A Damned Serious Business by Gerald Seymour

Author:Gerald Seymour [Seymour, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2018-01-03T16:00:00+00:00

Sitting by the river, the rain pattering on her shoulders, Daff was silent, chain-smoked. And waited.

Close to her, in thin undergrowth, was a burned-out rocket, the other fireworks used in the diversion had been collected up and taken away. The one that had been missed would be the only reminder of the business she was about. Not much to bloody show for it: the carcass of a firework, a few boot indentations in the mud and, she supposed, if she looked hard, some used matches. Further downstream and nearer to the tank memorial would be more scarred places, his footsteps . . . Ridiculous; she was supposed to be as hard as an old and rusted masonry nail, and she was wrapped in her thoughts, and he dominated them.

She wondered how the time went for him. The water flowed steadily. A patrol boat had gone past and then veered away round the bend, would now be close to the bridge at Narva. Two older men drifted by, their outboards moter switched off, careful to stay on the Estonian side of the river; they had rods out but she’d seen nothing caught.

Her knees were drawn up to her chest and her arms were folded on them, taking the weight of her head, and she remembered conversations in Baghdad and Kabul and Erbil, and it might have been her peculiar ability to draw him out, and others, take them into regions of confidentiality over little cups of Turkish coffee or good Earl Grey tea bags, and sometimes even a glass of beer or a whisky shot. Had fancied him, not ashamed of it. What people did who shared those sort of lives . . . And recalled her questions, his answers.

What happens afterwards? ‘Not a job you grow old in. Pack it in someday, switch the phone off. A place in the back end of nowhere where people can’t find you. Light a fire, stoke it up, just sit and let it all drain away. Hope someone’s there who understands it.’

Doing what? ‘Might do van deliveries in the winter, then take folks out hiking in the mountains, up north of Brecon, in the spring and summer. Nothing carrying responsibility.’

Who’ll share that, understand it? ‘God knows – someone with a skin thicker than most. You do this, are a Gun for Hire, and you get on the treadmill, but it’s always going faster, never slower and making it easier to jump clear. Don’t know how to find somebody who can think that way.’

But you have to want to pack the life in – sure you do? ‘All I know is this sort of soldiering – doing the mercenary, telling myself it’s not about being a crusader but it’s for the money. Can’t be escaped from. Mix with guys now – and you, Daff – like Brad and Rob, and they’re good to talk with, and other guys on the convoys. Go back to UK and nobody knows what it’s about. Why I’d have to lock myself away.

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