Vagabond

by Seymour, Gerald

  The little man in the uniform said in his ear, ‘My friend, for goodwill may I add to this collection a present from myself. Would a tank suit? A T-62, combat weight thirty-six tonnes, maximum speed fifty kilometres per hour, main armament range of four thousand eight hundred metres with fragmentation-high explosive shells. Would you take it?’

  ‘No, sir. We have no ability to use a battle tank. I applaud your generosity but—’

  The little man in the uniform was doubled up in laughter. A joke. Only for a moment did he imagine coming down the Pomeroy road, lurching into Irish Street and heading for the police barracks in a tank. He laughed too, but feebly. There were sufficient weapons here to make a difference in the war, and volunteers would flood to him. He would choose only the best, and a new world beckoned. He had woken and she had been cold beside him. The fly had flown from his face to her chin, then had skipped across the bruised line, where his fingers and thumbs had pressed, to her chest. He retched and was sick.

  They stood back, gave him space. He had eaten nothing through the night, and just a small cake in the café before his pick-up. The laughter was stifled. Was he all right? Yes. He was regarded curiously. The money, he realised, was trivial to them but not to his own people. The funds paid to the families of prisoners had been slashed because of the sum allocated to him. That would change when the firepower was back on the mountain, the old songs were sung again in bars and buckets rattled. A key opened a padlock at the end of the line.

  ‘I say again, it is a pity your friend did not come.’

  She had brought his car. As Karol had told her to, Jana parked in the station forecourt. She had done exactly as directed, and had cleared out the boot – it had contained a mess of supermarket bags, old newspapers and the bag in which he kept a change of clothing. There was a blanket on the seat behind her. As she had been told to, she had filled the tank to the screw cap. She loved Karol, loved the honesty that ran in him, which, she thought, was bred from naïveté, was sometimes stupid and at others heroic. He had promised her a future. She locked the car, put the keys into her bag, went to the machine and bought a ticket for the next train from Milovice to Prague. She would go home and cook herself something, then make another cake for her mother.

  The boxes were open. The headlights from the Mercedes and the Azerbaijani’s van lit them and reflected off the weapons and ammunition.

  He had the pages he had torn out of her notebook and had to crouch near the bonnets of the vehicles to read her writing – which was educated. Malachy Riordan shivered and the owl was still shouting, like it knew. His clothing was still damp. He had her list of the weaponry.

  There were priorities: they’d have recognised them. At the top was the deal that had been agreed: money transferred, the purchased items in the boxes with the protection of greaseproof paper and masking tape. At the bottom was what he had done. They knew – they weren’t idiots. He would have whacked the face of a slapper in any Russian city or kicked the arse of a whore. But she had been neither a slapper nor a whore. She had had education and style. She had been sent to hold his hand because the leaders of the Organisation would have thought him too crude to negotiate his way round a foreign city. These men knew, and it didn’t matter to them. They stood back and watched him, showing no impatience.

  He lifted out each weapon and laid it on the grass. Their voices were low and they exchanged cigarettes. It made him feel a little better, that they put the business of the weapons ahead of the girl. He had the inventory she had written: he started to examine the firing mechanisms and to count.

  Danny Curnow watched. They were approaching the moment of intervention, but it would not be his call. Beside him Karol Pilar had the camera.

  The headlights threw a rectangle of light. It would have been forty-five to fifty metres long, less in width. It lay across open ground, then petered out in the mass of birches and pines. The Czech would decide. Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, who carried the hitting power and were trained in close-quarters assault, belonged to him. Gaby Davies was crouched on the other side of him, and he doubted she had ever before been low to the ground, one knee in wet mud, watching targets who had with them enough weapons to start a small-scale war, low-intensity combat. Would she scream if the firing started and break cover? God alone knew.

  He had never believed in taking passengers. A few times, more senior men – ranking officers in Intelligence – had wanted to accompany him and Dusty to meetings with touts but he’d refused them. He’d told it straight: ‘No, you will not be with us. You’re not trained for it, or privy to the location. You would be an impediment to my safety and to Corporal Miller’s. You’ll get a full brief when I return.’ They were to the side of the rectangle of light. Whether he wanted her there or not was of minimal importance. She was there because she now outranked him.

  The Czech understood the change of leadership. Without reference to Danny, he had passed the night-sight monocular to her. She would be aiming through the gaps in the trees, and there was bracken, which was bloody noisy if it was disturbed. She had eyeball and had hooked a microphone into her watch-strap. A cable led up her sleeve to the recorder and she whispered her commentary. This was the evidence log. Karol Pilar had the camera to back it. Twice, Denisov walked in front of Malachy Riordan. Then the Czech eased away from Danny and looked for another gap. Pilar had his own machine pistol and microphone. Away in the blackness beyond the lights the three gunmen would move on the call.

  A murmur from Danny Curnow: ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Russia and Ireland together in the lens and a weapon held up. I am instructed to gain evidence, not intelligence. It will happen. Patience.’

  On the other side of him, warm breath close to his ear: ‘You all right?’

  ‘Fine – why should I not be?’

  He watched. They would shoot. That would be the moment of opportunity for the camera. Straight after the image was taken the arrests would take place. Easy. A walk in the park. The cold caught him.

  It might have been the cold that caused him to shiver. The weapons were being counted. He watched the tout. Ralph Exton played no part. He was like Danny Curnow. He thought it the last time he would be called back to arms.

  Jocelyn knew where to look and she saw him.

  It was a young people’s wine bar, which did good business on a Friday evening. The kids would have abandoned their desks and screens and emerged from the warrens of civil-service buildings. They were the public servants who believed themselves hard done by, underestimated, put upon, that they deserved a binge as the weekend loomed. Matthew Bentinick was the cuckoo among them. He was alone in a corner.

  She grimaced when their eyes caught, then headed through the throng. The crowd was three deep at the bar and the staff looked harassed. She hadn’t the energy to fight her way through to demand a single clean glass. They’d share. A Sauvignon Blanc bottle stood in front of him. Knowing him, it would be the house brand. The cork was out and the glass in front of him was empty. She pushed, did a Red Sea parting of a group from the Home Office that had merged with another from Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and burst through.

  Jocelyn did not think that she had ever seen the mercurial Matthew Bentinick so exhausted. A tired smile cracked his face as she squeezed close to him, hip to hip. He held a pipe in his hand, not lit but reeking of stale tobacco. The Friday-night talk battered them. Where would the crowds decamp to for a late meal? Who had tickets to which game the next afternoon? Whose line manager was a bastard? She filled the glass and tapped it, showing which side was his and which hers, then told him she wasn’t incubating any virus she knew of. He sipped, she swigged.

  ‘Always the worst?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Nowhere to go but sit and wait?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Because it’s personal?’

  ‘Personal and more.’

  ‘This shower round us, having their end-of-week moan, they have no idea what you carry, Matthew.
I don’t mean at home. What you carry each day at work and what you take back on the train each evening. Our family used to talk about it at ghastly reunions, which suddenly turned wonderful when you took one of the ancients out into the garden. No one else they met gave a toss. Special Operations Executive, dark nights, agents swinging under parachutes, half of them compromised and going into the cage within an hour of landing. And next morning there would be another gang of recruits needing a transfusion of confidence. They were left behind and ducked into corners in pubs to hug beers and shots of gin, and felt true cowards. They’d seem bemused that I was interested and almost grateful that I’d hear them out.’

  He gulped some wine and gripped the stem of his pipe. He pushed the glass to her. ‘Easy to imagine, Jocelyn, that we’re the ones with the short straws, eking out the waiting time and chorusing how much easier it is to be there, part of the fun and games, not side-lined. Sorry, my dear, but’s that’s crap.’

  The glass went back towards him and she had the bottle by the neck. The fine wine slopped from her mouth as she drank. Then she topped up the glass.

  ‘‘‘Them’’, the ones who are there?’

  ‘Because we’re in their hands.’

  ‘We rise and fall on their successes and failures. I don’t know a better man than my Vagabond. He’s the best because you can aim him at a target and he’ll go through fire to get to it. He won’t call Health and Safety, or argue an overtime rate. He does the job. The job owns him and has his loyalty. He would have risen from his deathbed when I told him the job needed him. He would have left a bride at the altar if I’d stood in the church door and flicked my fingers. Did I have the right to call him back? That’s the burden.’

  ‘And the girl, and the agent.’

  ‘She’s not Vagabond. She can look after herself. Fierce little thing and she’s competent. She’ll come through and climb – but won’t go the extra mile. That never held back any individual with ambition. The agent? A liar and deceiver, as they all are. They make their beds and can lie on them. I can justify the needs of a strategic policy that disrupts the flow of arms to revolutionary groupings – Ireland, north Africa, Middle East, Yemen and Somalia – and snipping the trade at source, with the safety and prosperity of our informant. Sink or swim? His problem. Gaby will look after herself. She won’t push herself into ultimate danger.’

  ‘But Vagabond called back?’

  ‘I often talk about him. I sit in our daughter’s room and tell her about him in a conversational way, as if she might be interested, but I’m speaking to an empty bed with a teddy bear on it – bought twenty-eight years ago from Hamleys – and I get no answer. I tell everyone who needs to know about Vagabond, who will go to the end of the road, if asked, and a bit beyond.’

  She passed him a handkerchief. ‘Is there long to wait, Matthew?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Long enough for another bottle.’

  She poured the dregs into the glass and stood up, then was lost in the throng. There were protests and curses from Home Office and Defra as she headed for the counter. She barely knew Vagabond, but had begun to care.

  The feet, clear of the bed, turned slowly. The toes were against the wall, then the heels. His legs were short, stubby and tanned from the summer sunshine of his Balkan home. One leg of his trousers was around his neck and the other was inserted in the space behind a window fastening. His lips were blue and his eyes bulged. His hands showed no sign of having scrabbled in his last moments to free himself from the self-tied noose. An alarm bell shrilled, boots pounded the corridor outside and an interrogator screamed in frustration.

  Dusty Miller reckoned he deserved it. He was astride the stool that was usually Desperate’s. The Dickens Bar was open late on a Friday, a concession to the end of the week, and the patron had asked where Daniel was. Dusty could say only that he was away but would be home soon. Every Friday. Desperate was in the Dickens Bar on the rue Basse, and every Saturday, but earlier, and every Sunday lunchtime before he left to rendezvous with the next batch of tourists at Dunkirk. It had been a busy and useful summer and the work had been continuous, the routine set in concrete, from before the anniversary and right through the day, 6 June, the celebration of the D Day landings seven decades before. Interest had held up over the next three months: they were now into September and there was no slackening.

  There would be a new broom. He didn’t know whether he would be driving out of Caen on the coming Sunday or if Desperate would be back. He thought it likely he would. He was not supposed to call him. He’d been tempted, but had not. He knew that Desperate had his mobile with him. Well, he might call tomorrow about arrangements for Sunday. He would break a rule, risk a curse, call the next morning. He had to know. But it wouldn’t be for much longer that Desperate headed off to Dunkirk on a Sunday and did his stalk through Honfleur, following the woman with the ash-blonde hair and sea-blue eyes, the strong walk and the perpetual sadness in her face. There would be the new broom because the painting, a coast-scape, was on its way and had been, almost, commissioned by Dusty, his little bit of match-making.

  For what he had done, he deserved a few beers in the Dickens. He’d had his supper – the women looked after him well and would continue after Desperate had gone. Gone where? To the north, where it was bloody cold and where cod was on the menu most nights. They’d look after him. He deserved his beers, and could suppose that he might just have brought a cup of happiness to two lonely souls. There was no hurry on the Saturday morning to get the group back on the minibus to Calais, and he’d be able to stay long enough in Caen to see the picture, her work from the dunes, arrive safely. He could, and did, congratulate himself.

  Another beer, yes, and for the patron too.

  The visitors were at their dinner, across the bassin Saint-Pierre from the hotel. It was too cool to be outside and serenaded by the shrill rattle of metal masts in the marina. The guide would be with them and would have relaxed, having stepped down from the plinth of knowledge. He was now ‘one of the gang’. The talk flowed and, with it, the wine.

  ‘Glad I’ve done it. Sort of puts it on the back burner. It was something I’d meant to do for years. Not a bundle of laughs, though.’

  ‘I’d say it’s about respect for those lads on the sands – whether at Dunkirk, hoping to be lifted off before the tide came in and drowned them, or Dieppe or on Sword and Omaha. It’s a gesture of respect.’

  ‘We’ve been here, Dorothy and I, to learn about sacrifice. A hard lesson, but this is the classroom for it.’

  ‘What confuses me is how those young lads came through it, the survivors. We didn’t hear anything about “stress” and “trauma”, not like after Afghanistan and Iraq. I suppose people then just had to get on with it. It’s what made them special.’

  ‘I thought it might all get technical and end up repetitive and rather boring. How wrong I was. We have to come here because it’s telling the dead that they’re not forgotten. We’re here to remember them.’

  A place at the table in the restaurant was empty. Usually it would have been filled by the minibus driver. On this occasion, the guide had said that the usual man had been called away and his stand-in had declined the invitation to join them. The meal slipped down, the inhibitions of strangers loosened, and the spare place was cleared away by a waiter to give them more room to spread themselves.

  ‘Don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t think I’d consider coming again. The place might get under your skin, into your blood. All those great empty beaches, and the quiet of the cemeteries. It’s hard to break away from them.’

  ‘Any more in that bottle down there?’

  The text reached Matthew Bentinick. Jocelyn craned forward to read it. The second bottle was well started.

  He said, ‘He’ll have heard of the arrest and will – forgive the vulgarity – have shat his pants. Then he’ll learn of the suicide. He’ll believe that a merciful God has silenced a possible accuser and that he’s safe
. And he’ll be wrong, which will make it all the sweeter.’

  She said, ‘It’ll be countdown time – wherever they bloody are.’

  Quiet and darkness had fallen on the mountain and the flat lands.

  Few cars were in the lanes to break the stillness, and the darkness was disturbed only by small pockets of light marking the communities. It would be the start of a hard day when dawn disturbed the quiet and the dark. Emotions would be scratched raw.

  Bridie Riordan sat in front of a fire that she had allowed to burn out. She toyed with her accounts book for the haulage and heard the hacking cough of her son above her.

  Attracta Donnelly and Siobhan Nugent drank coffee in the tout’s widow’s kitchen and talked softly of lives gone by, what might have been.

  Pearse’s mother had sent her family to bed, stayed downstairs and ironed her black dress for the next day. The television was blaring but she didn’t know what programme was on.

  Kevin’s mother was alone because her men were in the bar up the road and wouldn’t be back until later. She had washed her hair because she wanted to look her best for the service, and couldn’t have said why that was important.