A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  A few days before, the relative by marriage of the ‘cleaner’ had travelled as a pillion passenger on the same scooter with two baskets of dates. He had had similar identification papers – forged but good enough to pass a check by Iranian police, border guards, even men of an al-Quds Brigade detachment posted for the security of a valued man. He had asked vague questions in a coffee shop, had had gossip answers, and had overheard enough of a conversation to win the glowing smile of Abigail Jones, Echo Foxtrot. A fistful of dollars had been paid to the informants for the retrieval of the used cigarette filters and for a snatch of talk. She thought it most likely that either the informant and his relative had decided they had made enough money for their needs, had been intercepted and robbed, had unwisely shown a glimpse of riches in a coffee house, or had boasted and been heard by any of the myriad Ali Babas who lived in what was left of the marsh wilderness.

  ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘But it was good while it lasted. Enough?’

  Harding’s eyes raked the road. ‘Has to be, ma’am.’

  Corky, wilting in the heat of over a hundred degrees, said, ‘Too long, miss, that we’ve been here.’

  ‘Shit . . . So, the heroes coming from home will have it all to do for themselves, without a local hand to steady them. No, guys, don’t tell me this is lunatic. They’ll have to go in there and do the business on their own. Shit . . .’

  She walked to the lead Pajero. The two vehicles pulled off the dirt and on to the road, accelerating fast.

  Five miles down the road, towards Basra city, they saw a huddle of men and a police car. An ambulance was coming towards them. They would not slacken their speed, and their faces were covered, to hide the pale Caucasian features, as were the automatic weapons, loaded and with the safetys off. Easy to see: a small scooter on the sand beside the tarmacadam, a body with its head covered but new shoes exposed. They would have cost in the city what a man survived on in the marshes for a month. A second body was covered, except for the head with its grey beard.

  Corky, beside Shagger, said quietly, ‘So they got greedy and were bumped. My thinking, ma’am, they were lucky. If the bastards of the VEVAK had picked them up, then to get robbed and shot would have seemed a blessing. The shoes will be gone before they get put in the ambulance, won’t go to waste – but you had your money’s worth out of them.’

  She did not respond. Under her codename, Echo Foxtrot, she had her satphone out of her bag and was tapping out the numbers.

  Badger listened as the call was wound up. ‘No, I’m not suggesting there’s anything else that can be done. I appreciate we’re not talking about a flat tyre or an empty tank. I accept also your assurance that neither party would have been where hostiles could lift them. Paid too much – pretty ironic if you try to buy a man and end up going over the top of his avarice quotient. But it is still possible to go forward with this? It’s a setback but not terminal – we are still on course? I value the reassurance . . . You will, of course, be given travel itineraries as soon as . . . Thank you . . . Stay safe, please.’

  It was not possible, as Badger saw it, to conceal rank disappointment. It was in the Boss’s voice as he spoke softly into the receiver. They had all watched him: they were the sort of men, himself and Foxy, the Cousin, the Friend and the Major, who made an art form of studying weakness, setbacks. Badger, briefly, let his imagination wander to the big map on the board propped on the easy chair that the Major had unveiled before uttering that first sentence: ‘. . . changed the outcome of a war from a triumphant . . .’ That contact: a remote, clipped accent somewhere along Highway 6, between al-Amara and Basra, probably near the town of al-Qurnah – all marked on the map and linked by a ribbon of red – where the Tigris and the Euphrates met, fuelled his understanding of the heat, the hatred and the sheer danger of the place. The Boss sat very still and seemed to ponder. Then he shook his head, as if to clear his mind, and pocketed the phone.

  He said, ‘I can promise you, gentlemen, that in this matter you will not get half-truths and evasions from me. In the business that confronts us, we had a hope of local resources, but no longer. So, it is in our hands alone, which is probably a disappointment but perhaps a blessing. I apologise, Major, for the interruption . . . Please . . .’

  They were no longer fighting cocks, Badger reflected, not pirouetting or prancing in rivals’ faces. Linkage with a faraway place had rendered that sort of pride second-rate. On the map he could see the road, the line of an international border, the symbols of lakes and marshlands and . . . The Major breathed in hard, as if his mood also was altered. Before the call, he had started by saying that improvised explosive devices had changed the outcome of a war from a triumphant and victorious mission accomplished to something that was close to mirroring ignominious retreat. Then the phone had trilled in the Boss’s suit pocket, and the Major had stood silent while the call was answered. The frown had set in his forehead and he had scratched the back of his neck.

  ‘Back to where I began . . . The improvised explosive device is the weapon that has snatched victory from the coalition and replaced it with a very fair imitation of defeat. It’s a poor man’s weapon, deadlier and more influential than the famed Kalashnikov rifle. I would like to quote from Kipling:

  ‘A scrimmage in a border station –

  A canter down some dark defile

  Two thousand pounds of education

  Drops to a ten-rupee jezail.

  The Crammer’s boast, the Squadron’s pride

  Shot like a rabbit in a ride.’

  ‘Written more than a century ago, I suggest that the “education” was heftily expensive, and that ten rupees in the bazaar at Jalalabad or Peshawar bought something pretty cheap. Nothing has changed. We take the modern ten-rupee jezail – that’s a long-barrelled flintlock or matchlock rifle – extremely seriously. How seriously?

  ‘Between 2008 and next year, the United States defence family will spend in excess of thirty billion dollars – yes, you heard me – on all aspects of research to negate the effectiveness of these devices, from scanners, to detectors, and into the world of vehicles that can survive an attack. I said, “in excess of thirty billion dollars”, and the principal parts of such a weapon can be bought for five or ten dollars in any Iraqi souk. More sophisticated parts are brought into the Middle East from American factories. It’s a bewildering, crazy world. The most sensitive devices deployed in Iraq were to beat our strategy of putting a convoy inside an electronic counter-measures bubble that has a safety range of around a hundred metres. The enemy developed the technology of sitting off maybe a kilometre away and using combinations of passive infra-red and telemetry modules, and even such simple kit as car-key zappers, household alarms, the workings from inside a cheap wristwatch bought off a pavement stall. Right now, in Iran, they’re ahead of the counter-measures. The roadside bombs, often deployed in a daisy-chain configuration – that’s half a dozen devices linked over a couple of hundred metres – or in fake rocks made of papier-mâché or replacement kerb stones, create fear among troops. For every fatality, they knock down four, five, six wounded. They destroy morale and drive our armies into overhead flights by helicopter or overland drives in a truck with plate armour sides. Then along came the EFP, the explosive force projectile, which costs next to nothing to build and can destroy a main battle tank worth ten million sterling. The EFPs crushed us, and—’

  The Cousin said, ‘I know all this. I don’t need a high-school lecture.’

  The Friend said, ‘We have experience of this. It is taught in military kindergarten.’

  The Major’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s gratifying that some of you are so well informed. Is anyone not familiar with EFPs? Anyone?’

  Foxy said he had served in southern Iraq, and shrugged, and the Boss smiled limply as if to show he was up to speed.

  Badger said, ‘I’ve never heard of an EFP, and if you think I should know – and it’ll be important when you get around to explaining this business – then I’m all ears.’<
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  ‘Thank you, Badger. Does anyone want to go and make coffee or walk in the rain? No?’ He paused. He was a handsome man and would have fitted in on Horse Guards, or anywhere else in full dress uniform. Danny ‘Badger’ Baxter understood. There had been a time when he’d been on a week of stags watching a remote parked caravan where a nutcase guy was thought to be building a device to use against a supermarket chain. When the guy was picked up, the bomb-disposal people had moved in. Above the suit, the laundered shirt and the smart tie Badger had recognised the bleak, worn gaze. Maybe the Boss, the Cousin and the Friend didn’t know about the people who did bomb disposal and made things safe. To be different was Badger’s thing.

  ‘Right, then I’ll continue. The EFP involves a shaped charge, and we call that the Munroe effect. Charles E. Munroe, an American, worked out the theory of the shaped charge a hundred and twenty years ago while stationed at the Rhode Island base where they had a naval torpedo station. József Misnay and Hubert Schardian made refinements as they developed anti-tank weapons for the Wehrmacht in the 1940s. There is a metal tube, with a shallow copper bowl, factory-machined, at one end, and behind it explosives – perhaps military or perhaps triacetone triperoxide – a detonator, a trigger apparatus and a method of sending the signal for firing. The copper becomes a molten slug, travelling at a thousand yards per second, and will penetrate the armour of a tank, a personnel carrier, pretty much any vehicle on wheels or tracks. The EFPs are deployed at predictable choke points – where a road goes from four lanes to two, where there’s a bridge, an elevated highway or repair work. The devices have been tested thoroughly across the frontier and inside Iran. The range of the radio signals will have been determined, and “dickers” will have been used on the Iraq side to watch the procedures used by the coalition and to report back on them. Several times the convoy will have gone by, not knowing it was under electronic surveillance, and the results sent back across the frontier. They’re in no hurry. They have endless patience. They test and experiment and don’t move until they’re satisfied. Still with me?’

  What could they say? The Boss nodded. The Cousin and the Friend forced a smile. Foxy shrugged. Badger said sharply, ‘With you.’

  The Major said, ‘And I’m coming to the core. This is a peasant’s weapon. I repeat, it’s a peasant’s weapon to deploy, to activate, to see it kill and mutilate. But it is not a peasant who builds the electronics that run ahead of the counter-measures, or who oversees the factory where the shallow copper dish is milled to high standards. The view is peddled by the Pentagon and the MoD that the bomb-maker is a low-life rag-head who deals in very basic science concepts. Such assessments are dangerous, misleading and wrong. A small number of clever, innovative men is capable of wrong-footing us so consistently that the body-bags keep going home, and the injured with wounds they’ll carry to their graves. This particular individual – Rashid Armajan – is a man whose professionalism I would have, reluctantly, to respect. We know him also by the title given him by his employers and on the base where he works. He is the Engineer. Because I have looked at these people I feel free to offer a stereotypical image of him with some confidence. His family would be of huge importance to him. Alongside that we can say that religion is a major motivation, along with a profound love of his country. He’s a perfectionist, and with that comes personal egotism. He believes himself the best. Religion and nationalism give him the right to butcher the troops of the Great Satan and the Little Satan – anyone on the wrong side of God’s will. I’m not exaggerating if I say that this one individual is responsible in no small degree for the foul-up that is the coalition campaign in Iraq . . . and don’t forget how many casualties, killed and wounded, were caused by roadside bombs. We call an enemy a Bravo. Rashid Armajan is a big, bad Bravo, and we should take every opportunity to locate him and—’

  The clap of the Boss’s hands cut off the Major in mid-sentence.

  Badger had been concentrating and hadn’t anticipated the interruption. Then, as if satisfied that he had eye contact with the Major, the Boss softened. ‘Thank you very much, Major, for that comprehensive and thorough study of our target. It’s time for a break, and a sandwich.’

  A frown settled on Badger’s forehead, and he thought vaguely that part of an agenda had slipped by him, as if it flowed through a separate channel. His mind moved on because he had seen TV clips of the hospitals, clinics and rehabilitation centres where the amputees were taken, and of men struggling to hop along a corridor of parallel supports. He thought that after the sandwich he would be told what the mission was and what was expected of him.

  She told her mother what had been agreed.

  The children were at school and would not be home for two hours; her husband had been driven at dawn to the laboratory workbench. In darker moments, she would have said she competed with soldering irons, circuit boards, little silver detonators, alarm devices and . . . Mansoor, who oversaw the security at their home, had seen her husband taken away and the escort car that had followed, and would now be in his room in the barracks. She walked with a stick, held in her right fist, and her mother supported her left arm. She did not care that the sun was high and burned her face. Perspiration dribbled under the loose black robe and the scarf was tight round her head; she could feel, inside the material and pressed against the bone, the size of the growth.

  She said her husband refused to accept the verdict of the doctors in Tehran.

  Her mother walked with her, would not interrupt.

  She said that her husband had demanded of senior officials that she be allowed to leave the country and visit a more advanced centre of medicine, that funds be made available for such a journey and that arrangements be made for her to travel.

  They walked past the lagoon in front of their home. Birds flew low over the water and skimmed the tips of the reeds. The light played on the ripples where fish fed at the surface. She said that her work with the mine-clearance programme was not finished, and that if she was snatched away the deadly beasts would continue to take lives and maim children . . . She told her mother that Rashid could barely contemplate life without her. She urged her mother, now in her sixty-fifth year, to look after the children if . . . Then she smiled and declared she had faith in the consultant she would see.

  Where? She did not know.

  When? She had not been told.

  Her mother cried softly, and the wife of the bomb-maker – who organised the clearing of old minefields for which there were no charts – tried to hold her smile. It had to be soon, she said, that the arrangements were made because she did not believe she had much time. She was in God’s hands. And with her would be her husband, the only man she had loved, a good man.

  She thought the ibis the most beautiful bird that flew over the reeds as it turned towards the raised island beyond them. To Naghmeh, it was frail and vulnerable, so delicate, and she scanned the skies for the eagles that swooped on the ibis.

  In his experience, men who had been at risk of assassination for months or years became careless.

  When they first believed themselves important enough to be targets of their enemy, they would slink in the shadows, but few could sustain the effort. Also, when the target was away from his base and the familiar streets where the safe-houses were, he would consider himself untouchable and go to cafés or restaurants if he were flush with his organisation’s cash. He would sleep with his mistress in a hotel, hire a car and . . . To bring his mistress from Sidon in Lebanon and fly her on a budget airline to Malta International and have her share his double room in a waterfront hotel in Sliema was careless.

  The man was not a fighter but a strategist and a tactician, and some in the higher echelons of Unit 504, intelligence gathering, believed he was among the principal architects of the hidden tunnels and underground strong points from which a blood-letting had been wreaked on the Israeli Defence Force among the bare, harsh hills in the south of Lebanon where the common border was. A target did not have to be a fighter. To
be a strategist or a tactician was cause enough for a file to be lifted down and put into the tray of High Priority when an asset told of an extra-marital affair, the name of a mistress and her travel bookings. Few informants were governed by ideology and principle; many were alert to good payment.

  The target would have left the girl in bed. She would have screwed him until he’d wondered whether he was close to a coronary. Then he would have pushed her off, showered and walked to the Internet café. There, he would have finalised a meeting with a colleague now based in Tunis and another in Rome, and walked back to the hotel.

  When Unit 504 went to war it was not with a straitened budget.

  An aircraft loitered outside Maltese air space and held together the facets of the operation. The controller in the air was in communication with the slight young man who stood near to the taxi rank in front of the hotel, like any other hopeful stud waiting for his girl. At the end of the esplanade a motorcycle engine was ticking over, the rider helmeted, with a second helmet on his lap. Along the coast – two or three kilometres – a high-powered launch was moored as a concrete jetty. Further out to sea, on the edge of the radar horizon, a merchant ship registered in the port of Haifa was on course for a rendezvous. On occasion, the unit used a mobile phone loaded with enough military explosive to destroy the side of a man’s head when he answered a call, or they might have built a bomb into the headrest of the driver’s seat in a car, or put one under the nearside front wheel. They might attack with a commando squad of up to eight men, or there would be a single assassin with a short range ‘Barak’ SP-21 short recoil-operated and locked-breech pistol with fifteen 9mm rounds in the magazine; only two would be used. The target came close.