Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

Since the dark had come, and the cool, it had been harder to keep the dog quiet, and the big brute had lost interest in the bone, and. .. Light flooded out of the door ahead of him. Joey, from the rock, waved for quiet down in the gully.

He saw the three of them, Mister, the Eagle and Atkins, standing tall.

They left Dragan Kovac's home. It was becoming a ritual, and welcome.

At the end of the day, when the dusk made it impossible for them to work in their taped corridors, a few of them – and the foreman – came to his home, sat on his porch with him and drank his plum brandy He thought they needed the alcohol because of the work they did. The sun was long gone over the hill to the west of the valley when they lurched off up the track to the junction where their pick-ups were parked by the caravans.

The foreman shouted back, as he disappeared into the evening darkness, 'Thank you, Dragan, and have a quiet night.'

He laughed loudly. 'I have enough of them to know them too well. They are all quiet nights.'

'They think it's going according to his plan,' Maggie murmured. 'Sounds as if there's been a preamble, and now it's a break. The detail's going to follow if the others decide to come in… Eagle says that Mister's done well, but he says the others are hostile, suspicious and wary, but they like the money on offer.

The money's good but – this is Eagle – they're still cautious. Mister says it'll depend on the percentages

… God, can't one of you throttle that damn animal?'

She was on the flat stone beside Joey, the earphones on her head, and she tilted the dish with the antenna spike so that it was aimed at the three men who stood on the gravel between the house door and the parked vehicles. Frank was with her, and Ante and Fahro.

Behind the stone, in the gully, Muhsin and Salko lay on the squirming dog, scratched its stomach and tousled its neck.

'The Italian, that's Marco, is going to be asked to pay fifteen per cent of the value of cocaine handled by Mister's network in the UK – no, that's the negotiating point. They'll come down to twelve and a half per cent, it's Eagle, he says that's the bottom line…

Nikki, the Russian – City banking, City of London, laundering. Ten per cent is the minimum, but starting at eleven and a half per cent of all monies washed through Mister's placemen. They've gone on to more percentages – still with Nikki, but it's people-trafficking… God, they are talking big money.

Corporation stuff… Jesus, throttle it or gag it, but shut it up.'

'The weapons trade, Mister – I suggest not too hard to start with,' the Eagle said, in deference.

'London's the conduit for the trade, Mister. Best place he could work out of – access into Africa and the Middle East.' It was Atkins's first contribution: he felt shut out, sidelined. He was ignored.

'Start at six and three-eighths, on the first million, and go down to five and seven-eighths,' Mister said, with confidence. 'Nine per cent on the second million, ten on what's on top of that, if he goes through our contacts.'

'Sounds about right,' the Eagle muttered. 'Now the Turk, that is some evil bastard.'

Mister grinned balefully. ' I expect his mother loves him.'

'The Turk we pay thirty-five thousand pounds sterling, delivery in Sarajevo, for refined product, per kilo, as against the forty-five you're paying now.'

'So, I'd he getting, maximum, thirty-six per kilo?'

Somewhere in the darkness above them, a dog barked. It was, It sharp, baying, deep-throated bark.

'Three point six million for one hundred kilos. I think I can live with that. If it's not lorries, I was starting to think of all those regattas over the North Sea… '

There was a second bark, but it was stifled abruptly, then a low whine, then nothing.

'Regattas in Norway, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, France, all those clubs going over to compete. Can you sail, Atkins? Can't? Try learning. I'm going to have a pee. Fifteen minutes must be nearly up. You want a pee, Eagle? I'll call you when I need you, Atkins.'

It was masterful of Mister. Atkins had heard the bark and knew it was that of a guard or attack dog. It was the bark of the sort of dog used by the Royal Military Police for perimeter protection or for hunting a man down. He heard the door close behind them.

Alongside that sort of dog would be a handler and guns and – his mind raced – a listening probe. The dog had barked beyond the fall of the lights around the door. Mister's mastery had been in finishing his sentence, about a regatta route, then suggesting a pee, like he was too dumb to have been alerted, if they were listened to. He shivered. He heard the door behind him open again.

A light was switched on behind him, from the hall.

Its beam, maybe two hundred times candlepower, was thrown past him, over the green, well-cut and watered lawns, over the shrub bushes, and the man-height fence that was topped with a barbed-wire strand, into the scrub, on to a grey-white flat stone fifty yards from him. Atkins saw the man he had tried to kill, to run down. The light caught the big spectacles, too large for the face, and the thin shoulders, and the jutting knees as he sal cross-legged, unmoving. A woman with a dish was beside him, and an older man in uniform. Thenthe flashlight caught two men in dark overalls and their rifle barrels blinked back at the beam. Another man with another rifle, an image-intensifier sight on it, scrambled to join them. He couldn't see the dog but the barking was frantic and the noise billowed over him.

The light went out. There was pandemonium in the doorway of the house… He thought that all the bloody security had been in the house, complacent and sitting in the bloody kitchen – none of the idle bastards had been out on the property's fence.

Atkins started to walk. He had come to the end.

There was a shake in his stride, his knees were weak and he wanted to piss, but he went briskly on to the lawns and through the shrubs. He heard his name called, but he didn't turn. The engines were starting behind him, and there was the flash of headlights, the slamming of doors, and tyres grinding the gravel. The cry of his name felt like a knife into his back, then,

'Leave the bastard, fucking yellow bastard!' He heard the bark of the dog and the engines' scream.

He raised the flag – white flag, abject, surrender.

Atkins shouted, ' I'm coming over. Please, don't shoot.

Please, don't.'

He jumped at the high fence. It bucked, rocked, held under his weight. He did not feel the pain as the wire slashed his hands. He rolled over it, as he had been trained to do. He blundered through the thorn bushes towards the dog. He was thrown down.

Hands forced their way over his body, prised between his legs and into his armpits. He was rolled over and his arms were forced into his back, and the handcuffs clicked, tight, on his wrists. He was dragged.

Rocks caught his shins. He thought of the steely loyalty of his mother if she came to visit him, and the way the boy had struggled as he'd been lifted on to the bridge rail, and the contempt that would be on the face of his father. They were into a wood of thick-growing trees. Twice he hit the tree trunks and he felt the blood dribble from his nose. They didn't allow him to slow them. He was thrown onto the back of a pick-up. A cage door grated shut. The vehicle jerked forward. Beside him, kept from him by the cage mesh, was the hot breath of the snarling dog.

He thought he was free. He was no longer Atkins.

'Which one are we following?' Frank asked.

'Mister, Target One.'

'What about the others?'

'Irrelevant to me,' Joey said.

'And the guy in the back?'

'He's yours, not mine.'

' I can call up help, cavalry.'

' I don't want help, not from anyone.'