“What do we have on the older one, what name, what reliability?”
Fee said, “It would have been his grandfather who was first recruited, then tucked up in bed, allowed to sleep. Handed down the contact to his son. We have no reason to imagine him to be other than reliable, solid and probably looking forward to some distant day when he can get on an Aeroflot going anywhere in the west, and then hightail into Guernsey and draw out his loot. Goes without saying that we are co-signatories and have to sanction any withdrawal. The young one is the grandson of the original asset. We assume him to be hard-working, a graduate, anxious to prosper his career. From what we know of them, they’re a typical Murmansk working-class family, except that grandfather’s own dad was an anti-aircraft gunner on a destroyer putting in to Murmansk during the Arctic convoy days, taking advantage of local generosity. The communications we have had from our courier have been necessarily bare, but nothing that indicates alarms. They have been told what is expected of them – where, when, they meet you. Where I come from, Gaz, south London, we’ve a sense of when it’s going down the pan. Seems good, right now, from what we know.”
“No disrespect to you, but when do I see Knacker?”
“Busy man, has a plateful.”
“Doubt he has matters to concern him that are more important than putting a man across the Russian frontier to spotlight a target.”
“You will see him before you go.”
“And the aim of recognising the target?”
“Running before walking is seldom the best way to progress, Gaz.”
In Syria, at the Forward Operating Base they worked from, the briefings were of extraordinary detail with sand models of locations and ample aerial photographs. Timings were down to minutes and behind every operation was a backup force of the Hereford people and their rough terrain vehicles and the Chinook crews who would go through hellish levels of weather to get to them. He had never felt alone there until the day he was marooned on the hill above the village. He would be alone here.
She said, “Don’t go all fragile on me, Gaz, just don’t. You go in and you do your recognition and you bug out when you have an idea of locations and of his work schedules, and we have the people to do what else is required. I advise, now, a bit of sleep if you can… What else have I to say?”
Gaz did his rueful look. “Something about not getting caught, something about consequences… and something about making a difference.”
“I won’t, but Knacker will, when he gets here.”
The coin was small and a dull colour, once clean silver, but now ingrained with centuries of mud, a denarius, minted six years before Hadrian’s death: it rattled feebly in Knacker’s trouser pocket when his fingers played with his loose change. He carried £4 and 98p, and this one coin was – Maude had told him – worth £60 in a reputable auction room, but she had nicked it. A present for him. Not many said that romance intruded deep into the lives of Knacker and his wife. A pizza eaten on a bench in the gardens beside the abbey in Hexham, and then bed in the guest house and her ‘tired’, and him glad of no interruption to his thoughts on the mission ahead… She had woken at two in the morning, had used a sharp elbow to rouse him, had grinned, had left the bed and rooted in her jeans and had produced what had seemed a scrap of dried dirt, had told him its history, and that it was an unforgiveable felony not to declare a find. Had turned off the light, had gone back to sleep. In the morning she had scrubbed it with his toothbrush, let him scrutinise the face of the Emperor, and the goddess, Pietas, making a sacrifice on the reverse side… A hurried breakfast, and she had dropped him off and gone back to her dig. He let his fingertips caress the surfaces of the coin. He had told her only that he would be away a few days, that it was an insertion initially – not where, not when, not why.
He was back on the Wall. Close to Mile Castle 35, sitting on the old stones that the 6th legion’s stonemasons would have shaped when the foundations were laid, and ahead of him was flattish moorland and cropped grazing and one isolated farmstead. They did sheep here, not cattle, and none was close to him. No flies to irritate or disturb his concentration… Out there by the horizon and beyond it would have been an intelligence officer who probed with his intellect this section of fortification and had a life’s intention to find the point of weakness. Knacker identified with him. Did not know if the man had had a name, only that Mile Castle 35 would have figured in this man’s analysis: dressed in cured skins in winter when snow and frost were on the ground, and near naked in summer with woad paint for decoration. Unshaven, tresses of hair in a tangled mess, and clever, capable of deceit, and painstaking, all of which Knacker reckoned he possessed in plenty. Nothing greatly had changed over the many centuries.
Today, on the fence to the north-west of Murmansk there would be a static line of border guards, and a closed strip with entry forbidden behind it, and military patrols, and also a small army of agents and assets, not easily identified, who watched and reported. The Romans, to counter the threat of infiltration or attack, used the exploratores who roamed on horseback, heavily armed, over the Wall and beyond the horizon. Had also the speculators who did the covert stuff and might pose as deserters, refugees, merchants… and would face a bad death if identified. Merchants were the best in Knacker’s opinion for that work. Brought grain, fetched precious cloth for the wives of the barbarians’ top men. It interested Knacker that from time far back men had practised those same arts of warfare, had realised their value, had wanted to put a man beyond reach of help. That day, and preparing to be launched, he had Gaz to play the part of one of the men that his predecessor, out beyond the mist and the vague edge where cloud and ground met, would have waved off.
Had that man, nineteen centuries before, set off with a light heart and a smile and a cheerful step? Unlikely. More likely barely coherent, his gut twisted in fear, his bowels loose, and death might be by beheading and it might be by the form of crucifixion popular at the time for setting an example. He turned the coin in his pocket. Then, and now, men could be bought and relied upon for the heavy lifting, and the one pushed off and sent towards the Wall would have been given, or promised, a tiny purse of these coins, the one that was in his trouser pocket. In this age Gaz was shown a link with a Guernsey bank set among narrow cobbled streets and with hanging baskets of petunias, and a man giving the spiel who seemed as trustworthy as any country church deacon. Money had bought them in the Province and Knacker could have listed the others from new Russia who had taken his shilling, his coinage. He had no duty of care. None of them at the Round Table believed in that baggage.
He sat on the stone and stared, and waited. There would be a blast on a horn and the sound would be carried to him on the light wind, and no rain was forecast for that day, and brightness was expected. Maude would be able to dig and scratch in peace. The driver from a Hexham taxi service would take him to the airport and the pilot would ferry him to the front line. He thought himself refreshed, at peace, and a few sheep stampeded away from him as he stood, stretched, coughed. It was not right that men such as himself, from the Round Table, should be burdened with matters of conscience; they should be allowed to get on with their work. He’d give their man a little encouragement talk, always thought it went down well… Always the Russians in Knacker’s life. Their borders and their defences and their exploratores and their speculators, and, in comparison with their resources, he was just an innocent abroad, a painted man. He did not know whether they knew of him, had a file for him.