Vagabond

by Seymour, Gerald

  The armada, tossed by storms, met mid-Channel from a host of different ports in southern England, an extraordinary feat of navigation. From chaos came order as the host headed for Sword, Juno, Gold, Utah and Omaha. The first twenty-four hours would decide the battle. For months, German defences had been refined and strengthened under the direction of the formidable field marshal, Erwin Rommel. The Allies would land some 158,000 troops, and the defenders would reckon, for survival, to put them back into the sea.

  The visitors are awestruck by the ordinariness of a beach where the season has ended.

  The weather was too poor, low cloud, for the air force to provide ground-attack cover, and many staff officers feared a bloodbath and defeat. That it worked was a triumph of planning, heroism and – probably – a fair amount of luck. A must for any guide is the story of a piper. While he played ‘Highland Laddie’ and ‘Road To The Isles’, it was recorded that lapping waves raised the level of his kilt. The ladies always enjoyed that anecdote. They’d be running late for the other British and Canadian landing beaches and for the miracle of the Mulberry harbour or precast concrete blocks floated across and hooked together and the sole method of landing stores and vital fuel until a major port was captured. And triumphalism would have begun to rule, and only a few would stand on the soft sand and look for a perfectly smoothed pebble to take home, and think of the many who died – less than expected by doomsters – and many more who were mutilated and damaged and who fought for their lives; the men of both sides of the combat. The driver, usually there with the visitors on Thursday morning, would have spoken if asked to contribute.

  It was bad practice, and had Jocelyn been a lesser personality on the fourth floor, she might have been reprimanded for putting that screen-saver image on her laptop.

  It was there because, that day and that week, he was at the centre of policy and carried the weight of it on slight shoulders. She knew him as Vagabond. It was a top-shot picture, and she had expropriated it from the electronic memory of the ceiling camera at the side door of the building where he had been brought in. In her experience strangers always looked up as their ID was checked and they were waved through the barriers. His clothes were a mess, his face unshaven and his hair tousled. She had placed a rectangle over his eyes, blanking them out. She knew him, and Bentinick would have done, but his name was privy only to the director’s immediate staff. She might, that evening, raise a glass and speak his name. If the matter was resolved it would be because of him, but if it failed, he would be blamed. She had no problems with the ethics of him being called back: she had few problems with the ethics of anything.

  She had the laptop open in front of her, the screen tilted at an angle that prevented the man and woman opposite her from seeing it.

  It had been a brisk, pleasant walk from Thames House along the river, past Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, then the concrete teeth and black bollards that protected Parliament. She had gone up Whitehall and into the Treasury. They were waiting for her. In terms of deference it was a red-carpet greeting from Revenue & Customs. Strapped for resources, they could fund two teams only of investigators specialising in the international arms trade where British law was violated. They possessed a quality database and had access to each European capital lying to the west of the dismantled Iron Curtain. It was something of a crusade for them but their numbers were thin on the ground. Jocelyn was welcomed because she promised action and even a result.

  She brought with her legal opinion and documentation, and sought reciprocity.

  Her clothes were unironed and her legs bare but the Bravo team hung on her every word: both teams prayed for the chance to hit a high-value target.

  That morning the weather cleared. There was no rain, but no sunshine either. There was not enough mist to interfere with the clarity of the telescopic sight or to prevent an inveterate smoker seeking freedom in the garden.

  He had slept in the car, which had been parked in a field gateway away from house lights and any main traffic route. He stretched, grunted and coughed. He thought that, by the afternoon, he would be on a plane out of Heathrow airport, his fee assured. He was always, when he practised his trade, well clear of the scene by the time descriptions and media statements tripped from local police agencies.

  He drove back to work. By that evening his employer would be satisfied.

  Timofey had watched them go, then surfed the internet for news stories – dismal rainswept fields, a priest being interviewed, disturbed earth under a hedgerow – and walked his dogs. With them he had met two young women, often his companions among the trees on the steep slope above his house; they had talked about the weather and admired each other’s animals. On his return home, he had checked the suit he would wear on Saturday evening for the charity gala at the Grand Pupp Hotel. He was not required to speak but he would contribute generously and his presence would be noted. The embassy people would have driven down from Prague. He had been very clear with the brigadier as to what was required from him, from them, at the bank at midday.

  He sat down with some coffee. The dogs’ coats had muddied the rug – he hadn’t cleaned them as thoroughly as the brigadier would have done. Again, he checked the weather to the south-west of London, where the far edge of the city met the countryside. It would lift. The clouds would thin and the rain stop. He would hear that afternoon. He assumed that men from the embassy, on Saturday evening at the Grand Pupp, would sidle up to him and squeeze his hand, murmuring appreciation.

  In Europe, the weather was an exact science and offered up few surprises. The nearest to a nightmare in his life had been a thunderstorm, with jagged lightning, torrential rain and turbulence that had seemed capable of ripping the wings off the Antonov.

  Timofey’s hands shook – they always did when he remembered it – and the coffee slopped onto his trousers, staining them. If he remembered that storm at night, in his bed, he could not sleep.

  It had been the worst flight he had ever endured. The pilot might have been drunk or on an amphetamine high, but he had held his nerve and they had come through it. There had been worry about the cargo shifting: if twenty-five tonnes of weaponry had slid loose in the hold, they were doomed. He had been sick and rigid with fear when lightning had struck the fuselage. He had wept on his knees in the vomit because the bucket had tipped over but they had survived. They had come out of darkness into sunlight and the engineer had given Timofey a mop, cold water and a roll of kitchen paper to clear up his mess. It had been the second trip when he had been independent of Mr Vik, was his own man.

  Now he dabbed at his trousers with a handkerchief, which spread the damp stain.

  The pilot had made the landing. Timofey remembered the pitiable relief he had felt when the judder in the airframe told him they were down and alive.

  So much was different from the previous month. There were no villagers. The unloading would be done by the uniformed rabble. ‘Give them the spiel, Timofey,’ the pilot had said, ‘or we won’t get out of here.’

  No tail hatch would come down before the cloth bag and its lightweight contents were thrown up by the commander – probably a fucking field marshal by now: he’d been a full general the previous month – and checked. When Timofey was satisfied, the tail had grated down and the men had swarmed in to shift the crates. There had been maize fields, ripe for harvest, but the crop was flattened, and he saw shallow mounds the bright colour of the earth. The huts had no roofs because the thatch had been burned. The beams of the one concrete building were charred and skeletal, and round the windows there were the black marks of the fire. He saw the sign, scorched, that had indicated the school and the clinic. Bullet holes pocked the walls. He didn’t see her.

  There had been a clamour below the hatch close to the cabin. The pilot had said that the hold was empty. He’d thrown the switch: the tail had closed and the engines had engaged. Timofey had dropped the first box of Johnnie Walker down to the forest of reaching hands, then the second, and the engineer had swung the
hatch shut. They’d turned, buried the bastards in a storm of dirt and gone. He hadn’t seen her. Had never gone back there. It had been a smooth flight home.

  Always remembered that day, the storm. And the girl who had not been there. It had been a good trip and had confirmed him as a favoured acolyte of Mr Vik.

  The bank was off Wenceslas Square.

  Danny Curnow made the contact with his mobile, and was told where to look.

  He showed Gaby where the Czech was sitting, and saw her wince. She would have seen Karol Pilar’s face. It might have been a mirror image of his own. They stood, uncertain, fifty or sixty yards short of the bank. She muttered that there seemed to be a disproportionate number of ‘aggressive doors’ in the city. He told her to shut up, and she chuckled.

  She spotted them. They were on the far side of the street inside a dingy café. It was not the top end of the square, near the boutiques and restaurants, but there was a change bureau and a shop that sold fridge magnets. A tour party from Korea, Taiwan or Japan came by and the guide had an umbrella up as a beacon for them. Danny Curnow took Gaby’s arm and eased her away, satisfied when he was beyond the line of vision they might have had from inside the café. He thought Pilar’s face was more of a mess than his own. He wondered how bad it would have to have been for the Czech to pull out his firearm and shoot the guy. Catastrophe if he had. They were in sunlight, but he shivered.

  She tugged at his sleeve. ‘Why did you come back?’

  ‘I do a job. I don’t need a shrink.’

  ‘Which might frighten you?’

  He turned away from her. Anger rose in him – it was the tiredness and stress, the adrenalin of the fight. He couldn’t see inside the café but had a good view of the door. He looked down the street, past the bank to the bench in the centre of the square. Pilar caught his glance. He flicked a hand, acknowledgement. Danny ducked his head. He liked the boy, valued the commitment he showed, and—

  She tugged again at his sleeve. ‘It’s my business, why you came back. I want you to know, Danny, that I’ll hold your hand if it gets tough. I’ll see you through.’

  ‘Don’t talk shit.’

  ‘Because it’s pathetic.’

  ‘I’m not listening.’

  ‘It’s pathetic, Danny, because it means you can’t let go. You know those kids who go to university and leaving is the worst day of their lives? They hang around the lecture halls and the students’ bars. They can’t see that it’s over. They’ve lost the team they were once a part of, and nothing can replace it. I imagine, you’re lonely. I doubt you’ve got a woman. You should have, Danny. You should have left all this behind. You came too easily, and you were damaged before. God alone knows how you’ll be when it’s over and you’re back to where you were. Maybe you thought us all incapable, and you were the only one who could do the business. In our place, Danny, every Friday night there are people who feed their ID into the security machine and it doesn’t give it back. It destroys it so they can’t come in on Monday morning. They’re not a part of it any longer. Life goes on, like you never existed. The team sheet for next Saturday still goes up on the board for Accrington Stanley’s first eleven. The X40 bus goes from Reading to Oxford and doesn’t stop as a mark of respect to you. Nobody notices. Nobody needed you and you’ll make no difference. Bentinick was a bastard for cold-calling you. It’s a shame but you, Danny, are a victim.’

  He spotted the Mercedes. It loitered in heavy traffic, but edged closer.

  The couple came out of the café.

  It was for the Czech to lead and he had a camera.

  Danny Curnow shrugged, shook his shoulders, reckoned he’d ignore what she’d said. She slipped a hand into his arm, and they were another couple seemingly with time to kill in a tourist city, near to a bank, watching a Mercedes squeeze into a parking slot. He heard her laugh.

  Chapter 14

  The laugh was brittle, humourless, and there was the scent of her growing superiority over him. Not much Danny Curnow could do to slap down Gaby Davies’s new-found confidence.

  He had good eyeball. The Irish walked briskly towards the bank. He saw the caution of the man and the thrust of the girl’s stride: he looked around him and she did not. The brigadier was out of the car first. His face was marked, not as badly as Karol Pilar’s or his own, and he hobbled as if his hips or groin were still painful. Danny thought that at the peak of his military career he would have been handsome, authoritative on a parade-ground. Now he was hunched and a scowl creased his features. Ralph Exton was behind him: uncertain, hesitant, hanging back. Danny understood his ‘rather be somewhere else’ look. He had seen it often. The agent is at a meeting of importance and the pressure builds on him to deliver. What had seemed an excellent idea a week or a month ago is now wrapped in hazard. Danny could not, then, get close to Ralph Exton and speak to him. He would do it with eye contact.

  She laughed again. Danny and Gaby Davies were a hundred yards apart. For a moment his concentration broke and he cursed her softly. It was about the exercise of control – manipulation. For a moment, Exton had broken stride – had to. A snake of tourists followed the inevitable umbrella, perhaps listening to the history of Wenceslas, then three tall Africans with sports bags that bulged with handbags to sell on the street.

  ‘A glance of death’, was what Matthew Bentinick had called it. ‘Necessary to have it, my boy, and necessary to use it. The chance to nail a man with a glance at a hundred metres as effectively as a sniper can,’ he had said, while toying with a plastic beaker of coffee. ‘Because it’s about winning, and anything other than winning is unacceptable. He’s more afraid of you, my boy, than any of the scumbags who float round him – he has to be, or you pack up and go home.’ Vagabond had gone out into the soft rain of an early morning and had run to the car where Dusty had the heater on and the windows were well misted. Some men and a few women could deliver the ‘glance of death’. Others failed, tried again and were ridiculed.

  The Africans and the tourists did the work for him: Ralph Exton looked around to see if further ambushes would impede him and their eyes met.

  Danny Curnow kept his head still, focused on his target. The only movement he made was to rock slightly on the balls of his feet. The target saw him, then moved on, checked further up the pavement for obstructions, and the eyes darted back. Danny held him. He had a useful prop: his face had the clear marks of the night’s violence, which would further intimidate.

  It ended. The brigadier had Ralph Exton’s arm and pushed him forward. The girl came to intercept them – the man had seemed to shrink and his shoulders had convulsed. The moment was gone. The laughter beside him was stifled. She’d have seen her prize and her confidence would have ebbed. They went into the bank, after Malachy Riordan had paused in the doorway, spun on his heel, raked his eyes over the square.

  She said, ‘I see you shared the door. Generous. Don’t I get in the loop?’

  ‘When you deserve to – when your Joe doesn’t walk out on you.’

  She managed a smile, left him and walked to the bank.

  Malachy Riordan hissed, ‘That is serious money, but you’re saying it’s to be transferred beyond retrieving and we’ve seen nothing.’

  The Russian, creepy bastard, his facial injuries playing havoc with his mood, said, shrilly, ‘When it’s transferred and cleared you’ll see what is the merchandise.’

  ‘Which might be shit.’

  ‘You take that chance.’

  ‘We pay and have no guarantee.’

  ‘Wrong.’

  Riordan was agitated, and the girl was confused because he had elbowed her aside.

  Ralph Exton was cut off from the argument – it might have been almost funny, a Republican gunman and a former Soviet-era intelligence officer bickering inside a modern Prague bank about ‘terms and conditions’ for the purchase of lethal weapons and explosives, but it wasn’t.

  Riordan slapped a fist into a palm. ‘You telling me that we pay when we’ve had no sight of
what we’re buying? Where’s the guarantee?’

  ‘He is. Him.’ The brigadier jerked a thumb towards Ralph Exton. ‘It’s about trust.’

  ‘I want to see what we’re getting.’

  Ralph Exton intervened: ‘It’s about trust, Malachy, and about me. You trust me and I trust the people with whom I’ve negotiated quantities and costs.’

  ‘If I don’t see, I don’t buy.’

  ‘If we all stay calm,’ Ralph did a negotiator’s smile, ‘we can resolve—’

  The Russian chipped at them, a chisel on stone: ‘You think we care? You think this is business that matters to us? It is for sentiment. My employer’s sentiment for him, for Mr Exton. No transfer of money and I go. Does it matter to me? It does not.’

  Ralph saw Gaby Davies, scarf over her hair, big glasses masking her face, eyeing bank papers, and he had spotted the handler outside. His options were minimal. He stuck to the plan – he had no other. ‘I believe, Malachy, that you have to concede on this point and trust them, or—’

  ‘Where I come from, too many graves have been filled because of trust. I trust men and women I know.’

  ‘I assume, Malachy, that you trust me, and I can only urge you, therefore, to trust the man I’ve introduced to you. Through my good offices you have available an excellent price per unit for materials you and your colleagues need.’

  Ralph Exton had seen pictures of construction workers taking their lunch break on a spar while the Rockefeller Building grew in height in the years of the Great Depression. Eleven guys sitting on it with their sandwiches, no safety harnesses, the street 840 feet below. He felt now as if he was among them. His hands were shaking.

  The brigadier said, ‘No transfer and we quit. You accept or you do not. There is no trust. This is business. You will have no opportunity to deceive me. You transfer or I walk.’