A light was switched on behind him, from the hall.
Its beam, maybe two hundred times candlepower, was thrown past him, over the green, well-cut and watered lawns, over the shrub bushes, and the man-height fence that was topped with a barbed-wire strand, into the scrub, on to a grey-white flat stone fifty yards from him. Atkins saw the man he had tried to kill, to run down. The light caught the big spectacles, too large for the face, and the thin shoulders, and the jutting knees as he sal cross-legged, unmoving. A woman with a dish was beside him, and an older man in uniform. Thenthe flashlight caught two men in dark overalls and their rifle barrels blinked back at the beam. Another man with another rifle, an image-intensifier sight on it, scrambled to join them. He couldn't see the dog but the barking was frantic and the noise billowed over him.
The light went out. There was pandemonium in the doorway of the house… He thought that all the bloody security had been in the house, complacent and sitting in the bloody kitchen – none of the idle bastards had been out on the property's fence.
Atkins started to walk. He had come to the end.
There was a shake in his stride, his knees were weak and he wanted to piss, but he went briskly on to the lawns and through the shrubs. He heard his name called, but he didn't turn. The engines were starting behind him, and there was the flash of headlights, the slamming of doors, and tyres grinding the gravel. The cry of his name felt like a knife into his back, then,
'Leave the bastard, fucking yellow bastard!' He heard the bark of the dog and the engines' scream.
He raised the flag – white flag, abject, surrender.
Atkins shouted, ' I'm coming over. Please, don't shoot.
Please, don't.'
He jumped at the high fence. It bucked, rocked, held under his weight. He did not feel the pain as the wire slashed his hands. He rolled over it, as he had been trained to do. He blundered through the thorn bushes towards the dog. He was thrown down.
Hands forced their way over his body, prised between his legs and into his armpits. He was rolled over and his arms were forced into his back, and the handcuffs clicked, tight, on his wrists. He was dragged.
Rocks caught his shins. He thought of the steely loyalty of his mother if she came to visit him, and the way the boy had struggled as he'd been lifted on to the bridge rail, and the contempt that would be on the face of his father. They were into a wood of thick-growing trees. Twice he hit the tree trunks and he felt the blood dribble from his nose. They didn't allow him to slow them. He was thrown onto the back of a pick-up. A cage door grated shut. The vehicle jerked forward. Beside him, kept from him by the cage mesh, was the hot breath of the snarling dog.
He thought he was free. He was no longer Atkins.
'Which one are we following?' Frank asked.
'Mister, Target One.'
'What about the others?'
'Irrelevant to me,' Joey said.
'And the guy in the back?'
'He's yours, not mine.'
' I can call up help, cavalry.'
' I don't want help, not from anyone.'
'Where do you think, Joey Cann, we are going?'
'Wherever he leads us to.'
'He'll turn Queen's, won't he? He'll sing, testify.'
' I'll fix him. Eagle, you worry too much.'
'Right now, I'm worrying overtime.'
'Just drive.'
'You're the better driver, Mister.'
' If I'm driving I can't shoot. Think, Eagle, switch on.'
The Eagle knew Mister when in structured situations. He knew him in conference and in meetings, and when there was an agenda on the table in front of him in the office over the launderette. This, though, was new. He did not know Mister in crisis. He was not a part of the other meetings where the maps were studied and the guns loaded; he had been safe from them. The two guns were now out of the glove box.
One rested between Mister's thighs, the other was in his right hand, both were cocked. From what he could see of Mister's face, and from his voice, there was no panic. It was as if he had found a welcome fulfilment.
The window was down, the cold air of the evening whipping their faces. Mister checked often in the mirror, but the lights stayed behind them. In the chaos of the departure they had, both of them, tried to get into the Russian's car, and been bounced out. A pistol had pointed at their stomachs. The Turk's car had already pulled away. The Eagle had never driven a getaway vehicle. The lights behind were constant, but the lights he followed diminished,
The Eagle followed the tail-lights as best he could, but the Mitsubishi did not have the acceleration power of the Mercedes fleet ahead. Always the lights were strong behind him. He wanted to piss, and wouldn't have cared if he had messed his trousers. It was all right for Mister, he'd find another bloody lawyer. Suddenly, the lights ahead disappeared.
They're trying to lose us, bastards.'
' Keep looking.'
'You reckon, Mister, there are road-blocks up front?'
' I don't know – just look for their lights.'
'They'll know the way out, Serif'll know the bloody way what's that?'
The Eagle would have sworn, far up the road, just past the first sign into Godbina village, there was a flash of a brakelight, and no headlights in front of it.
He thought the Mercedes column had killed their lights so that the Mitsubishi would not be able to follow. Of course there would be road-blocks, and bloody machine-guns. His skill was in the reading of the pages of Archbold, not in evading road-blocks and bloody machine-guns. And if they evaded the road-blocks, what then? Where to then? He was slowing.
He'd have sworn – on his Bible, on Archbold, put his hand on the smooth leather of the volume and given his oath – that the brakelights had flashed again off the road to Mostar, climbing and going right. He took the decision. He saw the turn-off. There was a high moon rising. He swung the wheel and snapped off the headlights.
'What are you doing?'
'You said to follow them.'
'You sure it was them?'
'Sure, Mister.'
'Positive sure?'
'They turned off because there'll be road-blocks.
They know the form.'
The track they were on was good for the first half-mile. The Eagle started to relax. He had made the decision, and stood his corner, and his decision was accepted… His decision, not Mister's. He was starting to lose the sweat in the pit of his back. He had to go slower, change down through the gears, as the track surface deteriorated. Every minute or so he saw the wink of the brakelights in front of him, higher and climbing. His eyes were now accustomed to driving by moonlight. He leaned forward over the wheel, and by concentrating to his limits he could see most of the ruts, enough to avoid most of them… Then came the sinking despair. It came in his gut, his heart and in his mind. At first he did not dare to look up to the mirror. It had been his decision. Mister was quiet beside him, as if he'd parcelled off responsibility.
The low chassis of the Mercedes saloons would have snagged on the rutted track.
He looked up into the mirror and the twin headlights, merging there, dazzled him. The brakelights shone brightly, then were extinguished. As they drew level, the Eagle saw a tractor and two men unloading bales.
As they lurched on the rutted track past the tractor, in the moon's grey glow, the Eagle saw that its front lights were smashed. He had made a decision and it had been wrong. The humiliation and the fear settled on him. He turned to Mister. 'What are we going to do?'
An icy calm in the reply. 'Go overland, walk out of here… What are you, Eagle? What the fuck are you?'
'Not very clever, Mister.'
'I'll get you out – what'll you be then?'
'Grateful, Mister.'
The lights behind, in the mirror, glowed more fiercely, and the distance narrowed as they came ever closer. There was, the Eagle thought, an inevitability to this conflict. He'd known it since he'd seen the guns and heard the dog, and when the flashlight had found the young man sitting cross-legged on the flat stone peering at them through heavy spectacles. Mister had said the young man had been 'dealt with'. He recalled what he had said, in the road outside Mister's home, a month before, a bleat in his voice: You know what I worry about? I mean it, lose sleep about? One day you overreach – know what I mean – take a step too far. i worry…