Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

‘…and what’s today’s schedule?’

‘Maybe a walk this morning, then my business, then we hit the road.’

‘The business – in the city?’

‘I’m collected and…’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Not necessary, and you don’t have to.’

Their hands were lower, searching and moving with gentleness but increasing pace, and their breathing was faster.

‘Not letting you out of my sight. Won’t argue with you. I am with you. Too precious to me, Zed, to have you loose here – a difficult city. I am with you. Don’t care what you’re doing… heard the old one? “Hear nothing, see nothing, know nothing”. That’s my promise. I will be there.’

She squirmed under him. Who led? Both did. The dawn was outside the curtained window. The other couple were quiet. Replacing the sounds of the bed springs were the preparations for the day’s market, and the first scrapes of metal as the overnight shutters were lifted… He had busted the rules of the house, SC&O10’s, and he let the wonder of it happen, and did not know where he would be when he next slept, or where she would be.

He had showered first, flushed away the smells of the night, had dressed casually – not the previous day’s clothes, left stubble on his face. Zed had taken her turn in the bathroom and he thought she scrubbed herself hard as if she too wanted to erase what had happened; or perhaps she always did, washed fiercely. He was not proud…

Had reason not to be proud. The psychologists who monitored them had a mantra about burn-out which was apparent when the invented legend palled, lost relevance, when the Undercover might cross over and take up the target’s cause or criminality, or when the strain of living the lie became overwhelming. He preferred what an old instructor had told him, a woman of almost unique ugliness, never knew her name, and the stories of her verified successes were often rumoured; she had been with him at the start but he’d not seen her for months before being Phil, then acting out Norm, then Andy. She said that the danger, and the time to quit, was when the Undercover knew that he, or she, was ‘running on empty’. Had ignored the evidence of the needle drifting down towards the red sector on the gauge, was on a long road, far from any garage marked on the satnav, had gone on too long… was, in effect, a danger to colleagues, a pushover to adversaries, was putting himself at risk and the great mass of citizens that should have been better protected. She said that it wasn’t brave to hood-wink the team leaders and carry on with symptoms hidden, was not courageous to be in the field and refusing the inevitable… shelf-life, she’d said, was finite, might not be long: the Undercover would know it long before it became apparent. Dressed, ready to go, rucksack packed with the little he had brought, he sat on the bed, and thought some more. Thought where they might be, the people who had seemed – once – important to him.

They would not have been up yet, his mum and dad. There was a machine at his father’s side of the bed that made their morning cup of tea. If their cat was still alive it would be marching over their duvet, unless it had been run over, or died from an ailment, might be another. There had been a photograph of him in their bedroom, but it might have been binned. Perhaps, in privacy, they wept at the manner of his going, some crap about ‘important work and going under the radar and better that we lose sight of each other. I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t matter’. Some went home to their wives and kids too often, or to their parents, and the addresses were under the bad guys’ surveillance, and ended for the innocents in a shambles of late-night evacuations, even new identities. He thought of them… thought of girls who he might have known better and had not dared to… thought of men, women, who were either hard cases in the narcotics distribution chains, or just hapless and not knowing another way of survival, or who believed in a cause with passion and were intelligent but could mete out violence. Where were they? Cell doors not yet opened on the landings. Banged up and watching breakfast TV, and remembering the shit face they had trusted and who had lived a lie amongst them… thought of a girl – soft skin, a defiant jaw, good hips and good breasts and a good brain – and wanting to kill, or help to kill, and was now towelling herself dry: he had kissed the skin and ridden the hips, and his finger had brushed her breasts. She would be a song bird in a small cage, and would spit if she remembered him. And thought of others in the Marines, in the classrooms, in the uniformed police, but all gone. It would all happen in the next several hours.

Usually, at the end, before he’d sidle off to the shadows, disappear, the bosses would give him a cuff on the back, or a brief hug, tell him, ‘Well done, mate, you were fucking awesome. Done great, have a rest, then we’ll have the next one lined up. Of course we will, because you’re a star boy.’

She came out of the bathroom, had left her towel there. Walked past the window where the curtains were open, didn’t seem to care – seemed bleak, like her soul was lost, and started to dress… And he thought of the pair who ran him. Probably decent people, bags under their eyes, and smacked with lack of sleep. Demands that they justify the budget, and that a file could be closed, and the next one jacked up on the screen. Never-ending, never finished… and saw the script on the TV sets that announced ‘Breaking News’ and later there would be the footage from mobile phones and the sound of the screams and perhaps the gunfire, and the people running with the gurneys to the ambulances bringing in the day’s casualties at the Accident and Emergency entrances. They were Gough and Pegs, and would be somewhere outside the hotel door and would try to tail him, and him drop the message, and it was odds-on that he’d not see them again, have no call to and have no wish to. If he failed they failed, and there would not be a psychologist to offer up excuses for them: burn-out and running on empty. Just another day.

She’d pulled on her clothes. Then went back into the bathroom a last time and carried something but he did not see what it was. He would drive north to the channel port where the ferry was docked. They would not fuck that night. After the crossing he would take her wherever she told him, and she’d walk away with a package under her arm, last he’d see of her would be when she rounded a corner… wrong, next to last. He would be behind a screen in the court, she would be in a guarded dock… He would not sleep with her on the boat but would sit on the deck whether it rained, hailed, whether a gale blew. Out of the bathroom, and seemed thicker round the waist, and… Just another day, as easy or difficult as the rest of them. She zipped her bag, set it down beside his. He went round the room carefully and checked the floor, and the cupboard and under the bedside tables. He found the wrapping of one of the condoms, and pocketed it. They would leave nothing, no indication they had been there.

‘Some breakfast?’

‘Just something small.’

‘And you’ll tell me the plan, Zed, for the morning and the afternoon.’

‘Yes, of course.’

He carried the bag and the rucksack down the stairs.

Hardly any breakfast for either of them.

He stood behind her, and Zeinab paid the bill. He came forward and said they wanted to walk a little on La Canebière before leaving, and asked if their bags could be lodged for an hour. Why not?

Another couple were behind her, and the woman coughed loudly as if to let her know, forcibly, that they needed to hurry. Could have had a room above them, or on the floor below them, and the man let her do the complaining and merely wheezed. Indifferently, they were thanked for their custom, wished a good day, and it was added – an afterthought – that the management looked forward to welcoming them again… Zeinab had a reservation, made in London, for two single rooms, had exchanged them for a double, should have had a refund on the bill, had pointed to the sum required, but there was a shrug and she was eased sideways by the next check-out. And did not fight it… it was what Scorpion, or might have been Krait, had said to her. Not to attract attention, not to be looked at, nor noticed… She took the receipt, stepped away.