“Sorry, my father, a drunk. Apologies to you. Going to get him home. Don’t know what shit he was giving you, wasting your valuable time. I look after him. Harmless, a fool. Sorry…”
He held his father under his armpits. His father croaked a few guttural words. “An agent was sent. Through the wire… A man came… It is an attack on FSB… Hear me, listen… Listen.”
Nobody did, and nobody could. Timofey held his father upright and had a hand across his father’s mouth.
Timofey said, “Tragic, isn’t it? A good man until the fucking booze got him. Sorry.”
Did not lard it; apology was already enough out of character in that city. He had a hold on the man and they went out into the traffic and the vehicles weaved round them. Might have, if he had not been watched, dumped his father in the path of any heavy lorry that was going too fast for the brakes to work well on a wet surface. He took him past the bus shelter and tried to see his man. Dragged him back to the side street and the Fiat, opened the door and threw him into the back, and said to Natacha that the ‘old bastard’ would have betrayed them and was too pissed to make it into FSB and do the snitch. Timofey went back to the street corner where he could see the guard and the waiting car and the two men lounging against it, and had a view of the bus-stop. He checked his watch. It was the time when offices emptied and bars filled, and men came out with the girls they hoped to shag that evening… and he only cared for the twin prizes: excitement and money, adrenaline rush and cash. And wondered which officer inside that building was of such importance to the foreigners that they sent a man to find him.
Delta Alpha Sierra, the eighth hour
She didn’t cry out loud and that surprised Gaz.
The hours had drifted on and some of the Iranian militia had lit fires to shelter them from the weather and had built little covers to keep the rain off the embers, and they heated food. None for the village women, or the children… the men were all gone, had been taken beyond Gaz’s vision, and he had heard shots and assumed more executions had taken place… from the staccato bursts of firing it had not been a fusillade of weapons on automatic, but aimed.
The goats had moved away from her and seemed to believe it possible to forage but the dogs huddled close. Gaz had released her wrist. He would have liked to have held his rifle in one hand and to have wrapped his other arm round her, give her what little comfort he could. But he did not move and still no words had passed between them and they held this silence. A search party moved in and out of buildings that were not in flames. He saw them, noted them, wondered whether her own home, where the thorn palisade was in which the goats were corralled at night, would be the next to be searched. His legs ached because he could not shift but he had training for it: for her it would have been worse. The text from the FOB told him that a Hereford team was on the way but would lie up until dark. The text also said that the Chinook would fly, regardless of weather, if the vehicles could not get close enough to pull him out, and Arnie and Sam had already moved back and were at the RV point… It was just him that was left, and he was the witness.
What happened next… important to remember every fucking thing that played out in front of him… Rare for Gaz to swear, and it always upset Betty Riley when he did. He had the binoculars on a group of the IRGC as they exited a building and could see that one of them carried – as a trophy – a fag-end. It was a filter-tipped fag-end. The commander was called for, and the Russian officer, and the goons who traipsed after him, sauntered across the dirt. Gaz understood. He didn’t smoke but others did. He did not bring cigarettes to the village as a trifling goodwill gesture, but plenty did. Probably would have been when one of the Hereford teams was visiting, doing some weapons training with the kids, lecturing on a few of the combat basics, and they’d leave cigarettes but not be as dumb as to leave a carton or a packet, just a few filter-tipped fags. Would not have been a pack of local Alhamra, red and gold, but more likely Bensons, brought in from Cyprus after a rest & recreation. It was examined. The fag-end was passed from the commander to the Russian officer and he looked closely at it, like he was some goddam detective. Gaz was not sure how a particular woman in the little group that was hemmed in by bayonet points was identified. One moment she was inside the laager the women made, and the next she had been hauled out and was brought to stand in front of the commander and the officer. She was questioned.
The girl in front of Gaz would have known what she said, exact words of the response, a lip reading from the girl would have given each syllable of the answer. Gaz could not hear and did not have the language but the contortion on the woman’s face told him enough. She would have been an important figure in the village community and her nightclothes hung sodden on her. The breath came faster from the girl’s mouth, hissed through her teeth and lips. The woman’s face was inches from the commander’s and the officer’s. The commander, the senior Iranian, slapped her face, did a double impact job using the outside of his hand for the first stroke and the palm for the second, and the woman shook, steadied, did not fall. There was a moment, huge in the binoculars, when they faced each other and her face was flushed red from the blow. She spat. Twice.
The first was at the commander. A bearded face, half of it hidden by his dark glasses in spite of the low cloud and the rain and the lessening light, but he was fast enough to twist away and the mess went past him. The second spit was at the Russian officer. He had not anticipated it. The spit caught him at the nose and in the eyes, and he reeled back as if punched, and in his anger he seemed to choke for breath.
Gaz heard and saw what followed.
A hand on a holster, the flap already loosed, and a weapon held, barely aimed, pointed in the direction of the woman, of her stomach. No hesitation, and the crash of the shot carried on the wind, and the girl in front of him winced as if she had taken the force of it. The officer had fired at her stomach. The woman rolled, staggered, and then lurched forward, was going down, but her arms stretched forward and the fingers of her right hand caught his cheek, one fingernail sticing down the flesh, through the stubble, and the line was immediate and clean cut. It was big in the binoculars. The officer kicked out at her and caught her shin and she fell to the ground in front of him. As Gaz saw it, the officer lost control. His hand went up and felt his cheek and the blood was already flowing and he looked down and saw it run in the palm of his hand.
He fired again. Kept firing. Fired into the inert body of the woman. No more twitches or spasms, her life was already gone. The officer fired until the magazine in the butt of the Makarov was emptied. Then he kicked her, then, in extreme anger, kicked her again. Gaz thought he might be sick but held it back in his lower throat. The girl stared ahead, never moved, did not even shake, and the dogs were close to her but the goats were roaming, which left her more exposed than when they were thick around her. What struck Gaz was the minders had not moved. Had not taken the empty pistol from the officer, nor had deflected the kicks he aimed at the body, nor had sought to calm him.
And it would be worse, Gaz thought. Dusk was still four hours away and still witnesses lived. He watched the officer and the blood dribbled on his face.
The computer was switched off. Anything private to him was sanitised. Lavrenti rose from his seat and the chair went back hard against the wall and marked the paint: little matter. He hooked the strap of his bag over his shoulder, took his pistol from the desk’s top drawer, put it in the bag. A quick look around him and his two-year stint inside the Arctic Circle was nearly done. They were waiting outside, the new major and the captain. He acknowledged them, the briefest and shallowest duck of his head, and neither offered a hand to him as a farewell gesture. Down the corridor. No voices calling out through half-open doors… ignored, like he was a triangle of yesterday’s pizza. He went down the stairs. Usually he alerted his minders that he was on his way but it had not seemed important, not this time. He had noticed a growing impertinence from them these last days. In the big hallway on the ground floor, a colonel waited to receive a guest. The colonel bossed the headquarters building and the outer doors swung open and Lavrenti noted the arrival of an official from the regional governor’s office, and the two men hugged. The colonel would have seen the departing Lavrenti, would have known his tour of duty was completed, but did not acknowledge him. He was about to leave and was fishing the lanyard off his neck that held his local accreditation, and a security man stood and waited for it, and his face was lit in admiration.