Gerald Seymour - Holding the Zero

He was repulsive but she needed him, as everybody did. He lifted two cardboard boxes from the boot and carried them to her. She saw that the donor labels had been ripped off.

She didn’t know whether they were from Protect the Children or another bloody charity.

They were probably hers to begin with.

She smiled sweetly, and pointed. ‘Up there. That’s where she is.’

There was a slope and a distant clear-cut line of a ridge. Behind it were another three, softly hazy, barely visible in the high altitude. She’d hoped he’d gape and shrivel, but his pudgy face lit in triumph.

A line of men materialized over the nearest ridge. She put the boxes of morphine and penicillin in her pick-up, and Lev let her swig at the flask of whisky from the glove compartment of the Mercedes. She always needed whisky when the wounded were children. The column of men came down the slope with the casualties of battle.

One day each month a helicopter came to the eyrie in northern Iraq, collected Isaac Cohen, flew him back across the Turkish border to the base at Incerlik, and in the evening returned him to the isolation of his mountain home. On that one day he was debriefed by the Mossad officers stationed in Ankara who flew in to meet him. The contact was valuable and broke the impersonal monotony of radio intercepts – but even better was the chance to lie in a bath of warm water and to eat good cooked food. For a whole month he yearned for the comforts of that single day. The helicopter would not come for another twenty-four hours but already he was packed, ready for its arrival.

Haquim said, ‘He is a snake, but a snake that has no venom. I asked him what was the price of the machine-gun, and he said it was a gift. I asked why he wished to travel so far to make a gift, and he said that the gift was proof of his friendship.’

Breaking the rule Haquim had set, Gus had been lying in the sunshine by the fence and cleaning the blister on his heel when he had seen the return of the men who had carried down the wounded. An overweight, elderly civilian was among them, carried on one of the litters that had been used for the casualties. Behind him more men carried a heavy machine-gun and ammunition on a stretcher. At the broken gate of the village, the man had slid heavily off the litter, wiped the sweat from his forehead and taken charge of the machine-gun. He had wheeled it into the village, grunting from the weight of it, and Haquim had met him.

‘He is Lev Rybinsky, a Russian. He would not know about friendship. Everything for him is a negotiation for influence and financial gain. Where there is a closed border, he has access because he has bought the guards, he owns the customs men of the Syrians and the Turks and, perhaps, of the Iraqis. You want a tanker of fuel, he gets it for you.

You want fruit from America, he supplies it. You want an artefact of antiquity from Nineveh or Samarra, he provides it. Now, he comes to us with a gift of friendship and will not talk about a price.’

‘It would have a hell of a hitting power.’

‘At a range of a thousand metres it can pierce the armour on any part of a personnel carrier. Of course it is useful, but I ask, what is the price? What does he want that we can give him?’

They watched.

The Russian dragged the machine-gun towards the command post, from which Meda emerged. He stopped, wiped an old handkerchief over his head and face, straightened his tie, then bowed elaborately to Meda. She was laughing, and he reached forward, touched her arm, as if to discover that she was real. Haquim turned away.

‘You know, Gus, that we attack Tarjil tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’

‘You understand that to attack Tarjil we must come further down from the mountains?’

‘Yes.’

‘The real friends of the Kurds are not a man who brings a machine-gun – or a man who brings a sniper’s rifle. They are the mountains. And now we are leaving our friends behind us.’

‘What do I do at Tarjil?’

‘There will be a briefing at dusk, then you will be told. Then, perhaps, I will be told.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where were you this morning, when you went with Meda?’

‘Don’t ask me because I can’t tell you.’

He saw the beaming face of the Russian amongst the tight-pressed shoulders of the men and he heard Meda’s voice. He saw the adoration of the men for her and the sunlight played on her mouth, which, in dark secrecy, had kissed the cheek of a senior Iraqi officer. Her hands moved high in emphasis, and they had shaken the hand of the officer.

He sat on the ground and began to unwind the hessian bandage roll from the body of the rifle so that he could, again, enjoy the distraction of cleaning it.

The sergeant said, ‘I am from Basra, Major, and my young brother is with me here, and my cousin. Will the saboteurs attack in the morning? It is good that you are here, Major, with your rifle.’

Karim Aziz turned away from him. He was still in shock from the extent of the conspiracy, and struggling to comprehend what he’d seen. His legs ached from the long day’s walk, but the dog still bounded at his side. The darkness on the streets of Tarjil was broken by pockets of light from curtained or shuttered windows and from fires lit by the soldiers beside their bunkers. He had seen the gleam of confidence in the eyes of the men behind the sergeant as they noted his paint-smeared face and the heavy hanging camouflage smock, the rifle balanced in the crook of his arm.

An old man hurried from the shadows carrying a small can of heating oil, then saw him and blocked him.

‘I am retired now, Major, but I was professor of the economics faculty of the University of Mosul. This is my home. My wife pleaded that we should flee south, I said the army would protect us. It is good to see you, Major, with your rifle.’

The man kissed his cheek and stumbled on into the darkness. In the last light of the day, before Aziz had turned, he had been close to the village of Darbantaq – four hundred metres from it – and had lain on his stomach with the dog beside him, and watched. He had seen her – the witch – once, but she was hemmed in by a crowd and was crossing, fast, the gap between a row of homes and the command post. He had watched as a paunchy European had brought a DShKM heavy machine-gun into the village. He had noted the way the men sat in quiet clusters, as men always did in the hours before they went into battle. He had seen a part of the body of the officer at the entrance to the command post, and had tilted his head to study the ground from which the shot would have come. He had found, at the sufficient elevation to clear the roofs, the scrape on the slope made by the sheep. He had trekked back, his mind in turmoil.

Wandering alone in the streets of the town that would be attacked in the dawn, confused and troubled, tugged between the extremes of loyalty and conspiracy, he had seemed to have become a beacon towards which the hope of frightened people was drawn.

‘You are the master sniper, Major. Through the length of the regiment you and your skill are spoken of. We are not forgotten by Baghdad, Major, if they have sent you and your rifle. Shoot her! Shoot the witch.’

If he fought he would shoot against the conspiracy he had joined. If he did not fight, he would betray the trust of those who depended on him. He went slowly through the town, past the sandbag positions and cars that had been driven across the streets to make barricades, hugging the shadows and harbouring his torment.

The man had no face.

He lay against a rock, but had no face. Or he was in a ditch, or had tunnelled out a hide, or was back in trees, buried in shadow… but there was never a face to bring a character to the man.

The meeting droned on.

He needed to give a face to the man. He did not know whether it was cold or carried warm humour, whether the face had charity or parsimony. He did not know whether the face of the man was bearded, moustached, or clean-shaven, whether it was topped with hair, whether the eyes shone without mercy or with kindness. The man had come north to find him and to kill him, and he could not give him a face.