A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  His wife, Lili, had started a strident conversation with the wife of a property developer who had big sites and big contracts for holiday homes up the river and at Travemunde on the coast. His headache mattered little. He could forget it, manufacture a smile and return to her shoulder, or he could walk out on her.

  He went to his car. He had turned a last time in the hope that she would be hurrying after him, but her back was turned and her laughter rang out. He drove towards home and did not know how, if ever, he would regain his liberty. He did not even know the name of the fucking patient . . . and there was no headache, only anger.

  The ring of the telephone would sign a warrant on a man’s life – condemn him.

  Gibbons yearned for it to ring, as if he was pleading for permission to kill the man himself. There were a few still left at Vauxhall Bridge Cross – a little rheumatic in the joints, from a long-gone age – who would have understood his feelings. Not many. They were the unreconstructed warriors of the Cold War, and saw the bloody mess that was the Middle East as a self-inflicted wound that had bred many uncertainties. This band of brothers was left in the shadows of the corridors at the towers, and a younger generation – dressed down, more often than not, in jeans or chinos, shirts without ties or revealing blouses – preached an ethical manifesto, as if such a thing were appropriate in the new world order. Gibbons doubted it. Some shared his view; many did not. The arrangement for the communications was complex, but that was to hide them behind smoke. A message from the forward surveillance men would be sent on shortwave radio – brief transmission because to linger was to leave a footprint – to Abigail Jones and her back-up location. She would communicate with an Agency cell in Baghdad, who would onpass to the NATO base at Vicenza in the foothills of the Italian Alps. From there the message would go to technicians answerable to the Cousin in his service apartment behind Grosvernor Square. He would taste the message. A negative report would be transmitted electronically but an affirmative enough to kick-start the operation, would come through on the telephone. Complicated, but necessary for the process of denial.

  He watched the telephone.

  She had argued, but he had insisted. Len Gibbons had ordered Sarah to take his room key at the club and use the bed booked there. He had felt, increasingly that day, a point was about to be reached of success or failure, and he wanted to be present when the dice rolled, rattled, came to rest. He was now fifty-nine. His wife, Catherine, would have been disarmed to know that her bed partner, soul-mate, craved for a telephone to ring and therefore to consign a man to his death – not a fancy one in hospital with pain-relief drugs available, but in a street, spluttering blood as passers-by hurried on their way. She would not have believed it of him, that he tried to achieve anything so intrinsically vulgar as state-sponsored murder. She didn’t know him, which was as well. If his children, at college, had known their father plotted a killing they might have disowned him and slunk away, ashamed. The neighbours, in a quiet road of semi-detached mock-Tudor homes on a suburban estate in Motspur Park, on the Epsom to Waterloo line, would have winced had they known what was done in their name, as would the members of the gardening club, and the choir he hoped to join at some future date. He willed the phone to ring.

  He had a sandwich to eat and a Coke to drink. He sat at his desk and his universe was the telephone in front of him and its silence.

  It had been a dream but was unfulfilled. He would have liked to visit ancient, historic Rome. He dreamed of walking on the old stones and being among the floodlit temples and squares; it would have been a pilgrim’s journey for Gabbi.

  He could not. Some of those attached to the unit who were sent abroad would have slipped out and taken a fast taxi into the centre of the old city, then walked to the tourist trail. He would not. The magnificence of a great civilisation was a forty-five minute ride down the road, a wonder of the world, but he was a mere functionary. So he did not leave his room, go to the lobby and shout for a taxi.

  A message had been put under his door. He had not seen the courier. Neither had the courier seen Gabbi. From midnight, because time drifted fast, an executive jet aircraft was on standby. If it were needed, he would be told.

  He sat in the darkness of his room, on the unmade bed, and waited.

  She had said, with the light of the fire in her face, ‘It’s very important for the integrity of the survey, and its science, that we are able to work here undisturbed for three more days, maybe two, certainly one.’

  He had said, the brightness of the flames bouncing on his jacket, ‘What is “undisturbed”? How is that important?’

  Abigail Jones said, ‘The arrival here of a military unit would disturb the wildlife we’re observing, and would obstruct our efforts at serious study.’

  The leader of a marsh tribe, the sheikh, said, ‘And your proximity to the border with the Islamic Republic of Iran, your work close to the border, does that require the co-operation of our Iranian friends?’

  ‘Better that co-operation is not requested.’

  ‘And better that information on your presence, as you seek the “integrity of the survey”, is not passed?’

  ‘Better.’

  ‘So many of my people here are confused by your presence. Some who came innocently close have been injured, and some resent strangers near to their villages. These are difficult times for them, times of great hardship. I try to give leadership, but there will be some – younger than myself, with hot tempers – who will say that the military will pay for information about this expedition that surveys our wildlife, and others will believe that the Iranian authorities would also pay handsomely for knowledge of armed men coming close to their border for the purpose of evaluating the flora and fauna of the marshes. I have to lead, and I cannot lead if I am an obstruction to the young.’

  Harding came past her with more wood, from broken packing cases, for the fire. She heard the bleating of sheep. The animals were behind the wall of men waiting close to the sheikh. There would be a signal from their leader. A knife waited in the hands of a man near to the front. Abigail Jones thought the operation hung now on a sheep’s throat. If the signal were made that it be butchered, according to halal methods, negotiations had been concluded satisfactorily. If the sheep was led away, throat intact, and the knife was sheathed, the negotiations had failed and she doubted they would last there through the night. She was not about to back off, and there was in Abigail Jones a powerful sense of the value of retribution. She had served in Amman and Abu Dhabi, but also in Sarajevo as the second officer on the station. She knew the stories of the siege of Sarajevo and the atrocities inflicted, the massacre at Srebrenica and the close-run thing that had been the holding of the Muslim lines at Goražde; she had been involved with the teams of special forces who hunted down the war criminals. There was, familiar to her, a small Serb town named Foc?a. She’d operated there openly and searched for the mean-minded bastards who had done the bulk of the killings: two had been arrested, not important enough to go to The Hague but convicted in local courts. She thought it good that they whiled away their days and nights in cold damp cells . . . There had been a fling with a Bosniak artist down in Mostar, who had thought she was an aid worker. He had painted well, but she no longer had any of his work – the last had gone to the Christian Aid shop down the road from her maisonette. ‘Retribution’ did not cause her any difficulty. He was a man who made bombs. That was enough.

  She asked, ‘What is the cost?’

  ‘The cost of what?’

  She slapped her hands together as if the play-acting was over and business was to be settled. She thought the change of mood necessary. ‘How much for allowing us to complete our survey without interference from the military at al-Amara and al-Qurnah, and without the knowledge of the Revolutionary Guard Corps across the border? What will that cost me?’

  The sheikh wetted his lips and the sheep bleated harshly – she reckoned they had bloody good cause to. She might, then, have killed for a beer.
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  Not much more to say, so neither had said anything.

  Foxy slept now. Badger lay beside him and the other man’s light snoring was soothing, little more than the wind on the reeds. If he grunted he made less noise than when the birds splashed. Best to think about anything else . . . About the scabs on his hip, the back of his thigh and his stomach, under which the wounds oozed and might be infected. About the long and earnest-seeming talk between the Engineer and the goon, which had been too far away to be picked up. A little had: ‘And when we are gone tomorrow, Mansoor, what will you do?’ Gone where? Not said. Foxy had typed it onto the small screen he carried, his notebook, and pushed it towards Badger for him to read. And under it was written, ‘Look for a Sacred Ibis [whoever that is, whatever].’ The suitcase had been packed in the front bedroom and a lamp had been on beside the big bed. Badger could see the children asleep in it. The gear was good, but it wasn’t magic and they had no Merlin. The parents had kept their voices down so as not to wake their children. Nothing went onto the screen of Foxy’s notebook. Twice Badger was passed the headset and was able to listen through the earpiece where he’d broken the plastic coating, but he couldn’t make out the voices. The parents whispered, murmured, and the children slept.

  It was the saddest thing Badger had ever seen. Nothing in his life compared with it. The parents had packed their case and made ready to fly – somewhere – in the morning, and she was dying and the children were being left behind. They had decided – the mother and father – to have the kids in their bed with them this last night. He could look through his life, like a drowning man was supposed to, and he could not recall anything as gut-wrenching as what he saw in the lit bedroom. His mother and father, Paul and Debbie Baxter, had good health except that he’d had a hernia operation four years ago and she had pain in a knee if she walked more than a couple of miles. A grandfather had died on one side and a grandmother on the other, but they’d had good years, good lives, and it had been welcome at the end to both. No car accidents in the family, and no cancers. He had no best friend, so no one he was close to with a crisis to face, and Ged, his best oppo, was fit, and Fran, whom he’d lived with, was in good nick and her father worked out at the gym three days a week. He had been out of general uniform duties too long to remember how it was when he’d been sent, blue lights and sirens, to an RTA and found a guy’s head splattered across the windscreen, or a woman thrown off a bicycle. What was different when he had been at the roadside was that he hadn’t seen the victim before, hadn’t witnessed the man kiss his woman on the step, hug his kids and drop down into his car. He hadn’t had the ringside seat when the woman came dripping out of the shower and her man was giggling, tickling and flicking at the knot that held up the towel. He hadn’t seen them wolf breakfast or make sure that the bills were out of sight and not spoiling their precious time together. They, the bomb-maker and the bomb-maker’s woman, were the saddest couple he had ever watched.

  He could see the hands of his watch. If the case was packed they were going early. When they had gone, it was over. Nothing to stay for. Failure. If they went and there was no destination, it was down the pan – and had failed. The message would be sent. He would retrieve the microphone and draw in the cable. The Bergens would be packed and he would likely carry Foxy half the fucking way to the extraction point. What would he remember of her? Maybe when she’d sat on the bed, the kiddies slept and the case was filled – or when the committee of de-miners had come to the house, sat in the shade to say farewell, and some had cried . . . or when she’d stood alone in the light by the pier and the dinghy, leaning on the stick and watching the birds. Perhaps she saw an otter or followed the pigs with her eyes and enjoyed the peace.

  It was illegal.

  Danny ‘Badger’ Banks had put up his hand, volunteered, had signed up, and it was deniable, outside the law. Not about harvesting and not about culling, and not about the blank images, unseen, between the animals in the market pens and the meat hanging from hooks in a butcher’s shop. About an illegal murder. They had talked of the bombs in the shit beside the road, and the mutilations. The major had said, The improvised explosive device is the weapon that has snatched victory from the coalition and replaced it with a very fair imitation of defeat . . . There is a small number of clever, innovative men capable of wrong-footing us so consistently that the body-bags keep coming home and the injured with wounds they’ll carry to their graves . . . We call an enemy a Bravo. Rashid Armajan is a big bad Bravo and we should take every opportunity to locate him and . . . It would be murder, and those helping in the killing would be charged as accessories.

  The night was quiet around him.

  The lights inside the house were out, and the curtains were drawn at that bedroom window. He had not seen her undress, didn’t know with what intimacy her husband might have helped her with straps and fastenings. The man was not a jihadist who would explode himself in a carriage in an underground tunnel, and he was not a smuggler of Class-A stuff, polluting streets and youngsters and breeding addicts. He was not a break-off from a splintered Irish republican team. The man, the Engineer, did not threaten Danny ‘Badger’ Baxter, or anyone he knew.

  They had talked about the town the coffins came through, the military wing of the Selly Oak hospital, of the place in Surrey where the prosthetics were fitted and mobility was taught again. It was not his agenda.

  Badger reckoned he walked at others’ beck and call. Like he was a dog and a whistle blew. Foxy had told him he was deniable and an accessory, that it was illegal, and he had answered, ‘Thank you.’ What to do?

  His mind churned, and his eyes hurt from exhaustion. The scabs hurt worse, and the last water bottle was dry. The mosquito bites itched and his guts were full but he couldn’t empty them. He didn’t know where to find answers.

  It was the last morning. He had the headset on and waited for the first light to be switched on in the house. Then he would wake Foxy, whom he had thanked. He saw the flash of a cigarette lighter to the right and the goon came out of the barracks. There was a slight smear on the horizon, and the day started.

  Chapter 12

  When it had the light to see where it flew, the bird left its perch on a broken tree. Its place, a favourite for two years, was now dried out, and the mud under it had become a wizened mosaic so it could no longer wade there and hunt. It had not fed for three days, but the bird was a creature of close-governed habits and its instincts preserved its loyalty to that place. Hunger drove it to abandon its perch.

  It laboured into the air, weakened by lack of food. It was up before the dawn light had spread, and before the eagles had soared high to search for prey. It worked hard to get elevation and to feel the draught of wind under its broad wings.

  It went over areas of sunbaked mud, once covered with a film of water, and over what were now narrow drains and had once been deep waterways, and skirted a collection of huts that would have been in danger of annual flooding when the bird was young but now were marooned. Below it a few skinny, undernourished water buffalo meandered in search of lakes and lagoons.

  The ibis flew towards water, to the east where it would find food: small fish, frogs, mice or immature rats, beetles, spiders, butterflies and moths. The bird was female. The last year, her eggs had addled. Hunger had driven her from the stick nest in the tree and she had spent too many hours away, looking for the food that would sustain her. The ground had been arid and without life, and the village where in previous years she had scavenged was now deserted. Once she had seen the carcass of her mate but she had not fluttered down to feed off it, had left the mess of bones and feathers for the crows to peck at.

  She had broad wings, white with black-tipped feathers. As she flew, climbed, a rhythm returned to the flaps that took her forward. It tired her to fly any distance, but she would go as far as her strength permitted in her search. A column of smoke spiralled near to some buildings and she saw people there, swung away and did a half-circle around them: she had no love o
f people.

  When the sun edged over the horizon, she felt the first of the day’s warmth on her wings and back, white-feathered, and on her neck and head, black-feathered and with a black beak. The sun encouraged her to beat her wings harder, and soon she found a rivulet to follow. Then it became a stream, and a different smell seemed to come from the ground. There were reed banks.

  She flew lower.

  Beyond the reed banks there were expanses of water, not clear and dark as it would have been if the level was deep beyond the length of her wading legs. She looked for water that reflected the skies and in which she could see the mud bottom, not thick weed.

  She saw a building that had small lights around it, the green of the reeds and a bare space of dried dirt on which debris had accumulated, and she saw a little promontory just above the water and at the end a mass of dried leaves. She made a clumsy landing because of the time she had been flying. She settled, had barely steadied herself, then readied to strike. She was listed as a bird deserving the status of ‘conservation concern’ and ‘threatened’. In the last survey of the marshlands, while warfare raged around the dedicated lovers of the ibis, it was estimated that only twenty-six adults lived in this habitat. She hit with her beak. The strike was brutal, fast: she had a frog.

  It was a fat frog and it struggled, but its existence was already forfeit. It was put down on the reed fronds, and held by the beak until the claws at the foot of the bird’s left leg could pinion it down.