It couldn’t last more than three or four days.
He met his wife, Catherine, in a coffee shop on Regent Street.
She told him what was in the bag. Two shirts, three pairs of underpants, four pairs of socks, and a new pair of pyjamas. Len Gibbons thanked her, awkward – he had been since they’d first clapped eyes on each other thirty- five or so years earlier.
He couldn’t tell her how it was going. She could ask him nothing about what kept him in London, or why he needed changes of clothing. He couldn’t tell her how long he would be there. She couldn’t ask when he would need replacements and whether he would need another suit brought up, heavy- or lightweight. Nothing to say about the garden because of the weather, and she hadn’t heard from either of the children, both students. The job ruled him, not that it had treated him well. Another woman, in her place, might have harboured doubts about her husband’s staying up in London and sharing an office with Sarah, the faithful assistant. She didn’t – had actually said so last year. Catherine Gibbons thought that, most days, he didn’t notice what his assistant wore, probably hadn’t registered what she, his wife, had dressed in. She was a widow to the Service. They sipped coffee and nibbled shortbread. He looked at his watch twice, and flushed when she caught him at it.
Naughty of her, but she challenged him: ‘Important, Len, is it?’
He surprised her, didn’t change the subject or sit in silence. ‘Important as anything over my desk in years, and we have no idea how it will end or where. We’ve people out at the end of a line and… Does that tell you anything?’
Her eyes were bright and mischievous: ‘Is it legal?’
He didn’t bat her away. ‘Most would say it’s illegal. No one would say it’s legal. A few would say they don’t bloody care… Thanks for coming up.’
She persisted: ‘Those people at the end of the line, do they know whether it’s legal or not?’
‘They know what they need to know. Yes, I appreciate your coming up.’
He left her, had already outstayed the time he should have been away from his phone. He knew Badger and Foxy had been dumped, would be moving forward towards their lie-up and soon be at the border – which was, sort of, a defining moment. Legal or illegal, he didn’t bloody care – as long as it stayed deniable. It would be a huge step, as big as anything he had handled since he was a ‘greenhorn’. Should it have been asked of them?
Bit bloody late, Len, to be worrying on that.
He was like a donkey refusing to go any further, its hoofs stuck into the mud. He thought of Foxy as a stubborn, thick-skinned ass, but the guy had stopped, and he was a hell of a weight – heavier when the momentum was lost. Badger swore softly. He tried to take the next step but couldn’t tug Foxy forward. He turned. His face was in the older man’s, whose lips moved.
There was more water ahead of them, but they had stopped on a small raised platform of mud and rotted vegetation. Foxy’s right trouser leg was caught on a strand of barbed wire. His lips kept moving, but Badger couldn’t hear what he was saying. He had been thinking about Alpha Juliet – and that their approach through the shallow water and scattered reed beds had been about the most feeble and unprofessional he had ever attempted.
Foxy’s lips were still moving. Badger bent and freed the trouser leg, tearing it. The lips moved.
‘If you’ve something to say, then say it.’
‘Nothing to say to you.’
‘Who to, then?’
‘Myself.’
‘How knackered you are, and unfit? Not up for it?’
‘Something you wouldn’t understand.’
‘Try me.’
Foxy said, ‘Try, smart-arse, “ Halae shomaa chetoreh? ” Answer, khoobam mersee. I asked how you are and you told me you’re well and thanked me… We’re at the border, and there’s something called the Golden Hour, which you wouldn’t know about. We’re going to stop and rest for an hour, Golden or not. Got me?’
‘We don’t have an hour.’
‘Then you can go on ahead, and when you find a friendly policeman you can say, “ Raah raa beman neshaan daheed mehmaan-khaaneh, otaaq baraayeh se shab ”, but it’s unlikely he’ll drop you off at a hotel where you can book a room for three nights. It’s – don’t curl your lip at me – Farsi, which is spoken from where we crossed that wire. It’s why I’m here: I speak the language. You’re just the fucking pack animal that helps me to get close to the target. I matter, you don’t. If I want to rest then-’
‘Then you rest.’
It was a quick movement. A twist of the shoulders, a half-swivel of the hip and a step to the side. Badger extricated himself from Foxy’s weight.
He took a pace forward, then another. He was over the wire – would have given a hell of a lot to have Ged alongside him, quiet, authoritative, more than able to take his share. He spoke not a word of that language, and neither did Ged. There was a channel in front, sliced through the reed banks, and open water beyond it. He thought it would be a kilometre and a half to where the cross had been on the GPS screen, their destination. He detested the man he was shackled with, but Badger had no Farsi. He took another half-dozen steps, stopped and heaved off the bergen. He tilted his knee, rested the pack on it, out of the water, and rummaged. He found the packaging, ripped out the plastic inflatable and fired the air canister. It hissed, grew and floated.
He worked the bergen onto his shoulders again, turned and beckoned to Foxy. The heat blistered up from the water, and the gillie suit was one more burden. He didn’t know how much more of his strength he could depend on – but he was not about to show weakness. Foxy came to him. Another gesture, for Foxy to get into the dinghy. The little craft – not much bigger than a child’s on a beach – bucked under his weight. Badger lifted off Foxy’s bergen and dumped it on the man’s lap. There was a length of nylon rope, which he slipped across his shoulder and pulled hard. He walked, skirting the channel’s edge. The water was level with his knees. They went by a collapsed watchtower, which would have been felled three decades before. Two of the wooden legs were out of the water and half of the platform. They rounded a sunken assault barge.
He asked, from side of mouth, ‘What’s the Golden Hour?’
‘You want to know?’
‘Wouldn’t have asked if-’
‘It’s army speak. It’s the time the back-up should take to reach an FOB – that’s a forward operating base – when it comes under sustained attack and risks being overrun. The men know that back-up will reach them within the hour, by land or by helicopter. It’s the pact between the military units, an article of faith. At the FOB they have to hunker down, hang on in there, and know that within sixty minutes the cavalry will be coming over the horizon. That’s the Golden Hour – there’s other uses, like getting treatment to the wounded, but that’s the relevant one.’
‘And her and her lads, they’d get to us inside an hour?’
Almost droll from Foxy, like he enjoyed it. Like he had hold of the balls and squeezed them. ‘Do you want it gift-wrapped? Grow up, young ’un.’
‘Meaning?’ There might have been a tremor in Badger’s voice, but he swallowed hard and hoped it was hidden.
‘They’d get to where that watchtower was, and the wire – the border. They wouldn’t cross it. That’s how far they’d come forward in the Golden Hour, not a metre further. They won’t cross into Iran. They won’t discharge firearms at personnel inside Iran. They’ll lift us out from behind the border but won’t come in and get us. They’ll be there within the hour, was the promise. Maybe now you understand why I was reluctant to take the next step – and why only an idiot would rush on. Got me?’
‘Yes.’
‘God… Did you take it all on trust? Didn’t you think of asking one important question? Like “Where’s the back-up?” ’
‘Took it on trust.’
He started again to pull the nylon rope, and the water deepened. It was at the top of his thighs, clammy in his groin. In England, on operations, the back-up was never more than ten minutes away. Here, to hold out for the Golden Hour, they would have to retreat to the border, and there they would have handguns, one each with three magazines, gas, fists and boots. It had an emptiness to it, ‘take on trust’, that echoed in his head.
‘I asked. It mattered to me because I’ve a wife… Didn’t you ask that woman, the clever bitch?’
