Gerald Seymour - Holding the Zero

He was locked up in Horfield – that’s the gaol at Bristol – for three months. Mum and I, we hadn’t any money, we only got to see him twice. The first time, my dad was pathetic.

They might just as well have put him down as cage him. He was a free spirit, had to have the wind on his face, had to be out in the pissing rain. I cried all the way home and Mum wasn’t much better. The second time he was brighter, changed, and he said that Gus had been to see him. My dad thought he had plenty of friends before they locked him up, but Mum and me, and Gus, were the only ones who visited him. He’d taken the day off school, told his teachers he was going home for a family funeral, but he hitched rides up to Bristol and saw my dad. All the other friends had turned their backs on him. Not Gus.

That’s loyalty. He wouldn’t run out on you. He never saw my dad again… We moved and Dad was dead within the twelvemonth. Why? To me, loyalty is important. It’s the mark of a true friend, when you’re down the back’s not turned. What’s he doing there?

Will he make it through?’

‘I don’t know.’

Behind them, the major called out that he was taking Ms Manning to the shelter of his car. Willet seemed not to feel the rain dripping off his face. There was another failure, another death, another soldier tramping disconsolately forward after his position was identified. He told the sergeant that he would make damn certain that no blame accrued to him for helping the civilian, Augustus Henderson Peake, understand the trade of killing, and surviving.

‘What else did he learn here?’

‘I took him into the library, showed him what we had on sniping and signed them out in my name. In the evenings, off camp, I got the specialist instructors to meet him. There was Sergeant Williams who’s into dogs, because dogs are big for snipers, that’s tracker dogs. Sergeant Browne is weapons maintenance, Sergeant Fenton is camouflage, Sergeant Stevens is the top man for the tactics of using the AWM Lapua Magnum against armour, communications and helicopters. Sergeant-’

‘Did you say helicopters? You mean gun-ship helicopters?’

‘It’s not a cake-walk he’s gone on, Mr Willet. That’s why I passed him on to an old friend. Whatever they throw at him, he won’t back off. It’s a powerful thing, loyalty.’

He’d sent the signals first, then steadied himself and opened the secure voice link to Langley.

Caspar Reinholtz was alone in his office. The overall picture that he would share with the disembodied voices on the link was not for Luther, Bill and Rusty to hear.

He allowed few interruptions. The inquest would come later, a commission of inquiry, but his job now was merely to put flesh on the bones of another disaster in Iraq. Beside the receiver for the link was a sat-phone he would use as soon as he had finished with the link.

While he spoke, however hard he tried to cut her from his mind, the picture of the young woman was in his thoughts.

The great circle was tighter around agha Bekir, agha Ibrahim and Meda, but held at a respectful distance.

Gus heard the warbling pulse of the sat-phone, heard it because the men in the circle were quiet as they watched the feast of celebration. The chairs had been pushed aside and a rug laid out for the dishes of lamb and rice, and spicy vegetables. He knew what they ate because the scent of the food drifted across the open space of the circle. He sat against the wheel of the jeep and the boy was crouched beside him. The sat-phone cried to be answered. They would eat later, with all the men in the circle, then be briefed, then march in the dusk towards distant Kirkuk and the flame. The persistence of the sat-phone was silenced.

Gus watched idly. He saw agha Bekir put a dripping piece of meat in his mouth, hold the receiver to his face, and chew while he listened. Gus saw the sea-change.

The face clouded. Where there had been a wary smile there was now a concentrated coldness. The lines were back on the features. The boy had seen it and seemed to squirm; the murmur of voices in the circle was stilled and quiet laughter died. Agha Ibrahim was passed the sat-phone receiver and grains of rice slid from his fingers as he took it. He too listened, his face darkening, then threw the receiver away from him. Meda scrabbled on her knees across the rug, tipping aside food bowls and pots, and snatched it up. Gus heard her furious scream, and then she too dropped it. They were all on their feet. Agha Bekir was shouting to one side of the circle, and agha Ibrahim to the other, as if some strange apartheid divided their forces, and Meda was a small, spinning, yelling shape between them, and the rumble of the voices in the circle was confusion.

Every emotion of anguish was on the boy’s features.

‘What do they say?’

The boy piped, ‘They say it is finished. Meda will not believe them… They have the courage of sheep… They say it were better that it had never begun. Meda says tomorrow she will take them to Kirkuk. They say there is no air cover, that there is no mutiny in the Iraqi tanks, as they were promised. They say they are going home.’

Meda gripped their clothes in turn. She was ferocious in her attack, and she pleaded with them, but neither would catch her eye, as if they dared not, as if they feared her reproach.

The boy said, ‘They say that if they go now it is possible the revenge of the government will not be so great. The Americans’ promises are broken, they say they will never see Kirkuk. Meda says there is a place in history for them. They are worse than sheep when wolves come.’

For a moment, she hung on to the men, but they pulled clear of her. Agha Bekir and agha Ibrahim shouted their orders at the sectors of the circle. Meda was pleading with their men.

The boy’s passion was squeezed from him. ‘They say they are taking their men with them. Meda says she will be in Kirkuk in the morning, on her own if no man will follow her.’

On each side, the circle parted to allow the departure of the chieftains. Gus sat against the wheel of the jeep and held the big rifle across his legs. He felt a sense of calm because it was still a part of his perfect day.

Great shuffling columns of men passed her. She gazed on them with contempt. Gus saw the men who had used the wheeled machine-gun abandon it and walk on. He saw those who had run to the wire with her at the Victory City, and those who had gone down the road with her towards the barricade at Tarjil. A few broke the regimen of the columns and dropped down to sit in the dirt at her feet. He saw the big cars spurt away with their escorts of pick-ups and jeeps, and clinging in the back of one of them, amongst the men with guns, was the Russian. So, the bastard turned his back on licences for chrome, copper, iron and coal – and a small bitter smile hovered at Gus’s lips. He saw Haquim go to Meda, argue with her and try to pull her away, but she pushed him from her and his weight went on to his injured leg. He slipped to the dirt, and crawled away in his humiliation. Many went and only a few were left.

‘What are you going to do, Mr Gus?’

‘You should walk, Omar, you have a life to live.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Perhaps go and find something to eat.’

‘I cannot leave you, Mr Gus.’

They hugged each other. They were the transport manager and the urchin thief, and they clung to each other, were tied to each other as tightly as the chieftains’ ankles had been.

‘I am honoured to meet the sniper who does not fire.’

‘Do you wish to hear my report, Colonel?’

The new man, flown in from Baghdad, was rake thin. His uniform was immaculately creased and the medal ribbons on his chest were a kaleidoscope of colours. Major Aziz knew his name and his face from the photographs in the newspapers. The photographs always showed him at parades standing a pace behind the President. He wore the flash on his shoulder of the brigade of Amn al-Khass, the unit of the Special Security Service tasked with the protection of the President. It was predictable that a new commander would seek to belittle the men over whom he had authority, to demonstrate his power. In his filth, tired, hungry, Aziz stood loosely, not at attention, in the command bunker, and the dog lay in the dirt from his boots.