A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  It was now ‘bare-arsed ground’. He and Badger had, an understatement, insufficient cover, and no map that helped; the GPS handset guided him. They had been through water to their knees, in stinking mud to their ankles, and in reeds that towered over their heads. The option now was to walk in more water or climb a bank, scramble to the top on all fours, and get on a bund line, or it might be a berm – there was a difference. A berm was an earthwork thrown up by bulldozers as a military defence or a flood barrier, and a bund was a raised road. To go up would make an easier route but they would be exposed – ‘bare-arsed’ – which would break every rule in the croppie’s bible. He wanted water . . . Better, he needed water.

  And speed. He realised he couldn’t set the pace required. To get onto the flat top of the bund, or the berm, would ignore one of the core basics – Foxy taught them when he was out with recruits: Shape, Shadows, Shine, Surfaces, Space and Silhouette. If he went up onto the bund, and took the young’un with him, he would be silhouetted against the skies, the reeds and the mud – might as well have brought a bull horn with him and shouted that they were coming. He stayed down.

  His boots went through the water. It was a small satisfaction that their prints in the mud would be hidden by the water.

  There was clear, quiet breathing behind him, like the guy had no problems with the weight of his bergen. If they were seen, they would be at the mercy of thieves, who lived off what they could steal and sell on. They would be stolen and sold on, and then they’d be right for the orange jumpsuits, and for what used to be called ‘the Baghdad haircut’ in the interrogation centre. The sun’s light and strength drained his energy, and the cloying mud sapped the muscle power in his legs. There would be plenty of groups ready to stand in an orderly queue for the chance to bid big money at any auction if a pair of Crusaders were up for grabs. Orange suits were the uniform for the camera shows where poor bastards pleaded for their lives and rubbished their politicians’ policies: the jihadists put them always in the same colour as the Americans’ prisoners wore at Guantánamo, as if that legitimised the killing. The ‘haircut’ wasn’t a short back and sides but the head wrenched back and the throat exposed so that the blade had an easier cut . . . and the same bloody camera would be running. The bastards in Luton and the West Midlands, Bradford and the north-west, who lived in the mean terraces and who – between their prayer sessions – flitted between the Internet sites that showed the beheadings, would likely get a hard-on if they had a fuzzy view of Foxy Foulkes’s head going back and the flash of the knife . . . Damned if it was him who was going to stop first, and he didn’t know how far they had still to travel to the frontier. The symbols and numbers on the GPS were blurred with the sweat dribbling off his forehead into his eyes.

  They stayed in the lee of the bund, and there was a toppled battle tank ahead. His feet sloshed in water, and his stride was shorter. It was only the third hour and there might be another three to the border, then two more at least to where they would make the hide. He wore his gillie gear, and the bit that covered his head and face. A ‘gillie’ was a man who held the rods for the gentry on a salmon river, or guided marksmen towards deer; they’d been called up in the Great War from the estates to match the Prussian snipers with their skill in concealment, their knowledge of the elements and cover, and they’d developed their own suits, which gave them greater protection from searching eyes and lenses. The camouflage was good for the mud and dirt wall of the bund, but poor in the reeds. He listened for a gasp behind him – exhaustion, at the limit – but heard nothing.

  Should have concentrated. Had the orange suit in his head and a man – himself – pleading to a lens for mercy. Guys were behind with rifles and one had a knife. He went by the tank. Its body was intact and he couldn’t see the entry hole of an armour-piercing missile but one of the tracks was broken. It would have been a mine, then an internal explosion and fire. The plate on the turret was rusted by the wind and dark from the fire. It could have happened thirty years ago and they might still be inside. Thieves would have stripped the interior, the wristwatches and jewellery from the dead crew, if they were salvageable, but would have left the bodies. The thoughts of the jumpsuits and then the rotting dead brought him back to Ellie.

  A car’s wheels on the gravel, its door slamming. A key in the lock, her coming in.

  Him: ‘Hi, darling, where’ve you been?’

  Her hesitating, then: ‘Up to see Tash – didn’t I tell you I was going?’

  ‘Do I know Tash?’

  ‘Course you do. She used to work with me. You never listen, love. Course I told you.’

  ‘Made it home earlier than I’d thought . . .’ He’d moved to kiss her, but she’d averted her mouth and he’d just caught the back of her neck, but he’d smelt the perfume, lovely scent. He couldn’t see her face.

  A sort of distant voice: ‘I came back through Wootton Bassett, love, and got held up. They were bringing home one of the soldiers. The traffic was stopped. I couldn’t go anywhere. I watched. They’re all heroes, aren’t they? His coffin had the flag on it. The Legion was there. Everyone stood to attention. Old blokes had medals on. There was a family with flowers, people crying, loads of them. It was for a real hero, fantastic.’

  He’d said, ‘Well, love, I’m not a hero but I negotiated the motorway all the way up from the far west and . . .’

  It was a poor effort at a joke. She’d rounded on him and the rant had started. ‘You don’t bloody listen, do you? I’m talking about heroes; the bravest of the brave. Real men. It’s about sacrifice – a man told me that at the petrol station. Giving their lives for us. He called it ‘‘paying the ultimate price’’. That’s nothing to make some stupid remark about.’

  And there had been a slammed door. The bloody irony of it. He was slogging through mud at the edge of a bund, had a bergen on his back and a gillie suit that about suffocated him, and he was doing hero stuff. His throat was parched, and he was dehydrating, and they’d not allowed him to send a decent text. Irony was cold comfort.

  Two trucks had come off the bund and gone engine first down the sheer slope. Their bonnets were in the water. Maybe they’d been bulldozed off to make way for more tanks. The water was stagnant, and the smell was bad. He retched, and had to step further into the water until it was lapping his knees. He saw three legs of a creature stuck upright, and wondered where the fourth was. The carcass was of a water buffalo, and it was about fucking landmines. He was swaying. The heat and smell were destroying him. He started to sink.

  ‘It’s not the promenade at Bognor,’ a voice behind him mocked. ‘Shift it.’

  He must have opened his hand, let it slip. The stink of the animal clogged his nose. He scrabbled for it, couldn’t find it. The weight of the bergen seemed to pull him back.

  His voice croaked: ‘Give me a hand, Badger.’

  ‘You a passenger, Foxy?’

  ‘A hand.’

  ‘Want me to lead? That it? Do a donkey’s job?’

  ‘I want to stop. Rest.’

  ‘We have to get there before dark. That’s what the boss lady said.’

  ‘A drink, and some help.’

  ‘Say it properly, Foxy.’

  ‘Some help.’

  ‘Properly, Foxy.’

  ‘Please. Some fucking help, please.’

  And his voice must have lifted. A flight of ducks lifted out of dried foliage on the far side of the lagoon, and he remembered what Alpha Juliet had said. He wondered, rambling, if they were Marbled or Ferruginous or White-headed Duck. A hand came under his arm. He felt himself propelled forward, and they rounded the sunken trucks, leaning behind the buffalo carcass.

  With the hand in his armpit, the weight of the bergen lessened. They edged back under the bund. The mud seemed thinner now and the pace quickened. A water bottle was passed to him, and he swigged.

  He couldn’t hide it. ‘Back there, I dropped the GPS. It sank. I lost it.’

  No answer. Not even a look that killed. He
passed the bottle back. He thought they were heading in the right direction.

  The bloody irony of it. When could he have refused, stepped back smartly and walked away? The opportunities were never available for little people like Joe ‘Foxy’ Foulkes . . .

  She was still in bed, alone. The central heating had failed in her workplace of the last two years, Naval Procurement in Bath, and the buildings on the hills south of the city were as little ‘fit for purpose’ as the communal boiler system. They’d shivered all through yesterday, and the decision had been taken to close down until the problems were fixed.

  She heard, below the bedroom, the front gate squeal. It needed oiling. She’d asked Foxy to do it twice, reminded him only last week. A vehicle swung into the drive. Ellie got up, shivered, remembered she’d turned the heating up last night to twenty – Foxy didn’t like that, and said sixteen was high enough. But Foxy wasn’t there . . . She’d had the text.

  There were footsteps on the gravel, and two men’s voices. One was by the front door, the other beyond the gate. She hooked on her dressing-gown and parted the curtains. A man was leaning on her gate and his car half blocked the lane. Her eyes tracked across the drive, and there was Foxy’s car. The bell rang.

  She had had the text two mornings before: Hi, love. In a hurry – have to be away, work, don’t know how long. Verboten to phone. Luvya Foxy. She had rung his mobile eight, ten, twenty times, but it was switched off.

  She went downstairs. It was a decent cottage, in a country lane in a village outside the Wiltshire garrison town of Warminster, pretty with climbing roses over the porch, wisteria on the front walls, small mullion windows, a garden, three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a new kitchen she’d chosen. When they’d met, she’d been coming out of a divorce, with most of her savings gone in legal fees. She’d probably have ended up in a studio flat, if Foxy hadn’t offered her the lift down from the north-west. No way she could have afforded a chocolate-box cottage in the country. She had something to be grateful to Foxy for, but over the last two years that ‘something’ had become vague – almost out of sight since she’d met Piers.

  She opened the door. The man wore a white shirt, a chauffeur’s style black tie, probably with an elastic band round the neck, and an anorak. He held out the keys. ‘Your husband’s, Mrs Foulkes.’

  Half asleep, early in the morning and no alarm set: ‘What?’

  ‘Bringing back your husband’s car. We picked it up from the car park where he left it. Sorry we couldn’t manage it yesterday.’ He was turning away.

  It was a forlorn chance. ‘And where is he? Where’s he skived off to?’

  In mid-stride he paused, angled his face to her. A laugh without a chuckle. ‘Don’t imagine they tell me things like that. Not for the likes of me to know. Just a thought – if he’s away more than a couple of weeks, I suggest you turn the engine over, so’s the battery’s not flat when he gets back.’

  She closed the door on him, failed to thank him. Upstairs, she checked an Internet site, a town hall’s page, learned a date and a time, then called the guy who did accounts at the Naval Procurement offices.

  He stood under a palm tree and gazed out over the marshes.

  They were a source of fascination to him, an endless pleasure. He enjoyed little in his life. Mansoor was in his thirty-first year. He should, by now, have been prominent in the al-Quds Brigade, looking for further promotion and higher command, but the chance was denied him because of the explosion of the Hellfire missile fired from the Predator drone, neither seen nor heard, and giving a warning in fractions of a second as the light stream and the roar of power fell from the sky.

  He could stare out over the marshes, watch the wind move the reeds and ruffle the trees on the island across the lagoon, see the hunting herons and kingfishers, the ripples on the water when the fish rose and always there was the changing weather – threatening, benign, calm, dramatic – and the light. No two days were similar.

  He would not advance because of the injuries. Muscle, tissue, even some bone had been torn from the back of his left leg, above and below the kneecap. He would have recovered better if he had been close to medical aid: he had not. Numb with pain, Mansoor had been carried on a litter from northern Iraq across the mountains. The hospital where he had received the first serious treatment had been in the Iranian city of Saqqez. There had been traces of gangrene in the poorly bandaged wounds and the surgeons had deemed it necessary to take as much again of the remaining muscle, tissue and bone as the missile had. His limp was pronounced and his future as a combat officer was finished. He had been sent to the marshes on the border as security officer to the Engineer, Rashid Armajan.

  He would not have believed it possible. He knew the names of the birds that flew over the water and nested in the reeds, those that were gentle and harmless and those that had sharp talons and wickedly curved beaks. He knew also where the otters lived and bred, where there might be pig with young, and which island had the greatest infestation of poisonous snakes. He also knew that in these marshes, half a century before, there had been striped hyenas, wolf packs and, rarely, a leopard. Crippled, he provided security for the Engineer and learned about the beauty and life of the marshes.

  At first, while his wife continued to work as a computer operator at the Crate Camp Garrison, he had loathed the prospect of guarding this man. He had, almost, considered leaving the al-Quds. He had arrived at the house, had been billeted in the barracks that fronted onto the lagoon, had come to know the family, and the wild life of the marshes and could not have said now which mattered most to him.

  There were godwits and a small swimming group of pygmy cormorants and babblers, and he kept Japanese binoculars hanging from his neck. It the birds panicked he would look hard to see if a pig had disturbed them, a large dog otter, even a leopard or a wolf. It might be pilgrims going to and from Najaf across the border, or smugglers bringing opiate paste from Afghanistan and crossing Iranian territory. The birds were, almost, the sentries that watched over the little community, and more efficient than the men he commanded. With time, he had realised he was honoured to have responsibility for a man as important in the defence of his country as the Engineer.

  That morning he had been called by his father, an informer for the Revolutionary Guard Corps. He was a part-time postal official and also helped with the executions at the city gaol. He was a man of few talents and many interests, who let it be known that his son had failed to fulfil expectations. His father would have expected to ride on the back of his son’s successes; he had been uninterested in the medical prognosis after a section of his son’s leg had been gouged out by a missile, and more concerned with his return to authority and influence. That day his father had telephoned him from the prison with details of the public hanging of two Arabs. He had been the link between the hangman and the crane drivers in their cabs, telling them when to hoist the arms. He had enjoyed the morning; it had gone-well. From his father’s knee, through his time as a recruit of the Guard Corps, during his selection for the élite al-Quds, and lying on a makeshift stretcher to be hauled across mountain tracks, he had honed a hatred for all enemies of the state, whether Arabs in Ahvaz or the distant operators of the remote guided Predators. He could not salve his loathing of the Great Satan, take revenge for his damaged leg, but the Engineer had hurt them, which enhanced Mansoor’s loyalty.

  In the evening, he might bring out his fishing rod to catch a carp and then, too, he could watch the marshes. He was devastated by what he knew of the illness of the Engineer’s wife. He was, he thought, almost a part of their family.

  There was stillness in front of him, safety. The lenses of the glasses roved over the water and the flourishing reed beds. No creature moved sharply or thrashed to escape.

  In the heat of the afternoon, the police came. They had two battered pick-ups. Corky had alerted her when the dirt trails were still more than a kilometre away. She had shrugged into a robe and her face was part covered with a scarf. Both Corky
and Hamfist had done this territory with their regiments and would have regarded the police as deceitful and treacherous – they had probably sent a few to martyrs’ graves. They had talked this through and the drills were understood. Two spotter ’scopes up on the bund line round the wrecked drilling camp looked down into the marshes that surrounded the site. Harding was behind one and Shagger had the other; both had bird books and pamphlets beside their stools. Abigail had not seen an individual come close to the camp, and none of the Jones Boys had warned her of a ‘dicker’ looking them over from cover. They would have been told, and they would have come. The routine was that she would explain in her halting Arabic that they were a part of a UNESCO-sponsored eco-watch, additionally funded by National Geographic. They had the full support of the ministry in Baghdad, and the provincial governor’s office. She had the papers of each organisation to prove her point: a clutch of ‘To Whom It May Concern’ letters, all with impressive headings, a fifty-dollar bill attached to each one. She had anticipated that after each paper was examined the money would have gone. She knew what they earned, and remarked that she and her colleagues were grateful to the local police for watching over them. She could bore, and did so: her anxiety about the potential for oil pollution of this amazing habitat, unique in the world to Iraq; the species of bird and animal life here, needing monitoring, which were not found anywhere else in the world. Iraqis, from across the country, could be proud of it. Had they not been told she was coming with colleagues and an escort? She had the smile and her appearance was harmless, but the policemen would have seen the two men gazing out over the marshes through ’ scopes, breaking off to write in notepads. They also had cameras, while two more carried automatic weapons and were in the shadow of the buildings. When she had bored them enough, they left.