A Damned Serious Business

by Gerald Seymour

  A clear voice, but with a quaver in it, as if shock lodged in his throat. And the shout came again, greater urgency. His sergeant was farther along the bank and his shadow marked the extreme edge of the lights from the jeep. Not the cold from the wind, or the chill sitting on the water surface, but the moment when it was apparent to him that the success had been snatched, that failure was offered.

  Obviously a body. Face down. Uniformed. A washed head wound visible. Its weight, in the current, bent a branch against which it had lodged, debris from an earlier storm, and caught in the reeds. An unequal struggle, and about to be freed. The Major did not need to see the features. He felt an absence of any sympathy for the militiaman who might have been bludgeoned to death before going into the water, or might have drowned when helpless, incapacitated by injury. Felt very little. There had been a dream moment of marching a prisoner, or dragging him by the ankle down a third floor corridor in the Big House and going to the door of General Onishenko’s office suite, and dumping the man there, or even doing it with a body bag and leaving them to unfasten the zip. He had lost the dream moment, accepted it. The branch had bent to breaking point, then sprang back and the body progressed out and into the flow of the current. He saw it for only a few seconds, then lost sight of it.

  The Major stood with his sergeant gazing out on to the water, was minded to see how it finished: whether they survived, Yekaterina and the man who tried to take her out.

  They were in the flow. He had taken her into the water upstream from where the vehicle lights now lit a strip of the river.

  She was on the board, clinging to it, and the wetsuit enveloped her, too large and flapping loosely. She clung, both hands, to the board’s sides. He had a strap to hold on to. The strap was attached to the back end of the board and he needed to cling to it with both hands, and propel himself forward by kicking with his feet, sort of paddling, the way dogs did. He had no protection against the cold of the water and his body seemed already frozen and clumsy when he had launched. He had said to her that they needed quiet and would be taken into the light but must not splash or shout. There was no other way, and no other place. He had put her on to the board and she had squealed at him that she could not swim.

  Merc had said, a whisper but forceful, ‘You go on the board or you turn round and start walking back. There is a man you have battered to death, and he will buy you a little time, but only a little. His body will appear somewhere between here and the sea and will be fished out and his injuries evaluated. On your clothes, now, is his blood. They will have the technical knowledge, bet your life on it, to match the blood, or to do DNA from his home. You turn back and that is what you will face . . . All of the rest of your life in a cage. It is that or you go on the board.’

  He did not plead with her, nor promise she would not drown. It was the equivalent of what he would have said to the kids on the Hill, belting their backsides for exposing themselves to a sniper round, or for being too slow on the reloading of the DsHK machine-gun. She had gone down on the board and he had kept a good hold on it and floated it off in the bay and waded after it . . . had twice caught her ankle when she had almost slid off the board, and that was when his feet touched the bottom and before the foothold was lost, and the undertow snatched at him. He had clung to her ankle when she had seemed likely to fall off the board and had dragged her back and snapped at her.

  ‘You do it for yourself, hold on to it. If you lose the board and me, then you drown. It is not a funny place to be, the last moments before drowning. You cling to it or you are gone. It is the only chance you have – believe it.’

  The cold of the water had gone from his feet to his knees and into his groin, shrivelling him, and up over his belly and around his chest, numbing him, and he had lost the feeling of every limb, and the river water and its residue of mud was in his mouth and his nose and sloshed in his ears. They were out of the lea of the bank and into the main current, and wind had made waves and they splashed over him. Every few moments he lost sight of what was ahead and had his eyes clamped shut, and his nose and his mouth, as water broke over him. He thought he could guide the general direction of the board, and make slight progress with it. Merc could not have said whether he would have done better had he been alone . . . could have said that the presence of the girl, squirming, terrified – gave him a degree of ‘additional determination’: what a unit psychiatrist would have called it. Himself, he had no need to articulate, and had kicked into a survival cocoon . . . The boys driving the convoys or going down Route Irish always claimed on the bad days that no guy ever looked at the worst outcome, stayed with ‘Something’ll turn up, always does’, clung on it. She seemed to have a better hold, but the board had begun to shake and pitch. Waves came across it, as if they were on the open sea, and lifted it, let it fall and battered it. Sometimes it seemed inevitable that it would capsize, turn over and throw her off and nearly break his wrists as he tried to hold it stable. And sometimes, more often as they went farther out, he heard little shrieks from her. He thought only of the grip that she had on the board, and how long she could hold it, and for how much longer he could balance the board and kick enough to push it, farther into the river and towards the centre.

  They lost the darkness. The lights caught them. No way to lose them. He had to hope that the wind disturbed the waves, made white caps and masked them, gave them cover. Had to hope it. The current would take them out of the lit area and it was a chance they would not be seen, and she screamed.

  It was a howl of sheer terror. It was a cry that would carry over the noise of the wind and the breaking crests and the slap of the reeds behind them, and over the noise of a rifle being cocked, the grate of the metal parts. It rang in his ears, and he could not have silenced it, and sometimes they were lifted and sometimes they fell, but her scream stayed constant and might kill them, and he had heard the rifle armed, and he could not go quicker, and knew no place to hide.

  Chapter 20

  Merc waited for the shot. It might be single and aimed, and might be the start of a burst of automatic, spraying them.

  He could not silence her, nor give comfort. She would be exhausted, near to the simple desire to end the hell of slipping and bouncing on the board, as it was when people – grievously hurt – wanted only the peace to sleep. He saw her brother, gauntly thin, pale face, old acne traces, concave shoulders, and whose clothes hung loose on him, and who was a genius on a keyboard. Who had ended his own life in order to inflict an act of vengeance on those around him. He had no idea what they, those who he mixed with, had done to Nikki, bred his hatred. Merc had understood so little but had given his pledge. Amongst those he fought alongside there was no more powerful motive for going forward than a given promise. It was the bedrock guarantee the drivers and escorts and the mercenaries all believed in. A promise given was a banknote, had purity. They were still held in the light. Merc imagined that a marksman had a needle wavering in a V sight and tracked them, would have had a view of them when they rode a wave and then lost them when they went into the trough, shallow but sufficient to hide them, and her scream was strangled.

  It pierced his ears, then gurgled, then there was emptiness and silence.

  He had hold of her ankle. His grip was above the level of her boot and below the sealing join of the wetsuit, and when the boot came off and his grip slackened, Merc thought the river would take her. All other thoughts were obliterated, only the concentration of keeping a hold on any part of her foot and lower leg. Right down to the toes as the board heaved and bucked her and he felt her go sideways and away from it. One hand clamped on the holding strap and one squeezing the life from her toes and looking for a grip, and then seeing her face as it emerged from the water, lit by the vehicle on the shore, and seeing only the fear and the gaping mouth that took in water and knowing that she, who had been the fighter and who was now a killer, had thrown in the towel.

  He waited for the first shot.

  It was likely, Merc reckoned, t
hat it would cause her to struggle and he would lose her. He held her toes, might have been hard enough to break her bones, and he trod water and the board was on its side and wrenched on his fist, and he thought she’d scream again . . . A monstrous wave hit them. She was spluttering and choking, and her arms cartwheeled and there would have been air inside the suit, giving her buoyancy. Merc pressed the board down, used his stomach to do it and was contorted because he must hold the strap, never let go of it. He pulled her back. When part of her body was on the board he took the chance and loosened his grip on her ankle, and she would have convulsed in the moments between him freeing her and then having a hold of her again, close to the waist. She slipped again, her grip failing – almost – then retrieved it. An arm on each side and a leg hanging loose on each side and his fist held the strap and held a leg below the knee, and they went out of the cone of light.

  There were moments when they rose that he saw the moving vehicles on the road at the edge of his horizon. A terrible loneliness gripped Merc. No searchlights from the far side played over the water and looked for him. None to locate him, guide him home, be his angel escort; were no navigation lights from small craft, with the throb of outboards, coming out from the shore to corral and then lift him from the water. No flares fired so that he could see how close he was and how much farther he needed to go. She was quiet.

  He wondered if she were quiet because she had lost consciousness and only luck and her body weight kept her astride the board. Maybe, later, he would start to sing – not yet. She might have lost consciousness and he might drift to sleep and be held to the board by the strap looped over his wrist. The determination, what he had believed in, part of the religious core to the life of Merc, began to desert him.

  He no longer felt the cold and the water no longer chilled his body. He struggled to see her face. He tried to keep kicking and drive the board across the current towards that far shore where the road was and the traffic, and sometimes he heard the thud of a deep bass beat and music from a car radio. A bus went along the road and headed away from Narva and nobody came off at the stop. There were no fishermen’s hurricane lamps, and no craft on the river, not even the guys who ferried over cheap vodka and cigarettes and perhaps a decent supply of fresh heroin that transited Russia from the Caucuses . . . Delirious? Not quite but would be soon – and her, unable and unwilling to survive? Perhaps not yet, perhaps soon. A larger wave came, a rogue.

  Merc was lifted and seemed to get a better view of the moon and – almost – could detect its contours, and looked around, in front of him and behind him, and realised that the vehicle’s headlights were switched off and nothing showed ahead. He could not kick, wanted to but could not, nor could the girl. The current took them and they drifted and he couldn’t say if either had the strength to hold on, and he waited for the shots to be fired.

  He might have ordered the sergeant to do it. The Major might have demanded it. Or might have held out his hand and snapped the instruction, been given the rifle, then have cocked it, moved a bullet to the breach. He’d have had the rifle snug at his shoulder and made a line with the sights, and waited for the moon to come to a gap between scudding clouds. He would have been able to shoot, would have backed himself for a hit, perhaps by a deflection off the water, but when they rose high on a wave then he would have seen sufficient of them for clear aim, and he would also have backed the sergeant to have had hits, with a burst or with single shots. But the order was not given.

  The sergeant stood half a pace behind him, had been there since switching off the headlights. No reason to keep them on when the fugitives were beyond the reach of the headlights unless the jeep was manoeuvred. The sergeant had the rifle and leaned it against his shoulder, as a hunter would when expecting game to be flushed through by dogs and beaters. The Major was not as qualified a marksman as his father who had hunted all his life and who excelled at a killing shot that despatched boar or deer; had even shot, at long range, a bear that ravished a neighbour’s honey hives. It was the girl that he saw most often, on top of the board, and he thought of those kids who rode waves off the west of America or Australia that he had seen on the television. He saw her most often, and had heard her.

  A defining moment in his life had reached him, and he thought he recognised its significance. Along the corridor where he worked in the Big House, he could have rapped on any door, given a brief history of where he was and why, asked whether he should shoot. He’d have been half deafened in response. ‘Why not? Of course. Nail the bastard and drop the bitch. Shoot.’ He kept his own counsel. He might have used the phone, had the number loaded in it, of General Onishenko. Would have done a brief résumé, would have requested guidance, would have been told to shoot to kill if capture were not possible. He did not make the call, and did not ask for advice from his sergeant . . . had needed neither authorisation nor that advice when he had fired on a fugitive on the bridge or when the dinghy had been holed and a man abandoned to drowning.

  And, each time they were lifted – still not at a halfway point in his estimation – he saw the head, pale against the darkness of the water, of little Yekaterina. Could picture her across the table from him, having taken no care of her appearance and fit only for fast sex with the Leader of their small, misfit group. She would have walked down a street and not been spared a glance, would have entered a crowded room and not turned a head, and he thought her defiance was something to be treasured. What made her different? He saw so many of them. He could write, without opening an individual file, a biography of each of them shepherded into the interrogation room . . . those who revelled in impertinence which they mistook for intellect, and those who parroted slogans learned in their seminars; those who gloried in the freedom to smoke the stuff that was available or popped the pills that lifted their conceit. The Major would have said, of Yekaterina, that she possessed a degree of pure naivety that had a charm, and it made her contrariness, obstinacy interesting to him. He did not want to sleep with her, even less did he wish to debate with her, did not regard her as particularly interesting nor as a target worthy of his attention . . . It was the simplicity that appealed. A refusal to compromise, turn a cheek, had put her here.

  He would not shoot. If she went into the water, she would not survive . . . He doubted it had been the intention of the veteran on the far bank, splendid in his tweed suit and trilby hat and overcoat, to have her delivered into his lap. He supposed it a trade-off. The phone he had not looked at carried a stack of witness statements given after the explosion. He knew of the jealousies and hatreds of young Nikki and of the ones who went in near anonymity by the names of Gorilla and HookNose and the Roofer . . . all so clear to him. But he had no evidence and his General would not wish to hear him out if he did not bring the bomb’s courier to heel.

  And he would not ask for the rifle. He was a man renowned for his diligence, and thought that his dedication had become boring . . . His career would end, here on the banks of a dirty, deep, dark river. But he would see it played out, as if he owed it her. She no longer shrieked, but the man with her shouted and sometimes sang.

  Half of the way: might have been.

  His feet flapped but had no feeling.

  It was a waste of breath to call out but a sort of deliriousness gripped him. The conversation, not with her but with himself, at the full croaked pitch of his voice, was about – at first – Mercedes cars. He went through the models, and the performance histories, and what the prices should be, and then he could drift towards the manager of the bank in Stoke Poges and what sum of money could be withdrawn in twenty four hours, and how the showroom would be paid, if the Mercedes were purchased. Not concerned with who heard him or whether the darkness held an audience. He yelled about the joy of polishing the wax on the bodywork, of loading the liquids for windscreen cleaning, and buffing the leather work – of course, leather. He did not think they had been fired at, but might have missed the impact of gunfire with the wind on the water and the splash of waves
breaking around them, and the noise of his own voice. She did not contribute, nor was she in the passenger seat of the Mercedes coupé, it was not her hair that flowed in the slipstream behind her and around the head-rest. And he yelled directions as if to a driver, as to what turning they should take if they were to use the lanes linking Flackwell and Burnham and Hedgerley and Middle Green, and what pubs there were on the way . . . Then the hallucination caught him. He saw the vehicle parked, outside a small house on a small estate, and the front door was open. Inside, a young man in a grey suit shook his hand and gave him a set of keys and smirked and his view was the same as when the Special Forces boys put a small drone inside a building and did the virtual tour: there was nothing inside that he knew, and the rooms were empty and the walls bare, nobody there whom he knew and nothing that was familiar . . . He was running away and through the hall and into a patch of a front garden and throwing the set of keys at the young man, and sprinting past the Mercedes car, and running and running and was nowhere that he knew.

  He was at the edge, or beyond it, of survival, and his voice had almost died. Might have reached the halfway point and might have crossed it, and might still be short of it. The Mercedes was a broken dream, and so was the cottage that he had promised himself he would reach out for and buy ‘sometime’. He tried to kick harder.

  And remembered her, and called to her, and was not answered. Merc clung to Kat’s leg and tried to bury his numbed fingers on the wetsuit surface – and again found his voice, sang. From his childhood, hymns and scout songs. From the cub camps his father had taken him to, and the hymns from a chapel near his grandmother’s home, and some had been heard at his father’s funeral, and some were from the Sunday morning services that the new proxy parents insisted he attend . . . and there were more hymns from the brief and self-conscious gatherings of the contractors when one of the guys, dosed up on steroid pills, and with a load of cannabis in him, had not played sensible on Route Irish or the convoy runs out of Kabul and been zapped. They could get a padre out and do something in a secure lorry park, and then get the bag, often not a proper coffin, taken by helicopter to the airport, but after growling and tuneless voices had done a hymn . . . The best was ‘I vow to thee my country all earthly things above’ and it would end up, flat as tarmacadam with ‘ . . . and her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace’ which was bloody rubbish because the guys there were draped in weapons, might kill that night or kill the next day. He sang that and he sang others. And felt so tired. And wanted to sleep. And needed to close his eyes and cuddle and be warm.