The Untouchable

by Gerald Seymour

  Joey slipped out of the back of the van and went towards the rubbish bin. He had never felt so miserable, so worthless - not when the letter had dropped into the box of his parents' tied cottage to tell him his exam results had been inadequate for a college place, not when the Sierra Quebec Golf team had drifted in from the Old Bailey. Always, before, he could have blamed others. This time, only he carried the blame

  . . . He retrieved the pieces from the rubbish bin and carried them back. In the van she examined them.

  He had not brought everything: he had missed the snapped-off head of the probe. He was told what he had missed. He went a second time to the rubbish bin, groped in it and couldn't find the length of the broken probe. He pulled the wire frame out of the bin, shook it out and crawled among the debris until he found it.

  He brought the piece back to her, and left the rubbish scattered.

  She smiled, winked at him, and put it into a bag with the box and the wires. She closed down the camera, switched off the audio console and climbed into the van's driving seat. She offered no explanation as they drove along Zmaje od Bosne then on to the Bulevar Mese Selimovica.

  They sat in silence, and he nursed the hurt. The rain had lifted a shallow mist off the road, the warehouses and darkened factories. At first the beacon was faint.

  The light on the screen and the bleep drew them. They reached the junction for the turning to the airport. The building on the corner had had a massive tower that was collapsed now in huge concrete shapes. The beacon was stronger. The van's headlights found an encampment of caravans, lorries and bell-tents. They drove off the road and onto a mud track. The wheels spun, but she had control and edged past the camp.

  The light on the screen and the bleep intensified. He saw the fire engine, men with hoses and a crowd of dancing, leaping urchin kids. The smoke from the burned-out skeleton of the Toyota sagged in the wind.

  She gazed at the scene.

  'Not bad, eh? Still working.'

  He tried to summon the pith of sarcasm: 'I suppose you want me to go and retrieve it?'

  'It's otter, didn't I tell you? That's One Time -

  Throw Away. What a star, still going after that sort of fire.'

  'Are we on a test-to-destruction exercise?'

  'We are merely confirming that you showed out, that the targets know of our surveillance - cheer up, look on the bright side.'

  'Does it get worse?'

  'Doubt it. You showing out should make it all the more challenging. It could be, at last, interesting.'

  February 1997

  He already wore his heavy calf-length underpants under his pyjamas, a vest and thick woollen socks. He crawled from his bed onto the floor. The bed legs had been unscrewed and burned for warmth. He reached the solid old table that he would never chop up for the fire, heaved himself upright, went to the door and lifted down his heavy coat. Dragan Kovac would never be parted from that coat, which was twenty-five years old and a symbol of his past. Most of its front buttons were still in place; they were dulled but still, if he squinted at them, he could see the rampant eagle head embossed on them. The coat reminded him of the days when he had been a man of importance, the police sergeant, just as the table reminded him of the blessed days before his wife had been taken from him.

  There had been an explosion in the night.

  Without the help of the Spanish soldiers it would not have been possible for him to move back into his house. They had strung a great canvas sheet over the roof tiles that kept out the rain but not the damp. They had sealed the windows with planks, had replaced the broken chimney stack with a tube of silvery metal, but it smoked if the winter gales came from the east or the south. They brought him the basics of food, and paraffin oil for his lamp, and nagged that it was not a fit place for an elderly man to live on his own. But, he was back, and he would not shift before his Maker took him. Then he would be buried in the graveyard above Ljut beside his wife, below a rough-chiselled stone cross. The family with whom he had been force-lodged in Griefswald had packed his bags for him a full forty-eight hours before the mini-bus had come to collect him.

  The crisp sun lit the valley.

  From the door, looking down, he saw Husein Bekir with his fundamentalist son-in-law. Dragan Kovac spat a gob of mucus onto the concrete path that led from his front door. If they wore that uniform, camouflage markings and forage cap, they were fundamentalists and war criminals. He had no doubt of it. It was his surprise that a decent man like Husein Bekir - avaricious for land and money, but decent -

  allowed the man his daughter had married to flaunt that killers' uniform. He would speak to Husein about it when the fundamentalist criminal had returned to his unit . . . The uniforms, he had been told in the transit camp before he had returned to Ljut, were the cast-off clothes of the American army, and the weapons with which they were issued were

  American; their instructors were American, and they would have American advisers when, finally, they attacked the defenceless Serb people and drove them from their homes. It was what he had been told and he believed it. He believed, also, that this criminal soldier would have killed Serb babies and Serb women without mercy; he had been told it.

  Husein and his son-in-law were at the far riverbank, away from the ford.

  Since he had come back, Dragan Kovac had spoken twice to his neighbour. The Spanish soldiers had told him, repeated it, drilled it into him as though he were an idiot, that he should not step off the track that went down to the ford or up to the village. They had asked him where the mines were laid, but his memory was hazy and he could not remember what type had been sown, in what quantities, or where. Dragan had walked twice down to the ford, on the hard track, and they had shouted across the river to each other. How was Husein? He was fine. How was Lila? She was fine. How was the house? It was fine . . . That was the first time. The second time they had shouted over the water about the weather, about the volume of the rain-fall and that it was worse than any year since 1989, and about small things, and about his friend's hope of being given a new tractor . . . No politics, and nothing about the mines. When the water level fell, when it was possible for Husein Bekir to cross the ford, he would come and they would play chess, and Dragan had promised to cook for Husein and fill him with brandy while they played.

  The previous day, the son-in-law had slung a rope with a grapple-hook tied to its end over the river and dragged it tight till the claws caught fast in a withy clump then knotted his own end to an alder's roots.

  Perhaps Husein's memory was better than his own, or perhaps the son-in-law was merely lucky and had the arrogance of youth. Hanging from the rope, the young man had hauled himself over the river. Even at that long distance, Dragan had observed the fretted anxiety of Husein as the son-in-law searched for the mines. They were the ones on stakes that were fired with trip-wires. Much of the grass was still thin from the fire Husein had lit before Dragan's return. The son-in-law found four of what the Spanish soldiers called the PMR3 fragmentation mines, which they said were the most dangerous. The fire would have burned the nylon wires, but the mines had survived the fire. Dragan had thought it crass stupidity, but the son-in-law with the four mines had gone along the bank of the river and he'd lost sight of him where the wood came down to the water. An hour later he had come back without the mines . . . He watched the young man cross the river on the rope then walk along the riverbank towards the tree-line.

  There had been the detonation in the night, then silence.

  He put on his boots, tied them loosely, and stamped off down the track. He shouted for Husein to join him and wove towards the ford. He kept to the centre of the track. He felt good now, but he thought Husein walked less steadily than he remembered, and Husein was a year and seven months younger than him. He waited until Husein reached the ford and felt satisfaction that he walked less well than himself. And Husein, also, had poorer hearing, so Dragan had to shout above the tumble of the water to be heard.

  'What's h e . . . ' D
ragan spat into the river and saw his phlegm bobble before being carried away ' . . .

  what's he doing?'

  'Yesterday he picked up four of the mines and moved them.'

  'That's the job of a fool.'

  'He said we should eat meat - that we eat too much of the soya and pasta shit that the military brings.'

  'I heard a mine in the night,' Dragan replied sourly.

  'The soya and pasta is good enough for me.'

  'But not for my son-in-law. He took four mines from the field to the trees and looked for the tracks of deer. He moved the mines to kill a deer.'

  'Has he killed a deer?'

  'He's gone to see what he has killed. If it's a young deer it's good. It is God's gift. If it is a fox then the risk he took was wasted - he says we should eat meat.'

  Dragan, with the pomposity given him by his police overcoat, said, 'It is better to have a life and limbs than to have meat.'

  'He says he knows about mines.'

  'Then he's a fool - you should eat pasta and soya.'

  'Only once have we had fish since we came back.

  We need more than pasta and soya, the children must have meat if they are to grow . . . It is because of your people that we have the mines in my fields.'

  'The mines were put in the ground to protect us from barbarian criminals - like your son-in-law. Our officer called them "defensive mines".'

  Husein Bekir had spread his arms, waved them as if to call on God as a witness, and raged, 'You shelled us, you fired on our homes.'

  'You came and slit our throats in the night. You would have killed me.' The veins bulged in Dragan Kovac's throat as he bellowed his riposte.

  'You fired shells on us, on our women and our children.'

  'Enough, Husein Bekir, enough - can you not recognize that it is over, the war is finished?'

  'How is the war over when your mines are still in my fields?'

  Dragan laughed. 'I know the war is over when you are at my house and we play chess, and the brandy is on the table - and I will beat you on the table, and I will still be sitting when you are on the ground, drunk.'

  'You have no skill at chess, you cannot hold liquor.

  Never had . .. never could . . . never will.' The laughter cackled across the water. And over the laughter was the crack of the explosion.

  His friend, Husein, with the poorer hearing did not hear the blast. He still laughed. Dragan Kovac, the powerful man who had been in authority, cringed.

  The only time in his life he had ever run from the responsibilities of his position in Ljut was during the attack, and he had suffered - his God knew he had suffered - been imprisoned in the tower block in Griefswald as punishment for running. He had vowed then, many times, he would never flee his obligation again. He pointed to the wood. He stabbed at the wood with his finger. Husein Bekir's eyes followed the jabbing hand, laughter gone.

  A narrow column of dark, chemical smoke rose from the heart of the trees, and above the smoke, crows circled and screamed.

  Dragan saw Husein crumple. He said hoarsely,

  'You cannot go there, friend. You have the children to look after, and Lila. You must not go.'

  He had to strain to hear the voice. 'What if he is not dead? You said yourself...'

  'Believe he is dead.' It was the nearest, spoken with gruffness, that Dragan could get to kindness. 'Believe it was quick.'

  He watched as Husein turned and started up the track for his home. In the far distance he could see Husein's wife, daughter and grandchildren at the dour of their ruined house, and others in the village were running to them.

  The minefield was active, spawning, and its reach had spread because four mines had been moved by his friend's son-in-law, and two had exploded, but two more were now placed in new ground, where none had been before.

  He thought the valley, cut by the river between the villages of Vraca and Ljut, was damned.

  The wind caught the trees in Lavenham Road.

  Jen heard the cat-flap go, snapping in the kitchen door.

  She couldn't sleep. She missed him, that was God's honest truth. She hadn't needed the landlady, Violet, to tell her that she missed him. If she hadn't needed to get back to her two-room flat to feed the cat she would have slept in his bed. It would have been better to have been alone in his bed than alone in her own. Her cat, Walter, was a big black long-haired neutered male.

  He was a tie, demanding, and precious little affection from him repaid what she spent on his food. The cat never slept on her bed. He'd have been welcome enough but with the independence of his species he never took up the invitation.

  Jen's flat was the whole of the ground floor of a narrow terraced house; she shared the front door with a couple with a baby who rented the floor above, but they were away and there wasn't the crying of the child to disturb her. Jen would have liked the reassurance of the cat on her bed and the crying from upstairs. It was the quiet of the house that disturbed her. The wind was in the trees and it sang high-pitched in the telephone wire from the pole to the house, and it scudded a carton down Lavenham Road that bounced erratically, noisily.

  Cleaning Joey's room had been a waste of her time, but being there had been a comfort. Of course he'd be

  'all right' . . . She heard the creak of the fence at the back of the house, loud enough to carry through the length of the building, and then there was a sharp, shrill cry, but very brief, as if Walter fought with a rival. She hadn't thought the wind fierce enough to shift the back fence. She snuggled further down in the bed. She had responsibility for the fence. She used the garden. A fencepost or a section of paling would cost a fortune. She started the big debate that usually ended in sleep. Would he ask her to marry him?

  Would she accept if he asked? If he didn't ask, by next Christmas, or in a year's time, would she ask him to marry her? Her mother sniped about it, talked about her neighbours' joy in their grandchildren, said she'd soon be too old, said it was wrong for babies to be born out of wedlock. The wind had come on harder.

  She heard the singing, creaking. The front bell rang, persistent and loud. The hands of her watch told her it was half past midnight. The finger stayed on the bell button. She staggered from the bed. Could it be Joey?

  Could he be back, silly beggar, and not carrying his mobile? Could he have gone to Tooting Bec, then come on here, for her? She was out of bed and into her dressing-gown. The bell was a siren. It couldn't be Joey, he'd have rung her from Tooting Bec, from the telephone in the downstairs hall. She was into the hall, switched on the ceiling light. Through the frosted glass on the upper half of the door was the outline of a figure. The bell yelled for her. Then the silence, and the figure was gone from the far side of the door.

  The door was on the chain. She opened it. She heard, didn't see it, a car driving away. There was a cardboard box on the mat.

  Jen took the chain off, opened the door and lifted the top flap of the box. Then she screamed, howled at the wind.

  Dougie Gough wondered whether he had expected too much of a young man without the necessary bedrock of experience. Another couple of days and he might, probably would, pitch Cann home. He read the report a second time.

  From: SQG12/Sarajevo, B-H

  To: SQG1/London

  Timed: 00.10 16.03.01

  Message Starts:

  Para One - Observed, with Box 850, Target One / Two / Three on drive round former city battlefields, presumably time-killing.

  Para Two - Observed, with Box 850, Target One/Two/Three visit apartment of IM. Boxes were carried into the apartment but cannot say what they contained.

  Para Three - Target One visited Lion cemetery, then returned to hotel.

  Message Ends

  He thought it pretty damn thin. He rocked with tiredness. He had stayed on alone in the Sierra Quebec Golf room for two full hours after the last of the rest of the team had gone home, stayed for nothing.

  He started for his bed in south-west London. He did not know, because he hadn't be
en told, that a call had come through that evening for Cann and that Cann's father had been informed that his son was abroad. He marched with a good stride for the bus.

  stop on the all-night route. Nor did he know, had no reason to, that Jennifer Martin lived a dozen streets, across two main roads, from where he would sleep.

  At the bus-stop, Dougie Gough lit his pipe and waited - and wondered what in Sarajevo's day had been kept from him.

  The guests at the City livery-hall dinner - black tie and stag - finished the last of their brandy and their port and hurried for their chauffeurs and taxis.

  Cork had lost count of the times the minister had tried to catch his eye from the top table. He'd thought himself safe as the dinner broke up because the minister was surrounded by well-wishers. On the step, looking for a taxi, he was trapped.

  'A lift anywhere, can I drop you?'

  'Out of your way, I'm afraid - a taxi'll be along.'

  The minister's car waited, the door open.

  'I don't wish to press but the Secretary of State's taken an interest. Billy wanted to know where we were with Packer—'

  'We never use names on the pavement, Minister.'

  'So I told him you had assured me this creature was getting maximum effort - Billy's own constituency, two days ago, came out two from the top of the country's worst heroin-addiction areas, of course he's concerned, he has voters' complaints littering his surgeries - with maximum resources.'

  'About spot on. I think I also warned you against high hopes of quick fixes. If I didn't, I should have.'

  'I may call him "this creature", yes? Billy sees him as an affront to the government's whole law-and-order policy. Is he still in Sarajevo?'

  'Not locations on the pavement, please.'

  'Billy said it was intolerable that a man like - er —this creature could beat the justice system. I'm to be called in next week to say where we are, to give assurances. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you understand the priority of this.'

  'Of course . . . Sorry, must go.'