Brute Force

54

The apartment had two bedrooms and was very simple and very white after what I could smell was a new lick of paint. The building was nineteenth century, with high ceilings and shutters on the windows. The furniture was modern and new. I doubted Lynn had chosen it. In the living room, a pair of high glass doors opened onto a small Juliet balcony overlooking the Viale Andrea Doria, the road that ran along the harbour front and carried on the four K or so to Portofino. Beyond it was the harbour and the Mediterranean.

I picked up a pair of binoculars. Lynn probably spent hours boat spotting.

'We still assuming it's the Firm?'

'What's to tell us it isn't? Who else had the resources to find me in Donegal so fast? Who else could have made and planted a device so fast? Who else knew about Leptis? OK, anybody could have bought a tracker and followed me to yours, but the other stuff still points in the direction of Vauxhall Cross.'

'But why would they bracket us together? We're hardly a job lot.'

'It must be linked to Duff somehow. They're cleaning house. It must all come back to the Tripoli job.' I looked up at him sharply. 'Were there drugs on the Bahiti?'

'You mean anything the Yes Man could have been involved in?'

I must have looked surprised.

'I might have left the building, Nick, but I still have friends who haven't. I knew what he was up to all those years, but nobody would listen. He had the ear of the right people. When early retirement came up, I was glad to cut and run, wash my hands of the whole thing.' He looked up. 'You know about Hannibal?'

'Elephant Boy? Crossed the Alps?'

'Precisely. Well, we're in Hannibal country here. I've been thinking about his catchphrase: "We will either find a way, or make one." '

'Which one's your money on?'

'Make.' He smiled. 'Mark my words, Hannibal knew what he was talking about. He was only in his twenties when he was given command of Carthage's forces. That's Tunisia, these days. Within two years, by 219 BC, he had subjugated all of Spain, which violated Carthage's treaties with Rome. The Romans demanded Carthage surrender Hannibal to them, and the city refused. The Romans declared war, and so began the Second Punic War. But then came his masterstroke: instead of waiting for the Romans to arrive, Hannibal carried the war to their doorstep.

'That September he set out to cross the Alps with fifty thousand men and forty elephants. He did it in just fifteen days, despite heavy losses of men and animals to bad weather and hostile mountain tribesmen. His army went on to defeat the Romans in the battles of Ticinus and Trebia and occupy northern Italy.'

'And which bit of that applies to our situation exactly?'

'The thought that maybe we should carry the fight to them. Maybe we should contact the friends I still have on the inside, find out why this is happening and what we can do to end it.' I scanned the harbour and road below for guys sitting well back in their car seats, or a fishing boat bobbing about with a guy looking back at me through binoculars. I finally put them down and turned to him. 'There's another way of looking at Hannibal, you know.'

Lynn did a double-take, as if he was surprised I might have an opinion on anything other than what to look for in a kebab or a box-cutter. He might have guessed rightly that I didn't even get close to a GCSE in ancient history, but what he didn't know was that when I was in my twenties, I'd done a paper for my case study on battlefield strategy at the school of infantry in Brecon. The other guys did Rommel, Montgomery and Che Guevara, but Hannibal Barca was the boy for me. He ranked right up there alongside Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington in my book, as one of the greatest generals of all time.

'He might be famous for taking his army and elephants across the Alps, but he gets more cred from me for leading a successful campaign for fifteen years, far from home, and only by surviving off the land and his tactical wits.

'He was a soldier's soldier. He shared the same hardship and dangers as his men. Even his enemies said he never asked others to do what he couldn't or wouldn't do himself. No army's ever held its own so long, against such odds.'

'You're saying we do nothing?'

'I'm saying let's wait and see. Hannibal showed war can be won by avoiding battle instead of seeking it. He got results by attacking the enemy's communications and by flanking manoeuvres. So we don't have to carry the battle to them. Not yet, at least. We're in a safe house, let's draw breath and do some thinking.'

'That's all well and good, but we could have a window here that's not going to be open long. There must be deals to be made – there always are. I can catch one of my friends at home—'

'Not while I'm still about. You can call if you want, but I won't be staying. You'll be on your own when they stuff you in a bin-liner.' I shook my head. 'There's something else Hannibal once said: "When you make friends with the elephant keeper, expect the elephant." '

I looked along the walls for phone points. Nothing. Lynn knew his stuff. This really was a safe house. 'I'm going out to recce a few things. Give me the keys. If I'm not back in one hour thirty you're on your own. They'll have me.'