A Deniable Death (30 page)

If they quit, they left behind Badger and Foxy, and a mission that had taken months to put together was aborted. She remembered the sergeant who had explained, shyly, that his work was routine, quite boring – he’d spent three and half hours on his knees while he dismantled a device left in a shallow hole near Highway 6, made it safe and gave the forensic people the chance to trace a DNA sample and to find the date-seller and the road-sweeper. She wouldn’t quit.

Hands were on her. She smelt sour breath and felt long nails catch the waist of her robe, then the pressure pushing her downwards. Beside her a knife flickered in Shagger’s beam, and might have been about to close on Hamfist’s chest. Corky came. He had an iron bar. It might have been used once to support barbed-wire defences. Corky was from an estate where knowledge of street fighting came at about the same time as primary school and first communion. He lashed around him. There were groans, a scream. The hands were off Abigail. There were no faces, only hands, and some had their own blood on them. Three knives were lined up. They were at the edge of Shagger’s torch light. She recognised it. They were together to feed each other the courage to charge forward, and the knives were raised boldly. If one of her Boys was down, it was over.

More had gathered behind the knives. They would swamp the Boys and her – there were so few of them, four guys and their ma’am, because the wisdom said that the fewer bodies on the ground, the greater the chances of going in and out without being identified. She hadn’t argued with the wisdom – and the knives’ blades flashed. She didn’t know which, but either Corky or Harding threw the first gas grenade and it rolled among them. The smoke burst from the canister and enveloped them. They were pale figures caught in a white cloud and they seemed to dance as they choked. Another grenade was thrown and the cloud thickened. It was harder to see them, but easy to hear the choking and the coughs.

They took their casualties with them, five who were helped towards the gate.

She knew what she had to do. Her head ached, and the gas was in her eyes, making them water with needle pains.

Abigail walked away from her Boys, following the gaggle of men, towards the gate. She reached it and shouted, in good Arabic, what she wanted. She had resumed her role of authority.

She sat down in the dirt and folded her legs in the middle of the track. She waited for them to do as she had instructed. It was a gamble – as was the whole goddamn thing. She waited, and soon dawn would come.

When would he know? Mansoor asked him. And caught him flustered, having had to duck back into the house because there were papers he had been reading early that morning and he had forgotten to replace them in his briefcase. Know what?

Mansoor said it slowly, as if he talked with a demented man. When would he know the date on which he travelled, and when would he know where he travelled to?

The door of the Mercedes was held open for him and he threw the briefcase towards the far side of the seat. He said he would know that day – he had been promised.

A radio had been switched on in the house.

The security officer had fine hearing. He realised that the wife, Naghmeh, had not packed the new suitcase. He had been roused by a sentry in the night, and had gone half dressed from his room alongside the communal dormitory of the barracks. He had seen them – washed in moonlight – walking beside the water. He understood that the two were, almost, crushed. He had thought in the night that the wound on his leg was healed, and that the muscles and tendons that had been ruptured were knitting well. He had pondered, watching them walk together, that the time would come soon when he could apply for service with the al-Quds again, in Lebanon. It was an honour to be chosen to protect a man of the Engineer’s prominence, and it could not have been said that he was careless with the responsibility, but it did not extend him. He was asked by the driver what the situation was that morning in central Ahvaz.

A news bulletin came on the radio.

He could answer. His father had telephoned that morning. The hanging of the terrorist the previous day had gone well. There had been militia and Guard Corps personnel on the streets; no live rounds or gas had been fired; the crowds had dispersed quietly after only one charge with batons. His father had said that the hanging had been witnessed by the family of a bystander who had died when the bomb the youth had placed had exploded; the mother had spat at the condemned as he was lifted, trembling, onto a chair with the noose round his neck and the hood over his face. The father of the bystander would himself have kicked away the chair if he had not been restrained. His father loved to watch the hangings . . . His father had said that the streets were calm. He said it was safe to take the quicker route through the centre of the city.

He was surprised. The question had shocked him. Never before had his charge, Rashid Armajan, made such a query. It had been asked from beside the open rear door of the car, as if an afterthought: ‘Do you believe it possible that the regime governing us is, in fact, similar to a house built of playing cards that can be blown down, destroyed?’

The security officer, a true believer, gagged and must have betrayed his shock.

The Engineer was sharper: ‘Could the regime collapse? Is internal dissent, external aggression – combined – enough to break us?’

He sensed a trap. The question was close to treason. Men, and women, were hanged for treason. Did the question test his loyalty? Was he doubted?

‘Can the regime be swept away? Are we merely temporary? Are we like the Fascists and the Communists, the Ba’athists, the apartheid oppression in South Africa and the . . .?’

He stuttered it: ‘The regime is strong, is a rock. Those who denounce it and look to betray it will fail. There are spies everywhere, and danger. Vigilance must be rigorous. I tell you, should I find myself confronting such an enemy, he would know pain the like of which he has never experienced before. We are strong.’

‘Thank you. You are a good friend.’ The Engineer sank heavily into the car, swung in his legs and the driver closed the door after him.

Mansoor pondered. He could – and most probably should – report such a conversation. Who would be believed? Himself, a junior functionary, or a man who was fêted by the high command of the al-Quds Brigade and who was about to travel abroad on the state’s funding? Could he, by implication, accuse such a man of treason? The car turned a corner beside the barracks and disappeared, dust billowing behind it. Always it was necessary, if denouncing a man of prominence, to be certain. He was prepared to dither.

It would have been the wife’s mother who had the radio loud because she was partially deaf, had been afflicted since the enemy’s artillery had pounded Ahvaz.

He went to his chair in the shade and sat down with his binoculars. He wondered if this would be the day when the Sacred Ibis came over the reeds fringing the lagoon and settled on the exposed mud spit.

Foxy whispered brusquely, ‘The radio knocked out the long conversation at the car. Before it was switched on he said he would be told today the “when” and the “where”. That’s about it. For me it’ll be some sleep.’

Soon he would start to snore.

Badger felt alone. He had lost count of how many hours, days and nights it had been since they were scooped from their lives and taken north to the house facing out over the bay. The hours, days and nights since he had met the girl, Alpha Juliet, had merged too. He had taken the headset. Most of what it picked up was the babble of the radio. The heat inside his suit climbed, the sweat ran and he felt the weakness that lack of exercise produced. Those people at the house with the ruins of a castle and the pipes’ wail were too distant: he could no longer put faces to them. Time dripped, the images blurred . . . He couldn’t bloody remember them.

‘The carvery is always good value,’ Gibbons said, ‘and the fish is usually passable.’ He played host to the Cousin, the Friend and the Major. It had been Sarah’s idea. She had suggested it that morning, had made the phone calls with the invitations, had booked the table and appeared to believe he needed respite from sitting in the inner office, contemplating the wilting flowers, the pictures on the wall and the silence of the telephone. It had been sleeting in central London when he had walked from the office to the club.

A bottle of red was brought, a bottle of white and a small jug of water.

He smiled, a little deprecating. ‘Always the hardest time for us, the waiting. We’re all from that neck of the woods . . . I often think that others who are parked at their desks in our place and write those analysis pieces have little idea of the strains placed on us by our work in the front line . . . very little idea.’

Sarah had bundled a wad of cash into his hand, the implication being that she would lose it somewhere in the budget – elastic bands, highlighters, paper clips. In the club’s restaurant, rarely used by him because of its expense, she had reserved a corner table where they could speak and be free of eavesdropping.

The Cousin remarked, ‘There are people in Langley who drive up the Beltway before it’s light for half the year, look at a screen all day, and it’s dark when they’re back in the car and off home. They tell the little woman, ‘It’s been a hell of day, sweetie, just one hell of a day.’ They have no idea, and less concern, about the pressures we’re under when we’re running sharp-end stuff . . . But I take comfort from the feeling in my water that we’ve gotten close to the serious time. I’ll start with the white, Len, thank you.’

The Friend said, ‘I don’t intend to badmouth my own people, but Israel has the world’s highest proportion of jealous bastards who think they know better than the man of experience. We have awards that would fill a wall for interference and shit-chucking. What we do is difficult and stressful and you can piss against the wind for all the appreciation you’ll pick up. The red would suit me as a kick-off, Len, and I’m grateful for the invitation.’

The Major grimaced, smiled. ‘I can remember a day when I’d been out on those open-sewer streets of Basra from dawn till dusk and I’d killed five IEDs. Each was complex and would have been shipped in from that bloody production line across the border, and one was for me and complicated. There were bad guys on a roof, watching to see how I went about it – hoping also to see the big flash and hear the bang. I went back to the mess. Believe it, please. There was a colonel in there – using the Basra Palace, Saddam’s old watering-hole – for a farewell bash. He and his guests had put on their fancy-dress outfits and their gongs for smart dining. Flopped in a chair, feet on the table, beer bought me, and this bloody colonel wants to know why I haven’t washed, shaved, changed before entering the mess. Didn’t understand there was a life outside the limit of the air-conditioning system. I told him to fuck off – took my brigadier in Baghdad a week to smooth the waters. People have no idea about the real world. I’ll start with the white and then try the red. Thanks, Len.’

They ordered, drank and ate. Another bottle of red was required, but the water lasted. In a vacuum of information, responsibilities were reiterated and guarantees given. Coffee was accepted, but no brandy – an indication of work taken seriously.

The Major said, ‘I just want to put it on the record in this rather select company . . . People, these days, are pretty squeamish about what they call ‘extra-judicial’ interdiction. I think it an excellent way of dealing with an extant difficulty. Identify, locate and . . .’ He slapped a broad hand – with chunky fingers that seemed to lack the sensitivity necessary for the dismantling of improvised explosive devices – on the table. The cups rattled in the saucers, the unused cutlery banged against the glasses, and he’d done a passable imitation of a shot being fired, and another. Then the Major wiped his mouth with his napkin, and dropped it as though business had been done and procedures agreed.

The Friend used a toothpick. ‘We have a mantra that we neither confirm nor deny, and are consistent with it. It can, however, be let slip through many channels that the target was in trouble with his own people for fucking the wife of a man more influential, or for fabricating his expense accounts. That confuses the general public of many nations – but not the associates of the target. They know, they fear . . . The greatest source of the fear is that their small corner, that most secretive part of an organisation where they exist, will be penetrated . . . But we have to wait.’

He smiled and let slip a small belch, then meticulously folded his napkin and smoothed it.

The Cousin gazed around him wistfully, as if a small chance existed that, in a gentleman’s club, he might be permitted to smoke a cigar. ‘A Hellfire, if aimed accurately and carrying a punch of eight kilos of metal-augmented charge, can do a fair bit of ‘extra-judicial’. We don’t have – at this moment – a judge and jury sitting in north Waziristan, in the Haraz mountains of Yemen or in the sand round Kandahar, so what we do there has to benefit from lack of contact with a courthouse. I hear no great wail of protest. Go back two decades and a Canadian citizen was taken down, Gerald Bull, shot by – of course – persons unknown while earning big moolah for building the gun that was going to fire chemicals and biological out of Iraq and into Israel. Did the Canadians shout and yell? Deafening silence. The furore of the hand-wringers lasts a week at maximum – and it keeps the motherfuckers looking over their shoulders. There is only one law in this business. Don’t get caught. It’s a good one to remember. It has legs and has lasted years. A grand meal, Len.’