A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  The Major said softly, ‘You need warmth, you need hot drinks, you need to eat, and your animals have to be looked after . . . Which direction do I go in?’

  He waved forward his lieutenant. The couple were similar to his own parents who had eked out an existence in a smallholding to the east of Minsk, and it was likely the lieutenant had grandparents from the country who had experienced hardship, suffering, persecution . . . all the things anyone of age in these parts had endured. He told her to clean the pair of them, then take them inside, light the fire and stoke up the cooker and do the necessary with the feed for the animals in the barn. He saw the distaste at her mouth: she would have been from an élite entry into FSB and might have believed she could break through the ceilings that existed in the organisation, and was not to be used as a house-keeper for old people. Should have been front line, and had witnessed two killings, and was in shock, and . . . The Major told the couple what would be done for them but asked for help. The threat would have been implicit, but it was a request. He could hand down mild torture, could shoot to kill, could speak with gentleness. The old man gestured with his thumb and the headlights – at the edge of their cone – showed the track and its slit entry into the forest.

  He asked, ‘Why did you help them? What were they to you?’

  It seemed important, used up precious moments. He thought he needed to know.

  The old woman said, a cackling voice, and defiant as the lieutenant wiped snow from her face, cleared her mouth and cheeks and the bridge of her nose, ‘We have no beauty in our lives. We have never known beauty. They were here, in the barn, with our animals, and they loved. And . . . and he is a fighter, and brave. We know what a fighter is, but can only imagine beauty. They showed us. Is that enough?’

  He nodded. The lieutenant was ushering them towards the house and the dog slunk on its stomach to join them. His sergeant revved the engine and they bounced away and on to the track and dark closed around the beams of their headlights. It would be that moment of triumph, a vindication, evidence that could not be denied . . . He would not tell his wife about the bridge, nor about the holing of a dinghy, but he would tell her of a couple and their loyalty to a stranger, and their image of beauty. They went towards the river and branches scraped against them and the wheels struggled for traction . . . It would be a fine moment for him when he had them, and his pistol had the scent of cordite, and would seem to be smoking. A very fine moment.

  The sound, distant, at first confused Merc. Then was clear to him.

  A jeep straining in mud or ruts or climbing over exposed roots to go forward, was in a low gear, its engine racing.

  No more delay, Merc accepted it. The militiaman was now on his last cigarette and the carton had been tossed towards the reeds, and he still paced and still looked towards the narrow track leading into the forest, but might not yet have heard the approach of the vehicle. Now, or the jump suit and the appearance in court, and the flashing of photographers’ bulbs, and the bruises still on his face from the beatings, and . . . It was now. Now, Merc would learn what the girl, Kat, could do – if she were there.

  He rolled on his back. He kicked out with his legs, haphazard and confused, and seemed to writhe on his spine, and let out low grunts. He did what he could . . . Merc had no comprehension whether or not the act was convincing. The darkness was thick around him and the moon feeble, and the wind gathered force noisily, but he had heard the vehicle. He thrashed with his legs.

  The militiaman watched him, had stopped pacing, dragged on the cigarette but had the barrel aimed and the finger, Merc thought, still lodged inside the guard. There were shadows behind him: the trunks of trees, and the ill-defined shape of bushes, and they were a tight clump of birches, and one moved.

  Merc saw the outline of a branch or a fencing post raised high, and she was another shadow. It would have been good, then, if he could have talked her through it – the usual shit that fighting men did for each other about ‘decisiveness of movement’ and the ‘thrust of action’ which meant that an attack must be forced through, ‘body to body’ and coming from an ‘inexhaustible well of willpower’. And it was instructor language . . . She was Kat, a small-time girl with a dream of protest and perhaps a talent for playing the bloody piano, and she was there. Might be better value to him than any of the guys, Martin and Toomas and Kristjan, that Daff had hired. Might be able to drive a car fast from a major crime scene, might not be able to disable an armed man. The big figure loomed close to him. How would he have done it himself? Two paces forward, at least, and a heavily swung blow landing on the back of the neck where it joined the shoulder. Not a slap, not a tap, but a blow that used every last semblance of strength, all he possessed – except that it was not him, was her.

  Merc thought the militiaman had heard the vehicle for the first time, or was aware of the movement behind him. His head had gone high, he seemed to snort at the air, and there was the start of an oath, but the breath and the noise of it were strangled in his throat. The militiaman seemed to buckle, and he staggered and she had the weapon raised again and his arms were outstretched as if his first reaction were to fend off a subsequent blow. One second, or two, not more than three, and she either put him down or he would have the weapon swivelled and aimed and would fire at close range. It was the second blow, less effective, had hurt him but not dropped him. She had lost surprise. Merc moved, went like a snake but on his backside, and kicked out with his feet. He took the man’s ankles away from under him. The bulk of the militiaman collapsed across Merc, squeezed the breath from him, and the rifle dropped from his grip. Merc, under him, could not move. He looked up. She stood tall and raised her weapon again. She brought it down, used it with the ferocity of a woodcutter who brought an axe to split rings of firewood. Again and again, blow upon blow. She sobbed as she did it.

  The blood of the man on top of him ran on to his face and his neck. Wet and warming, and the voice above him gasped and tried to speak but the words could not escape and were only muffled. Another blow . . . and Merc shouted out. It was ‘enough’, it was done. She seemed reluctant to stop. A further blow and each time when the impact shuddered through her target it was a shock wave into Merc. He was wriggling, yelling for her to help him . . . and he realised, crystal sharp, what he had done to her.

  There was a bayonet on the underside of the rifle barrel. Standard issue. The militiaman was rolled off him and Merc twisted and presented the bound wrists to her. She was rigid, upright, and clutched her weapon and her breath came in great pants . . . He might have made a monster of her. He supposed that an instructor, at that moment, would have slapped her face sharply, right cheek, left cheek, then given an order again. It was about the buying of time, and the vehicle came closer and he heard its engine and the wind and the sounds of the river’s progress and heard her staccato breathing, and unless she had the bayonet from its clip the two of them, him and Kat, went nowhere, and fast – other than into the arms of more men, who’d have handcuffs and loaded magazines. It was said among the convoy drivers that they needed luck, but that luck did not come cheap, must be earned. It was luck that he lived, but luck would be snatched back if she did not get the bayonet. She made no move, and he kicked her. His right foot hit her left shin, halfway up and she squealed and he thought that she was about to strike him, hammer him with the weapon, then she dropped it. She was shivering, and slight whimpers had started in her throat, because of what he had brought to her life. He told her to get the bayonet. It came slowly, the retention of discipline. It was dark and her fingers were clumsy on the rifle and he could not help her.

  Merc had taught the girl to fight. He had shown her that the reason for fighting was to remove an enemy from the field. Easy for the girls who were in the trenches outside Erbil because theirs was a culture of war and defence against a merciless enemy – not Kat. He thought, as long as she lived, she would harbour the experience of killing a man. It was what he had done . . . he would have wanted no responsibility for
the contamination of another. And apart from her, he was part of the plan that had taken the roof off the building in the industrial estate, and he had seen the scale of the explosion and had heard the screaming cries of the ambulances racing to get there . . . She had the bayonet free. He rolled on to his stomach and presented his wrists. She started to saw through the plastic of the restraints. His arms were freed.

  She wanted love and opened her arms to him. They knelt, facing each other. Her arms were around his neck and he massaged hard at his own wrists, then pushed her away. He might have destroyed her, might have changed her beyond recognition. He used his sleeve to wipe the militiaman’s blood off him, and lost its heat and the sweet cloying scent of it. She refused to free him, and he pushed harder.

  ‘Did I not do well? Was that not what I had to do?’

  ‘Did well, did it good.’

  Said without praise. Would not have been different if it had been any of the girls who were in the Fire Force Unit in a Forward Operating Base and had just taken down their first ‘bad boy’ fighter and left him on the wire. Would not have gone round and handed out Horlicks and boiled sweets and told them they were their God’s gift, so precious, to the world of combat survival. He was free, and stood. She scratched his face. She came after him, went for his face, and for his eyes, and he deflected her.

  Merc picked up the rifle. No argument in his mind. He had no more use for it. He lifted it by the barrel and swung back his arm. Had never handled a loaded weapon in that way before. He threw it, saw it for a moment against the softer grey of the sky, and close to where the moon came up, lost sight of it, and heard a dull splash.

  He had made a promise. It might cost him his life, and might cost her life. He pulled the suit out from under the board. It was there because of vanity. Merc understood . . . The militiaman had wanted to present whatever officer hurried to the scene with the evidence of what he had found, how it was hidden, demonstrate his cleverness, had not dragged the suit clear of the board and punctured it – nor had he damaged the board. Merc was grateful for the conceit. He lifted the suit, tossed it towards her. He told her that without it she was dead, told her to get into it. Merc did not know how, without a suit, he’d survive in the water.

  Told her to hurry – heard the vehicle’s engine – and lifted up the body of the militiaman, life gone and the blood flow slowing, struggled with it, and waded into the river to where the ground started to shelve steeply, and eased the body off his shoulder. He saw it float, sink a bit, then start to move in the eddy of the backwater towards the reeds, and hopefully would clear them. He watched her fight to get into the suit and heard her cry out in frustration, but did not help her. He looked across, and upstream from where they were, and saw some car headlights on the road.

  ‘About right?’

  ‘As good as anywhere.’ Boot stood on the bank and gazed out into the darkness beyond the flow of the river, and saw nothing.

  ‘It’s downstream of where he landed, so that’s where he will have left his board, and then he’ll be pushed farther down when he’s launched. I think this is about right.’

  ‘Where we are and where we stay.’

  He had no wish to talk . . . upstream from them was a watch-tower and occasional bursts of light came from it, but he thought it nearly a quarter of a mile from them, and the next one, downstream, was close to a mile away. Voices carried over water deceptively. About the worst thing they could do for the boy, for Merc, was chatter away, do a fish wives’ convention, and alert whatever patrols, static or mobile, were deployed on the far side. He was unwilling to snap at Daff, a good girl, that she should shut her mouth, tie a knot in her tongue . . . Ollie Compton would have done. She’d have felt the thick edge of his language for chatter. Stressed people always wanted to talk as if inanities gave comfort. The surveillance team were behind them, on the road, lights doused. She left him, went to them, would gossip and smoke with them. A whistle would bring her if she were needed. He saw the lights, flickering and interrupted.

  The vehicle was among the trees and its engine revved and dawdled, then stopped. The headlights speared out – broken in zebra lines by the tree trunks and their branches – but reaching out over the river and would have illuminated the water close to halfway across, and the lights made little diamonds of the crests left by waves breaking with the wind. Always good to see an opponent, Boot thought . . . The Duke had never fought Napoleon before that June day, had never seen him before a telescope view of the Emperor outside Ligny on the eve of Quatre Bras. But had studied him and understood his method of battle. Would have been in similar darkness, with only pinpricks of little fires to guide him, and moving almost alone across the battlefield. Boot usually went out after his supper in the farmhouse to sit in the fields, under a tree or an umbrella, and consider the cost of it . . . One surgeon alone had done more than 300 amputations in the aftermath of the battle, all had worked until exhaustion rocked them, then had gone on. That same night women had come out from the nearby villages and with crude pliers taken out the teeth from the young men’s gums and they’d be – the proof was in his office by the Thames – used in the best dentures of western Europe and across the Atlantic in Canada. The defeated army, those who had not fled fast enough, would have been hard at work digging pits for the dead. The same pits were later excavated and the bones of the fallen brought back to Hull and sold on for grinding to agricultural fertiliser. Boot liked those stories. He stood and watched the lights that fell far short of him, then saw a man, uniformed, cross close to them. Same build, same sort of uniform. It was always helpful to see an opponent – not meet, but glimpse . . . The following evening, God willing, he would be on that battlefield in the Belgian countryside, with this bloody place and this bloody river, and this bloody matter, all behind him.

  A car pulled in behind him. He turned. The lights dazzled him. The interior lights of the surveillance car flashed on. A small saloon car and a boy barely old enough to shave and a girl whose face was screwed up in shock, and they’d have been looking for a quiet spot by the river to do some lusting, around the gear handle, and had blundered across them. A snarled word, some expletives and the surveillance lights were killed, and the intruder backed away, spun his car around and returned to the road, and quiet fell.

  Fast as lightning strikes, flashes of memory. The Major remembered.

  Papers that had sifted across his desk, or been on his screen, logged in his mind but the detail of them, not considered important at the time, were now clear. An old pen-pusher, a functionary probably employed to count paper clips in whatever building KGB used in the city of Tallin in ‘former times’. Left behind. The pension he would have been assured of had gone down the pan, and he needed to work to put bread on his table. Work was menial cleaning in the new ferry terminal . . . And a man had come past him off the overnight boat from Stockholm, and had triggered recall. A veteran professional and therefore inculcated with the need to provide detail. The recall was of a British spy who had been at a conference in the immediate months after the ‘collapse’, when the fate of the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal was discussed with the patronising attention of the NATO apparatchiks, and there had been a conversation, brief, about the outcome of the battle at Borodino. All listed in the report, and the appearance . . . good detail supplied. The style of hat, the clothing and the coat that matched the stereotype of the English ‘gentleman’, and the spectacles, and . . . enough in the report passed on down the train of bureaucracy, enough in the headlights across the river.

  He had seen the brown tweed and the dark outline of the trilby hat, and the heavy-rimmed spectacles were prominent. Clear enough across the river’s width when the man was lit by a turning car, full headlights, only for a few seconds. Proof of a sort for what he believed. And good to have a rival of style and ambition, so much better than going to war against the gangland thugs, or the kids who bought paint for daubing slogans. The briefest of sightings and then the car had turned away and darknes
s cloaked the far side. He thought they were close to where the man, Pyotr, would be. The sight of an opponent, across the width of the river, had deflected his attention.

  The focus of it, the attention? His failure to monitor his phone, buried under layers of clothing, during the heat of a chase. The failure of the militiaman to explain why eight increasingly impatient messages had been left on his phone, and the ultimate coy refusal to explain the urgency . . . The man wanted a grand moment, the pulling back of a curtain, the exposure of either a body or a prisoner, gold-plated evidence and with the whiff of smoke . . . The man over the water, the Major reckoned, was an old soldier of the Cold War, would have known success and failure, would accept it . . . But the phone in his hand, did not make the connection. He did not know where the militiaman was, and time dripped away from him. Sudden annoyance and then anger: where was the fucking man, and where was his triumph? His sergeant shouted.