A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  The torch was raised. Papers passed. Fumes spewed from the van’s exhaust. One uniformed man with the torch and another checking the paperwork, and they were next. The rucksack was between his feet and inside it was a laptop computer except that its innards were removed and good-grade, Russian-made explosives were packed in their place, with the detonator stick and the wiring, and the switch that would start a clock countdown. What to say? ‘Steady boys, let’s all keep calm. Don’t show fear. Fear is recognisable, and they’ll see it. Keep smiling, boys.’ Didn’t. Cut it. Merc tried not to speak unless there was a contribution in the chain that was of value. The van was waved on. The torch flashed towards them, indicating they should come forward, then stop. They wore high-visibility vests and had weapons slung from their belts, along with gas and batons and handcuffs . . . Merc pondered the issue.

  How frightened were they? A casualty of fear was loyalty. Different to the lay-by when they had been checked and he had not been with them. The loyalty was about money . . . Money had bought them, Martin and Toomas and Kristjan. Money up front and money on completion. Enough money, or not enough? They were paid men; ideology would have been low on the agenda . . . One chain-smoking, one with sweat streaming, one with an uncontrolled slither of a tongue over the lips. Guns for Hire, like himself. They could put their windows down, gesture towards him, have the torchbeam play on his face, and denounce him. What loyalty could be purchased with $3000 dollars in advance? Men with their freedom or lives at stake were likely to ditch loyalty.

  The torch shone on Martin and Toomas. Papers were passed, another bank note. The torch-beam played on him, and more talking, and he was the subject. The militiaman spat on the road. The papers were passed back through the window, not the bank note. The beam moved behind them, and the car went forward, dodging the oil drums, and they picked up speed.

  Toomas said, ‘It was about motor insurance. They said we had a faulty indicator light. Worth fifty euros for it to be ignored. They are shit.’

  A bad few moments for Merc, but not as bad as when the big man, black overalls and an assault rifle, was on the last strands of the wire and trying to get into the trench where his people were, and Cinar. It helped him put into perspective what was bad and what was acceptable. They were no different from himself, the hired helps, what the Service officers called ‘incrementals’, there for the money and no respect. And he thought the body language had been good.

  Merc said, ‘Something to eat would be good.’

  He was shivering . . . Kristjan told him that breathing the vapour from steaming potatoes was a cure; Toomas thought he’d do better by chewing garlic and onion: and Martin said the best thing was vodka laced with black pepper.

  Boot entered Passport Control and proffered documents that had little relation to his true identity . . . This fledgling nation state, Estonia, boasted counter-intelligence excellence, but many officers of the KGB-imitating state security apparatus had been booted from their offices, put to grass, had found the change difficult to stomach.

  Old networks had mutated. A man who had once enjoyed power and whose presence had created apprehension, could find himself doing work that was little more than basic labouring – sweeping the floors of the walkway between ship and terminal, neither passengers nor ferry staff sparing him a glance. He had lost dignity, status, but had not lost the acumen of suspicion and the ability to recognise a face: a seminar in Helsinki. Quite a senior man, and walking half a pace behind a considerable target from the old and chilly state of war, Oliver Compton. He was recognised by the bowed figure who cleaned the floor, ignored by those hurrying past him, and a conversation was remembered.

  A telephone call. How would Boot have known of it? He would not. He had registered the man and had thought him a recovering alcoholic, plenty of them, and charitably employed, given purpose. A call made to the flower market.

  Boot took a taxi into the heart of the city . . . had some hours in which he could walk, take in some sights. He felt calm, thought all in place – composed but not complacent.

  ‘All quiet?’

  She had been up and dressed for an hour. Before going to the canteen for fruit and cornflakes, the Maid had shaken out bedding, folded it, stowed it in the cupboard and dismantled the camp bed. The outer office was shipshape when the Big Boss looked in.

  ‘Yes, sir, of course.’

  ‘Nothing different overnight?’

  ‘You would have been told.’

  Something of a reprimand. She had heard that most of the offices had ‘dragon staff’ allocated them, women who ruled a minor fiefdom and accepted little interference. She supposed herself to be prominent among them, rather enjoyed the thought . . . Early for him to be on the corridors. A couple of his bag carriers were behind him. A meeting beckoned, and he’d needed reassurance. Not that she could have provided it. Nothing from Boot, silence from Daff, no protest squeals from the Estonian brothers. She shrugged.

  ‘Thank you.’ She considered which minefield he was about to enter, then resumed her work: expenses and holiday dates, and it was useful to hack at the administration of the office when a good one was running, took her mind away from it.

  They were on early shift, and noted the movements.

  Arthur said, ‘In at a quarter past six and out at forty-eight minutes past. Got it?’

  Roy had, nodded as he lowered the barrier for the Director’s saloon to manoeuvre out of VBX.

  ‘And Boot’s still gone, and the leggy one from his office that’s all bum and tits, and the top man is missing out on beauty sleep. All three . . . What’s it saying?’

  ‘A big one, and it’s running.’

  It was their game and played with pleasure. Sometimes instincts were confirmed, glum faces at the gate, and some unfortunate had screwed the job. Other times they’d be coming back in from the Royal Oak or the Pilgrim with cigars lit and step unsteady. They loved it and the game made a job of serious boredom worth the while.

  ‘Definite, isn’t it?’ Arthur said.

  ‘My shirt’s on it,’ Roy answered.

  ‘Know that poem, Roy? “They also serve who only stand and wait”. That’s us, old cocker. Hah, rather him than me, whoever it is, and wherever.’

  ‘I’d not take kindly to embarrassment, Jerry.’

  ‘I would not estimate the risk to be great, Minister.’

  ‘Nothing I should know?’

  ‘That might blow up in your face, my face, the Service’s face? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Delicate times, Jerry.’

  ‘When have they not been, Minister – Anglo-Russian relations? Which century do you want to fall back on? Always “delicate times”, us and the Ivans. Normal levels of dislike and mistrust.’

  ‘I need to assure our Allies, correction the ally, that we are in step with their initiative. What’s the word your people use? Blowback, that it? Nothing is going to “blowback”, scorch me?’

  ‘Not that I am aware of.’

  ‘We have constantly to make new evaluations for future policy.’

  ‘Always need open minds, fresh ideas.’

  ‘Have to accept the world as it is.’

  ‘And we should not permit little matters to obstruct our overtures.’

  The Director, Jerry to his political master, did not add any minor or major impertinence, but could have listed the obstructions . . . Annexation of a friendly power’s territory, murder by poison on our streets, downing of an airliner packed with passengers from our neighbours in the Netherlands, bombing Syria back to the Stone Age in support of a ghastly little despot, cheating at international sport with drugged-up zombies winning medals, the cyber attacks and daily difficulties fending off their hackers, intrusion into the democratic process, and the constant probing by their bombers . . . ‘Need to concentrate on the big picture.’

  ‘Dwight is anxious to brief us in person on the new initiative his government proposes . . . Don’t take offence, Jerry, I was only crossing Ts, dotting Is . . . The time
for us to exist in a state of near warfare, all this name calling, has had its day. We have to appear to be willing to live and let live, work with them, not talk only in a language of sanctions. I was thinking that the spirit of cooperation that keeps the Space Station aloft – Russians and Americans, and the occasional Briton – is an ideal to be nurtured. We want to consign to the bin this age of dissent and recrimination, find a way of getting along with them. I am not a Labrador, rolling over on my back and grovelling, but we have to modify a sulphurous posture towards them. I wanted you to meet Dwight, hear all this at first hand and not from the Neanderthals of the Agency . . . Ah, here we are. Thank you, Jerry, for the reassurance.’

  They came in a phalanx up the stairs, wide and imposing and symbolising the United Kingdom: huge and dominating and ‘punching above its weight’. Portraits and busts of great men, looked down on them, and on the Americans climbing the wide marble steps. The Director envied the spending power of the cousin across the water, but little else. He supposed that an accommodation with the Kremlin meant that neither Washington nor London – not Berlin or Rome or Paris – was prepared to commit to any further ‘arms race’ and therefore hoped to buy off the beast and use honeyed words and a gentle massage to achieve it . . . Some damn hope. A few statistics bounced in his mind as the visitors came towards them and the Minister wore the fulsome smile of a restaurant greeter: Russia had 22,000 main battle tanks, some old. His own country possessed 227, Germany 225, Norway 52. For fuck’s sake, bloody Yemen had three times the tanks of the United Kingdom, and the hackers ran free and . . . He fixed his smile.

  ‘Hi, Jerry, good to see you. Have to say, we are quite excited by what we have in mind, and hopeful. Optimistic. We have no place for moaners.’

  He shook the hand offered him and they were led into a meeting room, duly swept that morning, to hear what the Director would have called ‘bloody unadulterated appeasement’ and the Minister and his guest thought of as the ‘new relationship’. About pragmatism – he imagined that dear Boot, his chosen man, might throw up, vomit on that fine flooring, if asked to give it lip service . . . and wondered how Boot’s people prospered. He sat down, his attention polite and insincere, and murmured silently ‘Over my damned dead body’, and toyed with a biscuit. He kept the smile, like it was glued in place. Should he have demanded more time and more opportunity for reflection before sanctioning Copenhagen? Had he allowed himself to be stampeded? Was there still a chance to press an abort button? Over his dead bloody body . . . not a chance of it. The fixed smile had a tint of the glacial . . . Boot’s people would be moving in, going for their ‘ground zero’.

  ‘Quit, or stay and fight?’ Kat was bent over him. Still dark, the dregs of the night still clinging to the city’s skyline. She had washed, dressed in tough old jeans and thick clothing and had dumped a waterproof thermal coat on a chair, been to the fridge and emptied everything from it that she could dump into a pan, and made a mess of an omelette and had carried the plate to where he slept. He had slept well, not tossed, the cough gone from his throat, and she had needed to shake him to wake him. ‘Should I quit, accept they have beaten me, or stay to fight them – which?’

  It was hard to believe what Nikki had told her. There was sliced potato in the omelette, and a tomato, and she’d used the last two eggs, and a piece of ham that had curled. Grated most of the cheese left on a shelf, and finished the fruit juice carton. He wolfed what she brought him, then boiled the kettle for instant coffee. She called to him from the stove.

  ‘I had a dream. I think it was a dream and not just imagination, wishful . . . I read that, during the siege of the city, the nine hundred days, men and women dreamed that a great relief force had battered through the fascist lines, and broken the enemy, and behind our tanks were columns of lorries bringing food for the people. All of our grandparents, the great-uncles and great-aunts who had stayed alive by sneaking out at night with a sharpened knife and finding cats, dogs, rats, they could kill and skin and bring back. Then slicing meat from the stomachs and cheeks of the bodies in the street . . . My dream was of a great army of us, battalions of the people, marching forward and coming over the bridge and storming into the Big House, and spilling out and going down the corridors and sacking offices, spreading through the floors and destroying the files and memory sticks and smashing the computers, and then smoke rising from the building. Then, a gathering in the square, all of us in front of the Winter Palace and we started the march towards Moscow . . . We believed we would get there. Not the people who were with me in the meetings, people who have never achieved what you plan, Nikki . . . Then I woke and I was not outside in the cold but with an army around me, and belief. Do I stay and think I can fight, and that one day we might be strong – strong enough to paint a penis on a bridge, for a man to nail his testicles to the road surface, a band play on a cathedral altar, and think the police will tuck their batons in their belts, let us walk past them. Do I? Or run, be an émigrée, and have nothing for pride, and live off the theft from a bank my brother did, have the loneliness of a stranger in another country? Which?’

  He used his finger to smear up the last of the egg mixture, then put it in his mouth and sucked it, then licked. She had eaten nothing. He pulled a face, then shrugged. Nikki had no interest in a dream of a rising from the streets; what the proletariat had done a century before was a tedious story. He would accept no blame for what he did . . . She could gaze around their home, all they possessed, as far as their ambition reached: mould on the wall, a faded print of a palace, a couch bed that was functional, a grimy window that overlooked another block, linoleum worn enough to have lost its pattern. In a corner was a piled heap of music books: if she was to play again in the city it would be because the FSB Major gave her permission to, smoothed a way, signed it off . . . Which?

  Nikki stretched, yawned, coughed. He wore his underpants and his vest. He handed her the plate, then swung back the bed clothes and crawled off the bed. He reached for her and let his cheek brush against her face.

  ‘You should pack.’

  ‘What do I pack?’ Kat felt confidence leeching from her.

  ‘What you need.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Two days or three.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then things are bought for you.’ He was irritated and his forehead had knitted as though questions were unwelcome.

  ‘Tonight, where will we sleep?’

  ‘I don’t know. How do I know where you will sleep tonight? Kat, you will not have another chance. You want the gaol or the opportunity . . . Fuck’s sake, grow up, Kat.’

  ‘Do I take pictures, photographs . . . our parents, our grandparents, diplomas, birth certificates? You are serious . . .?’

  The bathroom door slammed. She heard the dribbling of the shower water, only a few seconds, then the slap of the toilet lid being raised and lodged. She went about her packing . . . Yes, some books, and some photographs – yes, and more clothes than she’d have needed for two days – yes, her framed certificate from the Conservatory, and shoes . . . The rucksack bulged. She had put in two extra sweaters and a sponge bag that could barely close from make-up and washing gear. The toilet flushed and the pipes howled as the water streamed back into the cistern, and the light was growing outside . . . She saw his own rucksack at the end of the bed as she stripped sheets and folded them tidily. Nikki’s bag was light in comparison with what she planned to take. Kat was about to open it when he came out of the bathroom. He pulled on yesterday’s clothes. Kat was not sure whether he had put on old socks or fresh ones. After he had smoothed the tangle of his hair, and had wiped his spectacles on his shirt front, he opened her bag. Most of the contents were tipped out. She made no protest. The radio was left playing. The outer door was locked and the key pushed back under the door. She crossed the landing in a daze . . . A neighbour, the trolley bus driver, opened his door and spoke cheerfully to her about the prospect of rain and her answer was a grunt.


  They walked to her car, and chucked their bags on to the back seat.

  Nikki gave instructions. Kat said she knew where they were headed. He said at what time they were to be there, and she said she knew how long it might take. He told her that she should check her mirrors more, and she flashed anger and asked if he wanted to drive. It could have been weeks, months, since they had exchanged as many words as they had that night, that morning. Most of what she had said had been shit. The idea of an uprising, and guys swinging by the neck on ropes hooked up to street lamps, was serious fantasy. But he had no other love in his life. The only item he owned as precious as Kat was his laptop. He had not, before today, seen her frightened.

  She gave instructions to him, kicked his ego and insulted him, but cooked for him and washed and ironed for him, and tried to control him . . . But he had tipped her on a course of action that she could only have imagined; she was beyond her grade of competence and no longer had command . . . Nikki did, knew what was to happen and how. He had seen her look behind her, and knew she would have seen his half-empty rucksack. She would have wondered how far he went with so little. On any other day, Kat would have quizzed him . . . Not that morning. Thick traffic obstructed them and they went slowly: she had started to hiss and fidget beside him, and twice pulled out to overtake, changed her mind and had been hooted and abused. Aircraft came in over them for landing at Pulkovo. They were beyond the monuments and plaques, cleaned and burnished, that marked the desperately fought lines behind which the city had survived. Then they were beyond the turning that would have taken her into the estate at Kupchino where she usually dropped him off. He was happy to be quiet; his mind was churning.