A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘It’ll be bad, bloody, Foxy, when they get it together. How did you get me into this? Don’t sulk on me.’

  He could see the spit, and it wouldn’t be long before they were organised.

  With boots, fists and the butt of his rifle, Mansoor drove his Basij peasants out of the barracks and onto the quay.

  It mocked him. He was an officer of the al-Quds Brigade, a veteran of undercover operations in occupied Iraq. He had been wounded in the service of the Islamic Republic and bore the scars of it. Neither his rank nor his experience could alter the enormity of what he saw. It laughed at him. It was a length of rope with untidily cut strands that hung from the lamp-post. It was well lit and the wind stirred it a metre above his head. There was more than a slashed rope to mock him. The pier, away to the side where the dinghy should have been moored, jeered at him, too.

  Lashing furiously around him, Mansoor created a fear of himself that was greater than the fear brought by the grenades. He beat his authority into them, and broke off only once. He had gone into the communications room, made the link, sucked in the air to give himself courage and reported that a prisoner had escaped, that his barracks was under attack from a special-forces unit that had now retreated towards the Iraqi frontier. He and his men had beaten off the assault but the prisoner, believed a casualty, had been taken. He had cut the link and gone back outside. His eyes wept and his hearing was damaged, but the scale of the catastrophe inflicted on him ensured that Mansoor regained control. It could not have been otherwise: if he sank into a corner and shivered, he would be hanged as a traitor.

  He punched hard, kicked hard, hit his men hard with the rifle butt. His voice was hoarse from bellowing, and he rasped instructions.

  The jeep had come forward and he had to swing the wheel because the driver cowered from him. When the vehicle faced out into the lagoon, and the headlights were on full beam, he could see the low outline of the dinghy and a slight wake drifting from it. The outline was visible on the extreme edge of the light thrown by the vehicle.

  The shooting was ragged. The Basij, as Mansoor knew, could not have hit a factory door with rifle fire at a hundred paces. There were the Austrian-made Steyr sniper rifles, which had been purchased by the IRGC, and the copy of the Chinese long-range weapon that was in turn a copy of the Russian Dragunov – the Iranian military called it the Nakhjir – but Mansoor had no marksman’s weapon in the small armoury. He had only the short-range assault rifles. They emptied a magazine each in the direction of the dinghy. He snatched at one, took it from a guard. He had seen how the resistance inside Iraq fired when at the edge of accuracy. He wedged himself against the lamp-post. There was no optical aid to the rifle sight, only the forward needle and the rear V for him to aim through. He did a calculation and set the sight’s range at two hundred metres. Squinting, Mansoor could see the dinghy. He thought a naked arm was draped over the side and made furrows in the water, adding to the wake, but he couldn’t see the man who propelled it away.

  He twisted the lever, went from automatic fire to single shots. It would have been a difficult shot with a Steyr or a Nakhjir; with an assault rifle it would be worse than difficult.

  He had not fired seriously on a range, watched by an expert instructor, since before he had been sent to Iraq. He struggled to remember old lessons of grip and posture, the settling of weight. His breathing slowed, and he began to squeeze the trigger bar. Old memories died hard. He could recapture, with extreme concentration, everything he had been taught on the range used by the al-Quds élite outside Ahvaz . . . but Mansoor was no longer a member of that élite, the special forces. His body was damaged, he had not slept and his temper was torn.

  Single shots, three.

  The first was short, the second wide – no more than two metres wide and two metres short – and the target was a dark, low, hazed shape. He had to squint to see it with any clarity. He believed that the third shot bucked the shape of the dinghy and that it reared a little.

  More orders, more blows and kicks. He put his men into the two jeeps. Their lights speared off past the barracks as they headed down the track towards the elevated path of the bund line flanking the lagoon. He reckoned he had scored a hit, that the jeeps would take him past their flight line, that he would block them . . .

  It was the town that had shaped Len Gibbons, made him the man he was – not the man the neighbours saw on a weekend morning when they walked their dogs, pushed prams or promenaded on the cul-de-sac off the railway line between Motspur Park and Epsom.

  He sat in his pension room, on Alfstrasse, with the lights off and the curtains open. He had worked the small easy chair close to the window. The drunks had dispersed and the late-evening stallholders had cleared up and gone. He had used this lodging house on recommendation from a secretary in Bonn when he had travelled north to the town, on the business of Antelope, and had usually been in this room, with the same pictures hung over new but similar wallpaper, the same chest and wardrobe, but a more modern chair. He would have looked out over the same view, the same towers on the great church.

  To the neighbours in the cul-de-sac – all of whom knew Catherine well and expected to speak to her if she was out at the front, gardening, or unloading the ecobags she took to the supermarket – he would have seemed a remote sort of man, distant, with little conversation, but harmless. He might have been washing an unspectacular Japanese car, using an electric-powered mower on the small patch of grass beside the path, or retouching the paintwork. He passed the time of day with them, and would smile at their dogs or their children. His conversation would range over the state of the weather, the reliability of the trains into London, and the price of fuel . . . What did he do? They were accountants, salesmen, teachers, hospital staff, widows who stayed at home and retail workers. Him? Some dreary job in London. It was never quite explained whether that meant Work and Pensions or Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but that was enough to satisfy them, and reason for him to be away on an early train on Monday and back late on Friday. Most would have thought it ‘sad’ that ‘old Gibbons’ slaved away at the expense of leisure and entertainment, and most would have felt sympathy for Catherine who existed alongside such a dull man with so limited a horizon. His suits were grey, unremarkable and bought from a chain, and his ties were those given him at Christmas. What did they know, the neighbours and the casual friends of his wife? They knew nothing. Neither did the mass of those going to work each day in the Towers have a more comprehensive profile of him. Some had made hobbies of archaeology or bell-ringing or whist, or did convoluted jigsaw puzzles, and thought themselves fulfilled. Len Gibbons successfully lived a local lie. Well hidden from view, there was a restless energy in him that a few recognised and some utilised. Now it contemplated, without qualm, the killing of an enemy. The Schlutup Fuck-up, in this town, had marked, moulded and fashioned him: he was a man in the shadows, but possessed of a ruthless determination.

  He sat in the chair, listened to the great clocks of Lübeck. He did not think of the prevailing weather, or commuter train timetables, the cost of petrol, or holidays. He did not think of how Catherine would be that evening or whether his son and daughter prospered at their different colleges. He considered, instead, all that had been done to guarantee the death of a man. He thought enough was in place.

  Had they known the work of Len Gibbons, his neighbours might have wondered if conscience afflicted him, if that night – in the certain knowledge of what would happen later in the morning, at his own hand, removed but culpable – he would find sleep hard to come by. The neighbours did not know the man living at the mock-Tudor semi-detached home in a safe corner of suburban South London. Any thought of conscience had been gouged out of him when he had worked in this town, listened to the chimes and handled Antelope. No second thoughts, hesitation. What mattered was not the snuffing out of a life but the effectiveness of his work, and the satisfaction that would come from a job well done. There had been brave words in the damp heap overlooking a
Scottish sea loch, but they had been for the benefit of the outsiders. The big picture was wiped, and the little picture was paramount: it showed a man, with his wife, coming across a pavement on the campus of the university’s medical school, and another man closed on him. It was the limit of the picture, and he was not troubled by it. He could have slept had he cared to. The Marienkirche was a principal church in Lübeck, rebuilt with extraordinary dedication and skill after the war. The great bells, shattered and lit by a single candle, that had plummeted down from the spires, were off the main body of the nave. They had been there when he had come to Lübeck thirty years before and they would still be there. They were supposed to grip the visitor by the throat and condemn the atrocity of violence. Gibbons didn’t care what would happen later that morning. Neither would the crews of the Wellington and Stirling bombers – who had made the firestorm, brought down the bells and filled mass graves – have been troubled.

  He sat alone and watched the skyline – and his phone, with the encryption software, bleeped. Not Sarah – asleep, no doubt, on a fold-away bed – but the Cousin. He glanced at the little screen: something about exfiltration in hand. He cleared it. Infiltration and exfiltration were history. The job had moved on. For a moment, Gibbons tried to remember the faces of the two men, but could not and gave up: they were from the past, not the present, and did not affect the future.

  He smiled to himself. He had decided where he would be in the morning, when the strike went home.

  Low voices alerted him. He didn’t understand the speech, but thought it was Russian.

  There was a light knock on the door. He came off the bed, slipped on his trousers, went to the door and opened it. The synagogue’s caretaker shuffled away. Framed in the doorway, a man gave a warm smile and had a large old leather bag hanging from his shoulder. A hand was offered. He took it. He had never met the man, and offered a formal greeting that betrayed nothing.

  The man spoke in their own tongue, used the word that in their language meant ‘engineer’ and smiled again. He had a light, tuneful voice.

  The transport would be outside at seven that morning, in four hours. Gabbi nodded. There would be the two of them, for the wheels and the hit – not five, not ten or twenty-five. A sneer curled the man’s lip: it told Gabbi that this one – from Berlin Station – had had no dealings with the unit in the Dubai business. He was shown a photograph, taken in poor light, and it was explained that the woman was the Engineer’s wife. The shirt-sleeved man was the neuro-consultant. In the foreground of the picture there was a car with a rear door open. He was told the registration number and make, that only one security man was used for the escort. He looked hard at the photograph and saw the face, eyes, the shape of the spectacles, the cut of the hair and the clothing, and memorised it. His hand never touched the photograph, and when the man’s fingers held it, Gabbi made out the fine texture of the latex gloves he wore. It was assumed that the entry of the Engineer, his back to the street, would be a difficult interception, but when he left, it would be an easier shot, into the face and stomach. Then the man shrugged, as if he had realised he should not presume to lecture an expert in techniques. On the likely schedule, he would be on the return sailing of the ferry in late morning. He had faith in the arrangements woven around him and did not query them.

  Gabbi was asked if he was comfortable. He said he was. Did he need to know more about the target, why the target was identified? He did not. Was he satisfied with the arrangements in place? He was.

  Anything he needed would be brought to him. Gabbi said he had found a book of drawings by a girl who had been a witness inside the camp at Theresienstadt and had survived. He said he had had family there who had not lived. He did not say it was his wife’s grandparents who had been incarcerated in the camp and had died of starvation.

  The bag was opened. A package in greaseproof paper, held together with thick elastic bands, was handed to him, with similar gloves. He knew the Beretta 92S, and a little grin flicked at his mouth when he was told that this particular weapon, and the ammunition it was loaded with, had been sold to the Egyptian armed forces: a small matter, but likely to cause confusion in an investigation. There were two magazines, eighteen bullets in all, and he would use two. It was wrapped again, and put on the table beside the bed.

  The man reached forward, gripped Gabbi’s shoulders and gave him a light brush kiss on each cheek. Then he was gone and the door closed on him. Gabbi heard the slither of the caretaker’s slippers, then the thud of the outer door being shut. He went back to bed and hoped to catch more sleep.

  His shoulder was shaken gently. The pilot, Eddie, jack-knifed up on the cot bed. His co-pilot hovered above him. ‘Thought you’d like to know that we’re fuelled, armed, all the checks done, ready to press the tit and lift. And likely we may be lifting.’

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

  ‘You were sleeping like a baby – would have been a crime.’

  ‘Fuck you.’ The pilot rubbed the sleep from his eyes. ‘What we got?’

  ‘Could go around first light. As we thought. A covert team up on the frontier, and maybe there’s casualties coming with them. The other bird is getting herself to speed. We go together.’

  He could hear the rotors of both birds turning over, and the ground-crew people would be crawling over the Black Hawks. It would likely be the last mission of interest that Eddie flew before the draw-down sucked him in. Then he might go home, or might be packed off with his guys and his machine to Afghanistan. He’d like to finish well. He tightened his boots.

  ‘Oh, and Eddie . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We don’t exist, and any flight we make is classified as never happening. It’s likely the mullah-men will be powerfully angry if we do get called out and are up close on their ground.’

  ‘Fuck them.’

  The birds’ engines sounded sweet and the windows shook. If an exfiltration needed a helicopter lift-out, they’d be in trouble, deep stuff, and it would be close run. It was good of the guys to let him sleep and recharge. Might have been their own survival instincts that had allowed it. Spooks, the pilot reckoned, were mad – not people you’d take home to your mother – and he’d go as far as he could to save them.

  Badger hissed, ‘How you put yourself in this place, Foxy, I don’t know.’

  The dinghy was holed: a bullet had pierced the metal hull about an inch below the waterline.

  It went down a few yards short of the mud spit, where the water was up to Badger’s waist. He had time to hoist Foxy onto his shoulder, as he had before. The skin, against the stubble on his own face, was wet, clammy and seemed white in the darkness, as if there were night-lights under it – like the ones used in nurseries and hospital wards. He went over the spit and past the heap he had made of dead foliage then slipped back into the water.

  ‘Don’t ask me how I’m doing. Actually, I’m doing fine. Just don’t bother to ask.’

  He could hear the jeeps’ engines on the bund line away from him, but he would have been masked by the reed beds. It was as well that he was. He could stand upright, which was best with the weight he carried. The level dropped and lapped at his knees, the birds thrashed for take-off and he plodded on, the mud under his boots clinging to them. He was taking deep breaths, struggling to suck the air deeper into his lungs. His legs were leaden. He had not begun: Badger was only at his start line. He came out of the water and was on the open ground. He went by the carcass of the bird, unrecognisable now as a creature of beauty. Badger didn’t do bird-watching, he wasn’t eco-obsessed, but he had learned to respect nature when he was in hides and when he hiked, testing himself, in Scotland or in the Brecons of Wales. He knew the range of the small songbirds that would come from the heather and bracken to filch crumbs, and the predator hobbies, peregrines and eagles; he knew also the divers on the lochs. There had been a poem drilled into them by a teacher about a bird a seaman had shot with a bolt. He was cursed for it, his mates too. That was what Fox
y had done; he had killed the ibis, made it into rats’ food.

  ‘Shouldn’t have done it, Foxy. Look what it’s done to us, with you killing it . . . You could say something, Foxy, not play bloody miserable.’

  He went as fast as he could, and his boots went into the side of the scrape where the hide had been. He lurched out of it, and Foxy’s weight shifted on his shoulder. Badger gasped and swore softly. It had been a sizeable piece of his life, important, and might be memorable, a bit of ground two yards square that had held them both, and the bergens, for hours, days and nights. He would remember it. Badger couldn’t have said then how long his life expectancy was, but the image of the scrape, the net and the camouflage, the smell of the bags, the piss bottles, Foxy’s body and breath, and Badger’s own would stay with him until the last. That might be when a firing squad was given the order or in a far distant bed in whatever home was then his. He went by the scrape and it was behind him. He would never see it again, but he wouldn’t forget it, ever.

  ‘Good riddance, Foxy, eh? How you doing? We’re getting there . . .’

  He staggered a bit going down the slight slope. He came to the bergens and the little inflatable. For a moment, he considered whether to tip Foxy into the inflatable along with the bergens. Only a moment. There were reeds off to his left and behind them the clear space used to bury the poor bastards who had come scavenging, and then – across more water – the elevated track. He could see the lights of the two jeeps. They were going slowly but making progress, and there would be a place ahead of them where they could swing to their right and either drive over mud, or trudge to get across the route Badger intended to take to the extraction point.

  ‘I reckon you’re better with me, Foxy. The bergens can get the ride.’

  He didn’t hear agreement or criticism. It was best to have Foxy on his shoulder – if there was a crisis, anything near to catastrophe, Badger didn’t want to be crouched over the inflatable, heaving his man onto his shoulder. He cantered into the water, which splashed up round his ankles, into his boots, and up the hem of the gillie suit. The weight was fierce on his shoulder. There was a string at the front end of the inflatable and he had it in his free hand. The other steadied Foxy, was on his buttocks and had a grip there. Foxy’s head bounced on the back of Badger’s hip, and his knees were over Badger’s heart. The feet kicked his stomach with each step.