'How did I do?'
They were the courtiers. Atkins told him he'd done well. They knew their lines and meant them. The Eagle said he had been magnificent.
'Christ, I fancy some fresh air, away from that bloody cigarette smoke.'
The dog, Nasir, played up, was whining, and Muhsin tried to soothe it. Joey didn't know why they'd brought it. He sat cross-legged on the flat stone in front of the gully. He had the camera slung round his neck, with the big lens attached, and beside him was the dish with the antenna probe, but Maggie had said all she could hear was music, at least four sound sources, and the radios cluttered up any chance of voices. She'd said that if she'd been in her workshop she might have been able to clear the music off the track and get to hear the voices, and he'd said that she wasn't in her bloody workshop but on a bloody hill in Bosnia, and she'd chucked the earphones off her head.
The sun was down over the hills in the west. When the darkness had come, Joey had gone onto the flat stone, as if that was escape from them, and from the dog. He didn't know when Frank had told her, hadn't heard him whisper the name of Judge Delic.
The dog wriggled on its back behind him and Muhsin whispered to it, and Joey heard his fingers scratching at the dog's belly.
Joey knew everything about the dog, and the dog's name. Muhsin had thought he'd be interested, when they were in the gully, to know the history of the animal and its name, and Frank had tediously translated.
'He was the best fighter that came out of Muslim Bosnia, better than any of those who were generals or brigadiers, better than Serif. Nasir Oric held Srebrenica for three years. If he had not been there it would have fallen months before the end, perhaps years before. He was a natural leader, only twenty-six years old when he took command of us. He had been a bodyguard to Milosovic in Belgrade, but he came back to us when war was inevitable. He called his men the "manoeuvre unit" and his own weapon, he carried it himself, was a fifty-calibre machine-gun.
The Serbs were terrified of him. He went out from our perimeter lines into their villages…'
Maggie had interrupted, 'Fuck the shaggy-dog story. What you did was inexcusable. To carry on, not telling us, like nothing had happened when authorization was withdrawn – to tell Frank now, that is a fucking disgrace. It's betrayal. We are illegal. What is this bullshit about promises?'
He ignored her, didn't rise to her carping, and asked Frank to go on with the story, as told by Muhsin.
'When the word spread in the enclave that Nasir Oric was going out that night at the head of the manoeuvre unit, with the fifty-calibre, the people in that part of the front line where he would go out would leave the aphrodisiac of watered honey mixed with crushed walnuts in jars outside their homes, and he would drink, and then he would go to kill Serbs. It was not so that he could fuck better that they left out the aphrodisiac, but so he could kill better… And, I called the dog Nasir… '
Maggie had said, 'Shit, my people would scalp me if they knew – after all I've done for you.'
Since the dark had come, and the cool, it had been harder to keep the dog quiet, and the big brute had lost interest in the bone, and. .. Light flooded out of the door ahead of him. Joey, from the rock, waved for quiet down in the gully.
He saw the three of them, Mister, the Eagle and Atkins, standing tall.
They left Dragan Kovac's home. It was becoming a ritual, and welcome.
At the end of the day, when the dusk made it impossible for them to work in their taped corridors, a few of them – and the foreman – came to his home, sat on his porch with him and drank his plum brandy He thought they needed the alcohol because of the work they did. The sun was long gone over the hill to the west of the valley when they lurched off up the track to the junction where their pick-ups were parked by the caravans.
The foreman shouted back, as he disappeared into the evening darkness, 'Thank you, Dragan, and have a quiet night.'
He laughed loudly. 'I have enough of them to know them too well. They are all quiet nights.'
'They think it's going according to his plan,' Maggie murmured. 'Sounds as if there's been a preamble, and now it's a break. The detail's going to follow if the others decide to come in… Eagle says that Mister's done well, but he says the others are hostile, suspicious and wary, but they like the money on offer.
The money's good but – this is Eagle – they're still cautious. Mister says it'll depend on the percentages
… God, can't one of you throttle that damn animal?'
She was on the flat stone beside Joey, the earphones on her head, and she tilted the dish with the antenna spike so that it was aimed at the three men who stood on the gravel between the house door and the parked vehicles. Frank was with her, and Ante and Fahro.
Behind the stone, in the gully, Muhsin and Salko lay on the squirming dog, scratched its stomach and tousled its neck.
'The Italian, that's Marco, is going to be asked to pay fifteen per cent of the value of cocaine handled by Mister's network in the UK – no, that's the negotiating point. They'll come down to twelve and a half per cent, it's Eagle, he says that's the bottom line…
Nikki, the Russian – City banking, City of London, laundering. Ten per cent is the minimum, but starting at eleven and a half per cent of all monies washed through Mister's placemen. They've gone on to more percentages – still with Nikki, but it's people-trafficking… God, they are talking big money.
Corporation stuff… Jesus, throttle it or gag it, but shut it up.'
'The weapons trade, Mister – I suggest not too hard to start with,' the Eagle said, in deference.
'London's the conduit for the trade, Mister. Best place he could work out of – access into Africa and the Middle East.' It was Atkins's first contribution: he felt shut out, sidelined. He was ignored.
'Start at six and three-eighths, on the first million, and go down to five and seven-eighths,' Mister said, with confidence. 'Nine per cent on the second million, ten on what's on top of that, if he goes through our contacts.'
'Sounds about right,' the Eagle muttered. 'Now the Turk, that is some evil bastard.'
Mister grinned balefully. ' I expect his mother loves him.'
'The Turk we pay thirty-five thousand pounds sterling, delivery in Sarajevo, for refined product, per kilo, as against the forty-five you're paying now.'
'So, I'd he getting, maximum, thirty-six per kilo?'
Somewhere in the darkness above them, a dog barked. It was, It sharp, baying, deep-throated bark.
'Three point six million for one hundred kilos. I think I can live with that. If it's not lorries, I was starting to think of all those regattas over the North Sea… '
There was a second bark, but it was stifled abruptly, then a low whine, then nothing.
'Regattas in Norway, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, France, all those clubs going over to compete. Can you sail, Atkins? Can't? Try learning. I'm going to have a pee. Fifteen minutes must be nearly up. You want a pee, Eagle? I'll call you when I need you, Atkins.'
It was masterful of Mister. Atkins had heard the bark and knew it was that of a guard or attack dog. It was the bark of the sort of dog used by the Royal Military Police for perimeter protection or for hunting a man down. He heard the door close behind them.
Alongside that sort of dog would be a handler and guns and – his mind raced – a listening probe. The dog had barked beyond the fall of the lights around the door. Mister's mastery had been in finishing his sentence, about a regatta route, then suggesting a pee, like he was too dumb to have been alerted, if they were listened to. He shivered. He heard the door behind him open again.