A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  Merc waited. More smoke billowed out of the chimney.

  She was pliant in his grip, and in the gloom it was hard for him to see the colour of her face, but he thought it greyer. He had tried to warm her, and failed. He did not know whether she dozed, or had lapsed into unconsciousness. The cold had cut him, and he had the better clothes. Merc could not move because one dog, a scarred face and with flattened ears, had stayed outside, its head between its front paws, watching the open ground. He wondered if a rat would come, or a rabbit, for it to chase. Simple things . . .

  Brad and Rob liked to wax on about the ‘small factors’ if their subject was Escape and Evasion. ‘E&E’, in their opinion, was not about training but was about commonsense, and luck: luck had the big call, they said. Worst thing, when luck was in short supply, was dogs. Cattle were a nuisance and sheep always milling too close, but dogs were the nightmare. No guy on E&E could beat a dog’s innate hostility to a stranger on its territory. He could lose her because of one dog and Rob and Brad would have nodded in agreement; he could lose himself . . . if she coughed or sneezed, it was cluster-fuck time, what they’d call it. One dog that had a miserable view of the world and had once been kicked by a stranger and stood across the way that he needed to go, carrying her. Big plans made by big people, important enough people to call up an executive jet and have him lifted out of a combat zone, but he was dependent on the mood of a dog, and . . . The door opened. It was called, went inside.

  He thought some more. Might not just be a dog that stood in his way. Might be an old couple who had lived in a forest, isolated, most or all of their lives, and who had a shotgun, who owed him nothing and might block him. She was as old as his grandmother. They might stand between him and where he needed to be. That great building on the south side of the Thames, ugly as sin, would have a brigade of men and women to lecture on infiltration and exfiltration, and attribution and strike back, do all the smart things with the problem that clever people did, and they’d flake away if he put his hand up. ‘Please, sir or ma’am, what do I do if a man stands in my way, blocks me, estimate eighty years old, and his wife, same age? Do I hurt them? Take them down? Within the rules of engagement?’ Would not sit easy with a fighting man off the trenches of a Forward Operating Base. Did a convoy driver on a road out of Kabul keep the pressure on the pedal when a kid ran out to collect his football? Ease off when a woman with a stick was crossing Route Irish? No one would tell him, or appreciate him asking. He had to get her inside the barn. No more talk about her dreams, silent. He had to be out of the cold, had to rest, sleep.

  He spurted to the barn door. Had her in a fireman’s lift, one hand clinging to her, the other across her mouth. If she cried out, Merc might have to kill a dog, or kill an old couple, or accept failure and the consequences. He disabled the padlock, as easily as the first time, hooked it back, and closed the door. He stood inside in darkness, the animals milling near, anxious and cautious, but he spoke softly to them.

  Chapter 15

  A small dog was prominent in Merc’s early childhood, but after his father’s death it was given away, and there were no animals in the home of his grandmother, and they did not do animals in the military, with the Pioneers. He had no contact with livestock in Baghdad or Kabul or Erbil, and did not gaze through gates at cattle or sheep near Stoke Poges. He carried the girl inside and his feet slithered under him. Warm noses nuzzled and shoulders pressed against him, and the animals seemed about to dislodge her. Merc laid her down.

  He had the torch with the pencil-wide beam, was careful and cupped it. He looked for a place where the straw was better than half clean, made a sort of bed that was dry, had some softness, eased her on to it . . . Merc had made a promise. She needed food, sleep, and warmth. His glove came away from her foot and the sock was mud-caked and her toes were cold. When he ran the light briefly over his face he could see her lips had thinned and darkened . . . Merc had seen the suicide deaths of those wearing the vest with the pouches and the explosives linked with wires to the switch held in the palm of a hand. All of them had a detached look on their features, like a mind-set had already killed them; recognisable from the blank eyes that had lost emotion. The boy, Nikki, would have valued the promise Merc had given him. All the men whom Merc had fought alongside had extracted promises that their bodies would be retrieved if they went down on what a schoolmaster had called a ‘foreign field’ when poetry was read to a bored, fidgeting class. Wives, sweethearts, would be visited, given bullshit about the death of a ‘hero’, courage and sacrifice, told with a straight face in some fuck-awful housing estate – and likely a new bloke already with his feet under the table. Nikki had his promise and would have carried his bag with the laptop shell into his meeting, and knew the story of the Wolf’s Lair. The bag would have been off the floor, not against a table leg, probably on the table in front of him, and the promise sustaining him after he had activated it would have been the survival of his sister, her being brought out, and maybe an image of a piano-playing career – that sort of rosy crap. He would have looked around the table. Snipers always claimed they could engage the eyes of a victim as they lined up with the cross-hairs, watch the guy playing with the kids, going with his newspaper to the unit latrine, joking with his chums, then drop him . . . Unlikely that Nikki would have beaded on the faces of those at the table, or showed the hatred he must have felt for them. Would have been hard, counting down the last minutes. Tension as sharp as a razor’s edge, and if he had showed it then there could have been an evacuation, or something . . . Nikki had only had Merc’s promise that his sister would be lifted out . . . It had been a quality explosion. A good result for Boot and Daff . . . Nikki was not looking over Merc’s shoulder, not watching to see whether the promise was kept . . . She had to be brought out. On top of the promise, she was a factor in the ‘deniability’ sub-clause of the deal . . . and the boys were, but they were beyond what Merc could cope with. Hands washed of the boys, not proud of it, and laid down from the start that they had the skills to get themselves through . . . And, not sure that he could get her across the river, or get himself over if burdened by her.

  She looked helpless. Like a waif on a street corner, far from home and far from what was familiar. Her eyes were open. Merc took her hands, rubbed them, and the animals seemed about to walk on her, trample over the bed he’d made, and the chickens were on a rafter above. Merc did not know which of them had done it, clattered against something metal. Could have been a cow, could have been one of the pigs.

  He smelled cooked meat. The lid had fallen against a mug. He was very still, as if he were watched. He lifted a small container, slow movements, nothing sudden, and laid it on her waist, where her coat was thick, and had her steady it, and the mug, and retrieved the lid, then found a plastic bag, lifted that too and inside were thick slices of bread, and that too went on to her lap, and he found the clothes. They hung on a wire frame. He had left them, hidden under straw, and they had been sodden, filthy. Trousers washed and pressed, a shirt meticulously ironed, and his pants and vest, and the hanger was on a nail from the beam that was the refuge of the chickens. He had thought he’d used good tradecraft, and had seen the old couple, the dogs and the shotgun, and seen the militiaman chopping wood for them . . . and had uncovered their deceit.

  He knelt beside her. Merc poured the liquid into the mug, then used his fingers to pick out meat and pieces of potato, and they too went into her mug. He fed her.

  Fed her, then fed himself. Felt his body grateful for the heat of the food, chewed longingly on the meat and crushed the potato in his mouth. Brad would have said, ‘My boy, be thankful you fell on your feet.’ Rob would have chipped, ‘Because you had the angels watching over you, and you’ll need the food, the sustenance, Merc, because of what’s in front of you.’ She ate and drank. If she shifted on the straw, the animals came closer, and he heard the soft tinkle of her laughter. The right response. It was extraordinary and unpredicted, that he should be running – with a passen
ger – and be fed by people who he had never met, knew nothing of. Wonderful food, right to laugh . . . He thought of the boys, wondered how they did: could not help them . . . She finished the mug, he wiped his fingers round the sides of the container for the last dregs, had her lick them off, and he put the mug into the container and replaced the lid.

  She slept.

  He took off the clothes he’d worn, changed into what had been left him. He could not explain the kindness shown him, nor why – as he assumed it – a militiaman was deceived. The wind filtered into the building and sang through holes and the frost came hard. The food might have saved them but the cold would come again. He lay close to her and – more to laugh at but he did not – a pig grunted, pushed at him with its snout, then subsided against his legs, and his face was licked . . . He had to sleep because of what lay ahead, and the promise made.

  ‘I just thought you’d like to know . . .’

  ‘Know what?’

  Boot had heard footsteps, heavy on frosted ground, then the sharp rap. Daff had shut his bedroom door, gone to the front of the building.

  ‘What had gone on up the road.’

  ‘If you think I’d be interested.’

  He’d heard the voices. And Daff had laughed, always seemed flippant, as intended.

  ‘There was a shooting at Kingisepp. Kingisepp is twenty kilometres from the bridge. Late last night . . . I thought it would be helpful for you to know.’

  ‘Any business of mine, a shooting up the road inside Russia?’

  Boot eased off the bed. His sleep had been a life saver, had managed a couple of hours dead to the world. He felt a cough rising in his throat and tried to stifle it, made a poor job of the effort. It was a strangled sound . . . As he could hear the man at the door, assumed to be from the surveillance team, so that man would have heard his splutter. Often enough a chase for secrecy seemed pointless.

  ‘Two cars came from the St Petersburg route and a block at Kingisepp had been reinforced after the explosion in the Kupchino district. The cars switched off their lights and went fast into a zigzag to get round the oil drums put there to slow vehicles. Achieved surprise and were almost clear . . . almost.’

  ‘Only almost?’

  He thought her attempt at indifference was plucky. He had slept but at the moment of waking he had believed himself to be sitting on his collapsible stool, in the shade of a tree or the shelter of an umbrella and had been looking down the slope and not able to see much because of the density of the smoke, and not able to hear much because of the barrage of the guns, and it had taken half a dozen seconds of blinking before the recall. Stuck in that dirty little room with the hideous wallpaper and the faded prints of the castle, and he had eased from the bed and had smoothed down his shirt and had done up the top button and knotted his tie, fastened his waistcoat. He listened.

  ‘Were almost clear, but . . ‘

  ‘They, who were almost clear, should I mind?’

  ‘We have a good monitoring capability on their radio systems. The old and tried tactic at a road-block is to have one gun as a backstop.’

  ‘Not taught at my school.’

  ‘The backstop had hits, tyres and bodywork, and perhaps also hits to personnel.’

  ‘Hardly my concern.’

  Attempts did not equate, in Boot’s opinion, to dramatic indifference. That the man had cracked the cover seemed to him to render the game merely stupid now. He went to the door, opened it, but kept back and was in shadow.

  ‘Thank you, friend.’

  ‘And you, sir, should be careful of catching pneumonia from the river air, and should get your sleep and get food. Also, sir, it is not necessary for you to act like a circus artist and climb into and out of the kitchen window. It is not dignified . . . Two cars have been found down the road from Kingisepp and both are burned out and the plates have been removed. It is on the militia radio nets. They will not search the forest until the morning because they are nervous of gunmen still alive and desperate. We venture to suggest that the haven of our border will very soon be harder to reach. We are concerned, also, that the opportunity to reach our territory may have passed, that the fugitives will be apprehended on their side of the river. You know better than us, sir, that the risks that follow what they’d regard as severe provocation, are considerable. However, there is still some time . . .’

  Boot supposed now that he had been tracked by the KaPo since reaching Tallinn, and while he had spent time in the capital, and no doubt had been followed to and from the train. Each of his precarious climbs from the kitchen window had probably been observed, and the long hours spent above the bridge, compulsive for any of the old front line warriors of the Cold War. His preamble done at the cemetery, and the site of the Duchess’s Ball, and at Ligny and Quatre Bras, he looked with excitement to erecting his stool to the left of where Wellington had been for much of the day and he would gaze out in any season over the fields and take in the distant high ground where the cannon of the Emperor were in formation, and would see the small end wall of the cottage where the Corsican had slept, poorly and with stomach ache. The day slipping, a wonderful dream and a happy one . . . And had seemed to hear between the cannonade blasts, the shouts of ‘Stand Firm’ and ‘Stand Fast’, and had seen Sir Thomas Picton, go forward and fall, and the advance of the Heavy Brigade . . . Breathtaking and always he was gripped with an excitement and a sense of perilous nerves, then had been woken.

  Boot asked, ‘The time? What is it of time?’

  ‘They have poor coordination. Areas of command are protected by those in charge. They do not talk to each other . . . I explain. There was confusion in St Petersburg in the explosion’s aftermath, described as a gas problem, then a suggestion of mafiya. Road-blocks in place but no indication of what the troopers should look for. We do not hear, yet, that lines have been drawn between dots, that Kingisepp is linked. It is the way they are, jealous of power, suspicious of sharing to prevent a rival gaining advantage . . . That gives time. Not considerable time. Time should not be wasted . . . But of course, it is all ‘hardly my concern’. And to you, sir, goodnight.’

  She closed the door. Boot went to his bed, smoothed it, tidied the sheets and blankets and did an institution’s hospital corners and punched the pillows, and called to her.

  ‘Daff, what’s the schedule? When will he try, that bloody river, to cross it?’

  ‘Has to sleep. Has to rest, cannot take it at the charge, and God alone knows what baggage he’s bringing with him . . . My fear, Boot, there’ll be a man across there who can think, assess, then act . . . Might be wrong.’

  ‘You seldom are wrong. A “man across there who can think”, very seldom.’

  His screen was clogged with detail on the explosion.

  No chance for the Major to go home, to sleep in his own bed. Late into the evening and more than twenty-four hours after the detonation, he was aware that a new incident room would be functioning by the morning, with a new team. The young woman in the office kept him upright at his desk, fed him stiff coffee and rough bread sandwiches from the canteen. He was a man of obstinate determination: a dog refusing to surrender a bone . . . His screen now had the plan of the room where the meeting was held, the location of each hacker at the table, the positioning of the GangMaster, of the FSB officers. The most recent information to reach him was an analysis of the explosive used, Russian and from the Samara-Sefiev factory on the Lower Volga. He had CCTV of the building and who had come and who had gone, and pictures of confrontations in the ensuing chaos. The coffee sustained him . . . Would he hand it over lightly, the file he created? He worked on, struggling to remain focused.

  A courier brought it from the basement operations room. A single sheet of paper. A handwritten scrawl apologised for the delay in its circulation. He glanced at it, then dumped it on a heap of everything else that had been collected and categorised as ‘related/unconfirmed relevance’. Another blink, another slurp of coffee, another hacked cough. He retrieved the s
heet, read it a second time . . . A one-time officer of State Security, sacked and now on hard times and cleaning the ferry terminal in the port of Tallinn across a nearby border, had recognised an intelligence official, British and elderly, coming off an overnight ferry from Stockholm. His fault, but the Major had asked for everything of possible interest – ‘everything’. It had been diligently reported, and an officer in Moscow had gone back to the embassy in Tallinn on Pikk, and a further answer was given . . . How had the Briton been recognised after so many years? Because two men, once equals, had discussed at a reception an area of military history and the importance of single battlefields: Borodino on the road to Moscow, 1812 and the blunting of the French advance east, or Waterloo, which had been fought thirty-three months later, quite an animated discussion. It was how the man was remembered, and he had come on a ludicrous route to Estonia, had slipped ashore with no official welcome.

  The night dragged on. In the morning, fresh-faced men and women would rifle in his files, transfer them, forget to thank him, and he would be cast adrift. He returned to the surveillance in the car-park, as if that were a key, and a meeting and men still unidentified.

  They thought he still lived, but he gave them no help.

  Toomas was still slung between them. Martin had one of his arms over his shoulder and Kristjan had the other. They had little to guide them now the noise of the road had faded, and the last of the light had been lost hours before. They had not eaten, had not drunk, had not rested. The man who decorated homes in the tower blocks outside the town of Haapsalu had done nothing in years to build his physical fitness. The man who stacked the shelves of a supermarket smoked incessantly, never walked if he could ride. Toomas, whom they carried, his feet scraping on the forest floor, was a big man and suited to his pretence as a knight in Teutonic armour. They went slowly, blundered, and branches whipped their faces. Unsure if he still lived, they did not talk about whether they carried dead weight.