THE HEART OF DANGER (4 page)

to his house and the mud from his Marko's feet was wiped against the

jacket of his best suit. And the German shepherd was leaping at him,

paws beating at him and the back of Marko and catching in the webbing

belt from which the rifle hung. She came to him, his Evica, crisp

in

the blue linen dress in which she went to work, school teaching and

they were all together on the step of his house. His home, his place,

his safety. His boy hugged him and his wife kissed him and his dog

whimpered pleasure. He climbed the stairs. The bed in their room,

the

room that looked away from the village and over the valley and the

stream, was not made, and he could see from the bed that his Marko

had

slept the night waiting for him with his Evica. He threw down the

case, and unhooked the AK47 assault rifle from his shoulder. He

started to strip out of his suit with the mud marks and his white

shirt

with the mud smears. They were behind him. He was telling her fast, the brandy warm in him, fast and with pride, of how he had been in

a

group that Milosevic had spoken to, more than ten minutes. And he

had

talked with Seselj, the Red Duke, one to one for at least a quarter

of

an hour. And he had been congratulated, personally, by Kertesz who

was

Chief of Intelligence. And he had shaken the hand of Bokan who

commanded the White Eagles. '.. . All of the big men were there,

and

I was there." He bent to the floor. He wore only his socks, vest

and

underpants. He unfastened his case. He rummaged amongst his used

clothes for the parcels, for the blouse and the plastic toy pistol,

that he had bought in Belgrade with American dollars. His Evica

said,

flat, "I tried to telephone you, it was impossible .. ." Milan grimaced. Of course the telephone did not work between the village

of

Salika and Belgrade. The telephone did not work, often, between the

village and Glina, nor between the village and Petrinja, not to

Vojnic,

nor to Vrginmost; of course it was not possible to reach Belgrade.

18

He

gave the wrapped parcel to his Marko. He watched the boy rip at the

thin paper. "I tried to telephone you to tell you that they had

come."

Marko had the plastic pistol free and made the noise of firing and

whooped his excitement. He gave his Evica her parcel. She took it

and

was gazing into his face, and he could see her fear. Confused, tired,

and the wash of the early brandy still in him, Milan did it for her,

and took the paper from the blouse, and held it in front of her and

against her shoulders and her chest. She pushed him away. She

ignored

the blouse and went to the window. Her back and her head and her

neck

were in shadow. "It was the day after you had gone that they came

and

dug for them." He held the blouse limp against his leg. He went

to

her and stood behind her. He looked out through the window and over

her shoulder. He looked across the fence at the end of his garden,

where she grew their vegetables, and across the field where the grass

was greening in the spring rain, and across the stream that was

swollen

from the winter's snow. He looked into the village of Rosenovici.

He

saw the scattered homes that had been burned and the tower of the

church that had been hit with shell fire and the roof of the school

that was a skeleton of wood beams. He knew where he should look.

On

down the distant lane and he could make out, faintly, the new tyre

marks in the grass that covered the old tractor ruts. At the end

of

the lane, where it went into the field, was the rough rectangle of

disturbed black-grey earth. "We did not know, without you, what to do.

They dug for them and they took them away." Arnold Browne closed

the

file. He thought he might have met the man, once or possibly twice,

when he had been briefing F Branch recruits long ago, or in that short

period of a few months when he had headed 1(D) section of A Branch.

He

thought he recognized the likeness but the file photograph was poor

and

thirteen years old. From what he remembered, he was quite an alert

and

resourceful young fellow. In his opinion, and professional suicide

19

to

voice it, there should have been room in Five for men like that. He

looked up and noted that the door to the outer office was closed.

He

had what his wife described, without sympathy, as a siege mentality

to

his work now. He pushed the file away across his empty desk, empty

because little of substance in the affairs of the Security Service

these days came his way. He reached for his direct-line telephone,

dialled, and spoke quietly so that his voice would not carry through

the prefabricated walls of his office and the closed door. He valued

his neighbour's friendship, something that excited him about the

power

of decision that no longer came his way. "Charles, it's Arnold ..

.

Can't speak much. Mary, she most definitely has the right to know.

There's a man who was once on our books ... If Mary wanted someone

to

peck around a bit then I've a telephone number .. . I'll have all

the

details tomorrow for her, and I'll mark his card meantime .. . Yes,

I

would recommend him."

Two.

He had been sat in the Sierra since before first light. He had the

engine idling and the heater going and every few minutes it was

necessary for him to wipe the inside of the windscreen hard, bully

it,

to clear the mist that hazed his view of the target house. He had

parked up in a side street a full fifty yards from the main road on

which the target house was one of a line of low-set terraced homes.

Four hours back, when he had first parked his Sierra in the side

street, he had felt a small glow of satisfaction; it was a good place

to be parked because it gave him the option of going right or left

up

the road without the clumsiness of a three-point turn, it was the

way

he would have done it before the slip, slide, out of the Service.

But

it was different now from his Service days, and this was solo

surveillance and he was working cheapskate, this was shoestring

stuff.

In the Service days, when he was with Section 4 of A Branch there

would

20

have been one to watch in the car and one to drive, and at the far

end

of the road, also tucked in at a side street, there would have been

the

back-up car and two more. In the bloody Service days there would

have

been bodies committed on the ground to cope with target surveillance,

those who would stay with the cars and those who could duck out and

dive for the Underground if that was how the target chose to move

.. .

But there was no point bitching, nothing gained from moaning.

Dreaming

of the Service days was crap and pointless. He was on his own and

just

bloody lucky to have found a parking space off the double yellows

in

the side street, and he would be going well if the target came out

of

the target house and used a car, and he would be going bad if the

target came out from the target house and ignored the target car and

walked four hundred yards right to the Piccadilly line Underground

or

two hundred yards left to the Central line. The big decision for

Penn:

to have another cigarette or to unwrap another peppermint. There

was a

cigarette packet's cellophane on the carpet by his feet, and silver

paper from the peppermint tube. He sat in the passenger seat of the

Sierra, pondered, made up his mind, and lit another cigarette. He

sat

in the passenger seat because that was the drill, because then the

locals would imagine that he was waiting for the driver and be less

suspicious of a stranger in their street. What they had said on the

training course, before he had gone to Section 4 of A Branch, the

watchers, was that personnel should be 'nondescript'. A good laugh

that had raised and Penn had the starter to win the bonus because

he

was reckoned good and proper 'nondescript', like it was going out

of

fashion. He was the man who did not stand out. Penn was the guy

in

the crowd who made up the numbers and was not noticed. Funny old

business, the chemistry of charisma ... at the first course he had

actually been called out of the crowd by the instructor and held up,

grinning and sheepish, as the example of what a watcher should be

like.

21

Penn was ordinary. He was average height, average build, naturally

wore average clothes. His hair was average brown, not dark and not

light, and average length, not long and not short. His walking

stride

was average, not clipped and mincing, not busy and athletic. His

accent was average, not smart and privileged, not lazy and careless

with the consonants. Penn was the sort of man, damn it, who was

accepted because he made few ripples .. . and wanting to make waves,

wanting to be recognized, was what had pitched him out of the Service.

Dragging on the cigarette .. . The door of the target house was

opening. Stubbing the cigarette into the filled ashtray .. . He saw

the target. Coughing the spittle of the Silk Cut and remembering

the

woman from Section 4 of A Branch who had come to the garage they used

under the railway arches in Wandsworth and slapped a No Smoking

sticker

on the door of the glove compartment and dared him, and bloody won

.. .

The target had turned and carefully locked the front door of the house

and was walking. The target was coming towards the parked and

heated-up Sierra. He made a note on the pad, time of departure, and

he

eased his average weight across the gear stick and the brake handle

and

slid in behind the wheel. Naughty little boy, the target, and not

playing it straight with the lady, the client. Penn was taking 300

a

day, a half to the company, for ten hours a day, cooking in his car

with the Silk Cut smoke up his nose so that the lady, the client,

should not be conned out of her fancy salary. It was mid-morning

and

the car would have stunk anyway from his socks that were damp and

his

trousers that were still wet from the rain when he had walked round

the

back of the target house to check whether there was a rear exit, and

a

hell of a good thing that there wasn't because this was solo

surveillance. The target was the fourth male out of the house that

morning. The target had followed a West Indian in building site

overalls, and an Asian, and a student with an armful of notebooks

and

college books. The target wore old jeans and a loose sweater, and

a

baseball cap back to front, and the target came past him whistling.

A

22

miserable morning with more rain in the air did not faze him. Enjoy

it, sunshine, because it won't be lasting. Bit late, sunshine, to

be

heading off for the office. Good and modern sense of dress in that

office, sunshine. The target went on down the road, and it was kid's

play because the target had no suspicion that he was watched and took

no evasive precautions. The target didn't swivel, didn't cross the

road fast, didn't grab a taxi, didn't dive for the Underground. Penn

followed him down the road, crawling the car, watched him cross at

the

lights, and it was pretty obvious where he was heading on a Thursday

morning. Too easy for a man trained in surveillance to the standards

of Section 4 of A Branch. The target was a Turkish Cypriot, tall

and

good-looking and with a rakish step, and hadn't a job and was living

in

bed sit land, and the gravy time was just about up. The target had

milked a good number until the client had walked into Alpha Security,

SW19, and been allocated the new boy on the staff. The client was

a

plain woman, thirty-six years old, with a high-quality brain and a

low

threshold of loneliness, who earned a salary of 60,000 plus a year

by

flipping gilts and bonds in an investment team. The client had

fallen

hard for the target and now wanted to know whether the love of her

life

was all he cracked himself up to be. It was bad luck for the client

that she had chosen the target to fall for because sure as hell the

target was living a little lie and the claimed job in property

development was economical, skinflint, with the truth.

Bad luck, Miss Client.

He parked up.

Tough shit, Mr. Target.

He locked his Sierra.

Penn sauntered along the pavement to the Department of Social