A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

First down the road, then away on a track with a stone base and off into the forest. His sergeant drove, followed the militiaman. Darkness hemmed them in. The sleet could not penetrate the canopy of branches. Only a local man would have known this track and recognised its turning off the highway. There was an alien smell in the air, trapped between the trees, recognised it from the cabin by the river far out of Minsk where he went for New Year with his wife and his son. An open fire, damp wood, smoke spurting up from an unswept chimney. He heard the scrape of a weapon being armed and a barrel poked from the side of the lead jeep, then the men squatting in the back took their cue and loaded rounds into the breeches of their rifles, and the lieutenant behind him copied them. The Major dropped his hand on to the holster at his belt. They came into a clearing.

  The Major saw the smoke from the chimney and saw animals dismal in the weather and chickens scattered and two sheep stampeding back towards a barn’s open door. An old man, stooping, came out of the farmhouse and carried a vintage shotgun, then a woman emerged, frail but with bright and hostile eyes, the wind rippling her shawl. He slipped down from the jeep and walked to the militiaman’s shoulder.

  ‘It is where they might be, Major, or where they might have been.’

  Twice Merc had been certain he had found the small area of open ground where the deer had been, where he had come ashore, where the board was hidden. Twice Merc had been wrong.

  For a man who appeared to a stranger cold, emotionless, not victim to mood swings, there had, twice, been moments of relief because a hanging branch had seemed familiar, or a plastic bag had been tucked on the top of a rotted fencing pole which he had thought he remembered. The triumph, twice, had surged. He had gone forward each time, faster and with less care, had cursed his own impatience. He had stood in the centre of a small open space. The sleet had spat on him and the trees had been ruffled by the wind, and the reeds had danced, and there had been a distant rumble of the river’s flow. He had looked around him and searched for the strip of cloth.

  Each time the same. He did not find it, six inches long and half an inch wide and tied in a simple knot and on a sodden length of old branch that had been carried downstream, then come to rest when last year’s flood subsided. Twice he had reckoned he had found the place, twice was mistaken. Time slid by. He recognised it; his performance had deteriorated. He should have found the marker by now, should have located the board and the suit. Should have retained his calm, but it slackened. Merc stared around him. At no time in his life had he felt such numbing cold and the wet was in his boots and his socks were sodden and his feet frozen. Bloody kit was failing him . . . all his clothing was wet. And frustration bit into him. He could see across.

  Dulled lights, through the low waves of the sleet, showed the vehicles on the far side of the river. Could have been as much as quarter of a mile away from him, the distance increased by the depth of the reed banks on both sides and then the trees and scrub before the raised road. Two worlds, his and theirs, and without the ability to communicate. Still had the phone and would not have dared to switch it on and have his position located, monitored. Lorries, vans, cars edged along the road in difficult driving weather and kept a constant speed. He could focus on a lorry with a high cab and hold it in sight, then lose it. He wondered where Daff was and Boot. And wondered whether they were here, and had binoculars, and kept a watch, or whether they had a view of the bridge upstream, or whether they lounged in a café and had hot coffee and toast and . . .

  Merc was a man who survived by the meld of instinct and confidence. One was dimmed and the other fractured. Needed to start again, and make another big decision. Had he come too far along the bank, gone past the clearing where he had left the marker? Had he not gone far enough? And a new worry . . . while he dithered in his search, was the girl still good? And what did he think of her, and was it merely because a promise had been given? He thought of her, alone and frightened – and cold. He thought she would start to shift, then move, then come from the hiding place, then stand and listen, try to hear his return. She might, a possibility, start to call out for him, her voice growing in pitch, becoming a scream, then a shriek and ending in choked tears. She might come in search of him. His thoughts cavorted . . . Yes, the board found, and the suit, and a place across the river where Boot and Daff waited, and him hurrying back to the point where he had left her – but no one there.

  Had not wanted her trailing near him, had thought of her as a burden. Considered the days when he’d escorted principals, done close protection, and they were not expected to contribute to decisions on when they would go out of a door, cross a pavement, when to sit in the back of an armour-plated vehicle and hunker down.

  Could have been right and might have been wrong. Realised his abilities had slipped. Seemed to Merc to be too difficult to get back into the protection of the tree line and have to push back damn near every low branch to make progress. He stayed on the animal track that was between the pines and the reeds. Then dropped to his knees. A patrol boat went by, going upstream and flying the Russian flag. And the opposite way, downstream, was a barge with timber props and he heard the greetings of the two crews as they passed.

  Merc was hurrying which was poor practice, and he no longer looked for the lights on the faraway road that was the other side of the river. He searched for the board and the suit, and could not find the cloth strip he had left as a marker. It was a possibility she would call for him, a probability that she would come after him, and he thought of her as a cross that he carried. God alone knew why he had come, agreed to it. On the move, searching, not finding, and a stampede that stopped his heart when a heron escaped from the reeds, flapping its wings against the fronds and flew up and into the sleet and lowering cloud.

  He heard the dog.

  Between sleep and unconsciousness and being vaguely awake, Toomas heard a throaty howl from deep in its chest. When he had slept he had dreamed of the young man with the ambition to become an academic, to learn modern history, then teach it in the university of Tartu. When he had been unconscious, time had filtered away and he had not dreamed nor felt the pain. When he awoke he saw the movement of the branches above him and

  the and sleet drifting on to his face and had felt sleet weight of the pistol in his hand. He heard the dog again, louder and closer. It pleased Toomas that he had rested and was more alert than when the boys had carried him. He craved a whisky, a vodka, could even have sunk a plastic beaker full of water. His tongue smeared his lips.

  He supposed that the final decision left in his life span – not where he would get Scotch whisky or Viru Valge vodka, or water – was when he would line up the barrel and press it as hard as he was able against the side of his scalp, then work the index finger inside the trigger guard. Do it now, do it later? Toomas was a big man, heavy and sporting a gut, and when he wore the suit of chain metal, and the steel helmet with the eye slits, and wielded the double-handed sword of the Teutonic knights, the tourists at the castle were nervous of his size and strength. The fear was that, now, he might not have the strength to pull the trigger. In the last hours, he had thought of his grandfather in the basement cell of the old KGB building on Pikk, and the pain meted out to him . . . Nothing about loyalty to the woman who had pressed money into his fist in the café at Narva, nothing about the cause of a strike back against the Russian state. He thought of his grandfather and the loneliness of his last hours. He could see the dog. It strained on its leash, slobber at its mouth, and was on its back legs, a handler struggling to control it. If he were caught he would be kept alive, and he would be tortured. If he were tortured he would give the names. He was pathetic, and wet himself and tears froze in his eyes.

  He felt the barrel and worked it toward his ear. Weapons were trained on him. The leash went slack. The dog was loosed. He struggled to find strength in his finger.

  The Major gazed at the couple. Then he smacked his fist against the cheek covered in a carpet of stubble. The blow was light but might have
dislodged the man’s dentures. The militiaman, Pyotr, had taken the shotgun from the old man, had called him Igor, had declined coffee from the old woman, Marika. The Major slapped again, his other fist. He rarely discussed his work in any detail with his wife. His wife rarely described the difficulties of her day in the consulting room. And he never talked of the times he went down the steep steps to the holding block in the basement and wore thin leather gloves and might alert a prisoner to the need for cooperation and ‘rough’ him. The husband, Igor, would have fallen but for the woman, Marika, supporting him. There were times in his work when the Major was not proud of what he did, but he would have vigorously defended himself from any charge of employing ‘gratuitous’ violence. They had searched the farmhouse and had found nothing of significance and he had realised the bond that existed between the militiaman, Pyotr, and the couple: there would have been tugged loyalties between a mellow and well-tested friendship and the desire to perform well in the presence of an FSB officer and be rewarded financially and with promotion opportunities. Personally, he had checked the crockery, old and chipped, its decoration faded, on the draining board and could not have sworn that extra mouths had been fed. Nor was there evidence that any bed had been used, other than that in which the couple slept. They had gone outside, entered inside the barn.

  His reputation at the Big House was because of his results. He thought such a reputation justified his methods. The stench of animals hung heavy and the pigs rampaged around them and he had stepped on an egg and the lieutenant’s boot slid in manure . . . He knew such places from his childhood. On the outskirts of the villages near where he had been reared and gone to school there had been remote farms with a handful of livestock, and a life that was primitive and hard. Thrown into that scene would have been the horrendous experiences of the Great Patriotic War; he had realised that this couple were old enough to have witnessed the advance of the Panzers, then their retreat three years later, and the arrival of the Red Army; and he expected that deeper in the trees around the clearing would be hidden graves identifiable by a squat cross or a heap of stones. He had noted that the old man, Igor, boasted a glass eye. They had found nothing in the barn. Back outside, Pyotr had shouted at them, in frustration: where their loyalties should lie, about saboteurs, about people who might have – but for God’s blessing – have killed him, him, their friend, Pyotr, who helped them. But they had stayed silent.

  The Major was uncertain. No evidence that fugitives had been here. Among a few of his contemporaries in the Big House there was a debate concerning methods of coercion that were appropriate for the extraction of truths. Beatings and kickings and the use of truncheons and electric shocks had all been used against suspects during the ‘difficult’ times of the Chechen wars: but there, the enemy were vermin. Anyone who captured a Black Widow suicide team was justified in using ‘harsh measures’ to learn where a bomb would be detonated. The Major’s dilemma was not based on principle but on effectiveness. Some doubted that torture, violence, physical abuse, extracted more than sleep deprivation or even friendly and personable conversation. Pyotr had tried the friendship line, and had been greeted with sullen and unresponsive silence. Another slap. He knew how far he would take it. A shove at the man, a gesture to him that he was held in contempt. He thought the woman stronger, and more likely to talk, if there was anything to speak of, in an effort to save her man.

  The Major would say nothing of what he had done here in the forest to his wife; her eyes would glaze over and she would look away from him. Why? The couple, Igor and Marika, both at least eighty years old, were the mirror image of his own parents, and his wife’s. Smallholders, hand-to-mouth farmers, survivors, owning little except each other. Neither his father and mother, or hers, would have betrayed a fugitive coming in the night and needing food, wanting shelter. Would never have done . . . It was, to the Major, as if he struck his own father . . . His phone rang, shrill.

  He slapped a last time, without enthusiasm, then answered his phone. As he listened, they peered back at him, suffering and silent. He was told of a body’s discovery. He could not match the militiaman’s confidence that this place mattered above all else.

  The question was asked behind him. ‘If he is here, if I find him. Is he for dead or is he for alive?’

  He answered brusquely, not looking back, ‘Either way, if you find him. Alive is the better. Yes, alive is what I would want.’

  It was his impression, as he strode away and left only Pyotr with them, that he heard phlegm spat on to the ground where he had stood – it was what his father would have done, or his mother, or his wife’s father or her mother. He had the coordinates of where the body was and it was said there was hot pursuit of another man in flight. He had told Pyotr to call him with any developments, gave the number, saw the militiaman write it with a ball-point on the palm of his hand, then climbed into his jeep. There had been no evidence. He needed evidence, a prisoner, if he were to stride into the Big House, march with echoing boots down a long corridor, dragging a captive in his wake, and deliver him to a general as a ‘smoking gun’. He was driven away.

  The news was collected by the monitoring agencies based in Cheltenham, sucked down on to their saucer dishes. Two men arrested in the western outskirts of St Petersburg. A report on police radios said an autorite from the Kupchino district, a survivor of a bomb explosion, had been held. Also on the radios was the arrest operation for a gang leader close to the Pulkovo Airport cargo complex. Both men – it was said – were linked to corruption. And the news was circulated, disseminated, was of interest to a small section at Vauxhall Bridge Cross.

  While the diesel cloud from the Major’s jeep was still fog in the air, Pyotr headed in a different direction, along a track leading towards the river.

  He left the couple behind him. No slaps and no kicks, and no betrayal asked of them. A flicker of a glance towards the track’s opening in the trees had been sufficient for him. His speech had been quiet, without passion and had explained a truth to them. ‘They were here, I know it. They are murderers, assassins. I believe you gave them food, drink, and I think they slept in the barn with the animals. You can indicate to me in which direction they went when they left. I presume it was at first light. If you do not show it me, the direction, then I will be patient until you do. During the patience I will shoot – one by one – the animals you have here: cows, pigs, sheep. And I will throttle the chickens, and kill your beloved dogs. I will not harm you, will not have to. With no animals and without me, you will starve. When you are starving – unless you commit murder-suicide with the shotgun – I will send the Social Care people from Ivangorod to collect you and you will go to different homes, for men and for women. You will not see each other again, or this place . . . That is if you do not tell me which path they took.’ He had then unhooked the strap on the weapon from his shoulder and had seemed to look beyond them as if evaluating which animal he would choose first. Could have been the milking cow, and could have been the heifer that he had promised to take to market and sell for them in the spring, could have been a pig that might have fed them for weeks after he had cleaned it and hung it for them in a month or two, but all the time watching them. He had seen the glance, then had hung the weapon again on his shoulder. There were slow running tears on the face of Marika and Igor bit at his lip and drew blood.

  Would he have carried out the threat? He thought he would have. He had made a decision. Pyotr, a militiaman from the town of Kingisepp, believed the Major from FSB in St Petersburg offered him a better route for the benefit and wealth of his future than did the old couple with their forest smallholding and their few animals. For many years he had been the couple’s friend, and he had known the Major only a handful of hours, but the decision was good. The trees closed round him. It was ground he knew, knew it as well as the deer and the pigs and the few bears who’d made it their refuge. He believed he might have broken the old couple, but the world moved on, and future advancement beckoned.

>   He could not see boot prints on the ground, did not need to, had already found a strand of bright wool snagged on a branch.

  His face quivered, his eyes flashed, his feet stamped. Boot shook himself. It was his method of regaining concentration. He wiped sleet off his moustache and eyebrows.

  Daff had spoken to London, to the Maid, the last throes of the battle. The moments when the issue had teetered between failure, and victory. Each time he visited the field, he exercised control and moved with the itinerary of the day and those before, but coming now to the crisis time. Probably raining there. Usually did across those sloping fields at that time of year. Sometimes he would have sheltered under an umbrella, one of those handed out to Gloria by exhibitors at an antiques show, and squatted on a collapsible stool. He had adequate rainwear, but felt more comfortable with the umbrella and the stool. He appreciated a time of crisis, that gap between failure and victory. There was no shelter where he’d have been. He lived for those moments, reckoned the chasm between a good result and catastrophe was never wide. He would have sat where the squares had formed: three ranks, wounded and commanders in the middle, and a porcupine barrier of fixed bayonets – the last resort to the volleys of rifle fire when the cavalry came close. Noise, smoke, screams and shrieks and the cries of crippled horses. Could always see it and sniff it, and the squares had held, but if they had broken and the men of the infantry battalions had fled, then the day was lost . . .

  He gazed down at the bridge, saw the slow queues of cars and vans and lorries pulling away from the checks on the Russian side, and saw the foot passengers. Daff had reported that – at VBX – the Big Boss had been down to the fourth floor requiring updates, but the Maid had packed him off with a response of ‘You’ll be the first to know’. Daff had said, rain or shine, they’d be home the next day, and the Maid was checking flights. If it succeeded, and was deniable, then celebrations would wait until a touchdown at Heathrow, and if it failed it would be the local station in the UK’s embassy who had the job of sweeping the shit off the pavement.