No chance for Gaz to ask advice… no officer to quiz, no senior guy back at the Forward Operating Base, no sergeant who had ‘been everywhere, done everything’ to challenge for a solution. His legs were locked and his breath came in gasps. He could drop the country boy but another twenty men came behind him and where the light was mounted was also a heavy machine-gun. There would be fleet-footed kids among the militiamen, tired and hungry and cold, but enlivened by this circus ring of excitement. Gaz was stiff, his gut ached with lack of food, and his mouth was dry.
He was about to speak… about to make some damn great hero speech. Waste of time, waste of effort, stuff about ‘going down fighting’. Did not speak, did not have to.
She was on her feet, brushing off his hand, a slow and considered movement. The light was full on her and the dogs hid behind her skirt.
In front of her, like a pack that had spotted prey, there was first a pause, and then the country boy was flicking at the belt of his trousers, and Gaz saw a grin playing on his face, and he would be the first to reach her.
She hitched her skirt and began to sprint down the hill and would have known it better than her hand, and chose a narrow track, made by her goats over the years. Her dogs galloped with her.
Had never had a conversation with her, only eye contact and long days of it since he had first come to the village. He had worked the duty roster with the people who did the tasking, made certain that he always went to the village to replace the batteries in the camera and to collect film. He saw her run and he saw the pack following her.
An English master at school had been besotted with Dickens: It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have… Had loved those words when the teacher had declaimed them: now understood them.
The searchlight stayed on her as she ran. He did not know her name, knew only that once a happiness had bounced in her eyes, and she was a peasant girl from a remote village who had bonded with a foreign soldier and had seen it as her duty to protect him. He blanched at the depth of her loyalty, and saw her fall. Maybe her skirt caught at her ankles and tripped her, maybe a stone on the track was enough to pitch her forward. She was down and he saw the dogs had gone to her. Saw that the country boy had his trousers already flapping at his knees and saw others snatching at buttons and belts, and lost sight of her because of the crush around her, and heard a dog yelp. He was a soldier, presumed strong, and he blubbered like a child. He saw the country boy come back through the crush, lifting his trousers and feeling for his belt, and others pushing closer and making an untidy queue… He wept until no tears were left.
From the trench, the officer watched, his goons behind him. A pistol out, perhaps another movement in the pit, and another shot fired… and he went back to his digging, and the last bodies were dumped, and he shovelled earth, and was alone. And darkness fell as the searchlight by the hatch of the personnel carrier was switched off.
“Who are you?”
“Does it matter?”
“What status do you have?”
“My own status, Major Volkov, that of a witness.”
“What name?”
“I don’t have to give you a name.”
“I wish to address you. What do I call you?”
“When I was a witness I was a corporal. You can call me that – Corporal.”
“But you have an officer with you, of course you do?”
“I do not answer any questions on the mission, Major.”
“You were there?”
“I told you that I was a witness.”
“Is that a witness to a satellite transmission? Or was there a drone up even in that weather? Perhaps you dream of what you think you saw.”
“A hillside south-west of the village. I had a hide in the lip of the hill. Was there from the time you reached the village. I saw the killings, the destruction of homes, I saw…”
“You were a reconnaissance soldier? A British army reconnaissance soldier? You were by the goats?”
“By the goats, and the girl.”
“We thought them formidable troops, the British reconnaissance unit. Why were we opponents? We had the same job, killing the terrorists. Why?”
“Above my grade, Major, those decisions.”
“Were you romancing the girl?”
“I was not.”
“Just a village girl, all she was.”
“As you say, just a village girl.”
“Only a girl. What happened, it is what soldiers do.”
“You have no need to tell me. Tell a judge. If it is your defence against a war crime that she was ‘just a village girl’ then you must say so. And there were many ‘just village mothers’ and ‘just village old men’ and ‘just village children’. Say that to the judge.”
“By now they will be looking for us. A big force will be out. A cordon…”
“I do not hear the helicopters, Major.”
“And I do not, Corporal.”
Through days, nights, weeks and months it had been welling in him. No one to tell. Only the loneliness of his own company to hear his whispers so that walls and doorways would not betray him. Here, he had only his gaoler to share his thoughts. His head rocked at the thought of this man, a pace behind him and holding a pistol, mannered and courteous and without anger, but with determination. He thought of the Iranians unlucky enough to be captured, taken alive, and thought of the long passageways in the Lubyanka and the men and women who ruled there, and how prisoners, some of them he had sent there, were treated: dehumanised, broken.
“Can I say something, a truth, Corporal?”
“You don’t bargain with me. Nothing is on the table for negotiation.”
“I have shame, Corporal. I live with it and it is more persistent than the malarial microbe. For that I can take medicine, which may work. For shame I cannot find the antidote. It is guilt… I make the excuse that it is just war, that war breeds crimes. Back there I said ‘just a village girl’. I live with it, Corporal, the guilt and the shame.”
“We keep going, Major. If you try to trick me then I will shoot you. Do not try to deceive me.”
“No one else. I have told no one else.”
He did not know if he was believed. Nor did he know whether it had been good to speak with this junior, whether the burden was lifted.
Timofey was in front, Natacha a pace behind.
They never disagreed on tactics. The officer could be taken into custody, or he might break free and run; either way he would be at the head of the queue to denounce them. The reckoning was that more money would be on offer if the officer was dead.
Timofey had said, “He stays alive and the FSB will be at our home. How do you run here, where do you go? Nowhere to run to… Imagine we have the money and we cross the border, and the money is useless, has no value. We have to do it.”
Natacha had said, “No future, no hope, not if he denounces us. I will do it.”
“We both do it.”
Like a bonding, like the blending of blood, both stopped the pursuit and crouched down, using their fingers to gouge through the lichen of the trail, to scrape and dig for stones, to prise them from the dirt. They were heavy stones, hardened from the eruptions of millennia before. Not as good a weapon as the pistol would have been, but the best available. It was not difficult to follow the trail because foot prints and broken twigs and crushed weeds were markers. She would have said that he had the stronger will for survival. He would have said that she had the better instinct for avoiding danger. Natacha thought that he would want to strike the first blow on the officer’s head. Timofey would have said that she would demand to hit first.