The streetlights were low, the headlights blinding, and it seemed that around him the city was vibrant, alive. It flourished. Lukas couldn’t walk along a street in Baghdad or Basra, Kabul or Kandahar, Bogotá or Cali. He saw backpackers in front of him, guys and girls who were half his age, would have come off a train and now trekked from the main-line station to whatever fleapit they could afford. His clothes were, of course, clean – laundered but not pressed – and he was shaven but not closely, and his short cropped hair was not brushed or combed. He lit a cigarette, dragged on it, and tobacco smoke mingled with what he breathed out. He felt good here. He pondered: Castrolami and himself, were they on opposite sides of a chequered board? A girl who was needed as a state witness was one queen, and a boy who had done ‘wrong place at wrong time’ was the other, and if the game was played to conventional rules only one could be left standing. He would have to act, if they were to claim a victory, on maverick rules. But, he had been told, it was not a city that threw up victories. He went by the cafés, the bars, the little restaurants and pizza houses, past the stalls where clothing was slung, and past tall west Africans who had laid on the paving handbags with fancy labels.
Not good for a man in Lukas’s trade to stand up and cheer if the hostage walked free, or to crumple and sag if the hostage came out zipped into a body-bag. Could do his best, nothing more. After success came another day, and after failure there was one more day to be met. He thought, though, and this hurt, that the priorities were not with the boy, and it would be a difficult road to walk… He saw the sign, lit, hardly welcoming… One more backpacker in town, older and more wizened, but unexceptional. He smiled wanly at the small group of men who stood by the step up into the pensione, and worked his way past them. None seemed to notice him.
He was greeted at the desk. He thought himself a welcome diversion from the Australian kids who had come into the lobby complaining that the toilet was blocked and wouldn’t flush. He murmured a name – the one that had been used on the reservation, which was on a passport he now offered, Canadian – then asked the guy whether he was Giuseppe. He wasn’t: Giuseppe was the day manager, worked from seven in the morning until seven in the evening. Lukas lied, said a friend had been here, had spoken well of the pensione and of Giuseppe. He was given his key.
Slowly, tired, he started up the stairs. He did not know yet which had been the floor where Eddie Deacon had taken a room. He was tired, a little hungry, and the room allocated to Lukas would, inevitably, be shit, and his situation would, inevitably, be about a thousand times better than Eddie Deacon’s. He unlocked a door, went in, kicked it shut.
He said quietly, ‘You get my best effort, kid, can’t say more – and can’t say it will be enough.’
11
As did his wife, Carmine Borelli possessed the cunning of the elderly and the wiliness of a veteran.
He didn’t understand the technicalities of the most modern surveillance systems employed in the piazza Dante barracks or inside the Questura, but he had grasped the need for total vigilance… His jacket collar was turned up, a loose cotton scarf covered much of his lower face and he wore a cap with a peak to hide his nose and eyes from elevated cameras. He had walked more than two kilometres, done back-doubles and alleyways, before he was satisfied. Then he had been picked up in a small repair garage in which he had a commanding financial stake. An old friend had driven him.
The car in which he had travelled to the north of the city was not a Mercedes, a BMW 7 series or an Audi, not a vehicle of status. It was a humble mass-produced Fiat, churned out by the Turin factories, anonymous. He would have confessed, climbing stiffly from the passenger seat and stepping into the sunshine, to a flutter of apprehension. It was hostile territory, and he was inside it. Mobile phones would have logged each metre the Fiat had brought him deeper into the complex of towers. He saw the scooter accelerate towards him, then brake and swerve.
He was happier to have Salvatore at his back.
When Carmine Borelli had taken charge of the Forcella district of the old city, where the streets followed the old layout of foundations put down by Roman builders, the district of Scampia had been scrub, fields and smallholdings. There was now a population of some seventy thousand. It was outside the area of his experience, and a new breed of clan leader was found here. They did not frighten him, but were a cause of anxiety. He had created wealth that was exceptional by the stricken standards of the Forcella people, and Pasquale had built on it, hugely increasing it. Vincenzo – if he was ever freed – would take it further.
Salvatore had removed the helmet and tucked it under his arm. Carmine Borelli took a cue from the hitman and doffed his cap. He unwound his cotton scarf and smoothed the collar of his jacket. It was, almost, an act of submission. It was a sign that they accepted they walked now under the protection of a more powerful man’s authority.
The families, supreme in Scampia, had wealth on different strata from that of the Borellis. They were, here, among the richest in the entire Italian state.
Those families also employed violence on a scale that could almost turn Carmine Borelli’s stomach. They fought, pursued vendettas, tortured, amputated, burned alive. He came with a request. The difficulty of asking the more powerful for favours was that a high price could be exacted. Desperate times meant desperate measures were employed.
They were checked in at a pavement-level entrance. Men spoke on mobile phones, men searched him with aggressive, disrespectful hands, men took the firearm from Salvatore’s belt, men eyed them as if they were lesser creatures. Carmine Borelli could accept the reduced status, but thought it harder for Salvatore to bow the knee. He imagined, in Salvatore, that pride burgeoned. It had to. It could not be otherwise. They were led up a flight of stairs – filth had accumulated in the well – past scattered syringes. He would not have tolerated the heroin addicts’ needles left as litter in Forcella, but the drug trade and its trafficking had come after his time of ascendancy. He was brought to an iron-barred gate across the first-level walkway.
It was unlocked by more men.
They went through, heard it clang shut, then the rattle of a heavy chain. Carmine knew little of ironwork but would have been an imbecile not to have realised that the fire brigade would need sophisticated oxyacetylene cutting gear to get through it, and it would be slow work. They walked some more, then went through another gate, similar, and climbed another staircase.
Little in life could frighten Carmine Borelli – but later he would admit to Anna, if the Virgin smiled on him and he was clear of this fuck-place, that he was uncertain, unhappy, with his experience on the lower floors of the great Sail tower in Scampia. When they were on the third level, there was another pause at another barred gate, and he breathed hard, sucking air into his lungs – and cursed a lifetime’s cigarettes. His hip ached sharply. It was good that Salvatore, disarmed, was with him. He thought, by now, they must be close. More men waited here, more mobiles were used, and he heard little jabbers of code talk. He thought the numbers were a show of strength, of power. He must acknowledge it.
What would he say? How would he say it? And why?
He would say – and it had been rehearsed in his wife’s presence, with her making suggestions, and when he had walked, avoiding possible surveillance and the gaze of cameras, and when he was in the car, being driven north to Scampia: ‘I value this meeting. I appreciate that you have given me your time. I am grateful for this opportunity. To the point. These are difficult times in Forcella. My son, Pasquale, is in Novara, and I believe your cousin and your nephew are also in Novara. My eldest grandson, Vincenzo – a fine boy – is held in London, and my younger grandsons, Giovanni and Silvio, are in Poggioreale. My beloved daughter-in-law, Gabriella, also is arrested. These are very severe times for my organisation, built with my blood and sweat for half a century and more. The threat to us now is from our own. I could tear out my tongue for speaking her name. My granddaughter, my Immacolata, has prostituted herself and taken the
money of the government. She destroys all I have built. We identify a weakness. A boy from England followed her here, is stupid, is ignorant, and loves her. We hope the whore loves him. We hold him, but not where we can keep him. We need a secure place. I ask for a secure place – a week, no more – under your protection. I ask also for my son’s most able associate, Salvatore, to be allowed free access. We will put as great a burden of pressure on my granddaughter – to retract and withdraw – as is possible. Here, under your control, is the most secure place in Naples. I would, of course, pay well for such a service.’ That was what he would say.
There were more men on the walkway, at either side and in front of a door.
The door was rapped, opened.
He saw then that Salvatore was blindfolded with a cloth, perhaps one for drying dishes, but he himself was not. He prayed to the Virgin that Salvatore would accept the indignity, not curse and rip it off. He was rewarded, but he saw the heave in Salvatore’s chest. The people in Scampia could recruit Salvatore or shoot him and leave him sprawled on a pavement. He thought, himself, he was safe – too old to be butchered. Too feeble. Too insignificant. He was shown in. Salvatore was guided after him.
He was taken to the kitchen.
A man sat there, dapper, with rounded shoulders and a cigarette, lit, between his fingers. A packet of Marlboro Light lay on the table. He had good hair, well styled, and clothes that looked expensive but not luxury wear. Beside the cigarettes there was a pocket calculator and scrap paper with scrawled figures in columns. Pasquale had known this man. There were no alliances in Naples, as there were in Calabria or in Palermo, but there were arrangements. He played his part. He ducked his head, showed respect. He knew, if the request for help, co-operation, was granted that a high price would be exacted. There was no alternative. He was fascinated by the face of the man, his features. A photograph of him appeared regularly in the newspapers, but was more than twenty years old. No more recent image existed, and the newspapers said the police had never succeeded with a telephone intercept in recording his voice.
Salvatore had made the links, arranged the meeting. He had done well.
Carmine Borelli was waved to a seat. If his request was granted, the boy would be moved to the most secure suburb of the city, would be beyond reach.
He began, ‘I value this meeting. I appreciate that…’
*
He sawed at the chain. It was not a dream, not any longer. Eddie Deacon could ease his thumbnail into the growing slit in the link.
He worked harder, frantic.
He had his jacket off, hitched on his shoulder. Without the sticks that were offered at the café, Castrolami would not have reached halfway up the steep path.
It was still early morning, but already the haze was building and the dawn clarity was wiped out. The city was far away and distanced further by the skim of cloud that sat over it. When he stopped and turned, he could make out the runway at Capodicino, the high-rise blocks of Scampia, the cranes at the docks, the curved line of the via Francesco Caracciolo, the Castel San Elmo squat on the hill, and the Castel dell’Ovo that jutted out into the sea. He could not see his own district, let alone his block, or the block of the artist.
He had started this trek on the south-west side of the mountain for the view. It was so many years since he had attempted anything as childishly idiotic as a climb to the crater rim of Vesuvio – maybe ten. Perhaps, then, it had been in February or November, not in the heat of a September morning. The sweat spilled off him and the dust lay on his face.
It was annoying to Castrolami that the American – well, American, but claiming some Italian, maybe some German, a possibility of some British ancestry, and the certainty of being a gypsy, a mongrel that was a bastardo – walked well and kept just behind but did not heave, pant and gasp. His annoyance was increased by the refusal of the bastardo to ask, at any time, the purpose of the journey. They had left the barracks at piazza Dante, climbed into Castrolami’s car, driven away from the city and parked in the yard by the station at Scavi Pompeii. They took the bus up the hill, past the old fortifications that overlooked the sea, the ever-thinning scrub. When the bus came to the park, they were left with a final three hundred metres on foot to the rim. It would have been good to hear, ‘What the fuck are we here for?’
He had not thought to bring water. Sweat discoloured his shirt. Each time he stopped, to calm his breathing and pretend to examine the view, a steady column of tourists passed him, going up and coming down. He alone wore suit trousers and carried a jacket. It could have been that Lukas found amusement in the climb, in Castrolami’s discomfort. They hit the last metres.
The path of caked, stamped-on dust cut through a lunar landscape. Almost nothing grew here. The stones and rocks were angular, punishing, a dull, lifeless grey. There was a first viewpoint where a fence kept the tourists a metre or more back from the rim and the cliff beyond it. There were Japanese, in large numbers, so Castrolami pushed on and headed for a white metal and plastic contraption, a couple of metres high and fastened with wire stays. He thought it would do for his purpose. He leaned on a rail. Lukas came alongside him, gave him nothing, waited and kept silence. Not being asked why took the gloss from Castrolami’s moment.
His calm broke, almost a snarl of anger: ‘Do you want to know why you are here or do you not want to know?’
He was not certain but he thought he felt a weakness.
Could have been mistaken, didn’t believe so. Eddie Deacon worked at the link, running it on the rough concrete ridge. What was certain, the pit where his nail went was always deeper.
Lukas said, ‘Do you want any smart shit talk from me about what volcanoes I’ve visited, where I’ve picked up hunks of lava? I can do that talk if it’s necessary. I don’t think it is. The view is non-existent. Comfort is non-existent. Shade is non-existent. We’re the only two cretins in this place too dumb to bring water. You have, friend, my undivided attention.’
He saw Castrolami’s lips purse, reckoned the anger was at the edge of control. He thought the morning wasted. Lukas said, ‘Say what you want to say.’
There was a harshness about the crater’s rim, and the sun came up from the stones of lava fields to reflect back into his eyes. He looked down, could see far into the hole, and found himself straining to see better. A hawk soared on the east side. The drop of the cliffs from the rim to the core was uneven, ragged. Faint curls of thin smoke or steam emerged from the rocks and dissipated. Lukas supposed there was some relevance to it… and was patient. He was rewarded.
Castrolami said, defiant, ‘I should bring here everybody who visits the city to meet me. I should use it as a theatre set to explain the reality of Naples. Anyway, you are ready?’
Lukas didn’t often do snide and smartass, thought the rewards short-lived. He would need the big, sweaty, armpit-stinking carabinieri guy. He said, ‘I am.’
Castrolami flung out a hand theatrically, waved at the hole. ‘It is one thousand nine hundred and thirty years, less one month, since the eruption that destroyed Pompeii and Ercolano. There was an eruption in the year 1631, three more in the eighteenth century, four in the nineteenth century. There have been two in the last century, 1929 and 1944. Look down. You see nothing that is threatening. It is at peace, something dead. That it exploded is in history, not actual. You cannot look down and see anything that is a maximum danger. Maybe it is only the newspapers that speak of the danger. Look at it, see nothing, and be blind.’
Lukas permitted himself to be led. Did not interrupt. He assumed that Castrolami had flogged his body through the ordeal of the climb for a good reason, and waited for it.
‘The scientists call it, in English language, the “plug”. For us it is the tappo. The plug holds down the lava underneath. The plug hides the reality of what is there. The plug, to keep the vision of harmless peace, is some ten kilometres deep. Below the plug is the burning liquid mass, the lava, and you have to imagine an enormous cavern in which it boils, bubbles
and is unseen, and that cavern may have a diameter of up to two hundred kilometres. If the plug breaks the cavern is emptied and pours upwards. The volcano is the city of Naples. At peace and tranquil, with fine churches and wonderful galleries and good food and wine, a triumph of sophistication, and safe. It is an illusion maintained by the strength of the plug. Out of sight and beyond your gaze there are powerful destructive forces. I brought you here to explain about Naples, the real danger and the false calm. We can go now.’
Lukas did not chide, did not complain. He thought, actually, it had been a good image and he doubted he would soon lose the sight of the scree slopes, the rockfall debris, the rough lava pieces and the smoke wisps that were all of the great forces at play he could see. He must imagine.
He started out again on the path, and dust slithered under his soles. The tourists came by him, gasping, struggling, and the sun was higher, hotter. He paused and looked down, not into the pit and on to the plug but at the city. He saw nothing that threatened, only the mist. He saw no danger in the faint hazed buildings that were toy-sized. Hard for him to understand that a poison was down there, hedged in by the blue of the sea. ‘I have it, thank you. Yes, let’s go.’
He thought of the boy – not good for him to feel emotional involvement. About the same age as the son who lived with his mother in the trailer camp, and didn’t write. He had heard from the London office that the boy’s parents spoke well of their son, and with love, and were on their knees with anxiety. He thought his own son, placed where the boy was, would have lost any will to fight after about ten minutes of capture, maybe less. He liked the face of the boy from the picture sent to him, and thought his own son nondescript, perhaps ugly. But Lukas didn’t do soap-opera sentiment. It wasn’t about the son he wished he’d had. Anyone, lame and halt or fit and fresh, would have his utmost endeavour. He had killed the thought of his own detached family, but not his mind image of the boy. They went down together. He thought Eddie Deacon would be existing in a living hell. Maybe the city itself lived under a plug but could destroy.
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