The Untouchable

by Gerald Seymour

  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 w a s past m i d n i g h t w h e n the chief investigation officer took a call from G o u g h , received a p e r e m p t o r y apology for the lateness of the hour, a n d w a s alerted to a fax sent to him. The C I O apologized to his wife, slipped into a dressing-gown a n d w e n t d o w n to his h o m e 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 m i n u t e d a little note for himself. He would speak to G o u g h in the morning. Past experience told h i m that d a n g e r b e c k o n e d w h e n f o o t m e n w e r e c o n f i d e n t that their trailing p r e s e n c e w a s n o t observed.

  Chapter Nine

  It was the spring day, in Sarajevo, when nothing much happened. There was a fast snow blizzard at dawn that hurried down the Igman slopes to envelop the city, then a bright, cold morning, then a bright, warm afternoon, then an overcast dusk, and rain in the evening.

  The longest queue in the city, from dawn to dusk, was outside the high, guarded gates of the German embassy on Mejtas Buka. Every day on which it was open the queue was there. In the hunt for visas and escape it stretched down the street and round the corner. A few at a time were admitted to the hidden buildings behind the wall. Many of those who queued would fail to reach the front of the line before the offices closed. Few of those allowed inside would be given entry to a Promised Land. Down by the Miljacka river, a shorter queue of men jostled at the door of the Slovenian embassy, also looking for a route out of a doomed country.

  There were no queues waiting for the shops to open on Mula Mustafe Baseskije and Saraci and

  Bravadziluk Halaci. The windows displaying designer clothes brought in from outside were looked into, but the tills did not ring and the fitting rooms stay I'd empty. The boutiques gave an impression of vibrant wealth, but it was bogus. No one could afford the dresses, blouses, skirts and lingerie; most items would have cost a civil servant a year's salary.

  The street markets were full from early morning when the stalls were set up to late afternoon when they were taken down and little pick-up trucks drove away with what had not been sold. The produce -

  cabbage, potatoes, carrots, beans, onions, peas - came from across the southern frontiers, because the country was still locked in winter's frosts. On other stalls there were clothes that had been smuggled in, no duty paid; they were cheap and thin, would not have kept out the morning's cold or the evening's rain. Everything in the markets came from abroad because the small factories, five years after the war's end, had not been rebuilt.

  On the steps of the buildings appropriated for the use of the international community, foreign men and foreign women gathered to smoke their cigarettes, most of which had been bought on the black market.

  Marlboro, Winston and Camel cigarettes, brought by high-speed launches from Italy or driven in from Serbia, were smoked on the steps of the buildings used by the Commission of Property Claims of Displaced Persons, the European Bank for Re-construction, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Labour Office and the International Monetary Fund . . . and the Office of the High Representative, the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe .. . and the United Nations Children's Fund, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the World Food Programme . . . and the United States Agency for International Development and the International Crisis Group. Men and women snatched short breaks, then ground out their cigarettes and went back to administering the country's every heartbeat. Roads, bus timetables, postage rates, sewage disposal, the design of banknotes, television programme schedules

  - the life of the city was in the hands of those foreigners, this day and every day.

  Romany beggars haunted the streets and crouched on corners beside war-maimed veterans who let their amputated limbs be seen, but their upturned caps and little cardboard boxes went unfilled. The city had no time for charity.

  Government ministers swept between their homes and offices in bomb-proof cars. The black Mercedes of the gangsters raced on the narrow streets. Italian troops, bored near to sleep, patrolled as a show but had no power of arrest and had orders to avoid provocation.

  In the street cafes, young men made a thimble of espresso or a can of Coca-Cola last an hour and swapped gossip on the best ways to gain admission to an Austrian, German or Scandinavian university.

  Nothing much happened.

  The Eel drove Mister along the Zmaja od Bosne, past the Holiday Inn, to Tower A of the UNIS building complex on Fra Andela Zvizdovica.

  Compartments again ruled his mind. Stacked at the back of his thoughts, and ignored, were the matters involving Serif and the deal, the death of his friend and the blood-laced face of an addict. As they came down what Atkins had called Snipers' Alley past ruins and shell-holed blocks, Mister was pondering what lorries from Bosnia with Love could bring into the city, and what they could take out. He was rested and sleeping well, but he had slept well in his cell in Brixton. He slept well because the shadow of failure did not exist in Mister's mind.

  From the Cruncher's calls to London, he had a name.

  He dropped down from the lorry cab. It had been the Cruncher's idea to paint the slogan 'Bosnia with Love' on the trailer's sides. When the trade was up and running, the lorry, and others, needed to be recognized, known. He saw three towers. Two were still fire-gutted and open to the weather. Tower A had lights burning in the bottom half of its floors and above he
saw men working precariously. He went into a cavernous hallway, gave the name at a reception desk and was told which floor he should go to, also that he should take the stairs as the lift wasn't operating. Before Cruncher had reported on it, Mister had never heard of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. After five flights of concrete steps he came to a landing. He straightened his quiet tie and smoothed his hair. He felt good. He asked for her at the security desk, and said what he'd brought.

  She came out through an inner door, and her smile of welcome and relief hit him - a bright light in darkness. 'I'm Monika Holberg, a field officer but based in Sarajevo canton, and you are my white knight. Your name is?'

  'I'm Packer. Mister Packer.'

  'I am so delighted to see you because you have the lorry, you have what I need.'

  'I have a lorry, Miss Holberg, and it is filled to overflowing with clothes, toys, everything that people at home thought would be wanted in Bosnia by those less fortunate than themselves.'

  It was only a small untruth. The lorry was not

  'overflowing'. Against the bulkhead at the back of the trailer was the empty space where the launchers and missiles, the handguns and the communications sets had been. She gripped his hand. In business he dealt with few women . . . only the Princess, in whom he confided everything. He went to his sisters, with the Eagle, when their signatures were needed for property contracts and bond purchases. At an associate's house he made it crystal plain that the women should be out of the room. He was never sure about women, except the Princess - never certain that they felt the same ties of loyalty as men, and that in interview rooms, late at night, battered by the questions of detectives in relays, they would stare at the ceiling and stay quiet.