Rat Run

by Gerald Seymour

  The gentleman, all old-world courtesy, wore a three-piece suit and a puffed-out tie that was immaculate at his collar. He had a handkerchief spilling from a breast pocket, and shoes you could have seen your face in. Percy was glad he'd kept the chauffeur waiting those extra minutes while he'd rummaged for a clean white shirt and Sharon had used the stiff brush to get the dandruff off his blazer with the British Legion shield on its breast pocket.

  When the coffee was in front of him – 'Two lumps, please' – and he'd had his second biscuit, he started.

  At his elbow, a tape-recorder turned. He didn't think they wanted crap so he told it like it was – for history and their archives – and scratched in memories that he'd long ago discarded.

  He told of the old squadron, Lancasters, and how he'd been volunteered out to the Middle East so had missed the raid four weeks afterwards to Hamburg.

  His new unit, flying Halifax Bill MZ971s, went up the Adriatic from the strip outside Alexandria, then turned to starboard and over the Balkans – his had had a girl in a swimsuit on the port side of the nose, with long legs, and she was shouting, 'I'm easy,' in white paint on the camouflage.

  The job of the aircraft and crews was to drop agents and weapons into occupied territory.

  That night, the weather people said there would be cloud cover to blank out a full moon over the target drop zone, and they'd carried a special-operations major and his sergeant, and a mountain of gear in tin cases, and he'd been in his usual place at the rear gun turret.

  Never trust the bloody weather people. Clear moonlight bathed the Halifax on the approach run, not a bloody cloud for love or money, and the flak bursting, and the fire first in port outer, then in starboard inner, and the pilot had ordered them to bail out. He'd followed the gear, the major and his sergeant, but he'd been the last to go clear out through the port-side hatch in the fuselage, and then 'I'm Easy' had corkscrewed and he'd been halfway down on his parachute when she'd gone in. Bloody great bang and bloody great fire.

  The major's sergeant had fallen like a stone, poor beggar, because his canopy hadn't opened.

  In the days and weeks that followed, Major

  Anstruther had made him batman, pack-mule, explosives expert, radio-operator and killer.

  They had met up with Mehmet Rahman and a gang of thugs and lived in caves. His toes still hurt from the first dose of frostbite, but it wasn't bad enough to stop him helping the major to blow a rail bridge and, later, to sabotage the shaft and winding shed of a chrome mine. .. And there was the ambush of a convoy of the 21st Mountain Corps in a valley up north of Shkodra, and his Sten gun had jammed and, beside him, the major had used up the last of his loaded magazines and thrown the last of his grenades and – if it had not been for Mehmet Rahman – they were both dead meat.

  Mehmet Rahman had saved his life, and Major

  Anstruther's.

  'They were good troops, the Mountain Corps, crack guys. Soon as we hit, they came up off the road and at us. We'd put down some of them, all yelling and hollering and shrieking. Then the major had nothing more to chuck at them and my Sten gun's jammed – bloody useless things, always getting blockages. They were all round us, coming after us, close enough to see them – damn soon and it would have been close enough to touch them. Mehmet Rahman came. Didn't have to. He was on his feet and running to us, all exposed, and his God must have watched for him, and there was bullets all round him but he didn't take a scratch. He had covering fire from his guys but he cleared a way through to us – shooting from the hip.

  The Germans backed off. Must have been chaos for them, the ambush and all, and they went down to what trucks and armoured stuff was still able to move and quit. Probably their priority was to get the convoy through. I reckon that's why they left their wounded, just wasn't the place to do a count. They'd have gone for two or three miles, then realized how many they'd left. We were high up, well gone, but we saw them come back. They didn't need to have bothered because there were no wounded left, only the dead.'

  He was telling it like it was, and he'd never told it before. He gulped at the coffee in the bone-china cup, but a biscuit was left half eaten on the plate. The gentleman gazed into his eyes, like he knew what was to come, and the tape turned.

  'Up there, we couldn't take prisoners, certainly not wounded prisoners. We couldn't – honest, believe me

  – do anything for the wounded. Anstruther shouted to me that I was to come away. He tried to get me behind some rocks but – shock, I suppose – I didn't move.

  Mehmet Rahman went among the wounded. Those that were bad, unconscious, he shot. But he had a knife. The knife was for those who were hit in the legs or the shoulders or had holes in their guts, but their eyes were open. He took the eyes out first, like the knife was taking a stone out of a plumb, then he slit their throats. I still hear the screaming of some of them, those he hadn't reached. Not mercy killing, butchering them for pleasure. He did all of them, till it was all quiet. I caught the major's knee and I pointed to what Mehmet Rahman did, but the major shook his head. The major said, soft, that it was a bad war and that pretending otherwise wouldn't make it a better war. Mehmet Rahman was like a fucking – excuse me, sir – animal because he scooped those men's eyes out and cut off their heads, sawed through their pipes and their neck bones, did it so that the next in line could see what was coming to him, and did it for pleasure.

  Then he wiped his knife on his shirt, and we went off up the mountain and left the silence. I tell you, I never heard such silence again, not in sixty years.'

  There was moisture at his eyes, and Percy Capel prodded a finger behind the lenses of his spectacles and wiped them. He was asked, the gentleman's voice silken and gentle, whether he had ever talked of this.

  'What? Down the Legion? Not likely. Been part of a war crime, sir, would you? I never told my Winifred – dead and buried, bless her – nor my boy, nor…

  What's extraordinary, my grandson has met up with the Rahman family. He's in-' He stopped, but he had already launched so he groped for an explanation. 'In import and export. Buys and sells. He met up, just by chance, with Mehmet Rahman's grand-nephew, and that put him in contact – business, you know – with Mehmet Rahman's son, and they'd heard of our family name. Small world… My grandson asked me what I knew of Mehmet Rahman. Did I say he was a murdering swine, a bloody animal? I did not. There's truth, some of the truth, a little of the truth – that's what I chose, a little of it. I said that my family and his were joined by blood, that my life was saved by Mehmet Rahman. It's a debt, right? You can't pay off that sort of debt. It's with you all your time on earth, and with your family.'

  The gentleman's face showed the vivid expression of not understanding. Percy Capel felt the obligation to explain. 'A debt like that, it owns you. Do you see that? It owns me, and my son, and my grandson. It's as much my grandson's debt as mine. They do business, my grandson and Mehmet Rahman's son, and I suppose that's like paying off the debt – but I doubt my grandson sees it that way… Anyway, you don't want to know that.'

  The frown on the gentleman's forehead had gone, as if he now understood, and Percy was nudged towards further anecdotal memories.

  He talked of more demolition and more sabotage, and of a Lysander that had landed to pick up the major and himself and fly them out, and then the tape was stopped. He was told how valuable his record of events would be to historians at the Imperial War Museum.

  The chauffeur drove him back to Bevin Close, and he was almost home before he realized that he had never been told the gentleman's name. He wondered then if he should have talked of Timo Rahman and Ricky, and an unpaid debt.

  'Worth it?' the curator asked.

  As he pocketed the tape, Frederick Gaunt smiled with warmth. 'I've never done it myself, but I can imagine it. You prise open the two sides of an encrusted oyster shell, and you find inside it a perfectly formed and lustrous pearl. Very much worth it.'

  A man from Krakow who hoped to be a policeman had told detectives
that his wife, strangled to death, had kept at the start of their relationship a chain of Arabic worry-beads in a drawer in their bedroom, and she had sworn to him that they were the gift of a friend, a student of mechanical engineering at Harburg – the only friend in her life before the Bahn-Wacht officer.

  A lecturer at the university had recalled the name of Else Borchardt's boyfriend as Sami, but not his family name.

  A child, in the Turkish language and through the help of an interpreter, had told detectives of a man who had hustled into the block after the child had pressed the bell at the outer door and his mother had activated the lock.

  A clerk at the warehouse, where past student records were kept, had ferreted that previous evening and found the papers – with the photograph – of that student from seven years before.

  A lecturer at the university, called by detectives from his mid-evening dinner-table, had confirmed that the photograph shown him was that of Else Borchardt's student boyfriend.

  A child, roused from sleep, was shown four photographs of male students and had chosen with no hesitation the picture of Else Borchardt's boyfriend and had said that that was the man who had pushed by him when his mother had let him into the block.

  A subeditor, with the front page of his newspaper about to close, had taken a call on the news desk of the Hamburger Abendblatt and had been alerted to receive, from Homicide, the photograph of a suspect.

  A journalist had worked at his computer to key in a full-face photograph… and the smaller picture of a victim.

  A technician had pressed the button that started the print run of the newspaper's altered front page.

  A driver had brought the new editions, bound with wire for delivery to wholesale distributors, from the presses of the Hamburger Abendblatt, with the suspect's photograph spread across three columns of the front page, and the victim's photograph across one.

  By morning, the suspect's photograph blared out at readers from Flensburg in the north, to Bremen in the south, from Lubeck in the east to Emden in the west.

  Above it 'Wanted for Murder' was printed in bold type, and under it was a picture of a pretty girl who had been strangled in the sight of her baby.

  ***

  Carrying a plastic bag with four sealed coffee beakers, four cling-wrapped rounds of sausage sandwiches, the nut-flavoured milk-chocolate bar that was Timo Rahman's favourite and a folded newspaper, the Bear left the shop.

  He sauntered towards the Mercedes, and opened the newspaper's front page.

  It hit him.

  He saw the photograph and the headline, and under them was the picture of a girl who had deep eyes and a smile.

  It blasted him. But it was one of the Bear's skills that he could hide the Shockwave caused by confusion, danger. No flicker of apprehension crossed his face, no twitch of anxiety. He could see them: Timo Rahman in the front passenger seat, and the Arab immediately behind him alongside the mouseboy. The newspaper was ripped by the wind and he rolled it quickly. There was a signal, long agreed, between his master and himself. In one hand he held the newspaper and the plastic bag, and he let the fist of the other drop – apparently casually – to the seam of his trousers, below the pocket. His thumb seemed, idly, to flick his first two fingers. It was the signal that risk was around them. Only a man as cautioned in risk as Timo Rahman would have watched his driver so closely that he noticed the gesture of the thumb brushing against two fingers. The front passenger door opened.

  The appearance of the Bear, huge shoulders, shambling walk and a perpetual frown of confusion, was that of a man whose body was an adult's but whose brain was that of a child. The appearance deceived. He saw Timo Rahman duck his head and make some excuse to those in the back seats, then come towards him. He was trusted with every secret of his master's life – not so the accountants, lawyers and investment brokers who surrounded Timo

  Rahman. Alone, the Bear had the trust.

  He had been, at the end of the Hoxha regime nineteen years before, an officer of the Sigurimi, the political police of the Albanian state. Earlier than any he had worked with, he had had the intelligence to comprehend that the death of the old president would mark the start of a changed world. The morning after that death he had slipped away from his office in the town of Shkodra, had taken a bus high into the mountains and gone to the village of the Rahman fis and, with humility, had pledged his loyalty. For two years he had been tested as the fis had expanded its power in the vacuum left by Hoxha's death – by robbery, tax-collection and enforcement, the Bear had proved his worth. He had gone with Timo Rahman to Hamburg and had fought beside him as the empire was created.

  They walked together, master and driver, to the back of the shop.

  Out of sight of the men on the back seat of the car, he showed Timo Rahman the front page of the newspaper.

  Timo Rahman scoured the page – the headline, the photograph, the picture, the report.

  The Bear would not speak unless he was asked to, would not advise unless the request were made. He would have said that it was not wise for Timo Rahman, whatever the rewards, to associate with militants, but he had not been asked. He would not have agreed that Alicia, the wife of Timo Rahman, had met a lover in the garden's summer-house – but he had not been asked. He held his silence and waited, and then the paper was crushed in Timo Rahman's hands. He was told where he should drive to, and they walked back to the car. The face of Timo Rahman showed no mark of the crisis.

  With the map spread across his knees and silence in the car, the Bear drove off the main road and away from the village shop. They took long, narrow side roads and saw tractors in fields, and cattle that had been released from winter barns. He could not see the sea because his horizon in the north was the long-grassed dyke where sheep grazed. He went on until, ahead of him, there was a tight plantation of pine trees and, to the north, the spire of a church. Level with the plantation a signpost gave the direction to the harbour, three kilometres away, of Nessmersiel. There, the plantation on one side of the road and the signpost on the other, he felt the light pressure of Timo Rahman's finger on his thigh. He braked and pulled on to the grass.

  His master was first out of the car, and held the rolled newspaper.

  He took the keys from the ignition, and followed, stood a half-pace behind Timo Rahman and towered over him.

  The Bear did not know the language spoken, but understood its meaning.

  'It is as far as we take you.'

  The mouseboy, Ricky Capel, powered down his window and peered from it. 'What you mean? This is the middle of fuck-all.'

  'From here you go alone, the two of you.'

  The mouseboy's mouth hung open, disbelieving.

  'Where the hell are we?'

  I

  'You walk to Nessmersiel, you take a small boat to the island – you wait to be collected. It is what you do.'

  The mouseboy's face quivered. 'You dumping us – me? Oh, that's bloody good.'

  'You go on from here together.'

  The mouseboy, Ricky Capel, came out of the car and stood his full height. His chest was up against the Bear's master. 'What's this about?'

  'It is about a fool. The fool is "Wanted for Murder".

  I do not do business with fools.'

  The Bear watched and his fists were clenched. He was ready to thrust his own body between the mouseboy's and his master. The newspaper was unfolded, the photograph was shown. He saw the man, who had no name, lean forward and look past Ricky Capel and study his own photograph. His expression was of sadness, not of surprise.

  The mouseboy said, 'Then we're fucked. I don't want no part of that.'

  'You should know, Ricky, that it is stupid to make enemies of those more powerful than yourself. The Americans are in love with the expression "You can run but you cannot hide". Take him, or you will make bad enemies. Do not make a bad enemy of me, or of his friends – because I will find you and they will.'

  At the back of the Mercedes, Timo Rahman opened the boot. The ar
gument, brief, was finished.

  He lifted out the gear that had been checked at the warehouse in Hamburg. He laid on the grass at the side of the road, under the signpost, the case that held the short-wave radio, the heavy, weatherproofed flashlight, two sets of leggings and two heavy coats.

  Last, he raised the boot's flooring and extracted from it a short-barrelled machine pistol, a magazine and a small plastic pouch of loose ammunition. He gave those to the man with no name, the fool who was hunted. From his inside pocket he took a passport and a bulging envelope. The passport was offered to the man, the envelope to the mouseboy. Because he had collected it from the people who had printed it, the Bear knew that the passport was Slovenian and in the name of Milan Draskic – and knew that the envelope, because he had counted the notes, held seventy-five thousand American dollars. Then he went back to the front, took out the plastic bag, pocketed the chocolate, and left them with coffee and the sandwiches.

  The mouseboy shook in fury. 'Not that arsehole who's the fool, it's me. I'm the bloody idiot for ever coming near you.'

  'You can run, Ricky, but you cannot hide.

  Remember it.'

  The Bear went back to the car and when Timo

  Rahman had settled into his seat, he reversed into the turning for Nessmersiel, and drove away, back where they had come from. For a long time, he could see in his mirror the two men they had abandoned by the road… If he had been asked, he would not have left them there because of the danger it might bring, but he had not been asked. At the last, before they were too small for him to recognize their movements, he saw them carry what they had been given into the cover of the plantation.

  'Look at him. He's the sort of man we need.'

  'We don't need any man – I don't need anyone.'

  'That is pig-headed, Malachy, and boring.'

  They had walked the length of the island's seashore. They had come off the ferry at the harbour on the extreme west point of Baltrum and had gone by the groynes and the packed stonework that made a barrier against the waves' surges. They had passed the knots of homes above the barrier, then struck out along the beach. With the tide far out they had been in a desert of gold-white sand, and grains of it swept across them in stinging clouds.