before the 'accident', and driven them away. Before they left, Atkins had beaten up the major, giving him injuries consistent with being thrown clear from the jeep as it had started its descent.
The major had been abandoned in a state of theatrical shock to walk eight kilometres to the barracks. The pride of the Finnish military determined that the manufacturers – Euromissile Dynamics Group of Fontenoy-aux- Roses in France – were given an horrific picture of the road mishap. The loss was forgotten, the launchers and missiles were written off.
They had been loaded onto a lorry carrying pulped timber, driven by the Eel, known to his mother as Billy Smith. They had reached a British port a week after the scarred, trembling major had shown investigators the tyremarks on the packed snow and the scars in the ice below.
Well done, Cruncher.
Seven weeks before the start of his trial Mister had been told by the Eagle that the launchers and missiles had reached safe haven, and he'd nodded, as if he'd never doubted they would. Three of the boxes were manhandled by Atkins and the Eel into an inner room at: the extreme rear of the warehouse, after a handgun had been taken from each. Before the fourth box was loaded into the Toyota, a map was spread out on it.
In magnified detail, it showed the streets of the old quarter of the city. As he outlined what would happen, Mister saw the way the Eagle craned forward over Atkins's shoulder to listen and watch his darting fingers; he noted how the Eagle hated all of it and could not help himself. The map was folded away. A small, loaded PPK Walther went into the back of his own belt and two filled magazines into his jacket pocket. Atkins drove away with the box, with a Luger pistol in the glove compartment. He told the Eagle that they would walk and find a taxi, didn't bother to offer him a firearm.
Mister left the Eel, a Makharov in his anorak pocket, to mind the lorry, and stepped out into the streets of Sarajevo to put right the matter of an insult.
' I still don't see why I have to do it.'
'You're doing it because that's what I'm telling you to do, and you'll do it just like I've told you to,'
Maggie Bolton said decisively.
'It doesn't make sense.'
'Everything, just like I've told you.'
Joey shrugged and sighed so that she could read his annoyance and took the case from her hand. They did a last check on her button microphone and his earpiece, then on his microphone, clipped to his undershirt, and her earpiece. Folded in his shirt pocket was the authorization for intrusive surveillance signed by Judge Delic, typed by his daughter – if it was needed, if he showed out, at the Custom House they would feed him to the rats on the Thames mudflats. She had a copy run off on the hotel's machine. He'd argued all through breakfast, and all through their walk from their hotel to the Holiday Inn, and she'd taken not a blind bit of notice, and had carried on with her briefing detail of where in the room the bug should be placed.
She was quiet, businesslike. The speech microphones were press-to-talk. If speech was not possible then the crash-out code was the repeated click on the button.
The atrium area of the hotel was empty now. The ashtrays had been filled by the delegates to a foreign- donor conference but they'd started their meeting, and the lethargic staff had not yet stirred themselves to clear up.
The pot plants were dying slowly. Outside, through the plate glass of the picture windows, were the two black Mercedes saloons, and the hoods; they weren't lounging as they'd been at the airport but were agitated, smoking hard, shouting into mobiles.
'It's not my job. This isn't my area of expertise.' He knew the argument was lost.
'Can we go to work, or shall we just carry on squabbling? Be a dear boy, stop messing.'
He'd argued because he was frightened, could neither help it nor hide it.
He walked towards the lift with the bag. He turned once and looked back at her. She winked, gave him a little wave then headed for the revolving glass door.
From where the van was parked, closer than last night, she'd have a clear view of the door and anyone who went through it, if they used the revolving door and not the coffee-shop entrance. The lift took Joey to the third floor. He'd stood back, when they'd arrived at the Holiday Inn, and she'd gone to Reception. She was a travel agent from London, handling business packages. She booked flights and hotels in the commercial sector. She was checking through accommodation facilities in Zagreb, Podgorica in Montenegro, Pristina in Kosovo, and in Sarajevo.
Could she please inspect a room? Were all the rooms the same? Businessmen, she had learned, were happiest on the third floor, not too high if they had a vertigo problem, not too low to be disturbed by a hotel's bars and the street traffic. She had been shown, Joey trailing her, unintroduced, the bag carrier, a room on the third floor and assured that the rooms were all the same, exactly the same, as was the policy of the hotel. For a few moments, Joey and the woman from Reception had been together in the bathroom and he'd made a little point of examining the bottles of shampoo and bath foam, and had seen the Polaroid's flash from behind the nearly closed door. When they'd come out Maggie had thanked the woman profusely and told her they were excellent rooms, then moved on to rates and credit-card acceptability. Over coffee in the atrium they'd studied the photographs and she'd told him what he should do, and where the bug should be placed. He went in the lift to the third floor.
She'd shown him, at their own hotel, how to open a hotel room with a plastic bank card.
Room 318. He closed the door behind him. The maid had been in and the room was clean, the bed made. Pyjamas were folded on the pillow. The wardrobe doors were closed. A suitcase was on a rack.
A pair of shoes was underneath it. He felt the room was a trap. He did not know how long he had, only that the opportunity might not come again. He must hurry, but not so that he made errors. He had the photograph to guide him. The telephone was too obvious, she'd said, the first place that would be checked if the room were searched for bugs – the light and power sockets would be the next. He took a towel from the bathroom, laid it on the upright chair from the desk, carried the chair to the wardrobe and kicked off his trainers. He stood on the towel, no shoes so that he would not dirty it, and the towel so that he would not indent the chair. Maggie had identified the waste space above the wardrobe, below the ceiling, as suit-able housing. With a screwdriver he prised back the wardrobe's upper fascia board. Into the space behind went the power unit, a black box the size of a paper-back book. He used the fine-needled spike she'd given him and pressed it in sharply, drove it in until he could feel the pressure on the front against his finger.
He made a tiny hole in the outer stained wood, threaded the microphone, a pinhead, into the hole and worked it until the head was flush with the hole. He threw a switch in the control, saw the green light glow, and held the board in his hand.
Joey whispered, 'Testing – two, three, four – testing…'
In his ear. 'You close up?'
'Right beside it.'
'Is it back together?'
'Not yet.'
'May need a volume tweak. Before it goes back together, try it from the window, then from beside the phone.'
'Will do.'
He put the board crudely into place and slipped down from the chair. He went to the window and looked down to the pavement a full hundred feet below. There was no balcony. He saw a taxi swing off the road and then disappear under the flat roof sheltering the main door.
Joey said, 'I'm by the window. This is normal speech level – two, three, four, testing from the window… Give me the OK, then I'll go to the phone position.'
Silence in his ear.
'Maggie, I'm at the window. Have you got me at the window? Come in, Maggie.'
A plaintive voice shrilled in his ear. 'Oh, Christ.
He's back. I bloody missed him. Gone through the door. Get out, out, out. Target One is through the door.
I missed him.'
He froze. His trainers were on the floor by the desk.
The chair was by the wardrobe, with the towel on it.
