They talked the price of king crabs. The red king crab, with a body size up to eight inches across, three pairs of legs and one pair of claws – currently marketing at $26 a kilo – was classified as an invasive species and one which brought big profits. Fee had done the homework, had brought the Norwegian fishing boat scuttling across the North Sea to Unst in Shetland. The creature, ugly as sin and a delicacy, was in big demand in St Petersburg and Moscow: wanted in all the pricier restaurants in which the new rich flaunted their wealth. The usual top fishing ground was the Kola fiord leading down to Murmansk. Except that this was not a natural species for those waters and pollution was thought to have ravaged stocks this summer season. A plane from the south flew in to Murmansk most days to collect the wriggling brutes in their last throes of life, and went home empty. A hole in the market led to opportunistic advancement. Norwegian waters did not have a fleet of dirty naval carcases leaking oil, chemicals, even radiation poison. It had worked well and a hole was filled. Knacker and Fee sipped their juice. It was the sort of wheeze that Knacker liked… up their noses, pinching their bollocks. Doing them damage and them not aware of it. Knacker had seen his people off across some miserable border, and some came back and some did not, but the usual result was a paper of some significance going on to the desks of ‘customers’ in the selected Ministry offices north of the Thames, or across the Atlantic. The purchase of red king crabs in Kirkenes harbour had made a dent in the cash float that Fee had brought, and he would sign it off. Cheap at the price. He did not laugh out loud because this was only the beginning, most certainly not the end of the beginning, not while his boy – a reluctant hero – was on the move and heading for a rendezvous.
“Would you like to eat one of the bloody things tonight, Knacker?”
“Wouldn’t mind that. But spare me having to watch you pop it into boiling water while alive.”
Gaz paused by the tree. Used its dead trunk to shield him, the basics in avoiding ‘silhouette’, and listened. He heard the rain dripping off the leaves and branches of birches and pines, and heard the ripple of the wind above him, and the shrill call of small birds – and did not hear the cacophony of barking dogs, nor sirens, but might have heard the distant throb of a vehicle engine.
Almost laughable… Gary Baldwin, Gaz, a guy invalided out of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, certified as a sufferer from post traumatic stress disorder, an island recluse who scratched a living from handyman jobs, was the invader – a solitary one-man-band invader – of the country with the largest land mass of territory on the planet. He thought his incursion was so far unnoticed, but doubted that the quiet and serenity around him would last. He pressed on.
Old skills were resurrected. He moved at a loping pace and hugged cover and clung to the edges of the tree line and did not use the open spaces of heather and low scrub where he might have gone faster but would have left a more marked trail. He had never worked in similar terrain. The ground was either rock-hard with a flimsy layer of peat compost sitting on top of granite formations, or it was a bog and his boots went into liquid black mud, and the trees were dwarf height and dense where they had taken root.
He thought they had been at the border later than intended, and tried to make up time. He concentrated on each step in front of him. Where to let his weight land, how to lift a boot from the bog and not leave it sucked under, avoiding brittle branches… There might have been the sound of a jeep’s engine, but he would not have sworn it. He considered how he would be met, how greeted, how they would be. Responsibility for the pick-up, he assumed, would have been delivered into the hands of the original recruit’s grandson. Gaz knew little of Russia, and the sociology of life in the western sectors of the country, but understood there was an undercurrent of resentment from the young against the dictatorship, what a lecturer had called the culture of kleptocracy, and another guest speaker had described the country as a ‘mafia state’. The grandson would be young, idealistic, educated, and would be a free spirit – would think that he was doing something for the future of his family, his friends and his neighbours, for society. He had heard of the Pussy Riot group, and knew protestors were banged up in gaol, that elections were rigged, that dissent was not tolerated… Knew there had been no inquiry into the actions of a Russian officer on liaison duty with Iranian militia troops during an atrocity of which he was a witness. So, a kid who was prepared to help the agent of a foreign power was likely to be a boy with high principles, a total contrast to himself. Gaz did not champion human rights, equality issues. He had been working out of the Forward Operating Base in central Syria at the time of the last UK election and it would have been possible to use a postal vote for the constituency of North Herefordshire, where the barracks at Credenhill were sited, but he had not bothered. He expected that the boy sent to meet him would want to quiz him on politics and talk of persecution, and staying outside gaol… and again he concentrated because the lake was in front of him.
He went around the north side of the water. A fish jumped, broke the surface and clattered back and sent spray flying. The ripples spread wide. He no longer heard what he had thought might be a jeep’s engine. And found the animal track.
The Norwegian boys on the fishing boat had given him a crash course on the ground he’d face, and the wildlife. Might be a bear such as the one that might have broken the fence behind him, might be moose or reindeer, might be a small pack of wolves. He took the path. Had walked for an hour, gone more than two miles, and he thought he was late for the pick-up, went as fast as he dared, but trying to avoid leaving a trail of heavy boot prints. Thought he noted a shape far back among the trees in shadow, and turned fast, but registered nothing, and twice more. Was sure that something, or someone, kept pace with him and was on a parallel path, but never heard and never saw… Now heard a vehicle, a straining lorry engine. He quickened his pace.
It would be good to meet the contact… In Afghan and Syria they often went with a local man, might be a policeman and might be a collaborator. Was never supposed to be fully trusted, but all the guys and girls went overboard to make the man driving them into a friend. Would try to read him, and see if there was sincerity in his eyes or shiftiness. The driver could nudge the mission towards success, what some in the SRR even regarded as glory. Flip the coin, see its reverse face, and the man might be subject to a raft of pressures in Syria. Could be that his whole posture was counterfeit, or that his family were the bargaining chip and would be wasted without cooperation, could be that the opposition made a better offer. Could be that the driver would arrive at a pre-arranged roadblock, get out of the vehicle and walk over to his father, his cousin, his uncle, his wife’s family and deliver Gaz – never did know and always better to get a ride with the Hereford lot or a lift in a Chinook. He was hurrying, was late, reckoned the contact boy was anxious, afraid, and pacing, cursing.
Through the trees, Gaz saw timber lorries on a road and climbing an incline, then quiet, then came into a sad and disused picnic lay-by. As it had been described. Collapsed timber tables with benches – might have been damaged by the weather and might have been vandalised. A surface of chip stones was carpeted with vigorously growing weed. He crouched down, still inside the cover of the low trees. Saw layers of dumped plastic, bags and wrappers and cartons. Looked for a car, and looked for a boy.
Like a kick in the stomach. Before being pushed out of the regiment, he would have easily settled himself and hidden away, waited for a contact to show. The lay-by was empty and nobody walked in circles, smoking, checking a wrist-watch. Birds sang, and a hawk went over and screamed, and a few cars passed on the road that was mostly hidden. He waited for an engine to slow and then the growl of tyres on gravel at the start of the lay-by, and then the pick-up car to come into view. And waited. And wondered… five minutes gone, ten, fifteen… and cursed. Confidence fled. A car came into the lay-by. Gaz stood. Dumb of him to have allowed doubt. The engine was switched off, and a man, middle-aged, climbed out, stood with his back to Gaz, fiddled with his flies and peed at the matted grass in front of him, shook himself, wriggled his arse, fastened his trousers and was back in the car and starting the engine. The emptiness and the silence returned. Nothing to do but wait – and hope. Sensible, Gaz reckoned, to go through the back-up plan, but it seemed to him to be shot with holes.