Gerald Seymour - A Deniable Death

His hands scratched at the wall. His fingernails gouged the plaster over the concrete blocks and he pulled himself upright. He went past the table and kicked the chair from his path. He stepped over his prisoner and did not know if the chest moved but he saw no bubbling in the blood at the mouth. He could not look into the man’s eyes because the swelling above and below had closed them. As he bent to reach past the man and loose the rope from the ring on the wall, he saw the wounds and bruises he had inflicted, the scars of the insect bites and the sores that ticks had caused. The man had destroyed him. He felt – almost – wonderment, a confusion. His face was very close to the man’s and he murmured the question he needed answering more than any other: ‘Why did you come to this place, which is nothing? Why were you here? Why was it worth it for you?’ He freed the rope, dragged on it and the man slid across the floor, through the blood, urine and water, on his back and buttocks. His other leg was bent but he did not cry out. Mansoor threw the end of the rope into the doorway, where it was caught by a guard, and gave his order again. The body was heaved past him and jammed in the door. It was freed, and then had gone down the corridor.

He slumped again, and his hands held his head.

Badger watched. Perhaps the coots did too, the frogs and the pigs. He hadn’t slept, eaten or drunk. He had been without sleep, food and water for more hours than he could calculate. He was close to delirium, on an edge.

They brought Foxy out. There were two on the rope and they went at a good pace, Foxy bouncing along behind them. They had come out of the main door into the barracks and had turned towards the water. They went into the pool of light thrown from the high lamp. When a stone caught at Foxy’s shoulder or hips and he got stuck, he was kicked free by those who flanked him. If his trailing leg snagged, he was kicked again. Badger saw it through his binoculars so he lived with each jolt of Foxy’s head. One of those who followed kicked at Foxy whether he was caught or not; another bent every three of four paces to scoop up dirt and pebbles, then threw them hard at Foxy’s face. Badger, with his lenses, could see the wounds, the cuts and the drying blood. He could also make out – among the scabs – the red marks where the skin had been burned. Now he knew why Foxy had tortured the dark with his screams of agony.

He looked for the goon, for Mansoor. He didn’t understand why he, too, had not come outside.

But Badger – on the edge of control – understood little.

The rope was thrown up and looped over the arm of the lamp, a strip of ironwork welded to the main pole. Its free end was caught, tugged down, and a gang of them took the strain. Foxy’s head bounced a last time in the dirt, then the body was up and clear. The light shone on the rope’s knot around his ankle, and onto the leg that took the weight. The other hung angled and crazily. The arms were loose in the shoulder sockets and the wrists brushed the ground. He turned slowly, gently.

Badger watched.

He watched for more than a minute and saw some of the guards punch the body, or kick at the head. He waited until their tiredness took over and they drifted back towards the barracks. The shadow under Foxy turned slowly, then went back on itself. Badger went to the bergens and took from them what he would need. It did not seem to be a matter for debate.

He had sent the message, then, again, switched off the kit. He had no wish to be burdened with an inquest.

He went into the water. The gillie suit billowed out and the cool settled on his legs and stomach. He had done what he hoped was sufficient to protect the Glock and the four magazines he had taken from the bergens, and had sealed them in the plastic bags that the Meals-Ready-To-Eat had been packaged in. The gas grenades and smoke were in other bags and all were knotted tight. The moon did not now have far to fall and sent a spear of light across the lagoon. There was a place, near the far quay, where it merged with another, duller, strip. The silver and lustreless gold met and sliced through each other, near to the quay and about midway between the house and the barracks. The moonlight was stronger and uninterrupted, but the high lamp’s was broken by the shadow, always spiralling, of the shape suspended from a rope.

Badger left behind him, on the far side of the clear ground, the bergens and the craft, ready and inflated.

He went into the water beside the wrecked carcass of the bird; the rats had left nothing worth returning for. He waded the first few paces and was soon up to his chest in water, the weapons, ammunition and grenades under the surface and deep in the suit’s poachers’ pouches. He had tried to evaluate what was ahead of him. Wasted effort. It mattered little. There might be a company of infantry, equipped with modern gear, all fed, watered, rested and alert, dug in with slit trenches and sandbagged sangars between the quay and the high lamp from which Foxy was suspended. He was on the move because he was obligated. It was no big decision for him. To retire, do nothing, to turn his back on Foxy – rotating in the light breeze from the rope – he didn’t consider it.

He came to the mud spit, lay on his stomach and used his elbows and knees to propel himself over the open ground, past the small mess of leaves, branches and dirt that he had used as the hiding place for the microphone. He allowed himself a brief thought that it had been well done. The arrival of the bird, the beautiful leggy creature that had so entranced the goon officer, had probably fucked them. If the goon’s attention had not been on it, where he must have seen something – a flash of light off the gear or a kink in the cable – they would have been out, clear, and gone… He went down again into the water. Ducks came from the dark to his left, were spooked by him and stampeded across the water, struggling for lift-off. The noise seemed loud enough to rouse the dead. But they were up, away, the ripples subsided, and the dented silver and old gold lines of the reflections calmed.

The bed of the lagoon seemed firmer. It might have been an old waterway, and the bottom was settled, weathered down. While he was within his depth he made good progress. Badger had no idea whether he would be able to wade or have to swim. The natural light was good and he could see well. Of course, he could also be seen. He moved steadily and left a wake behind him.

Badger would have appeared, had he been seen while he waded or swam, as detritus that floated on gentle currents. He kept away from the lines of light thrown by the moon and the lamp. Through the scrim netting of the headpiece he looked hard for the guards, their positions, their readiness. One was near the house, close to the front entrance, and illuminated by the security lights; in his view was the short pier to which the dinghy was tied. Another was sitting on a plastic chair by the entrance to the barracks, rigid and upright. His head was still, as if in shock, and he was heavy-built. Badger thought he was the one who had kicked Foxy’s head as they’d pulled him across the dirt. He hadn’t seen the goon emerge from the building. Another guard was further to the right from the barracks, close to the raised bund line that bordered the lagoon.

Police lectures on surveillance in siege situations emphasised that the numbers of hostage-takers must be logged. Why? Because the Germans had screwed up big during the Munich Olympics, and a lesson learned from mistakes of thirty-nine years before were still valid. The point was that German police on the walkway in front of the Israeli team house in the athletes’ village had seen the Palestinians in doorways and windows, and politicians had gone inside the house, but no proper count had been made of how many guys were there with their assault rifles. The rescue plan was based on the premise that there were four armed men – but when the helicopters brought the athletes and their Arab captors to the military airbase where the shoot-out would happen it was realised that there weren’t four targets to neutralise but eight. A recipe for a screw-up. Badger had counted three guards outside, which meant there were five more inside and the goon. Important. Strategies played in his mind… The first dawn light would come soon.