“You will pay me?”
She played her role, thought she did it well. He took a wad of money from his hip pocket, tossed it at her and she caught it, grimaced, then threw it towards Timofey.
“And him?”
The prisoner had his back to her.
“Because he will name us, denounce us. His money.”
He turned. And blanched. Saw her, all of her, raked a gaze over her body, every angle of her. The officer whispered into Gaz’s ear. Gaz’s hand was in a pocket of his tunic and lifted out a smart crocodile-skin, wallet. Peeled out the bank notes, all high denomination. She came close and they were handed to her, and the wallet returned to his pocket. She took the money, as a whore would have done, and grinned.
“And he will denounce us?”
Gaz shook his head. For a moment, confusion knitted her forehead, and suddenly she was small and no longer pretty and her boldness was gone. She covered herself with one arm and scampered clumsily among the rocks for her clothing, and turned away from them while she dragged on her clothes, and it was hard to fasten clasps and buttons because her hands shook.
It was over, like a curtain had been drawn across a stage.
In a few minutes they would move. They had heard no sirens, no helicopters, no barking dogs or the shouts of a cordon closing.
Gaz hardly dared to consider that in a handful of hours he would be touching down on Westray, his island refuge. Never a smooth landing, always a series of lessening bumps and usually a skid, most often to the starboard side as the wind came off the west coast and ran clear across the makeshift strip. A hut there, with a closed but unlocked door, and a chance to call up the hotel and ask who was doing taxi duty that day… Wondered if they would ask, from the far end of the line, whether he had been far, anywhere nice, and had he had better weather than was hitting the island. Just a bit of business that had to be attended to. Would feel the wind on his face coming off the Atlantic, and would hear the gulls’ screams. He gazed out over the lake and saw reflections and felt the cold of the ground and the rock he sat on and the sunshine was brittle. Allowed himself the chance to dream because the last stage was almost on him, and on his prisoner.
The officer was silent. The kids were near him but not joining him, and the money would have been bulging the boy’s pocket. Gaz was surprised that the officer had murmured in his ear a promise that the kids would not be denounced by him, but it had been said. Only a few minutes. The memory was a sharp pain, not welcome.
He had been told that in his condition, which they took seriously, the Orkneys were ideal. An escape from stress, withdrawal from anxiety, an opportunity to regain his health and to prosper, a chance to make strong reliable friendships and to ‘make a difference’ – this was emphasised. Would he go back? He did not know, and the peace at the lakeside disturbed him.
Delta Alpha Sierra, the sixteenth hour
It ended quickly.
Shots were fired into the pits before they were filled with piled earth. No point in the shooting except that it might have reminded the militiamen that they had confronted dangerous enemies. The vehicles were manoeuvring and the headlights spinning through all directions, and sometimes they burned out the vision through his image intensifier lenses, and sometimes he saw men running. He saw the officer work in a frenzy at the second pit, the last bodies going in, and the last soil and dirt covering them, and then the officer was gesticulating to the personnel carrier drivers, and the Iranian commander stood with his hands on his hips and allowed the Russian to give instructions. The APCs were driven up and down over the pits and where they sank too deep in the loose earth, more soil shovelled up to level off the ground… and then chaos. One body had been forgotten, and the pits were already closed over. Gaz thought that it was from the first group to be executed, left beside a goalpost. Petrol was tipped on it and a match thrown. There was shouting from the NCOs, and the final men came running towards their vehicles.
Gaz had seen the pits and the burials and the work the officer undertook himself. Had watched because the alternative was to have turned his head away from the football pitch and the destroyed buildings of the village, and to concentrate on the gang, sprinting with the excitement of a pack in pursuit. He knew where she was, where the chase had ended. Knew also that she had broken clear of him and had run so that she would divert attention away from him. He saw the last one break from the place where they had caught her. Yearned for the opportunity to use his rifle, take aim and lock, get the range and density of any cross wind, line him up and squeeze… and the militiaman stopped, turned, and aimed down at the ground, into the rocks. Gaz thought he identified a piece of her clothing, and saw her bare leg. Aimed, fired, had a jam. Cleared the breach, aimed and fired, and again silence. And in frustration the boy hammered his weapon against a rock… but was not going to strip it down in the dark and clear it. He might have reached for a knife at his belt. If he was a country boy he would have thought little of taking a knife to the throat of a goat or a sheep. There were yelling for him. He went, and fast. If he were a country boy he’d have the sure-footedness of a youngster able to go at speed in near darkness. A crescendo of noise as the engines gained power. He saw a light come on at the back of a carrier and hands reached down to grab him, peals of laughter, and then the heavy noise as the armour-plated door clanged shut.
They left. He watched the headlights turn off the dirt track to her village and straightened on the metalled surface of the highway, fumes belched and they were gone. The lights faded and then disappeared. Night was allowed to settle, and it was quiet. And then a soft sound of whimpering. He knew where he would find her.
Gaz reverted to type. He did not crawl out of his cover, take off in leaps and bounds, charging down the slope and away to his left. He did what was drilled into him as the correct procedure when working behind an enemy’s lines. Folded the scrim net, stuffed it in the Bergen, packed what he had collected in tinfoil and the bottle. He could have gone down to the wall beside the highway and set about changing the batteries on the camera, testing them and seeing if the problem were with the internal electronics or was merely power outage. But he did not… Could have been that the cameras had failed because of the fierce rain getting inside the casing, and he worried that he turned his back on the problem – but he did. He went toward the sound of the dogs.
The smells around him were of burning – the buildings and their contents. But most powerful was that of the scorched flesh of the body that had been noticed only when the grave pits were already filled in. The dogs were his guide. He came to them and the soft growling snarl dissolved when they scented Gaz. They were reluctant to move but came on their stomachs. When he crouched down, and had the Bergen and his rifle and needed one hand to steady himself, he realised that his fingers had moved from the fur of their necks and on to taut skin. Seemed natural to Gaz, the first thing he did, was to find the hem of her skirt and lower it until it reached her sandals. He put his fingers on that place below her neck and on her shoulder where a pulse was felt. He knew she lived. He held her, and the dogs leaned against him. She started to push herself up, came half-way, hacked a cough, then let his arm take her weight and stood. What to say? Nothing to say. He owed his life to her, and did not at that time have the words to express what he thought of her.
The rain had stopped. Small mercy. She leaned heavily on him and he thought she would walk awkwardly and in pain because of what had been done to her. He assumed that she bled there and he would not have known how to ask her. Did not ask her anything and did not speak, and his tears had dried. She had none, and her breathing was steady. He had his phone out, hit the keys, not the text. Darkness cloaked him but he had the stars now, and a moon, and also his compass. She did not trip or stumble. He heard sounds around him that at first he could not identify, but the dogs showed him. Goats had materialised; not as many as at the start of the day. Some would have stampeded and were lost, some would have been shot for sport, but the dogs were alerted and brought the stragglers together.