A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  Nothing of herself, and nothing of her brother whose body parts were now as small as those on a butcher’s slab. Her car was gone from the usual place she parked it, the neighbours said. The bank statements were trivial, the utilities bills were paid but on ‘last reminders’. He searched in vain for papers that demonstrated her involvement with the activists, and found no trail that showed anything of the skills of her brother, nor what had happened to the monies he had been paid. One clue remained. She had left two drawers full of poorly folded underwear, and the contents of a plywood wardrobe – warm clothes for the winter and light dresses and blouses for the summer – and in a corner was a heap of footwear – boots, shoes, trainers. In the bathroom was her toothbrush, and his, and soap and a small bottle of cheap eau de toilette. He asked the young woman, the lieutenant, why she would leave these items behind.

  He was answered, a voice without an opinion and not offering judgement. ‘They are left, Major, because she does not rate what is here. It’s low quality, she thinks. Where she is going she would not care to wear them. That is what she thinks. That is where she believes she is going – and will buy, or be given, new clothes.’

  They left, did not attempt to secure the broken door. He thought the place would be looted by the middle of the day. He was due to see the general, and swayed from tiredness as he went down the flights of stairs, and understood more.

  Pyotr saw the line.

  It had been a night of savage cold, the worst of the winter so far, but dry. The ground in front of the farmhouse was covered in a fine frost, and the wheels of his vehicle had crunched on ice on the approach lane, and he saw what had been done to confuse. Efforts had been made to obliterate the tracks that led from the barn’s door in a straight line. Where the footprints milled close to each other, made a mess of the ground, he thought there had been farewells and then the line had resumed. Two sets of tread marks on the stunted grass between the barn and the forest, not meandering but going directly. The attempt to hide them had been done by the animals. He assumed they had been driven back and forth across the trail that two persons had left. He was a hunter. Pyotr could track a boar or a deer, a rabbit, and thought that once he had even been close to a lynx when his rifle had been on his back and not ready to aim, and could easily follow a bear in winter. He had good eyes, and an instinct for a track left by fugitives. He did not say what he saw.

  They were poor liars.

  To Pyotr, they were as family. More important to him than any living relation, even his mother – and any of the women in Kingisepp with whom he enjoyed fragile relationships – were Igor and Marika. Where he stood would in the future belong to him, it was promised. The lie was obvious and denials had tripped off their tongues. He had warned that they should keep the barns locked, should be alert for strangers in flight, had told them his own life had been threatened at the road-block by desperate, dangerous men: they had lied. No one had come, they’d said in unison. They had heard nothing, nor had the dogs been alerted.

  The cattle and the pigs and the sheep, Pyotr believed, had tramped over the line, then had been fed on it. Insufficient to fool him. One was a man with a heavier tread and one was a woman who had worn small boots. He could have gone to the barn and pushed past them, inspected the interior, and probably he would have found flattened straw where they had rested in the night. If Igor and Marika lied about them, it was near certain that they had also been fed . . . and his anger rose at a steady pace. He remembered the surge of the cars at the road-block, coming out of a wall of darkness, and the sparks of fire as they cannoned off the sides of the drums, and his own fear when the shadows, in silhouette against the street lamps, had hurtled towards him, and the crack of his bullets – and still had the bruising at his right shoulder from the recoil. He did not challenge Marika or Igor. He might have been dead, cold in a mortuary at the hospital up the St Petersburg road, and at the hand of people who had been given shelter, safe fucking haven, by the senile old pair that he helped. But Pyotr did not accuse them, and the property was promised him when they died.

  They had brought him coffee. He stood on the grass and frozen mud and cupped the mug in his hands and did not try to search the barn but traced the route they had taken. He knew the forest well, and the few routes through it. The sun was up, low on the trees, and from the east and to the west was the Narva river. Old men in Kingisepp talked of the battle in the winter of 1944 when the Red Army had pushed across it, taken hideous casualties, to gain a foothold, and all spoke of the power of the current’s flow which had driven the landing craft out of formation, left them as easy pickings for the Fascist forces. Too wide, too strong, and no boats there to be stolen, all cleared from the security zone which he patrolled.

  He imagined the old couple, wrapped against the chill, watching two fugitives from justice leave – who could so easily have been his murderers – waving off their fucking guests. He made conversation. The animals were good? They had enough logs for a decent fire that day? Anything needed from the shop other than the milk and bread he had brought with him? He was given brief, evasive answers. He smiled, and urged them again to be careful of ‘ruthless criminals’. He said he would be back, but not who he’d bring with him. In his vehicle, bumping away up the track towards the Ivangorod to Kingisepp road, he imagined who he’d report to, what he would say. He might have been dead, and hate fed him.

  She talked, he hardly listened. What books did he read, what authors?

  Merc had given up trying to quieten her. Other than her, and their footfall that broke twigs and scuffed pine needles and the snap of broken branches, he heard nothing. He was unaware of pursuit or radio static, and smelled no cigarettes and they were far from the farm chimney’s smoke. He would grunt, monosyllabic, or cough, but not answer.

  What music did he like? They had sat on a fallen trunk. Taken a short rest, drunk cold water, then he had pulled her up and pushed on and into deeper forest. He had not yet found the trail he had used from the river. Sometimes she held his hand and allowed it to be used as a prop, keeping her upright, other times she clung to the sleeve of his coat. Was always close to him. Where had he been, were there Russians there?

  Enough rest . . . He led, and allowed memories to intrude . . . top of them was the big first contact, him and Rob and Brad. They were part of the Special Forces close protection unit assigned to the Green Zone. The ambassador could not do his usual helicopter ride to the airport because of low cloud, and they must have heard that he was a top man for the Route Irish run. Not the armoured Range Rover, but a battered Nissan, smoked privacy windows and a tuned-up engine under a bonnet where the paint was scraped and rust showed. It had gone without incident, His Excellency safely delivered, and they’d done the run back and an RPG had been launched and hit the car in front which had a Polish team in it, and Merc had swerved out of the way and then done an evasion routine, and the boys had let rip a couple of magazines, but it was the driving they had noted, not their own ‘free fire’ response. He had seen them around, and taken beers, and done kit talk, tactics chat, and they’d separated him from the military contractor mob. Then they’d gone, moved on . . .

  Did he have a home in England – what sort of home did he have?

  Fifteen months later, they’d met again. Was everywhere he went a war zone, were there beaches anywhere he went? A drawl. ‘Hi, matey, how you doing?’ Then a chuckle. ‘Great place, isn’t it? Told the property is cheap if you want to buy and settle.’ He had been in the vehicle park at the Bagram base, thirty miles out of Kabul, had just brought in a convoy. They’d come to pick up some Special Forces kit that had been airlifted for collection, and had dropped off a prisoner at the interrogation block. He’d been asked if he knew the road they’d be taking to a forward base on the far side of Kabul. He had not done war stories, but had described a ‘bad’ road, and had yanked out a map and showed them where the ‘worst of the bad’ places were . . . forewarned, forearmed, that sort of stuff. Had seen them a week later a
t one of the NATO compounds. They had been hit where he said they might. They had come through it: his advice had been sound. They were thankful, and showed it: he had fresh medic packs slipped him, and he’d learned more from them about the tactics of close-quarters combat. Then they’d shifted out again, taken the big bird home, gone with a couple of boxes – had sent him a clip of the coffins being unloaded, and a caustic note of thanks, which meant they’d have driven through Wootton Bassett at speed in a Land Rover and not gone through slow in a hearse. It could have been because of the advice he’d offered. Had lost touch again . . .

  At his home in England, was there, close by, a place where she could study?

  Walking up a main drag in Erbil, on the edge of Shah Park and looking at the citadel, a piercing wolf-whistle, then, ‘Look, Rob, a bad penny, what keeps turning up.’ And a growl of laughter, ‘Jeez, Brad, we got to teach him it all over again, everything?’ And hugs and cheek brushings and later that evening some more kit coming his way, and the next day he’d done a drive along the front line for them, and in the evening he’d brought them to his people who were going forward late that night, and they’d taken a class in survival skills and evasion, then target recognition. Good boys . . . His people had loved them except for one haughty woman who hadn’t the grace to smile, nor thank, because she did not do celebrity worship, but he thought she’d listened to every damn word. An old question: How do you know when you’re in a minefield? An old answer: When the guy behind you is blown up. Rob and Brad had been with a gang of Kurd fighters and doing a reconnoitre and one had lost a leg to a long buried PROM-1, and Merc was near enough to monitor the radio and knew a rough outline of the place, and had gone in, had near shat himself, had brought the guy out – had drunk with Rob and Brad that night, had not crawled from his pit the next day until after dusk. That the air strikes had come in after his ultimatum would have been down to them, to Rob and Brad, whatever they’d reckoned in VBX. Good to think of them . . .

  They went on through the forest and sometimes he was hunched double because of low branches . . . His home was an apartment or a house? In the country or the city?

  He tripped. He sprawled across a tree trunk. His nose was into the concrete-hard ground. There were scuffs on the far side of the trunk and he felt an additional layer of cold on the back of his neck. He did not need to be told, but she did it.

  ‘We did a circle. It is where we were a half hour ago. We’ve gone nowhere.’

  His face flushed embarrassment. His head was turned away and hid it. A little laughter rippled in his ear. He stood, caught her hand, tugged her clear, and did not know how he had been capable of that degree of error . . . Time had been lost, could not be recovered, added to the danger facing him, and her . . . Did he never make a mistake? No answer offered.

  Up and breakfasted, the apartment tidied, the washing up done and cutlery and crockery stowed in cupboards, and the bags packed. Daff went first out of the kitchen window, and Boot crawled up on to the draining board. The bags followed her. Time to resume the vigil. One leg went out through the open window and half of his body and most of his weight, and he realised he was toppling, and snatched at an arm – thicker than Daff’s. The surveillance man was there to take his weight. He was, with scant dignity, lowered to the mud surrounding the building. The start to the day that might prove the most significant of his professional life. And his cover shredded, and he was so obvious to the big wide world, so blatant, that a man not supposed to be aware of his comings and goings had taken on the task of aiding his descent from the window. Preposterous, amusing. For Boot, there was a behavioural rule book . . . what would Ollie Compton have done? Would have smiled gratitude, then let the arm take the strain, would have relied on a safe landing . . . and Ollie Compton would have murmured ‘Dear boy, what a champion you are’, then would have led the way to the nearest bar, beaten on the door until it opened, would have started a tab. Only one Ollie Compton. He thanked him, straightened his tie, tugged down his waistcoat, allowed his bag to be carried to the car.

  Boot said, conversationally, ‘Don’t suppose you know about Hougoumont, the farm at Hougoumont?’

  A shaken head, a roll of the eyes, a snort of laughter from Daff.

  A trifle of warmth from Boot. ‘It was on the right side of Wellington’s line, a bit forward and a bit detached, a vital obstruction to the French. You see, young man, they could not turn our flank while we held the farmhouse and its immediate grounds. Coming up this summer it will be two hundred and three years since the fight there. I think it was the critical point in a critical front, at a critical time in history. It has been said that Waterloo, in particular the defence of Hougoumont marked a “day that changed the tomorrows of years to come”. Apt, I feel, as it says there, “there is a duty to remember those who made history”. If I was not here it’s where I would have wanted to be, am there in soul. I like to sit under a tree in summer and dream of it as it was, smoke and carnage and knapsacks of courage, and huddle in the chapel in winter. I’m there rain and shine most weekends. The Coldstream Guards held the position, grand men, but it was a desperate business. A French sous-lieutenant, Legros, broke through the north gate, smashed it down with a heavy forester’s axe and for a minute or so the battle was in the balance, and so was the future of Europe, but the Guards closed the gate and trapped Legros and thirty others inside. All hinged on the gate being closed and the defence of Hougoumont continuing. This giant of a man was killed and all with him except for a drummer boy, aged thirteen, who they spared. Slaughtered the rest. A romantic colouring of a brutal day, and true. Wellington himself said that the closing of the gate turned the day. And a resupply. Running short of ammunition, and a regimental carter drove a load of bullets right through the French lines and into the defended perimeter. Cannot make them up, those brilliant stories. I always go there . . . You know, today, there are huge dead trees – great gaunt things where crows sit – that have perished because of the weight of lead shot they absorbed. Extraordinary. It’s my obsession, you see, and in the next few hours the obsession and my professional career will come together, walk hand in hand. Rather important to me . . . Did you say you had heard of Hougoumont?’

  They waved as they drove away.

  ‘I suppose this will be the day,’ Boot said.

  ‘They make it, the boys and Merc, or they don’t. It’ll be the day, good or bad.’

  ‘Never done it myself,’ Boot said. ‘In answer to your query, belated: been there, behind the lines, running or bluffing or doing the covert bit? Never done it, and never been anywhere like the farm at Hougoumont, anywhere that required undiluted courage. At Hougoumont, the Duke needed those Coldstreams to make supreme sacrifices. They had to, and the same is as true today, and I’m suggesting the necessity of that damn word, sacrifice. Cannot win without it. Do I sound as if I am trying to reassure myself? Don’t know where we get those people from . . . Still we can hope for the best, can’t do more.’

  An end of a shift. Firearms back in the armoury, paperwork completed, vest and kit hung in the locker, and no scares – not where the two guards had their watch. London livening up, and the traffic clogging, and a cold wind coming in from the east, replacements greeted, time for Roy and Arthur to scuttle for trains home from Vauxhall. A disappointing end to the duty.

  Not a sniff of Boot, nor Daff, neither sight nor sound of the Director or the Maid.

  ‘Do you reckon, Arthur, it’s all gone down the plug, whatever it is and wherever?’

  ‘For me, Roy, the glass is better for being half full. Has to be tonight, can’t be longer, can’t be.’

  They went their separate ways, and would doze a bit at home, maybe fiddle in the greenhouse or rake leaves off the lawn. They’d be back in the hut beside the gate slap on the dot of their duty start up. Arthur would have said that he felt part of some distant drama, had a stake in it, and doubted Roy would have said different.

  She had the teeth in her hand. The Maid would not normally
have disturbed them. She lifted them, studied the dentures, and they might have been yanked from French dead or from Germans or from the British boys on the left flank or the right, from infantry or artillery or cavalry, and they were still perfect two centuries after extraction. She was alone but still flicked a glance over her shoulder to be certain she was not witnessed, then clattered them, let the rattle play through the room. Then replaced them on the shelf where they took pride of place. What was it all for? The Big Boss demanded clarification – or justification. Some might have considered it a bit bloody late in the day for posing the question . . . They’d need sandwiches in the Pimlico block, and the coffee machine filled. A diversion for her was a text from north London, her parrot was well, was fed, had had its cage cleaned. More immediate, had the silly man forgotten what he had signed off? A message had come down from on high. The Brains Trust was to be reconvened. To be done that morning, not tomorrow and not next week. She assumed the Big Boss suffered, and Boot’s silence hurt him. Damn well hurt them all. Boot, of course, employed correct tradecraft . . . Was too close to the Russian border for extra messages to be sent to London, probably sent nothing because he’d little or no idea how his little army fared, hopefully trudging towards the frontier – hopefully. A good question for the clever young people to wrestle with. What was it all for?

  The Brains Trust had set an agenda for dealing with Lack of Moral Fibre, Squeamish Syndrome, or Getting in a Funk. The top men wanted justification, like a priest handed down absolution. Not convenient to gather at that time, that location, but a whip was on their backs. For each of them a basic fact was available. Some thirty-six hours before, a building in the Kupchino district of St Petersburg had suffered severe damage in an explosion, with casualties . . . What was it all for?