Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘You are satisfied, my young friend?’

  The man beside Tooth, same age but heavier built, without the extreme menace but seeming by his shifting eyes to be more devious, ignored Hamid. Like he did not want to be there, would prefer to be anywhere than here.

  ‘I am. It is clean.’

  ‘On your head be it . . .’ And the remark was repeated, after translation, in English, and both were laughing, grimly . . . And when might he expect to be paid for what he had done, near drowned, when might that happen? It did not seem the best moment, the right moment, for the questions to be asked. ‘. . . on your head. So, do it.’

  He had the package in his hand, and started, slowly, and not wishing to hurry, be noticed, to walk.

  Tooth said, ‘I like an open space, I like the unpredictable, I like to be where they could not have anticipated and there is no chance of a bug.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Crab.

  But, in Crab’s case, it would be an ‘open place’ somewhere else. He had initiated the question of the deal, had made the proposition. Wished, fervently, that he had not. It had a bad taste, had a smell like the rotting seaweed close to the quay where they had parked the car and spent half the night waiting for the bloody package; brought from the fishing boat by a near-drowned rat who had then wanted to tell his horror story, get his hero-fucking-gram, and he had been cut off as if he’d had a chainsaw at his knees, not acknowledged. Wanted to be back in his home, smart leafy Cheshire, where nothing stank, and maybe taking flowers to Rosie’s grave, and maybe discussing what Gary would cook him for supper . . . a bad taste and a bad smell, and the value of an old friendship, and the resurrection of old stories often told seemed to have done its time, become surplus. But he smiled weakly, and thought about the flight, and a gin on the way and Gary at the airport.

  Tooth said, ‘The kid, that’s the motherfucker’s brother. Looks handicapped. They’ll come together and they’ll swap. You know her?’

  ‘Don’t, just know her contacts. She’s nothing, does as she’s told.’

  ‘Good-looking girl. Holds herself well. She came with the kid and . . .’

  ‘Rode on the scooter with him.’

  ‘Don’t fucking interrupt me, Crab, don’t . . .’

  Done coldly, like Crab was just a junior associate, never like that before. Not spoken to as if he were an equal. And momentarily bit his lip, to stop himself from snapping back. No one in Cheshire, nor the stretch of Manchester where he was known, would have silenced him that abruptly.

  ‘. . . and just after she came, the VW parked up, the Polo, and the driver is now perched on the wall. Looks spare – what’s he there for?’

  ‘It’s her boyfriend. He’s taking her home.’

  ‘You know him, Crab?’

  ‘Only know he’s a lorry driver. What I hear, she has him wrapped around her finger. Do anything for her. Just a lorry driver.’

  ‘But you don’t know him.’

  ‘There’s others that have checked him – not me. They get the rifle, we get our stuff. They go. No, I don’t know him. Fuck sake, Tooth, what’s eating you?’

  No reply. He thought Tooth’s head was very still. It did not move as if he followed the progress of the girl and the Arab kid, nor of the ‘rat’ who had the package – bubble-wrap and masking tape – held loose by in his hand. Tooth’s gaze was locked, watching the guy who sat on the wall, swinging his feet. Crab reckoned he’d a pain in his stomach, and felt the cold damp at the back of his neck, and decided he should never have involved himself in the smuggling of a weapon, and it seemed that time stood motionless, and heard a rifle fire, and screaming, like the dream . . . Had seemed ‘a nice little earner’, shifting a weapon and more to come.

  September 2018

  Two men were deep in conversation at a café hidden away in a side street near to the principal entry gates for the Port of Piraeus. Seedy, needing paint on the walls and new vinyl on the floor, team photos of the perennial Greek champions, Olympiakos, in frames that had lost their lustre after years of nicotine had floated up from tables and enveloped the glass, a place of casual service, where strangers would not feel welcome. They worked to establish a price for the item on offer. On one side of the table, a plastic cloth covering its surface, was the vendor: a former civil servant from the Agriculture Ministry who had lost his job, and most of his income, when he had been fired under the imposed austerity programme. Opposite him was a merchant seaman, a navigating officer, whose regular route in a Greek-flagged fertiliser carrier was between Piraeus and the Somalian port of Mogadishu, beyond the Red Sea, into the western edge of the Indian Ocean – pirate seas.

  ‘They are hard times for me.’

  ‘Hard times for all of us.’

  ‘The bank will not lend me money any longer. I have no opportunity to work.’

  ‘But it is old.’

  ‘The family now live on hand-outs, food-banks, charities.’

  ‘I sympathise, sincerely. But it is an ancient weapon.’

  ‘It is indeed old, but it functions. With it are two filled magazines. I think two or three rounds were discharged. One was inside the bank, one killed an off-duty policeman, who was in the middle of a transaction and intervened. He fired one shot . . . God forbid that circumstances make it necessary for you to use it . . . Not much ammunition, but dealers do bullets for twenty cents each: was on the internet. I have to sell it, but at a sensible price.’

  The rifle was inside a canvas bag wedged between the one-time public employee’s shoes. Cracked and scuffed and without polish, they were evidence of the poverty consuming his family. He had shown this solitary customer the state it was in, and had explained, truthfully.

  ‘It was my son. He had it for a year. He is supposed to clean his own bedroom. It was under his bed, against a wall. My wife never saw it, nor my sisters, nor me. He picked it up when the gunman fell, and ran with it, hid it . . .’

  ‘Three fifty American dollars. The best price.’

  ‘He was frightened, my boy, and did not know how to dispose of it, anxiety festered in him. Imagine, a boy who is eleven years old and sleeping above a killing machine, with blood soaked into it. It was when we had, three days, only bread to eat, only tap water, and he took me and showed it to me.’

  ‘Three fifty, my bottom.’

  ‘God forbid those bastards come after you, but they are down below and getting a grappling hook on the rails, and you will have more than a pressure hose. You can shoot . . .’

  ‘Three fifty, all I am prepared to pay.’

  The seaman had started to scrape his chair back, and he finished his coffee ostentatiously, made a theatrical show of it. The ‘take it or leave it’ moment.

  ‘Four hundred – help me . . .’

  ‘But it is from another age. It looks uncared for, unwanted, at the end of usefulness. But it has history and the cuts on the wood would be the victims of it, and done in different styles which tells me it has been to many places, had a multitude of owners. I am a man of the sea, been through many ports, sailed many vessels and some were luxury and more had first-class quarters for crew, and some were freighters and trampers and carried filth, rubbish, bottom of the heap . . . Listen to me. Each time we docked we would go ashore and seek out the cat-houses, girls. Always now I imagine such a history given a whore. Fresh, firm flesh when the girl starts out, with a prettiness and an eagerness to learn her trade, and might be in London or in Marseille or hoping to get to Berlin and do the main avenues and have her own roof, and she begins to sag and the lines appear and she is not worth the great capitals’ business and might have reached Naples, or Vienna. More lines and more kilos at the waist and it will be Belgrade, or our city here, even Beirut, and her value is tumbling but still she knows how to please but the men are rougher, less concerned about anything other than a fast performance, then getting drunk. Now she is at the end of the line. The whore has come to Baghdad or to Damascus, even to Karachi, and she wears more make-up, puts it on with a shov
el, and keeps her mouth closed so her teeth cannot be seen. Her teats drop far down her chest, and she cannot get enough hair dye. I tell you, friend, I will meet the whore in Mogadishu. I will, out of sentiment, pay her what she asks, and hope she does not leave me with a complaint and embarrassment. A man with her should close his eyes, not be concerned when the undersheet was last changed, do it and be hardly undressed, and go back to the hotel and scrub well. It is a sad tale of decline . . . I don’t think that the whore, when she can no longer find business in Mogadishu, has anywhere else to go. It is the end. How does it happen, the end, I do not know, but that is the whore’s progress. You offer me an old whore.’

  ‘How much will you pay?’

  ‘What you ask, four hundred American dollars – more than it is worth. I tell you the price in Europe is four hundred, and in Somalia it is also that figure, and if I travel to parts of Sudan it could be as little as eighty-five dollars, for the whore whose legs are almost emaciated with mosquito bites but can still work.’

  ‘Thank you, bless you.’

  ‘Four hundred dollars, and the bag to take it away in.’

  They shook hands across the table.

  The new owner carried it out into the sunshine, held the bag easily, showed his pass at the guarded gate, and hurried to where his ship was berthed, and it was enveloped in a haze of dust as the fertiliser was tipped into the holds. In the morning it would start a fresh journey, through the Canal and out into open seas, heading for the Somali port.

  Samson carried the bag, canvas and unmarked, by the strap, let it swing by his knees, not obvious. The boss was behind him. There were others from the GIPN but shut away in a van and round a corner, out of sight. He took a seat at a table next to the English couple, and Major Valery was alongside. He’d have felt naked without the rifle that banged against his leg. The bag was heavy, had his vest in it, and his balaclava, and the rifle with the telescopic sight fitted – set at Battle Sight Zero, the usual killing distance – and some smoke grenades and flash-and-bang . . . The meeting had been dull enough to send him to sleep, or musing and far away with images of cheetahs and jaguars in his mind. He was alert now, in good shape. A sharp glance from the Major towards the English police officials, a bare flick of an eyebrow for recognition . . . He recognised the kid who walked with the girl, strolling and her with a money belt in her hand, the ties trailing. Approaching them was a slightly older man, north African, who carried a package, long and hard and heavy. Samson had enough experience to recognise the shape of a Kalashnikov assault rifle . . . He was wondering if the kid had burned all the clothing that was bloodstained from the single shot and the head of his target breaking apart, or if the kid had no replacements and had put his gear through three washings. He might have a useless arm but had shown enough guts to get up and go, fire his scooter’s engine, and there’d have been something tasty in the bag the kid would not give up. The Major murmured in his ear that the older guy was a dealer in La Castellane, small-time punk. Two targets of interest to watch, and coming closer, and no orders given him, and no understanding yet of what was required of him.

  Andy Knight, living with his current name, not Phil and not Norm, and not what he had once been, watched it play out. Thought it had a certain staged quality, but only recognised by him and the very few others privy to the entertainment . . . would not have been noted by the kids who played football, or the skateboarders, or the lovers on benches or the tourists drinking expensive coffees. He saw it, understood.

  The girl, his Zed, moved well, and seemed to show confidence, ought to walk well because she was heading in the direction of a life-changing outcome. Something haughty in her stride, and he wondered how close she was to landing on an island of arrogance. Watching her in his role as an undercover, he had not sensed her control waver after she had been spread-eagled on a pavement and him half over her, protecting her and she had been for a few brief seconds helpless and vulnerable. Had not lasted beyond the riposte. Up on her feet and belting one of the boys from the police station who acted out the extras’ roles. Vicious reaction . . . And she had dangled the confidence in the face of the lorry driver, had chosen him, patronised him, then had permitted the short experience in their bed before hammering off on the pillion in the night . . . and her life was now at a crossroads. It was predictable which choice she would make: the one that changed her life. Without hesitation she walked ahead.

  As he saw it, the man approaching her was streetwise, wary, and glanced around him as he carried the roughly wrapped package. But would only have attracted the notice of a trained officer. They came steadily together . . . the kid sometimes skipped to stay alongside her.

  It could have been one of those Cold War scenarios. The spy swap choreography. Their man coming one way across the ‘kill zone’, or our man on the centre line of a road bridge and heading towards a welcome committee, and seeming all so desperately normal. She had the money belt, and that would go one way and the package would go the other – and unwrapped, maybe smeared with gun oil, its contents would then be destined for a shopping mall or one of those clusters of streets where the bars were close together and the restaurants and the pubs, and mayhem, and then more to follow . . . Except, of course, that the trafficking of the package was monitored and would be managed, and the weapon made harmless in transit, and all would go well and there would be a silver lining to the thundercloud, and a happy ending which left good guys and good girls whooping in happiness. The Undercover knew about cluster-fucks, and cock-ups and failures of coordination, and the right hand and the left hand not acknowledging each other and the law in police covert operations which stated ‘If something can go wrong, it will go wrong . . .’ which was why what she did was life-changing.

  They were close. Normally, in the spy swaps, the pawns in the game came level and did not pause but kept on going. No nod no raised eyebrow, no ‘Sorry mate, but I have to tell you the food is bloody awful over there, I wouldn’t go where you are heading, not for love and not for money.’ He watched a deviance in the laws of quality swaps. He stopped and she did. A quick movement of her fingers and it was more than 100 metres away, but he reckoned she flicked back the zipper on the pouch, and he would have seen the bank notes, and the kid was earnest and close in talk – and the package went to the kid first. He held it, then took out a short-bladed knife and slashed the tape and the bubble-wrap and was pulling away the covering. Had made a small hole, enough for an inspection. He thought that Zed knew nothing about the difference between a deactivated Kalashnikov and one that was all-singing, all-dancing, ready to go . . . an ethnic Pakistani girl and two north African boys gathering for conversation in multi-cultural and multi-ethnic Marseille, nothing more natural. He looked around him and could see the shapes of two men sitting in heavy shadow near to the spot where he had first noticed the guy who brought the package, and saw the people from Wyvill Road, and . . . the hand grasped the money belt. She held the package. The kid tried to take it off her, might have thought it too heavy for her to carry. No bloody way, she pushed him clear and turned, and . . .

  He heard the shout. A gruff voice of protest, and of anger. A shout that echoed across the open space of the plaza, and a few heads turned. He saw a man standing at the far extremity of the space, small and bearded, wearing tinted glasses.

  ‘He’s a cop.’

  Tooth shouted in his own language. Was on his feet. Shouted it again, in Crab’s language.

  ‘A cop. He’s a cop.’

  But his voice would not have reached the cathedral’s doors and would not have been beaten back from the walls of the Fort Saint-Jean. He was pointing. To be engaged in business, to be dealing, and to be under police surveillance, was about as great a crime, in the life of Tooth, the legend in organised crime in the arrondissements of the northern sector of Marseille. A capital crime, good enough to wheel out the disused cobwebbed guillotine last used in the yard of the Baumettes gaol, was to be so careless as to bring a cop to the party. He was ges
ticulating, in a fury, and he pointed across the plaza and towards the wall on which a man sat, swinging his legs loosely, and behind him was a small car parked in limited space, then the road tunnel that linked the two sides of the vieux port. And the man stopped swinging his legs and froze on the wall, then stood. Tooth did not stay to see the end of it. Scurrying for an exit point, heading for his car, and his long-time friend, Crab, came after him.

  Tooth snarled after him, ‘You brought a cop. My eyes smell a cop, my nose sees a cop. You did not see it, smell it? Imbecile. He is watching, observing. His eyes track – that’s a cop. He sits in the sun, is alert, sees everything. It is surveillance. You bring this down on me – idiot.’

  Tooth ran as best he could, and Crab hobbled after him and tears wet his face.

  She had heard what was shouted, and heard the curse from the boy, Karym. She had seen the pointing arm and had swivelled on her heel, had looked where the arm and the finger directed, had seen Andy straighten, stand, agape . . . Karym had hold of her arm. She clung to the package. She wanted to shout out, ‘No, no, that is not a policeman, it’s Andy. He’s a driver. He drives a lorry. He is nobody. He does what I say. He . . .’ Wanted to and could not, and was dragged. She saw the man who had brought the package carrying the belt away, the straps streaming behind him, and he was running as if his life depended on the speed his legs could take him. And she saw the couple from the street, from La Canebière, who had had trouble reading their map and finding the place in their guidebook, and who Andy had helped. Shouted nothing back, allowed herself to be pulled away from the centre of the space.