A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Wait and watch. Nothing else we can do because we have to sleep. Watch and wait, and hope.’

  ‘And I am cold enough to cry.’

  ‘Must live with it.’

  She had to talk. Kat said, ‘I have a dream and—’

  ‘Most people do. Be quiet. Please.’

  His back was against the base of a tree trunk. The pine’s branches were around them, obscured the view of the farmhouse and the barn, the livestock and the log chopping.

  ‘I have a dream of what I want to be and where, and—’

  ‘It’s not the time to dream, just to stay still.’

  His glove did little to warm her foot. The chatter of her teeth drowned her voice. She sat across his lap and he had opened the zip of his jacket and had tucked her half inside it, and she had inserted her hands under his sweater and against his T-shirt, but the cold still bit at her. She thought that if she talked she would divert the cold.

  ‘You, for what you do, are you not allowed a dream?’

  ‘If the dogs hear you, they will come. We will be found, cannot outrun dogs. We will be shot or captured.’

  He did not meet her eyes.

  ‘My dream is to be an individual sufficiently important, radical, respected, for them to know my name. To be someone of value. A woman who should be heard. That is the dream. One day, my dream, I will walk with many thousands, be in the front rank – along with great figures, arms linked – and go into the square, confront the Kremlin, know that the big cars have fled from a back exit. Bring it down, pull it apart, their whole apparatus. They will flee – the new czar, and the new siloviki around him, and the new apparatchiks who are his servants. Am I not allowed to dream? Do you not dream?’

  ‘I do a job, and am not paid to dream.’

  She took slight warmth from him, not much and not enough. One hand roamed on the T-shirt material where it went around his rib-cage and towards the space above the angled hip bone, moved there without purpose. It was good to feel him, take that comfort, and she could see the dogs, and the shotgun and the rifle. The chopping had halted and the old couple and the man in militia uniform talked while he cupped his hands around the steaming mug . . . Her forefinger lingered on a roughened ridge on his skin.

  ‘At first, the great man of Ukraine, our czar’s friend, had an army of KGB to protect him, a brigade of special troops, a unit of the Presidential guard, and a team of bullet catchers. This is my dream . . . He fled. Helicopters, then a vehicle convoy, and finally he crossed into the Motherland of Russia, him and his woman, and there were only two bodyguards left to him. Everything else had gone, like old paint on wood that has wet rot. That is the end of a czar, and what I dream of . . . There is an old slogan, maybe you have heard it: “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it”. That is freedom, that is my dream. You, how can you live without a dream? When you came, did you not have a dream of doing something that made a difference to lives, had importance? Can you be so shallow that you do not dream?’

  ‘I do a job, try to do it well. If you alert the dogs then I will have failed in my job.’

  Under the T-shirt, her finger was against the line of damaged skin, and at the lowest end of it was a small crater; a small coin could have gone into it, or a blunted pencil end. Quickly, as if to catch him by surprise, she pulled her hand back and opened the gap in his anorak and lifted the sweater higher, and eased back the T-shirt, and bent her head. White skin, not tanned like his face and lower arms and his upper chest. It would have been where a bullet had gone into the skin, breached it, then mined a corridor into his body, and the skin had been tucked down at the entry point, but would have been opened for a line beyond it and that would have been where they had dug, in the emergency room, for the debris and the shattered pieces, and perhaps to extract what remained of the bullet if it had not exited through the small of his back. She thought of where his spine was and where his lungs were, and she knew sweet shit of the biology of the human body She could imagine it was long odds that a bullet striking there could have missed everything that was vital.

  ‘Do I get to be told?’

  ‘No.’

  She took her finger away and pulled down the T-shirt, then the sweater, then closed his jacket tighter round them both.

  ‘You are a fighting man. I assume it’s a battlefield wound, not treated in a skilled hospital with time for cosmetic surgery, make it pretty. On a conveyor belt, and you sewn up and then the next stretcher carried in. Was this war? You have the skill to fight a war, are a fighting man – not a poet. Why they chose you, sent you?’

  ‘To do a job, no more and no less.’

  ‘And not to dream?’

  ‘To dream would be an obstruction – except to dream of a Mercedes Benz, high performance, owning one, probably a coupé version . . .’

  A smile flickered on his face. She kissed his cheek, then snuggled lower and the cold seemed brutal. She was grateful to have found the battle scar, and to learn something of him, more than he would have told. In front of them, the militiaman with the axe was talking to an enthralled audience. And the animals moved close to them, except the dogs who kept watch.

  ‘Any of us could have been killed. They were animals. It could have been me, could have been any of us. They were ruthless. No thought for us, nor for themselves. No lights. Accelerating. We have poor illumination so they came from nowhere. Any of the boys at the start of the bridge could have been flattened by them, and they did not care. They were bouncing off the drums. What could we do? Nothing. Had to save our lives – well, almost all of us. We had been given no information from headquarters, just told to stay alert. Who was coming? Not told. What to look for? Not told that . . . We were very close to the end of our shift. They came from nowhere, devils . . . bandits, gangsters, perhaps from a smuggling gang. You would not know it because you live here, and are protected by isolation but – believe me – there are violent, despicable people in St Petersburg. They sell weapons, sell drugs, they sell protection which is extortion . . . criminals. And escaping towards the frontier. That is a place of thieves, across there. I tell you, it was me, Pyotr – your friend – who has done them damage. I was at the far end of the bridge, and the intention is that if the bandits, gangsters, criminals, push through the barricade there is one last chance to shoot at them. Me. The target was so hard to see, I could just fire and hope. Two cars, and I hit both, and I must have made at least one casualty. The border at the bridge is closed – and the river is in flood and no one can get across it, and all the boats – the fishermen’s – will be chained and padlocked. Because I fired into the cars, I think they will be on foot, if they are able to walk. You should be careful, but you have the dogs and you have a weapon. Barricade the doors. Lock all the windows. They are desperate and dangerous, will show you no mercy. But I do not think they will find anywhere as isolated as this. I will stay as long as I can, but we do an extra shift this evening. New forces have been moved into the area and will work both ways along the road. We will find them, I guarantee it. My commander says that I did exceptionally well – may receive a medal. Now, more logs should be cut.’

  He swung the axe with a new-found ferocity, his energy sustained by anger. He wished he had done better. If he had stopped both cars, or either of them, and if prisoners had been taken, or corpses offloaded, he would have been a hero among the men who did Reservist duty in Kingisepp, and the story would have been better for the telling. He cut a growing pile of logs, and would warn them again before he left to go back on duty.

  Back in his office in the Big House, the Major finally studied the surveillance report. He had kicked off his shoes, his feet were on his desk, and he might give himself the brief luxury of closing his eyes, a few minutes’ light sleep, and the opportunity – so elusive – to think. His phone rang.

  ‘That is Danik? It is, yes?’

  ‘I am Danik.’

  ‘Leonid, from Forensi
c . . .’

  ‘I did not know you were assigned. What news, please? I struggle on a dilemma.’

  ‘I heard you had the backing of the general. I think Onishenko could be a good friend, no shit with him. The hackers, that’s what they were, use first names, not family. You asked for ID on the one who was Nikki – yes, Nikki, I am correct?’

  They were from Minsk, from Belarus, and both recruited by FSB in the same year, but their paths rarely crossed, and he shunned social life. The Major gulped, tried to kill the exhaustion. In front of him was the surveillance report. He remembered the girl – ineffective, posing little threat, anxious to please, and who’d built a fantasy world, but defiant and not easily broken. She had met with four men, had taken her brother, and there was vagueness on whether a package were passed or if that was the sergeant’s imagination. It had been at a distance, the far side of two vehicles, and Nikki had carried a laptop bag. Confusing, difficult. Easy to evaluate consequences if it were gang warfare, and anything else was to walk into quicksand.

  ‘Yes, the matter of Nikki.’

  ‘My question, Danik, which bit do you want?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘My little joke. It is messy in there. He is in many pieces. Some on the floor, some on the wall behind him, some embedded in a wooden table . . . Some are outside the building which is possible because parts of the ceiling, and the roof, were detached and he flew with them. Well, bits of him did. You know those Chechen women who liked to go to Paradise where a nice boy or a dead lover was waiting for them, travelled via a vest and some explosives? They were spread so far that there were acute worries for contamination – could be HIV, dengue fever, hepatitis B. This is the same scenario. I am saying that the bomb was up close to your boy, your Nikki, when it detonated, and from the top of the table and might have been under his outstretched arms. It was inside a laptop computer. How much further should I go?’

  ‘Go the whole way, Leonid.’

  ‘Then I offer two scenarios. Perhaps your Nikki took the device into the meeting room in his laptop – or – a second individual was able to interfere with the bag and insert another laptop into it and know that it would explode while the meeting was still taking place. Are you there, Danik, are you listening?’

  ‘Listening, considering.’

  ‘Those diseases, did he have any of them – add in syphilis – all dangerous to my people, and to survivors, and there are more bits of him than a jigsaw. That means a considerable amount of ordnance, not a firework.’

  ‘Fuck off, Leonid . . . He carried the bomb into the meeting, is that what you are saying? Blew himself up, took them down with him? It is your conclusion?’

  ‘Was on top of it. I am not there, what else can I say, I offer reasonable hypothesis and paint a portrait. May I say something else?’

  ‘Go on, please.’ A sunny afternoon, and the cold outside was kept back by strong windows, double- or triple-glazed and the building’s boilers kept his room at a reasonable temperature, and he had been about to doze. No longer.

  ‘A meeting of hackers, and an autorite keeping watch on them, and men from your organisation there to ensure an agenda was in place, and the young people – I hear – all had grand reputations in their chosen fields, and are protected. Who would wish them harm? Have a pleasant afternoon, Danik.’

  The Major eased the button on his phone. Rang off and felt himself a novice swimmer in a deep pool or a wide river, out of his depth.

  ‘Afternoon, Arthur.’

  ‘And a good one to you, Roy.’

  They had met in their small fortified armoury, had drawn their weapons, ammunition, and grenades, and the sprays and the cuffs and extending batons, and had shrugged into their heavyweight vests, and walked together to the gate to resume duty. Not a bad day in London, crisp but the frost long gone. Nothing was out of the ordinary . . . an idiot had dropped a sandwich in the middle of the road, between them and Vauxhall railway station, and the gulls were coming in among the cars.

  Interesting for a moment, then Roy said, ‘Dessie’s not been out, not taken the Big Boss to his club, wash and brush up.’

  ‘Means it’s not sorted. And always a big deal when Boot’s away.’

  A cyclist came through, sweating in his lycra, and cleared his card, and all quite unexceptional, except to Roy and Arthur who liked a little charade puzzle, personal and not shared. A chap from Accounts and Budget Analysis who’d have known less than fuck-all about the business end of VBX, but always friendly, and with a wave.

  ‘I’d say it’s still all to play for, and the nerves upstairs will be taking some scratch.’

  The Maid, not like her, had underestimated the amount of milk in the fridge. Other than for toilet visits, and her dawn shower, she had not been away from the outer office. It was that time of day, when the light had begun to drop and the greyness had settled on the river, and the traffic was building, that she made a decent pot of tea. There was milk available in the bowels of the building but usually she’d find some at the tea point, at the end of her corridor. She had heard nothing. No call from Boot, no word from Daff. She would make the pot anyway, even if it were only herself who drank it. At the tea point were, courtesy of the management, small cartons of milk, far from fresh but drinkable. She looked, longingly, at her phone, at her screens, then hurried outside, locked the door and scampered to the far end of the corridor where the electric kettle was, and coffee sachets, and the milk, and saw them: the Big Boss and Plimsoll, deep in conversation . . . or conspiracy. She was jolted. The Maid had spent the morning working on the office expenses, and getting Boot’s into order, and sorting the leave chart for the first half of the next year. Also receiving attention was the remuneration for a recycling company in Harlesden, and the payment that would go through to a Buckinghamshire bank for the services of Gideon Francis Hawkins. Precious little for where he was and what was asked of him, and what Daff had invoiced for, multiplied by three, and . . . She thought Plimsoll a snake, and his mouth close to the Director’s ear. She went for the milk. She was not acknowledged. She gazed into the face of the Big Boss and he did not seem to see her, and into Plimsoll’s face, but he looked away. She went back to her door, unlocked it. She sat and waited for the whistle on her kettle, and had measured out the right weight of Earl Grey and felt tears well, and smelled treachery, and the knock on the door was light. She dabbed her eye, acknowledged it. He was in the doorway.

  The Big Boss said quietly, ‘I recognise the scale of opposition, but I continue to defend. I do not second guess my first commitment to Copenhagen but the wind of change is in my face, blowing quite hard. It’s the deniability factor that matters and can it hold fast . . . If Boot wins we’ll weather it. Be a concern if he loses. Dear lady, stay constant.’

  She had not quite put him to bed, but damn near.

  Daff sensed his fatigue and encroaching age.

  He had struggled to get through the window and had almost fallen off the draining board, and she had ushered him to his bed, and had seen his eyes close, and he muttered something about keeping a ‘good watch’, and had covered him with a rug, and had found herself a drink. And could reflect with the mug in her hand and the Scotch slopping in it, that had she been in London she might have been considering dinner, which invitation to accept, be like an Irish priest checking the day’s funerals against the pedigree of the hospitality afterwards. And could reflect that Boot, had he not been here, would have been on that midday Eurostar, reached the farmhouse on his old bicycle, would have done a part of his ritual tour, would be facing the long evening, and would retire early with his guide books and his maps and his histories, known by heart. Would imagine now that he could hear the patter of the falling rain, as it had been on that night before combat. In Boot’s mind there would have been darkened skies, the relentless storm soaking the men of both sides: thousands and thousands of poor wretches, almost in each other’s pockets and unable to cook, with little or no shelter, their woollen unifo
rms sucking up the moisture, and what was precious to them was the powder they must use the following day and it would have been kept against their skin. A quarter of a million men, suffering. Often enough, he had told Daff how it had been . . . An obsession? A man who might just as well have stood on the end of a platform at Didcot station and taken down the numbers of passing trains, an addict. She assumed it brought him a degree of serenity, and she had not heard him curse, nor criticise, and she thought he had a peace about his life . . . and would need it. And thought, also, that Boot had learned from his study of the Duke of the requirement of commitment, and to hell with the cost: worth doing, worth doing right . . . quite a burden.

  She would allow him a couple of hours, no more. Daff did not see herself as a care-home assistant . . . She would savour him, did not expect to meet his like again. It would have been brutal out in those fields, the rain tipping on them, and would be brutal, or more so, for the boys on the run from the hit – and if there had been shooting at a road-block then likely they would be on foot, and had probably separated. ‘A tough old world, Merc,’ she murmured, ‘but that’s why you took our shilling. Trouble is, Merc, you’ll have to look hard to find anyone prepared to thank you, if you make it out.’

  The day had gone, and the militiaman.

  The heap of logs had been thrown against the barn wall. The axe had been taken inside. The militiaman had put his vest back on, had again seemed to lecture the old couple and then had checked his rifle. Climbed back into his jeep, waved, and bumped off down the track. Exhaust fumes flew in the gathering dusk and hung, and it seemed the first of the frost caught them. The couple had watched him go, the old man cradling his shotgun as the jeep had disappeared, then had stood watch for her. She carried something into the barn and Merc assumed it to be grain for the chickens, or whatever the pigs would eat, and the cattle and the sheep were herded in by the dogs. When she emerged, she had put the padlock on the catch, and he had keenly watched her. She had made her way back to the farmhouse, and the old man’s eyes had seemed to probe into the trees where the light did not penetrate. The dogs stayed close to him.