The Untouchable

Chapter Eleven

They were getting out of the car, off the main road, in front of steel-shuttered gates, when the klaxon sounded behind them. The lorry had slowed but kept going.

Mister turned, saw Bosnia with Love on the side, and the Eel in the cab waving to him, before the lorry accelerated away down Bulevar Mese Selimovica, going away from the city. He waved back. It was the last time that the lorry would return to London empty.

The next time the lorry rolled for the frontier it would be carrying 'product'; this time it carried, in a pouch fastened to the base of the driver's seat, a short, affectionate letter to the Princess, and instructions to young Sol for the transfer of monies from a Cayman account to a Cypriot bank in Nicosia.

For a moment, deep inside himself and hidden from the Eagle and from Serif, he felt a small sensation of loneliness. For that moment he almost wished himself into the cab beside the Eel and going home to what was familiar.

They walked to the gate and one of Serif's men produced the keys that unfastened a rusting padlock. The heavy chain was freed, and the gates scraped open. It would be his Sarajevo base, the site from which he would launch his new career. It was the heart of Mister's grand design. He was told that it had once been the transport headquarters of the nationalized electricity company. He stepped through the gate after Serif, followed by the Eagle, then looked around him.

The compound was enclosed by high walls that were concrete rendered except where shell fire had hit them. The holes were filled with crudely placed cement blocks or sheets of old corrugated iron. The walls were topped with weathered coils of barbed wire. They were high enough, and the surrounding buildings low enough, to prevent the compound being overlooked. There were three steel-sided warehouses at the far end, and a small brick shed. The warehouses had been burned out and were charred black, but the shed had survived without a direct hit.

Rough repairs had been made, enough to proof the roofing against the weather and seal the sides. To the right side of the compound there was a mountain of wrecked vehicles, as if they had been bulldozed together after the artillery and the fires had destroyed them. Rubble, debris, glass shards were scattered through the compound and Mister's feet crunched as he walked towards the shed. It would be his place.

There was a louder, abrasive crushing behind him, and he turned to see Atkins drive into the yard. He was at the wheel of the replacement four-wheel drive, a white Mitsubishi. It was more thousands of marks of outlay, a minor investment against what he would accrue when the lorries rolled home with the

'product' on board. Glass slivers and little showers of concrete spat from under the wheels. Atkins hurried to catch him.

He was led to the first warehouse. When the hatch door was pulled open he stared inside and blinked. As far as he could see were stacked boxes: every Japanese manufacturer's televisions, stereos and videos. The second warehouse was filled half with wheat, barley and flour sacks, and half with plastic racks of women's clothes. The third was empty. He noted the ramp for vehicle repair. It would have been the electricity company's maintenance workshop. One of the men came to Serif and whispered in his ear, pointed to the gate, and was dismissed.

The location was right, the facilities were right, but it was not Mister's way to show enthusiasm.

Serif eyed him, as if waiting for the opportunity to state something of importance, but holding back for a better moment. Fuck him, he thought. They went to the shed. Coffee was made. A radio played local music. An electric fire made a fuggy heat. He took off his jacket, and so did Atkins. Neither carried a firearm, but he noted that Serif kept his jacket on. He spoke of the arrangements he had made for the transfer of monies, because the deal was signed and the contract agreed. The statement of importance from Serif, when it came, was a question that surprised him.

'You were followed in Sarajevo, you were tracked, who…?'

'I said I'd deal with it – I have dealt with it.'

'Who followed you, from what agency?'

'One man from Customs in UK. It's not a problem, I dealt with it.'

'What does "dealt with it" mean?'

'They'll pull back, ship out. You can forget it.'

'My question that concerns me: can the Customs in UK send a man to Sarajevo and track you without notifying the authorities here? Is permission not required?'

Mister turned to the Eagle. 'What's the position when they operate abroad?'

The Eagle said, 'It's quite clearly laid down.

Couldn't just come in here like tourists and operate clandestinely. That would be cowboy. They would require written authorization in Sarajevo from a government minister or a senior official or a judge.'

Mister thought it was the answer Serif expected.

There was a silence round them. Words moved sound-lessly on Serif's lips, as if names flicked on to and off his tongue, as if his mind turned over a list. His head went up and he stared at the ceiling as he pondered.

He must believe he owns, Mister thought, all the ministers in the city, all the officials with influence, and all the judges of importance – except one.

Abruptly Serif cracked his fingers as if by elimination he had decided which of them he did not own…

Then he threw the bomb.

'You said you would deal with it, had dealt – but you are still tracked, followed.'

Mister merely rolled his eyes, raised an eyebrow, queried it. Serif put down his coffee cup, went to the shed door and beckoned. Mister followed him. The Eagle and Atkins scraped back their chairs and made to go with him but he waved them back. They walked across the compound. The red mist played in his mind but he smiled, as if the matter was of no consequence.

He felt rare, raw anger. They reached the closed gate.

In the steel plate, at a man's eye height, was a hole the size of a large screw's head. Serif had to strain up on his toes to peer through it, then backed away. He stood aside. Mister bent his head slightly, looked through the hole and up the rutted street leading from the compound to the main road. He saw the traffic – buses, lorries, vans, cars, jeeps – on the Bulevar Mese Selimovica's eight lanes. He saw the pedestrians on both pavements going slowly against the wind. He saw tower blocks beyond the road.

He saw him… He saw Joey Cann.

Cann was sitting on a concrete rubbish bin where the street joined the road and seemed to shiver as the wind that funnelled down the road snatched at his anorak and his hair. Mister watched him take off his spectacles, wipe them hard on a handkerchief, then replace them… There should have been telephone calls from bright-lit rooms in the Custom House, in the small hours of the night, from the high men of the Church to the hotel. Calls should have been pumped through the switchboard of the hotel by the clerk who had eased money into his hip pocket.

The high men should have ordered Joey Cann to pull out, quit, run. There should have been packed bags, empty rooms, and a stampede for the airport.

But Cann sat on the rubbish bin and did not even make a pretence of concealment. Mister backed away from the spyhole. He smiled again but his nails dug into his soft palms and his knuckles were white, bloodless, with the effort of it. He went back towards the shed. Among those who knew him, the few who were close enough to watch, it was unthinkable for Mister to act when his temper was shredded. Rules he lived by were seldom broken. At the shed door Serif took his arm. 'What will you do?'

'I will deal with it myself.'

'It is what you said before.'

'Myself. I don't want, need, help. Ourselves Mister pulled open the shed door. He waved, a short, chopped gesture, for the Eagle and Atkins. He led them away into the yard. As he said what they would do, his finger jabbed in emphasis. The spittle from his fury bounced on Atkins's face and the Eagle's. It was personal, an insult. He would not turn the cheek to an insult, never had.

'Sounds to me as if that's not in your bloody precious manual,' Maggie had said.

She was parked up off the road. Except when high-sided lorries went by she could see him. He was so small. He sat on the rubbish bin and his legs were too short for his feet to rest on the pavement. He seemed to blanch in the wind that carried sheets of newspaper and empty packets up the pavement and the road around him. He had stepped over an undrawn line, and she'd told him that. He hadn't listened, but had slipped away from the van when she'd parked and walked back to the junction of the road and the street leading down to a warehouse complex, and he'd jerked himself up onto the rubbish bin. She had the camera on him, at that range a tiny blurred figu re, and she had the tape running on a loop… She saw Joey ease himself off his perch. He walked away from it carelessly, back towards her. When he looked behind him, every dozen strides, the wind lifted his hair, pulled it up to the roots, which made him look younger, and without protection. She'd seen the Mitsubishi turn into the street, driven by the former soldier, as Joey would have done. He'd been loitering then, but almost immediately afterwards he had taken to the perch on the rubbish bin. He'd have moved because the gates were opening and started his walk away up the pavement towards her. But it wasn't the Mitsubishi that appeared from the street and waited to join the traffic, it was Target One. To her, he seemed a small, insignificant figure, hunched in his overcoat.

He came out of the street on to the pavement, turned and walked towards Sarajevo's centre. Why walk?

Why go alone? Why not ride? Joey was following, a hundred yards behind, and matched the quick stride of Target One. She did not know the manner of it, but she recognized that a man-trap was set.

Atkins thought he tramped a treadmill, and did not know how to get off.

'This isn't a discussion,' Mister had said, and stabbed his finger into Atkins's chest. 'I'm not asking for advice, I am telling you how it is. It's not for talking round, it's for doing, doing the way I say it.'

By driving the new Mitsubishi, he walked the treadmill. He'd bought the Toyota outright, but the Mitsubishi was cash up front for rental. The vehicle had been stolen, four days before, from the parking area outside the apartments occupied by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the ICRC logo had been spray-painted off the doors, new number plates fitted and an additional set, with different numbers, lay on the floor behind him. It handled easily and well. He took it out into the traffic flow. Mister was a full three hundred yards ahead of him, and the tail – as the man had been described to him – was a hundred yards behind Mister. He idled the engine and scanned the road ahead. The Eagle had said nothing, hadn't protested, hadn't joined in when Atkins had queried his instructions and been slapped down. Ahead of him were the fruits of an effort to brighten the route into the city. New trees had been planted in the grass between the road and the pavement, supported to give them stability by tripods of wooden stakes, and interspersed between them were high street-lamps. He eased the vehicle forward. The Eagle's eyes were closed and he was breathing hard.

Atkins held the slow lane. He should have had notice of this, should have planned and rehearsed it, but it was on the hoof and he hadn't dared dispute it further with Mister. From the slow lane he would accelerate towards the tail and Mister, then pick the moment, swing at increased speed between the new trees and the street-lamps, hit the pavement, straighten, take the target square on the radiator grille, pull back between the obstacles, bump over the kerb, and swerve into the fast lane. The way Mister had said it, it had seemed so easy. It was beyond anything Atkins had ever done in his life – and the sweat ran on his back and across the pit of his gut. Each gap between the new trees and the street-lamps was as good as the last, as good as the next.

'Do it in your own time,' Mister had said. 'Just do it when you're ready.'

He recognized that Mister kept the pace steady, so that the tail's pace and position could be estimated, and the timing of the surge through the gap could be more exact. It couldn't fail, if he had the w i l l… it was murder. In the army he had never killed, never fired a weapon in anger. Bosnia, with the blue beret force, the source of his casually told war stories, had seen him in the ditches and crouched behind the sandbags, trembling and close to wetting himself, just like all the other guys. Mister would have done it, wouldn't have hesitated, but Mister played the decoy, wasn't there to stiffen him, and the Eagle shook, uncontrolled, beside him. He was alone. Atkins edged up through the gears, speed surging, and picked out a gap between the new trees and the street-lamps, his eyes tunnel-focusing on the head and shoulders, back, hips and striding legs of the tail.

'No need to be scared. Just imagine I'm holding your hand,' Mister had said.

It seemed to unfold so slowly in front of Maggie.

She started to shout into the microphone clipped to her blouse, incoherent. She'd said to him that if he insisted on going through with this ludicrous, un-professional surveillance procedure, she'd only be a part of it if he listened, and bloody close, all the time to his earpiece. She yelled, and the white Mitsubishi was going faster and closing on him, but his stride speed never altered. A young woman with a pram and her shopping in plastic bags balanced on it had passed Mister and walked towards Joey. Maggie could see through which gap the Mitsubishi would go. It was going too fast for it to be a shooting hit. The distance between her van and Joey, for the earpiece to pick up her screamed warnings, was too great. He should back off, take cover, dive. He should… She hit the van horn, smashed her clenched fist down on it, again and again, beat a tattoo with it. The woman with the pram and the shopping was near him. The Mitsubishi lurched as the nearside wheels bounced on the kerb, skidded on the grass, found grip, then aimed for the gap. The cacophony of the horn dinned in her cab, and Joey stopped, turned. Beside him, frozen, petrified, was the woman with the pram. Maggie saw Joey throw himself at the woman and she fell away from him, the pram toppling over, her shopping scattering.

The edge of the Mitsubishi's fender caught him.

No pain, but he felt himself tossed upwards, and he thought he floated. No sound, as the flank of the vehicle swept past him. He fell. The breath was driven out of his body, and everything around him was blurred.

Joey lay on the wet grass, the damp from it seeping into his clothes, and he gasped.

The woman picked herself up, righted her pram, and scooped up the shopping strewn around him. She never looked at him. When he squinted, screwed his eyes together, he thought he could make out the shock on her face. She said not a word, merely scurried away, pushing the pram along the pavement. He thought he had saved her life, and her baby's life, and her shopping, but she had nothing to say to him – then the pain spilled in him.

A man came past him, going towards the city, and didn't look down at him. Two youths, smoking, went by him, going away from the city, and seemed not to see him. Was he invisible to them as they hurried on their different ways? Fuck you, he mouthed. He groped on the grass for his spectacles, found them – bent arms but the lenses intact. He put them on, wedged them at a clown's angle on his nose. The pain ran through his leg and hip. Far down the road, the Mitsubishi slowed to a stop and Mister disappeared into it. Then it was gone, lost in the speed of the traffic.

Only tyremarks on the grass showed what had happened. He crawled to a tripod of stakes holding erect a young tree and tried to pull himself up, but couldn't.

The van swept over the kerb and onto the grass.

From the windows of two black Mercedes, faces peered at him, shallow outlines against the smoked glass of the windows, and ducked away when he caught their gaze.

Maggie ran from the van, came to him and knelt.

He thought, irrationally, that she didn't have to get her knees wet and her tights dirty on the mud in the grass.

'Are you all right?'

'I think I am – my leg hurts.'

'You tried to climb up, I saw you, against the tree.'

'I couldn't.'

'If you'd really hurt yourself you wouldn't have been able to get half-way up the tree, not if you'd done a bone.'

'You've a great bedside way. He tried to kill me.'

'But he didn't, that's the point.'

She reached over him and put her hand into the tear rip of his jeans that ran from the faded knee to the hip. Her fingers gripped at his bone and the flesh covering it. She'd the sensitivity, he thought, of one of those old, seen-it-all veterinary surgeons who had come to the estate and were taken by his father to see a lame heifer or a limping ewe.

She straightened. 'I don't think anything's broken – you were lucky. I expect it'll bruise up quite prettily.'

Joey flared. 'You were supposed to be watching my bloody back. I wouldn't have had to be lucky if you'd been awake. What about the goddam radio?'

He saw a small blood smear on her hand as she wiped it with her handkerchief.

'Didn't you hear me?'

He shook his head. She looked around. A frown settled on the delicacy of her forehead. Her gaze fastened on the PTT building back up the road and the antenna forest on the roof, the tilted mushroom dishes.

Joey said, 'Oh, that's good. Radio interference, too many spikes and bowls. Useful for you to know that when you get back. Be able to do something about that in the lab, won't you? It's very pleasing to know I've contributed to pushing along the frontiers of science. So, when did you cut your hand?'

A Discovery four-wheel drive pulled on to the kerb and the grass behind her. A man peered at her as if seeking confirmation.

She said, quietly, 'Must have done it on the wheel when I was hitting the horn.'

The man was angular, sallow, and his suit hung loosely off him. 'Isn't that Maggie? Isn't that the lovely Maggie Bolton, pride of the probe, terror of the bug technicians? You got a problem, darling?'

'Pardon my French, Mr Cann, but people like you are just a fucking nuisance here, and interfere.' He introduced himself as Benjamin Curwin. She called him Benjie.

Joey recognized him as one of the group of optimists around her at the ambassador's Commonwealth Day drinks session, when she'd worn the little black dress. Benjie had invited them in, insisted on it.

He worked from the United Nations Mission for Bosnia-Herzegovina building two hundred yards up the road from where it had happened. Black coffee and a whisky generously poured into a crystal tumbler for joey and a seat on a sofa where he could examine the rent in his trousers and feel the start of an aching stiffness, and an opportunity for them first to flirt-talk then slide to nostalgia. It was good-old-days time. Ignored and with bitterness rising, Joey thought that he was in the heartland of the men drafted in to run a country, and it was all so bloody smug. They'd gone through an outer office where secretaries had swooned with respect for a fat-cat hero. Benjie

Benjamin – wiped the mud off Maggie's knees, his hand hovering over her thigh, and they gossiped about times when the Secret Intelligence Service was run by officers, not bloody accountants, the brilliant days when the enemy was behind a curtain of minefields and fences, armed guards and dogs. He'd said, and she'd agreed, that present management's idea of a good day was lopping fifteen per cent off the Lisbon desk head's entertainment budget – what a bloody scandal. Joey had finished his coffee, swilled down his Scotch, and coughed hard, like he had work on his plate. Maggie had told Benjie – Benjamin – what had happened on the road, and why

'I'm sure it's useful for me to have your opinion,'

Joey said.

'You can have it, for free. We don't need you here, stirring the pot. We like it nice and quiet, the lid on tight. We want it so that we can control it. We came here – we were sent here – every man jack on this corridor, to achieve the impossible, the rebuilding of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a democratic multi-ethnic state, at a time when the international community fairly gushed with sympathy. We are resigned to failure. Criminality and corruption have beaten us.

Our present brief is to fail without it being noticed. We do not want noisy killings on the streets, and the spot-light on us. We want to creep away unseen.'

'Sorry if that's inconvenient, but Sarajevo happens to be the centre of major investigation.'

'Bollocks, nothing important happens here. I tell you what I think. This is a boring, sleazy little provincial town. They believe they're somebody, they're not. They want to be recognized as the Anne Frank of the Balkans, so that everybody weeps for them. Save your tears. It's without romance here, you couldn't fill an egg-cup with drama in Sarajevo. The rest of the world has lost patience with them, is trying its damnedest to forget them. The place lives on a myth and the sooner they recognize that the better. As for you, go home.'

Joey said doggedly, like a stubborn kid, 'I am involved in a major investigation, as is Miss Bolton.'

'You want some excitement, young man, go down to Montenegro, that's where you'll find it by the bucketful. Serif? He's like everything else here, minor league. We may not like the way Sarajevo ticks, but at least we have the measure of it. Then in comes a little joker – you, Mr Cann – and maybe upsets the cart and that makes my life harder. Walk away. Do your investigation some place else.'

'I have the full authority for intrusive surveillance, by Miss Bolton and myself, in this city from Judge Zenjil Delic. I'm legal, and-'

At the name, Benjie – Benjamin – seemed to jerk up on the sofa seat where he sat close to Maggie. It was as if everything said before had been for amusement. His glance stabbed at Maggie. 'Is that why you wanted that bloody name? It was all games, wasn't it, you clevei little bitch?' He mimicked her voice. '"Bet there's not one straight judge in this city, bet there isn't, bet each last one of them's bent." And I gave it you… ' He stared at Joey. 'And you've conned him into signing on the dotted line. Jesus. He is gold dust.

He's for a rainy day when something actually matters, he's not for some piffling fucking drugs inquiry. Have you compromised him? I'll wring your bloody head off your bloody shoulders if you have. You haven't, have you, compromised him?'

Joey walked heavily to the door.

The grated voice followed him. 'Get out of this city.

You understand nothing.'

'The Eagle says you bottled out/ Mister said calmly.

He'd had an hour to prepare his response. Atkins had taken Mister and the Eagle back to the Holiday Inn, had dropped them there, then followed the new procedure. He'd driven the Mitsubishi, with the slight dent on the front nearside fender, to the warehouse compound, had been let inside and left it there, then walked up to the road and waved down a taxi to return him to the hotel. He'd thought his job was to escort the missile launchers and the communications equipment into the city, demonstrate their capabilities, and act as the trusted interpreter. Killing had not been in the brief. At the hotel he joined Mister and the Eagle in the coffee-shop. The Eagle gazed ahead of him, past Atkins's shoulder.

Atkins blurted, 'I don't know how he can give an opinion. He was crapping himself and had his eyes closed.'

'He was only telling me what he thought. I pay him to tell me what he thinks.'

'I did not bottle out.'

'Very pleased to hear that, Atkins.'

Atkins couldn't read the man. There was no menace in the voice, no inflection that would create fear Mister spoke as if in gentle conversation. He thought of himself as being in an interview room alone with two detectives, and a tape-recorder's spools turning.

The detective who led would have said, 'It was an attempt at murder, an attempt to kill a member of Her Majesty's Customs and Excise. If you didn't like the idea, weren't on board, why didn't you refuse?' The detective at the back would have slapped a fist into a hand for emphasis and said, 'Don't give us bullshit about coercion.' Maybe those detectives, maybe everybody else, had never heard Mister speak quietly

… Mister's eyes were mesmeric. He could not escape them. He said feebly, 'I did the best I could.'

'Wasn't a very good best, was it?'

He blustered, 'I had him all lined up, I was going for him. Then beside him was this woman with a pram. He dived towards her. The cowardly shit used her to cover himself. I don't kill women or babies. If I'd gone after him I'd have hit the woman and the pram with the baby.'

'Did she come out of a manhole – push the cover up and lift the pram through it? Was there a manhole in the pavement? She popped up?'

'I didn't see her coming. I was just looking for him.

I didn't have any help from Eagle. If his eyes had been open – and he hadn't been busy wetting himself – he could have called the woman and the pram for me.

I hit the target, just a glance but a hit, if it had been a full hit, head on, then I would have taken out the woman and the pram. I'm not having killing women and babies on my conscience.'

'I'll look after your conscience, Atkins. I look after a lot of people's consciences.'

'It's the way it was.' Atkins's voice was a shrill whine.

'Do I criticize you? Calm down. Have a biscuit.'

He didn't want a biscuit, but he took one, held it in his hand and trembled. It cracked in his grip. He didn't want to look into Mister's eyes, but he couldn't look away. There was no light in the eyes; they had the quality of death. He knew that one day he would stumble through an explanation to two detectives in an interview room, and they would not believe him, and they would ask, again and again, why he had not walked away. He was Mister's toy, and toys could be thrown away… He was expendable. Napoleon had said, to Metternich, in 1810: 'You can't stop me. I spend thirty thousand men a month.'

'I'm sorry,' Atkins said, and despised himself.

'You sent that?'

'Two things, and you'd better remember them, Joey. I don't work for your crowd, and it's not my intention to go home in a box.'

'You said it would be "interesting". Do I quote correctly?'

Maggie bridled. 'And I was wrong. I'm not so arrogant that I can't admit when I'm wrong.'

She switched off the small screen. He felt betrayed.

She wound back the tape. The picture on the screen – she'd marched him from his room to the van and made him squat in the back, beside the bucket, and watch it – was good quality. It was now, he believed her, in London. It would be watched, each second of it. The white Mitsubishi, reduced to monochrome, veering out of the slow lane, heaving onto the grass cutting a line towards Joey, a woman and a pram, him throwing himself at her, and…

She said, 'You shouldn't worry. They'll all say you're a proper little hero.'

She asked him for Frank Williams's number and he gave it to her, didn't question why she wanted it.

'I'm going to find a bar.'

'That is being utterly pathetic,' Maggie accused.

He slammed the van door shut on her.

A biker couriered the tape across the Thames and along the Embankment, from Ceausescu Towers to the Custom House. The package was delivered into the hands of the PA to the chief investigation officer.

The instruction was given that there should be no interruptions, and the cassette was fed into Cork's VCR.

He settled in a comfortable chair and watched the screen.

Gough had been called from the Sierra Quebec Golf room. The meeting into which the summons had broken had reached the detailed stage where personnel were allocated to the raids he planned.

Search warrants had been drafted in preparation for submission to a magistrate for approval. Large-scale Ordnance Survey maps, fastened with tacks to the walls, reproduced the streets of the Fulham district of west London, an area of the Surrey countryside and a section of roads immediately to the south of the capital's North Circular. But the call had come from on high, and the meeting was suspended.

He'd stood behind the comfortable chair. Cork said he had already seen the relevant part of the tape twice, but had not told him what it showed. Gough had his pipe, unlit, in his mouth.

Watching the picture gave him a curious sensation of non-involvement, of distance. It was a feeling Dougie Gough always experienced when he viewed surveillance tapes. He was not a footman, never had been. He was an organizer, an administrator, a decision-taker and a strategist. His skills were considered by his superiors too great for him to pound pavements or idle in cars. He sent men and women out, and he listened to and read through their reports when they came back from the field, and he felt – would never have shown it – envy… He peered hard at the screen. The tape was mute. Far from the camera, Joey Cann sat on a rubbish bin and his heels kicked its concrete sides. He remembered the young man, hesitant yet defiant, but committed. The camera's eye pitched Gough half-way across the mass of Europe to a wide road that ran between tower buildings and walled warehouses. He had no concept of Sarajevo but he was carried there by the lens and it seemed to him that he stood now within hailing distance of Cann. Men, women and children passed the camera, front on and back on, and Dougie Gough could have reached out and tapped their shoulders. He was transported there.

No attempt at concealment, Cann sat in full view, then dropped off the rubbish bin and walked towards the camera eye. The lens zoomed on him. Dougie Gough saw tight lips, the muscles clenched hard in his cheeks, the jutting chin, and recognized the tension in him. Twice Cann glanced behind him, but kept walking. The third time he turned, Cann spun his body and retraced his walk. The camera panned wide. Dougie Gough had watched surveillance tapes of Albert William Packer and seen enough telephoto stills of his Target One. The two men walked away, separated by a distance of around a hundred yards. He never saw the face of Target One. Dougie Gough felt a little winnow of excitement: everything he had read, been told, was that his Target One employed cunning and great care to avoid surveillance… The camera jerked, the picture wavered, as the vehicle in which it was mounted edged forward. Basic precautions had been discarded on both sides, but Gough did not understand why.

Cann kept to the same stride, the same pace as the man ahead. A vehicle came by the camera, a white four-wheel drive, he saw it and forgot it. He had lost the two men, Packer and Cann, behind three lorries in convoy. He started to look at the tower blocks and was matching them to those on the outskirts of Glasgow beside the M8 motorway. As the lorries cleared the view of Target One and SQG12, he realized that the platform for the camera had sped forward, gone frantic. He felt his teeth tighten on the pipe's stem. He wanted to shout out, yell a warning. The white four-wheel drive came off the road – Cann turned Dougie Gough saw the woman and the pram – Cann was the target. It happened quickly, the camera lost focus, the vehicle masked Cann, the woman and the pram before it was wrenched away. He saw the woman on the ground, Cann close to her, and the pram over-turned. He said a little prayer, a begging plea. He could have shouted in relief as he saw Cann roll over, and the woman was pushing herself up then righting the pram. The focus on the camera was regained as Maggie Bolton ran into picture and knelt beside Cann

… Dougie Gough had never lost an executive officer, killed or injured, in three decades with the Church. He had never thought it remotely likely he would lose a man. It had been so fast.

Cork cut the picture and the screen went to snowstorm.

Gough took out his matches and lit his pipe. The smoke cloud hid the screen.

Cork passed him a single sheet of paper. He read.

To: Endicott, Room 709, VBX

From: Bolton (Technical Support), Sarajevo Subject: Organized Crime/AWP

Timed: 14.19 (local) 17.03.01

Security Classification: Secret

Message Starts:

See enclosed tape – my C amp;E comrade survived unhurt a murder attempt organized this a.m. by Target One. Vehicle used driven by Target Three.

Yesterday, unreported to C amp;E, my comrade showed out on surveillance of Target One, and a subsequent telephone call from his girlfriend, Jennifer Martin (address not known), reported her cat killed, disembowelled and dumped on her doorstep. Comrade's concern is that he will be called home!

Following the 'show out' my bug in Target One's hotel room was removed, and the vehicle fitted with my beacon was destroyed. I am exposed and without basic security. I request immediate pull out.

Luv, Maggie

Message Ends

Gough handed back the sheet of paper.

'I can't say I'm pleased at this development,' Cork intoned. 'They're going to bring her home. It's not a matter for discussion, it's their decision and they've taken it. Haven't you anything to say?'

Dougie Gough, acid in his voice, said, 'Beyond reminding you it was your order that he travelled, not a lot.'

'He should come home, shouldn't he, before it's – you know – too late?'

'If that's what you w a n t… '

'I want your advice!' Cork railed at him, 'What's the alternative? Put in a team of half a dozen, drop a Special Forces section alongside them for close protection? Hack into a budget I don't have? God – I've a minister on my back. What do I do, Mr Gough?'

'You do not offer knee-jerk interference.'

Cork ignored the impertinence – wouldn't have if it had been offered by any other man or woman in the building. 'The buck stops on my desk.'

'You leave running the operation to me.'

'If anything happens to him, I'll be crucified.'

'If my Maker will excuse a vile blasphemy, Mr Cork, I'll expect to be on the cross next to you. I'd like to think about it.'

He already had. Gough left the room and his feet stamped hard down the corridor, down the stairs and down another corridor. He lit his pipe, sucked hard on it, and the smoke clouds billowed behind him. There was that look on Dougie Gough's face that warned off any of the senior, higher or executive officers who passed him in the corridors or on the stairs from telling him that the Custom House was a protected no-smoking zone. He made his way back to the room used by the Sierra Quebec Golf team. Had there been mirrors on those corridors, had he looked at them, he would have seen a reflected image, older of course, of the face on the tape: Cann's – lips, cheek muscles, chin, tension and commitment. He tapped the numbers into the pad and went into the room. They all looked at him, ten of them, and awaited the explanation as to why he had been called away.

'Right, gentlemen, ladies – where were we?'

December 1997

The rain fell hard, had done so each day that week. He did not know it, but again the mines moved, carried in the rivulets that ran from the slopes above his fields.

Some were buried deeper in the silt brought down, but others had been washed out of the ground, and were exposed. Husein Bekir would not have known that he was responsible for the shifting life of the mines. By setting fire to the fields two years back, he had killed the grass roots that held the soil; he had released the ground from the binding roots and facilitated the movement.

His fatherless grandchildren walked with him down the track towards the swollen ford, with the Englishman who had come from Mostar.

They, he reflected between shouts towards the house across the Bunica river, were the strong ones. It was nine months since their father's death, but they had seemed to mourn him for only a day, not for weeks as he and Lila had, not for months as his daughter had. He called for his friend, Dragan Kovac, and the children echoed his shouts as if it were a game, skipped and ran ahead of him and the Englishman. The foreigner said his name was Barnaby and he spoke Husein's language, but nothing of what he said was welcome. The children were strong and did not act out roles as victims. Husein Bekir hoped that, one day, his grandchildren would know nothing of a war and would farm his fields in the valley.

The Englishman had arrived unannounced, had come to Vraca with his driver.

His grandchildren were like all those in the village of their age. They were thin, weedy, skinny. They had no muscle on them, and no sinew in their arms. The strength was not in their bodies but in their minds.

They could dismiss the memory of their father, but they could not lift a hay bale. When Husein had been the age of his grandson, he could work outside all day and every day of the school holidays, and during termtime before school and after it finished in the afternoons. The sight of them steeled the determination of Husein Bekir that he must fight – in whatever time was left to him – to have the valley cleared so that good meat was produced and good vegetables, to build the bodies of his grandchildren. If their bodies were not built then they could never farm the land. If they did not farm the land it would be sold off. What generations of the family had achieved, put together with sweat, would be sold in an hour to a stranger, perhaps to a Serb.

There had been a meeting that week in Sarajevo.

It was more than twenty years since Husein Bekir had been in Sarajevo. Then, it had been a long journey by bus for him to travel to the distant city for the wedding of the son of a blood cousin of Lila. He had not enjoyed it and he'd thanked his God when the bus had pulled clear of the city. And the day before, and in the evening, at the wedding feast, he had been treated by Lila's cousins as a peasant. None of them owned land. They worked in the state's factories. He had thirty hectares, paid for, on his own side of the Bunica river and nineteen hectares of the finest fields on the far side, and two hectares of vineyard, also paid for.

He had no debts. They had regarded him as a person without value. When it had left Sarajevo, the bus had gone past the Marshal Tito barracks, and he could recall them. Barnaby said that the meeting had taken place at the mine-action centre in the barracks.

He called to Dragan Kovac as a last resort, in the hope that his friend's argument might change the message brought from Sarajevo.

The rain spat down on him and plastered the hair of his grandchildren to their scalps. He saw Dragan Kovac at his door, sheltering under his porch, and he heard a muffled answering shout. He waved for him to come to the ford. They had played chess in the summer five times. Dragan Kovac would never come down the track, cross the ford and walk to Husein Bekir's home. Always Husein had to go to his house, to wade through the ford, and back again in the dark with the brandy swilling in his belly. And five times the fool – or the cheat – had beaten Husein Bekir. He saw Dragan Kovac emerge from the porch, and he was wearing his old coat, the Cetniks' coat, and he had on his old cap, with the eagle over the peak. The fool, the old fool, stomped down the track towards them. The country had been ruined by war, the valley was filled with mines, and he wore his uniform as if it still gave him importance. They waited. Dragan Kovac came slowly, stopped twice and leaned on his stick before starting again. Husein Bekir did not need a stick to help him walk.

'This is Barnaby. He is an Englishman from Sarajevo. He is from the mine-action centre. He wants to know about the mines you put in my ground.'

'Put because we were attacked – is your memory slipping, old man?'

'We did not put in any mines. Because you put mines down I cannot farm my fields.'

'To keep criminals away.'

'I told him that Dragan Kovac was senile, and would remember nothing.'

They both spat at the ground in front of their boots, it was their ritual. The grandchildren were throwing stones into the river. The Englishman was laughing.

He was a big man, dwarfed Husein Bekir, and he had a fine bearing, a good stature, and the appearance of a military man. Heavy binoculars hung from his neck.

He saw the old fool stiffen to attention and heard him bark a greeting.

'I am Dragan Kovac, sir, I am Retired Police Sergeant Kovac. May I be of help?'

'Maybe, maybe not, Mr Kovac. I was explaining to Mr Bekir that we had a meeting yesterday at the mine-action centre at which a number of mine-clearance proposals were considered. Right from the start I do not wish to raise false hopes. We have a list of thirteen thousand six hundred minefields in the country, of which one-tenth are in Neretva canton, here. But we try to look most closely at locations where direct hard-ship is caused by polluted ground, where a farmer cannot work, or where there have been casualties.

Because you had a death here you are on that list.

Today I was in Mostar, and it wasn't a long journey to come up here, just to see the ground. I was hoping you might remember where the mines were laid.'

'And don't bluster,' Husein interjected. 'Give the gentleman facts.'

'I laid no mines.' Dragan Kovac jutted his jaw.

'The war is over. We're not talking about blame,'

Barnaby said. 'I work with Muslims, Serbs and Croats as the consultant to both governments. I don't recognize flags – but neither do mines recognize the difference between soldiers and children. I have to know how many mines were laid and over how wide an area. If I have that information I can estimate, only roughly, how many de-miners will be needed, how long it will take, and how much it will cost. Do you remember?'

Dragan Kovac shook his head, looked up at the rainclouds, scratched his ear. 'It is very hard. I was not here all the time, after they attacked and tried to kill us.'

Husein Bekir said, 'You see? I told you the old fool remembers nothing.'

The Englishman had his binoculars up and gazed over the fields. 'I can see the bones of cattle out there.

Extraordinary how long bones survive before they rot down, and they're in the middle of the fields. It's not surprising but it's a bad indication. The middle of the fields is not where the mines would have been buried.

It means they've moved. Rain like this shifts them.

People shift them. Foxes, it's hard to believe, will pick up a small anti-personnel device that's exposed, carry it off and put it down a hundred metres away. Then there's more rain and it's covered over. Even where there were correctly made maps, they cannot be relied upon. The minefield is an organism, it breathes, it has a pulse. There could be ten, there could be a hundred.

It's a big area, it would take many men and much money, and the difficulties of one farmer are not a priority.'

'I don't know, I want to help b u t… ' Dragan Kovac shrugged.

'When will you come?' Husein Bekir tugged the Englishman's sleeve.

'Not soon. I apologize for dragging you out on a filthy day. It certainly will not be next year.'

Husein Bekir stood at his full height and gazed at the Englishman's face. 'If I and my wife, my daughter and my grandchildren, all my neighbours, my animals and my dog make a line, walk across my fields, if we all step on a mine and we are all killed, would you come then, more quickly? Would that make you come?'

'We will come, I promise it to both of you, when we can. We can only do so much… '

Joey pushed himself up from behind the wall of beer bottles that stretched across his table. His legs were rubber soft and gave as he lurched from the table. He grabbed the leather-jacket shoulder of a youth, was cursed and shoved away. He set his sights on the door to the street and swayed as he moved towards his target. The last time he had been drunk, incapable, and it was hard with a fuddled mind to remember it, had been on his fifteenth birthday, which had clashed on the estate with the final afternoon of the harvest.

The tractor men and the baling men had seen the fun of it and had poured rough cider down his throat, which they could handle but he could not. They'd brought him home to his mother then driven away, abandoning him to her piercing anger, and she'd not let him in the house before he'd thrown up into the silage pit. He'd wrecked what should have been a special dinner. He'd been alone, spinning in his bed, while his mother and father had eaten the dinner with his empty chair for company. He stood in the doorway, propped against the jamb, and saw a shrunken, bowed man go past the glass front, disappear beyond it. The man pushed a wheelchair. A young woman was in the wheelchair.

It wasn't the night cold that sobered him.

A man had said, 'You haven't, have you, compromised him?'

Joey ran after Judge Delic and Jasmina. Ran until he caught them.