Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

In an earlier commercial break – tedious adverts for competing banks, cheap furniture, holidays in the sun – he had checked the papers. Always, of course, he wore a balaclava, had done so once the name, Samson’s, was attached to him, was abroad in the projects, since the name had given him almost celebrity status. In La Provence one picture showed a grainy image of a man walking discreetly between the shadowed doorways of the street, with a rifle against his leg, and the sniper sight clearly visible, but the balaclava hid the face and there was no mention of his name.

He was a figure of mystery, of contradictions, hoped to remain so. He had enjoyed the film about the cheetahs. Now he would go to the café on Rue Charras, rout out his friends, go to play boule with them, the secondary pleasure on any free day, except that it would be cold – even in the sunshine – because of the force of the wind. He was relaxed, comfortable. A body in the morgue did not trouble him, and his reputation as an executioner would have brought a shrug to his shoulders, a grimace to his face. It was his job, to shoot at a man if it were necessary, to kill him, do what was asked of him – stay distant, uninvolved.

They sat in the car. Belts were fastened. Andy said how long it would take to drive into central Marseille. The engine turned over.

Seeming casual, he put the question. ‘What sort of business is it, for you – there? What you have to do.’

He was deflected. ‘Just some family business. You wouldn’t be interested. Boring business.’

He drove out of the car park and together they started to scan road signs for the A7 route. They had enjoyed lunch, done window shopping, ate an ice-cream. He didn’t follow up the question. The reason for his insertion, gathering clandestine information, was around an hour and a quarter away, and the city he drove towards had a reputation, deserved, for ruthless brutality. He found music on the car’s radio, thought it might drown out the thought of fear.

Andy drove, Zeinab dozed.

He went steadily, allowed the local drivers – cars and vans and lorries – to power past him. Her head was on his shoulder.

Because her breathing was calm, and her hand was loose on his thigh, he allowed himself a puckered frown. He accepted it, that the problem eating at him was a career breaker. He could imagine, easily, how it would have been for her during the long night hours.

He headed towards the source of the problem, and before her eyes had closed and her breathing slowed, and her fingers had found his upper leg, he had played the part of the friend from home who was infatuated, obsessed, the ready-made chauffeur who asked only vague questions. He thought her too ill-informed on life outside Savile Town to bother to question whether a guy was that simple, that easy to befriend… She would have undressed, put on whatever nightclothes she had packed, had waited in her adjoining room for his light knock on her door. She would have imagined that she could open the door, look at him with a fraud’s shock, hesitate, let him enter, let him lay his fingers on her arms, then loop them behind her, then kiss her, then move her back towards the bed, then… and she had waited. She had come to his door. She had stopped outside it, would have steeled herself and might even have raised her hand, and been about to knock. She would have heard his bogus snoring, volume lifted, would have listened, turned away. He had told her in the evening and across the bistro table how tired he was after the drive south. Once she had cried out as if a nightmare, had slotted into her sleep. Just the once. The problem would not disappear, he would not ignore it.

They had spent the half-way point in the journey in a camp-site, buying coffee and then walking over fields, using a farmer’s track. He had held her hand, comfortable and not passionate, and assumed that an equivalent exhaustion plea, as done the previous night would be barged aside. The light had been starting to dip. Cattle grazed on what grass they would find, and the wind whipped them and tugged at her coat and her hair. The track they’d walked had been scoured clear of puddles. Song birds were pitched in the air then blown towards the olive groves beside the cattle pastures. It was beautiful country, small farmhouses, cottages for workers, clumps of poplar trees without foliage and bent sharply, and a few clouds scurrying overhead. He had noticed, could not have helped it, the way that the wind plastered her clothes on the contours of her body. It was a growing problem that infected his mind.

He saw elegant cranes, swooping gulls, and swans that cowered in the shelter of the river-banks, and a solitary heron that patiently fished, and when they had walked their shadows had merged. The scale of the problem ran riot in his mind, and he could not exclude it, and he did not know what the answer would be… With the wind buffeting her, Andy Knight – his identity for that day, that week, and for all of the months of the last year – thought she looked brilliant: which was the problem. They left the camp-site.

Marseille loomed below them. When they were within sight of the sea’s churning waves, he eased her hand off his leg, gripped the wheel with his right hand and touched her chin, lifted it, and saw the way that her head jerked up. He recognised the stresses burdening her. Like a frightened cat, stiffening, arching her back, wide-eyed and alert, then seeing where she was, and with whom. Below them, away to the south, was the grey concrete ribbon of the airport runway and a passenger jet was on its final descent. He played innocent, gave no sign of recognising the conspiracy. Smiled at her, warm, and the traffic sped past them.

‘Glad you did not take a plane, quicker but less fun.’

She stumbled with the start of her reply. ‘Yes… well… yes – always more interesting, don’t you think, seeing, absorbing new horizons? Yes, glad.’

The road took them down a long, fast, winding hill. He saw white clusters of tower blocks, built like fortresses to repel strangers. Far in the distance and hazed in the dropping light of the early evening was a massive cathedral with a steep spire. He had never been a tourist, had no interest in it. Sightseeing would have been a dreary waste of his time, and he concentrated on steering a safe line on the road, and of maintaining his cover. The easiest way to screw up, the instructors said, was to relax, to be loose-tongued, to forget the disciplines. She told him they should head for the centre of Marseille, and was plotting a route on her phone screen. He was just a friend, nothing more and nothing less… they were near to the sea and the docks, and the night was closing on them – which was the heart of the problem.

Karym sat in the growing darkness and pondered.

What he should have asked of his brother, how his brother might have answered him.

He nibbled on pitta bread. No filling inside it. If he had gone back to the apartment, where his sister would be after a day in the shopping mall, there would have been salad in the fridge, but he could not be bothered to walk that far – not just for tomato and cheese and cucumber. He felt good now as the light fell. A girl had come up to him, had settled beside him on the rock that blocked entry to La Castellane, and had brought him the piece of bread. Normally, that girl would not have spoken to him because he had a damaged arm, had no friends, had a brother who dangled him but gave him only crumbs from the table… Now he had the status of a minor celebrity after his experience when rivals attacked, most especially because he had saved his brother’s cash.

Question. ‘What does a big man, a man with reputation, want with you?’