Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

Two gusts following close on each other heralded the opening thrusts of the storm. As if a tap had abruptly been turned on. Spots of rain pattering first, then a single thunderclap, then what seemed the tipping of a myriad of buckets. Dogs howled into the growing darkness. Not a night to be out, not for the old or the young, the uniformed or those in flimsy sweatshirts and jeans, those who worked and those who stood in line and looked to buy.

There was little cover from the elements around the project of La Castellane. A foul night and a dirty night, but many braved it. Police huddled under capes and the rain dripped from their headgear, and their focus was on keeping their weapons dry. Alongside them were those standing in the queues, uneasy as bedfellows who waited to be admitted so they might purchase quality Moroccan, a new shipment and well spoken of. Also soaked were those attempting to return to the project after a day of menial employment in the city, and those waiting to leave so that they could work at bars and clean shopping centres.

And there were the women who had emerged on to the narrow balconies butting off some of the apartment windows. Some wore waterproof hats, some had hitched plastic bags on to their heads, some allowed the rain to wash through their hair. The situation was a stand-off, and from the east-facing windows of La Castellane there was a good view of the bare open space under the walls, and the rocks ahead of them to impede access, then the road and finally the slope of scrub leading up to the shopping centre, where marksmen might gather. If there were marksmen, and the situation came to a blood-spattered head, then it was a fair and reasonable bet he would be there Only one star-studded figure attracted the attention of the women of the project. Spectacles were regularly wiped, eyes blinked often to dislodge rainwater… they did not know who he was because always he performed the death dance with a balaclava covering his features, and they knew his name only from that of a former executioner, and few of them would have known the significance in their adopted country’s history of the Place de la Concorde and the work of Charles-Henri Samson.

Sheltering in a police wagon, along with other marksmen, Samson dozed. The Styr SSG was balanced across his thighs, loaded but not cocked. Partly it was his imagination and some of it was the product of dreams: he was in the Tanzanian park of Serengeti and he seemed to see a family of cheetahs. The big female had come effortlessly down from a kopje , a small hillock of stones and bushes, and would have hidden her cubs there while she hunted. He had seen this first on television and now it was implanted in his mind, and he would not forget a frame of it. Led by their mother, the family crossed a flat area of arid grassland and headed for a green-painted long wheelbase Land Rover. The boldest of the cubs was the first to jump and skidded up on to the engine covering and then settled and switched a tail, and the mother came next and climbed on to the roof and lay easily down on the metalwork on which the sun had shone all day, and the others romped under the vehicle and round the wheels. A blonde and tanned woman sat at the wheel and must have sweltered because every window was firmly closed. She was, Samson knew, a prominent British expert on the species, and she had written a piece on the trust, the bond, between herself in her vehicle and this one family, and they came to her if she was close by and climbed on to this one zoologist’s roof and bonnet to catch the warmth of the metalwork. The dream or the thought of them gratified him… His rifle was clean, dry, and he awaited an order from the Major which might come and might not. He might shoot that evening, or perhaps another of the men close to him would, or perhaps none of them would. He was not restless, would not be concerned if he did not fire, or if he fired and killed… it would concern him if he fired and missed. Just before he had started to dream or imagine the advance of the cheetah tribe, Samson had received a text, from his wife: Drafted in. Getting wet. On the perimeter. First one home puts the supper on. What a happy place! Xxx He had not replied. It would all be connected, the call out. A weapon exchanged for money, and a clever old-school thug, known by the self-gratification name of Tooth, had noted the presence of the English detective, no doubt good at his work but in a location where ‘good’ was inadequate, and a girl who was moderately attractive but not in comparison to his own wife and his own daughter, and a mess… Most of his work involved mopping up after mistakes and errors of judgement – all similar to situations in the Serengeti where wildebeest or gazelles paid with their lives for mistakes. Some talked in the van but Samson held his peace, was quiet and waited.

‘Happy, Gough?’

‘Mildly delirious.’

The rain fell on them, dripped off them, and nothing changed and little moved. Maybe they’d have been better in the customer queue that was building steadily. Too many years since, as a teenager, she’d enjoyed a rebellious joint, Moroccan or other, but a smoke now might have been welcome. Had they been in London, or just in the UK, all would have seemed straightforward, and the weight would have been shared.

‘Sorry and all that but it’s writhing round my head. You and me, what we achieve. Apologies if out of order but it’s bitching me. Start with you. Satisfied you make a difference?’

‘Never doubted it.’

‘An assessment of where we are?’

‘Where we are not wanted, not respected, regarded as an interfering nuisance. The Major regards us as a pain, hardly disguised, our own man has freelanced and is out of control, a runaway cannon, and…’

They were alone. They were fed no information and there was no more food or coffee. She could remember the face of the would-be agent, drowned, with the smiling anxiety to please scrubbed from his face, and remember the girl at the heart of Rag and Bone who had seemed an innocent marionette, dancing to others’ tunes, and remember the sight of their boy, Andy Knight, hugging and holding the girl at the bridge in Avignon, and turned against Gough and her. And could see a marksman expertly killing a youth in a street. Nothing in her memory gave her satisfaction.

‘In this job, Gough, do we ever meet, mingle, cooperate, with decent folk?’

‘Never intentionally.’

‘Not ever?’

‘Only by accident.’

Pegs said, ‘I am serious, Gough… “making a difference” is about all we have to cling to if we’re to keep our peckers up. Otherwise, what the hell are we here for… It’s never-ending, we’re on a treadmill, and the threat is driving it faster. It’s the present and it’s the future, and I do not see an escape route… Sorry and all that, but I’m in the dumps.’

He put his arm around her. They were in the shadow of a small tree, the sort that landscapers would have planted in the hope of bringing ‘civilisation’ to this bleak place, and it would not have been noticed by any but a serious voyeur . He was a ‘good old boy’, Gough was, and needed to be because he was all she had… and nothing was permanent, in her jaundiced experience of life. It was a strong arm, and welcome.

Gough said, ‘Regrets for my gloomy view, but I think the rain has come on heavier.’

It had taken Crab several minutes of kneeing and elbowing to get through the clutch of passengers at the desk, their tempers steadily fraying.

He knew the flight was delayed. The hold-up, he gathered, was indefinite. Other aircraft with other destinations had now climbed above it on the departure board.

Life should run smoothly for a man such as Crab. His money and his heritage and his prestige were supposed to ensure that the stresses of ‘ordinary’ people were avoided. Around him were passengers off a cruise liner, who had gone in search of a wafer of winter sunshine and had been well doused between the coach and the airport, and irritation had spawned. He wouldn’t have looked much himself. God knows why… but a shortage of taxis, an argument about the fare which had ended with him scooting when threatened with a call to the police, a trek towards the terminal doors and the rain at its heaviest. He was soaked, and his jacket and his trousers and his shoes, and a grip of chill damp was on his skin… and the fucking flight seemed delayed without word of when he might board along with this crowd in their vacation gear. He did not do holidays. Crab did not do beaches, or cocktails at dusk, and did not do the tourism of traipsing round ruins, and now was going nowhere. What he did do was long-standing friendships, alliances, networking with a few people who were trusted, valuable, who respected him. It was like there was a prop that held up a good piece of his life, and it was like Tooth had got hold of a sledge and had whacked the prop, flattened it, and brought a ceiling down on him.