Gerald Seymour: Holding the Zero

All the while, the rain relentlessly beat down on him.

‘I’m George. Very good to meet you, Carol. It’s not often enough that we have the chance to share snippets with our sister service. And you’re Ken, right? Ministry of Defence? Very pleasant to meet you.’

He stood and shook their hands. There was a gushing charm to the greeting that Willet thought worse than insincere. The Security Service would be lesser beings, and Ministry personnel would be primitives. The security staff at the building’s main entrance had directed them to the bench on the embankment. Willet had been rather looking forward to gaining admittance to the secure sanctum of the Secret Intelligence Service, something to gossip about when he was back at the Ministry. But no conference room was offered them, no opportunity for rubbernecking the interior. They had been told they were expected at the fourth bench, going east towards the Festival Hall on the river’s south-side embankment. George had been waiting for them, and was lighting a cigarette as they approached.

‘I hope I don’t have to apologize for meeting you out here, but it is a nice morning and I always say the view of the river is delightful. It’s not that I’m a fresh-air freak but we have a Fascist correctness inside. Can’t have a little puff indoors. I was once on night duty, dying for a gasp, and I crawled underneath my desk and lit up. I was right under the desk but the bells still went, and the gauleiters came charging in… Now, how’s the young man doing? Is that what you want to know? I don’t mean to be rude, far from it, but is Augustus Peake any concern of yours?’

‘We think so,’ Ms Manning said.

Willet challenged. ‘If a British passport holder, with a bloody great rifle, is tramping around northern Iraq – with the consequences that entails – yes, it is a legitimate concern.’

George was fifty-something. He wore a loose cardigan that had been knitted for him, Willet thought, by a woman who had overestimated his size. He had a blotched face and thinning hair, and he coughed on his cigarette. It was early in the morning, bright and cold, and the wind came up off the river. Office workers, hurrying to be in before nine, strode meaningfully past them, and were interspersed with joggers pounding along the embankment. Willet hadn’t thought to bring a coat and shivered. He thought making them use a public bench was the height of rudeness, and calculated.

‘I come out here about three times a day and the river’s sights never fail to fascinate me… It’s all over. I’ll backtrack – and what I tell you is American material because we don’t have the resources to be on the ground there – and start with the march. It lasted a little more than a week and, like most of the Kurd expeditions down from the mountains, it ended in tears. The serious fighting involved some initial successes, then a suicidal raid into the city of Kirkuk – that period spanned five days. He’s a transport manager, you know, with a small haulage company and I would say it is fair to assume that they’ve been a long five days.’

‘But he survived?’

The moment after the cigarette’s ash had fallen on his tie, George threw away the butt and lit another. Willet waited for his question to be answered, stared out at a small tugboat going downriver towards Parliament, dragging a line of barges. He thought it was a rotten damn place to be discussing the nothing chances of Gus Peake’s survival.

‘No news, in this case, may be good news. What I can say, we do not know either way.

Most of the force that retreated from Kirkuk with their wounded made a successful return to the ceasefire line. He was not among that group. On the other hand, had he been taken by the Iraqis, if he was in their custody, we would probably have heard by now. I have to assume that Augustus Peake is currently in a no man’s land and legging it back, like a hare with a thorn up its bum, towards safety. That’s what I’d be doing, but I’m not him.’

‘There’s a woman.’

He gazed at her, then sniggered, ‘ Cherchez la femme… When was there not a woman?

Excuse me, please, my dear, I don’t mean offence. Yes, there was a woman. It’s all in the bailiwick of the Americans, you understand, and tied to their obsession with removing that man who’s been in their faces for so long. Quite a simple plan really – triple-pronged. The President is assassinated… an armoured unit in the north mutinies and drives south… A woman is a useful symbol of equality, modernism and leads a tribal force into Kirkuk. It was a grand idea, but it didn’t work. The President is alive, the unit didn’t mutiny, she’s dead. Dispiriting, really.’

The cigarette was gone, thrown after the previous one. There were pigeons gathering near them, as if they expected a feast of bread, not smoking butts. A destitute woman, carrying a cider bottle, swayed optimistically towards them but was waved imperiously away. Willet thought they were like the trustees after the death of a childless widow winding up her estate without the charity of respect.

‘How did she die?’ Ms Manning asked.

‘Quite a pretty woman by all accounts, and charismatic… It’s confusing. What is clear, a sniper was sent from Baghdad to counter Augustus Peake. That sniper disabled the woman’s transport during the fighting in Kirkuk and she was taken prisoner. The death is what’s confusing. The Iraqi news agency is saying she was hanged in public, but rumour in the city has it that she was shot at very long range moments before the rope was put round her neck. She’s dead, that’s what’s relevant, she’s out of the picture…’

‘“Long range” – did Gus Peake shoot her?’ Willet asked.

‘I really wouldn’t know, I wasn’t there. Who would you trust for accuracy? The rumour mill in Kirkuk or the INA? It’s not much of a choice if you’re looking for reliability… Eight years ago, in the uprising after the Gulf War, Kirkuk was held by the Kurds for a few days, then the army pushed them out and the citizenry fled to the mountains. Many died there, starvation, cold. They’re back in Kirkuk, those people, older and wiser, chastened. They turned out in big numbers to see the execution. Look, city people rarely fight, they leave it to the peasants in the hills, they watch to see who is going to win. The word is, and it’s probably sentimental twaddle, that the crowd did not jeer and abuse her as the Party hacks would have wanted; they watched her die in complete silence. That’s promising, for the future. Mythology comes from death, and mythology – martyrdom – is something we can work on.’

‘What exactly does that mean?’ There was threat in Ms Manning’s voice but the man chose not to recognize it and puffed at his newest cigarette.

‘Obvious. You can’t stand still in this business. Mythology, out of martyrdom, can sire insurrection. Policy, as laid down by our revered masters…’ He waved, a gesture of contempt, towards the towers and facade of Parliament across the river. ‘… dictates that we seek insurrection in that awful little corner of the world. The word of the hour is

“proxy”. Other people do the dirty work, get the shit on their boots, follow the myth of a martyr, and we achieve – at minimum cost – the aims of our policy. Please, my dear, don’t look so squeamish.’

Willet interjected. ‘Are you telling us that there were two snipers in Kirkuk – and one of them was Gus Peake?’

‘That is a fair assumption.’

‘How long ago?’ A hoarse question.

‘Twenty-four hours. Probably while I was sitting here yesterday and poisoning myself

… Do you know about snipers?’

‘I failed the course.’

‘Bad luck. My father was a sniper in Normandy, 1944, but not a very good one. I rang him last night, to get a viewpoint. What he said, about the best of them that he’d met, they’re proud, solitary and elitist, and they never did understand when it was time to wander graciously home. I go as often as I can to see friends in Scotland. Sometimes it’s the time of year when the big stags are rutting and fighting off the young pretenders -basic machismo sexual stuff. I’ve that image in my mind of locked antlers. Up there you find the skeletons of massive beasts, antlers entwined, who fought too long, went on with a dispute ages after the combat should have ended, were mortally weakened, could not disengage, starved to death together. It is glorious and pointless. The Iraqi is a Major Karim Aziz who instructs on sniping at the Baghdad Military College. He wouldn’t know when to quit. Augustus Peake, in my opinion, has the temperament of a hunter. A gambler never walks away from a final throw of the dice, a hunter never turns his back on a target. More than courage, it is about obsession. Just before I came down to meet you, I spoke with my esteemed American colleagues at Incerlik for an update. There’s no word of Peake having crossed the ceasefire line… Let’s mix the metaphors. The gamblers have probably locked antlers.’