet his mouth but slopped most of it. Did it again, and repeated it until the prisoner indicated he had taken in enough.

“Tell me something, Corporal.”

“I will not discuss the planning of the mission, its end-game.”

“This question, did your family push you into the military?”

“It was my own decision.”

“You did not join because that was the wish of your father and mother?”

“It was nothing to do with my guardians. I do not know the name of my father and I have not seen my birth mother since I was very young.”

A sigh, a shrug, a roll of the eyes as if to say, ‘God and were you not fucking lucky…’ and then, “Are you still corporal, in the military? Will you be promoted if the mission is successful? Well rewarded? I ask to learn your motivation, Corporal.”

“I am no longer in the military. I am a civilian. I had the rank of corporal, but not any longer. I garden for people and repair their homes. It is what I can manage.”

“Because?”

“Because of illness.”

“In the Russian military we call it the Afghan Syndrome – that illness?”

“Because of what I saw, was a witness to. I was violent, hit someone I was close to, a woman. I also can be ashamed of my actions, and feel guilt. And that is enough, and neither you nor me is a therapist. Enough.”

“Thank you, Corporal.”

“For nothing, Major, and we are going to rest another half-hour, then push forward, and we will go through or under or over the border fence.”

The smile that greeted Gaz was sardonic, almost mocked him. He had not yet read the man nor knew what reaction to expect from him as they came close to the wire, and having the pistol in his belt was reassurance of a sort. The kids stayed back.

The Norwegian brought two collapsible stools from his vehicle, and a thermos and other gear.

“What’s necessary, if it’s for the long haul.”

“Appreciated.”

Knacker had been sitting on the grass, under birch trees and within sight of the wire fence, but hidden from view. One patrol had gone by, a four-wheel drive vehicle with only a pair in the front, and he had stayed still and it had not slowed. He sat on the stool, had the same view, but the Norwegian was not satisfied with their cover. From a rucksack, he took two tunics and a jar of camouflage cream. Helped Knacker off with his coat, emptied the pockets, folded it, packed it away. Gave a hand for him to shrug into the military tunic with the camouflage shapes of general NATO markings, and did the same for himself. Opened the jar and dug with a couple of fingers. Knacker offered his face, was daubed. The Norwegian’s fingers moved briskly across Knacker’s features. He recognised an old smell and the taste of the cream when his upper lip was done and his tongue flickered to it involuntarily. A grin, ironic, from the Norwegian.

“Familiar? Back to the good old days? Not recently?”

“Used to, in the Irish times.”

They had been happy old days, not just good. Pretty much anyone who had made a name, positive or negative, awesome or disgraced, had served in the Province, cut their teeth there. The experiences were used as a raw kindergarten, before they’d all dispersed, gone on to confront supposed Russian opponents or those from ISIS, home and abroad. And pretty much anyone would have recalled those days as among the best that life had so far offered. Most of his time in Northern Ireland had been running assets, meeting in darkened pub car parks, or in remote lay-bys; on a few occasions he had worn uniform, done CamCream on face and hands, a Browning 9mm on a webbing belt, and had gone out to do some ditch time, or get buried in a hedgerow with a clear view of a farmhouse. Remembered all the stuff about cows’ curiosity, and sheep gathering in a half-moon and staring at the camera lenses and the binoculars, and the damn dogs that roamed ahead of the farmer when he came each morning to walk his parcels of land and would have a pocketful of enmity to carry with him. There was no danger here, not to him, Knacker was not threatened. Gaz was. He understood, after reflection, that the Norwegian – no name required and no ranking – would be an officer in the PST organisation, or might have been from E14, but he had no need for detail. Sufficient to realise that the man would have known as much about the life of the fence as would a train-spotter at the end of the platform at Didcot, knew every scheduled engine on the down line, and the up. Knacker did not mind help, was not stubbornly resistant… and who cared, who gave a tuppenny toss, because the era of Knacker’s Yard was wrapped in cling foil, gone in the can. Did not have to be told, but had the minutiae of danger for Gaz explained to him, a soft voice and insufficient to frighten the songbirds that flipped close to them.

“What we are hearing makes a picture.”

Gazing at the wire and noting the camera and the cables that would flash alarms if yanked, Knacker followed the progress of a pair of chaffinches, brightly coloured, pretty and confident, who perched on the barbs coiled at the top. And listened.

“It is confusing. We have nothing from the police networks, but have material from the confidential networks of FSB. An officer is listed as missing. He is a major, Lavrenti Volkov. The circumstances are vague. There are also reports of a foreign asset having crossed the frontier, and met by a nonentity couple, drug dealers. More reports indicate that a force of a hundred border guards will be deployed on the border within the next hour… May I ask if it has been an aim of your organisation to bring a prisoner into Norway and…”

“No bloody way.”

“The prisoner being taken to the border is an assumption based on what we know.”

“About as far from reality as is possible to stretch.”

“A prisoner brought with coercion to the border, and across it, would signal a grave and embarrassing situation. Repercussions would follow.”

“Our guy, he has no mandate.”

“Your man’s brief, as I understand, is to report on locations and schedules, not more.”

“Or do the business there.”

“I have been, perhaps unwisely, selective with the information I have passed back to my superiors. If a prisoner were brought across the fence there would be a greater fallout than if such a prisoner and your agent were to be intercepted on the far side of the fence. It would be bad, would destabilise the narrow agreements that are in place. Nothing then could be covert, hidden. Is there a situation where your agent might believe it within his remit to bring over a prisoner?”

“Absolutely bloody not.”

“Effectively to kidnap a major of FSB would provoke a very considerable issue.”

“Not authorised. Would be in flagrant violation of any instructions given him.”

“Why then would he act in such a way?”

“Don’t know. I’ll take his fucking balls off, watch me as I do it.”

“So, we wait and we see.”

They did not have long to wait. A small convoy of military trucks laboured up the track parallel to the wire. An officer dismounted from a jeep. Uniforms jumped down from the tailgates. And a dog handler came with them, and a machine-gun with a forward bi-pod. Orders were given and a field of fire back towards a forest track was identified. The convoy moved on and cigarettes were lit, and weapons were armed. Knacker’s hand, as if he needed comfort, went to his trouser pocket.

The coin was easy to find. Lightweight metal and frayed at the edges and with the indents on its surfaces almost eroded in spite of the girls’ hard work at cleaning it. His fingers turned it over… He reflected. He was the intelligence officer, painted and was crouched over his stool, and he wondered how many times that man, the keepsake in his imagination, had taken up a position within sight of the Wall, had been there damn near two millennia before and had watched for the return of his asset… And on the other side, hidden behind the Wall, behind the fence and the tree line, was the sector’s garrison commander. He saw himself in both roles, held the coin between two fingers, and one would win in the next several hours and one would lose – and neither would ever have believed they could trust an agent, an asset, to do as he was bloody told. He let the coin fall and it was subsumed amongst his small change. One to win and one to lose, predictable for both Knacker and his adversary.

The sea was millpond smooth.

The wind had gone, a little sunlight pitched through the cloud. Fee and Alice disentangled their arms, stood apart, as if they were at work.

“The betting?” Alice asked.

“Turning out to be that sort of day. I’m taking a no-show.”

Not often in their lives, tramping in the wake of Knacker and running affairs from the Yard, that they knew failure. Fee had no trust that their man would be on board. The instructions had been for the minimum of phone contact firstly from their man, and then from their boat. Taking it into Murmansk with the hold full of red king crabs, gourmet stuff, had been a master stroke, and having it there as an evacuation vehicle, along with decent documentation, were matters for pride.

A few gulls flew in its wake. Not many, because it was coming back without a catch. No gutted carcases were heaved overboard and the birds had nothing to clamour for. Fee had the better eyes of the two and had a hand at her forehead to shield the glare off the water, and it was hardly necessary but she shook her head. Had he been on board he would have stood at the bow. Would not have waved or jumped about because they were only a few hundred yards from the well-stocked Russian Consulate, and would have been too street-wise to blow the cover prematurely, but would have been there. Nothing to say, just a feeling of growing emptiness. They saw three crew on deck and could make out the silhouette of the skipper in the wheel-house. It came to the quayside, docked carefully. One of the boys jumped ashore and lashed a rope to a ring, and then the engine was cut. He didn’t look at them, avoided their gaze. Another rope was lashed and the boat lay still.

The skipper took it on himself… the engineer slid away and went to the harbour office to do the formalities… came towards Fee and Alice. Cigarettes were lit.

The skipper spoke, with something near to a doctor’s bedside tone, sombre, “We waited. We stayed at the quay as long as we dared. To have stayed longer invited even greater suspicion than we had already attracted. You bluff, and you attempt to make a best friend of a harbour official, but it wears thin. Impatience replaces cooperation. We had to sail. We were ready to hustle him on board as soon as he passed the security checks, and would have sailed within minutes. He did not come. We were sorry to have left without him. We cannot explain it. There was no extra security at the fishing docks. What has happened? A last thing. When we were far up the inlet, at an agreed place, we launched a buoy close to the shore and a small inflatable is packaged beneath it. We had talked of it with him. Very frankly, it is little more than a craft suitable for a beach in summer. I am sorry.”

He broke away, went back on board. Fee and Alice walked towards the town.

Alice said, “I hate this goddamn place.”

Fee said, “It fucking stinks.”

“Just a little nothing town, barely on a map.”

“And under the perpetual shadow of that bloody monster across the border. We’re screwed up, at the end of the road.”

“Best then is to get pissed, make a proper job of it.”

Both kept walking and neither wept and both wished they could.

“We do things differently, Dominic, today and in the future. The sooner that lesson is learned the more comfortable we shall all be.”

Dominic, considered a rising star, had been called to the office now occupied by the acting D-G to report on his communications with the far extremity of northern Norway, where it was adjacent to the frontier with the Russian Federation. He had been able to relay the message that Knacker – called him by that name which raised a serious frown and a shaken head – expected to be out within twenty-four hours, and would be bringing his team with him. ‘All of the team?’ Which was more than Dominic could answer.

“The Service is held back by the presence of a group of decrepit veteran warriors, playing games as if they were still at their preparatory schools. Playing God with people’s welfare, even their lives – which I understand to be this Knacker’s speciality. Has some poor wretch over there, has he? Something quite repellent about men and women who sit in safety while they consign others to risk, often to death. I won’t have it.”

Dominic sailed close to impertinence. He asked if the old adage of ‘rough men’ who might ‘visit violence’, at night, on the folks likely to harm us was now inappropriate.

“That is an attitude, no doubt hawked round by the ‘old guard’. But on my watch it will not be tolerated. Might have been acceptable a century ago, not today. State-sponsored assassination no longer has houseroom, and those who object can go and find themselves alternative employment. Root and branch these ‘rough men’ will be removed from the Service payroll. I won’t have it. It’s a new age that I will preside over… and this Knacker, he has a man on the far side of the Russian frontier, no doubt with a hue and cry up his backside… It will be a new dawn and it starts tomorrow. So, get him home, and his team, before more pain is inflicted. I read a résumé on the justification of this mission. It is preposterous, some woolly idea about a centre of intelligence in some ravaged village in Syria. Should be bottom of any list of priorities, and a Russian citizen to be murdered in cold blood. Might have been acceptable in the past, no longer. They’re going out to grass, all of them. I’ll not permit hankering after the Dark Ages. They are redundant. Understood?”

“Very clearly,” Dominic answered. “I’ll get back on to them. Tell them to find a decent verdant pasture. Have them on the first plane out, those that have a chance.”

“Let’s go do it,” Natacha said.

She was bored, uncomfortable, and tired, and the mosquitoes had taken a liking to her. She reached back and took Timofey’s arm and heaved him up.

They went together, in step, but neither carried a stone. Her idea, not his. Timofey would have turned away from the two men and headed off back the way they had come. He thought, ruefully, that too often he listened to her and did as she said. Had reason to: she had been the one arrested and he had been the one to break free, and she had been the one who had kept her mouth shut during interrogation and he had been at liberty. He sensed a sort of madness about her and wondered what show she would enact. There was always a show with Natacha which made her fun to be alongside, worthwhile when they worked. Was a pain in his gut when she plagued him with the Kursk business – not prepared to move on and ‘get a life’ as he urged. He knew each detail of the Kursk’s sinking and how long the survivors of the initial explosion had been alive at the stern end, and the telling made him shiver each time she parroted it, and what the navy had done and what fucking Putin hadn’t done. Knew it – and loved her in a rough, unsentimental way.

So, they went to ‘go do it’, and she was in front and skipped gracefully off rocks and on to hard grass tufts and stayed out of the bog, and Timofey laboured behind her. He did not know how she would do it, but supported her aim. She wanted money… He thought it a bad day for them, which had got worse because they had failed to retrieve the pistol, shoot the fucking officer, then get back home. Their only consolation was that they might stay free. Money would help. Money, in his opinion, usually helped.

Her show, and he would stay back. He was confident for her. If she could take a cop’s gun off him then he thought her a certainty. She reached them. The officer watched her, hands still tied behind his back, and something beyond contempt on his face, and Gaz never took his eye off her and removed the pistol from his belt. She was covered by the officer’s eyes and by the pistol.

The silence could have been what Timofey hated most about this bare, desolate space. It seemed to close in on him, then begin to throttle him. So he started to clap, rhythmically, as if they were not by a lake in daylight in the tundra but under the strobe lights of a strip club. It was the part she played. Her dance, and Timofey kept up his clapping but sank on to the ground. They would need money if they were to disappear, shrink off the stage and move on, perhaps reach as far as Archangel and start again there. She was a few feet in front of the Englishman and the officer, and her thin little anorak came off first. A girl by the railway station had been desperate for a spliff last summer and had paid for it with this anorak and Natacha was rarely without it. She threw it down by the officer’s feet. Her dance was sinewy, what they might have done in an oriental dive, not that either of them would have known.

After the anorak came the blouse. After the blouse came a flimsy vest. More pirouettes and more fast-foot shuffles, and then the speed of his clapping grew and her hands were at her waist and her belt was hanging loose.

She kicked off her trainers, then her jeans and came to her underwear. She did not look at the two men, did not know whether they watched her, were entranced, or were embarrassed, irritated. She went into the water, until it covered her ankles, and her dance splashed them. Flesh as white as if it had come from under a stone, went further and the water cascaded off her thighs, and her hair dripped and she went in deeper. Took one step more than she had intended and the bottom of the lake must have sloped sharply… and she was pitched forward. The clapping stopped, and she shrieked, went under. None of the men came forward to drag her out.

She surfaced, spluttering. The bones in her body seemed to jut out, sharp enough to break the skin at her elbows, her shoulders and her pelvis. Her hair was lank and tangled.

She chose Gaz. “You liked that?”

Hands on hips in front of him. “You thought I danced well?”

Made no effort to dry herself, had struck a pose, no modesty, and the smile cracked her cheeks. Her cabaret act was complete and attention was riveted on her, as she required.

“Did I do well enough?”

She stretched out her hand and the water dripped from her, and it would never have warmed during the brief Arctic summer, but she did not shiver.

“You will pay me?”

She played her role, thought she did it well. He took a wad of money from his hip pocket, tossed it at her and she caught it, grimaced, then threw it towards Timofey.

“And him?”

The prisoner had his back to her.

“Because he will name us, denounce us. His money.”

He turned. And blanched. Saw her, all of her, raked a gaze over her body, every angle of her. The officer whispered into Gaz’s ear. Gaz’s hand was in a pocket of his tunic and lifted out a smart crocodile-skin, wallet. Peeled out the bank notes, all high denomination. She came close and they were handed to her, and the wallet returned to his pocket. She took the money, as a whore would have done, and grinned.

“And he will denounce us?”

Gaz shook his head. For a moment, confusion knitted her forehead, and suddenly she was small and no longer pretty and her boldness was gone. She covered herself with one arm and scampered clumsily among the rocks for her clothing, and turned away from them while she dragged on her clothes, and it was hard to fasten clasps and buttons because her hands shook.

It was over, like a curtain had been drawn across a stage.

In a few minutes they would move. They had heard no sirens, no helicopters, no barking dogs or the shouts of a cordon closing.

Gaz hardly dared to consider that in a handful of hours he would be touching down on Westray, his island refuge. Never a smooth landing, always a series of lessening bumps and usually a skid, most often to the starboard side as the wind came off the west coast and ran clear across the makeshift strip. A hut there, with a closed but unlocked door, and a chance to call up the hotel and ask who was doing taxi duty that day… Wondered if they would ask, from the far end of the line, whether he had been far, anywhere nice, and had he had better weather than was hitting the island. Just a bit of business that had to be attended to. Would feel the wind on his face coming off the Atlantic, and would hear the gulls’ screams. He gazed out over the lake and saw reflections and felt the cold of the ground and the rock he sat on and the sunshine was brittle. Allowed himself the chance to dream because the last stage was almost on him, and on his prisoner.

The officer was silent. The kids were near him but not joining him, and the money would have been bulging the boy’s pocket. Gaz was surprised that the officer had murmured in his ear a promise that the kids would not be denounced by him, but it had been said. Only a few minutes. The memory was a sharp pain, not welcome.

He had been told that in his condition, which they took seriously, the Orkneys were ideal. An escape from stress, withdrawal from anxiety, an opportunity to regain his health and to prosper, a chance to make strong reliable friendships and to ‘make a difference’ – this was emphasised. Would he go back? He did not know, and the peace at the lakeside disturbed him.

Delta Alpha Sierra, the sixteenth hour

It ended quickly.

Shots were fired into the pits before they were filled with piled earth. No point in the shooting except that it might have reminded the militiamen that they had confronted dangerous enemies. The vehicles were manoeuvring and the headlights spinning through all directions, and sometimes they burned out the vision through his image intensifier lenses, and sometimes he saw men running. He saw the officer work in a frenzy at the second pit, the last bodies going in, and the last soil and dirt covering them, and then the officer was gesticulating to the personnel carrier drivers, and the Iranian commander stood with his hands on his hips and allowed the Russian to give instructions. The APCs were driven up and down over the pits and where they sank too deep in the loose earth, more soil shovelled up to level off the ground… and then chaos. One body had been forgotten, and the pits were already closed over. Gaz thought that it was from the first group to be executed, left beside a goalpost. Petrol was tipped on it and a match thrown. There was shouting from the NCOs, and the final men came running towards their vehicles.

Gaz had seen the pits and the burials and the work the officer undertook himself. Had watched because the alternative was to have turned his head away from the football pitch and the destroyed buildings of the village, and to concentrate on the gang, sprinting with the excitement of a pack in pursuit. He knew where she was, where the chase had ended. Knew also that she had broken clear of him and had run so that she would divert attention away from him. He saw the last one break from the place where they had caught her. Yearned for the opportunity to use his rifle, take aim and lock, get the range and density of any cross wind, line him up and squeeze… and the militiaman stopped, turned, and aimed down at the ground, into the rocks. Gaz thought he identified a piece of her clothing, and saw her bare leg. Aimed, fired, had a jam. Cleared the breach, aimed and fired, and again silence. And in frustration the boy hammered his weapon against a rock… but was not going to strip it down in the dark and clear it. He might have reached for a knife at his belt. If he was a country boy he would have thought little of taking a knife to the throat of a goat or a sheep. There were yelling for him. He went, and fast. If he were a country boy he’d have the sure-footedness of a youngster able to go at speed in near darkness. A crescendo of noise as the engines gained power. He saw a light come on at the back of a carrier and hands reached down to grab him, peals of laughter, and then the heavy noise as the armour-plated door clanged shut.

They left. He watched the headlights turn off the dirt track to her village and straightened on the metalled surface of the highway, fumes belched and they were gone. The lights faded and then disappeared. Night was allowed to settle, and it was quiet. And then a soft sound of whimpering. He knew where he would find her.

Gaz reverted to type. He did not crawl out of his cover, take off in leaps and bounds, charging down the slope and away to his left. He did what was drilled into him as the correct procedure when working behind an enemy’s lines. Folded the scrim net, stuffed it in the Bergen, packed what he had collected in tinfoil and the bottle. He could have gone down to the wall beside the highway and set about changing the batteries on the camera, testing them and seeing if the problem were with the internal electronics or was merely power outage. But he did not… Could have been that the cameras had failed because of the fierce rain getting inside the casing, and he worried that he turned his back on the problem – but he did. He went toward the sound of the dogs.

The smells around him were of burning – the buildings and their contents. But most powerful was that of the scorched flesh of the body that had been noticed only when the grave pits were already filled in. The dogs were his guide. He came to them and the soft growling snarl dissolved when they scented Gaz. They were reluctant to move but came on their stomachs. When he crouched down, and had the Bergen and his rifle and needed one hand to steady himself, he realised that his fingers had moved from the fur of their necks and on to taut skin. Seemed natural to Gaz, the first thing he did, was to find the hem of her skirt and lower it until it reached her sandals. He put his fingers on that place below her neck and on her shoulder where a pulse was felt. He knew she lived. He held her, and the dogs leaned against him. She started to push herself up, came half-way, hacked a cough, then let his arm take her weight and stood. What to say? Nothing to say. He owed his life to her, and did not at that time have the words to express what he thought of her.

The rain had stopped. Small mercy. She leaned heavily on him and he thought she would walk awkwardly and in pain because of what had been done to her. He assumed that she bled there and he would not have known how to ask her. Did not ask her anything and did not speak, and his tears had dried. She had none, and her breathing was steady. He had his phone out, hit the keys, not the text. Darkness cloaked him but he had the stars now, and a moon, and also his compass. She did not trip or stumble. He heard sounds around him that at first he could not identify, but the dogs showed him. Goats had materialised; not as many as at the start of the day. Some would have stampeded and were lost, some would have been shot for sport, but the dogs were alerted and brought the stragglers together.

It was cold: they pushed on. She no longer leaned on him, did not seem to need his help. Gaz could not think of a bigger debt than the one he owed her.

He had watched them for more than a quarter of an hour.

As an old soldier, one who had learned his trade well, Jasha had a rooted belief that problems were seldom solved by the man who hung back. And it was proven.

Time was lost, would not be regained. It interested him that the small group seemed to be resting beside the lake. He had watched. Old excitements had stirred. He had seen the girl do a striptease on the lake shore, had almost chuckled. There had been a whorehouse in a wooden shed by the gate in a perimeter fence around an airfield south of Kabul, and the women had come from Bulgaria or Romania, all a long time ago, and he had thought this girl to be skinny and bony and likely to give a ride to remember. But that was of passing interest… More important, he recognised her. Recognised her and remembered her boy, and the man he assumed to be a trained soldier who had come across the open spaces with them the day before. Knew them, and saw that they had another man with them. Jasha’s binoculars identified the bound wrists and the military tunic of the type favoured by the FSB units. Jasha had gone towards the sound of a single shot. Perhaps he had heard it only because a momentary bluster of wind had carried the noise. Perhaps they had assumed the shot’s retort would have vanished in the wilderness, gone unnoticed.

Jasha had heard it, and others had heard it. He watched them. Two men, both well armed, wearing civilian clothing. Not hunters who had strayed off the permitted areas and were after trophies. They were dressed for the city but had military-issue footwear. They were in pursuit, moved well, had a knowledge of dead ground and would not have been seen by those at the lake. Clear to Jasha that these were former fighting men, skilled in fieldcraft and presumably in marksmanship. Their route would take them to an intercept point that was halfway to the fence from the lake side.

And he had seen more that disturbed him. Before he had spotted the two men who would block, or trail, the fugitives, he had been on a heather-covered knoll, had lain on his stomach, had enjoyed an all-round view. The road from the east, the E105, climbed and was in clear sight. A military convoy was on the move but branching off to the west where there was nothing except the feeder roads used by the border militia to patrol the fence.

And… and the bear was still with him. Old Zhukov, the warrior and survivor – the one who had saved his skin and lasted through the Stalin purges – and the one who was an old scarred beast with his combat scratches from fights over territory or feminine favours, and his three good feet, he tracked Jasha. Why? He did not know.

He hurried. He could cross rough ground at speed. It was a hunter’s skill. He did not know why the bear did not just disappear into the dwarf birch and find a tree to sit under and sniff happily for berries, worms, a small deer it might outrun… but it followed him. Remained hidden but was close. He did not know the mind of the bear, but understood his own. His military career had been brought to an end because Jasha could not abide the posturing of the officer class. His obstinacy had ruled him. They had sought to belittle him, withdraw what was owed to him as a combat veteran because he had spoken a truth. He sided with victims, talked his mind on the treatment of wounded, frightened, conscripts in that distant war. Then, alone in his cabin in the endless winter months, reliant on the food he had stored in the summer and his supplies of heating oil, the hatred of them had germinated.

Had not met them, had never spoken with them, but was too gnarled in his temperament not to follow and watch. And the bear would easily keep pace with him and he had that reassurance. Also had the Dragunov rifle on his back.

“It will be me who shoots,” Mikki whispered.

“You are likely to miss, I am the better shot,” Boris answered him.

Both were supreme infantry-trained marksmen. In the late stages of the Afghan campaign, their unit had become increasingly involved in front line combat. The new conscript recruits had proved ever less reliable. With their officer, following where he led and with true faith, they had been deployed into increasingly hazardous patrols and strikes. The time when that officer had called down the air force on to his own position, because the hairy-faced bastards were within metres of them and the ammunition stock had dwindled to fuck-all of nothing, had been the culmination of their exposure to combat. And, that evening, after an apology of a hot shower and a visit to the casualty section of the military hospital to see comrades, the two had retired to a corner of the sergeants’ mess, had drunk beer, had talked of hits. Mikki had claimed eight hits but Boris had said that he knew his count was nine.

“The compromise is that we both shoot.”

“But only one will have the hit – me.”

They laughed together. What was not discussed was the degree to which the target must be clear before the bullet was fired. They had both fired in Chechnya, and their officer had been on short-term secondment, and it was an ambush set up by an informant. A good informant because otherwise his wife and elder daughter were likely to have a ‘bad time’ in the barracks where they were held. It would have been a tricky shot to drop the prime target guy, and he had been alongside the informant. Both had fired… the target lived another hour before heading off to the martyrs’ paradise and the waiting virgins, but the informant went down stone dead, half his head missing, Never agreed which of them had had the better aim.

“That target, he’s for killing, done outright.”

“Wouldn’t want him in court, blathering his story.”

“Not welcome, him regurgitating Syria.”

“Put him down, close his eyes, forget… and we take our man, shit-face Lavrenti, home to his adoring mama. Assuming we haven’t dropped him.”

Neither was a spring chicken, and neither spent time in the FSB basement gymnasium, and neither of them took care over their diet: it was a sense of duty to the brigadier that pushed them on. They were to the east of the lake where the innocent group had stopped, and a girl had stripped and paraded herself. It confused them. The chance had been given them to get ahead and stay hidden while they moved and still they sat at the lake.

“What range you looking at?”

“About a hundred… Good enough?”

“Heh, they’re moving. Sat on their arses, gave us time. Left it too long.”

Time, as a sergeant used to say, to ‘put the show on the road’. Gaz stood. He gazed around, did the full turn, watched and listened. A Sicilian moment: saw nothing, heard nothing… knew nothing. A pair of crows circled. Gaz always watched birds: these were moving steadily and showed no panic.

He had the pistol lodged in the back of his trousers. He took hold of the officer’s tunic and helped him upright. He had not spoken since the girl had done her act, been pensive, his head bowed. The statement, that the kids would not be denounced from a courtroom on the far side, or in confidential talk with a lawyer, had surprised Gaz. He had wondered whether to believe it, but had not challenged it.

Gaz said quietly, “We go now. The last leg… Be quite certain, Major, that if you attempt to break free I will shoot you. It is your choice. You live and go across the wire, you decide to end your life here in a self-inflicted suicide. Be very certain, Major, that I will kill you rather than have you go free. I was there, I saw it, I am determined that you will face a court, a process of justice. There are people who believe that revenge is acceptable. Not me. That brings us down to the same level as those responsible for a crime. Had I only wanted revenge then I could have shot you at the start. My opinion, Major, that would have belittled me but for you would have been the easier option. You should sit each day in a cell and look at a barred window, peering out ‘upon that little tent of blue we prisoners called the sky,’ and should think each day of where you were, what you did. If you are a man then you walk with me, if you are not a man then you break and I shoot.”

He tapped the major’s shoulder. Gaz did not fancy himself as a speaker. He had said a few tongue-tied words from the dock, had addressed the magistrate’s bench and made a piss-poor job of it, and his hands had shaken and the bench would have noted that he was no longer a fighting man.

No argument. The major moved. Ahead was a plateau of ground, carpeted in low birch, in full leaf, and dotted with green patches marking bogs, and there were reflections off little lakes, and dotted over the landscape were rock formations. They had a path of sorts to follow. It would be the same route as he had taken when he had come across. He glanced at his watch: anywhere else but here the light would be failing and the comfort of evening and darkness would be around him – not this far into the Circle. It would have been good to have had darkness, but he was not that blessed. His immediate target was higher ground, in a tree line, and the tree – taller than the rest – that had taken the lightning strike. First was the open ground. He had heard no helicopters nor the dawdling engine of a drone, and no sirens.

He turned, and gave a cursory wave to the kids. They were woken sleepers and he owed them nothing and they were paid, more handsomely than intended, and had made their own bed. Without them he would have blundered… but they were not friends which was the creed of the instructors. They were Locally Recruited Assistance, and he had no responsibility for them.