Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

‘Shouldn’t listen to chatter, can give you gut ache.’

‘What I was told, no one else would have squared it with the boss, no other driver.’

‘Something came up.’

He was the newest of the driving team. Normal rules dictated that the last in was the bottom of the food chain, and given the crap work. It was a heavy time of the year and after the Christmas break the sites they supplied were coming up to speed, and the weather didn’t matter. He’d joke, sound relaxed… but they’d get nothing.

‘Boys are wondering how you swung it. One of our old guys, retired last year, he’s coming back in as cover.’

‘Probably pleased to swap sitting in his greenhouse, watching seeds germinate.’

‘What I’m saying, Andy, is you have influence. More than I do, or anyone.’

‘I don’t suppose any time is ever convenient.’

It was the skill of an Undercover, a Level One, that he would not weaken when talking to one of the good guys, salt of the earth, dependable and the sort you’d always want minding your back. Would give them no more than to a stranger in a pub. Other than when he met the Controller or the Cover Officer, everyone he met was the subject of deceit. There were times – not now, too gentle – when questions were asked and he would act, seem to throw a tantrum. ‘What’s my past to you, what fucking business is it of yours, how do I know who you are – piss off.’ Could do that, or just deflect. Behind everything he was supposed to achieve was the Mission Statement, the Aims and the End Game, and the detail of hour by hour was left to Andy Knight – or to Norm Clarke, or to Phil Williams. It hurt, and the hurting took a toll. Always did, why he had shivered on the bed last night, squeezed his eyes shut, felt weakened.

‘And going off with a girl.’

‘So they say.’

‘For a week.’

‘I expect the nation will survive, and the city of Manchester, while I flop around and get pissed up.’

The mechanic came out from underneath. Looked long at Andy, and hard, and was puzzled, didn’t hide it, then he ducked his head down into the engine parts. An apprentice kid was whistled over, and was told to sit behind the wheel and do the pedals to turn the engine over. There was plenty more in the workshop that the mechanic could have been at, and plenty that was more useful for an apprentice… Andy was not a crusader, not a crime fighter for the glory of altruism, but he was addicted to the adrenaline – not the psychologists. Ordinary folks called it ‘buzz’; the challenge of it kept him upright, going forward. A big challenge; bigger than with the animal people and bigger than with the predictable druggies.

‘Where’s not good enough? It’ll not be Morecombe Bay, not Blackpool.’

‘And my motor?’

‘Motor’s fine now, after me sweating on it. Right, Andy, how far’s it going?’ The eyes pinioned him. A truth at last was to be coughed up. The mechanic wiped his hands on a rag and readied to hear the destination and detail about the ‘totty’ that was going to be in the passenger seat. Time for a crack, never time for a truth. When he was gone and it was clear he was not returning, then every word he had said would be subject to analysis, and the boss who had given him the time away would be castigated as a dupe. No other way. Never was. ‘Hope to die, cross my heart, soul of discretion.’

‘Big secret – but I’ll let you in.’

‘Good boy, where?’

‘South of Keele Services.’

The rag hit him in the face. He assumed the matter had come to a head, like a boil stretched by a bag of yellow pus and ready to burst. Most of the animal people were quite honest and very passionate and if he’d stayed alongside them another half year, he might have joined up. And the girl with auburn hair had set sights on him, and another six months would have been a problem. A hell of a mess when it was over and seven or eight ruined lives, and a hell of a lot more beagles getting syringes embedded below their skins. The mechanic and the apprentice had looked after him and put the VW Polo ahead of at least two of the big lorries that were showing grief… He thanked them, smiled – did not confide. They’d have loved the story that he was off on his travels, driving down through Europe, and a pretty girl would be alongside and might have a hand on his thigh, and might have felt tired and dropped her head and let it rest on his shoulder with her hair wafting on his cheeks, loved it and fed it round the canteen at the next scheduled meal break. He gave nothing.

November 1969

The cranes at Constanta, along the quayside of the Romanian port, swung the crates high and out, and then lowered them with no particular care on to the freighter’s deck.

Twenty crates, each containing 50 weapons, and five more for magazines, and three more for 7.62 × 39mm ammunition; surplus to requirements where they had been. They would no longer clog up space in a Hungarian police warehouse, were being given away. Given, but still with a price.

They had been certified fit for action, had been testified, and with familiar bureaucracy the details of serial numbers, stamped into the metalwork at a factory in remote Izhevsk, were listed on the papers that would accompany the shipment. The particular weapon with a last five-digit identification of 16751 languished, in the ninth crate to be hoisted on board. That AK-47, it had been said in Budapest, was damned. Because it had been buried for so long it had failed to polish up like the other consigned for export, it had no sheen, could not be burnished, and the wooden stock was scarred with two notches and a deep groove. It was at the bottom of the crate and the officer in charge of the storage was pleased to see the back of it. It was a clement day in the Black Sea city, with a light wind, good sunshine and shirtsleeve warmth. The loading was supervised by a member of the Hungarian AVH unit who, when it was complete, would be taken by a Romanian colleague, from the Departamentul Securitatii Statului, to a night club then a brothel because the network of colleagues functioned across international borders. Secrecy was observed. Only nominally were the weapons a gift.

When the last crate was in place, and covered by the principal cargo, Romanian refined auto-fuel, the freighter would sail. Its destination – acceptable between fraternal allies – would be Latakia, the Syrian port on the Mediterranean. Lorries would be waiting there, and local stevedores would first remove the oil drums, then get the crates off and into lorries whose canvas sides would prevent their contents being viewed, and they would drive off with a full-blown military escort of Syrian paratroopers. Why, if they had no value, if they were a gift? Because the thousand assault rifles represented an expression of foreign policy. They would buy approval, cement friendship. Had the cargo been identified, then an Israeli Air Force strike could be expected. It travelled in secrecy.

The gift was only possible because the Hungarians had taken delivery of a newer model of the Kalashnikov, with metal parts milled by machine tools for greater efficiency, not using pressed steel. Only the previous year, Hungarian forces had gone to a state of alert because of an insurrection in neighbouring Czechoslovakia, in which Soviet tanks had been deployed to restore the alliance between Moscow and Prague. More modern weapons were demanded and had been obtained for the secret police. The ‘gift’ would sail that night, and would thread through the Bosphorus and into the Mediterranean under cover of darkness. It was destined for a Palestinian group, based in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon, and the leaders of the faction were thought to be most at ease with the Kremlin’s aims. The price of the gift would be loyalty to Soviet instructions. The weapons, far in advance of what the group already possessed, would be used against Israeli territory when that course was directed, and not before. They were eagerly awaited, would be there within a week. Gratitude would be great, even for a weapon that had no lustre to its body, had a disfigured wooden stock, that looked to be a makeweight and there to ensure numbers were tidily rounded up.