The Untouchable

by Gerald Seymour

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

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

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

  Cork cut the picture and the screen went to snowstorm.

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

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

  To: Endicott, Room 709, VBX

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

  Timed: 14.19 (local) 17.03.01

  Security Classification: Secret

  Message Starts:

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

  Yesterday, unreported to C&E, my comrade showed out on surveillance of Target One, and a subsequent telephone call from his girlfriend, Jennifer Martin (address not known), reported her cat killed, disembowelled and dumped on

  her doorstep. Comrade's concern is that he will be called home!

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

  Luv, Maggie

  Message Ends

  Gough handed back the sheet of paper.

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

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

  'He should come home, shouldn't he, before it's -

  you know - too late?'

  'If that's what you w a n t . . . '

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

  'You do not offer knee-jerk interference.'

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

  'You leave running the operation to me.'

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

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

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

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

  December 1997

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  There had been a meeting that week in Sarajevo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  'To keep criminals away.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  It wasn't the night cold that sobered him.

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

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

  Chapter Twelve

  He heard the knock on the door over the noise of the shower. It was the time the laundry usually came back. He shouted from the bathroom that he would be a moment. He was towelling himself dry. He could have asked the maid to leave the laundry outside the door, but he'd also given her his shoes for cleaning, and he wanted to thank her and tip her when she returned them. Mister fastened one towel around his waist and looped a second over his shoulders, picked up loose change from the desk and went to the door. I le opened it and reached out his hand with the fist of coins.

  'I surprise you . . . ' She rolled her eyes. 'I apologize.'

  'Miss Holberg - I thought you were the maid.' He blushed.

  'Forgive me.'

  He saw the sparkle in her face, its cleanness, and the fun in her. 'I'm not in a state to receive a distinguished visitor.'

  'It is wrong of me not to have telephoned from Reception. I did not because I am devious, and I thought it would provide you with an opportunity to refuse me.'

  She said that the next morning the VIP visitors would go to the village of Visnjica. It was a one-hour drive from the city. She would be honoure
d if he would agree to accompany her. She understood that he was shy of personal publicity and that she both respected and admired this. His name would not be given to the visitors or to the villagers, but he would have the opportunity to see for himself the value of his generosity in bringing the Bosnia with Love lorry to Sarajevo. It was to be an important day for her and it would be further fulfilled if he would accompany her - assuming, of course, that he did not have more important business in the city. She hoped very much that he could accept.

  'I'd like that,' Mister said. 'I'm flattered. I'm delighted to accept.'

  She said she would pick him up in the morning, told him what he should wear - not towels, her laughter gently mocking him - and wished him a good evening.

  A minute after she'd gone, the maid brought his laundry and his dried, polished shoes. He whistled as he dressed. It was all compartments. He forgot the Princess, his wife, and in a compartment further recessed in his mind was the man who should have been killed on the grass beside the pavement.

  'You no longer have the mentality of a Customs officer.'

  'I wonder if I ever had it.'

  'You have become a competitor,' the judge said drily.

  'I am Joey Cann, the competitor who loses.'

  They had brought him to their home. He had helped to push the chair across the bridge and up the steep hill between lines of apartment buddings wrecked by artillery, fire-gutted and covered by a rash of bullet holes. The narrow width of the road would have been the front line. There were no lights above them or in the open windows. They made their way by torch beam, shining it down in front of the chair's wheels so that they did not hit debris and jolt her, and he'd wondered how the judge pushed his daughter up that hill each evening. They had turned into a narrower street and he had seen a heavy concrete mass, what had been the front of the third floor of a block, hanging threateningly over them, but she hadn't looked up at it and neither had the judge. The beam had been aimed at a house. It was half a building, one storey, and half a ruin. A door and a window were intact. The left side of the house had fallen away.