Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

August 2017

The mother of Nico Efthyvoulu had given him the money to buy it. She had gone into her widow’s bedroom after he had told her of his chance to purchase a small stake in a new bar that would open near the train station. Tourists visiting Athens, going to the ruins, walking among the Acropolis stones, would never be close, but he had told his mother that there would be good local trade. She had gone to her tin, kept under the bed, long emptied of sweet-tasting biscuits, and returned to him, in the kitchen, with the bank notes. He had smiled, told her it would be a fine investment, promised the money would be returned when profit showed. It was a month short of a year since Nico had been released from the young offenders’ institution. His mother was anxious to the point of desperation, that the boy, 21 years old and with gelled hair and smart clothing from the charity stall at the end of their street, should have a legitimate focus in his life.

Hot, almost to stifling point, and near to midday, and the sun scorching the streets, he wore a long coat that was suitable for when the snow came. He watched the bank and steeled himself. He needed the length of the coat to conceal the weapon he had purchased from a man in the quarter of the city behind the harbour… and the bastard had tried to screw him. The agreement was for 425 American dollars, cash. He had already lost out on the exchange rate, and then the bastard had insisted that the cost of the rifle would now be $500. What had been promised, what they had shaken hands on – $425 in a wad of old and untraceable notes – was left on the table. Gone from the table was the AK-47 and the loaded magazines that went with the sale… Much of that money would be needed for the new dentures required by the bastard, and perhaps some would go to the costs of rewiring his broken chin. Nico had never been gentle, not as a child and not now as an adult, when crossed.

The bank was quiet and had few customers at that time of day. It was a good neighbourhood, and most of the residents would have survived, not with anything to spare, the collapse of the economy. They would have done their banking when the place opened, when it was cool, and they took out their toy dogs. He sweated because of the thickness of the coat.

All that Nico Efthyvoulu had been able to buy was an old weapon. He had been assured, before rearranging the bastard’s face that it might have been manufactured years before, proven by the serial number – many numbers but finishing with 16751 – but its reliability was guaranteed. He had gone into the high wilderness north of the E75 ring road, on a foul day when few walkers would have ventured out, had found a discarded can, had fired two shots it. The first had missed but the stone face behind it had shattered. The second had pitched the can over. A good hit, and two were enough to satisfy him. The mess of scratches and gouges on the wood stock were confusing because he did not know the cause of them, or the reason they were there. Until this morning he had kept the weapon in a bedroom cupboard, at the back, the door locked.

He straightened. Some kids, ten years or so younger than himself, were playing football in the centre of the square. He passed them. At the entrance to the bank, he paused, then cranked the lever that controlled the shot selection, went to ‘single’, took a deep breath and felt the weakness in his knees and the shake in his hands, and hoped his voice could muster authority. He pulled up the knotted dark handkerchief around his neck until it covered the lower half of his face. The doors swung open in front of him.

The kids abandoned the football and watched, waited, eyes popping, mouths gaping.

Inside, in the cool, there was only one other customer, in earnest discussion with a cashier on the far side of a high screen, older with thin grey hair, and a suit but no tie. A girl was counting money at an open till beside her colleague. He tried to shout, sound commanding, and the counter girl looked at him, seemed bewildered, like he was part of a game show on the TV, Saturday night. But, she hit the alarm button, might have been below her counter, might have been a button on the floor. It shocked him, and his reaction was to fire at her. About as dumb as he could get, and there was as yet no cash offered him, stacked notes on the counter and bound in wads with elastic bands. The bell screamed in his ears. He had not hit her because the glass deflected the bullet up over her shoulder and into the wall behind. It should, perhaps, have been newly made glass that was proof against even a high velocity round, but the cut-backs around all sectors of Greece’s wrecked economy dictated the glass was sub-standard, there for show and image. He yelled at her again, but had picked out a feisty one. Behind the glass with the spider’s web of lines and distortions, she bawled back at him. He fired again, again, each time releasing the trigger and then squeezing another time on it. He had not looked sideways until he made out the other customer’s yell for him to chuck it down. Had he heard that…?

And turned, and looked into the face. The lower part of the face was almost hidden by the service pistol the man held, arms extended, eyes above the V and the needle sights. It registered. The man yelled his identification, a police officer. Both fired. The pistol was aimed and the rifle was at the hip and loosely pointed in the direction of the idiot, the fool who had had no call to intervene. Nico Efthyvoulu could have wept that it was his luck, his crass fortune, to try to rob a small-time bank, and find himself standing beside a cop. The stock, scarred and marked and ugly, cannoned back and into his hip and spun him, and the fierce, searing pain hit him in the back. He heard the girl behind the counter scream, shrill and hysterical, and heard the impact as the pistol clattered from a loose hand and hit the floor. The man who’d held it sagged at the knees and the first of his blood was falling on the pistol. Fucked up, all fucked up, and the pain ran in rivers down his back.

He turned, staggered, towards the door. As if for a valued customer, the door automatically opened and the warmth of the street buffeted his face. He lurched through, doubted he would get any further. It had killed him, the rifle had destroyed him, and he had lied to his mother to pay for it. He lurched to the bottom step and the kids were in a line on the far side of the street. The pain had lessened in his back and now there was numbness, and weakness. He would not get down the street, would not reach his home in the little wretched Citroen, all he could afford… the rifle slipped from his hand. Nothing left for him… He saw the kids. They came across the street. In the distance was a siren, faint but coming clearer. He thought the kids came to help him. Wrong again.

The boldest of them scooped up the rifle. They ran. They whooped in excitement, then scampered as if for their lives. They went round the corner, and his eyes misted. If he had had the strength, before the weapon had fallen from his grip on the steps, he would have taken it by the barrel, two hands beyond the curved magazine, and swung it high above his head and smashed it down on the imitation marble steps at the bank’s entrance. Would have battered it until the fucking thing broke… but Nico Efthyvoulu did not have the strength, saw little, and heard only vaguely, and there was blood in his mouth.

Hamid had lectured his brother. Where to be and when.

He had used his girl’s hair-drier to get some of the moisture off the packet. A lousy night was behind him, little sleep, nightmares of drowning, trying to read the big man’s remarks, repeated endlessly, and wondering whether he had secured an alliance… The package seemed insignificant for the trouble taken, but not for him to query. Funny thing, and not yet settled… plenty of talk about what he might do in the following months, what might be put in his path, and the influence that Tooth’s reputation carried, and good contracts… Not agreed was what his payment would be, and when the big bucks would begin to roll his way. Had not drawn the lines before, joined up the flag points. Had trusted. No figures to chew on. All about the future, what might happen. Options? Could hardly write it all down, then threaten to reveal all to the guys in L’Évêché because the chance was high that Tooth owned half of them, would be told, would send some boys out either to cut him up with half of a Kalashnikov magazine or – worse – put him in a car, do a barbecue on him. Did not know an option. A fast thought: easy to run a small-time distribution and sales business out of a stairwell at the bottom floor of Block K, difficult to run with a man such as Tooth, but too late to be thinking it now. Another thing to consider, Tooth had never touched the package, did not open it, examine it… and the fisherman might have been a nephew or might have been in obligation. Hamid thought he was out on a branch, his weight starting to bend it, make it whine and creak. He used tape to fasten the package against his chest and underneath his heavy leather jacket, and he’d wear his biker’s helmet with the dark visor.