The Outsiders (27 page)

‘Where we going, Boss?’

‘Anywhere.’

‘You good for a slog?’

‘That’ll do me fine.’

They went past the Shell garage, and all the pumps were busy. They stopped on the pavement. It had been before her time that a Special Forces unit had shot down three Provos on the pavement. The Irish had been on a bomb-laying reconnaissance and the troopers did not know whether their targets were armed or unarmed or whether they had left a bomb in place. She did not voice her own view on the killings. Winnie Monks accepted that men and women on the ground had to make macro-second decisions, then have them forensically examined by outsiders who had not been there, had not seen it, knew fuck all but were happy to pass judgment. It was not often that a boss was criticised when a mission went pear-shaped. Usually the bottle-washers caught the flak. Winnie Monks didn’t allow that. She and Kenny went through an arch and down a tunnel in what had been the old defensive walls of the colony, across a square, where a few hardy tourists ate ice cream or fish and chips, and into Main Street. It was crowded, and Kenny said one of the last cruise ships of the season was in harbour.

‘They seem to be doing well here.’

‘They are, Boss.’

‘Tourism hasn’t fallen off?’

‘No, Boss, nor money-laundering. It’s awash with dirty cash. Thirty thousand population, Boss, but thirty-five thousand companies are registered here. It’s rotten, and nothing’s done.’

They went left, into the back-streets, and had to edge on to pavements to let cars by as they climbed.

She wheezed and cursed the cigarillos she smoked, a blister was coming and . . . Kenny told her that the tower of the Moors’ castle was fourteenth century. They went as far as a heavy cannon, newly painted. It was aimed across the harbour to the airport’s runway. She gazed away from the block where Dottie was in the camp, and the terminal building for the flights, and tilted her head so that she saw far beyond the community of La Linea – Kenny told her, ‘The town’s even worse than the rest of Spain, is so bankrupt, Boss, that they can’t pay the wages for the council workers’ – and she saw little clusters of white houses going east down the coast to the Costa del Sol.

She thought of them – Sparky, Snapper and his camera, and Loy. They were on her watch.

With big binoculars, she could have seen Marbella. The wind came sharp round the vertical cliff edge, wrecking her hair and flattening her skirt against her hips. She had to grasp the rail to steady herself. For fuck’s sake, Winnie, she told herself, get a grip.

She turned to Kenny and beckoned him back to her side. ‘Is that all they do in this place?’

‘Launder dirty money? Yes. And they do it very well.’

She said they’d go further, higher, the next day, and set off down the hill.

An inquest would apportion blame.

She was in the sand, had gone forward with the driver.

The driver, in Caro Watson’s opinion, was a jewel. He did skilled vehicle surveillance and had kept well back so that the dust plume was faint, distant, but always visible. It had died.

She had left Barry and David, tasked with her protection, flushed and angry, with the Six man, and gone with the driver. They had binoculars and a couple of brown rugs, suitable for a desert picnic but better as camouflage. They’d walked out to the east of the road, then cut back towards the north and headed for a group of low dunes.

The factors that could be laid against her at an inquest were that she had not brought a shortwave radio with her to communicate with the Six man’s vehicle; she had encouraged the driver to take them between two of the dunes, along a shallow valley of loose sand, and to the top of a bluff, so preventing a view of their rear. She had not reckoned that camels, big, with huge hoofs and weighed down with cargo, would move so silently. Her attention had been on the group sitting perhaps four hundred yards ahead of her and she was lying on her stomach. She had had no training in surveillance on that terrain. She had not seen the camels before the first was within spitting distance and coming from behind. Winnie Monks, the Boss, would have called it a ‘shambolic fucking cock-up’.

She had seen two boys with herds of goats in scrub to her right and far beyond the dunes, and a bird that might have been a vulture had circled them. She had seen the meeting that the Russian was at – the boy sat away from him and looked desolate, but she had not seen the caravan of camels that came behind them.

She had been on her stomach, her shoes were splayed out. Her forward weight was on her elbows, which supported the binoculars. The driver had a smaller pair and whispered to her how many were at the meeting, the types of their vehicles. She noted everything – had good French – and was engrossed in what she watched.

The camels came within twenty feet of her and her driver. Two men were with them. The men could not have missed them, but did not acknowledge them. They kept their eyeline straight ahead, and the camels did not break stride. They went past the bluff, then down the easy slope, the beasts kicking up the fine sand. The vehicles and the Major’s meeting were in their path. Caro and the driver had covered themselves with the brown rugs but Caro had fair hair, highlighted, and the scarf she had worn over it had slipped. She might as well have marked her position with a party balloon.

She could have killed the boy.

Perhaps the caravan was carrying a cargo of weapons, unloaded at Nouakchott’s docks, of medicines, banned chemicals or cocaine at any stage of refinement.

It moved at a good speed, and she watched it drift further away. She tilted her binoculars to focus on the boy. He picked up handfuls of sand, then let the grains run through his fingers. She owed him no loyalty. He was an agent. But she would curse herself if she lost him. And so would Winnie Monks if her carelessness, exposed at an inquest, had jeopardised what they did.

The camels reached the group. There were greetings. One of the two riders pointed behind him. She slid down the slope, dragging the driver with her.

They hurried, as best they could, through the dunes to their wheels.

The Major sat in the sand, and did the calculations. They were hard bargaining people, the traders of the western Sahara. The Gecko had told him the Romans had been here. He was cross-legged and hungry, his temper was at a short fuse. His warrant officer had slipped the poison into his ear, and his master sergeant watched the boy. The caravan had been with them for a few minutes while the two men drank some water. He was under a wide-spreading thorn tree that gave some shade but there was little wind. Because of what he had heard it was hard for him to concentrate on the figures. Twice, the Major had seemed about to push himself up and walk away.

Abruptly, a hand that was more of a claw snaked towards him. His own hand was grasped and the stump of his index finger examined. There was a low cackle. He thought the amputation gave him status and waved for his minders to come closer and show their own scars. The man who held his hand stank and his breath was foul, but not for a moment did the Major doubt his word. The cargoes would come into the dock or the wharf at Nouakchott and would be brought by lorry or pick-up into the desert to the north. The necessary numbers of camel caravans would take the goods and ferry them further north to an airstrip. But that was another deal for another day.

He had heard what Grigoriy, his warrant officer, had said. He would dispose of the problem when he was ready to deal with it.

Natan pushed himself up, stretched, then started to walk. He did not know when or where he had created the suspicion.

He went slowly away from the road towards the immediate horizon of wind-smoothed dunes. Where he had been, near to the road and close to the thorn tree, there had been stones, blades of coarse grass and rabbit droppings. His feet slid in the sand. He aimed for the highest point on the highest dune. He heard slithering behind him, and a grunted oath. He did not need to turn to identify Ruslan because he knew the whistle that came from the man’s throat.

The sun was high, and the temperature was close to a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes he sank to his knees and had to claw himself on. He thought the final move in the puzzle he posed them had been made by the two camel riders who had come to the group in the shade and had pointed back into the dunes. To see for himself was reckless, but he abandoned caution.

He had not known fear when the bullies had circled him at school or when they had kicked the football that was the head of the tailor’s dummy and one had boasted that it had once been a man’s head. He had seen what they had done in a town in southern Russia. A man tied to a chair, his face a mess of blood and bruising. The warrant officer and the master sergeant had stood over him, panting from what they had inflicted. He had gone to fetch a memory stick he had dropped – the master sergeant had picked it up but had not returned it. The Major had been on his phone at the front door, separated from what was being done in his name. Natan had seen it and run. He had told the Major he couldn’t find the master sergeant so couldn’t finish the piece of work on the memory stick.

He had never been part of them. He was like a machine, given tasks and often ignored. He brought with him his knowledge, which they could not match, of technology. He was expected to provide secure communications that no intelligence agency could hope to break into. His work had never been questioned. He could almost feel the punches and hear the accusation based on the whore’s word. The fear cramped his stomach. He remembered the girl in the embassy at Baku, the kindness in her eyes, and the bitch in Constanta. He could have screamed.

He reached the top. A vista stretched away.

He could not see into the far distance where the sand colour of the desert merged into the same sand colour of the skies hovering above the horizon. Ruslan was some fifty paces behind, hands on his hips, gasping for breath. He could see the thorn tree where they had met, and the vehicles. Beyond them was the disappearing line of camels. He looked to the front, and imagined the point towards which the herdsman had pointed. The wind had not yet obliterated the sand scrapes they had left. Two. He traced the prints into the valley between the smaller dunes, then down to the layer where loose sand was replaced by grit. He saw the circle that the wheels had made when the vehicle had headed back where it had come from. Natan shielded his eyes against the sun’s glare. He saw the dust tail, faint – going fainter.

Soon he would lose all contact with it and the woman. Could she not have brought guns and men, a force of soldiers or police? Should they not have taken him to a place of safety and shown him gratitude for what he had done? The cloud of dust thrown up by the back wheels of a vehicle slipped into the haze. He thought of the girl in the embassy, not the woman in the car.

His legs trembled and his chin was slack. The fear welled, and he started to go slowly down the slope. He often slid, and Ruslan was in front of him.

‘They’ll be fugitives, and they don’t deserve it.’

Posie answered, ‘Isn’t it possible that these people know best?’

Another argument followed the same tracks and repeated itself.

‘It’s illegal, without local co-operation. It’s house-breaking and they couldn’t care less about Geoff and Fran.’

‘Jonno, there’s nothing you can do about it.’

‘Which doesn’t make it right.’

‘For God’s sake, Jonno, when did you start out as the world’s conscience?’

‘It’ll kill the old people.’

‘You’re out of your depth.’

He had driven back from the shop, had carried the bags into the kitchen and dumped them on the table. He had done the calculation on the bill. He had ticked their items on the shopping list and had put their change on the receipt. Then he had thrown his and Posie’s things into the fridge and had shouted upstairs. Posie had gone outside and cleared the washing line. Then he’d grabbed her hand and marched her to the car. He had driven back towards the town.

Now they were walking on the Paseo Maritimo, the promenade.

‘I don’t roll over.’

‘Have you any idea, Jonno, how bloody priggish you sound?’

Her arms were folded hard against her chest. He couldn’t have held her hand if he’d wanted to and his own were deep in his jeans pockets. Beyond the marina walls there were fishing boats and a jet-skier. On a long breakwater three fishermen sat with their rods. Far along the coast there was a jutting landmass that he had told Posie was Gibraltar.

He said, ‘They should go somewhere else, not Geoff and Fran’s patch. It’s a dump, Posie, but it’s their home, and it won’t ever be the same again. Do you trust that cop with the camera? I don’t. At the end, he’ll be gone down the pub, celebrating. Geoff and Fran are wrecked.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

He didn’t know. He pondered on her question or she walked beside him. She didn’t prompt him. There was an
ordinary
pavement bordered by an
ordinary
kerb and an
ordinary
stretch of road with the usual stained surface. The place had come on him fast. He hadn’t intended to be there. It was different in daylight, without the throb of music. A man with a gun had crossed that road, tripped on that kerb, had missed a target approaching that pavement where a convertible had been parked. The pistol had been raised before the trip, and the man hadn’t noticed Jonno was there. No one had asked him:
So, what are you going to do?
He had done nothing. If there had been blood, screaming and death, he would have carried it to his grave. Lucky, Jonno, that the idiot had missed twice, and that his failure to do anything wouldn’t haunt him.