The Collaborator

by Gerald Seymour

  He would go first to the place where he could shower and change his clothing, then take more of the pain pills because he didn’t want people in Forcella to see him hobble or limp. Clean, he would go home. He believed he had done well, believed also that he was on a treadmill, running, and didn’t know how long, at that pace, he could last.

  Once a week, regular as clockwork, Davide locked the door of his apartment, on the third floor of the Sail, and took a bus. It carried him from the architectural disaster zone that was Scampia into Naples, and there was a memorised sequence of meeting-places: the steep Funicolare climbing from the via Toledo, a gentleman’s hairdressing salon on the corso Umberto, the giardini pubblici in front of the royal palace of the Bourbons, the open ramparts of the Castel dell’Ovo, or one of the distinguished coffee houses of the city. When he was in any of those places, with tapes and cassettes in the hidden pockets sewn at his trousers’ waist, he was Delta465/Foxtrot.

  He sat on the bus that morning.

  He was not reckless, took no unnecessary risks in harbouring the secrecy of his double life, and felt no fear. In both his identities – Davide and Delta465/Foxtrot – he understood that the fate of an agent of the AISI, if uncovered, was death. Not negotiable. If it was discovered that a man from the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna was living in the Sail death was certain, with much pain beforehand. He lived with the threat. He had a compartmentalized mind, and could keep fear at arm’s length. That ensured he was an agent of quality and valued by his handlers. He enjoyed meeting them in the funicular carriage, the barber’s or in the gardens and would ask after their children and be told of their holidays – make-believe, of course, but it enabled him to feel he was inside a family, which was important to him. They had given him a number for the Apocalypse Call, but he doubted he would ever use it. He had no idea what his life might be outside the Sail and without the weekly meetings.

  Nothing to report that week. Nothing that would interest the men and women who met him. They were interested only in material of high-grade importance. He had seen, through his obsessionally polished windows, nothing of that category. Neither did he believe there was anything on the tapes from the cameras in his living room or from the audio cassettes linked to the microphones buried in the outer wall. The position of his apartment, where a flight came up from level two and another down from level four, had not been chosen randomly: it was a meeting-place – men stopped, talked and took little notice of the cleaned windows, the blaring television and the old man slumped in a chair with his back to the walkway. He knew of nothing that week to intrigue his handlers.

  She was no fool. Anna Borelli was as adept at losing a tail as any man half, a third or a quarter of her age. She did back-doubles, shop windows, was last on to a trolley bus on the corso Umberto, and went into the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore by the main entrance and out by the narrow emergency door. Only when she was satisfied that she was not under surveillance, or had lost it, did she head for the meeting-place. She carried a filled plastic shopping bag.

  She was another elderly lady, keeping death at bay for perhaps another year or only another month, and she wore black from stockings to scarf. She was unnoticed. She rang a bell. She was admitted through high gates. She crossed a yard of cannibalised vehicles and a door swung open when she prodded it with her toe. She was inside the building that had once been a car-repair business, but was now a place where stolen Mercedes, BMWs, Audis and the best models from the Alfa and Fiat factories were brought and dismantled. The parts would be shipped into Moldova or Ukraine, then moved further east. It had been an excellent business but was now slack and the yard was deserted, except for the scooter tucked against a side wall. The building seemed empty, but for the cigarette smoke that curled from beneath an inner door.

  Then she was met.

  She showed Salvatore what she had brought. There was bread, cheese, two slices of cheap processed ham, two apples, three small bottles of water, and the morning’s edition of Cronaca di Napoli – on the front page a photograph of a man sprawled dead, half in a gutter, outside a bar. She had not read it. She thought that by now her husband would be home. She approved of what he planned to do, and she would appreciate that when he sat in his chair, with her beside him, he would be clean and not smell as was usual. Salvatore had a camera on the table, and the man who rode the scooter was stretched out on a sofa, asleep, with a pistol on the floor beside his head.

  There was a corridor to the back, and a storeroom off it.

  A trapdoor was lifted and a torch shone down.

  A stench came up through the hole’s opening. She saw that the boy was hooded, bound, and that his arms were behind his back. She remembered him in her living room, his simplicity; remembered also when Immacolata, her husband’s angel, had been in the same room, had sat in the same chair, drinking from the same set of cups and eating off the same set of plates. She remembered the boy, his almost shy smile, the flush of gratitude when he was told that a man was coming to take him to Immacolata. She felt no sympathy.

  The torch showed the discolouration at his groin. She had not felt sympathy for the women in her brothels who had contracted syphilis from the American officers and had had to tell their husbands of the disease they carried. She had not felt sympathy for those widowed when she and her husband had climbed but others had been pushed aside, or for Gabriella when the births of Vincenzo and Giovanni were complex and brutally painful, or for Carmine when he was taken three times to Poggioreale. She did not even feel sympathy for herself.

  She watched.

  Salvatore rolled up the hood so that it cleared the mouth and nostrils but covered the eyes. He pulled off the binding tape and the young man, Eddie, cried out in pain because it had happened without warning, but then – so quickly – his face settled. Anna Borelli understood. Then Salvatore unlocked the handcuffs and allowed him, Eddie, to work his fingers over his wrists and bring back the circulation. She wondered if he was Edmondo or Eduardo. Then the hands were put together in front of his waist and the handcuffs went back on. Anna Borelli thought, from his face and the little gestures, that he was a fighter – it didn’t matter to her.

  She passed down a bucket and the newspaper she had brought.

  She knew a little English from the Americans. Salvatore told the young man that he should use the bucket, that he could eat, that he was to put the hood back on his head each time he heard movement over the trapdoor. If he didn’t he would be beaten. The bucket was stood in a corner. Salvatore had the camera. The newspaper front page facing the lens was placed in the young man’s hands and held up. The torch was switched off. Anna Borelli thought then that Salvatore would snatch up the hood and immediately take the photograph. The flash lit the bunker, and the white face, the scars on it and the blood smears – easier to see in the flash than in the torch beam.

  When the torch went back on, the hood was in place again.

  The newspaper was left beside the bucket. The food was in the plastic bag beside the young man’s knee. Anna Borelli saw the young man’s ears and fingers, the stain at his crotch, and felt no sympathy. She accepted, however, that she didn’t know how her granddaughter would react – what her response to the pressure would be when it built.

  Salvatore climbed out, the trapdoor fell back into place and the bolt was pushed home.

  With the tab from the camera lodged in her brassière, Anna Borelli set off for the office of the family’s lawyer.

  Castrolami watched. He thought it a performance for him and no others. He was sitting in the canteen area on the second floor of the barracks, the coffee in front of them with a plate of sweet biscuits. The swing door had been pushed open, and an officer – probably a maresciallo – had come in, looked around, seen the man, Lukas, and come to him, arms opening wide. Hugs, kisses – and Castrolami believed he saw tears. Not Lukas who wept, and not Lukas who kissed.

  It was about the establishment of credentials. The officer had small scars on his face and wal
ked heavily, as if his left leg carried an old injury. He would have been in his early forties, plump and pasty-faced. He clung to Lukas.

  It was explained.

  The officer was Marco. He had been in the detachment of carabinieri posted to the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. He was asleep in quarters used by the detachment in the building that had once been the office of the local Chamber of Commerce. A suicide attack on it had involved a tanker truck rigged with explosives. Seventeen carabinieri had been killed, and more were injured. Marco suffered cut tendons in his right leg from shrapnel and his face was hit by glass shards. He had gone home, recovered, convalesced and demanded to be returned to his unit. He had come back to Nasiriyah… Castrolami heard the story and thought it told well and quietly. He waited to learn its purpose.

  The canteen had filled. The short guy at Castrolami’s side, now extricated from the hugs and kisses, seemed to Castrolami to find it a necessary nuisance, and was impassive.

  ‘I went back, a dumb-fuck stupid thing to do – everyone told me so – but I was back. We had an outpost down the road and the day that those guys were supposed to get a week’s rations there was also a search mission under way. Just one of those days when a schedule gets fouled up, and people think it doesn’t matter. The consequence was a reduction in the size of the escort to take the rations. There were three of us, Italians, and two trucks. We got hit. They put an RPG through the engine of mine and blew us off the road. The driver, an Iraqi boy, was killed. The truck in front just kept going. I was taken.’

  Castrolami didn’t hear, in the packed room, that a throat was cleared, that a man’s joints clicked as he moved his weight from one foot to the other, that a nose was blown, that a cup was put heavily on a saucer or that cutlery rattled. Lukas’s face gave nothing away.

  ‘I was taken off quickly – fast, immediate. Would have been well gone by the time a reaction force was back in there… I was held fourteen days. They didn’t want a ransom, didn’t want a truckload of dollars, didn’t want a statement of intent to leave from our government. They told me they wanted prisoner exchange, people of theirs who were in Abu Ghraib under American jurisdiction. After fourteen days they got the message. No deal. They were ready to do me – would have been a knife job, decapitation. I thought they’d kill me that night. Those were fourteen long days – a different meaning to long than I’ve known before, like years and like hell. The guys who broke in were from Task Force 145, because we Italians didn’t have that sort of group. They came out of the Anaconda Camp in the Balad base. This man – Mr Lukas – did the co-ordination. He married what the assets brought in with prisoner interrogation and reconnaissance, and did it right. I owe him my life. I’m supposed to be a rock-hard bastard but the sight of this little runt, and the knowledge of what he did for me, his skill, makes me want to fucking weep. I never had a chance to thank him there. We, the Italian contingent, didn’t have such a man in Iraq. It was my great fortune that he was in country, with Defense Department, and allocated to my situation. Great fortune because he’s the best. I saw him in the distance and then he was gone, but guys told me… What I’m saying, if he’s in town, if some poor bastard goes through what I went through, then fuck the protocol and fucking listen to him.’

  Applause spattered the canteen.

  ‘Can we get out of here?’ Lukas asked softly, close to Castrolami.

  ‘It was your call to come,’ Castrolami said.

  ‘Someone thought it was a good idea. The chief honcho in the company I work for would have pulled him up on the files.’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t and maybe it was – a good idea.’

  He disengaged from the veteran – and Castrolami thought Marco now did some soft liaison job in Parliament but would never forget. Lukas endured one last, awkward embrace, then was pushing for the double doors, and the coffee hadn’t been drunk. They went along corridors and down flights of stairs. They hit the street going fast, as if both men wanted to be shot of a place that was sugar-sweet on sentimentality.

  ‘I suppose I should apologise, but it was reckoned a good, clean, fast way of establishing credentials – like fast-tracking them.’

  ‘Could you do that sort of cabaret in other places, other cities?’

  ‘’Fraid so, quite a number. I do apologise – a stunt and a gimmick. Not my way but—’

  ‘Give it me,’ Castrolami demanded.

  Lukas said, ‘I don’t horn in and play rank and pedigree. Inside there was just about a CV, and to save you time, and somebody else’s idea, if I’m invited I come in. If my advice is looked for, I offer it. There are no other strings, and no other agenda.’

  ‘I warn you, we pull in different directions.’

  Lukas was looking at his feet as they walked. ‘When was it ever different?’

  ‘I make no commitment to you, an outsider.’

  ‘In your place, I doubt I would.’

  *

  The cell had no air and the heat was trapped in it. If she had been charged with shop-lifting, bag-snatching or aggravated assault, Gabriella Borelli would have shared a cell with five others, even nine. But she was special, had status, was awarded solitary confinement. She had been escorted back to the cell, and the heat had wafted at her as the door was unlocked, had wrapped round her as it was closed after her. The sun was climbing and played directly on the window. Distorted shadows were thrown over her from the light hitting the bars.

  It had been a sour meeting with her lawyer, Umberto.

  She had sensed his shock when he saw her with chains fastened to manacles at her wrists. He would have heard them rattling as she was led down the corridor and into the interview room, and she sensed he felt personal pain for her, and also that his worst nightmare would have been to wear those chains, to sleep in a cell like hers and not to walk on the Tribunali or the Duomo but in an exercise yard. He had dabbed a handkerchief dosed with cologne at his nose. They had taken the chains off her when she was ready to sit opposite him.

  Did he believe that a case conference between accused and advocate was free of electronic audio surveillance? He did not.

  Did she believe that a microphone was not wired into the room, its furniture, its walls, ceiling and electrical fittings? Most certainly she did not.

  It had been a bizarre conference – she flopped on to the bunk bed on a raised concrete base. She kicked off the sandals which she had been issued with, loosened the blouse that had been torn when they’d felled her and unzipped the skirt that had ridden up when she was on the ground, but there was no relief from the heat. Umberto had produced a packet of cigarettes, cigarette papers for rolling but no loose tobacco, and two match books. The cigarettes were between them, and each had had a set of the matches. He had divided the papers so that they had half each. They had done the case conference.

  He had asked her if she was well and she had told him she was.

  He had written in an insect scrawl on a slip of the paper: A boy, the lover of Immacolata, came from England to find her. Had an address of via Forcella. The priest sent him to Carmine and Anna. He had pushed the slip towards her, and she had read it, then crumpled it and put it into the tinfoil ashtray between them.

  She had written: Was he stupid? Was he ignorant? She had shown it to him, then crushed it and dropped it with the other.

  They lit cigarettes, and allowed the lighted matches to burn the papers in the ashtray. A rhythm had developed.

  Did she have complaints that he should take up with the authorities? She did not.

  He knew nothing, had met Immacolata in London, loved her, knew nothing. Carmine took control. He sent for help.

  What control? What help?

  More paper burned in the ashtray.

  Was the food satisfactory? It was.

  It’s control through leadership. It’s to prevent secessionists and intrusion. He sent for Salvo.

  To what purpose?

  Smoke rose from the paper. More smoke curled up from the cigarettes.

  Was
she treated with respect? She was.

  Carmine thinks the boy from England can be used as leverage on Immacolata. Salvo has taken the boy, holds him in Sanità. Bits of him will be sent to Immacolata if she doesn’t retract her accusations.

  I doubt the bitch will – but good to use the boy. Make pressure with him. More important, find the bitch, shoot her, stamp on her face.

  In that note, she had allowed emotion to escape: her writing had been faster, larger, and the response had taken both sides of the paper.

  He asked her what she needed. She had said clothing, a portable electric fan, a radio and some magazines.

  What else?

  Use the boy, with a knife. Kill the bitch.

  What else did she want? She had not said that her love should be sent to her husband, to Vincenzo in London, to Giovanni or Silvio. She had not spoken of her parents-in-law or of Salvatore… She had said she needed a pair of her own shoes and more toothpaste. Together they had checked that all of the paper slips were burned to cinders, then had screwed out the cigarettes in the ash. He had stood, knocked on the door and the escort had come in. The manacles had gone back on her wrists. She had not thanked him for coming to the women’s gaol at Posilippo: she paid him, and he was rich on the family’s back.

  She sat now in the cell.

  She would, herself, have slit her daughter’s throat.