Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

“Serious, a meticulous operator, thorough, with an eye for advantage.”

“And a decent nose for ferreting out the sort of asset he can usefully employ.”

“I enjoy it when he saunters in here and gives us nothing, except that somehow it always leaks out, delicious canapés of detail.”

And the drink flowed and a good friend was remembered, gone on the long journey to the safe house in the skies, and the entry of the Coldstreamer was barely noticed. They believed themselves to be an old élite, whose life span was essential to the safety of the realm. They were confident and cheerful.

The Coldstreamer crouched beside Arthur Jennings’ chair. “So sorry, sir, for the disturbance. A summons from the DD-G, sir. You are required to attend, immediate. A car waiting outside.”

The officer’s rucksack was retrieved. His personal weapon found at the bottom.

Up the stairs, two at a time, Mikki leading. He could have said, or Boris, that the world had no worse outcome up its sleeve than when personal protection lost its ‘principal’. Irrelevant whether they despised him. Unimportant if they detested him. On their watch, they had lost the major.

The old cow had locked herself inside her apartment, had barred or bolted the door. They kicked the door and shouted. No response. Then they put their shoulders to it.

Mikki, from Kamchatka in the far east of the Federation was the tougher, stronger, and Boris from Irkutsk in Siberia was the brighter. It was Mikki’s efforts that collapsed the door, then Boris had hold of the old woman. Her shopping bags were not yet unpacked. She was on her knees. Nothing subtle in the efforts of Boris. She was a fellow citizen of the Federation. Her late husband had worked loyally for the state. He twisted the lobe of an ear. In between her bleating cries, like a ewe’s, he whispered his questions. Each time she did not answer it was Mikki’s turn to sweep china from a cupboard and pictures from the walls, and soon the room was trashed.

Done steadily, without impatience, and she was given the impression that the two of them had time to spill, could keep the pain coming without needing to hurry. Could hurt her more than she had ever been hurt, could break pretty much everything she possessed. Weeping and holding her ear, she spat out what she knew. The girl who had carried her bag was the girl who had kissed the man on the step by the front door. The boy who had sat in the car. The car that had taken the officer away. The man who kissed was not of that city, and not Russian. They left her.

Outside, pieces of the puzzle started to interlock, and connections were made.

A car might have followed them the previous evening when they had brought the major back from the Prospekt. The boy who had gone into the bar and had emerged with two vodka bottles had had a foreigner with him. Through the window of the bar they had seen the ‘foreigner’ go close to the major, then abruptly turn away. The boy who had come to the gate of the headquarters building on Prospekt and had carted away a drunk and been ingratiating and polite. The drunk had been demanding access to an officer to make an accusation of treachery. Work to be done, and fast, at that building.

First, unwelcome business. A telephone call to be made. Mikki behind the wheel and starting the engine and needing to burn rubber, and Boris scrolling through his phone for a stored number. Keys pressed. Face creased in anxiety, dialling tone and ringing out. A clipped military tone answered. Boris gave his name. What did he want? The brigadier and his wife were soon to leave for the airport to celebrate the return of their son from duty in the far north. Why did he call?

Well, for a start – shit – not great news to give. Had lost their son, not mislaid, not like a fucking wristwatch or a pair of spectacles put down, but lost like he and Mikki were mugged and had ‘lost’ their wallets. Called him ‘sir’ and his voice would have been hard to hear and his jaw trembled. Lost like it was a kidnap. An intake of breath. Where? At the front door of the block where he lived. Where was the car, where were they? Round the corner, just – very briefly – out of sight, which was a lie but necessary. What had they done so far? They had interrogated an eyewitness to the abduction… They had a siren going and had a slap-on blue light on the roof… What possible reason was there for his being taken? Boris could not answer, but would have to – knew it. Was his son not a middle-ranking officer, principally involved in desk work? He was, Boris was able to reply. Was a fucking nobody, was fucking useless, was a time-server – agreed? No reply from Boris, and the voice ranted on and detailed Lavrenti Volkov’s failings, and culminated.

“It could not have been a foreign agency.”

A big breath from Boris. It was owed to the man who had saved his life, who’d had the guts, courage, balls, to call down the air strike on to their position as they fought hand to hand and with ammunition low or finished. He blurted.

“It could be about Syria…”

“What about Syria? What about that fucking hornets’ nest?”

There was a village, there was a day the Iranian militia came to that village. There was that day when the major accompanied an Iranian commander to the village. The village was destroyed on that day. People died. Men, women, children died… Boris said it.

“But that was Iranians. My son was liaison. He had no authority, no command.”

Mikki was approaching that sector of the Prospekt where the headquarters building was sited. He nodded, encouraged Boris.

“He took part in it, Brigadier. He was at the front of it. Maybe a hundred people died, maybe more. He was active. We thought everyone had been killed so that no witnesses were left to testify. He was – forgive me, Brigadier – like a mad dog there. I know of no other reason for a foreigner to come and seize your son off the street.”

He thought he had crushed a man whom he had always respected beyond all others. Had broken the spirit of a man he would have followed anywhere, into the teeth of any battle. He thought the brigadier a man of discipline and of integrity. Who would have been wounded to learn that his boy, disliked and treated with near contempt, but his own blood, had been involved in a matter of such squalid violence. The silence hung on the line.

“We will do all we can, I promise you, to find him and recover him. We do that for you and your wife. We have a start but need a few hours before a general alarm is raised. That way scandal is suppressed. I am confident.”

He cut the call. They pulled up at the gate and flashed a card. A camera watched them.

“You said, ‘I am confident’ – what are you confident of?”

“Confident of fuck-all. I thought he was about to weep. I did not want to hear him weep. What the fuck else should I have said?”

They loosed his ankles, then took him down the inner stairs.

Just before they left the apartment, the boy found his father’s phone and chucked it from a window and it would have fallen in the scrub above the conning tower memorial. He had locked the door after him.

The girl led, and the boy held the officer’s arm and Gaz was behind them and kept the pistol within an inch of the back of the officer’s neck, but touched it with the barrel and foresight often enough to remind him it was there. They went down at scrambling speed. Brushed out of the way was a woman who worked part-time in the Fleet museum, the kids told him, and who would have been on her way to work. Next to be pitched back against a wall was the man who did translation work and was also a tour guide when the cruise liners, rarely, came to Murmansk. In the lower hallway, two young teenagers smoked and scuttled away as if lives were at risk. All of them would have known Timofey and Natacha, and would not rush to a phone. Seen nothing, heard nothing, known nothing, all survivors.