“And you have a target?”
“We do.”
“My knowledge of Russians – they are warm, they are generous, they are loyal in friendship, except for one fraternity.”
“They are used to being ruled. Serfs and aristocracy. They are docile. A small minority has a grip on authority.”
“And that is where your target exists, the contemporary aristocracy?”
“In the heart of it.”
“An important man, with status?”
“Not with status but a part of the apparatus. On the lower rungs of the élite. He is a target because of what happened thousands of miles from here, and when he is taken down then I gain advantage, an advantage worth chasing.”
“The man you sent… I was not able to form an opinion of him.”
“Unlikely you would: calm, responsible, quiet. Probably quite dull. No intellect but that is not required of him. Ordinary.”
“What do you look for when you search for such a man?”
“A sense of duty, but more than that. Dull and ordinary, yes. You point him in the right direction, tell him what is wanted, give him a shove and off he goes. That sort of man. Not complicated by moralities and ethics. A bit of obligation pushes him forward. Actually, this one rather needs me to regain lost pride, was on a downhill run till I showed up.”
“Manipulated?”
“Your word, not mine. Offered an opportunity when he was on the floor, had one of those bloody syndromes. Needed his self-respect burnished.”
“This ‘ordinary’ man had little chance to decline whatever you asked of him. I am sure there is no connection but on the police radio in Murmansk city there are reports of a police officer being assaulted and his personal firearm stolen from him. Any connection? But no report of a killing…”
Silence fell on them as if enough confidences, or too many, had been exchanged. Always the same, when the best laid plans were in place, the waiting. All now rested in the hands of an ‘ordinary’ man.
“I hope you have not forgotten, Gaz,” Knacker said to himself, “what he did. I hope you have nailed him. No reports of a body because it’s plastic wrapped and hidden and will not be found before you are clear of that place. You should now be sailing homewards, and I’ll meet you with a glass, bubbling furiously. Of course you won’t have forgotten what he did.”
Delta Alpha Sierra, the thirteenth hour
Gaz had resumed his hold on her arm. Occasionally, she whimpered.
She had told him, all that she had ever said to him, that one of those taken from the huddle of women was her sister. The rain seemed to have eased. Digging had started. The charred houses had been looted for tools. Gaz watched the officer.
The activity was at the football pitch. There had been little grass there and it was flat enough and there seemed a good depth of soil. They dug with spades and shovels and pickaxes and forks. Their commander leaned against a truck, and smoked. Made no contribution. The officer was growing impatient, striding along the line of Iranian militiamen, giving his orders and waving his arms in theatrical exasperation because the pit was not being excavated as fast as he wanted. It was obvious to Gaz that the officer would have had no authority over the IRGC men, would have been there as liaison only. The goons with the officer stayed back. Twice the officer turned and seemed to yell at them, perhaps demanded they put down their own weapons and go and find themselves tools and join the digging frenzy, but was ignored. Some of the perimeter men were called down from the higher ground around the village and from its recreation area and were sent to gather the bodies of those who had been shot, had been hanged, bayoneted. Gaz counted four who were brought from inside the smouldering buildings, rigid, scorched from the fire. Some of the men held handkerchiefs over their faces as they scratched at the ground. The NCOs were blistering the men for their poor work rate, and coming behind them was the Russian, and once he aimed a kick in the direction of a trooper who had dropped his spade, and held a rag in two hands over his face.
Gaz supposed it always played out in this way. A frenzy of killing and destruction and then – before the eagles and vultures came to feast – an attempt to hide what had been done. Not that there was, in Syria, any court before which those responsible for the atrocity might be brought… no panel of judges who would look down into the dock and face the Iranian commander of the IRGC unit, or his Russian colleague who had killed and now helped organise the burial of the evidence. Nor would any tribunal in western Europe or in the United Nations ever get to determine the guilt of those men. But they would have needed to conceal what they had done, and their anger at being fired on by reckless teenagers many hours before would have slid into the mud, and they would have been cold, and sodden and hungry, wanting to be gone from the place. But the dead – the evidence – could not be left to lie in the slackening rain, the dying wind ruffling their garments. The scavenger birds would come in the morning, but the rats would probably have already crept close and sniffed, coming as near as they dared. The pit grew in length and in depth. Some of the bodies were dragged by their hair, some by their clothing, some by a leg. The dead had no dignity, which would not have mattered to them, but he thought the girl would feel an agony. She would have known every one of them, and her sister was among them.
Somewhere behind him, to the north-east, two vehicles protected with steel plate and heavily armed would have stopped. They would have been miles back from the village and from the pick-up. It would have started as ‘You got Gaz?’ and ‘No, we got Arnie and we got Sam.’ ‘Did you not see Gaz?’ ‘Reckoned you had him.’ ‘Didn’t.’ ‘Nor us, we don’t have him.’ Then there would be a volley of oaths that would be spirited away on the wind, and short seconds of contemplation and a coming together of the relief party and of Gaz’s muckers, Arnie and Sam, and a realisation that they had pulled out and left behind one of their number, alone in that fuck-awful place. Arnie and Sam had had different viewpoints and had covered the road leading up from the south and would have heard shooting and would have seen the glow of fires but would only have known the extent of the atrocity from the texts that Gaz had sent. Would have realised he was grandstanding, could not exit a covert location in daylight, but it was night now, no sight of a star or anything of the moon, and it was safe to assume he’d have bugged out… knew they were coming, knew the rendezvous point, but had not reached it. What to do? It would have exercised them, and the messages were going back to the FOB and a spate of questioning that had no answers. Why was Gaz not with them? Who the fuck knew why?
He held the girl. Ant-like activity wriggled below him.
Gaz’s error. His mistake. Was not supposed to make a mistake. Mistakes ended with someone killed. One militiaman had been on the slope, sixty or seventy paces below them, and Gaz had lost sight of and interest in him. The last flare of flames in a building must have ignited a gas cylinder, used for heating a bread oven or making hot water… it exploded. A sheet of flame flew high towards the cloud base, brighter than the sheets of the earlier lightning. It lit the village and the pit being filled with cadavers, and the men who dug, and the strut of the officer, and illuminated the young militiaman on the slope who was hunched down and would have hoped his own commander and his NCOs had not noted his absence from the work fatigue. The country boy who was unwilling to dig a mass grave, and who was now shown up as a part of the tableau as if it were midday. With the thunderclap of the detonation and the brightness of the light, the goats’ final inhibition died. They broke and fled. Scattered to all points, bleating and screaming, and the dogs went after them.