Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

He was greeted.

‘I am Valery, Major Valery. I am what you would call the Gold Commander for this operation. You are well, not hurt?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You have no need of medical attention?’

‘No need of it.’

‘You will be escorted to where your colleagues are, given some coffee – that is all.’

The Major was walking away. He called to his back. ‘Do you not want a debrief from me?’

‘No, I do not.’

‘Wouldn’t that help enable you to understand what might happen?’

‘I know what will happen.’ The Major paused. ‘It is arranged what will happen.’

Zeinab noted it.

The elder brother, Hamid, never spoke to her, never seemed to notice her. Just a woman, irrelevant and not worth humouring, of no value. She had craved attention, now was ignored.

They talked together, and sometimes smiled and giggled and were together in that moment and she was not a part of them. Sometimes when they talked, Hamid rubbed his brother’s arm as if to reassure him, and there was something that Hamid said that caused Karym’s mouth to go wide and his eyes to seem to pop out under their lids, like a kid taken to a cave of sweets, and they were hugging… She was trusted, she had come to do a deal, and not her fucking fault that she had been duped by a plain clothes police spy. Nothing was her fault – never was and never would be.

She put her finger inside the trigger guard, squeezed, and neither was looking at her. An explosion of sound. Now both turned to face her.

Neither tried to wrestle the Kalashnikov from her, neither flinched away from her. They went on talking – like she was trouble, and the problem to be resolved was how to placate her long enough to be rid of her, and… she stood. She walked the three or four short paces from the end of the bed to the shelves where his books were. She could manage in one hand to collect three or four books at a time in her arms. She threw them.

They went through the window. Above her was a wide hole where plaster had been dislodged by the bullet she had fired into the ceiling. Steadily, she cleared the shelves, and the books went down, pages fluttering as they fell, and were taken by the wind and weighted by the rain and slapped on to the ground. She was not a reader, not a self-abuser, but was an activist, a soldier and a fighter, had known the impact of the stock on her shoulder and imagined that if she had peeled off her clothes, as she had in the room above the little square near to the fruit and vegetable market in the centre of Marseille, she’d have seen bruising by her collar-bone, which would have been like a bright strip of medal ribbon. The last titles to be thrown out were The Gun: The AK47 and the Evolution of War and AK-47: The Story of a Gun and AK-47: The Grim Reaper . The one that emptied the shelf was AK-47: The Gun that Changed the World . It went out into the night and had a drop of five storeys.

‘Will you not tell me what is going on?’

Karym said, ‘Patience, sister. We are going to take you from here, make you free.’

Heavier rain fell, drenching the watchers but not dampening their enthusiasm while they waited.

For those who could see it, the throwing out of the books was one of the few signs that something, anything , might be about to happen. And the customers still held their places in the queue, and the dealers moved among them and urged them to continue waiting and said that the rumour mill predicted that there would soon be movement, a change of situation. Another crowd had formed in the open, with no shelter, in the car park of the commercial centre – where the shopping malls were – and they came from many of the neighbouring projects and were brought there by the excited exchanges on the mobile phone networks. Their view was across the car park fence and over the slope at the bottom of which was the outer police cordon and across the street and the line of drenched customers, and the inner cordon, over the rocks at the entrance to La Castellane, and on to – full frontal – the walls and windows of one of the blocks. They had seen the books thrown down.

Worth waiting for, the finish of it, and few would bet on disappointment.

‘Unacceptable? We have emphasised that?’

‘Have hit it hard, Gough. Unacceptable. They understand.’

‘What then is the plan?’ They were alone, huddled together in the emptied wagon.

‘Not privy, not inside the loop… a nuisance, and interfering – that’s what we are.’

‘Can we demand, Pegs, to be told? Have it explained to us, or beyond our remit?’

‘We are on sufferance. Can hardly demand a cup of Earl Grey and a shortbread biscuit, let alone be accepted on to the inside track.’

‘You reckon we’ll be out tonight?’

‘Can but kneel and can but pray.’

‘It’s very near the end. I don’t have that feeling it will be pretty.’

Pegs let a hand rest on his arm. There was usually a shake up in Wyvill Road after an operation as protracted as Rag and Bone, and it was predictable they would be found new partners to work with. Man and woman together for each team was considered preferable, and it was known as a shake up of ‘bedfellows’, and there would be an inquest over this one and the chances of them being together again were slim: one big booze binge off the flight and then desks cleared and comfortable relationships fractured. They were fond of each other and convenient.

‘Quite near the end, yes. Pretty? We gave it our best, didn’t shirk it, but “best” rarely satisfies. That’s not in our jobs, Gough, and not in our lives, pretty endings.’

The Major talked to him.

He listened, did not interrupt. A busy man, and now taking time off from his duties, and it might have been something about respect. He chewed on a sandwich, some spiced up ham and foul tasting, and the coffee given him was tepid. And when? Quite soon. A schedule was fixed. Within half an hour. He had one request, reckoned he would be allowed just one, and it would have no effect on the detail of their planning. He asked it.

Was answered, a shrug from the Major, a junior called forward, an order given. He thanked the Major, shook his hand, went with his escort into the deep darkness. It was arguable whether he had committed another act of insubordination in failing to go in search of the couple who nominally controlled him, but not much now could be done to him, and the protocols seemed of low importance. He could feel her lips on his, would nurture the touch of them for the rest of the night, maybe all the way back to whichever home he could claim to belong in. They went up the hill and had almost left the estate with its tower blocks and the open window. A van without insignia was parked half on the pavement and half in the street, its bonnet and front cab faintly lit by a distant street-lamp. Below, down towards La Castellane, were a few lights that showed up the driving rain. The escort led him to the back of it where the light did not reach. He went down on his haunches and the escort doubled away. Realised immediately that he was not alone, that another man was close to him, hidden from view, and his elbow brushed against a rifle’s barrel. He spoke quietly, said who he was and why he was there and where he had been, and what he knew of a target.

Then said, ‘I come to ask something of you…’

Hamid told Karym that it was a matter of trust.

‘Trust in who?’

It was a matter of trust between himself and a police commander, Major Valery, a man with as honest a reputation as any senior officer inside L’Évêché. And he had the Major’s promise.

‘What is the promise?’

The promise was that the window of opportunity would be open. Only briefly, but open, a one-time chance. It was arranged and would happen, and the girl would be gone and he could drop her and make the excuse, and then the problem was hers, not any more to do with La Castellane.