Vagabond

by Seymour, Gerald

  ‘I came very carefully. I stayed in a back-street, did cut-outs to see a tail . . . I know about surveillance – human, cameras and audio – and I saw nothing. It was not me.’

  ‘And not me. There was a woman’s voice. She is of a British agency. My driver is cleared. Who else is left?’

  ‘The bastard.’

  ‘My friend is left.’

  ‘He set it up. He did the middle work.’

  ‘He is my friend. When I had nothing, he lifted me. Today it was all to help him. I make nothing on this deal, nothing. For my friend, to help him.’

  ‘I saw him in Ireland and showed him a drill. I switched the drill on. I lit cigarettes and held them close to him. Asked him why he sold weapons for use against his own people. I got a quick enough answer. I can tell you each fuckin’ word of it. “There’s a recession on where I live, and I’ve a family to keep, and you pay me. Good enough? I need the money.” It’s what he said.’

  ‘Get me away from here and I’ll do you more weapons.’

  ‘Your friend was a lie.’

  ‘He is walking but he is dead.’ Timofey’s voice had risen, anger in it. He felt a hand on his arm below the epaulette. It squeezed hard.

  ‘Dead, but not yet dead. Your driver didn’t wait around.’

  ‘I think he stays for me, a little away, at the old transport-pool depot. He might wait there. My driver is loyal to me, is nothing without me.’

  ‘He might stay. We’ll give it a bit longer, then get clear.’

  ‘I am in your hands. It hurts when your friend betrays you. I have people indebted to me in responsible positions, with authority. What is there for you, my freedom fighter?’

  ‘I go home, back where I came from. Say nothing, deny. Answer no questions. Hope to confuse . . . but certain to be convicted. Photographs, prints, DNA, and what’s on these clothes. The door closes for life – that’s twenty years. I don’t see the mountain, don’t hear it, don’t smell it. I don’t see my wife or my son, except through glass. He was your friend, but I checked him.’

  ‘We give it more time.’

  It had been a dilemma but only briefly. The screech owl’s call was the best. It pierced the evening air, and he could do it well enough for it to pass. And the bunker helped Danny Curnow – underground, the call would be muffled.

  They had come out of the trees. One of the boys was first. All of the torches were off. The monocular would have guided them. He would have stood out, a white shape against the tree, then Gaby and last Karol Pilar. His hand had been across his mouth. They had all stood a few metres from the bunker entrance and listened. She knew the order from London – she’d read the text. She might argue and bitch but she was a company girl and when push went beyond shove she’d knuckle down and do as instructed. The fling with the agent wouldn’t survive the homecoming, but Danny was no expert in relationships. He could have done a master’s in failed ones.

  He supposed it was because he was a ‘little man,’ comfortable inside a laager. He needed to belong – he had done in the army, which was a brotherhood, then in Caen and with the visitors, living with the cemeteries. It was not that he had felt vindictive towards Timofey Simonov, to whom he had never spoken. The man had done nothing to him . . . And Malachy Riordan, who kept alive the embers of an old war, was not in the equation. Neither of them mattered to Danny Curnow, but it was as if he had taken the shilling and therefore was obligated, not that money had been discussed. He hadn’t contemplated turning his back when the call to return had been spoken in his ear, against the ripple of the waves on the beach. It was almost over. He would be home in the morning, back with Lisette and Christine. Dusty would bombard him with questions, and then he might contact Matthew Bentinick to talk about remuneration. He’d never been good at getting the best possible payment. It was almost, but not quite, over, and a little of the business from long ago was unfinished.

  He stood back from the entrance and the boys let Gaby Davies and Karol Pilar come near to him. They all listened and the voices were plain, murmured, and English was spoken. She touched his arm as if that were an accolade for showing his worth, and the Czech gave him another punch on the shoulder. The boys had the monocular. They did the reconnaissance of the steps and peered towards the targets but couldn’t see them.

  Near to conclusion. It was always a massive let-down, what the trick-cyclists called ‘burn-out anticlimax’. She didn’t touch him now, and was bent close to Karol Pilar. She was in charge of the day and he had command of the moment. They whispered urgently to each other. Neither asked Danny for advice or an opinion. He stood back. It hardly mattered to Danny Curnow that he was ignored.

  ‘Get them out.’

  ‘I’m not sending boys in there. It’s a hell-hole.’

  ‘They have to be brought out, and we have a schedule.’ She had control, authority – the first time in her life that it mattered – and Gaby Davies used it.

  ‘I will not put the boys in danger ahead of myself, and I am not going in there.’

  ‘You have stun grenades?’

  ‘We have the M84, 180 decibels and a million candela – I already told you or Danny – with two-second delay.’

  ‘Get the show on the road. Use them.’ She pushed him away, a dismissal.

  ‘It could have a bad effect in there. Trapped?’ A last query.

  ‘We have a schedule to keep, and their welfare is their concern. Do it.’

  She was elbowed back, no ceremony, and crouched. She put her hands over her ears. Danny Curnow turned away and took a sort of shelter from the tree nearest him. He heard the rasp as the pin was pulled, then the noise of the impact as it bounced on the first step and went down.

  ‘He’ll have waited and . . .’ It rattled, like a tin can dropped in a supermarket aisle.

  Timofey Simonov had said he would call the driver who had brought him. He was sure his man would have waited. Unthinkable that he would abandon him.

  He couldn’t see it, only heard it, down three steps, leaping, and then the splash into the stagnant water. One moment he had been close to Riordan, and the next the man was gone, his movement making waves in the water. Riordan was down, almost under the water. Timofey Simonov did not understand.

  He stood, was exposed.

  The light burned out his eyesight and the explosion killed his hearing.

  Hands gripped his waist and he was dragged towards where he thought the bunker’s steps were. He tripped on the bottom one and was hit, a cuff with the heel of a hand at the nape of his neck. He had no clear thoughts. Dazed and bewildered, he was pitched forward and stumbled, then propelled upwards. Torches greeted him. The last blow caught him between the legs and he lurched higher. The lights in his face were indistinct and blurred and he saw the movement of mouths in the holes of balaclava-covered faces. He was snatched.

  There was a woman, young. His arms were wrenched back to his spine, above his buttocks. The tunic was torn from his chest, buttons exploding, and fingers searched him. The handcuffs were on his wrists. He could not have walked. They had hold of his arms at the elbows and his boots trailed along, the toecaps scuffing the ground. He heard nothing and saw little. In his mind there were confused images of his dogs and his home on the hill above Karlovy Vary, the assault rifle he should have fired, and the brigadier – where was he?

  Timofey Simonov shouted at the darkness and the trees: ‘Denisov, where are you? Denisov, tell them who I am . . .’ He couldn’t hear his own voice and no answer came. The silence blistered round him. Twice his boots snagged and he would have fallen onto his face but for the hands that gripped him. He tried to shout once more: ‘Denisov, explain to them who I know, who my friends are.’

  Trees loomed past him, and there were guns close to him. It was time to despair because he grasped with sharp clarity – that they knew who he was and who his friends were. He was dragged away and tears welled in his damaged eyes. The silence clung to him.

  They ran. Gaby Davies kept up easily with the bo
ys. They moved their prisoner as if he weighed nothing. The third, she thought it was Bravo, was behind them. If the prisoner slowed he kicked the back of the shin as encouragement to keep going. She felt almost ecstatic. The pity of it: she was far from the bar in Pimlico, at the end of Horseferry Road where they would be gathering that night – those inside the circle of knowledge – drinking. Perhaps the director himself would have prowled down from his eyrie on the upper floor to hand out personal congratulations, like confetti. But she wouldn’t be there. Gaby had been with the Service long enough to know how the zephyr of excitement came into the building: it had a force of its own and ignored the strictures of need-to-know. It celebrated any coup they pulled. Triumph, no details and no names, always seeped through doors, then up and down lift shafts. The prisoner bleated. Did she resent that so much had been kept from her? Not at all. He was a high-value target, and she had taken him down.

  ‘Where’s Danny?’ It was the Czech.

  ‘What? What did you say?’

  A shout. ‘Where’s Danny? I don’t have him.’

  ‘Somewhere behind us.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him. None of us have.’

  ‘Well, he’s a big boy, isn’t he? We have a schedule.’

  ‘Are we leaving him?’

  What else to do? Darkness governed the timetable, the cover of night, and the absence of senior officials at their desks, playing with their bloody screens, keyboards and Blackberrys. By daylight the hopes for success would wane. They were on the edge of illegality and needed the cover of darkness to be gone and finished by dawn, the erasure of evidence and the completion of a mission. She was unlikely to be sympathetic to a suggestion that they call a halt and wait for him to show.

  She called back: ‘He can look after himself.’

  She fell, and swore. Bravo heaved her up. She wore trainers, lightweight, good enough for a jog in a London park. She’d bought them for a hike round Kielder Water, in the Northumberland National Park; at home they thought she was a clerk with the Revenue. The shoes were not good enough for running and weaving, sliding and slipping in a forest in near darkness. She’d tripped on a concrete block.

  ‘Is that what we do?’

  ‘We leave him, of course we do. He’ll find his own way. It was never expected he’d go with us out of here.’

  ‘Did you hurt yourself?’

  ‘No.’ She said it too fast, confirming the lie. The shoes had been useless at Kielder Water and had given her a blister. She’d not gone far before settling at a viewpoint and smoking a quarter-pack of cigarettes. They looked stylish, and were useful in London, but not here – and she’d lost one in a mud pool. She was handed it – Karol Pilar had found it for her. ‘I didn’t hurt myself.’

  ‘And what about Ralph Exton?’

  ‘I’m not a nanny either. I can’t hang about.’

  ‘We leave Exton too?’

  ‘Is this a school trip? Do I have to round them up? They can come out together.’

  She had been to bed with him twice. She had been lonely and stressed out. She had marginally enjoyed the experience and had thought of a future of sorts for them, but that was when she had been running in the wake of Danny Curnow. It was her call now. What she would do, when she was home, was take the clothes out of her case, separate the underwear – everything that he, with not especially nimble fingers, had touched – find a plastic bag, stuff it in, take it down the street to the first rubbish bin and dump it.

  ‘You leave Danny Curnow – good guy – and you leave Ralph Exton, who was the most important voice in the affair? It’s what Mr Bentinick told me.’

  ‘They can walk, tell each other war stories. Can’t get my fucking shoe on.’

  But she did. The old blister had come back. They reached the van. The Russian was bundled inside, Alpha with him, then Gaby. Karol Pilar, Bravo and Charlie, who drove, were squashed into the front. They went out fast, over potholes, and as she rocked on the hard surface, she realised she had not thought of the other player in the game: Malachy Riordan. Her instructions, without equivocation, had been to ignore him. Bravo found a rock station, from Bratislava, and they went for the main road.

  ‘Can you hear me, Malachy?’

  It was fifteen minutes since they had left. Danny Curnow had leaned against a tree, let it take his weight. He was near to the entrance of the bunker.

  ‘I stayed because I owe you, Malachy.’

  There were times when all the proven lessons went out with the bath water. There was no good reason for Danny Curnow to have stayed in the forest around the desolate buildings of the former base. And less of a good reason for him to go to the bunker’s entrance, stand on the top step and silhouette himself against whatever light the moon gave. It seemed the right place and the right time. Maybe he’d waited too long.

  ‘The occasion and the opportunity came together, Malachy.’

  There was no answer from the blackness, and he assumed the man was still huddled at the far side of the bunker. He knew he was alive. If he had been dead, well, the Russian wouldn’t have made it up the steps. It was clear that he’d been pushed up and was too dazed to negotiate them on his own – and two voices had alerted Danny. He assumed he had delivered a body blow. Malachy Riordan had spent a quarter of an hour in hiding, hearing nothing but the wind in the trees and the occasional night bird’s call. Knowing that the Russian was gone – having heard the footfalls blundering away at speed – he had been steeling himself to emerge and slide away, hoping to find obscurity.

  ‘I used to see you as a kid, Malachy. I did surveillance on the farmhouse. Your father was the target, and I was often tasked there. I used to see you go to school and come back, and in the holidays and at weekends you’d be with your father out at the back or working on the lorries. I watched you, Malachy.’

  He listened and heard nothing. He might have been talking to himself – he often did, sitting in the cemeteries or at the back of the beaches by the closed ice-cream outlets. He might have been speaking to the headstones in their precise lines or to the men who had sheltered in the shallow pits of shifting sand in the dunes when the aircraft had swooped on them. Sometimes in his room he talked quietly to the pictures on the walls.

  ‘I was there when the priest came and told your mother that your father had died in the ambush. You came out of the door. What were you? Eight or nine? You screamed, Malachy, and I heard you. I knew then that you’d be a fighter and that you’d not be caged. I killed your father. I ran the agent who touted him. They said I was the best and I ran many agents so I killed many men. It’s a burden. I’m wondering if you feel the same weight because of men you’ve killed. They say it’s better when you talk about it. I’ve tried to find somebody, anybody, who’ll hear me out but don’t seem to know how to go about it.’

  It was colder and the wind had freshened. It gusted through the tunnels the trees made and past the buildings. He aimed his voice at the abyss beyond the steps, but heard no movement. The man would be like a rat in a corner, considering his best chances and failing to find any. He persisted and felt as if he’d come across a soul-mate. He’d never talked to Dusty like this.

  ‘I shouldn’t think your burden would be any policeman you’d shot – have you killed any, or just hurt them, damaged a leg or an eye? I’m not up to speed on the statistics of your war. They brought me back to run the agent here. Malachy, two things about you surprise me. You’re a big man, a hard man, an intelligent man, a fighter, who has the respect of the crowd up at Palace Barracks. They want to bang you up, shut the door on you, but they admire your professionalism. It’s always a plus for them – good tactics and strong commitment. But you must be carrying a burden – you are, aren’t you? Because of the girl.’

  He sat down on the top step. His knees were against his chest. He held the pistol loosely, not as if he believed himself threatened.

  ‘I’m a part of your life, just as you are of mine. I killed your father and I’ve destroyed you. That’s the way it i
s. I’m not taking you in. I don’t have cuffs, or an arrest warrant, and I don’t have an army out there behind me. I just wanted to talk. Funny thing about you, Malachy, I don’t reckon you as a theorist. Some can spout every hour and every date of an ‘atrocity’, always the victim, never to blame. You’re not one of them, I’m told. You’re a soldier. The first thing that confuses me is how you didn’t smell the tail and the deceit. It kind of lets you down in my image of you.’

  He was answered by the quiet.

  ‘What else bothers me about you, Malachy, is that you killed the girl. Nice-looking kid, smart and bright. We’d the impression she was here for kicks – know what I mean? She wasn’t one of the ideologues who recite doctrine for twenty-four hours a day. She wouldn’t have lasted, would have been out the door in a year and holed up with a banker or a broker in Zürich or Hamburg, like the struggle was a rite of passage for her. Some kids backpack round Australia but she wanted something with more muzzle velocity. Did you have to kill her? Why?’

  He scratched his nose and realised, then, that he was at the heart of it.

  ‘It’s the burden, and it never goes. ‘‘The cliff I’m going to climb gets steeper, and the rock I’m going to carry to the top gets heavier.’’ That’s what the burden’s like, and I couldn’t think of anyone other than you to talk to about it. But you won’t answer me and we’ll sit here a while longer. You’ve shoved that scumbag Russian into their arms, bought yourself time. He was what they wanted, not you. You were just the route in, otherwise insignificant. You have a little time. And I’m in no hurry.’

  With a last juddering heave, the wheels of the van cleared a pothole on the track and they lurched onto a decent surface. They were on a public road, lights glowing in the sky above the trees, within touching distance of a sort of civilisation, and had shed the old world of great armies and traditions in their backpacks. Charlie put his foot down.