Rat Run

by Gerald Seymour

  She held a hand.

  There was a gasp behind her, then nervous titters.

  The lights were on the gloves she wore and the black bones of a hand in hers. The clothing was gone, and much of the flesh. She thought she might vomit. She put down the hand, detached from the wrist because the muscle had burned. She felt the shape of the arm, then the torso and her fingers flickered up to the skull.

  A jawbone, an open mouth, eye sockets. It seemed to her that she learned more from the touch than from the glare of the lights on the face. They had called him Muhammad Iyad. She wondered how it had been for him in the final spasms of his life, his mouth wide with agony. Had his faith in God sustained him, or the love of his woman, or had he died in terror – cursing those he served? Her head bobbed, and she shook the thoughts from her mind. Her fingers dismantled the heap and found nothing more.

  'Right,' Polly said briskly, to the men behind her.

  'That's one of them. Where's the other?'

  A murmur of voices behind her, then Ludvik's hang-dog response. 'They have found only one cadaver.'

  'You had the building sealed, you told me.'

  'Only one body was found.'

  It was as if she were a child, and a present in gaudy wrapping was offered her, and when she reached for it the present was snatched away. The prize was gone.

  She turned and started to crawl back along the ladder. With the time differential between Prague and London› it would now be 10.35 p.m. at Vauxhall Bridge Cross, and Gaunt would be waiting. With the certainties of night following day, and spring following winter, she knew Gaunt would be at his desk with his shoes up on it, and waiting for her signal.

  Polly Wilkins swore obscenely, and came off the ladder.

  Frederick Gaunt read the latest epistle from the whey-faced creature who had written the report, now heavily circulated, on the Service's future.

  The in-tray left for him by Gloria was empty, its contents either gone to the shredder or dumped on her desk in the outer office for filing. He had done his emails through the evening. Nothing remained for him to read except the report – The Secret Intelligence Service in 2010 (Confidential) – which made his lips curl in irritation.

  It was crap.

  In five years the Service would 'understand customer and partner requirements'. What was the Service? A division of the bloody London Underground?

  He was old school and regarded 'jargon-mongers' with contempt… Maybe he should have gone when the knife hacked through the team responsible for the weapons-of-mass-destruction analysis. Could have gone then, on full pension as a sweetener, and joined the happy ranks of the Whitehall discards. Could have busied himself with his great love of Roman archaeology, set out his stall in a tidy guest-house, like the one at Bradford-on-Avon, and been within walking distance of the excavation, spent his days chipping with a light hammer, digging with a hand trowel, brushing at the mud and stone, letting out little whoops of pleasure as the villa gave up its secrets.

  Walking away, he had realized long ago, took courage: perhaps more courage than flowed in Frederick Gaunt's veins. No wife: she'd gone with that hairy-faced beggar to a smallholding in Herefordshire to live like a Balkan peasant. No children: their mother had poisoned their minds against him and contact was lost. No friends: an officer in the Service was adept at avoiding commitment to people outside his tunnel of work. No prizes to bask in: the war went on, different enemies but the same endless threat. When he left he would be one more of the old farts who was unable under the strictures of the Official Secrets Act to say boldly from a bar stool: 'Do you know who I used to be?' He would be another senile bore, with Roman artefacts for company and a guest-house for home.

  He stayed on and endured the crap of the jargon-mongers. And he waited… And he forced the pages of The Secret Intelligence Service 2010

  (Confidential) into the teeth of the shredder… And around him the building was hushed. He did not know whether Wilco would come through on a secure phone line or use the encrypted teleprinter. He would not nag her. Polly 'Wilco' Wilkins was the best girl he'd ever supervised, and the most loyal, and the most unlucky in the twin fall-out of the WMD analysis and love. It would have been an unspeakable crime to pester her for news. He knew that the storm squad had gone in, had been halted in its assault, that fire had ravaged the building and nothing more.

  All of it real. He doubted that the author of The Secret Intelligence Service 2010 (Confidential) – the purveyor of crap – had the smallest comprehension of real Service life. Men's lives on the line, body-to-body fighting, dying in combat as duty for their country or for their faith: real life.

  He drank the final splash of coffee and grimaced.

  He could see a barge progress, west to east, down the Thames and past Parliament. He was wondering if its driver was heavy on 'understanding customer and partner requirements' when the teleprinter against the wall behind him began its shrill chatter.

  He read.

  Gaunt,

  Bloody disaster. One, repeat one, body on premises.

  Body is badly burned but I believe forensics will identify Muhammad lyad. Your co-ord slipped the net early and MI bought him a start of up to 24 hours. So, no identification of co-ord and all internal DNA traces obliterated by fire (my estimate).

  Will be chasing loose ends in the morning. The bastard is that BIS promised me the area had been secured. You told me once: (quote) Life's unfair, always has been and always will be (end quote). Right now, I believe you.

  Love,

  Wilco

  He had said that to her when she had poured out to him on the phone that Dominic in Buenos Aires had ditched her. A wry, sad smile crossed Gaunt's face. It seemed to matter more to her than losing her fiance that a potential co-ordinator of al-Qaeda had been mislaid, was loose in Europe with a full day's time bought him. He signalled her.

  Wilco,

  If life were easy, everybody would be doing it. Sleep tight.

  Gaunt

  He closed down his desk, switched off the light and left darkness behind him. Frederick Gaunt, bowed by disappointment, went along the silent corridors, down in the elevator, across the hall, where he failed to notice the greetings of Night Security, and home to the loneliness of his flat. He felt himself to be in a maze of uncertainty and did not know where his path would lead or who would walk with him in similar ignorance. But Frederick Gaunt was not a quitter, and the loss of the trace on the co-ordinator would bring him to his desk early and back to the trail.

  He whistled to himself as he walked across the bridge.

  ***

  13 January 2004

  Taking charge: that was the talent of Hamish McQueen.

  As the company's senior sergeant, he ran Bravo.

  'What the hell happened, Corp? What sort of shambles was that?'

  The section's corporal told him. A patrol, routine. An ambush, not routine but handled. 'Actually, we did well, Sarge, really well. We had three incoming fire positions and we did good neutralizing on them, and we have at least one confirmed kill. Everything was brilliant. We did good hard target, did it at speed, didn't give the hostiles anything to hit. They took punishment and they broke off. Did you stop the ambulance?'

  'We stopped the ambulance. One dead and one likely to corpse. Both males. No women or kids, which means the best fire control. I'm not criticizing the response, which I'd consider entirely appropriate, that's not the shambles.

  What's the story with him?'

  In front of McQueen, the corporal seemed to duck his head away, evasive, as if he did not want to answer. McQueen gestured, thumb raised, to his right, where the officer sat on one of the plastic-seated chairs outside the operations room where men from the bunker took a soft-drink break or a smoke: he was staring forward and his shoulders seemed to tremble.

  Across the yard, the crews of the Warriors, the quick-reaction team, had been stood down and McQueen saw that men from the patrol were at the centre of little knots, pouring out their
tale, and that all eyes were on the officer.

  'I'm struggling, Sarge…'

  'Well, struggle a bit bloody harder. What am I going to report to the major? No one's going to bite you. What's the story?'

  T was up forward – I was trying to handle a bloody firefight'

  'Say what you've got to say.'

  'We did the hard-target bit at speed, then doubled round the back of the mosque and didn't stop till we were by the school. That was when we realized he wasn't with us.'

  McQueen pressed without mercy: 'Spill it. You realized then that Mr Kitchen was not with you. We've got your radio call on that – it's logged. What did you do?'

  'Doubled back. Went back the way we'd come… You know where we found him.'

  'You got his helmet and his flak-jacket, not his personal weapon. I am not criticizing you because there's no cause for that. I'd say you did bloody well. You've got to understand there was a right panic here – that is, serious panic.

  I'm moving on. Who was closest to him?'

  'Baz was. Baz says he lost him when we were doing the hard-target stuff.'

  'How do you rate that boy?'

  'Good kid. A bit lippy, but a good kid. Their chief guy, Baz dropped him, and with him down, the rest quit. We were in shit till Baz slotted their main man. He did well.'

  McQueen's gaze raked from the officer, still sitting and still alone like he had some plague affliction, across the yard from where the private soldier, Baz, stood at the heart of a cluster and was holding forth. Hamish McQueen had been with this Scottish regiment for eighteen years, and when the vacancy opened up he stood the best chance of any of the company sergeants to get the nod and promotion to regimental sergeant major. Better than most, he recognized a minefield. As if he walked among trip wires and pressure plates, he considered where he stood now, and its implications.

  For the sergeant there had been enough soft talk. 'Are you telling me, Corporal, that Mr Kitchen did a runner?'

  'He was with us, then he wasn't with us – can't say different,' the corporal said evasively. 'We found his helmet and his flak-jacket dumped, didn't find his weapon. There was kids following and jeering at him, but they weren't a threat.'

  'For fuck's sake, Corp, did he do a runner?'

  'What else? Can you see a mark on him? I can't. What we reckon – yes – he ran. That's what we reckon. Yellow bastard, feckin' quit on us.'

  'You talking? Baz talking?'

  He saw the section corporal suck in a deep, deep breath.

  'All of us talking… There's not a mark on him, and his helmet's gone and his flak-jacket and his gat. Where's he going? Back to Bravo. It's all of us bloody talking.'

  'But you never saw him turn and run… Tell me.'

  'For Christ's sake, I was in a firefight, then trying to do extraction. You tell me, Sarge, what else fits? Far as I know, first incoming and he's gone, that's the RPG and it was way high.' The corporal blurted: 'It's not my faidt, I'm not to blame if he's a yellow bastard, a Rupert who couldn't hack it.' 'Leave it there, Corp. Go get yourself and your boys a brew. I'll take it on.'

  He turned away and strode towards the sandbagged operations room. As he took the few steps, his webbing clanking across his chest, Hamish McQueen reflected that his report in the bunker would be the hardest he had ever made to his company commander. Too damn right.. . He passed the man who still sat on the chair and whose gaze was void of expression. For a company sergeant major, who had ambitions to take on the role of regimental sergeant major, it was high risk to denounce an officer for running from combat. He would play it straight, take the white line down the middle of the road, and report what he had been told. Others, higher up the chain, could play God, but not Hamish McQueen. He would relay only what had been said to him. He didn't look down at the man as he passed him – he could think of no greater disgrace for a man than to be labelled a coward who had done a runner under fire – but hurried inside the bunker.

  Deciding on what shirt, what trousers and giving a last shine to his shoes had eaten into the minutes of the schedule that Malachy had set himself. The shirt was not ironed but it was the best that had come from the charity shop, and the collar was not frayed. The trousers were not pressed but had only been worn once since their wash in the launderette. Clean socks on, and the shined shoes. Then Malachy stood in front of the little bathroom mirror, smoothed his hair into shape and used a finger to etch out a parting. The shoes set him off; he looked better than he had since Ivanhoe Manners had brought him to the Amersham.

  It was twelve minutes to eleven and, beyond the windows, thick darkness blanketed the estate.

  He would have to run down the stairs, sprint through the plazas and jog the length of the streets coming into Walworth Road. He'd cut it fine, but he would be there for eleven o'clock at the bus stop. He thought he had enough money to spare.

  Buying rope, packaging tape, the plastic toy and the multi-blade penknife had eaten into his fortnight's benefit money. He had the drawer open and counted out what he could spare: enough for a port or a sherry for Dawn and a Coke for himself – there would be a pub in the road open till late. He slotted the drawer shut, slipped the pound coins into his pocket, and started for the door.

  Suddenly he was late. He unfastened the lock and reached for the bolt.

  The telephone rang. He had the bolt down and the door open, and the bell cut after its triple ring.

  Then the silence clamoured behind him. To get to the bus stop, as he had promised, Malachy Kitchen would now have to push himself. His breathing came hard and his finger rested on the light switch by the door. Breaking a promise or keeping a promise? You do what you think is right, and maybe that'll make a ladder for you. To escort an old lady from the bus stop, after a hospital visit, back through the dark shadows of the estate? The minute had gone. The phone rang again.

  To let her meander alone, clutching her bag, through the alleyways of the Amersham and into the blackened stairwell where a smashed light had not been replaced? The quiet fell round him after the third ring.

  Chapter Six

  'I'll bet you were begging for the call. Praying for it.'

  The voice and the words, spoken in the shadows of the night, were crystal clear in Malachy's mind. He walked out of the stairwell street entrance of block nine and headed for the exit road from the Amersham.

  'You had a taste for it, didn't you? All down to me.

  I knew you'd come. Don't give me that stuff about "I done my bit". You've done precious little of damn all, and without me that's how it'll stay. You hearing me?'

  The sun was over the highest tower, block four, and little cloud puffs scudded around its brilliance, but down on the street he was sheltered from the wind. In the dark, in the parking bay, the wind had funnelled between the pillars, peeled off the car and buffeted him.

  He had heard, 'If you think you've "done my bit", go and look at her. I'm telling you very frankly, because I nearly trust you, we push paper round desks but we alter nothing. Enough, that's us, to get little newspaper headlines and "God, aren't we great?" stories on local TV, but we're not affecting the trade – it's the trade that put Millie where she is. You know what happened up north a few months ago? I'll tell you. A big city, with police costing millions a year, had to admit it was so swamped with class A that it had "lost control of crime" in its area. That's direct, what they said. "Lost control". Not Bogota, not Palermo, not bloody Kiev or Chicago, but a city you can take a train to. Barely surfaced in our papers and TV, because it was a bad-news story. Who wants bad news? But it's where we are. You live in this sink -

  Christ, I couldn't – and you see what's not on TV and in the papers.'

  The sun had brought the baby-mothers out. No thin gold finger-rings, just prams to push and toddlers to traipse towards the play places, or the swings and slides that weren't broken. Twice since he had lived on the Amersham, Malachy had seen children who could barely run, not understand, happily carry syringes picked up from the gutter back
to the baby-mothers.

  Once he had seen a little boy, done up in his best party clothes, kneel in the mud with a syringe and fly it over his head like it was a rocket.

  'Up north, that time, they got round to admitting what we all know. We're losing. Not that you ever will, but if you came into my place – where I push my poxy bits of paper around – you'd see that only the arseholes and the career wonks find anything to cheer about. When we do get ourselves wound up, and head off to do the good things, we're tripping over the European Court of Human bleeding Rights and we're flat on our bloody faces. I'm telling you this because I reckon you understand, Malachy Kitchen, about losing. You're a loser big-time – but you came running when you were called.'

  He came out past the last of the big blocks and walked a street towards the corner shop that Ivanhoe Manners had pointed out to him. There had been – he knew it because Millie Johnson had told him over tea – two more armed robberies since the twelve the social worker had spoken of. And the Southwark News had quoted the Asian shopkeeper as calling himself 'a sitting duck', with no insurance company prepared to quote for him. He couldn't quit because there was no buyer idiot enough to take it on. Guns under his chin, clubs in front of his face, CCTV and the panic button useless.

  'My estimate of you is that you're sick, spewing it up, with losing… so I've got plans for you. You did well – three kids out of the picture. You did what we cannot. Over the line, of course, sufficient to get you banged up and a charge sheet as long as half your arm. You should look at me as a visiting angel, who pitched up to help you get your life back, and if you make it I'll be on the sidelines cheering you. You got a long, long road. You won't be coming to me with "I've done my bit", will you? You won't disappoint me, will you? That would really upset me, because – whichever way you look at it – I'm helping you.'