Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

“I just do my job,” he said flatly.

“I hope I encourage you to ‘do your job’.”

She turned away. The colour was back in her face and the light in her eyes, and he thought her glance ravaged him and was intended to. Gaz bit at his lip. She went into the hotel’s foyer, and Knacker came from the shadows and gazed impassively at him. He thought his words had been pathetic. The woman, Fee, called from behind him. He went back down the steps and crossed the road and might have been run down because he looked neither way, and a horn blasted him, and she was stern faced and made no comment and they went up the hill together towards the safe house. He supposed he was ‘encouraged’, and the next day he would go across the border, and remember, all the time, what he had seen that day.

They were parked up in a four-wheel drive. Gaz was in the back.

The clothes he wore had been given him that morning. Cross-country gear and his own boots, and breakfast had been cooked by Fee, and a single cup of tea… He was shown again, on a laptop’s screen, the border and its hinterland, taken by a drone camera.

They were deep in a pine forest. A Norwegian was at the wheel and his name wasn’t given and Gaz assumed he was from their border control unit, roped in for the ride, and to offer advice. Fee sat beside the driver. Knacker was alongside Gaz. Gaz assumed the girl, Faizah, was now surplus baggage. They’d likely have pushed some bank notes into her purse for a taxi to the airport and she’d have already caught a flight south, then a Hamburg connection. Her job had been to hustle Gaz: she’d done that successfully. He had slept poorly, but could not remember the last time he had slept well – might have been the last night before deploying towards the village, Deir al-Siyarqi, more than two years ago.

Had slept well then, hadn’t known what would hit him in the next hours, out of ‘the clear blue sky’, unexpected and where all the bad times sprang from. Had been looking forward to seeing the girl – no name and no talk and a herd of goats and two dogs – and her playing the silent game with the raised eyebrow, the sharp light in her eye, and sharing his secret. A different girl on the step of the hotel, brought to Kirkenes with the express task of stiffening him. Army people called it ‘moral fibre’ – it needed to be strong, dependable, and they’d reckoned she could toughen him. Nothing about him sitting with her and asking how she did, what her life was, would she ever go back? Only her lecturing him on the constraints applying to any trooper, corporal, sergeant or officer in a unit specialising in reconnaissance. Left a bad taste, sour, and should have been better because of where they had been and what they had seen.

The drone, of course, had not crossed the border. He was shown the fence from an elevated angle, could see where pine trees had been cleared and the ploughed strip where footprints would show up, and the track of crushed stone that was another 100 yards back and used by patrol vehicles. The Norwegian said how often they came by, and had unfolded a map which had the camera arcs marked, and he’d pointed to a section where a bend in the fence left dead ground… a small length but with tumbler wires. Beside the Norwegian was a clear plastic bag holding strands of animal hair. He spoke quietly, never looking at Gaz, as if the sight of him would contaminate: he would have been just one more of the foot-soldiers that Knacker had rounded up. They were on the northern section of the wire, and it was explained that farther south the frontier was first in the centre of a river, then halfway across a wide lake, as big as an inland sea. Where their interest lay, marked with a streak of red, was outside the eyeline of the nearest watch-towers. Gaz did not query the intelligence the Norwegian brought: how recently had the length of wire been surveyed, how long since the patrol patterns had been logged, had this location been used before? Had to take it on trust.

He was asked if he wanted to stretch his legs. Knacker assumed he did, had already opened the vehicle door.

Something that Gaz loathed: the final talk before a mission, when a spook would tell them all how important it was, what a difference it would make. He stood on the edge of the clearing and they would have been 100 yards back from the frontier fence that was shielded by the pine forest where no birds sang.

Knacker came close. “I saw you wince. Don’t worry, you’ll not get a portrait of our monarch or the Union flag, and how we’re all reliant on you. Take it as read. What matters are my assurances. We don’t send you out bare-arsed. We’ve done our best, which is a good best, to ensure you have the planning and backup you deserve. Why you? You are the only one we have, as an asset, with the knowledge and the qualities to do what is asked. Interrupt me any moment you want to…”

Gaz asked nothing, busied his mind memorising what he was told. He shook his head. The rain was lifting, the clouds breaking and the wind dropping. Flies were gathering.

“…We had this sleeper family in Murmansk. Been there for ever. Codeword Matchless , and that was the name of a Royal Navy warship doing Arctic convoys, and a seaman came into the port, sneaked ashore during a blackout, had his leg over. He never went back but word reached his mates on another convoy that ‘herself’ had been down on the dockside with a little bundle all wrapped up and needing a dad to be shown off to… Bit of a yarn but twenty years later the intelligence people had a whiff of the story and some digging was done, clever stuff, and the girl was identified, and her little bastard, and they were signed up. Good people and brave, because they faced a miserable death if they were caught after taking our shilling. Yes, we paid them. Money into the account each quarter, and it vegetates in the Channel Islands, and they sleep, sleep well and are not disturbed. Moved through the generations and contact with them is through the Italian embassy in Moscow, and a SISMI officer. We have no reason to believe that the family are not receptive to being woken. We see them as reliable, hard-working, fond of this bank account where their wealth accrues, though not yet touched. The contact has assured them that a substantial bonus applies to this work. They meet you at the rendezvous point they have been given. You will have trekked to get there but you have all the necessary skills to achieve that. They take you into Murmansk. You will be placed in the vicinity of the FSB building on Lenin Prospekt. Play it how you wish to play it, Gaz… Identify him, tail him, the major, establish his place of residence, and that is pretty much it. You leave the rest to us. Get this down your throat, Gaz – and I am not merely urging you to go the extra mile, get this…”

Nothing to say, he listened.

“It was a war crime. It was a job for the International Court of justice. It was the marker laid down by a civilised world that such behaviour was unacceptable. War crimes are only applicable to the team that loses. They didn’t lose, they won. They flattened the country and slaughtered the opposition and gassed them, and clapped their hands and cheered for Victory Syria Day and not a prosecutor in sight. They won. Except that we , non-combatants, do not see it quite in that light and have our own end-game which will bring gratification to the few who survived. That brave and rather attractive girl is one who, I hope, will feel a tad of satisfaction, and the others who survived. Do we do this, Gaz, because we like to donate comfort and love to victims with a munificence based on vengeance? Not really. It’s about gaining friends and allies and putting them in debt to us, and that way we thrive. As I said, you leave the rest to us, and don’t worry your pretty head about what the rest entails. Mark him for us, Gaz, as you used to mark for the snipers, or for the drone strikes. Give us the opportunity to finish it, Gaz. I think Fee brought a thermos of coffee, and probably some biscuits.”