Rat Run

by Gerald Seymour

  She paid, insisted. The bill would just about wipe away Justin Braithwaite's entertainment allowance for the week. Short rations, there'd be, in the Service's annexe.

  On the pavement, his hand touched hers, then slipped into the crook of her arm.

  'That was really nice, and we'll do it again,' Polly said. 'I'd have loved to spend the afternoon in a couple of churches, with you to guide me, but that's for another day Must get back. See you soon, I hope.'

  'Gloria, have you ever been to Hamburg?' he shouted.

  'Twice, Mr Gaunt, just the twice. I liked it, rather a civilized city.'

  He had his hands together as if in prayer, fingers under his nostrils and thumbs against his mouth.

  Gloria would have come to the door behind him, would be leaning against the jamb. She would allow his thought processes, without interruption, to stutter out, as if that were part of her duties.

  'Perhaps "civilized", yes. Quality prostitutes, quality bankers, quality scenic views. Bravo, Hamburg. But it's where it all started, isn't it? While we were faffing over Baghdad, pushed by those bloody politicians, the eye was off the ball – our eye, the German eye and the American eye. Saddam's legacy – don't you know, Gloria? – was to be the fox that led the trail away from the den, where the vixen was and the bloody cubs.'

  'Quite apposite, Mr Gaunt,' she said drily, but she would never be impertinent. 'You should use that allusion in a report.'

  'Eye off the ball and not seeing the supreme target.

  In Hamburg.'

  'It wasn't just you, Mr Gaunt. There was an AQ desk.'

  'Everybody's eye off the ball. While we were wet-ting ourselves waiting for the next download of satellite imagery from some God-forsaken heap of sand in Iraq, the threat was incubated in Hamburg.

  What was the name of that wretched place?'

  'Harburg, across the Elbe river.'

  'And the name of that wretched street?'

  'Marienstrasse, Mr Gaunt.'

  'And the spores are still in the bloody pavements of your "civilized" city. It's where they were, where that horrendous plot was hatched, nine/eleven, where war was declared, the ultimate attack – and we knew nothing. Now, little Wilco sends her signal… A man resists torture – and his interrogators were well trained – to protect a notepad on which a telephone number was written. I'm getting there, Gloria. The telephone number is that of a factory that exports furniture. To where? To bloody "civilized" Hamburg.

  Hamburg again.'

  'Do you not think, Mr Gaunt, that you should rest for an hour or two?'

  'God, and wouldn't it be easy if we had some proper equipment to turn on them – a squadron of tanks, a battery of artillery, a brigade of paratroops I can deploy against them? Then I'm laughing. But this is a city that is "civilized". Hamburg is where they plot, plan, then launch from. Once a month I go to a lecture where an academic tells me I have to get into the mind of an enemy. How? I am white-skinned, middle-aged, middle-class, a little Englander. I have no chance… '

  'Should I make more coffee?'

  '… no bloody chance.' He waved at the pictures she had Sellotaped to the wall. 'Half my age, without possessions, with faith, without conscience, with the ability to justify strapping bloody "martyrs' belts" round foot-soldiers' stomachs. Only a fool suggests I can understand him.'

  'You're digging this weekend. That will be good for you.'

  'So wise, Gloria, always so wise. You filed it, remember, the commentary from Moskovskly Komsomolets at the time of that obscenity of the school siege: "Why are they always ahead of us? Why are they winning? Because they are at war, and we are just at work. It is time to realize that we, too, are at war." I believe I quote correctly.'

  'Don't you think, Mr Gaunt, you ought to have another coffee?'

  'I'd like, thank you, a gallon of coffee.' He intoned,

  ' "They are at war, and we are just at work." And I'd like some tanks on Hamburg's streets.'

  At a minor Customs post, north of the Czech town of Liberec and south of the Polish town of Zgorzelec, two officials slept and one staggered sleepily from the hut as the old saloon car, headlights bright, approached.

  Because of the telex from Prague received at the hut two days before, the solitary Customs man gestured with his hand for the car to slow. It stopped under a high light. He motioned to the driver to wind down his window and the rock music blasted out – what his own kids played. There were five inside, two girls and three youths. The telex had said that Arabs should be checked, but had listed no name; nor had a photograph been faxed to the post. He asked for the passports. Two of the boys, flaxen-haired, languidly offered him their papers – Polish. The girls, one red-head and the other with a mauve streak, had Czech documentation. The fifth passport was from the back of the car. A man, early thirties maybe older and maybe younger, was sandwiched between the girls and gave him the German passport. He shone his torch into the interior, let the beam light on darker skin. He held the opened pages under the high light.

  German citizenship. Date of birth, 1974. Place of birth listed as Colombo in Sri Lanka… Not an Arab.

  Sourly, he gave the passport back through the window. Somebody's daughters, from Liberec,

  Jablonec or Ceska Lipa, out for the night – without modesty but no doubt with condoms – with Polish boys and an Asian. Could have been his girls. These were new freedoms.

  He stamped back to the hut. It had not said on the telex that an Arab might have hitched a lift, joined a car filled with youngsters, to cross the frontier. The Customs official had no reason to be suspicious of the German passport-holder crushed between the girls in the back of the car. Nor did he have reason to suspect that, when the car reached Zgorzelec, and parked at the back of the discotheque hall, the man would sidle into the night, away from the booming noise, and head for the railway station. He poured himself some soup from his flask and returned to his magazine.

  'You have to believe it, Father, he will come.' The Bear had said it to him.

  'What did the television say?' Timo asked him. 'Tell me again.'

  'A siege in the Old Quarter of Prague. A man of the Russian mafiya finally killed by the police. Lies, of course.'

  'But not a lie that one was killed.'

  'One only, the television said. The lies were that he was Russian, a member of the mafiya. Father, they would lie on that.'

  'If one was dead, which of them would it be?'

  'Not the principal. Father, he will come.' The great paw of the Bear had settled on Timo's shoulder, and had squeezed reassurance.

  'Call Enver. He should send the mouseboy here.'

  He sat now with Alicia in the gymnasium of the school in Blankenese, sensing her nervousness. He could acknowledge that, through all the hours since he had met the young man from the warehouse in the Hammerbrook district – Regret cargo load 1824 has not been forwarded – he had given her little attention, his mind clouded by the import of what he had been told.

  If he had not had the confidence of the Bear to stiffen him, Timo would not have been at the school that evening.

  For good work in year nine and year seven, imitation parchment scrolls were to be presented to the best students. His girls were among them. They, with the rest of the favoured students of their classes, were at the front. He and Alicia sat with the comfort and wealth of the elite of Blankenese's community She had worried about what she should wear, what jewellery she should display, what cosmetics, what shoes were suitable. Before the Bear had spoken to him, he had ignored her concerns. Afterwards, he had gone through the wardrobes of dresses with her, had unlocked the safe with her jewellery and chosen for her, and the shoes, and he had pointed to the lipstick she should use. Timo Rahman was the pate of Hamburg, but he needed a man of brutish strength and limited intellect to soften nagging anxiety.

  Their younger girl stepped forward, climbed the steps to the stage, had her hand shaken, was given the scroll, and Timo jagged a glance sideways and saw love for her daughter light
Alicia's eyes – but the woman, the wife of the pate of the city, did not know whether she should clap, whether she should cheer.

  They were peasants of the mountains. He did what no other father, whose son or daughter had gone forward, had done. Timo stood. His arms were above his head and his hands thundered together in applause.

  He pulled Alicia to her feet. At that moment he cared not a fuck what other parents, the best of Blankenese, thought of them.

  Last summer, with Alicia, the girls, the Bear and Alicia's aunt, he had flown to Tirana and then they had travelled in a fleet of Mercedes limousines along the rutted, broken roads to the north, guarded by the guns of his clan. On the fourth day of the vacation at the villa he had built above Shkodra, he had sent the women and girls to visit Alicia's family in their village. Watched only by the Bear, he had negotiated with those men who had travelled to meet him.

  Matters of mutual co-operation. Intense men, they had stared around them with naked disapproval at the lavish trappings of the villa, had demanded prayer breaks, but had come with proposals. They had talked of transportation and safe addresses, the movement of weapons and the production of international travel documents: areas where he was strong and they were weak, or where he was weak and they were stronger. They had left, driven away by his people, before the return of the women and girls. Four days later, when his wife, her aunt and his daughters had travelled to see the site of his newest villa, where the foundations were already dug, the men had returned. The talk had been of money, what he would be paid and what would be demanded of him. At the end of that second day, Timo Rahman had shaken their hands and seen the fire in their eyes. By the shaking of hands he had pledged his word with the strength of the Canun, written down centuries before by Lek Dukagjeni, and their guarantee was on the word of their faith. He had gone into a world that was a clouded sky to him – right or wrong, with sense or idiocy – and he had made the deal. Now a man came – the Bear promised him. His elder girl went up the steps.

  He stood again, pulled Alicia up. They were peasants from the mountains. He had come to

  Hamburg with holes in his shoes, tears in the knees of his trousers and money to sustain him for a week.

  Alicia wriggled free of his grip, and sat, her face flushed red with embarrassment. He saw the sneers, the little titters of amusement his enthusiasm made, and clapped harder.

  A dosser stood under the street-light at the junction of Bevin Close and the main road, a woollen cap pulled down on his forehead and his coat collar up. Only a little of his face was visible to Davey, orange-coloured from the light, but what he could see of it was unshaven. The light caught his eyes, flashed on them.

  The dosser stared up the length of Bevin Close and his attention seemed to be far down it, where the cul-de-sac opened out and gave room for vehicles to turn, to the semi-detached houses where Ricky lived.

  Davey was careful, which was what Ricky paid him to be. He had been in the garage alongside his house to check the alarm on the car, then to satisfy himself that the sensors covering the garage interior were blinking red and alive. He was paid well to be careful of Ricky's security. When Davey turned from the garage, the dosser still stood there.

  Then the man moved.

  A little frown of surprise flicked at Davey's forehead.

  No longer at the junction of the main road and the cul-de-sac, the dosser now walked in a slow, rolling stride down the pavement on the opposite side to his garage and came into Bevin Close. Didn't stop, didn't look around him, went on as if he knew where to go.

  Davey heard the shout from inside: his meal was on the table. He called back that he would be a moment, not long. He was now on the step and there was the scent of cooked food from the kitchen, but he hesitated.

  The voice bit behind him: 'Come on, Davey, or it'll be cold.'

  'Be a second, just a second.'

  He saw the dosser stop in front of a door and peer past the gate and up the little pathway, as if he looked for a number, then briskly head on. He was supposed to know of everything that moved on Bevin Close. It was his work to maintain a constant watch for Crime Squad surveillance and the Criminal Intelligence Service's bugs. He knew every delivery van that called regularly, and the faces of relations who came often to visit. There had never before been a dosser in the cul-de-sac. If it had not been for his. blood link to Ricky Capel, Davey would have been small-time – perhaps a thief and dreaming of one big pay-out job, perhaps a mini-cab driver doing eighty hours a week. One day, and he had no idea of how far away it was, he would be able to buy an apartment or a little villa on the Spanish coast, with a patio and a pool. Or, one day, if he was not always careful, he would be in the Central Criminal Court hearing a judge slag him off and send him down. The dosser had slowed, was outside number eight, Ricky's place, and seemed to stare inside. Joanne – God, he didn't know why – never pulled the curtains after dark.

  'You coming or not?'

  'Just a moment.'

  He went out through his own gate and started to stride to the corner junction. He looked both ways, raked over what was parked there, and saw nothing that alarmed him. Then he swung back and headed down Bevin Close. He recognized all the cars parked on the kerb, either side of those numbers that did not have garages. The figure of the dosser was lit by the brightness spilling out from the window. He was confused, could admit it. Benji and Charlie had the brains, did the thinking, but they all depended on Davey's nose for danger. A dosser had no call to be in the cul-de-sac. If the dosser was some fancy caper from the Crime Squad or the Criminal Intelligence Service he would have back-up in a van or a car close by, and there was no vehicle that fitted on the main road or in Bevin Close. So what the hell was he doing there?

  The shout carried in the evening to him. 'You please yourself. It's in the oven, I'm starting.'

  He yelled, not over his shoulder but ahead: 'Hey, you. What's the game? What do you want?'

  The dosser didn't turn. If he'd been Crime Squad or Intelligence, he would now – challenged – be lifting his arm or ducking his head sideways and speaking urgently into his wrist microphone or the one on his collar. But the dosser just stared ahead at the window where the curtains weren't drawn.

  'Hey, I'm talking to you – what you doing?'

  No movement, no motion. Davey started to run. He could see the torn dank clothes of the dosser. He was panting, didn't do much running. He'd used to box in Peckham, super middle-weight, but that was way back. No call for him to run once he'd joined up with Ricky Capel. He came up behind the dosser, and the smells of the man were in his nose, but he hadn't turned – like it didn't matter that Davey had come down, fast, the length of the close and had yelled at him. That he was Ricky's man, his enforcer, was known through Lewisham, Peckham, Camberwell and Catford: in a pub he was bought drinks, in the betting shop he was allowed without fuss to the queue's front, in the street people moved out of his way. Davey was never ignored. He had stature as Ricky Capel's minder. He came up behind the dosser.

  'Don't you bloody listen? I was speaking to you.

  What's your business?'

  The shoulders, sagging, stayed in his face. Davey was a short-fuse man. The nearest place where dossers hung out, where they begged or slept or drank, was the underpass at Elephant and Castle, but that was up past Rotherhithe and over the Old Kent Road, not here. He grabbed the shoulder. No resistance. The stink seemed to billow over him. Davey boiled. He had the man's coat in his fist and swung his body round to face him. There was no fight in the man, but no fear. Davey was used to fear, inflicting it.

  Used to men cowering from him, cringing away.

  'Who are you? What you doing?'

  Not a quiver from the lips. Davey did not know whether it was dumb insolence or dumb stupidity. If the dosser had shown the fear then he might have frogmarched him up the length of Bevin Close and kicked his arse back on to the main road's pavement, and watched him go, then gone inside to get the supper out of the oven. The eyes stared back i
nto his.

  Was the man mental? One of those Care in the Community people? Didn't seem that way to Davey.

  No madness in the eyes.

  He was not sure if the eyes laughed at him. They were bright and big and close. The dosser's hand reached up, not to strike but to release Davey's grip on the shoulder; like it shouldn't have been there. The hand tried to prise the shoulder free and the weight of the dosser's body was against him, as if the man had done the business that had brought him to Bevin Close and was now ready to leave… No bloody way.

  There was another rattle of questions in his throat – waste of time asking them. He used a knee into the groin, hard. The dosser was going down and Davey was shouting, couldn't hear himself, as he put in the southpaw short hook to the chin. The dosser was down. Davey readied himself for the kick to the head.

  'What we got here, Davey boy?'

  His breath coming in spurts, he looked up. Ricky leaned casually on the closed front gate, had a good shirt on as if he was dressing to go out and had been interrupted. The shape, like a rag bundle and like the men under the cardboard at the underpass by

  Elephant and Castle, lay in front of him.

  'Some bloody vagrant scum, Ricky. Outside your house. Looking at it. I've asked him what he was doing, who he was, why… Didn't get an answer.

  Didn't get nothing. I belted him, Ricky.'

  'Did you?'

  'I don't reckon he's Crime Squad, just some loony that needed teaching.'

  'You reckon.'

  'Teaching respect.'

  'Maybe you haven't taught him well enough.'

  There was that quietness in Ricky's voice. It marked times when Davey knew better than to speak further.

  He came through the gate and looked down at the dosser. The eyes in the head on the pavement were unwavering and steady. If he had been on the ground and Ricky's shoes had come close, Davey would have wrapped his arms round his head and curled up the better to protect himself; it was what men did when they were to be kicked, he'd seen it too many times to remember. The head jerked back from the impact of Ricky's shoe.