Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

‘Why is it so talked of?’

‘Because it makes a man strong, walk with pride, cannot be defeated. The gun of the humble man, a peasant – the best. Both the fedayeen , anywhere in the world, fight with the Kalashnikov, and we do. It is the rifle of the citizen, not just the élite troops they employ – it is so special. I can get you one, a few minutes and a boy will come who keeps them for my brother. I can, if you want, and…’

‘I need to go back to my hotel. Thank you. Thank you again.’

‘This is my room – a nice room?’

‘A lovely room.’

He had her hand again. He tried to lead her from the room but she gazed at the poster on the wall, at the weapon they said, all of them, was supreme. He tugged… down the stairs, he babbled about how nice his room was and what a good apartment he and his sister lived in, and she absorbed the outline of the weapon, soaked herself in its image. They paused in the stairwell, and the queue was still there as another man was called forward, and she brushed against one of the kids and his weapon, and understood. The boy grinned, spoke in a sort of patois , was handed the rifle, put it in her hand, let her cradle it, just for a moment, like something new-born in her mind. It was snatched away. She was taken to the scooter and the engine was gunned, and she was driven out into the night. He was grateful to her for coming to his home. She thought herself unique in his life, and that her very presence imported status into his home, unknown before… and he treated her with such respect, and brought her to a world of new experience which she drank from eagerly.

She held his waist and the skin was there for her fingers, and she thanked him for letting her touch the rifle, so precious, so cold, so available.

January 2014.

‘I’m a fair man, Dazzer, always have been, and trust to God that I always will be.’

Reuven was a fixture now on the corner of the island of Cyprus that was closest to the Sovereign bases operated by the British military. He was well known as a potential conduit for the off-loading of ‘souvenirs’ illicitly carried home from the Afghan war.

‘A fair man who does a fair deal. Not a man who would cheat, defraud. A fighting soldier who looks for a small reward, in cash, after the trauma and desperate stresses of that brutal place.’

The private military contractor, his stint of duty exhausted, had flown to the garrison airfield with a flight full of UK infantry squaddies. It was normal for the PMC boys to be given a free ride home, courtesy of the military, as if a concession was due because the regular forces could not survive in that hostile environment, the hellhole of Helmand, without the support and logistics of the pseudo civilians. Not a pleasant flight to the eastern Mediterranean because the transporter had been bucked by crosswinds, and for all to see were two flag-draped coffins in the cargo sector. The troops were allowed 48 hours in the sunshine to swim, drink, fornicate if they could find a performing harridan, so that they did not get back to Brize Norton and go home to wives and girlfriends and parents while still reeling from the tensions of the conflict zone. It meant that fewer women were beaten up on their return, fewer pubs trashed to ruin… two days was the allotted safety valve period. Checks for contraband were minimal on departure from Afghanistan, would be rigorous at the Oxfordshire airfield and few would breach the security screening.

‘And honest, quite honest. If you believe you can find a better price from another merchant in such goods then, Dazzer, you should seek him out and trade with him. The price I offer is – quite truthfully – the best I can manage.’

Reuven was from the Baltic coast of Russia but had moved a decade before to Cyprus. Ethnic Jewish, with good English, a voice that was quiet and seemed to mince goodwill: he was the calling point for those who had smuggled out hardware, ammunition, ordnance, and then had been too frightened to risk confrontation with the Customs men at the UK end – merciless bastards. He operated from a bar that was Greek-themed, that served over-priced food, that played incessant Mouskouri or Roussos tracks. His table was deep in shadow. Beside him on the bench was the package that Dazzer had brought him to make a bid for, unwrapped, still seeming to carry the smell of war, of decayed dirt.

‘It is the best I can manage. I am not a charity, but I am not a charlatan. I pay what it is possible to pay. I am aware of the limited potential of myself finding a buyer for this item, very limited. We must be realistic, Dazzer, we must consider who might wish to purchase it, and why. I believe that the opportunity for re-sale hardly exists. Be very frank with you, tell you that it is, almost, worthless.’

They drank, lager for Dazzer and mineral water for Reuven… The contractor had enthused to himself about the value of the AK-47, and had done the sales pitch of the old man – and Father William was a good name for him – who was a freedom fighter when he should have been a pensioner, not that there was a good system of care for the elderly in up-country Afghanistan. All the time he had talked, Reuven had kept his face as still and unanimated as a poker player’s. Dazzer had little fight left in him – and the dreams in his life seldom had happy endings. A shrug, then the look of keen sincerity.

‘Do you know, my friend – my good and trusted friend – how many of these weapons, the different variants on them, have been manufactured, how many? How many millions? Tens of millions? Perhaps a hundred million… The value is trifling, even for one of this vintage that has been cared for with love, or that has a history of notoriety.’

He knew. Herbie had told him, but had also painted a pretty portrait of some dick-head who would pay a small fortune for the beast, and would have played up a history of fire-fights and pointed out the old scratched notches of those who had died from bullets shot from this AK-47’s magazines, but Herbie had been clear in his telling of the scale of the production line. Then a pause, and there must have been eye contact from Reuven to the bar and more sparkling water came and another beer with a decent head on it. Bad news would follow, but would be put with the reasonableness of a guy who knew he held the cards. There was no competition. It was a monopoly and Reuven owned it.

‘If you had brought me, Dazzer, the weapon that had been in the bolt-hole with Saddam when the Americans pulled him up into the daylight, and if you had the rifle used in the assassination of the Pharaoh of the Egyptians, Sadat, by the lieutenant – Khalid Islambouli – then I would say to you, again in honesty, that I might manage a more decent return on the item. There is no celebrity attachment to what you bring to me.’

Just another rifle. The beer was good in this bar. Somewhere up at the counter, almost out of sight but able to watch, was Reuven’s minder. He’d be jacketed, and his coat would hang loose to disguise the bulge of the Makharov pistol in a shoulder holster. Not that Dazzer was liable to make a scene and shout, maybe throw a punch because the fantasy of good money was now running in the drains. He’d pointed out the bloodstain that darkened the old wood of the stock, and the notches were now harder to distinguish and the place where the sliver had been was harder to see.

‘So, and we should not waste the time of busy people such as yourself, such as myself, the best I can offer to you is one hundred American dollars… probably I make a loss on that. But we are old friends, men with understanding and men with a relationship… a hundred dollars. Will you refuse it, Dazzer, and then attempt to bring the weapon through the Customs investigators at your British airport of entry, and risk ten or fifteen years in a gaol, or take it? Which?’