Gerald Seymour: Holding the Zero

When the sun fell on him, through the cloud gaps, he squirmed as far back as possible into the cavity under the stone slab, and his hand gently, tenderly, ruffled the hair at the dog’s throat. His preparations were made and he had no doubt that the man, his friend and adversary, had stayed.

As the cloud thinned, pushed away by the wind, so the vista of the valley opened before him. There were gullies of dark rock with silver ribbons of water from the night’s rain; scattered trees, clumps of wild fruit bushes, small patches of gorse, bracken and heather littered the rocky ground. There were dispersed rocks, open stone screes, and pockets of grass. It was good terrain for him and for his friend. He stared out over the carpet of cloud that filled the bottom of the valley, where its dispersal would be slowest, using his binoculars with a cotton net over them. He thought that a lesser man than himself would have peered at the unveiled expanse and harboured doubts.

He would not want to fire the one bullet, ready in the breech mechanism of the Dragunov, until the sun was behind him, playing on the slope opposite, but he had already made the necessary preparations for that moment, still many hours away. His patience would see him through the waiting. He was on his stomach and his head was behind the ’scope, his body twisted so that his legs could splay out under the slab. He would be hundreds of minutes in that position, without food, without water and without sleep. He was as comfortable as he could make himself as he studied the ground on the valley’s far side. There was a symmetrical shape to it. He estimated that the twin ridges bounding the valley were 1,300 metres apart. Both then fell sharply before flattening to a more gradual incline that in each case, at its limit, almost made a level plateau. On his side, looking across the cloud floor, he was close to the lip of that plateau. He reckoned that its forward edge on the far side, matched and dotted with trees, occasional protruding rocks, bushes and weather-flattened bracken, was 700 metres from his position. Below the lip, where he looked from and where he looked to, were cliff faces that fell into the cloud, tumbled stones and rare paths where animals or shepherds had made precarious tracks. There were fissures now in the cloud floor below and he could hear more distinctly the roll of a water torrent among rocks. Directly facing him was a rambling track that led up, across the plateau and then towards the far ridge, similar in every way to the one on his side down which his dog had led him before he had veered off and stumbled into the cavity below the slab.

From the side of his mouth, he whispered to the dog, ‘You have to be very strong and very patient, but I think my friend is there. In this life, nothing can be guaranteed, but I do not think the man, my friend, would run from me. My concern is the casualty he carried and his desire to find help for the child guide, but he is very tired. He has carried the child, who must have been precious to him, for a great distance – I could not have done that – but I cannot believe he would have had the strength in the time that was available to him to take the casualty up the first difficult climb, then across the easier plateau, then up the second climb. But, more important, I do not think that such a man would pass over the chance to face me. We are solitary people – I laugh when I say it, we are also possessed of a great arrogance – and we wait for the day when we can confront an equal.

What else is there, in this life, but to take up a challenge that is offered? I do not think he will have cheated me.’

He passed a biscuit to the dog, the last and damp from the bottom of the backpack, and apologized that he had not brought more food for it.

A shaft of sunlight broke the mist cover below him.

He saw the body, laid out on a smoothed wide stone around which the swollen river funnelled.

There was a dark stain high on the shoulder. It had been laid there with dignity and he saw, through the binoculars, that the eyes had been closed and that the arms had been laid at rest at the sides, and he thought the young face was at peace, the pain gone.

The body was where he was guaranteed to see it. The sun blazed down, destroyed the mist. He had not been cheated. He had not doubted the man, his friend.

Very carefully, concerned that he should not make sudden movements, Major Karim Aziz began to scan the steep slopes and the plateau across the valley, over the body.

‘Oh, by the way – I should have told you this morning, just didn’t get round to it – last night on my voicemail, my leave has come through,’ Ms Manning said. ‘All the days in lieu that I’m owed, two weeks – thank God.’

‘What are you going to do with it?’ Willet looked up from the console that he had just switched on.

‘I’ve got to see my mother, she’s had a bit of bronchitis, and I thought of a week’s sunshine break, Tenerife or-’

‘That’ll be nice,’ he said heavily. He pointed to the screen. ‘What do I do with this?’

‘Slam it in, and get on with other things. It’s finished, as far as I can see – look, it’s been good working with you, but there’s no-one else to see. We did what we were asked to do.’

Willet said coldly, ‘I don’t suppose there is anyone left to see.’

‘This sort of business always ends with a whimper. I don’t like it any more than you, but it’s what happens. Maybe we’ll meet up again.’

Willet gazed into her face. ‘He’s a victim. Won’t anything be done about the people who used him?’

‘Shouldn’t think so,’ she said. ‘They’re always forgotten, always hidden, always protected, those people.’

‘A victim, for Christ’s sake…’

She fidgeted for a moment, awkward, then said, ‘I don’t deal the cards. It’s been good knowing you. My advice, meant kindly, type it up, hand it in, and start at something else.’

‘He deserves more…’

She pulled the door closed behind her with the firmness of finality.

His fingers rattled on the keyboard.

AUGUSTUS HENDERSON PEAKE

9. (Conclusions after interview with George – (identity unknown),

SIS

Vauxhall Bridge Cross, conducted by self and Ms Manning, transcript attached.)

VICTIM: AHP in my opinion was manipulated by SIS. A man of limited intelligence and sparse experience, he was encouraged to travel to northern Iraq and involve himself in a harebrained scheme where other more powerful forces might win, where he would most certainly lose.

BLAME: There was a trail of Open Doors. SIS was at the heart of a programme aimed at deceiving AHP. The trail, and direct responsibility for it, leads to SIS. They and many others should take accountable responsibility for the utter precariousness of AHP’s position.

SUMMARY: For a raft of reasons, AHP was allowed to travel to northern Iraq with a ‘slim to non-existent’ chance of survival, in order to push forward matters of HMG policy. He was an innocent. His inevitable fate is a matter of public scandal.

TO BE COMPLETED

Irritably and impatiently, he flicked into the file for the number. When he had dialled it, and it had been answered, Willet had to wait a full four minutes for the junior-school teacher, Meg, to be brought to the telephone in the headmistress’s office.

He blurted breathily, ‘It’s Willet here, I met you on that disgraceful early morning when we barged into Mr Peake’s home. You should know that he is currently in northern Iraq, being hounded by a pursuit force of the Iraqi army. There are many who are culpable for his situation, but you should also know that you are one of the few without blame. I apologize for disturbing you… It’s not your fault but it’s in the hands of the gods now.’