A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  It was said first in German, as if the consultant made his point in that language, then repeated in English, but not in Farsi. The consultant had personally escorted them to the doorway, and said, ‘I shall look at the MRI and the X-rays overnight. Tomorrow I can tell you what is possible and what is not. Please, your appointment with me is at eight thirty. You understand that I can promise nothing.’

  He was gone. The target supported his wife down the one step and across the pavement, then helped her into the car. Gibbons saw her face, haggard, and saw the target’s, numbed. The door slammed, the light was cut, and the car drove away, no ceremony . . . Incredible. The lack of security, the absence of a full escort, astonished Gibbons. It told him that as yet the authorities had not reacted to a capture in the marshes. Extraordinary. He didn’t follow the car and had no need to know where the target would sleep that night. He didn’t want to test the professionalism of the driver and give him the opportunity to recognise a tail in place. But it had been a satisfactory evening that nothing had blighted. He had gained the knowledge that would facilitate a killing, its location and time. His step was almost jaunty as he walked to his own vehicle.

  The Cousin was across the street and low in his car – it was near to the bus stop where parents were waiting for their youngsters to get back to Roeckstrasse. He attracted no attention. He saw the big car, symbol of an individual’s triumph in his chosen field, sweep off the road into the driveway, the tyres scattering gravel. The house was dark, obviously empty, and offered no welcome. The car door was swung shut.

  The breadwinner was home and no one greeted him. That stirred a chord with an old warrior from the Agency: he was now, most of the time, out to grass, and would only be dragged back – not, of course, inside the Langley complex – when deniable work was called for. In his own life, before she’d finally quit, there had been times enough when he had come home late, tired, to find she’d decamped to her mother, her best girl friend, her worst girl friend, any fucking place. He understood. Woman trouble: couldn’t live with them, and couldn’t live without them. He saw the consultant, who hadn’t drawn the curtains or dropped a blind, pace in a room on the ground floor and eat what looked like a slice of cold pizza. He had no more, there, to learn.

  The Friend took the young man into the city, parked near to the cathedral, then invited him to walk.

  Had he had a good journey on the ferry? He had. Had the weather been bad in the Baltic? Not a problem. How had he passed the long hours? On the deck, reading. What had he read? Just a magazine. That had settled the Friend’s opinion that the spear-carriers of the state were best left to themselves, and that banal conversation was meaningless.

  Both wore caps with deep peaks and both had scarves over their faces, but that was natural in the cold cloaking the city that night, with the threat of the first severe snowfall. They went past the cathedral, with its massive floodlit sharp-tipped spire. The streets were narrow, and old houses pressed close to them. Little side turnings went into brief cul-de-sacs with small homes that might have dated back four centuries, when his own country had been sand, camels and migrant Bedouin. He did not tell the man that the apparent age of the streets they walked was bogus, that the British bombers had come at the start of an Easter feast and destroyed the city with incendiaries: that Lübeck had been rebuilt with care for its history. They went by the modernised church of St Anne, a Franciscan building, and he stopped to gaze for a moment through an iron-barred gate that was unlocked and slightly ajar. At the end of a paved path was the door to a brick building and above it a dull light burned. He said it was the synagogue of Lübeck, and led the way.

  At the door, he rapped the knocker, then pressed the bell. Feet padded noisily towards the door, a bolt was drawn back, a key turned. Sparse light fell on them, and they were admitted to a wide hall.

  The Friend said, ‘Anyone you see here is Russian. There are no German Jews in Lübeck, only Russians. Yeltsin sold the Jews to the German government. They are here and few speak German. They have made another ghetto, where we are. The few who know you are coming believe you are a political activist of the Jewish faith, hunted by extremists and needing refuge. A man will arrive from Berlin later tonight and bring . . . well, he will bring what you need. I will collect you in the morning. What you do and how is for you to decide. Then we get the fuck out. I shall be here at seven. Sleep well.’

  The caretaker, an old man, had directed them to an office where a camp bed had been left, with two folded blankets and a pillow. The Friend touched the young man’s shoulder. It might have been a gesture of encouragement, of support, but that was so obviously unnecessary. He had met – in his life with the unit – many men and women who killed for the state: some talked incessantly, others were silent, as if their tongues had been torn out; some were restless and fidgeting, others coldly still. All were touched by what they did, altered. Not this young man. There was a nod, a murmur of thanks, Hebrew spoken, then the back was turned, as if an audience was completed.

  The Friend let himself out, walked away down the street towards Königstrasse and the pension where he would sleep, if it were possible. He did not doubt the killer would sleep well on the collapsible bed with the wire frame and the wafer mattress.

  Harding said, ‘They’re back again, ma’am, and the numbers are building.’

  She answered with irritation: ‘I’ve eyes, I can see.’

  In truth, Abigail Jones could see little beyond the broken gate. Shadows flitted forward. There was thin moonlight, which gave the shadows a wash of pale colour. The American had the best eyesight of them all and probably knew how many were armed with rifles or shotguns and how many had come back with clubs or the spears they used for fishing where the lagoons weren’t drained. She should have apologised for her tone, did not. He did not seem to take offence. Maybe he understood how the tension swarmed in her head.

  ‘We could be getting into problems when the time comes to get out of here, ma’am.’

  Obvious. At that time, past midnight and well into another day, she alone carried responsibility in this little corner of the world – her sphere of influence. She had responsibility for herself and the four men paid to protect her, and for the situation further forward – a black hole of information, cut off from contact. She had helicopters on stand-by that could be utilised once only. She couldn’t call up the Station in Baghdad and request guidance: Sorry, Abigail, don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s nothing that’s flown across my desk. What to do? The best you can. And neither could she make a sat link with London and the Towers. Call her home desk: I’m just the lowly minion, the night duty officer, and I’m not permitted to contact your HDO before 06.00 local . . . Anything I can help with, or will it keep for the next seven hours? And she could hardly raise Len Gibbons, likely in Germany and leading the charge on a target: No way I can contribute, Abigail, because you’re there and I’m not, which means your judgement will be the one that counts. I’m sure whatever decision you take will be the right one and will stand up to scrutiny. If she asked for the advice of Corky or Shagger, or went to Hamfist and dropped the matter in his lap, if she looked up into Harding’s face and asked what she should do, she would lose authority.

  ‘If they’re in the way when we need to get out, we’ll go over or through them – whichever.’

  He shrugged, acceptance. These men were happiest when told what to do and when. They would drive hard and shoot straight, and it would be for her – Abigail Jones – to face the wrath of the aftermath. Fuck it. The problem was that the money had been handed over and had bought a few hours but not enough. The radio stayed silent and she had no word from forward, the other side of the border. She could rail, stamp, blaspheme and swear, but the radio stayed quiet. The number of men from the marshes now outside the gate had increased through the night, and by the morning they would again be boxed in, and the dollar bills were exhausted. It had been a short window and they hadn’t used it. Fuck it was about the best a
nswer she could muster.

  ‘If that’s what you want to do, ma’am, that’s what we’ll do.’

  She smiled, grim. ‘Settled, then. Harding, one of your Rangers told me when I first came here that his father had been with a paratroop unit of the South Vietnamese army and had done time as an adviser in the Central Highlands. The old guy had told his son that what made the early days there ‘comfortable’ was the certain guarantee that if he had been wounded or killed, heaven and earth would be moved to lift him out, on a stretcher or in a bag. Might take the services of a platoon that needed reinforcing with a company that then had to call on a battalion to be moved, and a flight of helicopters with a wing of air support. Whatever it took, it was available, and the guys on the ground knew it, so they were ‘comfortable’. I can’t go and get Foxy, and can’t go as far as Badger likely is, but I’ll sit on the extraction point for him – and we’ll move before dawn whether I’ve heard from him or not. Like I said, ‘‘over or through them’’. A coffee would go down well.’

  It was fraying, might already be unravelling.

  ‘I’ll get you a coffee, ma’am.’

  ‘And we can—’

  He interrupted her, almost kindly, like he tried to share – but could not. ‘Packed and ready to burn some rubber. We’ll go when you say, ma’am.’

  ‘Hang him up, like a pig, hang him high.’

  The officer gave his order. He thought his men barely recognised him. Not long before, he had led the killing of the Arabs who had crossed the frontier in search of abandoned military material, and his men – from the ranks of the Basij – had shown no hesitation or emotion in shooting, then digging the pits. They were frightened of him now. He was down on his haunches and his back was against the wall. The prisoner was on the far side of the table and chair. He realised that so much would have confused them. Why were senior men from Ahvaz not here? Why had they not been given custody of the man? Why had the man been beaten so savagely that he lay prone, unmoving? Why was the top sheet on the notepad clean, and the pencil laid neatly beside it? Why did they not know who they had captured and why had they not been praised for the success of their efforts? Why did their officer hug the floor and the wall, his head bowed? He was panting in spurts, and he clasped his hands together but could not stop them trembling. Why? The enormity of what he had done engulfed the officer, Mansoor. He did not turn towards the men who crowded in the doorway.

  ‘Get him out. Hang him up.’

  They hesitated. All of them, not merely those who had guarded the doorway, would have heard the prisoner’s screams, and his own shouted questions, the thudded blows with the wood, and the water splashed from the bucket. The Basij were the arm of the regime: they broke up demonstrations against the authority of the state; they made the cordons on arrest operations; they kept back the crowds at executions; they enforced the edicts on dress and music. They hesitated to go close to the man. Mansoor did not know who he was. The man wore no chains, no rings; his one boot had no label and the one in his underpants had been cut out. Only at the end had he spoken and then with such insults that . . . His head was on his knees and he recognised the enormity of disaster brought on him by his loss of temper. The man, prone, terrified them.

  His hands scratched at the wall. His fingernails gouged the plaster over the concrete blocks and he pulled himself upright. He went past the table and kicked the chair from his path. He stepped over his prisoner and did not know if the chest moved but he saw no bubbling in the blood at the mouth. He could not look into the man’s eyes because the swelling above and below had closed them. As he bent to reach past the man and loose the rope from the ring on the wall, he saw the wounds and bruises he had inflicted, the scars of the insect bites and the sores that ticks had caused. The man had destroyed him. He felt – almost – wonderment, a confusion. His face was very close to the man’s and he murmured the question he needed answering more than any other: ‘Why did you come to this place, which is nothing? Why were you here? Why was it worth it for you?’ He freed the rope, dragged on it and the man slid across the floor, through the blood, urine and water, on his back and buttocks. His other leg was bent but he did not cry out. Mansoor threw the end of the rope into the doorway, where it was caught by a guard, and gave his order again. The body was heaved past him and jammed in the door. It was freed, and then had gone down the corridor.

  He slumped again, and his hands held his head.

  Badger watched. Perhaps the coots did too, the frogs and the pigs. He hadn’t slept, eaten or drunk. He had been without sleep, food and water for more hours than he could calculate. He was close to delirium, on an edge.

  They brought Foxy out. There were two on the rope and they went at a good pace, Foxy bouncing along behind them. They had come out of the main door into the barracks and had turned towards the water. They went into the pool of light thrown from the high lamp. When a stone caught at Foxy’s shoulder or hips and he got stuck, he was kicked free by those who flanked him. If his trailing leg snagged, he was kicked again. Badger saw it through his binoculars so he lived with each jolt of Foxy’s head. One of those who followed kicked at Foxy whether he was caught or not; another bent every three of four paces to scoop up dirt and pebbles, then threw them hard at Foxy’s face. Badger, with his lenses, could see the wounds, the cuts and the drying blood. He could also make out – among the scabs – the red marks where the skin had been burned. Now he knew why Foxy had tortured the dark with his screams of agony.

  He looked for the goon, for Mansoor. He didn’t understand why he, too, had not come outside.

  But Badger – on the edge of control – understood little.

  The rope was thrown up and looped over the arm of the lamp, a strip of ironwork welded to the main pole. Its free end was caught, tugged down, and a gang of them took the strain. Foxy’s head bounced a last time in the dirt, then the body was up and clear. The light shone on the rope’s knot around his ankle, and onto the leg that took the weight. The other hung angled and crazily. The arms were loose in the shoulder sockets and the wrists brushed the ground. He turned slowly, gently.

  Badger watched.

  He watched for more than a minute and saw some of the guards punch the body, or kick at the head. He waited until their tiredness took over and they drifted back towards the barracks. The shadow under Foxy turned slowly, then went back on itself. Badger went to the bergens and took from them what he would need. It did not seem to be a matter for debate.

  Chapter 17

  He had sent the message, then, again, switched off the kit. He had no wish to be burdened with an inquest.

  He went into the water. The gillie suit billowed out and the cool settled on his legs and stomach. He had done what he hoped was sufficient to protect the Glock and the four magazines he had taken from the bergens, and had sealed them in the plastic bags that the Meals-Ready-To-Eat had been packaged in. The gas grenades and smoke were in other bags and all were knotted tight. The moon did not now have far to fall and sent a spear of light across the lagoon. There was a place, near the far quay, where it merged with another, duller, strip. The silver and lustreless gold met and sliced through each other, near to the quay and about midway between the house and the barracks. The moonlight was stronger and uninterrupted, but the high lamp’s was broken by the shadow, always spiralling, of the shape suspended from a rope.

  Badger left behind him, on the far side of the clear ground, the bergens and the craft, ready and inflated.

  He went into the water beside the wrecked carcass of the bird; the rats had left nothing worth returning for. He waded the first few paces and was soon up to his chest in water, the weapons, ammunition and grenades under the surface and deep in the suit’s poachers’ pouches. He had tried to evaluate what was ahead of him. Wasted effort. It mattered little. There might be a company of infantry, equipped with modern gear, all fed, watered, rested and alert, dug in with slit trenches and sandbagged sangars between the quay and the high lamp from which Foxy w
as suspended. He was on the move because he was obligated. It was no big decision for him. To retire, do nothing, to turn his back on Foxy – rotating in the light breeze from the rope – he didn’t consider it.

  He came to the mud spit, lay on his stomach and used his elbows and knees to propel himself over the open ground, past the small mess of leaves, branches and dirt that he had used as the hiding place for the microphone. He allowed himself a brief thought that it had been well done. The arrival of the bird, the beautiful leggy creature that had so entranced the goon officer, had probably fucked them. If the goon’s attention had not been on it, where he must have seen something – a flash of light off the gear or a kink in the cable – they would have been out, clear, and gone . . . He went down again into the water. Ducks came from the dark to his left, were spooked by him and stampeded across the water, struggling for lift-off. The noise seemed loud enough to rouse the dead. But they were up, away, the ripples subsided, and the dented silver and old gold lines of the reflections calmed.

  The bed of the lagoon seemed firmer. It might have been an old waterway, and the bottom was settled, weathered down. While he was within his depth he made good progress. Badger had no idea whether he would be able to wade or have to swim. The natural light was good and he could see well. Of course, he could also be seen. He moved steadily and left a wake behind him.

  Badger would have appeared, had he been seen while he waded or swam, as detritus that floated on gentle currents. He kept away from the lines of light thrown by the moon and the lamp. Through the scrim netting of the headpiece he looked hard for the guards, their positions, their readiness. One was near the house, close to the front entrance, and illuminated by the security lights; in his view was the short pier to which the dinghy was tied. Another was sitting on a plastic chair by the entrance to the barracks, rigid and upright. His head was still, as if in shock, and he was heavy-built. Badger thought he was the one who had kicked Foxy’s head as they’d pulled him across the dirt. He hadn’t seen the goon emerge from the building. Another guard was further to the right from the barracks, close to the raised bund line that bordered the lagoon.