Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  They would not have been up yet, his mum and dad. There was a machine at his father’s side of the bed that made their morning cup of tea. If their cat was still alive it would be marching over their duvet, unless it had been run over, or died from an ailment, might be another. There had been a photograph of him in their bedroom, but it might have been binned. Perhaps, in privacy, they wept at the manner of his going, some crap about ‘important work and going under the radar and better that we lose sight of each other. I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t matter’. Some went home to their wives and kids too often, or to their parents, and the addresses were under the bad guys’ surveillance, and ended for the innocents in a shambles of late-night evacuations, even new identities. He thought of them . . . thought of girls who he might have known better and had not dared to . . . thought of men, women, who were either hard cases in the narcotics distribution chains, or just hapless and not knowing another way of survival, or who believed in a cause with passion and were intelligent but could mete out violence. Where were they? Cell doors not yet opened on the landings. Banged up and watching breakfast TV, and remembering the shit face they had trusted and who had lived a lie amongst them . . . thought of a girl – soft skin, a defiant jaw, good hips and good breasts and a good brain – and wanting to kill, or help to kill, and was now towelling herself dry: he had kissed the skin and ridden the hips, and his finger had brushed her breasts. She would be a song bird in a small cage, and would spit if she remembered him. And thought of others in the Marines, in the classrooms, in the uniformed police, but all gone. It would all happen in the next several hours.

  Usually, at the end, before he’d sidle off to the shadows, disappear, the bosses would give him a cuff on the back, or a brief hug, tell him, ‘Well done, mate, you were fucking awesome. Done great, have a rest, then we’ll have the next one lined up. Of course we will, because you’re a star boy.’

  She came out of the bathroom, had left her towel there. Walked past the window where the curtains were open, didn’t seem to care – seemed bleak, like her soul was lost, and started to dress . . . And he thought of the pair who ran him. Probably decent people, bags under their eyes, and smacked with lack of sleep. Demands that they justify the budget, and that a file could be closed, and the next one jacked up on the screen. Never-ending, never finished . . . and saw the script on the TV sets that announced ‘Breaking News’ and later there would be the footage from mobile phones and the sound of the screams and perhaps the gunfire, and the people running with the gurneys to the ambulances bringing in the day’s casualties at the Accident and Emergency entrances. They were Gough and Pegs, and would be somewhere outside the hotel door and would try to tail him, and him drop the message, and it was odds-on that he’d not see them again, have no call to and have no wish to. If he failed they failed, and there would not be a psychologist to offer up excuses for them: burn-out and running on empty. Just another day.

  She’d pulled on her clothes. Then went back into the bathroom a last time and carried something but he did not see what it was. He would drive north to the channel port where the ferry was docked. They would not fuck that night. After the crossing he would take her wherever she told him, and she’d walk away with a package under her arm, last he’d see of her would be when she rounded a corner . . . wrong, next to last. He would be behind a screen in the court, she would be in a guarded dock . . . He would not sleep with her on the boat but would sit on the deck whether it rained, hailed, whether a gale blew. Out of the bathroom, and seemed thicker round the waist, and . . . Just another day, as easy or difficult as the rest of them. She zipped her bag, set it down beside his. He went round the room carefully and checked the floor, and the cupboard and under the bedside tables. He found the wrapping of one of the condoms, and pocketed it. They would leave nothing, no indication they had been there.

  ‘Some breakfast?’

  ‘Just something small.’

  ‘And you’ll tell me the plan, Zed, for the morning and the afternoon.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  He carried the bag and the rucksack down the stairs.

  Hardly any breakfast for either of them.

  He stood behind her, and Zeinab paid the bill. He came forward and said they wanted to walk a little on La Canebière before leaving, and asked if their bags could be lodged for an hour. Why not?

  Another couple were behind her, and the woman coughed loudly as if to let her know, forcibly, that they needed to hurry. Could have had a room above them, or on the floor below them, and the man let her do the complaining and merely wheezed. Indifferently, they were thanked for their custom, wished a good day, and it was added – an afterthought – that the management looked forward to welcoming them again . . . Zeinab had a reservation, made in London, for two single rooms, had exchanged them for a double, should have had a refund on the bill, had pointed to the sum required, but there was a shrug and she was eased sideways by the next check-out. And did not fight it . . . it was what Scorpion, or might have been Krait, had said to her. Not to attract attention, not to be looked at, nor noticed . . . She took the receipt, stepped away.

  She gave it to Andy, was asked if she wanted it, shook her head. She led and he followed.

  The early sunshine lit her face. She blinked, then focused. The knives and firearms in the shop window opposite gleamed at her. She was pushed by the flow of people going to, coming from, the open market, and thought how her mother would have been envious of the chance to buy fruit and vegetables of that quality, and how much better it was than Dewsbury’s market, and ground her nails into the palms of her hand to block the thought. Her parents, spiritually, were gone from her life. She would go home again for a weekend – if the university kept her – or would have to move back if they did not, but she would no longer be the servant of their beliefs, ideals, all changed when she had been straddled on the pillion and gone to the home of the boy in love with the Kalashnikov assault rifle and when she had been over Andy, almost an idiot but caring for her, and helping him.

  Opposite the hotel, across the width of the small square, were a couple – middle-aged and probably British – and the man had a map unfolded and pored over it, and they talked busily and the woman had an opened guidebook. He was half a pace behind her.

  She said they had an hour. He seemed remote to her. Merely nodded acceptance. And herself? Uncertain, excited, wanting to share but unable. As if she wrestled with herself . . . arms flailing and hacking with her knees and biting and scratching, and the signs of it suppressed. But above all, superior to the uncertainty, was the excitement. Not about religion as taught in the mosques at home, not about the politics of victimhood as dripped from the TV screens after Westminster or Manchester or the bridge over the river in London. About the adrenaline rush of excitement – not about the denunciations of police chiefs and ministers, or even the stories of the deaths of her cousins. More about the worship of the rifle that the young man with the crippled arm had shown her, and his love for it, and his yearning to hold and fire it . . . to have that power. Hold that fucking power . . . an obscenity, and her mother would have near fainted and her father might have taken his belt to her . . . that power. They strolled, like neither of them had a care. Not the cause but the rifle entrapped her: she went willingly because the weapon had won her . . . Zeinab knew little, beyond the basics, of counter-surveillance techniques. She did not look behind her . . . and Andy’s free hand held hers. They walked slowly and climbed the gentle hill and she looked in shop windows.

  Abruptly, Andy asked her. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Why do you need . . .?’

  ‘I have to plan the route out . . . I’m not an idiot, Zed. What you do, I don’t care. If it’s illegal, not my problem. To me, you are fantastic, brilliant, incredible. I am privileged to know you. What do you come to Marseille for, what does anyone come to Marseille for? For weed, for nothing else. I have no difficulty with it. Obvious. We get it on board, and we go. Going fast, quitting the pla
ce, burning the rubber. It is in your hand and we are gone . . . okay? That’s good? Where do you meet the supplier? I tell you, Zed, I’m not an idiot, and you should trust me.’

  She saw only sincerity. She looked into his face and watched the honesty in his eyes and had thought that afterwards, far away, there would be a place, a refuge, remote, and they might be together, safe and hidden – another day.

  ‘I have to be at the Place de la Major, by the cathedral, beside Quai de la Tourette. I take delivery there.’

  ‘And I’m not asking what you want . . . but I’m there, will watch over you. Trust me.’

  She would, believed him. In a bookshop they saw a cat comfortably perched on second-hand volumes and the sunshine fell on its face which was calm, content, and without a trace of fear. They climbed and the street widened. And did not look back.

  Karym did the tail . . .

  He was captivated by her, amazed that she had come in the night to La Castellane, climbed the stairs of the block, visited him, seen his bedroom, showed interest in his collection of Kalashnikov books. Had held his stomach as he had ridden away to the north with her as his pillion, could still feel her shape against his back, and her softness, and remember the strength of her arms, the sharpness of her nails. Without the experience of the money satchel, and the Samson moment, he would not have dared anything as rash as taking her – a stranger, an outsider – to his home. He was a changed man . . .

  . . . took the far side of La Canebière and flitted between doorways, lingered when they did. It was what his brother had told him to do. Hamid had returned in the night to the project, had gone to his own apartment where his own girl was. Had called for Karym, kid brother, to come at dawn. Had boasted of his new relationship with the great man, with Tooth. Had told him – like it was a hero’s story, not an imbecile’s – of going into the water, catching a packet before it sank, had been 35 minutes, at least, in the water, had been congratulated. Then had been taken to a hotel on the south side, and a room provided while he showered, cleaning the cold and the seawater off him, and his clothes returned washed and dried and ironed. The driver, Tooth’s, had then driven him back to the quayside and he had ridden away on his bike, and had known his future was secured.

  Two hours in his own bed for Karym, and no sleep, just tossing with the memory of her feel against his back and her touch of his stomach, and recalling what he had said of the rifle, and her understanding that he was an expert. What to tell her? Could be how the army of North Vietnam had out-gunned the Americans, their Marines who had the M16, could tell her that, and believed she would be fascinated, interested . . . if they had the time together.

  He followed. Any teenager from La Castellane knew how to look for a tail following, and protecting the girl and her friend. He had not seen one, but it was what his brother had ordered him to do, watch for it. He saw shoppers, saw troops in a patrol of four, saw police in a squad car, saw a tourist couple who seemed continuously to argue over their map, saw no tail.

  She had agreed to what he suggested.

  His conclusion: her courage was failing her . . . easy enough to be with other fanatics and close to what was familiar and to play the good calm kid, and with a basket load of necessary resolve. Their sex would by now be out of the window, back in history . . . It was becoming real, and far from what she knew, and cash was invested in her. Her face had gone sombre. Clear in his mind . . . her brief’s accusation of entrapment, and him under oath in the box. Denial. Who to believe? Her flickering eyes and wavering gaze and bowed head in the dock, and his straight ahead look into the jury’s eyes. Her blood-lust against his courage. A no-brainer for the judge when he summed up the case . . . He would lie better than she did. A piece of cake – but not proud of it, seldom harboured pride . . . And almost, put vulgar, wet herself, he reckoned, when she’d been far beyond any horizon on La Canebière, lost in thought and had failed to shift out of the path of another four squaddie patrol. Pretty near been spiked by the rifle barrel. Her eyes would have focused on the soldier, the weapon, the webbing and grenades and the flak-jacket: he had simply assumed she’d step aside. She had deep lines on her forehead: he read them as acute anxiety. Held tight to her hand.

  And he made her laugh. Gave her arm a jerk. He pointed across the tram tracks to a narrow central park that divided the traffic lanes. The sun was pretty on the trees, tables and chairs were outside cafés, and there was a bandstand for the summer season, and it looked good . . . looked better with the giant shapes of a giraffe and whatever a new-born one was called. They were double life-size at least, had a myriad of meaningless lines painted on the smooth plastic of the bodywork, and it seemed like they had just wandered in off one of the side streets, or out of a bank, or been in a bar, in a café: that’s what he said to her. For a moment she had thought him serious, then had burst out laughing. He supposed most of the kids, in the countdown to a suicide attack and wearing the vest, or any of them who drove the kid to the drop-off point and watched him walk away, first paces to Paradise, or who were just the lowest form of foot soldier, would have felt the stress before playing their part. She held tight to him, might have stumbled if he had not been there, then regained composure. He saw them, back on the pavement, bickering, and him with the map and her with the guidebook. Seemed to come steadily closer. It was a good move and he respected it.

  The man said, ‘Excuse me – you speak English? Please, if you speak English . . .’

  He replied, ‘I do and am. How can I help?’

  And Detective Chief Inspector, Gough, came close to him. He said in a firm voice, ‘Bit lost, and the boss over there seems to think we’re in one place, and I’ve a different view on it. Have a look at our map, please.’

  Well choreographed. The civilian analyst, Pegs, had parked herself on a bench a few yards away, had then addressed a remark at Zed, something anodyne, but she responded and gave Gough and him space . . . only for a few seconds and not to be laboured. Something like, ‘Where will we need to get the Metro to . . .’

  The voice tailed. Andy Knight, who he was that week, day, hour, jabbed with his finger on the map and found the Cathedral de la Major down by the waterside, and said softly that the relevant place was Place de la Major and Esplanade de Tourette. Said it would be there in an hour. The pick-up. Would it be open, the big voice boomed, but Andy apologised, did not know, called her and started to walk away. She came to him.

  ‘Where were they looking for?

  ‘Some cathedral.’

  ‘You showed him, knew where it was?’

  ‘They’d been arguing, and there are two cathedrals.’

  They walked on. He thought it a cleverly done brush contact, as it had to be, and Gough had done the switch in voice level correctly. Had to have been clever. The boy was easy to recognise. The arm, maybe a polio or maybe botched surgical intervention after a break, hung awkwardly, and it was easy to recognise his weight and shape and the same clothing as the night before under a light in the square below the hotel window. At the top of the hill was a jewellers, and he led her inside, and murmured close to her ear.

  ‘I don’t know where you’re leading me, Zed, don’t want to know. I still say it, you are more special than anyone I have been with before . . .’ Not saying much because that field was bloody near empty, but the dose was well poured and had a high sincerity content. And he needed her trust, and her confidence. ‘. . . Won’t take a refusal. Something to remember Marseille by.’

  It was 150 euros, a thin gold bracelet of fine links, simple and understated and a private type of gift: it would sail through on his expenses at the end of the assignment. Inside, the manager had seen the pair of them and had tried to lever Zed over towards the windows where the rings were. He paid, fastened it on her wrist, and the light lit the gold chain. And the pendant on her chest shone, markers of his deceit. They went out, and crossed the road and she laughed again at the sign of the monster giraffe and the little one . . . in his mind was the battering of wha
t seemed a drum beat. Something inevitable but he did not know what.

  His wife was in uniform, that of the Municipal Police, assigned that day to an area of Marseille that was affluent, for the smart crowd from the blocks lining the Avenue du Prado. She had put on her pistol, and her belt, from which was slung the kit – cuffs, canisters of gas, a baton – and asked him, from the door of the apartment, the familiar question.

  ‘Are you home for supper tonight?’

  ‘Don’t know, don’t see why not.’

  ‘Anything special – I am just going to schools. Talk about drugs. You?’

  ‘Planning – a buffoon from Paris is coming. A protection screen. We’re talking about it.’

  ‘Those people from England, did they . . .?’

  ‘No idea, maybe they went home.’

  He was told what to take out of the freezer so that it would have defrosted for their dinner, together or separately. She closed the door after her. He’d have five minutes more with the newspaper, then follow her out, go to his meeting. An interesting day or a dull one. ‘Samson’, the executioner, had no preference.