Rat Run

by Gerald Seymour

  He grinned. 'Well, going to be Nazis, weren't they?'

  He gazed around him. Couldn't really comprehend it, not forty thousand people killed, burned up, in one week.

  At the car, he was passed his roses and they walked across the aisle road and down a neat pathway. Then it was like he had seen on TV. He faced rows of white stones set in careful lines. Bloody beautiful, and clumps of flowers growing in little areas, no weeds, in front of each. He had never been to a place like it, and so quiet. He said what the names were, old Percy's friends, and he took one sector and Rahman another, and the driver a third part – and the stones were all so clean, like they'd been there since last week and not the best part of sixty years. It made him shiver, thinking of it – men in a plane and all that flak hitting it and the plane starting to dive, out of control, and not able to get out, and coming down from three and a half miles up. How long would that bloody take? Made him feel kind of weak. All of them, heroes, weren't they? Could he have hacked it? Yes

  … sure.. – certain

  … He was Ricky Capel. But, the shiver and the weakness had come on bad and he was swaying on his feet.

  The shout came. Rahman had found them, the only ones of the crew who had been intact enough for identification. Two stones side by side. A wireless-operator's grave and a bomb-aimer's grave, and they'd both been friends of his grandfather. He never did photographs and had never owned a camera: cameras and pictures, to Ricky, were the Crime Squad and the Criminal Intelligence Service. If he went, and it was rare, to a wedding, he'd spend half the reception making bloody certain he was not in a photograph, that no camera was aimed at him

  Would have been nice to have a picture to take back to old Percy, though. One of them had been twenty years old and one was nineteen, and there were pansies and daffodils in front of the two stones. He stood in front of them, pulled in his stomach and straightened his spine, and the rain fell on him -

  Rahman was on the phone, which didn't help the dignity of it. The uppers of his shoes were wet from the grass and his trousers clung to him. A full minute he stood there, and Rahman came off one call, then took another. Then, doing it for his grandfather, he laid the roses in front of each stone in remembrance of a wireless-operator and a bomb-aimer, dead in the first week of August 1943, stepped away and felt good for what he'd done.

  As they walked back to the car, Ricky said, 'I expect, Mr Rahman, you're proud to be Albanian, and I'm proud to be British. You'll love your country, Mr Rahman, as I love mine. Mad, isn't it? You come to a place like this and you're proud. Daft, isn't it, how a place like this gets to you? Don't mind saying it, I love my country…'

  No one, in twenty-six months, had come to seek her out.

  She lived in south-east central England in a town best known for its budget-cost airport and motor-manufacturing industry: Luton, with a population of 160,000. Her home was with her parents, who had come two decades before to Britain to escape the brutal ravages of political oppression in the Libyan city of Benghazi. That she had been born a healthy, vigorous baby had been by chance, her father had often told her. Her mother had been two months pregnant with her when the thugs of the regime's secret police had come to their home and beaten each of her parents in turn, on suspicion of handing out leaflets of protest at the godless rule of Gaddafi; blows from boots and batons had been used against her mother's belly. Her father, once a teacher of philosophy at the University of Benghazi, worked in Luton on a production line, manufacturing windscreen wipers for vans and lorries.

  Through childhood and her teenage years she had harboured hate for any who rejected the true faith of Islam. She had been chosen at a mosque in the town: her fervour had been recognized. A video had been shown, in a back room to a selected few, of what the imam called the declaration of a martyr widow. A Chechen woman, clothed in black and veiled, had worn the belt holding the explosives, the wiring and the trigger button, and had made a statement to the camera of her happiness at gaining the chance to strike against the Russian enemy who had murdered her young husband. She had spoken – not in a language understood in the mosque's back room

  – in a voice of calm, love and resolve. The film had continued with a distant street shot. A slight, small figure in black had approached a checkpoint of soldiers and when she reached them there had been the detonation, fire, smoke and chaos. At that moment, the woman in Luton had stood before the video ended, and cheered in exultation, in admiration at the blessing of martyrdom.

  Now she never watched such videos and was never invited to the back room of the mosque. She worked in a creche with children too young for school, while their mothers stood in lines and manufactured

  PVC

  windows. She was good with the children and her employers praised her dedication – and she waited. A man would come, either to her home or to the creche, one day. He would say: 'And He sends down hail from mountains in the sky, and He strikes with it whomever He wills, and turns it from whomever He wills.' She would answer: 'The vivid flash of its lightning nearly blinds the sight,' His statement and hers were in the Book, 24:43. Five days a week she played with and amused small children, and at the end of each day she was thanked by mothers for her kindness and devotion.

  When he came, she would slip away from the creche and would do what was asked of her.

  'What we cannot accept, Freddie, is a further failure.'

  'Of course not.'

  The meeting between Frederick Gaunt and the assistant deputy director took a familiar choreography.

  He paced as he talked and the ADD, Gilbert, stayed awkwardly hunched at his desk.

  'Quite simply put, a new failure would be intolerable.'

  'Of course.'

  Rain laced on the window and the desk light failed to lift the gloom.

  'It just cannot be countenanced, Freddie.'

  'I'm on board. Bodies crammed in morgues, mutilated victims stacked on corridor trolleys waiting for doctors, the shock and trauma of blood on the pavements. Without reservation, I accept that a major atrocity in our cities is not acceptable. No argument.'

  He saw a splash of surprise on his superior's face, then annoyance that the obvious drift of the argument had not been interpreted.

  'No, no, Freddie – take that as read.' He leaned forward and jabbed his finger for emphasis at the moving target, Gaunt striding. 'I am talking – don't you follow me? – about the effect of a new failure on us. Difficult times we live in. It is as if we are under siege. The reputation of the Service is at stake. There are corners of Whitehall in which our efforts, first-class efforts, are derided. There are, Freddie, enemies at large and they wait for one more cock-up – forgive me – on the scale of Iraq. We are perpetually scrutinized. Surely, Freddie, you see that? If there were to be a new failure, it's we who would be the victims. I don't exaggerate, there would be another weeding out and we would face desperate times.'

  'Oh, yes.'

  There was a shrill laugh from the desk. 'You know, Freddie, for a moment I didn't think you understood the true seriousness of the danger to the integrity, dignity, of the Service. Forgive me. Have you all you need?'

  'Computer time at Menwith, too low on the priority list. Do I want a galley-load of young Turks bustling around me? No. Do I want Berlin in on the act? No. Do I want a full charabanc sent from London to sit on Polly Wilkins in whom I have complete faith? No.

  What I want is luck, buckets of it.'

  'That is hardly a satisfactory shopping list. Freddie, very frankly, are you up for this one?'

  Was he? Wasn't he? He wondered briefly whether selfishness and a personal pride in his ability caused him to reject the battalions of help on offer. Word of any section's success always eddied through the building, crossed the need-to-know fences erected for internal security, and the men and women responsible for secret triumphs achieved an heroic status, and rank envy – damned if he would pass up the chance, damned if he would share.

  Gaunt said airily, 'Never been more confident,
Gilbert. It's falling nicely into place.'

  'But you promised me, with the Prague business, you talked of a rat run that you'd interrupt-'

  'Just a blip,' Gaunt said. He turned for the door, then paused. 'I anticipate we will finish this one in good shape.'

  In the corridor, he found that sweat dribbled on his skin. Deer were culled by rifle shots, foxes by poison and rats by gas, birds of prey by the teeth of post traps. He mopped his forehead with his breast-pocket handkerchief, and pondered it: how would they cull old warriors who had failed to protect the Service's reputation? Dump them on the street and let them walk away up the Albert Embankment with the carriage clock or decanter or a presentation box of tools, airbrush them out of history and sweep them to retirement? God, he needed luck, sacks of it.

  He led the way into the office block and down the corridor. Inside each room that he passed, which had the door open – Administration, Sales, Accounts – the staff snapped to their feet. He went through the swing doors and into the warehouse.

  Trailing Timo Rahman was the Bear. Far behind the Bear, ignored, was the mouseboy. His feet rapped across the concrete flooring as he went down the wide aisle between towers of cardboard-wrapped flat-packs. At the aisle's far end was the door to a store room, where mops, buckets and the chemicals for cleaning toilets were kept.

  He had wasted an hour at the Ohlsdorf cemetery, to humour the mouseboy, and more minutes than he had anticipated had been taken up in the search for names on stones. A little of his certainty was gone as he pushed open the store-room door – and the image of his wife danced before him, as it had all the time in the cemetery, and what she had done to him.

  The man sat on the plastic seat of a chair.

  He looked up.

  There was a calmness about him, a presence. Timo Rahman saw it, recognized it. The man put his hand on the table, on which lay a cleaned plate and half-full plastic water-bottle and pushed himself to his feet.

  The face of a man short of confidence would have cracked, Timo knew, with relief, but this one did not.

  The man bowed his head gravely – not in deference but in a gesture of courtesy to an equal. Timo introduced himself, murmured his name, but was not given a response. Instead, the man moved the half-pace forward and kissed his cheeks. Questions were asked softly, without preamble.

  When would he move on? Soon, one day or two.

  Was the transport in place? Arriving, about to start its journey.

  Was the transport secure? As secure as was possible.

  A lesson Timo Rahman had learned over many years was that conversation, idle and unnecessary, between men of stature was beneath dignity. He said that bedding would be provided, that the location provided safety and secrecy. Nothing more.

  He left the man, and the Bear closed the door. Then he saw the mouseboy's gaping eyes, and his sleeve was pulled.

  'Is that him?'

  No man snatched the sleeve of Timo Rahman's shirt. His life was myriad compartments, each sealed from the other, each carried in his mind. Behind him, the door had closed on a compartment and another replaced it. The new compartment was his wife, his home, an intruder, a lover… For a flashed moment there was a blurred line between the compartments.

  He squeezed hard on Ricky Capel's hand, held it in his tightening fist, removed it from his sleeve, then let it drop. He thought then that the mouseboy was too stupid to recognize that anger.

  'It is.'

  'We're bringing the boat over for that one man?'

  'He, that man.'

  'What is he? An Arab?'

  'He is the passenger on your boat.'

  'We're talking big money – he doesn't look big money.'

  'I am paid to move him, as you will be.'

  He started to walk away down the aisle of the warehouse, and ahead of him were the swing doors to the corridor and the offices of Administration, Sales and Accounts. Again the fingers, because the mouseboy was stupid, held him – at the wrist, where the gold-chain bracelet was.

  'What I'm asking, Mr Rahman, who is he?'

  'You need to know nothing of him, you have only to transport him.'

  'For you, Mr Rahman, I move a gang of girls, get them to Enver, or a lorry full of Chinese, Kurds, whatever… but one Arab, a boat coming for one man, that's different.'

  'You will do what you are paid to do.' Timo softened his voice, the better to hide his anger. 'It is not a difficulty.'

  'I'll tell you why it's different. He's a scumbag, not a businessman – not anything normal that I move for you. Why's he so important that we're not taking him through Dover or Harwich? Why's he not going into Heathrow or Manchester? Why's he got a bloody boat coming just for him? An Arab, dressed like a wreck, I know why he's important.'

  'It does not concern you, Ricky.'

  Like a fly that flew at his ear, the pitch was more shrill. 'A packet, no problem. A packet and you've no problem with me, money on the nail. Good dealing between us. This, Mr Rahman, is out of order. You saw those headstones this morning, I saw them, laid flowers for them. It's my country. An Arab, can't go through an airport or a ferryport, has to have a boat sent to bring him – you think I'm a right fool, Mr Rahman? That scumbag's a terrorist. I don't want to know, not about shifting a terrorist.'

  He pushed open the swing doors into the corridor.

  It was the skill of Timo Rahman, the core of his success as he believed it, that problems were anticipated and fall-back positions were in place. He swung his arm, like a friend, round the mouseboy's shoulders – could have kicked him, there, half to death – could have broken his neck with the heel of his hand.

  Said quietly, 'I ask nothing of you, Ricky, that you are not at ease with. I do not pressure you, but I listen to you. We are comrades, Ricky.'

  'As long as that's understood.'

  'Everything is understood.'

  They went out into the rain, and all the time Timo Rahman's arm was, like a friend's, round Ricky Capel's shoulders.

  He thought she had waited with patience for the story to run its course. Malachy ploughed on to its end. 'I didn't have petrol. Didn't have a weapon – didn't have a plan. I was just driven forward. I went right up to the house…'

  The yawn split her face. .. and they were talking about a shipment. Drugs, I suppose.'

  She stifled it, but the yawn's last heave muffled her voice. 'I think I'm there… I'm sorry, Malachy, for what happened to you but it's not my corner to stand in.' 'Drugs movements, they don't interest you?'

  'I don't do drugs – half a hundred agencies do, but it's not why I'm here.'

  'They're going to ship them out from an island – it's called Baltrum, don't know where it is. I'll find a map.

  They've a boat coming.'

  'You go careful.'

  'It's the finish of the road for me. I reckon there I can screw the man – the importer – and then I'm about through with it.'

  'Will you have gone far enough along the road?'

  'Don't know, to be honest with you, don't know whether it is.' He said weakly, 'I think it's all I have.'

  'Well, I'll be getting along,' she said brusquely, and she stood and looked down at him. 'If you reckon that buggering up one shipment of heroin or cocaine is the dog's bollocks I'll not argue with you. What does that add up to? A tenth of one per cent of the capital's supply for a month? About that? You tell yourself that you've made a difference and get back to the real world, Malachy. Good luck.'

  She walked away.

  He watched her as she slipped to the path and the heaviness of her sodden coat seemed to bow her. She walked on the carpet of fallen blossom and through the puddles, and the wind threw back her hair. He thought the roughness of her last words was a veneer: she, too, was fragile. He sensed that, at the last, frustration had spilled through her. She had given him most of a day, had brought him out of a police cell, had snatched him away from the home of Timo

  Rahman, and her reward had been a mumbled location for a transfer of drugs. Peerin
g after her, on his feet, he saw her as a diminishing figure under the prison wall at the boundary of the gardens. Yes, as vulnerable as him – and he felt her tongue and the warmth of her. I don't do drugs. Her time with him had been wasted, and before he finally lost sight of her, her stride had lengthened – and then she was gone.

  He went to find a map that would tell him where the island was.

  Chapter Fifteen

  He walked and could have dropped. Without the strength and tread of his shoes, he would long ago have stopped and sunk down to a bench beside a pavement. He had a sandwich in him, sausage and chilli, and the bulk of a map bulged his hip pocket. He had gone east from the city.

  Behind him were the proud places of the city, and its shamed corners – the outer and inner Alster lakes, the Rathaus, the New City and the Old City, the warehouse quarter and the former docks where cranes now lifted building materials for apartment blocks, over bridges and alongside canals, and through satellite communities housed in high towers, under autobahn routes using threatening pedestrian tunnels.

  But at Kirchsteinbek, with the map unfolded and his finger tracing the route, he turned south – and he thought the danger of the city receded. Ahead of him now were scattered villages, small towns and fields, drainage channels excavated geometrically across them. The map guided him.

  Bare poplar trees, tops bent in the wind, made aisles for him along straight roads. He passed a modern gaol wall, set back on his left, and the light had gone down enough for the arc-lights to shine out brilliantly. The map told him that soon he would swing his course to the west. There was a memorial stone set in the grass short of the prison perimeter but his eyes were too exhausted and his attention too dulled for him to read its inscription. In the growing darkness, beyond the gaol, a track led to low buildings, and beside the road, set among the poplars, was the sign: KZ -

  Gedenkstatte Neuengamme, and below it was a second sign directing visitors to a museum and exhibition centre. Before the prison there had been traffic on the straight, endless road, but none after it.