Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

“We keep going, Major. If you try to trick me then I will shoot you. Do not try to deceive me.”

“No one else. I have told no one else.”

He did not know if he was believed. Nor did he know whether it had been good to speak with this junior, whether the burden was lifted.

Timofey was in front, Natacha a pace behind.

They never disagreed on tactics. The officer could be taken into custody, or he might break free and run; either way he would be at the head of the queue to denounce them. The reckoning was that more money would be on offer if the officer was dead.

Timofey had said, “He stays alive and the FSB will be at our home. How do you run here, where do you go? Nowhere to run to… Imagine we have the money and we cross the border, and the money is useless, has no value. We have to do it.”

Natacha had said, “No future, no hope, not if he denounces us. I will do it.”

“We both do it.”

Like a bonding, like the blending of blood, both stopped the pursuit and crouched down, using their fingers to gouge through the lichen of the trail, to scrape and dig for stones, to prise them from the dirt. They were heavy stones, hardened from the eruptions of millennia before. Not as good a weapon as the pistol would have been, but the best available. It was not difficult to follow the trail because foot prints and broken twigs and crushed weeds were markers. She would have said that he had the stronger will for survival. He would have said that she had the better instinct for avoiding danger. Natacha thought that he would want to strike the first blow on the officer’s head. Timofey would have said that she would demand to hit first.

At times they could skip from stone to stone, miss the patches of bog where water lay till far into the summer: at other moments they sank in the pits and he had to lie on his face and reach into the dark mud and drag out her shoe. Would not have said so and would not have shown it, but the girl was more important to him than flight over the border, the escape to a life beyond Russia… he would lose her if they went. He would appear gauche, awkward, and she would dance for a new music player, and they would be lost and helpless and always running, and she would drift from him. Both were city kids and knew Murmansk and could trade in any of its districts and had friends of a sort there who hung out with them and drank sparingly with them, and dealt dope and ’phets on neighbourhood pitches. They would not go. To stay they had to destroy the chance of the major naming them, identifying where they lived.

He saw them first, and she had them in view a moment later. They sank down on their knees. The pair were less than 100 metres ahead and going slowly. The Russian had stumbled, and it was clear to Timofey and Natacha that the younger man had heaved him up. Not a kick and a punch but a helping hand. They crept forward, and he had his stone behind his back and she had shoved hers down her anorak. He was twenty-two years old and she was twenty… and he thought that if he were not leading her she would slip away from him and be gone towards brighter lights. She thought him reliable and dependable but also beginning to be predictable. Both would have said that, for reasons known only to them, they needed this moment of violence and authority. They started to run.

They were on a stretch of drier ground and they could go fast and the gap closed.

Natacha was jostling to get past Timofey, to be the first to strike. The shock was wide on the stranger’s face and his prisoner was cowering. She held her stone high and was clear of Timofey, realised that momentum was important in any attack: could be out in the middle of tundra, unseen, or could be in a dark corner by the Kirov statue, or among the trees behind the Kursk ’s conning tower. She seemed to have a fury about her and her arm was up, the stone bigger than her fist.

Gaz reacted in the way he had been taught.

Retaliate and do not back off. No other options, no place he could run to. His prisoner was on the ground: could not escape. The pistol was in his ‘wrong’ hand and it would have cost time to swivel and aim. He used his spare arm as a shield and deflected her blow. She recoiled. Timofey came after her. Gaz caught his wrist and pushed the boy back, and Timofey’s feet were entangled and he fell backwards. She came again at him. Gaz was from a culture where fighting women was degrading, would not have expected to use his full defence techniques: the heel of his hand across the throat, fingers extended and reaching for the eyes, a hard knee jerk up and into the lower belly, grabbing an ear lobe and twisting it… belting her across the face with the pistol as a last resort – or, the big call, aiming at her. She pounded at him and wriggled like an eel. He wasn’t her target so she fought, scratched, tried to reach the officer. He would take blows and bruises and blood, but would not permit her to harm his prisoner. He fought with one hand. The other held the pistol.

Timofey was back on his feet and lurching towards them and she had registered the pistol, and went for it. Hard against his body, writhing, difficult to hold unless he grabbed a fist of blonde hair and yanked it back, but she could survive pain. Had absorbed it all her life, had the pallor of Arctic nights, tower block life and prison cells. He had been forced to his knees and covered the prisoner, who was helpless, his hands tied behind his back. He supposed, vaguely, as the blows rained on him, hers with feeling and his with less enthusiasm, that he would give his life to protect the Russian major, and it would only take for him to lose hold of the Makarov pistol, or one blow of the stone in his hand or hers… if he were concussed, knocked unconscious, then the prisoner was dead.

He remembered the arguments. More money as a reward for them if Major Lavrenti Volkov was dead because that was the aim of the mission that had sent him to scout out the location for a murder. More chance of them sliding back into the anonymity of dope peddling if the life of the man who could identify them was terminated. Gaz could not fault the arguments, but rejected them. One blow, and he had failed in his responsibility, might as well have stayed on the island, kept up his little chain of jobs, kept space in his home for the black dog.

He hit her. She squealed, fell back. Without hurting her he would never get off the tundra, reach the border, cross to the safety of Norwegian territory, all tantalisingly close. He lashed with his boot at Timofey’s leg, and doubled him. Gaz did not know what happened in the next two, three seconds. Perhaps when her fingers had been groping for the pistol, one had found the lever for the safety and had shifted it. Perhaps, when he hit her or kicked the boy, his grip had altered and a finger had gone inside the guard. He was reeling, pushed himself up and the prisoner was still, barely breathing and face down. She had hatred in her eyes and part of her face was flushed from his blow. She glanced behind her and caught the eye of her boy, and it would have humiliated him that she led, not him, that she challenged him, and Gaz knew that the next time they came for him it would be… .

They did not do wounding shots on the range when SRR practised combat shooting, nor in the field. The card they sometimes carried spoke of justifying lethal force in the belief that their lives or those of others under their protection were now at risk. They did not do wounding shots because then an adversary might pull a grenade pin, detonate an Improvised Explosive Device, or have the strength to use a knife. The training was for killing shots, those that ended life. She would have taken the first two bullets, mid-chest or centre of the forehead – either where her thin anorak was torn open and her blouse had lost buttons in the struggle, or above the blaze of her eyes. He stumbled as he readied himself, and the prisoner was trying to turn and the officer’s feet caught in Gaz’s.