A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  There were days when he thought he had seen one, neck extended, legs tucked up and powered by wide wings, far away over the reeds. Each time his excitement had surged as the speck had come closer, until he could see it was a slow-flapping heron. He looked also for the predator. Mansoor, the security officer, indulged himself with his search for the Sacred Ibis, but he was also on constant watch for the threat, for danger. The White-tailed Eagle had been up that morning, the hen, but he had not seen it now for an hour. The eagle had no equal, would swoop and kill the gentle bird.

  If the Sacred Ibis came, if his hope was fulfilled, it would likely come low across the reeds, and he watched them closely. There were ducks and coots, and an otter. He thought them his allies. If the threat was alive, the waterbirds would panic and the otter would dive, telling him of a killer’s approach . . .

  The visitors arrived. Three cars had brought them from Ahvaz, Susangerd and Dezful. They would have gathered in Ahvaz and come in convoy into the border zone, which was under military control, and to which access was restricted.

  He went to check the papers, to satisfy himself. He would get two of his men to move a table under the trees, set chairs round it and carry over a tray of glasses and a jug of juice. He would put more cushions on the chair for Naghmeh, whose pain was worse this week. Then, when the meeting had started, he would come back to sit and search for the ibis among the reeds.

  Foxy listened. The sound was good – clear and clean. The technicians he had met on courses and field trials swore that this version of the shotgun directional microphone yielded quality results at three hundred metres, and he estimated it was now secreted no more than 240 metres from the front of the target house. He was using around a hundred metres of cable, sunken, from the microphone to where he lay.

  No way he would say it. The position was good, the voices were crystal. He would have claimed they were exposed and at risk from being so close to the target’s zone, and to the bastard who sat and tracked across the lagoon area, seeming to search it. The sounds of visitors and greetings were boosted by the walls and windows of the building behind where a table and chairs had been set, and bounced back.

  He realised the skill Badger had shown to get forward to the lie-up, and more to go along the mud strand and place the microphone in the heart of what seemed to be snagged-up debris. He was so damn good – but Foxy wouldn’t say it. Where they were had been dead ground to the view from their night-time position, and a track of sorts led off the bund line to the right. There were more reeds nearer to where he was – on his stomach; the bergens were hidden there and Badger slept there. Foxy needed to have a view of the target house. The weak point with covert listening gear, the technicians always said, was keeping the power going, having battery strength and replacement when recharging wasn’t an option. What they used had Output Impedance of 600 ohms and a frequency range of 50Hz–10kHz and an S/N ratio of 40 dB plus, and he’d thought Badger hadn’t understood any of the specifications. But he had done well to get them there.

  He reflected: two kilometres across a hostile frontier, they were alone, exposed. He also reflected that the chance of success was minimal. He knew about the landmines sown in this area by the Iraqis during the war three decades earlier – the woman had a fine voice that commanded attention.

  Naghmeh, the Engineer’s wife, was at the centre of the table and around her was her committee. She talked of a village: ‘The new well that was dug fourteen years ago was not deep enough and the water it reaches is inadequate. The answer is for the village to go back to the old well, but that is where the mines were laid. They are not mines against tanks and personnel carriers, but against people. They are the Belgian-made PRB M35 and the NR417. Also put there were the Italian SB33 and VS50, and there are the jumping American mines, the M16 A1 and the Bulgarian PSM 1. If – if – it is possible, I will go to Ahvaz with you to demand funds for the clearance programme. It is owed to the village, which should have decent water. I will go myself.’

  Across the table from her, a man and a woman, representatives of a village to the east and a half-kilometre outside the border’s restricted zone, wept quietly.

  She spoke of the farmers: ‘You have good sheep, of the best quality, and good goats, but the good land where your flocks and herds should graze is denied you by the mines. You have there the Yugoslav-manufactured PMA 3, which is primarily of plastic and rubber casing. It resists the pressure of flails to detonate it, but tilts on a foot’s weight and explodes. It does not kill but takes a leg or a foot, or a manhood. The shepherd and the goatherd cannot use those fields, and cannot put their beasts onto them. You have waited too long. Too many of your families are crippled, and your children cannot be out of your sight. I will go to Susangerd and not leave until I have the guarantee of action. I can be formidable.’

  The peasant farmers, who lived on a poverty breadline, wrung their hands and lacked the courage to look into her eyes.

  She talked to the man and his wife, who had spent their own savings and their extended family’s money, to buy a building and develop it as a hotel because they were near to a route used by the pilgrims going towards Karbala and Najaf – the shrine of Ali ibn Abi Talib, son-in-law of the Prophet, where each of the minarets was covered with forty thousand gold tiles. The side of the bund line that led to the border and crossed it, the tracks through the marshes on military roads constructed by the old enemy were mined, and the devices came from Bulgaria, Israel and China. The minefields were not marked and no charts existed to show their placement. The Iraqis who had put them in the ground did not care and the pilgrims would not walk or ride on a narrow track but spread across the elevated ground. Enough had been killed or crippled for no more to come. ‘I will go to Tehran if I have to. Where there is oil there is mine clearance. When the drillers and pipe-layers have to come in, the ground is cleaned. Not only are people and animals killed but the potential wealth of the area is blighted. I will demand that something is done so that pilgrims can use that route and stay at your hotel. I will burn their ears, I promise.’

  The couple choked back tears, and the woman let her hand rest lightly on Naghmeh’s.

  She turned to two younger women who wore headscarves but not veils. They would have come from a city and had education to go with their intelligence – as she had. ‘I have complained frequently, and will continue to do so, against the corruption that afflicts the mine-clearance work. I will not tolerate it. Corruption is a stain on the Islamic state. We cannot get the clearance teams without bribing officials first – or giving them “bonuses”. Then, when a contractor is appointed, has paid for that privilege, he cannot operate without further theft by officials. I will see whoever I have to see, and sit on their doorstep for however long I have to sit there.’

  Her voice was quieter as if the effort of talking through the morning had exhausted her. She sucked in her breath and felt the pain. The silence was broken by a sob from the slighter of the younger women.

  She could endure pain and extreme tiredness. She slapped her hand on the table. ‘Now, where is our action campaign? Let us consider where we can advance.’

  They all knew of her illness, and that the diagnosis was terminal. They also knew that she was due to travel abroad to consult with a foreign specialist, and that her life hung by a thread. She had their love and respect. Naghmeh could have made a short speech about her condition, telling them of her certainty that they would carry on with the work of mine clearance regardless of whether or not she drove the programme. She did not. None would have believed her.

  She thought few of them reckoned there would be another meeting such as this, outside her home in the warmth beside the lagoon where the birds roamed. She faced the water. It jarred that the security officer blocked part of her view, and that his weapon was displayed . . . The pain throbbed, a drum beating in her skull.

  They did the charade and logged birds; some species they could name but most they could not. The spotter ’scope, used by Sh
agger, stood high on a tripod, and Abigail was beside him with binoculars. The sun was high enough for the heat mist to have formed.

  Where they were, the marsh waters were blocked and the ground around the raised walls, bulldozed to safeguard the oil-drilling site against flooding, was bare and cracked. There were precious few birds, endangered or common, to look for and she thought they might have to resort to throwing down bread if they were to get a decent entry into the log.

  They were watched, mostly by kids, but there were adults, too, men. When the first half-dozen kids had turned up, seemingly materialising from open ground without warning, and the first couple of men, Shagger had murmured, ‘Had to happen, miss, like it was written down on a tablet. Two sets of wheels and us, no escort, and out here, putting up the tripod and the telescope. Always was going to create interest . . . and the chance of acquisition. I don’t know how long we can sweat it out.’

  She had said, ‘By now they’ll be in place and will – I hope – have their eyeball.’

  The sun beat down and she sweated. They were, predictably, the main attraction. She could have hoped that the area around the devastated drilling site had been abandoned by the marsh people – that the war and the draining by the dictator, followed by persecution and uncontrolled flooding, then four years of brutal drought, had driven them away. That would have been optimistic. Harding and Hamfist were sleeping, and Corky sat by the broken gate, his face half hidden by his wraparounds, the weapon lying on his legs. By the end of the day it would come to giving out sweets and they would be wrapped in five-dollar bills. Here, co-operation was bought with a high-velocity bullet and blood in the dirt, or by shelling out bribes. Might be why she detested the place and was counting the days till she was out of it – when this piece of work was finished, wrapped up. There might now be forty at the gate.

  They stood and watched. She thought they had a degree of patience unmatched anywhere she had been by any peoples she had known. They stood in the harsh light without water or food. Their entertainment was herself, Shagger and Corky, blocking the easy way into the compound with his rifle. She did not think them hostile yet, merely inquisitive. Later, they might resort to showing pictures, blown up on the photocopier, of a bustard, a bittern or a darter. If they were lucky they had another day in place. If Fortune smiled, it might be three days. Out ahead the mist settled on a horizon of flat earth and reed beds, and far away there was water – where he was. She could remember each cadence of her voice: ‘What did you do that for?’

  And the answer had been that God only knew, an evasion. She did not, would not, make a habit of crouching over a strange man to check the extent of bruising and finding her hands, fingertips, running over a flat stomach and going lower, then grabbing one of his hands and dragging it behind her so that it was under her T-shirt and on her skin. Difficult for Abigail Jones to know why she had made a pitch for this quiet, sometimes taciturn, sometimes mocking man who had walked into her life. It had been a compulsion. Regretted? Shit, no.

  She had not met the guy in Basra, Six, Baghdad or her last London posting who did the business for her. There had not been a lawyer, a banker or an army man who had interested her. The last had been a teacher, mathematics for fourteen-year-olds, in a Lambeth comprehensive. She’d almost lived with him – three nights or four a week. He’d had no money and no prospects, but was fun and intense. He had jacked in the job, put the pension-scheme payments on hold and sold almost everything he owned, then gone to teach – mathematics or anything – in up-country northern Cambodia. He was Peter. He’d asked her, take it or leave it, if she wanted to come with him, but that would have meant resignation and a bust career.

  There hadn’t been another guy since, not in London and not here . . . none of which answered her question. On top of a sleeping-bag in a ruined concrete office building with shell holes to view the stars and glass carpeting the floor, why had she hitched up her robe and lowered herself onto him? She didn’t know. She could still taste him, or imagined it. No regrets, none. What was best, he hadn’t thanked her. He hadn’t assumed he was going into harm’s way with the dawn, and this was a little boost to courage that might have flagged. He hadn’t even seemed surprised, but had been deep in her and had said nothing. It had been good . . . no regrets. He wasn’t out of her mind – and was beyond the haze on the horizon. She wore a moulded earpiece that doubled as a microphone, and the transmitter/receiver was on her belt. It was her link to them, and she wouldn’t anticipate the code message coming through unless their mission was complete and successful, or they needed to abort fast.

  She didn’t expect Shagger – or Hamfist, Corky or Harding – to remark on what had happened in the derelict building that night, but she wouldn’t object to his operational input. He had the experience, which gave his comments value. He was the wrong side of forty, with a little weight gathering across his belt, and he came from the extreme south west of the principality. His parents had slaved through his childhood on a subsistence hill farm, breeding sheep, White Welsh Mountain ewes. He’d gone into the army on leaving the grammar school, joined a para battalion, whereupon his father had ditched his pride and gone bankrupt. Shagger had fought in Africa and the Balkans, done time in Ireland, had been in Afghanistan in 2001 and had left the army the next year, a sergeant. He was one of the drain who had quit to make big money with the private military contractors. He knew about every yard and feature of the road from Baghdad airport to the Green Zone, but he had never quite raised sufficient funds for his goal. He intended, one day, to have the cash in the bank to buy back that farm in the Preseli hills. With each contract he took, Shagger learned more. He gave advice only when it was asked for, and she never rejected it.

  She said, ‘They’re fine for the moment. Nothing hostile.’

  ‘They can see guns and it’s daylight, miss. They’ll chance nothing till it’s dark. They thieve, miss. Always have.’

  ‘To pull back is a last option.’

  ‘It’s the worst option, miss. Here, at least, we might be inside the Golden Hour, or on the edge of it. We have to sweat it out.’

  ‘Would they know about the Golden Hour?’

  ‘They know that back-up’s guaranteed. Act of faith to them. Where they are, they’d need the faith.’

  Badger listened as Foxy murmured translations and interpretations: ‘He’s the security man, the chief. Has a limp so he’s been hurt somewhere. If he was hurt in an accident, it would have been on their roads. If he’s a military casualty it would likely have happened inside Iraq or up in Lebanon. He’s mumbling, doesn’t know what to say, except that she should have faith in God.’

  A benchmark of the work of a croppie, as Badger knew it, was to have binocular or ’scope vision, camera lenses or a directional shotgun microphone aimed at a target, eavesdropping, watching, noting, and be able to strip away the armour with which people tried to shield themselves if they expected to be observed. Few did. Not many understood the qualities he brought to his work, and the capabilities of the gear. It was a basic intrusion and he didn’t care. His life was spent watching men and women, noting small private happiness, tension and moments of pleasure. He was a voyeur: he might have been standing on a street in darkness and gazing at the gaps in bathroom curtains as a target prepared to wash, or looking into lit homes and seeing bitter domestic arguments. He might have been watching a killer burn a victim’s clothing, the sharing of the cash, the arming of a group on their way to a hit, a man weeping or a guard fumbling for words to a terminal patient. The gear enabled croppies to peer inside minds and souls. It didn’t bother him. It was his work.

  ‘She says her committee don’t believe they can carry on without her. The mine programme will fold if she isn’t there. She’s the icon figure who demands action – she repeats that. He nods, doesn’t answer, only says something about belief in God.’

  They had developed the hide through the morning. It was as good as anything Badger could remember. Normal: go in at night and do t
he construction stuff under cover of darkness, be cosy and covert when the light came. Abnormal: to burrow out the scrape and cover it, do the work in the sun’s glare, and have a man with security responsibilities sitting in a chair two hundred yards away. Something to be proud of. He had called the tune, and Foxy had stayed with the earphones clamped on, hadn’t acknowledged that the work was well done – was brilliant. They were on the extremity of the reeds where they were thin, and had taken over a narrow strip of the bare ground, the dried-out mud. He had worked a shallow dip for them no more than fifteen inches deep, and had made a rim wall of the soil. All of it was covered with debris he had painstakingly collected further into the reeds, the same dead fronds that hid the microphone on the mud spit. More fronds masked the cable where it came up out of the water and ran across the mud towards them. A work of art, a collector’s piece. Often the guard raised his binoculars and scanned. Then Badger had been statue still on his stomach, and the gillie suit was embedded with more reeds . . . There’d been no praise. He thought of Alpha Juliet. Difficult not to think of her. Impossible to imagine why she had done it, but he was glad she had.

  ‘He’s called Mansoor – that’s what she calls him. He says he hopes God will watch over her. She says her committee depends too much on her. She says it’s time to go and prepare the children’s food for when they come back from school. I think he’s near to tears. Right, she’s gone, and . . .’

  He was no longer listening. Fran had been good enough to run for a few months, but he’d left and she wouldn’t have cried. There had been two girls while he was still at school, and he’d shagged one while her parents were out at the supermarket, every Friday evening, for a month, the other in the woods near the nuke-weapons factory at Burghfield . . . And a woman PC called Brenda, who ran the organisation side of the team that did surveillance on the gypsy camp where the tinkers who did the country-house burglaries up and down the Thames-valley corridor came from. Nothing important to him. She had been, Alpha Juliet – and there was no one to tell him why she was locked into his mind.