The Untouchable

… in the room occupied by the Sierra Quebec Golf team in the Custom House, a secure facsimile message was received from Endicott, room 709. Vauxhall Bridge Cross. It was given to Gough. They were all there and they watched him. Gough said, 'Packer was at his big meeting – it aborted when Cann showed out

– there was no electronic evidence – Target Three, Bruce James, is in IPTF custody – Packer and Arbuthnot have gone across country, and Cann is in pursuit. It doesn't matter, though, local authorization for intrusive surveillance has been withdrawn. I think he's beaten us, Packer has. I asked too much of Cann.

I thought, and I took a chance with him, that Cann would bring him down. It was too much to ask.'

They began to clear their desks and unhook their

…Endicott, in his room at VBX, rang the home of a commander from the National Crime Squad. 'Don't interrupt me, please, and don't ask who tasked me.

You have an information leak from your building to Albert Packer. A call to Sarajevo was made the day before yesterday, in the morning, from the pavement outside your Pimlico office. We can be that specific.

The call was made at ten nineteen and was terminated at ten twenty-one. If you were to check your exterior video cameras you will see who made the call, who went out of the building either side of that window.

Act on it, please.' Endicott rang off. Traitors, turncoats, betrayers were a part of the history of his organization; He understood the cancerous contamination of their presence.

… the minister came into his wife's bedroom at their grace and favour home to switch off her light and kiss her cheek. He sat beside her. 'You remember, when we were in opposition, what you used to do, your good works. You tramped east Yorkshire to raise money for refugee relief in Bosnia. You were fearsome to the stitch-pockets, you bullied till you had your cheques.

I'm late because I've been reading about the place. You needn't have bothered. The dream's gone. It's a corrupt haven for criminality, and sinking, and it'll be worse.

The end of a dream is always sad, the light going out and leaving a dark, grubby corner.' He held her hand and hoped she slept and had not heard him.

'Are you there, Mister?'

' I'm here, Eagle.'

'What time is it?'

' If it matters, it's a minute past midnight.'

' I know where I am.'

'Good on you, Eagle.'

Yes, he knew where he was and he knew what had happened. There had been a moment, bliss, a happy moment, when he hadn't known where he was or what had happened to him. It couldn't have been sleep, but he might have fainted. There hadn't been delirium, or anything that was a dream, only blank insensible darkness in his mind. He had come through that darkness and he remembered opening his eyes, and he'd tried to swing his body but the pain had stopped him. He felt weak and wanted to vomit. He hadn't the strength. His hands groped over his body, as best he could lying on his side. Each place he touched made the pain hurt worse, and there was sticky warmth on his fingers. The liquid smeared them when he touched his stomach and his thighs.

Only when he lay quite still was the pain numbed. He had his back to Mister, couldn't see him and wouldn't risk the pain of trying to twist and look at him. Where his head lay, on his lower arm, there were no lights for him to look at, but the moon's glow showed the stretch of the field and then the black line of the trees.

'Does anyone know we're here?'

'Cann knows. He's in the trees. He's close. He knows.'

'Has he sent for help?'

' It's dark, Eagle, and we're in a minefield. No one's going to come and help.'

' I don't have much time, Mister, if I'm not helped

… Can't you come close to me, Mister?'

'Don't you listen, what I told you? It's a minefield.'

'Won't you come nearer to me, Mister?'

'There are mines – it's what Cann said – all around me. I can't move. I'm thinking… '

The Eagle thought he was free. It was as if a chain had snapped. He could not see Mister's eyes, which cut into men and made them shiver. His back was to Mister. He had no fear, now, of Mister, and he had no need any more of the rewards with which Mister bought him. The freedom was the cool breeze that played across his face, that stilled the pain. He was safe from the fear.

'Mister? Are you listening to me, Mister? I've been with you more than twenty-five years. I know you, Mister, like I know my hand. I want to tell you what I have learned about you.'

It was a struggle to raise his voice. Spit bubbled in his throat. The pain was worse when he tried to speak.

The Eagle did not have the strength to shout, and he did not think he had much time. He wished he could have turned so that he could see into Mister's eyes. He gloried in his freedom, and knew it could not be taken from him. He hoped that Mister heard him.

'You are evil, Albert William Packer. You are the most evil man I have met. As God's my witness I am ashamed to have been a part of you. I hope, as those I love say prayers over my body, that I am purged of the sins of my association with you.'

He could not lift his head, which lay on his fallen arm. He spoke into a wall of grass stems and he smelt the fresh-turned earth and the tang, acrid, of the chemicals.

'You are the bully. You inflict pain, misery. After you are dead – whenever, wherever – you will be hated, despised. Don't think a great column of people will follow your coffin, they won't. The coffin will go by and people will slam shut their doors and draw their curtains, because you are vile, a mutation of a human being. But I thank you, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for bringing me to this place.

Here, I've learned freedom from you. Thank you, Mister.'

He wished that Mister could have seen his face and seen the truth, the honesty, he felt. His voice fell and he didn't know whether he was heard. He cared no longer about the pain, but tried to throw his voice.

'And thank you for giving me a last sight of you.

You're scared, aren't you, Mister? I don't have any fear, not any longer. You're scared, I smell it. How do I know you are scared? Because you haven't run. You can't buy a mine, Mister, can you? Can't corrupt it. A mine doesn't get defused because a bent bastard like me preaches on your behalf in some bloody Crown Court. It's not a jury, you can't intimidate it – it's a mine.'

He heard behind him a slight, very small shifting movement.

'Can you see my leg, is that why you're scared to run?'

The movement was a metal scrape, an oiled lever under a thumb's pressure.

'Show me you're not scared. Run. Run twenty yards, or fifty, then tell me you're not scared.'

For a last time he hurled his voice high.

'Did Cann bring you down?'

The first three shots missed him. They were a thunder around the Eagle and the ground spat over him. The fourth shot hit his raised shoulder and flattened him, pinned him down to the grass, as if a hammer drove a nail into him. He gulped.

'Did Cann-?'

He pulled the trigger again and again and again… pulled it until the clicking replaced the blast, and the magazine was emptied.

The voice was away across the fields, from the tree-line.

'The Eagle was your last best man. That was another mistake. Who's going to protect you now, Mister? Are you going to run?'

He let the Luger slip from his fingers and tightened his arms closer around him to make smaller the space of wet grass on which his weight was set. There were six more hours of darkness. He had six more hours in which to make his decision. Are you going to run, Mister? If he turned his body, he could see the dark line of the river a hundred yards away, could hear it.

Beyond the river were the village lights, and there would be a car. It would take a hundred running strides to get to the river, a hundred times his feet would stamp down on the grass and the earth, one hundred chances of risk… He closed his eyes against the night.