The kid’s mother came into the project. She walked heavily, like her feet hurt, and her face was puffed where there had been tears. Karym thought she would have been rewarded only with vagueness, had received no promises. No imam or school teacher could guarantee protection for her son, and the gendarmerie would not have listened to her because her son was worthless to them and had no barter value . . . The girl had removed the boy’s hand from under her clothing and the kissing had stopped and she chewed hard on gum and he lit a cigarette. For a moment the mother’s eyes met Karym’s, and her anguish welled, but he looked away . . . he had no influence. Karym was without a girl, could not fight, had never fired a Kalashnikov, was worthless. He thought the mother decided the same. She would have known his name, and who was his brother. She trudged past him, went towards her stairwell, and would then climb slowly up the staircase. All the elevators were broken. No one respected him but he was, without grace, protected by his brother. The girl flicked her gum, and the wad hit Karym in the throat, and he turned.
The girl called out. ‘When will it happen?’
Karym’s head was sunk on his chest. ‘Will what happen?’
Her boy shouted. ‘Where will it be?’
‘What, or where, I don’t know.’
‘Doesn’t he tell you, your brother? Doesn’t tell you?’
A crowd had materialised. That was the way of the project. One moment empty walkways and deserted lanes between buildings and under the flapping washing, and the next a crowd gathering and squeezing close to hear better.
‘When is the barbecue?’
He did not know, said he did not know.
‘But there will be one, a barbecue? Yes . . .?’
He heard someone say that he was ‘fucking useless’, a ‘deformed cripple’. He did not know if there would be a barbecue, what his brother planned. It was usual if a stranger came to the project, or to any of the others where hashish was sold on the north side of Marseille, that the chouffes, the look-outs, would hem him in, quiz him, and intimidate. An old man arrived, pushed them aside, told them to go screw their mothers, had asked for his brother. Karym spoke to the man, seen no tremble in his hand, no twitch at his mouth above or below the beard and the moustache. He told him his brother was not there. Karym had been entrusted with the message, spoken quietly, as to when and where he should be across on the far side of the city – where Karym had never been. A name had been given and the man had walked away and when he had reached the outer barricade of big stones he had stopped purposefully, then spat into the ground. Karym had told his brother, and the instruction was obeyed, which had puzzled Karym.
There would be a barbecue, he assumed it. His brother would do a barbecue.
Astride the motorbike, hearing and feeling the power of its engine, Hamid, returned from his meeting.
Checking his mirrors frequently, staying within the speed limits to avoid police attention, he rode his Ducati Monster 821, with a horsepower of 112, towards the vieux port. He passed the Irish bars, O’Malley’s and O’Neills, but did not know where Ireland was and why its bars were considered important, and went by the McDonalds, and returned to La Castellane. It seemed necessary to get the business of a barbecue done before he was taken on for work by Tooth: he knew the man’s reputation . . . knew not to fail, and knew of the potential for rewards.
He wore a helmet; he was anonymous.
The meeting had made him both nervous and elated. Nervous because it was the first time that a legendary member of one of the old gangs had come to seek him out, and much would be expected of him, and he would be watched and bad consequences would follow if his standards were found wanting. Elated because it was remarkable that such a man had travelled all the way to La Castellane, had parked his car, had walked in and ignored the kids who had milled about him, had come to look for only one man, Hamid, which was a mark of his new-found success . . . where might his name have come from? He thought it most likely that a detective, one of the investigators working in the northern suburbs would have been owned by Tooth, would have spoken of him. It was about the future . . . If the future succeeded for him then he would not be riding a Ducati Monster 821, but would be in a Porsche, could be a Ferrari. With successful patronage he would move on from dealing hashish: he saw horizons unlimited and would ditch living in La Castellane. But he loved his bike. The ride was smooth, oozed power.
He turned on to the Boulevard Henri Barnier, did it with a swagger and a howl of his tyres, what was expected.
But, several matters confused him. Why was the packet to be delivered so small? Why was only one item, initially, to be delivered? Why these complicated arrangements for the transfer of a single weapon? He had not interrupted Tooth, not queried him, but he, himself, could have provided six rifles, and ammunition, and at a very acceptable knock-down price. He had been told a man and a woman would come from England to take delivery of just one AK-47. Confusing, but not for him to worry. Time first to arrange a barbecue which was necessary because authority could not be challenged.
‘And where’s it taking you?’
‘Somewhere south of Keele services.’
‘Word is there’ll be a passenger.’
‘Never rely on what you hear.’
Andy could not see the face, nor the shoulders, the head or the back of the mechanic because they were under the VW, but he’d heard the scrapes that meant shit and dirt and filth were being cleaned off cables and joins and from time to time a hand reached out to change kit. It was good of them to have found the time to look over his VW Polo: they were fine guys and he was grateful . . . but would give nothing.
‘And the chatter says that it’s a week’s holiday you’re grabbing.’
‘Shouldn’t listen to chatter, can give you gut ache.’
‘What I was told, no one else would have squared it with the boss, no other driver.’
‘Something came up.’
He was the newest of the driving team. Normal rules dictated that the last in was the bottom of the food chain, and given the crap work. It was a heavy time of the year and after the Christmas break the sites they supplied were coming up to speed, and the weather didn’t matter. He’d joke, sound relaxed . . . but they’d get nothing.
‘Boys are wondering how you swung it. One of our old guys, retired last year, he’s coming back in as cover.’
‘Probably pleased to swap sitting in his greenhouse, watching seeds germinate.’
‘What I’m saying, Andy, is you have influence. More than I do, or anyone.’
‘I don’t suppose any time is ever convenient.’
It was the skill of an Undercover, a Level One, that he would not weaken when talking to one of the good guys, salt of the earth, dependable and the sort you’d always want minding your back. Would give them no more than to a stranger in a pub. Other than when he met the Controller or the Cover Officer, everyone he met was the subject of deceit. There were times – not now, too gentle – when questions were asked and he would act, seem to throw a tantrum. ‘What’s my past to you, what fucking business is it of yours, how do I know who you are – piss off.’ Could do that, or just deflect. Behind everything he was supposed to achieve was the Mission Statement, the Aims and the End Game, and the detail of hour by hour was left to Andy Knight – or to Norm Clarke, or to Phil Williams. It hurt, and the hurting took a toll. Always did, why he had shivered on the bed last night, squeezed his eyes shut, felt weakened.
‘And going off with a girl.’
‘So they say.’
‘For a week.’
‘I expect the nation will survive, and the city of Manchester, while I flop around and get pissed up.’
The mechanic came out from underneath. Looked long at Andy, and hard, and was puzzled, didn’t hide it, then he ducked his head down into the engine parts. An apprentice kid was whistled over, and was told to sit behind the wheel and do the pedals to turn the engine over. There was plenty more in the workshop that the mechanic could have been a
t, and plenty that was more useful for an apprentice . . . Andy was not a crusader, not a crime fighter for the glory of altruism, but he was addicted to the adrenaline – not the psychologists. Ordinary folks called it ‘buzz’; the challenge of it kept him upright, going forward. A big challenge; bigger than with the animal people and bigger than with the predictable druggies.
‘Where’s not good enough? It’ll not be Morecombe Bay, not Blackpool.’
‘And my motor?’
‘Motor’s fine now, after me sweating on it. Right, Andy, how far’s it going?’ The eyes pinioned him. A truth at last was to be coughed up. The mechanic wiped his hands on a rag and readied to hear the destination and detail about the ‘totty’ that was going to be in the passenger seat. Time for a crack, never time for a truth. When he was gone and it was clear he was not returning, then every word he had said would be subject to analysis, and the boss who had given him the time away would be castigated as a dupe. No other way. Never was. ‘Hope to die, cross my heart, soul of discretion.’
‘Big secret – but I’ll let you in.’
‘Good boy, where?’
‘South of Keele Services.’
The rag hit him in the face. He assumed the matter had come to a head, like a boil stretched by a bag of yellow pus and ready to burst. Most of the animal people were quite honest and very passionate and if he’d stayed alongside them another half year, he might have joined up. And the girl with auburn hair had set sights on him, and another six months would have been a problem. A hell of a mess when it was over and seven or eight ruined lives, and a hell of a lot more beagles getting syringes embedded below their skins. The mechanic and the apprentice had looked after him and put the VW Polo ahead of at least two of the big lorries that were showing grief . . . He thanked them, smiled – did not confide. They’d have loved the story that he was off on his travels, driving down through Europe, and a pretty girl would be alongside and might have a hand on his thigh, and might have felt tired and dropped her head and let it rest on his shoulder with her hair wafting on his cheeks, loved it and fed it round the canteen at the next scheduled meal break. He gave nothing.
November 1969
The cranes at Constanta, along the quayside of the Romanian port, swung the crates high and out, and then lowered them with no particular care on to the freighter’s deck.
Twenty crates, each containing 50 weapons, and five more for magazines, and three more for 7.62 × 39mm ammunition; surplus to requirements where they had been. They would no longer clog up space in a Hungarian police warehouse, were being given away. Given, but still with a price.
They had been certified fit for action, had been testified, and with familiar bureaucracy the details of serial numbers, stamped into the metalwork at a factory in remote Izhevsk, were listed on the papers that would accompany the shipment. The particular weapon with a last five-digit identification of 16751 languished, in the ninth crate to be hoisted on board. That AK-47, it had been said in Budapest, was damned. Because it had been buried for so long it had failed to polish up like the other consigned for export, it had no sheen, could not be burnished, and the wooden stock was scarred with two notches and a deep groove. It was at the bottom of the crate and the officer in charge of the storage was pleased to see the back of it. It was a clement day in the Black Sea city, with a light wind, good sunshine and shirtsleeve warmth. The loading was supervised by a member of the Hungarian AVH unit who, when it was complete, would be taken by a Romanian colleague, from the Departamentul Securitatii Statului, to a night club then a brothel because the network of colleagues functioned across international borders. Secrecy was observed. Only nominally were the weapons a gift.
When the last crate was in place, and covered by the principal cargo, Romanian refined auto-fuel, the freighter would sail. Its destination – acceptable between fraternal allies – would be Latakia, the Syrian port on the Mediterranean. Lorries would be waiting there, and local stevedores would first remove the oil drums, then get the crates off and into lorries whose canvas sides would prevent their contents being viewed, and they would drive off with a full-blown military escort of Syrian paratroopers. Why, if they had no value, if they were a gift? Because the thousand assault rifles represented an expression of foreign policy. They would buy approval, cement friendship. Had the cargo been identified, then an Israeli Air Force strike could be expected. It travelled in secrecy.
The gift was only possible because the Hungarians had taken delivery of a newer model of the Kalashnikov, with metal parts milled by machine tools for greater efficiency, not using pressed steel. Only the previous year, Hungarian forces had gone to a state of alert because of an insurrection in neighbouring Czechoslovakia, in which Soviet tanks had been deployed to restore the alliance between Moscow and Prague. More modern weapons were demanded and had been obtained for the secret police. The ‘gift’ would sail that night, and would thread through the Bosphorus and into the Mediterranean under cover of darkness. It was destined for a Palestinian group, based in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon, and the leaders of the faction were thought to be most at ease with the Kremlin’s aims. The price of the gift would be loyalty to Soviet instructions. The weapons, far in advance of what the group already possessed, would be used against Israeli territory when that course was directed, and not before. They were eagerly awaited, would be there within a week. Gratitude would be great, even for a weapon that had no lustre to its body, had a disfigured wooden stock, that looked to be a makeweight and there to ensure numbers were tidily rounded up.
Hawsers loosed, the freighter eased from its berth.
They’d reached London. A clean shirt, and clean knickers, fresh socks and a fresh blouse. Neither had been home.
Gough talked to customers. Pegs had a line into Marseille.
The customer was Counter-Terrorist Command. Clear aims were given to Gough. The dead boy fished out of the water was past history, a warning to others on the price of betrayal, a casualty, and unimportant. The priority, top of the heap, was the conclusion that a piece of kit was to be collected in Marseille, likely to be an automatic weapon with proven killing power, and run back as a test for a new route, one earmarked as ideal for the customer, the jihadi group in the north. During its transit, an opportunity was to be manufactured for the weapon to be put in the care of the boffin people and they’d do the insert of the tracker, somewhere in the stock. It would be followed, would see where it ran, and the swoop would net the whole damn lot of them, the conspiracy. It was what a year and more of work had been about, and why the Undercover was in place. The customer was very hopeful and Gough was warned that SNAFU was not acceptable. If he had to report that it was a case of Situation Normal All Fouled Up – or ‘Fucked’ – it would mean that one or more weapons had been introduced to the country, an assault rifle or several, and the consequences were unacceptable. His head would be on the block, and the blade might not be sharp, and decapitation might take a bit of time and cause a bit of hurt. But, of course, the customer was confident in his ability.
Pegs did schoolgirl French. Normally a matter of liaison went through the Europol bureaucracy in Holland, or via the appropriate London-based embassy. She had pleaded lack of time, could not observe protocol. She had been given numbers to call, and a name . . . and it descended, along with her smart school accent, into a matter of trust. At the other end of the line was a police major. She did not want Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure which would have dumped her into a spider web of competing camps, did not want their full security surveillance units – wanted only a friendly face and a handful of cops who would sit in a van down the road round the corner and ask no questions and make no suggestions as to how the mission should be handled. Do traffic routes, give local geography knowledge, and leave the rest to her.
She’d launched in French when a call had been answered and the name confirmed. Good enough French . . . a crisp answer in English. A man who sounded in a hurry, and had taken a minimum of his
lunch break, who seemed to expect to be regarded as a collaborator, not talked to on a Need To Know basis. He was Alfred Valery. When was she coming? She didn’t know. When did she need the backup for an Undercover? She didn’t know. She doubted that she would have spilled facts on to his desk to his face; down a telephone line it was impossible. When she did come he would be in his office, and a mobile was given for night hours, and she could call, and Major Valery would see, with his available resources, what was possible. He had finished with, ‘We are quite busy here, madame. Much as we look forward to welcoming you, it should be understood that we have pressing matters that involve us.’ Call ended. Fuck you, Major. She turned on Gough.
‘You know, we don’t even have his bloody name. Only know Andy Knight. Know nothing of him. We meet him, no idea whether he is a star performer, or whether he’ll crumple. He is what we were given. What did he think of us? Useless bum scratchers? Top of the tree and efficient? Just average, just middling, what they call “premier mediocre”. What I’m saying, Gough, would you put your life, happily and with confidence, into our hands? Do we deserve that amount of faith? What do you say?’
Gough said, ‘We’re what he has. We’re where we are and that has to be good enough. Not important, what he thinks of us. We do our best, can’t do more.’
She told him how it would be.
‘Is that so, Zed?’
‘That’s how it is, and will be.’
She gave him the envelope, told him that he’d take the ferry out of Plymouth, would be going alone to Roscoff . . . Wasn’t a usual route but the ferry company were trying out a winter sailing schedule, but they’d be coming back from Caen into Portsmouth, and he must have looked bewildered. Part of the astonishment was that they’d be going out singly, and part of his surprise was the degree of subterfuge she’d gone for. They were in the same park as before, and it was the same light but driving drizzle as before and they’d both been cold. Should have been in a café and the warm, should have been in the car with the heater on, but she had led and he had followed, and they’d come to the bench. He wondered if her minders watched, had not seen them. Probably the minders were there and watched him a final time, evaluated him: last chance to ditch him. He thought her strained, speaking as if from a rehearsed text.
Battle Sight Zero Page 11
