Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

Easy to answer: on a mission for a senior officer, and Mikki had tapped his nose to indicate confidentiality, and Boris had touched a finger to his lips. Two gestures, enough to satisfy the drunk. And one drink followed another, and bank notes flitted over the counter, and neither had eaten… They were not booked on the major’s flight but on a later schedule. Their own apartment nearby, one shared bedroom, was already cleared and their own gear all gone on the same van as the officer’s. Where to sleep? Who the fuck cared? They were Afghan veterans and here were Syria veterans, and unnecessary to speak of connections to FSB. One of the last coherent statements made by Boris was that, in the hotel they would open off the highway from Moscow to St Petersburg, it would be good to have a themed bar area for armed services memorabilia… .

They were free of the shit major from early morning. Good enough reason to celebrate. Would have walked out on him months before – could have been straight after the return of the aircraft ferrying them all back from Latakia a few weeks after the ‘incident’ at a village close to a highway, and never spoken of. Would have done if their loyalty to his father, to the brigadier general, was not paramount.

It would be far into the small hours, not long before the idiocy of a dawn on a summer morning in Murmansk, that Mikki and Boris staggered out into the fresh air, and a taxi driver fleeced them, and they slept in the BMW. How would they wake to be in time for the shit major’s airport run? Well, they would, because they always woke early… if they didn’t wake then the shit major could rouse them. Not a problem.

Timofey said where they should go. Natacha said what she would do. He drove. Up the hill from the Prospekt, on the Sofi Perovskoy, was a narrow cul-de-sac down the street from the Regional Science Library, and at the far end was the best hamburger outlet in all of Murmansk.

All cooked on site, nothing brought in. All done by a heavily built proprieter who did the shift from mid evening into the small hours, and who had gained a reputation for quality. Good meat, the best onion slices and powerful chillis, and sauce if wanted, and at a decent price. The van ‘borrowed’ power from the local government building. No tax paid, and no civic permission required, because the business was near enough to the police station and close enough to the headquarters of FSB to ensure their patronage. Hardly a night went by, unless there was driving snow at blizzard proportions or the summer’s occasional torrential rain, when men and women doing late shifts would not slip away from desks and screens and vacate the custody suites, and turn up at the counter and place an order. The owner, who doubled as chef and wore an outsize white apron, would then cook the order, wrap it, and charge below-list prices for those in uniform or who wore an ID card hanging on a lanyard from their necks. It was a place of confidences between agencies, and of gossip, and a location where deals were done and favours earned. Always there were queues of men and women. The business had its own ‘roof’ in place, paid the necessary dues and was free of the attention of predator gangs.

Natacha and Timofey had found it and realised that, late into the night and early into the morning, kids gathered here, and were happy to take away a wrap for smoking once they had eaten. They had done good trade. A decent slice of business was available in the shadows beyond the light from the van. Then, change. The new FSB headquarters had been sufficient to drive away the kids. In most weathers, Timofey and Natacha had learned, the FSB people would walk from the back entrance of their building and come with an order: often five portions or even ten, then scurry back. Police used to draw up in their patrol cars at the top of the road and one would go for the order and the other would stay in the car, the radio playing light music, read a magazine or do word puzzles. Other police would come from the central block where they worked. It would be those in the patrol cars that the boy and the girl would target.

“Where will he shoot the officer?” Timofey asked.

“He did not say,” Natacha answered.

“If we do this and he shoots and a major in FSB is dead on the pavement and we are linked with the gun, then…”

“Then a wall of shit falls on us. I know.”

“Did he say they would pay big, extra?”

“Didn’t.”

“You have been with him – you trust him?”

Natacha’s laugh was soft, not a snigger or sneer. “An innocent, troubled. I don’t know how he will walk to his target, look into his face. Contact with the eyes, give the target a moment of terror, then shoot. Don’t know. But he asked for the gun.”

They passed the cul-de-sac and she saw a short queue, and a flash of light as a cigarette was lit.

“It will be good to watch,” and the laughter hooted. She had no fear of the involvement and could have talked of the nights in the communal cells, the brutality of the uniforms, and the system… Same uniforms, same system, that had left the boys on the submarine to die in darkness, abandoned… She lowered the window, spat through it, then flexed her hands, made her fingers supple. Nothing more to be said, and time running. The lights of a patrol car blinded him momentarily, then it parked in the street and the headlights were killed. One cop out and the other staying in, predictable. One cop walking into the cul-de-sac to join the queue and order, and the other content with Elton John.

He edged closer to the mouth of the cul-de-sac, and switched off the lights. He would not smoke in the car and show the glow of a cigarette, and he would duck his head low and keep it in shadow and the street lights were weak. She reached in the back of the Fiat, and pulled a plastic bag from the flap behind her seat, took it on her lap and dragged the tangled mess from it, and swore, and tried to make sense of the wig. Her blonde hair became chestnut and she reached into the shallow glove slot in front of her knees and found the spectacle case. Clear glass, heavy tortoiseshell frames, once used by a theatre group, and thrown out… She used the forward mirror to check the positioning of the wig, and put on the spectacles and contorted herself so that she could wriggle out of her light poplin coat and reverse it.

She stepped out of the car, and fingered the buttons of her blouse, loosening the top two and pulling the material a little apart, and swung her hips, and did her walk, and went to the patrol car. Behind her, Timofey would wait, his fingers hovering close to the ignition key. He knew what she would do, and neither dissuaded her nor encouraged her: it was their partnership. It would not take long; she might have five minutes or as much as seven or eight. She approached the patrol car, came from behind, and her footsteps would have been enough to alert the man who would have been soothed by his music, looking forward to his meal, and he would have seen thin legs and a loose top and a flash of skin and the outline of shallow breasts and a cascade of auburn hair, and the distinctive spectacles. She could see the back of his head and the shine of his bald scalp… It would be done fast, without negotiation, no time for him to consider, imagine when his partner would be back from the burger bar and what his wife, likely fat as a barn, would say if she knew. Just a little moment of shock and awe, and wonder. She had not done it before, but had imagined it. Did not seem a problem to her, nor a problem to Timofey who slept with her.

His window was wound down. She reached it, leaned on the frame.

He would have seen her face. No lipstick, no scent, no jewellery; she would have appeared little more than a child, with big academic glasses on her nose. He would have seen the grin, and might have read the offer. She moved fast. Leaning in and showing her cleavage, and the old beggar half jumping from his seat, but restrained by his seat belt. She unfastened it. Natacha reached down, manipulated him. Looked into his face and grinned. He started to pant, might have yelled, might have grappled for his radio microphone and pressed the switch to transmit, might have shouted for his partner, or might simply have thought himself the luckiest bastard in that precinct of Murmansk. All the time keeping her head only a few centimetres from his eyes and his mouth, and only reaching up to remove the spectacles and pocket them, then returning her hand to find the second belt, his own, and feeling him and chuckling. No time to waste.