had joined the Office of National Security. On the fingers of one of his plump hands he could count the minimal number of arrests and convictions of those responsible. Without interfering with their operations, he had gained a comprehensive knowledge of the Russian groups.
Nikki Gornikov had left Budapest that morning. He had been photographed leaving his apartment on Prater Street, and photographed again on Line 2 of the Metro. He had then been seen to take the classic anti-surveillance procedure of diving for a taxi, had been spotted at the airport and watched on to the Vienna flight. By the time those strands of information had been sifted on Sandor Dizo's desk, Nikki Gornikov could have driven a hundred miles from Vienna, or could have boarded any of a dozen flights. He called him ironically, when he thought of him, Baby Nikki because he was a forty-nine-year-old bear bull of a man with a face made ugly by smallpox and knife fights. On Baby Nikki there was a fifteen-page computer printout and a four-centimetre-thick file was laid down by the American and British tutors of a democratic intelligence service, he noted the departure of Baby Nikki Gornikov, of the vory v'zakone group, from Budapest, put another page in the file and hoped the man – wherever he had gone – might slip, stumble, fall under a convenient tram or trolley bus. The place for such a man, so sadistic, cruel and vicious a man as Nikki Gornikov, was the prison yard at dawn.
His tasks of the morning done, Sandor Dizo called to his secretary in the outer office for coffee, and some biscuits if there were any.
'It was their graveyard, but when the Muslims were put out of their homes, the Serb boys used it as a football pitch.'
After her death at St Matthew's hospice, after the funeral service in church, his mother's body had been cremated. Her ashes now lay in an oakwood casket in the crematorium's Garden of Remembrance. It was a lovely garden, clean-raked and dignified in winter, bright with flowers in summer. If kids had come into that garden, just across the North Circular from where he lived, to play football over her casket Mister would have taken a shotgun to them, or a pickaxe handle, or an industrial strimmer, or a chainsaw. None of the little tossers would have been in a state to kick a football again – none of the little bastards would have had the knees to walk again, let alone run. But that wasn't Monika's answer.
' I don't blame the Serb children,' she said. 'They know nothing else. They have never been shown another way.'
'Isn't there a proper pitch in the village where all the kids can play?'
'There was, but it was a park for tanks. It was destroyed. There is no pitch.'
He stood beside her and looked across the graveyard that was a soccer field
She had gone into the UNHCR field office in Gorazde, left him lor less than five minutes, which had seemed an age lo him. Then they'd driven on through the town and out of it. Beyond the old no man's land they'd reached a village where the majority ol the homes were intact, pretty, perched on hillsides, and had fields where cattle browsed on the first of the spring's fresh grass. The village was called Kopaci, she'd said.
He saw the gravestones, low, old and poorly carved, that had been used as goalposts. The other stones, which had been near the penalty spots, at either side of the penalty boxes and across the half-way line, had been uprooted and thrown aside. They marked the sidelines ol the pitch. She had changed him, he knew it A few kids stood with their parents and grandparents by two houses. The families had returned from exile lor their former homes, to find their graveyard was a football pitch, well worn and often played on, It had no grass but had been smoothed by boots and trainers into flattened wet mud.
'I'm going to meet them are you coming with me?'
He shook his head. 'More coffee with a spoonful of grit, more losing at cards? No, thank you.'
'A quarter of an hour they have to be reassured. If they give up, go back into Gorazde, then five years is wasted. It is important to spend time with them if only a few minutes… '
'I'll be here,' Mister said. 'Won't be going far.'
He started to walk down the hillside track The warmth was on his face and his back. He was humming his Elvis. He reached the end of the track, where it joined the road. He was strolling and had not a care. He could not remember when he had last walked on a country track, if he ever had
… Because of the warmth, he slipped out of his coat and carried it on his arm. He was at peace. He looked up the road, wondering how far he should walk and what he might see… and he saw the blue van.
It was parked a hundred yards up the road and faced the junction. The sun, reflected off the van's windscreen, dazzled him for a moment, but when he edged forward and twisted his body further, he could see through the windscreen.
He saw the small pale face, the tousled hair and the big spectacle lenses.
Mister thought the head would turn away, duck, try to hide itself, but it did not.
There was the howl of a klaxon horn. The lorry missed him by a foot, could have been less. Mister felt the sweat coming on his body. He saw the finger on the arm jutting from the window and the gesture of contempt from the lorry driver. He shouted back emptily, uselessly, at the lorry's tail. He had seen them leave the hotel – Cann trailing the woman, carrying the bag and the case – seen them going in time to catch the morning flight out. He looked both ways, up the road and down it, and there were no other vehicles parked, only the blue van.
He turned his back on it and walked off down the road.
Was Mister frightened? He was never frightened.
Who'd ever seen him frightened? No one had. He went at a good pace. He had no destination. He strode on the road, and knew he was followed.
He gained a target, had to have one. He was walking faster. Ahead of him, sheep and goats grazed by the road, watched by a shepherd and children.
Above the animals, up the slope, was the graveyard.
He stopped near the shepherd, who leaned on a long stick, a scarecrow figure in his loose clothing. The children had ceased their game, stood in a little knot and stared at him. He turned, looked back up the road.
He began to run towards the van, but it reversed.
When he ran faster, it backed faster away from him. When he slowed, it slowed. He stopped, the van stopped. The distance was a hundred yards. He knew he showed his anger… Christ, and it was beneath his dignity to show his anger. He ret raced his steps, over which he'd run and then walked, and the blue van followed him.
He nodded curtly to the shepherd, then tried to smile at the children through his anger. He sat down on the grass. The shepherd and the children watched him, and the animals grazed around him. As long as he could, he tried not to turn, but the compulsion beat him… Cann sat on a rock near to the blue van, cross-legged, like a pygmy bloody pixie. If he'd started to run towards him, he wouldn't have covered ten of the paces before Cann was back in the van, not twenty before the van was backing away… and he would have lost his self-respect. From what he knew of the Church and the Crime Squad, the greatest crime of surveillance was to show o u t – b u t Cann sat where he could be seen. Mister did not understand. Why wasn't the little bastard frightened of him?
She was standing at the top of the slope, at the edge of the graveyard, and waved to him. Round her were the few kids from the two families.
Cann was on the rock, a statue.
He walked to her, scrambled up the slope. Twice he slipped and mud smeared his trouser legs. She was laughing and said he was crazy. She held his hand.
'We have to leave, Mister,' she said. 'We need to be past Tvorno before night. We should not be on the ice in the darkness.'
'There's nothing to keep us here.'
Mister had his arm round her hip as they walked to her vehicle. She waved to the kids and to the older people at the graveyard, to the shepherd and the children with him. She was behind the wheel. She kissed his cheek. They drove away towards Gorazde.
The light had begun to fail as they cleared the finger town and began to climb, and her hand rested on his except when she changed gears. His face was turned away from her so that she would not see the fury that winnowed through him… No man stood against Mister, then walked away.
August 2000
It was their fourth morning, and that morning it rained.
It was incredible to Husein Bekir. He'd had to scratch in his memory to recall when it had last rained in that summer month. The clouds had gathered the previous evening and at dusk the storm had started.
