Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

'If that's what you w a n t… '

'I want your advice!' Cork railed at him, 'What's the alternative? Put in a team of half a dozen, drop a Special Forces section alongside them for close protection? Hack into a budget I don't have? God – I've a minister on my back. What do I do, Mr Gough?'

'You do not offer knee-jerk interference.'

Cork ignored the impertinence – wouldn't have if it had been offered by any other man or woman in the building. 'The buck stops on my desk.'

'You leave running the operation to me.'

'If anything happens to him, I'll be crucified.'

'If my Maker will excuse a vile blasphemy, Mr Cork, I'll expect to be on the cross next to you. I'd like to think about it.'

He already had. Gough left the room and his feet stamped hard down the corridor, down the stairs and down another corridor. He lit his pipe, sucked hard on it, and the smoke clouds billowed behind him. There was that look on Dougie Gough's face that warned off any of the senior, higher or executive officers who passed him in the corridors or on the stairs from telling him that the Custom House was a protected no-smoking zone. He made his way back to the room used by the Sierra Quebec Golf team. Had there been mirrors on those corridors, had he looked at them, he would have seen a reflected image, older of course, of the face on the tape: Cann's – lips, cheek muscles, chin, tension and commitment. He tapped the numbers into the pad and went into the room. They all looked at him, ten of them, and awaited the explanation as to why he had been called away.

'Right, gentlemen, ladies – where were we?'

December 1997

The rain fell hard, had done so each day that week. He did not know it, but again the mines moved, carried in the rivulets that ran from the slopes above his fields.

Some were buried deeper in the silt brought down, but others had been washed out of the ground, and were exposed. Husein Bekir would not have known that he was responsible for the shifting life of the mines. By setting fire to the fields two years back, he had killed the grass roots that held the soil; he had released the ground from the binding roots and facilitated the movement.

His fatherless grandchildren walked with him down the track towards the swollen ford, with the Englishman who had come from Mostar.

They, he reflected between shouts towards the house across the Bunica river, were the strong ones. It was nine months since their father's death, but they had seemed to mourn him for only a day, not for weeks as he and Lila had, not for months as his daughter had. He called for his friend, Dragan Kovac, and the children echoed his shouts as if it were a game, skipped and ran ahead of him and the Englishman. The foreigner said his name was Barnaby and he spoke Husein's language, but nothing of what he said was welcome. The children were strong and did not act out roles as victims. Husein Bekir hoped that, one day, his grandchildren would know nothing of a war and would farm his fields in the valley.

The Englishman had arrived unannounced, had come to Vraca with his driver.

His grandchildren were like all those in the village of their age. They were thin, weedy, skinny. They had no muscle on them, and no sinew in their arms. The strength was not in their bodies but in their minds.

They could dismiss the memory of their father, but they could not lift a hay bale. When Husein had been the age of his grandson, he could work outside all day and every day of the school holidays, and during termtime before school and after it finished in the afternoons. The sight of them steeled the determination of Husein Bekir that he must fight – in whatever time was left to him – to have the valley cleared so that good meat was produced and good vegetables, to build the bodies of his grandchildren. If their bodies were not built then they could never farm the land. If they did not farm the land it would be sold off. What generations of the family had achieved, put together with sweat, would be sold in an hour to a stranger, perhaps to a Serb.

There had been a meeting that week in Sarajevo.

It was more than twenty years since Husein Bekir had been in Sarajevo. Then, it had been a long journey by bus for him to travel to the distant city for the wedding of the son of a blood cousin of Lila. He had not enjoyed it and he'd thanked his God when the bus had pulled clear of the city. And the day before, and in the evening, at the wedding feast, he had been treated by Lila's cousins as a peasant. None of them owned land. They worked in the state's factories. He had thirty hectares, paid for, on his own side of the Bunica river and nineteen hectares of the finest fields on the far side, and two hectares of vineyard, also paid for.

He had no debts. They had regarded him as a person without value. When it had left Sarajevo, the bus had gone past the Marshal Tito barracks, and he could recall them. Barnaby said that the meeting had taken place at the mine-action centre in the barracks.

He called to Dragan Kovac as a last resort, in the hope that his friend's argument might change the message brought from Sarajevo.

The rain spat down on him and plastered the hair of his grandchildren to their scalps. He saw Dragan Kovac at his door, sheltering under his porch, and he heard a muffled answering shout. He waved for him to come to the ford. They had played chess in the summer five times. Dragan Kovac would never come down the track, cross the ford and walk to Husein Bekir's home. Always Husein had to go to his house, to wade through the ford, and back again in the dark with the brandy swilling in his belly. And five times the fool – or the cheat – had beaten Husein Bekir. He saw Dragan Kovac emerge from the porch, and he was wearing his old coat, the Cetniks' coat, and he had on his old cap, with the eagle over the peak. The fool, the old fool, stomped down the track towards them. The country had been ruined by war, the valley was filled with mines, and he wore his uniform as if it still gave him importance. They waited. Dragan Kovac came slowly, stopped twice and leaned on his stick before starting again. Husein Bekir did not need a stick to help him walk.

'This is Barnaby. He is an Englishman from Sarajevo. He is from the mine-action centre. He wants to know about the mines you put in my ground.'

'Put because we were attacked – is your memory slipping, old man?'

'We did not put in any mines. Because you put mines down I cannot farm my fields.'

'To keep criminals away.'

'I told him that Dragan Kovac was senile, and would remember nothing.'

They both spat at the ground in front of their boots, it was their ritual. The grandchildren were throwing stones into the river. The Englishman was laughing.

He was a big man, dwarfed Husein Bekir, and he had a fine bearing, a good stature, and the appearance of a military man. Heavy binoculars hung from his neck.

He saw the old fool stiffen to attention and heard him bark a greeting.

'I am Dragan Kovac, sir, I am Retired Police Sergeant Kovac. May I be of help?'

'Maybe, maybe not, Mr Kovac. I was explaining to Mr Bekir that we had a meeting yesterday at the mine-action centre at which a number of mine-clearance proposals were considered. Right from the start I do not wish to raise false hopes. We have a list of thirteen thousand six hundred minefields in the country, of which one-tenth are in Neretva canton, here. But we try to look most closely at locations where direct hard-ship is caused by polluted ground, where a farmer cannot work, or where there have been casualties.

Because you had a death here you are on that list.

Today I was in Mostar, and it wasn't a long journey to come up here, just to see the ground. I was hoping you might remember where the mines were laid.'

'And don't bluster,' Husein interjected. 'Give the gentleman facts.'