Beyond Recall

Chapter 7

‘Don’t worry, shouldn’t fret, something’ll show up – always does.’ What Knacker would have said if he could have reached him on a phone. Gaz had been at the lay-by a couple of minutes short of an hour. He was still hunched in the undergrowth near to the collapsed picnic bench.

He heard a car’s wheels on the stones behind the trees, where the slip-road came. He braced himself, ready to drag himself up. He had decided he would stay in cover until the car was at a halt, then would slip forward; he expected a window to be wound down, the codeword given, and he’d be inside a saloon, a fast handshake and they’d be off, the tyres squealing on the loose ground, and his heart could stop pounding, and… A police car came into the lay-by. It parked some forty paces from him. Two uniforms on board.

Knacker would have shrugged. ‘You’ll reckon a way round it when the pick-up gets to you. That’s who you are, what you do.’

The mosquitoes seemed to search for him. Some had success. Gaz could not stand up and could not flail and could not sit in a bush and light up a pipe… In his trade they reckoned that cows were bad because they would gather in a half-moon around a hide dug into a hedge, and sheep were crazily difficult because they were liable to stampede, and dogs were always curious. The policemen opened the door of the vehicle and were unwrapping sandwiches and unscrewing a flask.

Knacker would have said, ‘Think on the bright side – ask them for a lift into town, if the contact doesn’t show.’

The police were well dressed and their vehicle had been washed. They settled into their meal, then each had a cigarette, and then poured from the thermos. They might catch half an hour of sleep. One back-up plan seemed to Gaz to be the most realistic: give it an hour, maximum. Give it an hour and then go through the trees again and look for the animal track and follow it as far as the lake, and forget about the sense he had had that he was watched as he moved but had heard nothing. Get back to the lake and trail around the end of it and go by the little beach in front of where the fish had jumped, and look for the dead tree. Get a bearing off it, reach the fence. Don’t worry about prints in the ploughed strip or about leaving torn clothing on the wire, just run at it and jump, roll and fall. Walk back into town. Show up at the safe house and be turning over some variation of ‘not capable of organising a piss-up in a brewery’, and facing the big man.

Knacker would have said, ‘Just needed a bit of patience, and it was all going so well. I’d have thought better of you.’

Would go back to the island and drag the mower out of the shed and start catching up on a backlog of cutting grass, and doing the little jobs. Tell Aggie that he had flipped… would never have another chance of suffocating that black dog, the one that tracked him each dark night. He tried to remember good days… Not a whole heap of them. Bad for him to reminisce and hard for him to maintain that blood was not on his hands. He pinched himself. Hurt himself by twisting a fold of skin between his fingers as much as the mosquitoes did on the rest of his skin. He sat, and the insects feasted.

The policemen ate their food and crumpled the paper wrapping and chucked it aside. They shared a bar of chocolate and the tinfoil went the way of the sandwich wrapping, and they both swallowed from a plastic bottle of soft drink and dumped it with the rest of their garbage. Then they settled back in their seats, closed the doors and windows, and prepared for sleep. Enough to make a man cry.

Knacker would have said, ‘Remember you’re the best, Gaz. Not just because you were the witness, but because you are top of the tree. Why we chose you.’

And he stayed put, could not work out an option. Instead, he focused, remembered the target, why he was there providing a meal for mosquitoes, saw the face, needed to cling to it.

Not much to fill the boxes. The music centre and the widescreen TV, then into the kitchen.

Lavrenti could have called Mikki or Boris, told them to get off their arses and come up to the apartment and take over the packing up. Or at least politely request their help. Did neither. The removals company had assumed that he would not himself – Major Lavrenti Volkov – do the work. It had been explained that the company was not responsible for breakages if items were not correctly wrapped… He was losing his temper: two plates were cracked and a glass broken. But still he did not call them.

It mattered little how much he damaged. His mother would replace everything when he returned to the capital. Settling him into life in the Arbat quarter of Moscow would be her next project. There, he would be shot of Mikki and Boris, would tell his father that he longer required them. A big step for Lavrenti. A plate slipped from his hand, landed on its edge, and the pieces scattered. He kicked out, lashing then into the wall.

This was a good apartment by Murmansk’s standards. The landlord would have hoped for some personal advantage to come his way if the rent was at rock-bottom, and the maintenance charges waived. He was another who would find that patronising an officer of FSB carried a bad kickback. The window had a view of the docks: idle cranes, moored and rusted hulks, a destroyer awaiting cannibalisation. Not a cruise liner in sight although they had been promised, and the wind rippling the oily water. Through the same window, in view if he pressed his nose against the glass, was his official car, black and polished, and leaning against it were his minders.

They would not be worried by Lavrenti. Both were Afghan veterans, devoted to his father. They’d have licked his backside. They’d have been overrun, so the account went, when the local bastards surrounded a patrol that was edging down an incline of loose rock. Twenty men, an under-strength platoon and all of them from the security division. Calm words from his father and a call to get close, to keep up the volume of aimed shots – not enough ammunition to blast away on automatic – stay low among the rocks and believe… A Soviet flag was tied proudly to a thorn bush. His father had called in an air strike. Had called it in right above them. Who believed in God’s hand? None of them, before the jets arrived from the strip at Jalalabad. All of them, when the noise of the explosions died and the smoke cleared and they were free to finish the lives of the wounded mujahedeen, most of them had already gone to their God. The Russians were all alive, considered that their officer had saved them. Mikki and Boris were not loyal to Lavrenti but to his father. They lounged beside the big car and smoked and must have reflected that they lived a pretty good and prosperous life.

They had done jobs for his father, and chauffeured his mother, and provided protection during the wild years when the old regime collapsed. His father had done well, and the muscle he had brought to a killing ground had been supplied by Mikki and Boris. It was natural that as his father climbed he would need reliable men to watch his back against revenge and jealousy. The boy going to Syria, and his mother in tears, and his father, gruffly anxious, had sent them to stand alongside his only child to protect him. They had been with him that day, had seen it, watched it, but had not taken part in it…

He drank with his friends, fortified himself.

Whenever life was so bad that his future seemed eaten up, and he had no booze money, he would lurch up the hill, and know he was free of his son – the rat Timofey – and of his son’s girl, the whore. Always there were friends at the Alyosha monument, and always they were generous with what they had. It was a steep climb for him. After their own drink was finished, they would wait till it was quiet and the front plinth of the monument was deserted, and then the youngest and the fittest would dart forward. At the front of the monument, where gaudy wreaths were laid, were usually fresh fruit and newly cooked scones, and bottles of vodka. Those who came to stock up the offerings, in memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War who had died in the defence of the city, replenished the vodka bottles. The young drinkers, the fastest on their feet, would ignore the fruit and the scones. A bottle of real stuff, Stolichnaya 100 proof, ABV 50%, would be brought back, replaced by one filled with tap water, and they would drink happily until it was drained.

Today he wanted proper vodka, not the shit they were used to drinking. He needed to fortify himself, not that any of his fellow drinkers, riddled with alcoholism, would have understood his problem. They had been told often enough of the wrongs done him by the vermin who had taken his home, his son and his son’s whore, but they would find it hard to comprehend what he intended – when the drink supplied the necessary courage. To stand outside the big building on the Prospekt and tell the first officer he could grab hold of what his son intended. A sleeper, woken, and a foreign power intervening, and espionage. He would tell it because the alternative was a penal colony where there was nothing to drink, and where he would die.

Now he said where he was going, and why. Some shrugged and some looked away, and some thought he was obviously ready for an asylum, and some murmured that it was dangerous to denounce his own son. It would take a quantity of vodka to gain the boldness for that level of betrayal. He would do it. Fuck them all… He would.

“It is a secure line at your end?”

“Secure, confirmed.”

“Thank you. Good to speak, Paulo. You are going to bring me up to speed?”

“My intention, all you should know. I begin at the start… I considered that I had the wrong people and the wrong address, but I knew the name and the address were correct because they had the code. I tell you my friend, Knacker, they were a considerable surprise to me.”

Knacker assumed that Paulo, third-tier Italian diplomat and first-tier UK asset, spoke from the security room in his country’s Moscow embassy.

“Please explain.”

“Only my opinion but I should not hide it from you. They did not seem to be suitable, I think that an appropriate description.”

Over the years, Knacker had built himself a network of colleagues. They came from ethnically rich and diverse backgrounds, were cultivated with the care that Maude, when not scratching among ruins, gave to her glasshouse tomatoes. He believed them loyal to him, willing to walk an extra mile or two, and above all they were tasked to tell him the truth. His name was not widely known in the European intelligence community, but those who knew it swore by his effectiveness as a confounder of what was called the ‘Russian conspiracy’, to dislocate their best endeavours – almost a crusade.

“Tell me.”

“I am not a cold water man. I do not pour it with the aim of dampening enthusiasm. The man originally recruited, then let go to his sleep, is long dead. His son – now in his late fifties, early sixties – lives at the address I was given. He is a pitiful alcoholic, barely able to communicate and with severe physical limitations on his mobility. It would be unwise to place any reliability on him. Then there is the grandson… he has taken over the family primacy and was the one ‘woken’. He is Timofey. Cannot be specific but I am assuming him to be a pusher of narcotics, the cannabis/marijuana field, not the Class A of heroin/cocaine, but perhaps also in amphetamines. He would have no ideological distaste for the regime of authority in Murmansk city except that it is ‘authority’. He would be without discipline. Your expression, Knacker, is I believe ‘the loose cannon’. With him is a girl. On a table in the apartment, one bedroom and where they live with the father, was a gaol release form. The girl is just back from a detention sentence. I detect she has less self-control than him, more mercurial and harder to predict her actions. They possess a small car – Italian, of course, and therefore utterly reliable in its quality engineering. Knacker, allow me one suppressed smile. They are quite unsuitable for any important work put in their way. You want my conclusion?”

“Why not, Paulo? Are you cancelling Christmas?”

There was no possibility of Knacker misunderstanding the tenor of the Italian’s report. He liked the old quip of ‘If it were easy, everyone would do it’, could hide behind that, but not appropriate to inflict it on his colleague, and knew his honesty.

“It gives me no pleasure… it is a difficult town. The FSB there expect the infiltration of hostile agents. They have the Fleet and there are concerns for the security of the naval yards. Also they have the proximity of a NATO border. People live on a diet of suspicion. There is a sizeable apparatus of counter-intelligence. That is the reality.”

“The conclusion, Paulo?”

“It is difficult to say to you, Knacker, because I know what is invested.”

“Cut to the point, friend.”

There was a pause on the line. Expected. Knacker was in the garden of the safe house, and he spoke quietly. Fee watched him from the kitchen, behind the double glazing, and filed her nails. The Norwegian had sent a cryptic text indicating the Russian patrol vehicle had checked out the border fence and had dutifully photographed what appeared to be bear prints on the smoothed ground their side of the wire and had collected the coarse hair deposited on the barbs. From his vantage-point in the bushes he had heard their radio exchanges, and a shout that it was ‘another of those fucking bears, big bastard by the print size’, and they had set about repairing damage. All satisfactory.

“My conclusion, Knacker, with regret, is that the Matchless contact is not supportable. These are not the sort of people who could sustain the necessary actions for a mission of this risk. They should not be used. I urge you most strongly, the advice of a respectful colleague, to terminate the mission. Terminate it. You should bring back your man. That is my conclusion, Knacker. Abort him.”

“Thank you, Paulo.”

“Please, or it will be tragic, follow my advice.”

“Succinctly put. I am grateful – the trouble is that I reckon it too late. From your part of the world, Paulo, ‘the Rubicon is crossed’. Appreciate your help. Summary, don’t think I can get him back. Have to let matters take their course, and hope. Thanks again.”

He smiled to himself, pleased with what had been passed to him. They sounded the sort of people, those kids, that he would have wanted on board. Defiant, outside the tramlines of convention, bloody minded, and above all streetwise – could not have picked better. A rather jaunty step as he went inside.

The police car would have received a call.

A last piss into the undergrowth, a last disposal of rubbish, and the engine starting up. The blue lights came on over the car’s roof, and the guys inside had settled in their seats and both doors were slammed. They were off, did a sharp turn and at one point they were within ten yards of where Gaz hid. The car skidded on the stones and made a show of urgency. Gaz watched it go… had watched it for little short of an hour. Two lorries had turned in, been there five minutes, then had left. The police car accelerated, disappeared, and he was left with the emptiness that had taken hold of him before it had pitched up, like a mission failed…

He caught sight of the girl from the corner of his eye, shifted his gaze to her. She was down the lay-by from him, about fifty paces away. She stood her full height, raised her hand, clenched her fist except for the main finger, held the pose. Perhaps, in the police car, they would have had a glimpse of her in the mirror or perhaps they were already hitting the main road. She lowered her arm and began to brush the dirt and debris from her jeans and her top, and shook her head as if to dislodge any leaves or berries caught in her hair. She looked around, then down at her watch, then mouthed something which he did not hear. The gesture from the single finger showed contempt, an obscene insult, and as universal was Gaz’s reading of her lips. Could have been trakhat’ tebya, could have been fuck you, could have been anything that made her feelings clear for the ‘boys in blue’. She tilted her head and stared in front and behind and seemed for a moment to stamp in frustration. Her jeans were stained in mud below the knees and her footwear was pathetically unsuitable for traipsing across country. Her hair was blonde and tangled; she seemed to curse… and then she whistled.

The boy came. Gaz understood. She had come through the trees to the lay-by but had hidden while the police were there, had seen them off, had looked around her, had raked the cover with her eyes, and was annoyed because she had not found what she searched for, and had whistled to summon the boy. He was scrawny, pale, muddy, and he had hair cut short. She lectured him. A wide gesture, waving her arm across the empty expanse of the lay-by and then her hands slapped her thighs as if to emphasise her irritation… seemed to say this was the place, and… seemed to say that it had failed… and started to flounce. The boy stayed calm. Glanced at his watch, pursed his lips, would have accepted they had been late, shrugged. Perhaps the boy reckoned time, early or late, was less relevant than her response.… She stood with her hands on her hips, small and defiant and angry. He was quieter and calmer, and took a big breath.

One word, shouted at the emptiness of the lay-by. “Matchless.”

Gaz pushed himself up, responded: “Matchless.”

Small birds were pecking at the policemen’s food wrappers, but his shout, and Gaz’s answer, scattered them and they squawked and flew. He had not yet shown himself, was still wary. When he stepped forward that was the ultimate moment of vulnerability, no going back. And, they could have been turned, and could have had a better offer, and could have fifty FSB gooks in full combat gear poised to jump on him…

The boy shouted, fair enough English, “If you are here, stranger, and you answer to the word, Matchless, then show yourself and we can get the fuck out. We are late. We have hiked ten klicks. There is a block on the road at Titovka. To go beyond Titovka you must have a special permit and your documentation is checked. We left the wheels at Titovka and came through this forest – fucking awful. One last time, are you here, are you not here? We are not staying… here or not here?”

Every move he made during his years with the regiment had been planned. Every eventuality was considered. Backup always existed. The whole business was chaos, and he was an idiot for accepting the arm twisting, and… He stood up, parting the low fronds and branches of dwarf birch. He stepped forward.

He spoke in English, “I think it is me that you are supposed to meet.”

So chaotic that it seemed pitiful to talk in the code of a professional. He walked towards them. A basic law, one that he did not ignore, was to remember that they were not his friends. They were just part of the deal that Knacker had cobbled together. No hugs and no kisses, no small talk. A formal handshake, the girl first and then the boy, and her grip was firmer than the boy’s, and they had names. He was Timofey. She was Natacha. Who was he? Good question. He paused, hesitated and wondered how great a confidence he should give them.

Crisp but quiet. “I am Gaz… Thank you for coming.”

She said, “Nobody thought about the block at Titovka. Titovka is where the army has a garrison. We had to go around the block. We thought of taking a car, hot-wiring it, driving it up here. Would have done but could not see a car to give us that possibility. We go through all shit to get here. It is a closed zone, a security zone. Nobody told us that we had to enter it, we found for ourselves. I ask you, are your people incompetent?”

When he went back, if he did, Gaz promised himself that he would repeat the challenge of this girl, Natacha. Would like to see faces tighten, lips compress, all the things that bosses did when criticised, and the biggest insult was an accusation of incompetence.

Gaz said, “Probably, most days, they do their best.”

They both laughed in his face. He was asked if he could go through the forest and the bog, where there was no road, whether he would manage rough ground. Poker-faced, he said that he thought he could, would try. The girl led and was light-footed and set a pace. Neither wore the correct clothing or shoes, yet he struggled to keep up with them. Both possessed strength that came from tilting against the state’s windmills, the bloody-minded obstinacy required to survive on the basement of society, and the arrogance that came from being unbeaten… He knew the young tearaway kids in the Creggan and in the villages up on the hills of east Tyrone, and the ones who would have thought themselves indestructible when they had gone down the road from the village in Syria. It gave Gaz a level of confidence just trying to catch up with the girl and keep the boy from clipping his ankles. He would not be the one who needed to stop and gasp and regain composure, would make sure it was one of them. But he had a question, and it needed answering.

“What’s the motive for you in helping me? Because of the old family link, and sleeping but being loyal to an old promise. Is it that?”

The boy answered. “It is the money. Only the money.”

The girl chimed in, “What else? If you live here what matters? Only money.”

Nothing was as Gaz would have expected it. They went at a pace, skipping and dancing and sliding, slashed by low branches. He thought they were watched, would have sworn to it, but heard nothing and saw nothing and had only his instincts. And, certain of it, he was comfortable with them.

From the boy: “You go after an officer in FSB? What has he done?”

And from the girl: “We hate FSB. Big hate. What has he done?”

“Would take a long time to tell.”

Delta Alpha Sierra, the seventh hour

He could not look away. It would have been rank cowardice to close his eyes or bury his head in his hands. Gaz reckoned she no longer had the heart to rise to her feet, have the dogs go with her and stampede the goats down the slope and charge against the cordon line. No point in such an action, except that she would have been shot, would have had the misery ended.

He racked up the number of bad moments with the worst at the top of his list, and the space was crowded. The most recent ‘worst’ was the death of the handicapped child, probably Down’s syndrome. A teenage boy. His mother hanging on to him, holding him tight against her skirt, and other women helping her to control him, but he was strong, fought them, and broke free. Gaz assumed that the girl close to him, surrounded by her goats and dogs, would have known the lad, from the day he was born. This remote village would not have relied on the help of central government in the years before the start of the war. They would have banded together, every woman in the small community helping the mother. The kid ran in slow ungainly steps, his fists clenched. Would have seen what had happened to other boys, not much older than himself, who would have teased and tormented and loved him as part of their community. Now, the boy wanted to hurt the commander and the officer who so obviously had control of the scene and who directed the action. He was shot. A puppy had run with him, had been shot and wounded, squealed, and was shot again. The boy crawled, making an easier target, then howled. Then a rifle, fired on semi-automatic, ended his life.

The killing now became systematic. More of the boys who had crouched with their arms tied and their eyes blindfolded, were heaved up and dragged away past the surviving goal of the football pitch. They were taken beyond the limit of Gaz’s arc of vision, but the shots came clearly and were echoed back from the sides of the valley, amplified by the low cloud, and carried by the wind that funnelled through the village. Rain swirled over it. Gaz thought the time for a programme of killing had now started and that vengeance for the overnight attack had given way to clearance. He knew the Russian word for ‘provocation’ and the phrases for ‘unacceptable actions’ and ‘severe consequences’. He watched the officer and looked for any indication that he had now seen enough, wished to disassociate himself and stand back. What he remembered was the officer’s action when the Down’s boy had run with closed fists towards him and the commander. The service pistol, inevitably a Makarov, had been as near as made no difference out of the officer’s holster at the moment the boy had been dropped, then was aimed when the boy was wounded and before the final round was fired. An academic had come once to Credenhill and lectured them about the emotions roused by combat. Had used the expression ‘red mist’, had spoken of the threat it gave to police and troops involved in confrontation. He thought the officer was infected with it. Pistol drawn, face flushed, and grenades coming off his webbing, and being primed, and being hurled inside buildings already on fire. Self-control gone. What Gaz also saw was that the two Russian troopers, uniformed and an obvious protection for the officer, had not cocked their weapons; they followed their principal but did not ape him. The academic had spoken of ‘attacker advantage’ and ‘forward panic’ as being parts of a crowd reaction. Gaz thought the officer had now lost self-control: he had become an animal in a feeding frenzy, a fox in a chicken coop.

He could not intervene. He texted the FOB what he saw played out in front of him. The cordon stayed in place and all attention was directed inside it. The women were held back at bayonet point, but that would not last, and all of the boys had now been dragged across the football pitch and into the gully at the far end.

The girl was quiet. The animals cowered close to her.

The officer had thrown three grenades into buildings where the interiors were already set alight. From inside came the explosions, then the crack as rifle bullets stored there were detonated. From one, an old man came out on his hands and knees, his clothing alight, and Gaz thought he would have been taken there by his family, hidden in darkness in the hope he would survive. He was kicked, and was punched. The officer lit a cigarette. His minders stayed away from him, like they were not a part of it. Gaz could easily have shot him, but that was not a role that fitted the ethic of his unit. He would have been killed, his gear captured, and the girl would have died. Gaz held the rifle close, would use it as a final act of self-preservation, did not intervene.

It was beyond anything in his experience. He knew it would get worse: the women and the children, and the old men, were still corralled and would not for long be held back by the tips of steel bayonets. The officer used his pistol to shoot into the head of the first hanged boy, already dead, a wasted bullet… And the wind blew and the rain fell.

Jasha was an intelligent man, had once regarded himself as well read, with brusque opinions, and intolerant of idiots… but that was before he had become a recluse, a hunter. Now in his isolated world, he was yet another Russian who had been scarred by the awfulness of the Afghan intervention – and had been invalided out. Lost and alone, he had found the cabin and made a new life.

He pushed open the door of his cabin, and was confused. The door had no lock, was secured by bolts on the outside and a bar on the inside. He went in, closed it behind him, and his dog came slowly, stiffly, off its sacking bed, and nuzzled his ankle, and seemed spooked. Not that he was calm himself. He had been out on the tundra, had walked on a stalking trail following the sharp scent left by a dog fox, and at first, had been aware that the bear followed him, that he had Zhukov for company.

He had been a soldier who was always short-tempered when confronting the bullshit of the military machine. The war was so obviously unwinnable; defeat stared into the face of the Soviet Union, his country. While he had the freedom to have himself dropped off by a helicopter and go and find himself a lair to lie up in, and watch a village or a trail used by the enemy, and kill and slip away, live to kill again, he could control his frustration. Until he was wounded, hospitalised… Trailing after the fox he had been convinced that the bear used a parallel path and he thought several times he had noted a fleeting shadow of the creature, but not heard it, not seen it clearly, not smelled it, just believed with a stubborn certainty that it was there. His army career had ended in a casualty ward. An officer had toured the beds, handed out cigarettes, treated the injured to brief lectures on the justifications for the war – the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan – and how well it went, and how proud was the country, and the Party, of what they had done. Their sacrifice was recognised and… Jasha had said to the officer’s face that he talked shit, that the war was lost. If he did not believe him, then he should look the length of the ward, and both sides of it and count the number of occupied beds, and note not one was empty. Behind the officer had been a trailing entourage.

He could remember how Zhukov had seemed to wake from the sedation long before the bear had regained partial use of its limbs. A baleful eye, no love, no gratitude, but what he judged to be a degree of magnificent tolerance, and he had thrown the wire, its barbs still holding flesh and fur, high into a tree where it could not again hurt the beast. What did he want from any relationship? A fantasy of mutual respect, a sort of understanding between himself and Zhukov – a dream, but he thought it possible.

The officer leading the entourage was a combat veteran and had bright ribbons on his chest. In tow was a writer from a government propaganda agency, and the Izvestia correspondent shipped down from Kabul, and a TV news crew visiting from Leningrad. Jasha, the sniper, was weak, his voice soft, and he would have spoken through sagging breath. He told the microphone and the notebook and the officer’s flushing face, that the war was a bloody waste of conscripts’ lives, and that the talk of ultimate victory was a combination of imagination and lies. If the wounds on his leg had not been still bloody through the dressings he would have received a stinging slap across his unshaven cheeks. They moved on sharply, scrambling to be clear of his bed.

More confusing to Jasha was his clear view of what he assumed to be three fugitives: a girl who wore light city footwear, and equally light city clothing and who slogged over the uneven ground and tripped on rocks and sunk in the black mud of pools: a boy behind her who cursed and swore when he fell: and between them was a man, a little older with a rucksack on his back, who stepped confidently and wore camouflage. He reckoned he was an intruder, with the kids as his guides, and had scratched for a reason before floating a possible answer. They skirted Titovka where the roadblock was placed. Why would a fit and strong man, obviously a soldier, use that sort of trash for bringing him on to Russian territory? Could not answer the question.

He had been out of the ward within half an hour and had been shut away in a broom cupboard of a room, out of sight of all other casualties, placed where he could not contaminate the faithful… The officer had been from the political security section, and would have hit him had there not been so many witnesses. The episode accelerated a terminated army career: there were no references for work – he had quit them and all they stood for, had come to Murmansk, and had holed up in the tundra, had regretted nothing. He remembered the officer’s face, had not known his name.

He fed his dog. Parboiled meat and rice he had bought in Murmansk when he had met the man who purchased his pelts and trophy heads. Intelligent? He would have shrugged but not disagreed. A sharp mind? He accepted that… accepted also that the bear, Zhukov, might be admired but not as a friend, and accepted that he had no idea why a man in camouflage was being escorted across this God-deserted territory unless the need was to avoid the Titovka block. More intriguing: who took responsibility for the stranger’s journey?

Knacker nurtured the image of the woad-painted intelligence officer who dreamed of incursion and attack, and probed for weakness. Imagined the officer behind the Wall who had the fortifications to back him, and trained troops, and who had to be lucky every time, not just once. Loved the images, and allowed the cavalcade of thoughts to include his wife, Maude, on her knees and elbows and with her rear end stuck up high and scratching and brushing… and pocketing a little peck of historic interest – done it for him, in mischief.

How to brighten the coin had seemed a problem beyond Knacker’s reach but Fee had showed him the answer on her phone, then had busied herself. A good, wholesome, noisy spit on the denarius, then it was wrapped tightly in tinfoil, then put in a Pyrex dish, and steaming water poured across it. Time now for the revelation. She did not ask him about the relevance of the coin, but humoured him, as she usually did. She picked it up from the dish, shook it, unwrapped it, dried it, rubbed it hard, and handed it to him. A little silver coin, with good clear engraving on it.

Knacker chortled in pleasure, took it and pocketed it, said, “Many thanks – always need a talisman when we have a man far from home and going farther.”

He sat in the back of the saloon, had a VIP journey to work. Lavrenti had been longer at his apartment than he had expected.

They dropped him at the main entrance on Prospekt. The car would be taken around to the back gates and parked in the yard, but he was free to go in through the grand new doors of the building. The building was huge, dominating Lenin Prospekt: it could be considered a symbol of the state’s power, displaying the strength and ability to protect the citizens of Murmansk, or one that was intended to intimidate and to demand discipline. He went inside. Would he miss the life in this Arctic city, and the work it created? He would not. On the second floor, he was met by his replacement who recognised him from a casual meeting in Moscow some months before, and walked with a tall girl, a uniformed captain, a rare female with prospects in FSB. He was close to his old office door and noticed that his name had already been replaced – a fucking insult. But before he was able to snarl a response to what was a serious kicking to his prestige, the captain spoke.

“Ah, Major, you were not able to attend our meeting. We managed without you. You were scheduled to be here.”

“What meeting?’’

“It is customary, as you well know, Major, for the departing officer to brief his successor on current investigations, where they stand, their considered priority. You were not there… I briefed.”

“I was packing my apartment. I do not recall any ‘current investigations’ that were of importance.”

She ignored his impertinence. “Hardly fair, Major. Your team have been working hard to ensure progress in several areas of criminality. We regard them as of ‘importance’. Is this only a backwater, Major?”

“I was here yesterday.”

“The meeting was for today, not yesterday.”

He realised he was ‘history’s man’ and noted that the major who would replace him wore no wedding ring, Lavrenti had once received from the captain the certainty of an invitation… had claimed that her cooking was good, that she knew a source of fine Georgian wines, had posed an invitation to her studio apartment, and had worn a blouse with a button unfastened. He had brushed her aside. It was common for male and female officers in FSB to pair off, forge relationships. She wore her dark hair short, looked superb in a combat tunic, a webbing belt holding a filled holster at a wasp waist. He had rejected her. Would have gone instead, fast, to a prostitute. The officer beside her seemed to squirm in embarrassment. The captain gazed at him.

“I have briefed, Major, on our work to combat a spike in espionage in Murmansk, and the recent…”

“What espionage?’’

“An Italian diplomat was in the city two days ago. Is now back in Moscow. Notification was on your desk, not acted on.”

“And…?”

“The border fence north of the E105 highway was crossed five hours ago. Thought to be a wandering bear that went over, but not thoroughly investigated. You were asked what you wanted as a reaction, but did not answer.”

“And – other than a fucking bear and a fucking diplomat – what else?”

“The agitation of a Kirkenes-based eco group. More protests and because of their report on Kola pollution, nuclear work from the navy, the short-term suspension of the king crab trawler trade. Because of the extent of the damage, a Norwegian boat is due in tomorrow with Norwegian stocks of the creature for restaurants in St Petersburg and Moscow. The group is attracting attention, but you know that. We talked of it.”

He felt he could not threaten her, that she would not crumble. Lavrenti said, “I am glad you have plenty to concern you, as I will have in my next appointment. I have expenses to file so need my desk and my computer… so kindly find a corner at your work-space, Captain, for my successor, or the canteen.”

He waited. They retreated. Were in his office little more than half a minute, and came out with their laptops, and outer clothing, and a coffee flask, and the major carried a photograph of a couple who could have been his parents, but not a wife and children. What he understood of power, Lavrenti reckoned, was that if it were not enforced then it withered, and at pace. He felt vulnerable as he settled in his chair, tapped in, and brought up the record of his expenses. He was both confused and nervous, and did not warm to the list of trivia, what he might have reacted to had he not been distracted – a diplomat, a bear, a gang of eco-warriors and a boat full of wriggling crabs. It was hardly possible for them to have mutual relevance.

No indication that he was regarded as a ‘special’ man, and deserving additional respect, and leg room. The front seat, passenger side, was held forward by the girl, Natacha, and the invitation was clear. Gaz climbed in, shifted his backside, swiped away the debris of magazines and food wrappers and chocolate tinfoil and pizza packaging. The front seat was dropped back against his knees and she settled in front of him. When the boy, Timofey, switched on the ignition, the motor coughed, spat, then caught. They had been parked in an entry where a track led off the main highway.

He was offered what she called kosiak. They were out on the road, and the Fiat shook and rolled and Timofey was getting the maximum from it. Did he want what she called kosiak? He thought he should have felt nervous. Rather liked them, and would have been more worried if they were political, ideological refugees from the system of governing their country. There was something brazen about them which he found attractive, and their crossing of the open ground, could have been two hours of it, had impressed him. Done better than he had, and he wore the right gear. Felt confident. The boy drove well and carefully and would not have attracted attention. Did not crowd close to lorries’ tail bars or sweep into the centre of the road, engine straining to get past. They were heading for Murmansk and the countryside was the same as that they’d crossed on foot. Dwarf trees, bare rock, boulders carpeted in lichen, and dark lakes. He saw trucks and occasional cars and one convoy of military transport. Timofey laughed, said something to her. Then turned to Gaz and spoke in fractured English:

“In Russian, kosiak is a joint, a spliff. I learned that from the tourists I sell to because English is how I communicate when I trade with foreigners. It’s what I do, friend, I sell marijuana. I said to Natacha that you were a professional man and that you would not want that smoke – was I right?”

“You were right.”

“And you will want to know whether Natacha and I take a joint. No, we do not… We just sell and trade… You are in good company, friend.”

A hand came back, bony and emaciated, with bitten-down nails, and Gaz gave him his, and the car was driven with one hand on the wheel, and the grip now was iron hard and crushed Gaz’s fingers. Then Natacha had swivelled in her seat and a small and delicate hand, like a pianist’s, held the two of theirs and kissed them. All three laughed and they careered down a long and winding road.

At last, Gaz saw the silver of the sea… and he shivered and the cold came close to him. On the floor of a cell he would not be laughing, not holding hands and not taking kisses, not if he were spread-eagled on a pavement, rough hands searching his pockets and fingers going into his orifices and machine pistol barrels gouging the skin on his neck. The shiver had started and he did not know how to stop the chill and the tremor.

She said, “What you have come for? It is important?”

He could have answered that he had come to make the killing of a man easier, make the death simpler, but did not. He gave no answer.