Gerald Seymour - A Deniable Death

They ordered, drank and ate. Another bottle of red was required, but the water lasted. In a vacuum of information, responsibilities were reiterated and guarantees given. Coffee was accepted, but no brandy – an indication of work taken seriously.

The Major said, ‘I just want to put it on the record in this rather select company… People, these days, are pretty squeamish about what they call ‘extra-judicial’ interdiction. I think it an excellent way of dealing with an extant difficulty. Identify, locate and…’ He slapped a broad hand – with chunky fingers that seemed to lack the sensitivity necessary for the dismantling of improvised explosive devices – on the table. The cups rattled in the saucers, the unused cutlery banged against the glasses, and he’d done a passable imitation of a shot being fired, and another. Then the Major wiped his mouth with his napkin, and dropped it as though business had been done and procedures agreed.

The Friend used a toothpick. ‘We have a mantra that we neither confirm nor deny, and are consistent with it. It can, however, be let slip through many channels that the target was in trouble with his own people for fucking the wife of a man more influential, or for fabricating his expense accounts. That confuses the general public of many nations – but not the associates of the target. They know, they fear… The greatest source of the fear is that their small corner, that most secretive part of an organisation where they exist, will be penetrated… But we have to wait.’

He smiled and let slip a small belch, then meticulously folded his napkin and smoothed it.

The Cousin gazed around him wistfully, as if a small chance existed that, in a gentleman’s club, he might be permitted to smoke a cigar. ‘A Hellfire, if aimed accurately and carrying a punch of eight kilos of metal-augmented charge, can do a fair bit of ‘extra-judicial’. We don’t have – at this moment – a judge and jury sitting in north Waziristan, in the Haraz mountains of Yemen or in the sand round Kandahar, so what we do there has to benefit from lack of contact with a courthouse. I hear no great wail of protest. Go back two decades and a Canadian citizen was taken down, Gerald Bull, shot by – of course – persons unknown while earning big moolah for building the gun that was going to fire chemicals and biological out of Iraq and into Israel. Did the Canadians shout and yell? Deafening silence. The furore of the hand-wringers lasts a week at maximum – and it keeps the motherfuckers looking over their shoulders. There is only one law in this business. Don’t get caught. It’s a good one to remember. It has legs and has lasted years. A grand meal, Len.’

The Major and the Friend agreed. Gibbons raised an arm to motion for the waiter and his bill, then reached into an inner pocket for his fattened wallet. He said, ‘It’s not the easy time. When we have – and I’m confident we will – the direction to head in, it will all get easier. You’ve met the two men who are up front, know pretty much the same as I do about them. What I would like to say, though, the officer we have in support of them is first rate. Very dedicated. Yes – at the risk of landing hard on my arse – I’m very confident.’

The Cousin said, ‘And you’d know about that, Len, as I hear it. You’d know about landing hard on your arse.’

The Friend said – and would have read the filtered reports reaching foreign agencies, ‘Dogs a man, doesn’t it, when he has to be lifted out of the shit?’

Gibbons offered no denials. ‘Didn’t like it, but lessons were learned.’

The Major, not privy to secrets of the trade and historic foul-ups, pushed back his chair and made ready to stand. ‘I see, looking out onto the street, that nothing of the weather improves, sleet gone to snow. Hard to have a decent sight of them, in the mind, in the heat. It’s merciless, the heat is. Brutal. Anyway, what interests me are your good words on the officer on the ground who directs all this, and your confidence.’

On her haunches, Abigail Jones sat alone. Behind her, fifteen yards back, was Corky.

He accepted, they all did, that she had taken control again, and would call the moves.

Somewhere under the robe she wore – now mud-stained and dusty – was the holster that hugged her waist. The pistol was in it and there was a slit at the side of the garment that her fist could be shoved into if she needed the thing. She had tucked her gas mask behind her backside so it was close to hand but not visible.

She had called for a leader to be sent. The rag-heads always liked – at a time of confrontation – to have a meeting, a conference; then they would hector and bluster, give themselves the opportunity to preen and usually to walk out. A meeting, at a time of substantial dispute, was the way they usually went. She sat in the dirt in the centre of the gateway and waited for a leader to come.

Corky could see, from the tilt of her head, that her eyeline was down. Her focus point would have been about half of the distance between where she sat and the line of men facing her. One had a scarf, bloodstained, across his face, and another could only stand with the help of two others; one had weeping abrasions on his shin where the bar had been used on him, and another tucked his wrist between his shirt’s buttonholes and had a broken collar-bone. There were others who might have fractured ribs or dried blood on their scalps, but no shots had been fired and that was a miracle. He thought they had done well.

His rifle was slung across his chest and he had two magazines, filled, taped together. His flak vest was over his Jones Boys shirt, and the gas mask was hooked to his waist. If any of them had run at her, he would have dropped them.

Behind him was Shagger; Harding and Hamfist were at the Pajeros. Pretty feckin’ ridiculous but they still had the tripod up, the spotting ’scope mounted on it. The identification pictures were on the ground, held in place by a quarter of a mud brick: by now Corky might have been able to spot a Marbled Duck. He might have known the difference between a Ferruginous Duck and a White-headed Duck, and definitely he could have said which was a Basra Reed-warbler and which a Black-tailed Godwit. He had a sunhat on, camouflage type, while Shagger and Harding wore the Proeliator Security caps with the big peaks; Hamfist’s was from a pizza-delivery service in the east of Scotland. She wore nothing on her head other than a wispy scarf. Her body threw off no shadow because the sun was above her.

She waited. It was all bluff.

Harding’s take on it was that had it been American spooks a close-support airstrike would have been called in during the night, and Black Hawks would have come to lift them out. Shagger had said that if the mission had been run by any of the other Six officers from Baghdad they’d have called a taxi and quit.

She sat very still. Corky couldn’t see her face but thought of her as serene, so calm.

The heat made him wobble on his feet, the shimmer came up from the sand and the faces in front of him distorted. There was pain in his eyes behind the wraparounds, he craved a drink, and his concentration was going. Harding must have seen him rock.

The drawling voice was in his ear: ‘Go get yourself a drink.’

‘What about her?’

‘Go close to her, break the mood she’s set, you’ll get bawled out.’

‘I reckon.’

Harding murmured, ‘She’s remarkable.’

Corky did it side of mouth. ‘No one like her, an ace lady… You have any idea how long this needs spinning out?’

‘Beginning to think it’s closing down on us. Don’t reckon, up front, they have much more time. I saw how much water they took and it’s the heat… I don’t think they have a heap of time.’