The Outsiders by Gerald Seymour

have been curtailed by a chop, closed fist, on the back of that fragile neck.
    The Bear had sat at the side of the table, poised, and she had sat behind it with her pencil and notepad. The boy was on a hard chair in front of her. The Bear had murmured to her that she should keep it disciplined and under control, not allow it to ramble, that a ‘walk-in’ was likely to be some sad no-hoper with a life history of injustice. A gold-dust moment was unlikely . . . but the possibility existed.
    She did as she was advised. Date and place of birth, names of parents. She might have been doing benefits in a small-town social-security office at home. Passport details – two were handed to the Bear and he’d glanced at them. A fractional wintry smile had slipped over his lips. She was given the passports and realised that none of the details they carried matched what she had already written down.
    Headlines slipped on to her pages. Communications/hacker/encrypter . She found his voice hard to understand. Russian-based crime boss . The English was what she might have called ‘lazy’, a sort of vernacular and electronic shorthand. His employer was Petar Alexander Borsonov , he whispered. She had to strain to hear him. The Major . Associates were the warrant officer/the master sergeant . They did drugs , and money washing , and trafficking , and killing . . . state killing .
    They did state killing and they were protected by a roof . Liz Tremlett, earnest, enthusiastic, a young woman who read every Foreign Office advisory that came to her screen, had no idea what a roof was. The question must have shown in her eyes, and it was answered. She flipped her notepad page, scribbled again.
     
    They kill for FSB. FSB is the roof. The roof protects. The roof is the state and the state protects. They kill for the state. They cannot be harmed as long as they are the servants of the state.
     
    She was out of her depth now. She caught the eye of the Bear and murmured, ‘Heavy stuff, if true,’ and the Bear mouthed that it was Six work or more likely Central Intelligence Agency business. She felt a brush of annoyance, as if a prize had gone beyond reach. Still the boy shivered, and she sensed he was restless, as if time had slipped too far and the fear grew in him. He’d glanced twice at his wristwatch. She understood the enormity of what he’d done, the scale of his treachery. It was true betrayal.
    She said quietly, ‘Natan, I really appreciate that you’ve come to us with your story, and we take very seriously the allegations you make, but this is far above my level and— Look, where can you be contacted? What numbers can I pass to the relevant people?’
    He was slight enough, and seemed to shrivel further. ‘We are gone tomorrow. We go to Constanta. You think I would allow a stranger to call me? You think I would expose myself? At five o’clock tomorrow, I will try to be in a bar in Constanta. That is Romania, where we go to do more business. Do I trust you? Perhaps, a little. Do I trust you enough to give you my life? What do you think? I thought it too difficult to go to the Americans who hide inside their fortresses, their embassies, but I thought it more of interest to the British. In Constanta, I will speak to an intelligence officer, which you are not.’
    ‘I can only repeat, Natan, what I said. We take very seriously what you’ve told us. It’ll be passed on, higher and—’
    It was the first time the Bear had spoken directly to him. ‘Natan, why is it of more interest to us?’
    The boy’s head turned. He spat, ‘He killed your man. Enough? He kicked your agent until he died. The Major did it, all three of them. Once we stopped near to Pskov and they wanted to piss. The lay-by was a dump, and there was a shop-front dummy, full-size there. They pissed and they kicked the head of the dummy, and they laughed. They were shouting, excited. I sat in the car and I heard it. Before I joined them . . . It was a Briton, an