Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

They were in the far corner of the breakfast room. It was a quarter past nine.

'Good of you to show up,' she said.

'Why didn't you wake me?'

'Wild horses wouldn't have.' She grinned. 'You young, things have no stamina.'

He slouched into a chair. All of the Sreb Four were smoking. The cigarettes were as much part of their uniform as the jeans, boots and cheap leather jackets.

To get to the chair he had had to step over two sports bags. He couldn't see their guns and assumed that the machine pistols were in the bags. Frank Williams was beside her and seemed to smile at Joey, without mercy. He poured himself coffee from the jug, into her cup, and turned it so that he didn't drink from the side marked with her burgundy lipstick. The coffee dispersed the ache in his head. He snatched a bread roll off a plate and broke it, crumbs scattering on the cloth as he wolled it. She passed him a sheet of flimsy paper.

From: Endicott, Room 709, VBX

To: Bolton (Technical Support), Sarajevo

Subject: Organized Crime/AWP

Timed: 02.27GMT 19.03.01

Security Classification: Secret

Message Starts:

If you determined to play the wild goose/aka silly bugger, good luck. We insist you have serious protection – arrange it. You are not, repeat not, to put your personal safety at risk. We require your wrap-up within 48 hours, and then your immediate return UK. Remember at all times that we are the senior Service; you do not take instructions from the C amp;E junior.

Don't go native,

Endicott

'Am I supposed to thank you?'

'It's not compulsory. I don't mean to be personal, but actually you stink. I hope you filled a laundry-bag.'

Joey had finished the roll and the coffee. He tried to sound firm, decisive, but thought he failed. 'Can we, please, sort out the priorities of the day, and then I'll do my laundry?'

She asked, innocently, what he meant by

'priorities'.

He was too tired and too flustered to recognize the trap she laid for him. He said, 'Well, we need wheels.

We need to assess the targets and recce them, decide whether we can return to intrusive surveillance, then how we're going to divide up areas of responsibility.'

Her small hand hovered in front of her mouth as if to mask a yawn. Williams, the bastard, straight-faced, whispered a translation into the ear of the Sreb Four man on his right side and the message was passed between them. They were impassive and told him nothing of the trap.

'Well, isn't that the professional approach to take?'

Joey flared. 'Have yon a better idea? I was once called an "obstinate, arrogant sod", but I don't compete.

You're light years ahead.'

She turned in her chair and reached to the Venetian blind covering the window. She depressed one bar and lifted another, made a slit. The window faced on to the hotel's rear car park. He leaned forward, over the cups and the plates. He saw the blue van. The sun reflected from the new hub caps and glanced on the new tyres. He settled back in his chair and wrapped his arms around his chest.

She said, 'Waste not, want not, that's what my mum always told me, still tells me. I rather liked it. The van sort of felt like home. I'm sorry you lost my bucket.

Frank and two of the boys, Muhsin and Salko, went to retrieve it this morning, and borrowed the new wheels. While they were doing that, I went with the other boys to track down that Mitsubishi they tried to run you down with. There's now a beacon on it. It was easier than I thought it'd be. There were two guys asleep, pissed like you, in a shed at the side. The boys were good with the dog, made a proper friend of it – it's all in the body language, isn't it? I'm good on locks, so we checked out the warehouse, then went back the way we'd come, over the wall. Had the time of my life – big strong hands holding me where they shouldn't have, lifting me up and helping me down.

Anyway, then we popped down to the old quarter.

They took me up over the rooftops, to a place they knew. Bloody damn slippery the tiles were, and bloody great rough fingers on my waist, steadying me

– quite a compensation. From there I had a line of sight into Ismet Mujic's apartment, and I unpacked one of my choicest little boxes of tricks. It's the infinity transmitter. Across the street from my box is his window and behind his window is his phone. My box does the leap. It uses the phone's microphone to transmit the room's conversations. We have another ralay in the box and that goes to a room the boys have rented, and there's a tape-recorder turning there, voice-activated. Quite clever, yes? We didn't wake you because we thought you'd be tired. Sorry about that.'

He attempted civility. 'What do you suggest I do with my day?'

'If you don't mind me saying so, the way you look I'd reckon you're no use to man or beast. Take the rest of the day off – after you've done your laundry and shaved.'

'Thanks very bloody much.'

'Please excuse me, I've work to be getting on with.

Put your feet up, Joey. Come on, boys.'

She smiled sweetly at Joey as he crumpled. They followed her out of the breakfast room, carrying their bags, and formed a phalanx around her. The big men's boots padded around the clatter of her heels. Frank Williams was last up from the table. Joey caught his arm, pulled him close. 'I didn't think you'd be part of it.'

'Part of what?'

'Humiliating me – her showing off, at my expense, in front of "her boys".'

'Take the day off. The way you are, you're useless.'

He prised Joey's hand off his sleeve, and leaned closer.

'You know what she said to me? She said you'd lost the sense of fear, and without fear you'd get hurt – so she turned round. She's gone on a limb for you, and I have, and the boys. You've earned it, take the day off.'

Frank Williams ran to catch her.

Gough had taken the Underground to Tooting Bec. He sipped a good strong cup of tea, sat in the old chair, and listened.

'I wondered if someone would come to see me, but I hoped they wouldn't. I knew that if someone came and asked that question it would be to assess how well, or how badly, he would stand against the pressures ol extreme stress – because he was in danger I know him better than anyone, you see, better even than young Jenifer. He used to come in here in the evenings, late, and sit where you're sitting, in Perry's chair, and tell me about his day. Don't think me conceited, please, but I believe I'm as well briefed as anyone on that awful man, Packer. Perry was in the Diplomatic Corps and before that I was an army wife.

I've seen what stress can do to young people… It started as dedication. There seemed to be a sense of – may I use a word that's out of vogue in these times? duly. I thought it was keenness. I'd seen plenty of that in young, officers and young second secretaries. To me, keenness, duty, dedication are all admirable. You were hunting for evidence against Packer, and Joey was working all hours, and he seemed utterly happy.

He'd a girlfriend, a sweet soul, and he was making an adult life for himself, and was proud of what he did.

Then it all changed. I didn't recognize it at the time, but I can see it now. He was in that chair, where you are, it was near to midnight, and he told me that a surveillance operalion had identified Packer in a car with those ghastly drugs, and it was enough to warrant his arrest. It wasn't dedication any longer, it was more obsession. Give a child a toy, a favourite toy, then tell the child that at the weekend it will be taken from him. After Packer was arrested the light seemed to go from his life. He was brooding. I used to hear him in his room reading aloud the surveillance and evidence statements, and late at night he'd be playing the tapes of telephone intercepts, and I'd hear him striding around his room and asking the questions of the people interrogating Packer. Packer had become the reason for his existence. Packer had the power, even in his prison cell, the authority. Joey started to feel worthless, and that was when the dedication went and the obsession came. I don't want to speak ill of him, but I began to think of Joey as a hollow shell, as if he couldn't live without Packer. It is rather frightening, isn't it, obsession? It changes people. It brutalized Joey. It bred a sort of cruelty in his character, and I'd never seen it before, a quite unpleasant cruelty – he became savage with Jennifer, and she'd done nothing to deserve it. It is like a dark cloud on the sun – you don't often see it but when it's there it chills you. Is he still in Bosnia, still trailing Packer? He'll fight foul to win, to achieve whatever it is that drives him, he'll fight very dirty. I had a distressing thought the other night, it quite upset me. When he comes back, if he's won, if he's destroyed Packer, then he won't be the sort of young man I want to know… Will he stand up to the stress? He will, very well – the cruelty will sustain him.'