Gerald Seymour - A Deniable Death

‘Not what we’re here for – it would be a disaster. Don’t even think about it.’

She kept the smile fixed, but none of them stepped a half-pace back, and nobody answered her. If they’d heard Harding’s voice, recognised him as American, he might not be killed but sold on. There were chickens in cages in the souk, waiting to be sold and slaughtered, goats and sheep that were worth good money. They’d get a better price for the American than they would for Corky, Shagger and Hamfist. She turned to Harding. ‘Talk to me.’

‘It’ll be hard to stay here, ma’am, but here is within an acceptable distance of our people. Further back, wherever that’s possible, is not acceptable. Already they’re hung out, rags in the wind. I don’t see an option, hard as it is staying our ground.’

‘I hear you.’

‘My opinion, ma’am, it’s not possible – and the other guys would say it – to leave them out there beyond help. Wouldn’t be able to hold my head high again.’

‘Then we’ll hack it. Somehow. Thank you.’

They might be lucky and they might not. They might have time, the angels singing with them, and they might not. She bit her lip.

‘Have I spoken out of turn, ma’am?’

She shook her head. He had spoken with politeness, respect, but had given a clear message – rags in the wind – and two men far forward couldn’t be left, after guarantees had been given. She had little sense of honour, obligation, when she gave the Service’s word, but her men would have believed in necessary trust, and she had felt the younger man against her body, inside it.

‘Hack it and sweat it out.’ She walked away from the gate, and considered how many dollars to feed out now, how many later.

The consultant phoned Berlin. He leaned back in his chair and gazed through the window at the sleet spattering the glass. He gave the switchboard the name and was asked his own.

‘My name is Steffen. I am calling from Lubeck.’

The connection was made. He didn’t waste time on pleasantries. He began with the costs, in euros. There was the fee for his own time, for the clinic nurses, for the scanner, and the fee for X-rays, for the staff operating the scanner and the radiology team. He continued with the potential sums required if the examination showed that a stereo-tactic was possible and that an operation had a chance of success, then added, ‘You should have no anxiety that we would conduct the procedure merely to gain the payments when we have no hope of a favourable outcome. We have a long waiting list. We only take a patient into theatre when there are grounds for optimism.’

The numbers were in front of him and bounced in his eyes. A consultation and examination – and a verdict that denied hope – would cost thousands of euros. Surgery, then close supervision in intensive care and a further period of convalescence would add up to tens of thousands. He said that debit cards could be used, in advance, but not credit cards or cheques; a money order taken out on a German bank would be acceptable.

Were discounts available to the Islamic Republic? He said that his own remuneration might be subject to a realistic adjustment, but all other fees were non-negotiable. He had made provisional reservations for facilities on the following Monday.

The fees were agreed.

He finished, ‘Such a reservation will attract comment because, as yet, the patient has no identity. I am not interested in the patient’s name, but would be grateful for one that matches a passport and the medical records brought from Tehran. I would suggest a name is furnished as quickly as possible, or suspicion will be aroused. We are talking about an initial appointment for nine in the morning, Monday.’ He allowed a whiff of sarcasm. ‘I trust that finding a name for the patient will not prove too great a problem.’

The consultant rang off. He had pushed to the limits, but he had won nothing, and danced to their tune.

In his office, Len Gibbons moved paper round his desk, sent it in clockwise circles, the other way, then north, south, east and west. The phone did not ring. The sheets were the contents of two files, cardboard and downloaded from the computer. The phone did not ring because there was – obviously – nothing to report from that far-away front line, nothing of significance. It was the life of intelligence officers, such as Len Gibbons, who handled men and women who were sent across borders and were at the extremities of survival, that the phone only rang when matters reached breaking point. He liked to have paper on his desk and regarded the screen as a poor substitute. Through the door, which was open, he could see Sarah was at her desk, typing briskly, not in the style of his own battering two fingers. She would be busying herself with the detail of the accounts for the operation – wise, sensible, and mind-destructively dull. Nor had there been contact from the Towers.

The paper he moved anti-clockwise was headlined Joseph Paul Foulkes. It wasn’t the first time he had read the resume of a biography, or the tenth, and wouldn’t be the last. Foxy to his friends – not many of them. Aged 51, brought up in West Yorkshire, grammar-school educated, joining the local Police at eighteen marrying Liz (Elizabeth Joyce Routledge), a hospital worker, fathering two daughters, and specialising with the force in the elite Covert Rural Observation Post unit. Noticed. Advised that a careerenhancing move would be a transfer to the Metropolitan Police and Special Branch, then sent to Northern Ireland and given commendations for his work in dangerous country. A flair for languages. Courses at a language laboratory in Whitechapel, one on one, then six months of cramming in the culture aspects at the School of Oriental and African Studies, then Bristol University, and the military’s Beaconsfield camp, culminating in a useful knowledge of Farsi, the principal tongue of the Iranian diplomats based in the capital. Where they met contacts – woodlands, parked cars, remote country hotels, restaurants and lorry drivers’ cafes – he used the shotgun microphones or the larger parabolic versions and listened. Twice he had provided evidence leading to conviction and imprisonment. The marriage had not survived. Posted to Basra, Nov 03-Feb 04 for work with Intelligence and Interrogation, utilising his language skills in Farsi. Second wife was Ellie (Eleanor Daphne Wilson), now aged 33, employed by Naval Procurement in Bath. Remains a serving police officer, with good reputation, running CROP skills courses. Summary: Reliable, self-opinionated, wealth of experience. Gibbons would say that Foxy Foulkes was as good as any spewed up by the computers – he was what he had, and almost as old as himself.

Gibbons could not imagine, or have survived, the privations of where he had despatched the man.

No call came through from the Towers. No colleague rang in to offer moral support. He was isolated. He could have contaminated others so they had, effectively, consigned him to the leper colony. He had the funds, the contacts, the links, and was cast adrift. If it all fouled up it would be deniable in the Towers, and a whisper would be passed that ‘A junior official overreached himself, exceeded his powers, acted with no authorisation’. The great and the good would wash their hands of him. And if it succeeded?

The paper manoeuvred clockwise was headed Daniel George Baxter. It said he did not have friends, was generally known as Badger, and was 28 years old. He had been brought up by his parents, Paul and Debbie Baxter, on the outskirts of Reading. His father sold second-hand cars and his mother took care of the books; they lived at Burghfield close to the Atomic Weapons Establishment. Schooled at a comprehensive and regarded as an under-achiever; criticised in school-leaving report as a non-contributor. Accepted into the Thames Valley Police in 2001 and initial reports described him as quiet, resourceful and utterly dependable. What had changed? Gibbons could almost have recited it – he’d read it often enough. One referee had been a doctor, an obsessional ‘birder’, who treated Baxter’s parents. Baxter had taken him to flooded gravel pits west of Reading where he had led him, on his stomach, closer than he’d imagined possible to the perch from which a kingfisher dived; he had raved about the mind-set and calm of the applicant. A second referee had been a local accountant who prepared the business’s final tax papers, and whom Baxter had taken to the Kennet where they had sat through a summer evening watching a female otter with her cubs, feeding and playing; he had written of the young man’s patience and dedication. Had been taken into the force CROP unit at 22, extraordinarily young, after three years as an undistinguished beat constable. Had found his vocation: court evidence for a narcotics ‘untouchable’ at Wantage, and the principal surveillance on a tinkers’ site at Windsor, doubling as a thieves’ kitchen. Had been drafted into the West Country regional office of the Box. Reported to have the highest standards of professionalism. Not academic, not particularly intelligent, but an operator of genuine class. Almost teetotal, does not smoke. No known hobbies but holidays are spent hiking, alone, in the west of Scotland.