He thought he knew his mind, but did not share it. The engine of the Land Rover was gunned, the reminder that he was called home, and an aircraft waited for him and a small flotilla of fast jets had sprayed the line in front of the parapet of Hill 425 to enable him to go, conscience salved . . . Merc was a Gun for Hire, and his grandmother would have said that He who pays the piper calls the tune and some other poor beggars in another beleaguered position would have begged for the expertise of the bomb runs and gone without. What was worse than being wanted? Not being wanted? He was hugged and dust-dried lips brushed hard against his cheek, they seemed to hold him for extra seconds as though recognising this was the escape clause for him, and the ‘sometime’ when he would quit . . . He walked to the vehicle.
Brad would drive and Rob would do shotgun and he swung himself into the open back and squatted on the metal and it felt strange not to have a weapon in his hand, like his trousers had dropped or he wore no boots. He waved briefly, then stared ahead and shut them from his mind, and tried to do the same with the vivid image of the bright colour on the scrubbed floor of the area where he had left her, and had asked no questions.
Brad accelerated. He was passed a cigarette, took it, dragged on it and he was driven through streets that he did not recognise, as if his life had already moved on. Not the first time, or the last. A picture played in front of him, not the jammed traffic and the scream of horns and the yelling of hawkers. He saw his father, saw ‘Hold the Line Hawkins’, lieutenant in the Corps, proud to be a Pioneer and give the army some sangars to shelter behind and latrines to squat over, and something of a legend because the last dreg force to be called on to the jungle of lanes and alleys and cul-de-sacs in the Creggan Estate in Londonderry was his. He had led a platoon of lads unprepared for combat duties, and the local kids had rained half bricks and milk bottles on them. They had made a perimeter while an ambulance evacuated an old boy with ticker trouble. Police were with the ambulance team because it was the Creggan. The army were deployed because the police were there. In the name of the ‘unity of Ireland’ the kids pelted them with missiles. His father had shouted to his lads Hold the line, the Pioneers, had shouted it at the top of his voice as a rallying cry, and then they’d launched some gas and the mob had backed off enough for the ambulance to get clear, and the police in their armoured Land Rover, and the Pioneer platoon in three packed Pigs. One of the police had told a senior NCO of the shout ‘Hold the line, the Pioneers’ and it had gone into the folklore of the Corps, because they had too few battle honours. All the rest of the years his father was in the military he had carried that title. He hoped his father could have seen it from on high, knew of the defence of the trench on Hill 425. But Merc did little religion and was not sure what he believed in, could not have said whether his father knew or did not know. He had been three when his father had died. In the park, taking the family spaniel for a walk. Sat on a bench for a smoke, then toppled. Hoped his father knew, but the thought was lost against the screaming of his mother when the policeman called at the door and brought back the dog. There was a sign for the airport.
He soaked in his own silence. Did not know where he was headed, who he’d travel with, what would be the end game.
Nikki was early at work, first in. Had taken the key from Reception on the ground floor, unlocked the door, was hit by the usual smell of old food, old sweat, and old dirt – cleaners weren’t allowed into that area, nothing was tidied and the mess decayed on the floor. He dumped his bag. He had the right to hack and probe and pry from his kitchen table, but had thought it better – as the countdown ticked towards the meeting at the supermarket car-park – to come here, to be seen, normal and nothing different. Kat had dropped him off.
He wore the same clothes as the previous day, what he had used in Stockholm. The card from the bank manager had been shredded, thrown into a street rubbish bin, but the fight festered, and the certainty that the Roofer had never liked him, and would now seek to hurt him: a promise had been given. Hurt hard . . . So obvious to Nikki that he was apart from the others. He had slept poorly, tossing and heaving, and for much of the night could hear the coughing from behind the dividing wall as Kat had tried to clear mucus from her chest. Churning in his mind was the memory of their GangMaster standing in the doorway and threatening them with the story of the two boys caught by the police, who had ripped off a bank, who were going to go down and for many bad winters, in a camp, half-starved and probably raped. Nikki did not know, could not have done, whether he was merely the GangMaster’s toy thing, a young rat played with by a powerful cat, taunted. He flicked the switch and heard the murmur of the laptop’s power . . . Could have been that the story was dangled in front of him – boys who cheated the system, too greedy, lined up for punishment – and he would be watched to see if he broke cover. Waiting and watching, the GangMaster and the police and the FSB, and no one would stand beside him, and no one would protect Kat. He was cold and was shivering, and hit the keys clumsily, and aborted the trapdoor entry. He heard a footfall behind him. Nikki did not turn. His fingers slammed down on the keys. HookNose stood beside him. The shape of his nose, from the angle on its bridge, was as sharply bent as fisherman’s hook for hauling eels from the Neva River.
Nikki could not have explained the differences between himself and the core of the little group – the Roofer, HookNose and Gorilla – who worked in that communal room and hacked there and ate there, and swapped cables. They talked in stilted jargon about problems of entry and exit and extraction, exchanged details on the better defended targets they were given, yet he was outside. He preferred to go home to Kat and have her cook him something than to go to a bar with them and sink beers and also, maybe, pills. There had been tension in the room all that week. Did the GangMaster carry information on him? He started again, after the abort, to get his worm on the move, nudging it through the previously hidden entry points, and cautiously because this target area was scrutinised by a defence team at a military software contractor in southern France. The liquid flushed down on his head.
It would have been the coffee from a beaker left overnight on HookNose’s part of the work bench. It was cold and the milk smelled sour. It ran on his hair, on his cheeks, over his jaw and dribbled to his T-shirt and . . . He swung his arm. A predictable response, and easily avoided. His fist beat the air, had no impact. He tried to twist in his chair but the vinyl was worn under the wheels and the wheels caught. A slice of yesterday’s pizza was dropped on his lap, then the packaging and scattered crumbs and congealed mess. Coffee was in his eyes and he smeared them with his wrist. HookNose was at his place and staring at his screen. Nikki had never been a street fighter. He had not learned to fight dirty, fight tough, fight with deceit. Some kids did and some had practised the ‘stay safe’ way and had backed off and stayed in the shadows and had avoided the contact point. He didn’t fight. He did not stand up, but wiped at his face and used his handkerchief to clean the laptop keys, and he put the pizza packaging and the food into the bin by his feet and said nothing, and boiled private anger and did not face the man who had humiliated him. He heard the clicking of HookNose’s keys but made no eye contact, did not give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing his fear. HookNose was a full fifteen kilos heavier than Nikki, at least ten centimetres taller and would have enjoyed the chance to be provoked, have a blow landed on him, then retaliate.
Like it was a list of things to be done, targets to be attacked, in his mind Nikki ticked the box that was HookNose, and the box that was the Roofer . . . Kat was the one who would have retaliated, kicking and gouging and screaming and clawing. Kat would have fought but he had not, not then, not on ground he had not chosen.
The Brains Trust was in session early. Each spoke. Later, their digest would be on the Director’s desk and would influence – predictable to all of them – a matter of significance. They seemed to rehearse arguments that took them outside the bubble of conventional thought. They were beyond ‘attribution’ and into the
areas of ‘strike back’. Their voices were soft, each fearful of the implications. Only an untidy watercolour of a Welsh upland watched them, only a basic coffee machine listened.
Bob, of the Security Service, addressed Article 5 and the definition of a declaration of war.
‘Does a cyber attack on a NATO member constitute a trigger for Article five? Paraphrase, don’t need the full jargon. “An attack on one is an attack on us all, and demands retaliation or at least an active defence to repel an invader.” Got that? Simple. So the Kremlin puts tanks over the Narva River and into Estonia and has a one-day drive to Tallinn, and that is a declaration of war and we have no wriggle room, cannot kick a can down the street. We are in a combat situation – for a tank attack – under Article five of the NATO document. But anything that a tank does, or an attack aircraft, can be done better by a good hacker while he’s sitting and scratching the pimples on his backside. There is an argument for saying that a cyber raid – equivalent of a storm squad of commandos – into our more sensitive private parts, or the Pentagon’s, or our must-have utilities, is such an attack – and we are not talking about hoodlums and Organised Crime barons, but the Russian state. Provenance is what Boot has brought to the table for us to ruminate on. I’d say that we can be safe in an assumption that Article Five is violated by them every day and every week and every month. It is a breach of Article Five. Kremlin-sponsored theft, espionage, reconnaissance for the shutting down of our economy. Fraud is more damaging to us than armour and aircraft on the move, but they don’t believe we have the appetite to go to the NATO council and call for retaliation, and they might be right. How hungry are we? What do we have the stomach for? Above my pay grade to be calling those shots. But cyber is an attack every bit as serious as bombs or bullets. We could justify, as a NATO member, a strike back mission. Not with trumpets blaring, but covert. Yes, we could justify it.’
Bob spoke in little more than a whisper, subdued by what he brought to the table.
They had taken off, climbed fast, were soon at cruising altitude. Disapproval, or something stronger, oozed round him.
He sat in a well-upholstered seat. Wore the same clothing as when he had been in the trench for too many short days and too many long nights, dirt caked on the fatigues from the pit of the trench and dried bloodstains from the wounds of those who had been Merc’s comrades. The freshest stain was from the girl when she had pitched forward as they had taken their own into the casualty area of the hospital.
Disapproval, dislike, was apparent on the faces of the two stewards with whom he shared the cabin. Neither of the cockpit crew had come back to speak to him; he had not been told the duration, the weather, the onboard food, where they’d land. The male steward had brought a roll of kitchen paper, unwound a strip, eased it under Merc’s combat boots. The female steward had worked around him with a battery-powered vacuum cleaner. When she finished, Merc made eye contact and gave her his little smile and it must have worked for her – as it usually did – and she’d flushed embarrassment. He didn’t ask for water or for crisps, or peanuts or a fillet steak. He was not subject to the rank and disciplines that governed their lives, was not a part of their world, was free, a Gun for Hire. What he wore might also have stank of ordnance, and of weapons’ oil, and of urine that had run down his leg because in a fire fight it was not sensible to turn away in modesty and unzip.
They left him, and Merc soon slept, but lightly. The sort of sleep where he did not rest. Crosswinds hit them and the cockpit people did not look for a way round but ploughed through. His sleep did not refresh him – his mind had locked on the sight of the girl, Cinar, as her blood messed the floor and as the orderlies stripped off her clothing and her skin was defiled by the injury and the glaze in her eyes. Merc did not often take a casualty to heart, certainly not one who had so haughtily ignored him.
He was slumped in his seat, and the angle of the sun came through the porthole and lit him, but he was not at peace. Later, he lost the girl . . . New figures groped for his attention, but none had faces. They were men, women, not identifiable, and soon he’d meet them, affect their lives, but in his restless dream he didn’t know them or their future.
Kat was not short of ambition. She had ideas for her status that were not yet achieved, but she harboured optimism. She met the group in a café across the river from the Big House. Not the best place for them to be, but the proximity of their enemy gave off an additional waft of excitement. She was not among the big planners. In fact, she was little more than a fetcher and carrier, a buyer of the masonry paint they needed for slogan daubing, and she distributed posters and pamphlets to other groups.
They believed in the power of ‘shock’, they thought they hawked ‘ridicule’, they believed that they had already achieved much, and that in the months, years, ahead they would inflict damage on the very fabric of the state . . . Not of course with bombs or violence. Kat drank the dogma that stated shock and ridicule were more influential than weapons or explosives. Few of them had employment, and they received no benefits from the state, so lived by a meld of donations and petty theft, and Kat understood her value because she was supported by the money paid to her brother. Not that he understood her friends and colleagues in the struggle. Not that they understood the importance to their well-being of attracting the sister of a hacktivist who worked under the direction of FSB, a criminal and an asset to the corruption of society. Dregs of coffee cold at the bottom of glass mugs. Biscuits long gone, and the crumbs swept up. Coats on because at that time of the morning, well short of the midday break, the heating was low. Rolled cigarettes passed around.
She had a class later. Nikki met the cost of her piano lessons. She kept an eye on her watch. They talked of hopes for the future: the fall of the President, the sweeping away of the siloviki around him, the end of corruption, the start of liberty. The hopes were easy to accumulate, but methods stymied them. Not for them the sort of political rallies held in Moscow where arrests of principals were commonplace, direct protest with megaphones and banners. They talked of other means, and could be bold in their ideas but short of the enthusiasm that would carry them forward. Pride of place was the triumph just along the street, in view of the Big House, the Bolshoy Dom, where the great penis had been painted on the road surface of the bridge. There had been only thirty seconds to paint the organ’s outline, sixty-five metres long, then the activists had jumped clear and the bridge had been raised to permit a freighter going upstream, and then the image had faced the main entrance to the FSB complex: an extraordinary achievement, but it was eight years ago and the people responsible were now scattered.
More talk . . . the filmed liberation of a frozen chicken from the Nakhodka supermarket, cameraman up close; a girl had crouched, lowered her underwear, had stuffed the bird inside her pants, then had walked out, bypassing the cash tills. That was also eight years ago, a mix of protest at the price of food, and their conception of an art form.
Endless talk . . . laughing at the former President, known as the ‘little bear’, and the orgy in the Museum of Biology in the capital, but that was ten years ago . . . and talk of the artistic concept of commemorating the theft by state and church when a man had dressed in the robes of a priest and wore a policeman’s cap and had looted a food store, then walked out pushing a trolley, not paying . . . Babbled talk, and no one knew how to go forward. Some were bold but could not get others to follow, some preferred to talk but not act or strip. And Kat sat and listened . . . and remembered older fighters who had taken on the state in Moscow, a man who nailed his testicles to the tarmac in the great Square, another who wrapped himself, naked, in coils of razor wire, or set fire to the main doors of FSB headquarters – heroes. She did not know what she was capable of, or if mutilation in front of a camera was either a ‘shock’ to them or ‘ridiculed’ them. Would she have taken part, stripped and allowed herself to be screwed for the camera? Unsure. She looked at the men around the table, the hair on their hands, grime under their n
ails, the stains of fag ends on their fingers, and dulled eyes. Sure that she had no wish to do it with any of them, naked and with lights on her, and the clacking of camera shutters.
She cursed herself for her lack of commitment, saw the time, made excuses, left them, went to her piano lesson. They talked about damaging the régime, but it was only words – and all she did was talk with them. Her lessons were poor recompense.
Daff had learned the significance of Operation Jungle for the men she’d recruited. Bottled inside them, all three of the boys, was the sap of excitement of more than a half century ago. They would be picked up, off the southern headland, two kilometres from Haapsalu, at two in the morning. They had girlfriends. Dominating the excitement was the scent of high danger. Three boys, aged about twenty, from the same street in Haapsalu, behind the pretty painted fishermen’s cottages. The boys were going off in the depths of that night to learn to fight a lonely, hazardous war against a régime occupying their country . . . or so they told the girls. Embellishment of the risks faced was hardly required.
A Damned Serious Business Page 10