Closer to the car he began to struggle. Karym’s brother was there, at the back, showing no authority, no emotion, and claiming no involvement. It was the life of the project.
Arms trussed behind his back, legs tied at the ankles. A rear door opened. Thrown inside. The window open. He would have fallen on to a seat soaked with fuel. Tried to scream and could not; tried to kick open the door and could not. The kid would have heard the click of a cigarette lighter, would have seen the flame catch at the rag held over the flame, seen it carried close. Then the kid would have cowered as the rag was tossed casually through the window. Unable to shriek, his voice a gurgle, and no one helped him, but many watched.
The car exploded in flames and that was the moment a barbecue, Marseille-style, was lit . . . It was serious punishment but so also was the flaunting of a firearm and the breaking of discipline. Few, at that time, were asleep in La Castellane and the blaze climbed and the acrid smoke soared towards upper windows. When they could no longer see the kid, and his death throes, the crowd dispersed as if reluctant to accept it was finished.
Many slept, not heavily, and some were fortified with alcohol, which dulled awareness, and some were uneasy: none knew what was called the sleep of the good.
In the arms of Marie, her brightly painted nails playing patterns on his back, Tooth snored: he was exhausted from the physicality of their bed play, and had felt slight chest pains but had carried on because he never – from anything – backed off.
Undressed to his underwear and with his wife long gone to bed, the DIGN marksman, Samson, snored in a chair. The television had shown a film of elephant seals in some distant continent, and now displayed a meaningless snowstorm. He loved the world of the wild, its violence and simplicity. In a few hours an alarm would wake him and his wife in the apartment off the Rue Charras in the 7th arrondissement but until then he would sleep deeply, untroubled by conscience pangs.
And the Major – the response that he would make to the English visitors forgotten, expecting him to jump and liable to disappointment – was in his bed, his wife’s back against him, and the difficulties of the projects were banished, but his sleep was restless.
Hamid slept. Had not wanted the attention of his mistress, had left the couch for her. He wheezed from phlegm on his chest – he had smoked too often that day – but sleep took him, aided by a dosage of quality whisky. The sights of the evening did not register, he never dreamed, and sleep was a black void for him.
And far away, in the better suburbs of the Manchester area, with the tickets for his flight in the pouch on the dining-room table, and his bag packed, Crab slept. Even the excitement and pleasure of taking up arms again – in a way – or going back to war, being with a comrade and imagining combat, could not stifle his rhythmic grunting.
Pegs slept in the bedroom of the shoebox apartment they rented in the Vauxhall area and close enough to Wyvill Road. But Gough paced and smoked in the living-room, would feel worse than death in the morning, had a surveillance operation – two vehicles – running, and on a table was his mobile . . . He knew the target had left Manchester, knew the tail was in place. The stress factor always built when a Tango was tracked, when the pace quickened . . . but, if the tail maintained contact and the phone did not ring he would hope to sleep in the chair, not disturb Pegs, get a trifle of rest before the start of another day.
In a fast, violent manoeuvre, Scorpion took the car from the centre lane on the southbound motorway route, across the slow lane and into the feeder stretch for the service station. They would do it double-handed.
With a sheet of notepaper against her handbag and a pencil in her fingers, Zeinab did as she had been instructed and noted the registration numbers of vehicles following them out of their lane and into the feeder. Krait, in front of her, had his own sheet of paper, own pencil. Few cars and vans were on the road, and if they were tailed – as Krait had tersely explained in a further lecture on security, what he called ‘counter surveillance’ and ‘going into a choke’ – if the cop or spook vehicle followed them, they’d have a list of the numbers because halfway down the feeder and before the turns to the Food and Toilets and the Fuel and the Long Distance Parking, they would slow to a crawl. Any vehicles that followed them would have to come off the motorway, track them on the feeder, then avoid passing them. Simple, the way Krait explained it. Zeinab peered into the darkness at the following headlights and screwed her eyes to read and record registrations, then . . . acceleration. They took the exit . . . already she had noticed new precautions; nothing said to her as if at that stage she had not mattered sufficiently for breath to be wasted on her, and Scorpion had gone over the car with a handset, run it along the flanks and the wheel hubs and lain on his back and held it under the chassis. Between themselves they spoke in a Balochi dialect; she understood a little but had never admitted it. Krait had been told by Scorpion that the car was clean, not bugged. What did she have? She had two registration numbers. One was for a Transit van with a plumbing logo on the side, a driver and a passenger – men, and the other was for a saloon car, an old BMW 5 series, a man and a woman in the front and another man behind them; she had noted the BMW’s driver had both hands on the wheel, classic pose. They bypassed the facilities, drove fast for the exit.
She started to tell them what she had written down. She was waved to silence, like she was an interruption.
They careered back on to the motorway, and a car in the slow lane flashed them and a horn blasted behind them. They made for the central lane, and almost immediately for the outside, and the needle climbed. She sensed their stress, then abruptly the guys relaxed and their hands came together, like they were kids and it was football, and they made little squeals of excitement.
She was not part of them; they did not include her. What numbers had she written down? Told them, and expected praise. They said nothing, stayed within the speed limit. Scorpion flicked the radio’s buttons, found Asian Sound Radio, let it play softly, music. They thought they had done well, thought they had done better than well when they passed the transit crawling in the slow lane, then passed a BMW and she matched its registration and it was crawling too. It was what they had expected, and they were laughing, but she was not part of their celebration.
Phil slept, still dreamed, tossed and sweated.
They were more aggressive. Questions came from behind and in front of him.
Some shouted, others whispered close to his ears.
His hair, sparse and cut short, was held, nails gouging his scalp, and his head was dragged back that he might listen better. Fingers jabbed him, a knee that was small and sharp cannoned into the back of his leg and he nearly toppled. He was beyond bewilderment, astonishment. He tried to answer the questions. Attempted to cling to the legend he and the instructors had put together, sanctioned by his Control.
He felt coherence drifting. Where had he been two years before? What town? What street and what number? What job? Where had he lived two years before, what sort of house? What colour of house, what colour of front door? The girl, Bethany, had her mobile phone and was clocking the keys, waiting for an answer. Describing the house where he said he had lived two years before, and it was the first time that Phil realised that he was slipping, could not sustain the lie. The instructors said how to react: ‘Hit back’. The common refrain was to go for the big bastard, for the top man. Louder and louder, the circle round him, and he was digging into the limits of the legend and starting to blurt and he thought his defences were pretty much shredded. Had the instructors ever done it, the work that they lectured on, ever been part of it? Might ask them one day . . . He slapped a hand away from his hair, stood his full height. The big boy in the group was Dominic. Dominic got to shag most of the girls, had them on a roster. Right now, pretty much every night, Dominic was taking Tristana to bed, and making a hell of a noise of it, and Bethany was sulking because she had been stood down. Dominic was the big man . . . it was what the instructors said.
He
caught hold of Dominic’s chin, got some fingers into his thin beard, heard the howl, pulled again. Phil called it.
‘Pretty old one, old as the hills. Like a bad B movie. Blame someone else.’
‘What is your shit?’
‘Put attention away. Turn it away. Clever, what the police told you?’
He was hit full in the face, but he noticed the chance. Like ice on a thaw, starting slow, but the moment of doubt was laid. It was the same as making a breach in the wire round a defended sangar anywhere in the Middle East, and had to be exploited and fast. The hold on him had slackened and the questions were drying, and his eyes smarted from the blow. He would not hit back, could have put the guy, Dominic, back into the Stone Age. He was jabbering accusations.
‘Go out every morning. Say it’s for fags . . . Who goes with you? Nobody is with you . . . Don’t send anyone to get your fags, have to do it yourself.’
The guy readied for another punch, and Phil would parry it. He kept belting out the accusations. Spittle in each of their faces and voices rising, and the guy seeming to realise that a table had been turned, that the high cards had changed hands.
‘Which pigs pay you . . . Hooked up with local CID, or hooked up with Branch . . . When were we last raided? You made this an off-limits safe house, Dommy? Leave it nice and tidy and they don’t need to search because it’s all given them, word of mouth, that you, Dommy . . . Are you their “chissy”, Dominic? Know what a “chissy” is? Course you do. Tell them all what a Covert Human Intelligence Source is . . . tell everybody. You are shit, Dommy. Line me up and protect yourself. You are a fucking snake.’
One more blow was swung. Easy to weave away from it. The current girl was Tristana and the passed over goods was Beth, and they no longer tugged at Phil’s hair, nor poked him, nor kneed him, nor had their mouths curled in fury, nor looked to do him harm. What Phil did was to offer a short silent prayer of gratitude to the instructors and what they preached. He had the guy by his shirt front and Dominic had gone limp and the punch was his last effort. He made no effort to defend himself, might have been too shaken to think on his feet.
A little voice: ‘You think you are so clever. You pull the big stunt.’
‘Do I?’
‘Don’t fool me.’
‘That right?’
‘I’ll have you, have you bad.’
‘Careful how you go.’
‘You think you’ve done well – just get the fuck out.’
Phil gave a final shake of the guy’s clothing, dropped him, let him slide into a chair.
Dominic hissed into his face, ‘I’m going nowhere – a “chissy”, a tout, a plant – I’m watching you. You are scum. Watching you.’
Phil stood his ground, had to. They drifted away, shaken, low voices. A survival, but close run.
And he still slept, could not wake or lose it.
The driver, Scorpion, repeated the procedure, the same manoeuvre. The stretch of motorway had been checked out on the road atlas. Few sections of the motorway had two service stations within a few miles of each other, and accessible on the southern route. A little chuckle from behind the wheel, and time enough for Krait to put his hands, defensively, on the dash, and the brake pedal was stamped on, the briefest use of an indicator light, and they crossed from the fast lane to the centre lane and over the slow lane and into a feeder.
Not expected by Zeinab, neither had bothered to warn her. She was thrown across the seat and her bag took her weight. She might have gasped, might even have sworn, and provoked fuller laugh. Then, a snapped instruction. Paper and pencil. She scrabbled for them and Krait turned round in his seat and grinned. The car slowed as it went up the feeder.
She knew what to do.
Easy enough, nothing interesting came after them. A long-distance haulage lorry with an address in Krakov, and an empty coach, and a tiny Italian car with the back stuffed with plastic bags and bedding. Zeinab did not need to be told . . . In the distance between the two service stations, they would not have had time to call up another vehicle, and a slow performance Fiat 500 had not the legs for following them on a motorway. She remembered the plumber’s transit and a number for an industrial estate outside Stafford, and remembered the BMW with two passengers. Neither came through. She said there was nothing. Krait had made the same decision and murmured it to Scorpion, and they did a brief punch of their fists and repeated the tactic from the first service station, but then took a different exit and crossed over the motorway by the bridge and went north.
She didn’t ask, but was told.
They would go north for two exits, then come off again, then use cross-country roads. Why? On the motorway and the main arteries there were police cameras for ANPR. Which meant? Automatic Number Plate Recognition. First, they had not been tailed, were not under surveillance. Second, they had thrown the system’s computers. Was that good? It was good. Both guys were laughing and punched closed fists, one against the other.
‘The transit and the BMW – could they have been?’
‘Could, but they would have to have followed into the second – simple.’
The headlights lit narrow roads and spray kicked up from rain puddles and the car shook from pot-hole impacts. Zeinab was a child of the urban sprawl: knew Savile Town across the Calder river, and the big stores round Dewsbury’s centre, and the high spires of the churches she had never been into, and the higher minaret of the Markazi Masjid, and knew the fast food places and the narrow streets of the old town, and the Town Hall that had been smartened up by the council, and the bus station and the train station, and the streets of terraced houses. On the train from Dewsbury to Manchester, she sometimes looked at the desolation of the moors through the grime-caked windows but usually she studied. Zeinab had been out of Manchester and up the coast with Andy; they had parked on the dunes walked at low tide miles along damp sand. It had been useful in the association with the boy: showing gratitude for what he had done, his rescue – then a closer intimacy, holding hands and sometimes kissing, and his arm around her back and against her hip, as she had built up to recruiting him; her driver, her cover when coming back into UK with the package stowed in his car. She did not know the countryside or wild coastal places, would have said she thought them hostile, and had seen in the headlights the badger’s corpse with its innards splayed where tyres had disembowelled it. Scorpion drove fast and Krait called the turnings which kept them on the minor routes.
Tiredness overwhelmed her, and the motion of the car was so soporific. She dozed.
The phone rang. Eyes still closed, Gough groped for it, could not locate it, flicked it over the table’s edge. On his hands and knees, and the call clamouring for him, and starting to swear. She was beside him, had found it, answered it.
‘Yes, the office, where else? Of course we are. You on the road, a target on the move, the only place we’d be.’
He thought she had done well. In the upper echelons of counter-terrorism, relationships with colleagues were frowned on: bonking, screwing, shafting, shagging – whether inside office hours or at the end of a day – was regarded as a quick route to a transfer out. He grimaced at her. He was half dressed and she was half naked, her pyjamas sagging open. He took the phone, cleared his throat.
‘Gough here.’
And he was told.
And answered, ‘No, I am not criticising, nor am I querying the decision.’
Was told some more. He assumed at the other end of the call was a night-duty staffer who would be poorly briefed on the implications of what he relayed.
Gough said, ‘So they aborted. Very good. I am sure it was for sound operational reasons. But they aborted.’
The manoeuvres were set out, what the target car had done. He listened.
Gough answered, ‘Had to abort, understood. Pulled back in the face of a tactic first used by the Provisionals, no doubt learned from them. To show out is a disaster, accepted . . . just repeat the end line for me, please.’
It was ex
plained. Gough rang off. He had a sombre face, like death had come to the family. Pegs was no longer beside him, and he heard the shower start, and her splashing. He went to the bathroom door, opened it, saw her flesh pinking from the scalding level at which she always set the water.
‘Doesn’t get much worse, does it? An abort and a back-off, and they do a clever bit – we think – and go up the motorway in the wrong direction, north, then take an exit. Right now there is no ANPR on them. We’ve lost her. We are blundering, . . . which is worse than worse.’
He threw her the towel. One that they’d nicked from a Travel Lodge or a Holiday Inn, skimpy but adequate. He put on the kettle, would shave and wash after he had made coffee, strong coffee. Always a desperate time when a target was lost and an operation seemed to shudder to a halt, desperate and bad.
June 1971
A post had been sunk in a freshly dug hole that morning. The bone-hard ground at the edge of the camp had needed brute force and a swinging pickaxe to make the hole. The post inserted in it was not exactly vertical, but the best they could do, and the cavity had been filled and the excavated stones stamped down. The post stood alone and behind it was a clear view of gradually rising foothills on which sunlight shimmered. There were few trees and rare patches of shade on the slopes where goats grazed.
Watching the arrival of the firing squad was the intelligence officer of that section of that faction of the umbrella organisation, Fatah. They were late, usually were late on any schedule set them. It had been decided that the squad, of half a dozen, should wear uniform for the event. They did not have a common kit so some of the camouflage clothing was American, some was Soviet, and for the younger participants there were trousers and shirts in the dun colour that was close to that of the sand and scrub beyond the camp’s perimeter. They marched past the officer. Few had an understanding of drill and how to carry a rifle while moving in step. Some tried to copy those in front, but two had no comprehension and walked easily, briskly, and made no pretence at being part of a disciplined force. An older man, who once would have had a fine carriage, but now was paunchy, and had an exaggerated moustache, called the tempo of the march, and had been in the camp for 22 years, there since the first of the shanty town buildings had gone up. Everyone in the squad carried Kalashnikov rifles, held them across their chests, and strutted. They were formed into a line – at first ragged and then kicked into shape by the drill man – and commands were given as if that would increase their legitimacy. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and waved it towards the gate leading through the wire and into the alleys of the camp. He was ready, they could bring her.
Battle Sight Zero Page 16
