peace. It was a story his children loved. He saw the sad way Naghmeh watched him, sitting in her chair with her mother beside her, her eyes never off him. There had once been a girl, in Budapest where he had studied, who had terrified him with her openness. Memories of her and of that time reared more often now that he could only watch his wife’s growing fragility. He would do what he could – he would fight, bluster and argue – for her, but he had no faith in the miracle required when they travelled.
It was ‘interdiction’. Badger had heard the word spoken twice.
The evening session had been given to the Friend. The Israeli had talked of the al-Quds Brigade, its place in the ranks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, its influence in Gaza and south Lebanon, its authority throughout Iran, the discipline, commitment and elitism of its members. He had talked like an academic, a schoolmaster, and had not used the rhetoric of an enemy combatant. It was relevant, hugely so, because the home of the target was under the protection of both the Border Guards and the al-Quds crowd. They lived beside the small garrison barracks because his wife, Naghmeh, was influential on a steering committee dedicated to mine clearance along the frontier. Her work would suffer if she was shut away in a guarded compound far from the ground where the personnel and tank mines had been laid, where children and adults died, or were mutilated, as regularly as once a week. He talked well, was interesting, and did not demean his enemy: he spoke of him with dislike but not contempt, vilified his cruelty, admired his commitment and gave respect. And if they, whatever organisation the Friend represented, knew so much, why did they not themselves provide surveillance expertise?
Badger had been to a moderate-performing school on the outskirts of Reading and had left with qualifications only slightly better than mediocre. He had been idle and unmotivated, had not gone to university. Lack of formal education did not make him a fool. Why did not the Friend’s crowd do it themselves? Simple. They would have wanted a broad church, a coalition of the willing: they were akin to bookmakers who laid off the risk of financial calamity by slicing up big wagers. It had been a good talk. Then supper, no alcohol: a meal that must have chilled in the kitchens because it was hardly edible. It was brought in by the house owner – the grandfather of a dead soldier – and left on a sideboard. Most had not finished their plate of the main dish – stringly beef, boiled vegetables and heavy gravy. Some had toyed and the Boss hadn’t tried, but Badger had done well. He wasn’t fussy about his food. He’d heard little hisses of dissatisfaction from Foxy. While they ate, the Cousin had returned to the marshes, and the Major to the sophistication of the bomb-maker. Later the Boss had led them back to the lounge and the fire had been made up. Badger had done what he was good at, had sat, listened and watched. Twice he had heard the word ‘interdiction’.
The Major had said to the Friend,’… care about passionately is interdiction. I used to lie awake at night, at the Basra Palace, dreaming of it. Better than a wet one. What needs to be done and.. .’ The Friend had nodded in fierce agreement.
The Cousin had said to the Boss, ‘… every time it has to be interdiction so the mother-fuckers get the message…’ And the Boss had sagely inclined his head.
It was a word beyond Badger’s vocabulary.
Later, when Foxy talked to the Cousin about heat exhaustion when wearing gillie suits in the temperatures of the marshes, Badger had sidled towards the Boss, and asked what ‘interdiction’ was.
The Boss had said he thought it had stopped raining, and he wanted fresh air and the wind on his face.
They were outside, had taken faded old coats from hooks by the door. The wind had come on as a gale – there might have been hail in it – the seas crashed on the rocks, and he could make out the shape of a sheep flock huddled at an angle in the fence.
The hand pointed to the outline, indistinct, of the ruined castle keep. ‘You know, Badger, there’s history here and violent history at that. That place was the seat of clan mafia, gangsters and thugs, and they’d been there since the fourteenth century. There was a banqueting hall inside and, sunk in the floor of an annex, a dungeon that had a water level of three metres. There was a round stone in the centre that topped the surface. A prisoner consigned there had to sit on the stone and pray he didn’t fall asleep after two days or five. He might stay awake for a week, but it was inevitable that he’d drown. I fancy they wouldn’t have screamed, the victims, or begged. They wouldn’t have given the bastard up above that satisfaction… A serious place, and damn-all to do with this operation.’
‘Yes, Boss.’ Badger wanted to trust, to believe. ‘What is interdiction?’
A pause. Badger couldn’t see the Boss’s face, and couldn’t imagine why he had been brought outside to shiver.
The answer came. ‘Latin stuff – something about hitting communication lines in a military context. But I think you’re asking, Badger, what this plan means for our target, and what your role in this is leading up to. Am I about right there? A very fair question and one that deserves answering.’
‘What it’s about, yes.’
‘I’m being very frank, Badger, and probably going past my remit. But where you’re going and what you’re doing entitles you to total honesty. We hope to track Rashid Armajan to a place where we can approach him. We can’t do it where he is.’
‘Have I been naive, Boss?’
‘Not at all. With your help, Badger, we get up close. That’s an approach. You understand?’
They’d bung him, cart him to a safe-house and turn him. The Engineer would sing. ‘I understand. Thank you.’
‘That was indiscreet, and I’d get my wrist slapped. It’s time to get back inside, and tomorrow’s a hell of a day. What a dreadful wind.’
‘You did absolutely right, Mr Gibbons.’ He and the Major were in the hall, out of earshot.
‘An untruth, but justified. He seemed to swallow “approach”. ’
The Major murmured in his ear, ‘He’s a young man, hasn’t been where killing and mayhem are. Maybe he’s good at his job, but he’s not hardened in the way the older man is. He’s going to be staring through a ’scope and binoculars at a target and he’ll bond with him after a fashion. They all do. He’ll get caught up in the trivia of the target’s life, and the medical condition of the wife. There are kids, aren’t there? He’ll see them. He’ll get to be, by proxy, a part of that family… at home, at his work. He’s looking at a man who’ll be arrested and sent to gaol. We’re talking ‘interdiction’, zapping the bastard. Our Badger might not cope too well with that. You did right.’
‘Which was why I did it. Serious business, killing a chap, don’t you know.’ A smile flickered at Gibbons’s mouth.
Some days it was hard for him to remember his name. That day, his identity hovered between Gabbi who worked, occasionally, as an investigator into tax avoidance from an office near the Ministry of Finance, and Zak, and Yitzak, which was how the sailors on a freighter had known him, as well as the embassy people who had seen him out of the airport at Catania, in Sicily. He had many names. In the last year he had used Amnon, Saul, Peter, David and Jakob, and had seemed to have many places of work. On occasions his hair was blond but it could also be jet black or mouse, and cut short or topped with a flowing wig. The debrief would be the next day, and he had gone home and would sleep until he was woken by the clatter of keys in the door, the tap of her stick and her footfall.
He had been met at a military airfield. No trumpets. He had come down the short steps of an executive twin-engine plane and the unit’s driver had had the front passenger door open. The woman, in an adjutant’s role, was on the apron, her hand out for the passport with his last, now discarded, name and the photograph with the light hair. She had also taken from him the unused float for incidental expenses on Malta, and a mobile phone that had been operational. She had returned his own and asked if he was well. He’d said he was, and she had told him at what time he was expected at the unit in the morning. He had been driven to their home in the suburb of Ramat Gan. He’d made one call on his own mobile and had left voicemail for Leah, telling her he was back.
In the apartment – one living room, one decent bedroom, a small bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen – he sprawled on the sofa with the bamboo frame. He had eaten yoghurt from the refrigerator and some cheese, and drunk juice. He might read later if he had slept and she hadn’t come back from her desk at the defence ministry in the Hakira district. On the stairs to his second-floor door he had met Solly Stein and his wife, Miriam. They would have noted he was back and would have known that the apartment had been empty for four days. They would have thought he had been away on Revenue business, chasing a fat-cat crook who was – perhaps – a politician. The apartment was always empty when he was abroad because Leah slept at her mother’s. Solly Stein did not know, never would, that the hand of their neighbour across the second-floor landing, the one Miriam held as they’d talked briefly – the weather, the price of milk – had the previous day fired two killing shots into the head of a Hezbollah
