Gerald Seymour - A Deniable Death

‘Is that all I’m getting?’

‘It’s enough at this stage. Tea will be waiting.’

He blurted, ‘The business of remuneration. Well, where we’re being asked to go… am I not entitled to know the recompense?’

The Cousin said, ‘We were under the impression that you were still, Foxy, a serving police officer, therefore salaried and liable for full pension if you care to quit and take it. Probably there’s an overseas per diem allowance, disability stuff and widow’s entitlements in the package. I’d say you’re well looked after.’

The Friend said, ‘Your remuneration is a great deal healthier than anything my government wants to or would be able to pay.’

The Boss said, ‘If you’re having trouble in the cash area, Foxy, I can always arrange for a diversion, on the way to the airport, via Headley Court. You’ll get a chance to talk to amputees, victims of IEDs and EFPs, and see them learning to walk again or eating with artificial aids. You can discuss disability payments, your money and a soldier’s wage.’

Badger gazed at him. No contempt there, but a dry smile.

‘I was just checking because of my wife – because of Ellie. Tea would go down well. Thank you for your understanding. I suppose I’ll want to learn about the target, his security and…’

He touched her hand. There were few gestures of intimacy between them when they could be observed. He did not care then that her mother watched as he let his fingers fall on her wrist. He saw the thinness of her arm under his fingers. He didn’t care that Mansoor, the security officer, eyed them. Dark thoughts flitted in his mind. He could imagine her mother making love to her father when he was still alive – she had comforting weight about her hips and stomach, warm against a man, a sparkle in her eyes.

He couldn’t imagine this for Mansoor, who limped from the rocket fired by the Americans’ drone. Mansoor’s wife worked as a typist for the intelligence officer in the Guard Corps barracks, the Crate Camp Garrison off the Ahvaz to Mahshar road – he had never seen her without her burqah. Mansoor seemed devoid of tenderness and without the need for a woman.

Rashid, the Engineer, yearned to celebrate triumphs with his woman underneath him, her nails in his back and her small squeals in his ear – not loud enough to wake the children – when his work in the factory and on the testing ground went well, or when she cleared a minefield sown three decades earlier or gained new funding from the provincial government. They would not lie again together. He did not believe that medical success could be snatched abroad… but he had demanded it. He smiled weakly. He said that very soon he would have the detail of where they would travel and the name of the expert she would visit.

He went again to read to their children and tell them more of the three princes. The story was about lions that terrorised a farmer’s oxen and how Prince Korshid took the harnesses from the oxen, captured the lions, harnessed them to the plough, worked them and freed them. They went back to the hills and left the farmer in peace. It was a story his children loved. He saw the sad way Naghmeh watched him, sitting in her chair with her mother beside her, her eyes never off him. There had once been a girl, in Budapest where he had studied, who had terrified him with her openness. Memories of her and of that time reared more often now that he could only watch his wife’s growing fragility. He would do what he could – he would fight, bluster and argue – for her, but he had no faith in the miracle required when they travelled.

It was ‘interdiction’. Badger had heard the word spoken twice.

The evening session had been given to the Friend. The Israeli had talked of the al-Quds Brigade, its place in the ranks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, its influence in Gaza and south Lebanon, its authority throughout Iran, the discipline, commitment and elitism of its members. He had talked like an academic, a schoolmaster, and had not used the rhetoric of an enemy combatant. It was relevant, hugely so, because the home of the target was under the protection of both the Border Guards and the al-Quds crowd. They lived beside the small garrison barracks because his wife, Naghmeh, was influential on a steering committee dedicated to mine clearance along the frontier. Her work would suffer if she was shut away in a guarded compound far from the ground where the personnel and tank mines had been laid, where children and adults died, or were mutilated, as regularly as once a week. He talked well, was interesting, and did not demean his enemy: he spoke of him with dislike but not contempt, vilified his cruelty, admired his commitment and gave respect. And if they, whatever organisation the Friend represented, knew so much, why did they not themselves provide surveillance expertise?

Badger had been to a moderate-performing school on the outskirts of Reading and had left with qualifications only slightly better than mediocre. He had been idle and unmotivated, had not gone to university. Lack of formal education did not make him a fool. Why did not the Friend’s crowd do it themselves? Simple. They would have wanted a broad church, a coalition of the willing: they were akin to bookmakers who laid off the risk of financial calamity by slicing up big wagers. It had been a good talk. Then supper, no alcohol: a meal that must have chilled in the kitchens because it was hardly edible. It was brought in by the house owner – the grandfather of a dead soldier – and left on a sideboard. Most had not finished their plate of the main dish – stringly beef, boiled vegetables and heavy gravy. Some had toyed and the Boss hadn’t tried, but Badger had done well. He wasn’t fussy about his food. He’d heard little hisses of dissatisfaction from Foxy. While they ate, the Cousin had returned to the marshes, and the Major to the sophistication of the bomb-maker. Later the Boss had led them back to the lounge and the fire had been made up. Badger had done what he was good at, had sat, listened and watched. Twice he had heard the word ‘interdiction’.

The Major had said to the Friend,’… care about passionately is interdiction. I used to lie awake at night, at the Basra Palace, dreaming of it. Better than a wet one. What needs to be done and.. .’ The Friend had nodded in fierce agreement.

The Cousin had said to the Boss, ‘… every time it has to be interdiction so the mother-fuckers get the message…’ And the Boss had sagely inclined his head.

It was a word beyond Badger’s vocabulary.

Later, when Foxy talked to the Cousin about heat exhaustion when wearing gillie suits in the temperatures of the marshes, Badger had sidled towards the Boss, and asked what ‘interdiction’ was.

The Boss had said he thought it had stopped raining, and he wanted fresh air and the wind on his face.

They were outside, had taken faded old coats from hooks by the door. The wind had come on as a gale – there might have been hail in it – the seas crashed on the rocks, and he could make out the shape of a sheep flock huddled at an angle in the fence.

The hand pointed to the outline, indistinct, of the ruined castle keep. ‘You know, Badger, there’s history here and violent history at that. That place was the seat of clan mafia, gangsters and thugs, and they’d been there since the fourteenth century. There was a banqueting hall inside and, sunk in the floor of an annex, a dungeon that had a water level of three metres. There was a round stone in the centre that topped the surface. A prisoner consigned there had to sit on the stone and pray he didn’t fall asleep after two days or five. He might stay awake for a week, but it was inevitable that he’d drown. I fancy they wouldn’t have screamed, the victims, or begged. They wouldn’t have given the bastard up above that satisfaction… A serious place, and damn-all to do with this operation.’