A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  Out in front, moving easily and light-footed, was Badger. The American and the foreigner kept pace with him. Foxy felt the rotors’ pressure blasting him from behind and staggered as the beast, anonymous and black, rose again and headed back over the bay. Gibbons was beside him.

  ‘Why this place?’ Foxy might have nudged a hint of sarcasm into his tone. The outside of the edifice seemed to drip water from roof gullies and guttering, and he expected that half as much again would be falling through the ceilings into the salons and bedrooms. He held tightly to his bag and thanked the Lord he always packed more socks, smalls and shirts than he anticipated needing. All of them had overnight bags except Badger, who likely stank and would be higher by the evening.

  ‘Not down to me. He who pays the piper calls the tune – know what I mean?’

  He blinked in the rain. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘All in good time, Foxy – if you don’t mind the familiarity. It’s always best if names are in short supply. Our esteemed colleague from the Agency is paying the piper. The Americans are doing the logistics, which means their bucket of dollars is deeper than our biscuit tin of sterling. It’s the sort of place that appeals to them.’

  ‘And people live here – survive here?’

  ‘There is a life form in the Inner Hebrides that probably needs to huddle for comfort in the kitchen. I’m assured we won’t be disturbed by the family. Truth is, for this one the piper needs quite a bit of paying because it’s not the sort of thing – Monday through Friday – we usually do. Let’s get out of this bloody weather.’

  They went in through the high double doors, but no warmth greeted them. Foxy had good eyes and a good memory, and his power of observation in poor light was excellent: he noted the washing-up bowl in the centre of the tiled floor, the portrait of a villainous-looking kilted warrior above the first bend in the stairs, the faded pattern on the couch, that the paint was off all the doors, the smell of dogs and overcooked vegetables, an older man in earnest conversation with the American and a woman with bent shoulders, a thick sweater and a bob of silver hair. The rain beat on the door behind them, water dripped into the washing-up bowl and Badger sat on the bottom stair, showing no interest in anything around him. Foxy noted all of it.

  The voice of the greeter was soft in his ear: ‘Their grandson was Scots Guards in Iraq, attached to Special Forces, didn’t survive the tour. They’d want to help and, as I said, the Americans have a deep bucket. Improvised explosive device, on the al-Kut road. You’re going to hear a bit about improvised explosive devices, but I’m getting ahead of myself.’

  Foxy said vacuously, ‘I have some experience, but this should be interesting . . .’

  The man laughed without mirth, and Foxy couldn’t see what had been funny about his remark – about anything to do with improvised explosive devices.

  When the Engineer worked in his laboratory, or was on the factory floor checking the craftsmanship of the machine-tool work, he could escape from the enormity of the crisis that had settled on him. It was like the snowclouds that built up over the mountains beyond Tehran when winter came. When he played with the children he could briefly think himself free. When he walked on the track in front of his home and watched the birds hovering, swirling and wafting, there were moments when the load seemed to slip away. When he was at his bench, working on the use of more ceramic material to replace metal parts and negate the majority of the portable detectors . . . When he was out on the long straight tracks that had been bulldozed beyond the camp into wilderness and studied the capability of his radio messages to beat the electronics deployed against him, he sometimes forgot . . . The moments never lasted. There was laughter, rarely, and there were smiles, sometimes, and there were those times that the work was successful beyond dreams – counter-measures failed, detonation was precise and a target was destroyed in testing – but every time the cloud formed again, and the pleasure of achievement was wiped out. He could see the ever-growing weakness in his wife, the depth of her tiredness, and could watch the bravery with which she put on a show of normality. She was dying, and the process would each day be faster, the end nearer.

  He could not acknowledge it to her, but he realised his fingers were clumsier and his thoughts more muddled. He suffered. He couldn’t picture a future if – when – she was taken. Only once had he called in the debts owed him by the revolution of 1979 when the Ayatollah had left Paris and flown back to his people. He had been nine years old and had watched the television with his father, who taught mathematics in Susangerd, as the Imam Khomeini had come slowly down the aircraft’s steps.

  He had been three years older, and had wept when his father had dragged him back into their home: he had been about to join the child volunteers who would be given the ‘key to Paradise’ in exchange for clearing the minefields laid by the Iraqi enemy, making safe passage for the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij militia. His father had locked him into a room and not permitted him to leave the house for a week. He had gone back to school and there had been many empty places in the classroom. It had been said that when they had ran across mined ground they were killed by the explosions, their body parts scattered, that rats and foxes had come to eat pieces of their flesh. It had also been said that on the third day of the clearance operation the children, his friends from school, had been told to wrap themselves in rugs and roll across the dirt so that their bodies stayed together, were easier to collect after the line had moved forward.

  He resented not having a plastic key to Paradise. He did not believe the lie of foreigners that a half-million had been imported, at a discount rate for bulk, from a Taiwan factory.

  He had been twenty-two years old, a second-year student of electronic engineering at the Shahid Chamran University in Ahvaz, when his father had died. The martyr Mostafa Chamran, educated in the United States and with a PhD in electrical engineering, had fallen on the front line and was revered as a leader and a fighter. There had been many around him to whom Rashid could look for inspiration, living and dead. He was the regime’s child and its servant, and he had gone where he was directed, to university in Europe and to the camps in his country where his talents could be most useful on workbenches. This once he had called in the debt.

  In the afternoon he would be on the road that led away from Ahvaz towards Behbahan. A new shipment of American-made dual-tone multi-frequency equipment had come via the round-about route of Kuala Lumpur, then Jakarta, and he would test it for long-distance detonations. The Americans, almost, had gone from Iraq, but it was the Engineer’s duty to prepare the devices that would destroy any military advance into Iran by their troops. He would be late home, but her mother was there – the message had come by courier the evening before.

  Neither he nor his wife ever used a mobile telephone. In fact, the Engineer never spoke on any telephone. No voice trace of Rashid Armajan existed. Others communicated for him from his workshop, and he used encrypted email links. Messages of importance were brought by courier from the al-Quds Brigade garrison camp outside Ahvaz. One had come the previous evening.

  He and Naghmeh should be prepared to leave within the week. Final arrangements were being confirmed. He was not forgotten, was honoured. The state and the revolution recognised him. At his workbench, out of sight of others, he prayed in gratitude. Was there anything another doctor, a superior consultant, could offer? Would a long journey weaken her further and bring on the end? But the courier had brought a message that gave hope. He saw death on Internet screens and from recordings on mobile phones. The killings were caused by his own skills. He lost no sleep over that knowledge, but had not slept well since the Tehran doctors’ verdict when he had seen the bleakness in their eyes. Now hope, small, existed.

  They would be in God’s care.

  ‘Before we concentrate on the individual who has brought us together today, who and where he is, there’s something I’d like you both to respond to. First you, Foxy. In your long surveillance career, what was your most satisfy
ing achievement?’

  It was, of course, a trick question, and it was not unique to Len Gibbons. He’d heard it put twice during his thirty-five years at Six, in seminars when individuals were being evaluated. The answer usually revealed much about the subject.

  They were sitting in a horseshoe on hard chairs, and no notes were taken, but away to the side a board was balanced against the back of an armchair, covered with a drape. He sat at the extreme left, and had introduced himself as ‘Len’. The American was ‘the Cousin’ and the Israeli, from Unit 504 of Military Intelligence, was ‘the Friend’. There was Foxy and there was Badger, and between them the tall, handsome, suited man, ‘the Major’. There had been time for them to go to allocated rooms, have a tepid wash, meet a pack of Jack Russells and spaniels, and drink instant coffee from petrol-station mugs.

  Then Gibbons had shepherded them into what might have been a ballroom – no water came through this ceiling – where the main furniture was cloaked in dust-sheets, but at the far end, to the left of a huge, unlit fireplace, there was a small table with a vase of flowers on it and a silver-framed photograph of a young face smiling above a Guardsman’s ceremonial tunic. Gibbons thought it appropriate, and would refer to it. He had set out the chairs while the others were on the first floor – had borrowed enough from the dining room. He had gone to the sister service across the river, the Box, the anti-terrorist command and the Branch. The Box had come up with Badger, and Special Branch had said that Joe ‘Foxy’ Foulkes was the only one worth considering.

  It was a good question because it gave a man enough rope either to climb to a higher level, or to hang himself. He saw Foxy – a capable man with a number of successes behind him – stiffen. Well, he would be evaluating the audience of Gibbons, the Cousin and the Friend, and wondering what Badger’s take on it would be. Gibbons knew the record of Foxy Foulkes: a policeman of thirty-three years, a nine-year spell with Special Branch, four months in Basra, and a further seven years of lecturing in the arts of covert rural surveillance. He was a man who expected to be listened to and was.

  Foxy’s tongue flipped over his lips to moisten them. Gibbons saw that. The tie was straightened, which bought another few seconds, then a cough to clear the throat. The man was dependent on his instinct.

  Foxy said, in a good clear voice, as if they were his students, ‘Satisfying, yes? Interesting one. There’ve been a few – more than a few. Could be when I was with the Branch and we were doing the business on two Iranian attachés on a Manchester visit they’d made twice before. Our stake-out was on a golf course and there was snow on the ground. I had a youngster with me, didn’t know his arse from his elbow, and we came in close enough to see the drops on their noses when they did their contact – a Muslim kid working in the club’s kitchens. We did the approach so that not a flake of snow was disturbed within the arc of their vision . . . Yes, that was a pretty good one . . . And early in my time with West Yorkshire we had a budding PIRA cell on our patch. The Irish were clever by then and knew the procedures. They had a meeting and stood out in the middle of a football pitch. There was no way we could get close enough with a directional microphone. I had the answer. I picked the lock of the groundsman’s hut, took out the line marker after filling it with the white stuff and went right round them, then did the goal areas. By the time they were used to me I pushed the marker right up the halfway line and they actually apologised for being in my way and stepped aside. They’d been swapping phone numbers, so we had those and bust them up. And another. I did a hide in County Tyrone, up by the village of Cappagh, which was difficult country, populated with very difficult and very suspicious people. The hide was in a hedgerow and looked into a cattle barn where a Barrett .50-calibre was hidden. We thought it needed the human touch, not a remote camera. I’d dug the hide out and the first afternoon a sheep got caught in the hedge not fifteen yards from me. The farmer, a committed Provo, considered reliable enough to have responsibility for the weapon, came up to free the ewe. He walked right over my hide and his wellington boots would have been less than two feet from my face in the camouflage headgear. It was an exceptional hide and we were able to report when the weapon was moved, but the military weren’t fast enough and lost its tail. Anyway, they were three of the best.’

  Did the man expect a ripple of applause? He might have done and, if so, was disappointed. The Cousin gazed at the ceiling, the Friend at the floor. The Major had been paring his nails but now reached down to the case resting against his ankles and started to ferret in it. Len Gibbons wished fervently that Sarah was there, with her competence and reassurance. It was ridiculous that the players should have been carted up to this pile of old stone, but the Cousin must have felt this to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for baronial glory, and the Friend had demanded remote anonymity. He thought the old couple would be rattling around in another wing, and had learned that a divorced daughter lived with them. She would have been the mother of the officer killed by a roadside bomb, and he wondered what delicacies would be provided at the lunch break. Time to ask the other man the question designed to disrobe, expose.

  ‘Thank you, Foxy – very comprehensive. So, Badger, what in your professional career are the achievements that give you most satisfaction?’

  The man looked straight at him, unwavering eyes, direct and challenging. ‘None, boss, and I don’t send hero-grams to myself.’

  Silence. Len Gibbons realised he’d win nothing more from the younger man, no point in demanding it, and he thought Badger had played with Foxy’s ego, tossed it up into the air, let it fall on the bare patch of carpet and ground a heel on it. The veteran had laid out the depth of his experience, put it in a showcase so that the rookie boy was bound to fall short. Each had done well and, like two dogs, they’d circled each other, hitched up a back leg and pissed on the available lamp-posts. He wondered how they would do together.

  Gibbons said, ‘A difficult moment now confronts us. We will soon enter realms of great secrecy. You will have seen its quality – the secrecy, this place, your journey here. You both come with your praises sung, but after we begin the briefing process it’s too late for one of you to say, ‘I don’t think I really want to pull the shirt on for this game.’ Put crudely, you either piss now or get off the pot. Are you in, gentlemen, or out? Foxy, first – are you staying or going?’

  ‘You’ve put me in a difficult position. I don’t know what you’re asking of me. I’m a married man, the wrong side of fifty. I’d have appreciated the chance to talk to my wife but . . . I’m staying.’

  ‘And you, Badger?’

  ‘I go where I’m sent.’ Again there was a spark in the young buck’s face and a short, wintry grin.

  Gibbons said, ‘It starts now with a young woman, call-sign Echo Foxtrot, and those are the initials of Eternal Flame, which some colleagues call her because the Eternal Flame never goes out. It’s a little joke – a joke because it’s so inappropriate in her case. She’s out a great deal more often than is usually sensible. Step by step, gentlemen, but we’ll start with her and she’ll lead us to the meat. So, Echo Foxtrot . . .’

  For her and for the guys with her, known to her inner circle – those entrusted with life-and-death confidences – as the Jones Boys, it was a half-hour of maximum danger. They had been at the roadside, in the shade of some trees, in excess of thirty minutes. Their two SUVs, Pajeros from Mitsubishi’s factories in Japan, were battered and abused. They looked like heaps of sand-scarred, rusted crap but the armour-plated chassis, doors and windows were hidden from any but the most persistent observer. The vehicles were off the road but the engines murmured, and their weapons were armed.

  She stood nearest to the road and the dust from lorries’ wheels and pick-ups flew on to her burqah. The Yank was Harding and the Irishman Corky. They were close to her, khaffiyehs draped round their faces and covering their hair. They had on dirty jeans, and jackets weighed down with grenades and gas in the inside pockets; each had a pistol at the hip, held in by his
belt. In the Pajeros, with heavier firepower on the empty front passenger seats, were Shagger, the Welshman, and the Scot they called Hamfist. They were employees of Proeliator Security, a private military contracting company, and were paid to be bodyguards to Abigail Jones, a Six girl.

  Without them – and their show of grudging loyalty – she would have earned the title ‘Eternal Flame’, the one that never goes out. She was far from her secure base in Baghdad’s Green Zone, or the premises at the Basra airport complex, because she trusted, with a degree of fatalistic humour, the Jones Boys’ dedication, the quality of their noses and their understanding of when stupidity overtook duty. She did not deal with them on a need-to-know basis but talked each move through with them so that Hamfist, Shagger, Corky and Harding were privy to the secrets of the Six operation that had now run for some two years – ever since an unexploded device had been recovered and subjected to analysis for the uniqueness of a man’s deoxyribonucleic-acid deposits. She had been permitted two four-month extensions of her posting, almost unique, but she hoped to see the operation to its conclusion, to have a part in its death. The Jones Boys would be on the ground as long as she was. It was a commercial relationship that had become family, but they called her ‘miss’ or ‘ma’am’ and took no liberties of familiarity. Each time, though, that she went out and they hit the road, she took care to explain where they went, and why. Now it was to meet an informant.

  He hadn’t shown.

  There should have been, approaching through the mirage mist of the road, a motor scooter with an old man astride it. The heat would have distorted their first view of him from perhaps a mile down the straight highway; and as it had cleared they would have known him by the matted grey beard. Many months before, the informant had gone through the marshes and along the berms crossing them, with the papers in his pocket to identify himself as a resident of the Ahvaz Arab community on the far side of the frontier. The scooter had been left well hidden and he had walked, waded where there was still water in the lagoons, and had cut old reed fronds to make a broom for sweeping. He had cleaned a road and a pavement, pocketing cigarette butts strewn behind a man who smoked as stress gripped him.