A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  He was inside his own area, his fiefdom. The women watched him, looked for a sign. He masked his features, was impassive as he went to his inner lair. Boot knew what he wanted, found them, held them in his right hand. He did a jig. Ludicrous and clumsy, using the dentures, the Waterloo teeth that had been a present from the Maid, as if they were castanets. He pirouetted, and spun, and the clacking sounds filled the room as the teeth of the young soldiers hammered together – perfectly preserved two centuries after the village women had been out on to the battlefield with their crude pliers. It would be a grand show, it would be the fulfilment of Boot’s career. He sagged, and the teeth went quiet . . . They would have understood, pikestaff plain, that the operation across a frontier was approved, but neither Daff nor the Maid could match it.

  ‘Is he clear? Do we have him?’

  The Maid said, ‘Not yet. We stay hopeful. Too early to know.’

  He put the dentures carefully back on his desk, and his emotions were again concealed. He settled in his chair, and closed his eyes. Wanted that young man, and badly – but must wait. Could not do any other, and was practised at it. He waited to be told as the evening, and darkness, settled round him. It would be the summit of his career.

  Nikki dropped it.

  Was taking out a bag of crisps . . . Dropped a business card. Would have stuffed it into his shoulder-bag, missed it when he had cleared out the bag and made certain that the hotel bill, and the airport bus tickets, and the receipt from the restaurant, were dumped, not brought back to St Petersburg.

  ‘What’s that?’

  The Roofer was behind him. Nikki swung in his chair. The card was the account manager’s at the bank with the branch on Kornhamnstorg. Magenta with the man’s name and contact details in embossed gold, one given only to a client of value. He swivelled his chair and reached down. Not fast enough. The Roofer had it. He tried to snatch it back and failed.

  ‘A bank card from Stockholm, and gold—’

  ‘Give it me.’

  ‘Do we have please? Give it me, please.’

  One of those days. Raw nerves, tempers to be exploited. Amusement in short supply. Interest now from HookNose and Gorilla. Nikki was still in his chair and the Roofer was tall, a skin-and-bone body, his narrow arm held high, and the fingers extended, holding the card, beyond reach. The name on the card was read out.

  Nikki pushed himself up. The card was in the name of the Account Manager Private Wealth.

  It was an idiot’s mistake. The blood ran in his face, and his breath came faster, and his colouring would have told them that the game might betray him. They were bored and it was the time when they’d have slapped shut their laptops and gone out into the evening. There would be little to match the discomfort of one among them who carried the business card of a bank in the Swedish capital. It was not in Nikki’s nature to smile, make a joke – a rich girlfriend in Stockholm, needing financial guidance, big laugh, a great screw, but useless with money, roll his eyes – then put out his hand for the card, and say, Please. And they might have collapsed in laughter and made him talk about the girl and what he did in bed and . . . Could not have, and might not reach the card if he sprang for it. His mind turned, but slowly. HookNose wanted to look at it. Gorilla tugged at the Roofer’s arm.

  Nikki jumped. Stood on his toes and pushed the chair back for more thrust and reached for it. Had hold of the thin fine-boned fingers of the Roofer, what he used in the crannies of a building to haul himself higher. Had the fingers, crushed them, squeezed them, and the card was released, and the Roofer howled and his face contorted. The card floated down. Gorilla would have had it but Nikki had his foot across it. The Roofer was squealing, and was hurt: he needed his hand for his keyboard and his climbing. Nikki crouched, moved his foot, pocketed the card that was torn and bent and had the street dirt of his trainer sole across it.

  ‘I was given the card, going to use it, should be a good way in.’

  Who would have believed him? Would not have believed himself. Gorilla would not, nor HookNose. The Roofer would have doubted that a fellow hacker would use such violence to defend information on a target. He wondered if the Roofer was about to hit him.

  The GangMaster was at the door. The mood was hidden, but would not be forgotten. Fear made him loathe them. Nothing said . . . The GangMaster talked about targets and the need for more material for the money mules, and seemed wary of them, like a keeper venturing into the big cat cages of the zoo on Alexandrovsky Park. Nothing said, but everything would be remembered. The evening closed in on the building and Nikki shivered, and had committed himself and did not know when he should have brazened it out with them, turned his back on the quiet-voiced Englishman in the hotel room, there had not been such an opportunity, and he thought that was the skill of the man who had impaled him. He said nothing, lowered his head over his screen, looked for another trapdoor. He had no friend other than his sister. The darkness of a foul winter night was outside.

  The voice chimed in Nikki’s ear. ‘I’ll hurt you for that, fuck you till you scream.’

  In that exposed backwater of northern Europe, the night was around the house, and the wind came under the eaves and lifted those pieces of the roof that neither of the old couple, Igor and Marika, could make good, and draughts speared between the window-frames and the walls, and under the main door.

  They had repaired the house themselves, but years earlier. Never married but had been together since she was eighteen, and he sixteen. If the logging man, Pyotr, had not come two or three times a week, and done their paperwork for them, paid the few bills for which they were liable, and helped them with the livestock, they could not have survived there. Pyotr worked timber, was also a part-time sergeant in the militia and had arranged for them to live in the security zone beside the river, the border. The wind made music in the trees and funnelled down the Narva river, with powerful eddies branching off along the fire breaks in the forest and pummelling against the house. There was a saying among the elderly in those parts – five or six kilometres back from the river and hidden in forest: ‘I want to see my neighbour’s smoke, but I do not want to see him.’ When Pyotr had a big fire in the yard beside the buildings where he kept his tractor and his flat bed and some of his tools, they might have seen it . . . except that Igor had long lost the sight of his right eye and boasted a glass one of milky blue.

  They were peasants of Mother Russia, witnesses to the ferocious history of that region that had been fought over many times and many times changed allegiance. They would not have known of the great power politics played out in that sector of their country but had suffered from armies coming along the mud lane between the trees, tanks and artillery pieces in advance and in retreat, and there had been the deportations of agricultural collectivisation, and . . . They had no photographs of the great men intruding on their lives, of Hitler or Stalin or Kruschev or Putin. The radio reception was poor in spite of Pyotr’s best efforts, and the old generator was erratic and too many times the lights failed and there was no consistent signal from the wireless set. They listened intermittently to a concert because they liked to see the front of the set lit up, but both were deaf. Louder than the music, and the wind’s howl, were the cries of the animals in the barn. A shot-gun stood behind the front door, and three dogs slept in front of the wide fireplace, where logs hissed, and they talked of when they might have to consider bringing the livestock into their living area: a pair of cows, three pigs, two sheep and their chickens. No one would come that night and few knew of them and of the existence of the five-hectare smallholding. If the snow was bad they brought the animals in with them, and they loved them, all of them, and the dogs, even more than they loved Pyotr on whom they depended.

  Close to the house built from felled timber were the four fields they had cleared. Laborious, back-breaking work, and they had dug the necessary drainage ditches in the soft bog and made beds where they grew vegetables and summer fruits. Farther away, in summer, the animals grazed. They ha
d made it all and would not lightly let it go. When they were dead – an understanding that when one went the other would reach for the shotgun behind the door – they had agreed, unsigned, that Pyotr would take over the house and the land.

  No phone, no gas, light from a generator, a log fire for warmth, no telephone or mobile, but neither would have considered that fortune had dealt them a poor hand. They had each other, and a sort of freedom, and no strangers came. The route to the river bypassed them by a clear kilometre and was used by smugglers of cigarettes and alcohol, and by the militia patrols, but Igor and Marika were left undisturbed. They had eaten their dinner, pancakes and omelette with potato, and drunk their well water that was discoloured but never did them any harm. The radio was loud and the dogs slept and the animals cried and no one came to intrude on them. Their lives were a long story but they seldom recited it.

  The fire blazed and soon they would be ready for bed, barely undressed, and sleep.

  Brad had the earphones clamped tight on his skull.

  ‘They’re on their way, five minutes or ten, but coming.’

  Rob shook his head, bemused. ‘Makes you wonder why he matters. No chance of a lie, Brad, they wouldn’t do it for us.’

  ‘Not arguing . . . Young Merc – who’d have believed it . . . Suppose we’ll go and get him, soon as they’ve been and gone.’

  He sat in his chair, no light on, and chewed at the stem of the clay pipe. He could not light it because alarms would have sounded across the floor and down the corridor, but he bit carefully on it, and imagined. Seemed to hear the roll of the wagons on farm tracks and the booming rumble of the iron-shod wheels when they lurched up from hitting wedged stones, and the protests of the horses that dragged them, and the cursing of the men who were bent under the weight of their own kit. They would not have known where they were headed and what the day would hold when the light next came. The quartermasters would have yelled at them to keep up the pace, and ahead would have been a myriad of small lanterns. Most would have had little or no food for the bivouac that night. They might cross the frontier during darkness, or at dawn, and then the great adventure would be launched. Veterans spoke of Brussels on their route and told the newest recruits, first time in a Bonaparte army, that they would be welcomed there, and have good whores. Earlier, they would have moved to the side of the track and manoeuvred the loaded wagons, but would not have sworn in protest because they had made way for their Emperor’s carriage with its escort of clattering cavalry. They would have raised their headgear, held up their rifles, cheered him, and some might have seen him through the carriage window. And they would have been heartened . . . He seemed to hear all that, and could see the teeth on his desk, and if he tilted his head could see also the cartoon rendering of the Duke and his Boot.

  Nothing he could do. He put the pipe away in a drawer, stood up and shrugged into his coat, took his trilby from the stand, and wished them good night. He thought one at least would sleep there on the camp bed, mount a vigil until news came from some wretched front line on a horrid little corner of sand. He told them he was going home . . . Gloria had promised to serve a good goulash, which he fancied tonight . . . Nothing more to be done.

  She bayoneted the boy. Merc saw it from the corner of an eye. Could not get a proper sight of it, the plunge of the blade, its disappearance into the black material, then coming free and the light shining on it, then the thrust repeated. The radio was by his feet and was a mess of casing and wiring, and the circuit board was stamped on and crushed . . . Pleased he’d remembered to do that, destroy the communications, because there would be prime call-signs and linking numbers held in it, and if they were over-run – when – it would be a good prize. He fired, and might have been down to his last dozen rounds, and had only two grenades left on top of the one clipped to the webbing across his chest. He saw Cinar stab the man with her bayonet blade, and it told him that she had fired her final bullet, and probably dare not go down on her hands and knees and scrabble into the dirt at the trench bottom, to go though the kit of any of the ones already too damaged to fight on, or the dead. Over the parapet, though, he had good visibility because there were flares fired high into the sky by support from farther to the north. But no reinforcements were spared, and a diversion attack was underway to the south of the Hill. They were isolated, and the enemy came for the kill. He might not have seen it well, but he heard it clearly and over the rattle of firing and the explosions and the screams – her voice loudest and her foul mouth worst – was the soft cry from the guy at her feet, This was his foreign field, and no one would even have known his bloody name. He yelled instructions.

  Merc tried to lead, to be the example that they would follow. It was a hill, a pimple on a plain, and the blood drained away into the soil. They came again in a rush.

  The instructions were to ‘fire only aimed shots’ and to ‘stay strong’ and to remember their ‘families’, and to ‘take one with you’. It had not been as bad in the Afghan days, or going down Route Irish with the weapon on automatic and two magazines full and strapped together. The guys coming against them must have trampled the stomachs and spines, chests and backsides of their fallen friends, so many had gone down. A new sound intruded . . . The light faded and a flare died and the dark shapes came again and he heard the rending of clothing on the wire, but there was a new noise, first faint and then growing and gaining power as it approached. Two of them were in the trench. He saw the bayonet blade raised but another came behind her. Merc fired and the figure fell, but another replaced it. He heard nothing. The roar swamped his ears.

  Merc could not have said whether they had Royal Air Force markings, or were American, or piloted by Jordanians, Saudis or Australians. They came low and dumped their cargo on to the wire, and Merc was cowering at the bottom of the trench and lay on a body and did not know if it was a friend’s or an enemy’s. The explosions came in a deafening ripple, and earth and wire and stone flew far, wide, high. Before the quiet came and before his ears had recovered they had turned and swooped again for a second bombing run and dropped more. Then they climbed towards the stars. They showed the fire heat of their exhausts, and headed for home.

  In the light of one last flare, Merc could see the retreat down the hill. Some carried their wounded, some hobbled, some crawled, but most were left on the perimeter defences of Hill 425. He shouted at the top of his voice and could not hear himself, and the few he led came to him as if he were their talisman. The value of what they, he, had done? He supposed it mattered.

  He led them out, the dead and the living, and a skeleton force waited to take the position from them, but the battle for the Forward Operating Base was considered over; it had been held and the flag still flew unseen in the darkness above the trench. They stayed close to each other, and the grenade on his chest bounced against his ribcage, and Cinar was ahead of him and did not turn and did not look and did not talk, stumbled twice, refusing help. They followed the route of the communications trench and none had the strength to speak or to cry. Merc was surprised that so high a price was put on him, but had the proof of it.

  Chapter 4

  His people followed him out of the hospital.

  They had left four there, and two more were in the mortuary and the funerals would be later that morning in the quarter of the cemetery used by the military. Merc was shaken at what he had seen inside the Emergency Reception Centre, but masked it. Was good at that, of hiding emotion. They had gone to the hospital first, and the two guys from Special Forces, Rob and Brad, had trailed them, but not intervened. Not claimed first call on him, going pompous about the importance of a waiting flight out, were experienced enough to know that a sequence mattered. What Merc kept hidden was evidence of the ripple of shock that had engulfed him.

  He had no mark on his body. His ears rang and his eyes watered from exhaustion and his legs were cramped up. The others who had manoeuvred the gurneys down the corridors, not permitting the trained staff to take over, carried scrape
s and superficial blood smears but were whole. Cinar had been on the back right handle of the lead stretcher, on which lay the girl who had taken the stomach wound. They were almost at the first of the examination tables when she had lurched. Might have hit the corner of one of the instrument trolleys, and had gasped and gone down and had been on the floor, the energy flooding out of her, and only then had the hole in her tunic, immediately below the flak vest, been visible. The blood must have been trapped above the tight belt at her waist, against her skin, and now it spilled on the tiles and loosened the mud their boots had brought in. They had been waved clear, had left. Merc had not looked back at her, had not spoken to her, nor knelt beside her, had not taken her hand. He had been told to leave and had gone . . . Had not asked the question that most often provoked a lying answer. ‘She’ll be all right, won’t she?’ and a doctor mouthing through a cotton face guard ‘Of course she will, she’ll be fine.’ Near to him, the young woman who had been on the DShK machine gun, feeding the belt – only two bursts left when the ‘air’ had come – had choked a little, wheezed, then stayed strong. It was not Merc’s war but there never had been one that was his. He was paid to fight and it was convenient in London, from a citadel of power, that he be there. He did not deceive himself, did not claim to be press-ganged. The sun was peeping to the right of the fortress that had defended the town for 3000 years, and he blinked hard, but against the brightness and not because there were tears in his eyes.

  A couple of pick-ups took them across the city and to the barracks where Fire Force Unit 47 was based. The boys followed, still respectful.

  He checked his weapon into the armoury; and one magazine was empty and the other had only a fistful of rounds left. He unclipped the grenade from his webbing and it was laid gingerly in a box. A single syringe of battlefield morphine was retrieved from his rucksack, and would not be dumped for lack of hygiene, too precious. He walked to the hut where he was billeted, and his room was an apology of space, barely enough for a bed, a chair and a wardrobe close to collapse. Merc had no civilian clothes, had long since donated them to one of the camps for the displaced on the outskirts of Erbil, but he dumped his vest on the floor and his rucksack, and the webbing harness. He gazed at himself in a mirror above the shelf on which was a picture of his grandmother in the yard where she fed the sparrows. They stood by the door, watching him. He took his last AutoTrader from the rucksack but left Exchange and Mart at the bottom with some foul socks; someone might look after the socks and get them washed, and someone might enjoy the read and the pictures. He went out into the corridor, into the growing sunlight. The boy who had used the machine-gun was there – he had saved their lives. The toll taken on the guys in black had been formidable, and the vultures were probably there now, skipping in the wire’s tangles and the craters, picking at body parts. There were two others with him. Merc was quizzed. Was he coming back? A shrug. Was he leaving them? A grimace. Was he going to lead them when they were back in the line after a week with their families? A small gesture of his hand, uncertain. Was he going before the funerals? A nod.