and could not have failed to notice his relief that the brutes were gone from the room.
'You don't like dogs? Do dogs make you nervous? I tell you they are very gentle. They are strong but they are soft. I call them Michael and Rupert. They were generals here from the British army, leading the UN forces. Like your generals, they make a show of aggression but will not use their teeth. They left us to do the fighting while they hid behind their sandbags.
It was Celo, Caco and I who held the city. Without us it would have fallen.'
The withering eyes turned back to face Mister. 'You do not wish to have dinner with me?'
' Always best to do business with a clear head and an empty stomach.'
'Tomorrow at the same time, is that acceptable?'
'The same time tomorrow, and after the business is finished, I would be delighted to eat with you…'
Mister paused. Then said, as if it were an afterthought,
'What happened to my friend?'
A study of concern slipped on to Serif's face. 'It was very sad. .. I am still sad to this day… I feel a responsibility.'
'Why do you feel a responsibility?'
He had been with Mister since 1972. In twenty-nine years he had learned to read each inflection of Mister's voice. The question was put so softly, without malice. What he knew of Mister, a question was never asked for the sake of him hearing his own voice. His questions either searched for information or set a trap.
'He was my guest, I was his host. We had eaten in my restaurant. He was very happy. He drank freely.
He left us. I had offered him a driver to take him to the hotel, he refused. He said he would prefer to walk. I think he wanted the air.'
The Cruncher never walked when he could ride He'd take a taxi to go the length of a street. The Cruncher was a barrow-boy at heart and his delight was to be driven. In the back of a chauffeured limousine he was the kid from Attlee House who had made it good… The Eagle thought, for dinner with Ismet Mujic and the rest of the low- life scrotes, the Cruncher would have spent a full half-hour dressing himself. The best clothes for the best impression. On a mission for Mister, the child of his own brain, it was inconceivable that the Cruncher would have taken to the sauce.
'I have friends in the police. There was a most thorough investigation, and an autopsy was done.
You have friends in the police? As a businessman it is necessary, you understand. I have copies of the autopsy report, and the statements of the witnesses who saw him going towards the river. If you would like them…?'
'I think I would. That's very thoughtful of you.'
A chair was spun, a cabinet of antique rosewood was opened to reveal a safe. Ismet Mujic's hips hid the combinations he turned to unlock it, and hid them again as it was relocked. The papers were passed to Mister, who handed them on to him. He dropped the four sheets into his attache case.
'But they are not translated.'
'Not to worry, Serif. I'll pass them to his family, and add your condolences. I expect his family will find someone to translate for them. Tomorrow, then, at the same time – and it will be my pleasure.'
It was the time for smiles, handshakes and slapped backs, and then they were down and on to the street.
They walked, three abreast on the narrow pavement, towards the parked Toyota with the smoked windows. Mister said to them that he'd walk, walk and think, and he told the Eagle that he should start to work on the draft of an agreement of co-operation. He told Atkins that by the evening he wanted a working translation of the papers. Ahead of them was a small square of grass where the Rottweilers meandered and sniffed, and beside it men in thin coats watched a chess game played on black and white pavings with knee-high pieces, as if it were the best show in town. The young man, Enver, followed the chess and let the dogs wander free.
Mister said, 'If it's what I think then the river's calling for fucking pretty-boy.' Hands in his pockets, he walked away. It was the moment at which the Eagle knew for double damn certain that they should never have come.
'What do I do?'
'It's your shout, Joey, you do whatever you think right.'
The Toyota had powered past Mister and gone off up Mula Mustafe Baseskija. He walked and seemed to have no care.
'Do we split?'
'That's fairly obvious.'
'But you can't track one on one.'
'As we say at Box Eight Fifty, if it gets tough, 'you'll just have to pedal a bit harder'. Try that for advice.'
She climbed into the van and drove away.
Joey strode past the chess game and the dogs. He'd seen them come out of the street door and knew they were Ismet Mujic's dogs. He twisted his head away so that the young man with the dogs wouldn't see his face. He closed the gap. Mister had stopped, so Joey stopped. Mister was gazing into a shop window. What they said on the surveillance training courses, always to be remembered, was that ninety-five per cent of targets' days were entirely innocent and legal. Mister was window-shopping. He was gazing at jewellery in a window. Maybe Mister was thinking of the Princess
… He was walking back. He was coming closer…
Joey was frozen. Didn't know what to do. On a training exercise, or in Green Lanes for real, the target would have been in a box and covered by eight, ten or twelve personnel; Joey would have gone out of the cordon. He could not back off, not when he was one on one. The pavement space closed between them. He had been taught, had it dinned into him, that the worst crime was to show out… Mister was three paces from him. Joey could see how well he'd shaved, and that his tie was loose by a slight tug, and the hairs on his head were caught by the wind… Mister had stopped in front of another window where there was a display of Italian and French silk scarves.
Brilliant, big decision of the day – a Cartier bloody watch or a Givenchy bloody scarf, a high-carat gold bracelet or an Yves St Laurent shoulder wrap. Then Mister turned and walked on, like any other bloody tourist who'd put off buying the presents until the last day. What Joey had learned lifted him. Mister wasn't doing figure eights, and wasn't doing doorway cut-outs, and wasn't doing double-backs. He was the Untouchable, far from home, and wasn't using the anti-surveillance techniques that would have been his second nature to burn out a 'footman'. That was the bastard's confidence, why it wasn't 'no contest'.
Joey followed him, and clung to the sight of the rolling shoulders of his target.
December 1995
Spanish troops brought them the last leg of the journey back to Vraca. The young men of the unit that had been recruited from the Andalucfa region easily lifted Husein Bekir's frail frame down from the back of the three- tonne lorry. He accepted their help but would not let them take the small case from him. His clawed veined hands hung to it. Then they lifted down Lila, his wife, and the grandchildren.
He stared out over the valley and soaked up the sight of what was familiar and remembered. It was three years less two weeks since the day he had left.
He gazed at the river and the fields, the ruined village above them and the mountains beyond, and all the time he clutched his case because it contained everything he owned. Lila was beside him and held his arm; the grandchildren stood around them.
It had been a long journey.
The television sets, thirty days before, in the tent camp at Tuzla, had shown the signing of the agreement at a military camp in far-away America, at a place called Dayton in the state of Ohio. It had taken place under the wing of a huge bomber in a museum hangar. He did not know how difficult it had been for the American negotiators to win that agreement, and could not comprehend the detail of the maps and computer graphics used to fix the new boundaries that would decide who should live where, but the map on the television showed a line of red running through his valley, and he had known he could go home. Going home had been all that concerned him.
The morning after the announcement from Dayton Husein had led his tiny tribe out of the tent camp. In deep winter weather they had walked, hitched, ridden on carts pulled by slipping horses, been taken by military lorries, begged rides on buses when they had no money to buy tickets and they had crossed the ravaged country. They had
