Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

“Hi, how you doing? We’ve had a great day, good finds… And you, your day?”

“Just an average one, not a special one.”

And Alice by now would have touched down on an airstrip in Jordan, and Fee would be escorting their volunteered man on the next stage of a treadmill journey, and much was in place and much needed to be done. He kissed his wife’s cheek and she drove him away; the painted man would have to wait for further consideration. A decent kiss and cheerful, mirroring how he felt as the mission gathered pace. Would soon be past the point of turning back: always a good moment.

At the gate and after a wave to the guards, and a wink and a nod in return, Arthur Jennings, in his wheelchair, was helped into a taxi by a member of the D-G’s staff. He thought it had been a satisfactory meeting, longer than he’d expected and with a sandwich break. Away in the traffic and crossing the bridge, he phoned his protégé.

“Went well, Knacker, in fact I would call it quite satisfactory. I appreciate you are already on course, but the bonus is that you are now sanctioned. Years have not dimmed or withered his dislike of the Kremlin crowd, his contempt for them and their coterie of poisoners. I have to emphasise that he was anxious for the health and the safety of our man, and queried our assessment of risk. I said those were matters taken very seriously. May I rot in hell, but I skated over that, as if going in and out of that place was on a par with taking a train to and from Bognor for the day… Of course, goes without saying, he’ll be beyond reach and should he miss the schedules then he must rely on his own wits if he’s to make it out. His nerve has to hold. But, needs must, he’s the only card we have to bring to the table. You’ll have evaluated that.”

And he rang off. He pocketed his phone and felt alone, rather cold, knew he was prominent in the conspiracy involving the man they’d be using. Had seen a photograph of him. A decent sort of face, which wouldn’t help him where he was heading.

She shot better than Gaz did.

No rifles or pistols on his island that he knew of. Gaz was rusty and this was a Walther PPK, a close-quarters handgun, too lightweight for the military.

Heavily built for a woman of her agility, Fee dominated with her presence on the floodlit range. They had given a ride on the Cessna to air force people, technicians muttering electronics and frequencies and degrees of gibberish that were a foreign language to Gaz. Had over flown the Orkneys, and might have gone over his home but he had not looked out, nor looked over the smaller island of Papa Westray for her place, nor for the ancient settlement site where she had loved him and which had been a bagful of treasured moments. Then out over the sea again until the Shetlands were reached. Gone across the infrastructure of the wilting oil industry and surplus rigs in postcard-beautiful bays. A loop across the isolated light on Muckle Flugga and land on his right and the ocean going away to a far horizon on his left, and passed the big golf ball radar domes perched on a summit, then a turn and a fast descent, and another bay that faced out to the North Sea and a single scarlet-painted trawler tied up at a pier. They had landed as the afternoon gave space to evening. It was not his way to query what happened, and she had slept on the flight, and there was nothing that he needed to know that was worth waking her for.

The shooting was at twenty-five paces, not stationary targets, but silhouette figures coming from right to left and vice versa, and it was aimed shooting or fast response and suppressive, and through a whole magazine.

At the airfield, they were met by a military Land Rover. Now he was given information, of no interest to him. They were on Unst, they had been over the sophisticated early warning system of RAF Saxa Vord. In their wisdom, confident in the ending of the Cold War, Whitehall warriors had shut the place down and flogged off the RAF’s personnel accommodation. The officers’ mess was now a bunk-house. At considerable cost, the base had been dragged back on line. There was an old range, and an instructor had issued weapons to them both.

She had a greater number of central hits than he had. He thought he had enough holes in the cardboard targets to drop a man, close down the threat. He had been a good marksman in Syria, but other skills were higher on the list, and self-taught… He had gone into the Logistics Corps and was neither popular nor disliked, hardly noticed and could drive a three-ton truck adequately, and they’d had an exercise on the Brecons where there was sparse cover. A sector was marked off and the instructors played the game and went and had a fag and a brew, and a whistle was blown and the veterans went out to find them. Thirty had started and twenty-nine were found. In growing frustration the search for the last one had gone on for another hour, and a whistle had been blown and the transports’ engines had been cranked up, and he’d stood up and brushed old heather and dead bracken off his body and they’d have damn near gone over him a half dozen times. His skills were understood and he was transferred to Stirling Lines at Credenhill in Herefordshire, and put into the training wing of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, alongside the Special Forces of the gun club, but shooting was not the priority. Concealment ruled. They finished. The weapons were cleaned, then handed back to an armourer. He turned away. A trudge back to the Land Rover. How did he feel?

“All right, thank you.”

What sort of weapon did he want to take?

“No sort of weapon. Nice of you to ask. No sort.”

It was considered necessary, Knacker’s opinion and hers, for him to have a means of self-defence, a back-stop option.

“I’d rather not, so let’s move on.”

She bit on her lip. He thought she’d do that rarely. Said nothing and did not argue. His defence was concealment, an ability not to be noticed, and he relied on such talents, and standing up in downtown Murmansk with a peashooter handgun and a magazine of nine rounds was ludicrous. He took a last look at Muckle Flugga, isolated and on a crag and jutting up beyond the last cliff face on the west of the island, and saw gannets circling, and Gaz would have bet money – all of that £10,000 – that had he been there, hidden and covert, Knacker would have found him. They were driven across Unst, came to a quayside, walked together towards a trawler bathed in bright lights.

Two men were on the quay and two more worked at the main mast where a new sail was being hoisted, and farther down on the quay were the ragged remnants of an older sail, a pretty scarlet but with slashed rents. He assumed they had come in that morning and had been at sea in the storm and must have had a pocket handkerchief of sail hoisted and assumed they’d pitched through the swell and the white caps to meet a timetable set for them. Work stopped. He was watched closely. He thought they evaluated him She spoke first to them. “Hi, boys, sorry and all that if you had a bastard of a night but appreciate that you put in the effort. This is your passenger… treat him carefully as there’s nothing in his history about riding a million dollar yacht. See you on the other side, boys.”

With the ripped sail were also tangled ropes and broken wicker crab pots. Their faces were drawn with sleeplessness, all unshaved, and they wore damp clothing, and all smoked and all held coffee beakers. There was a small Norwegian pennant attached at the back end of the trawler.

She said to Gaz, matter of fact, like nothing was that important a deal. “They’re going to ferry you to Norway. Why? Good question but a good reason… You go in one way but we don’t reverse it. They’re going to lift you out from Murmansk. They need to have a look at you because they take a hell of a chance getting involved with you. The FSB who look after all forms of border control in Murmansk, land and sea, would take a bad view of their facilitating the escape of a high-profile fugitive. They’ll decide if you’re worth the risk to them. Have fun, Gaz.”