A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  He sprawled, his fingers failing to find a grip on the worn vinyl flooring, and his legs were above him and he’d had the mouse in his hand so had dragged it with him and the cable had yanked the laptop off the work surface, and it landed on Nikki’s chest. Nothing said to Nikki, nor to the Roofer, and HookNose was ignored, and Gorilla sat, switched on his own power. And they knew nothing . . . it was the middle of Tuesday afternoon and sleet was in the air and the rooftops were hard to see, and they did not know who he had been with on Sunday evening and what was talked of. Knew nothing of Nikki’s new friends, nothing of an account held in a bank on the square overlooking the quayside of the Swedish capital, nothing of the man who now controlled him, and what he offered. Had they known, then the Roofer and HookNose and Gorilla would have kicked him near to death. Their ignorance fortified Nikki. He was on his knees, reached up to put the laptop back on the work space, then pulled himself to his feet. That they knew nothing was the great strength he had . . . His stomach churned. He sat again, and powered up. None of them looked at him. He did not gasp or curse or threaten. Nikki ignored them. Nobody in that great city of Russian power knew anything, not even his sister who was the one person he loved. Nobody. And new friends were coming, would soon be with him and would value him.

  ‘I had a grenade on my chest,’ Merc said.

  They were on the walkway on the south side of the Thames, and had been through the matter of detail once, would return to it again. The question asked of Merc had been how close they had been to their position being overwhelmed. He thought his answer adequate.

  ‘And you’d have pulled the pin?’

  ‘No hesitation, and everyone with me had one, sir, or a last pistol bullet. We’d not have been taken – and that’s less than a day ago.’

  He and the Six man were together and Daff was behind, like a protective back-marker, but twice she had been called forward, had skipped over the intervening space, responded to a query, gave the facts and had retreated. Merc did not care for ‘hero-stories’, kept away from those who peddled them. He could still feel, the weight of the grenade on his webbing and the little tattoo it had beaten on his vest when he had moved. He would have detonated it if the trench had been lost; he would have grabbed Cinar and dragged her down, his stomach on hers, then pulled the pin.

  ‘Being captured alive in that little corner of the world – to me – raises quite horrific sensations. Captured where we are asking you to go would be uncomfortable for you, unpleasant, but unlikely to be life-threatening. The embarrassment to me and my ilk would be on a major scale. Don’t call me “sir”, my name is Coker – Edwin Coker. It’s usually regarded as poor practice for an officer to give his real name to an “increment”. I trust in you, and your ability to stay free, your resolution if otherwise in withstanding sophisticated harsh interrogation. I’m old, and operate in a kind of backwater, and if they had my name and my address and my wife’s name, it would not be too disastrous to contemplate. So, I am Edwin Coker, but am known to colleagues as Boot. Just that – Boot – and not “sir”, never “sir”. If you were taken and it all spilled out, you would survive in a rat-infested cockroach colony of a gaol for a few years until we lifted someone they thought worth swapping you for. Not the colleagues. I do not think, in the modern holiday camp run by FSB, that the people you are with would come through. Bad for them, worse for my little compromised asset, the hacker. He would suffer greatly and death for him might seem pretty much of a liberation. If you wanted one, a pill, I could provide it. Do you?’

  Merc did not want a lethal pill, not where he was going. They walked on. He spoke little and left the talking to Coker, thinned hair, spectacles that looked to have done good service, a jacket of tweed under a raincoat of fading brown, and a trilby plastered low on his forehead so that the wind would not tip it into the river. Never did talk much, certainly not when on Hill 425. Then, conversation was about infestations of flies, and kit, and the quality of the ammunition issued. They were comrades, but not friends, companions in conflict. He thought the man with him was senior and a decision maker, and likely to be obsessional about something, but not sharing it, and had hoped to be a leader – but now was vulnerable. A seasoned veteran but needing Merc, dependent on a man half his age who gained the most satisfaction out of Auto Trader and Exchange and Mart and studied the price lists of performance Mercedes saloons.

  ‘Am I leaping ahead too fast?’

  ‘You are asking me if I am on board – prepared to go?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes . . . Rather took it for granted. Shouldn’t have done.’

  Merc supposed a spark of mischief was warranted. He was hooked, had been from the start. He always wanted to start, to be far from the briefers, make his own plan.

  ‘At the end of the day, what’s in it for me?’

  A hesitation, then indecision, a near stutter. ‘Good question, but it’ll be a poor answer. Not much. A payment that will not reflect the importance of the work we ask for, will not alter your way of life. Quite miserly, but that is the way we are. What my wife often says about being coopted onto committees is that the only thing worse than being asked to serve is not being asked. I am not usually tongue-tied, but in this case I am short of words. What’s in it for you, Merc – what my dear Daff calls you – is that you come with recommendation, your esteem will be enhanced, you will have the imagined medal for having done something that is “worthwhile”. Am I getting anywhere?’

  He thought him honest. ‘Getting somewhere.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Barges went by, then an empty pleasure boat, and the lamps seemed bright across the water and the bridges were a stream of headlights, and the grey of the cloud merged with the roofs.

  ‘I don’t speak the language, I don’t know the ground, I don’t know the back-up people, I don’t know the man I am required to handle. It’s not a promising start,’ Merc said.

  They walked on paving. Weeds were rooted where the grouting had collapsed. They had passed a beer bottle and several cans that rattled when the wind caught them, and fast-food polystyrene trays. All around him, separated by the river, were the great edifices of his country’s power, its authority, its stature: they meant little to Merc. Merc thought he did not belong in such a place, that his last home was more important to him. The voice was crisp and calm in his ear.

  ‘You raise difficulties, very fairly. As would anyone else with such a proposition put to them. The difference? “Anyone else” declines, sends me off with a flea in the ear – wants time to think on it, wants more hours to ponder than I have available. “Anyone else” walks away, a wave and a smile and back to the pub, or wherever. Not you, that’s the difference. Three men travelling with you, Estonians but fluent Russian speakers, know the ground and the routines, and with an intelligence-gathering background. Did a good run a while back into Kaliningrad. Recommended by people who should know. You’ll be protected and sheltered and your sole responsibility is couriering the package – and keeping the kid on side. But – first, foremost – you are not “anyone else”, why we wanted you. And we’re grateful you’re on board.’

  ‘Which makes me an idiot?’

  ‘Not in any way. Makes you “old school”, with a careless regard for the book and its strictures. For God’s sake, there are people in this city today who regard the ultimate challenge they will face in the course of a working day as crossing the bloody road. You cross the road, Merc. You stand in a fire position, and all levels of shit are thrown at you. You make choices and they do not intimidate you. And you are not reckless with your safety or with that of the people who follow you . . . about “trust”.’

  His ‘home’ might have been in the barracks and the cupboard space allowed him, with the TV on the wall and the one chair where he could sit with his magazines, and the bed where he slept. Or might have been the trench dug out from the summit of Hill 425, and the dirt and the mess and the stains and the brightness of the ejected cartridge cases.

  �
�What “trust” should I show?’

  ‘All I have to offer is the guarantee that I have done everything possible, within my remit, to ensure this mission succeeds, has the best chance possible. That may not be enough. For God’s sake, man, walk if you are going to walk. Are you in or are you out?’

  ‘Never a question of—’

  ‘In or out? Just for the record, I do not have time to go and drag another from anywhere, any damn place, put air strikes over him, get the Parachute Regiment on the ground to lift him, have a good woman bared and ready to go to enthuse him. I have no second option. It happens with you, or it does not happen – because of your record, your qualities, your . . . for fuck’s sake, this is not a vanity contest. You won it. We chose you. Taking it or leaving it?’

  And ‘home’ might also have been the hotel bar where he met Brad and Rob from the Hereford gang and passed over the notes he had made in a Forward Fire Position, done in a child’s handwriting and listing the complexities of combat at close quarters. The messages went back to the allied liaison team and might be shipped to London. Perhaps they were ignored. He had, for now, no other life and was not yet ready for ‘sometime’, was frightened of the quiet it would bring: kept it there in reserve, like a spare and loaded magazine, or the grenade on his chest.

  ‘If I could finish, sir . . . Never a question of staying in or walking out. Never was . . .’

  ‘It will be Copenhagen. Yes, Operation Copenhagen. Has a good ring to it.’

  It was the second time they had been as far as Lambeth Bridge, and the flags across the river at Whitehall, topping the buildings of state, flew flat, and Merc seemed not to feel the cold, nor be rocked by the wind. He wondered why the man called himself ‘Boot’, did not ask, not important enough to waste breath on, but he wondered.

  ‘Is this an act of war?’

  ‘Entitled to ask. Might be, might be near to it, though not a concern of yours. Others will ferret through that consideration. Let it lie. Our opponents idolise the doctrine of deception. The covering of tracks. It will seem like internecine warfare between two gangs of rivals, of thugs, and will create uncertainty, confusion between the gangs that employ the hackers, and more uncertainty at the levels in the apparatus of state control as the men who do the protection fall out. One believes he is betrayed and one believes he is a victim. Lurking around them will be the heavy shadow of suspicion. Some brighter individual – always one investigator who is a tad above the intellect of the rest – will point a hesitant finger, but I’m confident he’ll not be listened to. Could be said to be an act of war, aggression, same as they launch against us but they’ll not recognise it.’

  ‘It’s important?’

  ‘Not done on a whim. There is one last thing. Don’t associate yourself on the way out with the passengers. If there is a hue and cry, and there’s likely to be, come on your own, be responsible for yourself. That’s it, thank you for agreeing to be with us. Important? Of course it is. It’ll be a good show.’

  Merc thought the man ill-equipped to muster a speech of inspiration, would have found it as awkward himself. But the light was in the eyes, and enthusiasm in the voice, and sensed also a ruthlessness that would come easier from being behind the lines, safe from hazard. They were halfway between the bridges and Lambeth was shielded by the low and scudding mist, and the colour seemed washed off the yellow and green walls of the VBX building. The tide was coming in fast and little waves rapped against the steps leading to the grey and frothed water. The man that he called sir, who called himself Coker, but known as Boot, hurried away and was bowed and into the teeth of the wind and clung to his hat, and his tie rippled over his shoulder. He had never considered hearing the plan and then shaking his head. ‘Regrets, but you’ve come to the wrong man. Pity you went to all that trouble.’ Never been in his head.

  Daff, from stalking the two men, had come up fast behind him, and again inserted her hand in his arm, and they might have been lovers or might have been brother and sister. Her voice was quiet and close to his ear and she talked detail: the width of the river, the security in the restricted zone beyond it, and the rendezvous with the boys who were ill-defined quality but he’d whip them into the shape he needed, and the character of the asset, and the size and weight of the explosive charge, and the time of the gathering of juvenile experts who were as good as they came.

  He asked one thing of Daff – not for the use of a car to take him to a terrace off the Oxford Road in Reading, or for a car to drive him north and west and into the Buckinghamshire town of Stoke Poges and be there before a bank closed, but he asked her to arrange for flowers to be sent. What sort? Chrysanthemums, what his nan had always liked, the gold ones and the merlot-red ones. Where to? He gave the name of the hospital and the street it was on, near to the Ministry of Justice. Brad and Rob would handle it. She typed it up on her phone. Walkers passed them and cyclists and kids on skateboards, and mothers with buggies, and men sat on benches and huddled against the weather and tried to smoke. They played the game, and every now and again she would nuzzle against his ear, did the acting well. She led him back to the service flat, suggested he might try to sleep, told him when they would move.

  ‘I can feel it in my water, Arthur.’

  ‘What I always say, Roy, if old Boot’s involved then it’ll be a right “good one”.’

  The two guards on the main gate had noted Boot’s exit and his return; he seemed tense, alert, and in a hurry. The one they knew as the Maid, Marian, who worked for him, had come in carrying a heavy metal boxed case on a shoulder strap that had half pulled her over but she’d not allowed it to be handled by anyone else, nor permitted it on to the conveyor belt to the X-ray, and so it was locked now in a lead-lined storage box. Across the wide traffic flow they had seen Daff – could always spot her because she was tall and bronzed and had a pony-tail that was set off when it was windy – and she was leading a young guy who had a tanned and worn face, and was light on his feet. She’d come back alone from under the railway bridge, flashing the card on the lanyard round her neck. Bloody good-looking girl, with no time for a nod to them.

  ‘On the final countdown, I’d say.’

  ‘Sort of gives you a shiver, doesn’t it, Roy?’

  Then they were concentrating, or trying to, eyesight not as good and hearing impeded by the earpieces they wore, and neither was sure what would happen if the building came under sustained attack – suicide bombers, rocket-propelled grenades, a car bomb. But best guess was ‘first-degree chaos, total cluster-fuck’. They enjoyed their prediction analysis of pending operations; it was like choosing lottery numbers.

  Her attention was elsewhere. Kat was scolded.

  Nikki paid handsomely for the lessons, and without the cash contribution of her brother, her fingers would have stiffened and thickened, the joints lost their suppleness, and the dream of playing in a concert hall would – once and for all – have been found a fraud. At the Conservatory she would have felt the quality of a teacher – not here, not any longer – would have been warm, and among fellow students all striving and feeding from each other’s talent. She was insulted, was treated as a student devoid of talent: deserved to be.

  Her arrest, the point of her decline as a musician, had been brutal. At home in the apartment, Nikki already gone because that morning there was a concerted ‘wolf pack attack’ which he had not explained, and she was alone, not dressed. The door had splintered, then caved. Just cotton pyjamas, no robe, uniformed men and women filling the space, a fast body search, fingers cased in plastic entering her, cold faces and no explanation, her brother’s gear tipped on the floor. They had known to leave his equipment, not ransack it for hard drives, but could still violate it; she understood the extent of power and its limits. One day and one evening in the interrogation room and a barrage of questions about associates, their plans, ambitions, the leaders. Still in her pyjamas and with a stinking police station blanket across her shoulders, lights in her face. A night in a cell with half a
dozen other women who were thieves and whores and a poetess who had written a work denouncing the terrorism of despotic authority and had published it on an underground press. ‘Give them nothing,’ the poetess had told her. ‘Fuck them and ignore them,’ a whore had told her. ‘Spit in their faces,’ a thief had told her. But, she had given them something: names that she thought were innocent, locations she had never heard of, outlines of what was talked about. Morning had come, and she been extracted from the cell, given bread and a glass of milk, seen the smiling face of an interrogator, and had signed a sheet of paper acknowledging that all the possessions she had brought to the police station had been returned to her – only her watch. She had been about to leave, confused and cold, and had been handed a second sheet of paper, four lines printed on it, had read it, and learned that the Conservatory had expelled her, her student grant had been withdrawn, and items from her locker could be collected from the main entrance on Teatrainaya Square, and an illegible signature. They had allowed her to keep the blanket, subject to its return the following week, and given her sufficient money to take a train to the station closest to their home. Her brother had wept for her.

  She was useless. She wasted her tutor’s time. She responded to kindness with indifference. She did not deserve the opportunity to be taught by a woman of distinction . . . All familiar accusations. She paid $75 an hour for the lessons. Not an explosion of anger but a calculated gesture . The woman was obese, wore a sack of a dress, and her scarlet lipstick was grotesque on her pale skin, and the ornaments at her neck were paste, and her hair was growing too fast for the dye, and . . . If the group wanted a ‘clothes off’ protest, she would agree. Strip naked, winter cold and ice on the ground, would do it, make a protest that was political and artistic. She had no passport, nowhere to run to, and could think of nothing with which to make her statement, other than bare and goose-pimpled skin. To hell with the system, the fat cats, and with the denial of freedom. What was freedom? Too confused at that moment to give herself an answer. Not confused enough to forgo the chance to slam the lid of the piano while the woman’s hands were on the keys, and Chopin ended in a shrill scream. Might have broken the woman’s fingers, but Kat did not stay to find out. She swept up her bag, left the money for the day’s lesson on the table, and all her music scores, stormed out, kicked the door shut on the teacher’s pain, felt relief, and had no idea where that could take her. She would see them that evening, make her declaration, demand a role, and convince them of her commitment.