A Cold Flame

by Aidan Conway

  “I’m not saying that,” Maroni countered. “As far as this Jibril story goes, you’ve got a lead. You’ve done decent work. I’ve never said you weren’t good cops. Foolish maybe and with an incorrigible tendency to keep things from me. Even so, I can see that it’s been quite a job. But if he’s here, he has to be found. That’s worth going for. Can you both live with that?”

  Nice and safe. The foreigner. The evil other. The evil within is always a different story though, isn’t it, thought Rossi. But Maroni was shaping up for something else. The sting in the tail? The bombshell?

  “Like I said,” he began again, “if you two cooperate, there’s a way through the woods on this one but there’s a price to pay, at least in the short term.” He had his hands clasped in front of him on the desk in the bad-news-but-tough-shit pose. Rossi made it easy for him.

  “Suspension?”

  Maroni nodded.

  “On full pay, of course. But yes. Until there’s a let up. It will soften the blow for everyone.”

  “And ‘our’ lead?” said Rossi. “You know it all now. What are you going to do about Jibril?”

  “We’ll take care of that,” said Maroni. “Have faith in me.”

  “Is that with immediate effect?” asked Rossi staring hard at Maroni.

  He seemed to be turning it over. Rossi knew that suspending them was going to make it easier for Maroni. It was the low-maintenance solution to keep the press off his back and God knows who else, but he also knew Maroni was a cop like the rest of them, despite the insulation of institutional necessity surrounding him. He too had taken some risks in his day to get results, and Rossi was counting now on Maroni’s reliving at least some of those moments.

  “I could stall them,” he said then, “for twenty-four hours. But after that it will be public. And you’ll be off. Both of you.”

  Rossi would take that. A quick glance told him Carrara would too. Twenty-four hours wasn’t a lot but it could be enough, if you weren’t too worried about sleeping or anything else that smacked of a normal existence.

  Sixty-One

  So Ali had got his way. Jibril looked on as they laid out and arranged samples of their nearly complete arsenal on a khaki tarpaulin. This was Ali’s moment. The others were gathered. Karim and Yusef, by their attentive silence, showing their reverence for his devil-may-care approach. Would one of them then plant the bomb? In many ways, they were always going to be the kind of guys who would have drifted into a gang, Jibril was sure, if there had been one for them. But this was not Paris or Marseille. Here immigration was still quite new, had been sudden, and as yet remained raw. The ghettoization existed in places, but it was nothing like in the lawless, forgotten banlieues.

  The Roman gangs would never admit them into their ranks, into their closed world. And Karim’s and Yusef’s own communities had not yet shown their teeth or any desire to put together similarly minded criminal outfits. Only the Nigerians, who had come up from Palermo and Napoli, had built well-structured organizations founded on fear, belonging, and omertà. And the Russians, of course, the Chinese too, always. The rest were the powerful home-grown clans: the Calabrians, the Sicilians, the Roma gypsies and the Sinti. Karim and Yusef were still green, yet Jibril could see that they would do anything for Ali, for in him and in his authoritative and dedicated almost maverick professorial role, they had found a brother and a father, respect and glory and value in their lives all rolled into one.

  And the equipment had now suddenly become a reality. The cache that had been delivered under cover of a furniture consignment and which they had before them was enough to wreak havoc in a crowded city. “We can take out dozens,” Ali had said, as he fondled and caressed the automatic weapons, the easily concealed machine pistols, the assault rifles for “open warfare”, as he called it. His fantasy triggered something in Jibril then as he remembered, flickering in his own memory, how he had revered the weapons when he had first begun to believe in a cause. His commanders then had held up the AK47 as a symbol of freedom, a guerilla’s crucifix, the power to turn the tables now in his very hands. Ali wanted to turn the tables on the life of rejection and bitterly confused sense of self that at least in part had made him what he was. In the newspaper headlines and rolling TV news he envisaged, he would finally be a protagonist with an identity that no one could question.

  Jibril’s flashback was neutral, almost comforting at first, but as he watched it, film-like, he also began to feel it mutate dangerously. It was not so far back in the past but he felt already he had lived for a long time and taking life meant living many lives at once. It was a kind of cosmic trap, being the custodian of so much truncated being. And somewhere there, too, was the subdued yearning for lost innocence, the life cut off from him for ever, and with that came the insistent fantasy of ending it all. With an effort he stopped the vision.

  Time was short and running out but at least the day and the time of the attack had been set. Ali continued to pick up and put down the hardware, demonstrating with rapid, almost theatrical gestures the finer points of their functioning. The planned training had been cancelled for fear they might be exposed before they could act. Jibril knew he had a whole afternoon but he’d been lucky. Lucky again. He had made sure that much, at least, had gone his way.

  Sixty-Two

  “So, options?” said Carrara. They’d got takeaway second breakfasts and were in the Alfa, away from prying eyes and ears. The story had come out and even if the content wasn’t damning, it wasn’t good. Torrini would be holding back and using what he had as bargaining chips, and it had all been couched in terms of “conflicting reports”, and “allegations of”, “witnesses are reported as” and so forth. Rossi dipped his wholemeal honey-filled cornetto into his coffee, splashing part of its contents across the front page.

  “Well, we could use having Katia to give us a hand. She’s proved herself already and I think she’s game.”

  Carrara shot him a glance which Rossi chose to ignore.

  “And Gab, remember we’ve still got something there.”

  Rossi nodded as the coffee and carbohydrate combination began to give him the needed boost.

  “And I’ve been doing some thinking about Silvestre,” Rossi said then.

  “Keep thinking,” said Carrara. “He’s a law unto himself.”

  “Slippery bastard, for sure.”

  “An opportunist. The worst kind. You never know what he might have in mind.”

  “Which could maybe work in our favour,” said Rossi. “If he smells an opportunity. His principles are very market-oriented.”

  “He makes me sick,” said Carrara. “He’d sell his own grandmother.”

  Rossi nodded.

  “Agreed, but we’re in a tight spot and I want out. So, shall we get on the road?”

  Carrara took his and Rossi’s takeaway leftovers, stuffed them into the paper bag they had come in and then tossed the lot out into a waiting bin.

  “Not recycling today?” said Rossi as Carrara threw the Alfa into gear and hit the accelerator with more than a hint of generalized rage.

  Sixty-Three

  Ali’s plan was simple and Jibril had allowed him to take the credit. Ali had laughed at its simplicity. “We could do this everyday,” he had said as he helped Karim to adjust the rucksack to comfortably fit his frame and made final checks to the detonators and the timer which would be positioned inside the main charge at the latest possible moment. “Who says we need military explosives?” he said again. “I’m all for do-it-yourself, you know.”

  Ali then helped Karim to slip the rucksack carefully off his back, and they placed it carefully in a corner of the room. Jibril watched, knowing that the device, containing litres of The Mother of Satan, was highly unstable. Yet he stood and observed. Ali was on some other plane, the strength of his death wish growing steadily. For him it had to be a simple matter of time.

  Jibril knew taking public transport to the destination was a risk as a jolt or a sudden impact could potenti
ally cause the bomb to explode prematurely. He had expressed his concerns about this but Ali had won the day. “Whatever happens is the will of Allah,” he had said, closing the discussion.

  Only the detonators could be called actual explosives, in that they were ready-made for the purpose. The supply lines out of the former Yugoslavia were bringing in materials every day – destined either for the criminal gangs of Europe and beyond, or actors in a new political sphere to rival the insanity of the authors of the 1990s conflict which had torn the region and its peoples apart. Ali had picked up his sub-machine gun, was stroking it with admiration.

  “Will we all have one of these, Jibril?” he asked.

  “If you like it, we can get more,” he replied. “Now, let’s run through it again,” he went on, wanting and needing to know that he had left nothing to chance. Ali took up the narrative.

  “We leave the house,” he said, “one by one, with the exception of Karim, who will wait here until we are out of the danger zone. We two,” he continued, indicating Yusef and himself, “will carry dummy rucksacks, and we will go in different directions. We say goodbye to each other outside, in full view, as if we are going on long journeys.” The idea was to confuse any surveillance units and to stretch their resources into trailing three or four possible targets. “Then, when the moment is right, Karim will leave and make his way to the destination. He will leave the bomb in what he judges to be the most effective location but will do so at the agreed time. As soon as he leaves the house the bomb will be live with no option of aborting the attack.” He looked at Karim who was listening, his head down, nodding rhythmically. “If you should run into transport problems, you leave the device wherever you see fit. Damage limitation, for us, understand?”

  Karim looked up nodded and blinked. He was nervous but concealed it well. He was dressed now in light-coloured ripped jeans and a chequered shirt and wrap-round dark glasses pushed back on his head. A bandana completed the disguise. He could have passed for a backpacker from anywhere. Who would suspect him?

  “Are you certain about the call box?” said Jibril. “When did you check it last?”

  “It’s fine,” said Ali. “When Karim has left the target he goes into the department store. He changes and walks out the other door and proceeds to where the phones are. There are several. He chooses one and makes the call and then he disappears but is available if anything should not go to plan. Then you, Jibril, will begin phase two. You and I will be in position, here,” he pointed to the map. “Exactly where the fountain is. I can go round and keep moving, but I will be here on the fountain. When the device detonates there will be confusion, a massive rush in all directions but it’s my calculation that most will flee this way, north.”

  “And then I open up,” said Jibril.

  “Yes,” said Ali. “You hit the police first, the place will be crawling with them, and then you mingle in with the crowd and proceed towards my initial position.”

  “Then you begin firing,” said Jibril. “But we agree to target the police whenever possible. We create chaos among the civilians, but we concentrate on taking out the military targets.”

  “Sending the crowds back in your direction,” said Ali, without acknowledging Jibril’s proviso. He continued.

  “We maintain radio silence for twenty-four hours. No one returns to the flat except Jibril, who will keep it under observation, as agreed. Everyone stays at their respective safe address until notified. Everyone has their alibi. Then we sit back and watch as the city and this country begins to wake up from its idle dreaming.”

  Sixty-Four

  Gab let them into his emporium, greeting them with a toothy smile. He had hired out a lock-up garage next to his apartment building and filled it with a dizzying array of hardware. Nonetheless, it had a homely feel, like a man cave, with its scuffed retro leather divan and kitchen corner with a fridge and an old-fashioned drinks dispenser. All the mod cons necessary for a codebreaker and hacker extraordinaire.

  “Gentlemen, how may I be of assistance?”

  Rossi had a wearied air, his face pale and his cheeks sunken from fatigue. Carrara was already showing signs of mild irritation at the unwanted dose of irony as he tried to rub some of the sleep out of his own eyes.

  “All is not well?”

  “Could be better,” said Rossi looking around for another chair near the computer that he could crash out on. “What have you got for us?” he said, pulling up a wholly inadequate bar stool as Gab sat into his swivel chair and proceeded to rev up his various machines and screens like a pilot preparing for take-off in some cockpit of his own design. The larger of his three screens flickered into life, and Rossi and Carrara looked on as Gab manoeuvred his rollerball mouse.

  “This is all gobbledygook,” he said racing through the frames before stopping, shifting the images then stopping again. “Here,” he said, and turned to them both, “this is all I could get. The blast knocked out one of the cameras though, not both, so that’s the first thing.” He clicked and let the black-and-white images run. It was reasonably coherent time-lapse, students coming and going, a large concentration remaining, frustratingly, not right next to but in a direct line between the camera and where they believed the device had been planted.

  “Not much to see so far,” said Carrara. Then there was the flash, confusion and smoke and then a few more seconds before the video cut out. Rossi did not seem impressed either. Gab, however, was clicking around again.

  “Nothing much there, you’ll agree. Now, take a look at this enhanced version,” he said as he let the images roll for a second time. This time the scene was zoomed out slightly. The far bank of the Tiber was now more visible, cars and vans could be made out passing slowly on the one-way system. “Look there,” he said, drawing their attention to a detail, a shadow to all intents and purposes but moving. He made some more adjustments and the camera eye homed in a little more. It was grainier but had assumed a recognizable shape. The blast again and then the shadow, which Rossi and Carrara could now see was a human form. It appeared to raise something and lower it and, as if nothing untoward had happened, left the scene at walking pace.

  “Show me that again,” said Rossi, getting up and going in closer for all it was worth and studying the images frame by frame now. He reached out and rewound the images himself a third time as Gab surrendered the controls. Rossi looked at Carrara.

  Carrara was still staring at the screen, his face as pale now as Rossi’s.

  “Somebody keeping an eye on things?” said Gab. “Could it be her?”

  “Fifty-fifty,” said Rossi, sipping on an uncharacteristic can of something fizzy courtesy of their host. “Maybe sixty-forty it’s her, even if she is supposed to be dead. But whoever it was, it wasn’t any Middle-Eastern terrorist.”

  “Unless they were working for Middle-Eastern terrorists,” said Gab. “But you’re saying it wasn’t her who went into the ravine back in the winter? In her four-by-four. It was a set-up?”

  Again they watched the morsel of film they had before them.

  “Long hair, binoculars, no surprise. It could all be adding up,” said Rossi.

  “What about DNA?” said Carrara. “Let’s prove it beyond a doubt.”

  Rossi shook his head. He knew there would be genetic material conserved from the postmortem on the body found in the ravine, the body they had initially presumed beyond any doubt to have been that of Marini.

  “How the hell do you propose we get a sample?” said Rossi. “We can’t just barge in and say we think things might not have gone quite as we said they did back then when we were hunting down The Carpenter. Do you mind if we run some tests? And it’s really not the right moment for that kind of explaining, with Silvestre probably caught up in trying to frame us.”

  Carrara was rubbing at his dark stubble and grimacing at the fix they had found themselves in.

  “And you can bet we were watched,” said Rossi, “and tracked when we went into the church to check out the cardinal
’s tomb. The chances are we’ll be watched now. We can’t afford to step out of line. Besides, we’d have to get a sample from Marini’s father or her son. Again, how do you propose doing that? More unfeasible bureaucracy, more deception, and time is, shall we say, decidedly against us.”

  “So we just err on the side of caution?” said Carrara. “We accept that Marini could be alive after all and she might well have had a hand in the university bomb and whatever else.”

  “We have to entertain that as a real possibility,” said Rossi. “I don’t know what her objective is, but either way, someone was coordinating that attack. It’s there to see. Italians planned the bombing, obtained the hardware, planted the device, confirmed its success and then waited for the fallout.”

  Carrara and Rossi stared again at the images, willing some other clue to emerge that might give them a competitive edge.

  “But gentlemen,” began Gab again, “I was almost forgetting. This is indeed your lucky day.”

  “Are you quite sure about that?” said Carrara.

  Gab smiled back. Rossi seemed to have half a concealed smile on his face too.

  “Remember a small matter of some encrypted computer files I managed to filch?”

  “The Marini files?” said Rossi. He had long since given up all hope of getting anywhere with them. It had seemed like a gift, at first, as The Carpenter case had been drawing to its dramatic conclusion and, beginning to suspect Marini could be either knowingly or unknowingly caught up in a double play, he had got Gab to hook up to her computer via a WI-FI hack. They had copied the files but as yet they had remained uncrackable.

  “The ones you said were like trying to open a walnut with your toes?” said Carrara, recalling Gab’s past attempts and frustrations.

  “Yes, indeedy.”

  Gab reached behind him for a smaller laptop.

  “Well, in the face of extreme adversity and with no end in sight, I called in the FDA?”