Gerald Seymour - The Dealer and the Dead

He walked well.

They had stones, rocks and clods as solid as bricks and chucked, threw, heaved them at Gillot.

Anders realised well enough the need for release. Understood the torture a community would have endured after nineteen years without a scapegoat to skewer. Bombarding the man with stones might be sufficient to ease that long pain – and it might not. Might be the knives that did it. Did he care? William Anders, professor of forensic pathology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was a feted expert witness at international criminal courts. From the witness stand he had, frequently enough, given the testimony that would consign a mass murderer to a lifetime behind bars. An arms dealer was no friend of his. But…

He could nod in grudging admiration – admiration that was not freely given. The man walked well, had touched all of them, a chancer, and had manipulated them. He despised himself for being there – would not have been anyplace else for a sack of gold coins.

There was now blood on Gillot’s face, and bruises, and mud had disintegrated on the front of his shirt. Some of the blood scars were from grazes and others from skin punctures. He seemed to ride the impact of what was thrown at him, but didn’t do a boxer’s ducks and weaves. If the aim was good, he was hit; if it was poor, the stone went past him. Anders thought he went slower, that the injuries were sapping him. He passed them.

Anders looked into his face, and read nothing from it. Not defiance or remorse but deadness.

The one with the launcher, Tomislav, spat. A good, accurate aim. The spittle was on Gillot’s cheek and- He didn’t see who threw the next stone – a glancing blow on the forehead and Gillot dropped.

Down for a count?

No.

He was on his knees, then up. In the moment he was down the crowd around the guy with the launcher had surged, then swayed unsteadily and held an unmarked line around Gillot. It was as if a perimeter would not be crossed if he stayed upright. Their discipline held.

Anders joined his friend, Steyn, and the detective, and the three of them were behind him.

‘Not a pretty sight, is it? A vigilante mob is damn near as ugly as it comes. You kind of forget, maybe too easily, what bred the blood lust. He walks well.’

There was no pain. Neither were there thoughts of home and green fields, warm beer and safety. He was past pain. He didn’t think of his wife and daughter, or his dog. He didn’t think of the gulls that wheeled above the lighthouse at the tip of the island or the kestrels that hovered over the scrub. There was numbness in his body and his mind. He didn’t think of friends in the trade, the men he had worked with, those he had settled deals with, or the pilots who had shipped his cargoes, the freighter skippers who had ferried his containers. He did think of old Solly Lieberman.

What they threw that hit him buffeted but there was no pain.

He could just about manufacture a picture of Solly Lieberman, mentor, not in the decrepit office, in the day heat of the Peshawar bazaar, the air-conditioned cool of the bar or in any bloody place they had been together. He saw Solly Lieberman, veteran of the Normandy landings, survivor of the black-market gang feuds in occupied Germany, the guy who had walked away from the risk of covert assassination, condemned for selling firepower to the Arabs or weaponry to the Jews. He saw Solly Lieberman – maybe already had his pants down when the goddamn bear had had him. He didn’t think he would have felt pain, just the numbness. What an idiot place to die, the one Solly Lieberman had chosen: the tundra forests. What an idiot place to go to: a cornfield path in east Slavonia.

He was on his feet and went forward. He held the plastic bag tightly – fucked if he would back off, and fucked if he’d be anything other than stubborn pig-stupid. He clung to the belief that Benjie Arbuthnot had planted in him, that this was the only way he might live.

He was hit more often, but he didn’t go down again. There was sweat in his eyes and maybe blood. It was hard to see. The launcher was now behind him, gone. New voices were close, a cacophony, deafening, and he was trapped inside the avenue made by the corn. A man held a sniper rifle, and the woman was beside him. The good old Dragunov – could do a good price on a hundred SVD Dragunov 7.62mm sniper rifles and a better price if a PSO-1 telescopic sight was included with each weapon, 6deg. field of vision and integral rangefinder. Good kit and 50 per cent hit chance at 800 metres. He could have rustled up a warehouse full from Bulgaria, Romania or… Who fucking cared?

He saw the man with the rifle, and Megs Behan was beside him.

He jostled her, then seemed to stumble, and Megs Behan, from instinct, reached out to steady him. She realised that the rubber-tipped end of the crutch had slipped and he’d lost its support, and the rifle barrel wavered in front of her face, then regained the aim.

They would not have understood. No one she knew – family, friend, work colleague, hack on the paper who had binned her press release – would have understood what it was like to stand on the crushed corn and witness a death march. She had no doubt that that was what it was. There was little spring in his walk, no smile – as if he had nothing left to sell. She didn’t know what was in his plastic bag. He had gone to sleep before her, and she had watched over him, had seen his back and the bruising, two impact points. She could have touched him and had not, could have held him and had not… could have woken him up, turned him over and suggested that he do the business for the last time – and had not.

She watched.

The crowd around him was now too close set for stones and clods to be thrown. He was no longer pelted, instead was jostled and bounced.

Fists reached out and snatched at the shirt on his right arm, on his left, and other hands pushed hard at him.

A woman, swathed in black, kicked his right shin, and a man tried to trip him. More spat. All jeered.

Under his nose was the barrel of the rifle with the big sight clamped to it. Megs Behan had seen photographs of similar weapons and they were in the hands of warlords, drugs barons and bodyguards around despots. It was the world of smoke and mirrors. She could remember, most clearly, standing at the gate of the house overlooking the coast, enjoying the tolerance of a police team, a seat in their car at night, and what she had yelled into her bullhorn with the volume switch at ‘Full’. Now her throat was dry, parched from the dust kicked up by many feet, and she had nothing to shout. They would not have understood. She supposed there would be – in half an hour or an hour – a rag doll of a body with more cuts on it than there were now and more bruising, that it would be flat out and the crowd would stand around it, as they did in the photographs when the mob had turned against yesterday’s man, Saddam, Ceau escu or any African ten-minute dictator. She would go back into the office, probably tomorrow, and they would gather around to quiz her, and she might just tell them to fuck off. Her bag was slung on her shoulder. Zipped inside an inner pouch was the note. She reckoned she’d go hungry that night.

Behind him were the detective, the American grave-digger and the doctor. They’d linked arms and forced their way through. Behind them was the crowd that had already had its turn at abusing, throwing, spitting.

His progress was ever more erratic, and the hands grasped his clothing tighter, but he did not retaliate or try to fight them off.

*

‘What are they shouting?’ Roscoe was between the American and the doctor, and they made a wedge to push forward. When necessary, they kicked to clear the way ahead and keep the contact with Gillot.