A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  Kristjan stacked shelves in the Fama supermarket in the town across the river. He had wanted to be a professional boxer, had seen himself with bloodied eyes standing in a ring as the guy in the white shirt and black tie lifted his hand . . . If he went now, he would be back and across the bridge and have a chance to put on dry clothes and be in the aisles by the time his shift started, and he’d need the money because the bitch in charge of the wheel had taken all he’d had. Past the Female door, past the Male door, and a fire escape exit at the end of the corridor, and it had been on the local radio in Narva that the casino had passed all the safety tests from the Russian administration: the door would not be padlocked – it would be alarmed. A sucked-in breath was followed by fists clenching and muscles stiffening. Kristjan caught the bar of the door, wrenched it, and reeled back as it opened. His ears rang with the alarm’s scream. The cold slapped his face. He started to run.

  All downhill to the bridge. The afternoon had dulled into evening. The lights were bright ahead of him on the far side. He was in a side street flanked with small homes, wood planks nailed to the concrete for walls, and all spitting out smoke from their chimneys, and the road had ruts and holes and some were repaired and some not, and barking dogs hurled themselves at the garden gates. He fell, foot twisting in a pit gouged by last year’s weather, and the impetus threw him forward and he rolled over twice, and the breath was belted from his body . . . He would not be late for the shift in the Fama supermarket. Most evenings, at the start of his work, he filled the shelves that carried chilled groceries and afterwards he would turn to . . . And Martin would not be doing a shift of painting or decorating, and Toomas would never again shrug into the chain-mail tunic. Too tired and too battered, too drunk and too emotionally drained to consider realities . . . He ran, and ahead of him were the brightly illuminated huts, the guards, and the barrier at the start of the bridge.

  Men running and men shouting, and he ran faster than he had known it possible, and raised his knees and swung his arms and sucked at the chill air and heaved it down into his lungs and nearly fell again but kept himself upright. Horns chorused behind him. The guards ahead were wrapped against the snow, sleet, wind, whatever the weather threw at them. They wore balaclavas and fur caps, and some had lifted the thick hoods from the collars of their uniforms. They might not have heard the sounds of the chase.

  Kristjan, grandson of a patriot who had no known grave, sodden with alcohol, famished and on the last leg of a tilt at survival, ran towards the barrier.

  Kat, at the extremity of her reach, had her hand on it.

  It might have lain there, unseen, undisturbed, for more than seven decades. She thought it a metre long and a coil of wire was wrapped on it. Kat held the rusted length and began to tug. She needed a weapon. No stones at the edge of the river where the ground flooded some of the year, and no half-rotten fence posts. This bar would have been dumped there, or fallen, or been dropped in one of the attempted river crossings by the Red Army in the winter or spring of 1944. She knew the stories of the battle for Narva and for the slopes on the far side, at Siivertsi, and on the hillside at Sinimae to the north, then all supplies had to be ferried to the bridgehead across the river, and in winter, and in the cold, and the water high and the current powerful. It had been in the history curriculum at school . . . and she knew of the casualties because the school kids were lined up in front of the memorials on the various anniversaries of the stages of the battle to take Narva town and bypass it. She had a hand on the bar.

  But it was snagged. Kat imagined that the post had been left, then would have been covered in fine silt when the next flood came, then that covering would have flaked off in hot weather and the bar exposed, then covered, then revealed, repeating the pattern for more than seventy years. She had seen him play at being an epileptic, and had seen the broad back of the man who covered him with the rifle, had seen the gloved finger inserted inside the trigger guard, and she had realised what he did when he thrashed, panted, had the froth on his lips. She had moved to her right, behind thicker scrub and tired yellow grass, and the tip of the iron bar had gouged into her face . . . She had never, in her life, used violence. She pulled on it, as hard as she dared.

  Violence had never in serious degree been inflicted on her. She might have sat with the group seeking to reach a pinnacle of opposition by painting a penis on the bridge in front of the Big House, or going topless to a demonstration. Might have talked it through with them – and gone to the Leader for endorsement. Might have argued the case for more posters on a police barracks wall where there was no camera cover to breach their anonymity. They could talk about it for an hour, a day, or a week, and huddle close to the radiators in the café, and might send a new kid out to buy pizza, and take the tops off beer bottles. Talk about it.

  She had her hand on the iron bar, attempted to free it. It was stubbornly held. She had loosened it but the lower part remained in the fine sandy soil, frozen, below the grass and the roots of bushes. Her brother, Nikki, drunk and lounging on the sofa, talking through the alcohol fumes about what he did – hacking for anyone who would pay best – would use the word maskirovka, would boast of the success of the tactics of ‘deception’. The man on the ground, wrists tied, watched by the rifle barrel, had tried to deceive and had won her the opportunity to move to the right, unseen, silent, and then the spike of rust-caked iron had struck her face, fucking nearly taken her eye out. She did not think the group would sanction such a use of force, not without discussion, argument, a weighing of consequences. He, the man who had loved her, had attracted attention to himself in order that she could move, search for the weapon . . . They were together, bonded.

  The debate for Kat: what effort could she use to free the bar? The militiaman – a peasant, stupid, a servant of the régime but cunning and in line for a reward – had left messages on the phone, most of them with respect but also with added impatience, and he waited. The opportunity could not last hours longer, maybe only minutes. The militiaman had resumed his pacing. His back was to her.

  Kat took the chance, dragged on it, used two fists. It came clear. Dirt rose into her face, her shoulders pushed back small branches. She did not know if she was hidden, or whether a part of her body showed. He knew, her man did. He rolled. On his back and then on his front, and again, and a little sobbing cry in his throat, and a choke. The militiaman gazed down on his prisoner. The bar had come free.

  A skeleton hand gripped it. The hand was taken off at the wrist. It would have been the wrist of a Red Army soldier. Blown up by a mortar shell, cut down by machine-gun fire, hidden from sight and clutching at an iron bar as if it might give him help. On a finger of the hand, loose on a bone but not dislodged, was a ring of dulled yellow metal. What her mother still wore, what her father had worn until it was taken off his finger in the mortuary. A soldier who had died in combat, for the Russia he might have loved, might have hated, and with NKVD machine-gunners behind him to make sure that he went forward and then clambered into the barges that were taking them across, under fire. But had been felled in the moments before and had clung in desperation, last moments of his life, to an iron post on which barbed wire had been hung. She was fascinated by it, and the chink of light it made. The hand of mud-smeared bones slid from the bar, lost its grip, and the ring with it – and the ground closing over them.

  She had an iron bar, and a target. The militiaman loomed over her, sometimes moving and sometimes still, oozing power, and had a rifle and a finger inside the trigger guard . . . He would have to tell her, show her the moment: if he called the wrong moment then they were gone, both, as useless as if buried in the silt soil of the river.

  Confusion delayed them. All of the Major’s training in intelligence and the military had been directed at removing chaos from an equation, replacing it with fast analysis and action.

  The alarm had sounded. Shrill bells ringing at the back of the building. From the doorway, with amusement, he had watched the slouched figure ben
t low on the roulette table, the languid moving arms of the girl as she scraped away his chips. He would come out of the same doorway, fall into their arms, offer up his wrists for the manacles to snap on to . . . His sergeant had been nearly certain, almost certain, that this man had been in the supermarket car-park. Same time as Nikki had come there, in the hours before the bomb had taken the roof off the building, had taken many lives of the best, brightest, of their trade: only nearly and only almost certain . . . and the sergeant had been almost certain that a foreigner had been in an adjacent car to that used by Nikki and his sister. He had been considering – when the alarm had sparked – what degree of ‘persuasion’ would yield fast results from an inebriated idiot. Might be a slap and a kick, might be the dropping of his trousers and his underpants and a gloved hand squeezing, might be the sight of the pliers from the repair box at the back of the jeep, and their proximity to his fingernails. Might be the sergeant lighting a cigarette and handing it to the lieutenant and the glowing tip coming close to his testicles, his face, cheeks . . . And they had all started to run, a gaggle of pursuit, towards the back, then had seen him already well down the sloping road that ran alongside the main route to the bridge, and the frontier crossing point. The Major had screamed for his own people to stop. Could not have abandoned them and gone back, alone, to the jeep – did not have the fucking keys. Had grabbed the sergeant by the collar, had halted him, had turned him.

  That was the delay . . . They went down the main drag to the bridge. He had a good view of it.

  Arms out, rifles still slung on the guards’ shoulders. Men, grotesque in size because of their heavy clothing, lumbered into place to intercept a lone runner who weaved in and out of the vehicles going down the hill, coming up it. The Major did not know what orders they had on relevant force to be used: not East Germany and the fence of a quarter of a century before, not the border troops on the Berlin Wall. The Major doubted they would shoot. The target was past the guards but the rhythm of his running was broken and he started to shamble forward crazily as if the alcohol had kicked in. There would be a halfway point on the bridge, there always was. Any bridge that divided them, the Federation and the NATO, had a line to mark the halfway point. The sergeant drove, hit the horn. The barrier was raised. They veered between oncoming lorries and those waiting to go west, they saw pedestrians freeze on the footpath section. They closed on the man . . . In the Major’s mind were old films of long-distance runners, grained and in monochrome, collapsing within sight of a finishing line, might stagger over it and might fall short. They would not catch him.

  He told his sergeant what he should do. The Major had looped his arm on to the sergeant’s shoulders and squeezed hard with his fingers at the man’s neck so that his order would not be ignored. The lieutenant screamed, like a young deer trapped in a snare, and twisted and looked away, frightened to witness it. . . . Or they let him go, allowed him free passage across the line.

  The Major reached inside his unbuttoned tunic for the pistol in the shoulder holster, and then felt the vibration. The nuisance wobble of his phone that had been buried far down in his clothing, moving and irritating. He had the pistol and started to aim and was pitched forward as the sergeant braked, stamped on it, as he had been told. Aimed again. A half dozen paces from where the line would be the man rocked in the road.

  The Major had a steady arm.

  Boot, with a clear view of him, showed no hint of emotion. Might as well have watched a feisty sports competition. He stood forward of the bench, his feet a little apart, and swayed gently on the balls of his feet. His suit, decent tweed, was darkened by the damp on the legs but his overcoat was open and showed the cut of his jacket and waistcoat. The street light above illuminated him. As a seeming afterthought he had straightened his tie in the moment before he had left the bench, and he had the trilby pulled well down over his forehead. His hands in the leather gloves, Gloria’s present at Christmas the year before last, were clasped together in front of his stomach.

  He’d a good sight of the officer.

  The one in front, staggering the last few steps towards the bridge’s centre was – Daff’s voice in his ear – Kristjan. She might, a sign of her stressed nerves, have then embarked on a biography, salient points and irrelevancies, but he waved her to silence. Not interested . . . He reckoned the officer a dozen steps behind the man, aiming.

  What was salient in Boot’s mind was early experiences with Ollie Compton on the Inner German Border, a happy hunting ground of minefields and wire fencing and famished dogs on running wires and watch-towers with machine-guns mounted, and useful cash bonuses paid by the bankrupt régime of the DDR to border troops who successfully brought down a would-be escaper. Boot had seen it once, a wretch on the wire and left hanging upside down for the rest of the day after being shot, and had heard the detonations of the automatic guns triggered by trip-wires that could dismember a man’s body . . . Had also seen at the Berlin crossing point the apprehension of an agent who had so nearly reached freedom. The klaxon still sounded at the far checkpoint. Militiamen were gathered at the barrier. Traffic had stopped. Pedestrians on the walkway had either sprinted for the Estonian end or had turned back and had run towards the Russian side. None stayed to watch, or crouched or lay prone. Boot saw the officer with the raised pistol, and the figure in front of him had now fallen and was on his hands and knees, like a toddler, unable to walk, crawling towards an imaginary line . . . Might have already crossed, might have straddled it, might not yet be there. He reached for Daff’s binoculars, took them, focused them. Handed them back to her. Allowed her to use them.

  Boot murmured, ‘Come on, my boy – your eyes are better than mine, Daff, but I think those are major’s insignia on his shoulder, an FSB major. Get it done with, Don’t piss about now. Shoot. That’s the right thing to do, my boy, best foot forward and shoot.’

  He did as Boot wanted. Even against the cacophony of the klaxon, the shot was loud, clear in the evening air. One shot only and the back of the head seemed to disintegrate. A good shot, Boot would have said, because he knew it was not easy to fire with accuracy with a hand gun at that range and in a state of tension . . . Perhaps he watched an officer who could keep his calm, hold and cosset it.

  Daff swore. ‘Murderer, cold fucking murderer.’

  Not on Boot’s reckoning. ‘A very much better outcome than being grabbed by the ankle and hauled back into their jurisdiction – much better.’

  Daff had her hand on his arm. He remembered her peevish remark earlier, parading her concerns about ‘responsibility’, that sort of irrelevance, but harboured no ill towards her. A useful result because it was now evident that all of the Estonian recruits – ‘pay peanuts and you get monkeys’ – were removed from predatory investigators, as good as if they had all escaped. Probably, as the light faded evening, time to go downstream and wait, watch, for Merc. He was about to turn when he noticed that the Major, in front of his jeep, looked up from the level of the bridge where the life had bled from a fugitive, and his eye would have tracked up the height of the centuries-old bastion, and had alighted on him. Eye contact? Nothing as precise at 200 yards, give or take, but the gaze was held. The officer pulled open his tunic, returned his pistol to the holster and then his fingers flicked quickly at another pocket and a phone was taken out. The officer glanced at it, and Boot no longer figured in his attention. The phone was in the Major’s face, as if he was reading messages, then he was running. He sprinted to the jeep, slapped his man’s back for encouragement, and the young woman, might have been a lieutenant, jumped athletically into the open back seat. The jeep spun, left the body for others to retrieve.

  ‘I think we should be on our way,’ Boot said. ‘God keep you safe, young fellow – do that, God, there’s a good fellow, please.’

  Merc saw it. The militiaman had grabbed at his phone when it rang. At last, a response to his many messages.

  Silly, small things noticed, and they helped form the mosaic of what would pl
ay out. An officer called. The militiaman stiffened his spine and stood tall and barked words that Merc did not understand. He assumed there would be coordinates, the fastest route from whatever was the officer’s starting point. Also there would be back-up, a posse of troops called in. He sensed the pride of the man whose rifle watched over him. Merc knew those bumlickers who would only share news when it would benefit them and would scramble to be noticed. Among the contractors there had been enough who only wanted proximity to a diplomat or a chief executive officer. Bigger matters . . . He did not know where she was.

  Not where, nor her intention, nor her capability. Could not search for her, peer into the fading light, nor could he lift his head, draw back his ears and strain to hear, and identify where she was – if still on her stomach and close. Time running out on them, like the bloody sand in an hourglass and starting to fall slowly and then gathering pace, tumbling down and unstoppable.

  If she were there, he had no way to warn her. The militiaman stared at him. Could not, because of the balaclava, read the mood but the eyes of the man seemed to feast on him, and there was a glance at his wrist as if checking for how much longer he needed to wait. He heard nothing but the wind and surge of the water, and a call from an owl. He steeled himself.

  One chance . . .

  Kat could not see his face, but was aware of a shadow shape on the ground.

  The militiaman waited, restless.

  They might have been ice statues.

  Men made them from floes taken out of the river running through St Petersburg in winter, did the same with frozen bergs on the Svislach river that split Minsk where he had worked before his transfer. The lights of the Major’s jeep lit them. They were two white figures and the snow had layered over their clothing, had settled on their faces and rested on the little hair left exposed. The broken shotgun crooked in the man’s arm was like a theatrical prop. Behind them, to the left, was the farmhouse. No fire pushed smoke up from the chimney and no lights were lit inside. He thought they had been there all day, from the time he had left them after what he considered to be mild roughing. They would not have eaten and not have sheltered from the snow or the sleet or the wind. Behind them, to the right was the barn door, opened. The jeep’s lights threw shadows inside the barn. A dog was curled beside the door, half in and half out, as if loyalty to the old couple had done a deal with the need for self-preservation: it had a look of sheer misery, its head down between its front paws. He thought the dog cowed by what had happened to the pair of them. The Major understood. They were defeated by betrayal. He would not know, did not need to know, what threat or compulsion had exercised on them by the militia sergeant, but it should have been obvious to him that the fugitives had sheltered here, had been protected by the couple; a natural instinct but stupid. A feeble gesture and one likely to bring down retribution. Inside the barn, the animals were huddled, pigs and sheep and cattle, and their arrival would have disturbed the vigil of the stock as they waited to be fed, but nothing had been brought, and the couple had stood together. Shamed, coated in snow, close, he assumed, to hypothermia. He approached.