The Untouchable

Chapter Eight

Frank showed Joey in. The building was at the heart of a little empire of white prefabricated boxes. The room was reached down a hushed corridor covered with lifeless green synthetic carpet that stifled the sound of shoes. Policemen and women, in a polyglot of laundered uniforms, their national flags sewn to their upper sleeves, busily carried papers from office to office, laid them beside colleagues who laboured at computer screens. The corridor smelt of fresh ground coffee and fresh heated croissants. There were no raised voices. Here, speech was as muted as the murmur of the computers.

A quiet voice responded to Frank's knock. Joey was shown inside.

It was a tiny workspace shoe-horned between walls that were little more than screens.

The walls were pincushions for leave charts, maps, duty rosters, and photographs of children, and the shield insignias of police forces from all over the world, from the Czech Republic and South Australia to Mexico. It represented a brotherhood he felt no part of.

'You're Mr Cann, Customs and Excise of the United Kingdom. Frank's told me about you. How can I help?'

Joey had no insignia to offer. The office co-ordinated the training of the Bosnian police to deal with the threat of organized crime. It was the start of their fourth day in Sarajevo, the third of Mister, the Eagle and Atkins, and a routine had been established.

For both Joey and Maggie a routine was important.

They came from structured employment and an ordered division of responsibilities suited them.

Maggie Bolton was up early and had driven the blue van to the parking area close to the Holiday Inn hotel, to tune the audio equipment monitoring room 318.

Joey would follow later and join her, after his visit to the headquarters of the International Police Task Force. When their Target One left the hotel they would both follow, as best they could, and share the surveillance through the day and the evening. When Target One returned to the hotel, Maggie would resume her watch with the earphones, and Joey was free to roam.

'I don't have much time… '

'That's not a Sarajevo habit. God, a man in a hurry, it's almost worth a diary entry. Shoot.'

Frank didn't intervene, leaving Joey to explain what was wanted and to emphasize the requirement for security, secrecy.

The man, relentlessly chewing gum, wore the badge of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on his upper sleeve. He listened without comment. He had small, darting eyes that stayed locked on Joey's spectacles. The smartness of the Canadian's uniform and the high polish of his boots unsettled Joey in his faded jeans, sweatshirt, sweater and windcheater. He-heard Joey out.

'Let me tell you, Mr Cann, about my day. I am from a town in Manitoba, you wouldn't know its name, with a population of around fifteen thousand who are mostly Aboriginals. Right now, there, it's late evening, the temperature is around minus thirty-five degrees, and it's my home. I was shipped out of there six months ago, and I'll be shipped back in three months, and I can't wait… My day starts each morning at five and I leave my little room out in Ilidza – for which I pay five hundred German marks a month – and I go to work out in a gymnasium that's equipped by the SFOR military. I shower, and at seven I ring my wife, then I get my breakfast in the American camp at Butmir where it's familiar food and cheap. I am in my office by eight o'clock and until five o'clock in the afternoon I put papers from my in-tray into my out-tray, and when the out-tray is full I put them back in the empty in-tray. I break that up with a couple of meetings, most of which are taken up by translation time, and a sandwich for lunch. After five o'clock I go back to my room and cook myself a meal in the kitchen I share with two Swedish dog-handlers, and I might gossip a little with them. After my meal I watch a video or read a book and I'm in bed by nine o'clock.

That way the nights go faster. My regret is that I cannot make the days go quicker. I am wasting my time here. I know that and my government knows it. As each RCMP officer goes home he will not be replaced.

It's not about the cost but about the lack of achievement. Put brutally, Mr Cann, we are kicking soft excreta.

'The place is a crossroads. Every form of criminal trafficking is coming through here. Women from the Ukraine, Romania and Russia, either to work in brothels here or for transit into western Europe.

Asylum seekers from China, Afghanistan, Iran, anywhere you want, are stacked here before being moved on. Tobacco is shipped in from Italy and resold in bulk. A luxury car is stolen in the street in the morning in Hamburg or Stuttgart, the next morning it's here and in a workshop where the numbers are filed off, and the morning after it's on its way via Slovakia to Moscow. The Balkan trail of the drugs route has reopened after the war; it's not being moved in kilos but in tonnes. I want to go home, back to that balls-freezing cold in Manitoba, because I can't do a damn thing here.

'The country is held in a web of corruption. I cannot fight it. People like me are in place, and people more important than me, and we're all just pissing in the wind. Everyone's on the take. At the moment, we keep the corruption under the surface and nearly out of sight, but the Canadians are leaving and everyone else will be quitting, and then a whole country in the heart of Europe will be handed over to serious gangsters – the Turks, Russians, Albanians, Italians, and the local men. Have you heard of Serif? You have, OK.

There isn't a senior politician here, or a senior official with any power, who is fighting the culture of corruption.

'We were supposed to do some good by coming here, remember? We were going to teach a society that had endured the rape of war how to put that experience behind them. We came with a noble sentiment and generosity. About the tenth time you get your shin lacked you start to get the message. Little people are too frightened to come to us. The big people see us as being in the way and obstructing their snouts from going deeper into the swill troughs. Today I'm dealing with three million American dollars' worth of tractors, trailers, balers, plus a hundred tonnes of agricultural fertilizer, plus eighty tonnes of seed potatoes – donated by the UN, which is your tax-payers and mine – found upcountry in a warehouse owned by a politician. He'd have sold part of the loot on, and the rest he'd have distributed as largesse. That was a chance find by a bloody-minded patrol of Finns, who haven't been here long enough to have given up on the place. We are not even scratching the surface.

'There's a bigger problem, Mr Cann, and it worries me a whole lot more. Who am I to stand in judgement? Where I come from in Manitoba we are getting into a culture of criminality. The Aboriginal kids are on dope, LSD and lighter fuel. They're drinking after-shave lotion, and the adults are smashed out of their minds on class A stuff. A city like Winnipeg, where your senior-citizen tourists come to start their coach trips of the Rockies, has what we classify as a "serious heroin problem". In British Columbia they now grow better marijuana than the Mexicans. On the US border, we're stopping perhaps one load out of twenty, five per cent, of hard drugs. It's not that we're losing, the war is already lost. We're in a sewer at home. So, who am I to tell these people that it's wrong for them to be in a cesspit? Perhaps thinking never helped a law-enforcement officer.

'You said you were a busy man, Mr Cann. That's good, and I hope you can keep hold of your enthusiasm. I am prepared to authorize Frank Williams to continue liaison with you… I am also prepared to authorize the four officers, named by Frank, to be available to be with you as a part of a training exercise. You understand me, Mr Cann, a training exercise – and I wish to know nothing more. Good luck.'

'Thank you, sir.'

Joey made a mental note to send him a pin or a tie when he was back, when he had finished. He ran from the stifling heat of the Portakabin city and hoped he was not late to link with Maggie.

Mister said, 'I want a warehouse, full time and permanent.'

'What you want, Packer, is protection.'

They were around a circular glass table, Mister, the Eagle and himself on one side, and facing them were Ismet Mujic and two men. Atkins thought the older one, heavy-built, big-fisted, square-faced and crop-haired, might be an intelligence officer or senior in the police, but he was not introduced and he had not spoken. The other man, younger, without a name or a voice, had lank black hair with gel in it and the air of privileged connection. Atkins presumed the conversation was recorded, just as the Eagle had their device built into the base of his attache case. Laid on a side table at the back of the room, not hidden, was a loaded Kalashnikov assault rifle with two magazines taped together, and at the side of the table and positioned like a favourite new toy was the launcher still holding the missile tube. The Rottweilers were beside the door, stretched out and sleeping, occasionally pawing each other, then yawning to show their teeth. Sometimes, through the door, came the grating cough of one of the guards. The ambience – guns, dogs, guards – was intended to intimidate. Mister had left his PPK

Walther in the Toyota, and said the Luger given to Atkins should be with it. It was the first time Atkins had been with Mister for a major negotiation, seen the style. Mister, the Eagle and he had countered the intention to intimidate by hooking their jackets on to the chair behind them, showing they were not armed.

'It is not "Packer" it is "Mister". I don't need protection, I want co-operation.'

'Can you be so sure, after so few hours here, Mister Packer, that you will not need protection?'

'I have never needed protection in my life, but always try to find co-operation.'

Before they'd left the Toyota Mister had said that it was all about body language. The body must never show fear. On the road into and out of Tuzla, when Atkins had worn the blue beret and been on food-convoy escort, he'd known that noise and determination, and an absence of fear, were the currency for getting through the road-blocks manned by drunk Serb, Muslim or Croat thugs. At the road-blocks were papaks, oafs, and they were bullies. He had learned it was a crime to show fear to the road-block kids. He thought the body language of Mister was a master class in itself. It was all about bluff and presence.

'Mr Dubbs used that word many times. He spoke of co-operation.'

'We'll talk of him when we have agreed on co-operation.'

'You bring a lawyer with you – what is the value of a lawyer?'

'My colleague is here to draw up a document of co-operation. I co-operate with you and you co-operate with me. It is put down on paper and we sign it, we both sign it. The document is our bond. You have a copy and I have a copy.'

Around the table from him, at Mister's left shoulder, the Eagle had nodded decisively at the mention of his part in the matter. Atkins remembered the lonely outpouring of the previous evening in the atrium bar. He thought the Eagle's dependence on Mister outweighed a fear of the guns, the dogs and the guards. He thought also that Mister's quiet answers confused Ismet Mujic, and there were moments when he hesitated and glanced to either side of him before throwing his next question.

'And if, Mister Packer, you should break the bond?'

'It's just "Mister" – then you've lost nothing.'

'And if I should break the bond, Mister?'

'I'm not making threats, Serif. The launcher aimed at your lovely apartment was only my idea of a little joke. If you were to break the bond, go back on your word, you would lose more money than you can dream of. I pay well for co-operation.'

Mister's voice was pitched low. To hear him they all had to lean across the table, which gave gravity to him. The Eagle had said that Mister was 'a very clever man'. The agenda was his, and Ismet Mujic followed.

'Mr Dubbs did not say what you would pay.'

'For me to decide, when we have discussed co-operation.'

'The problem, Mister… '

'There are no problems. When two men of business both seek to do a deal then there isn't a need for problems.'

'If you do not have protection then it is possible that you have a difficulty with the police.'

Each point made by Ismet Mujic was countered immediately by Mister, sometimes with a small off hand gesture of his arm, and diminished.

'A part of the reward for your co-operation is that I don't have such a difficulty.'

'Without protection, a foreigner here, you could face more difficulties with the political leadership.'

'You would see to it, Serif, that I had no difficulties with the police or with politicians. It is how you would co-operate.'

'Would I be your partner?'

It was slyly put. Atkins thought Ismet Mujic expected rejection, which would give him cause to bluster and take the high ground. Mister's smile was supreme, as if he dealt with an old friend.

'I think that's the direction we're going.'

'I have other partners to consider.'

'A businessman such as yourself, Serif, would have many partners.'

'There is a Russian gentleman. And an Italian gentleman from Sicily -1 am told that is a most beautiful island. I have partnerships with the Turks – they are very serious with business. It would be most expensive to satisfy all of my partners.'

'Let's deal with yourself first, Serif, and others later.'

Atkins saw the Eagle's eyes flit to the ceiling. It was a killer blow. A new strain was introduced. When he had been told on the aircraft what Mister planned, it had seemed easy, reasonable. The scale of the operation now being pursued by Mister hit him, slugged him, as it had the Eagle, but Mister's reply was gentle, as if nothing ambushed or surprised him.

'Co-operation or protection, whatever you want to call it, how much do you pay?'

'I pay for what I get.' Mister's voice was softly reasonable.

'For no difficulties with the police, no investigations by government, for transport over the border without delays from Customs, for warehousing space rental, for the service of vehicle mechanics who are reliable, and guards to ride with the drivers because this is a country of many bandits, how much do you pay?'

'I could pay a flat cash figure, or I could pay for each vehicle movement, or I could pay a percentage of profit.'

'A percentage of profit?' A smear of derision from Ismet Mujic.

Mister never hesitated. 'You'd have my word on it, Serif. We say in England, "My word is my bond."

You've never been to England, to London. If you'd been there, met the people I do business with, then you'd hear that my word is good enough for anybody.

In business I'm a good friend, but if I'm ripped off then I make a bad enemy.'

'What is flat cash?'

'A million American dollars for the first year, payable quarterly, the first payment on signature of the document, and I would suggest a Cyprus bank would be the most convenient. I'm not bargaining at this stage. At the end of the first year we renegotiate, but my guarantee is that the first year's payments will be less than the second year's. That's my offer.'

They broke.

Mister, the Eagle and Atkins were left in the room, watched by the Rottweilers. Atkins moved from the chair and stood casually near the low table on which the Kalashnikov lay. It was what he was paid to do.

The Eagle wiped sweat from his forehead. He didn't say anything because Mister had closed his eyes, tipped himself back and catnapped, slept, as if there were no problems and no difficulties, only co-operation.

From the coffee-house they could watch the building's street door. They had been there an hour and Joey had started to fidget. They were on the second cup of coffee. Every ten minutes one of the men in black, with the tattoos, the shaven head and the hanging belly, would walk to the end of the block and back, and each time would look into the shops, bars and the cafe window. They had to be beside the glass to have a clear view of the street door. They were the only foreigners in there.

It was three years since Joey had done regular surveillance duties. On a good day, in London, the whole of Sierra Quebec Golf – twelve of them – would have been used for such a stake-out, and three cars; on a bad day there would have been eight, and still three cars. Now, there were the two of them and the van was parked up the street. The last two times when the man in black had examined them through the cafe window, Maggie had held his hand and looked Labrador-like into his eyes, as if they were lovers. It was called Jack and Jill at home, a male executive officer and a female executive officer attracted less attention than two men, and sometimes it went from handholding to kissing, and sometimes from kissing to groping, and sometimes to bed at the end of the shift. She had his hand again. The shadow of the man passed the window. It was not often that Joey looked into Jen's eyes and searched her face. The eyes and the face opposite him were lined, older. There was a coldness in them. He thought he didn't matter to her

– they had no small-talk and no confidences. In the Sierra Quebec Golf vans and cars, and on the pavements when they did Jack and Jill, and in the pubs, in the office afterwards, they all learned about and prodded into each other's lives. The shadow passed again, and her hand slipped out of his. The touch of her fingers on his hand meant nothing to her, and they both watched the street door. He stared fiercely out through the window and sensed her amusement.

Joey snatched her hand back, and gripped it. He thought she'd cry out, but she did not. 'In his life, Mister has won every time. I am Joey Cann and I have never won, not a bloody thing. Mister is a winner and Joey Cann is a loser. At home it would be no contest.

We are not at home… Don't sell me short. If he's off his own ground, I think, I might just be a winner.'

'I want to consider what you offer.'

'Reasonable.'

'Concern myself with details and then talk more.'

'Accepted.'

They should never have come, the Eagle had convinced himself. He should have been hosting a long-arranged meal, choosing the wines from the cellar, pottering in an apron behind Mo in the kitchen, pouring drinks for the president of the county's Law Society, a recently retired Home Office civil servant, a consultant surgeon, a land-rich farmer and their wives. Now, there would be an empty place at the end of the table. He was not there because without Mister there would be no gardener, no country house, no complacent fat bastards as guests. Mister called and the Eagle jumped…

For ten minutes there had been whispered voices in the hall, then Serif had led his people back in, and Mister had jerked awake.

'And I suggest that we meet tonight for dinner, to talk of the details.'

'Serif, I'm afraid I can't do that.'

'I am offering you dinner at my restaurant, where the best food in Sarajevo is served, and the best wine.'

'I never mix eating with business.'

The dogs were whining at the door. They'd slept until the meeting had broken but had roused themselves the moment Serif had left the room. The Eagle listened but his eyes never left the dogs and their jaws.

The Rottweilers showed their teeth as they whined, and the air in the room and the carpets stank of them.

Serif turned to the door, clapped his hands then shouted a name. The young man who came in was not in the uniform of the guards. The Eagle thought the name shouted was 'Enver'. He was pale, smooth-skinned and not tattooed; his shirt was burgundy silk and blond hair rested on its collar; his trousers were tight and white. Little escaped the Eagle. The young man, Enver, sauntered into the room, while the guards' every movement was abrupt. He carried two short, woven leashes, crooned softly to the dogs, clipped the leashes to the studded collars, and took the strain as they bounded ahead of him through the door. Down in the country, at dinner with his friends, the Eagle would have used the word faggot, but never in Mister's hearing. Ismet Mujic's heavy eyes were watching him and could not have failed to notice his relief that the brutes were gone from the room.

'You don't like dogs? Do dogs make you nervous? I tell you they are very gentle. They are strong but they are soft. I call them Michael and Rupert. They were generals here from the British army, leading the UN forces. Like your generals, they make a show of aggression but will not use their teeth. They left us to do the fighting while they hid behind their sandbags.

It was Celo, Caco and I who held the city. Without us it would have fallen.'

The withering eyes turned back to face Mister. 'You do not wish to have dinner with me?'

' Always best to do business with a clear head and an empty stomach.'

'Tomorrow at the same time, is that acceptable?'

'The same time tomorrow, and after the business is finished, I would be delighted to eat with you…'

Mister paused. Then said, as if it were an afterthought,

'What happened to my friend?'

A study of concern slipped on to Serif's face. 'It was very sad. .. I am still sad to this day… I feel a responsibility.'

'Why do you feel a responsibility?'

He had been with Mister since 1972. In twenty-nine years he had learned to read each inflection of Mister's voice. The question was put so softly, without malice. What he knew of Mister, a question was never asked for the sake of him hearing his own voice. His questions either searched for information or set a trap.

'He was my guest, I was his host. We had eaten in my restaurant. He was very happy. He drank freely.

He left us. I had offered him a driver to take him to the hotel, he refused. He said he would prefer to walk. I think he wanted the air.'

The Cruncher never walked when he could ride He'd take a taxi to go the length of a street. The Cruncher was a barrow-boy at heart and his delight was to be driven. In the back of a chauffeured limousine he was the kid from Attlee House who had made it good… The Eagle thought, for dinner with Ismet Mujic and the rest of the low-life scrotes, the Cruncher would have spent a full half-hour dressing himself. The best clothes for the best impression. On a mission for Mister, the child of his own brain, it was inconceivable that the Cruncher would have taken to the sauce.

'I have friends in the police. There was a most thorough investigation, and an autopsy was done.

You have friends in the police? As a businessman it is necessary, you understand. I have copies of the autopsy report, and the statements of the witnesses who saw him going towards the river. If you would like them…?'

'I think I would. That's very thoughtful of you.'

A chair was spun, a cabinet of antique rosewood was opened to reveal a safe. Ismet Mujic's hips hid the combinations he turned to unlock it, and hid them again as it was relocked. The papers were passed to Mister, who handed them on to him. He dropped the four sheets into his attache case.

'But they are not translated.'

'Not to worry, Serif. I'll pass them to his family, and add your condolences. I expect his family will find someone to translate for them. Tomorrow, then, at the same time – and it will be my pleasure.'

It was the time for smiles, handshakes and slapped backs, and then they were down and on to the street.

They walked, three abreast on the narrow pavement, towards the parked Toyota with the smoked windows. Mister said to them that he'd walk, walk and think, and he told the Eagle that he should start to work on the draft of an agreement of co-operation. He told Atkins that by the evening he wanted a working translation of the papers. Ahead of them was a small square of grass where the Rottweilers meandered and sniffed, and beside it men in thin coats watched a chess game played on black and white pavings with knee-high pieces, as if it were the best show in town. The young man, Enver, followed the chess and let the dogs wander free.

Mister said, 'If it's what I think then the river's calling for fucking pretty-boy.' Hands in his pockets, he walked away. It was the moment at which the Eagle knew for double damn certain that they should never have come.

'What do I do?'

'It's your shout, Joey, you do whatever you think right.'

The Toyota had powered past Mister and gone off up Mula Mustafe Baseskija. He walked and seemed to have no care.

'Do we split?'

'That's fairly obvious.'

'But you can't track one on one.'

'As we say at Box Eight Fifty, if it gets tough, "you'll just have to pedal a bit harder". Try that for advice.'

She climbed into the van and drove away.

Joey strode past the chess game and the dogs. He'd seen them come out of the street door and knew they were Ismet Mujic's dogs. He twisted his head away so that the young man with the dogs wouldn't see his face. He closed the gap. Mister had stopped, so Joey stopped. Mister was gazing into a shop window. What they said on the surveillance training courses, always to be remembered, was that ninety-five per cent of targets' days were entirely innocent and legal. Mister was window-shopping. He was gazing at jewellery in a window. Maybe Mister was thinking of the Princess

… He was walking back. He was coming closer…

Joey was frozen. Didn't know what to do. On a training exercise, or in Green Lanes for real, the target would have been in a box and covered by eight, ten or twelve personnel; Joey would have gone out of the cordon. He could not back off, not when he was one on one. The pavement space closed between them. He had been taught, had it dinned into him, that the worst crime was to show out… Mister was three paces from him. Joey could see how well he'd shaved, and that his tie was loose by a slight tug, and the hairs on his head were caught by the wind… Mister had stopped in front of another window where there was a display of Italian and French silk scarves.

Brilliant, big decision of the day – a Cartier bloody watch or a Givenchy bloody scarf, a high-carat gold bracelet or an Yves St Laurent shoulder wrap. Then Mister turned and walked on, like any other bloody tourist who'd put off buying the presents until the last day. What Joey had learned lifted him. Mister wasn't doing figure eights, and wasn't doing doorway cut-outs, and wasn't doing double-backs. He was the Untouchable, far from home, and wasn't using the anti-surveillance techniques that would have been his second nature to burn out a 'footman'. That was the bastard's confidence, why it wasn't 'no contest'.

Joey followed him, and clung to the sight of the rolling shoulders of his target.

December 1995

Spanish troops brought them the last leg of the journey back to Vraca. The young men of the unit that had been recruited from the Andalucfa region easily lifted Husein Bekir's frail frame down from the back of the three-tonne lorry. He accepted their help but would not let them take the small case from him. His clawed veined hands hung to it. Then they lifted down Lila, his wife, and the grandchildren.

He stared out over the valley and soaked up the sight of what was familiar and remembered. It was three years less two weeks since the day he had left.

He gazed at the river and the fields, the ruined village above them and the mountains beyond, and all the time he clutched his case because it contained everything he owned. Lila was beside him and held his arm; the grandchildren stood around them.

It had been a long journey.

The television sets, thirty days before, in the tent camp at Tuzla, had shown the signing of the agreement at a military camp in far-away America, at a place called Dayton in the state of Ohio. It had taken place under the wing of a huge bomber in a museum hangar. He did not know how difficult it had been for the American negotiators to win that agreement, and could not comprehend the detail of the maps and computer graphics used to fix the new boundaries that would decide who should live where, but the map on the television showed a line of red running through his valley, and he had known he could go home. Going home had been all that concerned him.

The morning after the announcement from Dayton Husein had led his tiny tribe out of the tent camp. In deep winter weather they had walked, hitched, ridden on carts pulled by slipping horses, been taken by military lorries, begged rides on buses when they had no money to buy tickets and they had crossed the ravaged country. They had slept in snow-covered woods, huddling together for warmth, and in ruined homes and in the wrecked outbuildings of farms and among cattle and pigs and in the hall wells of apartment blocks in the towns. They had eaten grass and rotting cabbages that were scraped from ice-locked earth, and they had begged for food. A week before they had sold Lila's ring, given her on their marriage day, the last thing they owned of value, and had bought smoked ham and potato broth, enough to fill a bucket.

Eight kilometres short of Vraca, at the cafe where in the old days they had stopped for coffee and brandy on the way to the cattle-market, they had found a building without a roof and a platoon of Spanish troops. Lila had said to him that, last night, it was only because of the grandchildren that the foreigners gave them shelter and blankets and promised to take them on in the morning.

Every muscle in his body was stiffened from the journey. He stood and gazed as the pain dribbled through him, and she clung to his arm. It was a bright, sunny winter morning, and long shadows thrown from the bare roof beams of the village houses caught his face, and his wife's and the grandchildren's faces, to accentuate the thin skin covering their bones, and the sunken eyes. If Lila had not been holding his arm he would have stumbled forward and fallen through exhaustion and hunger. It was all as he remembered it.

The officer, with an interpreter, hovered behind him.

The baker's, the blacksmith's and the engineer's houses were all as he had last seen them, gutted by fire from the artillery, open to the skies, displaying the wallpaper and the carpets in the upper rooms where the outer walls had been holed. The minaret was down, felled by a direct hit from a tank shell, just as it had been. The weeds grew on the cobbled village street. He tottered a few short steps forward, past the end of the building that had been the village meeting-hall and the school for the smallest children before they were old enough to go on the bus, and he saw his own home. A tree, without a leaf to decorate its branches, grew through the missing tiles of the roof

… There was a piteous crying. His hearing was poorer now and he heard the sound faintly, and with the crying was a cringing whine. The cat came. He heard Lila's gasp, then the excited screams of his grandchildren; for three years he had not heard them scream in happiness. The cat broke from shadow, white, black and brown markings, and slunk in a belly scrape through the weeds towards them. The grandchildren ran to it and it stopped, its back arched, nuzzled their legs before they swept it up in their arms, held it close and passed it between them. The tears ran in his face and through his stubble beard.

Then he saw the dog. He could not have taken it with him. Each morning or evening, in the hellish heat of the tent or in the numbing cold, he had thought about the dog and said silent words of apology; he remembered the stones he had thrown at it to stop it following them out of the village. The dog was so thin and it crawled near to him, cowed. He had thrown stones at the dog and shouted at it to be gone and he had heard it yelp when a stone had caught its stomach, but to the last it had obeyed him and gone back to the deserted home. He shook with weeping and bent down awkwardly, rubbed his hand on its ribcage and saw the fleas scampering on his fingers.

Through the interpreter, the officer said, 'It is what we are supposed to do, to escort people back to their homes. It will be difficult for you to live here. It is against my judgement to let you stay.'

'I will not leave. Are you prepared to shoot me?'

'We will do what we can for you. We will leave bread and milk, and a little meat. We will come again with more.'

'I say to your God that he should look after you.'

'My great-uncle fought in a civil war in my country.

I understand that people have to go home, and start again, and forget.'

'It will be hard to forget.'

'If you do not forget, it is what my great-uncle told me – and forgive – then no sort of life is possible.'

Husein looked past his house, and the well, and down to the track to the ford, and over the river. He saw his flattened yellowed fields, topped by black dead thistles and brown dead cow parsley and grey dead ragwort, and he saw the toppled posts in the vineyard. He looked for coils of new barbed wire.

'It is my land, they put mines in my land. Do you know where they put them? Are they marked?'

'They left two weeks ago. The Serbs told me the track was safe. The commander said he did not have a record of where the mines were laid, so they are not fenced. Even if they were fenced it would be difficult to know their position. Mines swim in the ground. It is a strange word to use, but it is what happens. They can move many metres. The commander would give me no information.'

'Do I forget that? Do I forgive them for it?'

'If you do not then you have no life – I can give you some heating-oil and some blankets.'

'And I will need matches. To light fires I will need many boxes of matches.'

'You will have matches. Also I can give you candles.'

'When did it last rain?'

'We have had no rain for a month, so the river is low. Use the river for water, but boil it. I do not know if those people came across and sabotaged the well.

The graveyard is desecrated. It would be wise to assume the well cannot be used.'

'May your God watch over you.'

Husein stood at the top of the track with the pile of blankets and the cardboard box of food and milk, and the plastic bag of match cartons with the candles and the jerry-can of heating-oil. The wind on his face was from the west. The ground under his feet was rock dry. The dog licked his hand when he bent, creaking joints, and felt the grass and found no moisture there.

He went back to his land, down the track, and waded across the river at the ford. The water flowed above his knees and the stones under his shoes were slippery as glass, but his will helped him m a k e the crossing. In his hands were the jerry-can of oil, the bag of matches and the candles, kept dry and h e l d high even when he stumbled. On the far side of the ford he looked up at his friend's house and wondered how he did and where he was, whether he was dead and in an unmarked grave, whether he was in a distant camp and still dreaming of the valley. On the track, near to the home of Dragan Kovac, the water sloshing in his shoes, he reached to snatch up handfuls of dry grass, made little heaps of it then spilled heating-oil on them. The wind came harder on his back and he welcomed it. He could see, ahead of him, the ribcages of his animals, and a hawk circled above him. When he had made a dozen small mounds of dried grass, buried halves of the candles in them and splashed them with the oil, he lit the candles' wicks.

The fires raged then guttered, then took. He had heard in the camp at Tuzla that fire destroyed mines.

A crackling wall of flames slowly advanced across his grazing fields and moved towards the ground which, in years gone, he had ploughed to grow vegetables and maize. A great smoke pall hung over his valley and was carried on the wind beyond the line of fire. He believed what he had been told in the tent camp. The proof was there in the explosions.

Seven times the ground broke and was thrown upwards by detonations; and the shrapnel sang over his head. The wind lifted burning grass tufts and wafted them beyond the extent of the line, spreading the fire. To his right, far out towards the line of the fire, there was a grass island circled by black scorched ground. The flames moved on and left the island behind.

Husein Bekir had heard in the camp that fire exploded mines. He had not been told, by experts, that only the mines nearest the surface would be affected; others would smoulder but would not explode; some would have their stakes burned through and would fall over but would not explode; some would have their nylon trip-wires melted but would stay in place with their antennae still lethal; and some had metal wire that the fire would not sever.

Each time a mine detonated he felt a wild sense of excitement, as if his youth returned to him.

A young boar broke in a panic run from the grass island. It ran back over the ground that the fire had covered and headed for the track where Husein stood.

Its stampede had covered twenty-five metres when it was lifted high by the flash of light and the crest of smoke. He saw the blood spurt while it was in the air and its right leg flying free as it fell.

Husein Bekir turned away. He thought he had wasted half of the heating-oil, half of the candles, and two cartons of matches. He went back across the ford.

Joey had lost himself in the late-evening darkness, had gone to his rendezvous.

When she was out on the street, or in the van and trailing, Maggie dressed up-market. When she was parked in the van, in the back of it, with her earphones for company, and her book, she was dressed down.

Neat skirts, blouses, cardigans and sensible shoes were left behind in the hotel wardrobe. She was in black jeans and wore a loose black roll-neck sweater and a black headscarf over her hair. She had been a small, darting shadow when she had gone to the Toyota four-wheel drive, had ducked down and levered herself underneath it on her back. With a small penknife, she had scraped mud sludge, crusted salt and the paintwork off the bottom of the vehicle.

She had made a square of clean metal that was large enough to take the magnet of the device. She called the device, in her own jargon, an OTTER. It would send a beacon signal for two kilometres in a built-up area, and up to three kilometres in countryside. It was One Time-Throw Away equipment, not meant to be retrieved. When the assignment was completed, she would have to pick up the probe bug in room 318 of the building towering above her, but the beacon would be abandoned.

Already she had learned from her earphones that Target One did not use his hotel telephone, nor did he hold meetings in the room.

She heard him shower, dress, whistle to himself, and she heard him snore when he catnapped on his bed. The only time she had heard his voice was when he thanked, and tipped, the maid for the return of his laundry. She was wasting her time and wished she were at home, with colleagues who mattered to her and with work that had a grain of importance. She thought that Joey Cann – slight, intense, his pebble spectacles hiding half of his face – would not have moved past the first-interview stage for recruitment into her world.

She heard Target One cough to clear his throat, then the room's door closing, then the silence.

First, Mister read the document prepared by the Eagle and printed out on his laptop. 'That'll do,' he said.

He passed it back, and the waiter came to take their order. He had again refused Atkins's offer to go out and find a restaurant away from the hotel. He gave his order, let the others tell the waiter what they'd have, then flicked his fingers impatiently at Atkins, ready for the papers to be passed him. He scanned the trans lated witness statements and reflected that they were conveniently tidy.

'You got your street map?'

Atkins unfolded his large-scale map of the city and spread it over their laid places. Mister pointed to the third witness statement, and the address of the discharged and disabled soldier. Atkins turned over the map and ran his finger down the street index; he said that the street, Hamdije Kaprazica, was in the Dobrinja district. 'It's about where I showed you from the plane when we came in. That's the old front line.'

'Could you find it for me?' Mister asked.

'Yes – what, in the morning?'

'Tonight. According to his statement, he was the last man to see Cruncher alive.'

The Eagle spluttered on his bread roll.

'You got a problem?'

'No problem, Mister, if that's what you want.'

'I'd like to see him and hear how it was with Cruncher just before he went into the river. He was a good friend.'

The waiter carried the tray to their table.

'I lost my leg in the war. It is taken off at the knee. The amputation was not done well. It was the circumstances of the operation. I cannot have an artificial one. The stump does not allow it. We were fighting here to hold the tunnel entrance at the airport. Do you have money for me?'

The room was a pit of filth. There was no electricity, no fire. In the brutal light of Frank's torch beam he could have been thirty or fifty. The face was sunken and pale, the hair was thinned through, and the hands shook perpetually. He was propped up on a bed of sacking, newspapers, and pillows that had no covers and leaked feathers. There was a stink of old faeces and urine. When the torch beam had roved across the room, searched for him, it had skipped over three syringes. Joey watched him and Frank translated: 'I have to have money. You want to know what I saw?

I say nothing without money.'

He held a crutch across his chest, as if to protect himself. His eyes were dulled in their sockets. His sleeves, both arms, were pulled up. Joey thought, from what he knew of pincushion arms, that the man would be finding it hard by now to get a fix on the veins. Joey pulled money from his pocket and handed it to Frank. The little wad of notes was tossed into the torchlight and onto the man's lap, above the stump.

Joey saw the money counted and there was a flash of what he thought was cunning in the lustreless eyes.

The notes were slipped under the bed of sacks and newspapers.

'Sometimes I go into town to buy. If I buy here, because I cannot defend myself, because I have a stump, sometimes I am attacked, for my money. I go to the old quarter. It is more expensive there, but I am not attacked. Also in the old quarter I can ask for money from foreigners. There are many foreigners there and sometimes they are kind… You want to know what I saw? And more money when I have told you…? You are gentlemen, I think you will be kind.

I told the police what I saw. He was on the bridge. He was leaning over the rail, and sick. I thought it was alcohol that made him sick. He could hardly stand, and when his grip on the rail failed he nearly fell over it. The river was very high that night. I looked away.

Someone came and I went to them to ask for money. I was refused. I looked again for him, I didn't see him.

He must have gone into the river. Someone else came and they gave me money. I went to buy. It was two days later, when I was back at the bridge that the police stopped me and asked if I had seen anything, and they showed me the photograph of the man.'

The hands shook harder on the crutch.

Joey said icily, 'Will you ask him, please, what unit he was with when he lost his leg?'

The reply came through Frank. 'I was with the fighters led by Ismet Mujic. We had to hold Dobrinja, we-'

Joey swung on his heel. There had been a teacher at school who had tried to reintroduce Latin into the curriculum. Joey had been in the small class. Little of it remained with him. Julius Caesar had crossed the Rubicon river and had said: 'Iacta alea est. ' And they had translated Suetonius, who had quoted Caesar:

'Let us go whither the omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. The die is now cast.'

The step was taken and there was no drawing back from its consequences. And in English classes they had read Shakespeare's Richard III: 'I have set my life upon a cast, / And I will stand the hazard of the die.'

He went down the staircase.

There was light snow falling, but not heavily enough to settle.

Frank passed him and went to the back of the small truck. Its windows were painted over. His hand was on the door's handle.

'It's what you want?'

'It's what I want.'

'It breaks every rule in my life… '

'And mine,' Joey said. 'Just get on with it.'

Frank opened the door. Four men scrambled out.

They wore drab blue overalls and their faces were masked by balaclavas. Frank talked to them briefly.

None seemed to look at Joey, as if he were un-important. They went towards the block's entrance, with purpose. He had not been introduced to them, dark, silent, smoking shapes in the back of the van, when Frank had collected him and they had driven into Dobrinja.

Frank had said they were on an unmarked frontier.

The blocks on the far side of the street were rebuilt, holes plugged, had new plastic windows and street-lights. The lights didn't carry the width of the street but died in the central grassy reservation. They stood in dank darkness. Frank told him that when they had drawn the map lines at Dayton that ended the war and provided the new ethnic boundaries, they had used a blunt pencil. The pencil's marking, on the map, was fifty metres wide: the east side of Hamdije Kaprozice was left in a no man's land, unclaimed by either the Muslim authorities or by the Serbs. Small gangs of men floated past them. In Britain, Joey never had as much as a truncheon when he was out on surveillance late in the night, only a long-handled torch.

He thought the no man's land was the territory of dealers and pushers. The only thing he had believed that the disabled soldier had said was that here, in the darkness, he might be attacked and stripped of the money he needed for heroin. He wondered how long, doing what he himself could not do, the men would be. He said, 'They won't hang around will they

– God, what a place – your thugs?'

'Not thugs, Joey. I call them the Sreb Four. If you don't know a man's story you don't call him a thug.

When you're not burdened with facts it's best to keep the judgements short. I met them in Sanski Most, that's the extreme west of the country. When people like me first arrive we're sent somewhere for a month's acclimatization before the permanent posting starts. They were about as far from home as is possible, because home was the east. Then I met up with them again in Sarajevo. They are cousins, and they are all from the village of Bibici, which is south of the town. It was an extended family. All the houses in the village were lived in by the family. They were all policemen. When the war started Srebrenica was besieged and they, as policemen, were at the front, in the trenches. The population in the town had gone from nine thousand pre-war to fifty thousand during the siege. Then it f e l l… That's a long story, why it fell.

I'm telling you this because you will never see these people again, and it'll be good for you to think of them when you're snuggled up warm in your bed at home and your biggest problem is remembering whether you've done a new lot of fucking lottery numbers for the weekend… The women and kids, they reckoned, would be shipped out under UN supervision because Srebrenica was designated as a

"safe haven". Nobody at that time – least of all UN generals and the politicians who directed them – had enough of a sense of honour to guarantee the haven, but the duplicity wasn't known then. The women and children would be protected. The men would fight their way out over the mountains, through forests.

The NATO planes, it was thought, would put down carpet bombing on the Serbs so that the men had a chance in the break-out. The fittest of the men, the best fighters and the best armed, were at the front of the column – the Sreb Four were at the front of the front, because they were the best. What they didn't know was that, behind them, their fathers, uncles, nephews, grandfathers, had been either rounded up in Srebrenica and butchered or were being killed, trapped and ambushed. They reckon they were betrayed, and I couldn't argue with it, not just by the UN and NATO but by their own people. What they think, the town was allowed to fall as a part of the end-game peace deal, they weren't given the guns and the reinforcements to hold it. The men of the family, all except the Sreb Four, were killed. Some of their women hanged themselves so that they wouldn't be raped, and some strangled their daughters so it didn't happen to them. They got out, and they're inseparable. They hate the Serbs for what was done to their families, and they hate the Muslim leaders for betraying them. They have been through hell, have walked through it, and come out the far side of it. You'll want to know what I did that makes them indebted to me – not much, in truth. There's IPTF in Srebrenica, and I arranged for myself to have a day there. I took flowers and laid them in a warehouse where some of the women killed themselves, and in the factory at Potocari where the older men were shot, and in the woods where the younger men were caught and had their throats slit. I took photographs of where I'd put the flowers. That's all I did. What they are doing in there won't trouble them, after what they've seen, not an iota… So, don't go fucking soft on me.'

They came out. Joey thought that if he had been able to see their faces they would have been expressionless. There was no tension in their bodies and no laughter in their voices. They huddled round Frank, and told him quietly what they had learned.

Then one of them wiped his hands on the seat of his overalls, felt in his pocket and passed Frank the clean banknotes. He gave them back to Joey.

Joey had crossed a river.

'Turn him over,' Mister said.

A little spear of light from the pencil torch followed Atkins's boot as it tipped the man over from his stomach to his back.

The Eagle, behind Mister, gasped. Mister could see the eyes through swollen lids and the mouth through split lips, but the rest of the facial features were lost in a sea of blood. Mister knew a great deal about beatings – fists, cosh-sticks, boots – it was what he had done in the past, and he felt cheated because he would have done it again, there, that night.

'Is he gone?'

Atkins knelt beside the man and felt the pulse at his neck. As he straightened, he shook his head.

'If he's not gone now then he will be soon,' Mister said.

'We should get out of here, Mister,' the Eagle hissed.

'It's not a healthy place.' Atkins's pistol had been in his hand from the moment they had left the Toyota, and it had been between his legs as soon as they had driven into Dobrinja.

'In our own time. You never know when you're watched, so you never run. You never let anyone see you run. Gives us something to think about – eh, Eagle – who'd have done a fancy job like that… A druggies' fight, or my friend with the puppy dogs and the pretty boy? Let's go, let's go to bed.'

It was past midnight w h e n the chief investigation officer took a call from Gough, received a peremptory apology for the lateness of the hour, and was alerted to a fax sent to him. The CIO apologized to his wife, slipped into a dressing-gown and went down to his home cubicle office.

He read:

From: SQG12/Sarajevo, B-H

To: SQG1/London

Timed: 00.18 15.03.01

Message Starts:

Para One – Target One in contact with Ismet Mujic, a.k.a. Serif. Sweetener supplied is anti-tank missile launcher (make and origin unknown). Box 850 have hotel bug in place for Target One, as yet no result – also location beacon on Target One's vehicle. Target One is accompanied at all times by Target Two (Eagle) and Target Three (Atkins).

Believe (not confirmed) a-tml brought to B-H in overland charity shipment from Bosnia with Love.

Para Two – From information received, I learn that Dubbs, a.k.a. the Cruncher, was murdered by Ismet Mujic, plus associates. It's choice, exclaimer.

Cruncher was taken to niteclub/restaurant, the Platinum City, owned by IM. In the party was Enver – toy-boy partner of IM. I learn that, during dinner, Cruncher's sexual preferences were made obvious: he reached under the table and squeezed Enver's testicles – to demonstrate, I presume, his availability. His host, no doubt used to providing said demonstration himself, took offence.

Eyewitness was begging outside Platinum City, regular pitch, heard the accusations made in the street as Cruncher was taken out, saw a chop-hand blow to back of Cruncher's neck by IM, saw goons put Cruncher from bridge into Miljacka river.

Regret that eyewitness declined to provide sworn/signed statement of above.

Para Three – Full permission for intrusive surveillance from Judge Zenjil Delic, signed and stamped. God knows why, haven't got round to asking Him.

Para Four – My observation: Target One is unaware of current surveillance. Opinion is shared by Box 850.

Message Ends

He minuted a little note for himself. He would speak to Goughin the morning. Past experience told him that danger beckoned when foot men were confident that their trailing presence was not observed.