Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

‘What are you thinking?’ Gough asked her.

‘That I’d expected this would be all marinas and five-star dossers, a place for tacky celebs… and maybe we’ve had a better view of where we are.’

‘I think so.’

The Major walked towards them.

The body was carried past. Cigarettes were lit. They seemed to him to be as cold and as hungry and as out of place as refugees.

The Major said, ‘It was interesting, no more. A criminal steals from a criminal. The profits from narcotics trafficking are being taken to a bank – I do not know which one – or where. Another group from another area, had lost the money it needed to pay for a shipment already received, they have to steal, find a ready source of cash. I thought it would be interesting for you to see the city into which you plan to plant your Undercover… not always a pretty place.’

It was late and he wanted to be home; Simone would have a meal for him to be heated in a microwave, and the children would be asleep, but he would not be returning to the apartment on the Rue d’Orient tonight because the paperwork would not wait until the morning.

‘You believe that a new route for the movement of firearms is planned by a terror group in your country. Very possible. So, firearms come into Marseille; they are not brought here by UK nationals, but by local entrepreneurs, gangsters, those beyond the law. They are not legitimate business people involved in simple import/export, they are not spinster aunts who dabble in something of this and something of that, they are not bankers who see an investment turning out a satisfactory profit… They are thugs. They know the market-place and where we are vulnerable, how to move around us. Criminal thugs have risen to eminence through violence. No other way to measure them. The higher they have risen, the greater their realisation that violence, its certainty, should determine their actions.’

Within his first six months in Marseille, men had sidled up to him: lawyers, accountants, guys from the Chamber of Commerce, local government officials, had talked in soft voices of the advantageous of mutual cooperation. Coldly, sternly, politely, he had declined the ‘advantages’ they offered.

‘This is a dangerous city. If you manoeuvre an agent that you employ on to these streets, close to the sources of violence, you take a great chance. A chance with your agent’s wellbeing… but, that will have been evaluated. Of course.’

Most weeks he did the equivalent job of sweeping up the detritus left on the north of the city: bodies carbonised in cars, corpses slumped in cafés with multiple Kalashnikov bullet wounds, cadavers abandoned in the hills above the projects. Few palliatives to the frustration, and few arrests.

‘We are stretched very thin. We are under-resourced. You breeze into our city and require a team from the “intervention force” and want them to sit on their backsides and wait around, and be ready to help your agent, and then another team, then another. Three shifts… I regret that it cannot be done. You have the right to go to my superiors and request that I am bypassed, and the likelihood is that you would be escorted to the airport. You could contact the Ministry in Paris and they would request a written communication as to your aims, and perhaps you will receive a suggestion that you come back in a couple of months or three.’

He had one weakness, and knew it. His wife would be in bed having prepared his dinner and would have made sure there was a beer in the fridge, and his children would have wanted to talk to him about football or dancing or… No other officer from L’Évêché had been invited to his home, had met his family. It was a small measure of security, about all he could do. It was his heel, where he was vulnerable, and he knew it.

‘You were fortunate to have contacted me. This is a dangerous city, it is also a corrupt city. There are officers, investigators, who have sold out, and it would be advantageous for any of them to pass your names, your hotels, your mission – what you call Rag and Bone – to interested parties. Myself, I trust very few – Samson, yes, I trust him, would give him my life for safe keeping. Not others.’

He hoped they would appreciate his frankness. Their bags were still in the wagon they had travelled in. He would have the couple dropped at their hotel, then return to work.

‘I give you my mobile. You ring that number. Wherever I am, it is with me. We will come. We will be there as quickly as is possible… I do not know what you expected, but you should not have travelled here and should not have permitted your man to journey, naked, to Marseille. For one rifle, for a handful of rifles, a trifle. You should withdraw him… My phone is the best I can do.’

‘You all right?’

‘I’m good.’

‘It was delivered?’

‘It was.’

Karym had washed himself in a fountain in a little square off the main road coming down the hill from the police blockade. It was the evening when the Credit Union stayed open late, when men came to bank their wages – those with work – to save up for the annual pilgrimage to the family in Tunisia or Morocco, or any fucking place that people who lived in La Castellane had come from. He had crouched over the stagnant rainwater in the fountain’s bowl and had rinsed his face, had seen the blood stain the water. He had lodged the cash. The girl behind the secure barrier had not queried why a kid with water dripping from his hair, who had wild eyes, filth on his clothing, should bank that sort of sum, but had counted it and had given him a receipt. He had left the building, had sat astride his scooter and had begun to shake. Could feel the pressure of the pistol barrel on his throat, and the warmth of the blood on his face. Stiffness trapped his legs, his hands trembled. He could not have steered the Peugeot scooter. He had heard the growl of the Ducati’s approach. His brother had found him.

‘I need to ride with you.’

‘Is your bike broken?’

A hesitation… he had asked often enough for his brother to buy him a new scooter, the Piaggio MP3 Yourban would be the best, with the tilting front wheels… he would not have dared to lie to his brother. ‘Just that I do not feel well.’

‘You ride with me. I’ll send kids down for the Peugeot. Good that it is not broken. Okay, we move, we are missing trade.’

He sat behind his brother. The wind scoured his face, where the blood had been. He was not thanked, not congratulated, not praised for his effort in getting clear of the site so that the police did not take possession of the satchel. They went back, fast and noisily, to La Castellane. Only when they were near to the project did his brother slow the bike and tilt his head back so that he could speak, so that Karym could hear him.

‘It was Samson who killed the thief. You were lucky. Anyone other than Samson and you, too, would be dead. He is formidable. You do not want, ever again, to be in the sights of Samson’s rifle. Never again.’

Karym heard the squeal of laughter, and the engine was gunned and they made an entry back into the estate, like it was just another evening, and trading had already started, and they were late.

‘Welcome to my distinguished friend.’

‘Greetings, my old cocker.’

‘You look grand.’

At the Arrivals gate, hugging him, Tooth laid kisses on each of Crab’s cheeks. Not that Crab was tall, but Tooth needed to be up on his toes to do it. Crab did not respond with his lips, but held his friend fervently.

‘Don’t deserve to be. It’s been a journey from hell and back and hell again. Good to be here.’

Many hours late, Crab had arrived. First, the late arrival of the aircraft in Manchester, then the rostered crew being out of hours, then a light flashing when it should not have, then a delay with one passenger’s baggage and the need to offload everything in the hold. It had been a litany of disaster. Crab had suffered. He did not read, nor listen to music, did not drink, and the hours had gone slowly, then a storm over central France, then big crosswinds coming off the sea when they were on the final approach and being tossed… Tooth would not want to know.