The Collaborator

by Gerald Seymour

  He shoved Castrolami aside. He sprinted as near as he could.

  He went past the Engineer and the Bomber.

  He caught the Tractor’s arm. He held it, stopped him.

  He panted – couldn’t find a voice to speak. He pointed to the can.

  They went on, and Lukas again had taken his place behind Castrolami, and each of them stepped with care round the can, until the last ROS guy squatted down, then went on to his knees and shone a torch into it. Lukas had turned and could see him under a kid’s towel. Then the guy stood up and kicked the can to hell. It rattled away.

  The warning he had given, his caution for a can, was not ridiculed – he had respect.

  The Engineer took big bolt-cutters from his bag, opened the blades and put the loop of the padlock between them, flexed and used his strength, and the padlock broke apart. The gate was pushed open by the Tractor. Beyond it, the washing hung thicker and made a fog; it could not be seen through.

  Lukas knelt. He could see under the washing, and the walkway stretched to a darkened infinity and had no horizon. Nothing, nobody, moved.

  They used the long tunnel from the Palace of Justice to bring Immacolata to the Poggioreale gaol. She could have gone by car and entered through the back gates, but when offered the choice she took the walking option and did it briskly, with a good stride, Rossi and Orecchia at either side of her. The deputy prosecutor was in front, the carabinieri liaison officer behind.

  The air around her was close, dank from the dribble of a water leak, and was ill lit. Prisoners were brought by small bus from the court to the gaol and the fumes hung, trapped.

  Immacolata did not show relief when they reached the steps, when a door was unlocked by a guard, when fresh air wafted over her.

  She was told by the deputy prosecutor how long she had. She shrugged, and answered that she did not need that much time.

  The gaol was not yet shut down for the night and the clamour inside it filled her ears. She had no doubts. She was led to an interview room. At the door she was told her brothers had not been informed that they were to meet her.

  The door opened. They had their backs to it. There were four officers in the room and cigarette smoke rose towards a single barred light. She saw that Giovanni lounged, had tipped back his chair, and Silvio was hunched forward, his head resting on his joined hands. They were manacled. She was led round the table and recognition broke. Shock from Giovanni, confusion from Silvio. She smoothed her skirt and sat down. Two of the officers flanked the table and two were immediately behind her brothers.

  Immacolata said, ‘I’m here to tell you – in person, because I’m not frightened of you – that I intend to continue collaborating with the state, and to give evidence in any criminal trial that follows the information I provide. I will not be deterred and—’

  Big hands rested on Giovanni’s shoulders. He spat, ‘Bitch! You’re the walking dead – and the boy you fucked will be sliced.’

  ‘I won’t be deterred and my decision is irrevocable. I’ll be a witness in court, whatever is done to those who have been close to me.’

  Silvio did not have to be held and his shoulders shook. He blurted, ‘I loved you, you were my sister, I did whatever you asked me. I never told our mother I drove you to Nola. Why have you done this to me? Please, why?’

  ‘To break the power of our family. I’ll put that power under the heel of my shoe and grind it to dust. Whatever happens, my mind will not be changed.’

  She stood. She was the queen of the moment and the audience was completed. Silvio – sad, inadequate, a worshipper – wept into his hands. She started to move round the table and Giovanni lunged. The hands, held together by manacles, were in her face, the fingers outstretched and the nails exposed, as a cat’s claws would have been. One nail caught the tip of her nose, and as the blood welled he was thrust back into his chair. He spat, but it fell short of her. Then a hand was in his hair and locked his head still.

  Silvio sobbed, ‘I thought you loved me. I thought you were my friend.’

  Giovanni snarled, ‘They’ll slice him slowly. They’ll send you his dick. Keep looking over your shoulder, and know that you’ll be found.’

  She left. Her escorts would have hustled her out, but she went at her own pace.

  She heard, outside the room – as inside Giovanni fought an unequal battle and Silvio howled – Orecchia ask Rossi, ‘What did Caesar say?’

  And heard Rossi’s answer, ‘At the Rubicon river, as he prepared to ford it and march south, he said, “Iacta alea est!” “The die is cast.” She can’t turn now.’

  ‘She understands the consequences.’

  ‘She understands – and has cut herself free of them.’

  Orecchia said, ‘God be gracious and protect us from principles.’ She didn’t turn her head and tell him she’d heard what he’d said – and didn’t think of Eddie Deacon, but of Nola and a cemetery.

  They went past the agent’s door. Easy to recognise: there was a light on inside and the room, seen through the broken door, and the clean window, was wrecked. It had been searched systematically and then, Lukas thought, trashed in vengeance. He knew now what had happened to the agent, about the fall and the dog that had been shot. Lukas was big on agents – assets – and he recognised their value more than most. In any city he worked, or any strip of jungle, or up any goddam mountain, he would ask about intelligence assets and probe for what they were able to bring to the table. It was not for him, an outsider, to criticise the unwillingness of an agency to share – well, not out loud and not for quoting. He could have said that the agent might be alive, might enjoy a glass of a local wine in a safe-house, if his material had been shared and he’d been lifted out. He could have surmised that many agents had been ‘lost’ – euphemism for slaughtered – because they’d been kept in place beyond the sale date. The agent had cheated those who had come to his apartment, had plunged from a window and so denied them the chance of the beating, the kicking, the burning with cigarettes, maybe the use of electrodes and waterboarding. For cheating them they had wrecked the place.

  Lukas could see, also, the cables that hung from the ceiling and dropped down from the cavities in the plaster where they had been hidden, the hole through the wall and the place where an attachment for the hook that held a washing line in place had masked the exterior lens. He couldn’t have sworn to it, but he thought that Castrolami’s arms moved, saw the jerk of the elbows, and reckoned the investigator had crossed himself. If the boy survived – if Lukas’s best effort was sufficient – if an apartment further up the walkway was not dry, then that life would be owed to the asset who had died. Sobering – yes. They went on, quiet, fast and wary, but not stampeding. Each took fistfuls of the washing and dragged it down, thought little of dumping it in the dirt at the side of the walkway. Sometimes it was women’s underclothes they snatched, but there was no laughter. They hustled forward, momentum with them. Lukas thought he liked serious men, that they were good to be with when advancing towards what his jargon called the ‘termination phase’. Then not even outsize knickers or a frilly imitation lace brassière made for humour.

  The second gate was locked, with a large lock box welded to it. More delay. Lukas thought the gates, barricaded against them, were the sign that they were tolerated for an evening here, on this level alone – the limit of that cursory negotiation at the bottom of the stairs – but they had no automatic right to access.

  Again, Lukas did not have to be told. Bolt-cutters could do chains and a padlock, but not entry through a locked gate. He wondered what they would use. The Engineer had turned, crouched and unhitched the straps of his bag. Eyes must have met. The Engineer told him that it would be T4 – an abbreviation for an impossible-to-pronounce formula name that ended in ‘trinitramine’, a compound of nitric acid and hexamine, with a blast velocity of 8750 metres per second and… Lukas had not heard him speak before. He had known enough technical screwballs in his time, and doubted they were different peo
ple from those who stood on platforms and noted train numbers, or had binoculars to see the registration on aircraft fuselages coming in to land and taking off. The Engineer worked fast, and his description of the power he was manufacturing fell on Lukas’s deaf ears. It would be a crucial moment.

  Along the empty corridor was an apartment – wet or dry. If it was wet, the hostage target was there and a psychopath, a lunatic, had to be talked out of killing him. What counted was to get close by covert approach. There was nothing secret about a blast of T4-type plastic explosive. Horrible stuff, colourless, and in the Engineer’s hands, about half an ounce, less than a golfball. Then a stick detonator, the wiring, the waving of them back, taking shelter in doorways, the playing out of a cable and the clips going on to a box – and if the apartment was wet, they did not know which was its door.

  ‘We go through. We look and we find. I speak. I ask for the boy, and I ask for surrender. Maybe the boy gets killed, maybe I’m shot at. Then it’s your chance. You want it different?’

  ‘The way it is, that’ll be fine by me.’ Lukas took the chance offered him and hit Castrolami’s arm – not as hard as he had been hit but with what force he could manage.

  They waited for the Engineer to count them down.

  Eddie boiled.

  ‘You know, each time I do a hit, it is the next morning in the newspapers, and I buy them. They write so much about me. They make up much. I had thought of calling some of the reporters to meet me, and tell them that they must be exact and tell truths, they should treat me with greater respect. I read all the newspapers the morning after, and they carry the conferences of the police and they talk about me. I think they do not make much money, the reporters. They would be as easy to buy as police are. I earn in one week what a policeman makes in one year… They have nothing. I have money in the bank.’

  The anger burned. Those who knew him would not have recognised Eddie’s voice, and the crack of contempt in it. ‘Maybe you don’t.’

  ‘What do you say? What?’

  ‘Maybe you don’t have money in the bank.’

  ‘I do, I know it.’ Gabbled, but irritated.

  Eddie said, ‘Maybe they’ve taken it all, fleeced you.’

  ‘What is “fleeced”?’

  ‘What you do – “fleece” is steal… They open the accounts for you?’

  ‘The lawyer did, for Gabriella. Before her it was for Pasquale Borelli. The lawyer did what they instructed.’

  ‘They’d have fleeced you. Did you ever see the statements?’

  ‘They cannot send them. I was told the statements. It is a million euros, near.’

  ‘If there was ever money there, which is doubtful, now it’ll be gone.’

  ‘I have their word.’

  ‘Their word? Like your word? A word is a guarantee? In fucking Naples? I bet you—’

  ‘What do you bet?’

  ‘I bet you that your accounts, if they ever existed, are empty. I reckon you were easy to trick, to deceive. I reckon you’re just some animal they employ, then put back in a cage. There’s no money, I bet it.’

  He was hit across the face. Salvatore had crouched low over him and used the barrel of the pistol as a whip. The blow made more blood, opened the wounds that had almost sealed, and scraped away more skin. It hurt bad. He thought he wanted the fucking show on the fucking road, wanted it over. He was finished with lying trussed – cut and bruised, in pain, his ribs throbbing – and helpless like a goddam chicken going to slaughter. No sirens, no goddam help. What made it easier – like a mouthful of codeine, paracetamol or ibuprofen, even like bloody aspirin – was that in his anger he had challenged the bastard on his money, had hit the open wound, had put salt on it. Wanted it over, and the triumph preserved. The victory was proven by the wild slashing strike on his face.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Eddie said, in his face.

  He had pushed himself up, ignoring the pain. He sat upright. He looked into the wide eyes, could see them in the slack light. There was silence, and he didn’t know why. Wanted it done.

  He heard the scrape as a lever on the pistol was moved, thought it the safety. Heard the weapon cocked, metal scratching on metal. Could almost smile, saw the barrel wobble as if the bastard couldn’t hold the aim steady. Needed it finished. Heard the explosion.

  Maybe the front door of the apartment, on to the walkway, had not been locked because it opened and light flooded in. A window flew into the outer room, Eddie smelled smoke.

  The door swung hard, slowed and flapped, then was still, but open.

  He was pulled up. Because his ankles were fastened he couldn’t move. He was dragged to the door, propelled into the walkway, and could feel the pistol’s barrel, a pencil’s width, against the back of his neck where the hair reached to.

  Eddie was a shield.

  He saw them, and, fifty paces up the walkway, wreathed in smoke, the frame of the barred gate, which had been open when he had run. Now it was half through a window. Doors near to it hung askew, unhinged, windows were out, and washing was stripped or shredded.

  The men were through the gap. All huge. Three leading. Black suits, black masks, black weapons. He was wrenched round. He looked momentarily up the walkway, in the other direction, and a gate there was fastened shut.

  The men had stopped. Weapons were up, aimed. Eddie felt Salvatore’s breath on his neck, beside where the pistol barrel dug. They had come, and about fucking time and… all anger gone.

  A blast in his ear, deafening.

  Too fast for him to react, blink. A puff of concrete dust came off a wall near the gate, high, and the men scattered. One on his stomach, one in a right-side doorway and one in a left, with a rubbish bin for further cover. More men were behind them. Eddie saw one, large, wore a suit. Incredible, yes, a goddam suit, and there was a small guy beside him, who looked old, out of place, and crouched and— Eddie was dragged back inside.

  They had come.

  What had changed? It was that Eddie wanted to live – because they had come. Almost overwhelmed him, the sight of the men in their black kit, the guns and masks, the quiet around them, and the emptiness, and a man in a suit, and a man with short pepper-coloured hair and a lightweight windcheater. More behind them. Eddie trembled. Then his ankles were kicked hard and his feet went out from under him. He was felled, collapsed, and couldn’t break the impact. He wriggled towards the far wall. He cursed himself for having provoked the bastard to anger, didn’t think it smart – hadn’t known they were coming.

  He wondered who they were, what sort of men had come, who had sent them – what they knew of him.

  The silence hung heavy. The quiet settled. He wanted to live, wanted nothing more.

  The door to the walkway slammed shut. There was scraping as the table was dragged across the floor, then wedged into the outer doorway, chairs used as props to hold it. It was the older man he could picture best.

  ‘I have had a short eyeball on the target hostage, Echo Delta Delta India Echo. He is held in an apartment of the Sail building, third level, Scampia, a Naples suburb. Initial indication is one hostage-taker, armed. Unlikely to be a covert exit point. Nothing by way of escape is negotiable. Target seemed from brief sighting at approx forty paces to be bound, had facial marks of abuse, but did not appear to have life-threatening injuries. Taker, my opinion, is unstable and unpredictable. Time to go to work. Out.’

  He closed the call.

  A waiter came to the table with the wine list, and Roddy Johnstone waved for it to be given to his guest.

  ‘You all right, Duck? You look a bit pale. Got a ghost showing up?’ the guest asked.

  He shook his head. It was a decent restaurant, close to his office, and it was usual for him to bring prospective clients here, and convenient – halfway on foot between Grosvenor Square and Berkeley Square – for most. He asked his guest, who would be talking detail in a contract for the security of an oil-drilling programme in Georgia’s Taribani Field, zone fourteen in block twelve, which could
be worth fifteen million American dollars over ten years, to select a wine and choose from the menu for both of them. He apologised for having been distracted by the call.

  He went outside. He stood on the pavement and the doorman lit a cigarette for him. He had seen Lukas’s name come up on his mobile, had allowed him to talk, had not interrupted, had allowed him to ring off, had not spoken a word. Thoughts clouded his mind. He saw Lukas, saw a waste mass of concrete floors and walls, saw men with armed, aimed weapons, saw a young man who had gone off to get his girl back, had walked as an innocent into a snake’s nest, had been beaten and had had a gun barrel against his head, and he saw an idiot who would have pledged – because they all did – that he would not be captured alive, and again he saw his man, Lukas. He flicked the cigarette towards a drain cover and watched it gutter.

  Not something he would have wished to do, but not something to be avoided. He dialled. He did it because a kidnapping was involved, and a boy had been brought into the extended family of Duck’s world. He would have cheapened himself had he not made the call then, there. He had no shame in admitting to himself that he cared.

  He heard a call ring out, and heard it answered.

  He said, ‘Mrs Deacon? Mrs Betty Deacon, yes?… It’s Roddy Johnstone from Ground Force. I won’t beat around… This is a holding call. The position is that I’ve just received confirmation of what we call an “eyeball”. It means that my man has seen your son, seen him physically, at a distance of about forty paces. He’s in reasonable physical condition… Mrs Deacon, we’re a long way from the end of this road. Eddie’s held by an armed man in a housing complex. The authorities are there, and my colleague is with them. He’s very good at what he does. Mrs Deacon, as soon as I have further news I’ll give it you… I shall hope for the best and I shall hope for it very soon, but we’re in uncertain times. Goodnight, Mrs Deacon, and my regards to your husband.’