A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  They were parked close to the little Polo. Its windows were steamed up and it was hard to distinguish the girl from her brother, and the man behind them. None seemed to be talking, but cigarettes were lit. It seemed impossible to Kristjan that any of them in the Polo could have shut their eyes, leaned back, nodded and slept, even dozed. Impossible. His grandmother had been taken across the bridge at Narva, pregnant and bulging. Would have followed the same route as his grandfather, on a truck floor, bleeding and semi-conscious and ready to ‘disappear’. His mother had been born in a camp and years later mother and daughter had been allowed back and were resettled in the town, and she

  had married a peasant from Kazakhstan who was placed there, and that was a fair option as it gave a roof over the woman’s

  head, and food on the table, and a beating if the man were drunk, and the streets were the territory of the militia and KGB. It was where Kristjan had been raised. The town – Russian-speaking and Russian-built and Russian culture – had captured him. Occasional visits out, and one journey far to the west had brought him to Haapsalu. He had made contact with Martin and a bond was forged. Enough to take him to Kaliningrad with them, but afterwards he had returned to Narva, and had struggled and had existed, stunted. Anyone raised in Narva appreciated the KGB’s control and their reach.

  ‘They are criminals. They survive because of their links.’

  Martin said, ‘They have links with KGB, whatever it is called now, but the same people. We know it.’

  Toomas said, ‘I know the power of KGB, everybody knows.’

  Kristjan slapped the back of Toomas’s seat. ‘Imagine it. The thing goes early, a bomb – what it is they take inside. The kid, the little rat, is running out. They go to a state of emergency, they seal the roads. You think they are not efficient? What happens when there are blocks on all the roads, and the heaviest blocks are towards the frontier, what is for us? I have imagination . . . Do you, either of you?’

  A silence in the car. All of them looking into the Polo, seeing the glow of cigarettes through the mist on the windows. Kristjan leading and the others beginning to follow, no stomach for argument.

  Three men of middle age, and the last time their courage had been tested was fifteen years before, in the enclave of Kaliningrad, and they had fled, crashing through a border fence. One was a house painter, one wore fancy-dress armour for tourists’ selfies, and one kept the shelves full in a supermarket. Persuasive talk from a woman, her smiling confidence dripping on them in a café, and none had – then – dared to throw it back in her face. In the lay-by on the E-20, Martin had been close to gunning the engine, swinging back on to the road, doing a sharp U-turn and heading back towards the check at Ivangorod. A temptation, an apple on a plate, a chocolate on a table. Kristjan thought he shared out the fear and all three in equal parts could imagine a security man’s fist clutching their collars and dragging them out, one by one, and kicks, blows, steep steps to fall down, and cell doors slamming, and camps where the ground never thawed. Easy to imagine.

  ‘What to do?’ From Toomas.

  ‘We owe them nothing,’ Kristjan said. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Should we talk to them?’ Hesitancy from Martin.

  ‘He would kill us. He has a firearm, we do not . . . You see his eyes? A killer’s eyes. He smiles often, and acts like a friend. He cannot hide his eyes, those of a man who kills.’

  ‘And he is British and they lied to us.’

  ‘And, long ago, they betrayed our grandfathers, murdered them.’

  Kristjan said, ‘Just slip away. Be through the road-block at Kingisepp . . . We have no debt to them.’

  Kristjan thought her pretty, and thought her brother vermin, and thought the eyes of the man who had been sent to instruct and guide them were without love or fear, or feeling. The sounds of their breathing, and stress in the whistle of air between their teeth, then the single click as Martin turned the ignition key.

  Kristjan said, ‘We were paid to drive and protect him. We have done that. He has another car . . . we have no blame.’

  Toomas coughed.

  Kristjan shouted, ‘Get the hell out and go.’

  Martin did it fast, and none of them looked back at the Polo. They went out of the Kentucky Fried Chicken car-park and headed for the slip road that would get them back on to the highway.

  Nothing said, nothing to say.

  The tail lights moved away and were engulfed. All of them knew. Did it make any difference? Merc thought it an added problem, but not terminal . . . Any survivor from where he had been would not rate it a difficulty beyond handling. They were supposed to do cool driving, talk easily at a block in the road, and give them protection if a crowd came be there, calm and ready. Just back-up, but essential: local knowledge, culture, street-wise.

  What did they know? Enough. Could go to the nearest police station, dial the local emergency number, stop a cop and shout something at him and then head for the safety of the bridge. And the deniability factor? Nothing Merc could do . . . He thought he understood what was expected of him . . . He had no need to be there, had expected to twist arms, apply pressure, but there was no need.

  ‘What do you call that?’ She had turned to face him.

  ‘What you want to hear, or what I feel?’

  ‘Are they different?’

  ‘Them bugging out on us makes for a difficulty but no more.’

  ‘Or what you feel?’

  ‘A bit less than a shit storm, and less than a train wreck.’

  ‘We go on?’

  Not Merc’s call. Could not answer her. The boy stayed quiet. Twenty minutes earlier, when she had gone to the facilities, he had used the time to go over the trigger and the timing of the inbuilt clock and the size of the charge, and what it could do in confined space, and he and Nikki had had the laptop opened and the switch identified, done it all again. One thing the boy had asked had confused Merc – little usually did, but this had. ‘Do you know about the Wolf’s Lair?’ He did not. Was it a cave, somewhere in a forest, a place among crevices of rock? He had seen a half smile on Nikki’s face, then it had been wiped . . . He thought he understood. Thought. Was not certain. The boy looked at his watch, then reached out. Merc clasped the smooth body of the laptop, lifted it, passed it over.

  There could have been semantics, a word Daff had used: was he now party to an ‘act of war’ in handing over the device, or merely indulging in ‘justifiable self-defence against an aggressor’? Not Merc’s business . . . he was one of those happily simple people, she had said, who concentrated on carrying out his mission, and surviving. Nikki’s hands shook and Merc thought the laptop might fall from his grip. The laptop disappeared from sight, swallowed inside Nikki’s bag. Nikki gazed into his face.

  ‘And you will take her?’

  ‘I will take her,’ Merc answered.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For nothing. We’ll wait for you.’

  ‘Do that, wait for me.’

  A car was powering into the parking area and the headlights ground into the windscreen, and Nikki’s face was lit and seemed a pocked mess from the rain-water, and a light smile briefly flickered. How should he have been? Taut, tense, biting savagely on his lip, or calm? Just a touch of hands, not an aggressive slap of the palms. Nikki took the girl’s hand and held it tightly. More cars came and more lights speared them and seemed to emphasise their vulnerability. Merc would not hurry them.

  A final glance at his watch. Her hand was freed. The light flooded in on them as Nikki opened the door, and kicked out his legs as if accepting that the time for messing around was over. He stood outside the car. There were no goodbyes, no waves to him, no blown kisses to her.

  The door closed after him. Using his sleeve, Merc wiped his window, cleared the misted glass. He saw the boy break into a loping jog, like a kid who was late for a class. He had a good stride, and the rucksack bounced loosely against his back. Merc had the weight of the pistol in his pocket and gulped some air, then g
roped for the door handle and climbed out of the car and stretched. He could see the top corner of the building, a dark shape angled against the cloud. Usually Merc thought himself better than average at choosing something pithy to say when a crisis loomed – and had nothing.

  He looked around and saw motorists eating in their cars and people hurrying to and from the service counter. Ordinary enough. Beyond the parking area, the main artery road crawled. He would gladly, at that moment, have exchanged this place for Hill 425, and taken the incoming fire and men charging the wire, for sitting in the Polo beside a girl and knowing that her brother carried a bomb into a crowded room . . . what he had been ordered to facilitate. He felt the wind on his face and the spit of sleet, and did not know if he was cursed.

  Merc climbed into the front passenger seat. Another car manoeuvred and its lights played on Kat’s face and he thought the glisten on her skin might have been tears. The car stopped beside them and kids piled out, laughing, shouting, and ran towards the counter; he supposed them now to be his enemy, and he wondered where Boot was and why the big men were never there. She took his hand and held it in a fierce grip.

  She said, ‘How long do you think he’ll be?’

  Chapter 11

  Merc stayed silent and she did not ask again, but held his hand.

  More customers now thronged at the fast food counter, and some were singing and some were drunk and some carried big radios turned up loud, and some were hurrying to get home from a day’s work. The pressure of her hand did not slacken. He had the window on his side lowered by an inch and cold air flushed through the interior and some of the damp that came from the sleet. He needed it open so that he would hear shots, or explosions or ambulance and police sirens. Any of them would tell him, and her, that the boy was blown out, arrested or killed, or was running, or that the rucksack had been searched and the building was being cleared. ‘Ordinary’ people flowed around the Polo and none had a sense of threat.

  She did not look at him, did not sniff back tears, but they ran on her cheeks. It was the burden Merc carried – amorality, a justification. There had been a ‘good old boy’ in Baghdad. Once of the Welsh Guards, probably busted out for persistent infringement of regulations, and he might have thought the young – green – Merc needed to get the compartments of his life better screwed down. Had sleeves of tattoos on his arms, and angry spots on his chest from steroids, and an overweight jowl, bad teeth, and a bulging gut, and could get sentimental – with a can in his hand – about childhood in Merthyr Tydfil. Where the rugby team played every day and the male choir sang every evening and the pubs never closed. He’d told Merc: ‘You do your job. Others may take a packet, get hurt. Don’t let it be you. Leave your conscience behind, under the bed, and forget it. Don’t expect to be loved by those with you. And, who is the friend of the sniper? Nobody – that’s today. Up the valley where I come from there would have been longbow men, archers. If they were caught they’d have their finger sliced off to show they were useless and couldn’t draw a bowstring, and a slit throat would follow. Just as snipers never go into the usual POW cage but end up in a ditch, mutilated. And nobody loves you, young ’un. There’s not the protection of the regulars. Better money but hung out to dry if it goes sour. And they ask you to do the dirty jobs, and they try to keep their own hands clean, and you’ll be deniable, a firewall between them and you. They’re big men who do the tasking, and they’d call themselves honourable men, but they spend their time looking for people who’ll go down into the sewer. No morality involved. Chuck it, along with the conscience . . . And don’t think, afterwards, you’ll be able to walk into your local bar and be the same as those who never left the town. You’re different, set apart, and it’s what you carry. None of them have been where you have, tossing lives around, taking money for it, and without the shelter of military orders. You know who the lucky bastards are? The pilots. Steam along and chuck out a bomb and not see where it lands, who falls on it, what the collateral is, and go back and have a jar in the mess. You’re up close, and its personal for you, which is where the big men want you. No medals on offer, and no hearse leaving Brize with the Legion lowering standards for it. That’s the life, and you get on with it, and you don’t feel sorry for yourself. And you then go off, quit, and sell retread tyres. Apologies if I’ve bored you, young ’un.’ He had lasted six more weeks then had been blown up, a roadside bomb, the Nahiyet al-Rasheed district, usually regarded as safe, and had gone home in a box.

  He did not twitch, or shift his hand, did not disturb the hold she had on him.

  ‘And you don’t know?’

  ‘Sorry, but I don’t know how long.’

  ‘He’ll arm it, and he’ll run.’

  ‘Not for me to call. He does it his own way. You have to be ready.’

  ‘Because they quit on you?’

  ‘Because they quit on me, on us . . . I don’t pass around judgements. I thought they’d stay, they did not. End of story . . . You will drive. It’ll be good.’

  It was what Merc was supposed to do well, that flutter of a smile, only it was dark and she would not have to read his voice and would not have known if his expression was sincere, encouraging, or phoney. He remembered how he had bawled out the girl in the trench, with the tucked-up ebony hair and the wasp waist pinioned under the webbing belt and the bulge below the flak vest, and the look of contempt she had given him, and about saving her head from disintegrating when a sniper fired . . . He squeezed the hand, and he could see the corner of the roof of the building.

  ‘Because they were frightened?’

  Merc said grimly, ‘We should not have had them on the show. A mistake. We move on. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘How do we get across?’

  ‘I don’t know. Honest. One step at a time.’

  He would have liked to have had the banter of the ‘good old boy’ with him, who took pills that wrecked his body, and drank in excess, and never showed fear . . . Could have told her the old Special Forces saying: The only easy day is yesterday. She was close to him and he felt her warmth, and did not want to talk. He wondered what Wolf’s Lair was. Did not ask.

  He tried to imagine how it would be. Could not see Nikki, could not picture where he would be and who stood or sat close to him and where the rucksack was, whether he’d already taken the laptop out of it, if he had already fired the trigger. Merc considered whether the twin strands of information he had been given by Boot – weight of the explosive contained and its quality and therefore its effectiveness, and the length of time between firing the trigger and detonation – was true or false. Whether he himself was trusted to lie, or was fair game for deceit. Considered it. Merc surprised himself, felt no outrage, and had preached the message of Mushroom Management. He held her hand, and the tears came on stronger. As the Gun for Hire, Merc knew his place. Nothing he could say. He had barged into their lives, made an empty statement about taking her out and across the river, and did not know how it would be done, and might not have cared.

  The corner of the building became more indistinct as the sleet grew heavier, and a little of it settled and the vehicles coming in and out left confused tramlines, and what he saw told him nothing.

  ‘You are the best, why we have brought you together.’

  It would have been unlikely, in Nikki’s opinion, that the GangMaster had any idea of what they did, how they achieved it. They were upstairs, scattered around a long table and a cobweb mess of wires ran from wall plugs and adaptors around their chairs and then up on to the surface and were already hooked into their laptops: except that Nikki had two of them and one remained in his rucksack, down by his feet.

  ‘All of you are highly recommended, and are expert in what we want of you.’

  The GangMaster stood. There was an annex at the end of the room behind him, and an open door, and Nikki had spotted three men in there, smartly turned out, keeping out of sight. He supposed they’d have colonel’s rank, maybe one was a full brigadier. The GangMaster wo
uld have made his way up from the gutter by the ruthless wastage of opposition, and now had reached a pinnacle. He would have had little experience in speaking to an audience, and made a poor job of it; seemed to sweat, gazed down at his shoes. None of them would have been fooled by him. He would not comprehend the world of malware, covert intrusion into supposed secure computing systems. But one amongst them would have been his trusted eyes and his ears . . . Could have been HookNose, might have been Gorilla, and along the table was the Roofer: one of them would inform on moods, indiscretions, confidences, grumbles, and would be rewarded. Not Nikki. He had never been singled out for recruitment to informer . . . Because his sister was an anti-régime activist.

  ‘Each of you will be given a separate task for execution tomorrow and over the weekend. It is a matter of importance to the State. I remind you, all of you, that the State can be a generous protector to us all – can be a brutal enemy if our actions fall below standards required in the national interest.’

  He had no love for any of them. Nikki could not recall that any among them round the table had shown him kindness, had offered friendship. He was remote, alone: some had sneered at him, some had shown contempt, some had refused him respect . . . He did not consider whether he had offered them what had been denied him.

  ‘Confidentiality is paramount. Our country is under siege and we have the right to defend ourselves. To fall short of the faith placed in you, would be stupid, and dangerous.’

  He talked shit. The twins sat opposite him would not have heard; they had earpieces inserted and their machines were powered up and they were playing a game and were not reprimanded, and their mother was waiting in a room below. He had been late, the last to arrive, and he had seen cold anger on the GangMaster’s features, and had been ignored by HookNose and Gorilla, but the Roofer had peered at him – as if uncertain. Who would be late for such a call, who would dare, and why? He was reassured to have the weight of the rucksack against his ankles, felt calm. He had browsed for it, the events of that early afternoon at the Wolf’s Lair, a summer’s day in late July, seventy-four years ago, had recognised the lessons. On his own computer, the screen-save image was of his sister . . . a decent picture and her hair smart and her smile wide and she had been at the Conservatory, the world at her feet; but she had tripped, stumbled, joined the bastards who had contaminated her. He was not on her phone. He had checked. She did not carry a picture of him. He stared across the table at the twins, had no quarrel with them, nor with any of the other strangers who lounged in their chairs. Some yawned and some had their eyes closed, and HookNose had belched loudly . . . like it was important for them to demonstrate their freedom from the apparatus that employed, protected, them. Big egos, big vanities, but they all needed their roof to be in place. Only he was free. Nikki did not belch, yawn, play bored, was calm, because he had read the detail, learned what it taught.