Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

To the wire, Lavrenti said, “He was a fine man, the finest… dead. I owe him much. I am in debt to him.”

He smiled. Of those who watched him, only a man crouching beyond the wire and hidden by low branches would have understood, and those in a half-circle behind him would have thought he rambled… For guilt there was a punishment. For a crime there was no atonement.

He lifted the pistol, the corporal’s pistol. He put the barrel between his lips, bit on it. He pushed the barrel deeper, felt the metal grind on his teeth. His finger was on the trigger, and the foresight of the Makarov gouged the roof of his mouth. The corporal had been his teacher. His finger tightened, squeezed.

Knacker murmured, “Well, fuck that for a curtain line.”

The Norwegian was impassive.

The noise of the single shot faded. The blood spout and the bits had long scattered. The body did some spasms but was lifeless now and the top of the head was fractured. The officer, first to move, bent, crouched, then knelt, shrugged to confirm the obvious, prised the pistol away, without fuss, made it safe. Walked off.

A stretcher was brought from one of their trucks and the remains of Lavrenti Volkov, major of Federalnya ’sluzhba bezopasnosti , was heaved on to it, no ceremony and little respect. And somehow fitting… Knacker thought it the way that a condemned, pronounced dead, would have been treated in the pit below the trapdoor. He thought those in the camps adjoining Syria and with especial attention to those who had come from that village, that region, might enjoy a telling of the circumstances of the retribution. Might egg it a little, might give more satisfaction that way, might upgrade the role and responsibility of a young British trooper – out of retirement from the front line but determined to avenge the savage atrocity meted out to loyal and innocent friends – that sort of stuff – and gave his life in the act. Might be the end of the road, but always a requirement to leave matters neatly in place.

The body was hoisted into the back of a truck. Some mud and leaves, sodden and clammy, were kicked over the blood stains. There would be sufficient carrion feeders out here to clear up. They were moving on, no longer required.

His phone vibrated. Alice. If he wanted that flight it was time to quit his location, come direct to the Kirkenes airport. He was asked if there was word of their man, and he answered quietly that the belief was that he had been shot, dead probably. Likely hidden somewhere in the squat forest of the tundra and might lie there for weeks, months, years. Too wet for the dogs, and too windy for the choppers to fly, but the forecast was due to improve for the rest of the week. Best if their man were not found and if Gaz, done better than expected for all his queasiness, were left to lie in peace, the rain and winds would scatter the scent of his failed flight.

The lorries drove away. Knacker emerged from the trees and his Norwegian friend folded up the stool he’d provided.

He went up to the wire, stood inches from it. Knacker rummaged in his pocket and found the coin. Maude might have understood but if she did not then it hardly mattered to him. It would be a good place for it to rest. He took it out of the pocket. A silver denarius from the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, the image of Pietas, ‘duty’, still visible. He imagined himself as one of the Frumentarii , a wheat collector, alone and gathering lethal intelligence. Was, briefly, also an officer trained to conduct counter-espionage on the Wall, and keep it safe, secure… Or could have been the dirty little beggar in pelts and covered in woad who did the job on the other side. Not important which role he, Knacker, performed 1800 years later. He held the coin, brushed it hard against his camouflage to retrieve some shine on its surface, and threw it.

No sunlight to glint on it. It rose in an arc, dived, and fell.

The coin, pressed in that precious metal, landed near to where the blood had been thickest, but the rain was already dispersing it. It made a feeble splash, and sank. He had been here, the wheat collector or the intelligence officer or the spy master, had left his mark. An honourable profession and he had no shame for any of his achievements and no regrets for the price others – always others because that was the nature of his work – might have paid. The airport would be called, told he was on his way, the flight would be held. This section of fence was silent, like nothing had happened there, and a few birds chirped without enthusiasm.

Knacker said to the Norwegian, “Always remember what delivers intelligence is agents. They are motivated by money and ideology and compromise and ego, any of those or all of them, so MICE puts agents in the field, on the ground, and they deliver. Deliver a hell of a sight more than bloody machines. Been a good day and a good evening. Ended well for us. One or two things not quite in place, but mostly satisfactory – and left tidily.”

She was in the water. The estimate, before Natacha went in, was that the naval vessel would power past the green-painted buoy that rode in the waves and would head on for the mouth of the inlet. She had stripped down, wore her jeans and not much else, and had shaken off her trainers and socks. Any other time, Gaz could have done it, but not with an entry wound, not with an exit wound. She was in the water and at the buoy, and the vessel should have been hammering up the inlet, but it had slackened power, and was crawling. She swam well enough, clumsy but effective, and could flip up her legs and do a shallow dive and had already dragged hard enough on the rope to show them the package fastened to it, then had wrestled with it, would have had cold fingers and been shivering through her body, and had freed it, and had showed them, and… the vessel had slowed and twenty of the crew, could have been more, were on deck. She was pointed at.

Timofey swore softly. The hunter, Jasha, was stone-faced. Gaz, and most of them in the regiment, would have said they believed in the true faith, in Murphy’s Law. ‘If it could go wrong, it would, bet your shirt on it.’ A biblical level of certainty about it. An officer was being called. It had to be Natacha who went into the water because Jasha said he could not swim, and neither could Timofey. Shouting and running on deck, and decisions to be made: time passing, and him weaker, and the best of the tide was now, and the best of the wind. She rose out of the water. Sat, astride the buoy. Gave the guys on the warship a view of herself. Waved to them. Would have heard the cheering and the wolf whistles.

Let them bounce, did an eyeful for them, blew kisses back. And seemed, and Gaz did not know how she managed it, to waggle her hips… She was a great girl, a unique kid, and he counted the blessings that she was the girlfriend of Timofey, a wakened sleeper. Had never met anyone in any way similar.

A belch of dark smoke breeched the funnel vent. Like an oil problem in the engine had been dealt with. The whole length of the deck was filled with sailor boys, all rewarded with the full sight of her white skin and her breasts and sodden blonde hair clinging to her shoulders. The vessel gathered power. The sailors might have been on their way out into the Barents for a week-long sea trial, or might have been at the start of the journey down to the Mediterranean and warmth. Gaz doubted, wherever they went, they would find another girl with the supreme talent of Natacha, drug pusher from Murmansk, and his friend.

She had the package, and swam back to the rock where they sheltered.

Timofey helped her ashore, shivering and sliding and coughing water, and they had no towel to dry her, but that job was done with the fleece that Jasha wore. He used his knife on the package wrapping to reveal the folded shape of the folded rubber, and air hissed and the shape filled, became a dinghy. Might have been six feet across, and the sides might have been a foot high, and the wind caught it, and Timofey grabbed it.