Gerald Seymour - A Deniable Death

The dust cloud thrown up behind the car had thinned, and the children had left cheerfully enough with their grandmother for school.

The bird had stayed. He had as good a view of it as he could have hoped for. He did not tire of watching it. His father would not have understood, or his wife or his mother. Himself, until he had been allocated to the security of the Engineer, he would not have believed that a man could watch a bird that sat across a hundred and fifty metres of water from him, and pray that the moment would not pass. The focus of the glasses was on the feathers of the wings and neck, the clean lines of the beak – and on the expanse of mud behind it that was broken only by the debris of dead reeds.

‘What’s special about that bird?’

‘It’s endangered, rare – his obsession.’

‘We’re screwed. We can’t move while he’s there.’

‘State the obvious, young ’un.’

‘We can’t leave it but we can’t go to get it.’

He couldn’t leave the scrape and move in the gillie suit across bare ground to the reed beds, then go into the water, wade to the mud spit and give the bloody bird a shove while binoculars were on him. He couldn’t tug out the microphone because the cable would be out of the water and visible. He couldn’t leave it there either, because that would break the disciplines. It would be the equivalent of leaving a semaphore sign that ‘UK was here’ when the microphone was found – as it would be.

‘Then we stay put. Night follows day, right? We go at dusk.’

‘That’s a whole day to kill.’

‘So sleep a bit, think of water.’

‘We haven’t got any.’

‘You ever get tired of stating the obvious, young ’un? Apparently not.’

‘I have to go forward and collect the stuff. I have to get…’ Badger didn’t finish. Foxy had grunted, sighed, turned his back on him. Maybe it was nine hours before he could move out to collect the kit. He could reflect and evaluate. He could count the flies that swarmed above the scrim net. He could watch the goon in the plastic chair and wonder how a grown man had such an empty skull that he needed to sit with a rifle across his knees and watch a bird that was not much different from the herons Badger had seen in Wales, and half as interesting as the eagles he knew from Scotland. He could think of Alpha Juliet and holding her, of sending the call-sign code back for a meeting at the extraction point, and… Time for interrogation.

Badger asked, What was our justification for coming here?

He answered himself: They said it was a rogue state and reckoned there were weapons that could nuke us, gas us, poison us.

Were we surprised that they wanted us out so shot at us and blew us up?

He answered himself, Gob-smacked.

Did no one question the inevitable bit? That clever bombs might be provided by a neighbour and laid by a local? he asked. Did no one reckon it might be none of our business?

He answered: Plenty did, but they were ignored, out of step with policy.

Us coming here, was it done in my name? Badger asked.

He answered, and his words rang in his mind, Who needed the opinion of a moron? The big people knew what was in your best interest.

The big people – were they right to say that the man I fingered was our enemy?

Irrelevant. It’s done, can’t be undone.

Badger asked, Do I take pride in what I did – getting here, surviving here, fulfilling the mission – or am I ashamed?

He paused, then answered, A luxury and an indulgence. A waste of space – and breath. Done and impossible to undo. You are, Danny Baxter, the little fellow who is told what to do and does it. A man will have his head blown off and a good woman who clears minefields – who is dying – will be widowed. You are a part of it, and it’s done in your name. Perhaps they’ll give you a fucking medal to polish.

The sun was higher, and his need for water was cruel. His stomach was distended by the Imodium tablets, and the sores were suppurating. Their mission was complete… except that the bird sat on the microphone. There was nothing else for Badger to look at. He could see the bird’s back and fancied that a small loop of the cable had hitched up and was near to its folded legs.

The goon sat in his chair. A guard had brought him coffee and a plate of sandwiches.

Hours to kill before he went into the water. They had done their work and should by now have been with the guys in the Pajeros and Alpha Juliet. Congratulations should have been gruffly conferred and he might have had cream on the scabs and sores. He worked out which route he would take, and considered how dark it should be before he moved. The time dragged and Foxy slept. Then the pigs came and an otter passed by. Ducks were there, and coots, and the hours crawled. Badger’s body was racked with pain. He knew each step he would take when he went into the water.

The sun had dipped and started its slide.

Badger moved. When he shifted it was better for some of the sores and worse for others. The flies still swarmed and it was not yet dark enough for the mosquitoes. He could see the face of his wristwatch.

‘Not long, thank God,’ he murmured.

‘What?’

‘I said, “Not long.” ’

When he was out of this hell hole, Badger reckoned, he’d want to shout. He would need – maybe at the airfield at Basra, or at Kuwait airport – to get up on a table in the spooks’ office or in a coffee lounge and bawl the roof off, yell, scream, shake the walls. He’d shout in the shower, and louder in the surgery when the medic examined the wounds that the biting creatures had given him. He craved to shout now at the goon who sat in the chair, facing the lagoon and the still water.

Another thing he’d do, when he was back at any imitation of civilisation, was take the gillie suit, and the vest he wore under it, the pants and the socks, maybe even the boots, and chuck it all into one of those oil drums used as an incinerator, spill some fuel in and throw into it a lit roll of newspaper. They’d burn: the lice and fleas, ticks, ants and little red spiders. It would be sheer pleasure to watch them. Through the day, the thought of stripping off that gear and of the flames leaping in the drum had been companionship for Badger. He envied little about Foxy but his ability to sleep wherever and whenever.

He squirmed a little. Any movement seemed to set off the irritation of the insect bites. The next evening, those that weren’t lodged in the gillie suit would turn up and find the meal ticket had moved on. His mind jostled between reality and fantasy, as it had done to kill the hours: fleas, ticks and ants who found the empty hide should consider themselves lucky not to have been in the suit when it went into the drum… Maybe he’d gone a little mad. Maybe ‘a whiff of insanity’ was part of a croppie’s job description. But it was good to let the madness take hold because then anxieties about it’s in your name and it’s done, can’t be undone were pushed back. He stretched his legs to the limit and his left thigh cramped.

‘About another hour, then I’ll be moving.’

‘That so, young ’un?’

‘The bird’s awake, seems it’s getting some life back.’

‘Should be hungry. It’ll need to go and feed.’

‘The further away the bloody better, and him with it.’

The goon, the officer, had finally stood. He took a last cigarette and tossed the empty pack onto the ground beside the quay. He stretched and walked to the far end of the short pier, but hardly looked right or left. His eye line stayed with the bird. Now it was upright and seemed to test the ground and the debris under its feet. It stamped a little and eased the weight from one leg to the other. Then its head lifted, its neck straightened and it croaked, a harsh sound. The wings opened and flapped.