Bill Penn was not material for General Intelligence Group. Bill Penn was clerk grade, executive officer grade, pathetic grade, with need of a nanny to hold his hand tight. Bill Penn was the jam my bastard' who had londed the big fat one, and who was out of his depth, and who shpuld have stayed on debt collection and rummaging through dustbins and Service of Legal Process and surveillance tailing of a jerk who didn't know he was watched. Two days had been wasted, and he had nothing to report. "Do what you can," 91 Penn said. The streets were bright and full. The windows lit the young faces gazing at the heaped goods from old Europe. The best of London and Paris and Rome and Frankfurt brazened in front of the wide teenage eyes. Cameras and computers, furs and fridges, Scotch and silks, all there and piled high in the windows on Trg Bana Jelacica. Perhaps Jovic read him. "An illusion," the artist said. "We have nothing but independence. Old men say that independence is important. Myself, I prefer to have two arms, no war, and I prefer to paint rather than trail round with an innocent.
