Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

The skipper had asked for the rest of that day, another twelve hours. Impossible. The Harbour-Master’s man would have the boat towed out by tugs if it could not sail under its own power. What about six hours? The minimum of what was needed for the repair to be effected. Impossible. The office of the Harbour-Master could supply engineers to verify and repair the offending piston, but it must leave in the slot allocated.

The piston was, of course, in rude health… when the engineer took over the conversation, mixing up a patois of Russian and Norwegian and technical English, the skipper gazed over the shoulders of the Harbour-Master’s man, and could see the security gate, and the deck-hand who was there to welcome the hurrying ‘crewman’ who had so obviously overstayed his shore leave. He remembered his passenger across the North Sea from the Orkneys, had liked him… which was not relevant. One hour?

“If you can repair your piston in one hour, why did you ask for a half day?”

The skipper smiled. “We go in one hour and hope to get to the open sea, and hope it lasts long enough for us to reach Kirkenes. We appreciate your hospitality.”

“You have one hour, then you leave.”

Hands were shaken, business concluded. He gazed up the hill towards the monument dominating the city, and the apartment blocks, and not even the thin early sunshine could brighten the damn place, and wondered where he was, and what had delayed him , and the stress ate at the skipper. They had all assumed there would be a party that night after they left Russian territorial waters, and a bottle of Scotch was ready: might have assumed too much.

From his window, Lavrenti saw his car.

The windows were misted which meant that the two of them were inside and probably listening to the early morning football talk show, and smoking. They should have been waiting beside the car, finishing its valeting, the motor turning over and a door open for him. Even better if one of them had been outside his apartment door and ready to carry his bag down the stairs. What he saw did little to improve his mood, based on another night’s failure to sleep. And there was their increasing disrespect. All difficult to pinpoint if he had cared to raise it with his father, but he had noted it… He was about to turn away when he noticed the couple.

He wore his informal uniform, suitable for an office day or one of those tedious occasions when he went to the border and talked with the Norwegian colonel about traffic delays on the E105 route across the frontier or access for the herdsmen who had to be brought from Norway to Russia to take home their reindeer when they cleared the frontier fence. He wore his medal ribbons, and his shoes were polished, although he had cleaned them himself. Breakfast, of a sort, would be served on the flight.

The couple were kissing. She had blonde hair, a strong nose, high cheekbones, and her arms were looped around the man’s neck. Lavrenti could not see his face; he was kissing her hard… this was something that the two men, Mikki and Boris, should have prevented. Completely wrong that two strangers – he knew, by sight, everyone who lived in the block and used his staircase – behaved so blatantly. That men and women should come to his front entrance and act like teenagers on heat was disgusting… Time to move. He could have taken a coin from his pocket and flipped it out of the window and hoped to hear it clatter on to the BMW’s roof which might have startled the bastards.

The man with the girl had no face and his clothing was non-descript. Lavrenti had passed out with high marks from the FSB’s Academy college, a grand building on Michurinsky Prospekt, across the street from the Olympic Park, and he had done particularly well in a field exercise where every salient point in the appearance of a target had to be noted. It was a paper that he had passed with honours. Lavrenti grimaced, shook his head sharply as if that were the route to a clearer head. Nothing of the man who kissed the blonde girl registered with him.

For the last time, he turned his back on the apartment and hooked his rucksack on to a shoulder. The place meant less than nothing to him, except as a cell block of anxiety, known only to him, admitted to no other. He slammed the door and headed for the stairs, and would give those men grief.

Gaz heard the clatter of footsteps on the inside stairway.

Her arms were still tight around his neck. Gaz had clamped his teeth together to keep her tongue out of his mouth. She did it like it was a game, that they were lovers, not serious, just having fun. Natacha kept her eyes open and he could see the laughter dancing in them. He broke clear. He had told her what she should do in the minutes before and she had broken from the kissing to nod her head in mock seriousness, and would have thought he joked and they would laugh afterwards. Then had gone back to kissing him again and resuming their cover… He wrenched away from her… down the street was the old woman with her laden plastic bags, coming slowly towards them. The car windows were still misted up. The snoring was steady.

The pistol was out of his belt. Armed, cocked, safety on.

The apartment block door swung open, might have been kicked. The officer filled the doorway; he was scowling and breathing heavily. Gaz read him, not difficult. He was about to bawl out his minders, still fast asleep in the car… Gaz relied on Natacha. No time to repeat instructions, no time to gaze into her face, to convey this was ‘real business’, not fantasy, not pretend.

The men’s eyes met. Those of Gary ‘Gaz’ Baldwin, corporal of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, invalided out, and those of Lavrenti Alexander Volkov, major in the Federal’nya sluzhba bezopasnosti reckoned as a rising star. A few minutes before six in the morning and the apartment block towering over them not yet stirring. Gaz staring, confirming recognition. The target, about to bellow towards the car, saw the girl twisting away from a scruffily dressed man, smaller than himself, lighter and nondescript, who blocked his way and who was snaking an arm around his back then jerking something clear. Gaz saw the scar: needed nothing else, and saw the strip of medal ribbons, and had no time to wonder which was for meritorious conduct in Syria.

Gaz caught him unprepared. He used the weight of the pistol against the officer’s neck, below and a little behind his left earlobe, hit hard and true, and the head flipped sideways. What the instructors said in the personal defence lectures, the unarmed combat sessions, was that the blow that jerked the neck and head sideways was the one that stunned. Gaz saw the desperate gulp of shock, eyes big and staring and the head lolling away to the right. The look that said, ‘What the fuck? What was that? Who are you?…’ and the pistol went up hard and under the officer’s chin. The barrel and the foresight of the Makarov were tearing into the loose skin below his jaw. The officer might have been stunned, but he was a young man trained in combat, and comprehension would come fast… he would know that a pistol was under his jaw and, if fired, a bullet would explode upwards and behind the nasal channels and into the tissues of his brain.

The best chance of breaking clear was in the first seconds, while the wannabe captors were overdosing on adrenaline and stressed half out of their minds. ‘Go for it then. Do it then because it will never be as good again.’ Could have been that FSB did the same course. The girl was slow. She was dragging a plastic bag from her hip pocket.

Gaz hit him again. A hard slug of a blow. Should not have been necessary. It should not have been the work of an SRR ex-corporal to disable a middle-ranking officer and do it short-handed. The Hereford crowd would have done it with four, minimum; trained guys, brutal and fast and ruthless, and the target out of his mind in shock, and feet not touching the ground. The second blow stunned. Gaz snatched the bag from the girl’s hand and shoved it into the officer’s mouth. Had to prise the teeth apart but dug it in and heard the coughing and retching. Natacha stared at him, then remembered her instructions, what had seemed a joke, and had the second bag ready. He took it from her and pulled it down over the officer’s head and his cap fell from his head. Gaz had the pistol under the officer’s chin and his other hand held the officer’s left arm, had it wrenched up behind his back, and was trying to run, dragging the target with him. Past the car, down the path, on to the pavement and over it, and into the road. A van came by. What would the driver do? Might just look hard at the far side of the road and see nothing and hear nothing and… what real people did who were not queuing to be heroes. The van went by. The officer might have been on the same level of course as offered by Gaz’s people. Locked his legs. Swung with his free hand. Tried to buckle his knees.