A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  He lay on the floor and the concrete was cool. He waited for the pain to start, and wondered how long, in Lübeck, they would need him to resist, and how long he could last. A match was scraped and he smelt cigarette smoke. It came close to him, closer, past his head and over his chest. The agony was on his stomach as the lit cigarette touched. Foxy screamed.

  ‘He’s switched the damn thing off,’ she said.

  ‘Well, he would, miss,’ Corky said.

  It was the fourth time she had tried, the fourth time she had been answered by a crackle of static. The weight lay on her shoulders. She would carry the glory of success and bear the burden of failure. It was a problem with these wretched deniables that the responsibilities were not shared. There was much that Abigail Jones now regretted. She had agreed that he should stay in place, watch and learn, and not come out. Not shared, because there was no bank of bureaucrats in an open-plan office who all owned a piece of the operation. She had it on her own. She could talk only with her bodyguards – not her mentors or her think-tank: none of them had a degree from Warwick in politics, economics and modern history, or Six’s training on grappling with the ‘consequences of actions’ or ‘cutting and running on the Iran-Iraq border’. Had the problem concerned single-parent fatherhood from a distance, Hamfist might have contributed, and Corky if it had been regeneration of Provo heartlands (West Belfast). Shagger was big on the economics of hill farming, and Harding on trailer-park life.

  It had been sharp of Corky, close to insolence.

  She was curt, as if her control was ebbing: ‘What does that mean, exactly what?’

  They could play dumb, be on the edge. ‘He would switch off, wouldn’t he, miss?’

  ‘Why? It’s hardly professional.’

  They had a fire in the scorched oil drum, and there was enough timber from the buildings to keep it burning. They were sitting around it, and she reckoned that the crowd would be back at the gate in the morning, and that the bribe chucked at the sheikh hadn’t a long life. There was a grunt, almost derision, and she reckoned it was Shagger’s. Was any of it professional? Any of it?

  She said, ‘It’s unprofessional to switch off communications. Is that an area of debate?’

  Hamfist was quiet, reflective: ‘His partner’s been taken, miss, and if he’d left the radio on, the chance is you’d have ordered him out.’

  Shagger had a good voice, might have been to the standard a choir wanted: ‘He’ll go when there’s nothing else he can do. Won’t be before he has to. He’d think, miss, the most unprofessional thing he could do is to turn his back on a mate, go before it’s time.’

  From Hamfist: ‘He’d have to live with it the rest of his days. And it would track him every hour of every night.’

  She snapped, with bitterness: ‘But there’s nothing he can do.’

  From Harding: ‘It’s like keeping a vigil, and it’s what a man owes to another. First light, ma’am, he’ll come. Forget about Badger, think about Foxy. Badger’ll be good, but Foxy’ll have it bad. How much time is needed in that German town? How much is that time going to cost him? The time Foxy buys’ll come expensive. You with me, ma’am?’

  She felt small, shrunken. They’d swamped her irritation at a radio being switched off and turned her attention, four-square, to the man with the trimmed moustache and the clipped voice, who was beyond reach and in need of prayers. The flames played on her face, and she shuddered.

  Chapter 15

  He said nothing.

  The questions came in Farsi and Arabic, in halting English and Pashto. English was always the last of the series.

  He answered to none.

  Who was he? What was his name? When the bedlam of languages had been used, and he’d answered none, he was beaten.

  The goon did not use any special weapon: there was no hardwood truncheon, no lead-tipped baton, no leather-coated whip. The instrument was a length of builder’s wood. Nothing refined.

  His underpants had been taken off him. They stank. He thought they would be soiled. His boot, also, had been dragged off, but his socks had been left. They, too, stank, and were sodden and tight on his feet. He could see. The blindfold had been removed. The room had no window and a light burned in a ceiling recess, covered by a wire-mesh grille that soaked up some of the bulb’s power so the room was in shadow. Two guards stood by the door. He reckoned they’d have been Basij, conscripted, part-time warriors and the lowest of the low – Home Guard stuff. They had automatic rifles that they held warily. There was a ring on the wall, and a rope was tied to it. The far end was lashed to his right ankle. He was no threat to them, and had no chance of escape. He couldn’t have risen to his feet, bullocked past the goon, incapacitated or disarmed the two guards, opened the door and charged off down the corridor. Even so, the guards were tense, and armed. He couldn’t have done anything because his arms had been pulled behind his back, and his wrists were bound together with farmers’ twine, the knot tight enough to restrict blood flow.

  He didn’t answer, and couldn’t protect himself.

  When he was beaten, if he tried to wriggle away, get onto his side, face the wall and present his spine, his head or his upper arm was grabbed. He was pulled back and turned, with a boot, onto his back, his privates and lower stomach targets for the wood. Twice more he had been burned.

  Who was he? What was his name?

  There was blood on his face from the cuts on his cheeks below the eye sockets and from his nose – already broken, he thought – and from the split on his upper lip. He didn’t answer, although he could have done. I am a detective sergeant of the Metropolitan Police Service and currently attached to Box 500. His name was Joseph Foulkes, born 8 April 1960, married first to Liz and second to Ellie, two kids the first time round.

  It would have been hard to answer, though: bits of his teeth lay on the concrete floor and his tongue had swollen to double its size. Had he given his name, it was likely that more of his teeth pieces would have worked loose and had to be spat clear.

  He said nothing. Defiance was natural to him. So far – cigarettes stubbed on his stomach, blows from the wood and kicks – he could absorb it. Bloody pain was manageable. It wouldn’t last long. The defiance was melded with sheer obstinacy. He was of the age when kids had gone to see black-and-white films, had read close-print books and knew of Odette Hallowes, and Yeo-Thomas, who was the White Rabbit, and of Violette Szabo. He was of the age when he had passed judgement on naval personnel captured in the Shatt al-Arab waterway who had seemed to thank the bastards of the Revolutionary Guard Corps for the humiliations and mock-executions and had almost apologised for navigation cock-ups. The stories of childhood had stayed with him. The memory of news bulletins, and older men’s disgust, was sharp. He told the goon nothing.

  There was a table in the room. There had been a moment when the blindfold had been stripped off and he had seen a clean notepad on the table, with two pencils. The top page was blank. The bastard expected to fill it when he, Foxy, did the canary bit. The page stayed blank. It was his target to keep it so.

  The goon did not know who he was. The goon moved on. What was his mission? He was asked in Farsi, Arabic and English, then again in Farsi and finally in Pashto. The wood was raised as he was given a second to show willingness to answer. He could see the wood but his eyes were misted and narrowed from the blows. He could have said: A colleague and I are on a deniable mission to observe the home of Rashid Armajan, bomb-maker, and using techniques of surveillance as practised in covert rural observation post procedures, with a shotgun mike. We learned that Armajan and his wife were headed for Lübeck where she has a medical consultation and he has an appointment with . . .

  It was about time drifting, and he didn’t know how much was needed. What was his mission? Maybe, already, the Engineer had reached Germany. Maybe, the following morning, afternoon or evening he would be targeted – if Foxy answered the question What is your mission?. Telephone or radio calls, text messages or emails would fly, and a
shield would be placed in front of the man. He would be inside a security bubble and the chance would be gone. A shite-face would say that Foxy Foulkes had not delivered and there’d be a cock-sucker on hand to agree. Pig obstinate, and knew it because Liz – first wife – had told him so.

  The wood came down. The goon bastard swung it with full force. Foxy’s problem – there were many but the one topping the list: he didn’t know where the blow would land and couldn’t wriggle to avoid its impact. It was on the shins. No flesh there, just skin on bone. Done with the flat of the wood to inflict pain, not the edge, which might have broken the tibia. He might not say anything but he was near to screaming.

  The wood was lifted again. Foxy looked up at the face. He didn’t see hate, only frustration, and the wood came down. He jack-knifed because it was in the groin, on the shrivelled little thing that Ellie – two months back – had laughed at when he’d walked naked into the bedroom from the bathroom. She’d turned her back on him and gone back to her book. Great waves of heaving, wanting to vomit, convulsed Foxy. The wood went up again and he couldn’t help himself. He no longer had the strength to cross his legs. He was humiliated, helpless and the pain sources competed, from his feet to the crown of his skull. He didn’t know how much time they needed.

  He was hit there again.

  The questions came in a babble of languages. He didn’t answer.

  He used the tactic he had been told of.

  He hit the prisoner again with the wood. He couldn’t see the man’s privates but he could aim for the stomach, and was rewarded with a grunt. The breath bubbled blood in the mouth. When he had been in the north of Iraq, before the injury, men had been taken by the resistance – under supervision of the al-Quds – and denounced as collaborators. Those who served the Great Satan were condemned, but first they were encouraged – with planks, boots, lit cigarettes and fingernail extraction – to tell of their contacts, the safe-houses where they met intelligence officers, and the targets they spied on. Some died prematurely under questioning. Others talked in hoarse whispers and had to be carried outside to be shot. A few surrendered what information was wanted at the sight of the match lighting the first cigarette and walked to the killing place. Sometimes electricity was used but not often, or a man was hooded and made to kneel, then would hear a pistol being armed. He would feel the muzzle against the back of his head, then hear the click as the hammer came down. There was no bullet in the chamber, but he would foul his trousers and wet himself. They did that as much for amusement as to break a man.

  He sweated. No window, the door shut, no fan. He had started with blows that had not exerted him and had won nothing. Now he hit with all the strength he could muster. They had been very few, the collaborators who had not bent under a beating.

  His father had told Mansoor of what was done in the gaol at Ahvaz. The bombers and assassins – Ahvaz Arabs – suffered heavily as the interrogators built pictures of the networks controlling them, and were not pretty to view before they went to the gallows.

  Mansoor had no doubt that pain loosened tongues and broke resolve. The frustration: he did not know who he had.

  Mansoor had assumed that the man now stripped and spreadeagled in front of him, unable to protect himself, would talk after a brief display of defiance. The message sent by radio to the security section of the IRGC had not identified him as an al-Quds Brigade officer, although his name was on it, and his location at the border post on the sector that faced the Iraqi town of al-Qurnah. There, An intruder has been apprehended. Investigations are ongoing, and an officer with an escort should be sent tomorrow morning to take the prisoner into custody in Ahvaz. All deliberately vague.

  The frustration grew with each blow he struck, and the silence that followed it. Twice, he had crouched beside the bloodied face and put his ear near to where the front teeth had been battered out because he was certain the man would answer him. He had heard coughing and groans. He did not know the identity of the man, or the purpose of his mission. It would have helped Mansoor had he gone outside, into the evening air, taken a chair close to a fire that would disperse the mosquitoes, and not allowed anyone close to him. Had he sat, sipped some juice and calmed, matters now clouded would have clarified. He stayed in the room, used the wood again, and yelled the questions. Who was the man? What was his mission? No answer came.

  It had been a dream of glory.

  In the dream, men came from Ahvaz in the morning. A prisoner would be brought from the cell at the back of the barracks and given to them. With the prisoner there would be an envelope containing a full confession, listing his name, his operation, his controller. The light would be coming up. His men would be armed, ready, and he would tell the senior investigators who had travelled from Ahvaz that he had no more time to talk with them as he would now be making a complex search of the area and would conduct a thorough follow-up. In the dream, he was congratulated for his diligence, and shown deference. In the dream, later, further praise came from his own unit. He had dreamed of the praise, had even recited in silence the words of congratulation showering down on him.

  He hit the man again, and again, and again, drew more blood and darkened more bruises. The control had gone from Mansoor’s voice and the questions were no longer soft-spoken but shouted, high-pitched.

  He lit another cigarette.

  He started again, at the beginning, and asked the first question: who was he? As he had at the beginning, he dragged on the cigarette, let the tip glow, then bent over the stomach. His hand crossed the skin and went towards the hair. The urine ran. He pressed the cigarette down. The man screamed.

  Badger heard him.

  The scream – Foxy’s – was a knife cut in the darkness. Before, there had been the dulled sounds of the frogs, the coots and the ducks, and of the pair of pigs that still rooted in the edges of the reed bed. There were sprints by water birds and territory scuffles, but Foxy’s scream was a slicing wire, and another followed it.

  He sat very still and very tense.

  Badger would go when he had to. Then he would switch on his communications and make a last staccato call. He would give an ‘expected time of arrival’ at the extraction point, but not yet.

  He expected that the dawn would come, the sun would poke up, announcing one more stinking hot day, and he would see – in the magnification of his binoculars – the arrival of military transport, lorries and jeeps. Soldiers, not these crap guys but trained men, would spill out and the search would begin, with cordon lines and others sent forward at the sides to give cover fire. Then it would be right for him to quit. He might also see, before he slipped into the water behind him and the forest thickness of the reeds, them taking Foxy away. He might be on a stretcher or might be dragged. If he was upright, his head would be slumped and a cloth bound around it. The blood, the cuts and bruises would be easy to see, even at that distance. He would have done what he could, stayed to the limits of obligation, and he would track back towards the extraction point. He was confident he would be ahead of the follow-up force – and two things were certain.

  Two? Just two.

  First: no bright young spark from the Prudential Insurance sales team was going to write a life policy for Foxy. A slow smile played on Badger’s face. There had been a funeral for a CROP technique instructor, young, killed by stomach cancer, before Badger’s time but still talked of. When the coffin had been carried out of a packed church to go to the crematorium, a crackly recording of Gracie Fields doing her hit song, ‘Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye’, had played and the whole congregation had begun to clap. Many were weeping buckets, and they’d kept the nearby pub open till past midnight. It was said to have been the best funeral moment ever. Badger always smiled when he thought of it – he wondered if Foxy had been there.

  Second: an operation was unravelling and its security had been breached. There would be Cancel flashes and Abort instructions. Humour was good for squaddies and croppies, fire teams and ambulance people, but outsiders �
�� other than the psychiatrists – reckoned it offensive and loutish. They understood fuck-all.

  The scream came once more.

  Fainter, with a blunter cutting edge. That would not mean that the pain was less: it was a sign that his strength was down, and the fight was draining.

  He had no protection now from the mosquitoes. The clear ground where the hide had been made was around four foot above the water level. Badger’s place now was on the reverse slope from where the hide had been and his boots were just clear of the water. His body was on the incline and only his head, covered in camouflage scrim net, broke the top line. He had the binoculars with him and the night-sight. One of the bergens was against his boots and the thin rope, holding the small inflatable, with the second bergen in it, was round his ankle. He was ready to go, but not before the time came.

  Badger remembered when he’d been a young police officer and they’d escorted ambulances into Accident and Emergency with knife and gun victims. He would see men and women sitting on plastic chairs in the corridors and know that behind doors or screens a life was ebbing; they were there to express solidarity, a sort of love and friendship. He would stay as long as he could. Badger could picture them now: they had politeness and dignity, and seemed grateful to him for his concern. There was often a bit of a choke in his throat when he slipped away to resume his duty, and went out of their lives. It was an obligation to stay – here and at the Royal Bristol Infirmary or the Royal United in Bath.