Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

‘Why did they make such an agreement?’

It was a matter of negotiation, Hamid told his kid brother. The Major and himself had agreed the deal. His brother asked, reasonably, why the police would talk, even barter, with a dope dealer, and his answer was plausible. From the police side they had a considerable detachment of officers pulled from other duties to enforce a cordon, and the overtime bill was rapidly mounting and would go to the Heavens if the siege lasted after midnight, and it was an embarrassment and reflected poorly: they wanted the matter closed down. From his own point of view the advantages of kicking the can down the street were several. There was the new shipment in the project, customers waiting in torrential rain. Not just his own customers, but every other franchise inside La Castellane was affected, and already his phone was filled with complaints. It was a matter to be settled and fast.

‘And her? What if she refuses?’

An idiot’s question. How could she refuse? Here, inside, she could do nothing. There, outside, she was a free agent. Earlier she had been told the bare outlines, now his brother was furnished with detail. She could go with her rifle, run in the hills, scramble in the mountains, go anywhere she wished that was far from the arrondissement in which the project existed. That was what he told his brother… did not tell him that the price for the deal, and the opening up again of the project, and the evening’s trading, was that he would betray Tooth, deliver him through evidence provided to the investigators working to the disciplines and cleanliness of Major Valery… did not tell him that his younger brother was so infatuated, mesmerised, by the girl that he would likely have stayed with her and supported and strengthened her and that the siege would then have continued – another day and another night, and more trading lost, and more money missed… he said that time was now short.

‘It will work, it is genuine?’

Would he lie to his own family, his own blood, would he? Of course he would not. The girl was on the bed, and he did not think that she slept and the weapon was held warily, the finger against the trigger guard. He thought she would fight until they killed her. And he saw the way that Karym, the dreamer and the romancer, gazed at her, was starstruck by her but yet wanted to touch, not her boobs but the Kalashnikov, did not want to put his hands between her legs, but on to the stock and the barrel and the selector lever of the assault rifle… He thought that when it was over they might do a discount price for the customers lined up outside, held back by the cordon, patient and waiting and soaked.

He checked his brother’s wrist-watch, and kept the best until the last. Flicked him the ignition key to the Ducati 821 Monster, and saw a simple face lighten and a smile crack from ear to ear. He supposed the boy, his brother, with his damaged arm could steer the bike – if only for a short distance. Told him he would see him. When? Soon.

Hamid stole a last glance, at his brother, and then the girl and then the rifle.

January 2019

It was his first day and it was predictable that he was nervous. He was Josef, he was 23 years of age and he had earned a 2nd class degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Izhevsk State Technical University. Still dark around the plant and his elder brother, a doctor of medicine but still in training, dropped him off, and waved to him and he crunched away across the fresh compacted snow. He had never been inside the gates, but tried to mask his hesitation and walk boldly, and remembered that it was where his great-grandfather had worked; there were proudly framed monochrome photographs in his parents’ apartment to show him at workers’ parades and celebrations in the years after the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Josef, whose principal interest in life was football and the teams playing in the main European leagues, was taken by a receptionist to the mess-room where the foremen were. He introduced himself, and added that his great-grandfather had worked here on an early production line.

‘…for the AK-47. He was here in the middle nineteen-fifties. Would have seen the great and famous Mikhail Kalashnikov. When the rifle was new, and had such advanced technology. I never met my great-grandfather…’

He was interrupted. A foreman from the machine tool shop told him that the factory then had been a dark and miserable and dangerous place in which to work, and the pressure on the labour force to achieve targets had been immense… ‘The miracle was that the product they produced when materials were short and equipment was crude – at the time the whole nation was seeking to rebuild itself after the catastrophe of the Fascist invasion, and those bastards have not changed – reached such high standards. The design was excellent because of its simplicity. A peasant from the steppes could learn to operate it and fight in extreme conditions and maintain it. Extraordinary. I think, even today, it would be possible in remote or backward corners of the world to find a weapon that your great-grandfather helped manufacture. If you were to find it, there would be a strong chance that it would still do its job. It was the best and will never be matched for its innovation. There are some who say that it changed the face of the world, gave power to downtrodden and third-class citizens, provided them with pride and authority… but times have changed. You are now in a modern factory. You will be working with a new generation of combat weapons, those carried into conflict by the men and women of our Special Forces, and they expect only the best, which they get. The new versions of rifle and close quarters weaponry are smoother to operate, lighter, have greater hitting power, but the old principles still stand. For all our progress, the AK-47 your great-grandfather made still lives inside all those innovations, the principles remain. Have you been to the museum? No? You should, Josef. You will find there identical rifles to the ones manufactured in those times… and a superior type has never been produced. The old Kalashnikov led the world.’

He thought, from what he knew of the history of the former Soviet Union, that more than half a century before military music would have been played over the high speakers, interspersed with exhortations for harder work, greater productivity, and speeches from Malenkov or Khrushchev or Brezhnev; he heard pop music to soothe the workers.

They had reached a belt line and final checks were being made on a stream of weaponry carried along it. He would start here, where his great-grandfather had been, and would first be an apprentice, but with ambitions to go into junior management. He was introduced to a woman on the line who would show him the procedures, and he thanked the foreman for his time.

‘Only one thing to remember, young Josef, never drop one, let it fall to the floor, because that is certain bad luck – if it ever happens – to any person who might use the weapon. Never let it fall, or it is cursed. It may appear undamaged… Be very careful.’

The foreman left them.

The woman said, ‘He talks shit. It is a machine, does not have a soul. Drop it in a factory or drop it in a combat zone – what is the difference? It is shit.’

The weapons rolled on, were checked, and the firing mechanism tested, and one teetered near the edge of the line but Josef was quick to get a hand on it, move it to safety – though he claimed to her that he believed neither in luck nor a curse.

Zeinab came off the bed.

She put her arms around the boy’s neck, but still held the rifle. Not the gesture of a lover but of a friend to whom a wrong had been done.

‘I am sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’

‘I am sorry that I shouted at you. I should not have.’