Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

We only use them to cut back scrub.'

'What about those things you carry, the things that find metal? You could go faster if you had them.'

'We have metal detectors but they're about useless in this situation, for two reasons. First, there is minimal metal in the PMA and PROM mines, they are made from plastic. Second, there are minerals in the ground, in the rock strata, which contaminate the signal, also there are the pylon cables, which confuse the machine.'

Husein Bekir snorted. He was being backed, and he knew it, into a cul-de-sac from which there was no retreat. His voice rose in strident attack. 'How, then, will you – one day, when it is convenient to you – clear my fields?'

'Perhaps we will bring dogs, but the greater part of the work will be on hands and knees, manually with the probe. We can push the probe four inches into the ground. That is how we do it.'

The foreman's quiet rebuttals seemed as insulting as Dragan Kovac's sneer that he was too old and too feeble.

'I don't know how you can clear the land if you cannot even put in posts, stakes, that will survive one night's storm weather,' Husein said.

'What do you mean?'

'Down past Kovac's house, your posts are already blown over by the wind, because you did not sink them deep enough.'

'The ground is very hard.'

'Oh, the ground is hard. It is too hard in the summer, too wet in the winter. I am sorry you do not find perfect ground, not hard, not wet. I work in my fields when it is hot, when it is cold… '

' I'll look at the posts. Do me a favour, go home.'

'When I have shown you the posts that you cannot put in the ground because it is too hard?'

' I will walk with you.'

To rid himself of Husein Bekir, the foreman, as if making a great sacrifice in the interests of peace, threw away the dregs of his coffee and went to the nearest of the pick-up trucks. When he reappeared he was carrying a small sledge-hammer. They walked in silence down the track. The clouds were breaking over the high ground in the west, and at the limit of Husein's eyesight were small patches of blue sky. He thought that within an hour there would be a rainbow and then the day would clear: they would have no excuse any longer to shelter in their caravan. In spite of the drizzle the birds were calling sharply. A thrush flew with the trophy of a wriggling worm to an elder bush, a sparrow was chased by finches, and there were little showers of redwings wheeling in formation. The storm in the night had greened his fields. If he had had cattle he would have blessed the rain that gave life to the fields that had been burned by the sun, but he did not have cattle and there was now a yellow tape strip to separate the fields from the track.

If he had had crops maize or wheat or vegetables – the storm rain would have brought them to a peak before the September harvest, but the fields were not ploughed and he had no crops.

With his rolling gait, his hip and knee both aching, Husein hurried towards the lord and the foreman's boots thudded behind him

There were two posts down, not more than twenty-five centimetres from the chipped stones of the track.

The tape lay on the thick grass verge. Of course, Husein Bekir could have taken the one step onto the grass, picked up the two posts, worked them back into their two holes and tautened the yellow tape. He could have done it when he had walked up the track half an hour earlier to beard the men in their caravan.

But he had made his point. How could they talk about clearing his land, more than two hundred and fifty thousand square metres of it, if they could not make two posts secure? He stood triumphant.

The foreman barked, 'You brought me down here because of that?'

Husein walked on.

He heard the thump ol the sledge-hammer behind him. He stopped, looked behind him, and grinned slyly to himself. One post was in. The foreman stepped back onto the track, moved along it half a dozen strides, and paused by the second fallen post

'I do not like to have my time wasted,' the foreman shouted after him.

Husein was about to turn. From the corner of his field of vision, he saw the foreman's left boot on the track, but as the man leaned forward to retrieve the second post he settled his right boot half a metre beyond the track. As he bent and reached, his weight transferred to his right leg.

The clap of the sound dinned into Husein Bekir's ears, the brightness of the flash seemed to blind him, the wind caught him, and he heard the foreman shriek.

When the Eagle came out of the hotel's lift, Atkins saw his face: it was pale, wiped with a deathly pallor, and shock was written on it. His eyes were dulled and his mouth slack.

They had killed the day on another tourist drive, but the Eagle hadn't been interested. They had driven, again, out towards Pale, and back again after lunch.

At Reception there had been six message slips in the Eagle's pigeon-hole, and he'd taken them upstairs.

'What's the problem? Seen a ghost?'

'We're late.'

They were late for the appointment to meet Ismet Mujic. They drove towards the old quarter. The Eagle's head was bowed.

'Do you want to talk about it?' Atkins asked.

'Talk about what?'

'Talk about whatever your problem is.'

'It is a problem,' the Eagle said quietly. 'A unique problem in my experience. My clerk's been on the phone for me. Under pain of death by garrotting, my clerk is not supposed to contact me unless the world's falling in.'

'Has it fallen in?'

'My home was raided. it dawn this morning. The Church came mob-handed with a warrant, all legal, and turned it over. Had my wife out of bed, woke the kids, stripped the place

'What did they find?'

'They found nothing, they look away nothing.'

Atkins trieid to smile, to reassure. 'Then there's no problem.'

'You know very little, Atkins. You jump when you should stand still. The Church – God, give them credit for a modicum ol intelligence know there's nothing in my home, and nothing in my grubby little office.

I'm not that bloody stupid… What matters is in safety deposits, and in my head. They wouldn't have expected to find anything.'

'So, what's the big deal?'

'Posting a letter to me felling me where I stand. A man said lo my wife "We have to be lucky once, you have to be lucky every time." That was the text of the message, Atkins Wife traumatized, girls in shock, neighbours wondering what the hell's going on, at dawn, at good old Henry's pad, Turning the bloody screw, squeezing till it hurts. Going for the weak spot, tightening the wire to breaking point… That's my problem.'

'Can you cope?'

A wintry little grin played at the Eagle's mouth.

'Probably not much better, but better than you.'

'What does that mean?' Atkins turned, confused, gazed at the Eagle. Hadn't seen the pedestrian who screamed, waved a stick angrily at them.

'Please, watch the road – the Church did your address yesterday.'

Atkins hissed, 'Why wasn't I told? Christ! You didn't tell me.'

'Mister's decision, because you're only on probation.'

'That is so bloody insulting.'

The Eagle pointed to a gap in the cars parked in the narrow street, overhung with narrow balconies.

'There's a space there, you can get into it. You were on the treadmill, you could have got off, you didn't, so don't whine. I've been on the treadmill twenty-something years. It goes faster. Get off, and you fall on your bloody face.'

They left the Mitsubishi, both sombre. They rang the bell, were let in and escorted up the stairs. They heard the dogs pawing the inner door. They saw the big teeth and the snarl in the set of the jaws. They were shown into the bedroom. The bed, Atkins thought, was big enough for a family. Enver was on his stomach and the sheet had ridden down to expose his bronzed back and his buttocks. Serif wore a T-shirt, and the sheet covered his groin. Serif said they were late, and they both apologized. He took a sheet of paper, rested it on a magazine, drew a map for them, said where they should be the next day, and at what time, and they both thanked him. Serif's question: where was Mister? The Eagle's answer: engaged in Ugandan practices. What were Ugandan practices? 'Oh, sorry, just slipped out, beg pardon, Ugandan practices are an expression we have in London for pursuing business contacts.' They were dismissed.