(2013) Collateral Damage

by Colin Smith

  'What did you tell her?' his boss asked.

  'I told her that perhaps she was right and that, in any case, there had been another delay and we wouldn't be there until the day after tomorrow at the earliest,' he said in his terrible Arabic.

  'You did right,' said Kamal, 'although I've never doubted her before. Do you think she believed you?'

  'No doubt about it,' said George. 'Women often keep their brains between their legs.'

  'It's usually the way,' agreed Kamal, whose Marxism had not entirely overcome the prejudices of a traditional upbringing.

  'He's a lucky man. His last days will have been sweet. When will you be there?'

  'Tonight at the latest.'

  'Good. See that it's tidy.'

  When she returned from making her call Koller came up quietly behind her, kissed her on the back of her neck and cupped her breasts. 'Tell me your real name, goddess,' he commanded. It was the first time he had asked.

  'Nadia.' She said it hesitantly, as if she had almost forgotten it herself.

  'Does Rebecca have news for Benjamin he said, reverting to their code-names.

  'They say there's been another delay. They say they'll definitely be here the day after tomorrow.'

  There would be time to tell him more. She wanted to think about it. To warn him was one sort of treachery; not to was betraying herself. And she was certain of his innocence. What had he said? 'We never make little mistakes.'

  It was her duty to see that this time there were no mistakes. She would have to make sure they held Dove back while Hans told his story. Perhaps they would end up killing the Englishman. That would be better. The man was obviously a maniac. Her eye caught the label on a bottle of Othello wine. 'If I don't tell him,' she shuddered, 'he'll think I betrayed him like the Moor misjudged Desdemona.'

  'Time for a siesta,' he said.

  It was not yet noon, but she allowed him to lead her back to bed. Somewhere close by a church bell began to chime. It was the Orthodox Good Friday.

  12. No Shrines for a Terrorist

  Dove watched as a National Guard band in unpressed battledress and scuffed boots slow-marched the Easter procession from the church with a rolling dirge, their kettle-drums draped in black crepe. Behind them came a solemn platoon of infantry, old British bolt-action rifles reversed and pointing to the ground. After the soldiers the flanks were guarded by a troop of boy scouts, who held their long poles horizontally so that they formed a fence around the venerable white-bearded bishops displaying icons and the curly-haired choir-boys swinging incense. At the roadside old ladies crossed themselves as the huge wooden crucifix went by and teenage boys in jeans and sweaters slunk off into the night to ignite more of their homemade explosives behind walls or under culverts. The fireworks went off with monstrous reports, sometimes drowning out the band's mournful clarinets.

  A familiar long-haired figure detached himself from the crowd and came up close to the Englishman so that when he spoke Dove could smell the whisky on his breath. 'It's looking good,' said George. 'Her car's there and I don't think they'd go out without it. Remember - leave the chick alone unless she tries to pull a piece on you. We want to talk to her.'

  And if she's dumb enough to come out shooting, thought George, then fuck her luck. He had enough problems tonight. It was like being asked to put down a dog you had trained. He had the feeling he wasn't going to forget this one in a hurry. He patted the hip-flask. The whisky helped a bit. Not much. Hash might have been better, but he didn't trust himself on it. In Nam Charlie had stomped all over dudes too stoned to fight.

  Dove wondered exactly what 'a talk' meant and whether he might not be doing the woman a favour if he did shoot her, but he didn't say anything. Instead he asked, 'What do you think the chances are of the girl getting to a gun?'

  'She'll probably have one around, but not that close and the key should give you the edge. They won't be expecting somebody straight through the front door. Just remember - drop Koller right away. Don't stand there telling him your goddamn life history and why you're doin' it. Just waste the bastard. I'll be right behind you and take the girl. But don't look round for me I'll watch your back. Keep your eyes on Koller and keep putting holes in him until he stops moving. Don't be afraid to empty the magazine.'

  'It'll be a pleasure,' said Dove. Yet even as he said it he wondered if it would be. It was so preposterously neat. More like an execution. They had not only found out where Koller was staying, but George had even managed to get a key made. How had he done that? It worried him - but he had come too far and had loved Emma too much to turn back now.

  'OK. Let's go. Yaller,' said the Palestinian. Again Dove got a whiff of the whisky. It surprised him. He had expected George to be as cool as he was when the Israeli planes attacked.

  Koller was sitting at the kitchen table trying to finish the letter he had outlined to Nadia at lunch the day before. He wrote on lined yellow paper in a forward-slanting, almost gothic script, that was very similar to the hand of the parent he was writing to. Around his feet lay several scrunched-up drafts. In the end he settled for just three lines. When he had finished he took the letter into his room where he had some envelopes. Nadia was next door in her bedroom, her body wrapped in an orangecoloured towel, using a hair-drier. They were not long out of bed and intending to dine out. She had decided that this would be the moment to warn him that they didn't believe: his story about The Circle.

  Dove and George came up in the lift. The first thing the schoolteacher noticed was that there was a spy-hole in the front door and, for a second or two, this alone was enough to bring him to a halt. He imagined Koller behind the woodwork watching every move he made. What had George said? No modern door could stop a pistol bullet. He was sweating now and there was a tight pain coming up across his chest that reminded him of the way he felt after training sessions with the fedayeen. On the right of the front door there was a strip of frosted glass and through it he could see that the light was on in the hallway. The sound of church bells and explosions floated up from outside.

  He checked that the Walther's safety was off and then carefully replaced it in the waistband of his trousers; his palm was sticky with sweat. Behind him George was breathing heavily and Dove thought: 'He's as scared as I am.'

  He took out the door-key the Palestinian had given him and wondered again how they had so quickly found a safe-house belonging to a rival organisation. The key was not very new looking. Its metal was dull and the ridges felt worn. He inserted it and suddenly found himself hoping that the woman had changed the lock or bolted the door. This was madness. What was he doing here? The key turned easily. He pushed the door and they stepped inside.

  George had told him the layout several times, although never how he knew it. On the right there was a long, open-plan drawing and dining room entered through a sliding glass door. Unlike the hallway this room was in darkness. At the end of the hallway facing him was a door that had been left slightly ajar: he could see that a light was on inside. He had been told that this would most probably be Koller's bedroom. 'Go get him,' hissed George.

  Dove walked quickly along the grey marble floor, pistol in his right hand, arm almost fully outstretched. When he got to the bedroom door he kicked it open and saw a fair-haired man sitting on the bed addressing an envelope which lay on a pad across his knees. For a fraction of a second they stared at each other. Terrorist pen in hand, the schoolteacher with his gun. Dove fired twice. The shots deafening in the confines of the small room, and then in a voice he hardly recognized as his own: 'I'm Stephen Dove.'

  The first bullet was wild, the consummation of blind panic. It caught the terrorist high up on the fleshy part of the thigh as he dropped the pen and his hand ran back along the mattress. The second shot was aimed the way George had taught him to do it, the left hand steadying his right wrist. The special soft-nosed bullet hit Koller just below his heart, ripped through a lung and exited near his backbone. He stopped moving then and fell back onto the bed, his l
eft arm taking his weight while the stain spread on his shirt and his face began to drain to the colour of stone. 'Stop an elephant with this gun,' George had said. But Koller was still alive - just.

  Somewhere a woman was shouting in Arabic. Dove was hardly aware of it. 'You killed my wife,' he said. It was important to explain why he had done this thing to him. The Englishman's finger was still on the trigger, but the arms were relaxed now and the pistol pointing almost to the floor.

  Koller slowly nodded his head in comprehension. His mouth was open and he was trying to fight down the shock. He felt no real pain yet; he was reminded of being winded on a school football field.

  The woman was shouting again, this time in English for the benefit of Koller. 'He told me they were coming tomorrow. You must believe me. He told me it was tomorrow.' The German seemed to nod again.

  Dove turned round and saw George pushing aside a wildfaced young woman wrapped in an orange beach-towel while at the same time he appeared to be trying to level his Walther at the Englishman's chest. Dove stared at the Palestinian, noted the glazed look in his eyes. Then the pistol swung away from him and there was what sounded like a single echoing report. George catapulted back against the wall, clutching his throat. Koller was lying on the bed in much the same position as before with the little Vzor automatic in his right hand. There was a small, blueish hole in the centre of his forehead and he was quite dead. George and Koller had fired simultaneously.

  The woman came over and seized Koller by his bloodied shirt, pulled him upright as if she was trying to shake him back to life. Then she collapsed, her cheek in the gore on his chest, shoulders heaving with great sobs. The Palestinian was slumped against the wall making dreadful choking sounds, legs twitching like a half-crushed insect. Dove, unhurt, stepped over him into the hallway and tried to vomit out the memory of what he had just done and seen.

  The woman followed him out, her cheek smudged with Koller's blood, absently arranging the top of the orange bathtowel about her breasts. Dove, hardly aware of her presence, was looking down at a small puddle of vomit on the floor, the ringing in his ears from the gunshots beginning to be replaced by a rushing, sea-shell sound. The woman was saying something in her American English, but the sense of the words took a long time to penetrate his understanding. 'He saved your life,' she was saying. 'Hans Koller saved your life.'

  Dove wanted to explain. He opened his mouth to speak, but he found it painful to work his jaw and the reply failed to come. He felt his chest was in a vice, the breath being squeezed out of him in a gigantic bear-hug. He gasped, snatching at the air like a drowning man, conscious that it was spilling past him before he could drink his fill. Everything began to blur as if his eyes were watering. He tried hard to focus, but just then his chest burst out of the bear-hug and he grabbed at the woman's bath towel too late to stop his forehead cracking the tiled floor.

  Nadia pulled the towel out of Dove's grasp and then watched the big Englishman shuddering his life away, peering down at him with the detachment of someone attempting to fathom out movement at the foot of a tall cliff. When it was over she allowed the towel to fall about her ankles and stood naked like this for perhaps a minute, thinking about the implications of what had happened. Dove would still be a hero, of course: the manner of his death would serve only to underline his torment, the anguish of a civilized man revenging himself on a barbarian. There would never be any posthumous accolades for Koller; no shrines for a terrorist; he would not even be mourned by the Front.

  She picked up the towel, remembering as she did so the way Dove had lunged for it as he fell, and went into her bedroom, where she dressed carefully in bra and pants, a silk shirt and skirt. She buttoned the shirt carefully, then stood in front of a mirror and ripped it savagely down from the collar so that most of the buttons flew off; she arranged one of the bra cups so that her right breast was totally exposed. When she was satisfied she went back into the hallway and sat down beside Dove. She picked up his head by his hair and, trying not to look into the dead eyes, scratched his face hard several times, making sure she collected plenty of skin under her fingernails. Rigor mortis had not yet set in and there was some blood. She lay down, pulled her skirt up so that it was well over her waist, and rolled her pants down to her hips so that some of her pubic hair was showing.

  'Am I in danger?' Koller had asked.

  'Not while I'm with you.' And she had believed it.

  She swept her hand across the tiles until it came up against the cold metal of Dove's Walther. She checked to see that the pistol was still in working order, and then held it loosely in her right hand so that her thumb was on the trigger. It might work, she thought. One thing she was certain of: the Front had not intended her to be among the survivors.

  Outside, the band played and the youths continued to let off their fireworks.

  13. A Hero Perishes

  Somewhere over the Mediterranean Fitchett ordered a whisky and decided that he might as well pass the time to Heathrow by starting on his report. He hated paperwork and it was, he thought, doubly unnecessary in this case because the affair had been so thoroughly aired in print.

  The newspapers had badly wanted to make a hero out of Dove and it was not their fault that, in the end, he got a bad press. Policemen and reporters can only work on what they believe to be fact and, in Dove's case, what they believed to be fact was wrong.

  In the Coroner's court in Nicosia the circumstances relating to the charnel-house discovered in Nadia's apartment had been spelt out quite succinctly. There were three male corpses and one female. Two of the men and the woman had died of gunshot wounds. Ballistic evidence provided an accurate reconstruction of who shot who. The Englishman Stephen Dove had died of cardiac arrest in a struggle with the Palestinian woman known as Nadia Mouron. Both their fingerprints had been found on the pistol which killed her and it seemed likely that she had shot herself while fighting for possession of the gun. The state of her clothing strongly suggested that Dove had been trying to sexually assault her when he suffered a massive heart attack, probably almost immediately after the woman had been shot. The pathologist had pointed out that all four of the deceased had died within minutes of each other. It was impossible, he said, to pinpoint the exact time of death to within half an hour. He added that the lividity marks, bruises left by blood gathering at the lowest point in a fresh corpse, indicated that none of the bodies had been moved after death.

  'Christ. He iced himself chasing pussy,' Fitchett had overheard an awed American reporter in court whisper to a colleague. The policeman had to agree that this about summed things up.

  Deprived of an unsullied hero Fleet Street was not slow in assembling the circumstantial evidence. This showed that Dove had been more than a little strange, almost a licensed sex maniac whose revenge seemed to be sadistically aimed at Koller's women as much as at the terrorist himself. Apart from the Palestinian woman he had tried to rape at gunpoint, presumably near the zenith of some terrible sexual high brought on by the violence, there was the cabinet minister's daughter who would probably never walk again without the aid of a stick. Then Tina, the whore from Beirut, turned up at the front desk of the most sensational tabloid and for four figures and a. good lunch sold them a story which seemed to prove that the schoolteacher enjoyed beating up ladies of no particular political conviction at all. After that even close friends such as Roger Day, the English teacher, said that grief had obviously driven him more than a little crazy.

  Dove might have emerged with some credit, however mixed his motives, for successfully taking on three dangerous terrorists if the Front's flimsy explanation that George and Koller accidentally shot each other protecting their female comrade had not been challenged by news stories, quoting 'Israeli intelligence sources', giving a truer version of events. The Funny had decided that damaging the Front's relations with their foreign supporters was much more important than allowing some seedy schoolmaster more dignity than he deserved. So it came out that one of the dead me
n had been on Dove's side and they helped him kill their own man.

  The only thing the press got nowhere near to was the Charlemagne Circle. Fitchett might have if he had allowed himself to follow his intuition. For a long time on that flight back to London he studied a photocopy of Koller's note to his father that the Greek Cypriot police had let him have. It read:

  My Dear Papa,

  'After every December there's always a May.'

  Now for you it will always be December.

  Not even a 'cut-out' between us.

  He had written 'cut-out' in English.

  Hans

  For some time Fitchett played with a strange idea. He even began to write it. Then he crossed it out. No, it wouldn't do. Wouldn't do for the Yard. If he came up with something like that they'd really think he was a candidate for the funny farm.

  If you enjoyed reading Collateral Damage you may be interested in Spies of Jerusalem by Colin Smith, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Spies of Jerusalem by Colin Smith

  PROLOGUE

  Huj, 8 November 1917: about 2.30 p.m.

  There were dead men and dead horses, but at first it was mostly dead horses.

  Meinertzhagen and Ponting arrived with the cleaners, human and otherwise. The birds circled in the low thermals above the ambulances and stretcher parties, especially over the far ridge where the Turkish dead were thickly clustered.

  ‘Buzzards,’ said Meinertzhagen, pushing up the peak of his solar topee and holding a hand over his eyes. ‘Long-legged buzzards and a few Booted Eagles by the look of ’em.’

  Ponting shuddered. ‘They disgust me.’

  ‘But why? It’s their nature.’

  The officers rode on in silence for a while after that, each apparently lost in his own thoughts. They were freshly horsed on the tough little Australian remounts that were known in that campaign as Walers because they were bred in New South Wales. Now they walked their Walers down the ridge behind which the Warwicks and Worcesters had assembled before making their sudden appearance on the skyline to start their half-mile gallop towards the Austrian seventy-fives.