Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

Jasha was not a man easily unnerved.

He was military by training. He was now in his middle sixties, and a wound received in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, had halted his ability to run. He had learned to swing his hips and bend his back and scurry at speed. Ugly but effective, and what mattered to him was nothing to do with a parade ground and everything to do with a degree of agility. His leg hurt him but he accepted the levels of pain and was thankful his own fragmented muscle caused him less agony than the wire would have done that had dug deep in Zhukov’s leg. He could accept pain. In midwinter, a tooth had broken and the pain had run in rivers and it was when the track was blocked by snow so he had removed the tooth stump and its root with a pair of old pliers, and had survived. Pain he understood and reckoned to cope with, but he was uneasy about the hidden presence of the bear. Jasha had never established, enough to take a liberty with it, whether the creature regarded him as a benefactor or an enemy. He abandoned his vegetable patch.

He stood by the door of his cabin, strained his eyes, his ears. The old dog lay on its bed of hessian sacks… He had seen the sacks outside a store in Murmansk, piled in a basket, and had thought they might have a use, had picked out a couple and thrown them in his pick-up and driven off; had felt remorse, had paid for them on his next visit to the city. Jasha was a confused man, and sometimes he chuckled at the thought of it – not that day. The dog was too old to accompany him when he hunted for a full day, went after the Arctic fox or the lynx, but it guarded his cabin. The dog growled. Not loud, but soft, like a light flashed to show an alarm. An intruder was close. He was unnerved. Jasha had faced ferocious tribesmen in combat, but always they would show themselves as they edged closer, looked for a killing shot or, better for them, the opportunity to take a prisoner. The dog showed its teeth and sunk low on its sack bed.

He would have liked to talk with the bear, with Zhukov… What he knew of combat was that a tracker followed an enemy and waited for a sign of weakness. He had his rifle with him: had taken, in the last several days, to having the weapon with him when he went to dig in his garden or to clear back dwarf birch saplings, or to empty the bucket that he used inside the cabin. He went inside. In two days’ time he had an appointment in the city for the sale of pelts, now well dried, and for the heads of two foxes which would fetch a good price, and he would have to leave the dog to fend for itself for a few hours.

Jasha closed and barricaded the cabin door behind him, using the table and the chair. Rain dripped rhythmically from the roof and misted the window panes. He sat in his chair and faced the door, his rifle on his lap. The dog, an old and treasured friend, came off the sacking and sat close to his knee. He heard nothing and saw nothing. His fear seemed to shame him.

She was told to stand on the steps of the hotel. The evening was closing down and the clouds nibbled against the sea horizon behind her, and the wind blew at the soft rain. In spite of it being high summer some of the passing cars used their headlights and the tarmacadam glistened. The man she had met in Hamburg had greeted her at the airport, had told her again that she should call him ‘Knacker’, had shared a taxi with her, had booked her for a single night into the hotel by the shore and along from the harbour. He stood close to the girl but behind her, would have been in shadow. In the middle of the day the woman from the consulate had come to the bar on Rostocker Strasse, and had paid the owner for her time and had taken her to catch a flight through Copenhagen and on to this edge of the European mainland. She could have refused, had not. He, Knacker, had told her that this journey for which, in a quiet voice, he thanked her, was the last time she would be involved in a matter of retribution…

She would never forget. She had heard people discuss death, talk of bereavement, when they were waiting for food or drinks to be brought to them in the bar. Usually, they spoke of ‘moving on’ and ‘putting all that behind us’. They had not been where she had been. To have refused to come would, in Faizah’s mind, have been a betrayal of the village she had once been a part of. She saw him. Felt for the first time, the only time, a weakness in her legs and seemed to shiver on a warm evening. He walked well and she thought him a stranger in the place, and he looked once behind him and a woman – stout hips and tight trousers and with a street-light showing up a tattoo on her arm – waved him forward. Seemed as manipulated as she was. Dressed casually, he came forward warily and reached the far side of the street. No traffic to hold him up but he looked both ways as if that were routine, necessary or not, always careful, and crossed – would have been told to, and then looked up and was in front of the steps leading to the hotel’s entrance. Recognised her… where they had been and what they had shared. Of course he recognised her. He rocked on his feet, hesitated, and climbed the step towards her. She had been told that she would see him and had asked why she was brought the long distance from Hamburg. Knacker had said, “It’s to encourage him, my dear, simply that. Encourage him.”

To hug her, to kiss her, to shake her hand, to stand awkwardly in front of her. Options that faced Gaz. Remembered how it had been on the last day, all through the hours that he had been with her – and remembered also how it was when he had been in the hide and she had come close with her dogs and her goats, and never a word spoken between them. He had been in the room in the safe house, he had lain on the bed and stared at the ceiling and had not slept and had tried again and again to memorise all he had been shown… He had not thought of Aggie. Nor had he thought of the gardens and homes where he was booked for work. Nor had he considered the rumour mill that would have been grinding the length and breadth of Westray, and thought his life there already fractured. The puppeteer was Knacker… Gaz saw him standing in the darkness at the side of the hotel entrance and beyond the throw of the interior lights. He saw the scar on her chin, where the skin had folded back, where her finger now went, nervously. He stood in front of her. He thought her aged and her skin had lost most of its lustre and her eyes were dull. He reached out his hand. One finger of his joined with one of hers. Each finger hooked so that they did not drift away.

She said, “You are going to Murmansk, where he is.”

“Yes.”

“Where the Russian officer is.”

“Yes.”

“He could have stopped everything.”

“Could have, probably… chose not to.”

“I have been brought here to ‘encourage’ you.”

“It’s what they do – they believe if I am encouraged then I will do better.”

“What do you do in Murmansk?”

“I am supposed to watch the FSB office in Murmansk. To see him. To follow him. To learn his home and his work schedule. Then I come out.”

“Finished? See him, walk close to him? Then, come out?”

“That is what I am told to do.”

“You identify him, where he believes he is safe. You can get beside him. You can shoot him, strangle him, stab him, beat with a bar on his skull until it breaks. Not kill him?”

“No.”

“You remember it?”

“Yes. Very well. It is not my business to kill.”

“You are a soldier…”

“Was a soldier. Not now.”

“You will help to kill?”

“I do not know what is intended. Perhaps others will be used to kill. From my information, perhaps.”

“You will not kill him? Only help to kill him? Should I go with you? I could kill him. With my hands, with a gun… You saw him, saw what he did.”