Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

He would try again. If he did not try, again and again, then his future was in the penal colony, a certainty leading to his death. Smart shoes came towards him and he clutched at a man’s trouser leg but his hand was kicked away; then he grabbed at a woman’s ankle and held it for a moment before being stabbed with an umbrella… but he had seen which door they had come through. He started to crawl.

Knacker looked through a gap in the curtains into the annexe off the lobby, and could see a table and bench beyond the window fronting on to the Kirkenes street.

The one that Alice called the Facilitator was facing him, but unaware of him. Three men were seated at the table, all in profile. All smoked, all drank Pepsi-Cola, wore T-shirts, and frayed jeans and trainers, and the empty tins were stacked in front of them and a tinfoil ashtray overflowed.

After studying them, Knacker remarked to Alice and Fee, “I was at the Round Table the other day. Old Boot was there, not in good shape and not long with us, I fear. I didn’t dare engage him in conversation or I would have been deluged with Iron Duke minutiae and Waterloo stuff. Had he been here, looking at those ‘hitters’, who we intend to let loose beyond that frontier, I fear he would have given us the standard Wellington quote: I don’t know what effect these men will have on the enemy but, by God, they terrify me . What do they know?”

Alice answered. “They know that they’ll be put in the path of the Russian officer who was at the village. They won’t see us, and I was not given their names when I chose them. They know they have been chosen because we wanted men who will walk over nails, through fire, for the chance to do the guy some hurt. Frothing at the mouth, I’d say.”

Fee said, cheerily, “Remember, Knacker, when we were in Syria, and the gun club boys used to talk about Fire and Forget, the Milan or the Javelin anti-tank missile. Aim it and let it go… What we can expect is a right ruckus on the streets of Murmansk.”

Alice said, “We’ll be long gone, Knacker. Well out of it, and deniable.”

Fee said, “But reverberations, Knacker. Heard far and wide.”

“My impression of them, Knacker, is that they’ll want to get down to a hardware store and get a knife sharpener. Use it to freshen up razor-blades,” Alice said.

“I think that’s the game we’re into, Knacker,’’ Fee said.

He left them. A brisk stride took him out of the town and down to its coast line and there was a fine-looking church there, with a well-tended graveyard and a bench. He sat. He reflected.

Wondered if they knew his identity in the Lubyanka. Wondered if they had heard whispers of a man who was nudging towards elderly and had a silly name. If they had an address in New Malden, and knew of Maude and her hobbies and of his sons. Wondered if they had a file on the Round Table and its ludicrous pantomimes with the sword from the theatrical outfitter, and one on Arthur Jennings, dear man. Wondered if they had a man just like him, and a luncheon club where they performed their own version of pagan rituals. Wondered, most of all, whether they played the sport with any less intensity than he did… wondered if they did not know of him because he would have been regarded as little more than a nuisance, irritating and easily brushed aside; it would hurt to be so dismissed – and might be justified. He had never received, in all his years in the Service, any form of commendation, never been awarded a medal pinned on him by his sovereign, had never briefed a politician, never even met one for a flaccid handshake. The coins rattled in his trouser pocket, except for the denarius cleaned for him by Fee. His fingers rested on it and traced the lines on its face and its reverse and it seemed to show the transitory times of men who sought ‘to make a difference’. Some idiot had dropped it in the mud, and such an idiot might have been distracted by anxieties as to whether that woad-painted bastard away in the far distance was confidently plotting incursions.

He spluttered with laughter. It was going to be good: why should it not be?

“I want a bus-stop,” Gaz said.

The girl Natacha was deep in to her rant. “You have to listen, because this is why my father hanged himself, died because he could not live while all the men whose friendship he treasured were gone, lost… And why I help you. Why? Because it was these people, those in the new FSB palace, in all their palaces, who killed the men who could have been saved on the Kursk . Not all of them, but some. They should be alive, some… after the explosion and the deaths of ninety-five sailors there were twenty-three who were unharmed and who sheltered on the upper deck of the ninth compartment. They should have been rescued. Who could have saved them? The British could and the Americans could – but it was not acceptable that foreigners save our sailors. You understand why I hate?”

Gaz said, “A bus-stop is always good. No one sits outside if it is raining, but they wait for a bus.”

She was passionate, blasting him with her words. “The President was on holiday. In the sun, in the south, resting, still there five days after the disaster: that sort of man, not prepared to interrupt a holiday. And no senior officer dared to ask for help from the NATO navies. Eventually some cracked in their resolve and foreign divers and foreign equipment were asked for but no detail was given of how the escape hatch operated, and the divers were not allowed to fly to Murmansk but had to come many, many miles by sea, with more time lost. It was believed that if one, just one, of our sailors were rescued by a NATO navy then it would be political catastrophe. Such was the language of those who governed us and defended us. A deputy prime minister came to talk with the relatives of the crew at their base. A woman, perhaps already a widow, blistered him with criticism of their lies. Was she heard? She was sedated. A needle was stuck in her leg. The pride of the government was more important than the lives of sailors. It is why we help you – not just for money.”

The boy laughed. Gaz thought that Timofey had probably heard the story of the Kursk ’s loss many times. He needed a bus-stop because there seemed to be no cafés here and no place to wait and watch.

“Eight days after the disaster, the NATO navy opened the hatch on the Kursk but all the men who had lived at first were now dead, too late. Three days too late, at least. Killed by carbon monoxide poisoning in pitch darkness and with water all round them and oil in it. A horrible death. Then the President came. He made a big offer to the families: every widow and every mother would get an officer’s salary for ten years for her sailor husband or sailor son. How many roubles? The President did not know. He went away. Do you understand?”

It was the way of Gaz’s work that there were times when he needed to listen to a tirade or a confession or just gossip in which he had no stake, no interest, but it was necessary to show interest, concern, and not to kill the cooperation of anyone he relied on. The same wherever he had worked. The Fiat was parked. The boy, Timofey, rolled his eyes and had a tired grin. He led them up a side street and out on to the main street, the Prospekt. There were fine public buildings and some flew a flag, limp in the rain without wind to stir it. Timofey led him to a bus-stop and when he looked across the Prospekt he saw the big building which had three prominent towers – at each end and in the centre, and two blocks that were recessed between the towers, and saw a high fence of ironwork and a gate that was guarded. And saw a drunk who was kneeling, arguing with a guard… Saw a parked car half on the pavement, two men idling beside it who seemed uninterested in all that passed them by, and the taller one threw down a cigarette butt and the smaller one held a small book of the sort that contained puzzles or word teasers. He rocked. The girl, Natacha, cannoned into him. He looked at the two men by the car, a black BMW 5 series, and the recognition flooded in him. Cold ran on his neck. Gaz knew them. They would not have known him.