His wife, Maude, from her dig site guest house. Was he all right?
“Fine, thank you.”
A pause, and he wondered if a crisis beckoned, or whether she had drunk too much at dinner with her fellow excavators: well, actually something relevant to him, and might have seemed moderately tipsy.
“Very good, what’s that?”
He was one of the frumentarii and they were originally collectors of the wheat stocks needed to feed the army.
“Yes, Maude. Except that we are not short of wheat where I am. Anything else?”
She continued and, rare for her, there was an edge of mischief in her voice. On the dig that day, the last, they had found part of a gravestone of such a wheat collector, and there had been considerable excitement. The wheat collectors, travelling far and wide, were the most sophisticated of Rome’s intelligence gatherers.
“Pleased to hear it. Quite late here. Safe journey tomorrow.”
But told there was more. Another group on the dig had found layers of ash, carbonised material, undisturbed for nineteen centuries, and the professor with them had claimed this as proof that the barbarians had broken the wall, had pulverised the defences of a fort, would have swarmed across it, would have slaughtered the legion troopers and their families, and the only survivors would have been taken north, into the dark lands, as slaves. Was that not interesting?
“Tell me, Maude.”
She told him. As she explained it, all the might of Rome could be bested when the tribesmen had come, no doubt in secrecy but with detailed planning, had identified a flaw in the Wall, had attacked, had destroyed, had won.
He was cheered. He thought Murphy’s Law a relegated negative. God, and if he had owned a pot of woad paint he might just have stripped off and daubed himself… He imagined the panic and anger that would have spread along the length of the Wall when it was obvious that the savages had come across, done their will, had gone home. She should not have telephoned, that was a rule of their lives, but love and respect existed between them, was not exhausted, and she had cheered him. “Thank you, Maude, grateful.”
He turned the lights off, had almost a cheerful step as he went towards the room allocated him, just a single bed. They were in the main bedroom, in the double, undressed and rather sweetly in each other’s arms, both snoring. He would have liked to have woken them, Fee and Alice, and told them of the wheat collector, bivouacked on Lenin Prospekt, and of the wily old beggar in his paint and skins, operating from a safe house across the fence, who had just won the day, or the night. He tiptoed past their door.
It was the hallmark of Knacker that he never doubted his instinct, never stopped in mid-stride to tell himself, ‘too damned dangerous, too much of a risk, better to back off’. Had not, would not. Had he ever questioned those instincts, subjected them to forensic examination, then the chances were high he would have ended up as a snapped reed. Would sleep well, and on the dressing-table was the silver coin that Fee had cleaned, quite bright and easy to see.
The sofa was free.
Gaz sat on it. He thought the old man, Timofey’s father, had rolled off and was now asleep on the floor, half-wrapped in a threadbare blanket. Only one side light was switched on, a bare bulb. It was a dismal room and no effort had been made to smarten or tidy it. It had no mementoes, no little pieces of china or pottery that might have reminded the occupants of ‘good times’, however far back. The father puffed and gurgled and spittle ringed his mouth. He held an empty bottle by the neck and the second bottle, unopened, stood on a kitchen unit at the far side of the room, opposite the door. He imagined Aggie here… she would have come in and sworn, then would have looked for a bucket and cloths and any sort of disinfectant, would have rolled up her sleeves and hitched up her skirt, would have started at the sink and the cooker and steadily worked her way through the whole apartment. Then, while it dried she would have carted the furniture – what there was of it – out of the door and on to the landing. Would have tipped it item by item down the flights of stairs, then out into the open, would have piled it high. She would, Gaz knew it, if allowed, have turned his own home into a place for both of them, not just a place to sleep, with clothes heaped on the floor and a sink full of unwashed plates. Aggie had tried to put pride back into his life. She would not have known why, only that he was short of it. The smell around him was of dirt, sweat and staleness, and the place was quiet and the father stayed asleep and the kids had not returned.
Where would they go in Murmansk, in the small hours of the night, to find a pistol? No idea… Would not be bought from the deeper underworld because they would have asked him for cash. Exhaustion crawled over him. Needed to eat but would not have dared open the small fridge and look inside… Nodded, leaden-eyed, and sank back into the uneven surface of the sofa cushions, and slept. He slept well. Needed to. A creed of the unit was always to grab sleep where it was available.
He felt oddly warm. And drifted… and heard feet slithering on the floor, and the bottle toppling, and the crack of a breaking plastic seal, and heard the hiss of the man relieving himself in the sink. Felt a hand on his shoulder and the bottle touch his face, and Gaz thought that it was not his place to fight, to protest. He was the interloper. He slid off the sofa.
His place was taken. The springs of the sofa sang as the man slumped. The bottle might have the top back on or it might not. And the alcohol might have drained into the fabric and padding of the furniture or it might not. Not Gaz’s business… The man had an account in a Channel Islands bank, one of those discreet buildings back from the esplanade lining the harbour. The account accumulated cash, could have bought a decent flat down near the Prospekt, or a fine cabin across the frontier in Norway. He would never get to draw from it. Best he could hope for was an annual printout that displayed for a half-minute on a mobile phone screen, then vanished. The man had no international passport and his opportunity to get to the Channel Islands was minimal… This was the man who had gone to the headquarters building on the Prospekt. To what purpose? To play the tout and the snitch, and to denounce… He forgot about sleep.
On the hard floor, Gaz reflected. The man was not his enemy. He had no right to blame him, let alone harm him. A degree of guilt seeped into him. And uncertainties. He could remember so clearly how it had been in the village below him, and he wondered about his duty, how far it should take him… Very soon, he expected to see the officer and to have a pistol in his hand, loaded…
Delta Alpha Sierra, the eleventh hour
The light always went fast there.
Dusk becoming night, hastened along by the low rain clouds that the wind blustered. The short horizon darkened. In front of Gaz, homes still burned, shadows flickered, but the smoke aggravated what light was left. He knew how it would be…
…would have sent two vehicles, rough terrain types and armour-plated at the sides, big beasts. A driver and a navigator in the front, though he would have a general purpose machine-gun on a mounting in front of him, and behind them would be the guy with ready access, down by his feet, to an anti-tank missile and the .50 calibre weapon. They would be in darkness and, night-vision goggles to guide them, and would have to reach a set of given coordinates. Would not want to hang around and would not know if they were within seconds of being blasted and an ambush sprung. Would be hoping, fervently and with expletives to amplify it, that the boys would be there, waiting and ready to go. Once they had the boys, they’d burn rubber. The name of the game was exfiltration, never straightforward, depending on cool heads, and nerve. Worst was having to hang about because one of the guys was late to the pick-up: when he showed, a late guy would get a bollocking, and singing an aria of excuses didn’t gain sympathy. How it would be…