Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

He was tired. He said wearily, softly, 'All right, Eagle, all right, Atkins, let me tell you how I see it, because' you're asking, and you've the right to, "Is it falling apart?" Fair question. Deserves a fair answer.

We've positive and negative, asset and debit. I'll go first on the negative, the debit… We are going to meet Marco Tardi of the Brusca family, and Nikki Gornikov from the vory v'zakone group, and Fuat Selcuk, who owns half of the west of Turkey. They are top-of-the-Ieague people, they're travellers, they reach across Europe and the Near East into Asia and as far as the States. I haven't met people like that before. I meet guys in London, and if the sun's shining and it's a good day I get as far as Manchester, Birmingham or Newcastle, and if it's special I get as far as Glasgow. I deal with Yardies and Chinese and guys who call me Mister because they're scared shitless of me. I'm the biggest fish in a small puddle. I don't know how I'm going to be when I meet these people today. I don't know whether I'm going to fall on my face, if they're going to think I'm not worth bothering with.

It's new ground for me – am I up to it? That's a negative.'

They had left the Jablanicko Jezero lake behind them, where there were wooden restaurants, and fishermen as still as hermits who held their rods and stared at the blue-green depth of the water. Now they were in the gorge. The sun speared down into it.

The road was fast and dry, the snow-capped hills were left far back. They went past fields where tractors ploughed. They were three smartly dressed men on their way to a business meeting. His voice was gentle, without passion.

'Since we've been here we have been under continuing surveillance by the Church. It's not a big team, it may just be a one-man token show. I've done what I'd normally do. I've done the warning and the frighteners, and now I've beaten the crap out of him. I don't know whether he's still there, or isn't there… They'll have learned about the warehouse we chose, and about the charity lorry. Truth be told, every piece of detail we have put in place this week has been time wasted. That's debit.'

They all wore their best. Mister's suit was light grey. The Eagle wore formal charcoal, what he'd have taken from the wardrobe for a Law Society dinner in Guildford when he sought to impress, his tie discreet, foreign and silk, and he'd have spent time in his room cleaning his shoes before they'd left. Atkins had chosen tan slacks, a sports jacket and the regiment's tie. Mister talked, mused, as if the important audience was himself.

'And it's not just at this end that the Church is working the pressure. Atkins's address is done over, the Eagle's home is trashed and mine. I'm searched.

The Princess called me this morning. She knows better than that, and she unstitched the most basic rule we've got. I didn't have word of it before they came in, and I didn't have word they were doing yours, Atkins, and yours, Eagle. It's like they're stepping over a trip wire because they know it's there. And it can get worse. There was a picture taken of me when I went to a crappy little village where the Bosnia with Love stuff had been dumped. It's left with the Princess by the Church. It's that sort of moment, a pretty girl and me, and we're close. Christ, I don't get to meet girls like that. Nothing's bloody happened, not yet, but the picture makes it look like I'm kissing her. I've had my ears thrashed by the Princess. She can't handle it, she's bawling, and their recorders are turning on it Thai's the negatives. That's why the question's fair is it tailing apart?'

He couldn't see the Eagle, but heard him squirm in the seat behind. Atkins's eyes never left the road.

'Do I turn, cut my losses, and run?'

They were both silent. Neither had spoken since the journey had started. He thought they were both pathetic, but didn't show what he thought.

'It's a fair question, you're entitled to ask it.'

His voice held ils quiet.

' I've never run, haven't ever… When I was a kid at school, I didn't run. I used to get hell kicked out of me when I was making my patch. Bigger kids, stronger, older, kicked and punched me and I went home with blood on my face and teeth loose, and I went back each next morning, until the day when I could hand back the kicks and the fists. I ruled in that school. I ruled, had control. I would have been nothing if I had shown fear, just another tearaway, and been smacked down… When they put me out of school, when I was starting up my own patch – shopkeepers, businesses, fourteen years old and protecting them – people wanted me to cut my losses and run.

There was fist fights and knife fights, there was a petrol bomb thrown at me. I went after them. I was a kid, but I went after them in their pubs and in their pads, went after them until they backed off. I had to clear the competition out from Stoke Newington first, then from Islington and Holloway, then from Dalston and Hackney. There was good pickings and the competition didn't want me – it was shotguns and shooters… I went inside. I got two things out of Pentonville. I got respect but I had to fight for it, and with the respect came the contacts. The Mixer came from Pentonville, and the Cards, and the Cruncher, and the link to you, Eagle. If I hadn't stood the ground, hadn't fought, at the age I was, I'd just have ended up as another kid who was playtime for the old perverts… I came out. I went up to Green Lanes and I started buying, started dealing, started selling on.

More territory to move into, and bigger fights. I could have turned then. It was about will, about determination, about belief. If 1 hadn't had the will, if the determination had been short, then I'd have gone under. There was heavy money to be made and too many snouts in the trough, and only room in the trough for one, mine. I put men in hospital, but they didn't talk to the CID because they hadn't the guts to, and none of them came back for more. What I'm saying is that respect doesn't come easy, it's earned. I earned it. I sat in the top of the tree, because I didn't turn or run or q u i t… and the years go by. I am sitting in the top of that tree, and I am thinking. Where do I go, if I don't turn and run and quit? Only one place to go – find a bigger tree, climb it and get higher. Did anyone say it was easy? It wasn't easy in the school, not easy getting the shopkeepers to shell out in Stoke Newington, or to clear the territory in north London, wasn't easy in Pentonville, wasn't easy going up to Green Lanes. But I had the will… So, now I have problems.'

He eased back against the comfort of the seat. He despised them.

'What's a problem for? It's for solving. Problems are for low-life, they'll' not for Mister. I go on, I never backed from anything I wanted. I want this… Either of you, do you want to get out? Do you want to walk?

You going to stand at the side of the road and wait for a bus? Going to the airport? I don't hear you, Eagle.

You're not speaking, Alkins.'

He heard the shuffle of papers behind him, and thought the Eagle hid in them, and Atkins's eyes only left the road when he checked the mirror. They came out of the Neretva gorge.

'Well, that's that, then – maybe, because I think we're ahead of schedule, we can stop and get something to eat. Might be a long day.'

Mister closed his eyes and felt the sun beat on his face. He thought only of the meeting. Monika and the Princess were forgotten, and the Eagle and Atkins who were rubbish, and Cann who was a flea's bite. He was untouchable, and supreme, and the meeting would prove it.

They came onto the flat plain, and the signs pointed for Mostar. Joey drove the blue van. He had failed. He had washed up, like driftwood on a beach.

Maggie was beside him, her legs straddling the gearstick, her skirt riding up, and beyond her on the front bench seat was Frank Williams. His arm was behind her neck, her hair against his cheek. They both slept, had the right to. They had been up all through the night to monitor the increasing panic, shouting and belted orders relayed to them by the infinity transmitter. The boy, Enver, had not been found. The Sarajevo police were out searching for him, the hospitals had not admitted him. Only when Ismet Mujic had abandoned his watch for the boy, and had left the apartment to go to the airport to meet the first flight of the morning in from Zagreb, had they come back to the hotel, with time to shower and change, and head off for the Holiday Inn with the van. Joey was the one who had slept, who would drive. He had watched the Mitsubishi pull out from the hotel, and once it was on the open road he had dropped back and allowed visual contact to be lost. He was guided by the small blinking light of the beacon, sometimes intense and sometimes faint, on the screen in front of her splayed-out knees.