Beyond Recall

Chapter 6

They were parked up in a four-wheel drive. Gaz was in the back.

The clothes he wore had been given him that morning. Cross-country gear and his own boots, and breakfast had been cooked by Fee, and a single cup of tea… He was shown again, on a laptop’s screen, the border and its hinterland, taken by a drone camera.

They were deep in a pine forest. A Norwegian was at the wheel and his name wasn’t given and Gaz assumed he was from their border control unit, roped in for the ride, and to offer advice. Fee sat beside the driver. Knacker was alongside Gaz. Gaz assumed the girl, Faizah, was now surplus baggage. They’d likely have pushed some bank notes into her purse for a taxi to the airport and she’d have already caught a flight south, then a Hamburg connection. Her job had been to hustle Gaz: she’d done that successfully. He had slept poorly, but could not remember the last time he had slept well – might have been the last night before deploying towards the village, Deir al-Siyarqi, more than two years ago.

Had slept well then, hadn’t known what would hit him in the next hours, out of ‘the clear blue sky’, unexpected and where all the bad times sprang from. Had been looking forward to seeing the girl – no name and no talk and a herd of goats and two dogs – and her playing the silent game with the raised eyebrow, the sharp light in her eye, and sharing his secret. A different girl on the step of the hotel, brought to Kirkenes with the express task of stiffening him. Army people called it ‘moral fibre’ – it needed to be strong, dependable, and they’d reckoned she could toughen him. Nothing about him sitting with her and asking how she did, what her life was, would she ever go back? Only her lecturing him on the constraints applying to any trooper, corporal, sergeant or officer in a unit specialising in reconnaissance. Left a bad taste, sour, and should have been better because of where they had been and what they had seen.

The drone, of course, had not crossed the border. He was shown the fence from an elevated angle, could see where pine trees had been cleared and the ploughed strip where footprints would show up, and the track of crushed stone that was another 100 yards back and used by patrol vehicles. The Norwegian said how often they came by, and had unfolded a map which had the camera arcs marked, and he’d pointed to a section where a bend in the fence left dead ground… a small length but with tumbler wires. Beside the Norwegian was a clear plastic bag holding strands of animal hair. He spoke quietly, never looking at Gaz, as if the sight of him would contaminate: he would have been just one more of the foot-soldiers that Knacker had rounded up. They were on the northern section of the wire, and it was explained that farther south the frontier was first in the centre of a river, then halfway across a wide lake, as big as an inland sea. Where their interest lay, marked with a streak of red, was outside the eyeline of the nearest watch-towers. Gaz did not query the intelligence the Norwegian brought: how recently had the length of wire been surveyed, how long since the patrol patterns had been logged, had this location been used before? Had to take it on trust.

He was asked if he wanted to stretch his legs. Knacker assumed he did, had already opened the vehicle door.

Something that Gaz loathed: the final talk before a mission, when a spook would tell them all how important it was, what a difference it would make. He stood on the edge of the clearing and they would have been 100 yards back from the frontier fence that was shielded by the pine forest where no birds sang.

Knacker came close. “I saw you wince. Don’t worry, you’ll not get a portrait of our monarch or the Union flag, and how we’re all reliant on you. Take it as read. What matters are my assurances. We don’t send you out bare-arsed. We’ve done our best, which is a good best, to ensure you have the planning and backup you deserve. Why you? You are the only one we have, as an asset, with the knowledge and the qualities to do what is asked. Interrupt me any moment you want to…”

Gaz asked nothing, busied his mind memorising what he was told. He shook his head. The rain was lifting, the clouds breaking and the wind dropping. Flies were gathering.

“…We had this sleeper family in Murmansk. Been there for ever. Codeword Matchless, and that was the name of a Royal Navy warship doing Arctic convoys, and a seaman came into the port, sneaked ashore during a blackout, had his leg over. He never went back but word reached his mates on another convoy that ‘herself’ had been down on the dockside with a little bundle all wrapped up and needing a dad to be shown off to… Bit of a yarn but twenty years later the intelligence people had a whiff of the story and some digging was done, clever stuff, and the girl was identified, and her little bastard, and they were signed up. Good people and brave, because they faced a miserable death if they were caught after taking our shilling. Yes, we paid them. Money into the account each quarter, and it vegetates in the Channel Islands, and they sleep, sleep well and are not disturbed. Moved through the generations and contact with them is through the Italian embassy in Moscow, and a SISMI officer. We have no reason to believe that the family are not receptive to being woken. We see them as reliable, hard-working, fond of this bank account where their wealth accrues, though not yet touched. The contact has assured them that a substantial bonus applies to this work. They meet you at the rendezvous point they have been given. You will have trekked to get there but you have all the necessary skills to achieve that. They take you into Murmansk. You will be placed in the vicinity of the FSB building on Lenin Prospekt. Play it how you wish to play it, Gaz… Identify him, tail him, the major, establish his place of residence, and that is pretty much it. You leave the rest to us. Get this down your throat, Gaz – and I am not merely urging you to go the extra mile, get this…”

Nothing to say, he listened.

“It was a war crime. It was a job for the International Court of justice. It was the marker laid down by a civilised world that such behaviour was unacceptable. War crimes are only applicable to the team that loses. They didn’t lose, they won. They flattened the country and slaughtered the opposition and gassed them, and clapped their hands and cheered for Victory Syria Day and not a prosecutor in sight. They won. Except that we, non-combatants, do not see it quite in that light and have our own end-game which will bring gratification to the few who survived. That brave and rather attractive girl is one who, I hope, will feel a tad of satisfaction, and the others who survived. Do we do this, Gaz, because we like to donate comfort and love to victims with a munificence based on vengeance? Not really. It’s about gaining friends and allies and putting them in debt to us, and that way we thrive. As I said, you leave the rest to us, and don’t worry your pretty head about what the rest entails. Mark him for us, Gaz, as you used to mark for the snipers, or for the drone strikes. Give us the opportunity to finish it, Gaz. I think Fee brought a thermos of coffee, and probably some biscuits.”

Knacker stood back. Not a man who regularly congratulated himself. He had been listened to, had been heard. It was his familiar speech on the eve of a mission, the last hours before a man was put in harm’s way. Minor variations, but done many times. Earlier in his life he had stayed close to the border and had watched his agent go over or under or through a fence. Or had seen him into the departure hall at an airport. Or had been on a platform when a night train pulled away, his man settling into a seat and ticking fast in his mind the details of the legend, a lifestyle story, he’d been provided with. There had been a few men, and one woman, who had believed they possessed the strength of will to change their minds late in the day, to step back, and say to his face they were no longer prepared to go, wanted out. None had succeeded. He had ridiculed them, had praised them to the hilt, used the poetry of inspiration, had threatened… Quite a considerable armoury of tax investigation, job loss, consequences that were brutal and which he would not flinch from employing. They’d all gone… a few had even come back.

He seldom lingered in the past, just a fast kaleidoscope of faces that seemed to blur the image of Gaz in front of him. There were enough of them who had gone boldly forward with his soft-spoken encouragement trilling in their heads. Some had died beyond the reach of help after experiencing the violence of interrogation cells, and some had gone to the penal colonies, and some would emerge as broken individuals, but Knacker could comfort himself that, the end had always justified the means. A couple lost in Iran and three in the Damascus hell-holes, but the outstanding majority had gone into the territory of the Russian Federation. In his experience, the men he sent put on a show of confidence. There were those who were traitors to their own regime, who loathed it, or were keen to accept Knacker’s money, intelligence officers or scientists, one from the military general staff. And some who worked in telephone exchanges or in central banking. Some would earnestly say to him, ‘I think I’ve done enough…’ He’d respond, total sincerity, that their safety was his paramount concern and ‘… just one more time, friend, just once more, then we’ll call it a day…’ They all did, and there was always a moment of reflection at the Round Table, when a new casualty was spoken of, a pause in laughter and gossip and a raised glass. And life moved on. His hand was in his pocket and his fingers played with the coins – sterling and euros and Norwegian kroner – and they rested on the one that Maude had stolen at the Wall. He liked that thought, being a Pict or a Cantabrian painted with woad, not wearing a suit and a waterproof against a change in the weather and pushing men forward towards that great Wall, or a simple fence, all in the interests of the greater good.

“Little bit more time to kill, and I’m relying on Fee having that flask, and those biscuits… then I’ll leave you with her and our good and competent local colleague. Just have to get back to town, tie up a few loose ends… See you when you come back out… First, a splash of coffee.”

He always tied loose ends, left everything tidy; Knacker believed in the value of tidiness. The coin was between his fingers and that evening he might get one of the girls to clean it.

“We’ll miss you, Major, miss you greatly.”

Many had echoed that, all lying bastards: he knew most would be anxious to see him gone. He represented power and influence beyond a level they could attain or dream of.

“Congratulations on your new appointment, Major, we have been fortunate to have you here.”

Murmansk had a fine new headquarters building, but it was a backwater and those who wished to earn promotion would want to be out of the place fast. Only an imbecile would want to be here in this city where for six weeks in summer there was no darkness, and for six weeks in winter there was no sunrise. His mother had travelled north for two visits in the twenty-three months he had been stationed there and he had seen the lustre leave her face and she had seemed to shrivel in the wind. On each occasion rain had fallen steadily. There was nothing to show her and she had remarked, when standing at the foot of the Alyosha monument, that she would have preferred a postcard of it to seeing it for herself.

“We hope you will have pleasant memories of the city, of us, Major, and remember us favourably, and we hope you will speak well of us and our work in Moscow.”

In the capital there were fine shopping opportunities, and worthwhile work and a chance to bead his gaze on the faces of the fidgeting men over whom he exercised control. And status. And the regular chance to manufacture an excuse to take a free flight down to Sochi where there was always a vacant villa or an apartment belonging to a friend of his father. The brigadier general had never come to see him. His father distrusted the navy, was an army man, had no interest in the affairs of the Northern Fleet. And work involving drugs dependency in the city would hardly have held his father’s attention, nor anything connected with the so called ‘green lobby’ that complained endlessly about the alleged dumping of nuclear waste from decommissioned submarines. He hoped he would never again have to deal with security problems involving the frontier, or monitoring foreign diplomats and occasional tourists, or the difficult relations with the naval security people, an arrogant crowd. His father had sent the two minders who lived in a neighbouring block and drove him around and mounted a loose guard over him.

“A privilege to work with you, Major, and our thanks for your insights.”

He would go out of the door and his desk would be cleared and the hard drive on his computer cleansed of his own work and a new man would soon have his feet under the table.

“Your replacement, Major, was here the day before yesterday. Seemed efficient and interested in his work. A wife and two children, and looking forward to our winter sports.”

No backward glance from him when Mikki and Boris travelled with him to the airport, and his few personal possessions would have been crated and would go south on the train. There had been no gathering of colleagues at the main entrance to see him off. Most of those serving in Murmansk looked for a lifetime of sinecure and making enough money to buy an apartment without a mortgage between the railway station and the Prospekt. Would be excited to handle a case history of the eco-people who tried to bring law suits against the government and needed warning off. He could have had the boys park his official transport at the back of the building where the cell block was located and where the closed yard and high gates prevented scrutiny. Lavrenti preferred to use the front entrance, the limited spaces for senior officers, to make a statement of his importance.

He sat alone in his room. The matronly woman who typed for him was in an outer office, the door between them closed. When he had first come to Murmansk, the same woman had managed to beard him in the staff canteen; sitting with her had been a girl in her early twenties, his assistant’s niece, and the introduction was blatant. He had, scarcely polite, turned it down. Had flushed red, had indicated that there was a significant ‘other’ in Moscow. It had been a poor lie… His phone did not ring, emails were no longer copied to him, and the room was bare of anything personal except for the last item in the room that he would take away with him. A monochrome photograph, enlarged and framed with an aged gold leaf effect which had been hard to achieve in Murmansk, showed his father beside the barbecue, the President, smiling in front of him. Lavrenti never referred to the occasion and was not in the picture, but everyone in the building on Prospekt would have known of the picture and his assistant would have spread word of it. He would take the picture down the next day and it would go in the cases to be sent south…

His father had phoned him. Not a happy call. Cold, clipped, demanding an explanation why a roof had not been supplied to a coming man who had the opportunity to exploit mineral and oil deposits. He had blustered, his father had been incisive in his criticism. The situation with the Jew was to be rectified as soon as he returned to Moscow – not a matter of debate. He would sleep badly again that night. His assistant had prepared digests of ongoing cases, investigations that he had worked on, and the following day he would meet his successor and be shot of his responsibilities.

He stared at the desk, then at the empty screen, then at the closed door – and could not forget what he had seen, what he had done. No one in the headquarters building would miss him when he was gone, and the loneliness crushed him.

He had sagged off the sofa bed, and dropped down on to the rug beside it, and his elbow hit a bottle and toppled it… another day had started in the life of the woken sleeper.

The apartment was quiet. Next door, through a thin wall, music played, but the kids had gone for the day and had switched off the radios and the TV, and he had not heard them when they had come out of the one bedroom, his bedroom, and taken any food that was in the old refrigerator. They had enough money, because one was a thief and the other was a whore and both were criminals, but they had not bought a new or even a reconditioned refrigerator. He lived from the scraps they gave him, and most of his money went on cheap booze. He was thin and gaunt, and had dreamed of being even thinner and even more drawn in the face and with his skin hanging off his bones. In his dream, he was shuffling in a line of other zeks, wearing the prisoners’ flimsy uniform, near starved, and coughing half his guts up and labelled as a man who had betrayed his country.

He cared little for his son and cared less for his son’s girl. His wife was long gone, had given birth to the one child – named Timofey which meant ‘Honouring a God’ – and had left him to bring up the brat. And his sisters had gone. Anyone with a brain left Murmansk. He remained, and a few of his drinking partners; he loved them but had never told them, never spoken of a bank account abroad or of a codeword, Matchless. He feared that he might reveal his secret when drunk, pissing against a wall beside them… He would go to a prison camp for the rest of his days if he were caught as an enemy of the state, would rot there, and die there. He loathed his son, but could not drink without the money his son gave him. Loathed the girl who some days would come out of the bedroom – naked – and parade in front of him as he lay on the sofa bed, flaunting her tits and her arse, hated her. He did not wash. Did not eat, and had tipped over the bottle and its contents had slopped on the rug.

On television they showed films of FSB men and women when they charged out from the shadows and surprised traitors, handcuffed them and bundled them into vehicles. The television showed films of traitors in the courts, in a cage and facing justice. The films made it clear that the FSB always caught the spies, the traitors. It was on the television.

He would report the treachery. He would save himself. He would go into town, to the Prospekt, would find an officer, would tell him of the Italian’s visit, would stress his own loyalty – would not go to a penal colony up in the tundra, and would be rewarded, and would have drink – and would get back his own bed. He dressed in what he had worn most of the week and drained what was left in his overturned bottle. He would save himself.

Down by the Stroitel stadium, where they played ice hockey, junior league matches, the kids waited.

In Timofey’s life and in Natacha’s, going down to the stadium and waiting there was as dangerous a time as any. Freedom on a knife-edge because it was the one occasion when they were not in charge; they were there because they were told to be. The stadium, for a reason that neither could explain, was the location chosen by the Chechen boys from St Petersburg who drove up to Murmansk with fresh supplies: they had the best product. They were reliable, their prices were consistent, they were careful with their security. Wild and small and swarthy and from the Caucusus, their cruelty and brutality were unmatched. It was said that even the gangs in St Petersburg and Moscow were nervous of the Chechens. They waited.

Time drifted. The product that the Chechens brought to Murmansk was the best on the market. Timofey and Natacha had their regular customers. Never a complaint about the quality of the cut, never an accusation that the weed was augmented with fine sawdust, domestic flour or dried grass cuttings. If the Chechens in their large black van with privacy windows were late then the kids did not complain. To insult the travelling suppliers, or to antagonise them, would lead to bad consequences. Only a lunatic would trifle with the Chechens. It was the world in which they lived, but in the slow build-up to sex the night before, while the old idiot grunted and heaved and cursed in the living-room and failed to sleep, they had murmured what they would do with the money lodged in the foreign bank account, and that would be increased as a reward for the services they would provide as ‘sleepers’. They considered Red Sea resorts, the Italian coast or the Costas. Timofey carried a thick wad of notes in his hip pocket, she had more in her shoulder-bag. This was more important than where they had pledged to be later in the day; they were in place and with the money, looking out for the arrival of the Chechens, and also for the police.

They sat in the Fiat 500 – and smoked and talked and she nuzzled his neck and his hand lay on her thigh, and they kept a look on the mirror and the road behind the parking area. Maybe, Natacha whispered, there would be an opportunity, later, to get new wheels, something bigger and more comfortable than the Fiat. They had only each other, no one else cared a pinch for them. His father was a drunk and… her father was dead and in a shameful suicide’s grave.

She seldom told the story of how the death of the Kursk had killed her own father, safe on dry land when the explosion had ripped the submarine apart. He had been in the arms of his girl and had not set an alarm, had been in the warmth of a bed when the crew had stumbled from the apartments in the closed naval town of Vidyaevo on an August morning and gone to the buses that would take them to the quay where the submarine was moored. Some vessel. The height of the fourth storey of the building in which she now lived with Timofey, and as long as two football pitches, and they had sailed early with their Shipwreck and Starfish and Stallion missiles to exercise out in the Barents as if the enemy – NATO forces – were targets. First they would make an attack using a torpedo that weighed five tonnes and which was powered by hydrogen peroxide H2 02 propellant… She knew every detail of what had happened. At the moment her father had been stretching, yawning, considering the brilliance of the fuck he had enjoyed, that torpedo had exploded. The Kursk had gone down, its hull broken open. Her father, and his girl – who would be Natacha’s mother – did not learn of the Kursk’s loss for several hours. He would have pleaded influenza, and there were no telephones for the use of junior crew so he could not call in sick. Her father, after the persistence of the rumours sweeping the garrison town, had realised all his friends, colleagues, the boys with whom he laughed, joked, drank, were dead. He lived because he screwed this girl. He had taken a length of rope and had gone to the edge of the perimeter and had hanged himself. Natacha was a survivor of a sort, and managed, because of Timofey, to stay strong. And, that morning, if they were impatient, if they bugged out because the contact was late, then they would never again have the chance to trade with the Chechens, and might pay a high price for their disrespect – so they waited.

Gaz had sat in the vehicle, eyes closed and body still, and used known techniques for relaxation. There was a tap on his arm. The Norwegian to see him on his way. Gaz had no complaint that he had not seen Knacker, nor that Fee stood back and was half masked by the trees and did not speak and did not wave. No one in the regiment, about to climb up the ramp of a Chinook or scramble into a Special Forces vehicle and head off towards the sharp bit, wanted chaff talk that fogged concentration. He hooked the small rucksack over his shoulder. A change of clothes was in his bag but he was now in combat and camouflage gear and his only weapons were a flash-and-bang, and a pepper spray and a single smoke grenade. His clothing was sanitised, all labels removed and – if caught – he was expected to keep his mouth shut for thirty-six hours which would give time for what he knew to be buried, disguised. It was said within thirty-six hours, if you blundered into a patrol anywhere, here or Syria or the Province, the captors would realise the significance of who they had. After thirty-six… not worth thinking about, and the stuff he carried was for escape, creating diversion and chaos and having the bottle to break and run. But that, too, was chaff.

The Norwegian was older than Gaz – grizzled beard, cropped hair, slim and tall and fit. He led the way, carrying the small plastic bag that contained the animal hair. Gaz did not turn to see if Knacker and Fee watched him go. When they had worked out from the Forward Operating Base in Syria, and the same in Afghanistan, the Sixers always stayed back and the contacts were brought to them in a secure place. He assumed that Knacker was, in their books, a proven Russia expert, but would have bet that he had never been there. Might have looked out across country and at watch-towers, might have peered through high-powered lenses at an expanse of treetops, might have watched distant cars on the move… the Sixers were supposed to stay safe.

In a low voice, barely more than the sound of the wind in the leaves and on the fronds of the pines, the Norwegian explained why he carried the animal hair, and why he had with him a square metre of heavy leather. Made sense to Gaz. They were at the edge of the tree line. The fence was thirty yards of open ground in front of him. The Norwegian held his arm as if he did not want him to charge, not until he was pushed forward. From under his coat he produced two metal discs, each the size of a large Frisbee.

“I won’t see you again, friend, but I wish you well. It is right that you come out another way because this is a valuable place and should not be abused. You are like a bear. A bear does not recognise a political barrier. Goes to it, assesses, crosses it and has a coat that is strong, and protects it. We believe we know the patrol pattern and that this is a good time. You cross. You run after returning to me what is mine, and you do not stop. You go across the patrol track, then right and you will see a tree, quite tall, killed by a lightning strike. Beyond it, on lower ground, is a small lake. You take the left side of it and will see an animal track that veers to the right and you follow it, and you come to the road. That is the main highway from Kirkenes to Murmansk. On the far side, going down a little hill, is a picnic site, a pull-in behind the trees. There used to be benches there when the idea was to develop cross-border relations and have a friendly place for Russians and Norwegians to stop, take a pee, eat, then drive on. It is not used now because relationships have changed, changed considerably. You do not expect charity there, friend, but it is where you will meet your people. I wish you well. You are ready?”

“Ready.”

The Norwegian glanced at his watch, stood erect, listened. Gaz heard only the light patter of rain and the wind blowing in treetops, was passed the sheet of hard leather, and breathed hard, and considered. Then, with no ceremony, he was pushed in the shoulder and went forward, stumbled, regained his balance… and realised he was at war, a lowly and deniable trooper, lurching towards a frontier barrier. A few strides and the fence was in front of him. The ethos of his former unit was to merge and blend, to observe and note, to slip away and report. What action was taken was not his responsibility. Did as he was told, obeyed orders and it was for others to decide what use was made of the information he provided. He did not pilot a drone strike and did not nestle a sniper’s rifle against his shoulder. He did not have to look into the faces of the relatives or the comrades-in-arms of those whose lives were snatched because of the reconnaissance he was expert at. Comforting? Sometimes… What he had often hidden behind was the screen of professionalism. Like now. Like getting across open grass, thick and tufted, and seeing the fence looming high over him and razor wire strands up to his waist, and among them tumbler alarm wires, then four more stands, then short crossbars on each post and attached to them was more wire that projected a foot on each side. The concrete posts holding the barrier were solid and newly made. Saw that, and saw the ploughed strip beyond the fence where footprints would show, and he’d not have the time to smooth the dirt and lose the shape of his boots in the ground. Then a vehicle track, and patrols would be alerted by the tumbler wires, then the sanctuary of the tree line… No time to consider the finer points of ethics… A last thought and not of Aggie, not of Aggie taking a picnic with him on the cliff edge, but of the girl, and her scarred face, who had come to encourage him and the contempt in her voice when he’d explained his role, what he did and what he did not do. He heaved the sheet of hard leather over the wires’ cutting edges at the top of the fence, and jumped. The fence rocked, and he swung his legs.

A hissing voice, urgent, behind him. “Go. Keep going.”

They were thrown from behind him. Done expertly, landing not by chance but from a practised drill. Two metal pieces, the size of dinner plates, lay on the undisturbed ploughed strip.

He landed. The fence was violated, the wire loosened and sagged. Professionalism kicked in, like he had not been away two years, sitting in the shadows, agonising over his past. By now the alarms would be chorusing and lights flashing. He stretched forward with his right leg and put his boot on to the nearer metal plate and felt it sink, and stepped on to the second, and balanced and rocked and crouched and reached to pick up the first and threw it, and saw it fly well above the drooping fence. The Norwegian was on the far side of the wire, freeing the leather, and starting to scatter the hairs from his plastic bag, long and coarse. Gaz did the last stride and was beyond the ploughed strip and turned and groped for the second plate, and could see that the imprint it left was that of a huge beast with claw indents that went down a quarter of an inch. Clever and simple, and good enough for a cursory check. He threw the second plate over the fence and the Norwegian scurried to pick it up, and was gone. Left behind was the buckled fence, the traces of brown bear hairs impaled on the barbs and also the creature’s prints.

Gaz ran. Went fast for the tree line. Head down, searching for stones on which to land, and rock where he would not leave a trail. Kept running, and veered to the right as he had been told. Saw the tree. Dark, bare, dead, it seemed scorched as if the lightning had burned all sap and life from it. He headed for it… tried to gain strength to fight the fear that welled. Had dismissed the girl with her goats, and Aggie who was bent on rescuing him, and even Debbie who was a good kid and sorely tried and whom he had hit. He thought of the target, the officer who had come to the village.

Delta Alpha Sierra, the sixth hour

The body on the crossbar no longer kicked, or twitched, just spiralled.

Gaz was trained to observe, accepted that life was gone. He watched the troops who were not part of the cordon, those who had fanned out and were starting to search the buildings. It might have been that either the commander or his Russian captain were behind schedule, that time had slipped, and the example to be made was not yet nailed down. Troops approached the group of kids, who sat, hunched, round shoulders, blindfolded heads, hands tied at their backs. Until the Iranians reached for them they would not have known if they were to be taken. The one with a football shirt was lifted up and held. Gaz had the glasses on him and recognised the badge on his shirt was that of Bayern Munich; the shirt would have been a top possession, and would have come into Syria with aid parcels from Germany: not sending their own sons to fight in a messy mid-east war, but happy to send a football shirt over. The kids did not know, but Gaz did, where they were going to be taken. He knew… and the girl probably knew, and Gaz reached forward and stretched his arm far enough to hold her wrist, and held it tight.

He said nothing, nor did she.

What they had seen was that there were now four ropes looped over the crossbar of the goalpost. A man from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps carried a sledgehammer and tent pegs. The ropes had a noose at the short end; after being slung over the crossbar, the other end was fastened to a peg which was then hammered into the soil. More chairs had been brought out into the rain and the wind. The corralled women, with the small children, were not blindfolded and they might have been intimidated by the aimed rifles during the first killing, but no longer. They had begun to whistle and shriek and the sounds of their voices filled the valley.

The one who wore the Bayern Munich shirt kicked out as he was carried. Gaz assumed that his blindfold had slipped. The kid would have seen the goal where he’d believed himself the Lewandowski of the village. Seen the ropes and the chairs, seen the body suspended, feet making slow circles and reversing, and would have seen the hooded man who stood near to the commander. Gaz could not have said what was best. Best to get it over with, take the inevitable, hope it would be quick. Or best to fight, howl and lash out, try to break free only to be clubbed and taken to the football goal and heaved up on to a chair? Gaz had no opinion, hated what he saw but could not look away, and held the girl’s wrist. Had he been able to, Gaz would have smothered her, lain on top of her and twisted her head so that she saw nothing, and covered her ears so that she heard nothing. The cordon of militia guys was perhaps a 100 metres from him and seemed uninterested in a group of goats, would not have seen her, nor her dogs. If she yelled at them or stood and screamed curses then they would come, fanned out and scrambling at speed, and he would have no possibility of breaking out, and she would be shot down. For him it would be worse; to be captured was the foulest nightmare of Special Forces troops. If she did sacrifice her cover and scream abuse she would achieve nothing. He held her.

The kid with the football shirt, Lewandowski’s name and number – nine – faded on the back, was hauled past the commander. His arms were bound and he was held by two men who dragged him towards the football pitch, his legs seeming to stagger and slip below him. It might have been an act and might have been an accident. The kid had control of his legs and could pivot on one and lash out with the other. He had good purchase… Go quickly, or go with a fight? Gaz did not know. In Londonderry once, up in the Creggan estate and in the roof of a derelict house, he had seen a child, brought by his mother to waste ground for a kneecap punishment – would have been labelled as anti-social which might have meant vandalism, or might have meant he’d called a local strongman ‘a feckin arsehole’, or might have meant stealing. Little more than a kid and going to be shot in the kneecaps, from the back, and hadn’t fought, had just lain there and waited, like he was drugged. He would never run again. The Bayern kid’s trainer caught the Iranian officer on the side of the cheek, and the kick had enough power to twist the man’s neck and topple him so that he staggered and might have gone down had the Russian not grabbed him, held him upright. Gaz thought it a powerful enough kick to have loosened teeth, might even have damaged the ligaments holding the jaw. He was held but they had no grip on his legs and he managed one last kick and caught the officer’s groin. The officer jackknifed, and the pain would have been severe. Clever? Maybe… Worth doing? Perhaps. The commander squirmed: nobody laughed, not like they would have done on an English cricket pitch. Maybe the kid had not thought it through, maybe he hadn’t reckoned on consequences, just launched fury as a response… the consequence might have been coming anyway and all he’d done was hasten it.

They were all on the chairs under the crossbar, and all quickly had the nooses slung around their necks. The women and the children had troops close against them, chest to chest, and were spitting and were being whacked with rifle butts, and the noise was of pandemonium. Gaz held her wrist so tightly that he might have snapped the bone, and she whimpered and so did the dogs, quietly but in distress.

There was a crack. A crack like a rifle-shot.

A crack that was carried on the sharp wind to Gaz, and he squinted to see what had made the sound and saw the chaos and then the scrum of movement between the goalposts. Four boys had been hoisted on the crossbar. Too much weight. Chairs dragged clear, the crossbar snapping. The roped kids falling and militia around them and the commander back on his feet, hobbling and gesticulating. They used bayonets on the bound kids on the ground, using the blades as if they were clearing rough ground.

Gaz thought there was more to come, that the killing had only started, and he could not look away. By text he was told to hold his ground… he was a witness and therefore valuable. Not intended that a Special Forces team having carved a path through the depth of the storm should then get stuck in a fire-fight against an al-Quds unit. He held her wrist and she did not fight him, and he thought his strength leached.

Had Alice been on the phone, when the three were brought in front of her, to her lover, confidante and fellow journeygirl for Knacker, she would have said, ‘No lie, Fee, but they look proper evil bastards.’ Hereford boys escorted them into the tent, were wary of them, with good reason.

And Fee might have answered her: ‘Evil is good, rack it up, and a little cunning to garnish it – where they’re going.’

The contact they had collected on the way to this shanty town of hovels for displaced persons quizzed each of the men in turn. Their recent histories were laid out. Common for the trio was an ability to focus on the flight from the village of Deir al-Siyarqi during the critical minutes before the cordon around the village closed. All those who had escaped from their homes and had run, half-dressed and fresh from sleep, across the football pitch and up the dried river-bed, had been pursued only a few hundred yards before the IRGC people had given up and had loosed wasted shots after them. They had gathered in the far distance, had hidden and had watched until dusk. None of the three had returned to the village that night, and in the morning they had watched as the birds circled in the air and the pall of smoke was not yet dispersed. One had lost his parents, one had lost his parents and two brothers, one had lost his wife. The camp where their credentials were examined by Alice for suitability was eight miles from the village that had been their home. The flotsam of the war in that sector were kept there, supplied with minimum nourishment and basic shelter. Alice had been driven there fast, the vehicle kicking up dirt from the open ground, to the rim of a plateau. The regiment guys had been reluctant to stop there more than half a minute. Time enough for her to soak up an atmosphere, and flick images of what she saw on to her phone. There had been drone pictures for her to sift through but nothing as cold and comprehensive as seeing it with her own eyes: all the roofs blown off or sagging, all the walls blackened from fire damage. The mound of the mass grave was still prominent, and she had stood for a few seconds where she imagined Gaz had been hidden, and from which he had seen the day play out… They had then driven to the shanty town where the detritus of the seven-year war were living out their lives. Quite moving, actually, not that sweet Alice with her face of extreme innocence and a scattering of freckles, gave time to sentimentality. She thought the men fitted Knacker’s requirements.

She would have said, had she been on the phone to Fee, ‘I think they’ll manage a good job, and go through shades of shit to get there to do it. Will be a painful job on him when they know where to go.’

Fee would have replied, ‘Painful and slow and him wishing he’d not been born. Well done, girl.’

And that was Alice’s business completed, and she could get back on the road with her escort, and the three chosen men would be moved by the man who had brought them to this sprawl of shelters, and they’d call him FoxTrot which was F for ‘Facilitator’. FoxTrot would shift them in a camper wagon across country, through back roads and tracks to the Lebanese border, bring them to Beirut where ‘sympathetic local assets’ would provide cash and travel documentation in the names of three citizens from Beirut, and they would fly north. The beauty of it was that they had seen Alice but did not know her name and she had spoken to them in Arabic, and could have been German or Dutch or Swedish, and the regiment boys were in mufti and did not have to speak and were masked. Fee was right to praise her; it had gone well. They left in a dirt cloud, and she’d be back in the Yard in the morning. It had gone well at her end, but that was the easier one, by a country mile.

She texted Knacker, spare with detail. Three on the move. Told him all he’d need to know. Alice reckoned him a good guy, the only man she’d follow into hell.

Knacker and Fee sipped apple juice. He rarely drank alcohol and she could do without. Some teams were used to being pissed up when an agent was launched, but he thought that irrelevant and juvenile and had trained his girls to follow the stricture.

They talked the price of king crabs. The red king crab, with a body size up to eight inches across, three pairs of legs and one pair of claws – currently marketing at $26 a kilo – was classified as an invasive species and one which brought big profits. Fee had done the homework, had brought the Norwegian fishing boat scuttling across the North Sea to Unst in Shetland. The creature, ugly as sin and a delicacy, was in big demand in St Petersburg and Moscow: wanted in all the pricier restaurants in which the new rich flaunted their wealth. The usual top fishing ground was the Kola fiord leading down to Murmansk. Except that this was not a natural species for those waters and pollution was thought to have ravaged stocks this summer season. A plane from the south flew in to Murmansk most days to collect the wriggling brutes in their last throes of life, and went home empty. A hole in the market led to opportunistic advancement. Norwegian waters did not have a fleet of dirty naval carcases leaking oil, chemicals, even radiation poison. It had worked well and a hole was filled. Knacker and Fee sipped their juice. It was the sort of wheeze that Knacker liked… up their noses, pinching their bollocks. Doing them damage and them not aware of it. Knacker had seen his people off across some miserable border, and some came back and some did not, but the usual result was a paper of some significance going on to the desks of ‘customers’ in the selected Ministry offices north of the Thames, or across the Atlantic. The purchase of red king crabs in Kirkenes harbour had made a dent in the cash float that Fee had brought, and he would sign it off. Cheap at the price. He did not laugh out loud because this was only the beginning, most certainly not the end of the beginning, not while his boy – a reluctant hero – was on the move and heading for a rendezvous.

“Would you like to eat one of the bloody things tonight, Knacker?”

“Wouldn’t mind that. But spare me having to watch you pop it into boiling water while alive.”

Gaz paused by the tree. Used its dead trunk to shield him, the basics in avoiding ‘silhouette’, and listened. He heard the rain dripping off the leaves and branches of birches and pines, and heard the ripple of the wind above him, and the shrill call of small birds – and did not hear the cacophony of barking dogs, nor sirens, but might have heard the distant throb of a vehicle engine.

Almost laughable… Gary Baldwin, Gaz, a guy invalided out of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, certified as a sufferer from post traumatic stress disorder, an island recluse who scratched a living from handyman jobs, was the invader – a solitary one-man-band invader – of the country with the largest land mass of territory on the planet. He thought his incursion was so far unnoticed, but doubted that the quiet and serenity around him would last. He pressed on.

Old skills were resurrected. He moved at a loping pace and hugged cover and clung to the edges of the tree line and did not use the open spaces of heather and low scrub where he might have gone faster but would have left a more marked trail. He had never worked in similar terrain. The ground was either rock-hard with a flimsy layer of peat compost sitting on top of granite formations, or it was a bog and his boots went into liquid black mud, and the trees were dwarf height and dense where they had taken root.

He thought they had been at the border later than intended, and tried to make up time. He concentrated on each step in front of him. Where to let his weight land, how to lift a boot from the bog and not leave it sucked under, avoiding brittle branches… There might have been the sound of a jeep’s engine, but he would not have sworn it. He considered how he would be met, how greeted, how they would be. Responsibility for the pick-up, he assumed, would have been delivered into the hands of the original recruit’s grandson. Gaz knew little of Russia, and the sociology of life in the western sectors of the country, but understood there was an undercurrent of resentment from the young against the dictatorship, what a lecturer had called the culture of kleptocracy, and another guest speaker had described the country as a ‘mafia state’. The grandson would be young, idealistic, educated, and would be a free spirit – would think that he was doing something for the future of his family, his friends and his neighbours, for society. He had heard of the Pussy Riot group, and knew protestors were banged up in gaol, that elections were rigged, that dissent was not tolerated… Knew there had been no inquiry into the actions of a Russian officer on liaison duty with Iranian militia troops during an atrocity of which he was a witness. So, a kid who was prepared to help the agent of a foreign power was likely to be a boy with high principles, a total contrast to himself. Gaz did not champion human rights, equality issues. He had been working out of the Forward Operating Base in central Syria at the time of the last UK election and it would have been possible to use a postal vote for the constituency of North Herefordshire, where the barracks at Credenhill were sited, but he had not bothered. He expected that the boy sent to meet him would want to quiz him on politics and talk of persecution, and staying outside gaol… and again he concentrated because the lake was in front of him.

He went around the north side of the water. A fish jumped, broke the surface and clattered back and sent spray flying. The ripples spread wide. He no longer heard what he had thought might be a jeep’s engine. And found the animal track.

The Norwegian boys on the fishing boat had given him a crash course on the ground he’d face, and the wildlife. Might be a bear such as the one that might have broken the fence behind him, might be moose or reindeer, might be a small pack of wolves. He took the path. Had walked for an hour, gone more than two miles, and he thought he was late for the pick-up, went as fast as he dared, but trying to avoid leaving a trail of heavy boot prints. Thought he noted a shape far back among the trees in shadow, and turned fast, but registered nothing, and twice more. Was sure that something, or someone, kept pace with him and was on a parallel path, but never heard and never saw… Now heard a vehicle, a straining lorry engine. He quickened his pace.

It would be good to meet the contact… In Afghan and Syria they often went with a local man, might be a policeman and might be a collaborator. Was never supposed to be fully trusted, but all the guys and girls went overboard to make the man driving them into a friend. Would try to read him, and see if there was sincerity in his eyes or shiftiness. The driver could nudge the mission towards success, what some in the SRR even regarded as glory. Flip the coin, see its reverse face, and the man might be subject to a raft of pressures in Syria. Could be that his whole posture was counterfeit, or that his family were the bargaining chip and would be wasted without cooperation, could be that the opposition made a better offer. Could be that the driver would arrive at a pre-arranged roadblock, get out of the vehicle and walk over to his father, his cousin, his uncle, his wife’s family and deliver Gaz – never did know and always better to get a ride with the Hereford lot or a lift in a Chinook. He was hurrying, was late, reckoned the contact boy was anxious, afraid, and pacing, cursing.

Through the trees, Gaz saw timber lorries on a road and climbing an incline, then quiet, then came into a sad and disused picnic lay-by. As it had been described. Collapsed timber tables with benches – might have been damaged by the weather and might have been vandalised. A surface of chip stones was carpeted with vigorously growing weed. He crouched down, still inside the cover of the low trees. Saw layers of dumped plastic, bags and wrappers and cartons. Looked for a car, and looked for a boy.

Like a kick in the stomach. Before being pushed out of the regiment, he would have easily settled himself and hidden away, waited for a contact to show. The lay-by was empty and nobody walked in circles, smoking, checking a wrist-watch. Birds sang, and a hawk went over and screamed, and a few cars passed on the road that was mostly hidden. He waited for an engine to slow and then the growl of tyres on gravel at the start of the lay-by, and then the pick-up car to come into view. And waited. And wondered… five minutes gone, ten, fifteen… and cursed. Confidence fled. A car came into the lay-by. Gaz stood. Dumb of him to have allowed doubt. The engine was switched off, and a man, middle-aged, climbed out, stood with his back to Gaz, fiddled with his flies and peed at the matted grass in front of him, shook himself, wriggled his arse, fastened his trousers and was back in the car and starting the engine. The emptiness and the silence returned. Nothing to do but wait – and hope. Sensible, Gaz reckoned, to go through the back-up plan, but it seemed to him to be shot with holes.