Walking Into the Ocean

by David Whellams

  “Gentlemen, first things first. Don’t worry about losing Lasker. I’ve been searching for him for weeks and never came close. Let’s start by you taking me through your surveillance.”

  The two men were mollified by Peter’s introduction, though they kept a wary eye on Albanoni. Bahti, the evident leader of the pair, sat up straight. “We have been watching your man for seventy-two hours, maybe a bit less. Rotating shifts, twelve-and-twelve.”

  “Back it up a bit,” Peter interjected. “How did you get the alert in the first place?”

  Albanoni answered. “Three days ago, your office cabled a list of names that appeared on British and EU export manifests for three automobiles headed for Malta. We checked for the matching import stamps here on Malta, and we found them; they fit the cars’ description. The local signature was in the name Herman Willemsea, and the Customs official recalled that the person showed a Maltese passport in that particular name. We have checked. There is no citizen of Malta with that name.”

  Bahti jumped in, eager for some credit for his and his partner’s initiative. “Your office told us that Lasker could be in Valletta using one of the names connected to the cars. We decided to check hotel registrations for the last week. Hotels here are required to make these available to the authorities. We found him.”

  “But the hotels don’t retain passports?”

  “No,” Bahti said, “but he was registered at a particular hotel under the name Herman Willemsea, and he showed a passport with that name on it. He never identified himself as André Lasker, and there was no sign of a Lasker passport either at the hotel or at Customs.”

  The detectives created an expectant pause. “You see what happened, Chief Inspector?” Bahti went on. It was a test. There was a huge contradiction here.

  “I do,” Peter replied. “Do I have this right? Someone with the false name Willemsea signed the import documents several months ago. But not the same person who used the passport at the hotel.”

  The one called Korman smiled for the first time. “Right. Mr. Lasker had another, probably British, fake passport that he used to enter Malta, and then someone gave him the Willemsea passport when he arrived, to use while he was here.”

  “And therefore,” Peter added, “someone had the skill to alter passport photographs, and manufacture fresh passports on short notice. This is a sophisticated operation.”

  “We began surveillance,” Bahti said. “We managed to observe the suspect up close in the lobby. He matched the photograph sent to us by Europol of Mr. Lasker. Not a great picture, but clear enough.”

  “The same picture was distributed by Interpol and by Scotland Yard,” Albanoni added, unhelpfully.

  “We were told not to arrest him yet, until you got here,” Korman said.

  Bahti continued. “We believed that if he abandoned the hotel, there were few places he could hide in Sliema, or even in Valletta. And our people at the airport were on alert for the Willemsea passport.”

  The flaw in their assumptions was obvious, but Peter restrained himself. Lasker had employed a third passport, though possibly the same one he presented upon entry, to flee the country. Either way, the only name they knew was Willemsea.

  “When did you lose him?”

  “This morning,” Bahti said. “The desk clerk was instructed to watch for our man. They have a small breakfast room on the entry floor. He came down at his usual time, had coffee and fruit, and read the International Herald Tribune.”

  “He went out the back,” Korman added.

  Peter turned to Albanoni. “Does everyone have his picture?”

  “Yes, but why are you asking that?”

  “Because I think Lasker flew out of Luga today, using a separate passport.”

  “A third one? Well,” Albanoni said defensively, “our Customs Officers were told to watch for the man in the picture.”

  “What flights leave between, say, 9:00 a.m. and mid-afternoon?”

  Korman was the only one who had the answer. “Air Malta to London, British Airways to Heathrow, Ryanair to Barcelona, Alitalia to Rome and Lufthansa to Frankfurt. A few charters returning home to the Continent.”

  “What about Ryanair to Pisa?” Bahti asked.

  “Not today.”

  It was intriguing to guess at Lasker’s preferred destination. Peter believed that the mechanic wouldn’t take the direct route back to England — namely, the Heathrow flight — and thereby risk the predictable tight screening at customs. Luton or Gatwick were no less fastidious but, with a disguise, he might have a better chance to get through. Lasker might also have flown to the continental hub that had the most connectors to the U.K.

  “Well,” Peter sighed, “let’s check the most and least likely destinations, and narrow from there. Can we call up the Ryanair site on the web?”

  Bahti smiled. “You want to see how he can reach Britain the easiest?”

  They trooped down to an open area in the police building where Bahti and Korman had their desks. Each was piled with reports and telephone messages. Bahti tapped the keyboard on the desktop at his station, and the Ryanair homepage came onto the screen. He pressed another key and the destination map unfolded. He clicked on Barcelona and the classic starburst of lines flew out from the Spanish city to a number of European cities, including London.

  “Okay,” Albanoni said, “let’s contact security at Barcelona. Somebody needs to go to the airport to see if anyone of Lasker’s description got on the Ryanair to Spain, and check the Rome and Frankfurt flights. I will call Europol in The Hague and Interpol in Lyon.”

  He was about to dispatch both detectives to the airport, when Peter interceded. “Wait a moment. Do you have the documents covering the three automobiles that Willemsea imported to Malta?”

  All three nodded. “We have them in the Lasker dossier,” Bahti said.

  “Is there a local destination for the cars, and address?”

  Bahti understood. “Yes. There must be a Maltese address identified on the forms. Only a Maltese can legally import.”

  They made another journey down the hall, to Albanoni’s file cabinet. The detectives were a bit uncomfortable being in the boss’s office. They dug out the dog-eared shipping forms and discovered that the address at the bottom of all three was the same.

  “We all know him,” Korman said.

  “Him?” Peter said

  “He is in the import-export trade. All kinds of goods. Sylvio Kamatta. He has an office on the harbour.”

  “Is he reputable?” Peter said. The detectives smiled and shook their heads.

  “Is he known to deal in forged passports?” Peter added. There was no answer but the two street detectives were already reaching for their coats.

  Korman and Bahti were assigned to take Peter to track down Kamatta at his office, which was located near the adjacent waterfront of Vittoriosa, while the deputy commissioner went off to find men to handle the airport. This arrangement suited Peter, who preferred to have the two plainclothes officers with him when he interviewed the suspect. Peter understood the reality that there was always at least one tough kingpin at the centre of every elaborate fraud. The interrogation of Kamatta wasn’t going to be polite. They needed to pick up the Lasker trail as fast as possible.

  The plan went awry almost immediately. They assumed that Kamatta could be traced through his harbourfront office, a short trip from police headquarters, and so, instead of calling ahead, the three detectives, Korman driving, hustled over to the docks. The office was planted on the second floor of a boxy, nondescript block set back a hundred metres from the water. A woman who looked as if nothing, and certainly not three grim policemen, could impress her occupied a desk and chair in the bleak space. The only decoration was a bulletin board that covered one wall and served as Kamatta’s invoicing system. Peter scanned the squibs and sticky notes while the woman stared without emotion. Bahti would play bad cop. Korman stood in the doorway, pretty much blocking out the light.

  “Where is your boss
?” Bahti said in English, for Peter’s benefit.

  “On vacation.” She replied, with a heavy Maltese inflection.

  She spoke in a smoker’s rasp. Her creased face was heavily tanned. Bahti and the woman then conducted an argument in the Maltese language. It grew louder and more threatening on both sides, although there could be no doubt, in her mind or theirs, that Bahti would get his way. Peter understood that Bahti was warning her of a night in jail if she failed to cooperate.

  Bahti turned to Peter and reported: “She refuses to say where he is and when he will return.”

  By the look Bahti gave him, he knew that the woman understood English quite well. He played along, pretending that she did not. “What was the first thing she said when you asked her where he was?”

  “First she told me he was taking a vacation. Then she said that she did not know where he was. Then that he was at the seashore.”

  This was an island, and so Peter couldn’t read all the nuances of that answer. “Does ‘at the seashore’ have a special meaning in Malta?”

  “Yes,” Bahti said. “It is what people say when they are going to their home villages. Sometimes it means they are going to a seaside town nearby for a few days, to relax.”

  “Can we find out where Kamatta is from?”

  Bahti asked. The woman spewed out a stream of insults in Maltese.

  “She won’t say. I threatened again to close up the office and bring her to the lock-up in Valletta.”

  Peter told Bahti to keep working on the woman, but he winked as he said it. He ushered Korman to the landing outside the office doorway and whispered something in the detective’s ear. The woman watched them walk away. They went back inside and Korman took his turn questioning the woman; it was a case of hard cop and harder cop. Although Peter comprehended nothing in the Maltese language, he waited for the key word to come up. It would be the same in both languages.

  “Terrorism,” Korman said. The woman turned pale. She no longer pretended to be ignorant of English. She looked at Peter — understanding that he was someone foreign, and had special authority — but he shrugged, indicating that he couldn’t stop these two aggressive locals. Peter had read the Home Office file. Malta had modelled its terrorism legislation on Britain’s, supplemented with model Commonwealth laws developed in the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack. The country had adopted preventive detention as one of its deterrence strategies, significantly with a rather open-ended process for reviewing and revoking that detention. Korman’s tone implied that she might languish in jail until her boss resurfaced.

  She switched to halting English, perhaps seeking sympathy from the Brit. “Everyone, they know that Kamatta is from Marsalforn. He was born there, but he is not there now. I do not know where he went, but it was not Marsalforn.”

  “What the Christ does that mean?” Bahti said, in English this time.

  “It means,” Korman answered loudly, “that this lying old seagull thinks Kamatta will hurt her worse than we will. She knows where he is. I will take her to the town.”

  The woman began wailing but Korman simply dragged her out the door and down the stairs to the street; Peter heard him instructing her to stay away from the office. All three men knew what was going on, even if the woman did not. They knew Kamatta was likely in his hometown, but they let the lady think she had fooled them.

  Bahti and Peter looked in the battered desk and through the papers pinned to the bulletin board. Copies of shipping manifests, business cards and even vacation brochures covered the corkboard; the Maltese coppers would likely confiscate the whole mess. But they found very little to connect the owner to Lasker, though Bahti did find an address that he said was a street in Marsalforn, over on the island of Gozo.

  Back in the car, but without the woman, Bahti retraced the route to police headquarters. “We will pick up your luggage and take you to the Marriott.”

  Peter’s excitement rose as he began to see the carrot dangling at the end of the stick, even if the carrot apparently was hiding an island away. Kamatta was likely the key to all of André Lasker’s false identities. Peter was tired, from the flight and the heat, but the certainty that Lasker existed and was probably headed back to Britain reinvigorated him. Bahti was so dour that Peter had a hard time reading his face, but he immediately liked him; he had a sense that the man was the ultimate street detective, never happier than when he had explicit orders to do what was necessary to apprehend criminals, and to do it fast.

  “What about Kamatta, then?” Peter asked.

  “It is probably too late to go to Marsalforn tonight,” Bahti replied. “It is on Gozo, the smaller island. But I have a man in Victoria, the capital city of Gozo. He will do what I tell him.”

  Peter always tried to be alert to the subtleties of the local police wherever he travelled on an investigation. He was willing to push them to faster action, but there was often a way of doing things, a circular way of getting results, that had to be respected, and Peter was adept at picking up on it. Albanoni, on the other hand, appeared not to see the urgency of following every lead in order to find Lasker before he reached English territory; his lethargy, born of bureaucratic ossification, was going to be exasperating. Peter had more confidence in Bahti.

  “Okay,” Peter replied, neutrally. “Do you men know Kamatta?”

  There was a pause — and not only because Bahti was busy at that moment swerving around a lorry — while the Maltese detectives thought through their answer. “Yes. Kamatta is Maltese,” Bahti said. “We are a small island with many ‘invaders’ who bring in drugs, illegal refugees, prostitutes, and so on. But when my fellow citizens get involved, I become wonderfully pissed off!”

  They turned into Albanoni’s parking space (which was a statement in itself on Bahti’s part, but which also indicated that the deputy commissioner probably was still occupied at the airport).

  “Get your stuff, Inspector,” Bahti instructed. “We will go to the hotel, and then, if you are interested, we will go for dinner. Korman, I’m afraid, must run home to his pregnant wife.”

  Peter immediately agreed to this plan. They reached the Marriott and he went inside to register. By the time he returned, his new partner had made his call to Victoria; Korman had left.

  “Here is the arrangement. Marko will drive to Marsalforn right away and check the address we have. He is Gozan. He does not know Kamatta, and he thinks he is not one of the natives of Marsalforn. But Marko knows everyone else who knows anything, and they will tell him if Kamatta is around.”

  “And Marko is a police officer?”

  “Not exactly. He is my cousin. He is reliable.”

  “I believe you, Officer Bahti. Is that your first name or your last?”

  “It is both. It’s a long story. Call me Bahti. Obviously.”

  “Call me Peter. Just for the record, is there a police presence on Gozo?”

  “Certainly, and they are very good people. But it is complicated. There are units in Victoria and in Mgarr. Mgarr is the port where the Malta ferry goes. They are used to dealing with tourists and their crises, or with local matters like spousal battery. But it has been a tradition that major cases are supervised from Valletta. In reality, Gozo experiences as much drug and refugee smuggling as Malta. Less prostitution, though. We make sure they save face when we take over a matter — that is the expression?”

  “It is.”

  “Yes, they are getting involved a lot in counterterrorism and refugee exercises. That is because both involve patrolling the coast, along with the navy.”

  Peter thought he had it straight. Bahti would use his cousin to make discreet inquiries regarding Kamatta’s whereabouts. Only then would the detectives decide how to proceed. Peter had no doubt that Korman and Bahti would go it alone if that proved to be the most effective tactic. But just to be crystal clear, he said, “But the expertise on passport forgery is in Valletta?”

  Bahti shrugged. “We all learn to read a fake passport. You would be shocked at ho
w many forged papers I see. Malta is a crossroads for illegals moving up into Europe from Africa. Much of the forgery work is excellent, I admit. But we do have a very good forensics lab. You may get to meet them,” he added wryly.

  He gave Peter the simple directions to the restaurant and they agreed to rendezvous there in an hour. Bahti high-signed several cab drivers parked in front of the Marriott and headed off towards police headquarters.

  CHAPTER 26

  The Marriott was positioned at the edge of the ancient gates to Valletta. Peter went back to the front desk and retrieved his messages. Of the three, one was from Bartleben and the second from Albanoni, but it was simply a welcoming note that predated his arrival. The third was from Ronald Hamm. Peter got lucky. From his hotel room, the 3G capacity of his mobile kicked in and he heard the phone at Bartleben’s end ringing. As usual, he was still at the office.

  “Peter! I can hear you fine. Where are you?”

  “In my hotel in Valletta.”

  “How is Malta?”

  “When I see it, I’ll let you know. Has Malta Police Headquarters reached you in the last hour or so?”

  “No. what’s the news?

  “Lasker was here. He slipped away from surveillance and flew out of Luga earlier today — ironically, probably about the time I was arriving. Did a Deputy Commissioner by the name of Albanoni contact your office, or anyone else?” Peter could hear him getting up from his desk and walking into the reception area. “Is there something regarding Interpol?” he continued, as Bartleben roamed the office.

  “Peter, he called while I was out,” Bartleben answered. “The message states he would be contacting Europol, for a start. Wants me to check back.”