Gerald Seymour - Holding the Zero

Joe’s hand slipped to her arm to stop her. He waved in the gloom towards his bodyguards and made a gesture of eating. They should bring some food. He touched her again to tell her that he listened. He knew about fighting. His experience of war was close second-hand, moving behind the combat troops in Kuwait and making safe unexploded ordnance. After the guns had gone silent he had been in the Iraqi slit trenches and in their bunkers, dealt with their ordnance, and seen the slaughter’s end-game.

‘I don’t know how I’d be if I’d had half my guts taken away – maybe not too bloody happy. Not one whined. It’s all for freedom. They say they have to fight for their freedom. Is that crap, Joe? There’s this woman leading them called Meda, and she’s told them about freedom. I don’t suppose you’ve met her but I have, and they’d follow her wherever she goes. This morning, dawn, she took them to hell.’

He sat against the tree-trunk. She was beside him. He had his legs pulled up tight and his arms wrapped round them. His chin was down on his knees as he stared at the dark ground in front of his boots.

‘God, I don’t know what freedom is. No way I know what their idea of freedom means. The nearest I know about freedom is when my bloody contract here is finished and I get out and I’ve money in the bank to spend. Can you imagine, Joe, running up an open road into gunfire because that’s the way to find freedom? There’s a part of it that we’re involved in, you and me, Joe. It’s only a small part, but we’re in there.’

He looked up sharply.

Sarah said, ‘I took a letter from an old man. The old man, Hoyshar, is the woman’s grandfather. The letter was addressed to an Englishman. I gave you the letter, you promised you’d hand it on. Did you?’

The memory of what he’d done, and thought nothing of, welled back in him. He nodded. He remembered what he had forgotten, the name on the envelope. He stared into her eyes and didn’t answer.

She pressed. ‘Moving that letter ensured our bloody involvement… Apparently some sniper came out here because of that letter. A guy from England, didn’t have to. You know what they said, those guys who were wounded, with their guts hanging out, without arms, with holes in their lungs? The poor simple bastards say he is the best shot they ever knew, but they were hurt at Tarjil because his rifle fouled up and he couldn’t shoot over them. He came because of that letter I gave to you and you moved on. No-one else came.

After Tarjil they’re going to hit a brigade camp, and then it’s Kirkuk. And the daft fuckers think they’ll win because of one sniper and the woman.’

‘They’ll be out of the mountains,’ Joe said grimly, ‘be in the open. The tanks’ll put them through the mincer.’

‘Makes you feel small, doesn’t it? Involved but not able to help. Fucking small.’

‘I just do my job. That’s what I’m here for. Nothing more.’

Joe Denton, twenty years in the Royal Engineers, specialist in explosives, stared down at the shadowy pile of the seventeen mines he had made safe that day. In the backpack beside him, with his helmet and armoured waistcoat, were the seventeen detonators. If Joe, the corporal, had not been screwing the daughter of a Military Police officer on his last posting in Germany, if he’d not smacked the officer’s chin when ordered to stay away from his little angel, he’d still be in the army, and would be without involvement.

‘I’m thinking of all that shit going on out there, while all I do is sit back here and pick up the fucking pieces.’

The food was brought to them. They sat under the tree and the night settled around them.

‘I had toothache this morning, Joe. What I saw today made me forget it. Toothache just doesn’t compete. It’s all in the mind.’

‘My last war… What a hell of a way to finish.’

‘Prizes, awards – hey, and rises. I hear cash registers.’

‘You want to get killed, Mike? Try somewhere to get killed that people care about, Dean. It’s the way the world works.’

They were still in Diyarbakir’s premier league watering-hole, the bar of the Hotel Malkoc, huddled around a table by the window.

‘It’d be the ultimate bow out.’

‘I might get a professorship in media studies, out in the Midwest.’

‘Don’t kid yourself. People wouldn’t even bother to look in the atlas to find where you were killed.’

It had been the end of another fruitless day of obstruction and failure, capped by a lousy meal. Mike, Dean and Gretchen had swapped their sob stories, and had moved on to the inevitable – the pull-out, the booking of air tickets – when the Russian had sidled up and greeted them as old friends.

‘How did he know about us? I mean, how?’

‘Because we talk too much, Mike.’

‘That German, I say it myself, he is a complete sod.’

Gretchen pulled a face, her mouth curled in disgust. So, they had been talking flights out from Diyarbakir when the stiletto-thin German, Jurgen, had intruded into their group and made the introduction. The proposition had been put. The German and the Russian were behind them, leaning comfortably at the bar. Fifteen thousand dollars was the price.

‘I’d be putting my reputation on the line, asking the office for a guarantee of five thou.’

‘They’d crucify me if they paid up and he was a conman.’

‘It’s not the point. The point is the danger. Don’t you see that? It’s the danger of going in there, and nobody caring.’

‘Then we’ll just have to make them care,’ Mike said boldly. It had been written of him in a television rag that he’d dodged more bullets than John Wayne. The image was there to be maintained. He twisted and waved to the Russian to join them.

Gretchen had her eyes tight shut. She grimaced. ‘I can’t quite believe it is actually true.’

‘Actually true…’ The Russian beamed behind her, then bent to offer the posture of confidentiality. ‘You talk about the woman. Twenty-four hours ago, in Iraq, I was with her. I met her. You have the word of Lev Rybinsky. Look at my feet, look at my clothes, look at the mud. I walked across mountains to meet her, to be with her, and walked back.

I am very sincere with you. The money is not for me, it is to open the door of the route to her. There is no profit in this to me. I have come to you because of my love for the freedom of an abused people. The world should know about her. For me, there would be no financial gain.’

‘You’d take us?’ Mike asked, breathily.

‘Of course.’

‘We’d see combat?’ the American demanded.

‘She is marching to Kirkuk and she will not stop. The storm is gathering – yes, my guarantee, you would see combat.’

‘We would walk with her?’ Gretchen queried nervously.

‘You would walk beside her – for fifteen thousand American dollars – into a liberated Kirkuk. I regret I cannot drop the price. Did you know there was a foreign sniper with her?’

AUGUSTUS HENDERSON PEAKE.

4. (Conclusions after interview with Ray Davies (owner of Davies and Sons, haulage company) conducted by self and Ms Carol Manning -transcript attached.) TEMPERAMENT: AHP is an intensely private individual, and is therefore probably best known by his employer. He has worked for the company all his adult life, starting as a teaboy/office runner aged 18, and rising to the position of Transport Manager. Much is made at the company of the stressful pace of the job – much is also made of AHP’s ability to cope with that stress. Words used to describe his TEMPERAMENT are

‘phlegmatic’, ‘patient’ and ‘calm’. They are the descriptions of a character most appreciated by instructors in sniper arts. Interestingly, the owner knew next to nothing of AHP’s life away from the workplace. His shooting passion with the Historic Breech-loading and Small-arms Association was not mentioned. He brought his partner with him to social events, the Christmas party etc., but his personal life was lived behind a closed door. However, importantly, it was made clear that AHP lacks a ruthless side to his character. (The example is minor but indicative of character.) He was unsettled when given the task of sacking a driver who was persistently behind schedule on trans-European journeys, and ‘wriggled’ over clear evidence that a second driver was claiming paid sick leave for a bogus ailment. The TEMPERAMENT is excellent for the role AHP has given himself, but I doubt he has the necessary ‘steel’ for combat. Also, without a long knowledge of MILITARY WEAPONS and MILITARY TRAINING, his chances of medium-term survival remain slim to non-existent.