A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘Yes, Boss.’ Badger wanted to trust, to believe. ‘What is interdiction?’

  A pause. Badger couldn’t see the Boss’s face, and couldn’t imagine why he had been brought outside to shiver.

  The answer came. ‘Latin stuff – something about hitting communication lines in a military context. But I think you’re asking, Badger, what this plan means for our target, and what your role in this is leading up to. Am I about right there? A very fair question and one that deserves answering.’

  ‘What it’s about, yes.’

  ‘I’m being very frank, Badger, and probably going past my remit. But where you’re going and what you’re doing entitles you to total honesty. We hope to track Rashid Armajan to a place where we can approach him. We can’t do it where he is.’

  ‘Have I been naïve, Boss?’

  ‘Not at all. With your help, Badger, we get up close. That’s an approach. You understand?’

  They’d bung him, cart him to a safe-house and turn him. The Engineer would sing. ‘I understand. Thank you.’

  ‘That was indiscreet, and I’d get my wrist slapped. It’s time to get back inside, and tomorrow’s a hell of a day. What a dreadful wind.’

  ‘You did absolutely right, Mr Gibbons.’ He and the Major were in the hall, out of earshot.

  ‘An untruth, but justified. He seemed to swallow “approach”. ’

  The Major murmured in his ear, ‘He’s a young man, hasn’t been where killing and mayhem are. Maybe he’s good at his job, but he’s not hardened in the way the older man is. He’s going to be staring through a ’scope and binoculars at a target and he’ll bond with him after a fashion. They all do. He’ll get caught up in the trivia of the target’s life, and the medical condition of the wife. There are kids, aren’t there? He’ll see them. He’ll get to be, by proxy, a part of that family . . . at home, at his work. He’s looking at a man who’ll be arrested and sent to gaol. We’re talking ‘interdiction’, zapping the bastard. Our Badger might not cope too well with that. You did right.’

  ‘Which was why I did it. Serious business, killing a chap, don’t you know.’ A smile flickered at Gibbons’s mouth.

  Some days it was hard for him to remember his name. That day, his identity hovered between Gabbi who worked, occasionally, as an investigator into tax avoidance from an office near the Ministry of Finance, and Zak, and Yitzak, which was how the sailors on a freighter had known him, as well as the embassy people who had seen him out of the airport at Catania, in Sicily. He had many names. In the last year he had used Amnon, Saul, Peter, David and Jakob, and had seemed to have many places of work. On occasions his hair was blond but it could also be jet black or mouse, and cut short or topped with a flowing wig. The debrief would be the next day, and he had gone home and would sleep until he was woken by the clatter of keys in the door, the tap of her stick and her footfall.

  He had been met at a military airfield. No trumpets. He had come down the short steps of an executive twin-engine plane and the unit’s driver had had the front passenger door open. The woman, in an adjutant’s role, was on the apron, her hand out for the passport with his last, now discarded, name and the photograph with the light hair. She had also taken from him the unused float for incidental expenses on Malta, and a mobile phone that had been operational. She had returned his own and asked if he was well. He’d said he was, and she had told him at what time he was expected at the unit in the morning. He had been driven to their home in the suburb of Ramat Gan. He’d made one call on his own mobile and had left voicemail for Leah, telling her he was back.

  In the apartment – one living room, one decent bedroom, a small bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen – he sprawled on the sofa with the bamboo frame. He had eaten yoghurt from the refrigerator and some cheese, and drunk juice. He might read later if he had slept and she hadn’t come back from her desk at the defence ministry in the Hakira district. On the stairs to his second-floor door he had met Solly Stein and his wife, Miriam. They would have noted he was back and would have known that the apartment had been empty for four days. They would have thought he had been away on Revenue business, chasing a fat-cat crook who was – perhaps – a politician. The apartment was always empty when he was abroad because Leah slept at her mother’s. Solly Stein did not know, never would, that the hand of their neighbour across the second-floor landing, the one Miriam held as they’d talked briefly – the weather, the price of milk – had the previous day fired two killing shots into the head of a Hezbollah strategist. If they had known, she would have kissed his cheeks.

  He did not endure agonies of conscience as he lay on the sofa. He never had. Nor was he cold, unfeeling. He had been told that the resident psychiatrist attached to the unit regarded him as unique among his colleagues. Without remorse, rabid xenophobia, regret or triumphalism: like a man who worked in an abattoir and earned a monthly wage. An enigma, and not understood, but depended upon. There were some in clinics and others who beat their women, and a few who thought themselves so above the law that they hit banks and were now locked up.

  He heard the tap of her stick against the door, must have dozed but was immediately awake. He rolled off the sofa and his bare feet slithered across the tiled floor. He heard the key go into the lock. She knew what he did, but never spoke of it, or of her own work at Camp Rabin, in Military Intelligence. She had been blinded in Lebanon by the shrapnel scattered in the explosion of an Iranian-built missile. The wounds inflicted were beyond the skill of surgeons, and she lived in a world of black and grey shadows. They hugged and the love shone.

  ‘You’re good?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I brought supper.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  They clung and kissed.

  ‘Are you home for long – if you can answer?’

  It was possible, in what she did at the ministry, that she helped choose the targets allocated to him. She might have worked on the selection of individuals of Hamas, Hezbollah or the Fateh Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade who were thought of sufficient importance.

  ‘Perhaps, and perhaps not. Soon I will know. I am home tonight.’

  They were lovers, and she was Leah. She could not have said what name, in their bed, he would answer to.

  The pool in the Zone had a bad end-of-season look about it. If she had been a holidaymaker and paying good money to lie beside it, with her book, she would have thought the place was up for sale, or that the maintenance money had run out, or that this was yesterday’s destination.

  There was a better-kept pool in the embassy’s garden but she preferred the dowdiness of this one. The weeds that grew between the tiled and paved surfaces gave it more of an office feel and negated any guilt at apparently skiving off for the day. She was happy, anyway, to be far from her office in the secure section, distanced from the interminable gossip of the diplomats and their support staff. Her guards were not permitted at the pool and had to sit in an air-conditioned shed by the entrance to that sector of the Zone. The book, actually, was interesting.

  On one side of her, quietly snoring, a towel across his face, was Hamfist, his flak vest beside him with the rucksack in which his gear was stowed, and an AK-47 assault rifle, with a magazine loaded and another taped to it. Her mobile lay on her thigh, the back smeared with sun cream. She took breaks from the book to make calls and check texts. Hamfist was a Scot, a ‘clumsy sod’ – as she called him – with any refined equipment other than one that fired a high-velocity shell. He had been in a Scottish infantry unit, had done nine years that included a spell in al-Amarah up on Highway 6. He had come through a mild load of post-traumatic stuff – better than the clap – but civilian life had not welcomed him. Instead he had signed for Proeliator Security and close protection for a Six officer. She thought he took more pride in wearing the newly washed and ironed T-shirt with the logo of the Jones Boys Band than almost anything else. She read about the birds in the marshes, on either side of Highway 6, that stretched in places to the border dividing
Iran from Iraq. Pretty birds, majestic birds, endangered birds, some so small she’d need a telescope to spot them.

  On her other side was Corky, not from the south-west of Ireland and County Cork but from the Andersonstown quarter of west Belfast, but there was no logic in acquired military names. He had been mentioned in despatches for his reaction in an ambush in Basra seven years back, and was in awe of her, but he allowed her to help him choose birthday and Christmas gifts for a son in Colchester aged eleven, and a daughter in Darlington, aged five. Her phone vibrated, and she raised her eyebrows – gold, the colour of her hair – lifted it, read the message and cleared it. She had organised the paperwork by which part of his salary was paid by Proeliator Security to each of the mothers. He had the same gear as Hamfist except that his rifle was an M16A1, with a muzzle velocity of 3,200 feet per second and a catastrophic hydrostatic shock effect on tissue when it hit, which Cork swore by. He wore a rumpled T-shirt, camouflage trousers, big wraparound shades, his boots, and was always a tousled mess.

  Somewhere behind her, out of view, Harding and Shagger would be on plastic chairs or hunkered on their haunches, ready to go. She knew she merely had to hitch a leg off the lounger and drop the book – Field Guide to the Birds of the Middle East – into her bag, on top of Birds of Iraq, and they would be on their feet. By the time she had draped the towel around her legs and knotted it at the waist, all four would be wearing their flak vests and rucksacks, with their weapons in their hands. When she stood and lifted the bag, Shagger would come forward with her own vest and hold it up so that she could shrug into it. When she quit Baghdad, at the end of this show, took the Six shuttle flight down to Kuwait, then headed for the Towers, she reckoned they would be devastated. Not her problem, but it nagged. She thought often – with relief or ruefully – that the Jones Boys ensured her celibacy. It would be a rare bastard who ambled towards her and began a chat-up routine: Hello there. Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by you again? Or, Excuse me, I’ve left my wallet behind. Do you mind if we share an armoured personnel carrier home? If an officer, American or British, Latvian or Australian, a diplomat or an administrator, had tried to get his hand in her pants, most likely he’d have ended in a Casevac tent. There were times when she ached for—

  She had long legs, tight waist, fair bumps, pretty mouth and a good sun-kissed complexion, but no man. She called quietly, ‘Guys, can you come over? Guys, please.’

  She had the four around her. ‘Don’t get me wrong, this is serious and not bull. We’re concerned about the survival prospects of the Basra Reed-warbler – smart name is Acrocephalus griseldis – the Black-tailed Godwit, the Greater Spotted Eagle, the Sacred Ibis, Threskiornis aethiopicus, and a few others, how they’re dealing with drought and what effect renewed oil exploration in their habitat will have. Two supposed surveillance experts are taking off tonight and will hit here tomorrow. The ecogame is the cover. Questions?’

  There never were. They relied on her to tell them what they needed to know, and she gave them more than was necessary, which showed her trust in them. In their world, and hers, trust was a big factor, sometimes the biggest.

  ‘And there’s people we have to see and bits of paper we have to collect. What do I think of it? Doesn’t matter. We’re back, they’re forward and over the frontier, at what you guys call the ‘sharp end’. We’re supposed to be their support, but easier said than done. Rather them than me. It’s all a bit old-fashioned, a bit of a shout from the past – but I’m up for it. Anyway, if the birds get oil on their wings, they’re bollocksed.’

  She went to get dressed in the female changing area, where they wouldn’t follow her, and now felt challenged. She sensed she was heading, roller-coaster, towards an end-game more hazardous than anything she had experienced before, and that the risk factor had ratcheted.

  The piper played what he assumed was a lament. Their host and his wife were on the front steps. In their foreheads, the positioning of their eyes and the push of their jaws, Foxy Foulkes thought he could read something of the grandson in the photograph. The old man and woman had shaken hands as they’d left. By chance Foxy was last out of the door, and they had gripped his. Might have been because he was the last, or that small morsels had dropped from the table and they knew a little of what was planned in the Iraqi marshlands. Maybe intuition told them that in their home an act of revenge was plotted against someone, anyone, who had worked to kill the grandson who might one day have taken over this pile of damp grey stone. It was grim stuff that the piper played. A light rain fell on his shoulders, and there was a stag in the field that seemed forlorn, lost. The dogs ignored the helicopter and chased furiously after crows that flew away from them. The grandmother held Foxy’s hand and shook it. Foxy didn’t know whether he should thank them for their hospitality or . . . They willed him forward. A murmur of ‘God keep you safe’ from her and a growl from him: ‘Remember us, and go after them wherever you find them.’ It was all theatre, had a majesty to it – decayed but there – and the piper’s cheeks puffed with his efforts and the dirge was fit for a funeral but went mostly unheard as the rotors gathered speed.

  He raised his voice: ‘We’ll do what we can.’

  It was rare for Foxy Foulkes to feel that his words, drowned by the helicopter’s engine and the piper’s efforts, were utterly vacuous. Felt it then, could have bitten his lip. What he thought of as banal was a beacon to the couple. He saw their eyes blaze and wetness formed in the grandfather’s. She stood tall and kissed his cheek – roughly shaven that morning in tepid water. He freed his hands and scurried past the piper. The crewman waited on the lawn for him, near to an old rose bed. The others had boarded. He thought the American would have paid in cash for the privilege of using the house and that there would be no paper trail. The helicopter’s flight plans would have been listed as ‘training exercises’ and the flying logs would have perpetuated the lies. There would have been, Foxy realised, elderly men and women the length and breadth of the country who mourned grandsons cut down by the bombs left at the side of a straight road traversing a desert, men and women who had lost children, young women whose husbands had come home in coffins, and children taken to full military funerals who had no father. He was as trapped as if they had taken him to a pathology theatre at the John Radcliffe in Oxford where the corpses were brought, to the military hospital in Birmingham or the Headley Court rehabilitation clinic. He could never have refused. The crewman put a gloved fist under Foxy’s arm and heaved. He flopped into the cabin.

  The others were already belted to their seats, and he saw the looks of impatience because he had delayed them – for a minute and a half.

  He wondered what he would tell Ellie, what sort of phone call was permitted, how long and how detailed . . . where the kit would come from, and what the duration of the operation would be. He knew so little and there was an almost infuriating calm about the little beggar sitting across the cabin from him. They were airborne, and there was a view of the once grand house, the couple on the steps who waved, the castle keep, the grey sea, the grey rocks and the shingle beach. Then they smacked into the grey clouds – and the little beggar showed no sign of letting the lack of information fester in him. Of course, he hadn’t been there.

  The helicopter shook and the pilot made no concessions to the comfort of his passengers. If ‘Badger’ Baxter had been to Iraq, he might not have been slumped in his seat, apparently relaxed about close support, how near they were expected to get and – Foxy’s knowledge of the language raced in his mind – what the quality of the directional audio would be. Had he been able to reach across the width of the cabin, he might have kicked the little beggar’s shin and wiped the calm off his face. It was his language skills that had done for him.

  They powered through dense cloud. The Cousin and the Friend talked into each other’s ears, protectors lifted. Foxy could not read their averted lips. The Boss, Gibbons, sat upright, hands tight on the frame of the canvas seat. Foxy met Badge
r’s glance. Hadn’t intended to. Was rewarded with a brief smile, as if they were equals and shared authority, responsibility. He wouldn’t tolerate that. They were not equals.

  He shivered. Couldn’t help himself. He hoped the thick coat wrapped round him would mask it. He shivered at the thought of the reed beds, the water in the lagoons and channels, the heat and the hatred – and saw again the faces, some bloodied but not pleading, some bruised but not begging, in the interrogation rooms of the Joint Forward Intelligence Team. God help them if they were taken because of the hatred that had been incubated in that fucking place.

  He was walking with his daughter when the mobile phone warbled. He let Magda’s hand go, reached into an inner pocket, saw the number and did not recognise it. Few people had his personal phone details, and the majority of those he worked with did not. It was a way to protect his privacy. Had the number been generally available his phone would have controlled his life. He answered.

  ‘Yes? Steffen . . .’ There was a pause. A wrong number? He spoke again. ‘This is Steffen.’

  It annoyed him. He was a busy man, sometimes almost overwhelmed by the volume of work that his success and reputation brought him, and he valued the moments he spent with his daughter, who was seven. She had been talking about her day at school, the art lesson.

  His own number was given by the caller, but not in German: the man spoke in the Farsi of his past. The caller waited.

  He repeated, in German. ‘This is Steffen, yes.’

  The caller persisted, again in Farsi. Was he not Soheil, the Star? Was his name not Soheil? He called himself Steffen. He was married to Lili, who had been a theatre nurse at the Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf. From the day of their wedding, he had cut his links with an old world and his history. Lili and her parents had expected it of him, and his patients did not wish to be treated – at a time of personal crisis – by a specialist who was obviously an Iranian immigrant. He had a pale complexion and his German was excellent; the habits and culture of the new identity had been easy to acquire. His wife was blonde and pretty, and his daughter was not obviously mixed-race. They had settled well into the prosperous society of the city they had chosen as their home. His daughter tugged at his arm, wanted his attention.