Beyond Recall

Chapter 5

“We’ll see you, man.”

“That’ll be good, and I’ll see you guys – I hope.”

He hitched his bag on his shoulder and walked away from the fishing boat and down the quayside. He saw Fee ahead of him and she scratched behind her ear and then kicked at a pebble, and was gazing at the skyline, and showed little interest… Might have convinced a rookie that she cared nothing about whether he was on time, or late, or whether he was washed out with sea sickness and about to jack it in, chuck the mission over the side of the quay where the weed floated. She’d care… Gaz supposed there should have been a customs officer or an immigration functionary standing with her and waiting to check his documentation. There was not, nor any sign of one hurrying to intercept him: that would have been her responsibility. Would not have lasted half an hour on Knacker’s payroll if she could not deflect such interest. She greeted him.

“A decent ride?”

“Decent enough.”

“Anything left in your guts?”

“Guts are fine.”

“Rather you…”

This was Kirkenes. The guys had told him it was a fishing port, with a booming marine repair yard, and a small dry-dock. The guys had also said that the town was dull, like ‘one horse and one street’, and had been rebuilt after the war, had been flattened by Russian aircraft during the German occupation, then the Germans had been pushed out and they’d bombed the place even flatter to make it uncomfortable for the Russian invaders. He had been told this in low, considered voices as they had swung into the fiord leading to the town and its harbour. They had been dour men at the start all weighing and judging him. Was he worth the effort? Worth the risk of going to a penal colony for twenty years? Did he have that sort of value? It was a grey, oppressive morning, the sort of day that indicated summer had given Kirkenes a miss… The guys must have been happy to have him as a passenger, and with a return booking because that was what had been called out to him as he had walked towards Fee. Good guys, using basic transport. Little luxury in the common sleeping area below deck. They’d seen him off with a noncommittal slap on the shoulders and a brief hug before he’d climbed up a couple of steps and then stretched out for the quayside. But they expected to see him, which gave comfort – and a back-stop was agreed.

He walked beside Fee, matched her long stride. If he’d have allowed it, she would have carried his bag.

It had been explained to Gaz: why four Norwegian fishermen would hazard their freedom, involve themselves in UK black operations. It had been explained as the trawler had ploughed on in what they called a ‘moderate swell’. One of the younger guys had done it as if nothing he said was remarkable. “About the second world war. Everything is the second world war. Finished seventy-five years ago but nothing is changed and the allegiances still rule. Old loyalties and old loves, and old gratitudes count now as they did then. The time of our grandfathers. Everywhere you go in your life today you can look over your shoulder and see the results of that conflict. There was the Shetland Bus. You would not know of it. Small trawlers sailed to and from Norway and berthed in the Shetland Isles and they brought back from German occupation the refugees and the agents who were considered important to the resistance, and returned there in desperate winter seas, with the same agents, this time with weapons and explosives. Only went in winter because of the darkness and when the seas were worst and when the Germans could not fly and did not have patrol craft out… All of us had grandfathers who sailed on the Bus route. The message came and of course we would answer. Can you understand that? Now, you as an island people are in decline. We have an abundance of oil and gas and can build a superior infrastructure and have as generous a welfare programme as there is in the whole of Europe. But neither situation allows us to ignore a call for help. It is unwritten, forged in iron, and still lives. But we look at you, assess you, because it is a big thing that is asked of us. At the end we will tell you whether the old friendship has a greater pull on our loyalties than common sense… What is asked of us is not easy and the penalties for failure are big. You know that, of course you do. The same as for you.”

One speech and no theatrical gestures of friendship, and no emotion shown, and Gaz had believed each word he was told and had imagined small boats, inshore trawlers, buffeted by winds and tumbling through the white caps, and had felt stronger, a little.

He had realised he was being examined all the time he was on board and supposed he had passed some test – as he had done nine years before when he had pitched up at Stirling Lines, home of the cream of the Special Forces, and had been thrown into the rigours of training required by the instructors of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. Had been told the majority of the intake would fail, and might have been the youngest to reach those heights in the selection process. There had been a girl there. A sergeant’s daughter. Good enough looking, seeing him as a catch, but no special commitment returned by him. More important was the passing of the brutal tests inflicted on them. Each week seeing more of them carrying a bag to the minibus and taken to Hereford rail station, returned to unit, failed. Not Gaz… Did well enough in Close Quarters Battle Training and high marks in Close Target Reconnaissance and better than useful in Unarmed Combat Skills, and passing out. Off to Londonderry for the first operational posting and familiarising himself with working the housing estates where hatred for military was ingrained. Where, if trapped, he might shoot his way out and might not, in which case he would end up a bloodied corpse. Had rather enjoyed it, had handled the pressure and had been praised in the laconic shorthand the unit used. Had done time in the Province, had gone back to the camp in the west of England, close to the Welsh border, to find the sergeant had moved on but his daughter had stayed, seemed to expect him to move in with her. She was Debbie. Had done it, moved to her one-bed place. Shouldn’t have, but had… all the boys shagged available girls. Part of the way they all lived. Nice girl… and what had happened was not her fault, was his. He had gone to Syria. Not like the Creggan and the Bogside in Londonderry, but big boys’ games.

The boat crew had made the one speech, none of it repeated, and mostly he had huddled below deck and tossed with the bunk’s motion and only been out on deck at dusk going into evening and had seen one whale and two pods of dolphins and once they had been buzzed by an eagle that had come low over them, hoping for fish carcases to be thrown its way. What irked him most was that bits of the plan they were putting in place had already been decided before they had his arm-twisted agreement to be a part of it. Could he have refused? Not worth even scratching it over in his mind.

She led him to a car, where a driver waited for them. She opened the back door for Gaz. The driver didn’t speak. Gaz thought he was treated like he had the plague, was dangerous to know. The light rain had flecked his hair and dampened his anorak. He slung his bag ahead of him and climbed in. He reckoned he was being given all the attention due a ‘fatted calf’, pampered, cosseted and good for a week-long feast. Would he be remembered the day after the table had been cleared and the guests had burped and farted and staggered off home? Not likely to be. They drove away from the quay and towards a sprawl of buildings. Saw his target and the wire-fine line on his face that had seeped blood, could see him clearly.

The Jew stood. The meeting was concluded.

The Jew had been ‘invited’ to Lefortovo because the gaol and its section of interrogation rooms was the place where Lavrenti was most comfortable when in the capital and needed to meet strangers. He very seldom entertained in the bistros of the Arbat district, or in the dining-room of a larger hotel. To have control and to feel the exercise of authority, he chose one of the small, soundproofed rooms inside the gaol. Here, he could be confident that any individual he met would be unnerved, anxious, and therefore likely to put themselves in Lavrenti’s debt… Not this man.

The Jew had explained his position in the fields of Arctic mineral extraction, had outlined his proposed understanding, and now expected the major to ‘piss or get off the pot’. Implicit in what Lavrenti was offered was the Jew’s confidence that it was ‘take it or leave it’ and that there would be a queue of other men inside the Shield of the State, the Federal’nya sluzhba bezopasnosti, who he could turn to if this agreement were not accepted. The man wanted a roof; word would have passed to him that a rising star in the firmament could provide the necessary guarantees, a solid and progressive roof, a krysha. Also implied was the unstated and unarguable fact that the Jew took a chance with this young man and banked on his reputation to survive and to prosper. It was a long-term arrangement that the Jew looked for, and one of mutual benefit.

It was the usual tactic of Lavrenti, when a man was in front of him, across a bare desk, that he said little, aimed to increase the discomfort of his visitor… not so that morning. The Jew had his cigarette packet on the table, along with a chunky Marlboro lighter, and would soon – likely – ignore the No Smoking sign and light up, which would activate the alarms. The Jew seemed to feel he had given enough of his time, looked for confirmation and was ready to leave. The deal was for ten per cent, rising to fifteen per cent of anticipated profits.

The take-out was small initially, but the major was not yet in the giddy circles of those adjacent to the seat of power, the court of the Czar, but would soon be if he worked and exercised influence. The offer meant he was, as yet, taken on trust.

The Jew did not have any small talk and seemed puzzled that more questions had not been asked, but the detail was run through and Lavrenti stared down at the table. No paper record and no bugged recording of this conversation would exist. He had exercised his power many times in small rooms such as this one before going to Syria, and they would again be his fiefdom when he returned from the short visit to Murmansk. Now he was alone, faced a significant step into unknown territory, would no longer be the protégé of his father and feed from the old man’s hand… It had been another bad night.

It was hot that day in the small interrogation areas of the Lefortovo, the air-conditioning was off and the windows were sealed, and sweat beaded on the back of his neck and threatened to break loose on his forehead. In the night, fleetingly, he had felt the cold on his body when the wind had driven the rain against his camouflage gear and the wet had penetrated and the chill had gripped. He remembered each hour, each minute, at the village, and what had happened and what he had done.

This was the future… a deal to provide a roof and protection to a little Jew who would trick and bribe and evade responsibility for revenue payment and he would assure the success of the programme, and would live well off it – as his father had done with other cash cows. Now the Jew stared at him, looked hard into his eyes, showed little respect.

“Are you all right, Major?”

He said he was well, and yet could not meet the penetrating gaze of the Jew.

“You were far away; were you listening to me?”

He had listened.

“You are, Major, as I am told it, a decorated and experienced officer. Served in Syria, a fine record there. Perhaps finance and mineral extraction are alien to you – perhaps.”

He could deny that. He needed to show himself to be well on the ladder and advancing towards the highest rungs. He knew the question that would follow and never answered it whether it came from a stranger, the Jew, or from his family, even his father, the former brigadier general.

“How was it there? As bad as we assume, or worse?”

He said, seemingly offhand and bland, that it was a necessary act of policy and the commitment had suited the state at that time, that it was finished and not to be pecked over.

“I hope it was for some purpose… You found it hard, saw bad things? Was your role dangerous, did…?”

Lavrenti slammed his fist on the table. “I don’t fucking talk about it. Don’t.”

And he stood, and faced the Jew. The man showed no astonishment at the sudden, unprompted explosion. If he then had doubts as to the wisdom of putting his protection in this officer’s hands, relying on protection under this officer’s roof, he made no sign of it… What was not said was sufficient to deflate Lavrenti.

“Well, Major, you have much to think of, and no doubt would be pleased to have time to consider a response. What a privilege to have met you. No hurry, nothing immediate is required, maybe in a few months…”

The cigarettes were pocketed and the Marlboro lighter. It was as if the Jew had come to a car showroom and had browsed and looked at brochures, then decided that he did not like what he saw, would go elsewhere, but without wishing to cause offence. Lavrenti pushed a button on the leg of the table, at knee height. An escort would come and lead the Jew out of Lefortovo. He had never before reacted in such a way to mention of his war service in Syria, had not acknowledged the stress caused by what he had seen on one day, and what he had done on that same day. Within an hour his father would have been told and within an hour and five minutes the brigadier general, retired, would be on the phone, blaring questions and criticism at him, and he would deflect. Nothing of that day had left him, and more often his nights were spent tossing and sleepless. He went out into the corridor, locking the door behind him. He walked briskly. Uniformed men in the corridors stopped, stood sharply at attention, saluted him, and from behind open doors officers saw who passed them and called out greetings as if he were the man everybody wished to count as a friend because he owned a future. A guard at the main gate offered good wishes and asked when he would be back, but he did not answer.

In a restricted parking area, a privileged space, the car’s engine was idling, Mikki at the wheel and Boris standing by an opened rear door. They talked and laughed, and saw him. It would be a fast drive to the military airport, then all three would be on a flight, duration 150 minutes, going north to Murmansk.

He had not lost his temper in that way before, had not shown such weakness… The images clung at his throat.

They went at speed and a cloud of dust billowed behind them. Alice, petite and pretty and with her hair trailing under the rim of a combat helmet, half of her face covered against the dust and sand by a khaki scarf, and the skin below her throat masked with the shape of an armour-plated jerkin, and with trousers in olive green flapping on her legs, was with the Special Forces. She was taken into Syria, across a border marked only by a single strand of barbed wire, now long buried in dirt and sand. A few such routes, listed only on the covert maps. existed for mutual convenience.

She was driven – three vehicles and one passenger, her, with machine-guns festooned on them all – towards a sanitised but unwelcoming refugee camp where they would collect a guide for further incursion. The escort had given her headphones and a face microphone so she could communicate, but remarks were kept to a minimum because her business was not for sharing, and procedures in this hostile environment were best kept private. It was ‘wild west country’ and the warlords of Syrian militia and the Americans and the Russians ruled the ground along with the Hereford people. There had been times when the British would have met up with Russians from their Spetsnaz teams, cans of strong beer broken open, and fags exchanged, but relations now were guarded, though the understanding of free passage along selected routes still held.

Only Knacker would have granted such opportunities to a low-ranking official. Alice spoke well, had a decent accent and a reasonable Oxford degree in Modern History, but working to Knacker and answerable only to him, she was entrusted with work far beyond her pay grade. Her family had wealth, a certain influence, a home on the hills above the Regency city of Bath… and her lover, sometimes passionate, sometimes noisy and sometimes raising eyebrows, was the formidable Fee. They were a solid item. Four months after teaming up domestically and living in Fee’s housing association apartment in south-east London, Alice had been driven by Fee to the west country. She had been dropped down the street and out of view of her parents’ home – and Fee would have gone to the shops – and she had walked the last 200 yards, and had believed that her mother and her father were too hidebound in their attitudes to accept the relationship, bless it. It had been a hideous wet day, biblical torrents rushing down the street, and Fee had driven to the house, and had been waved in along with their daughter. A few frosty minutes and news of a problem with an electric kettle had surfaced. Fee, huge and muscular and with a gap between her teeth and cropped hair and a bulging backside, had produced a screwdriver, had re-wired the kettle, had programmed their televisions, had fixed Alice’s mother’s mobile phone. Since then, Fee had been up on the roof to check for loose lead, had cleaned out gutters, had re-plumbed a shower unit. She was now adored and was greeted on each visit with a fresh work list… .

They had clearance of a sort, but had been fashionably economical with detail, to drive away from the camp and into the harsh hinterland of the country where grief and brutality and mourning and cruelty were the popular pastimes. Had she used a firearm? Once or twice, a laconic answer. She had an assault rifle across her lap loaded with twin magazines, and a leather pouch filled with grenades, and a medical pack strapped to her hip.

The camp was beyond a hillside, a collection of tented streets, and hanging above it was a pall of smoke from small cooking stoves. A Red Cross flag hung limp by the gate. The Amman based station that looked after Jordan had done the leg work. The guy in front of her, normally crouched behind his weapon and scanning every summit, every ridge and every bend in the track, gestured to her. A lone man sat beside the track, 100 yards from the camp entrance, his head down so that his features could not be recognised, and would have heard their engines rumbling along the track. The man pushed himself up and came loping towards them. He was watched by the guns, fingers on triggers and weapons cocked. It was bad country and only a fool would not have been suspicious of a supposed contact, his motives and loyalties. He was frisked, searched roughly – would be their guide.

Alice shook his hand firmly. The man pointed away to the east and the wheels spun and they headed out across open country… Sort of everyday work, Alice was giggling to herself, to go off-road and fetch herself three killers, not squeamish men, from a village. Down to her to select them. Not work for a recce man with demons in his head who might falter when a trigger needed pulling, but for guys in whom a desire for revenge burned brightly – a mark of the responsibility that Knacker dumped in her sweet little lap where the automatic rifle lay.

Delta Alpha Sierra, the fifth hour

Gaz watched, could not take his eyes from the scene.

He watched, had readied himself, was coiled as a crushed spring. He could have burst from his hiding point, shouldered the Bergen, then run into the rain and the wind that streamed over the flat ground above the rim of the slope, and he would have to have gone fast because there was no cover. He prepared to break out and quit because he was uncertain how much longer the girl could endure what she saw. If the moment came when she could not absorb more of it, and screamed or shrieked or yelled, then he would have to take the gamble, and run. More likely scramble, hunched low and have the rifle ready if it were necessary to give suppression fire. It was a bad option, but all options were poor.

He could have reached under the net and touched her hip, could have felt the sodden material of her jacket, and the dogs hard against her would have snarled and showed their teeth, and might have savaged him. He did not know, God’s truth, whether he should reach out, envelop her and bury her face against his shoulder and twist her so that she saw nothing… Not out of sympathy but because of the risk that she might yell defiance or abuse or agony at them. The goats, sweet and gentle, took their mood from her and stamped close against her, ignoring the dogs. She would have been justified in standing, howling, losing control. Not easy for Gaz, and he was trained and she was not. Hard for her. He thought that if he had gripped her shoulders and pulled her down towards him she would have fought him off. Reckoned he would have failed and he was on his side and had no room to manoeuvre. If her discipline cracked then they would come for her, for him… The Special Forces vehicles were reported to be on their way and they’d be heading into bucketing rain, scouring winds.

The hooded man, the informer, had already separated the young men of the village who had been too slow to evade the closing cordon. Those he had identified squatted in a small circle, their heads bowed under their bound hands and blindfolded with strips of their clothing that had been ripped to make a length of cloth sufficient to go round their skulls. Now the turncoat, what Gaz would have known as a ‘tout’ during his time in the Province, loitered by the circle – might be glorying in the power given him, might be as trapped himself as any man who betrayed family, friends, comrades in arms – and then pointed, condemned the first.

A rope was thrown up and looped over the crossbar of the nearest goal on the football area. Two of the Iranians caught it and started to loop the noose, and another had brought a wooden chair from a house.

And women in their group and hemmed in by rifles, loaded and aimed, had started to moan, a premature keening wail for the dead. Gaz gazed down at the Russian. Would have been an intelligence officer, and most likely from the FSB ranks because they were used in most of the close liaison jobs. Iranians would operate under the supervision of a Russian, he would have his own bodyguard team with him to keep his arse clean and safe, and if push came to shove then the assumed wisdom of the men and women who tasked Gaz was that the Iranians would be ‘good kids’, do as they were told. The Russians had the big artillery, the fast jets that could plaster down ordnance and gas, and the helicopters. They ruled if an officer decided to chuck in his weight. Would he now intervene or would he accept that all was ordained? And what would the girl do if they went ahead, stood the boy on a chair under the crossbar? He had a tight hold on his rifle and a strap of the Bergen was over one shoulder, and there was a pistol in a holster on his hip, and smoke and flash-and-bang were hooked on the front of his camouflage tunic. It was impossible for Gaz to see the face of the boy under the blindfold, and the rain peppered him and the pennants on the aerials of the Iranian personnel carriers were rigid.

The Russian officer stood with arms folded. His legs were a little apart and he might have rocked on the balls of his feet, and the wind rapped him and rain streamed on his face but he made no movement. He neither wiped the rainwater from his face, nor tugged his headgear lower, nor did he intervene. The Iranian commander was close to him and seemed not to need to give orders, as if decisions of protocol and procedure were long taken… The girl in front of him shook and little spurts of breath dribbled at her mouth, and Gaz thought this was the beginning, the beginning of the beginning. The boy would not have realised what was intended for him until two fists, one on each side of him, grabbed his arms and lifted him up and started to march him away from the group – from the other kids who had loaded into pick-ups and driven down the road looking for fun, like it was a night out in Stoke-on-Trent but better because they had fire-power and a base to shoot up. Consequences far to the back of their minds.

Gaz watched. The girl watched. Neither of them shielded their eyes, did not look away as if that might be – God alone knew how – disrespectful to the kid. The Russian did not move and the two men behind him were expressionless, as if this was a part of a day’s work, might have been right.

The kid was lifted up on the chair, and might now have realised what came next for him. Would have known for certain when the noose made a necklace over his head and under his chin and the knot was tightened. An NCO was in charge of it. The kid was supported and the far end of the rope was knotted at the top, by the crossbar’s angle with the upright post. Gaz saw the NCO look to his commander and received nothing that told him anything of ‘enough is enough’. Might have looked for confirmation at the Russian, and might not. The NCO had his hand on the chair’s back and ducked his head, the signal, and the steadying hands freed the kid’s trousers and the chair was pulled from under him. The boy kicked a long time, his body dancing and spinning, but found nothing that was a haven for his weight, and was suspended and was strangled. The Russian officer now looked away but his minders did not. Gaz had seen sniper kills, and had seen advancing mujahidin cut down by machine-gun fire in a maize field, and had seen others caught on an open hillside by mortar fire as bombs rained down… had not seen anything as played out as the death of the kid from the rope on the goalpost crossbar.

It could have been her brother or her cousin, or could have been the boy she hoped one day might be her husband, but she did not cry out. It was a start and would be worse, and Gaz was its witness.

“When will Knacker be here?”

A reasonable question, a blunt answer.

Fee said, “He’ll be here when he’s ready to be here.”

They had come along the coast, had passed ship building units and tanks for bunkering and a mountain of crab pots and their orange marker buoys, and one hotel, and then the driver had taken a sharp right and had gone up a narrow street of bungalows. Their destination was the one that did not have kids’ bicycles and skateboards outside, was also the one with a pocket handkerchief of uncut grass. He had followed her inside, had dumped his bag in the back room offered to him, had seen there was another bedroom in which her clothing was spread messily. He had showered, shaved, put on clean jeans and a shirt from his bag. In a dining area at the back, blinds down and the lights on, there was a screen and a projector. He had expected that Knacker would do the briefing. She did it well enough. He did not complain, nor did he take notes, but he absorbed. Maps on the screen, from her phone. They showed the border, the territory beyond the closed area, and a single highway leading across tundra to Murmansk.

Next, the maps showed the position of a roadblock far north on the highway, but back from the frontier, another at Titovka, and the barracks and headquarters of the 200th Independent Motorised Rifle Brigade. Then, photographs of the fence flashed up, concrete posts and stock-proof wire mesh capped with razor wire: sections with cameras were marked and those with tumble wires, and the ploughed strip behind, and the depth of the closed area. The picture taken from a blog and showing a hatchet-faced officer. Gaz betrayed himself, a sucked intake of breath, and he could see the line of the scar. Another picture, from stock files, of the new FSB building on Lenin Prospekt in Murmansk. An image of a man, probably middle forties, a cigarette drooping from his mouth. And a young man… fair hair, his attention seemed far away, but piercing eyes and a determined glance… Gaz always looked first at the eyes. He assumed them to be the sleepers, now woken.

“What do we have on the older one, what name, what reliability?”

Fee said, “It would have been his grandfather who was first recruited, then tucked up in bed, allowed to sleep. Handed down the contact to his son. We have no reason to imagine him to be other than reliable, solid and probably looking forward to some distant day when he can get on an Aeroflot going anywhere in the west, and then hightail into Guernsey and draw out his loot. Goes without saying that we are co-signatories and have to sanction any withdrawal. The young one is the grandson of the original asset. We assume him to be hard-working, a graduate, anxious to prosper his career. From what we know of them, they’re a typical Murmansk working-class family, except that grandfather’s own dad was an anti-aircraft gunner on a destroyer putting in to Murmansk during the Arctic convoy days, taking advantage of local generosity. The communications we have had from our courier have been necessarily bare, but nothing that indicates alarms. They have been told what is expected of them – where, when, they meet you. Where I come from, Gaz, south London, we’ve a sense of when it’s going down the pan. Seems good, right now, from what we know.”

“No disrespect to you, but when do I see Knacker?”

“Busy man, has a plateful.”

“Doubt he has matters to concern him that are more important than putting a man across the Russian frontier to spotlight a target.”

“You will see him before you go.”

“And the aim of recognising the target?”

“Running before walking is seldom the best way to progress, Gaz.”

In Syria, at the Forward Operating Base they worked from, the briefings were of extraordinary detail with sand models of locations and ample aerial photographs. Timings were down to minutes and behind every operation was a backup force of the Hereford people and their rough terrain vehicles and the Chinook crews who would go through hellish levels of weather to get to them. He had never felt alone there until the day he was marooned on the hill above the village. He would be alone here.

She said, “Don’t go all fragile on me, Gaz, just don’t. You go in and you do your recognition and you bug out when you have an idea of locations and of his work schedules, and we have the people to do what else is required. I advise, now, a bit of sleep if you can… What else have I to say?”

Gaz did his rueful look. “Something about not getting caught, something about consequences… and something about making a difference.”

“I won’t, but Knacker will, when he gets here.”

The coin was small and a dull colour, once clean silver, but now ingrained with centuries of mud, a denarius, minted six years before Hadrian’s death: it rattled feebly in Knacker’s trouser pocket when his fingers played with his loose change. He carried £4 and 98p, and this one coin was – Maude had told him – worth £60 in a reputable auction room, but she had nicked it. A present for him. Not many said that romance intruded deep into the lives of Knacker and his wife. A pizza eaten on a bench in the gardens beside the abbey in Hexham, and then bed in the guest house and her ‘tired’, and him glad of no interruption to his thoughts on the mission ahead… She had woken at two in the morning, had used a sharp elbow to rouse him, had grinned, had left the bed and rooted in her jeans and had produced what had seemed a scrap of dried dirt, had told him its history, and that it was an unforgiveable felony not to declare a find. Had turned off the light, had gone back to sleep. In the morning she had scrubbed it with his toothbrush, let him scrutinise the face of the Emperor, and the goddess, Pietas, making a sacrifice on the reverse side… A hurried breakfast, and she had dropped him off and gone back to her dig. He let his fingertips caress the surfaces of the coin. He had told her only that he would be away a few days, that it was an insertion initially – not where, not when, not why.

He was back on the Wall. Close to Mile Castle 35, sitting on the old stones that the 6th legion’s stonemasons would have shaped when the foundations were laid, and ahead of him was flattish moorland and cropped grazing and one isolated farmstead. They did sheep here, not cattle, and none was close to him. No flies to irritate or disturb his concentration… Out there by the horizon and beyond it would have been an intelligence officer who probed with his intellect this section of fortification and had a life’s intention to find the point of weakness. Knacker identified with him. Did not know if the man had had a name, only that Mile Castle 35 would have figured in this man’s analysis: dressed in cured skins in winter when snow and frost were on the ground, and near naked in summer with woad paint for decoration. Unshaven, tresses of hair in a tangled mess, and clever, capable of deceit, and painstaking, all of which Knacker reckoned he possessed in plenty. Nothing greatly had changed over the many centuries.

Today, on the fence to the north-west of Murmansk there would be a static line of border guards, and a closed strip with entry forbidden behind it, and military patrols, and also a small army of agents and assets, not easily identified, who watched and reported. The Romans, to counter the threat of infiltration or attack, used the exploratores who roamed on horseback, heavily armed, over the Wall and beyond the horizon. Had also the speculators who did the covert stuff and might pose as deserters, refugees, merchants… and would face a bad death if identified. Merchants were the best in Knacker’s opinion for that work. Brought grain, fetched precious cloth for the wives of the barbarians’ top men. It interested Knacker that from time far back men had practised those same arts of warfare, had realised their value, had wanted to put a man beyond reach of help. That day, and preparing to be launched, he had Gaz to play the part of one of the men that his predecessor, out beyond the mist and the vague edge where cloud and ground met, would have waved off.

Had that man, nineteen centuries before, set off with a light heart and a smile and a cheerful step? Unlikely. More likely barely coherent, his gut twisted in fear, his bowels loose, and death might be by beheading and it might be by the form of crucifixion popular at the time for setting an example. He turned the coin in his pocket. Then, and now, men could be bought and relied upon for the heavy lifting, and the one pushed off and sent towards the Wall would have been given, or promised, a tiny purse of these coins, the one that was in his trouser pocket. In this age Gaz was shown a link with a Guernsey bank set among narrow cobbled streets and with hanging baskets of petunias, and a man giving the spiel who seemed as trustworthy as any country church deacon. Money had bought them in the Province and Knacker could have listed the others from new Russia who had taken his shilling, his coinage. He had no duty of care. None of them at the Round Table believed in that baggage.

He sat on the stone and stared, and waited. There would be a blast on a horn and the sound would be carried to him on the light wind, and no rain was forecast for that day, and brightness was expected. Maude would be able to dig and scratch in peace. The driver from a Hexham taxi service would take him to the airport and the pilot would ferry him to the front line. He thought himself refreshed, at peace, and a few sheep stampeded away from him as he stood, stretched, coughed. It was not right that men such as himself, from the Round Table, should be burdened with matters of conscience; they should be allowed to get on with their work. He’d give their man a little encouragement talk, always thought it went down well… Always the Russians in Knacker’s life. Their borders and their defences and their exploratores and their speculators, and, in comparison with their resources, he was just an innocent abroad, a painted man. He did not know whether they knew of him, had a file for him.

He gazed out a last time, then glanced at his watch and reckoned the taxi was either there or near, and slowly trudged away from the wall and the ruin of Mile Castle 35. It would be good to be up to speed, running, starting out on the mission – not, of course that Knacker would be setting foot into barbarian territory.

The kids did business.

Natacha accosted. Timofey carried the stock in a shoulder-bag and took the money. Both reckoned themselves good at personal security, and both would have said they had learned lessons from the last time, when she was caught and he’d legged it into the pitch darkness. There was supposed to be, this time, a fast bug-out route to take them away from the selling pitch and up a steep slope, through a jungle of bushes and small trees, across a road and then into the warren of lanes inside the housing complex. This was not where they had been busted, at the railway station, and where the buses and coaches parked.

Each of them had a good view of the steps leading to the monument. The walkway was wide and open and it would have been hard for the police to approach them unseen, difficult even for the FSB people who sometimes took over from the police. It had been the FSB who had arrested Natacha: he had evaded them and she was close to it but had slipped and gone over on an ankle and that had given the bastards the chance to dive on her.

At the edge of a wide space of concrete, backing on to the undergrowth and the high apartments, was a peculiar black shape, curved in a half-circle, five or six metres high and seeming to have small covered windows that were similar to those in a pilot’s cockpit. On the front of it was a gold-coloured eagle mounted on a pristine scarlet base. The monument was important to Natacha because of the plaque set into brickwork at the back which carried the names of more than 100 men lost in a submarine disaster. Natacha’s father’s name should have been there but was not… should have been, because of the loss of that vessel, the monstrous Kursk – sunk with no survivors in August 2000 out in the icy Barents Sea. Her father’s name was not there, should have been, and he was as dead as any of the men, who had sailed in her. Natacha liked to work close to the conning tower of the submarine, recovered from the bottom of the Barents, along with the bodies, and the rust scraped off it, and new paint applied, and a permanent memorial to those sailors of the Northern Fleet, as her father had been.

It was bold of them to trade in daytime, but it was a part of Murmansk – poor housing, poor pay for those in work, poor expectations – where money could be taken. Customers did not expect to hang around. Service on the nail was wanted. They had their regulars, men and women and boys and girls. In fine rain, buyers shuffled close to them. The city had a name for hard drugs, and Murmansk had as high a number of HIV addicts as any town in the Russian Federation. A new customer sidled close. The Italian.

“I have a flight in an hour.”

“We will get our money? The extra money they will pay us?”

Timofey reckoned the Italian despised him. Had no reason to believe this, but he seemed to look across the open concrete and towards the section of the conning tower and to linger on Natacha’s legs. He gazed at the Italian. Was told with a disinterested shrug that ‘money’ was the affair of others but he assumed obligations and promises would be kept. A slip of paper was passed to him, pocketed.

The Italian said, “Where you have to be, and at what time. You meet this man and you do what is asked, and you will find his employers grateful. I came here after visiting your father. Your father was drunk. Your father told me you would be here… I would like to warn, dear friend, that these people for whom you work, who have woken you, are most trustworthy. Rewards for completing the task they give you. Quite unpleasant vengeance if they are betrayed. Easy to understand. Be there, do as you are asked.”

He was gone. Striding quickly, and he would have had to work hard to have thrown off the inevitable tail that local FSB would have placed on a known diplomat travelling to Murmansk from the capital, and slipping away from whatever legitimate business had brought him so far north. They went on selling and the rain had come on heavier and the mist settled low above the apartments and customers came and went and the slip of paper was crumpled in Timofey’s pocket… He would do what was asked of him but only for the promised money.

He could not see Zhukov but knew he was close. He could not hear Zhukov but believed he was watched.

He was at the back of his cabin where he had dug and hoed the scant soil to plant summer vegetables. He had potatoes and carrots and cabbages growing. Near the cabin were dense dwarf birches and he should have been able to see a creature as large as the bear. And there were sufficient fallen twigs and dried leaves to mark where it moved.

Jasha was not a man easily unnerved.

He was military by training. He was now in his middle sixties, and a wound received in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, had halted his ability to run. He had learned to swing his hips and bend his back and scurry at speed. Ugly but effective, and what mattered to him was nothing to do with a parade ground and everything to do with a degree of agility. His leg hurt him but he accepted the levels of pain and was thankful his own fragmented muscle caused him less agony than the wire would have done that had dug deep in Zhukov’s leg. He could accept pain. In midwinter, a tooth had broken and the pain had run in rivers and it was when the track was blocked by snow so he had removed the tooth stump and its root with a pair of old pliers, and had survived. Pain he understood and reckoned to cope with, but he was uneasy about the hidden presence of the bear. Jasha had never established, enough to take a liberty with it, whether the creature regarded him as a benefactor or an enemy. He abandoned his vegetable patch.

He stood by the door of his cabin, strained his eyes, his ears. The old dog lay on its bed of hessian sacks… He had seen the sacks outside a store in Murmansk, piled in a basket, and had thought they might have a use, had picked out a couple and thrown them in his pick-up and driven off; had felt remorse, had paid for them on his next visit to the city. Jasha was a confused man, and sometimes he chuckled at the thought of it – not that day. The dog was too old to accompany him when he hunted for a full day, went after the Arctic fox or the lynx, but it guarded his cabin. The dog growled. Not loud, but soft, like a light flashed to show an alarm. An intruder was close. He was unnerved. Jasha had faced ferocious tribesmen in combat, but always they would show themselves as they edged closer, looked for a killing shot or, better for them, the opportunity to take a prisoner. The dog showed its teeth and sunk low on its sack bed.

He would have liked to talk with the bear, with Zhukov… What he knew of combat was that a tracker followed an enemy and waited for a sign of weakness. He had his rifle with him: had taken, in the last several days, to having the weapon with him when he went to dig in his garden or to clear back dwarf birch saplings, or to empty the bucket that he used inside the cabin. He went inside. In two days’ time he had an appointment in the city for the sale of pelts, now well dried, and for the heads of two foxes which would fetch a good price, and he would have to leave the dog to fend for itself for a few hours.

Jasha closed and barricaded the cabin door behind him, using the table and the chair. Rain dripped rhythmically from the roof and misted the window panes. He sat in his chair and faced the door, his rifle on his lap. The dog, an old and treasured friend, came off the sacking and sat close to his knee. He heard nothing and saw nothing. His fear seemed to shame him.

She was told to stand on the steps of the hotel. The evening was closing down and the clouds nibbled against the sea horizon behind her, and the wind blew at the soft rain. In spite of it being high summer some of the passing cars used their headlights and the tarmacadam glistened. The man she had met in Hamburg had greeted her at the airport, had told her again that she should call him ‘Knacker’, had shared a taxi with her, had booked her for a single night into the hotel by the shore and along from the harbour. He stood close to the girl but behind her, would have been in shadow. In the middle of the day the woman from the consulate had come to the bar on Rostocker Strasse, and had paid the owner for her time and had taken her to catch a flight through Copenhagen and on to this edge of the European mainland. She could have refused, had not. He, Knacker, had told her that this journey for which, in a quiet voice, he thanked her, was the last time she would be involved in a matter of retribution…

She would never forget. She had heard people discuss death, talk of bereavement, when they were waiting for food or drinks to be brought to them in the bar. Usually, they spoke of ‘moving on’ and ‘putting all that behind us’. They had not been where she had been. To have refused to come would, in Faizah’s mind, have been a betrayal of the village she had once been a part of. She saw him. Felt for the first time, the only time, a weakness in her legs and seemed to shiver on a warm evening. He walked well and she thought him a stranger in the place, and he looked once behind him and a woman – stout hips and tight trousers and with a street-light showing up a tattoo on her arm – waved him forward. Seemed as manipulated as she was. Dressed casually, he came forward warily and reached the far side of the street. No traffic to hold him up but he looked both ways as if that were routine, necessary or not, always careful, and crossed – would have been told to, and then looked up and was in front of the steps leading to the hotel’s entrance. Recognised her… where they had been and what they had shared. Of course he recognised her. He rocked on his feet, hesitated, and climbed the step towards her. She had been told that she would see him and had asked why she was brought the long distance from Hamburg. Knacker had said, “It’s to encourage him, my dear, simply that. Encourage him.”

To hug her, to kiss her, to shake her hand, to stand awkwardly in front of her. Options that faced Gaz. Remembered how it had been on the last day, all through the hours that he had been with her – and remembered also how it was when he had been in the hide and she had come close with her dogs and her goats, and never a word spoken between them. He had been in the room in the safe house, he had lain on the bed and stared at the ceiling and had not slept and had tried again and again to memorise all he had been shown… He had not thought of Aggie. Nor had he thought of the gardens and homes where he was booked for work. Nor had he considered the rumour mill that would have been grinding the length and breadth of Westray, and thought his life there already fractured. The puppeteer was Knacker… Gaz saw him standing in the darkness at the side of the hotel entrance and beyond the throw of the interior lights. He saw the scar on her chin, where the skin had folded back, where her finger now went, nervously. He stood in front of her. He thought her aged and her skin had lost most of its lustre and her eyes were dull. He reached out his hand. One finger of his joined with one of hers. Each finger hooked so that they did not drift away.

She said, “You are going to Murmansk, where he is.”

“Yes.”

“Where the Russian officer is.”

“Yes.”

“He could have stopped everything.”

“Could have, probably… chose not to.”

“I have been brought here to ‘encourage’ you.”

“It’s what they do – they believe if I am encouraged then I will do better.”

“What do you do in Murmansk?”

“I am supposed to watch the FSB office in Murmansk. To see him. To follow him. To learn his home and his work schedule. Then I come out.”

“Finished? See him, walk close to him? Then, come out?”

“That is what I am told to do.”

“You identify him, where he believes he is safe. You can get beside him. You can shoot him, strangle him, stab him, beat with a bar on his skull until it breaks. Not kill him?”

“No.”

“You remember it?”

“Yes. Very well. It is not my business to kill.”

“You are a soldier…”

“Was a soldier. Not now.”

“You will help to kill?”

“I do not know what is intended. Perhaps others will be used to kill. From my information, perhaps.”

“You will not kill him? Only help to kill him? Should I go with you? I could kill him. With my hands, with a gun… You saw him, saw what he did.”

“I just do my job,” he said flatly.

“I hope I encourage you to ‘do your job’.”

She turned away. The colour was back in her face and the light in her eyes, and he thought her glance ravaged him and was intended to. Gaz bit at his lip. She went into the hotel’s foyer, and Knacker came from the shadows and gazed impassively at him. He thought his words had been pathetic. The woman, Fee, called from behind him. He went back down the steps and crossed the road and might have been run down because he looked neither way, and a horn blasted him, and she was stern faced and made no comment and they went up the hill together towards the safe house. He supposed he was ‘encouraged’, and the next day he would go across the border, and remember, all the time, what he had seen that day.