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.
He had failed because he had no authorization for intrusive surveillance. He could gather no evidence because the authorization had been withdrawn. He could place the moment when the professionalism he prided had drifted to obsession and the Church culture had been shed. It was when Mister had walked to the cemetery, when he had seen his rolling, confident gait, and he had been outwitted, out thought; it was failure. Everything since had been the feeble, second-rate attempt to claw back from the failure. Joey Cann, and it battered in his mind, was the loser – always.
The beacon guided him and he let her sleep, and Frank.
Two pick-ups followed him. The Sreb Four had split into pairs. On the back of the second pick-up was a wire cage. In the cage was Nasir. Not that Joey gave a damn for the life history of the brute, but it was called Nasir Muhsin had told him the name and the history as if it were information of importance before they left Sarajevo, information to be nurtured. Nasir Oric had been the commander holding the perimeter line at Srebrenica who had been withdrawn on government orders, who was not there when the enclave fell, when the throats had been slit. When the beacon light dulled he stamped down on the accelerator pedal to coax the maximum speed from the van.
Joey fell deserted, alone with only the obsession for company.
The beacon led him to swing right at the main junction, towards Mostar – ahead of him, before he turned, a low line of hills shimmered in the haze. He did not know their name, or that of the valley they hid, and he lost sight of the ground that rose to meet an unforgiving, sun-drenched sky.
Husein Bekir had come down to the ford, but the water was too deep for him to cross. He wore the same protection from the sun as he did against the winter cold. His coat, which reached to his knees, was tightly fastened with twine over his stomach and he had on his heavy rubber boots. His beret cap shielded his scalp from the sun.
The de-miners sat on the track where an ash tree threw shade and their dog was stretched out against its trunk. They ate bread and drank from Coketins Husein had come down to the ford to see how far their yellow tape corridors had progressed in that morning's work – one, he estimated, was five metres further forward, one was seven metres, not one of them was more than ten. His fields were more than a thousand metres in length, and a few paces more than two hundred and fifty metres wide. He shouted across at them. Why did they need to stop to eat and to drink? Should they not work faster? How much were they paid to sit in the shade and not work? They ignored him, not a head turned towards him.
He turned. The quiet settled again on the valley. It had been God's place, and it was poisoned. In the heat's haze the fields drifted away from him, were cloaked in silence.
The location chosen by Ismet Mujic was in deference to the Italian. Marco Tardi had flown from Messina to Bari on the Italian mainland, then by light aircraft to Split on Croatian territory. On collection, he had been driven to Mostar.
It was all complications. It was in deference to the Italian because he was the biggest player in Ismet Mujic's business life. The Russian had said they should meet at Brcko, near to the Arizona market, where he had associates. The Turk had wanted Sarajevo, the base of his allies. Fuat Selcuk had reached Sarajevo's airport first and had complained for the entire thirty-five minutes he had waited for Nikki Gornikov's plane to arrive. The Turk and the Russian would not travel in the same car, each insisted that their bodyguards must be with them at all times.
The convoy from the airport to Mostar was three cars, and a fourth joined there. It was all shit… He had been on his mobile eleven times and the boy, Enver, had not been found.
He made the rendezvous. He watched the Russian and the Turk, not leaving their cars, peer with distaste at the Italian in his car. Small scorpions could be found in the dry hills in summer between Mostar and the coast, and it was the habit of local men to catch them, not wearing gloves for fear of damaging them, then to build a little prison for them of concrete blocks, let them fight, and wager big money on the outcome…