Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  He trusted, strange for him, the young man he had met in the park off the Boulevard Charles Livon; trusted him because he believed in the fate, as described to him without a moment of hesitation, of anyone who broke the bounds of discipline. Tooth did not do it himself, exact punishment, but knew plenty of men who would. Trust, and he did not expect to be proven wrong.

  It was done with a formality. Done without noise or drama, done with a protocol. Done with inevitability.

  The bell did not work. Hamid, kingpin of that stairwell, a little emperor in the world of trading good-quality hashish from Morocco knocked on the door of the fifth-floor apartment. Not a heavy knock, not one that threatened to remove the door from its hinges. He waited. Behind him, at a distance back along the communal walkway from the stairs were the sightseers, like the tourists who gathered at the quayside of the vieux port, who were the strong-arm muscle that he needed as watchers and dealers and couriers, but not required now. His younger brother, Karym, was with them. The mob would not be required, and he carried no weapon.

  He was patient. He heard the rustling of feet across the floor beyond the thin wood of the door. A TV played inside. There was a spy hole and he assumed it would be used. A voice called out inside, the mother’s. He would have been inspected, his identity confirmed. There would have been time enough for her to lift her phone, call 112 and demand immediate response from the Police Nationale, possible. But not a single patrol car would be tasked to go and evaluate a problem. Entry into La Castellane would take planning, commitment, probably the deployment of a hundred officers. She, the mother, would have known that. The stink from the walkway of urine and decayed food and rubbish filtered in his nostrils. He would not be kept waiting long. The mother was a nourrice, unemployable at her age, and reliant on the small income he paid her for keeping weapons or cash, or pouches of hashish, safe and hidden. She called out again, quite a firm voice. A bolt was drawn, a chain was loosed, a key was turned. He had not expected he would have to force his way inside. She opened the door. He smiled at her, without warmth, but as if it were correct to acknowledge a woman who he employed, and who had not given him – as far as he knew – cause for complaint. Her face was frosted, and her eyes were wide and she did not blink, did not look away from him. She called again.

  The boy appeared, came from a room off the hallway.

  There was no gesture to the boy. Nothing said. The mother held her son for a moment, then released him. The boy shook. Some mothers might have clung tight to her son, held him with a desperate strength, cried out so that the whole block knew her agony. Not this mother. She might have thought he was condemned, might have thought that her boy would be beaten, roughed up, then returned. The boy could barely walk. He did not try to run back inside the apartment, take refuge in his bedroom. He came out and stepped, swaying at weak knees, on to the walkway. Then the boy wet himself . . . the door closed behind him. They heard the key being turned and the chain replaced, and the bolt pushed across. Hamid took the boy’s ear, easy to reach under his close-cut hair, this was a teenager who had regarded himself as a rising star, who had spent money on his appearance, but now had messed himself. A trail was left behind him and along the walkway. He might have been too terrified to fight, and his step was leaden, and the hold on his ear was merciless. They walked towards the youths.

  Hamid knew the boundaries of his power. On this walkway and its stairs, and at the well at the bottom, his authority was total. With the small bearded man, knowing his reputation, he would not have considered taking a liberty: no action, no word, that might offer offence. The group parted. A day before, it was safe to assume, the boy would have been cocky, brimming cheek and mischief, and now his trousers were stained and he left the mark, warm, dribbling, behind him, and his mother would now be slumped at her table, head in hands, alone, convulsed in tears. It would teach the boys who followed them down the stairs, hushed and not daring to be heard, a further lesson in the need for discipline, and they would appreciate the show when it was done. A barbecue was always well attended, was popular among the teenagers who followed a leader, and a leader’s money.

  They went outside, past the overflowing rubbish bins that the corporation had not collected that week, or the previous one, or the one before, citing ‘problems of access’. Likely they were holding out for bonus payments if they came inside La Castellane or any of the other nearby projects. The sun was dropping and darkness would soon envelop the close buildings. His hand now rested loosely on the boy’s shoulder. The bladder would have been emptied and the boy was firmly pushed forward if he slowed. With darkness came the customers. With the customers came the banknotes, new and old, frayed or virgin. The project’s life relied on the sale of hashish, and scores depended on the patronage of men such as the brother of Karym. All of the chouffes and the rabbatteurs and the charbonneurs and the nourrices were paid, had families they supported. The government did not come with hand-out cash, nor the corporation in the arrondissement, nor the bureaucracy in the Town Hall on the Quai du Port. All were paid well in excess of the listed poverty line. The project depended on hashish and the quality of the entrepreneurs selling it . . . All of the boys who followed saw themselves as coming figures, had ambition – but kept their distance and none had made eye contact. None would speak up, none would defend. He went to another block. The boy was handed over to new gaolers. An astute move: it meant that the credit for the coming barbecue was spread, meant also that the matter could be put to rest for a few hours, leave him free to start trading when the night descended on the poorly lit buildings.

  The boy had gone, a door had closed on him. He whistled, and his young brother – the cripple who was Karym – ran forward. He said what was wanted.

  Karym carried the rifle.

  Not obviously, not as the boy had done, not as an idiot would.

  It was wrapped in a blanket and tucked under his strong arm. He had been sent by his brother back to Hamid’s personal apartment – a palace of modern furniture and drapes and a kitchen like those on TV – and had collected the weapon from under the bed. There had been, he noted, two small hand grenades in a half-open drawer and a pistol was protruding from under the pillow, and was loaded, and on a dressing-table was a can of pepper-spray. In the apartment, Karym shared with his sister there were no weapons. When he had retrieved the rifle from under the bed, he had sat on the mattress and had laid out the pieces of the weapon on the floor at his feet, had done it by touch and had learned its history of origin, then had put it together again, barely looking as the parts went back into place. Karym regretted that he had no friend with whom to share his obsession. Not his sister. Not his mother when she came from Cassis, the town where she lived and worked, and she would scream and rail that her family were vermin because of Hamid’s notoriety. If the obsession had involved the fans of the Marseille football team then he could have shared. Not that the kids would go to the Stade Vélodrome to watch Olympique because that was on the far side of the city, away down the Prado road and distant from familiar territory, but there were boys who knew everything about the team, the players, the tactics . . . all tedious to young Karym. The weapon, the AK-47, the design of Mikhail Kalashnikov, was principal in his life. Nothing mattered as much as taking any opportunity to soak up information on the rifle, and to handle one . . . This one was crap. It would have come off the production line of the Zastava factory at Kragujevac in the Serbian state. They called it the Zastava M70, a poorly produced copy of the Kalashnikov. They came to Marseille from the Balkans by road or via a great loop which took them to Spain and then another overland route. Frequently they were intercepted and the hauls were large and the prisons bulged with the couriers . . . but it was, to young Karym, still a Kalashnikov. He walked through the project. It was said – Karym had read it in a magazine – that there were still six million assault rifles privately owned in the Balkan countries, illegal and hidden, and any family that was suffering hardship would take the rifle to a dealer, hagg
le over it, get a poor price, sell it. It gave Karym pride to know that the projects of northern Marseille were the principal destination for the trade – other than the terror groups circling Belgium and the French capital, but terror was outside all aspects of Karym’s interest and experience . . . and, Zastava made the ammunition. It was a clean weapon, might never have been out of its shipping wrapping, previously stored in a warehouse, then put up for sale like it was a used car, ‘one careful owner’, then bought by his brother. Maybe his brother had paid $150, or could have been less because the market belonged to the buyers.

  Carrying the rifle, the boy who had messed with it – now likely to be trussed and in a bunker below a block – was gone from Karym’s mind.

  It was the freedom weapon. It was the rifle chosen by men and women who believed in seductive wars of liberation, and it was easily available to them. A child of ten could learn to strip and assemble, could kill with it . . . not Karym, who had the liability of his weakened arm. And had never fired one. They had made, he’d read, one hundred million of them, and he had never fired one, aimed down the V sight and the needle set at Battle Sight Zero, not one of the one hundred million – was worse, far more pain to him than the absence of a girl in his life. His brother waiting for him in the shadows, saw him, emerged.

  Kids watched. He thought them the pilot fish that swam close to a shark. If the shark fed, ripped at the flesh of a seal or a swimmer then there was debris in the water, meat or gristle, which they’d scavenge . . . but they’d swim where the power was. If his brother fell then the kids would desert him, as they had deserted the boy taken from his mother. His brother took the weapon.

  And was gone. Nothing shared. He was not an actor, only a witness – not a player but part of the audience. He did not complain. He had no affection for his brother, and none was shown him, but each was of use to the other. Karym’s brother was a protector, and Karym was a useful courier, errand runner.

  Karym took his place again, among the other watchers at the entrance to the project. He sensed a growing anticipation around him because a barbecue was planned, but he did not know when, nor where. When questions were asked of him, he merely shrugged, would not admit ignorance. But the mood was there, around him, like jungle creatures sniffing blood, and the first customers were coming to the checkpoint and would be escorted by boys to the payment and distribution points. Blood, to the boys of the La Castellane project, had a clear and distinctive scent.

  The binoculars were passed between them, backwards and forwards.

  ‘What do you read?’

  ‘Read something, cannot say.’

  Major Valery held the binoculars, high-powered but with a fine cloth mesh over the lenses so that reflection from street-lights did not flash back off them. He wore black overalls, a black balaclava hid his face, and the belt and pistol holster at his waist were black. It was a place he came to once a week or once a fortnight, and it had been found by his companion. There were few evenings when the Major was home, off the Rue d’Orient, near to the hospitals and the city cemetery, and far from the 15th arrondissement, when the offices at L’Évêché emptied. The district of Verduron, the project of La Castellane, was at the heart of his responsibility, but he had many, was worked to the bone. He had come from the northern city of Lille, civilisation, had been transferred to Marseille with promises of fast-track promotion after the corruption scandal involving the Brigade anti-criminalité. A section of investigators and their infrastructure had been proven to be on the take, doing it big time, for tens of thousands of euros. He trusted few whom he worked with, but one man in particular was marked out, in the Major’s mind, as having uncompromising, granite-hard integrity. They hunted together, were often a pair. He thought his companion could not be bought, therefore had the greatest value, and was a proven killer. He passed the binoculars to the sergeant, to the one they called Samson. A grim name, perhaps appropriate, and neither wanted nor disowned. It was their habit to come to a vantage-point above any of the projects, where a decent view was possible, where a secure hiding place was available.

  ‘Difficult to assess, but a tension.’

  ‘Unusual, more kids hanging on corners, and older people safe in their buildings.’

  ‘A priest spoke of a mother’s visit to him, came to him because she believed he would have greater influence than an imam. A boy in trouble, a dealer, whatever – we can do nothing. It is a tough place, toughest for those who have to live there.’

  ‘There is an atmosphere, something builds,’ Samson murmured.

  It was not necessary for them to be there, beyond the duty call, and neither would have shared the results of their surveillance with others, gave no confidences. The Major was known to have been brought to Marseille to restore a degree of integrity in the Brigade, and the Sergeant’s identity had been leaked and he, his blue balaclava, his given name and the marksman’s rifle, had become known.

  ‘I had a call – not your concern but I took a call. Very grand, the Metropolitan Police from England, Scotland Yard, a voice that seemed to regard me as a hotel concierge, and they have an Undercover coming through: no detail, no explanation, just the suggestion that I make a backup team available. Not through the usual channels, but direct and circumventing them to save time. I come here, look at that place, at La Castellane, at the customers coming for purchase of hashish, all criminal and illegal, and I relax . . . I could have broken the phone, Samson, indeed I could.’

  ‘You told them to go fuck . . .’

  ‘Sort it when they come, time then . . . Samson, what do you see?’

  The marksman said that his own quiet time in an evening, while his wife cooked or made clothes, or ironed her uniform for the next day’s inner city policing, was to watch the nature films on the TV. He spoke of hyenas in an African reserve, gathering because a big predator was closing in on a kill, and if the hyenas were alerted then so also would the vultures. They could smell, the hyenas could, Samson said, when a death was imminent, and the vultures watched through every hour of daylight. He thought it was like that, a world of hyenas and vultures and the near-dead, in the project.

  A mirthless chuckle from the Major. ‘And the kids there are the hyenas, or the vultures?’

  Samson said softly, ‘Nearly, not quite. The kids enjoy the spectacle of the killing. The hyena kills to eat or to clear the scraps left . . . it is a small difference.’

  They would give it another half an hour then leave as quietly and as unseen as they had come, and they would go to their homes across the city, far from here, from the scent of blood. More customers came and business was brisk that evening.

  And another difference, the hyenas in there, among the blocks and patrolling the walkways and entrances, were better armed than the men and women of the GIPN, had greater fire-power . . . not a place to go short-handed, without good reason.

  October 1970

  An open sewer ran past the entrance to the building. Old sacking, still marked with the stencilled initials of UNHCR, hung from nails hammered into the beam that crossed the entrance. It rained on the camp; the good weather of the early autumn had gone. Low cloud covered the hills to the east, towards the Syrian border. The building was home to a family that had once owned a villa and an apple orchard and olive groves near to the town of Acre: but Acre was now inside Israeli territory and this was a family that had fled, wisely or unwisely, 22 years earlier. The family was extended – grandparents, parents, and children. And instead of the fine villa and sweet shaded gardens and a smallholding, they lived in a construction put together with a hammer and a liberal supply of nails.

  The shot was fired.

  The roof was made from rusted corrugated iron sections, as if they had been found on a rubbish heap and brought specially to this camp for Palestinian refugees. The walls were plywood and nailed to the frames of pallets. Two windows were covered with clear cellophane which was stained, darkened and hard to see through. The roof leaked when it rained, the walls gave
no protection against the cold of winter, and in that part of Lebanon there would be snow. The mud in front of the entrance was slippery and clinging. The family possessed little except their memories and stories of the past, and the cooking pots that the women used when the camp authorities issued food supplies. There was no work, they had no income, were dependent on subsistence aid. A gift had come their way a month before, but it did not help to heat or feed the family. The eldest grandson had been accepted into the fedayeen group that ran the camp. He was fifteen, conceited, proud that he had been given an AK-47 assault rifle as a mark of his acceptance into the training cadre. Many men in the camp carried weapons. But that day the grandson had left the weapon behind when he had gone for cigarettes.

  After the single shot came the scream.

  It was a hideous sound, that of an old woman pierced by sudden anguish. The sound split apart the sacking rags at the entrance of the building. Neighbours gathered. Those walking either side of the ditch that ran in the centre of the path, that carried raw waste and stank, hesitated and ducked down or scurried for cover. First out was a kid, a boy, five or six years old, thin and emaciated as were so many children in the camp. He was screaming that he did not know it was loaded, was only showing it . . . and already he had been kicked hard in the back and belted across his face. He ran, bent double in pain, tears on his face. Next came a mother, clutching her youngest daughter, three years old perhaps. The blood already stained her clothing. The small girl’s face was unmarked and a sort of peace had settled there, but her chest was ripped open, and her back was punctured. Her only movement came from the mother’s violent shaking as if to force back to life some movement of the heart or lungs. Next out, thrusting aside the sacking, was the grandmother. The keening scream came from deep in her throat and she carried the AK-47 rifle by the tip of the barrel, her fist clamped on it just below the fore-sight. She threw it, in a high looping arc. She damned it, in full voice.