A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  She said to Harding, ‘That was probably good enough for today, and maybe for tomorrow, but they’ll be back. I don’t think in a couple of days they’d manage enough links to unravel it at Baghdad or Basra level. Three days, maximum four, would push against the limits.’

  He nodded. Truth was, she liked him more than the others. The original quiet American, he spoke rarely but, of them all, he was the one Abigail trusted with her life.

  She said, ‘I doubt the Fox and the Badger will be in much shape after three or four days.’

  Was it flawed? Two men who might have been inserted too late and find the bird flown, or had gone in too early and would be unable to sustain the watch. They might be there too long and show out. She had liked the scrapping between them. There was no way other than to have men on their stomachs, peering through lenses with earphones clamped to their skulls. It couldn’t be done with satellites on the electronics in the drones. It would be their shout. The mission depended on them. She had thought the antipathy, at each other’s throats, more likely to raise the competitive streak that would dominate their relationship. Too cosy, and they wouldn’t be efficient. It was personal to Abigail Jones because she had examined Badger’s bruising and had worked a leg over his pelvis to see it better. He had said something about the smell of her body, then the taste, and she had done as much stripping as he had. She had made a complication where there should have been none. She always kept a couple in her wallet, and when she had gone at first light to clear her system the condom had gone into the hole with their rubbish for burial. All a complication, but Abigail Jones did not do regret.

  It couldn’t last more than three or four days.

  He met his wife, Catherine, in a coffee shop on Regent Street.

  She told him what was in the bag. Two shirts, three pairs of underpants, four pairs of socks, and a new pair of pyjamas. Len Gibbons thanked her, awkward – he had been since they’d first clapped eyes on each other thirty-five or so years earlier.

  He couldn’t tell her how it was going. She could ask him nothing about what kept him in London, or why he needed changes of clothing. He couldn’t tell her how long he would be there. She couldn’t ask when he would need replacements and whether he would need another suit brought up, heavy- or lightweight. Nothing to say about the garden because of the weather, and she hadn’t heard from either of the children, both students. The job ruled him, not that it had treated him well. Another woman, in her place, might have harboured doubts about her husband’s staying up in London and sharing an office with Sarah, the faithful assistant. She didn’t – had actually said so last year. Catherine Gibbons thought that, most days, he didn’t notice what his assistant wore, probably hadn’t registered what she, his wife, had dressed in. She was a widow to the Service. They sipped coffee and nibbled shortbread. He looked at his watch twice, and flushed when she caught him at it.

  Naughty of her, but she challenged him: ‘Important, Len, is it?’

  He surprised her, didn’t change the subject or sit in silence. ‘Important as anything over my desk in years, and we have no idea how it will end or where. We’ve people out at the end of a line and . . . Does that tell you anything?’

  Her eyes were bright and mischievous: ‘Is it legal?’

  He didn’t bat her away. ‘Most would say it’s illegal. No one would say it’s legal. A few would say they don’t bloody care . . . Thanks for coming up.’

  She persisted: ‘Those people at the end of the line, do they know whether it’s legal or not?’

  ‘They know what they need to know. Yes, I appreciate your coming up.’

  He left her, had already outstayed the time he should have been away from his phone. He knew Badger and Foxy had been dumped, would be moving forward towards their lie-up and soon be at the border – which was, sort of, a defining moment. Legal or illegal, he didn’t bloody care – as long as it stayed deniable. It would be a huge step, as big as anything he had handled since he was a ‘greenhorn’. Should it have been asked of them?

  Bit bloody late, Len, to be worrying on that.

  He was like a donkey refusing to go any further, its hoofs stuck into the mud. He thought of Foxy as a stubborn, thick-skinned ass, but the guy had stopped, and he was a hell of a weight – heavier when the momentum was lost. Badger swore softly. He tried to take the next step but couldn’t tug Foxy forward. He turned. His face was in the older man’s, whose lips moved.

  There was more water ahead of them, but they had stopped on a small raised platform of mud and rotted vegetation. Foxy’s right trouser leg was caught on a strand of barbed wire. His lips kept moving, but Badger couldn’t hear what he was saying. He had been thinking about Alpha Juliet – and that their approach through the shallow water and scattered reed beds had been about the most feeble and unprofessional he had ever attempted.

  Foxy’s lips were still moving. Badger bent and freed the trouser leg, tearing it. The lips moved.

  ‘If you’ve something to say, then say it.’

  ‘Nothing to say to you.’

  ‘Who to, then?’

  ‘Myself.’

  ‘How knackered you are, and unfit? Not up for it?’

  ‘Something you wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Foxy said, ‘Try, smart-arse, “Halae shomaa chetoreh?” Answer, khoobam mersee. I asked how you are and you told me you’re well and thanked me . . . We’re at the border, and there’s something called the Golden Hour, which you wouldn’t know about. We’re going to stop and rest for an hour, Golden or not. Got me?’

  ‘We don’t have an hour.’

  ‘Then you can go on ahead, and when you find a friendly policeman you can say, “Raah raa beman neshaan daheed mehmaan-khaaneh, otaaq baraayeh se shab”, but it’s unlikely he’ll drop you off at a hotel where you can book a room for three nights. It’s – don’t curl your lip at me – Farsi, which is spoken from where we crossed that wire. It’s why I’m here: I speak the language. You’re just the fucking pack animal that helps me to get close to the target. I matter, you don’t. If I want to rest then—’

  ‘Then you rest.’

  It was a quick movement. A twist of the shoulders, a half-swivel of the hip and a step to the side. Badger extricated himself from Foxy’s weight.

  He took a pace forward, then another. He was over the wire – would have given a hell of a lot to have Ged alongside him, quiet, authoritative, more than able to take his share. He spoke not a word of that language, and neither did Ged. There was a channel in front, sliced through the reed banks, and open water beyond it. He thought it would be a kilometre and a half to where the cross had been on the GPS screen, their destination. He detested the man he was shackled with, but Badger had no Farsi. He took another half-dozen steps, stopped and heaved off the bergen. He tilted his knee, rested the pack on it, out of the water, and rummaged. He found the packaging, ripped out the plastic inflatable and fired the air canister. It hissed, grew and floated.

  He worked the bergen onto his shoulders again, turned and beckoned to Foxy. The heat blistered up from the water, and the gillie suit was one more burden. He didn’t know how much more of his strength he could depend on – but he was not about to show weakness. Foxy came to him. Another gesture, for Foxy to get into the dinghy. The little craft – not much bigger than a child’s on a beach – bucked under his weight. Badger lifted off Foxy’s bergen and dumped it on the man’s lap. There was a length of nylon rope, which he slipped across his shoulder and pulled hard. He walked, skirting the channel’s edge. The water was level with his knees. They went by a collapsed watchtower, which would have been felled three decades before. Two of the wooden legs were out of the water and half of the platform. They rounded a sunken assault barge.

  He asked, from side of mouth, ‘What’s the Golden Hour?’

  ‘You want to know?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have asked if—’

  ‘It’s army speak. It’s the time the back-up should take to reach
an FOB – that’s a forward operating base – when it comes under sustained attack and risks being overrun. The men know that back-up will reach them within the hour, by land or by helicopter. It’s the pact between the military units, an article of faith. At the FOB they have to hunker down, hang on in there, and know that within sixty minutes the cavalry will be coming over the horizon. That’s the Golden Hour – there’s other uses, like getting treatment to the wounded, but that’s the relevant one.’

  ‘And her and her lads, they’d get to us inside an hour?’

  Almost droll from Foxy, like he enjoyed it. Like he had hold of the balls and squeezed them. ‘Do you want it gift-wrapped? Grow up, young ’un.’

  ‘Meaning?’ There might have been a tremor in Badger’s voice, but he swallowed hard and hoped it was hidden.

  ‘They’d get to where that watchtower was, and the wire – the border. They wouldn’t cross it. That’s how far they’d come forward in the Golden Hour, not a metre further. They won’t cross into Iran. They won’t discharge firearms at personnel inside Iran. They’ll lift us out from behind the border but won’t come in and get us. They’ll be there within the hour, was the promise. Maybe now you understand why I was reluctant to take the next step – and why only an idiot would rush on. Got me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘God . . . Did you take it all on trust? Didn’t you think of asking one important question? Like “Where’s the back-up?” ’

  ‘Took it on trust.’

  He started again to pull the nylon rope, and the water deepened. It was at the top of his thighs, clammy in his groin. In England, on operations, the back-up was never more than ten minutes away. Here, to hold out for the Golden Hour, they would have to retreat to the border, and there they would have handguns, one each with three magazines, gas, fists and boots. It had an emptiness to it, ‘take on trust’, that echoed in his head.

  ‘I asked. It mattered to me because I’ve a wife . . . Didn’t you ask that woman, the clever bitch?’

  ‘No.’

  The van was driven into the car park at the rear of the hostel, and a car followed it. To both drivers, it seemed a desolate place of stained, weathered concrete and – late morning – it was deserted. Most of the windows had the blinds up but no interior light on; a few had the blinds down. They might have wondered whether this anonymous block, with no name, only a street number, was the correct destination, but a woman came out of the doors in part of a police uniform, which matched where they were supposed to be. The door clattered shut, and was self-locking. The van driver was sharp enough to register the difficulty and called to her.

  He’d brought a car back. And?

  He’d need somewhere secure to leave the keys.

  He had a name, Daniel Baxter.

  Was she supposed to have heard of him?

  He’d kick the door down, if he had to, to find somewhere to leave the keys safely. The policewoman grumbled but took them. They were attached to a ring with a picture of a badger’s head. She punched the door’s code and dropped them into one for each resident’s locked boxes, and was thanked. She ran for her own wheels.

  The van driver said to his colleague, ‘I don’t know where he’s gone, Baxter, but I’d bet my best shirt that nobody here’s even noticed he’s away.’

  The consultant came out of the doorway, hoisted his umbrella and started to run. He saw the man. His principal theatre was in Hamburg, but he also had a clinic in Lübeck, at the University Hospital and Medical School, with scanning equipment, where he could see patients. His was a new block, but there were many old buildings on the campus that had stood for more than seventy years. On the far side of the street was the cafeteria to which he liked to slip away in the middle of the day for a baguette and coffee and to glance through the day’s paper – the Morgenpost. The football reports cleared his mind before he returned for the afternoon. The man, not a German, was in front of the cafeteria.

  It had been raining all morning. If the consultant had kept running, heading for the café’s door, he would have had either to sidestep or collide with the man. He slowed in the middle of the street and found himself anchored there. A delivery van hooted at him. The man had no umbrella, no raincoat. Water glistened on his short hair and the shoulders of his jacket. The shirt under the jacket had no collar and was buttoned at the throat, and the cheeks were swarthy. He thought the man was from the east, perhaps Baluchistan province. The trousers were baggy at the knees and the shoes dulled by wet.

  The man had the appearance of a guest-worker in the northern German city. He could have been a bus driver, a plumber, a construction-site worker, or a book-keeping clerk in a warehouse – and would have been a ranking intelligence officer, working under diplomatic cover. He was rooted in the road, and a car swerved past to his left. A trio of students on bicycles trilled bells at him. The man had dressed, the consultant realised, to emphasise the old world of an orphan in Tehran, and of a student who had prospered because the state had paid his way.

  There was a smile from the man, as if they were old friends. He came across the street with his arms outstretched. He ducked under the canopy of the consultant’s umbrella and kissed Soheil on both cheeks – not Steffen. There was a whiff of a spicy sauce on the man’s breath and a hint of nicotine. He would have been an official of Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Amniat-e Keshvar, and any official of VEVAK was to be feared. He had not told Lili of the call, and through that morning he had thought only twice of the contact.

  He blurted, ‘I’ve just come out for a sandwich. I have little time, and—’

  ‘I have driven from Berlin and you have – distinguished Soheil – as much time as I need you to have. So, do we stand here and cause an accident or go somewhere? Your office? Can’t someone go out and fetch coffee for you, juice for me, some food? Will you entertain me in the rain or in the dry?’

  Would he take an Iranian intelligence officer into his sanctum? Hang up a wet jacket beside a radiator? Introduce him? My friend here is from the Ministry of Intelligence and State Security in Tehran. Everybody knows – don’t they? – that I’m not really German, that I’m Iranian by birth. My education was subsidised by the Ministry of Health in Iran, and now the debt has been called in. They want a favour from me. Please, make him feel at home and bring him juice and a sandwich – salad with fish would be best – and see if his shoes need yesterday’s newspaper in the toecaps. He took the man’s elbow and led him towards the café.

  There was a table by the window, and three chairs. They took two and the official kicked away the third so they had the table to themselves. From the wet on the man’s face, hair and jacket, the consultant thought he had waited for him for at least a half-hour, and knew he would have stayed there all day if necessary. No appointment had been made, but that screwed the pressure tighter.

  He brought the tray with coffee and juice, a sausage baguette for himself and another with salad and fish. The man was reaching into his pocket and a cigarette packet emerged. The consultant – Soheil or Steffen – hissed that smoking was forbidden on all the university sites.

  The man smiled. ‘We can bring the patient at any time now.’

  He was known for his cool head, and was said to be as sure as any in the big Hamburg hospital if he was faced with potential catastrophe in theatre. He stammered that he had not yet had the chance to check the availability of facilities. The stammer became meandering waffle: he did not know what was required, would not know until he saw the patient, had read the case history and examined the scans. The man let him finish. He might have fought, called a bluff, but he didn’t dare.

  What he did dare was to ask, ‘My patient, who is he?’

  The smile was laughter. ‘Who? We have not yet decided on a name for them.’

  The man took the consultant’s hand. As a surgeon he was reputed to be slick and fast, which kept anaesthetic times to a minimum and lessened the dangers of internal bleeding. Now the pressure on his fingers showed him how vulnerable his t
alent was.

  ‘I will see the patient.’

  ‘I didn’t doubt it.’

  ‘And I will look into the availability of theatre and scan equipment. I know we are heavily booked, but I will look into it.’

  ‘You will do what is necessary.’

  His hand was freed. He was given a card. The man’s baguette was finished, his own not started. The juice glass was empty, and his coffee cooling. They could come with a hammer, force his hand onto a table, or one of the low walls around the canals of Lübeck, and break every bone. They could destroy him. The man stood up. The printed card had a first name only on it, with the address and numbers of the embassy in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. The man put euros on the table, as if it would sully him to accept the consultant’s hospitality, and slipped out through the door into the rain.

  Back in his small clinic, the consultant checked the availability of scanners in Lübeck and the theatre in Hamburg. Then a patient was shown in. He forced a smile. His daughter had a toy marionette: he understood the way it danced to its handler’s tune. If they had not yet determined the identity of the patient it was a security matter, sensitive . . . He thought his life teetered as a chasm yawned.

  It had been a day like many others. He had finished the debrief – had enjoyed the session with the psychologist – and had been shown a file that told him little. Then he had walked out of the building into the winter sunshine of the Mediterranean, pleasant and clean, and had gone to eat on his own.