Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

The answer, as quiet as the rustle of old leaves in a gentle wind, smacked the breath from his chest. “You should recall your visit to a village…”

“… You should remember, Major, your visit to the village of Deir al-Siyarqi.”

He saw the officer flinch. Gaz had turned, only for a moment. He thought that his response to ‘I have done nothing’ devastated more than the blow to the face with the pistol butt, and more than the kneeing by the girl. Gaz had not understood what he had said, but the tone was a mixture of authority and wheedling reason. Would have been the predictable line of making a deal, getting real, being everybody’s friend, and it was all a mistake. What Gaz would have expected. The girl must have answered sharply, behind the cover of her sweet face, because the confidence had drained and the argument had been louder then had spilled into English. First the officer’s head went down and his chin hit his chest, then his head came up and his lips narrowed and, somewhere deep behind the slack blindfold, his eyes would have flickered.

Gaz said, “There was a village. I came because of what was done there.”

Far below him, out in the harbour channel, Gaz saw the fishing boat. She made slow speed and a launch sailed alongside her. The good guys on board, kind men and decent and the sort he’d have known in the unit, would have talked and fidgeted and rustled up excuses and might have delayed the sailing for an hour or so, but had hit the buffer of bureaucracy, and they were on their way. If they lost the attention of the present escort, further up the inlet and beyond the Severomorsk submarine base, Gaz assumed they would try to use the one back-stop procedure that had been talked of. Discussing it in the below-deck cabin it had seemed fanciful, and thinking of it now it seemed ridiculous. They were good enough guys, all of them, for him to assume they would try to fulfil the procedure. It was a fine-looking craft and the water it traversed was calm and it made a useful bow wave. He thought well of the small crew, imagined they’d be gutted that he was not on board… remembered the words of Robbie Burns mouthed when the milking parlour pump went down, or the pin sheared on the field grass topper. Best laid plans o’ mice an’ men, Gang aft a-gley . And the men crewing a small fishing boat would have understood that. Best plans going awry. He might see them again… and might not. He held the pistol. He saw that the kids had made no move towards the officer, that he was still trussed securely to the chair. He had not wasted his time at the window, and did not waste it further as the boat went north up the inlet.

“It is about the village, only the village.”

“Rubbish, shit talk.”

“About the village.”

“Not there, never heard that name.”

“The village of Deir al-Siyarqi. I think you will remember the day you were there.”

“Never heard of such a place. You cannot prove I was there. Show me evidence.”

“I saw you there, Major Volkov. I am a witness.”

“You lie… you could not have seen me because I was never there, have never heard of such a place. I was liaison, I stayed in a barracks. I played no part in operations, and…”

“A witness, Major Volkov, to an atrocity.”

Like a darkness had come into the room. All eyes were on him. He struggled to break the bags that tied him to the chair, and failed. Wriggled and contorted, and what Gaz could see of his face was flushed where blood ran, and he tried to kick out with his feet but all he achieved was to topple the chair so that he slid onto the floor. No one helped him. The old man stayed back now as if realising, though not understanding the language, that the major’s claim to power had slipped away, and the kids did not move as he thrashed against the chair. Gaz understood them both: Timofey was boot-faced and showed no feeling and would have been considering what he had involved himself with, and the girl had a look of malevolence and smiled through it as though this was entertainment, high grade.

“So, I was there. But I was the liaison. I gave no orders and had no authority. They were savages, the Iranians. They obeyed none of the rules of warfare. None of it was my doing. I still have nightmares because of what I saw that day, I cannot escape them. What tortures me the most is that I was helpless and in no position to influence it. They were like mad dogs, the IRGC, but it was the attack in the night on their camp which provoked their anger. I did not plan the follow-up operation. I went along in the hope that some intelligence material could be accessed from the village. Several times I urged the commander to rein back his militia but always he refused. I am not a psychologist, but from what little I know of that discipline, it was clear that a frenzy of hate enveloped that unit of IRGC. They were beyond control. I had no part in the killings or the abuse, what was done to the women. I was a bystander. The weather added to the awfulness of the day, and into the night – rain, gales, thunder. I have no guilt. Do you not understand war? It is what happens in war. I have been honest with you, but I do not believe you were an eyewitness – perhaps you were there afterwards. Whoever you are, and from whatever agency, you should free me. I am an innocent man… there were no witnesses.”

“I was there. I saw everything you did.”

There was a tone of finality in Gaz’s voice, as though by trying to excuse himself of blame the major merely wasted breath. He looked again from the window and no longer saw the boat, only the ends of its bow wave and some gulls hovering over its wake. He had needed a plan and the quiet in the apartment had given him the scope to think of it. A workable plan? Not sure, would not be certain for twenty-four hours. It was the only plan he knew. He gestured to Timofey and the kid went forward and took the weight of the chair, and his father helped, and they straightened it. He said that he needed some food and a hot drink, and he peeled off notes from a wad in his pocket and gave them to the girl. He trusted her more than he trusted her lover, but had no right to burden either of them with his trust. She went out, and would have skipped away down the stairs. She could, of course, use her phone and call a police number, or could head off into the city centre and pitch up on the Prospekt and denounce him, and a storm squad would be kitted in bulletproof vests and wear balaclavas under their helmets and carry assault rifles and gas and flash grenades and would break through the flimsy door to the apartment, and she could then claim the rewards he imagined the major had offered… But it would not happen, that at least he was sure of.

It was a quality wake. Most of those that were organised in celebration of the life of a Round Table member were good occasions. They mixed anecdotes and what they saw as truisms, and laughter, and powerful doses of criticism were always directed at the new guard, the analysis geeks. Upwards of twenty were in the first-floor room of the Kennington Road pub and on the central table lay the theatrical sword. One founder member was a notable absentee – Knacker – and it was said that his rooms down the road were still locked up and showing no lights; so, not just him away but also his girls. Only a revered death could beat the excitement of the members when one of their own was running a show. Not that secrets were hawked round but small nuggets were talked of with evident joy. At the heart of the occasion was the true veteran, Arthur Jennings, always with a crush of colleagues round him and listening to the observations of the arch enemy of the geek gang.

“Miss him if he’s not with us, don’t we, old Knacker?”

“First-class man. No formal education but razor sharp. He’ll be up on some part of that bloody place’s endless border, and they’ll know about it, but not until he’s ready.”