Gerald Seymour - Holding the Zero

‘Afterwards, will you take me with you? Will you take me to your home?’

Gus let out a low, involuntary chuckle. ‘Ridiculous.’

‘Why is that ridiculous?’

‘Because…’

‘I am your friend here. I can be your friend at your home.’

He could not see the boy’s face but he sensed the smarting resentment… Yes, he could take him home. The boy could sleep on the floor and each morning he could go out into the handkerchief-sized garden at the back of the block, lower his trousers, squat and defecate. Maybe he could thieve the silver spoons from the drawer. Yes, the boy could go with him to work, could sit in the office and be bored witless and look at the wallets protruding from the inside pockets of the jackets draped on chairs and the women’s handbags with the purses displayed. Yes, he could take him up Guildford’s high street on a Saturday morning. He could watch the snake-like movements of the boy’s hands and see his pockets fill. Yes, he could take him to the pub. He would try to intervene in time to stop the flash of a knife if a lout or a yob laughed at the boy’s appearance. Yes, the boy should see Stickledown Range. He could lay the boy on the mat beside him and ask for him to call the distance and wind deflection and know they would be right. Gus reached out in the darkness and his hand found the thin shoulder. He gripped it hard.

‘I would like to sleep now, Omar, and I want you to wake me when it is time to go.’

‘I sort of sat on it, Caspar. I don’t like to be a harbinger, the bringer of bad news. And I’m sorry for it.’

‘I heard it on the radio, Isaac, on their news bulletin. You have nothing to apologize for.’

‘They’re going to hang her in the morning.’

‘Jesus – I didn’t get that from the radio.’

‘They’re going to hang her in the morning – they’ve told the Party faithful to ensure a good attendance.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘Did you hear about the shooting?’

‘No.’

‘There was shooting in Kirkuk this morning. You recall the marksman with her?’

‘I remember him.’

‘After she was taken, the rest of her people came out, all except him. He stayed.

Kirkuk this morning was like your Dodge City, Caspar. He shot at least seven soldiers before he backed off – long-shot stuff, one bullet for one man.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘You met her, Caspar, you saw her. She’d twist a man’s head. It could only be a futile gesture of his commitment to her… I have to believe he cannot turn away from her.’

‘Isaac, maybe he should have gone to the Agency’s school. We major in courses on walking out on trusting idiots.’

‘There are PhDs on it at the Mossad. You are not alone on the excellence of walking away. Of course, there’s nothing that he can do for her.’

‘Isaac, I appreciate your calling. Appreciate the advance warning. I won’t sleep much tonight. She was good and feisty – those bastards in Arbil and Sulaymaniyah didn’t deserve her. And we didn’t. I hope she knows he stayed when no other fucker did. Shit…

I have a paper to read so I’m up to speed to entertain a serious asshole who’ll be here about the time she’s dangling… Goodnight, Isaac.’

He cut the link. He reflected that there might just be a job vacancy, or two, or three, in the classified advertisements of the Baghdad newspapers.

Wanted: HANGMAN. No previous experience required. Expertise not necessary. Successful applicant must be prepared to work long hours.

Good career prospects.

The paper had come in two hours earlier and had clogged thirty-two seconds of time on the secure teleprinter. It took thirty-two seconds to transmit the latest piece of Langley optimism, and the plan on the paper would give work for years to a hangman, or two, or three… He was so goddam tired. He started to turn the pages of the paper – and in a few hours, as she was hanged, a shiny-faced man would step off the shuttle plane from Ankara and would be expecting Caspar Reinholtz to be similarly breezy and cheerful, to say that it was the best plan ever conceived for the toppling of the Boss for Life. He was hunched over his desk, the words in front of him bouncing uselessly in his head.

First Phase: A core group of 250 Iraqi exiles would be trained in sabotage techniques by US Special Forces. Second Phase: A further 2,000 exiles receive eight weeks’ basic military training. Third Phase : Twenty groups of twenty men infiltrate Government of Iraq territory to blow up power lines and disrupt internal transport. Fourth Phase: More men are pushed across friendly borders and set up a liberated enclave. Fifth Phase: The overthrowing of the regime of the Boss for Life.

It was always that simple and they always sent the plan on ahead of its author so that a dumb field officer, a Caspar Reinholtz, could not plead the need for time to study it. It would be considered defeatist to tell the author that the plan was a piece of crap.

A plan was dead. Long live the plan.

The woman, Meda, would hang in the morning and a new thesis of liberation was transmitted to Incerlik.

There was work for one hangman. There would soon be work for many more.

Maybe the man coming in on the shuttle would shake the lethargy out of Caspar Reinholtz’s system, and maybe he would not. But, maybe, the man on the shuttle on the last leg of his journey from Langley should be congratulated for a new refinement of warfare: combat by fucking proxy. Maybe Caspar should grip his hand and slap his shoulder and praise him for digging out a plan where someone else did the fighting for America and faced the noose. No-risk fighting, no casualties going home in body bags to Arkansas or Alaska or Alabama, no mothers trying to be brave as the caskets went down into good Virginia or Vermont earth, because the poor bastards getting killed were proxy soldiers and didn’t count.

Rusty came into the office, and brought coffee with him.

‘There’s a call for you, Caspar – the green phone. It’s London – been cleared by Langley. They want to talk to you.’

‘What about?’

‘About that sniper. Do I say you’re available or not available?’

He thought of the man he had met, and the big rifle, of the man who had not turned, not walked away, of the man who did not know the fucking rules.

‘I’ll take it.’

Long before dawn, while the stars and the moon’s crescent still watched the city, the first of the crowd came, intent on gaining the best places. Those who had risen earliest, or who had not been to bed, pressed against the barrier behind which a solid wall of soldiers stood. They came at first in a dribble and would arrive later in a growing mass.

Confronting them, above the soldiers, was a wooden platform on which was set a low chair. Above the chair and below a solid crossbeam was a dangling rope with a waiting noose that swayed gently in the light night wind. The same wind rippled the canvas sides of the scaffold and flapped the roof above the crossbeam. Because of the cold, those who had arrived first were well wrapped in thick coats and some carried blankets to drape over their shoulders. Music from transistor radios would help to pass the time before daybreak, and later coffee vendors would come. Warm plastic cups would be passed over heads, money would return on a reverse route, and there was a buzz of talk. Away behind the crowd, stretching into an infinity of dull street lights, was the length of Martyr Avenue. They came to see the death of the witch, but none of them who surged onto the weight of the barrier knew why there was a roof over the gallows and side screens around it.

He sat on the balcony, the night caressing his face. Her warmth was against his back. The dog nestled against his legs. Major Karim Aziz let the conceit play in his mind, and shield him from the future.