A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘What do you do?’

  A simple and unemotional answer: ‘I make the bombs that are put beside the road.’

  ‘Good bombs? Clever bombs?’

  ‘I am told the counter-measures, electronics, are difficult, that I am ahead of the American scientists, and the British. I am told I am the best.’

  ‘I understand why you travel in secrecy, then, and have no identity.’

  ‘To what purpose to be the best while my wife is dying?’

  ‘You are right to go in secrecy, without a name. Iraq and Afghanistan?’

  ‘More sophisticated in Iraq, but we teach the Afghan resistance about basic devices. There, they do not need such advanced devices as I made for the Iraq theatre, my best work, but I have influence on what is used in Afghanistan.’

  ‘And we see on the television many funerals in NATO countries because of the bombs beside the road. If they knew of you they would kill you. Do I approve, disapprove, of what you do? I do not interfere in matters I cannot influence. You should have no fear that I will allow any feelings to dictate my decisions concerning your wife. Thank you for allowing me to breathe the smoke.’

  The moon was at its height and there was good light over the clear ground. Badger caught two rats on the periphery of his vision, extreme right side of the 150-degree arc he was capable of. When the moon went down past the horizon, Badger would take the two bergens and leave nothing to show he had been present, a witness to the place. The rats came from the reed beds to his right and straight towards him.

  There were people who did not like rats, and people who were scared shitless by them. There were people who saw rats as vermin, to be slaughtered.

  Badger did not feel strongly about them. They scurried towards him and the one behind gave slight squeaking sounds. He couldn’t have said if it was twenty minutes, half an hour, longer or shorter, since he had last heard the scream – it had been weaker the last time. The lights in the house were out, but the security ones were lit. There was no movement beyond the pacing of the two guards who watched the single-storey building, and another guard – uniform and assault rifle – who sat under a tree. One more leaned against the outer door of the barracks. He could see the guard at the door clearest because he was in the range of the most powerful light, which beamed down from the lamp-post.

  They came towards him.

  The smaller one, greyer than the other, came to Badger’s side, skipped onto the small of his back and was over him and gone without a backward glance. He had barely felt its weight. The other had a more russet coat and a longer tail, well scaled and as long as its body. It was down to training that Badger could observe and note every moment of an event that seemed, at the time, insignificant. They said that, in the world of the jihadists and of the high-value targets in organised crime, the little moments that seemed to hold no significance were those that might put a puzzle piece in place. Unlikely that there would be importance in the movement of a rat across his body, but he noted it. It came on a slightly altered track and had veered towards his shoulders. It came onto Badger’s arm, went over his armpit with a brief sniffing stop, was on his right shoulder, then the nape of his neck. It paused there, was close to his ear, and there were the sounds, faint, of its breathing. It went forward, crossed the crown of Badger’s head and a claw seemed to catch in the netting of his headpiece. It came down onto his forearms, then his hands, covered with camouflage cream, which held the binoculars. It stopped there, he saw the glint of its eyes, a yellowed amber. Perhaps it was aware, at that moment, of larger eyes watching it or felt the beat of Badger’s heart, but it was not fazed. It moved off him and went by the image-intensifier, laid on the ground, and was gone. He had had many such encounters and—

  The scream came.

  It didn’t matter to Badger that the sound was even fainter than before. He clutched the binoculars, had nothing else to hold on to.

  The rats, together again, were exposed on the open ground in front of him and the moonlight was on them. The difference in colour was lost, their size seemed to merge and the length of their tails. Badger could have sworn that both rats stiffened at the scream, like it was a sound alien in their world.

  He listened for the scream to come again, shared the pain a little. And he saw the faraway lights across the lagoon. Then his attention was taken by the rats: they had found the carcass of the bird. It was tugged between them and feathers flew. He watched them maul and mangle it, but another scream did not come.

  He understood that he had fainted. He had no sense of time gone. His first image was of the bucket. The goon held it, swung it, and the water doused him. It would have been the second or third bucket because water cascaded off him towards a growing pool in the corner. It was aimed at his head and came in a wall towards him, splashing hard. It went up his nose, into his mouth and some forced a passage into his eyes, which were slitted with the swelling.

  Foxy must have lifted his head. An automatic reflex gesture, not one he controlled. His vision was distorted, and although he looked up into the face of the goon he couldn’t see the expression: anger, frustration, panic that his prisoner might have croaked on him? There was laughter. Foxy didn’t know whether it was humour, or manic.

  A barrage of questions was thrown at him, none new. He didn’t know how long his fainting had protected him. The questions bludgeoned him, but he had no chance to reply. He thought the goon as weak as himself and . . . The cigarette was on the table, laid across the packet. A match was out of the box, and on the piece of wood he had been clubbed with. He would have fainted as the cigarette was about to be lit – as if he had been granted a stay, because the pain was not worth inflicting if he was unconscious.

  Questions, and their answers: I am Sergeant Joseph Foulkes of the Metropolitan Police Service. I am on a deniable mission put together by the Secret Intelligence Service of Great Britain. As an expert in covert rural surveillance, I was tasked to observe Rashid Armajan, the Engineer. I have a good working knowledge of Farsi and deployed a microphone directed at Armajan’s home. I heard it said that Armajan, the Engineer, travelled to the German city of Lübeck with his sick wife. I relayed that information to my back-up team who are across the frontier in Iraq. I do not have a schedule, but in the next few hours an operation will be launched to kill Armajan in Lübeck. I am told that the killing is justified because of Armajan’s talent in constructing the electronics of roadside bombs. They were the answers he had not given, would give. There was a threshold.

  He saw the cigarette picked up, the filter lodged in the goon’s mouth. A match was raised and the box was lifted.

  He had been to the threshold of pain, and could not go there again. Through the swollen lids, tears ran . . . They would be in an officers’ mess, after dinner had been served with drinks: What I heard, not for repeating, we had their stellar IED boffin in our sights in Europe after a clandestine operation on the Iran border, and that guy, Foulkes – self-styled surveillance wizard – was captured, interrogated, only had to hang on a few hours, keep his mouth shut, but spilled the lot. We didn’t get the boffin, which would have been worth popping corks for. A variety of the theme would have passed between beds and cubicles in a ward at Selly Oak where the military casualties were cared for: What I was told, the bastard was damn near in the gun sight, but this guy talked . . . And in a gymnasium at the place south of London where they taught the amputees a degree of mobility: He talked a good talk about himself, but he spat it out and didn’t give our people the time they needed. That was what they would say and where they would say it.

  The match flashed and the cigarette was lit. The goon had taken a handkerchief from his pocket, stained, and Foxy knew it would be used to wipe a place on his privates, make it dry, so that the cigarette was not extinguished by the water that had been thrown at him.

  Foxy did not cringe and didn’t attempt to bury himself in the angle between the concrete of the floor and the cement blocks of the wall. He knew the threshold would
be crossed when he was burned. Everything he would say when the pain scorched his skin was in his mind.

  The goon came close, limp prominent, and bent over him.

  Foxy’s arms were tied behind his back and his right ankle was fastened by rope to a ring in the wall. He was very calm. Foxy was on his back and seemed to spread out his left leg. It was as if he exposed himself further, was more naked, could not defend himself and was close to the cracking point, the threshold and denial of the Code’s principles. He needed only to be tipped.

  The goon was over him. Damn little strength left, and all of it so precious. The bruising, the cuts, the burns, the insect bites, now infected and raw, seemed less alive. He flexed the muscles of his left leg. The goon, Mansoor, crouched, and the handkerchief came down towards a place an inch or so above the hair at the pit of Foxy’s stomach. His skin was rubbed hard, dried and smoke poured from the goon’s mouth. The handkerchief went back into the pocket. The cigarette was taken from the lips and went down towards the skin.

  It touched. Foxy reacted.

  Didn’t feel the pain, not that time. It took all of his strength, and more, from reservoirs he hadn’t known existed any longer. His leg came up straight. Then he swivelled as best he could on his backside, the leg bent sharply at the knee, and the impact pitched the goon over. His weight would have gone onto the damaged leg and he stumbled. The cigarette dropped, he lost his balance and sprawled.

  Foxy locked him with his leg.

  He had no weapon. His arms were behind his back so he couldn’t punch. His ankle was roped so he couldn’t kick. He couldn’t grapple with the goon’s belt or get to his throat. He did the head-butt.

  A young policeman, called to closing-time fights in pubs and late-night brawls in the streets, had learned that back-street combat was with a broken bottle or the bone at the front of the skull. He had seen it done, and known of the pain it inflicted on hard men. He held the goon close with his legs around the man’s waist and slammed his head into his face. He heard the squeal.

  The pub and street fighters he had seen as a young policeman went for the nose.

  Foxy hit again and again. The guards had come from the door and his ears were gripped. The small of his back was unprotected and boots lashed the bottom of his spine. For a moment the goon’s ear was close to Foxy’s mouth.

  It was hard for Foxy to speak through the split lips, swollen gums and the gaps where teeth had been. He spoke in good, correct Farsi into the ear: ‘Who is fucking your mother tonight, Mansoor? Who is riding her? Is there a queue round the block waiting to fuck your mother? What do you do, Mansoor, while your mother is fucking the street? Do you get kids to suck you off?’ Vile language, learned well. He was dragged clear and his face was hit. His leg was bent back so that the goon could be pulled off him. He knew those sentences, in Farsi, by heart and had often spoken them. It was under instruction by the interrogators of the Joint Force Intelligence Team, when he’d done terping, that he had mastered the lines guaranteed to make an Arab prisoner or captured Iranian lose any vestige of cool. The interrogators knew their work, and Foxy had seen its success many times.

  The goon was on his feet. He flailed his arms to drive back the guards, his chest heaved and blood flowed from his distorted nostrils. His feet stamped, and the bar of wood was in his hand.

  The first blow struck him – Foxy would have been at the threshold if there had been another cigarette – and more deluged down on him. He saw nothing in the cell. The table was gone, and the cigarette packet, the matchbox, the chair, the guards at the door and the light in the ceiling. There was darkness. Foxy no longer fought the beating. He was overwhelmed, and his strength had gone.

  He saw, at the last, a man in a darkened street. He wore a black frock coat and carried a top hat in one hand, a cane in the other, and walked proudly. It was the last thing Foxy saw – and the man’s head was lowered in respect.

  ‘Still a good turn out, is there, Doug?’ he was asked.

  They were lucky in his village to have their own British Legion branch and the building was adequate, in need of repairs but the fabric was sound. Doug Bentley always came for a drink, or three, on the evening before a repatriation.

  There were four beers in his round, all low-strength, which reflected the ages of his friends. He was standing and collecting the glasses to take them back to the bar. They couldn’t afford a paid steward any longer, and it was accepted that glasses were reused, not clean ones for when each drink was poured. ‘Still plenty there. It’s held up well.’

  ‘Third in a fortnight? Right, Doug?’ From an old Pioneer Corps man.

  He paused. ‘That’s right, the third. It’s five have come through. Anyone want any crisps or peanuts?’

  ‘My Annie won’t watch it.’ From a paratrooper who had done Cyprus and Aden. ‘Upsets her. I used to watch regular, but I don’t now. It’s bad enough seeing it on TV, but it must be pretty difficult, Doug, week in and week out – for you, I mean. Yes, nuts, thanks.’

  It wasn’t talked about much in the bar – it was in the early days, but it had been running for three years now. Doug Bentley had carried their standard for all of that time, and no one else had jostled him for the job. He didn’t talk about it unless another raised the subject of Bassett and the hearses coming up the High Street. He would have liked to share it more often – not just with Beryl – and the opportunity yawned. He took it. ‘It’s a damn sight less upsetting for us than for the parents and the grannies, the brothers, the nephews, all the kids from the family. One last week, a woman cried her heart out. All quiet except for her sobbing. It went right through to your guts. She was weeping her eyes out in the road. We all felt it, all of us in our line. What I remember, the week before, was all the hands that were just laid on the glass of the hearse, the nearest they could get to the coffin with the flag on it, and that same one – a big family and friends group had come over from the east of England – an older man shouted, “Well done, boys,” for the two of them going through, and others picked it up. “Well done, boys,” and they were all clapping. It gets in your bones, like rheumatism does. I wouldn’t miss it. I say that in honesty.’

  ‘I’m the crisps, the bacon ones, Doug.’ He was a veteran of Suez, artillery. ‘Do they really like it, being out there and having the world watching them? Nothing like that in our day – were popped down out there. Seems unnatural to me, like it’s a spectacle – I’m not criticising you, Doug.’

  ‘Fair enough. I was chatting with a sergeant from a unit last month, and he said the military and the families appreciate people being there – like it’s recognition. Could be called appreciation. It’s what’s said . . . I tell you, when they finish coming through Bassett I don’t know what I’ll do with myself . . . Right, four pints, one crisps and we’ll have two nuts.’

  He went to the bar.

  His neighbours thought it was morbid, and had told Beryl so, him and her going off so regular on the first bus to Swindon, the second bus to Wootton Bassett, and the long reverse journey. While he was down at the Legion, the night before a repatriation, she would be running the iron over his charcoal slacks to get a decent crease and brushing the shoulders of his blazer, the one with the Pay Corps badge. If she’d time she’d polish his three medals, and before he’d come out he’d do his shoes so that they gleamed and put the whitener on his formal gloves. Last thing, she’d check there were no crumples in the black ribbon she tied with a flourished bow at the top of the standard pole. His neighbours had empty, vacant lives and nothing to lift them. Doug Bentley thought himself blessed, and also that a hole, wide enough for a volcano to spew from, would be left in his remaining years when the repatriations stopped coming into the Lyneham base, and the hearses no longer drove up the hill into the town.

  He brought the drinks back to their table, with the crisps and the nuts, and the artillery veteran asked if there was time for a cribbage game, and the paratrooper – who had last jumped thirty-nine years before – said there was
; the Pioneer Corps man, who had spent two years digging latrines on tank ranges in Germany, agreed. Then they’d all three looked at Doug Bentley for his opinion: time for a cribbage game? They had to nudge him.

  He’d been far away, just down the High Street from the Cross Keys, waiting for the command to raise the standards and . . . He said he’d enjoy that.

  Len Gibbons watched.

  Too many years since he’d been in a long raincoat and a trilby, hugging shadows in a doorway and listening: it was enough to make a new man of him. He saw the target, the target’s wife and the medical man. They paused on the step and the sleet had eased. He saw also the car across the width of the pavement close to the kerb. The driver reached back and flicked open the rear passenger door.

  The car had been there, on a restricted-parking line, all the time Gibbons had been in place, but the opening of the door, and the flooding of the interior with light, enabled him to see the driver: hardly a taxing identification. Dark-haired, swarthy, stubble, and a shirt buttoned to the throat without a collar. The car, an Opel saloon and granite grey, did not have Corps Diplomatique plates, but Gibbons reckoned it was an embassy vehicle. He had, of course, done his discreet walk round the block, the café across the campus street. The car was all the security offered to the target and his wife. He used a little of a veteran’s tradecraft. He had good ears, could hear – Catherine said – every cat that came into the garden to scratch up the new bedding plants; he wore a hearing aid. It was a tip he’d picked up from the Provos: they had worn them when their hit teams advanced on potential attack sites and needed to know if they were covered by military or police guns; with an aid, they could hear better when a weapon was cocked. Gibbons had borrowed one from the technical people in the basement annex. It fitted comfortably, and was good value.