He heard the scrape of a chair across the floor and the rustle as plastic was unwrapped. He was put in the chair.
‘What the fuck? Why the hell? What gives with you lot? What is the problem?’
He did not think he was heard and there was no response, but he heard the plastic being spread on the floor around the chair. He felt the piss welling in him . . . the instructors did it well, and the Marines in ‘Resistance to Interrogation’, and they had no comprehension of how it was.
And he still slept, hated it, but could not wake.
‘You watch him, Zeinab, watch him and closely.’
She was given the passport she would use. She flicked it open, saw the name, looked at the photograph, and with the glasses it was a good enough image – heavy and distinctive spectacles, with clear lenses. Among the pages of the passport were bank notes, euros and sterling. They were a hundred yards from the station and would have been short of the cameras that covered the front entrance. She opened her bag, slid it inside.
Krait, the snake with the venom in its tongue, repeated, ‘Watch him, always, and be prepared – you understand?’
Scorpion had turned to face her. ‘Be prepared, whatever is necessary.’
She came out of the car then leaned back in to collect her bag. Traffic edged past them, heading for the station. Luton, this time in the morning – close to dawn – was busy with office workers heading for the capital.
‘I trust him,’ she said.
Scorpion said, ‘If you suspect him, you act. What is to “act”, you know that?’
‘Whatever is “necessary”, what you said.’
‘You saw the boy in the car?’ from Scorpion.
‘He made suspicion, enough for us to “act”, do what was “necessary”,’ from Krait.
‘You think me weak, I am not.’
From Krait, ‘We take a gamble with him.’
‘He is infatuated. I think, almost, he loves me. He just wants to be with me. He is what makes our chain strongest.’
From Scorpion, ‘The ability of the chain to survive stress is not the strongest link, it is the weakest. The weakest link.’
‘He is not that, the weakest.’
‘If you doubted him, Zeinab, then . . .’
‘I do not.’
She lifted her bag and started to walk. There was no call after her from either of them. She did not know how they had killed the boy who had attracted their suspicion but she had seen the bruises and scrapes on his face and the wild glimmer in his eyes, supposed it was a measure of the pain inflicted, did not know which of them – Krait or Scorpion – had done it. Neither called after her to wish her luck, to give encouragement. Had either of them been in Syria, or escaped in the last hours of the defence of Mosul? She did not know. If she brought back one weapon, she did not know which of them would use it: the one who was spindly and tall, the other who was squat and heavy at the gut and the hips. If she failed them, if it imploded, then they would rot in cells for near to the rest of their adult lives: if she failed badly, so would she . . . She walked and started to see the image. Four young men, twelve years earlier, rucksacks heavy on their backs, strolling towards the open doors of Luton station, and less than two hours of their lives left to be lived, and the bombs they carried primed . . . and their targets were in London where she now headed, and they were from her streets, from among her people. They had shown, on the cameras that watched them, no fear, their hands in their pockets, nothing furtive, simply going about their business. She walked in their footsteps . . . Zeinab had read that the names of the men were forgotten, they had been consigned to statistics . . . walked where they had been. Went boldly.
She was Zeinab, 22 years of age, a student at a prestigious university, from a small house in a Leeds satellite town – once vibrant, now dying, and she took the first steps of the journey taking her to war, but needed first to gather the necessary weapons for combat. She was jostled, pushed, and men and women surged past her for the barriers and the platforms, and they were her enemy, and she floated among them and was a ‘clean skin’ and went unnoticed. She revelled in her anonymity . . . and hated. She did not – never had – analyse the loathing she felt for the flow of society around her, whether in the mall at Manchester that they had paced out, or at this station near to London . . . It did not matter to her whether those who might be maimed, killed, bereaved, were Christians or Jews or Muslims, not important whether they were old and frail like the woman who sheltered close to a wall, clinging to a walking frame and letting the crush pass her, or whether they were young and ambitious and hopeful like the kids on her corridor in the Hall of Residence. She could not have pointed to a particular slight, or an insult. She had never suffered humiliation because of her faith, her dress, her appearance, her intellect. She was ignored. She detested those, pushing past her, who did not see her, never had and never would – unless she brought back the weapon and it was used.
She queued, bought a ticket. Wondered where he was, and wondered whether she should have boasted to them about her control of Andy Knight – where he was, sweet boy and stupid and loving – but realised she had developed a growing degree of softness for the boy – and spat from her mind talk of suspicion and acting and necessity . . . Zeinab waited on the platform for the next train south, and the start. Did not know where it would take her, how far beyond anything in her experience.
The first light of the day peeped over the rim of the hillside above La Castellane, and feeble shadows were thrown from the blocks and settled on the ground where the rubbish bins had not been emptied and the trees were snapped off and bushes collected garbage and plastic. Few had work that necessitated them rising early to take the 25 bus down the hill and past the old suburbs and the ferry port and into the city of Marseille. Karym’s sister was among the few. She would leave the project, cross the road, climb the rough ground and go into the shopping mall across the valley via its empty car park. She said to him that she hated the ‘fucking place, everything about it’, and he had turned his back on her, then followed her out.
It was Karym’s home.
Had once been his father’s home until he had packed one suitcase, gone with a promise of sending back money, a lie, and returned to Tunisia. Once was his mother’s but she now lived down the coast and worked there and said her children were scum. Was still the nominal home of Karym’s brother, except that Hamid slept in another block where he had an apartment littered with the trappings of his wealth and with complicated gadgetry that he could not make to function unless Karym came, and fiddled with it. He had not slept well. He walked in the alleyways between the buildings, alone. Was disturbed, and fidgeted and scratched his head.
Two sounds had lingered in his mind, neither good or easily dispersed. The mother of the boy had come out on to her balcony, had cried to the moon, to the stars and to the gulls, had made the sound of an animal in pain, and the cry was piercing. A true lament, that seemed to rip at the very heart of her intestines, as if a part of her soul burned. There was a dog that had been hit by a car on the Boulevard Henri Barnier, both legs broken, and it had screamed, and no one could get close to it with a club or an iron bar, and it had been shot with an AK which had released it from its pain, and had also allowed a degree of quiet to settle over La Castellane which made traders happier. Her son had screamed, that was the other sound that had knifed into Karym. The kid had reason to scream; the gag had worked loose and the gasoline would have been in his nostrils and the flaming rag had come close to the open window, then been tossed inside. He had screamed even after the crowd had lost sight of him behind the flames, had screamed until the tank – more fumes than fuel – had exploded and his efforts to kick his way out were curtailed. Two sounds, mother and son, both sharp. It was always that way, cries and screams, each time there was a barbecue in La Castellane. Sometimes Karym thought himself indifferent to the noises, a few times he shrugged them off: it was rare that they slashed at him, as they had that night. He had n
ot been close to the car but it had seemed that the smoke of the burning tyres, and the flesh, had come to rest on his clothing, impregnated it. The smell was worse than the crying or the screaming. He walked in the estate. He would have been observed though he saw nobody except isolated workers hurrying to the project’s exits, escaping for the day with a coveted reward of poor wages.
The flames had long died. Wisps of smoke climbed above the scorched car. He went near enough to see the shape of the boy, but could not distinguish the head or the arms or the torso. The barbecue was part of the life of the project, so Karym neither supported it nor criticised it. The barbecue happened, and nothing would stop it, not the noise and not the smell. A new sound intruded. Sirens came from down the hill.
The day was not yet advanced, and the lights of the convoy showed up well. That the police would come, with the fire team, and in force, was built into the schedule his brother had set. They would come to a halt short of the entrance to the project, would then take a coffee and a sandwich or a piece of pie, and they would have announced their intention and then would come in when they were expected. That way, as the choreography played out, there would be no aggravation and the weapons would be left in the safe houses. It was good, Karym thought, to have understandings in place. He turned away from the burned car. No one would talk: in the newspaper, La Provence, they called it a wall of silence. No tongues would murmur in the ears of investigators. His brother was safe, Karym was certain. He saw a girl running, late for her bus, and he smiled at her, good-looking bitch and good hips, and she broke her stride to spit in the mud, then went on running. He was the brother of Hamid. He had protection but was without a friend. The police, now forming up at the side of the road, would come in force into the project and would hope to find an idiot or a lunatic or some person of any age with a death wish who would describe the barbecue and tell the name of the organiser; would find no one. Not even the mother . . .
In the world of Karym, in La Castellane, no one spoke to the police, gave them evidence. It would be a crime on the scale of blasphemy.
He went back to the apartment. It was his turn to clean it. Why should he be bothered? He would lie on his unmade bed, and would look at his books, study the Avtomat Kalashnikova obraztsa 1947 goda, although he could almost recite by heart, would wait for the day when, in spite of the weakness of his arm, he was allowed to hold one, fire it, blast with it, turn the selector to automatic and loose off a full magazine over a range fit for Battle Sight Zero, close up, and smell the cordite and hear the crash of the firing and the tinkling landing of ejected cartridges . . .
A policeman shouted at him, told him to come closer. He kept on walking.
The Major insisted that the forensic team came with him.
There was an ambulance, unnecessary for the carbonised corpse, close to the burned vehicle, and a plain-sided dark van, and all those who went close wore plastic overshoes as if the chance of preserving evidence was necessary, and had heavy gloves, and masks over their mouths and noses to counter the smell. Samson watched the mass of identical windows, and the flat roofs, and the corners of the walkways through the magnification of his rifle sight, and he had slept well before being called out and was wary. It was sensible to bring the ambulance. It might be that one of them – uniformed, a plain-clothes investigator, the doctor, the prosecutor, a photographer, an imam – would be hit if a kid fired off an assault rifle.
The police presence was now monitored by a network of calls between PayAsYouGo phones and by coded texts, and by the signs of moving hands, fingers at high windows. Samson wore his balaclava, would have been a marked man. He held his rifle ready but did not strike a pose that threatened. A woman, middle-aged and swathed in black clothing, worn loose, had approached and spoken briefly to an officer, had not been permitted near the car, had been questioned and had shaken her head vigorously, then had turned away, had gone. He thought of himself, here, as an intruder . . . the project, this one and all of the others in the half crescent on the north side of Marseille, lived in a differing authority and culture to the rest of the city. Own codes of conduct, own ‘judiciary’, own penalties for those who broke the singular rules of behaviour. There were many at L’Évêché, who gathered in the corridors of the city’s police headquarters and railed against the lack of a big stick to bring the traders into the orbit of the courts . . . But Samson remained relaxed at the divisions of the society. He was no crusader, had no great desire to find targets, zero on them, squeeze the trigger stick of his rifle: when he did he felt no remorse, no pain, was any other man who had finished a shift of his day-job. He assumed he was watched, recognised by the balaclava, and that half a dozen Kalashnikovs were aimed in the general direction of the forensics. The police would not linger. The photographs would be taken, the remnant of the blackened body would be gingerly removed, a school teacher or a social worker would come forward and condemn the barbarism of the perpetrators. The Major was at his side.
‘We have an identity.’
‘And . . .?’
‘Sixteen years old. A juvenile court conviction, wounding with a knife at school, expelled, no qualifications, no employment.’
Samson nodded, could have written it himself. ‘And . . .?’
‘The woman was his mother. They came for him yesterday. A dispute.’
‘And . . .?’ Muffled questions through the balaclava and his eyes roved over the windows, and the roofing.
‘The mother says that she did not know which group her son worked for. Nor does she know who came for him. Nor the extent of the ‘‘crime’’ of which he was accused . . . What else would she say? She has to live here. We will not offer her full witness protection, guard her for the rest of her life. She is sensible . . . I cannot criticise her. It is the same as the last time, will be the same the next time. Not more than a quarter of an hour.’
He was alone again. He thought of the return of the vehicles to L’Évêché, and the canteen meal that would be served there . . . he saw the mother, very calm, surrounded by a group of older women and the communal grief suppressed, saw a boy with a withered arm who gazed at him from a clear 100 metres away, saw a man leave the project astride a Ducati Monster, saw a flatbed with a crane hoist up the burned car, saw the body driven away, saw the watchers grow bored.
Many weapons would be aimed at him. He doubted any of the kids would have the balls between their legs, sufficient courage, to aim, target him, and fire. He backed away.
The start of another day in his life, few were different. He climbed into the truck and the plated door slammed shut: it was a place where death came easily, where the assault rifle ruled.
September 1972
The boys watched, entranced.
They sat in a building of plywood walls and corrugated iron roofing. Some were sitting on the floor, concrete and covered by old rugs, some had chairs, more stood.
The transmission came from Beirut and the signal in the Tibnine area was poor and interruptions were frequent, but the flickering picture did nothing to lessen their enthusiasm – it welled and they shouted defiance.
The boys, all dressed in the camouflage now generally available to the splinter parties under the vague umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, had gathered in the ramshackle building when word had spread, a wildfire of fact and rumour, that the fedayeen had attacked the Zionist warmonger team in the Olympic Village of Munich. Only those, not many of them, with more than basic educational skills knew where Munich was, but all were loaded with the skills of how to handle, strip, reassemble and fire the AK-47 assault rifles that lay across their knees, or rested on their shoulders. They had been watching ever since the Lebanese state broadcaster had first come on air, two days before, to show flaky pictures of the Village. Each time that a member of the ‘brothers’ had been shown on the screen – small and set in an elderly wooden frame – they had cheered, raised their weapons above their heads: they had seen members of the team face off the German so-called neg
otiators. To have fought their way inside a heavily guarded compound, to have broken into the Israeli house, was a triumph. The commentary was at times exuberant, at other times a recital of what had already happened, the novelty fading. It was said, again and again, that a deal would be done and that many Palestinian fighters imprisoned in Israeli gaols would be freed in exchange for the athletes captured by these heroes. They had sat and stood in their places all through that day, and their mothers or sisters had brought them food in the early evening because none would willingly abandon the opportunity to watch the triumph for their people play out. Each one of them was armed. There were many weapons available now to the fighters in this camp. Most were shiny, well painted, clean, without chips or scrapes, and had been nowhere other than on an occasional hillside where it was safe to fire and on the rare exercises that were organised for them, and they were used for parade ground drills . . . Only one looked as though it might have been retrieved from a rubbish heap, and it stood out because it was so obviously a veteran weapon – tried, perhaps tested, one with its own history – and it was held with a degree of reverence by a slightly built young man who had only recently started to grow the first shadows of a moustache. They had sat there through the first evening, had debated how many prisoners the Zionists would need to clear from their gaols to get back their precious athletes, had calculated the scale of the victory . . . and had watched late at night, had wept, had cursed the deceit and treachery of the German negotiators. Had sat numbed and silent, with lips bitten in anger as the spokesman for the Olympics had told of an ambush, five heroes slaughtered, three brave men captured, an attack of extraordinary amateurishness.
Battle Sight Zero Page 18
