This one man still slept. The voices were low and she thought from her schoolgirl appreciation of French that they talked about the best socks to go inside their combat boots, also about a football game that would be played the coming Sunday, Olympique against Rennes, and both discussions were without passion and were thoughtful. And one might be called upon to kill that night, and one might confront an assault rifle held by a British zealot and might die . . . but for the moment socks and football were top of the list.
She shivered, not from the cold nor the damp, or from hunger, but from the thought of what the next hours might carry, what fate. And wondered which of the men was the policewoman’s husband and whether she feared for him . . . the consensus now was that the German socks used by the Bundesgrenzschutz were the best and that Olympique Marseille would win by three clear goals, and if it would be the sniper. Pegs was humbled, felt small, inadequate.
In Gough’s ear, Pegs whispered,‘Goes against the bloody grain, but I feel a bit of a prayer for our boy is called for.’
Was answered bleakly.‘Already been there, done that.’
Hamid approached the Major.
He had asked who was in charge and had been brought to a control vehicle. The engine ran and fumes belched from the back and inside it was dry and warm, and housed a handful of men and women with computers and phones and radios, and a drop-down desk and a screen with a large street map featuring La Castellane. The Major stood on the top step and the open door flapped behind him.
Difficult to phrase the request. Hamid had rehearsed it many times.
He did not know the Major had not had dealings with him. Rumour spoke of him as being an incorruptible, not accepting arrangements of mutual advantage. The old gangster was rumoured to have owned the criminal investigation department at L’Évêché, and made sufficient profits to have paid them off handsomely. He had seen Major Valery when his brother had been a prisoner of their Somali rivals, but not to speak with. Now, he believed accommodation was necessary. He was met at the bottom of the steps and the door behind was closed. The Major set the tone, seemed to switch off his personal radio.
‘Thank you, sir, for speaking with me. I am Hamid, I am the brother . . .’
A cold reply.‘I know who you are.’
‘We find ourselves, sir, in a difficult situation.’
‘Do we?’
‘Not a situation that is favourable to the residents of the project.’
‘Explain.’
‘I pick my words with care. I do not wish to offend.’
‘I have many officers here. They would prefer to be in their homes or carrying out useful duties. They are wet, they are tired, they are hungry, but there is a situation I cannot ignore, and at the heart of it is your younger brother.’
‘All true, sir . . . and with my younger brother is a woman with a Kalash, and an Englishman who has been denounced as a police spy. He is their prisoner . . . We want your officers to return to their homes and duties.’
‘So that the normal and peaceful life enjoyed inside La Castellane may be normalised? Yes?’
‘You understand perfectly, sir.’
‘There is a red line. It cannot be crossed.’
‘Explain it, please.’
‘It is not possible, in order to open up the essential trading on which the project survives, for the woman involved to be allowed safe passage into the night. It cannot be done. Also, in the short term there would be consequences for your own involvement in this matter. Consequences are difficult to avoid.’
‘I am very frank with you, sir. We have a new delivery for the market of La Castellane. Not just in my hands, but other “traders” in the project are in possession of it. Through the action of my brother – infatuated by this woman – none of us can sell the product, and at a time when it would command the greatest reward, and of course it is already paid for and at a high outlay.’
‘I grieve for you in your dilemma.’
‘I can suggest a programme, sir, by which our mutual problems may be curtailed.’
‘Explain your “solution”, explain also your response to “consequences”, and appreciate that I do not negotiate – but am pragmatic.’
‘I have your word, Major, that you are not wired, and . . .’
Major Valery lifted his arms. Hamid accepted the invitation and patted him down, as a security guard would have done, under the policeman’s arms, around his waist and inside his legs, then checked that the radio on the clip below the Major’s shoulder was switched off, and stepped back. He then lifted his own arms and was also searched for a bug . . . There would be no record of their accord.
The first proposition dealt with the situation immediately confronting them, and the second of Hamid’s solutions offered a response to ‘consequences’, and what he would subsequently offer. He was listened to, then given the briefest nod of the Major’s cap, and a little of the water lodged there came down as spray.
‘And now?’
‘I want your hand, sir. I am told of you that is a sufficient guarantee.’
A glove was removed. The hand was shaken, a loose grip but not limp.
They went their separate ways, had arrangements to make.
He thought it was time.
‘Zed, will you listen to me? You should. Should listen.’
She sat on the bed. The boy had gone to the kitchen. He’d heard plates being moved and the fridge opened, and a tap running. He would try, supposed it was owed.
‘Best you can do, Zed, is to chuck it out of the window, and any spare ammunition with it. Get rid of it, and then walk down the stairs and out into the night, and do not try any silly bugger games because they will have eyes on you all the way and image intensifiers which are the lenses that will show you up. Best get it over with, Zed . . . What I have seen of you is enough for me to make a judgement. You are not a true jihadi, one wrapped up in the faith and yearning for a trip to Paradise. They are few. The many are those who get roped in at an early stage and offer a bit of commitment. In your case it was because of two charismatic cousins, when you were younger and more impressionable – I do not mean to patronise, Zed – and then you met people who could recognise your usefulness, and you went in deeper. I don’t rate you as an extremist, so best now to jack it in.’
He reckoned she was desperate for sleep. Her head rolled, and her eyes blinked, and she tried to fight the exhaustion and he thought she’d fail. Was likely a greater threat to him now than at any time. He stayed very still and his voice was monotonous, quiet, his words were for her only. If the storm squad came for her, and saw the weapon, then they would blast her and she might survive fast surgical intervention, and might not – and it might not be a healthy scene for himself – for whoever he bloody was. Wouldn’t be any ‘Excuse me, sir, just checking, who are you or should I shoot and then go through your pockets?’, or ‘Sorry and all that, sir, didn’t mean anything personal in emptying half a clip into you – and you who we were tasked to save, to release,’, none of that and the boys would not give a flying fuck whether or not he was wasted alongside her.
‘You were on the radar, Zed, long before I pitched up. There are ruthless men in the frame, Zed, and they are manipulative and saw you as a fine opportunity . . . I was put on the case. What did you mean to me, Zed? Truth, no lie, you meant plenty. I should not have been to bed with you, it was unprofessional and deceitful and not necessary. I apologise.’
Once he had thought she was about to drop away into unwanted sleep, then she’d jerked up and had almost dropped the weapon but now retained it, knuckles tight and her finger inside the trigger guard, which was a bad place for it to be. The boy came back in, and brought a glass of milk for her. He did a last throw.
‘Take the chance offered you, Zed. The weapon out through the window. Maybe find a pillowcase or a towel, something white, and wave it after you’ve dumped the hardware. Like my Christmas, it doesn’t come round on demand. I feel this is a chance while everything out ther
e is calm, quiet. Get it over with, Zed . . . We’ll all say it was the “other bastards” who pushed you into this stage of an armed insurrection – not your fault, and that will count for you. Get rid of the rifle, that’s the first step, and stay alive – dump it.’
She pushed herself up from the bed. Did not look at him but went towards the window. The wind ruffled what was left of the curtains and the rain blew into her face. She stopped there, seemed to want to think, and the weapon was now looser in her hand and against her leg, and her hair danced in the draught.
January 2019
‘You want quality?’
‘I just want one – quality or junk.’
‘Not quality. Junk would be agreeable?’
‘And just one, one only.’
The man who ran the warehouse was cautious. Unusual in those troubled days in Libya – his country, described as a ‘basket case’ on CNN, and a ‘failed state’ on BBC World – for him to receive a visitor from Europe. A small squat bearded man had arrived in a pick-up, unannounced, and with a minimal escort, and had seemed confident, not intimidated by Benghazi’s reputation, and its marauding gangs. The windows had no glass, the air-conditioning unit was punctured with holes from bullets that had pierced it from the outside. What was new was a safe screwed down to the floor, and an Apple laptop on the desk: they were enough for most businesses to thrive, particularly in valuing weapons, quality or junk.
‘So, you come from France, and wish to purchase one AK-47, just one . . . I could do you a weapon in that sort that belonged to a dictator’s son, or a warlord’s grandson. Could have gold plate, gold paint, platinum inlay, but you want just one, and it could be junk?’
‘One, and it can be junk.’
‘I have something that might interest you. I could give it to you and not charge. However, if I make a gift then I believe that is insulting to you. You expect to pay a price and you shall. To you it would be one hundred dollars American and a further fifty dollars American for sufficient ammunition to load two or three magazines, which would come with it. It is agreeable, one hundred and fifty dollars?’
‘Most agreeable.’
‘You wish to see it – of course you do.’
They left the office. A phalanx of guards formed around them, most belonging to the dealer, not the Frenchman. Their feet crunched over broken glass. The wind lifted sheets of corrugated iron, loosened by a previous barrage of mortar shells. The dealer told his story as they walked. A Bedouin party had come to him. He had been recommended to them. They had brought fresh dates, and camel skins, and communications equipment in good condition from a military vehicle out of fuel and abandoned in the sands, and a rifle that had been given them by an Egyptian on the road between Sidi Barrani and Alexandria. They had firearms of their own, had no need for this vintage weapon, had offloaded it and the whole package was paid for with five $20 bills. Probably they had then gone to other traders to purchase what they might need before returning to the lonely, but perhaps satisfactory, life among the dunes. The weapon itself?
‘I would call it “junk”. Who would want it? I can see from the serial number that it is Russian and one of the first to come from the new production line at Izhevsk. I think it is 1955 or 1956, so it is old. The working parts are reasonable, and it was test fired by my own nephew. I would not have allowed him near it if I had doubted its reliability. It can still do what it was built for. Sixty-five years and it can kill as well as the day they shipped it off the line. I think, my friend, it has many stories to tell because the stock is well scraped. Perhaps one scrape for every killing, but that is my imagination playing with me. If you do not take it then it will go to make up numbers at the bottom of a crate for central Africa. I think, also, and this may be of some advantage, the history of the weapon is not recorded, it would have no trace.’
The dealer mopped his face with a handkerchief already sweat-stained, but the Frenchman did not seem concerned with perspiration nor with the colonies of flies that followed them. The place had once been a camp for the military of the deposed leader, Gaddafi, the colonel who had become a tyrant and whose overthrow had destroyed the country: the dealer, for one, would have welcomed him back, and the security prisons the old régime had controlled. They entered a former barracks, the roof gone and the rafters open to the skies. Guards rose from chairs. The wide double doors were open. The camp had been thoroughly looted after the dictator’s death, and sufficient dislodged panels had been taken from other roofs to make a section of the building weatherproof. They walked past filled crates of weapons: assault rifles, missile and grenade launchers, pistols, machine-guns, sniper rifles . . .
‘This time, just the one?’
‘We examine a new route. We are not interested in the Serbian highway which is no longer secure, and Bulgaria and Albania are exhausted and the people there would sell you to the spies of the western countries. The next time would be a substantial cargo, and the time after that would be a major opportunity for you – and for me. I have heard much of you and look forward to a satisfactory agreement, for you and for me.’
The dealer, fidgeting incessantly with his set of red sandalwood prayer-beads, led his customer into the shed. It was not difficult to find. It lay alone, ugly, unwanted, but still dangerous.
‘That is it.’
The dealer bent and lifted it, careful to cover his fingers with his handkerchief so that his prints would not be left on its barrel. He balanced it across his arms and took his spectacles from his nose and held them for magnification closer to the metalwork and read out the digits of the individual serial number for this particular rifle. . . . 16751. It was from Izhevsk, a piece of history. If that were what was wanted it would be driven to Misrata, a slightly functioning port city, then shipped on by sea.
‘Old, yes? But still lethal. Look at the stock and the marks there, and see how many lives it has taken – and capable of adding to its toll. Not pretty, but it can kill. What else, my friend, do you want from a rifle?’
Reaching home, having stayed too long in a bar and finding no one to reminisce with over a juice drink, Tooth was in poor humour. Which turned for the worse. Out of his car, into the kitchen, making coffee, and the wife of his Corsican minder, approached him. She kept house in the villa and had been making beds, and had found a sock and a used pair of underpants under the one used by Crab: should she wash them and find a bag for them so they might be posted to his friend?
He snapped at her.‘Not my fucking friend. No. Burn them.’
The couple were used to his mood swings and no offence at his language was taken. He took his coffee to the terrace. He sat in the rain. Smoked a dismal cigar that was quickly damp and hard to relight. Pondered . . . The man who had been his guest was no longer his friend – had been his friend, but not now. The rain was on his face, on the peak of his small tartan cap, across the tinted lenses of his spectacles. Had never known it before, the moment when it was clear to him that his world had crumbled . . . a bad time to have lost a friend.
He considered . . . any other friends? He was uncertain if there were other friends he could claim. Those he had grown up with, his rivals or allies in the carving up of sectors of interest in Marseille, were now either dead or in care homes. The policemen he had bribed and who had preserved his liberty, kept him outside the walls of Baumettes, would not have taken his call, would have crossed a street so as not to meet him. The hoteliers and restaurant managers who had favoured him with the best suites, the premier tables, would not have given him the time of day. He had never before felt such despair . . . what was he left with? Tooth believed himself reduced to naming as a friend a boy from a project in the north of the city, originating from Tunisia, a small-time dope dealer, who at least bobbed a head in respect to him, and stammered nervously when asked questions, and who he had not yet bothered to pay for his services. Hamid would have to be a friend . . . He lay on the lounger and a puddle formed under his back and he wallowed in self-pity, and the night pres
sed on.
She lifted the rifle.
Seemed not to feel its weight. Raised it in two hands above the level of the window-sill, and the rain caught at the metalwork, darkened it, gave it a sheen as if she had polished it for a grand occasion, a parade. He would be behind her, watching her. She had been many minutes by the window and did not turn to face him, and both had stayed silent. She felt ready now to give him her answer.
Few lights burned below. The police vehicles were in darkness, and the guns were out of sight, using the bushes on the far side of the road as cover. She did not doubt that many were aimed at her. She felt no fear and she held firmly to the Kalashnikov, could not be hurt while she had hold of it. It would have been the same for her cousins, no fear but an overriding confidence: she wondered then how many of the people who had taken ownership of the rifle in its history had felt the same as her. It would be fast, sudden and without pain, and she would know nothing of it.
She moved slowly, deliberately, had the rifle up and lodged at her shoulder and felt the rough edge of the stock against her skin, and she closed one eye and peered down the barrel and had the V sight and the needle sight in place. A finger on the trigger. Her name would be spoken of in every street in Savile Town, none would dare to criticise what she had done. If her body was returned for burial in the cemetery it would not be done in the dead of night as if people should feel ashamed of her. The finger squeezed. She had no target, but would shoot into the black inkiness of the slope beyond the road and below the shopping centre above it and at the crown of the hill.
Battle Sight Zero Page 44