Cry Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  The pod in his ears had been silent for almost half an hour, which was a good sign. His men had spotted nothing suspicious through their night-scope binoculars.

  02.59.

  He started to count down the seconds.

  Twenty-five, four, three …

  He raised his hand to his mouth and blew hard on the whistle.

  It was a trick he used, a game he sometimes played. It kept his men on their toes as they waited for the signal to attack, the tension building.

  It might have been the start of a race as the assault teams came darting out from cover like an army of lethal black cats, each group of men with a specific job to do. They were all heavily armed with modified ArmaLite AR-18 rifles, Beretta pistols, serrated close-combat knives and stunguns, but the weapons were matt black, invisible in the dark.

  There were only forty of them tonight, all picked by hand, specialists who excelled at climbing. A group of six dropped down on one knee at the foot of the gangplank, securing the position if anyone attempted to abandon the ship. Others swarmed like monkeys up the mooring ropes, while two more teams surged up extendable assault ladders that they threw against the hull. Corsini didn’t look at his watch again, but he hadn’t stopped counting.

  Before he reached zero, they were all on board.

  Shouts were heard as the ship’s crew realized what was happening. Firing sounded and lightning flashed as the assault teams followed orders, discharging their weapons against anyone who pointed a gun or fired at them. Wisps of white smoke began to drift across the still, dark water.

  Corsini felt a stab of nostalgia as he watched them in action. An officer in his position – head of the national Special Operations Command of the carabinieri – had to stand back and let the lower ranks do the work, but he would have sacrificed the privilege for half an hour just to be there in the thick of it.

  There was another prolonged burst of gunfire, then silence.

  It was broken seconds later by the sound of four sharp whistles – three short notes, one long one – as the different assault groups signalled that resistance had been overcome and that they were holding their positions.

  General Corsini acknowledged the signal with his own higher-pitched whistle, then moved out from behind the tallyman’s shed where he had been sheltering. He walked without hurrying towards the Furore, knowing that his men had the situation in hand.

  ‘Well done,’ he said into the microphone. ‘I expected no less.’

  By the time he reached the gangplank, his men were unloading the hidden cargo, the stuff that wasn’t listed in the bill of lading, piling it high on the quayside. Crates of Chinese Kalashnikov copies, a mountain of ammunition, three grenade-launchers, boxes of pistols confiscated long ago by the police in Singapore, plus two large plastic wraps of cocaine from Turkey that must have weighed all of fifty pounds.

  The assault leader stepped up, came to attention and saluted.

  ‘No casualties on our side, sir. Three dead sailors …’

  ‘Jack-tars shouldn’t play with guns,’ Corsini said with a tight smile.

  ‘Seven more are locked up in their cabins, sir!’

  The officer clicked his heels, and turned to his men: ‘Hip, hip …’

  ‘Hooray for General Corsini!’

  It was hardly more than a quiet whisper, but better than a shout. In the midst of his men, he was the only one who wasn’t wearing a flak jacket and black balaclava. When the reporters and cameramen arrived on schedule at four a.m., he didn’t bother to change into his uniform. It was part of the performance. As lights came on and microphones pressed in on him, a pretty young journalist he had never seen before asked a question that broke the ice and got him off to a good start.

  ‘Why are you dressed like a navvy, General Corsini?’

  ‘Someone has to oil the machinery,’ he replied.

  When the laughter died down, standing in front of the arms cache, the prow of the Furore gleaming in the bright lights, he described the logistics of the raid, the timing and the number of men involved. Then he gave them a detailed rundown of the illegal treasure he had harvested, moving from a case of arms to a sack of cocaine, saying where it had come from and how much it was worth on the black market. He began to feel the cold now, but he was glowing inside.

  As the show came to an end, the pretty young journalist leant close.

  ‘I hope you didn’t think I was being impertinent.’ She smiled.

  ‘The thought never crossed my mind,’ he said.

  ‘A blue boiler suit! It adds to your charisma, General. They call you the Legend, don’t they? Your men, I mean to say.’

  Corsini knew that the microphone she was holding hadn’t been switched off.

  ‘Is that what they call me?’ he said.

  He saluted, then walked away.

  Corsini poured a shot of baijiu into the ceremonial cup.

  He was tired but not yet in the mood for sleep, his mind still racing after the success of the raid on the Furore. Everything had gone exactly according to plan. It was time to celebrate.

  He had bought the porcelain cup from an antique shop in Peking three years before while attending an international conference about Triads, tongs and street gangs such as the Black Bugs and the Flying Dragons. The baijiu came at no great expense from a small shop in Piazza Vittorio, Rome’s own Chinatown.

  How many other warriors had drunk from that cup after a victory?

  He took a sip, savouring the rice liquor as it burnt its way towards his stomach.

  How many warriors had drunk baijiu before a battle to give them courage?

  There would be a battle, of course. If the magistrates in Milan had their way, the Furore would be the last in his long line of victories. They would try to get rid of him – want to pension him off, he supposed. Well, they were making a mistake if they thought they could outmanoeuvre him. He would defend himself. At any cost.

  In any way …

  He took another sip of baijiu, then opened his copy of The Art of War. He kept it on his desk the way a preacher keeps his Bible. It always amazed him to think that the book had been written three hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ. The words of the Chinese general, Sun Tzu, had survived.

  And he would survive, too.

  He found the passage that he was looking for: ‘Your attack must strike home like a stone hitting an egg. The principle is inescapable: the egg is fragile, the stone is not.’

  All he had to do was to find the right egg.

  EIGHT

  1 August, 2012

  It would soon be dawn.

  Venus cast silvery shadows over the grass in front of the house.

  Sebastiano Cangio sat on the doorstep, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, a cigarette in his hand. He hadn’t been able to sleep, but he didn’t regret the loss. Why sleep when you had Venus all to yourself? The planet had never looked so big. It seemed to be so close, you felt that you could touch it with your hand. It wouldn’t last much longer now. The sun would soon edge over the horizon and Venus would fade from sight. Then birds would take the place of the bleating sheep in the darkness on the far side of the valley.

  He loved the way that nature shifted modes.

  One light came on, another disappeared. The echoes of the night gave way to the sounds of day. The sheep would drift into the wings, song birds would strut out on to the stage.

  Umbria wasn’t like London, that was for sure.

  The city sounds were all mechanical: the rumble of the Underground, the sudden shudder beneath your feet as the first trains started running, police sirens fading as the daytime traffic began to swell, cars and buses churning out fumes as they crawled towards the city centre. Doors would slam inside the house, high heels clatter outside on the pavement, tourists rattling past with suitcases on their way to nearby King’s Cross station. You soon forgot about the drunken shouts, the shattered beer bottles, the overturned dustbins, as the working day got into gear.

  Can
gio stared at Venus and he knew that he was in love.

  He was in love with the night, in love with his job, in love with Umbria.

  Even Marzio Diamante had won him over. The senior ranger had been in the park service for twenty-odd years, though he hated the forest and envied anyone who lived in a big city. When Cangio had told him he had run away from London because he couldn’t stand it, Marzio had glared at him. ‘What did the English do to you?’ he asked.

  Most of all he loved the wolves.

  Most of all?

  He wasn’t certain whether he loved Loredana yet. It was best to keep his head on his shoulders. For the moment, he was prepared to admit that he liked her a lot.

  They had met six weeks before in the bar where he always went for his breakfast. Italians don’t make breakfast at home – they go to a bar, buy coffee and a snack, then leave the barman to wash up the cups. Enrico’s was a regular stopping place for anyone who lived inside the national park. Cangio had been busy into the early hours the night before, working on maps, marking the territories of the three wolf packs that lived in the park, so he’d arrived at the bar a bit later than usual. He’d been standing at the counter, waiting for his second cappuccino of the day, when a girl had come rushing in, blonde hair tied back with an elastic band, jeans, yellow T-shirt and cowboy boots. She’d been out of breath, breathing hard.

  ‘The usual, Enrico,’ she’d called to the barman. ‘Quick as you can,’ she’d urged him, watching as the old man placed Cangio’s capuccino on the counter, then turned away and started loading ground coffee into the Gaggia, lining up the coffee cup and switching on the machine. She’d raised her eyebrows and sang on a rising note: ‘I’m going to be la-ate!’

  ‘What’s the usual?’ Cangio had asked.

  She’d glanced at his cappuccino and said, ‘Enrico’s working on it.’

  Cangio had pushed the cup and saucer towards her. ‘I’m not in a rush. You have mine, I’ll have yours.’

  She had looked at him with surprise and interest.

  ‘That’s kind,’ she’d said as Enrico had handed over her ‘usual’ croissant.

  Then she’d smiled. Not at Enrico the barman. At him.

  That smile seemed to light her up like an electric bulb. It had started on her lips, brought a flush to her cheeks, made her brown eyes glisten. As she’d sunk white teeth into the croissant, her breasts had moved energetically beneath her T-shirt. Even they seemed to be smiling at him, he’d thought, thinking of the estate agency for the first time in a month or more, remembering the way Claire Maunders demanded her coffee and snacks, never saying please, never saying thanks.

  ‘Fresh blood, Loredana,’ Enrico had said. ‘It took an earthquake to bring some new young lads to work out here in the wilderness. Seb’s the new park ranger. Tall, dark and handsome. From Calabria, he says. Says he studies wolves, too. I’d shoot the lot of them if I had my way.’

  Three minutes later, Loredana had roared off to town in her ancient Fiat 500. But before she left, she’d offered to give him a tour of the local churches. ‘The ones that haven’t fallen down,’ she said brightly.

  ‘Her uncle was the parish priest in Preci,’ the barman told Cangio as they watched her go. ‘She started ringing church bells when she was five. Up and down, up and down, holding on to the bell rope like a chimpanzee. She’s a nice kid.’

  Enrico had given him the details, too. Loredana Salvini, twenty-six years old, assistant manager in the supermarket on the edge of Spoleto.

  ‘She had a boyfriend once,’ Enrico had told him with a smile, ‘but I believe she chucked him. You’d better watch yourself there, my friend!’

  Cangio had met someone else for the first time in the bar that day as well.

  If meeting Loredana had been exciting, the second meeting had been disturbing.

  As he fished out his wallet, meaning to pay for his breakfast, Enrico had shook his head. ‘It’s already settled,’ he’d said. Luckily, Cangio hadn’t opened his mouth, but the thought flashed through his brain like lightning: Loredana! But then the barman had nodded in the direction of a man at the far end of the room. ‘He paid,’ Enrico said.

  A middle-aged man that Cangio didn’t recognize had been sitting alone at one of the tables. He’d worn a dirty workshirt and had an unlit cigar in his mouth, staring up at the television on the wall, his curly black hair unkempt and frosted with grey ends. He might have been good looking once, but now he had the time-worn look of a statue that had been corroded by wind and rain.

  Cangio had walked towards him, intending to thank him for his generosity, wondering whether the man had mistaken him for someone else.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he’d said as the man looked up at him. ‘You paid for my coffee.’

  The man had crossed his arms and ignored the hand that Cangio offered him. ‘That’s right,’ he’d said, not standing, looking up at him. ‘Which corner of Calabria do you hail from?’

  It was the accent that had taken Cangio by surprise, the rising cadence with a trace of a dialect he’d recognized but couldn’t place. And it hadn’t been just the man’s way of speech that caught him off guard – it was his manner, too, which was stern, interrogative.

  ‘Soverato,’ Cangio had said, as serious as the man in an instant. ‘You?’

  The man had stared at him for some moments. ‘I live here now,’ he’d said with emphasis, as if he’d put the past behind him. He’d rolled the cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. ‘Why d’you leave Calabria? There are wolves down there, too.’

  He’d definitely come from the south, from the Sila or Aspromonte mountains, maybe, where dialects changed so quickly that people living ten miles apart had trouble making sense of one another. Then again, when a man from the south doesn’t want to talk, as they say down there, it’s ‘like pulling out boot-nails with your teeth’.

  Cangio had decided to humour him. Why not, after all? They were two Calabrians who had chosen to live in Umbria. ‘I left Soverato on account of an animal,’ he’d replied with a smile, ‘but it wasn’t a wolf.’

  ‘Call yourself a ranger?’ the man had said, staring into his eyes. ‘You should like all animals. Even the ones back home. That’s what I’d have thought.’

  He’d never looked away, never blinked, weighing every word that he’d said.

  Cangio had tried to laugh it off. ‘I wasn’t a ranger then,’ he said. ‘I nearly got bitten by a lizard on the beach at Soverato.’

  The man had raised his eyebrows, glanced at the TV, then looked back at him. ‘Lizards on Soverato beach? That’s a new one …’

  ‘It wasn’t on the sand,’ he’d said, ‘it was tattooed on someone’s neck. Excuse me, but I’ve got to go to work. I just wanted to thank you for the coffee. Next time, breakfast’s on me.’

  Finally, the man had smiled. ‘If there is a next time. A man could lose himself in the woods around here. They’re almost as thick as the woods back home.’

  When Marzio had picked him up outside the bar, Cangio had asked if he knew the Calabrian.

  Marzio had shrugged his shoulders. ‘Bit of a mystery, he is. Says his name’s Corrado. He’s been up here a while. Got a farm up on the mountain, keeps a few sheep, I’ve been told. We haven’t swapped more than half-a-dozen words. A loner, if you ask me.’

  Cangio had soon forgotten the incident as they’d driven around the park, checking the wire netting on the eastern border that protected the roads. There were always earthquakes, loose rocks that came tumbling down, a hazard to drivers.

  Watching Venus, he’d decided that he was happy be a loner, too.

  The house he was living in was perched on the side of the mountain with a view across the valley. It was a casa cantoniera, one of those big old houses you found dotted along the roads from one end of Italy to the other, all painted rustic red, each one marked with a metal plaque and serial number. ANAS, the metal sign said. The Azienda Nazionale Autonoma delle Strade had built the roads and houses back in the Fascist
era. The woods all around it were teeming with deer, wild boar, wolves, eagles and an occasional bear.

  ‘If you don’t mind living on your own, you’ll be all right,’ Marzio had said.

  Marzio knew Loredana, of course. He seemed to know everyone in the area. ‘Don’t try playing the big city boy with her,’ Marzio had warned him. ‘Loredana’s bright. She could have gone to Rome, or anywhere, but she likes it here.’

  In fact, that had been the first test.

  ‘You moved here from London?’ Loredana had said the first time they went out together for a pizza. ‘What brings you to the backwoods?’

  She had listened to him talk about his job for five minutes, then she’d smiled and said, ‘I’ve never met a guy who studies wolves. Hey, don’t they prey on innocent young maidens?’

  ‘It all depends,’ he’d said with a grin.

  Then he had taken her up the mountain, and shown her the den.

  ‘They’re tiny,’ she’d whispered, peering into the night glasses.

  ‘The cubs are four days old …’

  The first kiss had seemed inevitable.

  She’d even asked questions. Why do wolves dig holes? Don’t they run free on the mountains? He’d told her about the breeding cycle, raising the cubs, the pack taking to the hills, the young ones finding mates of their own. He couldn’t remember the last time he had told a girl about his favourite animal, and he wondered whether it meant something.

  In the end, he had come up with an answer: he’d been lucky.

  And wasn’t luck a funny thing? Such a strange kind of luck, too. The earthquake had brought him to Umbria. The wreckage, the ruins. If it hadn’t been for the earthquake, he might still be in London and would never have met Loredana.

  You couldn’t tell anyone that, though.