The Namesake cab-3

by Conor Fitzgerald

  ‘One of those tricky lies that you can’t challenge without revealing that you, too, are lying,’ said Blume.

  ‘Right. So everyone is pretending that we need to attach an undercover police officer to him for purposes that we would prefer not to talk about. The pretend undercover agent is you, of course.’

  ‘What’s my cover story?’ asked Blume.

  ‘You are going to tell him you are investigating toxic dumping, but obviously you can’t say much. That’s why the material I gave you on Friday night should be enough for you to bluff with. You know a bit about the subject now. You tell him that your mission is secret, and that your bosses thought it would be good to have you join him and pretend to be one of two German tourists travelling into Campania, the Amalfi coast.’

  ‘He won’t believe that if he’s smart.’

  ‘He wore a false moustache and missed a stakeout by his own colleague so he could visit a Mafia boss just out of jail. It is possible he is not smart at all.’

  ‘They’ve had three days already to find out what this Hoffmann is up to. He doesn’t sound as if he’s going to fall for my undercover stuff. If he starts asking me about the Camorra, that file you gave me the other night was pretty thin even for bluffing purposes.’

  ‘I realize that. If at any point you feel that he should simply be stopped, let us know. Bear in mind also that we or his bosses in the BKA might come to the same decision and intervene. But in the meantime, why not see what we can find out? I see this as a perfect opportunity for you to get a feel for what working undercover might be like.’

  Blume looked doubtful.

  ‘The best way to see what Hoffmann is up to is to let him start doing it without letting on. Covertly track where he goes, who he meets. Not assign someone to him.’

  ‘That’s exactly what the BKA wanted, but we really can’t let that happen. We can’t have a German agent apparently freelancing in a delicate area, just ahead of the Ndrangheta summit, too. Our first idea was just to stop him. Assigning someone to him was a compromise, and we only agreed to that once we were as sure as we could be this was not some sort of set-up.’

  ‘Good job you trust them, I’d hate to see what distrust looks like.’

  ‘Use that phone to report to us and keep it on you at all times so we can see where you are.’

  Blume turned to the BKA chief and said in English, ‘Your rogue agent will cancel whatever plans he had as soon as I turn up.’

  ‘ Ich bitte Sie, das ist doch offenkundig! ’ Weissmann muttered something else that Blume failed to catch, then laughed, stood up and, for some reason, gave Massimiliani a blow on the back, presumably intended as a friendly gesture. ‘Sorry, I must speak English.’

  Massimiliani had claimed he liked the German commander, but Blume caught a flash of outrage on his face at being thumped so heartily on the back.

  ‘I just said it was obvious he would have changed his plans,’ explained Weissmann, ‘if his plans are something he means to keep secret, which they may not be. It is also possible that he has something so urgent that he means to do it anyhow, or it is possible that by putting you in his company we are preventing him from doing something. We will continue to examine his files and movements until we find out something.’

  ‘Why not just follow him discreetly?’ asked Blume. He could see Massimiliani was annoyed he was repeating the question to Weissmann. ‘I mean before now,’ he specified.

  ‘That is what we have been doing since Friday evening,’ said Weissmann. ‘But we have been monitoring him only at a distance, using his phone and credit card, without the direct involvement of any Italian police. He has been in the Tyrol, like many Germans, but now he is heading south.’

  ‘You called him,’ said Blume. ‘So now he knows his movements are being observed. Frankly, this does not seem to have been particularly brilliant.’

  Weissmann grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. He had a fat silver ring on the base of his thumb and a tiny cobweb tattoo on his palm. ‘It was so dumb, yeah, so dumb.’

  But it was not so dumb. To follow a rogue agent in Italy, the BKA either had to launch a large and expensive surveillance operation using their own people, and risk getting caught and losing trust with the Italians, or they had to rely on a team of Italian police doing the surveillance for them on one of their own men, which he could see was not an attractive prospect either. Add to that the fact that Blume and this Hoffmann character seemed to be tilting more or less in the same direction against the same locale in Germany, and were both prepared to use unorthodox and secretive ways to do it, and they seemed made for one another. Blume also realized, with a flush of shame, that he and the German must also appear as two fools on an errand. Hoffmann’s disguise had been penetrated at once, Blume’s forging of Maria Itria’s transcript was discovered within hours.

  Weissmann gave him a friendly nod and, for good measure, another thumbs-up.

  ‘Babysit him and talk to him,’ continued Massimiliani in Italian. ‘Try to find out whatever you can while we and the BKA try to find out about this new connection between Domenico Megale and the Camorra.’

  Weissmann came up and extended his hand, but vertically, like he wanted either to high-five or do one of those hand-grab, shoulder-bump, buddy-buddy moves that young people seemed to favour.

  Blume chose to ignore it. Weissmann dropped his hand by his side, smiled understandingly, then aimed a left-handed punch at Blume’s bicep.

  ‘I appreciate this, Commissioner. You will do good work.’

  Blume left the room, rubbing his arm.

  20

  Rome

  A dip in the terrain outside the perimeter fence of the DCSA compound gave the illusion that the area towards which they were headed was contiguous with the car park surrounding the IKEA emporium about half a kilometre away.

  They left the air-conditioned building, and Blume thought the heat outside was not as bad as he had feared, but a few paces and the soaking sensation on his back reminded him that Roman heat was cumulative as well as humid. The no-man’s land that separated them from IKEA was filled with yellowing fennel, run to seed, which clogged the air with a scent of hay and aniseed that threatened to make him sneeze. As he kept up with Massimiliani, who walked at a quick pace, he caught flickering glimpses through the railings of broken ancient Roman brickwork and low mounds, beneath which lay tombs emptied of their treasures.

  ‘You were meant to hand in your phone, Blume.’

  ‘What’s this thing about my phone?’

  ‘It’s standard undercover procedure. You get a phone full of innocuous-looking numbers, nothing that connects back, nothing that can compromise.’

  ‘I see,’ said Blume. ‘Except I’m not going properly undercover, am I?’

  Massimiliani hesitated.

  ‘Am I?’ said Blume.

  ‘No,’ said Massimiliani finally. ‘We considered it. We even set in process a procedure to get you some different ID… but you’ve never been trained. A three-day course will do at a pinch… Just try to sell Hoffmann the idea you are working undercover and have more to hide than him.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Great! There it is: that camper van parked under the pink mimosa.’

  ‘There is no such thing as a pink mimosa,’ said Blume. ‘That’s a Persian silk tree.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘That’s its proper name,’ said Blume. He pointed to the vehicle underneath the tree. ‘Look at the state of that piece of junk. Thirty years old if it’s a day. It’s hard to tell how much of that brown and orange is design from the ’70s or whenever, and how much is rust. I’d be surprised to see it move.’

  ‘It’s a Fiat Hymer,’ said Massimiliani.

  ‘Where’s the car we’re using?’ said Blume. ‘You guys have a load of great cars confiscated in asset seizures. If I could choose…’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you understood. You’re going with him in the van. It helps to hide your identity and his. A camper van
is just the sort of thing a pair of German tourists would use. Two men in a saloon car: police; two men in an camper van…’

  ‘Queer,’ said Blume.

  Massimiliani nodded sympathetically. ‘I can see how you might think that,’ he said. ‘But think of it as an advantage in undercover terms. I don’t expect you to sleep in there with him. I’ve made some bookings in a nice place, a hotel in Positano,’ said Massimiliani. ‘Separate rooms,’ he added.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Blume. ‘Also, is it normal for people with camper vans to use hotels?’

  ‘Probably not, but I figured you might not want to go along with what Hoffmann professes was his original plan, which was a campsite in Salerno.’

  ‘I’ve never been inside a camper van,’ said Blume. ‘You?’

  ‘Dear God, no,’ said Massimiliani.

  Despite its age, the motor home had evidently been well looked after. ‘No one in the cockpit or whatever the front bit is called,’ said Blume. ‘But the engine’s running. What’s that about?’

  ‘He must be in the back,’ said Massimiliani. ‘I suppose the engine is for the air-conditioning.’ He knocked on the side of the van, and the door swung open.

  The man who stepped out was painfully thin, remarkably tall and, worst of all, bare-chested, apparently feeling unselfconscious about his cream-white skin and the wispy strawberry-coloured hairs that branched out beneath his nipples. His hair was fiery red, and his arms, neck, throat and face were covered in long brown freckles. He was barefoot, and as he touched the hot ground, he winced, showing teeth that seemed glassy and translucent, and were surrounded by an excess of gum.

  ‘You are the man whom I must accompany?’ asked the German in English.

  ‘That’s me. Commissioner Blume, Alec Blume.’ He reluctantly held out his hand, expecting the German’s hand to be sweaty, but it was perfectly dry and the handshake seemed normal enough: as robust and unenthusiastic as his own.

  ‘Konrad Hoffmann. We can go now. I have been waiting too long already.’

  The German’s English pronunciation was almost perfect, slightly American even.

  Blume turned to Massimiliani and, speaking Italian, said, ‘I get into this freakmobile from the ’70s and we drive down to Positano. That’s it?’

  Instead of answering him, Massimiliani turned to the German who, thankfully, had retired to fetch a white T-shirt and was pulling it over his head. He stood there watching them for a while, then climbed into the cab, pointedly slammed shut the door, and sat in the driver’s seat gunning the motor.

  ‘Oh,’ said Massimiliani. ‘Almost forgot…’ He pulled an envelope from his inside pocket and handed it to Blume. ‘Cash. That’s to pay the hotel and expenses. You can sign for it when you get back.’

  ‘I didn’t bring an overnight bag,’ said Blume.

  ‘Did I not mention you would need one?’

  ‘You didn’t even mention the journey.’

  ‘Sorry. We only decided on our tactics definitely this morning, while you were in the conference room.’

  ‘But the idea was there since Friday?’ said Blume.

  ‘Yes,’ said Massimiliani. ‘I am so used to working on a need-to-know basis…’

  ‘That you can’t even tell someone to bring a change of clothes?’

  ‘That’s one of the reasons I gave you that money.’

  ‘Underpants money. Great.’

  The camper van gave a blast of its horn.

  ‘See?’ said Massimiliani. ‘Leave a German in the sun for a bit and he turns into an Italian. I bet he never hit his horn outside a police headquarters in Dusseldorf. He’s not going out of that gate without my clearance or without you. By the way, I’ve had your car sent back to your station at Collegio Romano.’

  ‘How thoughtful of you,’ said Blume. ‘At least promise me that if you find out anything useful about this guy and why he went to visit Megale, you’ll let me know.’

  ‘We’ll keep you informed, you keep us informed. Enjoy your trip.’

  Blume climbed into the camper van beside the German who had had the decency also to put on a pair of white trainers. As soon as he was in, the security gate started to roll slowly open.

  ‘This is a farce,’ said Konrad, revving the engine in a threatening manner, but then driving out of the gate with exceeding care.

  ‘I agree,’ said Blume.

  ‘I want you to know that this camper van was built in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell. I bought it second-hand in 1990.’

  ‘World Cup year. You guys won. Unless you’re East German. Did you buy it to come down here to see the matches?’

  ‘That was one reason.’

  Blume reflected for a moment. ‘Why do you think I care when this camper was made?’

  ‘You said it was from the 1970s.’

  ‘You mean when I was talking to Captain Massimiliani. True, I did say that. It was for rhetorical effect. I also remember saying it in Italian. So this is your way of telling me you understand Italian and I had better watch my mouth?’

  Hoffmann turned to look at him. The bright sun through the dirty windscreen illuminated the tips of his pale eyelashes in a way that made Blume think of insect wings.

  ‘My spoken Italian is good even though it is not a useful language to speak. My comprehension is perfect. For your sake I have decided we can use English.’ Hoffmann signalled right. The camper wobbled and squeaked as he moved into the next lane.

  ‘For my sake?’

  ‘You are American-born, I am informed.’

  ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘His name is Weissmann.’

  ‘Yes, I met him.’

  ‘He is not my commander. He is from Abteilung IK. International Coordination. That is not my department, so he is not my boss.’

  ‘Is he your superior officer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Blume. Hoffmann started to reply, but Blume interrupted: ‘No, don’t take this exit.’

  ‘I was told I could continue with my trip as planned, now you are telling me I cannot?’

  ‘I want you to stop by my house first. It won’t take too long,’ said Blume. ‘It’s nearby. I have a suitcase packed and waiting by the door. It’ll take me three minutes once we’re there.’

  ‘ Unter der Bedingung dass, ich bereit zu warten bin.’

  ‘Of course you’ll wait for me, Hoffmann. I trust you.’

  ‘You understand German?’

  ‘I worked in a BMW factory in Munich in my youth. Every summer, almost all summer, for five years. It got me through college. I don’t speak it well, but that’s fine. It is not a useful language.’

  21

  Rome

  Blume grabbed an empty backpack, then opened his wardrobe only to find almost no clothes there. He was three or four washing loads behind. The only viable clothes, along with his favourite possessions, were locked in the cream-coloured hard-shelled suitcase which dated from the days before someone had thought to attach wheels to luggage. It was even older than Hoffmann’s camper van. He grabbed some socks and underwear and stuffed them into the backpack, then, willing blood and power into his biceps, finally lifted the suitcase and carried it out of the apartment. He had imagined this action several times in his mind, thinking that once the suitcase passed the threshold he would have made an irrevocable decision to move out of his apartment and in with Caterina. He was relieved to discover that it was not so.

  He dragged the suitcase across the courtyard and out the front gate, making sure his arm and not his back was taking the enormous strain. As he made his way down the street towards the camper van, his phone started ringing, and he cursed volubly, to hide his relief at having an excuse to drop the weight and answer. But when he saw Caterina’s name on the display, his relief turned to anxiety. He hit the hang-up key with his thumb and carried the suitcase the rest of the way. Hoffmann left the cab, opened the side door, and stood inside waiting to receive the suitcase.

  ‘Thanks,’ sai
d Blume. He counted a one-two in his head and one-two out loud as he swung it up, anticipating the pleasure of the sudden release of the weight. Hoffmann caught it with excessive nonchalance and staggered backwards, looking gratifyingly shocked at the weight of the thing.

  ‘How long do you think we are going to be travelling for?’ asked Hoffmann.

  ‘I packed it for a different reason,’ said Blume. He did not feel like adding any more but if he was supposed to find out as much as he could about Hoffmann, he needed to make an effort to seem friendly. ‘It’s been there for some time. I’m supposed to be moving in with my girlfriend.’

  ‘Girlfriend. Ah. That’s good. Have you been with her for long?’

  ‘A while,’ said Blume. ‘She’s a colleague.’

  ‘Super. So you see each other all the time.’ Konrad stepped out and closed the camper door, then locked it.

  ‘Yes. Being always in contact with her is…’ His phone rang again.

  ‘You can answer that,’ said Hoffmann. Blume glanced at it, saw Caterina’s name, and cut it off. ‘It’s stopped. Look, can I just check something in my case before we go?’

  ‘Inside the camper?’ Hoffmann’s blue eyes widened in exaggerated surprise.

  Reluctantly, he unlocked the door and Blume stepped inside. He noted two matching soft leather suitcases nestling against each other in the back, and beside them, his own oversized and antiquated cream one. The interior was furnished with plastic wood and the metal edges with fake wood-grain siding, which suddenly disinterred a buried memory of a Buick station wagon someone’s mother used to drive. He remembered sitting in the back, his bare legs stuck to the vinyl bench seats, as the car, an enormous thing, glided down the freeway like a fat boat on a muddy river. In Europe, you could always feel the rumble of the wheels. You were always aware of the surface of the road.

  Stuck to the fake wood-board above the curtain that separated the living area from the front cab was a photo of a young woman. To judge from the pale-blue tint that had washed away most of the bright colours, it was at least fifteen years old. The girl was blonde, smiling, and possibly pretty, but the flat colour and absence of shadow made it hard to form a clear idea of what she was like. She was standing in front of a camper van, which, Blume guessed, was the one he was standing in.