He seemed to have spent a majority of his adult life facing the barriers set up by the Russian state. The Service at Ceausescu Towers was obsessed with Russia, the machinations of the Kremlin, its enmity and cunning, its mischief and deceit. Nothing to be proud of but it was the life he led. Farther along the Wall that early evening was his wife. Maude, as she cleaned mud and dirt off scraps of material or pottery shards or found a coin that had fallen from a purse eighteen centuries before, refused to humour him with support for the overwhelming attention given to Moscow matters. She would not permit it as a third person, a decent sized elephant, in her bedroom, her kitchen, her lounge. Had been that way since the first day of their married lives: she on a dig at Herculaneum and him wandering around the drugs fortress of the Scampia development and testing his skills and his nerves, then meeting for dinner, late, in their Naples hotel – and it had rained every day for the week. Back home, she had her own friends on her own terms. Yes, two boys born to them, and for the births of both he had been away, and a conversation – repeated to Knacker – was “Don’t know how you put up with him, Maude, I wouldn’t – ever considered divorcing him?” She had answered, a reliable source repeated, “Considered divorce? No, never. Murder? Yes, often.” But those in the road in the south London suburb of New Malden who had no idea that he was anything other than a common-or-garden civil servant, Pensions or Agriculture and Food, would have made erroneous judgements, not recognising the hidden sinews of the marriage, that had lasted – so far – twenty-eight years. His work was not talked of, by him, by her, by their sons, now both of student age. She came here, to the ruined wall, as often as she was able, and he would call by when he could hitch a lift or find an opportunity. The pilot had made a deviation, dropped down at Newcastle, and a taxi had taken him close to the Mithras temple. It was a good place for clear thinking.
The tails of the cattle flicked in irritation and Knacker reckoned the flies were increasingly active. Maude would come for him when her digging day was over, not a moment before, and till then he must share the burden of the insects with the herd. He imagined the anxieties of the commander of the cohort based here, with responsibility for this segment of the empire’s defences. Imagined his arrogance, and his trappings of power, and the disciplined stamp of the troops on the parade ground, and imagined also the private moments of anxiety. Knacker wore a leather bag across his shoulder, contents delivered by courier to the police office at Newcastle’s airport, and in it were aerial pictures and ground-level images of the fence and the cameras and the ploughed strip on the border that now concerned him. There would be a commander there, back from the frontier, and unaware of a looming threat… He, Knacker, was not that man, did not have a cohort to lead, did not sit behind defences, did not rely on an untested link.
His eyes were on the far distance, an area shielded in the darkness of the spreading evening. There, hidden from sight but clear in his mind, was the man who Knacker wished most to identify with – perhaps dressed in skins, perhaps naked except for a colouring of blue woad paint, perhaps gaunt and hairy, perhaps as anonymous 1800 years before as a contemporary intelligence officer who sat and chewed his thoughts among the cows. Of course, there would have been, out there among the Caledonian and Brigantes tribes, an intelligence officer of proven worth, or what was the Wall for? Maybe the same damned flies had come for this man as now circled Knacker. He thought of this man, watching for weakness, as his friend, and… A horn blasted behind him. Some of the cattle stood and peered towards the road. Knacker pushed himself upright, would not want to keep her waiting. He walked across the field but thought more of his ‘friend’ than his wife, and the car door was opened for him.
“Hi, how you doing? We’ve had a great day, good finds… And you, your day?”
“Just an average one, not a special one.”
And Alice by now would have touched down on an airstrip in Jordan, and Fee would be escorting their volunteered man on the next stage of a treadmill journey, and much was in place and much needed to be done. He kissed his wife’s cheek and she drove him away; the painted man would have to wait for further consideration. A decent kiss and cheerful, mirroring how he felt as the mission gathered pace. Would soon be past the point of turning back: always a good moment.
At the gate and after a wave to the guards, and a wink and a nod in return, Arthur Jennings, in his wheelchair, was helped into a taxi by a member of the D-G’s staff. He thought it had been a satisfactory meeting, longer than he’d expected and with a sandwich break. Away in the traffic and crossing the bridge, he phoned his protégé.
“Went well, Knacker, in fact I would call it quite satisfactory. I appreciate you are already on course, but the bonus is that you are now sanctioned. Years have not dimmed or withered his dislike of the Kremlin crowd, his contempt for them and their coterie of poisoners. I have to emphasise that he was anxious for the health and the safety of our man, and queried our assessment of risk. I said those were matters taken very seriously. May I rot in hell, but I skated over that, as if going in and out of that place was on a par with taking a train to and from Bognor for the day… Of course, goes without saying, he’ll be beyond reach and should he miss the schedules then he must rely on his own wits if he’s to make it out. His nerve has to hold. But, needs must, he’s the only card we have to bring to the table. You’ll have evaluated that.”
And he rang off. He pocketed his phone and felt alone, rather cold, knew he was prominent in the conspiracy involving the man they’d be using. Had seen a photograph of him. A decent sort of face, which wouldn’t help him where he was heading.
She shot better than Gaz did.
No rifles or pistols on his island that he knew of. Gaz was rusty and this was a Walther PPK, a close-quarters handgun, too lightweight for the military.
Heavily built for a woman of her agility, Fee dominated with her presence on the floodlit range. They had given a ride on the Cessna to air force people, technicians muttering electronics and frequencies and degrees of gibberish that were a foreign language to Gaz. Had over flown the Orkneys, and might have gone over his home but he had not looked out, nor looked over the smaller island of Papa Westray for her place, nor for the ancient settlement site where she had loved him and which had been a bagful of treasured moments. Then out over the sea again until the Shetlands were reached. Gone across the infrastructure of the wilting oil industry and surplus rigs in postcard-beautiful bays. A loop across the isolated light on Muckle Flugga and land on his right and the ocean going away to a far horizon on his left, and passed the big golf ball radar domes perched on a summit, then a turn and a fast descent, and another bay that faced out to the North Sea and a single scarlet-painted trawler tied up at a pier. They had landed as the afternoon gave space to evening. It was not his way to query what happened, and she had slept on the flight, and there was nothing that he needed to know that was worth waking her for.
The shooting was at twenty-five paces, not stationary targets, but silhouette figures coming from right to left and vice versa, and it was aimed shooting or fast response and suppressive, and through a whole magazine.
At the airfield, they were met by a military Land Rover. Now he was given information, of no interest to him. They were on Unst, they had been over the sophisticated early warning system of RAF Saxa Vord. In their wisdom, confident in the ending of the Cold War, Whitehall warriors had shut the place down and flogged off the RAF’s personnel accommodation. The officers’ mess was now a bunk-house. At considerable cost, the base had been dragged back on line. There was an old range, and an instructor had issued weapons to them both.