The Untouchable

Chapter Seventeen

Was it falling apart? He sat beside Atkins, who drove, with the Eagle behind him. They thought it was cracking, splintering, and were both silent, had been all the way from the city to Jablanica and the start of the gorge that held in the Neretva river. Nothing in Mister's life had ever fallen apart.

He was tired. He said wearily, softly, 'All right, Eagle, all right, Atkins, let me tell you how I see it, because' you're asking, and you've the right to, "Is it falling apart?" Fair question. Deserves a fair answer.

We've positive and negative, asset and debit. I'll go first on the negative, the debit… We are going to meet Marco Tardi of the Brusca family, and Nikki Gornikov from the vory v'zakone group, and Fuat Selcuk, who owns half of the west of Turkey. They are top-of-the-Ieague people, they're travellers, they reach across Europe and the Near East into Asia and as far as the States. I haven't met people like that before. I meet guys in London, and if the sun's shining and it's a good day I get as far as Manchester, Birmingham or Newcastle, and if it's special I get as far as Glasgow. I deal with Yardies and Chinese and guys who call me Mister because they're scared shitless of me. I'm the biggest fish in a small puddle. I don't know how I'm going to be when I meet these people today. I don't know whether I'm going to fall on my face, if they're going to think I'm not worth bothering with.

It's new ground for me – am I up to it? That's a negative.'

They had left the Jablanicko Jezero lake behind them, where there were wooden restaurants, and fishermen as still as hermits who held their rods and stared at the blue-green depth of the water. Now they were in the gorge. The sun speared down into it.

The road was fast and dry, the snow-capped hills were left far back. They went past fields where tractors ploughed. They were three smartly dressed men on their way to a business meeting. His voice was gentle, without passion.

'Since we've been here we have been under continuing surveillance by the Church. It's not a big team, it may just be a one-man token show. I've done what I'd normally do. I've done the warning and the frighteners, and now I've beaten the crap out of him. I don't know whether he's still there, or isn't there… They'll have learned about the warehouse we chose, and about the charity lorry. Truth be told, every piece of detail we have put in place this week has been time wasted. That's debit.'

They all wore their best. Mister's suit was light grey. The Eagle wore formal charcoal, what he'd have taken from the wardrobe for a Law Society dinner in Guildford when he sought to impress, his tie discreet, foreign and silk, and he'd have spent time in his room cleaning his shoes before they'd left. Atkins had chosen tan slacks, a sports jacket and the regiment's tie. Mister talked, mused, as if the important audience was himself.

'And it's not just at this end that the Church is working the pressure. Atkins's address is done over, the Eagle's home is trashed and mine. I'm searched.

The Princess called me this morning. She knows better than that, and she unstitched the most basic rule we've got. I didn't have word of it before they came in, and I didn't have word they were doing yours, Atkins, and yours, Eagle. It's like they're stepping over a trip wire because they know it's there. And it can get worse. There was a picture taken of me when I went to a crappy little village where the Bosnia with Love stuff had been dumped. It's left with the Princess by the Church. It's that sort of moment, a pretty girl and me, and we're close. Christ, I don't get to meet girls like that. Nothing's bloody happened, not yet, but the picture makes it look like I'm kissing her. I've had my ears thrashed by the Princess. She can't handle it, she's bawling, and their recorders are turning on it Thai's the negatives. That's why the question's fair is it tailing apart?'

He couldn't see the Eagle, but heard him squirm in the seat behind. Atkins's eyes never left the road.

'Do I turn, cut my losses, and run?'

They were both silent. Neither had spoken since the journey had started. He thought they were both pathetic, but didn't show what he thought.

'It's a fair question, you're entitled to ask it.'

His voice held ils quiet.

' I've never run, haven't ever… When I was a kid at school, I didn't run. I used to get hell kicked out of me when I was making my patch. Bigger kids, stronger, older, kicked and punched me and I went home with blood on my face and teeth loose, and I went back each next morning, until the day when I could hand back the kicks and the fists. I ruled in that school. I ruled, had control. I would have been nothing if I had shown fear, just another tearaway, and been smacked down… When they put me out of school, when I was starting up my own patch – shopkeepers, businesses, fourteen years old and protecting them – people wanted me to cut my losses and run.

There was fist fights and knife fights, there was a petrol bomb thrown at me. I went after them. I was a kid, but I went after them in their pubs and in their pads, went after them until they backed off. I had to clear the competition out from Stoke Newington first, then from Islington and Holloway, then from Dalston and Hackney. There was good pickings and the competition didn't want me – it was shotguns and shooters… I went inside. I got two things out of Pentonville. I got respect but I had to fight for it, and with the respect came the contacts. The Mixer came from Pentonville, and the Cards, and the Cruncher, and the link to you, Eagle. If I hadn't stood the ground, hadn't fought, at the age I was, I'd just have ended up as another kid who was playtime for the old perverts… I came out. I went up to Green Lanes and I started buying, started dealing, started selling on.

More territory to move into, and bigger fights. I could have turned then. It was about will, about determination, about belief. If 1 hadn't had the will, if the determination had been short, then I'd have gone under. There was heavy money to be made and too many snouts in the trough, and only room in the trough for one, mine. I put men in hospital, but they didn't talk to the CID because they hadn't the guts to, and none of them came back for more. What I'm saying is that respect doesn't come easy, it's earned. I earned it. I sat in the top of the tree, because I didn't turn or run or q u i t… and the years go by. I am sitting in the top of that tree, and I am thinking. Where do I go, if I don't turn and run and quit? Only one place to go – find a bigger tree, climb it and get higher. Did anyone say it was easy? It wasn't easy in the school, not easy getting the shopkeepers to shell out in Stoke Newington, or to clear the territory in north London, wasn't easy in Pentonville, wasn't easy going up to Green Lanes. But I had the will… So, now I have problems.'

He eased back against the comfort of the seat. He despised them.

'What's a problem for? It's for solving. Problems are for low-life, they'll' not for Mister. I go on, I never backed from anything I wanted. I want this… Either of you, do you want to get out? Do you want to walk?

You going to stand at the side of the road and wait for a bus? Going to the airport? I don't hear you, Eagle.

You're not speaking, Alkins.'

He heard the shuffle of papers behind him, and thought the Eagle hid in them, and Atkins's eyes only left the road when he checked the mirror. They came out of the Neretva gorge.

'Well, that's that, then – maybe, because I think we're ahead of schedule, we can stop and get something to eat. Might be a long day.'

Mister closed his eyes and felt the sun beat on his face. He thought only of the meeting. Monika and the Princess were forgotten, and the Eagle and Atkins who were rubbish, and Cann who was a flea's bite. He was untouchable, and supreme, and the meeting would prove it.

They came onto the flat plain, and the signs pointed for Mostar. Joey drove the blue van. He had failed. He had washed up, like driftwood on a beach.

Maggie was beside him, her legs straddling the gearstick, her skirt riding up, and beyond her on the front bench seat was Frank Williams. His arm was behind her neck, her hair against his cheek. They both slept, had the right to. They had been up all through the night to monitor the increasing panic, shouting and belted orders relayed to them by the infinity transmitter. The boy, Enver, had not been found. The Sarajevo police were out searching for him, the hospitals had not admitted him. Only when Ismet Mujic had abandoned his watch for the boy, and had left the apartment to go to the airport to meet the first flight of the morning in from Zagreb, had they come back to the hotel, with time to shower and change, and head off for the Holiday Inn with the van. Joey was the one who had slept, who would drive. He had watched the Mitsubishi pull out from the hotel, and once it was on the open road he had dropped back and allowed visual contact to be lost. He was guided by the small blinking light of the beacon, sometimes intense and sometimes faint, on the screen in front of her splayed-out knees.

He had failed because he had no authorization for intrusive surveillance. He could gather no evidence because the authorization had been withdrawn. He could place the moment when the professionalism he prided had drifted to obsession and the Church culture had been shed. It was when Mister had walked to the cemetery, when he had seen his rolling, confident gait, and he had been outwitted, out thought; it was failure. Everything since had been the feeble, second-rate attempt to claw back from the failure. Joey Cann, and it battered in his mind, was the loser – always.

The beacon guided him and he let her sleep, and Frank.

Two pick-ups followed him. The Sreb Four had split into pairs. On the back of the second pick-up was a wire cage. In the cage was Nasir. Not that Joey gave a damn for the life history of the brute, but it was called Nasir Muhsin had told him the name and the history as if it were information of importance before they left Sarajevo, information to be nurtured. Nasir Oric had been the commander holding the perimeter line at Srebrenica who had been withdrawn on government orders, who was not there when the enclave fell, when the throats had been slit. When the beacon light dulled he stamped down on the accelerator pedal to coax the maximum speed from the van.

Joey fell deserted, alone with only the obsession for company.

The beacon led him to swing right at the main junction, towards Mostar – ahead of him, before he turned, a low line of hills shimmered in the haze. He did not know their name, or that of the valley they hid, and he lost sight of the ground that rose to meet an unforgiving, sun-drenched sky.

Husein Bekir had come down to the ford, but the water was too deep for him to cross. He wore the same protection from the sun as he did against the winter cold. His coat, which reached to his knees, was tightly fastened with twine over his stomach and he had on his heavy rubber boots. His beret cap shielded his scalp from the sun.

The de-miners sat on the track where an ash tree threw shade and their dog was stretched out against its trunk. They ate bread and drank from Coketins Husein had come down to the ford to see how far their yellow tape corridors had progressed in that morning's work – one, he estimated, was five metres further forward, one was seven metres, not one of them was more than ten. His fields were more than a thousand metres in length, and a few paces more than two hundred and fifty metres wide. He shouted across at them. Why did they need to stop to eat and to drink? Should they not work faster? How much were they paid to sit in the shade and not work? They ignored him, not a head turned towards him.

He turned. The quiet settled again on the valley. It had been God's place, and it was poisoned. In the heat's haze the fields drifted away from him, were cloaked in silence.

The location chosen by Ismet Mujic was in deference to the Italian. Marco Tardi had flown from Messina to Bari on the Italian mainland, then by light aircraft to Split on Croatian territory. On collection, he had been driven to Mostar.

It was all complications. It was in deference to the Italian because he was the biggest player in Ismet Mujic's business life. The Russian had said they should meet at Brcko, near to the Arizona market, where he had associates. The Turk had wanted Sarajevo, the base of his allies. Fuat Selcuk had reached Sarajevo's airport first and had complained for the entire thirty-five minutes he had waited for Nikki Gornikov's plane to arrive. The Turk and the Russian would not travel in the same car, each insisted that their bodyguards must be with them at all times.

The convoy from the airport to Mostar was three cars, and a fourth joined there. It was all shit… He had been on his mobile eleven times and the boy, Enver, had not been found.

He made the rendezvous. He watched the Russian and the Turk, not leaving their cars, peer with distaste at the Italian in his car. Small scorpions could be found in the dry hills in summer between Mostar and the coast, and it was the habit of local men to catch them, not wearing gloves for fear of damaging them, then to build a little prison for them of concrete blocks, let them fight, and wager big money on the outcome…

Ismet Mujic would not have bet on the Englishman.

His car led and, enveloped in the dust trail, their cars followed.

Mister walked, and Atkins stayed at a distance behind him.

Back at the Mitsubishi was the Eagle, who had said his feet hurt in his shoes. They'd left him, with his shoes off, massaging his feet. Atkins, seeing the Eagle's spindly white ankles, had wondered how the man managed at rough shooting over the fields, which he claimed he did. The vehicle was parked outside a big modern hotel, spotlessly clean, money lavished, about the only building Atkins had seen in Mostar that wasn't war-damaged. He'd never reached Moslar when he'd served his twin UN tours.

Mister had led and Atkins had gone after him.

Mister had gone off into the Muslim quarter on the east side of the city, down cobbled, shaded streets beneath overhanging balconies, and he'd paused lor a long time at the great gap where the Stari Most bridge had been. Atkins could remember when it had been brought down by explosives – on his second tour. The Croats had blamed the Muslims for an act of international vandalism; the Muslims had blamed the Croats for a war crime on a world heritage site. There were two workmen there, and a sign said the bridge was being rebuilt with Italian craftsmen and UNESCO funding. Mister gazed down into the tumbling water below the gap the old bridge had spanned. Atkins thought his face was serene, calm. Had been ever since they'd arrived in the city.

Mister's eyes never left the water of the Neretva.

Atkins said, 'You know, Mister, kids used to jump off here for the tourists, dive off the old bridge, then crawl back up and get paid for it.'

Mister interrupted, his voice still and quiet, 'Can I tell you what's valuable, Atkins? It's time… time to focus, concentrate and think… Understand me, Atkins, I don't give a shit about whether kids jumped off here. I don't give a shit about this place, anything of it, anything of their war. You ever interrupt me again and it'll be the last time, because I'll have sliced your yapping tongue out of your mouth. You with me, Atkins?'

Atkins reeled. Mister's face never changed. The serenity stayed.

Mister leaned on the rail and stared another minute at the water. He turned, the affable smile on his face.

'Right, Atkins, I reckon we'll be late there, and that's just right. Let the bastards wait, I always say. Let them s w e a t… You all right, Atkins?'

'Of course, Mister.'

The beacon led them from Mostar. They had been through a village marked on the map as Hodbina, a place of scattered homes, small tended fields and grazing livestock, and women worked with hoes and spades on vegetable patches. It was off the main road south to the coast. Smoke came from the chimneys, but diffused into the clean skies. A road, part tarmacadam and part steamrollered stones, took them on, until the beacon's pulse led them to a track veering right off the road, and they saw the fresh tyremarks. It was wild country; the cultivated fields were behind them. Old rock was scattered over the ground and clumps of thorny scrub had found shallow rooting. The sun beat down on it. Joey had slowed. The two pick-ups went by him. They stopped ahead then turned, and reversed into a small wood of dense birch, using a rutted path. He followed and parked beside them. Maggie Bolton went to the back of the van, opened its door, winked at Frank, then dropped her skirt to her ankles. She reached inside and rummaged, lifted out her pair of old jeans and slipped them on.

The dog, Nasir, was freed from his cage and allowed to wander in the trees, lift his leg, then was leashed.

They went into the depths of the trees.

The guns were cocked. Salko, Ante and Fahro carried Kalashnikovs, and Ante's had a night sight screwed onto the top of the barrel. Muhsin had a pistol at his belt alongside a big water bottle and the leash in his hand. The dog had a dried, weather-desiccated bone in its mouth. They were in front.

Frank lugged Maggie's box of magic tricks. She walked with Joey. They went towards the brightness where the sun hit against the last line of the trees. At the edge of the wood they looked down and saw the house.

The track with the tyremarks ran down the hill in front of them and reached an oasis of green. There was a rich garden around the house, clawed back from the stone and the scrub. Sprinklers played over it and made small rainbows. Four Mercedes cars were parked on swept gravel in front of the building, along with the white Mitsubishi. It was Spanish hacienda style, with walls of white stucco and closed shutters covering the windows. A carrion crow soared above it and cried gratingly. Two men, dressed in black, worked on the cars – but not the Mitsubishi – polishing away the roads' dust.

Frank was beside him, and murmured, 'Now we're here, can I ask something?'

'Ask away.'

'What are we here for?'

Joey thought before he spoke, as if an immediate answer eluded him. Then said, 'To force mistakes.'

'Yes, yes – OK, very funny man. I'll say it slowly – what do we hope to achieve by being here?'

Joey shook his head slowly. ' I don't know.'

'Wait a minute, steady down,' Frank said evenly. 'If you want to play this out, don't mini! me there are six of us here, and you. You must have an idea where this is going?'

'Regardless of whether you'd come, any of you, I'd have been here.'

Frank stared at him, brow furrowed, and the scratch was in his voice. 'Tell me, if you'd be so kind, what is there that I should know?'

'All you need to know right now is that Judge Delic has withdrawn the authorization for intrusive surveillance on Target One.'

The hiss. 'So, it's not legal, any of it? Jesus – you picked a fine time…'

Joey looked away, back to the house and the men cleaning the vehicles.

'Are you stupid, an idiot? What are you? No legality, can't gather evidence, can't put anything before a court, no time for handcuffs. Why are we here?'

'Because I gave my promise to follow this man wherever he led,' Joey said, as if that answer was adequate.

They scrambled down the slope towards the fence that hugged the green of the oasis. Joey saw that the dog never lost hold of the bone. The sun was at its zenith and threw their shadows down under their bodies. They closed on the fence. When one of their bodies, or the dog's paws, caused small stones to cascade down, they all froze, then went on when they saw that the two men had not broken from the work of cleaning, the cars. A dozen paces from the fence there was a gully and they sagged into it. Muhsin poured waler sparingly into the dog's throat. Masking them from the house was a flat stone, storm-smoothed.

Down on the earth, pressed close to him, Frank murmured, 'You know what? Obsession is dangerous for health yours and ours.'

' I gave my promise,' Joey said, open-faced.

It was, the Eagle recognized it, Mister's finest hour.

He did not apologize for his lateness. That they had waited for him was obvious from the used plates and dirty knives and forks on the table, the colter cups and glasses beside the empty water bottles. There had been no hint of apology. Effortlessly, he had created an atmosphere of an equal among partners. They would have fidgeted, cursed, they would have queried the arrangements of Ismet Mujic, they would have listened for the crunch on gravel of the late arrivals' vehicle. 'Don't bend the knee to them,' Mister had said, as the front door was opened for them. 'Let them know it's their privilege to be meeting us.' It was high risk, the Eagle had thought, but Mister always won because he always risked. They'd gone inside, into the dim cool of a wide living room, and Mister had, per-functorily but with charm, shaken their hands. 'I'm Mister, and this is my legal adviser, Eagle, and I have also brought with me my associate, Atkins. They're fine men, both of them, and as committed as I am to the principles of honest business dealing.' He had been asked by Ismet Mujic if he wished to eat, and had brusquely declined. He had then belittled Ismet Mujic. 'Now, Serif, has this room been scanned?' It hadn't… Mister's eyebrows had been raised fractionally in surprise, and the others had gazed at him in a marginal moment of suspicion. Mister had nodded to Atkins. Atkins had left the room. Radios had started to blare through the ground floor of the building, and upstairs. Mister had said nothing until Atkins had returned, then Mister had pointed to the stereo system in the room; that had been turned on, volume up. 'Now can we get to work.' Then he had snapped his fingers at the Eagle and Atkins and had pointed to the table. They'd started to clear it, the Italian began to help, then the Russian and last the Turk, and Ismet Mujic was shouting towards the kitchen for his people, but by the time they came the plates were stacked and the cutlery gathered together, and Ismet Mujic was further belittled.

'We need, my friend, a cloth to clean the table.'

When the table was cleared and wiped, Mister sat down. With the Eagle and Atkins, he took one side of the table, made the living room into a board room with him playing the part of chief executive officer.

Mister had said, the last thing before they'd hit the gravel in front of the house, 'We find a room with a table, we sit down one side of it. We do not take off our jackets or loosen our ties. We are not slumped in easy chairs. We are in control – they are bloody lucky to have us.' They sat opposite. They were casual in dress and posture, and their jewellery dripped from them. The contrast was powerful, as Mister had wanted.

It was the nearest he would come to an apology in that finest hour. ' I regret that I do not speak Italian, Russian or Turkish. Neither do my colleagues. I hope we can manage in the English language.'

They gazed at him impassively.

'That's taken, then. Two things I want to say first. I am grateful to you, Serif, for making this meeting possible. I appreciate that it has not been easy for you to bring together three gentlemen with differing schedules, all important. You have, Serif, my sincere thanks.' The Eagle wondered whether they had carried guns into the house. Atkins had left their own weapons in the Mitsubishi, as Mister had instructed, and each of them during the introductions had, offhand, flapped back their jackets to show they were not armed, as Mister had ordered. ' I work on one strong principle that is not negotiable. My word is my bond.

I make a deal and I guarantee that, to i he best of my ability, the deal is carried through, and the "best of my ability" is good. Serif will tell you that I have done a deal with him and that the promised monies are now lodged in his account in Nicosia, as I said they would be. You will all have associates in London. You will have checked with them. You will have asked about me. You will have been told that I am a serious player. So, gentlemen, do I have your attention for my proposals?'

The Eagle could not decide which of them had the cruellest eyes.

'You will allow me to give you my evaluation of the common factor affecting all three of you. In London you do not fulfil your business potential – you fall far short of what could be achieved. That's where I can help, where I can make a difference in your profitability.'

The Italian had the youngest eyes, but there was no sparkle in them to match his smile.

'You bring in, Marco, product from Venezuela and Colombia, but your difficulty is getting it into the European marketplace. I suggest you ship direct to the ports of Montenegro, then take a series of options.

You can handle the product yourself and use the Adriatic bridge to Italy, or you can avail yourself of the lorry network I will be setting up in Bosnia. It can be used to move your product either east or north. If you wish it, and your product goes to the UK, I will make available to you the dealer and distributor infrastructure that I already have in place. You will meet with no competition, you will not have to fight a turf war because I will be your ally and no man in London will fight against me. The market will be cleared for your use. That's what I'm offering you, Marco, and I would like you to consider it carefully.'

The Russian had narrow, slitted eyes, and the bags under them were puffed.

'As I understand it, Nikki, you and your colleagues make a great deal of money, but that's where your difficulty starts. What to do with the money? I anticipate that you will find it increasingly hard to use the facilities of Russian banks in New York, Cyprus or Hungary. Those banks are going to come under intensive law-enforcement scrutiny. To maximize the return on your hard-earned profits, you need access to legitimate banking. That's the City of London. I can provide you, for a most reasonable fee, the opportunities to rinse through the City, through introductions. No more grey hairs, stress-free banking

… In addition, you are engaged in people-trafficking, but it's chaotic and amateurish, and too many of your people consignments go down because you do not have the expertise of. 1 British partner. I can be of help

– a n d I can help with your automobile trade, and your weapons trade. London is not merely a major street-market, it is also. a name. London is respectability. The name of London opens doors, as you will find if you take up my offer, worldwide.'

The Turk had small eyes, set close together, and they squinted.

'Thank you for your patience, Fuat. You're a big man. Where you operate you are king, except in one area. I handle your product. I'm at the end of the line, but in Green Lanes. I am buying the product you have purchased, refined, then shipped on for importation into the UK. The importation is where you are not king, far from it. I read my newspapers, just as I am sure you read yours. Not a month goes by without the interception of a consignment of product at the British ports. Naturally, you rely on Turkish transportation -

Turkish lorries and Turkish shipping. The cargo on such lorries and ship containers attracts the greatest attention. Payment is on delivery, so if the importation is busted you don't get the money. I am suggesting that you deliver into Sarajevo, that Sarajevo is the transit point for both of us. A blind donkey can bring the product into Sarajevo, any lorry with any plates can get through, and that's where you'd be paid. It's less for you, of course, than for importation direct to the UK, but it's less risk. I can use British-registered lorries with British passport-holders driving them, and they're waved through when your transport is stopped, searched. With due respect to you, nothing gets a Customs man's nose sniffing faster than a Product of Turkey stamp on a cargo consignment of ceramic tiles or oranges or whatever you want. What you gain is money, what you lose is the headache and the hassle. That's my proposal to you.'

The smoke of their cigarettes made a wall along the middle length of the table and watered their eyes, but they stared at Mister unblinking.

'I've done my deal with Serif, and I'm very happy with the terms agreed. I can predict with confidence that he is going to be a good friend to me, like a brother… Each of you three gentlemen had influence in the running of this country, and I believe that influence will grow as the foreign powers withdraw. I intend to operate here, and I am asking for your co-operation, your partnership, in our mutual self-interest… I'd like to take a break now. In the break you, Marco, Nikki and Fuat, have a chance to think over what I've said and to decide whether to take it further. If any of you decide not to, then, please, feel free to back off, and leave. If you feel you wish to move ahead, into those new areas of product profitability that I have outlined, then I will talk detail and percentages. Would a fifteen-minute break be satisfactory? I want to settle it at this session, I want to wrap it up.'

He stood, smiled briefly, then went to the door, Atkins and the Eagle in his wake.

It had been Mister's finest hour, a masterclass. He'd heard it all before, of course, but there had been no mere parrot's recitation of the Cruncher's vision. It had been softly spoken persuasion, and never an interrupt ion, never a yawn. They were the Cruncher's words, but only Mister could have spoken them into the cruelty of those eyes.

'How did I do?'

They were the courtiers. Atkins told him he'd done well. They knew their lines and meant them. The Eagle said he had been magnificent.

'Christ, I fancy some fresh air, away from that bloody cigarette smoke.'

The dog, Nasir, played up, was whining, and Muhsin tried to soothe it. Joey didn't know why they'd brought it. He sat cross-legged on the flat stone in front of the gully. He had the camera slung round his neck, with the big lens attached, and beside him was the dish with the antenna probe, but Maggie had said all she could hear was music, at least four sound sources, and the radios cluttered up any chance of voices. She'd said that if she'd been in her workshop she might have been able to clear the music off the track and get to hear the voices, and he'd said that she wasn't in her bloody workshop but on a bloody hill in Bosnia, and she'd chucked the earphones off her head.

The sun was down over the hills in the west. When the darkness had come, Joey had gone onto the flat stone, as if that was escape from them, and from the dog. He didn't know when Frank had told her, hadn't heard him whisper the name of Judge Delic.

The dog wriggled on its back behind him and Muhsin whispered to it, and Joey heard his fingers scratching at the dog's belly.

Joey knew everything about the dog, and the dog's name. Muhsin had thought he'd be interested, when they were in the gully, to know the history of the animal and its name, and Frank had tediously translated.

'He was the best fighter that came out of Muslim Bosnia, better than any of those who were generals or brigadiers, better than Serif. Nasir Oric held Srebrenica for three years. If he had not been there it would have fallen months before the end, perhaps years before. He was a natural leader, only twenty-six years old when he took command of us. He had been a bodyguard to Milosovic in Belgrade, but he came back to us when war was inevitable. He called his men the "manoeuvre unit" and his own weapon, he carried it himself, was a fifty-calibre machine-gun.

The Serbs were terrified of him. He went out from our perimeter lines into their villages…'

Maggie had interrupted, 'Fuck the shaggy-dog story. What you did was inexcusable. To carry on, not telling us, like nothing had happened when authorization was withdrawn – to tell Frank now, that is a fucking disgrace. It's betrayal. We are illegal. What is this bullshit about promises?'

He ignored her, didn't rise to her carping, and asked Frank to go on with the story, as told by Muhsin.

'When the word spread in the enclave that Nasir Oric was going out that night at the head of the manoeuvre unit, with the fifty-calibre, the people in that part of the front line where he would go out would leave the aphrodisiac of watered honey mixed with crushed walnuts in jars outside their homes, and he would drink, and then he would go to kill Serbs. It was not so that he could fuck better that they left out the aphrodisiac, but so he could kill better… And, I called the dog Nasir… '

Maggie had said, 'Shit, my people would scalp me if they knew – after all I've done for you.'

Since the dark had come, and the cool, it had been harder to keep the dog quiet, and the big brute had lost interest in the bone, and. .. Light flooded out of the door ahead of him. Joey, from the rock, waved for quiet down in the gully.

He saw the three of them, Mister, the Eagle and Atkins, standing tall.

They left Dragan Kovac's home. It was becoming a ritual, and welcome.

At the end of the day, when the dusk made it impossible for them to work in their taped corridors, a few of them – and the foreman – came to his home, sat on his porch with him and drank his plum brandy He thought they needed the alcohol because of the work they did. The sun was long gone over the hill to the west of the valley when they lurched off up the track to the junction where their pick-ups were parked by the caravans.

The foreman shouted back, as he disappeared into the evening darkness, 'Thank you, Dragan, and have a quiet night.'

He laughed loudly. 'I have enough of them to know them too well. They are all quiet nights.'

'They think it's going according to his plan,' Maggie murmured. 'Sounds as if there's been a preamble, and now it's a break. The detail's going to follow if the others decide to come in… Eagle says that Mister's done well, but he says the others are hostile, suspicious and wary, but they like the money on offer.

The money's good but – this is Eagle – they're still cautious. Mister says it'll depend on the percentages

… God, can't one of you throttle that damn animal?'

She was on the flat stone beside Joey, the earphones on her head, and she tilted the dish with the antenna spike so that it was aimed at the three men who stood on the gravel between the house door and the parked vehicles. Frank was with her, and Ante and Fahro.

Behind the stone, in the gully, Muhsin and Salko lay on the squirming dog, scratched its stomach and tousled its neck.

'The Italian, that's Marco, is going to be asked to pay fifteen per cent of the value of cocaine handled by Mister's network in the UK – no, that's the negotiating point. They'll come down to twelve and a half per cent, it's Eagle, he says that's the bottom line…

Nikki, the Russian – City banking, City of London, laundering. Ten per cent is the minimum, but starting at eleven and a half per cent of all monies washed through Mister's placemen. They've gone on to more percentages – still with Nikki, but it's people-trafficking… God, they are talking big money.

Corporation stuff… Jesus, throttle it or gag it, but shut it up.'

'The weapons trade, Mister – I suggest not too hard to start with,' the Eagle said, in deference.

'London's the conduit for the trade, Mister. Best place he could work out of – access into Africa and the Middle East.' It was Atkins's first contribution: he felt shut out, sidelined. He was ignored.

'Start at six and three-eighths, on the first million, and go down to five and seven-eighths,' Mister said, with confidence. 'Nine per cent on the second million, ten on what's on top of that, if he goes through our contacts.'

'Sounds about right,' the Eagle muttered. 'Now the Turk, that is some evil bastard.'

Mister grinned balefully. ' I expect his mother loves him.'

'The Turk we pay thirty-five thousand pounds sterling, delivery in Sarajevo, for refined product, per kilo, as against the forty-five you're paying now.'

'So, I'd he getting, maximum, thirty-six per kilo?'

Somewhere in the darkness above them, a dog barked. It was, It sharp, baying, deep-throated bark.

'Three point six million for one hundred kilos. I think I can live with that. If it's not lorries, I was starting to think of all those regattas over the North Sea… '

There was a second bark, but it was stifled abruptly, then a low whine, then nothing.

'Regattas in Norway, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, France, all those clubs going over to compete. Can you sail, Atkins? Can't? Try learning. I'm going to have a pee. Fifteen minutes must be nearly up. You want a pee, Eagle? I'll call you when I need you, Atkins.'

It was masterful of Mister. Atkins had heard the bark and knew it was that of a guard or attack dog. It was the bark of the sort of dog used by the Royal Military Police for perimeter protection or for hunting a man down. He heard the door close behind them.

Alongside that sort of dog would be a handler and guns and – his mind raced – a listening probe. The dog had barked beyond the fall of the lights around the door. Mister's mastery had been in finishing his sentence, about a regatta route, then suggesting a pee, like he was too dumb to have been alerted, if they were listened to. He shivered. He heard the door behind him open again.

A light was switched on behind him, from the hall.

Its beam, maybe two hundred times candlepower, was thrown past him, over the green, well-cut and watered lawns, over the shrub bushes, and the man-height fence that was topped with a barbed-wire strand, into the scrub, on to a grey-white flat stone fifty yards from him. Atkins saw the man he had tried to kill, to run down. The light caught the big spectacles, too large for the face, and the thin shoulders, and the jutting knees as he sal cross-legged, unmoving. A woman with a dish was beside him, and an older man in uniform. Thenthe flashlight caught two men in dark overalls and their rifle barrels blinked back at the beam. Another man with another rifle, an image-intensifier sight on it, scrambled to join them. He couldn't see the dog but the barking was frantic and the noise billowed over him.

The light went out. There was pandemonium in the doorway of the house… He thought that all the bloody security had been in the house, complacent and sitting in the bloody kitchen – none of the idle bastards had been out on the property's fence.

Atkins started to walk. He had come to the end.

There was a shake in his stride, his knees were weak and he wanted to piss, but he went briskly on to the lawns and through the shrubs. He heard his name called, but he didn't turn. The engines were starting behind him, and there was the flash of headlights, the slamming of doors, and tyres grinding the gravel. The cry of his name felt like a knife into his back, then,

'Leave the bastard, fucking yellow bastard!' He heard the bark of the dog and the engines' scream.

He raised the flag – white flag, abject, surrender.

Atkins shouted, ' I'm coming over. Please, don't shoot.

Please, don't.'

He jumped at the high fence. It bucked, rocked, held under his weight. He did not feel the pain as the wire slashed his hands. He rolled over it, as he had been trained to do. He blundered through the thorn bushes towards the dog. He was thrown down.

Hands forced their way over his body, prised between his legs and into his armpits. He was rolled over and his arms were forced into his back, and the handcuffs clicked, tight, on his wrists. He was dragged.

Rocks caught his shins. He thought of the steely loyalty of his mother if she came to visit him, and the way the boy had struggled as he'd been lifted on to the bridge rail, and the contempt that would be on the face of his father. They were into a wood of thick-growing trees. Twice he hit the tree trunks and he felt the blood dribble from his nose. They didn't allow him to slow them. He was thrown onto the back of a pick-up. A cage door grated shut. The vehicle jerked forward. Beside him, kept from him by the cage mesh, was the hot breath of the snarling dog.

He thought he was free. He was no longer Atkins.

'Which one are we following?' Frank asked.

'Mister, Target One.'

'What about the others?'

'Irrelevant to me,' Joey said.

'And the guy in the back?'

'He's yours, not mine.'

' I can call up help, cavalry.'

' I don't want help, not from anyone.'

'Where do you think, Joey Cann, we are going?'

'Wherever he leads us to.'

'He'll turn Queen's, won't he? He'll sing, testify.'

' I'll fix him. Eagle, you worry too much.'

'Right now, I'm worrying overtime.'

'Just drive.'

'You're the better driver, Mister.'

' If I'm driving I can't shoot. Think, Eagle, switch on.'

The Eagle knew Mister when in structured situations. He knew him in conference and in meetings, and when there was an agenda on the table in front of him in the office over the launderette. This, though, was new. He did not know Mister in crisis. He was not a part of the other meetings where the maps were studied and the guns loaded; he had been safe from them. The two guns were now out of the glove box.

One rested between Mister's thighs, the other was in his right hand, both were cocked. From what he could see of Mister's face, and from his voice, there was no panic. It was as if he had found a welcome fulfilment.

The window was down, the cold air of the evening whipping their faces. Mister checked often in the mirror, but the lights stayed behind them. In the chaos of the departure they had, both of them, tried to get into the Russian's car, and been bounced out. A pistol had pointed at their stomachs. The Turk's car had already pulled away. The Eagle had never driven a getaway vehicle. The lights behind were constant, but the lights he followed diminished,

The Eagle followed the tail-lights as best he could, but the Mitsubishi did not have the acceleration power of the Mercedes fleet ahead. Always the lights were strong behind him. He wanted to piss, and wouldn't have cared if he had messed his trousers. It was all right for Mister, he'd find another bloody lawyer. Suddenly, the lights ahead disappeared.

They're trying to lose us, bastards.'

' Keep looking.'

'You reckon, Mister, there are road-blocks up front?'

' I don't know – just look for their lights.'

'They'll know the way out, Serif'll know the bloody way what's that?'

The Eagle would have sworn, far up the road, just past the first sign into Godbina village, there was a flash of a brakelight, and no headlights in front of it.

He thought the Mercedes column had killed their lights so that the Mitsubishi would not be able to follow. Of course there would be road-blocks, and bloody machine-guns. His skill was in the reading of the pages of Archbold, not in evading road-blocks and bloody machine-guns. And if they evaded the road-blocks, what then? Where to then? He was slowing.

He'd have sworn – on his Bible, on Archbold, put his hand on the smooth leather of the volume and given his oath – that the brakelights had flashed again off the road to Mostar, climbing and going right. He took the decision. He saw the turn-off. There was a high moon rising. He swung the wheel and snapped off the headlights.

'What are you doing?'

'You said to follow them.'

'You sure it was them?'

'Sure, Mister.'

'Positive sure?'

'They turned off because there'll be road-blocks.

They know the form.'

The track they were on was good for the first half-mile. The Eagle started to relax. He had made the decision, and stood his corner, and his decision was accepted… His decision, not Mister's. He was starting to lose the sweat in the pit of his back. He had to go slower, change down through the gears, as the track surface deteriorated. Every minute or so he saw the wink of the brakelights in front of him, higher and climbing. His eyes were now accustomed to driving by moonlight. He leaned forward over the wheel, and by concentrating to his limits he could see most of the ruts, enough to avoid most of them… Then came the sinking despair. It came in his gut, his heart and in his mind. At first he did not dare to look up to the mirror. It had been his decision. Mister was quiet beside him, as if he'd parcelled off responsibility.

The low chassis of the Mercedes saloons would have snagged on the rutted track.

He looked up into the mirror and the twin headlights, merging there, dazzled him. The brakelights shone brightly, then were extinguished. As they drew level, the Eagle saw a tractor and two men unloading bales.

As they lurched on the rutted track past the tractor, in the moon's grey glow, the Eagle saw that its front lights were smashed. He had made a decision and it had been wrong. The humiliation and the fear settled on him. He turned to Mister. 'What are we going to do?'

An icy calm in the reply. 'Go overland, walk out of here… What are you, Eagle? What the fuck are you?'

'Not very clever, Mister.'

'I'll get you out – what'll you be then?'

'Grateful, Mister.'

The lights behind, in the mirror, glowed more fiercely, and the distance narrowed as they came ever closer. There was, the Eagle thought, an inevitability to this conflict. He'd known it since he'd seen the guns and heard the dog, and when the flashlight had found the young man sitting cross-legged on the flat stone peering at them through heavy spectacles. Mister had said the young man had been 'dealt with'. He recalled what he had said, in the road outside Mister's home, a month before, a bleat in his voice: You know what I worry about? I mean it, lose sleep about? One day you overreach – know what I mean – take a step too far. i worry…

And he could remember Mister's punch just below his heart, and the pain. He pulled over and the Mitsubishi lurched into a shallow ditch.

'You won't leave me, Mister?'

'Did I ever?'

They were at the crest of a hill. The track, ever rougher, fell away from them. Down to the left were lights and the outlines of close-set buildings. There were more lights in the far distance, and a murmur of water. Between the two groupings of lights was a black hole into which the Eagle gazed and saw nothing. He scrambled out. He subsided into the ditch, water covered his shoes and the cold gripped his feet. He came round the front of the Mitsubishi.

Mister was silhouetted against the moon. He heard the drone of the vehicles down the track behind them, and in moments their lights would trap him.

'Are you coming or not?'

'Coming, Mister.'

Ante had the rifle to his shoulder. His body-weight was against the bonnet of the blue van. He aimed. He had the whole of the upper chest of Target One in his

'scope. He dragged back the cocking lever, scraped it till it locked home. He settled. Frank swung his arm up. His wrist would have hit the underside of the barrel immediately below the end of the sight's lens, and the aim darted towards the moon. Frank lectured Ante. Joey realized the anger of Salko and Fahro.

Muhsin had the dog down from the cage and it peed against the wheel of the van.

'You did right,' Joey said.

'Thank you – but it's not for you. He was going to blow him away. I am an authorized firearms officer, sometimes I'm a team leader. That man is under my control. I am responsible for his actions, and his target is a British citizen. I'd have been before Disciplinary, a full inquiry. I know the regulations no one's life was in danger. It would have been murder, and if 1 hadn't intervened I would have been an accessory.'

' I support what you did.'

' I'm grateful for that, Joey.'

' I support what you did because Mister is mine.'

Joey marshalled them. Muhsin would lead with the dog, and Ante would be alongside them. Joey would be a dozen paces behind, with Salko and Fahro.

Joey said to Frank, 'You should watch the prisoner.

Please feel free to read him his rights, and you can offer him a solicitor. You can assure him he'll have legal-aid funding for an appeal to the European court should that be necessary, and make sure he's warm, fed and comfortable and-'

But Joey didn't finish. He hurried away into the dark, and there was the thud of the boots around him, and the baying of the dog.

Mister ran.

The Eagle shambled after him.

Every thorn hush seemed to catch at the Eagle's suit jacket and trousers, and he seemed to stumble on every stone Sometimes they would blunder onto a path and then they could go faster, but each path petered away into denser thorn thickets. On a drop, deeper than half the height of his body, he was thrown forward, winded, and he cried out for Mister's help, but help didn't come and he pushed himself up and followed the crashing, ripping sounds of Mister's flight. Driving him on was the noise of the dog's pursuit. He didn't know how they would lose the dog.

There were people in the village, his friends and Mo's friends, who paid seven hundred and fifty pounds for a dog that was little more than a pup, and they talked about their dogs talked about damn all else but their dogs – spoke about ground scent and air scent. The ground scent was from his shoes, and the air scent was from the sweat as he panted to follow Mister.

They said, his friends and Mo's, that 'The hardest thing in this good life is to evade a well-trained dog.'

The heel of his right shoe had come off.

'Are you there, Mister?'

'You're doing well, Eagle, keep at it.'

He saw the shadow of Mister and then it was gone.

There were thicker trees. Mister had gone into them.

Then a path. He was on the path and off it when he heard Mister's feet break dry wood. Mister hadn't told him of the path, hadn't warned him of it, hadn't guided him down it. He tried to run but was capable only of a slow, waddling trot. His breath came in great heaves and his stomach bulk bounced on his belt. He tripped. Moonlight didn't penetrate the canopy of the trees above him. He fell flat. The fall burst the air from his lungs. His fingers scrabbled for a grip, to push himself up. The dog was closer, and the staccato voices urging it on. His fingers found the smooth shapes. Long thin shapes, then wider but still smooth, then the shapes of locking joints, then narrower cross-shapes, then the teeth, and his fingers slipped into the eye sockets and on to the rounded plate of the skull. The Eagle whimpered. The skeleton was across the track. He could not see it, but could feel it and touch it and understand it as clearly as a Braille reader would have. He pushed himself up. The dog's barking drove him on. He had gone twenty more short strides when he realized that his left shoe was off. Thorns, small stones, bramble stems, broken branch wood slashed his foot. He hobbled after Mister and sobbed from the pain. Mister was at the edge of the wood. There was thin grey-white light from the moon and an emptiness in front of them that was cut by a dark line where water ran loud, then more emptiness, then the lights. The lights were a grail. Mister had his foot down on a tape of dull yellow.

' I lost my shoe and the other's broken.'

'Chist, you're my burden.'

The Eagle stepped over the tape. Mister passed him. The Eagle's feet sank into thick grass.

Maggie had her torch on the map.

' I think I've found where we are. The village, the hear one, that's Ljut – and over there, the far one, that's Vraca… If you look in my bag, Frank, in the back, there's a flask. Won't be hot but better than nothing.'

She switched on her mobile and banged out the numbers.

Muhsin and the dog, and Ante had stopped at the tree-line. Joey reached them, with Fahro and Salko.

The dog strained at the leash, but Muhsin held it.

Joey could see the shadowy shapes, separated, slipping away towards the dark cut. He stepped forward: he would follow where he was led. Arms caught him, hands gripped his coat. He struggled to free himself.

Wherever the road led, he would follow. Ante lifted the tape and Salko pressed Joey's head down till his eyes were inches from it.

Fahro said the word, and Muhsin echoed it.

'Mina… mina.'