Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

Jasha could have taken them to his cabin. Had not. Might have fed them and lit a fire, and given her a blanket to drape over herself while her clothing dried on a bar in front of the flames. But they had no place in his space, and the only common factor was the stranger inserted briefly into their lives. He would have enjoyed more time with the agent, learning something of where he had been and his philosophy and where he stored the anger that was common to those of the lone wolf breed. Could have spent two days, or three, but then each would have exhausted the other… Jasha imagined that the man was long dead and would now be swirling among the mixed currents of the Barents. Might float for a bit after being toppled from the craft, then would sink. Might snag on deep rocks, or be dropped in weed beds, or be beached on isolated rocks and become food for the gulls. Had not told the kids.

He reached his cabin. He looked around when he was out of the pick-up. Stood still and listened to the sounds of his dog scraping the inside of the door, but listened also for Zhukov. Heard only the dog and the wind in the trees. He did not expect that he would see the bear again… unless the idiot creature suffered more injury, required help. If it stayed fit then their companionship was unnecessary. He would miss it, missed any friend who moved on. He fed his dog, lit the fire, then stripped out of his wet clothing.

But he was troubled. Remembered how long he had watched the dinghy as it spun and twisted, rose and fell, and seen it into the rain mist of the inlet, and looked long and hard for it after it had disappeared. He supposed he was touched by the man… which was weakness for Jasha. But they were all flawed men and made friendships only from necessity, and ditched them when they could, which was their pedigree – missed a friend, regretted the passing, and moved on.

He was in and out of sleep.

Gaz did not know, nor care, how long he had been in the dinghy. Time no longer had meaning. What had changed were weather conditions and with them the sea’s motion.

The cloud blanket was gone and through his near closed eyes he watched as the sun teetered on the edge of the horizon, did not dip further in this Arctic Circle summer, but would hover and then rise for the start of a fresh day. The wind had dropped and the wave movements were now gentle, soothing, and he lay in the dinghy with the water heavy around his body and rolling.

He had tried to fight sleep. Reckoned he had made a good fist of it for as long as his strength held out, but that had slipped. When he finally slept he would not wake again. Regrets? He would have said, had his thoughts been cogent, that he was a small man in a big system, a tiny cog in a large motor, that he had performed a use and delivered as comprehensively as he had found possible. Could not have demanded more… No more pain in his upper body and it might have been the cold water in the bottom of the dinghy that lapped against him that had achieved the numbness. It would be good to sleep.

Gulls were with him.

Not the seal. Doubted now whether he had actually had a seal riding escort, and was now near certain that he had not actually seen a full-grown brown bear on the rocks as he had moved towards the northern mouth of the inlet before drifting into the Barents Sea. The gulls shrieked and screamed over him, might have suggested that he hurried up with the business of getting himself asleep so that they could begin the feast. One, the boldest but not the biggest, had landed on the side of the dingy, had pirouetted there and perched more comfortably, and Gaz had managed to tilt his head sharply and it had realised that he still lived and that patience was demanded. It would go first for his eyes, then the slack skin of his cheeks, then try to burrow its beak inside his mouth having prised open his jaw. He would have liked to have the seal alongside, if there had actually been one. It could have ridden shotgun. Always on the wagons that the regiment boys drove were some who were never behind the wheel but were crouched over the barrel, and its sights, of the big machine-gun, fifty calibre. They were capable of keeping bad things back, and the seal would have been the nearest thing to match them.

No seal and no bear, and the gulls biding their time and circling him. Only the one face to hold on to. He had seen men die, eking out the last moments of breath and heartbeat, and some held crucifixes and some gripped worry beads and some shouted prayers. He only had the face… but the shape of it, lips and nose and the dance of the eyes and the hair that the wind carried over it was fading in his mind.

No ships to look for and only the ripple of water and the gulls’ cries. And ever more difficult to keep his eyes open.

It was an ability much prized. Both Mikki and Boris had the skill. Each cupped a lit cigarette in the palm of their left hand.

The funeral service would be a brief affair, but both would have time to smoke a filter tip during the priest’s prayers and there would be a short address from the brigadier on the loss of his son, tragically taken.

They stood behind the principal mourners. Other than the family there was a decent attendance of older cronies, men from the former KGB days, and their wives, many of whom showed off loud jewellery. Not anything that either man would have commented on to Lavrenti’s mother and father, but it was striking that very few colleagues from Lubyanka had chosen to come to this cool, shaded, flyblown place of ostentatious headstones. The burial was in the Kuntsevo cemetery, out at the end of Kutuvovsky Prospekt, and both had arrived early. There was good history in the ground there and they looked for the ‘famous’ graves of Kim Philby, a hero and a defector to the Russian cause and a Briton with an Order of the Red Banner, and those of the Krogers, husband and wife, both quality agents, and there were those of Russian military men who had given their lives for the Communist state. The brigadier would have had to pull strings, use influence, to lay his hands on a precious plot here.

The mother looked broken. The father had aged but stayed upright, straight-backed, kept his head still and looked imperiously into the middle distance. Not suicide, of course not. Not a self-inflicted wound. Not a war criminal for whom a mysterious sense of conscience had driven him to seek his own punishment. Not an officer of FSB who had allowed himself to be captured by a lone foreign operative who was aided by a pair of low-life narcotics dealers… It was the funeral of Lavrenti Volkov who had distinguished himself in combat in Syria, who was marked for promotion, who had been out on the north-west border of Russia and engaged in vigilant patrolling of an area notorious for its use by criminals and spies, and who had suffered a fatal wound from the malfunction of his service pistol. A tragedy. A young, honourable man cut down when not yet in his pride.

Had Boris spoken he might have said, ‘I need a smoke, a good drag, after all the shit I’ve had to listen to.’

And Mikki might have said, ‘Typical, took the coward’s way out. I tell you something: if anyone from that village is left alive, and is stuck in some fucking camp over a border, then it will be time to pop the corks, whatever they do, celebrate big time.’

‘And the guy who came for him.’

‘No chance, not at that range, not with the way he went down. Be there somewhere and loss of blood, or sepsis, will have screwed him. The kids will have dumped him.’

‘Heh, that bear might have fucking had him.’

‘Big bastard, the biggest. I’ve never run that fast.’

‘Scared the shit out of me.’

Had the exchange taken place there would have been a peal of laughter from Boris and a growled chortle from Mikki – inappropriate at that time, that place. An honour guard arrived, did a goose-stepping approach, formed two short ranks, and were cued in by the priest, and a volley of shots was fired over the open pit where the coffin now rested, then marched away… Trowels were used to scatter the first dry soil. The coffin had not been open for any part of the service: it would have been considered unnecessary to show the extent of the head wounds resulting from the ‘accidental discharge’.