He rarely dared contradict her, but he had stood too long in the cold, had seen less than her. ‘You are wrong, it is the left foot.’
‘You see nothing. The left has the shoe on it. The right foot not.’
‘The left foot has no shoe or no boot. I saw that.’
‘It’s her right foot that needs a shoe, a boot, whatever.’
‘Wrong. You go, get a right foot shoe, or a boot, and take it to her. Perhaps they fuck again. Perhaps they are asleep . . . Whatever, you interrupt a fuck or a sleep, and you give them a right side shoe, boot, and you look with a flashlight and you will see you have brought the wrong one. Then, will you apologise?’
‘I will not. And you, Igor, are an idiot.’
‘An idiot? I know the difference between right and left.’
‘You are an idiot because you do not know what I shall do.’
‘What will you do, and not apologise?’
‘I will take a right shoe or boot, and a left shoe or boot, and leave them by the door.’
Her laughter cackled. He had gone to the fire and kicked a smouldering log and sparks flew from it, and he swigged vodka from the bottle and any other time she would have yelled abuse at him.
‘But we cannot help them,’ Igor said.
‘We cannot. We do not have that power.’
‘And in the morning Pyotr will come.’
‘He would shoot them. The drink will make you talk, talk too much.’
Igor said, grimly, ‘Pyotr would kill them. Think no more of it than of them being a pig in the forest, or rats in his yard.’
The fire had lifted. He took Marika in his arms and shyly placed a kiss on her mouth and covered half of her face with his moustache and his beard, part white with age and part yellow from the smoke from his pipe. She pushed him away, but was slow to do it, then went to look for shoes and boots. Left him slumped in his chair. It had been a long night and their old lives would not be the same again because of what they had done and what they had seen.
Boot woke, a better sleep than before. He shook, wiped his eyes, and called to her.
‘Anything?’
Daff answered him. ‘Nothing.’
‘We’d have heard?’
‘We would.’
She gestured from his door and across the room and to the window. From his bed, Boot looked through the door and the window and saw the car and the cigarettes’ glows inside.
‘What’s on the radio, from over there?’
‘Not much. Suggestion of a gas leak leading to an explosion. Quite separate on the local police networks is an attempt by smugglers to break through a road-block, implication of drugs trafficking . . . Oh, and the Maid called on the secure line.’
‘Wanting?’
‘Big Boss under pressure. When was it different? Can I ask you a question, sort of personal?’
He seemed puzzled, squinted back at her. ‘What do you need to know?’
‘Just this . . . it’s your job, and you are good at your job, better than good. You send people to bad places, where they endure seven shades of Hell, or worse. Play God with them, and sometimes you’ve volunteered them, and others have volunteered themselves. Could you do it, Boot, what you’ve asked of others – be silent in the cell, take the beatings in interrogation, what you ask of others? I couldn’t, damn sure. What about you?’
‘Don’t think I heard that. Thanks for the rest – all right for me in the bathroom?’
She shrugged, seemed to say he could spend all day in there if that were his wish . . . when was it different? Never much different . . . older men stuck at the border and waiting for a sign that the agents would make it to sanctuary while all the time being nagged by the angels in the firmament. Would be good to shave carefully, wash comprehensively, and have a clean shirt for the day . . . All of them would have shaved that morning, both sides gathered on the twin flanks of the chosen battlefield, and cleaned themselves up even if only puddles of water from the overnight deluge were available. A bit later on, if events did not lurk on the horizon, he would carry his imagination down the track, on to the lane that led to the farm at Hougoumont. They would have washed, put on any fresh clothing they could find, and would have looked their best, and the young men around the Duke would have been in their finery. Damn cold out there and he’d be grateful, when the vigil resumed, for the waistcoat that went with his suit. He missed not having the Maid close to him, assumed she would soon be up and about, busy, would have cleaned around the outer office and his space, and wiped the picture of the ‘great man’, and likely given the Waterloo teeth a flick with a yellow duster. And he tried to picture the man he had sent, had plucked from one warm furnace and dumped in another, and who he had walked with by the Thames, and it troubled him that he could barely recall a word the man had said.
No hot water, when he went to the bathroom, just a tepid dribble, but he was pleased to have the chance to shave, would look presentable for the day – whatever it might bring.
Kat said, soft, ‘I don’t know who you are.’
He did not reply.
‘You walk into my life, into my brother’s . . . I am dependent on you. All of my future rests with you.’
She was above him, resting on one elbow, and some of her hair fell across her face and blurred the image of him but she did not bother to push it away.
‘My life is carried by you. It might be long, and it might be years in a prison cell or in a box in a grave. Can I cross a river? I must because everything behind me is burned and I cannot return to what I had, a little but something. I put trust in you.’
Her fingers, in the gloves, slid across his face, found his ears, and the sockets of his closed eyes, and around his mouth where the stubble had grown and down the length of his nose, and into his short hair, and it was, for Kat, the best loving she had known.
‘I did not have a string of men coming to the apartment, have to tell Nikki to stay outside because I am humping a man in my bed, and could be receiving presents. I do not do that. I was with you, went with you, and thought you shy, and led you, and I regret nothing . . . but it is, for me, not just like scratching an armpit, coughing and spitting, eating pizza because I like it . . . It was important, I wanted to – with you. I have to believe that you can cross the river – and afterwards? I think we will cross the river because that was a promise you gave. Then? Where do we go, what is our life? I have the right to know who you are.’
She thought that he heard her. Her voice was very quiet, and the animals around them seemed lost in sleep, and the cold was close. His eyes stayed shut but there had been moments when she had thought a slight smile drifted on his face: could not have been sure. A little of him, she believed, belonged to her, but she did not know who he was, and it would have to be prised out of him which would take time. They would have time, after they reached the far side of the river.
‘I don’t know who you are, what you love, hate, what is your ambition and what angers you, and what is a line you refuse to cross. I deserve to know because of now and because of what is ahead – and for us, what is the future: I have the right.’
Good questions, fair comment.
Merc was warm, was grateful for that. It was what the guys talked about, Baghdad and Kabul and Erbil and at any of the barracks where he had been with the Pioneers. Right place at the right time. Some of the guys would let it be known that they’d showed up lucky, then shrugged and then moved on, and others would have talked it through in detail, and a few might have had a bit of it stored on their phone memory. It was good to be warm.
Among the stink of the animals, in darkness with the moon long gone, Merc would have preferred the chance to think; one big river, one small board, one guy who had an idea of how to achieve it, and one girl who was a decent weight and would panic and would be a passenger. But the promise was the bigger burden . . . Some of the guys, not many, would have said they were going for a slash, given her a kiss, have crept out of the barn, would have done a ru
nner. Probably the best strategy . . . he ditched it . . . him gone, her left and caught and interrogated and spilling it, and deniability lost . . . ditched it. Her voice had pattered in his ear, her fingers traced his face, and soon the cattle would grow restless – and soon they would move. The finger movements calmed him.
Merc was suspicious of calm. She assumed a future. What he stayed clear of was a hardening up of ‘sometime’. Of course ‘sometime’ was up front, staring into his face. Sometime, Merc could go to the bank at Stoke Poges and tell the manager that he would be needing funds for the purchase of a property. He could get himself down to the dealership and admire the latest of the Mercedes Benz range. And, sometime soon might be right for a woman in his life. Because he thought about ‘sometime’, Merc lacked the concentration for what strategy was best, when they hit the river. And ‘sometime’ was when he came back into a world almost, ‘normal’ – and ‘sometime’ he would put all of this, and guns and road-blocks and man-hunts, and salients that had a Hill like 425 in their front line, behind him, walk away from it . . . if he had not drowned. He eased her back and belted the rump of a heifer, shifted it and stirred them all. Time to be awake, the resting finished. He slapped his body to liven it, then was statue-still. Merc could have sworn on a book that there was a footfall at the barn door, and the animals tensed, and he did too.
Chapter 16
Merc strained to hear.
Picked up the sound of the footstep, imprecise, dragging. Then heard the rustle, slight but bold. And thought it was a rat in the straw.
It was a moment when he’d have picked up a weapon and swung to face the enemy and would have aimed at a shadow or a scrap of noise and been pinpoint accurate. He had no weapon. He identified in the faint light, the eyes, set close. And made out the shape of the creature. Excluding its tail, it might have been nine inches in length. He saw the whiskers and the yellowed teeth, two main incisors, a rough dark grey coat, and the tail seemed coated in a kind of snakeskin. It stared back at him . . . Merc knew rats from the bunkers under the parapet walls in the fire positions. A giant lived close to where he slept, recognised by a broken right tooth and fighting scars on its face. The second winter that he had been on that front line, with snow on the sandbags and the wire in front pretty with icicles, this one had come to sleep beside him – live and let live – and had been curled close, had never bitten him or threatened him. They had gone out of the line, and had been replaced, had come back a week later. His personal rat had been stiff and frozen, rigor mortis, and had been dumped in the wire, its head broken as if by a heavy blow or a kick. He wondered if, when they had loved, his gloved hands on her skin – and hers on his – there had been moments when they could have felt the caress of the rat’s tail.
She screamed. A sound of anguish and horror the rat scurried to escape and he kicked out where he thought it fled and caught it, and the creature squealed, and he heard it fall. Merc thought they would have been around him, and Kat, all of the night, sleeping and loving.
A new noise: the scrape of the door hinges. A torch on his face. He could not see past it. Her scream continued and the animals in the barn were waking, stumbling and bellowing, and the chickens were coming down off the beam. He did not know whether – behind the torch – there were men with rifles, or . . . The light reversed. It shone on the old woman and the old man, and on two dogs, their hackles high. The scream died. The woman spoke to Kat. Kat answered her. The woman cackled. Kat grinned, stood, and tidied her clothing. The woman slapped a gnarled hand on her thigh, and the man grinned.
Kat said to Merc, ‘They are surprised we saw only one. They have brought food . . .’
The tray was put on the ground, lit by the torch. They sat around it. The shotgun was propped against the wall. Two apples, a little rotten but mostly good. Bread. Slices of cold meat, tough and hard to chew, something in a bowl that seemed to Merc to be porridge, sweet with honey, and one spoon which they all shared, and cheese that was cut with a penknife from the man’s pocket. Merc studied their faces . . . had seen them wherever he had travelled. They were lined, worn, weathered, and the flesh hung loose on the cheekbones, and the eyes were dulled and sunk far into sockets. She had loose strands of hair on her chin and he was sprouting stubble. Had seen them in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in the small villages outside Erbil. What was constant, Merc thought, was that they’d survived suffering, had learned to live beside it. They looked at him, as if interested in an alien creature, but he did not sense that they quizzed her. Who was he? Where did he come from? Why was he there? In near silence, they ate. At the end of the meal as the chickens scratched at the crumbs left where the straw was thinnest, a pair of boots was given to Kat. They were too large for her, but they were boots and boots could save her life. The woman peeled off her own faded socks, the pattern long washed out, and with holes in the heel. Kat wore them over her own, then dragged on the boots.
It was still dark when they left. A few words were exchanged with Kat. Merc saw them shrug, and the old man spat, a gesture of derision. They said goodbyes, he formally and she with a passion. His handshake and her kiss. Nearly dawn, and they walked away from the barn and towards a path that narrowed quickly, and the ground was harder from the cold, and their feet slithered on ice.
Merc asked her, ‘Why did they help us?’
‘Because we were fugitives.’
‘That is a good enough reason?’
‘Yes, good enough for many. They thought you would come back and did your clothes and left food. They assume you are opposing the “system” that looks to control them and do not think you a criminal, and the militiaman who came warned them of danger, which was an invitation for them, and . . .’
‘And . . .?’
‘Perhaps because we made a show for them. They did not have to go to a theatre or a circus. They watched us, outside in the cold. They saw the love we did . . . I think, watching us, gave them a happiness. I should trust you, they said. And . . . they say that to try to cross the river without a boat is not possible. That we will drown or be shot. They said that. But I should trust you, and they will remember a long time, all the rest of their lives, the joy we gave them, with our loving. And you, joy?’
He led, and she had her arm tucked into his, and he took the snap of the branches they bent back, and did the estimates of the direction needed. Slow-going, and the light had started to spread. He did not hear pursuit, but did not doubt that it would come.
Kat thought she walked well, did not slow him down. She hung on his arm and matched his stride.
In the city, she hardly ever walked. From the money Nikki gave her, she took trams and buses and the metro. She ate poorly, played no sport, but at the start of this day, and heading towards the river, she stepped out. She could walk well because of the loving in the barn’s straw. From the itching in the pit of her back and down between her legs, Kat knew there was still straw pieces and dust lodged there. And she knew she had entranced him because he had called out, had broken a cardinal rule he had set her, for silence, had broken it himself. She could not know what he had shouted, something she had not understood. She was not good, not practised, and she had thought him – a man with a battle wound in his side and the scar tissue of a field hospital operation, done at speed – a novice. And knew nothing of him, except that he had wanted her enough to lose control, cry out. A flat stomach against hers, the two main bones fused, hair entangled, and after the shout, a gasp . . . She would learn about him. She had no doubt that she had entranced the stranger who had burst into her life. She did not know where they were going, what schedule he had set himself. Afterwards there would be time to learn, and she would be a pianist at a school in London, perhaps the Royal College which had been well spoken of at the Conservatory. No complaint from her at the pace they went and sometimes the ice screen broke under their feet and they slid down into mud pools and their boots were covered, and sometimes they tripped on exposed tree roots, and sometimes the whip of the branches sla
shed and she’d tasted her own blood. She clung to him. She realised, blundering through the forest, that she had only thought once of her brother and the ball of flame rising above the flat roof, the debris thrown up and the rumble of the detonation. Had not prayed for him nor cried, nor understood why Nikki had extracted the promise . . . He said they would stop and rest, but not yet. Hardly needed to rest, felt strong.
Across the small hallway, the front door lay splintered, the hinges ripped off. It had not been a strong door, and his sergeant had put his shoulder into it twice, and the final entry had been achieved by the young woman, done with relish, using her boot. They had each taken a room.
The Major’s hands were working methodically inside the drawers of a chest. Small parts of his life were kept from his wife. She’d have wrinkled her nose at the sight of him, in his work as an FSB investigator, trawling through a young woman’s underwear. He would tell her – when he reached home – of the breaking down of a door, and tell her of body parts collected in a mortuary, and let her know of the fatal injuries suffered by the young people from the fire flash at the moment of detonation, what the glass had done in the blowback of the bomb, but would not tell her of his search among brassières and panties and vests and tights. He hunted for evidence. Where had little Yekaterina gone, with whom, what had she known, when would a truth drop into his hand? Everything was as if her departure had been fast, chaotic. Had rather liked her. She was more interesting than the exhibitionists who were obsessed with phallus shapes, and talked – their brains doped up – of revolution. He thought her musical talent was genuine, thought also she’d have performed well as an agent. Many, in his experience, first snorted refusal but then came to enjoy the clandestine power over others, enjoyed even more the rewards that came: food, cut-price travel tickets, help with accommodation bolt-holes, and the opportunity – in the far future – of embracing a new identity. He found nothing.
A Damned Serious Business Page 39