Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

In a fast, violent manoeuvre, Scorpion took the car from the centre lane on the southbound motorway route, across the slow lane and into the feeder stretch for the service station. They would do it double-handed.

With a sheet of notepaper against her handbag and a pencil in her fingers, Zeinab did as she had been instructed and noted the registration numbers of vehicles following them out of their lane and into the feeder. Krait, in front of her, had his own sheet of paper, own pencil. Few cars and vans were on the road, and if they were tailed – as Krait had tersely explained in a further lecture on security, what he called ‘counter surveillance’ and ‘going into a choke’ – if the cop or spook vehicle followed them, they’d have a list of the numbers because halfway down the feeder and before the turns to the Food and Toilets and the Fuel and the Long Distance Parking, they would slow to a crawl. Any vehicles that followed them would have to come off the motorway, track them on the feeder, then avoid passing them. Simple, the way Krait explained it. Zeinab peered into the darkness at the following headlights and screwed her eyes to read and record registrations, then… acceleration. They took the exit… already she had noticed new precautions; nothing said to her as if at that stage she had not mattered sufficiently for breath to be wasted on her, and Scorpion had gone over the car with a handset, run it along the flanks and the wheel hubs and lain on his back and held it under the chassis. Between themselves they spoke in a Balochi dialect; she understood a little but had never admitted it. Krait had been told by Scorpion that the car was clean, not bugged. What did she have? She had two registration numbers. One was for a Transit van with a plumbing logo on the side, a driver and a passenger – men, and the other was for a saloon car, an old BMW 5 series, a man and a woman in the front and another man behind them; she had noted the BMW’s driver had both hands on the wheel, classic pose. They bypassed the facilities, drove fast for the exit.

She started to tell them what she had written down. She was waved to silence, like she was an interruption.

They careered back on to the motorway, and a car in the slow lane flashed them and a horn blasted behind them. They made for the central lane, and almost immediately for the outside, and the needle climbed. She sensed their stress, then abruptly the guys relaxed and their hands came together, like they were kids and it was football, and they made little squeals of excitement.

She was not part of them; they did not include her. What numbers had she written down? Told them, and expected praise. They said nothing, stayed within the speed limit. Scorpion flicked the radio’s buttons, found Asian Sound Radio, let it play softly, music. They thought they had done well, thought they had done better than well when they passed the transit crawling in the slow lane, then passed a BMW and she matched its registration and it was crawling too. It was what they had expected, and they were laughing, but she was not part of their celebration.

Phil slept, still dreamed, tossed and sweated .

They were more aggressive. Questions came from behind and in front of him.

Some shouted, others whispered close to his ears.

His hair, sparse and cut short, was held, nails gouging his scalp, and his head was dragged back that he might listen better. Fingers jabbed him, a knee that was small and sharp cannoned into the back of his leg and he nearly toppled. He was beyond bewilderment, astonishment. He tried to answer the questions. Attempted to cling to the legend he and the instructors had put together, sanctioned by his Control.

He felt coherence drifting. Where had he been two years before? What town? What street and what number? What job? Where had he lived two years before, what sort of house? What colour of house, what colour of front door? The girl, Bethany, had her mobile phone and was clocking the keys, waiting for an answer. Describing the house where he said he had lived two years before, and it was the first time that Phil realised that he was slipping, could not sustain the lie. The instructors said how to react: ‘Hit back’. The common refrain was to go for the big bastard, for the top man. Louder and louder, the circle round him, and he was digging into the limits of the legend and starting to blurt and he thought his defences were pretty much shredded. Had the instructors ever done it, the work that they lectured on, ever been part of it? Might ask them one day… He slapped a hand away from his hair, stood his full height. The big boy in the group was Dominic. Dominic got to shag most of the girls, had them on a roster. Right now, pretty much every night, Dominic was taking Tristana to bed, and making a hell of a noise of it, and Bethany was sulking because she had been stood down. Dominic was the big man… it was what the instructors said.

He caught hold of Dominic’s chin, got some fingers into his thin beard, heard the howl, pulled again. Phil called it.

‘Pretty old one, old as the hills. Like a bad B movie. Blame someone else.’

‘What is your shit?’

‘Put attention away. Turn it away. Clever, what the police told you?’

He was hit full in the face, but he noticed the chance. Like ice on a thaw, starting slow, but the moment of doubt was laid. It was the same as making a breach in the wire round a defended sangar anywhere in the Middle East, and had to be exploited and fast. The hold on him had slackened and the questions were drying, and his eyes smarted from the blow. He would not hit back, could have put the guy, Dominic, back into the Stone Age. He was jabbering accusations.

‘Go out every morning. Say it’s for fags… Who goes with you? Nobody is with you… Don’t send anyone to get your fags, have to do it yourself.’

The guy readied for another punch, and Phil would parry it. He kept belting out the accusations. Spittle in each of their faces and voices rising, and the guy seeming to realise that a table had been turned, that the high cards had changed hands.

‘Which pigs pay you… Hooked up with local CID, or hooked up with Branch… When were we last raided? You made this an off-limits safe house, Dommy? Leave it nice and tidy and they don’t need to search because it’s all given them, word of mouth, that you, Dommy… Are you their “chissy”, Dominic? Know what a “chissy” is? Course you do. Tell them all what a Covert Human Intelligence Source is… tell everybody. You are shit, Dommy. Line me up and protect yourself. You are a fucking snake.’

One more blow was swung. Easy to weave away from it. The current girl was Tristana and the passed over goods was Beth, and they no longer tugged at Phil’s hair, nor poked him, nor kneed him, nor had their mouths curled in fury, nor looked to do him harm. What Phil did was to offer a short silent prayer of gratitude to the instructors and what they preached. He had the guy by his shirt front and Dominic had gone limp and the punch was his last effort. He made no effort to defend himself, might have been too shaken to think on his feet.

A little voice: ‘You think you are so clever. You pull the big stunt.’

‘Do I?’

‘Don’t fool me.’

‘That right?’

‘I’ll have you, have you bad.’

‘Careful how you go.’

‘You think you’ve done well – just get the fuck out.’

Phil gave a final shake of the guy’s clothing, dropped him, let him slide into a chair.

Dominic hissed into his face, ‘I’m going nowhere – a “chissy”, a tout, a plant – I’m watching you. You are scum. Watching you.’

Phil stood his ground, had to. They drifted away, shaken, low voices. A survival, but close run.

And he still slept, could not wake or lose it .