Deep Black

His smile faded and his eyes dropped to the floor as he shuffled past me. ‘No, I don’t know. I’m sorry. Excuse me.’

Jerry was near the washrooms now and I worked my way towards him, asking as I went. The next one I tried was a suited, briefcase-toting businessman who looked like he’d just come out of an insurance office. ‘I’m looking for a holy man, a Hasan Nuhanovic. Have you—?’ Before I’d even finished the sentence, he’d walked away without answering.

Jerry was immediately at my side, looking concerned. ‘What’re you doing, man?’

‘Rocking the boat.’

I spotted the shopkeeper talking urgently to a young guy with brown hair, and not about the weather. There was a lot of pointing into the crowd.

Jerry was still agitated. ‘Shouldn’t we stick to the plan? We’re here for Salkic first, right?’

I was already on my way towards the shop. The young man had a neat short back and sides and the kind of raincoat that wouldn’t have looked out of place in DC. I closed on him as he headed for the main entrance. ‘Ramzi Salkic?’

I knew it was him, the moment he tried to sidestep me and didn’t look up.

‘No, no, no. I’m not—’ His eyes never left the ground.

I found myself speaking to the top of his head. ‘I need to get a message to Hasan Nuhanovic. Can you do that for me? Have I got the right person?’

He pushed past me and I decided not to create any more of a scene by trying to stop him. Instead, I followed him to the shoe racks, where he slipped off his smart loafers.

‘Please leave me alone.’ He had to talk loudly to make himself heard over the murmurs of the faithful. ‘You have the wrong person.’

We were getting quite a few disapproving glances from the direction of the mats.

‘My mistake. I’m sorry.’

Their attention switched to me as I turned and moved back against the tide.

I headed for the shop. When he saw me coming, the owner scuttled inside and turned the lights off. ‘We are closed.’ He disappeared into the gloom without a backward glance.

For some reason I’d been expecting Salkic to be a lot older. It takes time to build trust with a principal; the middle man is normally someone they’ve grown up with, a contemporary with shared history and experience.

Jerry joined me. ‘What do you think? Is that him?’

‘For sure. He didn’t look confused, he didn’t look at me. He just wanted to get away.’

‘You fucked that up, then, didn’t you?’

But that was the least of our worries.

‘There’s two guys over there by the washrooms.’ Jerry kept eye-contact with me, as if I might take a look. ‘They didn’t look too pleased to see you. You’re gonna think I’m crazy, but I think one of them was at the Palestine.’

73

We walked out of the courtyard together, smiling and chatting as if we didn’t have a care in the world. ‘What’s he look like?’

‘Remember the pool fight? With that Lats guy? The one with the goatee, I think it’s him.’

We exited the gates near the two shrines, turned right, out of their line of sight, carried on down the road, then took another right to get us behind the mosque. The narrow road was lined with bars and cafes.

We sat down outside a cevapcici shop, on a long wooden bench under an awning. The doors were open and we were hit by a blast of warm air from the grill, where an old boy was frying meat.

I got Jerry to sit facing the shop because I needed a better view of the road. All the cafes were pretty quiet. It wasn’t really time to eat yet.

Seconds later, the two flat tops rounded the corner. I looked at Jerry and smiled as if we were enjoying a joke. ‘Both of them were in Baghdad.’

They were in pretty much the same kit, too; the only additions were the black-leather bomber jackets. Goatee caught sight of us and they ducked into a bar more or less opposite.

‘Won’t be long before at least one of them comes to the window.’

‘Why the fuck were you going public about Nuhanovic, man?’ He managed to give me a big smile and a bollocking at the same time. ‘That’s what’s got us in the shit. What we going to do?’

‘Nothing, yet. Chances are it’s nothing to do with Nuhanovic; maybe they just recognized us. I’d be curious if I bumped into someone here I’d seen in Baghdad.’

Jerry leaned forward. ‘Me too.’

A waiter appeared with ears that stuck out far enough to have held ten pens instead of just the one, and we both ordered cevapcici. ‘Five or ten piece?’

I asked for ten and Jerry nodded. ‘You have any Zam Zam?’

The waiter looked puzzled.

‘Or Mecca? You got any Mecca Cola?’

He looked as if he thought Jerry was taking the piss.

‘OK, maybe Fanta?’

He nodded and walked away, shouting our order to the old guy who, going by the size of the jug handles each side of his head, must have been his dad.

Jerry was rather good at this acting-normal-while-really-doing-something-else routine. Maybe it was a photojournalist thing.

The Fanta arrived, complete with straws and glasses. Jerry picked his up and held it in front of him. ‘I just thought I’d liberate my taste – you know, “Don’t drink stupid, drink committed.” Those guys still in the bar?’

I nodded as I reached over and swivelled the can so he could read the manufacturer’s details. ‘See who makes it?’

‘Coca-Cola. Shit.’ He pulled back on the ring and poured it into his glass. ‘Oh, well, I tried.’

I took a map I’d picked up at Reception from my pocket, put it on the table and pretended to play the well- known tourist game, Where the Fuck Are We?

The cevapcici turned up, ten sausage-type things the size of my little finger, made of kebab meat. I ripped open the pitta bread and shoved them in with a king-size helping of chopped raw onion. ‘They’ve still got eyes on us.’

One bite took me straight back to the Hereford kebab shop with Rob, trying to impress women with our sophistication while our lips were covered with grease, and chilli sauce dripped on to our shirts. ‘OK, here’s the plan.’ I kept on chewing. ‘If Salkic is there during Asr, we hit him again.’

Twenty minutes and a couple of Fantas later, we were ready to roll. It was time to shop. Well, sort of: I wanted to see how the flat tops reacted. There was no point trying to lose them – there weren’t that many hotels in town. Someone, somewhere, would know where we were.

Jerry paid the bill, all of about four dollars, and we wandered back across a small square where old men played park chess with giant pieces on faded black and white paving slabs. Weeds sprouted through the gaps and some of the original pieces hadn’t survived. The missing ones were improvised with sculptures made from lumps of wood and plastic bottles.

Jerry and I weren’t the only ones who had stopped to watch. Maybe the flat tops’ surveillance drills were shit; maybe they wanted us to know that they were there. Either way, they never took their eyes off us.

Jerry was still switched on and avoided getting eye to eye with them. He walked and talked as if he was totally unaware.

The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with Jerry that the flat tops were on to us because of Nuhanovic. Like everyone else on the planet, they’d want him dead: a moral crusade would be bad for business –