Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

It was the first crisis. There would be more. Gaz understood that a half measure was useless. ‘Go for broke’ was what he had been lectured, ‘Don’t show weakness’ was their call. Wondered if the noise of the safety coming off, being slid across with his thumb would be sufficient for the target to realise it would finish badly if he fought back. Gaz ducked under the blow, swung blind, and had to do no more.

Natacha kicked the officer.

The pain would have spread sharp and clean in his shin, and then she kneed him. A gasping and sobbing sound gurgled through the plastic bag in the target’s mouth, and his legs went slack. She had hold of his right arm, and Gaz thought the officer was trying to vomit.

Two more cars passed them, going towards the heart of Murmansk, and neither stopped. They dragged him fast and the headlights of the Fiat flashed and he could see that Timofey was out of the car and peering up the road, would have been waiting to hear the sound of double tap, would have wondered why he hadn’t. Timofey had the back door of the Fiat open, the engine running, and stared in astonishment, a fag dripping off his lower lip. They passed the old woman with her bags of swedes and turnips, and she had to back away and give them a clear run of the pavement, or they would have flattened her.

They came to the Fiat. A group of kids were watching… the officer was pushed forward, his head cannoning into the far side of the back seat. Gaz wrenched his legs into a foetal position and grabbed two more plastic bags from the front seat. Natacha was now in the passenger seat beside Timofey. Gaz tied one of the plastic bags round the officer’s ankles, knotted, and knotted again, and the second went round his wrists, at the small of his back, knotted, and knotted again. The tyres screamed, and the Fiat was heading down the road.

“Now what?” A squeal in her voice.

“Now where?” Confusion in Timofey’s.

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing.”

“Why did he not shoot?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why is the bastard not dead?”

“Was not told, Timofey. Used like I am a servant.”

“He was going to shoot. Kill, then we take him to the harbour.”

“That is what I thought.”

“But he did not shoot, why not?”

“Listen… he did not tell me. Did not tell me why he wanted the bags.”

“Could he have shot him?”

“It was perfect. He was body to body with him. The man had no defence.”

“Where does it put us?”

“Don’t know. I know nothing. I know nothing more than you do.”

“Will we be paid?”

“How can I answer, Timofey?”

“He took him well.”

“Took him like a fucking cat after vermin, Timofey. Took him brilliantly. Has not spoken a word to him, not one word.”

Timofey twisted, eyes off the road and looked back. “What do we do now? Where do we go?”

A quiet voice behind him. “We go to your apartment, and we organise and you do the last thing I ask of you. Then we are gone, and your part is forgotten, except for the reward paid you. I am going to take him out. End of story.”

“Were you frightened to kill him?”

“No.”

Timofey drove and Natacha had her hand on his thigh, and the laughter was gone from her and the mischief had fled.

The old woman, moving slowly and gasping under the weight of the swedes and turnips, saw the military cap. She put down the bags and massaged her hands to get the feeling back into the fingers, flexed her joints, cracked them, and wondered what she had seen and how what she had seen might affect her… But she always liked – despite a grim and grey appearance – to laugh. And did not deny herself. She picked up the cap and placed it on the bonnet of the German car. Then extracted her apartment keys from her purse. She scraped the sharper side of the main key along the door of the BMW black saloon, then kicked the driver’s door as hard as frail feet and her boots would permit. She picked up her bags and was back inside the hallway with a speed that surprised her. She was on the third floor, had hurried up the stairs, and was inside her own pocket handkerchief living-room and at the window in time to see two bleary-eyed men emerge from the car, notice the cap, scratch and fidget, and wave their arms in confusion. She went to make tea… an arrogant bastard would have been her description of the officer who had lived two floors higher in the block. But the amusement was short-lived because the taller of the minders saw her and started toward the door.

I am going to take him out. End of story.

The man was straddling him, his neck was ruptured from the blows, he felt he was suffocating inside the plastic bag, and it had taken moments before his mind had begun to clear.

Two young people at the entrance. The girl was a decoy. The man had belted him, struck him hard. Would not have happened if the idiots supposed to watch over him had not been asleep in the car. Done with swiftness and a degree of expertise… His initial fight back had been a failure. The pain was still in his privates and his shins were agony where the man’s weight pressed on them. He could not shift the plastic bags that gagged and blindfolded him, and bile had dribbled from the sides of his mouth, but he had not vomited. His wrists were tightly bound and his ankles, and he had heard the whisper of talk in the front as the driver threw the little car from one side of the road to the other. They went fast and several times there were choruses of horns as other vehicles were cut up or swerved aside.

Who had taken him? He did not know. At the Academy they taught a reasonable level of English to a favoured stream of recruits. He needed English if he went after foreign diplomat missions, and when he hunted out the western businessmen who came to Moscow and St Petersburg, and thought that Russia was a milch-cow to exploit. I am going to take him out. End of story. Not mafia. Not local environmentalists from Murmansk. Not opponents of the President’s rule who had, anyway, a negative foothold this far from the principal cities. And not mistaken identity because he wore uniform and a car waited outside for him… He had had, and scratched in his memory for evidence against the conclusion, no contact with Great Britain, with anyone British: well, other than two businessmen whom he had hustled before going to Syria, and an economist who had written hostile investment reports relating to business life in modern Russia and whose apartment he had ordered to be broken into. But… neither businessmen nor economists would have involved themselves, or had the resources to, in a violent attack on an officer such as himself. And the whispering in the front of the car, in Russian, was of death, of him being shot dead, and the opportunity had been there and not taken.

Lavrenti could not speak. Could not demand to be freed. Could not demand an explanation: ‘Do you fucking know, you peasant shit, who I am?’ Could not tell them that his father was a brigadier general and his contact list spread as high as the President. Could do nothing. Was not able to make sense of what he had heard, a flat voice, and calm. I am going to take him out. End of story .

Going at speed and quartering the roads and no more talk, and he listened for sirens as evidence of pursuit, and was not rewarded.

Off the E105 highway from Murmansk to the frontier and then the Norwegian town of Kirkenes, and on the east side, the Russian side, of the border checks at Titovka, was a slight track. It might once have led to a natural forest of trees which had long before been felled, and it might once have reached a fortified position for artillery or machine-guns in the defence of the city from the Nazi invaders. It was now used only by Jasha, the recluse. It led to his cabin. He had no power or water, no comforts, nothing of the modern world except for the metal box under his bed where many thousands of roubles were stored. He had wealth, but nothing on which to spend it except for the basic foods that he and his dog needed, and the oil for his lamp, and tobacco for his pipe – essential in summer when the mosquitoes swarmed, and ammunition for his rifle which shot the wild creatures that he sold on those rare visits to the city. His friend was his dog. He loved his dog and its encroaching age upset him. More important now was his belief that he possessed a new neighbour. He had not been out of the hut for twenty-four hours. His neighbour had been inside the hut and had searched its contents but had taken nothing, had destroyed nothing. He could not judge what relationship, other than respect, was possible with the neighbour – with the bear that he had called Zhukov.