When the buses came he would settle back and stare into the faces, but not be noticed himself, and he would play mind games. How would they respond, hooded, bound, beaten, videotaped with guns at their heads and knives at their throats as they parrot-spoke denunciations of state policy? His interpretation of how they would react, in circumstances of the greatest stress would govern the guidance he gave and the decisions he took.
He had no favourites. He was no more on the side of the pretty slim blonde girl with the denim mini-skirt who came off the bus with the Hamburg plates than he was on the side of the guy who walked behind her with a stick. All were equal. So, he was not summoned to the great offices of authority in the power centres of the world. He did not walk echoing corridors, was not brought into carpeted offices and offered sherry or Scotch, because their occupants did not know his name. He worked in dark corners, that were – except once – beyond the reach of long-lens cameras.
It was rumoured, though five years later it remained unconfirmed, that a photographer from a German news agency had snapped him on a street in Baghdad when he was with a Special Forces crowd. The photographer had been embedded with a marine unit or would otherwise have been hotel-bound. Rumour ran that the sunlight had nicked the glass of the Leica camera so he had seen its owner and strode up to him. He had half strangled the snapper when he pulled off the strap and broke the camera open by stamping on it, destroying maybe fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of equipment. He had taken out the memory stick and had chucked it into the middle of a wide sewer, then had gotten on with his work. The photographer had been told by a gofer alongside Lukas, from the Green Zone, that if he talked about the incident his safety could not be guaranteed. It was a rumour. In the work he did, his anonymity was precious, perhaps even more so than that of an elite bomb-disposal operative. If his face had been known to the enemy, with his reputation, he would have been a prime target, and his usefulness in the field minimised. And, which he had not admitted to another soul he had a rooted aversion to the limelight, almost shyness, disguised under brusque indifference.
He had no medals, but the people – ordinary, average, humble – coming off the bus of a Hamburg tour company, pretty and ugly, young and old, did not have medals. Most of those freed from the hell-holes, the bunkers where they squatted in excreta and urine, listening for footsteps and wondering if a weapon was loaded or a knife sharpened, would never know of Lukas’s existence. It was better that way. No handshakes at the end, if it had gone well, no hugging and kissing, no names and promises of cards on the anniversary. The only way.
So, his imagined friends queued in front of him to enter the museum, and one of his real friends sketched in crayon by the river, and several more cleaned cafe tables and swept floors – and all would be wondering if he would stroll by, spend some time, or whether he was gone, wherever and for whatever.
That morning he left his bench, went to the kiosk and bought a pistaccio ice-cream. It was his favourite. He thought about it when he was in places that didn’t do that flavour or any other. Some said he was a screwball and unhinged, others that folk should be goddam grateful the lunatic stayed on call and was never far from his phone.
When he had finished the ice-cream and wiped his mouth, he would head into the museum for the Legion of Honour, and the impeccable garden in the central courtyard with the fine red roses. It was where he went when he had tired of the mind games, and it was where heroes were. He did not see himself as heroic, and if a medal had been offered he would have refused it.
Many, meeting him for the first time, defined him as ‘that screwball’. A major in the Rangers had. It was Baqubah and they’d helicoptered in from Camp Liberty at the Balad air base between Baghdad and Samarra. There was a single-storey house, breeze blocks and tin roof, on the extreme edge of the place near fields, and the asset handled by Task Force 145 said it was where the hostage was – a Greek-born engineer and expert in electricity supply, and how many guys held him. Difficult to get close, and the usual thing would have been to do three or four days’ reconnaissance, learn the movements and do it from a distance. Lukas was at the command point, four or five klicks back, and was barely tolerated by the major who rated him – FBI background and all – as an unwelcome shoe-in. A forward covert observer would have been on a telescope, reported a jerk coming to the building cautiously and that he carried a canister of milk and a metre-wide roll of clear plastic sheeting. Only Lukas – in the command centre – had reacted. He had demanded – not asked or suggested but demanded – that the storm squad assault the building immediately. It had been agreed. Would have been Lukas’s damn near manic certainty that had won the day: an attack without sufficient preparation, without a model of the interior, and in the bright heat light of the middle of the day.
Twelve minutes after Lukas had made his demand the first men in the Ranger platoon hit the doors front and back, then the windows, and chucked in stun grenades and gas canisters, like it was Christmas and they were giving them away. They dragged out the Greek, and brought him back from the dead. The Greek said he would have been dead in five minutes, was shouting it because of what the grenades had done to his hearing and choking because of the gas. Then the major asked the man designated a ‘screwball’ how he’d known the attack had to go in without the necessary preparation. Lukas had said: ‘Because they took the plastic sheeting in.’ Would he explain? Lukas had said: ‘They always spread plastic sheeting out on the floor before they saw a guy’s head off with a serrated blade to keep the blood off it.’ There had been a camera, with a charged battery, mounted on a tripod. The major had been awarded another ribbon and his storm squad had commendations, and none of them had ever seen Lukas again. Maybe by now the major had made brigadier or even general, and maybe the Greek had a good position in power supply at the ministry in Athens… and Lukas wandered into the courtyard of the museum for heroes.
It was how he liked it, staying unknown but being on call.
Gerald Seymour
The Collaborator
6
He had been lucky. He told himself that luck had dictated that a lorry should spill its load on the M11 just north of Harlow, the northbound carriageway, and that a tailback of four miles should delay a family on a budget break to Rome while the rail service had sailed past unaffected. Eddie Deacon would have slept on a bench at the airport, Stansted, but instead found himself aboard a ‘cheap and cheerful’ flight going to Ciampino.
A rush to get himself on board, a chase down corridors and piers, and he had been the last on to the aircraft. He was not even in a seat before the doors were closed and it was taxiing. He told himself then that he was blessed.
He had not bought a book, and they didn’t do freebie newspapers with that airline. The child on his left ate chocolate messily and concentrated on a GameBoy, and the woman on his right was rigid with nerves – he reckoned he might have her hand in his lap, for comfort, when it came to landing. Eddie didn’t buy anything from the trolley and sat still, upright, stared ahead and made no contact, eye or physical, with the woman or the child. He thought he might just as well have pulled a pin and rolled a pineapple grenade into his parents’ living room: his father had been monosyllabic and breathing hard, but had coughed up the offer to look after his plastic bill, which was decent, but afterwards they would – together – have been in shock. He had switched off his mobile before catching the train to Stansted. He reckoned they would have tried half a dozen times to phone him, to try to dissuade him, to tell him he should go to the language school and request his job back. His parents, and all their friends, would never march out of regular paid employment without having another position to move to on the following Monday morning. So, the concept of what he had done left him vaguely light-headed. His mind danced.