Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

He didn't want a biscuit, but he took one, held it in his hand and trembled. It cracked in his grip. He didn't want to look into Mister's eyes, but he couldn't look away. There was no light in the eyes; they had the quality of death. He knew that one day he would stumble through an explanation to two detectives in an interview room, and they would not believe him, and they would ask, again and again, why he had not walked away. He was Mister's toy, and toys could be thrown away… He was expendable. Napoleon had said, to Metternich, in 1810: 'You can't stop me. I spend thirty thousand men a month.'

'I'm sorry,' Atkins said, and despised himself.

'You sent that?'

'Two things, and you'd better remember them, Joey. I don't work for your crowd, and it's not my intention to go home in a box.'

'You said it would be "interesting". Do I quote correctly?'

Maggie bridled. 'And I was wrong. I'm not so arrogant that I can't admit when I'm wrong.'

She switched off the small screen. He felt betrayed.

She wound back the tape. The picture on the screen – she'd marched him from his room to the van and made him squat in the back, beside the bucket, and watch it – was good quality. It was now, he believed her, in London. It would be watched, each second of it. The white Mitsubishi, reduced to monochrome, veering out of the slow lane, heaving onto the grass cutting a line towards Joey, a woman and a pram, him throwing himself at her, and…

She said, 'You shouldn't worry. They'll all say you're a proper little hero.'

She asked him for Frank Williams's number and he gave it to her, didn't question why she wanted it.

'I'm going to find a bar.'

'That is being utterly pathetic,' Maggie accused.

He slammed the van door shut on her.

A biker couriered the tape across the Thames and along the Embankment, from Ceausescu Towers to the Custom House. The package was delivered into the hands of the PA to the chief investigation officer.

The instruction was given that there should be no interruptions, and the cassette was fed into Cork's VCR.

He settled in a comfortable chair and watched the screen.

Gough had been called from the Sierra Quebec Golf room. The meeting into which the summons had broken had reached the detailed stage where personnel were allocated to the raids he planned.

Search warrants had been drafted in preparation for submission to a magistrate for approval. Large-scale Ordnance Survey maps, fastened with tacks to the walls, reproduced the streets of the Fulham district of west London, an area of the Surrey countryside and a section of roads immediately to the south of the capital's North Circular. But the call had come from on high, and the meeting was suspended.

He'd stood behind the comfortable chair. Cork said he had already seen the relevant part of the tape twice, but had not told him what it showed. Gough had his pipe, unlit, in his mouth.

Watching the picture gave him a curious sensation of non-involvement, of distance. It was a feeling Dougie Gough always experienced when he viewed surveillance tapes. He was not a footman, never had been. He was an organizer, an administrator, a decision-taker and a strategist. His skills were considered by his superiors too great for him to pound pavements or idle in cars. He sent men and women out, and he listened to and read through their reports when they came back from the field, and he felt – would never have shown it – envy… He peered hard at the screen. The tape was mute. Far from the camera, Joey Cann sat on a rubbish bin and his heels kicked its concrete sides. He remembered the young man, hesitant yet defiant, but committed. The camera's eye pitched Gough half-way across the mass of Europe to a wide road that ran between tower buildings and walled warehouses. He had no concept of Sarajevo but he was carried there by the lens and it seemed to him that he stood now within hailing distance of Cann. Men, women and children passed the camera, front on and back on, and Dougie Gough could have reached out and tapped their shoulders. He was transported there.

No attempt at concealment, Cann sat in full view, then dropped off the rubbish bin and walked towards the camera eye. The lens zoomed on him. Dougie Gough saw tight lips, the muscles clenched hard in his cheeks, the jutting chin, and recognized the tension in him. Twice Cann glanced behind him, but kept walking. The third time he turned, Cann spun his body and retraced his walk. The camera panned wide. Dougie Gough had watched surveillance tapes of Albert William Packer and seen enough telephoto stills of his Target One. The two men walked away, separated by a distance of around a hundred yards. He never saw the face of Target One. Dougie Gough felt a little winnow of excitement: everything he had read, been told, was that his Target One employed cunning and great care to avoid surveillance… The camera jerked, the picture wavered, as the vehicle in which it was mounted edged forward. Basic precautions had been discarded on both sides, but Gough did not understand why.

Cann kept to the same stride, the same pace as the man ahead. A vehicle came by the camera, a white four-wheel drive, he saw it and forgot it. He had lost the two men, Packer and Cann, behind three lorries in convoy. He started to look at the tower blocks and was matching them to those on the outskirts of Glasgow beside the M8 motorway. As the lorries cleared the view of Target One and SQG12, he realized that the platform for the camera had sped forward, gone frantic. He felt his teeth tighten on the pipe's stem. He wanted to shout out, yell a warning. The white four-wheel drive came off the road – Cann turned Dougie Gough saw the woman and the pram – Cann was the target. It happened quickly, the camera lost focus, the vehicle masked Cann, the woman and the pram before it was wrenched away. He saw the woman on the ground, Cann close to her, and the pram over-turned. He said a little prayer, a begging plea. He could have shouted in relief as he saw Cann roll over, and the woman was pushing herself up then righting the pram. The focus on the camera was regained as Maggie Bolton ran into picture and knelt beside Cann

… Dougie Gough had never lost an executive officer, killed or injured, in three decades with the Church. He had never thought it remotely likely he would lose a man. It had been so fast.

Cork cut the picture and the screen went to snowstorm.

Gough took out his matches and lit his pipe. The smoke cloud hid the screen.

Cork passed him a single sheet of paper. He read.

To: Endicott, Room 709, VBX

From: Bolton (Technical Support), Sarajevo Subject: Organized Crime/AWP

Timed: 14.19 (local) 17.03.01

Security Classification: Secret

Message Starts:

See enclosed tape – my C amp;E comrade survived unhurt a murder attempt organized this a.m. by Target One. Vehicle used driven by Target Three.

Yesterday, unreported to C amp;E, my comrade showed out on surveillance of Target One, and a subsequent telephone call from his girlfriend, Jennifer Martin (address not known), reported her cat killed, disembowelled and dumped on her doorstep. Comrade's concern is that he will be called home!

Following the 'show out' my bug in Target One's hotel room was removed, and the vehicle fitted with my beacon was destroyed. I am exposed and without basic security. I request immediate pull out.

Luv, Maggie

Message Ends

Gough handed back the sheet of paper.

'I can't say I'm pleased at this development,' Cork intoned. 'They're going to bring her home. It's not a matter for discussion, it's their decision and they've taken it. Haven't you anything to say?'

Dougie Gough, acid in his voice, said, 'Beyond reminding you it was your order that he travelled, not a lot.'

'He should come home, shouldn't he, before it's – you know – too late?'