A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  Again, was he not Soheil, the Star?

  It was fourteen years since he had left Tehran. On the day he took the flight to Europe, he had recently qualified at the Tehran University medical school. His talents were such that he had been sent to the neuro-surgery wing of the UKHE to study under the tutelage of a Chefarzt. He had not gone home. He had married, changed his name, had believed he was forgotten – it was now four and a half years since the embassy in Berlin had last contacted him to make certain he was ‘happy and content’ and to tell him that his achievements were watched with pride by those who had provided him with the opportunity to go abroad. Magda tugged harder. He let go of her hand and she sagged back – he thought she might fall.

  He could have cut the call. He could have switched off the phone, taken his daughter’s hand, walked on beside the Hansahafen and put the contact out of his mind. He was asked if it was convenient to talk. There was an edge to the voice.

  His thoughts meandered: to speak in German or Farsi? To answer to Soheil or demand to be called Steffen?

  ‘The professor of oncology in Tehran, almost your foster-father, asked to be remembered to you. He is old now, and his wife is in poor health. Times at home are difficult, in what is their country and yours, Soheil. There is violence, and there are difficult people who exercise authority in some areas. The taint of treason is attached to those who befriend the few who distance themselves from the Islamic revolution. Is it convenient to talk?’

  He asked for the identity of the caller, and was told he was just a humble functionary at the embassy in Berlin. Magda had gone to the edge of the quay, where there was a drop of three metres to the waterline. She was beside a gap between two traditional sailing boats. He could not shout at her because she might flinch and trip. He remembered the professor who had reared him from the age of nine after his parents, both doctors, had died in a forward medical post, under mortar attack during the battle to liberate Khorramshahr, when tending the wounded. The professor and his wife, childless, had taken the orphan into their home . . . He understood the nature of the threat to them. He did not contradict and give his German name . . . He had qualified with the highest marks, was the son of martyred parents and had practised for a year in a slum district of the capital. He had therefore been permitted to study abroad – but had not returned. He answered in his native language. His wife and daughter, his colleagues at the Klinik in Hamburg and the medical school in Lübeck, between which he split his time, understood no Farsi. His daughter reached into his overcoat pocket for the bread they always brought when they walked beside the harbour.

  The blunt question: ‘You work in the field of brain tumours?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘There is a procedure called “stereo-tactic”?’

  ‘It is in my field.’

  ‘There are cases where a condition is inoperable in conventional surgery, but where stereo-tactic is an alternative?’

  ‘There are.’

  ‘You have a high reputation, but you have not forgotten your family’s roots – your parents’ heroism, your foster-father’s sacrifices, the state’s generosity?’

  ‘What do you want of me?’ His daughter threw bread into the air. Gulls flew close to her, screaming. They had huge predatory beaks.

  ‘That you see a patient.’

  ‘For whom nothing can be done in Tehran?’

  ‘Nothing.’ It was a cold voice. He presumed the patient, terminally ill without a procedure that was always a last resort and fraught with complication, would be a senior man in the clerical or revolutionary hierarchy. ‘We are talking to you because nothing further is possible in Tehran.’

  ‘The patient would come here or to Hamburg?’ The bread was gone and the child was at his side, tugging his sleeve, and saying loudly that she wanted to go home. She started to pull him towards the Burgtorbrücke, and he let her take him.

  ‘It is intended the patient would travel.’

  ‘There are more experienced consultants in Frankfurt, Vienna, Paris and London, men better qualified than I.’

  ‘We would not have the discretion that we gain from you, the confidentiality. There will be no electronic messages, only brief telephone communication. I will come to visit you, Soheil, when the travel arrangements are complete. I am so glad that I can report your co-operation.’

  The call ended. He understood. Discretion and confidentiality were the keys. Perhaps it was a prosecutor with blood on his hands, who now faced his God, would imminently be with Him, and was important enough to demand the full resources of the state to buy him a few more months, or a general in the Revolutionary Guard Corps, or an imam. He could not run from them. He held tight to the little girl’s hand as they crossed the bridge and headed for the fine villa that was their home.

  His daughter – also perhaps vulnerable and a weapon to be used against him – sprinted ahead. He shouted at her to slow down, and she turned, wide-eyed, shocked by his anger. He accepted that even here, in his adopted town, he could not be free of them – ever.

  He let himself into the office, closed the door behind him and locked it.

  She was at her desk. Len Gibbons noted that, in his absence, she had turned her room and the one allocated to him into something that was as much a home as a workplace. She had arranged two small vases of flowers, one on his desk, which he could see through the open connecting door, and one on hers, and a tray for tea-making lay beside the electric kettle, with a biscuit tin. On a wall away from the photographs of bombs, the featureless picture of a target and the enlarged map of the marsh region between the confluence of the rivers and the frontier, she had hung a picture. He smiled as he dumped his bag down and shrugged off his coat. There was a big sky in which birds flew and a long meadow between forests, in which an elephant wandered, a scarlet parrot perched and a deer grazed. In the background, far down the meadow, a robed man led two naked – or near naked – figures.

  ‘Enlighten me, Sarah.’

  ‘It’s the Garden of Eden. God’s there with the two innocents. It’s by Jan Brueghel the Elder, painted in 1607. Adam and Eve before the apple upset the cart. Appropriate, I thought. How did it go?’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Are they all right?’

  ‘We call them Foxy and Badger. They’re probably just about all right.’

  He was leaning over his desk, checking the notes she had left him and pitching them into the shredder.

  ‘Is “all right” good enough?’

  He looked up sharply. ‘Has to be. We make do with what’s given us. I must cut my cloth according to my means. Very thoughtful of you, Sarah, as always, and such an appropriate image.’

  They were in business class. Foxy said that ‘they’ would have pulled a heavy one – a favour required – with the carrier. They would be up for around six hours on a non-stop flight to Kuwait City. Badger said nothing.

  They took off.

  Gibbons had seen them into the terminal, then shaken their hands and left. They had carried their bags of one change of clothes – dirty – and washbags to Check-in. Badger reckoned he was expected to carry Foxy’s while the older man did the talking at the desk. He did his own talking, interrupted to make the point, left the bag on the floor and Foxy had had to go back for it.

  They went up into the night, and Badger felt more gut knots than he’d ever known. Beside him Foxy was biting hard at his lip and was close to drawing blood. Badger didn’t like to be afraid: it unsettled him.

  Chapter 4

  A wall of heat hit them. Badger saw Foxy recoil from it. It seemed to suck the energy out of his own chest, his lungs – and he had walked only a few paces. The sun’s light smacked upwards from the expanse of concrete, its force mocking the effectiveness of his sunglasses. Everything that was beyond a hundred metres away was distorted and bounced like a mirage. He could barely make out the distant terminal buildings, but the flags topping them hung limp. Foxy seemed to stagger – as if the wall not only surrounded him but punc
hed hard.

  Badger heard him: ‘Fucking place, fucking weather. By the by, here, you’re Badger and I’m Foxy. I don’t want any mucking with proper names. Enough on our plates without chucking identification around. To whom it may concern, and us, those are our names . . . Nothing fucking changes.’

  A fuel truck drove slowly towards their helicopter and a Humvee had parked on the far side of the cockpit – it would be for the crew. There were two Pajeros in front of them. A woman stood tall in front of one, scratching at her loose robe. She wore a head scarf close round her hair and Badger thought it was against the sun, not for modesty. There were two men in each vehicle; the windows were up and the engines were turning over, which meant they had air-conditioning.

  Badger assumed Foxy was talking to him, not to himself: ‘Nothing changes except the flags . . . My place was about a quarter of a mile the far side of the terminal. Any time after about seven in the morning and before five in the afternoon you could hardly walk that quarter-mile without dehydration. You’d need a couple of litres straight down, and if you walked it before seven and after five you had to wear a flak jacket and helmet and be listening for the mortar’s whistle, or there were rockets incoming. I loathed it then and I loathe it now.’

  Badger said, ‘Nobody cares, Foxy.’ He had stamped on the moan. Not the first, and it wouldn’t be the last. During the long relay of their journeys, he had felt no inclination to humour the man. He’d seen Foxy crumple, as if the wind was squeezed out of him, when the request for permission to call home was curtly refused; he’d had to make do with a text of about five lines, and show it to Gibbons before he sent it. A poignant moment: Badger had been close by when the message was punched out and the mobile switched off. The Boss had taken it and put it, with Badger’s, into a plastic bag, which he had pocketed. There was no one that Badger would have called. He had had his boots in the car and been able to bag them, but Foxy had only been carrying a pair of heavy trainers, which would not have been waterproof. Badger should have been sympathetic about it, but was not, and should have been grateful that Foxy had negotiated the fee with the Boss at the eleventh hour but he had not thanked the older man for winning payment over and above their salaries.

  There had been the flight to Kuwait City, where they’d been met by a corporal, American, from a logistics unit, who had escorted them out of the civilian area to a military annex. They had spent three hours in a departure hut with air-conditioning chilling them and had been offered upright chairs. Foxy had sat in one with his back straight, but Badger had made a space on the floor, wedged his bag against the wall, lain down with his head on the bag and slept. Later, the same corporal had driven them in a minibus to the pad where the helicopter waited. There had been machine-gunners on the cabin doors, weapons armed, and they’d done contour flying, hugged the dirt, woven and come up where there were cables slung between pylons, but otherwise kept low. Badger had never been in a war zone, too young for the Northern Ireland experience, and he noticed that Foxy stared straight ahead, looking ill at ease.

  Roads with occasional cars and ancient lorries. Homes were single-storey and surrounded by dumped vehicles and giant refrigerators. Kids waved, women ignored them and men looked away. Goats and thin sheep stampeded. A checkpoint where the Iraqi flag – red, white and black – fluttered briefly as the helicopter drove draught across it, and there were local soldiers or policemen. The gunner cleared phlegm from his throat and spat.

  The sand stretched away until it reached green corridors that would have been vegetation alongside rivers. They went up one of the beds and were over mud and exposed wrecks. It was like the life had been taken from a waterway. They had not been issued with headphones and were given no commentary on the route, the security scene, the duration . . . nothing. Might have been junk and on the way to a refuse pit. They had come fast over a perimeter fence, and the huge scale of the base, the empire it had become, was exposed: a place built to survive for ever. As far as he could see, there were prefabricated constructions, hangars and maintenance bays, blast walls and stores warehouses. They had hovered, then the skids had touched and the heat wall had clutched them. When his feet had hit the concrete, Badger had wiped a handkerchief across his face. His body under the loose T-shirt was wet, but Foxy still wore his blazer and tie.

  Foxy led; Badger let him.

  They walked, him three paces behind, towards the woman and the vehicles.

  He heard Foxy mutter, ‘Could have opened his door – could have damn well stepped out to meet us.’

  ‘Yes,’ Badger said, barely audible. He was not used to meeting Six officers and didn’t know what to expect.

  ‘He’d better be bloody good, as good as he’s arrogant.’

  ‘Can’t argue with that.’

  ‘Do they think we’re temporary staff for the kitchens, washing up or— Him not being here to meet us is just bloody ungracious. Discourteous prat. Christ, this bloody sun . . . I won’t be quick to forget Alpha Juliet’s breach of manners, and I expect your backing when I take him to task.’

  They were close to her. Her hands were on her hips and she swayed a little on the balls of her feet. Badger thought she had control, and could have described it as authority. There was a wildness about her appearance that appealed, a raffishness, and he made that judgement in spite of the full robe, the trainers that peeped out below it, the headscarf and the dark glasses.

  ‘Welcome here, gentlemen, and thanks very much for making yourselves available. I’m Abigail.’

  Badger was alongside Foxy, and said softly, ‘So that makes you Alpha?’

  ‘Alpha Juliet, correct.’

  ‘I’m Badger, and he’s Foxy.’ He grinned. ‘We’re the sweepings off the floor.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Badger – and good to meet you, Foxy.’ She’d shaken Badger’s hand first, briefly, then took the older man’s. Badger saw the confusion and near embarrassment in Foxy. The cussed old thing would be wondering how far his voice had carried in the stillness once the helicopter’s rotors had shut down. There was something about her mouth that was mischievous and he’d have bet that behind the glasses there was a sparkle – might be fun, amusement or even contempt. Before he had gone off to work for the Box, and he’d been a croppie with his local force, a judge had been under threat during an organised-crime trial. He was wanted off the case and violence was in the air so the surveillance team was holed up for days at the back of the property on the edge of a Cotswold village. The judge had a younger wife with a flash of cheekiness in her smile and she’d brought them, in the hide, at the start of the second week of observing fuck-all, a tray of tea and shortbread. She’d had that gravel growl in her voice, sort of husky and deep. She hadn’t cared that she might have blown the exercise. The voice had said old money. It had been raining and Badger and his oppo were well into their stag, cold and wet and . . . Old money, good breeding and the rule of instincts. It was the only time he’d ever climbed out of a hide in his gillie suit, pushed back his camouflage headpiece, sipped a mug of tea, dunked a biscuit, offered thanks and told a woman to ‘bugger off out of it’.

  Foxy said, ‘Good of you to meet us, Abigail. Appreciated.’

  She took them to the vehicles.

  Foxy said, ‘We’d like a chance for a wash, maybe something to eat – light, a salad – then some sleep and—’

  ‘Could be a problem, the bit about sleep.’

  ‘We’re very tired. I have to say, Abigail, that we haven’t been treated well since being dragged into this mission. The briefings have been general in the extreme, all detail excluded. What’s called for now is rest, then a comprehensive evaluation of the ground, the equipment, back-up and the time scales – that’s after we’re satisfactorily acclimatised and—’

  ‘Sorry and all that, but those scales are pared down to the quick. I can do you the shower and some cam-clothing. Everything else is on the hoof.’

  Maybe it was his tiredness, maybe the heat or the weight of the blazer, b
ut Foxy barked, ‘It seems pretty much of a shambles to me, and we deserve better. The man in UK – Gibbons, he called himself – who put this together, he warrants lynching. It screams wishful thinking and incompetence.’

  She had the door of the back Pajero open for him. Foxy seemed to huff, then slid on to a back seat strewn with weaponry, magazines and vests.

  She said, like it was no big deal, ‘I put it together, it’s my shout. If it fouls up and you lose your head, it’ll be my neck on the block for decapitation. It’s the best I can do.’

  The door was slammed on Foxy. With a thumb she gestured for Badger to follow her to the lead vehicle. He had to burrow for a space on the back seat. When she was in and the doors were shut, they were driven away. He didn’t catch her eye, didn’t see the point in trying, and kept silent. Best to stay silent as he couldn’t picture where the road led or who it led him to.

  The Engineer’s car had diverted in the city of Ahvaz, off the route that was shortest, quickest, to the camp. It had crossed the Karun river and gone to the principal clinic in the town where his wife’s medication awaited collection. But the painkillers were not on the usual shelf and the man administering the pharmacy had not come to work that day. The woman who replaced him was unfamiliar with the stock held in storage, and there was a delay. By the time the plastic bottles containing the pills and capsules were in his hand, he had lost the first half-hour of an appointment awaiting him when he reached his workplace.

  Not his driver’s fault that they were late, but the man – his driver for nine years, loyal and fully aware of the importance of Rashid Armajan to the al-Quds Brigade – went now for a back-street cut-through to get them onto the main highway out of the city. They were away from the wider boulevards and the big concrete housing blocks, the post office and the railway station were behind them, and the homes were smaller, more roughly constructed. Cyclists, men on scooters, women walking with children and carrying water cans from or to the standpipes blocked and slowed them. The driver blasted the horn.