'Pardon my French, Mr Cann, but people like you are just a fucking nuisance here, and interfere.' He introduced himself as Benjamin Curwin. She called him Benjie.
Joey recognized him as one of the group of optimists around her at the ambassador's Commonwealth Day drinks session, when she'd worn the little black dress. Benjie had invited them in, insisted on it.
He worked from the United Nations Mission for Bosnia-Herzegovina building two hundred yards up the road from where it had happened. Black coffee and a whisky generously poured into a crystal tumbler for joey and a seat on a sofa where he could examine the rent in his trousers and feel the start of an aching stiffness, and an opportunity for them first to flirt-talk then slide to nostalgia. It was good-old-days time. Ignored and with bitterness rising, Joey thought that he was in the heartland of the men drafted in to run a country, and it was all so bloody smug. They'd gone through an outer office where secretaries had swooned with respect for a fat-cat hero. Benjie
Benjamin – wiped the mud off Maggie's knees, his hand hovering over her thigh, and they gossiped about times when the Secret Intelligence Service was run by officers, not bloody accountants, the brilliant days when the enemy was behind a curtain of minefields and fences, armed guards and dogs. He'd said, and she'd agreed, that present management's idea of a good day was lopping fifteen per cent off the Lisbon desk head's entertainment budget – what a bloody scandal. Joey had finished his coffee, swilled down his Scotch, and coughed hard, like he had work on his plate. Maggie had told Benjie – Benjamin – what had happened on the road, and why
'I'm sure it's useful for me to have your opinion,'
Joey said.
'You can have it, for free. We don't need you here, stirring the pot. We like it nice and quiet, the lid on tight. We want it so that we can control it. We came here – we were sent here – every man jack on this corridor, to achieve the impossible, the rebuilding of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a democratic multi-ethnic state, at a time when the international community fairly gushed with sympathy. We are resigned to failure. Criminality and corruption have beaten us.
Our present brief is to fail without it being noticed. We do not want noisy killings on the streets, and the spot-light on us. We want to creep away unseen.'
'Sorry if that's inconvenient, but Sarajevo happens to be the centre of major investigation.'
'Bollocks, nothing important happens here. I tell you what I think. This is a boring, sleazy little provincial town. They believe they're somebody, they're not. They want to be recognized as the Anne Frank of the Balkans, so that everybody weeps for them. Save your tears. It's without romance here, you couldn't fill an egg-cup with drama in Sarajevo. The rest of the world has lost patience with them, is trying its damnedest to forget them. The place lives on a myth and the sooner they recognize that the better. As for you, go home.'
Joey said doggedly, like a stubborn kid, 'I am involved in a major investigation, as is Miss Bolton.'
'You want some excitement, young man, go down to Montenegro, that's where you'll find it by the bucketful. Serif? He's like everything else here, minor league. We may not like the way Sarajevo ticks, but at least we have the measure of it. Then in comes a little joker – you, Mr Cann – and maybe upsets the cart and that makes my life harder. Walk away. Do your investigation some place else.'
'I have the full authority for intrusive surveillance, by Miss Bolton and myself, in this city from Judge Zenjil Delic. I'm legal, and-'
At the name, Benjie – Benjamin – seemed to jerk up on the sofa seat where he sat close to Maggie. It was as if everything said before had been for amusement. His glance stabbed at Maggie. 'Is that why you wanted that bloody name? It was all games, wasn't it, you clevei little bitch?' He mimicked her voice. '"Bet there's not one straight judge in this city, bet there isn't, bet each last one of them's bent." And I gave it you… ' He stared at Joey. 'And you've conned him into signing on the dotted line. Jesus. He is gold dust.
He's for a rainy day when something actually matters, he's not for some piffling fucking drugs inquiry. Have you compromised him? I'll wring your bloody head off your bloody shoulders if you have. You haven't, have you, compromised him?'
Joey walked heavily to the door.
The grated voice followed him. 'Get out of this city.
You understand nothing.'
'The Eagle says you bottled out/ Mister said calmly.
He'd had an hour to prepare his response. Atkins had taken Mister and the Eagle back to the Holiday Inn, had dropped them there, then followed the new procedure. He'd driven the Mitsubishi, with the slight dent on the front nearside fender, to the warehouse compound, had been let inside and left it there, then walked up to the road and waved down a taxi to return him to the hotel. He'd thought his job was to escort the missile launchers and the communications equipment into the city, demonstrate their capabilities, and act as the trusted interpreter. Killing had not been in the brief. At the hotel he joined Mister and the Eagle in the coffee-shop. The Eagle gazed ahead of him, past Atkins's shoulder.
Atkins blurted, 'I don't know how he can give an opinion. He was crapping himself and had his eyes closed.'
'He was only telling me what he thought. I pay him to tell me what he thinks.'
'I did not bottle out.'
'Very pleased to hear that, Atkins.'
Atkins couldn't read the man. There was no menace in the voice, no inflection that would create fear Mister spoke as if in gentle conversation. He thought of himself as being in an interview room alone with two detectives, and a tape-recorder's spools turning.
The detective who led would have said, 'It was an attempt at murder, an attempt to kill a member of Her Majesty's Customs and Excise. If you didn't like the idea, weren't on board, why didn't you refuse?' The detective at the back would have slapped a fist into a hand for emphasis and said, 'Don't give us bullshit about coercion.' Maybe those detectives, maybe everybody else, had never heard Mister speak quietly
… Mister's eyes were mesmeric. He could not escape them. He said feebly, 'I did the best I could.'
'Wasn't a very good best, was it?'
He blustered, 'I had him all lined up, I was going for him. Then beside him was this woman with a pram. He dived towards her. The cowardly shit used her to cover himself. I don't kill women or babies. If I'd gone after him I'd have hit the woman and the pram with the baby.'
'Did she come out of a manhole – push the cover up and lift the pram through it? Was there a manhole in the pavement? She popped up?'
'I didn't see her coming. I was just looking for him.
I didn't have any help from Eagle. If his eyes had been open – and he hadn't been busy wetting himself – he could have called the woman and the pram for me.
I hit the target, just a glance but a hit, if it had been a full hit, head on, then I would have taken out the woman and the pram. I'm not having killing women and babies on my conscience.'
'I'll look after your conscience, Atkins. I look after a lot of people's consciences.'
'It's the way it was.' Atkins's voice was a shrill whine.
'Do I criticize you? Calm down. Have a biscuit.'
He didn't want a biscuit, but he took one, held it in his hand and trembled. It cracked in his grip. He didn't want to look into Mister's eyes, but he couldn't look away. There was no light in the eyes; they had the quality of death. He knew that one day he would stumble through an explanation to two detectives in an interview room, and they would not believe him, and they would ask, again and again, why he had not walked away. He was Mister's toy, and toys could be thrown away… He was expendable. Napoleon had said, to Metternich, in 1810: 'You can't stop me. I spend thirty thousand men a month.'
'I'm sorry,' Atkins said, and despised himself.