Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

He said, “I did what I could, did what I thought was right. Won’t be thanked for it. I was sick before I came to your place, your territory. Not now. I think well of myself. Good to have known you, friend.”

His head sagged.

The seal was back with him. Not as close as before, but moving slowly enough to keep pace with him. It was huge, heavy, but had a grace in the water and he wondered about its enemies: orca whales and polar bears. Off Westray, out at Noup Head, he had seen the killer whales – and Aggie was usually with him and they would sit on sheep-cropped grass. He did not know what day it was, what date, and so could not say if it were one of the mornings that she would come across from her island to restock her pottery in the craft shelf of the hotel. He did not think he had anything further that he should say to the seal, and let his head rest on the side of the dinghy and the water splashed around him, and he drifted and did not know where he was – nor knew if, any longer, it mattered. He supposed he had honoured his promise, had done his best.

Delta Alpha Sierra, the twentieth hour

He lay on the bunk bed allocated him.

Arnie and Sam did the honours. Not much to employ them. They packed his gear, his personal kit. Had already taken his issued firearms and the grenade canisters back to the armoury. Used the same Bergen that had been with him through all those days. Next to nothing that went in the bag had any sentimental or emotional importance to him. Some of the guys, and most of the girls, brought pictures and mementoes to the Forward Operating Base, wanted to be reminded of wives and girlfriends, of small children, of dogs at home. Gaz had not. Just essentials. His bag was by the door. Their suggestion, he should get off his arse, put a bad day behind him, come on over to the bar. There were dispensation times when the cupboard under the counter was unlocked, and beers could be served, and the normal intake of fruit juice and Cola and Sprite were ignored. Their officer would have accepted that his experience had been bad, damaging, needed lubricating. Refused… It was not pressed. The guys and girls in the regiment were individuals, did not require herding. He was entitled to decline. The door closed on them.

He had told his story coherently. Had good recall. Had talked little of the girl, had been calm and composed and professional, but then had broken, shed tears. He had noted how they had waited for his composure to return, had not hustled him. Had done the bit about the girl, and her sacrifice and him undiscovered. He lay on the bunk bed, and wondered whether he had emphasised sufficiently her role in his preservation: they had seemed interested but it was not milked. An attitude that seemed to be: ‘War is shit, tell me something new, what I didn’t know, it’s bad shit, and never pretty and never glorious’. He wondered what they , across the table from him – the girls and the debrief officer who they referred to as Knacker – knew of warfare: not games of intelligence officers parking cameras in concrete walls, but shooting war and the consequences of war. Doubted they knew much… Gaz didn’t play chess. Did not know of the game in which little people, ‘pawns’, got to be knocked off the board.

They came back for him. Arnie helped to tidy him, and Sam hoisted up his bag. The Chinook was ready. It would be the regular run into Kurdish territory and the airport there, would do rotation of personnel and load up with supplies for this Forward Operating Base and a couple of other locations. Would be routine for them, but nothing was routine in Gaz’s world. He was reluctant to leave the bunk. Both of them, Arnie and Sam, would have realised that their colleague was damaged. Going to be shipped out and soonest. Would be fast-tracked. The helicopter to Idlib, another supply flight, and into RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus, and the big bird out later in the day to Brize Norton, home. An early assessment that the damage might be terminal to his career… Some would have shaken out of the experience, others would not.

He stood in the centre of the room. Looked around him, saw blank walls of plywood. There would be another guy there by the time the next dusk came down over the desert.

Gaz said, “I don’t ever forget what happened. Owe it to them there, and owe it to her who saved my life. Don’t forget it, and I promise that I will do what is possible to repay those responsible with a degree of harsh justice. I pledge that.”

Arnie said, “Yes, of course, Gaz, well spoken.”

Sam said, “Quite right, Gaz. Nice thought. Fuck knows how you will, but nice.”

It would have been all around the FOB that a girl had endured a gang-shag in order that Gaz stayed hidden in his covert observation position. That Gaz must have been soft on her, her on him, that she herded goats in the village that had been taken down. Would give them something to talk about.

They went out. Arnie and Sam stayed close to him. Out past the briefing room where the intelligence man and his girls were with their officer and glanced up momentarily at the beat of the boots on the corridor floor. Past the Mess that he would not be returning to, and a chorus of ‘Good luck’, and he was already gone from the ranks, no longer a part of them. Out into the night air and across the apron and towards the arc lights close to where the Chinook was parked, engines rumbling.

He said it like it was a commitment that needed reinforcing. “I promise… what is possible… a degree of harsh justice. It is owed to you.”

And his voice was drowned by the thrash of the rotors.

Timofey said, “It was good to have known him.”

Natacha said, “Was the best time of my life, most fun and most excitement.”

“I don’t have hope for him.”

“He will be alone and frightened.”

Jasha said, “His trade would mark him as a solitary man. Not a frightened man. If he is not overboard he will sleep; if he sleeps he will not wake… Good to know you.”

They hugged awkwardly. In truth, something of them unsettled Jasha. He thought they possessed a freedom that he did not have. Were as liberated as Zhukov, and would have hung around him while there was a value in his friendship, then would have drifted away, returned to a world from which he was excluded. It was a long time since Jasha had held another man in his arms, many years, and even longer since he had clung to a young woman and felt her dampened contours, bumps and angles against him. He had guided them back, first, to where his vehicle was parked up, well out of sight of his cabin, then had driven them to the point where the little Fiat had been left. They said they would go back to the apartment where his father was. Would be cautious, careful, suspicious, would spend time watching the entrance and looking for cars that mounted surveillance. Would be wary of any indication that an FSB investigation searchlight was beamed on them. Would spend most of the day loitering and watching. If it were clear, then they would be inside, check on his father, might feed him, then would draw down stocks for sale from the cache behind the wardrobe, and would be off to the railway station in time to meet the slow train up from the capital. Would they ever be used again as ‘assets’? Jasha doubted it. He had done his farewells with the boy first, then the girl. She kissed him, wet lips, and shivering, and then they were into the little car, and they bumped away and swung on to the slip-road to the highway for the run down to the coast and the bridge over the inlet, and then to Murmansk. He thought it unlikely they would talk of him after they had gone two kilometres, and that he would soon be forgotten, an unpredicted interlude.

A last wave from her, then the bend in the track.