Alex Shaw - Cold Blood

Gorodetski nodded. He didn’t know how to take this comment. His brother, too, had been a Spetsnaz officer but he had been killed in Afghanistan. The colonel continued, ‘You have made your family very proud and upheld your brother’s name. But you can do so much more. Will you not reconsider your decision?’ He didn’t like to plead but damn it; this man was one of the best he’d ever seen.

Gorodetski shook his head slowly. ‘I have made my decision, Comrade Colonel. I am sorry.’

‘A Spetsnaz officer should never be sorry.’ The colonel held out his hand and the major passed him a pen. He cast one more look at the young officer before signing the form and marking it with the official stamp. All three men stood. The colonel handed Gorodetski the papers. Gorodetski saluted and left the room.

‘Fool,’ muttered the major.

‘Exactly the opposite,’ replied the colonel.

Horley Community College , Horley , UK

‘My dad says all the French are poofs,’ Danny Butterworth stated to the class of fifteen-year-olds.

‘Sam knows French, don’t ya, Sam!’ added his comedy partner, Dale Small.

Samantha was busy reapplying eyeliner and didn’t look up from her mirror. ‘ Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ?’

‘Everyone has, you slapper!’ Dale shouted.

At the front of the class, Arnaud took a deep breath. ‘That is enough!’ He slammed the French textbook on the desk and glared at the offending class members. ‘I have asked for silence and I will not ask again!’ A hand went up at the back of the class. ‘Yes, Danny?’

‘Which page we on, mister?’ Danny replied with a cherubic expression.

Arnaud paused and inwardly sighed before answering. ‘Page sixty-nine. Le Weekend .’

There were sniggers around the room. ‘That’s when Sam does her French, sir – at the weekend,’ shouted Danny across the classroom.

‘Twat!’ Sam put down her compact and raised her middle finger.

‘Stand up.’

There was a pause and Sam, a heavily made up girl, her hair streaked bleach-blonde, stood up. Arnaud looked her in the eye she held his gaze. ‘Wot?’

‘What do you mean, “wot”?! I will not tolerate that kind of language in my French class!’

‘But it is French, mister,’ shouted Dale

‘And she is a slapper, sir!’ added Danny.

Sam threw her textbook at the two boys. ‘Wankers!’

‘Get out. Just get out.’ Arnaud was turning red. Unbelievable, unbelievable.

Making as much noise as possible, Sam pushed her table away, scooped up her bag and left the room. Slamming the door, she added, ‘I am twatting going!’

Danny and Dale looked at each other, Danny raising his right fist and Dale hitting it with his own. They were enjoying this, their weekly game of wind up the ‘gay teacher’, made all the better if they could also piss off Sam Reynolds. Danny leant back in his chair and put his feet up on the table and Dale opened a can of Coke. Arnaud, facing the whiteboard, was oblivious of this and continued to calm his breathing, writing the page number, date and title in his neatest handwriting. He would report this behaviour once the lesson was over; Sam was already on report and would be internally excluded for her outburst. Behind him the noise level in the class started to grow. He was about to turn around again and give them another telling off when suddenly it stopped.

‘Put your feet on the floor, and you… put that can in the bin.’ The man at the door looked at Arnaud, a stern expression on his face. ‘Let me know the names of the ones who’ll be picking up litter at lunchtime.’

Arnaud returned with an equally stern face of his own, ‘Will do, Mr Middleton.’

Middleton nodded, glowered again at Danny and Dale, and shut the door. Outside he could be heard shouting. Arnaud let out a sigh, sat at his desk and opened his book.

‘ Le weekend . Can anyone tell me what that means in English?’

The remainder of the lesson was only slightly less chaotic. Sam returned after having been spoken to by Middleton and sat solemnly at the front, refusing to work and doodling, while Danny and Dale were quiet because they were listening to their iPods. In fact, the only pupils working were the six on the front two rows. At ten-fifty the bell sounded and there was a sudden mass exodus. Chairs were left upturned and books lying on tables. Arnaud sighed heavily and made a note on Sam’s report. She looked at it and then at him with a face full of hate, before she, too, left. This wasn’t what teaching was meant to be like. He bent down to pick up a sweet wrapper and got a handful of sticky chocolate for his trouble. He wiped his hand on a piece of A4 paper and collected up the French textbooks.

Twenty minutes for break, then another two hours until lunch, and finally a free period for lesson five. Unless they gave him another cover! Two more Year Nine classes and then a bottom-set Year Ten. Now he knew why the government had paid him to train as a teacher! Still, he was nearly at the end of his NQT year and would be a fully qualified, respected teacher in September.

He shut the door and locked it behind him. Instantly, he was banged into as pupils pushed past in an attempt to get to the canteen and gorge on junk food as soon as was humanly possible.

He had grown immune to the knocks now. Arnaud had been at Horley Community College for almost two years, first as a student, when he was given easier classes, and then as an NQT – newly qualified teacher. The school had offered him a job and he, like a fool, had accepted it. ‘Best to work in a difficult school – baptism of fire, as it were,’ his mentor had told him. Yeah, right. At least it was a nice day outside, which was probably why the kids were so fidgety. He couldn’t blame them. Who would want to be inside concentrating on French grammar or asking how much for a kilo of pommes when, just through the window, the summer had truly arrived?

One more week, he kept telling himself, and then the summer holidays and unemployment. Well, not quite. Having given a term’s notice, his contract would finish at the end of August and the school had said there would be supply work for him if he still hadn’t found anything. Supply work, in Horley? He laughed to himself as he entered the staffroom; Beirut sounded safer.

Arnaud sat wearily in the worn easy chair that occupied the corner of the room. Around him, teachers scurried to get as much coffee as their break would allow. He spotted the sexy blonde student teacher he’d seen on the train and wished her into the vacant seat next to him. It didn’t happen. She sat between two fit-looking men in shorts. P.E. teachers! Puh! He sipped his hot coffee and burnt his tongue. Bugger.

‘Heard any more about that job you applied for?’ the Head of Foreign Languages, Richard Middleton, asked as he sat down heavily.

‘Not yet.’

‘Kyiv, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ He moved his tongue inside his mouth, feeling the burn.

‘Ah, did you know that Kyiv is the birthplace of modern Russia?’

‘No.’ Arnaud turned in his seat.

‘Kyiv-Rus was the original capital of Russia almost a thousand years ago, long, long before the Tsars, the Bolsheviks and the Communists popped up. Back then it was populated by nomadic tribes.’

Arnaud was impressed. ‘Did you study Russian history at uni?’

Middleton smiled. ‘No. I saw it on the Discovery Channel.’

Odessa Oblast , Ukraine , near the Transdniester border

Bull looked through the kite sight. Nothing yet. He and his Brigada were watching and waiting. If all went to plan, this would be the first step. He shivered in the cold of the pre-dawn. It brought back memories of a lifetime ago…