Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

'Thank you, sir.'

'To be used with discretion.'

'Of course, sir.'

Joey Cann's promise of discretion was worth nothing. If evidence were found, if Target One were held, then the authorization would be in the public domain in open court. There were telephone lines, fax lines, e-mail lines between London and Sarajevo. With his scrawled signature, Judge Delic had compromised himself, and would have known it. The promise was empty. The judge had turned away and was staring up at the photograph of a family. Jasmina told Joey of the telephone number on the pad beside Duncan Dubbs's hotel bed, that the number had been answered by Ismet Mujic, and she gave him the list of three eyewitnesses and copies of their statements to the local police. He felt he was a stormcloud settling on their lives.

At the door, Joey said, 'I'm grateful to you, sir – and to you, miss – very grateful for involving yourselves.'

The judge said, flat-voiced, 'I have broken a rule of my life. The rule says that to survive here you must remain unnoticed. The rule was given me by my mother, because of my father's death. I was one and a half years old when my father died. My father, in the difficult times of the world war and the German occupation, thought it right to involve himself in the fight against the Tito partizans. He was recruited into the Handzar, which was the 13th SS Division, all Muslims

– the word is the Turkish one for the curved dagger of our people. He was proud of his involvement and the uniform they gave him. He was trained in Germany and France. A little later, Tito formed the 16th Muslim Brigade. My father had joined the wrong side; it would have been better for him to remain unnoticed.

He was shot after the war.'

'Then why, sir, did you break your rule?'

'From the claim of blood, because of blood that was spilled – from stupidity. Not a story to be told to a stranger. Be satisfied with what you have.'

She opened the door for him. Joey ran down the flights of stairs, through the cavern of the hallway and out into the street. If he had not checked himself, he would have punched the fume-filled air in triumph.

The aircraft bucked. Mister wondered whether the Eagle was going to throw up. Sitting beside him, clutching the seat's arms, choking and coughing, the lawyer's face was green-white. On the other side of him, Atkins was looking out on the dense grey mass of cloud. They were in powerful cross-winds and the plane was thrown sideways, forced down, climbed again, then plunged down further. The Eagle's dis-comfiture made Mister feel good and took away any anxiety he might have felt.

'Is this the way you used to come in?' What he liked about Atkins was that the former soldier never spoke unless it was required of him.

'In all weathers, Mister, and the rougher the better.

This isn't bad. Worst was good weather, no cloud.

We're on approach now. We used to call the RAF flights, C130 transports, "Maybe Airlines". Over the mountains and then the "Khe Sanh drop-down" – Khe Sanh was an American fire base in Vietnam where they had to come in against Triple A, anti-aircraft artillery. The pilots' technique was to corkscrew from twenty thousand feet, a little disturbing on the bowels. In good weather they'd shoot, particularly if they were pissed. In bad weather they couldn't see you.'

'Wasn't there any response?'

'Blue beret time, Mister, take it on the chin. One day I'll tell you about United Nations soldiering.'

They hit a bigger pocket. The Eagle gasped. Mister felt better than good. 'Do you know what we're doing here, Atkins?'

'I don't, but you'll tell me when you're ready to.'

His voice was faint against the thunder of the engines. 'Right now, I'm ready. I can't suffer boredom, Atkins, can't abide it. I was going nowhere, I was doing what I'd done three years before. What I needed was challenges – new scene, new drills, new business.

The Cruncher put up the idea. The Afghans produce the stuff, and the Cruncher said they'd get X amount, and that wasn't negotiable. The Turks pick it up and ship it across Europe then get it over to the UK and they charge Y. I sell it on and that's Z. Three factors in the street price. X is beyond my reach, and Z is my money anyway, so it's Y that I'm going after. The Turks ship it through here. My proposition

Cruncher's – is that I buy for delivery into Bosnia for Y minus forty per cent, or Y minus fifty per cent, then I ship onwards. I run the transport organization from Bosnia. I go into an international league… and that, Atkins, is big bucks. We'd have been here earlier if I'd not been away. Got any cold water?'

The aircraft kicked a last time, then broke through the cloud ceiling. Light flooded into the cabin. He steadied the tray as they banked sharply. He had a clear view of the mountains and the snow streaks between the pine-forest plantations.

'Not for me, Mister, to pour cold water on anything you put up.. . The Triple A was up there and this was when they'd hit you, the bastards, when you were helpless and steadying to come in… If you can get the Turks on board you've done well, if you can get the Bosnian low-life on board then you've done better than well. But you know that.'

'I pay you to tell me what I should know.'

'Who are we dealing with, from the low-life?'

'He's called S e r i f… '

The undercarriage slipped down. The aircraft yawed. Atkins was pointing through the porthole window. Apartment blocks slipped by. It took Mister a moment to realize why they had been pointed out.

He squinted to see better. The buildings were empty carcasses: they had been devastated by artillery, great holes punched in the walls; they had been ravaged by fire, scorched patches around the gaping windows; they had been pocked by small-arms bullets and shrapnel, disease-ridden and spotted from the volume of it.

Atkins said to him, 'There was a tunnel under the runway from Butmir on the far side to Dobrinja, where we're looking. It was the Muslim lifeline and the Serbs couldn't break in to close it. Serif was instru-mental in defending the link. The army brought their supplies in through the tunnel, and Serif brought in the black-market stuff. He made serious money out of it, and he sealed his deals with government. Don't ever forget, Mister, Serif is protected from the top of government down. He's hard – and if the Cruncher was around that's what he'd tell you. He's a dangerous man, not to be taken lightly.'

They hit the runway hard.

Mister laid one hand over the Eagle's fist clenching the armrest and with the other he punched Atkins. He said, against the thunder of the reverse thrust, 'We'll eat him. You see if we don't.'

An old blue Japanese-made van was at the back of the airport car park. From where it was parked the driver and his passenger had a clear view through the wiped windscreen of the two black Mercedes saloons that had stopped directly in front of the outer arrivals door. Joey was behind the wheel. Maggie talked in terse code into the microphone clipped to her blouse.

'They're in place,' Cork said.

'You're lucky to have her.' Endicott's smile was superior. 'She's bloodstock.'

Dennis Cork, chief investigation officer, had stalled the meeting to answer his mobile call in the Home Office minister's private room. Giles Endicott had been his desk chief at the Secret Intelligence Service before the transfer to Customs amp; Excise. The transfer had brought Cork a substantial increment in salary and in civil-service grading so that he now ranked as equal to his former master, but old habits died hard: he remained, in Endicott's book, a junior.

Cork responded tetchily, 'I am merely reporting that my man is in place.'

And i merely observing that he has a first-class operator up alongside him,'

The minister intervened: 'I made a speech last week you may or may not have picked it up – in which I spoke of the devastation caused by the drugs trade.