Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

Because he stood on the chair and was close to the woodwork at the top of the wardrobe, because his torch beam played on the joins at the angles of the wood screen, he saw the faint scrape where the join had been loosened. The wood creaked and small splinters fell from it as Mister dragged it apart.

It was smaller than anything the men in the industrial park at Romford had shown him. He grinned to himself. The bug, he thought, was the most recently developed and most miniaturized, and it had been used against him. The grin was because he felt that respect was being shown him. His anger slackened. He looked at the box, the wires and the listening probe slotted into the wood, and he considered… There were options open to him. He could leave it where it was and feed false information into it, get the Eagle in and talk riddles, discuss bogus travel movements, but no message would then be sent. He could go down the third-floor corridor, take Atkins's radio, put the volume to full, hold the radio beside the probe's microphone, throw the on switch, and blast the ears that would be listening under headphones, but that would not send the message he wanted.

He could swear down the link, blasphemies and obscenities, and laugh raucously, but that would lessen the message.

He left it in place.

He put his room back together, undid the chaos of his search.

He stripped out of the suit with the mud wet on his knees, scraped the caked clay off his shoes, then took a long shower and dressed for dinner.

Standing on the chair, he took down the box, the wires and the probe, then used the flat of his hand to hammer the joins on the wood screen back into place.

He took the bug out of his room and walked briskly down the corridor, down three flights of stairs, across the atrium hall, through the swing doors and out into the spitting night. He hurried because he did not want his clean suit and clean shoes to get wet from the rain.

They watched the screen. The bright lights of the hotel's porch roof flared the picture and burned out the face of Target One, but as he came forward the picture compensated. He was whistling to himself, amplified and tinny over the van's speaker.

Maggie tilted the joystick control and the camera tracked with him.

Joey breathed hard. He was against her back, could feel the warmth of her, peered over her shoulder.

He went into the centre of the car park. A taxi flashed him with its headlights, but he smiled and gestured that he didn't need it. Mister looked around him and saw what he wanted. The camera followed him towards a rubbish bin at the edge of the car park.

He never looked around or hunted for them, as if they weren't important, as if he knew they were there. He was beside the bin, his arm moved, and the box, the wires and the fine probe dropped at his feet. The carried its clatter. The box had bounced on the gravel but was still now and the twisted wires lay on of a polished shoe was raised. Mister stamped twice on the box. The speaker reverberated once, then the silence was around them. Mister bent, picked up the pieces of the box and the wires that had detached from. He snapped the probe in half, and dropped it into the rubbish bin. He wiped his hands, rubbed the rain off his hair, turned for the hotel's door, and disappeared inside.

'Well, go on… ' she said.

Joey looked blankly at her.

'Didn't your mother ever tell you, "Waste not, want not"? I can rebuild it, so go and get it.'

He thought she enjoyed the moment.

'You were the one who showed out, remember – so just get it.'

Joey said feebly, 'I don't know where or when. I just don't understand at what moment I showed out.'

' "Winners and losers", as I recall. It's quite simple.

You weren't good enough. You overvalued your capability. Please, just go and get it.'

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.