Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

'I don't have much time… '

'That's not a Sarajevo habit. God, a man in a hurry, it's almost worth a diary entry. Shoot.'

Frank didn't intervene, leaving Joey to explain what was wanted and to emphasize the requirement for security, secrecy.

The man, relentlessly chewing gum, wore the badge of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on his upper sleeve. He listened without comment. He had small, darting eyes that stayed locked on Joey's spectacles. The smartness of the Canadian's uniform and the high polish of his boots unsettled Joey in his faded jeans, sweatshirt, sweater and windcheater. He-heard Joey out.

'Let me tell you, Mr Cann, about my day. I am from a town in Manitoba, you wouldn't know its name, with a population of around fifteen thousand who are mostly Aboriginals. Right now, there, it's late evening, the temperature is around minus thirty-five degrees, and it's my home. I was shipped out of there six months ago, and I'll be shipped back in three months, and I can't wait… My day starts each morning at five and I leave my little room out in Ilidza – for which I pay five hundred German marks a month – and I go to work out in a gymnasium that's equipped by the SFOR military. I shower, and at seven I ring my wife, then I get my breakfast in the American camp at Butmir where it's familiar food and cheap. I am in my office by eight o'clock and until five o'clock in the afternoon I put papers from my in-tray into my out-tray, and when the out-tray is full I put them back in the empty in-tray. I break that up with a couple of meetings, most of which are taken up by translation time, and a sandwich for lunch. After five o'clock I go back to my room and cook myself a meal in the kitchen I share with two Swedish dog-handlers, and I might gossip a little with them. After my meal I watch a video or read a book and I'm in bed by nine o'clock.

That way the nights go faster. My regret is that I cannot make the days go quicker. I am wasting my time here. I know that and my government knows it. As each RCMP officer goes home he will not be replaced.

It's not about the cost but about the lack of achievement. Put brutally, Mr Cann, we are kicking soft excreta.

'The place is a crossroads. Every form of criminal trafficking is coming through here. Women from the Ukraine, Romania and Russia, either to work in brothels here or for transit into western Europe.

Asylum seekers from China, Afghanistan, Iran, anywhere you want, are stacked here before being moved on. Tobacco is shipped in from Italy and resold in bulk. A luxury car is stolen in the street in the morning in Hamburg or Stuttgart, the next morning it's here and in a workshop where the numbers are filed off, and the morning after it's on its way via Slovakia to Moscow. The Balkan trail of the drugs route has reopened after the war; it's not being moved in kilos but in tonnes. I want to go home, back to that balls-freezing cold in Manitoba, because I can't do a damn thing here.

'The country is held in a web of corruption. I cannot fight it. People like me are in place, and people more important than me, and we're all just pissing in the wind. Everyone's on the take. At the moment, we keep the corruption under the surface and nearly out of sight, but the Canadians are leaving and everyone else will be quitting, and then a whole country in the heart of Europe will be handed over to serious gangsters – the Turks, Russians, Albanians, Italians, and the local men. Have you heard of Serif? You have, OK.

There isn't a senior politician here, or a senior official with any power, who is fighting the culture of corruption.

'We were supposed to do some good by coming here, remember? We were going to teach a society that had endured the rape of war how to put that experience behind them. We came with a noble sentiment and generosity. About the tenth time you get your shin lacked you start to get the message. Little people are too frightened to come to us. The big people see us as being in the way and obstructing their snouts from going deeper into the swill troughs. Today I'm dealing with three million American dollars' worth of tractors, trailers, balers, plus a hundred tonnes of agricultural fertilizer, plus eighty tonnes of seed potatoes – donated by the UN, which is your tax-payers and mine – found upcountry in a warehouse owned by a politician. He'd have sold part of the loot on, and the rest he'd have distributed as largesse. That was a chance find by a bloody-minded patrol of Finns, who haven't been here long enough to have given up on the place. We are not even scratching the surface.

'There's a bigger problem, Mr Cann, and it worries me a whole lot more. Who am I to stand in judgement? Where I come from in Manitoba we are getting into a culture of criminality. The Aboriginal kids are on dope, LSD and lighter fuel. They're drinking after-shave lotion, and the adults are smashed out of their minds on class A stuff. A city like Winnipeg, where your senior-citizen tourists come to start their coach trips of the Rockies, has what we classify as a "serious heroin problem". In British Columbia they now grow better marijuana than the Mexicans. On the US border, we're stopping perhaps one load out of twenty, five per cent, of hard drugs. It's not that we're losing, the war is already lost. We're in a sewer at home. So, who am I to tell these people that it's wrong for them to be in a cesspit? Perhaps thinking never helped a law-enforcement officer.

'You said you were a busy man, Mr Cann. That's good, and I hope you can keep hold of your enthusiasm. I am prepared to authorize Frank Williams to continue liaison with you… I am also prepared to authorize the four officers, named by Frank, to be available to be with you as a part of a training exercise. You understand me, Mr Cann, a training exercise – and I wish to know nothing more. Good luck.'

'Thank you, sir.'

Joey made a mental note to send him a pin or a tie when he was back, when he had finished. He ran from the stifling heat of the Portakabin city and hoped he was not late to link with Maggie.

Mister said, 'I want a warehouse, full time and permanent.'

'What you want, Packer, is protection.'

They were around a circular glass table, Mister, the Eagle and himself on one side, and facing them were Ismet Mujic and two men. Atkins thought the older one, heavy-built, big-fisted, square-faced and crop-haired, might be an intelligence officer or senior in the police, but he was not introduced and he had not spoken. The other man, younger, without a name or a voice, had lank black hair with gel in it and the air of privileged connection. Atkins presumed the conversation was recorded, just as the Eagle had their device built into the base of his attache case. Laid on a side table at the back of the room, not hidden, was a loaded Kalashnikov assault rifle with two magazines taped together, and at the side of the table and positioned like a favourite new toy was the launcher still holding the missile tube. The Rottweilers were beside the door, stretched out and sleeping, occasionally pawing each other, then yawning to show their teeth. Sometimes, through the door, came the grating cough of one of the guards. The ambience – guns, dogs, guards – was intended to intimidate. Mister had left his PPK

Walther in the Toyota, and said the Luger given to Atkins should be with it. It was the first time Atkins had been with Mister for a major negotiation, seen the style. Mister, the Eagle and he had countered the intention to intimidate by hooking their jackets on to the chair behind them, showing they were not armed.

'It is not "Packer" it is "Mister". I don't need protection, I want co-operation.'

'Can you be so sure, after so few hours here, Mister Packer, that you will not need protection?'

'I have never needed protection in my life, but always try to find co-operation.'