The Untouchable (23 page)

In '94, she had manufactured the tiny microphone bug to be fitted into the mobile phone of an Iraqi official of the Mukhabarat who travelled to meet fellow secret intelligence officers in Tripoli, Libya. The beauty of the device was that it could be activated to monitor both telephone transmissions and voice conversations that did not involve the phone. She had spent five days in Malta with the Libyan police bodyguard who had been turned and had the task of inserting the bug in the target's phone. It had worked, she was told, like 'a dream'. And she was told, also, two months later that the bodyguard - sweet, charming, courteous, vulnerable, and loving on evenings on the hotel veranda overlooking the sea - had been held, tortured and shot. Again the gin had been offered her, again her composure had held. If she cried, it was only in the silence of her tiny flat.

She was a part of the old world, a Cold War warrior.

She had protested viciously when her line-manager had assigned her to Sarajevo, told that her annual assessment interview would be postponed, given to understand that the latest rate of
per diem
expenses should not be exceeded unless she was prepared to stump up the excess herself. Yes, she had been to Sarajevo in the war, but with her own people, and in a time before the line-managers had taken control of Ceaucescu Towers, a time before assessments were
de rigueur
for experienced experts, when expenses were passed without quibble. There had been bugs in the President's office, and in the UN

general's operations centre, and nearly - if there had been another week to work on it - in Ratko Mladic's headquarters. As far as she was concerned this assignment was vulgar plod work, a waste of her time.

She was damned if she would easily give a sight of her soul to Joey Cann.

'Forget it,' Maggie said. 'It's in the past.'

'Is that all you've got to say?'

'Too right, that's all you're getting.'

He'd subsided into silence and let her drive. She'd been on the courses run from Fort Monkton at Gosport. From the old strongpoint built to deter Napoleonic ideas of invasion, on the Hampshire coast overlooking the English Channel, she'd learned to drive surveillance cars through the close Portsmouth city streets, in country lanes, and up the motorway towards London. She knew what she was doing, but it was hard in the clogged traffic to hold the link with the Mercedes, and she didn't need his righteous scared anger.

'You don't know as much as you think, do you?'

she said.

' W h a t . . . ?'

'You say you know everything about the target, but you don't - you didn't know he liked Presley for starters. It's only small, but it's the small things that matter. In my experience, the better people in this game have humility.'

He brooded. She didn't regret chipping away at his arrogance.

She braked. They were in the old quarter. The cars were parked half on the pavement a hundred yards ahead. She saw Packer, Target One, and the gang of the hoods, and Targets Two and Three, and then she saw Serif.

Mister said, 'You've been kept waiting, I do apologize.

I had business to attend to - it's so annoying, isn't it, when business holds things up?'

Mobile to mobile, Sarajevo to London, Cruncher had reported to the Eagle that Serif spoke good English.

Serif said, 'And I should apologize to you, Mr Packer, because my business prevented me from meeting you at the airport yesterday.'

'That's fine, no offence - and that's the apologies out of the way. Good.' Other than to his mother, who was dead, and to his father in Cripps House, Mister never apologized and meant it.

'I am happy, and I welcome you - as I welcomed your associate, Mr Dubbs.'

'Very sad, what happened to Mr Dubbs. He was a trusted friend.'

'A great loss to you, and a great hurt to me that such a tragic accident should happen in my city.'

'We'll talk about it . . . First, I'm going to ask a favour of you, Serif - if I may call you that? I'd be gratified if you'd accompany me. Something of a bit of a surprise for you.' Mister never asked favours and seldom expressed gratitude.

Predictably, Serif hesitated. Mister smiled guile-lessly at him. They were standing on the pavement outside the guarded staircase that led to Serif's apartment in a district of narrow streets and alleyways of traditional jewellery stores, little restaurants, coffee-houses and bookshops, all dominated by a slender mosque tower. Mister's smile, calculated, and the gentle way he took the sleeve of Serif's jacket made it difficult for the man to refuse. It was as he had intended.

They rode in the two Mercedes. He shared the back seat with Serif, and the Eagle was sandwiched between them, his shoulder in Serif's armpit, and the impression of the holstered weapon digging into him.

Mister saw the nervous flutter on the Eagle'', face. Mister's PPK Walther was against his buttocks.

It was fourteen years since he had fired a handgun in anger, across a street and into the upper thigh of Chrissie Dimmock; it was eleven years since he had fired in vengeance, point blank into the back of the skull of the Yardie, Ivanhoe Pilton. Chrissie Dimmock and Ivanhoe Pilton had disputed territory with him. If the roles had been reversed, if the Bosnian had come on to his turf, he would have shot him, and left the Mixer to dispose of him, washed himself down and gone to have a good lunch or dinner . . . The road climbed past the crumpled-down pylon of a ski-lift.

They stopped on a piece of wasteground. At its furthest edge he saw the tall, upright Atkins. There were kids, who watched over a few skinny goats, looking at the cars.

Mister stepped from the car, the Eagle at his side, sealed to him as if they were Siamese. He waved for Serif to catch him up and walked towards Atkins. Behind him, a voice at the kids and they ran. At a sharp pace, he crossed the wasteground to where the medium-range Trigat launcher squatted on the ground, its tripod legs set in the earth, a sheet of plastic behind it, beside Atkins's feet. It was aimed back over the city, into the indistinct mass of roofs and windows. Atkins nodded to him briskly. Mister thought Atkins brought class with him.

Mister said, 'A little present, Serif, something that expresses my goodwill. You got a mobile?'

'I have a mobile.'

'You got someone in your address?'

'I have a friend there.'

'You should ring your friend and tell him to open the front window, the big one, then stand there.

Please, could you do that for me?'

The call was made.

Mister said, 'Since this is going to be yours, Serif, I expect you'd like to know about it. Mr Atkins is your man.'

Atkins said, as if he was an instructor at a class,

'This is the Trigat, a multi-mission medium-range system for infantry. It's designed for use against tanks, helicopters and reinforced bunkers. The range is two hundred to two and a half thousand metres, and at two thousand metres the missile flight time is under twelve seconds, when it will have reached a speed of one hundred and fifty kilometres per hour. The aim point is the hit point, and cannot be affected by counter-measures, with a double charge for maximum penetration. It will come into full service production next year. It will work equally well at minus thirty-five degrees or plus forty degrees. It's the best . . .

Would you like to see what it can do?'

'What, here? In the city?' Serif giggled.

Mister said, 'Perhaps you'd like to see, Serif, what Mr Atkins chose as a target. Take a look through the sight.'

He thought it would have been obvious to Serif, but the man knelt and then lay on the plastic sheet, his eye to the aperture. The view through the sight, times ten magnification, would carry Serif over the rooftops, over the river and the bridges, over more roofs, to an open window where the curtains blew in the wind, where a man in a black shirt and black jeans stood, and behind him the most prized possessions of Serif, low-life hood. If the missile were fired, its bright flame exhaust fizzing across the city, it would explode iinside that room.

Mister flicked his eyebrow, the slightest movement, but it was picked up by Atkins - a good man, alert.

Atkins crouched beside Serif and depressed the main system switch. There was the sound of a bee's drone.

He said easily, without malice, 'It's live, Serif, just press the tit and you'll see how good it is. Only destroys the target, everything around the target's OK. You up for it?'

Serif wriggled back on the plastic sheet as if he were frightened that any slip, any clumsy movement against the launcher might trigger its firing.

Mister grinned. The detective chief inspector he owned, in the Crime Squad, had once quoted to him the remark of the detective superintendent then leading the hunt for evidence against him: 'Always watch his eyes. The rest of his face can be all sparkling and laughing. Never his eyes, they're fucking evil eyes.'

He'd stood, the night he was told that, in front of the mirror, and had stared into his reflection. He'd not told the Princess how the detective superintendent had described his eyes. He reached out with his hand to help Serif up, and Atkins switched off the Trigat.

He held Serif's hand, and with the other he slapped the man's back. 'You'll find me a good friend, Serif.

I'm not the sort of little man who takes offence when I'm stood up at the airport by a guy who has more important business than meeting me. It's yours, because you're my friend, and there's four warheads to go with it. And there's more where it's come from for you, for when we've done trading. And there's different presents as well. When you're with me, you'll feel like it's your birthday every day. Let's meet tomorrow, and I'll see that nice apartment of yours.

It'll be my pleasure.'

'What is it?'

'It's an anti-tank launcher,' Maggie said, as she took the binoculars back from him. She slung their strap around her neck, against the gold chain and the hanging St Christopher. Half a roll of film had been exposed in her camera.

'Bloody hell,' Joey mouthed.

He thought he could see, without the binoculars, the launcher being loaded into the boot of the second Mercedes. She had turned the van round so that it faced down the hill and away from the wasteground.

She said softly, 'I wonder if our friend Ismet knows the expression, "Beware of strangers bearing gifts."

There's going to be tears if his mother never told him that.'

They left. As the second Mercedes boot was closed down, they drove away. They were too exposed where they had parked.

'What would that thing do?' Joey asked.

She was thoughtful. 'It's not about what it can do.

Possession of it gives a man power, but not as much power as goes to the man who provides it. That's a big play, for serious business . . . '

'Am I not obliged to report that, tell the authorities, the International Police Task Force? Shouldn't I?'

'Don't be ridiculous,' Maggie said. 'Don't make me wish you'd stayed in your pram.'

They went back to the Holiday Inn, parked within sight of the main door, and Maggie crawled into the back of the van and settled with her earphones and tape decks while Joey went to look for sandwiches.

Summer 1994

He was called 'Rado'. The new men stationed in the village of Ljut called him by that name because the previous unit had, and the unit before them. Each morning, they had watched him wander purposefully from the ruins of the village opposite, down the track to the ford across the river, which was now low, and wade across, then seen his stride quicken as he stampeded out of the water and settled for his day's feeding in the overgrown grasslands of the grazing meadows. In the evening, when the sun dipped, he reversed his route and went back to a lonely sleep in the byre near the well of Vraca village.

During long days, Rado was the men's only sight of movement in the fields to the front of them, their only source of interest. They bet on his survival as had the unit before them and the unit before that. The soldiers were little more than boys, from villages where their parents had farms and, far from home, they took comfort from the sight of Rado each day because he represented something familiar. His story was handed down on the day each unit was relieved . . .

On New Year's Day, nineteen months before, the fundamentalists had abandoned the village across the river and the livestock had been turned out to fend for themselves. Rado, then unnamed, was a recently castrated bull calf of Limousin stock. The dairy cows had died in trumpeting agony because they were not milked. The sheep had been scattered by a wolf pack.

Some had been hunted down and some had fled to the high woods behind the village. The chickens and geese had been the prey of foxes. The heifers, dominated by the one bull calf among them, had come down to the ford in the spring fifteen months before, when the river's pace slackened and its depth dropped. They would have scented the good new grass ahead of them and had crossed; each, in spo-radic and haphazard turn, had stepped on, disturbed or shifted a mine. Last summer all but three had been killed. They went back, these survivors, each evening to the byre over the river where a dog waited for them. The autumn had come, the river had risen, and the three heifers and the bull calf had been blocked from coming over. Then it was spring again, and they were back. They had returned for their daily feeding in the grass meadow in the first week in April. By the third week of April, after two dulled smoke-rising explosions, there had been only one heifer to walk beside the bull calf; lost, sad, mooning lovers. On the last day of April the ground had erupted in a mess of noise and upthrown turf sods, and the bull calf had been alone.

The story handed down to each successive unit occupying the bunkers flanking Ljut village was that the bull calf had stayed with the maimed heifer all that day, that it had steadily licked the heifer's head, hour after hour, had quietened her screams of agony, had stayed with her until death and release. Then, as the evening had come on, he had gone back to the ford and crossed to sleep alone.

Through May, June and July, into August, the daily return of Rado was watched by the troops, and he was given his name.