A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  . . . the final and crucial turning point of the day, when the nerve of two adversaries was tested to breaking point. Boot, had he been there and not above the bridge at Narva, would have eased off his stool, folded it, tucked it under his arm, held the umbrella high and would have gone to the rim where there was a view across the fields. Ploughed, this week or next, in November. Full of unharvested maize, not yet ripened, two centuries and more before. He pictured the advance of the Guard, veterans of the Emperor’s wars and considered an élite, and heard the thunder of their drummers coming through the crop. No reserves left, and standing officers on both sides urging their men to stand firm. It had seemed, to Wellington’s surviving aides, that the next few minutes would decide who carried the day. A hoarseness in Boot’s voice, under his umbrella and looking over the Belgian landscape, when he would shout – did it every time – ‘La garde recule’. They had turned, had fallen back in poor order when the German army, the Duke’s allies, had appeared on the eastern flank. He could see sparse traffic on the narrow roads of Ivangorod and a few shoppers bent under the weight of their plastic bags; and beyond the town and the riverside bungalows were the forests, where the last act would be played out. Always had to clear his throat, hack a cough, because it was raw when he shouted the cry that the guard fell back . . .

  Daff was in a litany of the events forecast for his diary, where he was to be and when: a routine medical check, farewell drinks for a colleague, a conversation with a Russia Desk specialist of the Fivers across the Thames. He thought she talked for the sake of it, which was a reflection of the tension she felt, and his. He hid it better, but would not chide her.

  . . . and he would be again on the move and drift on the path along the ridge towards the farm at Hougoumont and pause at the small memorial that marked where Captain Mercer had sited his battery and had fired some 700 rounds of case-shot at close range, and inflicted hideous casualties on French cavalry, and in the summer visits he would hear skylarks over the farmland, and that day he would have heard only the steady drip of rain from his umbrella. And Boot would breathe in hard, accept the victory, and would recite in a whisper – his shouting done – the words of the Duke: ‘The nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. By God! I don’t think it would have been done if I had not been there.’ Not from any sense of arrogance, but more from duty, Boot thought it better that he should be there. He must not show anxiety, nor shiver from the cold.

  Kat stood.

  Too cold to sit any longer. And fearful because she had been left, isolated, and tension had merged into fear. She heard the wind in the trees, and the whines and groans and simpering as branches rubbed each other, or smacked together.

  With the fear came anger. She should not have been left. Her loving had not been praised, nor her driving. He should have done that, given praise. A first step. She moved. To go where? To go to find him. Rational? Hardly. Disciplined? Not . . . The sleet was heavier. She stood at full height and could see over the reed beds and on to the expanse of water, and the lights of cars on the far side. No praise for her driving through the road-block, and no praise for the gentleness of her loving, and for calming him; and after the fear and the anger came the thought that had driven her to her feet. She was ditched . . . All the talk was of a promise made to Nikki, who was dead, who would not call in the debt. Perhaps he had already gone into the water, left her.

  Merc and the deer gazed at each other.

  Neither moved, both barely breathed. Their eyes locked.

  And beyond the deer was the piece of torn material on the branch where he had left it. Then it backed, little delicate hoofs moving together and with utmost caution, but stepping away from him, though the eyes – amber-coloured, bright and wide – held his. He stood his ground. The sleet pellets had become flakes of snow and blew up the river, funnelled from the Baltic, and came from behind the deer, covered his scent and the sounds of his approach. Then it was gone, crashing away through the undergrowth. It had been a Christmas card scene: a deer with ears high and snow dusting its scalp where stunted horns grew. He skirted the open space where it had fed or come for water. The strip of cloth marked where the board would be and the suit. Merc thought the cloud had come down, nudged almost level to the water’s surface, and grey merged with grey and the snow seemed heavier. He crouched, groped, and his gloved fingers found the hard shape of the board. He eased it out from under the brambles and scrub, and the suit. He did not often show emotion. Merc despised clenched fist salutes . . . permitted himself a short smile that cracked lines in his stubble-covered face . . . A different feeling of cold. Not from the damp or the wind, and not from the flakes blown into his nostrils and resting on his lips.

  Where an animal had hackles, the cold on the back of his neck erupted.

  Merc would not have noticed the anti-flash attachment at the end of the rifle barrel had it not been for the scrape in the paintwork and the dulled clean metal. He knelt beside the board, half exposed, and the suit. The barrel was aimed directly at him. No sudden movements from Merc. He bought time, a few seconds, and evaluated initial options available . . . He looked above the attachment on the rifle barrel and fixed on the needle foresight, and blinked and changed focus, blinked again, and saw the sheen of an eye, further back and behind the V-sight. Silence clung in the air except for the roar of the river mocking his efforts to survive, and his promise seemed to have lost importance.

  Chapter 18

  Merc moved first.

  Might be shot, might be challenged, might face one weapon and might have half a dozen Kalashnikovs trained on him. He was kneeling and could not shift quickly if any sort of opportunity came; eased himself into a position where he was on the balls of his feet, hunched down and with an ache gripping his legs, but at least could now push himself upright. Knees stiff, hunger and thirst and cold taking turns to bite him, and his board half revealed, and the suit with it. Without either, the chance of getting across was fragile; with neither was negligible. He began to consider his options.

  The assault rifle was pressed against a broad shoulder. The eye was over the sight. He did not see anything of weakness or indecision as the man came forward and cleared the cover. Uniform worn, good quality kit, and a balaclava hiding the face except for the mouth and eyes. Merc was usually able to form impressions of men, could read eyes and body movement and posture. Took no comfort from what he saw. He read him as a countryman, a hunter, a guy who did not panic: no overwhelming excitement would lead to stupid action . . . too calm. A forest man, and hard to deceive.

  The rifle seemed small against his bulk, like a toy . . . There had been a young officer in the Pioneer Corps, pretty useless at where to site a field latrine but a stalker of deer in the remote north-west of Scotland and he liked to talk of ‘grallocking’ a stag on a hillside, cleaning out the intestines, leaving a banquet for the eagles. This man, the balaclava and the combat fatigues, would have done it fast and expertly. The rifle was aimed at Merc’s chest, and the range between barrel tip and his body was five yards, six at most. This man would have been able to track down an injured, furious and suffering wild boar and shoot it dead when it abandoned any more attempt to hide and charged instead.

  And worse, as the man came forward. Slotted on a strap across the chest pocket of his tunic was a mobile phone, in a leather case. It was what Merc knew about, calling up the cavalry. The man wore the same uniform camouflage patterns as the men at the road-block. He remembered a larger man at the tail of the block who had fired, then dived clear. Could have been a match. The snow came down between them. Merc lost sight of the river’s far bank, the lights of vehicles . . . They would not have expected him yet. He believed that Boot and Daff would be in position near to the tank memorial, and they’d have image intensifiers to pick him up on the board, see him struggling to keep it steady.

  They were now three or four yards apart. A gloved finger was inside the guard, rested on the trigger. Merc assumed the safety was off, one in the breach.<
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  The hand that steadied the weapon came off the barrel and reached for the phone. The barrel did not waver, and the eyes held their line on Merc. He could lunge forward and might get a grip on the barrel and might have sufficient impact to break the aim and topple the man, but he was not hopeful. Reckoned it more likely that he would be shot through the chest. More fast thoughts . . . Had seen enough of them, in triage, having the clothes stripped off them on the gurney because it was important to get the scalpels and tweezers into a wound fast to extract detritus from clothing and dirt and the contamination of a fracturing bullet. Had been short sharp days before in the emergency area of the hospital as the clothing was stripped away from the girl’s chest and stomach, and there would be flowers, the merlot shade of chrysanthemums, beside a bed. He’d not have that . . . Would be alive and treated as a hostile, or would be dead, no flowers. What the boys said, Rob and Brad – and anyone who had made a study of escape and evasion – was that the business had to be done fast. Had to be done quick – but had to be done with a chance of success. The fingers were on the buttons on the phone. They started to tap. What should he do? He did not know.

  He kept his eyes locked on the chest of the bent figure low in front of a mess of bushes and reeds. He watched him over the top of the rifle, the V-sight and the needle. He thought he’d reason to be cautious.

  It had been, at the road-block, the most unnerving experience of his life: the two cars belting toward him in the half light, full speed and front on, had been worse than anything before. Earlier danger moments were not in serious competition . . . a big boar, well-tusked and with a stomach wound from a cousin’s bullet and making a last charge from close scrub, or the moment that a saw’s chain snapped and flew back and might have taken off the front of his face . . .

  Pyotr could have been blindfolded and led to a ground sheet on which the parts of a Kalashnikov rifle were laid out, but in no order or pattern, and could have reassembled the weapon within a minute, a minute and a half at most, and another half minute to slap on the magazine, take off the blindfold, fire at and hit a target at fifty metres. The fingers of one hand tapped out the number he had scrawled on the palm of his hand, but the barrel of his rifle never wavered.

  He thought the man interesting . . . Did not seem to panic or hyper-ventilate. Did not speak. Pyotr, part-time militiaman, part-time forester, and part-time ‘friend’ of an old couple who would – one day – pass on their smallholding to him, had not been in the regular military. Of course, as did everyone who served in

  the militia, he devoured the magazines that told the stories of the exploits of the Special Forces units, Spetsnaz teams in Syria and especially of the death of a ‘hero’ officer who was surrounded by his enemy and called down an airstrike on himself, and many of ‘them’ went with him to their God. But he had not been in the army – too young for Chechnya and too old for Ukraine. The man did not seem to show fear and Pyotr thought he rated his chances as low.

  He tapped out the numbers. Heard a connection made, heard it dial, and memorised what he would say, how he would tell the officer from St Petersburg of his success, his triumph, heard the female voice with a tinny pitch report that a call could not be taken but a message could be left. There were many places down the river, upstream and downstream of Ivangorod, where a mobile signal failed. He cursed out loud. Had had the words ready, cocky, confident. But not to be shared with a recording machine. He said he should be called back, soonest, and cut the link. He watched the man with care, and the man’s stillness and silence told Pyotr of the danger he could bring to him. The snow fall slackened but the wind was stronger and the noise in the trees greater, and the water was rougher out in the river’s main channel.

  There was blood and exposed flesh from where skin had been torn back, and both were dead: the response of the pursuit team had been understandable but not clever. The Major did not criticise. The dog’s handler, in hot pursuit and with his colleagues running behind him to keep up, had seen a figure on the ground, half covered in snow but with a service pistol, a Makarov, in his hand, and had released the dog. The dog had taken the man at the shoulder, as it was trained to do, and the arm had swung round and the man had convulsed and a shot had been fired. The dog had taken a fatal head wound. A barrage of shots from behind the handler, might have been twenty bullets striking the man.

  A simple story and one with no clever ending because the fugitive had been killed. Might as well have hung from an abbatoir hook for all the evidence he would cough up. An older wound was hard to find under a drying blood pool, but the woman with him was not squeamish and had slipped on plastic gloves and found it. A wallet with little of interest, no address, an ID that he sensed immediately was bogus. He turned away.

  The Major checked his mobile, had no signal, was called by one of the team who had been with the handler and had radio contact on their net from the Kingisepp barracks . . . They were to go south, fast, and coordinates were given.

  He strode past the handler. The man wept openly at the loss of his dog. The Major did not criticise. He thought the snow had eased but the wind was savage and the cold brutal and conditions for fugitives were poor, which brought a slow and mirthless smile to his chafed lips. He and his escort hurried back to their jeep.

  She blundered forward, a creature of the city.

  Kat did not have him to support her, nor to deflect the whip of the branches off her body. As a student she had always pleaded sickness when the time came for the summer camps where the kids would be under canvas and savaged by mosquitoes, and nowhere to crap . . . The city was her home and where she found safety. She went slowly and quickly lost the little confidence she’d had when quitting where he’d left her. Close to the river the snow had covered any track he might have left . . . She could go back towards her starting point, and might find it and might not. She could go forward, in search of him and perhaps would be successful and perhaps not.

  She recognised that many of her actions over the last several days had bordered on the idiotic. She went noisily, and did not possess those skills of moving in silence through a wilderness; would have screamed if she had startled a pig or a deer . . . She tripped on a root, fell, bruised an elbow, cut her lower lip and began to weep, soft, quiet tears, and saw him. Saw Nikki who was her brother. Saw him as he had walked away from her towards the security gate, carrying the bag with the laptop . . . saw him as he had gone through the doors . . saw the flash of light in the sky and the eruption of the roof . . . and saw what she imagined was the debris of a body that had been at close quarters to an explosion . . . Saw the peace on his face when he had last slept in the flat . . . saw Nikki and tried to cry out to him, and the face was gone.

  Eyes watched her. They had a lustre, and seemed to reach out to her in the feeble light. She was about to shriek when a bird took off. It glided away from her. No clatter of impact against the low branches. She had seen a bird like it in the zoo in the city, the Great Grey Owl. It went in a ghost’s silence, and though she strained to hear it there was no sound of a wing-beat. She pulled herself up.

  Kat smeared her arm across her face and wiped away tears and spread some blood, and smeared mud over her cheeks. She had fallen, she had pitied herself, she had disturbed the creature in its own territory . . . and she despised herself. She set off, would find him. She could have justified what she had done by the loneliness of sitting in the shelter of trees, hour upon hour, and learning nothing, seeing less. She stayed at the edge of the tree line, and went along the bank of the river, downstream, and did not know how she would explain to him, when she found him, why she had disobeyed him . . . and did not know what she would do if she did not find him.

  His eyes narrowed, the snow gathered on the lids and the upper skin of his cheeks. Boot saw the flash of the surveillance car’s lights.

  Daff reacted. She stood, leaned over him, handled him like he was a care-home patient. She cleaned the snow off his face, with a briskness, no trace of the sentimenta
l, and she was off.

  Boot looked away from the vigil. He saw her go to the surveillance vehicle, and a cigarette pack was passed out through a barely opened window. She helped herself and was passed a lighter, and its flame was brief, bright, and then her face clouded in the first exhalation of smoke. She bent, had her ear against the gap, listening. She straightened. The window was closed and she blew the two boys inside a cheery kiss, then returned to him. Boot, not often but occasionally, allowed himself a surge of temper. What he wanted most in the world, on that Saturday afternoon as the light began to fall, was the chance to shed his shoes, peel off his wet socks, replace them with a clean, dry and warm pair – and then see his men come home.

  He would have sounded peevish. ‘Am I entitled to ask, when did they sign up for our team? We are a covert operation, straining the tolerance of allies by our very presence, and should make a virtue of discretion. We are not working alongside them, and I would appreciate if we could, please, remain separate entities.’

  ‘God, Boot, that is just so fucking pompous.’

  And could not remember when she had ever before spoken to him in that tone, made more provocative by laughter that showed her good teeth and was wafted away on the wind.

  ‘We are in control, it is our show . . .’

  ‘In a hole, Boot, don’t dig deeper.’

  He stiffened. ‘I think I am owed an explanation and . . .’

  Dragging deep on her cigarette, like it was precious, she said, ‘Say it how it is. We have no control. We do not influence events. The boys we sent over are on their own. We have no helicopter fleet on stand-by for an exfiltration flight, we have no boots on the ground to cover a landing zone. They are left to do the best they can and ringing in their ears will be our heartfelt plea – “Don’t get caught, stay deniable”. Oh, yes, what those intrusive beggars over there wanted me to know – all on a barter scene, mutual help and all that, doing it at low level so that we both get an easy life – would possibly be of interest to you, Boot – possibly.’