Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

Andy Knight said, voice quiet, ‘Always difficult, I’m sure you’ll agree, for those who have never done something to put themselves in the place of the guys who eat it, live it, sleep it. If you had done it, you would know that it’s the equivalent of running up a Jolly Roger flag, skull and crossbones, signals immediate danger, they say something important and the outsider – not quite trusted, not yet on the real inside track, straightaway needs to go and piss, and if anyone follows him to the lavatory they’ll hear his voice whispering, or hear the bloody keys going on his phone… my life on the line – not yours – and I call in when I am good, when I am ready, not on a schedule.’

A smile from Gough, probably not intended but patronising. ‘Not the time for this. Leave it for when the psychologist does the de-pressurising, get it out of your system then. Don’t think we are blind to the strain you exist under. It was an observation that you have lost your target, that we have felt the need to put a surveillance detail on her, the full works, costs a bomb, and done it because she waved you goodbye. Where are we? We are at you meeting her in a bloody car park in Avignon. Except, she calls the shots and that was not in the game plan.’

‘It’s where we are.’

‘Not a good place.’

‘It’s about Kalashnikovs?’

‘Our estimate, what they want most. You to drive one, two, three, what we assume. Different issue if they have Kalashnikovs on the street… Another thing for the blunt bit, we have major resources invested in this, have emptied out the piggy bank and gambled on the lady and you up close with her, and being taken into a whole network, and learning of people way up the chain. When we move we cauterise an entire set-up, take them off the street. Not just her, and low-level dross. She takes you there… Except, you are not with her, are not close… And, I run this shit shower – please, do not forget that. Please, do not.’

The voice had not risen but the speech had slowed as if for emphasis, and Andy saw that the woman grimaced momentarily as if that had been an unexpected speech from Gough, pithy and to the point. All for nothing… tired, hungry, nervous, and led inexorably into a spat. Trouble was, clocks were never turned back. Could not start again.

Andy shrugged, nothing else to say. He picked up his grip, left the sack in the corner, might catch up with it sometime, and might not. She gave him a slip of paper, an address. Gough did not look up, did not wish him luck. They did not know his name, where he was from, who had been important in his life: was not sure he knew. He left them.

Gough said, ‘He’s gone native.’

Pegs said, ‘He needed a good kicking, you gave him a soft one, should have been harder. Suppose it happens to them all, going native.’

He’d gone, and they’d heard the security guard wish him a good evening, and the outer door had swung shut, and there had been a few footsteps, then quiet.

Gough still sat at the table. ‘God, and I sympathise, but there has to be a command structure, and he has to understand it. We employ him, we direct him, we task him. The whole business falls apart if we let him just slide away, outside our direction.’

‘I think you gave it him, but only one barrel. Could have been two, should have been.’

Gough remembered what a psychologist had told him, about Undercovers. ‘Has to have a high motivation for law enforcement, but that’s not enough on its own. More vital is an obsessive personality and a need to win. Must be a winner.’ They had missed the last schedule where Andy Knight was supposed to see the psychologist, a routine visit, for an assessment, how he was standing up to the stress levels induced by continuous deceit. Such meetings were supposed to be regular but were often casualties, and no one seemed that concerned when the date had slipped. The psychologist had talked to them about the signs that raised a red flag: pulse rate up, fast and staccato speech, a bit of breathlessness, normally punctual and ordered but running late, anxieties about personal safety, short and uncontrolled temper. Standard stuff. He’d thought the psychologist to be a sensible woman, and she’d talked them through what the Undercover should be. The ability to blend, go unnoticed in a crowd. Not be easy to know, keep a reserve. Won’t be noisy in a pub, not an extrovert. Suspicion of those he meets will dominate his character. It had seemed a game, not any longer. Might have been, the sea change in attitude for Gough, when they’d been shown the body in the water and a rather second-rate, or third-level, source had been submerged, marks on the face, still the signs of terror frozen in the eyes. Not a game any longer.

‘What’s to be done?’

‘Nothing,’ Pegs answered. ‘Nothing to be done.’

A career detective, more than 30 years served and able to claim full pension rights, Gough stayed on for want of making the ultimate decision on his domestic life. He shared a small home of pale London brick with his wife, Clare: polite, separate, parallel lives and no children to complicate, and they did not embarrass each other. He spoke with the remnants of the Scots accent coming from the west, along the winding road from Inverary to Loch Awe. Once he was a renowned thief taker, then had been in the Branch, now was a tracker of jihadis , but anonymous, never appeared in open court or stood in the witness box. Pegs was a decade younger, and her former husband was on the road and sold printer inks, and the one daughter lived in the east of the country with a guy who hadn’t fathered her two children. Both daughter and current partner she described as ‘a waste of space’. What was her fault? Nothing. She’d never accept blame. She was the product of an expensive school in south Oxfordshire, came from money, but had turned her back on it and swore and cursed and drank, and the focus of her life was working alongside Gough. They were both comfortably certain that their physical relationship, stretching beyond work matters, was unknown in the building off Wyvill Road. In fact, it was an open secret, and their efforts at discretion caused amusement. The unremitting burden of anxiety, afflicting both – and many hundreds of others working for the Security Service and the Counter-Terrorist Units – was the hackneyed old adage of needing to be lucky every time, and the opposition needing to be lucky just the once. They worked desperate hours, were afraid to relax their guard because luck might then evade them. He would wear, day in and day out, except in the two months of high summer, heavy corduroy trousers, a lightly checked shirt, with a tie, and a sports jacket, and she would be in a white blouse and a black trouser suit and the minimum of jewellery. His hair had thinned, was grey, and hers was highlighted and worn short. They disagreed on nothing of importance, but he bounced at her and usually she’d claim the final word.

‘Should I have said that, him gone “native”, was that out of order?’

‘He picked a fight, a fight about nothing.’

‘Should he be there, Pegs? Or should he be pulled?’

‘Can’t do that. No… no… can’t.’

‘All laid down. Duty of care, pages of it in the manual. Down to us.’

‘That is bollocks, Gough. Pull him out, just ridiculous.’

‘What I said, duty of care… what is my responsibility?’

‘That is a heap of shite. Can’t go now. He has to see it through. Marseille is a crap place. He has to be there… Imagine it. About tea-time, Gough, on a Sunday, leading up to a holiday, and big crowds out, and they start interrupting programmes, and your mobile’s gone crazy and mine. Someone will have a snapshot on a phone: in black, carrying a Kalash, lifting it up, calm as you like, and dropping another poor whimpering bastard. They hit lucky and we didn’t, and the numbers start stacking up and he’d hardly be into the second magazine, and armed response is stuck in traffic… You’d tell them at the inquiry that you had a guy inside them, a Level One, but you pulled him because he seemed to be carrying the pressure poorly, and you reckoned that was your duty of care, seemed a bit flat and grumpy: tell that to them. You’d swing in the fucking wind, Gough. You’d hang and swing, and deserve to.’