Nomad

by James Swallow

  Every boy had suffered a variation on the same theme; family taken away by conflict. Each one rendered alone by bombs and guns, by conflicts they didn’t understand.

  “Come on.” Halil moved quickly toward the main building, while the guard on the roof turned out of the wind. He heard a match strike, caught the scent of cheap tobacco. Speeding up to a sprint, he made it to a broken wall and Tarki came after him. Halil pushed the other youth in through a hole in the shabby concrete, under a curtain of fragmented blocks clinging to a grid of exposed rebar. He followed him through and froze, listening.

  The guard’s boots echoed over their heads, but there was no urgency to the steps. “He didn’t see us,” Tarki whispered, incredulous.

  “Told you,” said Halil, with a smug grin. “Now, slow and quiet, okay?”

  “What are we looking for?” Tarki dithered, and Halil glared at him.

  “Whatever we find,” he retorted, and picked his way across the room.

  Unless they were there with a teacher, the boys were banned from the main blockhouse. The central building was taller than all the rest of the structures in the orphanage, and the men lived in there. Halil suspected that things other than the instruction of youths went on inside.

  The other boys were content enough to accept that. Most of them seemed willing to accept the lot they had been given. If they followed the rules and did as they were told, then the teachers showed them fairness. Halil could not help but wonder if this was because it made the youths do as they were told, not because the teachers really believed they were due it. But he kept his questions to himself, even from Tarki. His father had once told him that the truly clever man remains silent until the most important moment.

  The men in this place called themselves teachers, but they were not. It made him angry in a small, silent way to hear them take that title. Halil’s father had been a real teacher. An educated man who had traveled to a great university in England when he was just a few years older than his son was now, who knew facts about everything and made it all seem fascinating. Halil’s father had spoken many languages, taught them in schools. He had been a clever man.

  The teachers here were cunning, but that was not the same thing. They were thuggish, they were hard and unyielding. Halil kept quiet and did nothing to raise attention. He did not excel, he did not fail. Instead, he watched.

  The two youths moved gingerly though the empty outer rooms, into corridors choked with discarded chairs, winding in between walls that had been crudely knocked through with sledgehammers.

  There were many decaying rooms like this on the edges of the compound, and Halil was beginning to understand that they had been left this way deliberately. The men in charge of the orphanage wanted it to appear tumbledown and neglected, to make anyone looking think it was a worthless place.

  He wanted to know why that was. He wanted to know about the helicopters they heard in the hills but never glimpsed, or who was in the black jeeps that came and went in the night every few weeks.

  And he wanted to know about what happened to the youths who had been here when he arrived, the older teenagers. People went away in the orphanage, and when they did it was as if they had never existed. The ones who left never came back.

  There were only two faces from outside that Halil had seen more than once. There was the dark-skinned man with the cruel gaze who would watch from the edges of the quad, and the taller one who sometimes came to talk to them. The one with the cruel eyes was like a hawk, always looking for weakness. Halil made sure he never met his sight, for fear he might see right through him.

  The tall man was different. When he came, it was an event. The teachers were reverential to him, seeking his favor. He wore no insignia or badges of rank, but in his thoughts Halil imagined him as a general, the leader of some vast army. He was handsome and aloof, like a mythic hero, and when he spoke his words made everything else turn to silence. Sometimes he brought films for the youths to watch, full of fire and action. The films were about battles and enemies, wars that were going on in countries that were just names on a map to Halil. Once, the films showed places that he thought he recognized from the pictures of England his father had in their old house.

  Sometimes, one of the other youths would slacken and perform poorly; the regimens of training and education were strict and inflexible, and those who fell behind were soon isolated. A moment would come and the ones who did not keep up would not be at dinner that evening. If anyone asked, they would be told that the missing youth had been “sent back.”

  Halil wondered exactly where they had been sent back to.

  His curiosity was cracking the edges of the silent mask he wore. Something in the tempo of the lessons and the mood of the orphanage was changing, and Halil could sense it, like a clock ticking down.

  And so he was here. Halil had convinced Tarki to come with him, to dare to enter the main buildings, just to sate the gnawing questions pulling at him. “Maybe we can find out some things…” He spoke without thinking. “About our families.”

  “My parents died,” Tarki said automatically. “This my home now.”

  “That’s what the teachers tell us,” he retorted. “Don’t you want to get away from here one day?”

  “We will,” Tarki insisted. “Once we’ve learned enough.” He gave a sheepish grin. “I’ve learned my words, almost all of them. I’ll be done soon.”

  Halil wandered to one of the walls, picking at the peeling paint. A strip came off between his fingers. “Where are we going to go? Where they decide to send us?”

  “I suppose so. Is that so bad? The teachers—”

  A sudden jolt of annoyance cut through Halil. “Don’t you even care?” he demanded. “They are not teachers, they are soldiers! Teachers don’t have guns!”

  Tarki glanced around nervously. “You’re too loud. Be quiet.”

  “I am sick of being quiet!” Halil snapped, with a heat that surprised him. “I—”

  His angry words died in his throat as he heard the low mutter of conversation nearby, and the grind of boots on the tiled floor, coming closer.

  * * *

  It was starting to rain as Marc reached Calais, and he skirted the port town, working his way around the edges in search of the Jungle.

  It was the name the locals gave to a shanty town created out of trash and old tents, accreted by the slow trickle of illegal migrants working their way across Europe toward the French border and Great Britain. The police and customs officers had bulldozed the original Jungle a few years back, but the illegals kept coming and they kept rebuilding it somewhere else, in hopes of staying off the government radar. As an active clandestine pipeline into the UK, it was very much an ongoing concern for the security services, but the route was managed by Albanian organized crime groups and they were hard to penetrate. It didn’t help that jurisdictional conflicts between MI6 and the DCRI got in the way of every attempt to shut down the route for good.

  He stole a pair of tracksuit trousers from a neglected washing line, grabbing them before the rain soaked them through. He found a petrol station with an all-night mini-market attached, and used some of the money he had stolen from the gunman’s corpse to get a couple of tasteless microwave burgers and a deep cup of dark, tarry coffee. The meat was gray and mushy, but it was edible, and he found a corner away from the security cameras where he could eat. A few more euros went on a packet of disposable razors, a khaki baseball cap with an embroidered tricolor and a cheap black hoodie with the letters F-R-A-N-C-E sewn across the chest.

  For a long moment he looked up at a disposable cell phone in a pack above the counter, and thought about buying it; but what would be the point? He couldn’t exactly call the front desk at Vauxhall Cross and ask them to send a car for him.

  On some level, Marc was still operating on instinct, and that told him that his trust was now a commodity not to be spent at random. He was in the wind, with no idea who was after him. Sooner or later, the man he had killed would fail
to report in and the people running the assassin would know something was wrong. His window of opportunity to find out who was responsible for the deaths of his team was closing, and if Marc was going to do this himself, he had to do it now.

  He cracked open the razors and used the blades to cut off the letters on the hoodie, discarding the shreds to make the thing more nondescript. His jeans and jacket were filthy and they stank of oil, smoke and cordite. Marc ditched them in a waste bin, but not before slicing out the jacket’s thick inner zip pocket to become a makeshift bag for the Sig Sauer.

  On the road near the Jungle there was a cluster of figures, crouched low on the grass verge near a parked car. Young men mostly, some sharing cigarettes or peering warily into the dark. Marc heard snatches of what sounded like Arabic and Polish. Like the new kid at school, he shuffled up to the group and looked for a place on the edge, keeping his hat down, trying not to draw attention.

  That lasted all of two minutes before a pair of heavy-set men in cold weather coats exited the car and came striding out toward them. Before Marc could get up, the largest of the pair grabbed him by the scruff of his hood and pulled him off balance.

  “Who the fuck are you?” demanded the other man in growled, mangled French. “Think you can roll up here and sneak on to the line, asshole?”

  Marc played submissive. “Need a ride,” he replied.

  “Is that so? Why should I accommodate you?” The man peered at him. “You a criminal? A terrorist?”

  “As if!” Marc managed a weak grin and a Gallic shrug. “I can pay…”

  “You will,” grunted the one holding him up. He went for the pocket of the hoodie where the gun was hidden, but Marc held up a hand.

  “Not there. Here.” He indicated his hat, and the first man tore it off his head. A fold of notes fluttered out from where he had hidden them in the lining, and the thug caught them with a dexterity surprising for a man of his bulk. He fingered the money.

  “Congratulations, my friend.” The other man smiled, showing yellowed tombstone teeth. “You paid the fine for pissing me off. Now where’s the cash for the trip?”

  Marc played along, reaching into his shoe for the last of the euros. He kept his other hand near the pocket with the pistol. If the extra money wasn’t enough, his only remaining option was to improvise something at gunpoint, and that would not end well.

  “Much better,” said the thug, and pressed his cap back into his chest. “Bon voyage.”

  * * *

  Men were coming, making their way along the corridor. There was a rough laugh as they rounded the corner, and Halil froze. He caught one of them complaining about a poor performance, a pathetic score … They were discussing the results of a football match.

  The color drained from Tarki’s face and he threw a nervous look in the direction they had come. “We have to run!” he rasped. “I don’t want a beating!”

  Halil held his breath. The two youths were out of sight. If they maintained their silence, if they just kept their cool, they would not be discovered.

  One look at Tarki told Halil that all rational thought had fled from the other teenager. He saw the flash of abject panic in Tarki’s eyes and raised a hand to try and stop him, but it was too late. Tarki bolted, running back through the broken walls and away toward the breach in the concrete.

  The rattle and creak of motion was like a switch being tripped, and the casual conversation between the two men in the corridor changed instantly. Their voices went low and serious. Halil heard the snap of holsters being released.

  His every instinct was to sprint headlong after his friend and pray that he would get away before he was seen. The teachers hit the boys with batons when they broke the rules, and the bigger the infraction, the bigger the stick.

  He wanted to run, but the men were at the door. Slowly, quietly, he dropped down and shrank behind a broken cabinet resting against one of the walls.

  The door opened, framing a figure. He peered inside, sniffing the air. Halil was suddenly very aware of the odor of his own sweat. The moment stretched to breaking point, and Halil was certain the man was looking directly at him, penetrating the darkness. But the door closed and the pace of the previous conversation returned. The goalkeeper, the men decided, was worthless. They shared a laugh and walked on.

  Halil became aware that he had been holding his breath tightly in his chest, and with a shudder, he released it. He sat there in the dark for a while, waiting for the men to come back, for it to be revealed that they had seen him, that they were tricking him.

  But they did not return, and neither did Tarki. Halil got to his feet and took a few experimental steps over the creaking floor. Each one he took emboldened him a little more, and presently a smile broke on his lips.

  This was a little victory for him, and the fear of being caught made it all the more sweet. He was learning a new lesson here—that the teachers were not all-seeing.

  Defiant pride rose in his chest. For so long the teachers had made him feel inferior, as if his life was only allowed to go on at their sufferance, but now here he was, breaking their rules and doing it under their noses.

  Halil wanted a memorial for the moment, a keepsake. A way to prove to the other boys that he had done this thing and come back unharmed.

  Halil cast around, looking for something he could take back to the barracks to mark his adventure, but there was nothing, only bits of broken glass and scraps of wood. He picked one up and toyed with it. Then, without stopping to think, he went to the walls and used the stick to draw lines in the peeling paint. Down low by the door, where it wasn’t immediately apparent, he wrote his name in little scratches. He marked the place, making it his territory, and grinned.

  Somewhere deep in the building, a door slammed. Before, that sound would have sent his heart racing, it would have pushed him to run away like Tarki. Now he stood and listened, excited by the prospect. “I am sick of being quiet,” he repeated to himself.

  Halil crept to the door, easing it open. The ill-lit corridor ranged away from him, back in the direction the two men had come from. He decided that he wanted to know what was on the other side of the door at the far end.

  * * *

  A truck pulling a soft-sided trailer growled down the road and juddered to a halt with a hiss of air brakes. Marc was slow off the line as the rest of the illegals bolted to their feet and sprinted toward the back of the vehicle. He came up at the rear of the group, watching carefully.

  The Albanians moved up to the cab and the driver stepped out. He was in his fifties, dour and balding, dressed in a heavy lumberjack shirt. Marc caught sight of an envelope passing between the thug and the driver, and the other man went to the latches on the side of the trailer and snapped them open. The vinyl wall of the container slid open on squeaking runners like a thick curtain, revealing shrink-wrapped pallets loaded with cardboard boxes. Some of the men were already climbing up, moving loose boxes aside to reveal a hidden space where the group would be able to hide.

  Marc glanced at the name on the side of the trailer, seeing the logo of a Yorkshire-based haulage firm. He caught the driver asking for a light and heard a matching accent. The man was looking at his envelope. “This is a bit light.”

  “Less today.” The Albanian gave a noncommittal nod. “Lot of les flics around tonight. The police.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  The other man nodded gravely. “You didn’t hear what happen, down the road? At Dunkirk?”

  The driver shook his head. “I listen to Johnny Cash in this country, not the bloody radio.”

  “Ah. Well.” He mimed an explosion. “The police, they see mad bombers everywhere. Bad for business. People keep low profile.”

  “I was promised—”

  “Take or leave it.” All the false warmth drained out of the Albanian’s tone.

  The driver didn’t press his luck. “Aye, right then,” he replied, after a moment.

  Hands beckoned Marc from within the cave of boxes and he
scrambled up into it. The dislodged cargo came back into place, piece by piece, and they were walled in.

  Someone cracked a chemical light stick and the eerie green glow bathed a sea of silent faces. Marc counted nine others in there with him. Glancing around, he tried to read the names on the boxes, wondering what kind of load the driver was hauling. He caught sight of a bill of lading; they were bound for Manchester, via Dover and Calais.

  Marc shifted, avoiding the pit where a urine-stained plastic bucket had been left for their use, and found a corner where he could sit back and wait.

  Outside, the cab door slammed and the muffled strains of “I Walk the Line” filtered back to them. Then the truck’s engine coughed into life and they were moving. Marc stole a glance at the Cabot and logged the time in his thoughts. England was a few hours away, and soon he would be one step closer to safety.

  Or something, he thought grimly.

  * * *

  The corridor was lit every few feet by a light bulb inside a metal cage. Doors led to other rooms, and Halil could sense other people beyond them, with the occasional murmur of a distant voice or the rattle of a tea glass.

  The brimming confidence he had felt after he escaped detection was starting to wane, and he tried to hold on to it, but it was like a sea tide. The wave of daring had come in and filled him up, but now it was pulling back again and there was nothing Halil could do to stop it. Questioning voices in his head—all of which sounded like Tarki at his most nasal and whiny—eroded his defiance second by second. He felt tremors in his legs, as if he had been running too fast.

  He had to turn back. One single wrong move, one mistake and he would be caught. Halil had never heard of any of the teenagers doing what he was doing now—did that mean that those who dared to come here would be “sent back?”

  Wood scraped on the floor in a nearby room—someone moving a chair—and Halil almost cried out in surprise. He ducked away, snaking through the gap between two doors into the first room he came to.