by James Flynn
Luke could hear a struggle taking place in the doorway but from his position could not see what was happening. He needed to think fast.
“Chung Su … Chung Su, I know you can hear me.” He spoke loudly and in English. “Chung Su, everything is ok, he isn’t going to hurt you. I need you to help me. Here is what I want you to do, first stop fighting, just relax your body … ok?”
Luke listened intensely. After a short time the sound of a muffled struggle subsided and the only sound was the café owner’s panting.
“Ok, good, now the next thing I need is a little harder but I know you can do it. I want you to gently rest against something hard, a wall or a door, then I want you to push the man as hard as possible out into the alleyway. I am going to count to three, then shout Go … you push as hard as you can.”
Luke hoped Chung Su understood him; he gave her a few seconds as he bent his knees slightly and focused on the area just in front of the doorway.
“One … two … three … GO!”
For a millisecond Luke feared she had not heard him, and then a loud grunt was followed by the guttural swearing of the owner. The moment the owner stumbled out into the open Luke sprang into action. He kicked hard and low into the back of the knee joint, using the owner’s momentum to then wrap his left arm around his neck and take control of the knife with his right, throwing it to the ground. Luke then used his right arm to lock under his left, creating a vice grip around the owner’s neck. He began pumping his feet backwards, dragging the man off-balance and tightening his grip. They hit a bump in the concrete and both men toppled backwards, crashing onto the cold floor, but Luke did not let go.
The spit and guttural expletives were now rolling into coughs and gasps. The owner’s movements were panicked, frenzied movements of a human being watching death approach. Still Luke clung on, the muscles in his arms were burning. Gradually the writhing lost energy, the coughs were now just short, sharp gasps. The owner eventually lost consciousness.
“Stop it …”
Luke glanced up and saw Chung Su with the knife in her hand, her eyes were red.
“Please stop … he doesn’t deserve to die.”
Luke didn’t let go, he looked into Chung Su’s eyes, her face half in shadow. No, he has to be neutralised, he is a witness.
“Please … please.” Chung was pleading.
Luke fought to keep focused, images flashed through his mind, voices played in his ears. No, nothing is more important than the mission …
“I am begging you; he does not need to die.”
Luke looked up, but he no longer saw Chung Su. Stood in front of him in the grey light was a beautiful woman with wavy blonde hair, her face was full of compassion and her blue eyes ignited in him a warm sense of comfort. She spoke.
You don’t want to do it Alex.
A clattering sound of train wheels screeching across tracks, somewhere in a distant haze, hit Luke’s ears …
“Stop it, stop it … please.” Chung Su was now crying as she watched the man’s life slip away.
Luke looked up at Chung Su, then back to the man. He let his arms drop and pushed the owner off. Standing, he stared at Chung Su.
“Is he dead?” She did not want the answer.
Luke spoke quietly. “No. We need to move, let’s go.” Luke took the knife out of Chung Su’s hand, wiped the handle with his shirt and buried it deep in a bin liner.
Shaking her head, Chung Su stumbled along behind.
40.
The Alfa Romeo 159 was tucked away down a side street. Its white and red paintwork did not make it the most inconspicuous of cars. Beltrano rolled his Mazda CX-7 gently past the Carabinieri patrol car, gliding to the end of the road where he parked up. He checked his mirror. Once satisfied, he clicked open his door and stepped down onto the road.
Walking slowly up to the patrol car, he tapped on the window. Delvechi flicked a switch and the door unlocked. Beltrano took his place inside.
“Good morning, Sir.”
Beltrano did not respond, he kept his gaze down on the dashboard.
“Sir, I know what you are thinking …”
“Do you? Enlighten me.”
Delvechi shifted in the driver’s seat, attempting to negotiate his knees either side of the steering wheel. “Well … I assume you have seen the news?”
Beltrano stayed motionless.
“Sir, I just felt … we needed an edge, and we needed quick results … I … I just thought normally we would flush suspects out, close down their options. So I leaked a little information to the news networks.”
“Is that so?”
Delvechi didn’t know what else to say on the subject.
“What is so urgent?” Beltrano asked. “I said to meet at L’Aquila.”
Delvechi smiled. “You are going to want to know this, Sir, this morning I wasn’t in bed as you said on your voicemail, I was in the station hoping for some tip offs to come in from the coverage. We got pretty much nothing …”
Beltrano scoffed under his breath.
“But we did get one call; it was from a café. A man was rambling on about some fight or assault that he had been involved in … he wasn’t being very coherent, but he insisted the police needed to get involved …”
Beltrano began playing with his lighter in his coat pocket.
“The man said that there had been a fight between him and his friends and one other man, the aggressor … really bad stuff apparently …”
“I assume this is leading somewhere?”
“He said the man was with the Asian girl from the news …” Delvechi let the words hang.
Beltrano looked at Delvechi for the first time. He noted that the sling had been taken off; under his sleeve he could see Delvechi now wore only a dressed bandage. “What time did the call come in?”
“Just before I called you, Sir.”
“Who else knows?”
“No one. By chance I took the call, and I figured you would want us to react first, so I didn’t share anything … just called you and drove out here.”
Beltrano softened. “The café?”
“End of the road and turn right.” Delvechi gave a smug smile. “I had a casual walk past earlier … not exactly the finest establishment.”
Beltrano didn’t indulge him. “Let’s go see what we can find out.”
They both went to exit the patrol car when Beltrano suddenly turned back on his junior.
“If you ever make a move without my permission on this case again, I will have you stationed in the middle of Outer Mongolia for the rest of time, understand?”
Delvechi nodded and they both stepped out.
41.
Chung Su sat alone in the car. She felt isolated in every sense of the word. In an immediate sense she was sat in a tiny stolen car surrounded by someone else’s life: magazines lay sprawled in the footwell, various music discs were crammed into the central partition between driver and passenger and the smell was one of a lived-in machine. Her captor had broken in and started the car in the time it took her to even process what was happening.
Robert Reid had driven them directly out of the town and navigated a range of windy roads that climbed up and away from Teramo. After around fifteen minutes they had stopped where the car now sat. In the morning silence, confronted with the rural winter scene, Chung Su couldn’t help but think of her family: her mother and grandfather was the extent of the family she had. Her father had disappeared before Chung Su reached two years old; all she ever knew was that he had been summoned to the Southern border within the De-Militarised Zone and had never returned.
Chung Su had grown up close to the DMZ stretching along the border between North and South Korea. Does it affect a person living so close to hatred? She had always felt it must do, somewhere deep inside it creates unrest, an ever-shifting anxiety that seeps into the soul. Looking far into the distance, the rolling Abruzzi hills framed her thoughts; they were so peaceful, so unfettered by pain or unease. Chung
Su caught the tears in her eyes, blinking away the moisture. The streets of Teramo had been gentle and peaceful. She saw herself sweeping in like a demon. Stop it, Stop it, stop it. She needed to focus her thoughts elsewhere, focus on positives, lighter thoughts.
Grandfather …
***
Luke pushed the SIM card into place, and clicked the battery in over the top, replacing the back cover securely. He pressed down the power button and the familiar mobile operator logo flashed up. He left it for a while; no voicemail or text message symbol came up so he pressed the green dial button on the only number in the phone.
“Hello, Nissell & Randall?”
“Hi, I currently have money invested with one of your offshore departments.”
“Which department please?”
“Italy.”
“Branch?”
“Abruzzo.”
“Please hold.”
Luke waited for the high-pitched singular beep to stop and Davison’s voice to come on. But after several seconds Davison still hadn’t got on the line. Suddenly, the clipped female voice came back on. “I am sorry Sir, no one is available right now, we shall give you a call back shortly.”
The line went dead. Luke had not been expecting it and he looked inquisitively at the screen. He knew the procedure, if it was stated that someone would call back shortly then things were serious. It meant that Davison did not want to communicate in casual code. If he was calling back then it would be using their satellite system, bouncing the signal across a wide array of different satellites, putting any unwanted traces into an ongoing loop, completely secure.
The phone pinged into life, the screen flashed on and off but no number came up. The frame gently vibrated against Luke’s palm. He answered. “Hello, Robert speaking?”
“Temple, it’s Davison.”
The familiar East London tone came through clearly.
“We are fully encrypted so I hope you are somewhere you can talk freely.”
“Yeah.”
“The girl with you?”
“She is sat in a car twenty feet away.”
“Ok. We are exhausting options our end. I don’t know what your strategy is and at this point I don’t care. I know you are now aware how big this is. There are more players than we first thought so we are trying to readjust.”
Davison went silent; Luke didn’t say a word.
“I will level with you Luke, we didn’t see this coming. Vittorio’s disappearance was the catalyst for an unravelling of revelations that we were not prepared for. When he went missing we knew that there was work being done at the facility that was of European importance … but this … this we did not know.”
Luke could hear Davison was frustrated that Group 9 did not have a full view; it was what he lived for, total control.
“In what directions are you looking?” Luke asked.
“Because of your new best friend we are looking hard at the People’s Republic but you and I both know it can be like a black hole.”
“What have you got on her?”
Luke heard Davison take a breath. “She is a scientist … we are being told she is nothing more than that …”
“But?”
“She is definitely a scientist … fully legitimate … but I don’t like her work history, especially for the last eight years or so.”
“Why?”
“We can’t get a grip on it. She is down as working for the main government physics research lab in Pyongyang, but we cannot pin down exactly what she has been working on.”
“What are your thoughts?”
“I don’t know, but I know when I start hearing words like physics research associated with hostile dictatorships I get very nervous indeed.”
“There is more than one entity involved. My guess would be Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan ... maybe Syria.”
“That just a swing?”
“No, seen them, heard them, they are prepped and armed.”
Davison let out a low growl. “You have just named four entities that could fit a thousand profiles. They are the standard go-to players.”
“And?”
Davison didn’t answer.
“There are too many coincidences in all of this … and I don’t believe in …” Luke was cut off.
“Coincidences, I know.” Davison again went quiet. Luke looked over at the small white Fiat 500 that he had stolen, he could see Chung Su’s outline.
“We cannot afford to put anyone else on the ground with you, so you are our man at the moment. Can you prove there are more parties involved than just North Korea?” Davison’s voice was tense with anxiety.
“Not yet but I’ll do what I can. Instinct is telling me the girl is a sideshow, which would put the Republic as a sideshow as well.”
“But they are involved, that is pretty clear, and we have to find out what the hell is going on! What have you found on Vittorio?”
Luke knew not to release everything, not even to Davison.
“Not much …”
“Vittorio is key! He is key! Where the hell is he? You think he is dead?”
“Probably …”
“Really? Hmmm. I have a whole team thumbing through what professor Brun revealed …” Luke felt Davison bristle. “We don’t have the expertise to verify. What’s the girl saying?”
“Not a lot.”
“Shit Luke, you are an intelligence operative, give me something!”
Luke said nothing, there was nothing Davison could do. He knew that he was being told he was on his own so he may as well keep it that way.
“This is big, I don’t need to tell you that. We are sharing nothing with anyone at the moment, this is why we exist. But shit Luke … shit. This OPERA stuff … there are vultures swarming, and I don’t like it one bit.”
“Sure.”
“Ok … one thing I can do for you is provide some accessories. Ready for the location?”
“Go.”
“Corso San Giorgio, 36, IT64100.”
“Got it.” Luke committed it to memory, no trail.
“They will be there within two hours.”
Luke considered asking how Davison knew about what Brun had revealed, but what was the point? It changed nothing.
“Luke …” Davison hesitated. “I am no good with all of this science babble. Level with me … how bad could it potentially be?”
Luke thought a moment about the question. There was no point in lying, not to Davison.
“Start brushing up on that science babble because this is a game changer.”
“Then I don’t need to tell you that you are free to do whatever it takes. This isn’t a reconnaissance mission anymore, we need to get pre-emptive. You have to unravel this. You hear me, this is why you exist … find and neutralise. I don’t give a shit how you do it, but get the job done. Understood?”
Before Luke could answer the line went dead. He processed the conversation and ran through his options, they were few.
He walked back to the car and beckoned Chung Su out. She clicked the door open and stretched as she stood.
“Let’s go.”
“You say this very often …”
Luke gave a half smile. “I like to keep moving.”
“Yes, I noticed. Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“Are we just leaving this here? Anyone can drive past, the police can find it here very quickly.”
Luke turned and stared at her. Chung Su felt herself go red. She had surprised herself with her thinking. Perhaps she was taking to this life more than she realised.
“It’s fine.”
They marched down the road. The morning was bitterly cold and the wind blew unhindered across the open plains. They reached a sharp bend where houses staggered up the hillside; Luke led Chung Su across the road and up to Professor Brun’s front gate.
42.
Delvechi and Beltrano walked side by side back toward their cars. Beltrano had not said a word since leaving the
café, he was navigating his own thoughts and Delvechi didn’t need to be psychic to know his boss didn’t want to chat.
Beltrano had interrogated the five men in the café as if they were murder suspects, showing absolutely no concern or sympathy for the victims. The five men were all construction workers by trade, none too bright, but not weak. Yet they all agreed they had been confronted by one man, the man who was with the girl from the radio.
Beltrano had pushed hard to get details. How tall was he? What language did he speak? Was the girl hurt? Was the man hurt? What weapons was he carrying? Did he seem scared or calm? How many times did he hit you? Did the girl help him? Delvechi did not doubt the men’s unanimous testimony, which meant Beltrano had been right, it was a professional they were dealing with.
Delvechi felt a buzz. Imagine wrapping this up as my first assignment. Images of him being applauded by his superiors gave him a tingle. It was starting to become obvious that some dangerous people were interested in the OPERA experiment. But what has the girl to do with all of this?
Suddenly a mobile phone ringtone blared to life. “I need to get this.” Beltrano grunted and stalked off around the corner. The call was quick. “Something has come up. I want you to do a door to door around here.” Delvechi gave a look of confusion. “We need to know how they got away from here, my guess is car, so put a call into the station and ask them to cross-reference any stolen car reports with this area.”
“But I can do that back at the station, Sir.” Delvechi tried to keep his voice upbeat so as not to anger Beltrano, but he couldn’t see the point in a door to door.
“No, you need to do a door to door … they may not have left the area.” Beltrano left no doubt that it was an order.
“I’ll make some enquiries. Who was on the phone?”
Beltrano was staring down the road, lost in his own thoughts. “No one ... report to me immediately if anything comes up.”
“Ok, but where are you …”
Beltrano was already walking back to his car before Delvechi could finish his sentence. Scratching his bandage, he shook his head. Goddamn it! The other two gunmen were gnawing at him, eating away at his thoughts. Delvechi felt the energy rising in him. He had not joined the force to sit by and let others mess up … mess up his glory.