For this operation, codenamed Rag and Bone, there would have been an examination of three principal parts. Did it have Proportionality to the potential threat? Was there Justification in launching it? Could Necessity be lined up with the danger posed by the target? It would have gone, with the pitiful relevant information available, to the Office of Surveillance Commissioners, and the case would have been put with all the emotion of a guy going down to the High Street bank and pleading for a mortgage. A judge would have warbled about ‘intrusion’ and the sins of ‘trawling’ but he’d have nodded, signed on the dotted line – then gone to lunch. Then the talent contest . . . Clutching their authorisation, they’d have gone to Specialist Crime and Operations 10. Who was available, who was suitable, who could say what the time parameters might be for Rag and Bone. The chances were that SC&O10 would have had to evaluate the competing bids, and juggle rosters, and decide which of the Level One people was best for what was asked. He had been chosen. Had taken the new name, had gone into the purdah world while a legend of his life was concocted, and the psychologists would have had their say: how to get a white-skinned boy up close and personal with an ethnic sub-continent girl from Savile Town in the depressed little Yorkshire community of Dewsbury. That was how it was done, and he was tasked, and they held him up, the Controller and the Cover Officer, as the best man they could have had . . . and knew so little.
He went to the car.
Some truths were bigger than others. Truths existed around the area of backup. The biggest truth, up for argument but peddled by every controller, said that backup – guns and intervention, the cavalry coming over the hill – was not negotiable and was guaranteed. A pretty story, and wheeled out often enough, and not believed. For Andy Knight in the little VW Polo and about to head off for foreign parts with the girlfriend, Zed, there would be nominal protection but no intervention if he flagged up suspicion. The smallest truth, not talked about, shrugged at: the thought of leaving an Undercover up the creek, no paddle. Wear a wire? Too easy, and any sort of microphone built into a shirt button or a belt, or posing as a pattern in a tie, sent off a signal, as did any sort of bug worn in a shoe’s heel. Every shop doing security stuff, sold the hoovering kit that could locate microphones and bugs, and any people who were serious about what they did would sweep a room before they met in it. He would be alone. Better accept it. Somewhere down the road and round the corner would be the cars and a van where the boys would be with the H&Ks and the Glocks, and the fags and the coffee flasks, and a bucket to piss in . . . down the road but too far. Alone and beyond reach. It would take just one slip. Forgetting bugs and microphones, and heading into the territory of the legend, and saying one thing about where he had been to school and then, four months later, contradicting himself, and the school was somewhere else . . . Saying he had a sister one time but not the next . . . Claiming he had met someone a year back and it had not featured on the ‘legend’ that a hood had been kept on in prison for assault on an officer and had not been released . . . Too many times when mistakes could trip off the tongue, and the firearms too far away. And another truth: people on the other side who were targeted did not take kindly to the thought that a guy they might have liked, believed in, joked with, cuddled, was a fraud. The animal people would likely have laid hands on butchers’ cleavers and the druggies would have gone in search of a friend who could rustle up a chain-saw. Zed’s people? He doubted they were short of imagination. A mistake would go badly for him, and he was alone, beyond reach.
It was difficult, impossible – however hard the effort he put in – to lose sight of truths.
Andy Knight was where he was – there because of a rabbit, would have been a big bastard because it had dug a big hole, but hadn’t the time to curse the rabbit because he was in the traffic and this was the last stage of the journey that was predictable. Nothing else would be. She was a good-looking girl, and could be fun when she lightened up, and he would betray her because that was the job – take it or leave it. Had belief in the job? Did, didn’t he? He squeezed his eyes shut, risky when driving but the only way to lose the question, and it was worse in the night when the darkness was around him – worse than bad. When she knew, she would spit at him, curse, hate him, and meantime would kiss him. He drove to the depot.
Krait and Scorpion flanked her. Zed walked in the shopping mall, wide and open, music playing.
She knew the place. Anyone who lived in the city was familiar with it, visited, talked of its good bargains. She knew what the Irish had done to it years ago and how it had been rebuilt. Not that day, but on others, she had seen armed police suddenly materialise out of the crowds, looking at her, into her, past her, then gone. She carried with her the memory of their laden belts of equipment and the weight of the vests covering their chests, and their accessories – worn as easily as a handbag or rucksack or a furled umbrella – were machine pistols while holstered pistols flapped against their thighs.
The guys with her were those who had first briefed her, who had told her, while she was in Manchester, to bin the traditional garments favoured by her father and mother. They had known those distant cousins . . .
One of them would carry the rifle, not her.
Zeinab could not have picked out either as being more suitable, had no idea who would be more efficient. The crowds were light. It would not be done on a morning such as this, but on a Saturday afternoon, or on the Sunday of a public holiday, or on the last late shopping night before Christmas. She could imagine it . . . Perhaps they would dress in black, the colour favoured by the defenders of Mosul or Raqqa or any collection of concrete block buildings that was an oasis of sorts in the desert sands of Iraq or Syria. Black was the colour of fear, recognised as a signature of the martyrs. So also was the profile of the rifle, with its curved magazine and distinctive fore-sight. She had never seen an AK-47, had never held one, felt its weight. She did not know whether it was easy to lift, whether the shots needed to be fired with the stock at the shoulder . . . She looked into the faces that swam past her. Ordinary people . . . Asians and Africans and swarthy south Europeans. It would not be an opportunity to choose who was innocent and who was guilty. Who lived, who died. Inside the mall the hot air was blown the length of the corridors and she felt sweaty, uncomfortable. Outside it was cold and clean and the wind purged dirt from her skin. Religion, in Zeinab’s mind, was a straitjacket that refused flexibility. When the rifle was brought to this floor of the shopping centre, or another in the city, or carried across the Pennines to Leeds – it would be about her sense of freedom. She thought the guys harboured the same motivations. They did not pray at prescribed intervals throughout the day, get out their mats, face towards the estimate of the direction to the places in Saudi Arabia, did not go to the mosques, as far as she knew, even on the designated days. She was in a commercial shopping zone, not in a seminar presided over by a tutor whose attention would likely have been on the curve of her arse and the weight of her boobs . . . nothing about religion. In the seminar, she’d have articulated a view of a degree of liberty, with the weight of white persons’ domination off her people’s backs. She could imagine the raw, throat-stripping exhilaration as she pushed towards a bank of TVs in a shop and saw the aftermath. Heard sirens, sobbing eye witnesses, screams and hysterical yelled instructions from security, and maybe even heard the double tap of a weapon – then the silence. Would be a place like this . . . She gazed into the faces of the shoppers, the old and the young – some used sticks to balance better and some ran and skidded and chorused their shouts. It would be one of the two guys, or a man she had never met, and perhaps he would leave behind, whichever one it was, a recorded message that shouted defiance. And it could not happen without her. Because she knew it, she walked with a firmer stride and the guys sometimes needed to scurry to keep up with her. It did not have to be said. Zeinab understood . . . and Andy, her besotted lorry driver Her evaluation of him was ‘unimportant but useful’: nothing more. Attractive? Perhaps. She had
been brought here, to be in the corridors, pass the huge brightly lit caverns of goods and displays, in order that she might reflect on the high value of a target. That she was brought here was a mark of the reliance they had on her. She wondered which of the two guys it would be, dismissed the idea of another and wondered if they would feel fear, and . . . round a sharp-angled corner.
Close to a toilet door. Beyond a Bella Italia and close to a Pound Store, two of them. Weapons across their chests, their belts sagging under the burden of handcuffs and gas canisters and ammunition, their trousers floppy and creased, and neither was shaved, and . . . they carried all the paraphernalia of their trade. They might have eyed the guys who walked with her, run the rule over them and lost interest, and both saw her. She would not back off, look demure and shy: she stared back at them, and straightened her back and pushed out her chest, and was rewarded: one smiled at her, the other grinned, and when they moved on down the corridor she was certain they’d have chuckled. ‘Right little fucking goer’ and ‘Bloody come-on eyes, gagging for it’.
She turned to the guys, said she’d seen enough. Could picture how it would be amongst the blood pools and the glass shards and the sliding chaos of the flight, and the islands of those on the floor who could not move. Zeinab did not need to see any more. She left them, a flick of her wrist to indicate they should stay. She felt control, authority. They should stay where they were and wait for her. She knew what she would buy, looked for the display, found what she wanted: like silk, and the right size. Paid, left, rejoined them . . . Needed to see nothing more.
It was about a rifle. One rifle. To start with.
‘You will do the close support, I watch. You will be rewarded.’
An old man had done the equivalent in his world of snapping his fingers for attention, and the younger man, like an obedient dog, had come running.
‘You take care of it, the transfer. Small business I accept, but it will grow.’
In the world that Tooth occupied, his instructions were rarely ignored, and any idiot who did not accept what was ‘requested’ of him, would suffer. The reputation of Tooth still counted in Marseille and its environs. The years when he was a familiar figure seated in the cafés on the narrow side-streets off La Canebière, always facing the door, were long gone. Most of his time was now spent in the quality suburbs to the south of the city, at the villa he had built – still regarded as extraordinary that building permission had been granted for construction on that headland – looking out across the Mediterranean and towards craggy islands. He was the last of the Corsican era, as criminologists liked to call it, the big men who had run the drugs scene, and the girls, before the Arabs – savages from north Africa – had elbowed them aside, trampled on them.
‘If it is satisfactory, this route and these people, then much will follow. You have my word: my word is the best currency.’
If he looked at himself in the mirror, the large one with the gilt frame in the hallway of the villa – which he never did – he would not have easily understood how it was that a small man, thick bearded but tidy, usually wearing a tartan cap on his greying hair, could create both fear and obedience. But, had he paused before the mirror and examined himself, he’d have been denied the sight of his eyes. Always he wore dark glasses. When he came out of the bathroom in the morning, they went on along with his socks and underpants, and only when he changed into his pyjamas did they come off. His eyes were pale blue, a lighter colour than the sea, and cold, cold as if frozen. The reputation that had lasted into his old age was fearsome, the reason why the younger man had come from the north of Marseille when told to. His name came from the Bible – Exodus 21–24 – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and could have been a ‘hand’ or a ‘foot’ or a ‘burn’ or a ‘wound’, but Tooth was the name that had stayed with him. Anyone who crossed him risked serious reprisal: many teeth had been extracted, without a whiff of anaesthetic, because of stupidity, refusal to acknowledge the obvious. He had been told of this young man by a policeman who he paid well, had gone to visit La Castellane to seek him out. Tooth had walked past the kids who had challenged him, seemed about to threaten an elderly guy, lining up to jostle and challenge an intruder. He had told them to ‘go fuck your mothers’ had not backed off – never had. The kids had: would have recognised authority. He had not been armed, never carried a weapon, but he was known, and his reputation was alive. Having failed to find the man he wanted he had left the instruction to summon him, then had walked back through the kids and seen that they stayed warily clear of him. Most of those who had gone in the generation before him, the big men of Marseille, were dead – the Belgian, the Roaster, the Big Blond – shot in cafés while enjoying strong coffee, doing deals. He survived because he was discreet.
‘It is one weapon. What do you have yourself, of the Kalashnikov, five or six, seven? This is one. We look for a new route. If successful we have the contract to bring many. Not from Serbia, or overland from Spain, but by sea. I believe it an opportunity.’
His best investment had been the filtering of cash into the serious crime squad working from L’Évêché, close to the cathedral, the name all Marseille gave to the headquarters offices of the police. With his back well covered he had been regarded as the Emperor of the 3rd District, his authority total either side of the autoroute from the St Charles railway terminus and almost to the airport. He was an institution in the city, could command tables in any restaurant or at the better hotels.
‘Your name was given me. I’d not want trust abused.’
The meeting was in a park off the wide and busy Boulevard Charles Livon. Lawns were enhanced with well-tended beds, and the shrubs would soon be sprouting after the winter pruning. The view across the harbour, down on to the Fort Saint-Jean, was superb, and on this clear and sunny day, with a scouring clean wind, Tooth could see beyond the ferry terminal and container docks as far as the indistinct and hazed image – white buildings crushed close together – of the La Castellane project. They were sitting on a bench and behind them was a statue dedicated to local seamen lost in the Mediterranean. It had a realism in the work that might have created anxiety for any who might be about to sail in gale force conditions: he had no fear, and the work was meaningless to him. He had let the young man park his motorbike, go toward the bench, had checked he was alone, then had joined him. Nothing was challenged, everything was agreed.
‘You will put the people in place, do what is necessary. Understand also that if your work is satisfactory you will find you are given access to those in significant positions who can advance you. I think that is very clear. I ask you one question, just one.’
A smile might have slipped across his face. Difficult to ascertain because of the thickness of his beard. ‘My question – how do you respond to a man or a boy who cheats on you, who breaks the trust you have shown?’
He was answered. Nodded, seemed satisfied, said how and when the next contact would be made. The younger man was dismissed and started to walk away across the grass, skirting the mothers and nannies who had brought the children out after school and nursery . . . and he was pleased.
The life of a person with the status of Tooth was based on friendships: very few but of a lasting quality. He would be with Crab . . . At home he lived with his long-term mistress, Marie. They had been in a restaurant, Nice, on the Promenade des Anglais, and beside the Plage Beau Rivage. She had played the bitch, complained, irritated, raised her voice. Another couple, same age, were at an adjacent table. Marie had acted out a scene, would not have done anything like it at the villa or would have found herself out on the step with her clothes in a heap at her feet. It was about a bracelet in a jeweller’s window that he had not bought her. She had made theatrically for the door. The guy from the other couple, a frown knitted in sympathy but grinning widely, had voiced his opinion, in regional English but Tooth had understood. ‘Can’t live with them, can’t live without them’. He had scowled, then smiled, then let himself go and his laugh
ter had pealed through the restaurant, and he had joined them. The start . . . him and Crab. Together, Tooth and Crab. After half an hour, Marie had come back. He had not welcomed, nor acknowledged her; he had made a new friend. Tooth had a strong nose. He recognised Crab’s trade. They would hug, do business, laugh and drink. Make a good profit. They would eat well and talk of old times. They would feel blessed that they, old men, could still broker deals.
Tooth pushed himself up from the bench and the wind lifted his cap. He looked across the fortresses of Marseille and the city’s terminals and docks, and saw the indistinct white outline of what they called La Castellane where the new generation came from, some of them . . . He liked what he had been told was the fate of a boy who broke his word, could no longer be trusted. Enjoyed that. He missed business, it hurt him not to trade; he was lost if he could not.
The younger brother, with the damaged arm, remained at the principal entrance to the project.
A couple kissed, sitting on one of the rocks that restricted entry to La Castellane. They made no effort to seek out privacy. Karym knew the boy. Both had been pupils at the huge Lycée Saint Exupéry, both drops-outs, leaving on their sixteenth birthdays. A teacher had told Karym that it did not have to be this way, that he was too bright to walk away from education. The boy had his hand under the girl’s coat and she had draped her thighs over his legs, and the kissing was hard: the boy had already fathered a kid, by another girl . . . Karym had no girl. He did not have a pretty girl, a girl with a model’s waist, a fat girl or an ugly girl. No girl, not even one with an itch who wanted it each day. In La Castellane, girls looked for a boy who could fight with a knife, who had the patronage of a dealer, was able to act as an enforcer. Any boy who could fight. Not a boy who was crippled, and who only had a scooter because his weakened arm was not strong enough to handle a serious bike . . . He would ride his Peugeot later, when his shift was done, round the nearby streets, go painfully slowly . . . What he wished to own and what he saved for was a Piaggio MP3 Yourban, and one day he would be able to afford it, and hoped his arm would allow him to ride it. The kissing couple did not see him.
Battle Sight Zero Page 10
