Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

Hawsers loosed, the freighter eased from its berth.

They’d reached London. A clean shirt, and clean knickers, fresh socks and a fresh blouse. Neither had been home.

Gough talked to customers. Pegs had a line into Marseille.

The customer was Counter-Terrorist Command. Clear aims were given to Gough. The dead boy fished out of the water was past history, a warning to others on the price of betrayal, a casualty, and unimportant. The priority, top of the heap, was the conclusion that a piece of kit was to be collected in Marseille, likely to be an automatic weapon with proven killing power, and run back as a test for a new route, one earmarked as ideal for the customer, the jihadi group in the north. During its transit, an opportunity was to be manufactured for the weapon to be put in the care of the boffin people and they’d do the insert of the tracker, somewhere in the stock. It would be followed, would see where it ran, and the swoop would net the whole damn lot of them, the conspiracy. It was what a year and more of work had been about, and why the Undercover was in place. The customer was very hopeful and Gough was warned that SNAFU was not acceptable. If he had to report that it was a case of Situation Normal All Fouled Up – or ‘Fucked’ – it would mean that one or more weapons had been introduced to the country, an assault rifle or several, and the consequences were unacceptable. His head would be on the block, and the blade might not be sharp, and decapitation might take a bit of time and cause a bit of hurt. But, of course, the customer was confident in his ability.

Pegs did schoolgirl French. Normally a matter of liaison went through the Europol bureaucracy in Holland, or via the appropriate London-based embassy. She had pleaded lack of time, could not observe protocol. She had been given numbers to call, and a name… and it descended, along with her smart school accent, into a matter of trust. At the other end of the line was a police major. She did not want Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure which would have dumped her into a spider web of competing camps, did not want their full security surveillance units – wanted only a friendly face and a handful of cops who would sit in a van down the road round the corner and ask no questions and make no suggestions as to how the mission should be handled. Do traffic routes, give local geography knowledge, and leave the rest to her.

She’d launched in French when a call had been answered and the name confirmed. Good enough French… a crisp answer in English. A man who sounded in a hurry, and had taken a minimum of his lunch break, who seemed to expect to be regarded as a collaborator, not talked to on a Need To Know basis. He was Alfred Valery. When was she coming? She didn’t know. When did she need the backup for an Undercover? She didn’t know. She doubted that she would have spilled facts on to his desk to his face; down a telephone line it was impossible. When she did come he would be in his office, and a mobile was given for night hours, and she could call, and Major Valery would see, with his available resources, what was possible. He had finished with, ‘We are quite busy here, madame. Much as we look forward to welcoming you, it should be understood that we have pressing matters that involve us.’ Call ended. Fuck you, Major. She turned on Gough.

‘You know, we don’t even have his bloody name. Only know Andy Knight. Know nothing of him. We meet him, no idea whether he is a star performer, or whether he’ll crumple. He is what we were given. What did he think of us? Useless bum scratchers? Top of the tree and efficient? Just average, just middling, what they call “premier mediocre”. What I’m saying, Gough, would you put your life, happily and with confidence, into our hands? Do we deserve that amount of faith? What do you say?’

Gough said, ‘We’re what he has. We’re where we are and that has to be good enough. Not important, what he thinks of us. We do our best, can’t do more.’

She told him how it would be.

‘Is that so, Zed?’

‘That’s how it is, and will be.’

She gave him the envelope, told him that he’d take the ferry out of Plymouth, would be going alone to Roscoff… Wasn’t a usual route but the ferry company were trying out a winter sailing schedule, but they’d be coming back from Caen into Portsmouth, and he must have looked bewildered. Part of the astonishment was that they’d be going out singly, and part of his surprise was the degree of subterfuge she’d gone for. They were in the same park as before, and it was the same light but driving drizzle as before and they’d both been cold. Should have been in a café and the warm, should have been in the car with the heater on, but she had led and he had followed, and they’d come to the bench. He wondered if her minders watched, had not seen them. Probably the minders were there and watched him a final time, evaluated him: last chance to ditch him. He thought her strained, speaking as if from a rehearsed text.

‘How do you go? I don’t understand.’

‘What is the problem? I fly. You drive.’

‘If you can fly, for family business, why involve me?’

‘We have a holiday.’

‘It’s a great holiday, Zed, you and me. Pity we’re not together. What do we do, send texts to each other? Nice where I am. How is the weather with you? Love and kisses – sorry, but imagine them . That’s how it’ll be.’

She was flushed, unhappy. It could have been the first time that he had been sharp with her. Proper domestic stuff. A spat. They always said, the instructors that groomed the Undercovers, that a situation should not be entered when the outcome was uncertain. He pushed her… He was the guy who had been invited for a naughty week, some nookie was on the cards – a different problem and one to be faced later – and he was supposed to be the obsessed boy who had fallen under her spell, and… he heaved her into a corner because that was the reaction expected of him. Could not go docile. He thought her tough, no panic showing, and she might have frowned and her lips might have narrowed, and her eyes blazed. She reckoned she controlled him.

‘I cannot get away now when I intended. You drive, I meet you, and we retain our schedule. Accept it. Live with it. You want to argue?’

‘Just surprised, just upset.’

She trumped him. Gave credit to her, it was bold. Threw his whine back in his face. ‘You don’t approve, then you walk away. That’s it, Andy, goodbye, good luck, been nice?’

He crumpled, had to. ‘It’s what you want, Zed. That’s good enough.’

Andy had let her know he had worked hard to get the time off, not easy, and let her know that going away with her was important to him because of his feelings for her – admiration, respect, affection, or something more – and he could not fight her, could not take the risk of her marching away, dumping him. He thought it said much of her that she did not apologise, did not excuse herself. She had arrogance, self-belief. More than the animal people and certainly more than the druggies. And her mood apparently changed. Some might have bought it. Not Andy. She kissed him. That was supposed to buy him. She must have thought he came cheap, as a lorry driver would, and a warm kiss was his reward. It was a good kiss and he wondered if it were all play-acting. And the way he responded? Was that also play-acting? A long kiss. Light flashed: her anorak was open, her sweater pulled wide, her T-shirt had slipped down, and the skin on her chest was exposed, and the beam caught the stone on the chain that he had bought for her… not exactly, but she’d told him what she’d seen, and how much it was, and he’d given her cash. He did not often see it, and she never flaunted it, didn’t use it as an actor’s prop. First time in weeks she’d worn it, far as he knew. He saw it, supposed it meant something – something to her, perhaps something to him… And she broke, said quietly that work had to be done, an essay, murmured about the risk of being chucked out: first time that excuse had surfaced. She said when she would see him, where.