Gerald Seymour - A Deniable Death

He didn’t know how much more he could buy. The man across the room from him, exhausted, breathed heavily. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. His fingers trembled and the wood shivered in his hand. Frustration, obvious, built in the goon’s head. The next spate of violence would be uncontrolled aggression and Foxy would suffer… knew it. But didn’t know how long it mattered that his silence held. When he had been the interpreter for the JFIT people in Basra, he had never seen one of them show anger, lose their cool. He knew the routine: questions, silence, beating and kicking, silence, burning – knew it and waited for it. How long did they need? More than an hour? More than one more beating and two cigarettes? Foxy couldn’t remember what the gaunt little American, with the hook for a hand, had said or what was called a ‘code of conduct’ with a prisoner.

He lay on the cell floor, trussed, roped to the wall and knew it was coming soon: a bad beating and kicking, and a burning.

A decision that only Mansoor could make: to give up on him and wait for the senior officers to come, or to try one more time.

He had been exhausted and had spent time leaning against the table – not sitting. He had been brought a glass of juice by one of the Basij peasants; the guard had had no stomach for what he had seen, the prisoner on the concrete floor, and had vomited his last meal. He had drunk the juice, which had refreshed him, given clarity to his thoughts. The two guards inside the cell, minding the door, had not spoken during the long hours. He thought they were terrified by what they had seen. He knew they looked away when he used a cigarette to burn. They did not interrupt the growing understanding he had.

When his mind cleared it was as if he had slapped his own face hard. He was, himself, exposed. He could have been naked, lain alongside the man on the floor. He could have been beaten and accused.

It was about the man he was tasked to protect – clarity came in a burst. A puzzle that had been obstinate slid into place: so simple. Some who examined his actions might find it hard to credit that mere enthusiasm, and vanity, had led him to create circumstances where the prisoner remained in his custody and not in that of officers with experience and rank. He was tasked to protect Rashid Armajan, a man of great sensitivity. He had pulled from the water an agent in a camouflage suit who offered no explanation and he imagined that the couple now travelled anonymously, without a cordon of guards. He thought he had put them at hazard – perhaps killed them. Some would say – suspicious men with the cold eyes of investigators – that the denial of information about the capture was itself an act of treason.

He could go from the cell, down the corridor and into his office, slap on the lights and telephone to the Crate Camp Garrison. He could demand to speak first with the duty officer, and then that the commanding officer, from the al-Quds Brigade, be woken and brought to the telephone. He would tell of an arrest made five and three-quarter hours earlier, a failed questioning, and no message of such an important matter passed up any chain and…

A great sigh. Almost a sob of desperation.

He dropped the cigarettes onto the table, pushed back the flap of the packet, flicked the box of matches and reached for the wood.

Mansoor believed that salvation, for him, lay with a confession from his prisoner. Then he would telephone the Crate Camp Garrison and get the connection to the duty officer. He steeled himself, took rambling steps across the cell, away from the table, and towards the man on the floor.

The scream went to the marrow of Badger’s bones. He looked again to the east, away into the blackness of the night, and did not see the dawn’s first softening. He would not go until that early light signalled the day’s start.

Until his death, he would hear Foxy’s screams, never be free of them. There would be, even in a deniable world, an inquiry – like a fucking inquest – and the questions would be asked by those who had never been in a shallow scrape, covered with scrim net and watching the movements of the guard detail around the home of a target who made the bombs that killed the guys brought back through the Wiltshire town. Likely the questions would be asked by those who had never gone without water when the thermometer hit 110 degrees plus, had never lain in a scrape and pissed into a bottle. They would not know of a meeting of a landmine clearance group with a terminally ill woman, who stood tall with courage, and did not see small kids kick footballs and ride tricycles, unaware that their mother would soon be dead but that their father would beat her to the grave. They would know nothing, but would demand answers to their questions.

Wasn’t your job, Constable, to get Sergeant Foulkes into position, then support him in every way possible and do the donkey work of extracting him?… You were aware, Constable, that Sergeant Foulkes was nearly twice your age?… How was it, Constable, that you permitted Sergeant Foulkes, an older and less fit man than yourself, to go forward to retrieve the cable and microphone?… Did you not feel retrieval was your job?… Did you, Constable, pull your weight on this mission?

The shout came from deep in his chest, rose in his throat, burst from his mouth, was silent and hurled towards the coots, the ducks, the marauding otter and the browsing pigs on the edge of the reed bed.

‘You weren’t fucking there. If you weren’t there, you don’t know.’

He would stay until dawn, but there was no light yet, no smear, to the east.

It was like an afterthought. The goon, Mansoor, paced a path back and forth in front of where Foxy lay and lashed the wood against the wall. Once a guard had flinched away but had been belted on the shoulder and cried out. The pacing had gone on, the blows had been struck and paint chipped off the concrete. Then had come, no warning, the assault, and a new level of violence.

Different: the lashing with the wood first, not the questions. He tried, logic scrambled and confused, to anticipate where the next show would strike him, what part of his body. Foxy no longer had the ability to plot the patterns, and he couldn’t wriggle, curl himself into the foetal position, because the blows were random.

There was more blood and another tooth had dropped from his mouth. The wood had to lash through the swarm of flies that now flew over him. Between each blow they came in to settle – each time bolder – on the newest wound.

How long? He was hit across the cheek. How long needed to be bought? The little air in his lungs was knocked out. He was bent and winded. He remembered… He was hit on his right kneecap, then on the left ankle. The beating had reached a frenzy and the goon grunted.

He saw light on the hook: the hook had caught the sunlight that filtered through the windows and spread across the auditorium, and Foxy remembered the words of a Code… and no one in the room had taken seriously what was said. There had been an almost audible titter, laughter behind hands, when the American had spoken of the Code. An awkwardness, because each time the SERE man had talked of the United States of America, there had been a pause and then the sentence had been remade with ‘United Kingdom’ inserted; where there had been ‘American’ there was ‘British’. It was resurrected. He could focus on a sentence that survived the beating and the pain, had it sharp: I am British, fighting in the forces that guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defence… I will never forget that I am British, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles that made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United Kingdom. Some had said the man was naff, others that he spoke crap. One had stated the little guy had the relevance of a Disney cartoon cut-out… More blows landed. None of those who had sniggered were here and hurt, not knowing how much time needed to be bought.