The Untouchable

Chapter Thirteen

For Mister the day started well.

There was a clear sky over him with a dipping quarter-moon. The sun wasn't yet up over the rooftops of the city but a sheen of its coming light slipped into the side-street where he stood. His position, half in the doorway of a steel-shuttered boutique, gave him a useful view of the square and its shrub bushes draped with wind-blown litter, the hotel's steps, the interior foyer and the reception desk.

He had the timetable of the flights. He had risen early and expected to be rewarded for it. He saw them come into the foyer together, and go to the desk. He understood the way they worked, operated, at the Church.

They backed off. It was the difference between him and them. There would have been a meeting, and fed into the meeting would have been options – to stay and reinforce or to back off. He felt supreme.

She carried a lightweight case out of the foyer and down the hotel's steps. The young man, Cann, followed her, loaded with a heavy silvery metal case and a smaller overnight sports bag. She didn't look like anyone from the Church he'd seen before – too petite, too smart – and not police either. She would have been the bug e x p e r t… but he'd seen her off. She turned on the pavement and walked towards the far end of the hotel building, Cann trailing behind her.

Under a street-lamp, Mister saw their faces. Hers was tight, his was depressed and lowered. They disappeared from his view, went round the corner of the hotel's block. Mister waited. He had seen enough, but his innate care and sense of caution ruled him.

An old blue van came fast from the side of the hotel and accelerated past the steps to the foyer, then braked noisily at the traffic lights. She was driving. A lesser man than himself would have whistled and waved to them, or given them the finger. They were gone. He looked down at his watch to make the quick calculation. They were on schedule for the flight out.

There was a bounce in his stride when he left the side-street. It would be a good day for him.

She'd held her silence all the way down the old Snipers' Alley, past the destroyed newspaper building, past the ruins of what had been the front line protecting the airport corridor, and past the camp of the French soldiers. She'd said nothing and Joey hadn't broken into her mood.

She parked, switched off the engine, then tossed him the keys.

'Good luck,' she said.

'I'll see you in.'

'You don't have to – I'm capable of catching, on my own, an airline flight.'

'I'll carry your case.'

She pouted. 'The gentleman to the last.'

Not that Joey had seen many but he thought it was like any early-morning airport anywhere. She took her place in the check-in queue. In front and behind them were the personnel of the international community. There was a buzz and a rippling of jokes in a mess of languages. They were getting out, they were getting shot of the place for ever, or had the lesser escape of a week's leave. Policemen, soldiers, Red Cross workers, United Nations officials, they all let the staff on the check-in know how they felt about a reservation on the silver freedom bird. Maggie Bolton wasn't a part of them. She was severe, cold, as if that were her protection. The laughter rang around her, over her. When she was one place short of the front of the queue, she turned to Joey. She didn't speak but pointed to her ticket, her eyes asking the question: was he coming? He shook his head. She knew nothing of the clamour of his bedside telephone. What I'm looking for, Joey, is mistakes, big ones, the ones that nail him. It had been a long time, many clocks' chimes disturbing the night quiet, before he had slept again.

Maggie gazed at him, as if he were far away, then jabbed her elbow into his ribcage.

'Right, that's it, that's me on board.'

Both of her bags would go with her in the cabin.

She left the check-in and started to walk towards the departure doors, let him carry the heavier bug case.

'What happens when you get back?' Joey asked.

'Is that supposed to be bloody sarcastic?'

'It's merely a simple question, meant to be polite.'

She paused at the doors and stood against the flow.

'Into Heathrow about eleven thirty, if the Zagreb connection works. A car to meet me and take me into London – not because I'm important but because of the bag. A debrief – if they ask me why you didn't travel, I'll say you were waiting for the dry-cleaning to come back. Don't worry, I won't shop you.'

Joey said softly, 'My instructions are to stay, carry on without you, as best I can.'

Her composure broke. 'What? That is worse than bloody stupid.'

'And when you've had your debrief?'

'Check the bug into the workshop, see if it's past help. Go home. Look at the post, ring my mother. The usual. Then put my feet up. Then

… We all fail, you know. We don't brood about it. Learn to accept failure.'

'Have a good flight.'

She swivelled away from him, joined the flow and went through the doors.

'It's a tip,' Atkins said.

'The right road, the right number.'

'Can't be r i g h t… '

'It's what Mister said,' the Eagle muttered. 'Are you going to whinge, or are you going to do what he told you to do?'

'You bastard.'

'Eating from his hand. A couple of little compliments – God, you come cheap.'

Atkins flushed.

They walked towards the half-intact, half-destroyed house. Where his parents were, down in Wiltshire, a dry cow or a useless lame gelding wouldn't have been kept in such a place. This building was lived in. Where the stumped rafters were lowest from the angle of the roof, what was left of it, a washing-line was suspended and it reached to the bottom branch of a bare tree. On the line, drying in the sunshine, were a young woman's flimsy pieces of underwear, and mixed with them was a ragged assortment of long baggy pants, thick vests, heavy check shirts and the darned socks of an old man.

There had once been a garden. Over the rubble of the house end lay the tangle of sprouting rose suckers, trying to crawl towards the open, wall-papered interior. What had been an inner door was barricaded with nailed planks. Atkins thought it a pitiful place, not a judge's home, not five years after the war had ended. He saw the nearly buried roof of a car. If he hadn't been examining the building, turning it over with his trained eye, he would not have seen it. It would have been parked beside the building when the artillery shell had struck home. Part of the roof and all of the outer wall had fallen on it, along with the last of the dirtied snow of the winter. There were narrow wheelmarks making tramlines to and from a ramp leading to the main door. It was the right address, the wheelmarks confirmed it. The door, with the paint weathered off it, was firmly shut. There were no lights behind the two remaining windows, which were covered with double layers of cellophane; he could not see inside… He was the best, quality. Mister had said it. He turned his back on Judge Delic's home.

Over breakfast and before leaving for a vaguely explained destination, Mister had described the departure of Cann and a woman scuttling with their bags from a central hotel – without crowing – and then Atkins had been told of a 'little problem' that Mister wanted sorting out. He looked above the house. He searched the hillside for a place of elevation, where the tripod could be set up, that could be reached on tarmac.

He thought the place would be near the Jewish cemetery.

Atkins set off to find it, and the Eagle puffed after him.

'Miss Bolton? I'm Ruthin, Eddie Ruthin. I came down from Vienna.' She thought him a vacuous-looking younger man, with a quiff of hair falling on his forehead below a trilby, thin under an oversized Burberry mackintosh.

'What for?'

She had come into the airside concourse at Zagreb.

She felt wretched. It was not the turbulence that had hit the flight, but the glowering thoughts in her head that affected her. She was out, Cann was still in. She had found justification for it and had walked away, abandoned him. She hadn't even pecked him on the cheek, but had given him instead a homily on failure.

'They thought, in London, after what you've been through, that a friendly face might help.'

'Did they?'

'Well, your life was in danger, wasn't it? So, how can I help?'

'How long do I have here?'

' 'Fraid there's three hours to kill before the London flight. I suppose, also, they didn't want you lugging all your gear round on your own. May I take the case?'

'I'm perfectly capable.'

'Well, let's find a chair, somewhere to sit you down.

What about a coffee?'

Maggie sat in a chair and faced the plate-glass windows. She manoeuvred the heavy case under her thighs and behind her shins, stared out over the runways and saw a distant line of hills to the west.

Beyond the hill was the border, and beyond the border was Joey Cann. The case holding the equipment that might have helped him was cold against her shins and thighs.

'I'd like, please, if you can get them to make it, a pink gin'

Gough listened. 'So, you came down to see old Finch, to see how the old beggar's surviving, and to pick the old brains. Surviving not too bad, actually, with a bit of help from ten year-old malt. You know the best-kept secret in the Custom House? There's a life outside. Fancy that. My life now is the garden and the newspapers, and I do the housework because Emily's still working, and I've. a bit of time to think. You'll be wondering if I'm bitter and twisted. Can answer that easily enough – I am. What makes me bitterest, twists me tightest, is that Cann still works in Sierra Quebec Golf. I used to pity him, almost feel sorry for him. now I just detest him. I go to the wall at dawn, blindfold over my face, and the rest of my people get the Church's version of Siberia, but Cann survives.

You want to know what I think? He's one of those empty people fuck-all in him. No life and therefore no balanced view, searching for a cause. The cause might have been God,, might have been Chelsea bloody Football club, might have been fuchsias in a green-house. but it was Packer. That sort of empty person needs a bloody cause, something to fill the hole.

Bastard didn't have one iota of the ethic of law enforcement, not like I had and the rest of my people

– and look where it's got us. It was more like that pitiful sort of dedication those sick creatures have who stalk celebrities, photograph them, stand outside their homes and go through their rubbish, all wrapped up in some shitty justification that he was the only one who cared about the job. I ran a good team. We worked for each other. He didn't. To the other guys, girls, he was a pain. He wanted to be alone, wasn't a part of us, he had his mission. His mission made him a big boy, gave him a reason for living. People with a mission, they come unstuck, don't know when to stop. You shouldn't have sent him there, not to Bosnia. Wouldn't that be the sort of place where you'd need to know when to stop, and back off?'

Gough left Brian Finch in his conservatory with the first glass of the day in his hand. He had heard what he wanted to hear.

'It's a neck of the world I don't know.' Mister's con-fession of ignorance felt like an apology.

'I promise you, there is no place more beautiful, more pure, Mr Packer, or more sad. Perhaps one day you will go there, yes?'

'Maybe. The way you tell it maybe I should – but not to see the sad part.'

Monika Holberg was like no woman he had ever known. But, then, the Lofoten Islands, north of the Arctic Circle, was a place he had never heard of. As she'd told him about her home and a life of farming small fields, and of dragging cod out of the sea, he'd thought grimly that they didn't grow poppies in their fields or coca bushes, didn't have laboratories that manufactured E tablets or amphetamines, had nothing for him to buy, nothing for him to sell. Not good fertile territory for trading. She was like no woman he'd known because she talked. From the time she'd |picked him up, with her driver, sitting in the back of the UNHCR jeep she had barely drawn breath, He knew about her home village, Njusford on the island ol Hakstodoya. He knew about her parents, Henrik and Helge. About her brother and sister, Johan and Hulde. He knew the names of their cows that lived eight months of the year in a heated barn, and the annual weight of the cod they caught in the nets.

He knew about the brother, Knut, who had hanged himself aged sixteen, twelve years before as an escape from the demon depression' of the winter's darkness.

She told him everything and asked him nothing. Her life cascaded over him. It was so rare for him to be treated to such trusting, personal confidences. Then, when she had finished with the Lofoten Islands, and the hanging of her brother, she switched effortlessly to her career working with refugees in Somalia and East Timor, Mozambique and Kosovo; he knew where Kosovo was, had a vague idea of where Somalia and Mozambique were positioned on the African continent, but had never heard of East Timor. He didn't like to display his ignorance, thought it lessened him. He didn't want to be small in her eyes.

They turned off the main road and the jeep began to bump up a rough track. 'You are all right, Mr Packer?'

'I'm fine, I'm really enjoying myself.'

'I am not talking too much?'

'Not at all You fascinate me. You make me think that I've led a very sheltered life… Everyone calls me Mister. I'd like you to, please.'

She pulled a face, then she giggled. 'It is a very strange name but it that is what you w a n t… We are nearly there. The village is called Visnjica. You will remember that? Visnjica in Opstina Kiseljak.'

Mister said, didn't think about it, 'They all sound the same to me, these names.'

'But you must remember the name and the district Mister. Surely, when you go home, you will tell the charities who have made the gift where their generosity has gone. It is important, surely.'

'Yes,' Mister said. 'It is important.'

On the yellowed grass between the track and a small river, in spate, were the heavy tyremarks of the military vehicles parked up. He saw armoured personnel carriers, flying the German flag, an ambulance and jeeps. Beyond them, over the river, above the trees where snow was scattered, two heavy helicopters hovered, then descended.

'Typical of the Germans to strike completely the wrong note. We are trying to tell frightened people that it is safe to come back to their homes. The people have been the victims of war, perhaps the most savage Europe has seen, and we are telling them that the danger is over. But this is the area of responsibility of the German military, and they have VIPs coming by the helicopters and it is necessary for them to make a show. They are so clumsy, so bovine… In Norway we do not have a good experience of the Germans.'

She left the driver with the jeep. They walked into the village, a long ribbon of scattered buildings that stretched up the hill on both sides of the track. Behind them the helicopters disgorged generals, men in suits and women in smart dresses. Some houses showed no war damage, cattle bellowed from the barns behind them, and smoke puffed from the chimneys. But most were destroyed, their roofs sunk between the four upstanding walls, the undergrowth high around and inside them. A few had bright new tiled roofs and new walls of red brick or concrete blocks, new windows and doors, and washing draped in front of them. Men, women and children walked from them towards the track and formed a thin line of welcome.

' The village, before the war, was home to Croats and Muslims It is easy, Mister, to believe the war was only made by Serbs. The Croats were as bad as the Serbs They waited until the Muslims were defenceless then attacked them. Before the war there were three hundred Muslim families here, and sixty Croat families then there was the ethnic cleansing. The Muslims were expelled, their houses were destroyed – not m lighting but by explosives after they had gone.

Most went toGermany, but they have been expelled again, so they try to return to their old homes and to live beside their old neighbours, who became their enemies. Of three hundred, we now have the first twenty families back. They find their homes have been looted, everything of value has been taken, and is now inside the houses that are not damaged-TVs, stoves, baths, bulbs, even the electric wires, and the cattle, sheep and goats. It is not easy, but my job is to help to rebuild the relations between neighbours.'

Women with small children and babies, and old men With dulled laces, stood in a knot outside a square set building, that had no roof, no glass in the tall windows, and a wide hole where the door should have been They had their backs to the ruin as if it did not exist The women wore old coats against the chill, and the wind snatched. at their headscarves; the men wore berets and thick sweaters, had weathered faces that were expressionless, and the children stared back at Mister and held limply to toys. In the field beside the building were short, freshly painted white pegs.

'It could have been worse, Mister. If it had not been for your generosity I do not think they would have come out of their houses to see the VIPs. The coats scarves, sweaters and toys came from Bosnia with Love. At least they are warm, and the little ones have something to amuse them. It is too much, I am sorry, to expect them to smile, but at least they have come

… The building is their mosque. It was not a military target, it was destroyed by their neighbours as an act of vandalism, and the graveyard, all the stones were smashed with sledge-hammers and pickaxes. In such circumstances, it takes great courage and determination to come home. If I ask the Croats who live here, who today hide, who destroyed the mosque, they will tell me it was outsiders who came, criminal scum, under the control of warlords. Perhaps in Sarajevo you have heard of the Muslim scum – Caco, Celo, Serif. The Croats had Tuta and Sela. The Serbs had many criminals – Arkan and Selsjek. I am not supposed to hate, it does not fit with the principles of the UNHCR, but I loathe those scum – they've sucked the blood from good, decent, simple people.'

There was a desultory clapping behind them. She held his arm, did it naturally and without premeditation, and turned him round. The uniforms, suits and smart-styled women were glad-handing their way up the track and through the village. Women were nodded to, men's shoulders were slapped, the babies' cheeks were tweaked in the show of solidarity. He watched the cameras. It was an event. Earnest conversations started up and lasted long enough to be recorded and witnessed on film. A little scrum had developed at the front of the VIPs, and a sergeant of the German army, red-faced, attempted to push back the cameras and microphones, succeeded, then was outflanked to the right, drove the right back, and was outflanked to the left. Twice when he thought a lens was aimed towards him, that he would figure in the background of a picture, Mister did what was reflex to him and presented his back to them.

'We have to have them here because we need the publicity Id go round the world. The need for money for these people has to be reinforced with the pictures and the interviews – but it is degrading. They take the dignity from people. How can people talk, with honesty, about their situation when they have a camera in one nostril and a microphone in the other?

The media has no discipline. They are like frogs, slimy frogs, and you collect them in a bucket but as you put one in another slips out.'

They were both laughing. It was their own moment, and private. She took his hand. She was holding his hand as they laughed, and their faces were close, and he saw the while cleanness of her teeth and the tan of her skin. She led him further up the hill.

Mister let her hold his hand.

The shutter clattered on automatic. Through the viewfinder, using the 300mm lens, Joey watched them laughing and holding hands. Eight frames, or nine, and then his view of them was obscured by the old mill building above the stream. He lay on his stomach, crushing down last autumn's fall of leaves, and huddled behind the camera.

'What other charities, Mister, do you help?'

'Well, bits and pieces.'

'You can tell me – I admire your modesty. Too many people boast. Tell me.'

'I do things for a hospice. You know what a hospice is? Yes? I help them… I put a roof on a church

'Is that your life, Mister? Helping in Bosnia, helping in a hospice, helping a church?'

'Well, not entirely.'

She squeezed his hand. He felt the warmth of her smile.

'Come on.'

In the distance he heard the helicopter rotors start to turn. They'd barely been on the ground half an hour. The VIPs, in a slithering column, retraced their way through the village, and the media were boarding buses. The villagers drifted from the track and meandered in little groups towards the few rebuilt homes. He was surprised the visit had been so short, and she must have read his thoughts. She told him that it was important the visitors were not bored, were enthusiastic, went back to their offices and wrote the reports that would bring in more donations from their governments.

Children now surrounded the two of them as they walked along a mud-packed path. With one hand she held Mister's, with the other a child's. He saw the way they touched her, pinched at her coat sleeve, gripped the hem of her anorak, and he saw the love in her face for them. They went towards a narrow plank bridge spanning the stream. He felt the little tickle in his trailing hand and looked down sharply. A small boy had reached to take the trailing hand. Mister was about to reject him, snatch his own hand away. He'd never allowed his sisters' children to get close to him. His sisters always scolded their children if they came close to him and told them not to 'bother' their uncle. He knew nothing of the trust of children. He let the small boy take his trailing hand as they went across the loose-fastened planks of the bridge. A little girl came behind the boy and took his free hand for the bridge crossing, and Mister saw the upturned tag of her anorak; Marks amp; Spencer, a cast-off. As he came off the bridge, still holding the little boy's hand, Monika looked at him and winked. She approved. He could not remember the last time that pleasure and pride had coursed through him at such a small thing. She took him to a house.

'They have no electricity, only heating-oil for the fire and a gas can for the stove. A little paraffin is given them each month for light. If we get more people back, have more homes for them to move into, we can pressure the authorities to spend money and restore the electricity supply. There are three families living here, nineteen people. Work has been done on the ground floor, but not yet upstairs because they are waiting for more building materials to be brought. It is not possible for them to buy the materials themselves because they have no work, no money, but at least they are, again, in their homes. .. How many bedrooms do you have in your house, Mister?'

'Five.'

'How many people?'

'My wife and myself.'

They went inside. He hovered behind her, and she was greeted like a true friend. He saw in the gloom two of the boxes, unpacked, on which were scrawled Bosnia with Love. Leading to the one table were mud smears across the bare concrete floor. An old man sat in a chair near to the table and smoked; his pullover bore the woven insignia of the Edinburgh Woollen Mill and crossed golf clubs under the stitched writing, and he smoked as if that were the luxury left to him.

There was a line of institution beds, with metal frames, dull blankets. The little girl careered away and bounced onto a bed, but the small boy kept hold of Mister's hand. The women were of all ages, but only old men were crowding into the room. The child wanted, Mister thought, to hold the hand of his father

… There were four bedrooms always empty at his home by the North Circular Road. His father visited, occasionally, but would not stay over. His mother had never slept in his house. He and the Princess had no friends they would have invited, nor her father and mother. They never entertained in the dining room with the big mahogany table and the matching set of eight chairs. If it was necessary to entertain, for business, he went to a restaurant, the Mixer arranged a private room at the back, a Card sat in the kitchen and another stood at the private room's door. He had so many bedrooms. He had hotel bedrooms and service accommodation bedrooms and time-share bedrooms.

He had more bedrooms in Cyprus, the South of France, on the Spanish coast and in the Caribbean and

… He had the money to rebuild the village and bring every man, woman and child back to it and to dress all of them in Armani or Yves St Laurent, to give them electricity, plumb in the sewage, put boards and carpets under their feet and curtains at their windows, to build a factory for them, and to bring them pedi-gree cattle. If he had done that he would not have noticed the loss.

He was served coffee. To Mister it was bitter and the sludge at the bottom of the tiny cup caught between his teeth. It was the coffee of Green Lanes that he drank in the spieler cafes with the Turks, and he was practised in hiding his disgust as he drank. A dog-eared set of cards was cut. The stakes for the game were used matches, plucked from a filled ashtray and Mown on to remove the tobacco dust. It wasn't easy lor him to play, and twice he grimaced at Monika, The small boy held his hand, would not let go of it. He played, and the time slipped away. He made certain he was never the winner. At home, in London, he would never be a loser, and not a loser in the old city of Sarajevo when he played the high-stakes game with Serif, whom she called criminal scum. He lost the matches he had been given. She was at the far end of the room, with the women, and she glanced al him, lapped the face of her watch.

They went out into the dusk. It was only when they left that Mister realized a crowd had gathered in the room and outside the door to watch him fail at cards, and lo he close to her. She kissed many cheeks, he shook the many hands pressed on him.

On the slippery path he took her fingers so that she would not fall. It was an excuse. She wore good walking boots, he had smooth leather-soled shoes.

They went across the bridge, clung to a handrail that was a slack strand of rope, and walked on the track down through the village. The shells of the burned-out houses remained in darkness. Brighter lights shone out from the undamaged homes where the generator engines thudded and where uncovered windows showed the flicker of television pictures

… He heard the patter of the feet that followed him.

'Why don't they go back and get them, the TVs?'

'Because they are beaten people, Mister, they have no more any spirit to fight.'

'Then they've no future.'

'The other future is to start the war again, Mister. Of course you are angry – I am angry – but violence, criminal violence, solves nothing. It is the way of the barbarian. The place for the criminals is not at the head of armies of thugs and thieves, it is in gaol where there are bars and where there is no key.'

They reached her jeep. The engine was on and her driver slept in the sealed warmth. He heard a low, guttered, hacking cough behind him. He turned. For a moment the small boy cringed away, was a retreating shadow figure on the empty track. He reached out his arms and the child came to him. He lifted the little boy and hugged the thin frame to his chest. Monika was with him. Together they held the child. He kissed the child's face, and Monika kissed his. He put the small boy down and watched him go into the darkness.

'If the visitors had done what you have they would have learned ten times, a hundred times, more. I thank you.'

'For nothing.'

They climbed into the jeep, were driven away from the village. On the seat between them her hand rested on his.

June 1998

Three times Husein Bekir had conceded defeat in the past five hours. Three times the patronizing victor's satisfaction had been on Dragan Kovac's face.

Each time he lost, while the retired police sergeant poured more brandy, burped on his lunch, and called him an old fool and a man without intelligence, Husein immediately set the carved wooden pieces back on the board, and they played again. He had played the last game, and the next would be the same, with a desperate intensity that furrowed his forehead, that made his hand tremble as he lifted a piece and slapped it down in its new position. His concentration was on his own moves, and what he anticipated would be Dragen Kovac's moves, but above all he searched for a sign of his opponent's cheating. As yet he could not find such a sign and that confused him hugely. If his opponent did not cheat, the implication was clear to Husein he, himself, was inferior… Of course Dragan kovac cheated. He heard a distant voice calling, his name, but ignored it. The grandchild and the dog were also ignored, and had slipped out of the door to search for entertainment.

When the bottle's mouth hovered over his glass, Husein put his hand clumsily over it and succeeded only in tipping over the glass. His head was bent over the board and he saw nothing of the fields below the porch, and he did not look up to find the voice calling his name, and he did not glance at the mulberry tree beyond the sagging fence of barbed wire, and he did not see the dog chasing alter the ball his grandson had thrown for it. He tried, his concentration fading, to plot the defence of his bishop, and he thought it was with unnecessary ostentation that Dragan Kovac wiped the spilled brandy off the table.

Until she reached him he had not been aware of Lila's approach up the track.

As he peered down at the board and looked for answers, he saw at the edge of his vision her river-washed rubber boots, which came to the top of her muscled shins. When was he coming home? she asked: he was coming home when the game was finished. Who was going to milk the goats? she asked he would milk the goats when he had finished the game. What was more important, milking the goats or drinking and playing games? Where was his grandchild? He did not know. She snorted at him in derision, and he heard Dragan Kovac's chuckle. There was the cackling of her voice, and he lost the threads of his defence. He looked up. He was palpitating with anger. He looked around. The child was high in the mulberry tree beyond the fence. The dog sat under the spread of the tree with the ball in its mouth and the saliva dripped from its jaws. Did he consider it responsible to allow the child to climb a tree – from which he might fall – and not even know where he was? Did he consider it responsible to be drunk when in charge of the child, his grandson? Under his breath, holding his head in his hands, he swore.

If he wanted to get back his chill, she said, that was his business, but she was not permitting him to abandon her grandson up a dangerous tree. If he got his chill back, through his own stupidity, when he should have been milking the goats, then it would not be she who nursed him. He wriggled in annoyance, and Dragan Kovac reached, grinning, for the bottle.

Husein Bekir saw his wife, Lila, stamp away from him in her shining rubber boots. She was stout, strong for her age, heavy-built. She seemed to plough through the long uncut grass below the porch towards the drooping fence in front of the mulberry tree. She straddled the fence, caught her skirt on the wire, extricated herself, leaving a thread on the barbs when she swung over her back leg, then went into the shade under the tree's leaves. He saw the deepening lines in his friend's forehead, and his eyes were screwed to narrow slits. His mouth gaped open, as if he tried to clarify a little moment of memory from far back, and could not. Then his friend's tongue flapped idly, but no words came. She was calling the child down.

Husein did not know what memory seeped back into the mind of Dragan Kovac, nor what his friend tried to say.

The child was pale, thin, like the scrawny dog gliding on the baked earth under the tree, had no meat on him and was lightweight.

His woman, Lila, was solid and heavy.

She moved under the tree so that she could better steady the child when he dropped down to her and her voice was harsh with her command as if she had no patience.

Dragan Kovac hissed, 'It's where they did it – put them I remember, it's where-'

'Put what?'

The mine exploded under her foot.

For Joey, it had been the journey from hell.

The nightmare had begun after he had seen Mister and the woman leave the village in the UNHCRjeep.

It had been hard to track them at the end, in the failed light. He had kept a distance back from them, but had seen Mister pick up a child and hug it, and then the small boy had run up the track past him. Joey had walked another mile through the long strip of the village, to where the blue van was hidden in trees beside the river. As he'd approached, stumbling over fallen branches, he'd heard the charge of their escape.

They would have run when they'd heard his approach. The van's doors were open. He'd sworn.

He'd reached inside, felt the dash and found the loose wires from the radio. His foot, as he'd stood by the door, had brushed against bricks. He'd sworn aloud He'd gone round to the passenger side, found the pocket open, and the torch hadn't been there. Mori-bricks against his hand on the passenger side – bricks to hold up the van, because there were no bloody wheels, no tyres. He'd sworn again in fury. Of course he had seen the poverty of the village, abject poverty, but he'd never thought that a little of the poverty might be removed by the acquisition of his tyres, his goddam wheels. He'd started to walk.

He dragged himself up the stairs of the hotel. A man had been sitting, smoking, an empty coffee cup in front of him, close to the reception desk, and he'd been given his key by a scowling night porter whose eyes were never off the man. He went up to his landing.

A man lounged in a chair at the top of the stairs, seemed to strip Joey with his gaze. He, too, wore the uniform of the man in the foyer – jeans, a cigarette, close-cut hair, a black leather jacket. A short-barrelled machine pistol, two magazines taped together, lay on his lap. Joey knew the face but couldn't put a place to it. It confused him, but in his exhaustion he didn't stop.

He went past the door of the room that had been Maggie's; there was a light under it and low voices, the scented fumes of cigarettes.

He let himself into his room, dumped his bag on the bed and took out the camera.

Opening up his laptop, he wrote his report, his fingers hammering on the keys.

He'd walked to the main road, then gone west along it. He'd hitched every car and lorry that had passed him, but none had stopped and some had nearly clipped him. He'd reached a village and seen a cafe's lights. He'd gone into it. Was there a taxi in the village? Shrugged responses, there was no taxi. Was there a telephone to call a taxi from Kiseljak?

The telephone was broken. He'd headed off, continued walking.

The report was typed out. He was tired, so bloody tired. He was cold, he was damp, he was hungry. He snatched the wire cables from his bag. His fingers shivered. It was slow going, and his temper was fuelled – should have taken him thirty seconds but it took him minutes – and he linked the cables to his laptop and his mobile, and hit the transmission-code keys. The first time, with his clumsiness, it didn't go through, second time it did.

He had walked for an hour and a half to reach Kiseljak. No taxis, no buses. In the police station he had gone half-way down on his knees, and flagged them with his ID. A police car had taken him to Rakovica, half-way to Sarajevo, and the driver had gestured that he could go no further, that he was not allowed beyond his area. Again, he had walked. A lorry with a drunk driver had lifted him as far as Blasuj, then dropped him. He'd walked in the dark, another hour, almost crying in his frustration, towards the always distant lights of the city, his goal.

Joey wired the digital camera to his mobile, and dialled. And the camera's pictures were downloaded to London. The mobile's screen message told him they were received.

He'd walked into Ilidza. No taxis in Kiseljak, Rakovica or Blasuj, and half a hundred bloody taxis in the Ilidja suburb. He'd been driven to the hotel, He'd staggered in through the door, into the bright light mud on his boots, his trousers and his coat.

He remembered, the recognition seeped into his mind, where he'd seen the men… They had been in the back of the truck. When he had been picked up in the truck, and the door had been opened for him, the interior light had come on. They had been in the back – Ante and Muhsin. He had seen their faces -

Salko and Fahro – before he had nestled down in the front seat and slammed the truck door, and the light had gone out. When they had come from the truck and had gone into the druggie's block, they had worn balaclavas and he hadn't seen their faces. He'd seen their faces when they'd come out of the block, work done, before they'd pulled their hoods back down.

'An excellent meal,' Mister said, and pushed his chair back from the table.

It had been the same meal, the Eagle reflected, that they'd eaten every night, but it was the first time Mister had praised the food. He'd talked, rambling, about his day, about war and poverty, about hatred, and the Eagle and Atkins had been his audience. If it had been hot, stinking hot, he would have diagnosed Mister as a sunstroke case, but there hadn't been any fierce sun… She wasn't mentioned. The Eagle began to think the unthinkable.

Almost as an afterthought, Mister turned to Atkins.

'You did all right today?'

'Went well, Mister.'

'You got the place?'

'We did a reconnaissance on the house and we've found a position where there's a clear field of vision on to it, a clear field of fire.'

'And tarmac?'

'Tarmac and frozen ground. The ground's smooth.'

'That's great, well done.'

The Eagle thought Atkins was a bloody puppy lapping praise.

'That's what we do tomorrow – should be a bit special. I mean, seeing it actually fired, that'll be sort of exciting… Good night, guys.'

Mister walked away from the table, left them, and his whistling echoed out ol the restaurant. It was, of course, unthinkable, and he had known Mister for twenty-eight years, and the Princess for eighteen of them – unthinkable.

The pictures were passed by Gough round the central table, to be subjected to the team's scrutiny.

'Choice – I'd fancy a bit of il myself,' said SQG3.

'Not what I'd have expected from him, dipping his wick, not from what Boy Brilliant left us on him, out of the character Cann drew,' said SQG8.

'Silly old beggar, getting the flushes at his age, and his Princess won't like it, will not be a happy girl if she gets to see them,' said SQG5.

'She'll get to see them, in good time,' Gough growled. 'What I'd like, at both ends from tomorrow we start to build the pressure. From pressure comes mistakes – only a little diversion and can we now, please, concentrate.'

He gathered up the pictures of his Target One and an unidentified young woman, locked them in his drawer, and they applied themselves again to the first of the rummages that would be launched in the morning that would build the pressure, force the mistakes. The name of Cann, and what he did, dis not deserve another mention. They were too busy, inside their own agenda, to think of him.

He closed his door behind him and went down the corridor. He waved his ID at the man on the landing, thought it was Salko, and saw that both the hands were on the machine pistol. He had left behind his coat and he swivelled to show that there was no weapon in his belt. Outside her room, the one he thought was Muhsin acknowledged him sourly, and Joey thought he was allowed with reluctance to go to the door.

He knocked and heard a scrabble of movement behind it. He said his name. The door opened on the chain, then closed again, then was fully opened.

'Come on in,' she said. 'Join the party.'

She was on the bed, dressed, a filled glass in her hand, shared with a cigarette. Frank Williams, the policeman, in uniform, was in the chair by the window. The last two of what he had called the Sreb Four were hunched on the carpet – jeans, leather jackets and cigarettes, machine pistols against their knees within fast reach – one against the foot of the bed and one against the wardrobe. Joey reckoned they were Fahro and Ante. He saw the metal case on the floor under the window, by the chair.

'It's the advantage of a transit lounge, the duty-free.

I've Chivas Regal and Courvoisier.'

'You're drunk.'

'Have to be drunk or mental to come back here.'

'Why did you turn round?'

'A nice young man met me at Zagreb. He thought I was in mortal danger. He bought me three pink gins

… So, I got to think you needed wet-nursing.'

'Why don't you fuck off?'

'And needed looking after. I thought it was pretty foul to ditch you. I was three hours from home. At the debrief they'd all have bad-mouthed you, and they'd have apologized for sending me out with a kid, an amateur. The knives would have been in your back, Joey, and the sneers down the phone to where you work. I'd have gone home, alone.'

' I didn't ask you to stay.'

She spat, 'God, you make it hard!'

' I don't want you, don't need you.'

'A speech, we will have a speech. You will not, please, interrupt my speech.'

'Do you have something to eat?'

'Damn you.' She wiggled her bottom. The hem of her skirt climbed her thighs. She pulled two packets of peanuts from under her and hurled them at him. '1 was about to say-'

' I'll have the whisky.'

'You're an obstinate, arrogant sod. I am trying to help you.' She reached for the bottle and threw it at him. He caught it, then the plastic beaker that followed. Frank had his hand over his mouth, as if he was stifling laughter. The men with the guns were expressionless. 'We are all trying to help you. I tracked Frank down from the airport, he drove me here, then he called in the cavalry. We are all trying to bloody help you.'

' I don't want you, any of you. I'm doing all right.'

' I've stepped over the same line as you have. I-'

' I doubt it – isn't there anything more than peanuts?'

'Shut up, hear me – for God's sake, do me that courtesy.' The crackle slipped from her voice, and the wasp's sting. 'You showed me the line to cross and I've followed you. I told the joker who met me at Zagreb that I'd realized I'd left my best black shoes behind and was going back to get them – heh, don't look so damn pissed off, it's supposed to be funny.

Your Target One, he's your enemy. At my place, we don't have enemies. We don't hate our opposition, don't despise it, we play a fucking game with it.

Where are the KGB now, and the Hungarians and the Poles? They're at our seminars, or giving us lectures, and then we go off to the bar and we swap old stories, chat through the equipment we used, and we have a laugh about the poor puny bastards who believed in us, who they tortured and shot. We're dying, you're alive. You're bloody lucky to have an enemy. So I came back.'

He downed the whisky. He poured what was left of the first peanut packet into his mouth and pocketed the second.

' I'll see you in the morning.'