The taxi was idling at the side door. He dived for the security of the back seat. He saw the way the driver looked nervously at the client following him, then away. All the cabbies in London would know that the quietly dressed man with an unremarkable face, his client, was Albert William Packer. He gave the destination to the cabbie. The Eagle realized then that Mister had not yet thanked him, had not squeezed his arm in gratitude, nor muttered a kind word to him.

As the taxi pulled out from the shadowy passage behind the Central Criminal Court, Mister asked softly, 'Where's Cruncher?'

The first time the Sarajevo firemen had managed to get the grab hook onto the body and pull it out of the Miljacka's central flow and into slower side waters, they had ripped off a sleeve of its jacket. Their rope went slack, and they hauled it in to find the length of cloth.

The chief fireman steadied himself, checked the coiled rope at his feet then swung the grab hook in faster circles above his helmet. The trees restricted the length of rope he could swing to gain the necessary momentum. There was a crowd behind them, and another on the far side of the river. Frank Williams, wearing the light blue uniform of the International Police Task Force, was enough of a student of the recent war to understand why there were trees on this section of the bank. This point in the river had been the front line. The burned-out apartments over the water had been the home of the sniper nests, crouched with their telescopic sights and looking down at a perfect view of the trees. All over the city, even in the worst of the shelling, men had gone out with axes and saws to fell trees for basic warmth, and take a chance with death.