Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

Approaching the end of the street, Knacker saw the flag, and ducked away.

He faced an ordinary enough office building, a flag-pole angled from the wall above the entrance. The flag had red and blue and white strips, was wrapped around the pole, did not fly with any joy. The Russian flag… He had, before setting out on a lone walk, noted on the girls’ map that the Russian consulate was at the upper end of a central Kirkenes street. There would be a camera that scanned the street and recorded those approaching the doorway. He thought his face would not have been shown clearly at the distance where he turned on his heel. He had already walked up that street, past the art shop and the stationer’s and a couple of fast foods, and he had noted the imitation border markers concreted into the pavement. They were painted in red and green bands, the colours the Russians used on the frontier markers, and were plastered with photographs, in colour, of a benign looking chap who was – had been – prominent in this Norwegian town but had made a visit to Moscow. He was now banged up in a cell block in the Lefortovo: an accusation of espionage, and his home community disbelieving and angry and impotent. Knacker had passed the town’s large police building with its intelligence liaison desk, and the big church where parishioners knelt on a Sunday and would have tried to exorcise anxieties about their neighbours, their neighbours’ intentions, and would have failed. Knacker left the consulate behind him, always enjoyed a walk, alone, and could reflect. Could think of motivation, why a single enemy consumed his attention. Was parsimonious with that adversary – did not feel the same cold dedication for conflict with Iranians or North Koreans, or the Chinese who were now labelled by the analysts as engendering the greater threat. He confronted Russia, would do so as long as he was employed.

Why? Difficult to answer. Knacker had never been across the borders, by land, by sea, by air, of the old Soviet Union and of the newer Russian Federation. The only citizens that he knew from behind the former or present versions of an Iron Curtain were fugitive dissidents and recruited defectors. The matter of searching for an opposition target was based on the value it carried. Russians were high end. Men talked long into the night of when they had bested that opponent. Legendary tales were embedded into the Service folklore, epic triumphs – and monumental failures. They were the only ‘enemy’ on the playing field for whom the game’s end result mattered… with, Knacker’s opinion, motivation and going the extra yard. A game with high stakes. They played big, and Knacker had lost men and they had too. He would continue to face collateral as would they… but always the notion of victory softened any conscience pang… He thought himself a man of decency, would gladly write the chit for a one-off payment for a widow, a grieving mother, a daughter, even a mistress. He thought his opponents arrogant, contemptuous of his efforts and so it was worth administering a sharp kick to these shins. As he walked the wide streets of this frontier community, he could consider that the establishment of a small oasis of loyalty where once had been the village of Deir al-Siyarqi was reward enough for casualties taken.

He was in a fine mood. He kept away from the hotel where the Facilitator and his hoods waited to be called forward. He assumed that Gaz, the reluctant volunteer, was by now on the trail, lead dog in a pack and going hard after a bushy tail, and on board the fishing boat within hours… going well.

Not complacent and not chicken counting, but likely soon to be murmured about at a Round Table lunch… Going well enough to be shared amongst that élite where the impossible was boasted as normal, why it existed and why Knacker’s reputation was rarely bested. Going well and the phone in his pocket would only ring if the business headed for the pan. He was pleased that the Round Table’s traditions remained in good hands, was vindicated.

Fingers probed, prodded, used a meld of firmness and gentleness, but went where they were guided and with the required force.

Eyes glanced away from the patient’s chest and upper stomach and scanned the X-rayed image that had been taped to the side of a bookcase above a drinks cabinet. Lips pursed and a frown furrowed a forehead. The doctor was astride a stool and his patient – Dickie, Director-General, God Almighty – was propped up by cushions on the chaise longue that had long been a fixture in that office high above the river, looking out on the seat of government on the other side of the Thames. The patient would have assumed himself indestructible but the doctor would have known better.

“All right, give it me.”

The doctor did.

“Heavy schedule at the moment. I’ll try and fit in the necessary when it’s calmer.”

The doctor’s head shook sharply. ‘Immediately’ was the response, or ‘sooner’.

“Bugger… you don’t look open to negotiation, Freddie. Can’t go this moment, need to put the DD-G in the frame. Allowed that, am I?”

No barter permitted. A few hours, not a full day. If the schedule were abused the chances were high that the destination would be the mortuary, not the clinic. The doctor thought a soothing word might help, ‘nothing’s for ever, and the DD-G’s likely to make a fair fist of things’, and the tidbit of the joys of lasting longer, seeing more of the grandchildren.

“Smooth talk… Problem is I’ve put things in place, but they’re on a fragile base – one running at the moment. Beyond recall… Be here tomorrow, please, and take me in.”

The doctor left. The Director-General, an admirer of Knacker, a supporter of all of that ilk, pushed himself uncomfortably off the chaise longue and felt that irritating stab of pain, and rang his PA in the outer office and asked for a meeting with his deputy, early in the morning. Felt angry, then reflected that it was probably never easily accepted that a potentially terminal condition existed deep in the chest.

“Shit, bloody inconvenient. A show running and all out of reach.”

He parked the pick-up. It might have been in a restricted area, but the hunter, the recluse from the forest, had no address that would register on a traffic office computer. He went to the hotel and carried a heavy bag. Horns jutted from it, and the hooves of two deer, and the tip of the dark tail of an Arctic fox. Jasha had come to town to do business. There was one hotel in the town that his contact cared to use.

The Azimut had a minimalist coffee lounge and lobby. Jasha came here because it was a hotel that permitted him to bring his old dog. Normally he would have sat with the agent who bought the pelts and trophies, and the dog would have been curled by his feet. He accepted the cash offered… not that he needed money. Under his bed in the cabin and screwed down on to the floor’s planking was a combination-locked safety deposit box. Each time that he returned from Murmansk it was harder for Jasha to insert the bank notes, denominations of 100 American dollars and 500 Russian rubles with the image of Peter the Great upon them. Jasha could not have said how much he was worth and had never tipped the notes out of their secure box and counted them. His distraction was obvious, and the agent quizzed him.

“Are you unwell, Jasha?”

A shake of the head and an attempt to dismiss such trivia. “No, I am well.”

“And soon another winter, and you are not younger, and you live without comfort.”

“I am good, and I have pleasant company.”

“You have not lured a woman up there, surely not?”

“I have my own company, have my dog, and outside is nature. It is enough.”

He assumed the agent thought he lived in circumstances similar to a serf in the times of Catherine. He was challenged twice more with efforts at conversation, and was vague. They made their farewells. He had the idea that the agent watched him leave and wore that look an old friend reserves for someone not expected to live long. The money was in his hip pocket and he had shouldered the big bag, now empty. He would visit a supermarket for essentials, then head back up the road, into the wilderness, to rejoin his own world of the dog, the bear and the creatures he stalked… except, the source of his distraction: he had seen the intruders he had noticed earlier on his way to the Azimut hotel.