A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  And she talked. Talked and did not stop. He thought it was the climb-down from the stress of the drive, and from the acceptance that her brother had died in the building, at his own hand or misjudgement of the length of the fuse mechanism. He was not referred to, nor was the drive out of the city. A monotone voice, devoid of emotion.

  ‘We saw the fire, and heard the explosion. It was not a firecracker. It was designed to kill. A meeting of hackers, men or boys of the best quality, and controlled by the government. You wanted them destroyed, that was why you came, why you brought the bomb. You would hope to hide what you did behind the cover of a vendetta.’

  A steady speed and they were tucked close to the car ahead, and that was behind two lorries, each with empty timber trailers, going fast, and a chemical tanker.

  ‘I was in a group. I tell you, very frankly, we were pathetic. We dream of belonging, being part of a family.’

  Clear ahead, effortlessly passing the lorries, trailers, and the tanker.

  ‘The family has to make a difference. That is good, yes? To change a system, burn out corruption. To throw out the new czar, to destroy his court. Big, fantastic aims. We talked of how it should be achieved. How? The Leader will screw a new girl, and enjoy himself, and enhance his authority, and none of the family will question what he has written. We exchange a czar for a Leader.’

  A deer crossed the road but she did not brake, would have collided with it, but it leaped for the shadows and disappeared in darkness.

  ‘Do you know what it is to be crushed? Are you experienced in fighting, you would have told me. In our family we often spoke of our importance. I saw the explosion. It was huge. It would have killed many if they were in that room, upstairs, the end of the building. It was a blow against them. The room was filled with hackers. They are the people who strip assets from foreign banks, take hundreds of millions of dollars, euros, sterling, steal it, and there were people there who have tormented my brother. I thought . . . You want to know what I thought?’

  Merc did not reply. A hand came off the wheel, was laid on his thigh, rested there. He did not move it. He would be told what she thought.

  ‘I thought that it was heroic to go under the big bridge opposite FSB offices in the city, and when it is raised to allow a boat with a funnel to go under, then to paint on the under-side the outline of a penis – a dick, what the Leader would have shoved in me – and we regarded the man who came up with the idea as a lion struggling for freedom. It was to make a difference. You understand?’

  And he wondered how many times, on deployments he had ‘made a difference’, and he thought of his father. The legend of the Corps, the elderly officer drafted off the routine duties of supervising the digging of latrine pits, or constructing sangars that were proof against a direct hit from an RPG -7’s grenade, had been put on riot control, his platoon bottled, stoned, abused, and had shouted ‘Hold the Line, the Pioneers’, had gone into mythology. Had he altered anything? Her hand moved, stroked him.

  ‘Make a difference. It was what we hoped. How? Find the courage and go out in the depth of night, have lookouts to spot police or militia. Look for walls not covered by the street lights. A bucket of paste with us. Certain we were not observed, we would slap on the paste, then stick small posters to it, the text written by the Leader. That was the extent of the counter-revolution. The limit of what we did. You are entitled to laugh in our face.’

  Merc stayed impassive, and the wind whipped his forehead. He had saved the lives of men, and had ended the lives of others . . . He thought he had saved the life of a dark-haired girl who regarded him with indifference, or occasional hostility, and he had whacked her arse to keep her alive. Cats sometimes came into the bunkers, had been one on a previous posting to Hill 425, and the guys, the girls, always made a fuss of a cat, stroked it. Like she was stroking his leg.

  ‘Did we make a difference, did anything change? Can you imagine it, a message goes to the FSB liaison officer, sitting inside the Presidential quarters at the Kremlin, or at his palace overlooking the sea in the north, or to the place built for him far to the south, and the officer shivers in anxiety. He goes immediately to the great man, to the czar, and tells him that posters have been put on walls in St Petersburg, and they denounce him as a tyrant. He would tremble? His hand would shake? His bodyguards would transfer him to a bomb-proof bunker? That was the best I could do, and I nearly screwed the Leader because I wanted to belong with that family . . . I am ashamed. I see what you have done. They will hear about it. He will be told about a bomb, but not about posters and paste. I am right?’

  A bomb would be talked about. Lives had been taken. There was always the moment that the TV relished when a national leader was smiling in mid-conference, or was with flag-waving kids, or greeting guests at a reception, or perhaps squaring up on the twelfth or thirteenth green, then the interruption came. A stone-faced aide, a scrap of paper, the face clouding: confusion, anger, and a day wrecked because the authority of the man was hijacked. It was how it would be. What he might say to her: ‘I’m not the man who can give you an answer. Just do as I’m told, what people of my rank always do. You know a chap called Boot? No? You should. Put your questions to Boot.’ Merc said nothing. The forest was thick on either side, and no more deer came . . . He remembered how it had been at the choke point: the chicane and the oil drums weighted with concrete, the guns slung on straps from the goons’ necks. They carried on down the road; there was no other way. The boys were ahead of them: entrapped by Daff, not the first and would not be the last.

  Not idiots, the men in the surveillance car parked on the open ground across from the front entrance to the apartment on Igor Gramov Street. Daff didn’t have to ask: they supplied.

  ‘Some sort of incident in the Kupchino district.’

  ‘Never heard of it,’ she said.

  ‘They’re wary on their radios, a sensitive location and sensitive people.’

  ‘None of my business.’

  They knew of the river crossing, of the diversion created by fireworks being launched into a rainstorm. Knew that a woman such as herself was not visiting depressed, run-down, going-nowhere Narva because of the beauty salons. She had brought Boot in through the kitchen window, and they probably knew it, and knew also that she had bought enough food for two, but it would not be spoken of. She was in the back and the guy beside her fed her cigarettes, and the one in the front had a camera with a big lens and an image intensifier attachment. Charade games had been a part of her upbringing and she was easy with gentle deception.

  ‘Explosives involved.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘And reports of casualties.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘Could be gang stuff, mafiya feud.’

  ‘You always monitor their net?’ A query, little interest, but polite, making conversation – and smoking – helping them pass a boring night. Playing at sympathy for the tedium, but they understood. Relaxed, like it was talk among friends, and both sides trawling . . . Better kept at this level, than alerting the spook desks in the embassies and their seniors. She wore a provocative scent, which usually coughed up dividends.

  ‘Why does that local stuff get through to you boys?’ An innocent question.

  An innocent reply. ‘If it is a gang fight, then the boss who launched it will want to get the perpetrators out fast, beyond reach of arrest, and we are just down the road. We have the escape route. It is the easy way to get clear.’

  And the guy behind the wheel ducked his head and listened hard, holding the earpiece tight against his head. Would have been his Control. He straightened and turned to Daff.

  ‘Their ambulance net is talking of fatalities. Interesting . . . when mafiya have feuds they do car bombs or sniper shots, take out specific targets. This is a big bomb, not the usual way for them . . . But as you say, none of your business.’

  ‘That’s what I say.’

  And she moved on to safer territory: kit. What the boys always w
anted to talk about – not sex or food, not books or films, but the quality of firearms, a Makarov set against the Walther PPQ, or socks or boots or . . . She’d stub out her cigarette, tell them it was her bedtime, and leave them with the thought of it, and grin, and touch an arm, let the scent linger, and be gone. And would take Boot out through the kitchen window.

  Boot had a good view of the barrier. The area, the far side of the bridge, was well lit. It would be a new entry on Boot’s list of battle honours. He was thankful for the quality of his coat, and had the trilby hard down on his head so that the wind did not take it. Its force was down the gorge, north to south, made between the ramparts of the twin castles, and for centuries men who were in effect mercenaries and with no immediate quarrel in that territory had eyed each other across the fault line, the river, had watched for signs of what they’d regarded as important. As he did. They had weapons at the barrier and a hut where papers were verified, but little traffic to occupy them at that time of night.

  There had been Rozvadov, a point on the German–Czech border where he’d stood and waited with Ollie Compton, and another one where the two Germanys faced each other across a minefield and savage dogs, with watch-towers, outside Helmstedt, and various ones in Berlin of which the favourite to wait on was the Glienicke on the Potsdam side of Berlin. Good restaurants there, with a view, comfortable to wait in. And he and Ollie Compton had once done shivering time on the Soviet–Finnish border, at Rajapooseppi, inside the Arctic Circle, and the sad little man they had waited for had never shown: might still be there, frozen solid, if a bear had not had him. The first time at the bridge at Narva. Some in VBX might have had little flags pinned to a map to mark the points, or a collection of fridge magnets . . . Always tough to wait, and a stretch on his patience.

  There was much for Boot to reflect on. Principally, there was the size of the bomb, as reported by Daff. Difficult to read, in Boot’s experience, whether a man in the field, up close and personal with a target, would go squeamish. Stockholm syndrome, almost appropriate. A look through cross-hairs or across a street, seeing the faces and eyes of the potential casualties, often weakened resolve. A man or woman might back off, lose conviction. He had been economical, had understated the weight of the device, its power. They would be running hard, a few kilometres away from the bridge, and would need a minimum of obstructions. He doubted he would rot in hell – hoped not to. It would have been good to have been able to exchange Daff’s company for that of Ollie Compton, as he watched the bridge, and waited. It was where her boys would come, the Estonians who had been hired, at minimal cost, for undemanding work. The crossing places were a narcotic to any field officer who hired agents – at the best deal available, squeezing the expenditure – to wait.

  The barrier was down. No cars or lorries were about to pass through. Pedestrians crossed, the last of the day’s smugglers – tolerated by both sides – of vodka and cigarettes. They went past the barrier, and headed briskly towards the centre point, where the white line was clearly painted. When the boys came, Boot thought – with blood on their hands – they’d have their heads down after passing through the security, would not look behind them, would dread the cry to ‘Halt’, and had to reach the line. Then could dance, sing, punch the air, give a finger behind them, be safe: just a line in the middle of the high bridge and the water dark underneath and flowing deep and cold, and the rain spattering on its ruffled surface. He had known better places.

  It seemed, from the first report she had relayed, an operation impeccably on course so far. Except . . . except . . . no chickens yet to be counted. About deniability, about getting the guys back. All about deniability. Boot should have been asleep, far from anxieties, in his farmhouse billet – and Gloria away on an antique dealers’ junket – and dreaming contentedly of how it would have been thirty-six hours, or less, from the start of the battle. Two great armies abandoning retreat and pursuit, starting to form up within two, three miles of each other. An area of fields some five miles square and seething with 200,000 combatants, and their horses, their cannon and their baggage . . . thrilling stuff and he thought himself blessed . . . and he watched the bridge. A car came. Daff stood apart from him, allowed him to absorb the mood and atmosphere of the place. The car came painfully slowly towards the barrier, braked, the barrier was raised. The driver did not hurry, would not have dared. The car edged towards the white line, was within the range of an automatic weapon, and there would be loudspeakers to broadcast the command for the driver to stop, and order the vehicle to reverse . . . Sometimes they had come through and then hung on the necks of himself and Ollie Compton, and sometimes they had never showed, and sometimes there had been crisp rifle fire from beyond their field of vision, and sometimes a klaxon’s howl. If deniability was lost then he had failed.

  ‘Are we too early?’

  She answered him. ‘A little early, for them. Merc will be later, of course. Frankly, forgive the jargon, it’s Kingisepp that gives me the squits. Know what I mean?’

  The Maid locked the outer door behind her. She was well prepared for overnight office stays. She padded quietly down the corridor towards the elevator.

  She wore an ankle-length robe, a shimmering silvery effect, that had been a present from the man who shared a small part of her life – less than the space occupied by her parrot – and comfortable fluffy slippers. She had tidied her hair before leaving. In the dulled light of the corridor, she could have been a ghost. A glance into the mirror to make certain she was presentable. Tapped in a code to get to the top floor of VBX; she was one of the few outside the inner circle who had access to it. A young man met her, an aide of the Big Boss, junior but well thought of. His Night Duty Officer. She was brought through . . . He snored, quite loud, with catarrh lodged in his sinuses. She went forward, stood over the camp bed and shook his shoulder; he jolted.

  She said, ‘Just to get you up to speed. An explosion has been reported in the Kupchino district. A warehouse, office, used by a company described as dealing in import/export. Quite a big bang, fatalities, and several carted off to hospital. News agencies and local radio are not talking bombs but suggesting a gas leakage, but that’s to be expected initially. No word of any arrests. So far so good. Thought you should know . . .’

  For a moment there was a flash of excitement in his eyes; he would have given his right one – not his arm – to be in that little town flanking the Narva river, alongside Boot. She left him. The aide switched off the light. She did not think the Big Boss would get back to sleep, and would soon be pestering her for more news.

  She went down in the elevator and along her corridor. A ghost abroad in the silence of the floor . . . All for nothing if one were caught, held and identified, and deniability failed. She wondered how sharp they would be, the adversaries, how clever, whether they could think outside the loop or were trapped inside it.

  The Major now had his sergeant to drive him, and the young lieutenant. Enough . . . From the jeep he had already made the briefest of calls to his wife. Would not be home, did not know when he would be. She was scrubbing up in a hospital. No conversation.

  He went to the Operations Room. A formidable area in a basement section of the Big House, the far end to the cell block, it dealt with all aspects of the security of the state: serious crime, the activities of dissidents, counter-terrorism, anything that pricked the formidable skin of the nation. An old lesson, one he believed, was that an investigator should always follow his ‘nose’, go where it took him, but always be prepared to stand still for a moment and raise his head, allow the wind to fan across his nostrils and sniff; be open minded, without the burden of preconception. At the desks that monitored the banks of screens watching over the inner and outer districts of the city, he was told the first blocks were now in place and traffic queues had formed, and he was informed, with ghoulish enjoyment, that tempers were already frayed. More blocks were now sealing the northern road towards the Finnish border, the E-18, and out to the east and the wilde
rness of forests by Lake Ladoga, the E-105, and towards the south and Moscow, the E-95. The road west out of the city, close to Kupchino district, the E-20, also had an outer block in position, within the last several minutes, at the town of Kingisepp. They showed him, on the screens, the satellite view of where the further controls would be placed. He was told, at Kingisepp, there was the river, and the expanse of chemical works, and both were impossible to by-pass. What sort of car were they looking for? He could not answer but the men inside the one that mattered would be in flight, stress pasted on their faces, would lie and stumble, show fear and . . . they would know when they hit the right vehicle. He moved on, to the far side of the bunker space.

  The Major stopped behind a young man’s chair, no recognition, no deference, and in response to the question put to him, lifted a phone and dialled. Would have spoken to the general, would have received choice words. A gulp, an acceptance without further query. The delay was regretted. What could be done for the Major, could he repeat his request? He did.

  As if he cast a fly over smooth waters, sitting in his small punt boat on a waterscape outside Minsk. Did not know what he might draw up to the surface, or indeed if the fly he had tied was suitable. It was the Intelligence Desk. What was unusual? What was interesting? What had been received but as yet had no relevant pigeon-hole? Of particular interest to him was the E-20 because Kupchino was on that side of the city, and the border there, and . . . Fingertips clattered on a keyboard. Text played on the screen: a German national, with a press card, had tried to enter Russia through the bridge control point on the Narva river and had claimed a wish to visit the Ivangorod castle, and had been refused entry. Smuggling infringements on the border, amounts of contraband too considerable for the protocol. Two men out duck shooting on the lake, the Peipus, where it ran into the Narva river, and they had ‘strayed’ into Russian territory, gone past the marker buoys, and been chased back by a patrol craft. And a display of fireworks that . . .