Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  She screamed, ‘Talk to me. Tell me I meant something, was not just more money in your wage packet. Fucking man, who are you?’

  The sunset, away over the water from La Castellane was spectacular that evening. From gold to blood-red, and rippling on a disturbed sea, and seeming highlighted by banking clouds that gathered to the west, above Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhone and Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and the shadows over the Camargue hurried towards the housing estate. It was January when the weather could change fast and was unpredictable. There could be thunder, hail, lightning, and crisp evenings and sunsets that were spectacular over the tower blocks, but the weather in all its vagaries had little effect on trade.

  An orderly queue had formed. The queue, a snake of persons of many ages and with varied indications of affluence, was there each night as dusk collapsed over La Castellane. Seven evenings a week, seven nights, and the queue would always be hungry, demanding to be fed. But that night, the stomach of the queue remained empty. The queue was formed and waited patiently. Beyond the queue, restless and growing aggressive, were the lookouts and the escorts and the security for the differing franchises that tried, for profit, to satisfy the market-place. But could not. In stairwells, and in various apartments ‘owned’ by the dealers who had authority, was an importation of fresh merchandise, touted as being of high quality, but it could not be sold. Between the head of the queue and the kids who lived off the dealers was a cordon of police. No person was permitted to enter, and none to leave. It was a lockdown. Anxiety burdened Hamid. He was responsible. In his brother’s apartment was a woman, armed, and a foreign policeman, and while they were there, all routes of entry and exit were blocked – and trade was lost, and trade was profit, what La Castellane thrived on, survived by. Like a tap had been turned off.

  ‘It’ll end in tears.’

  ‘When it comes to optimism, you are a bucket full of holes.’

  She was back beside Gough and he sensed her mood swing had taken her towards the gallows idea of fun, black stuff and larded with pessimism. She had been led away by a female police officer and they had trekked in the half-light towards some dense cluster of bushes. Himself, he would not have welcomed squatting down there, with the fair to middling chance of lowering a cheek on to an addict’s hypodermic. Could in a weak moment have sympathised with her, but not made a habit of it over the years.

  ‘I state the obvious.’

  ‘What I don’t see is why? Why did he follow her inside that place?’

  ‘You are so naive.’

  ‘Perhaps, but . . .’

  ‘There’s an itch down there in the lower regions. A bitch on heat and a following dog, oldest game in the park. Can’t dump her.’

  ‘Vulgar, Pegs, and beneath you.’

  They were, both of them, the sort of vagrants that their type of work spewed out. The freaks that populated the corridors of the differing sections of the Counter-Terrorist business. Never home in the evenings, seldom present at breakfast because they were staying away or had already left for the train. Noses to the grindstone because that seemed best proof against a cock-up, the level of failure that sent a man, or a woman, out of a back entrance and fast, so that acute failure did not contaminate. He dreamed of reaching the magic retirement age, and then the chance to live close to his mother in a village between Loch Awe and Inverary, in the west of the Highlands, where no one – not even a passing predator in a salmon pool and listening to a lonely monologue – would know who he had once been, what he had once done. Not even a bloody otter.

  ‘And true – wait till it plays out, and come back to me. No other reason for anyone with an ounce of sanity to go where he has gone.’

  ‘He’s a professional and you sell him short.’

  ‘An attractive thought. Be real, Gough. We know nothing of him. He was a present at Christmas from the well-known distant aunt, that sort of thing, and you don’t know what you’re getting. Might be useless, might be valuable – a waste of space or what makes a complex operation run with well-oiled cogs. In the lap of the Gods. We expect to, and fail to, control him and prod him into the directions that suit us. It’s a pipedream. What I said, know nothing about him. No name, no history in his rucksack, only the legend cooked up by the people in his office. No file available, no record for us of what he’s achieved before. It is, Gough, a disaster recipe.’

  ‘I always like to imagine a good outcome.’

  A young officer offered them wrapped rolls and little mugs of strong coffee, and she’d smiled at him. There was an innocence to her face, and an obvious pleasure with her work that rather captivated Gough. But then, she would not be fielding brickbats, would not face a probing inquiry by those who practised hindsight to an art form, and the bill would be questioned. He had not caught a salmon on that river, tried for one every year and illegally, no licence, since he was a teenager and with a spoon on a fly only water . . . it would be good to get there again, and soon. Would Pegs be sitting on the bank behind him as he cast? Probably not.

  She bored on. ‘What I’m saying, he’s put himself in harm’s way. Idiotic and impetuous. What sends a man as a volunteer into that sort of place? Can only be the itch . . . why I say it’ll end in tears, and there won’t be a ride in a hearse through Royal Wootton Bassett for him: he’ll go in the dead of night . . . there’ll be tears, but not mine.’

  ‘If you say so, Pegs.’

  He heard a peremptory whistle. The Major strode towards them.

  With sufficient problems to exercise him, he did not need them. Did not require the presence of two passengers with nothing to contribute.

  Major Valery had already asked for his principal captain on the ground, who had the notebook and the pencil, to be briefed on the Undercover and had been brushed away. ‘Sorry and all that, not intended as disrespect, we know nothing of him – well, next to nothing. Not inside the loop. Whether he’s gone rogue, or is doing the Stockholm bit, can’t say . . . Don’t know whether he has a wife, a partner, a boyfriend, a caravan full of kids, where he comes from, his experience level, his stress tolerance. No idea, don’t know him, cannot help.’ He came back to lay down red lines, not to be crossed.

  ‘The situation as I see it . . . First, your man is inside, has been denounced as a covert agent, is in a place of maximum danger through his own actions, but I am obliged to consider his wellbeing. I have a security perimeter around the project. Second, one of your nationals has purchased an AK-47 rifle, presumably with the intention of smuggling it into the UK, and that is a very small priority for me. Thirdly, we deal with suppliers of narcotics, those in the Class B category and I have no interest in them; if they were not here the economies of places such as La Castellane would collapse. There would be a crime wave of endemic proportions as a substitute for that economy. Last, and important, this is not a Disney theme park. You do not walk around, ask questions, get in the way. I will do my best to get your man into a place of safety. If I am successful, you and your colleague and your agent will be driven at speed to the airport and put on a plane, destination immaterial, and taken off my patch. There are no questions from you, of course. But one from me.’

  ‘Fire it,’ the man said and the woman glowered at him.

  ‘The girl in there, how will she be? Can she kill? Without an audience and without cameras, will she shoot him?’

  The woman answered, ‘Have to wait and see, won’t we? Which will make for an interesting evening. My promise, Major, if you fuck up then we’ll make double damn certain you field no blame, no recrimination. Just so as we understand each other.’

  He thought it would rain soon, and be dark sooner, and the added complications screwed each other in his mind.

  December 2018

  He came out of the Consulate building, clasping the print-out given him, and began to dance a clumsy jig.

  Then collected himself and regained his outward calm, unable to harness his inner elation, only disguise it, and walked across the car park, then went through a gate in
the concrete walls deemed necessary to protect any United States of America mission abroad, then weaved through the concrete anti-tank teeth that were another layer of defence for the few American nationals in the recently opened building on the outskirts of his home city, Alexandria. Next was the long walk in the stifling heat to the distant area where visitors – applying for entry visas – were permitted to park.

  His cup, brimful and slightly overflowing, contained good news, the best news, and was relayed to him in the dry language of the print-out. As a Christian Egyptian national he was to be awarded refugee status: he and his family were to be welcomed in that distant country. They would go quickly, without fanfare, no farewell parties and no wringing of hands with neighbours. Would pack a few of their choicest possessions, would leave the rest in the apartment – furniture, fittings, unexceptional pictures, out-dated clothing, and the keys would go to a cousin and he would dispose of the remnants of their Egyptian life: if he was lucky there would be work for this harbourmaster’s office pilot in a port along the Atlantic seaboard, or on the Great Lakes in the north, and the children would have education and the family could worship on a Sunday morning without fear of death, mutilation, any atrocity weapon detonated by the fanatics of his city. He did not go straight home, nor did he phone his family.

  The pilot had other pressing business.

  Near to his home on the eastern side of Alexandria was a line of poorly constructed lock-up garages and storerooms. Most were used by men who traded in fruit and vegetables in the open-air markets of the city, but he had one on which his father had long ago taken a lease. He had failed to find the courage to bring the weapon into his own home. The risk of its discovery, or of the children finding it and gossiping to others, was too great. Still in the wrapping in which it had been given him by the navigating officer; he warily took it from the garage and stowed it in his car, under his own seat, and drove away.

  He went west. He felt a conspirator and his mind was clouded in guilt and nervousness, because he carried the weapon.

  Went out on the international coastal road, followed the signs for Alamein and Marsah Matruh and Sidi Barrani. For his work as a pilot he needed certainty and precision. Professional disciplines. Through the middle of that day, in the glare of the sun and against a backdrop of endless, featureless desert, he drove away from all he knew, and all of the people who knew him. He could not go as far as the Libyan border, five hours’ drive, but he went for a clear hour and 40 minutes until he spied the caravan. They were a part of the great Bedouin tribe. They had camels. They had desert tents and cloaked women, and still moved across frontiers in search of grazing. Their world was pressured by Japanese-built pick-up trucks, and by the ‘sophistication’ of TV, by narcotics, by the bureaucrats who needed them corralled into the authority of the state . . . They moved languidly at the pace the camels wished to go under the burden of their load.

  He stopped the car beside the road.

  The pilot lifted out the weapon in its packaging. Hopefully, in years to come, inside the safety of the United States, he would remember what he had done and might try to explain to new friends how great had been the fear he’d carried both as a Christian and as a man owning an illegal weapon. One might have brought a lynch mob down on him, the other might have had him climb the scaffold’s steps. He covered the rifle with the cloth always in the car which he draped over the windscreen when the vehicle was parked in sunlight. To other drivers on the road, past the battlefield cemetery of the British and their allies, forty minutes out of Alamein, he would have looked like a man hurrying towards a dip in the sand where he could hide and relieve his bowels.

  He should never have accepted it, should have refused the gift. It had never been in his house. Now, with his visa granted, there were no circumstances when he might have needed its protection. He would be glad to be rid of it.

  Kids came running towards him, might have wanted to see if he carried sweets or would give them coins. His shoes had filled with sand which grated on his socks and if he went farther he would start blisters.

  No comment, nothing said, he gave up the package, his burden, let it slide into hands that might not yet have lost an innocence, without explanation, and he waved them away. He stood and watched the swarm of youngsters sprint barefoot back to the line of camels and adults. A cluster of men examined what had been brought them, were now 200 metres from him. An arm was raised, to acknowledge the gift, and shoulders shrugged but the stride of the camels never shortened. He watched them go, the package buried in a beast’s load, and soon the heat’s haze claimed them. He had lost the thing, and thanked his God for it, and went back to his car. In a few days the caravan would have crossed into Libya, well south of the border crossing.

  The pilot shook the grains from his shoes, massaged his feet and took more sand from his socks. He would drive home and in the evening when the children were in their beds he would tell his wife of their new future, show her the print-out from the Consulate . . . he believed that their days of living with terror were almost over, that he had no further requirement for a killing machine, a Kalashnikov.

  ‘What did you want?’ It was the motorcycle rider, who had exchanged the money belt for the weapon. He did not answer. ‘You came here because you wanted something, what?’

  He sensed this was a man who made decisions that affected a cash flow of tens of thousands of euros, who would have – in a limited space – the power of life and the power of death over opponents. He would have snapped instructions and lesser creatures would do his bidding: there had been people at the heart of the courier conspiracy when he was Norm Clarke and busy betraying them who would have had such power. If this man decided him better dead and gone, then it would happen, and he would leave the apartment in a body bag, and it would be hard going for the mortuary people to get him down the stairs. He did not help, no answer given. He would speak when he was ready, not wheedle, give nothing . . . his way.

  ‘The old man, he is a grand figure. He is a legend in the city. He said you were a cop. I did not know, but he did. Why does a cop come here, into our life?’

  The evening had come down and outside the cloud had thickened, and the power of the wind had slipped. No lights shone in the bedroom. The man was two feet from him, and his breath stank of chillis, and he still had patience, but it would not last. The boy with the wrecked arm stood in the doorway and had a knife in his hand but seemed more interested in looking across the hallway and into the living area and catching some of the game show. Zed sat on the bed. He thought by now she would have realised she had entered a cul-de-sac, and did not know how to retrace her steps, and the rifle was across her lap . . . Long ago, with an identity now shelved, he had apparently idolised a worn and frayed bear and had carried it through the day, and to nursery, and only released it when he was in the bath, then carried it to bed. She had the rifle, held it that way . . . There would have been weapons instructors at Lympstone who could talk about the way in which a Kalashnikov empowered those whose voices had never been heard before. She might not have known how to break out of the tower block, but she would not have doubted that the rifle was her salvation, a protector.

  ‘I do hashish. I do well with hashish. A cop from abroad does not care about hashish in the north of Marseille. Why?’

  He could barely see the dealer’s face. But enough light came up from the street lamps for some to fall on her cheeks and nestle over her nose and into the small lines at the side of her mouth, and the caverns in which her eyes were set . . . places where a young man and a young woman could lose themselves, be strangers in a community and not hunted down. Not everyone had to belong and have roots, have a granny in the cemetery, to be accepted on certain terms – live and let live . . . he thought her beautiful, stubborn, but beautiful.

  ‘What can satisfy you?

  There were no more sirens outside, but sometimes a vehicle moved and then the blue lights climbed the walls of the block and filtered into the bedroom an
d shone on the ceiling or slid over the walls, once covering the poster of the rifle; the only other light was the flicker of the technicolour from the TV.

  ‘I understand. You do not have to speak . . . You came for the girl. Yes?’

  He did not think he was about to die, but had no complacency. Tiredness would build, and with it would come impatience, exasperation, anger, all of them increasing the danger factor. But he said nothing, was not ready to argue his corner.

  ‘It is not romance, no. It is because you are a cop and she is a fugitive, yes?’

  He was offered a cigarette, declined. He had noted that the man addressed only him, ignored the others, as if they had no importance, were worthless . . . might have been a wrong judgement because she had the rifle, was the only one of them equipped to kill, as far as he knew.

  ‘You know what? I understand everything . . . The girl is a fugitive, and the girl has a weapon, an automatic rifle, big deal. I have seven under my control. In this project alone there might be twenty-five. And now, I tell you what you are, you are a nuisance to me. You are an obstruction.’

  Zed now hovered close, had not relaxed her grip on the rifle, seemed calmer and more settled as if her mind were made up. Andy watched. The man, Hamid, turned towards her as if at last acknowledging her place in the sun, perhaps her right to be consulted.

  ‘And you, what do you want?’

  Wanted what she would not have admitted to. Not shared what she wanted. Almost frightened of what she wanted. Would like to have told Andy, snuggled in bed together, bare-skinned and warm and wet, and him loving her, told him as he slept and the rhythm of his breathing was regular, that she wanted to be known. Have her name shouted.

  Nobody outside Savile Town knew the names of the boys, her cousins, who had gone from Dewsbury on the bus, or by train, to go and fight in Syria, or in Iraq. And to die there. Only a few could recall their faces: ‘a quiet boy, and very serious . . . always polite, always helpful . . . do anything for anybody’. Forgotten now. It shamed her. She had had to struggle to recall the names of the suicide people, and more often now the faces of her two cousins became blurred and merged and it was harder for her to see two individuals. She did not know if the last two had carried Kalashnikovs similar to the one she now held when they’d gone to detonate themselves, driving an armour-plated vehicle, reinforced sides and an engine covered with tempered steel sheets so that they could manoeuvre through defensive fire and stay in control right to the target area. Had felt that power, and the strength given them by the rifle, peering through a slit in the armour plate and hearing the drumming of rifle fire. She did not know whether the cousins, two names and one face, had been armed with them – or had been asleep in a makeshift barracks, or had been grunting through sex with one of the child girls who went there with the fervent adoration of converts, and a bomb or a missile had struck their building. She thought it would have been a cruel fate to have died at the hand of the enemy and without an AK to hold, as she had, in his hand. The answer to the question? She yearned for a form of recognition.