When he left, the location of the hide would have been cleansed. He had used reed fronds to brush around where the hide had been, smoothing out boot and handprints, then scattered the reeds they’d used for cover. He’d gone over the footfall into the reed beds, the clear ground that led over the rim where he was now and down to the water. The microphone was buried in mud and the length of the cable had been retrieved. The bird’s carcass was beached in front of him.
There was nothing more he could do.
It had gone well – well enough for the spats between himself and Foxy to have been dismissed – and now it was worse than anything imaginable. Foxy taken. He would talk, of course he would. The screams he had heard said that Foxy would talk. In a week’s time, or two weeks, Badger would be in his room at the police hostel and the TV would be on in the corner, half hidden behind a hillock of kit, and he would hear the voice, and look up, and Foxy’s face would be on the screen. He would hear Foxy’s confession in a flat, rehearsed voice, and would remember the screams. The screams said he would talk.
Didn’t like him, did he? Never had – not that, now, it mattered much.
Foxy could barely see. The swelling under and above his eyes had almost closed off his vision. Difficult for him to hear anything because his ears had been beaten and sound was dulled. But he was lucid and could analyse the pain. The cigarettes were worst. The beatings were repetitive and taking their toll of him. What had made him scream was when the cigarettes scorched his skin. Each time it was done he had wet himself. They were the worst because his eyes could pick up the flash of the match and his nose could smell the smoke and he could make out the descent of the hand that held the cigarette. He had started to scream before the fag’s tip had touched him.
An image came into his mind, was clear, then hazed and faded. It was of a small, cramped-up guy who had been brought to speak to them in the base outside Basra. He had been an expert on SERE, American. He wore US combat fatigues and had a flash on his left arm. It showed a shield and a double-bladed military knife, vertical, that cut two lengths of barbed wire. The man said, in a deliberate, far South accent, that the symbol was of Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape through the wire barricades of the enemy’s gaols and territory. He had gestured towards the shield, and his right lower arm and hand had been missing, replaced with a multi-purpose hook.
None of the Brits had come into the lecture hall if they were off-duty; the only ones there were happy enough to have a minor diversion from their work. The others, who were resting or in the canteen, hadn’t thought it worth their time. Foxy had been at the back of the small lecture hall and had listened, half awake; like most of them he had not rated it likely that he would face a situation where he needed to know how to Survive, Evade, Resist and Escape. The start was clear: the man, the shield insignia, the hook, and the introduction by a British officer, and the story of how a man, now in his mid-fifties and therefore a veteran, had lost an arm three decades earlier and learned enough lessons from it to have been kept on in the military well past all normal retirement dates.
The next part of the memory was hazy. Something about being the number-two flier in an F-4 Phantom and hit by surface-to-air near Hanoi, limping back and getting close to the DMZ, then having to bale out, and being captured with a broken arm and escaping before the local medics had fixed the damage. He’d been with the air-force pilot, walking and getting gangrene, then the pilot, using a sliver of glass from a broken bottle, washed in a stream, had amputated at the wrist. They had come through.
The guy was a primary expert in his field, but an audience had been pressed into attending and had thought what he said irrelevant to life in the base. What had faded was what the guy with the hook had said. Foxy struggled for recall, and watched for the fucking cigarette packet to be dragged out of the pocket.
The goon would lurch towards him, drag up his head, get a handhold on his hair or ear, then use the fist on his face.
Foxy struggled to remember what the SERE guy had said, but the memories were gone. The goon, Mansoor, limped. He could give no indication that he understood a word of Farsi. Nor could he give any hint that he had watched the house and listened to conversations. He was in the business of buying time.
The time between each cigarette seemed the most important measure. Not the hands of a clock or watchface, but the time between the last cough on the cigarette, then it being dropped and stamped on, and the next brought out from the pack, put in the mouth, the match scraping the box, sometimes failing to ignite, and the delay while another was pulled out. For fuck’s sake, Foxy, not a fucking laugh. Get out of this fucking place and apply for the franchise to build a decent factory in these parts for the manufacture of good-quality matches, By Appointment to the Ayatollah. A business opportunity – for fuck’s sake, Foxy. The goon had a bad chest and had had, also, a bad wound.
Much had been lost, but not the logic. The view Foxy had of him was difficult through swollen eyelids. The goon leaned on the table and gazed down at his prey, seeming to consider how next to inflict pain and win answers. The pages in the pad stayed clean, the pencils unused. Logic told Foxy that a military casualty was posted away and out of sight. No army unit wanted disabled men hobbling about the garrison. One had ended up with the work of overseeing the security of a bomb-maker, was posted in Nowheresville, off the map, and forgotten. Good name for him: ‘Backwater Boy’. The Backwater Boy wasn’t stupid, was switched on enough to pick up whatever signs had been left for him. He had made the trap and left it on a hair trigger. Foxy had gone into it, led by his bloody chin. Logic said, also, that Mansoor, the Backwater Boy, had been tardy in calling for back-up and the big fellows from Headquarters. He wanted to book into the limelight, courtesy of a prisoner and pages filled with confession. He might have allowed vanity to cloud good sense. But they would come. In the morning, they’d be there. He’d bought a little time, but didn’t see how he could buy enough – needed a sackload of it.
Questions . . . Who was he?
The struggling English with a pupil’s accent . . . What was his name?
Temper rising . . . What was his mission?
And logic said – because the big fellows were not already there – that he would be sweating on his failure. It didn’t help him. It achieved confusion and scrambled clarity. Foxy clung to his silence. There didn’t seem to be an alternative. He couldn’t believe that any crap about being a bird-fancier, an anthropologist or an eco-scientist would carry weight. He’d been caught floundering in darkness close to the home of a security target, wearing a camouflage gillie suit, designed for a sniper or for rural surveillance. He didn’t know for how long he could bottle the admissions.
Not long . . . He was naked except for his socks. His arms were knotted behind his back; a rope shackled an ankle to a wall ring. He had wet himself and lay in a pool of it. Mucous stuff dribbled from his backside, and among the mosquito bites and tick sores there were the new burn marks from the cigarettes.
The packet came out, was shaken, the filter ends bouncing up . . .
Foxy cringed away and hugged the wall, twisting his stomach to keep his privates from the goon. He tried to remember what the man with the insignia on his arm – the knife and the split barbed wire – had said of Resistance. He could not, and struggled.
. . . and the filter went between the lips. The matchbox was out. Foxy felt the scream welling. He was pressed hard against the wall, which gave him no sanctuary. The match flared and the cigarette was lit. The glow came, the smoke billowed, and Foxy saw that the man panted, with anger, tiredness and frustration. He came forward and the bad leg trailed on the floor. There was rage in the eyes. The man, Mansoor, crouched. There was no pity. A big drag on the cigarette and the tip burned. Foxy didn’t have the strength to fight, couldn’t worm clear.
The hand came low. Foxy screamed before the pain, and the scream still had a voice when the pain flushed in him. He didn’t think the scream was heard, and didn’t care.
/> He’d come late, bad traffic on the road and a meeting that had overrun. The rain had been sluicing on the path. Ellie had shrugged, explained, and he did what was asked of him.
She’d told him where Foxy had stacked the logs when they’d been delivered last August, behind the garage, and she’d given him the basket to fill. When he’d done that, she’d told Piers to fill the coal bucket from the bunker Foxy had spent an afternoon putting together on the far side of the garage. She’d explained she would have done it herself but the rain had been so fierce.
The fire burned.
What had changed that evening was that his car was not down the side of the garage, near the coal and out of sight from the lane. He’d told her he’d have been half drowned if he parked where he had last night. She’d said it didn’t really matter.
There was a meal for two from the supermarket on the table. Foxy didn’t like pre-cooked, packaged meals and bitched if they were offered him and she hadn’t cooked his supper. The bottle had come from the wine store Foxy kept topped up. A pair of candles had been lit. It didn’t really matter if the Noakes woman from down the lane walked her dog last thing, saw the extra car and only a light on upstairs, or if the Davies man went out with his, saw Piers’s car and knew she was being screwed. It didn’t matter: Ellie wasn’t staying.
Would she be going with Piers? Setting up home with him? Maybe, maybe not.
It was a decent Chilean wine: Foxy rated Chilean vineyards and said they were sensibly priced. They ate and drank; their tongues loosened. The storm brewed and rain lashed. Twigs, from the leafless trees, were blown onto the slates and rattled as they fell to the paved path. She said where she would be in the morning and that she’d already phoned them at work, pleaded the throat infection that was her most used excuse, and he’d asked whether they still bought it. She’d shrugged, like it wasn’t important.
Piers asked, ‘You going to pack it in, the job?’
‘I might.’
‘If you wanted out, you could transfer internally. I could – end up at the same place.’
‘Like where?’
‘Edinburgh, Preston, Plymouth? Two wages. Wouldn’t be a place this size. You’d be shot of him.’
‘Worth thinking about.’
‘You could tell him. What’s he going to do? Bite your head off? Just tell him.’
‘When?’ She gazed at the front door and the wind rattled it. For a moment she listened hard, as if expecting the crunch of tyres on the gravel. ‘I might and I might not.’
‘When? When he comes back? Do you know how long it’ll be until . . .’
‘Don’t know when he’s back, or where he is, or why . . . Are we going to talk about him all night? That what you want?’
Her eyes danced. The candle flames lit them and she held her glass across the table. He filled it and she raised it as if in a toast. It seemed a waste to have lit the fire, then abandon it. She left the plates on the table and led him by the hand to the stairs. She might stay with Piers and she might not. What was certain for Ellie, she would be on the pavement tomorrow, mourning the homecoming of a hero. It seemed important to be there each time, as if it was a drug. She was not ready to wean herself off it. She took him up the stairs and he was pushing her. They almost ran the last few strides into Foxy’s bedroom.
Had there been a fly on the wall, it might have noted that Len Gibbons, at a corner table of a restaurant down by the Holsterhafen – one bottle killed, another damaged – Len Gibbons said, ‘I just cannot credit it. We set up a most successful operation, and the whole thing is put at jeopardy because one of them is idiotic enough to go back to collect a microphone and some cabling. I’m almost apoplectic. We get back, garbled, an interpretation that says it would be unprofessional and against regular procedures to leave the gear behind. Does it bother the Iranians if their DNA is on the bombs that mutilate our soldiers today, and have done for the last eight years? Of course not. They couldn’t give a toss. One would have thought, given a modicum of common sense, that they’d have upped sticks and done the fastest possible runner, but that’s not the case. Result: disaster. The other is hanging about there, can’t do anything, and should have high-tailed it hours back. I tell you, whoever gets back from this is going to have their arse kicked the length of Whitehall. How could they do it to us? And I’ll you something else, my friends, it won’t be Len Gibbons – faithful dog in Her Majesty’s darker affairs – who takes the rap for it. Sorry to rant, but I just cannot comprehend how such imbecilic things can happen . . . Well, it’s what comes of using increments, getting in casual labour. So much work done and all of it wasted.’
Had there been a bug in the socket beside the table, it would have been able to pick up and pass on the quieter tone of the Cousin. ‘I would hesitate, of course, Len, to gainsay you, but, forgive me, I will. Where are we? We’re in Lübeck. Also in the town, or soon to be, are Herr Armajan, the bomb boffin, and his Frau. Now, halfway to the other side of the world it’s the middle of the night, and in some bog a group of peasant militia have their hands on a high-importance target. They get on the phone, are connected to some idiot manning the switchboard, who knows his commander will kick his balls in if he’s disturbed. What I’m saying is that the local man will fail, during the night, to raise anyone of real import. That’s the way those places work. Some time tomorrow morning, there’s a possibility that it might land on the desk of a man who knows who Armajan is, where he is, who is responsible for him. Very few in VEVAK will know, and perhaps only one man in the embassy in Berlin. My analysis, if we get close tomorrow, we’ll have a clear run in.’
Had there been a waitress who hovered at a table further out in the restaurant and who was blessed with sharp hearing, she would have eavesdropped on the quiet voice of the man called the Friend, who said, ‘I’m more inclined towards the optimist than the pessimist, the glass half full rather than half empty. I think we’ll have him tomorrow morning. We go, gentlemen, and stake out. We’re old men but a bad evening in Lübeck is a good enough opportunity for old skills to be dusted off. I’m confident we’ll locate him and then the opportunity will present itself for the strike. The morning, tomorrow, would be best. I would like to say that it’s been a real pleasure to be a colleague of both of you. If we travel tomorrow, early, there will be no chance of farewells. I do it now, gentlemen.’
They went out into a bitter night: one to go to Roeckstrasse, one to the medical school on the university campus, and one to meet the ferry from Telleborg to greet a man considered expert at his work.
They came to Lübeck. It had been a slow train with stops, and the carriage had been crowded. For part of the journey he had stood and she had sat. For the first twenty-five minutes out of Hamburg she had been sandwiched between a black-skinned girl, who ate pastries, scattering crumbs, and managed to talk continuously on a mobile phone, and a youth with orange-dyed hair in a standing strip over the crown of his head, the sides shaven, metal rings in his ears and eyelids. When they’d left the carriage, the girl had brushed the remainder of the crumbs off her lap, but the boy had said something politely that she did not understand as he had stepped over her feet.
She was exhausted. He had looked for a lift to take her from the platform to the concourse, but there was none, and it had been a laborious effort for her to climb the steps.
The Engineer had sufficient English to ask for the hotel, at an information kiosk. He said that the hotel into which he was booked with his wife was on Lindenstrasse. The woman had been filing her nails and looked at him as if he were an interruption; she had pointed out where they should go, and passed him a small map with the street heavily underlined.
His wife asked if they could take a taxi, and he said it was, on the map, only a hundred metres or so . . . They should have used a taxi. She leaned more heavily now on his arm and the case squealed on its wheels. There was sleet in the air and a thin film had settled on her shoulders and in her hair. They passed a bench where a bearded old man sat wi
th an opened bottle beside him, then statues to Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck. He did not know who they were or why they were commemorated. He looked again at the map and realised he had gone too far along the street and must turn to the right. She sighed heavily, blamed him.
They had to cross a major road but went with other pedestrians, and then they were in Lindenstrasse. The hotel was an old, white-painted building. He had expected something modern, glass and steel. He helped her up the steps and bounced the case after him.
They were at Reception. A girl was there, young and blonde. She wore a low-cut blouse and leaned towards him across her desk. He sensed Naghmeh’s recoil. She queried his business there and he answered that he had a reservation. She asked, of course, in what name. In what name? He turned away from her. He felt a fool. He had to reach inside his jacket pocket, produce the Czech passports, flick one open and look at the name. He should have memorised it on the first flight, the second or third, or on the train. He grinned, played the idiot, and displayed the page of the passport that carried a name and his photograph. Both were taken, photocopied, handed back. Registration forms were given to them. He said, in his difficult English, that his wife was not well. He made a meaningless scribble on his form in the signature box, and asked for the key. It was given him, with a sealed envelope.
They took the lift, went along a corridor and heard TVs. He unlocked the door. It was an ordinary room, with a double bed and a wardrobe, a small desk and a television on the wall. A door led to a bathroom with a walk-in shower.
She looked around her and sagged. In the hotel in Tehran there had been a bowl of fruit and a vase of flowers because of who they were. Not here. He opened the envelope as she sat heavily on the bed. It was handwritten, not signed, on the hotel’s paper, and said at what time they would be collected. He checked his watch. They had an hour and ten minutes to pass. Was she hungry? She shook her head.
A Deniable Death Page 36
