And he could remember Mister's punch just below his heart, and the pain. He pulled over and the Mitsubishi lurched into a shallow ditch.
'You won't leave me, Mister?'
'Did I ever?'
They were at the crest of a hill. The track, ever rougher, fell away from them. Down to the left were lights and the outlines of close-set buildings. There were more lights in the far distance, and a murmur of water. Between the two groupings of lights was a black hole into which the Eagle gazed and saw nothing. He scrambled out. He subsided into the ditch, water covered his shoes and the cold gripped his feet. He came round the front of the Mitsubishi.
Mister was silhouetted against the moon. He heard the drone of the vehicles down the track behind them, and in moments their lights would trap him.
'Are you coming or not?'
'Coming, Mister.'
Ante had the rifle to his shoulder. His body-weight was against the bonnet of the blue van. He aimed. He had the whole of the upper chest of Target One in his
'scope. He dragged back the cocking lever, scraped it till it locked home. He settled. Frank swung his arm up. His wrist would have hit the underside of the barrel immediately below the end of the sight's lens, and the aim darted towards the moon. Frank lectured Ante. Joey realized the anger of Salko and Fahro.
Muhsin had the dog down from the cage and it peed against the wheel of the van.
'You did right,' Joey said.
'Thank you – but it's not for you. He was going to blow him away. I am an authorized firearms officer, sometimes I'm a team leader. That man is under my control. I am responsible for his actions, and his target is a British citizen. I'd have been before Disciplinary, a full inquiry. I know the regulations no one's life was in danger. It would have been murder, and if 1 hadn't intervened I would have been an accessory.'
' I support what you did.'
' I'm grateful for that, Joey.'
' I support what you did because Mister is mine.'
Joey marshalled them. Muhsin would lead with the dog, and Ante would be alongside them. Joey would be a dozen paces behind, with Salko and Fahro.
Joey said to Frank, 'You should watch the prisoner.
Please feel free to read him his rights, and you can offer him a solicitor. You can assure him he'll have legal-aid funding for an appeal to the European court should that be necessary, and make sure he's warm, fed and comfortable and-'
But Joey didn't finish. He hurried away into the dark, and there was the thud of the boots around him, and the baying of the dog.
Mister ran.
The Eagle shambled after him.
Every thorn hush seemed to catch at the Eagle's suit jacket and trousers, and he seemed to stumble on every stone Sometimes they would blunder onto a path and then they could go faster, but each path petered away into denser thorn thickets. On a drop, deeper than half the height of his body, he was thrown forward, winded, and he cried out for Mister's help, but help didn't come and he pushed himself up and followed the crashing, ripping sounds of Mister's flight. Driving him on was the noise of the dog's pursuit. He didn't know how they would lose the dog.
There were people in the village, his friends and Mo's friends, who paid seven hundred and fifty pounds for a dog that was little more than a pup, and they talked about their dogs talked about damn all else but their dogs – spoke about ground scent and air scent. The ground scent was from his shoes, and the air scent was from the sweat as he panted to follow Mister.
They said, his friends and Mo's, that 'The hardest thing in this good life is to evade a well-trained dog.'
The heel of his right shoe had come off.
'Are you there, Mister?'
'You're doing well, Eagle, keep at it.'
He saw the shadow of Mister and then it was gone.
There were thicker trees. Mister had gone into them.
Then a path. He was on the path and off it when he heard Mister's feet break dry wood. Mister hadn't told him of the path, hadn't warned him of it, hadn't guided him down it. He tried to run but was capable only of a slow, waddling trot. His breath came in great heaves and his stomach bulk bounced on his belt. He tripped. Moonlight didn't penetrate the canopy of the trees above him. He fell flat. The fall burst the air from his lungs. His fingers scrabbled for a grip, to push himself up. The dog was closer, and the staccato voices urging it on. His fingers found the smooth shapes. Long thin shapes, then wider but still smooth, then the shapes of locking joints, then narrower cross-shapes, then the teeth, and his fingers slipped into the eye sockets and on to the rounded plate of the skull. The Eagle whimpered. The skeleton was across the track. He could not see it, but could feel it and touch it and understand it as clearly as a Braille reader would have. He pushed himself up. The dog's barking drove him on. He had gone twenty more short strides when he realized that his left shoe was off. Thorns, small stones, bramble stems, broken branch wood slashed his foot. He hobbled after Mister and sobbed from the pain. Mister was at the edge of the wood. There was thin grey-white light from the moon and an emptiness in front of them that was cut by a dark line where water ran loud, then more emptiness, then the lights. The lights were a grail. Mister had his foot down on a tape of dull yellow.
' I lost my shoe and the other's broken.'
'Chist, you're my burden.'
The Eagle stepped over the tape. Mister passed him. The Eagle's feet sank into thick grass.
Maggie had her torch on the map.
' I think I've found where we are. The village, the hear one, that's Ljut – and over there, the far one, that's Vraca… If you look in my bag, Frank, in the back, there's a flask. Won't be hot but better than nothing.'
She switched on her mobile and banged out the numbers.
Muhsin and the dog, and Ante had stopped at the tree-line. Joey reached them, with Fahro and Salko.
The dog strained at the leash, but Muhsin held it.
Joey could see the shadowy shapes, separated, slipping away towards the dark cut. He stepped forward: he would follow where he was led. Arms caught him, hands gripped his coat. He struggled to free himself.
Wherever the road led, he would follow. Ante lifted the tape and Salko pressed Joey's head down till his eyes were inches from it.
Fahro said the word, and Muhsin echoed it.
'Mina… mina.'
552
Chapter Eighteen
The watch on the Eagle's left wrist stopped at one minute past ten o'clock.
At ten o'clock, Mister glanced down, saw the hands of his own watch shine luminously at him, sucked in breath, and looked back. He reckoned he had reached a half-way point in the open ground between the tree-line that he had come through and the black strip that was his target, where there was the rumble of fast-flowing water. He turned his back on the distant lights. He had the PPK Walther in the belt at his waist and the Luger was hanging in his suit-jacket pocket.
There would be wheels in the village, where the lights were and, with the PPK and the Luger to persuade, he would take a car. If the dog came close, he would shoot it with the PPK or the Luger.
He didn't know why the dog, the following men and Cann had not broken clear of the tree-line…
Then he remembered the rifles. He realized the target he made and crouched down, the dew on the grass soaking into the lower legs of his trousers. Mister saw the blundering, gasping approach of the Eagle, maybe forty yards away. The Eagle meandered towards him, like a drunk's walk. How long would he wait for him?