The Collaborator

18

When there wasn’t much worth saying, Lukas usually stayed silent.

Castrolami seemed tight, knotted, and would have had cause. They had left the city and climbed on to the plateau area inland, to the east, and the dense housing was behind them. The ground opened: scrub, rubbish, abandoned construction, more scrub, more rubbish, more half-finished projects, and more scattered lighting. The traffic blockages of the old city were back down the hill. Lukas saw the towers.

He was near to making progress calls on his mobile, but not yet. He was not one of those who went off radar and only called in when he had success or failure to report, but he wouldn’t call unless he had hard information. At Ground Force Security they paid his wage and put a roof over his head; if he didn’t have them, he might just have to ship out and go back to Charlotte, a trailer park, a wife who might tolerate him if he was around to do handyman jobs and a son who would ignore him. He’d eat doughnuts and fries, drink grape juice, maybe hike some Carolina trails, and worry about a Bureau pension that had been cut short in contributions and would keep him light on cigarettes. He wouldn’t walk away willingly from his employer, and he would call when he had information.

The towers speared up and alongside them there were big shoeboxes laid on their sides. Way back, when he was young in the Bureau and there was a shortage of personal-protection guys for an overseas detail, he had taken a short straw and had gone in the director’s entourage to a terrorism conference in west Berlin. There had been a chance of a day across the other side: they’d been bussed through the Wall, and he had seen the forests of towers on the outskirts of the eastern sector. Lukas could live in an attic apartment under the eaves off the rue de Bellechasse in the heart of a great old city, or he could live in a cabin up high in a treeline – like the guy at Ruby Ridge had. He couldn’t have lived in a tower block in east Berlin, or one out on the darkened flatlands east of Naples. Castrolami had hold of his sleeve and tugged at it, then pointed at the map. The pencil torch caught the outline of the big block, and Castrolami pointed out through the window. It was massive. It was indeed a sail. The towers now seemed dwarfed by it. The lights from windows etched in its shape. There seemed to Lukas to be a hull to the building, then what was almost forward decking and then twin sail shapes rose, climbed high.

They were close now.

What Castrolami had not asked him: could he maintain the same hunger for his work as in the past when his reputation was made? Did he have the same fascination for the techniques that would undo his opponent?

Inside the minibus there was the murmur of the comms kid’s voice as he spoke into a button microphone. His metal-lined case was open and dials were lit. Twice a separate microphone was passed to Castrolami and enveloped in his ham fist as he spoke. There was the scrape of weapons being armed. He thought the Tractor was the leader, the Bomber was the joker, and that the world’s roof would have to collapse before the Engineer contributed.

A contested entry was a disaster. Lukas knew it – they would all know it. He thought the place would be, from Castrolami’s plan, like a gopher warren of tunnels and entries, exits, climbs and descents, like the ground squirrels used. The navigation was done by the driver’s escort, who would lean back and whisper into Castrolami’s ear. He had said, himself, that he needed to be as close as was possible to the hostage and the hostage-taker, and he didn’t think it needed saying again. He had seen a sign, crazily askew, for the via Baku: he wondered what the connection might be between an asshole corner of southern Italy and the capital city of Azerbaijan, but doubted it mattered. Another sign told him they were on the viale della Resistenza. The torch flashed on the map and the pudgy finger pointed to the location.

They were slowing.

Lukas felt the tightness in his gut – always there when the action came near.

Castrolami said, quiet but breathy, ‘It is unlikely we will be met with armed resistance, but it is possible. If we are, stay close to my back. You do not show anyone your voice, your accent – damn Yankee. We may be confronted with passive opposition, crowds, abuse, heckling, man-handling. Stay close to me, hold on to me. I expect barricades, steel gates, blocks to slow us – the Ingegnere will deal with them, and for hostile people we have the Bombardiere. We attempt speed, but we do not know what we find and we do not have the luxury of time for reconnaissance. What do you wish to say?’

‘I’m here. I can give advice if it’s wanted. I don’t impose.’

Castrolami punched his arm, a good hard jab, made it hurt, and it seemed to Lukas a gesture of affection – might have been respect. There was no call for respect.

The minibus came to a stop.

They had rocked on to a pavement and the weight had broken a slab. The roll had barely stopped when the Trattore had slid back the side door and was out. There was a stampede.

Lukas had never jumped with a parachute. He had been on an aircraft from which men had jumped, at night, over a targeted farm where a contract worker was reported to be held. What had lasted with him was the sight of the dispatcher by the open hatch as he booted the guys out and into the void. The driver’s escort had that job. Half of the ROS guys, then Castrolami and the comms kid, the rest of the ROS guys, and Lukas. The escort’s fist caught him, as if he was the runt of the damn litter, threw him forward and he cannoned first into a big backpack, then the one with the bolt-cutters damn near speared him with a handle. He steadied himself against Castrolami’s backside and most of the wind was squeezed out of him. He gasped. He was in his forty-eighth year – did that matter? Maybe not the statistic, but he didn’t run on pavements or do gym sessions, and guys with a childhood heritage of trailer parks didn’t play tennis. He’d never had the time or inclination to learn golf, and mountain hiking was more a dream than real. He felt old. He sucked in air – felt old, feeble, but there was no young bastard pressing up against him. Why could Ground Force Security rent out the services of Lukas, a hack who had seen better days? Because negotiators and co-ordinators were happy to work a Stateside beat or to be in London or Berlin, but declined postings to Mosul, Jalalabad or Medellin, any goddam place where there were shit, flies and a building like the Sail – and a wretch who was looking at a knife or a pistol.

They were running, except the driver and his escort who were left behind.

Lukas didn’t play at heroes, was separated from Castrolami’s back by a cigarette-paper thickness. He saw, past the big shoulders, the shadows in a dark doorway. Lukas thought, then, there was brief negotiation, a few seconds, two or three exchanges, and the shadows were done and the way ahead was clear. There were pounding feet, and he imagined the heavy boots encasing water-resistant socks, and more boots behind him, which was as welcome a sound as any. The Tractor had a flashlight in one hand, turned it on. In the other he held a handgun. He wore a vest, and had a machine pistol slung on a strap looped at his neck. His chin jutted. No debate, negotiation or discussion. The Tractor led them through – as if he was crossing a water-filled ditch or rode a sand berm – and men made way for them. Lukas was given no explanation, but he factored that their entry on to a staircase was not impeded. That was a little victory, minimal, but a victory of sorts.

The smell of the place hit him.

The flashlight, used intermittently, guided him up.

He would do the best he could – had no more to offer.

It was as if a signal had been given from the base of the stairwell and sent on up to the floors above. The flashlight caught men and women, children with them. They were dressed, the smaller children in night clothes, and carried cases and bundles. One child had a puppy clasped to his chest, and others had prime toys. He sensed the mood of evacuation – as if a deck was cleared. There was no eye-contact between those on the stairs coming down, stumbling under their loads, and those going up, bowed under the weight of the kit. Two groups not acknowledging each other. Lukas thought he did dirty work: it was work that decent people should not be asked to perform. He went up the stairs and Castrolami’s shoulders bounced in front of him.

Eddie wondered where the noise had gone. Salvatore talked. ‘They pay me well – because I am the best. I am expert and I am valuable. I have accounts in banks in Switzerland and in Liechtenstein. I do not know where that is. There is another account in Andorra. I have never been there. I am twenty-four years old and I have much money and many accounts.’

He should have heard noise. The keenest sounds he had heard had been when he was brought up the staircase, hooded, and when he was taken down a long corridor and voices had been muffled behind doors and windows, with televisions and music. Men had shouted, women had laughed, kids had squealed and dogs had barked, yapped. He had heard less when he had run and realised that the corridor was a walkway, an aisle between boxed apartments. There was a knife on the table near the door, close to Salvatore’s hip, and he had a pistol in his hands.

‘I can buy what I want. I can go to any shop in Naples and I can buy anything. I want jewels for a girl, I can buy them. I want a suit, I want shoes, I want a car. I have the money in banks. They pay me because of my worth. They want me, the Borelli family. They can have me but they must pay. I think I have a million euros in accounts, and perhaps it is more. One day I will go to the coast, not Italy. One day I will go to France – they have told me, the family has, of Cannes and Nice, and I will go there. I think I will have many girlfriends when I go to France, because I will have money and I can buy anything.’

He could not recall so clearly the sounds of the walkway when he had fled along it before he saw – under the washing – the barred gate, closed. Eddie, then, had been on his toes and running at speed, despite the stiffness in his legs, knees and hips from being tied down, and the burden of the chain and ankle shackle. He had heard sounds then: shouts of pursuit, the gasp of his breath, doors slamming in his face, a kid’s obscenity as he charged past a window – and there had been the loudness of the television in the room where he had taken refuge. Now he could hear nothing. It was as though quiet carpeted the air round him. Salvatore’s shoes slithered on the flooring and his voice droned in the accented English as he played with the pistol and aimed it at points on the wall. Eddie thought there was in the eyes something demonic or manic or lunatic, something that was plain bloody mad. He realised it: he was the only audience the man had, maybe had ever had.

‘I will go to France, to the Mediterranean, and I will buy an apartment – a penthouse – with cash and I will go to a showroom and buy a car and again I will use cash. In the morning I go to the bank and I sit down, and I authorise transfers from Liechtenstein and Andorra and other places, and then they go to get my money from their store in the basement and we fill a suitcase with my money and then I go to the real-estate office and to the showroom. I will find new friends and new girls. Maybe this is in one year, or three years, and maybe it is tomorrow after I have… I will go to France. I speak good English – the best, yes? I will speak good French. I have many enemies here, but they will never find me when I have gone to Cannes or Nice. There I will be unknown and I will have much, very much money. I have the money because of what I do well. I kill well.’

The shadow spun on its heels and the feet came close to Eddie’s face and the shadow crouched. A little of the light from a window, thrown up by a streetlamp, orange, caught the pistol’s barrel and rested on it. It was three or four inches, less than six, from Eddie’s forehead. He stared at it and kept the focus of his eyes on the needle sight at the end of the barrel and could see the finger, just, on the bar protecting the trigger, and the finger slipped from the bar to the trigger stick. He wondered then if his bladder would burst, whether the urine would squirt into his trousers, fill the groin, make it steam hot. The finger moved from the trigger. He did not know if the safety catch had been on or off. What had he thought of? Had had a modicum of seconds to reflect. Had not thought of his parents, or his house friends, or anything noble, had not thought of Immacolata – had worried that he would mess his trousers. Had hated the bastard, and anger caught in him.

‘I think, when I have gone to France, that many in Naples will remember my name. The kids will, women will. They will remember that I was a big man in Forcella and in Sanita and here in Scampia, and that I had respect. No one in Naples, I promise it you, would ever dare not to give me respect. I will be written of for many years, in the Cronaca and in the Mattino, and I will let them know that I live – go to Germany and send a postcard, go to Slovakia and send another. The police do not have the brains that I have and they will not find me. I will be written of in the papers and they will put my photograph there, because I have importance, and I have respect. I will never be taken. Do you understand me? I will not be taken alive.’

Eddie was still lying on his side. He had lost sensation in his hands from the tightness of the plastic at his wrists, and he thought the welts at his ankles were raw and his vision was through the slits of his swollen eyes and his lips were broken and the bruises throbbed, and he hated and felt the growing anger. The man, Salvatore, circled him, held the pistol in two hands and aimed it down, but the shadows of the fists were too dark for Eddie to know if the finger was on the bar or on the trigger, and the man laughed – cackled. Eddie thought Salvatore didn’t hear the silence around them. Himself, he didn’t know why the quiet had come.

*

The first gate on the walkway of the third level was chained and padlocked. Washing had not been taken off the wires, some of it still sodden and some of it nearly dry. The wet sheets, towels and shirts clung to their faces as they went forward. It was as if the evacuation was complete. Nobody came and nobody moved: no men from a clan, no families quitting, all gone, faded into the evening, and most of the lights with them. The clothes and bedding hung out to dry threw long shadows. No radio had been left on, and no television. They were wary of the silence, and the Tractor went on the balls of his feet.

Lukas saw, looking past Castrolami, a cola can lying abandoned on the walkway a few yards short of the steel-barred gate that had chains and a heavy-duty padlock securing it. The cola can was in the centre of the walkway. He was in Baghdad. There was a street, emptied, silent, where kids didn’t play, men didn’t stand on steps to smoke and talk. There was a street with a Sprite can tossed on to the path, and the patrol would use that path. There was a private, first class, of an airborne outfit and he was point on the patrol, and the Sprite can was in front of him and he was near to it. There was a first sergeant leading the patrol, walking with Lukas – doing acclimatisation – and the man’s yell had damn near shredded the clothes and the vest off Lukas’s back, and had stopped the private, first class, dead in his tracks. It had been explained – an empty street, no people, no traffic, was the tell-tale sign of an ambush. A trashed can was on a path and grunts always, did it always, kicked a can that was in front of them. A can could hold a quarter-kilo of plastic explosive and a detonator operating off a tilt switch could fire it when it was kicked, and it could take a leg off the point man and the balls off the one following him, and maybe some eyes… Lukas burst forward.

He shoved Castrolami aside. He sprinted as near as he could.

He went past the Engineer and the Bomber.

He caught the Tractor’s arm. He held it, stopped him.

He panted – couldn’t find a voice to speak. He pointed to the can.

They went on, and Lukas again had taken his place behind Castrolami, and each of them stepped with care round the can, until the last ROS guy squatted down, then went on to his knees and shone a torch into it. Lukas had turned and could see him under a kid’s towel. Then the guy stood up and kicked the can to hell. It rattled away.

The warning he had given, his caution for a can, was not ridiculed – he had respect.

The Engineer took big bolt-cutters from his bag, opened the blades and put the loop of the padlock between them, flexed and used his strength, and the padlock broke apart. The gate was pushed open by the Tractor. Beyond it, the washing hung thicker and made a fog; it could not be seen through.

Lukas knelt. He could see under the washing, and the walkway stretched to a darkened infinity and had no horizon. Nothing, nobody, moved.

They used the long tunnel from the Palace of Justice to bring Immacolata to the Poggioreale gaol. She could have gone by car and entered through the back gates, but when offered the choice she took the walking option and did it briskly, with a good stride, Rossi and Orecchia at either side of her. The deputy prosecutor was in front, the carabinieri liaison officer behind.

The air around her was close, dank from the dribble of a water leak, and was ill lit. Prisoners were brought by small bus from the court to the gaol and the fumes hung, trapped.

Immacolata did not show relief when they reached the steps, when a door was unlocked by a guard, when fresh air wafted over her.

She was told by the deputy prosecutor how long she had. She shrugged, and answered that she did not need that much time.

The gaol was not yet shut down for the night and the clamour inside it filled her ears. She had no doubts. She was led to an interview room. At the door she was told her brothers had not been informed that they were to meet her.

The door opened. They had their backs to it. There were four officers in the room and cigarette smoke rose towards a single barred light. She saw that Giovanni lounged, had tipped back his chair, and Silvio was hunched forward, his head resting on his joined hands. They were manacled. She was led round the table and recognition broke. Shock from Giovanni, confusion from Silvio. She smoothed her skirt and sat down. Two of the officers flanked the table and two were immediately behind her brothers.

Immacolata said, ‘I’m here to tell you – in person, because I’m not frightened of you – that I intend to continue collaborating with the state, and to give evidence in any criminal trial that follows the information I provide. I will not be deterred and-’

Big hands rested on Giovanni’s shoulders. He spat, ‘Bitch! You’re the walking dead – and the boy you fucked will be sliced.’

‘I won’t be deterred and my decision is irrevocable. I’ll be a witness in court, whatever is done to those who have been close to me.’

Silvio did not have to be held and his shoulders shook. He blurted, ‘I loved you, you were my sister, I did whatever you asked me. I never told our mother I drove you to Nola. Why have you done this to me? Please, why?’

‘To break the power of our family. I’ll put that power under the heel of my shoe and grind it to dust. Whatever happens, my mind will not be changed.’

She stood. She was the queen of the moment and the audience was completed. Silvio – sad, inadequate, a worshipper – wept into his hands. She started to move round the table and Giovanni lunged. The hands, held together by manacles, were in her face, the fingers outstretched and the nails exposed, as a cat’s claws would have been. One nail caught the tip of her nose, and as the blood welled he was thrust back into his chair. He spat, but it fell short of her. Then a hand was in his hair and locked his head still.

Silvio sobbed, ‘I thought you loved me. I thought you were my friend.’

Giovanni snarled, ‘They’ll slice him slowly. They’ll send you his dick. Keep looking over your shoulder, and know that you’ll be found.’

She left. Her escorts would have hustled her out, but she went at her own pace.

She heard, outside the room – as inside Giovanni fought an unequal battle and Silvio howled – Orecchia ask Rossi, ‘What did Caesar say?’

And heard Rossi’s answer, ‘At the Rubicon river, as he prepared to ford it and march south, he said, “ Iacta alea est! ” “The die is cast.” She can’t turn now.’

‘She understands the consequences.’

‘She understands – and has cut herself free of them.’

Orecchia said, ‘God be gracious and protect us from principles.’ She didn’t turn her head and tell him she’d heard what he’d said – and didn’t think of Eddie Deacon, but of Nola and a cemetery.

They went past the agent’s door. Easy to recognise: there was a light on inside and the room, seen through the broken door, and the clean window, was wrecked. It had been searched systematically and then, Lukas thought, trashed in vengeance. He knew now what had happened to the agent, about the fall and the dog that had been shot. Lukas was big on agents – assets – and he recognised their value more than most. In any city he worked, or any strip of jungle, or up any goddam mountain, he would ask about intelligence assets and probe for what they were able to bring to the table. It was not for him, an outsider, to criticise the unwillingness of an agency to share – well, not out loud and not for quoting. He could have said that the agent might be alive, might enjoy a glass of a local wine in a safe-house, if his material had been shared and he’d been lifted out. He could have surmised that many agents had been ‘lost’ – euphemism for slaughtered – because they’d been kept in place beyond the sale date. The agent had cheated those who had come to his apartment, had plunged from a window and so denied them the chance of the beating, the kicking, the burning with cigarettes, maybe the use of electrodes and waterboarding. For cheating them they had wrecked the place.

Lukas could see, also, the cables that hung from the ceiling and dropped down from the cavities in the plaster where they had been hidden, the hole through the wall and the place where an attachment for the hook that held a washing line in place had masked the exterior lens. He couldn’t have sworn to it, but he thought that Castrolami’s arms moved, saw the jerk of the elbows, and reckoned the investigator had crossed himself. If the boy survived – if Lukas’s best effort was sufficient – if an apartment further up the walkway was not dry, then that life would be owed to the asset who had died. Sobering – yes. They went on, quiet, fast and wary, but not stampeding. Each took fistfuls of the washing and dragged it down, thought little of dumping it in the dirt at the side of the walkway. Sometimes it was women’s underclothes they snatched, but there was no laughter. They hustled forward, momentum with them. Lukas thought he liked serious men, that they were good to be with when advancing towards what his jargon called the ‘termination phase’. Then not even outsize knickers or a frilly imitation lace brassiere made for humour.

The second gate was locked, with a large lock box welded to it. More delay. Lukas thought the gates, barricaded against them, were the sign that they were tolerated for an evening here, on this level alone – the limit of that cursory negotiation at the bottom of the stairs – but they had no automatic right to access.

Again, Lukas did not have to be told. Bolt-cutters could do chains and a padlock, but not entry through a locked gate. He wondered what they would use. The Engineer had turned, crouched and unhitched the straps of his bag. Eyes must have met. The Engineer told him that it would be T4 – an abbreviation for an impossible-to-pronounce formula name that ended in ‘trinitramine’, a compound of nitric acid and hexamine, with a blast velocity of 8750 metres per second and… Lukas had not heard him speak before. He had known enough technical screwballs in his time, and doubted they were different people from those who stood on platforms and noted train numbers, or had binoculars to see the registration on aircraft fuselages coming in to land and taking off. The Engineer worked fast, and his description of the power he was manufacturing fell on Lukas’s deaf ears. It would be a crucial moment.

Along the empty corridor was an apartment – wet or dry. If it was wet, the hostage target was there and a psychopath, a lunatic, had to be talked out of killing him. What counted was to get close by covert approach. There was nothing secret about a blast of T4-type plastic explosive. Horrible stuff, colourless, and in the Engineer’s hands, about half an ounce, less than a golfball. Then a stick detonator, the wiring, the waving of them back, taking shelter in doorways, the playing out of a cable and the clips going on to a box – and if the apartment was wet, they did not know which was its door.

‘We go through. We look and we find. I speak. I ask for the boy, and I ask for surrender. Maybe the boy gets killed, maybe I’m shot at. Then it’s your chance. You want it different?’

‘The way it is, that’ll be fine by me.’ Lukas took the chance offered him and hit Castrolami’s arm – not as hard as he had been hit but with what force he could manage.

They waited for the Engineer to count them down.

Eddie boiled.

‘You know, each time I do a hit, it is the next morning in the newspapers, and I buy them. They write so much about me. They make up much. I had thought of calling some of the reporters to meet me, and tell them that they must be exact and tell truths, they should treat me with greater respect. I read all the newspapers the morning after, and they carry the conferences of the police and they talk about me. I think they do not make much money, the reporters. They would be as easy to buy as police are. I earn in one week what a policeman makes in one year… They have nothing. I have money in the bank.’

The anger burned. Those who knew him would not have recognised Eddie’s voice, and the crack of contempt in it. ‘Maybe you don’t.’

‘What do you say? What?’

‘Maybe you don’t have money in the bank.’

‘I do, I know it.’ Gabbled, but irritated.

Eddie said, ‘Maybe they’ve taken it all, fleeced you.’

‘What is “fleeced”?’

‘What you do – “fleece” is steal… They open the accounts for you?’

‘The lawyer did, for Gabriella. Before her it was for Pasquale Borelli. The lawyer did what they instructed.’

‘They’d have fleeced you. Did you ever see the statements?’

‘They cannot send them. I was told the statements. It is a million euros, near.’

‘If there was ever money there, which is doubtful, now it’ll be gone.’

‘I have their word.’

‘Their word? Like your word? A word is a guarantee? In fucking Naples? I bet you-’

‘What do you bet?’

‘I bet you that your accounts, if they ever existed, are empty. I reckon you were easy to trick, to deceive. I reckon you’re just some animal they employ, then put back in a cage. There’s no money, I bet it.’

He was hit across the face. Salvatore had crouched low over him and used the barrel of the pistol as a whip. The blow made more blood, opened the wounds that had almost sealed, and scraped away more skin. It hurt bad. He thought he wanted the fucking show on the fucking road, wanted it over. He was finished with lying trussed – cut and bruised, in pain, his ribs throbbing – and helpless like a goddam chicken going to slaughter. No sirens, no goddam help. What made it easier – like a mouthful of codeine, paracetamol or ibuprofen, even like bloody aspirin – was that in his anger he had challenged the bastard on his money, had hit the open wound, had put salt on it. Wanted it over, and the triumph preserved. The victory was proven by the wild slashing strike on his face.

‘Fuck you,’ Eddie said, in his face.

He had pushed himself up, ignoring the pain. He sat upright. He looked into the wide eyes, could see them in the slack light. There was silence, and he didn’t know why. Wanted it done.

He heard the scrape as a lever on the pistol was moved, thought it the safety. Heard the weapon cocked, metal scratching on metal. Could almost smile, saw the barrel wobble as if the bastard couldn’t hold the aim steady. Needed it finished. Heard the explosion.

Maybe the front door of the apartment, on to the walkway, had not been locked because it opened and light flooded in. A window flew into the outer room, Eddie smelled smoke.

The door swung hard, slowed and flapped, then was still, but open.

He was pulled up. Because his ankles were fastened he couldn’t move. He was dragged to the door, propelled into the walkway, and could feel the pistol’s barrel, a pencil’s width, against the back of his neck where the hair reached to.

Eddie was a shield.

He saw them, and, fifty paces up the walkway, wreathed in smoke, the frame of the barred gate, which had been open when he had run. Now it was half through a window. Doors near to it hung askew, unhinged, windows were out, and washing was stripped or shredded.

The men were through the gap. All huge. Three leading. Black suits, black masks, black weapons. He was wrenched round. He looked momentarily up the walkway, in the other direction, and a gate there was fastened shut.

The men had stopped. Weapons were up, aimed. Eddie felt Salvatore’s breath on his neck, beside where the pistol barrel dug. They had come, and about fucking time and… all anger gone.

A blast in his ear, deafening.

Too fast for him to react, blink. A puff of concrete dust came off a wall near the gate, high, and the men scattered. One on his stomach, one in a right-side doorway and one in a left, with a rubbish bin for further cover. More men were behind them. Eddie saw one, large, wore a suit. Incredible, yes, a goddam suit, and there was a small guy beside him, who looked old, out of place, and crouched and- Eddie was dragged back inside.

They had come.

What had changed? It was that Eddie wanted to live – because they had come. Almost overwhelmed him, the sight of the men in their black kit, the guns and masks, the quiet around them, and the emptiness, and a man in a suit, and a man with short pepper-coloured hair and a lightweight windcheater. More behind them. Eddie trembled. Then his ankles were kicked hard and his feet went out from under him. He was felled, collapsed, and couldn’t break the impact. He wriggled towards the far wall. He cursed himself for having provoked the bastard to anger, didn’t think it smart – hadn’t known they were coming.

He wondered who they were, what sort of men had come, who had sent them – what they knew of him.

The silence hung heavy. The quiet settled. He wanted to live, wanted nothing more.

The door to the walkway slammed shut. There was scraping as the table was dragged across the floor, then wedged into the outer doorway, chairs used as props to hold it. It was the older man he could picture best.

‘I have had a short eyeball on the target hostage, Echo Delta Delta India Echo. He is held in an apartment of the Sail building, third level, Scampia, a Naples suburb. Initial indication is one hostage-taker, armed. Unlikely to be a covert exit point. Nothing by way of escape is negotiable. Target seemed from brief sighting at approx forty paces to be bound, had facial marks of abuse, but did not appear to have life-threatening injuries. Taker, my opinion, is unstable and unpredictable. Time to go to work. Out.’

He closed the call.

A waiter came to the table with the wine list, and Roddy Johnstone waved for it to be given to his guest.

‘You all right, Duck? You look a bit pale. Got a ghost showing up?’ the guest asked.

He shook his head. It was a decent restaurant, close to his office, and it was usual for him to bring prospective clients here, and convenient – halfway on foot between Grosvenor Square and Berkeley Square – for most. He asked his guest, who would be talking detail in a contract for the security of an oil-drilling programme in Georgia’s Taribani Field, zone fourteen in block twelve, which could be worth fifteen million American dollars over ten years, to select a wine and choose from the menu for both of them. He apologised for having been distracted by the call.

He went outside. He stood on the pavement and the doorman lit a cigarette for him. He had seen Lukas’s name come up on his mobile, had allowed him to talk, had not interrupted, had allowed him to ring off, had not spoken a word. Thoughts clouded his mind. He saw Lukas, saw a waste mass of concrete floors and walls, saw men with armed, aimed weapons, saw a young man who had gone off to get his girl back, had walked as an innocent into a snake’s nest, had been beaten and had had a gun barrel against his head, and he saw an idiot who would have pledged – because they all did – that he would not be captured alive, and again he saw his man, Lukas. He flicked the cigarette towards a drain cover and watched it gutter.

Not something he would have wished to do, but not something to be avoided. He dialled. He did it because a kidnapping was involved, and a boy had been brought into the extended family of Duck’s world. He would have cheapened himself had he not made the call then, there. He had no shame in admitting to himself that he cared.

He heard a call ring out, and heard it answered.

He said, ‘Mrs Deacon? Mrs Betty Deacon, yes?… It’s Roddy Johnstone from Ground Force. I won’t beat around… This is a holding call. The position is that I’ve just received confirmation of what we call an “eyeball”. It means that my man has seen your son, seen him physically, at a distance of about forty paces. He’s in reasonable physical condition… Mrs Deacon, we’re a long way from the end of this road. Eddie’s held by an armed man in a housing complex. The authorities are there, and my colleague is with them. He’s very good at what he does. Mrs Deacon, as soon as I have further news I’ll give it you… I shall hope for the best and I shall hope for it very soon, but we’re in uncertain times. Goodnight, Mrs Deacon, and my regards to your husband.’

He saw them too, winced, and wished he’d lit a second cigarette. He went back into the restaurant.

‘Everything all right?’ his guest asked.

He smiled. ‘Probably, perhaps – about as all right as it can be. Now, what have you ordered for us?’

Immacolata had been given pizza in the prosecutor’s office. She was not privy to events. He had been called out by his assistant three times, left his inner office, gone into the outer, took the phone and kept his voice at a pitch subdued enough for her not to hear what he said. She sensed that finality approached and that she was not invited to share it. Each time, when he came back, he had a deeper-cut frown on his forehead and then – as if he remembered its presence – would force a smile and attempt to wipe anxiety.

She ate the pizza and drank aerated water. She thought, in truth, they didn’t believe in her resolve. She cleared her plate and emptied the bottle. Immacolata said, and did her sweet, warm smile, ‘You need not be concerned for me. My mind is made up, and it’s not for changing.’

He looked at her quizzically, as if he didn’t yet understand her. ‘I work in this room, Signorina for six days out of seven every week, for a minimum of ten hours every day. I strive after successes, but they are rare and elusive. To arrest a de Lauro or a Lo Russo or a Licciardi or a Contini classes as success. Maybe once a year we take one. Because of you, the evidence you bring, I have been able to close down an entire family – not an individual but a whole clan… Does that then defeat the criminal conspiracy? No. But it halts the advance. In my terms, to halt an advance, to stop a flow of Vesuvio’s lava, is a success. Such are the crumbs off the table from which I survive. If you capitulate, Signorina, success is snatched away and the advance – irresistible – continues.’

‘I won’t capitulate.’

‘You will not say – now, at this moment – that the life of the boy matters more?’

‘No.’

‘Say it to me again, please.’

‘No… His life doesn’t matter more.’

‘Thank you.’

She stood up and let the pizza fragments fall from her lap on to his carpet and desk. She brushed the lap of her skirt, then took a little handkerchief from her bag and wiped the ring on the desk that the bottle had left. She touched her hair. She faced him. ‘I’m ready for my next test – yes? It’s a matter of giving proof? Where’s Eddie?’

‘In Scampia, in the Sail, at the mercy of your father’s killer. Salvatore controls him.’

‘Will you save him?’

‘We’ll try to.’

‘Could I save him?’

‘Of course.’

‘And the price would be my evidence?’

He shrugged. He didn’t have to give her his answer. She walked towards the door. It was as if she was an actor, on a stage, caught in a pool of light, and she knew the lines would not be spoken again, the questions and doubts would not be reiterated. She would not be thanked. She did not expect gratitude, and she thought humanity – what had been a variety of love – had been squeezed out of her, existed only in a padlock abandoned on a bridge. She said, ‘I am ready to go to Posilippo now, to give you proof and serve you the crumbs, success. Can we move? I hope your best is good enough for Eddie’s life.’

‘It’s only advice, not control.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Lukas answered. ‘I give advice and you – obvious – are free to take or ignore it… It’s the way, friend, it always is.’

He saw a wry smile spread on Castrolami’s face – almost Lukas grinned, as dry as the skin of a tomato left out in the midday sun, what they sold in a supermarket – and Castrolami asked, ‘What would be the first item of advice?’

Lukas squinted, looked up the length of the walkway. Two ROS guys, including the one they called Franco, the sniper, the franco tiratore , had gone up to the fourth level, had tracked along it then come down and were now hunkered in front of the far barred gate on the third level. The washing in front of him had not been torn away and it was only as he lay on his stomach that he could see the doorways and windows, the one door and the one window. He thought the section of walkway was now evacuated; if it wasn’t, if some had been determined to stay behind, they must take their chance. There should not be the distraction of bawled commands, or requests, on a bullhorn for people to get clear. Always difficult to make the last few shift – they had a sick relative who was bedridden, a dog and four cats, a stick insect and a snake, a programme was coming on the television that they never missed, they feared they’d be looted once they’d gone. What now to advise?

He lit a cigarette. The Tractor had just started one, and the Engineer had just stubbed one out… From what he had seen and heard in the hours in the annexe off the operations room at piazza Dante he knew a little of the men around him. They talked girlfriends and sex, wives and arguments, kids and schools, mothers and food – and the psychologist made mobile calls to his partner, Maria, Spanish, and was concerned about the progress of her PhD thesis, while the collator was bothered that his son was on left-side defence in the cafe soccer team for the under-nines and should have been on the right. Castrolami had made one terse call, not more than ten seconds’ duration, to a woman, hoping her work had gone well and stating that he would not be eating with her that evening.

Lukas’s only communication had been with Roddy ‘Duck’ Johnstone, and had been short, brief, factual and without emotion. He had no one else to call. He never called his mother, Amy, and never called his father because he didn’t know his name. Never called his one-time wife, Martha, who knew him only because a lawyer in Charlotte, out of a smart office block on the city centre’s West Trade Street, sent her a small donation on the first Friday of each month, a couple of hundred dollars that had once been to look after the kid and had never been cancelled. She didn’t acknowledge it. Never called his boy, Dougie, who did real estate out of premises on North Tryon Street. There was no one he knew, other than Duck – and that was professional – who would give a damn whether he called or not… Not even the artist on the riverbank or the man who had the grocery off the rue de Bellechasse, or the woman who sold him ice-creams outside the museum, or the waiters in the cafes would care greatly if he returned to their territory or not. He wasn’t maudlin. It was the way he wanted his life to be. He didn’t have ties that tugged at him. He was only bonded, so he was told, to his work. He lay on his stomach with his upper body jutting out of the recess of a doorway. He could see the distant shapes of the Sniper and his partner, the door they focused on, and the window, and he could see half of Castrolami’s shoulder. Lying in the filth of the walkway would screw Castrolami’s suit. What advice was on offer?

The walkway was secured at both ends, so no advice was needed on sanitising the perimeters of a designated siege area.

Nothing was negotiable on free passage out for a hostage-taker and his victim.

The renunciation of evidence would not happen. An exchange – witness statements ditched in return for a life given – was not an option.

Clemency for a killer – unlikely. Leniency – improbable.

‘Right now I don’t have advice to give,’ Lukas said. ‘I can tell you what I want and what I don’t want.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I want to stabilise the atmosphere, cut the tension, get it stable. Make it so tedious that everyone wants to go to sleep – like it’s taking the drama out of the show. The hostage-taker, what I have on him, he’s young and he’s used to immediate acceptance of what he says, and he’ll reckon himself – saying it vulgar – the dog’s bollocks. He sees himself right now as a central figure in a big theatre. We have to get him down to the ground, and calm him, bleed the adrenalin out of him, then keep him cool. That’s the stabilisation. He’ll threaten to kill because he has no other currency to chuck at us. Cool and calm is what we aim for. The priority for the boy is to have him walk out in one piece. Agreed? We do an assault by your people and we’re on uncertain ground – may win, may lose. An assault is last-chance stuff. The hostage-taker, where’s your priority for him?’

‘Taken alive.’

‘Most of them, ones fitting his profile, want what we call “police-assisted suicide”. It’s easy and quick, and they have a delusion about a legend being born. Alive, and he’s just another number in another cell block, rotting and forgotten. Alive, then, is my aim point.’

‘Do you do timetables?’

‘Try not to.’

‘I don’t have for ever.’

Lukas understood. A deal already in place. Part of a walkway cleared. A clan leader ordering his people to stand aside on this limited patch of territory, and an understanding that the law-and-order guys do their work, hurry, look for nothing else, do not disrupt, get lost. A deal that called for a long spoon, supper taken with devils, not a nice deal, one that stuck in a gullet. A deal that was understandable.

‘It’ll be over by dawn,’ Lukas said. He had the feeling he was regarded as an oracle, had done little to diminish it, and that he knew solutions to whatever problem areas were thrown up. But hostage negotiation, hostage rescue and hostage coordination were not exact sciences. Some people lived their lives on certainties, down to a level of decision-taking on whether to replace with a bayonet or screw-fastening bulb. He knew of no two cases where hostages had been taken that exactly mirrored each other, but, there were basic patterns, enough for him to make up expertise on the hoof. What Castrolami had not asked him: did he have the same excitement as years back? Did he find the processes repetitive and was the light in his eye dulled? ‘I have that feeling, and…’

The shout came down the walkway, hacked into the night air.

‘… it’ll be finished by dawn. What did he shout?’

Lukas strained to hear the voice better and Castrolami had a hand cupping his ear.

He heard the obscenity. The feet came back across the floor and Eddie was heaved upright. He stood, tottered, was supported. The man was at his back and wriggled in his hips and pelvis but stayed close to him. Eddie felt the belt looped round his own waist, then buckled across his stomach. They were a single item, Siamese. One hand was round Eddie’s chest, above the belt, and the other held the pistol against his neck.

His feet, from behind, kicked. He could manage a hop, and went forward. More hops and the space between the inner and outer door was crossed.

Halting, in English, at his ear: ‘They do not answer me. They see you, they will answer me.’

What to say? Nothing. Eddie bit his lower lip. It was broken where his teeth closed on it, and swollen to double size and the pain, brief, was pure. His ankles were trussed, his wrists too, and he could only move at a snail’s pace. He was driven forward… and, God, he wanted to live. He prayed silently, but the bitten lip moved, and they would not shoot. He could feel the body of Salvatore close against him and they were indivisible. The door was pulled open. Eddie blinked.

There were gaps between the sheets, towels, shirts, underwear and dishcloths. None of them stood.

Eddie did. Eddie was exposed. He looked left, saw the barrels of rifles and felt that each aimed at the centre of his chest, above the belt, below the arm, and zeroed – Eddie reckoned – on the place where his heart beat, bloody pounded. He didn’t know if he could hold his bladder. His body was twisted a quarter-turn and he looked to the right and up the other section of the walkway. Light reflected back from the telescopic sight mounted above the barrel and another black-suited figure was prone beside the marksman and had binoculars. The binoculars’ aim and the sight’s and the barrel’s were not on Eddie’s chest but his head. He could feel the pressure of the second head, Salvatore’s, against the back of his scalp, and the forehead moved, made little motions, bucking his own forward and back. Eddie read it. A rifle’s bullet would enter and exit, would not hit one of them but both, and the movements of Salvatore’s head dictated that the sniper’s aim fluctuated between their two skulls. From the other direction, up the walkway, the rifle bullets would go through one chest – one ribcage, one set of lungs or one heart – then into the other.

Prayed again – ‘Don’t let the bastards shoot.’ Realised it: ‘the bastards’ were the marksmen. A fucking jumble in his mind and the marksmen were the risk to his life, not the man hugging him close and holding the pistol to his neck.

The voice boomed in his ear, had stayed with English, and Eddie didn’t know why: ‘I walk out. I walk past you. I walk from the Sail. When I walk I have the guarantee that the whore, Immacolata Borelli, the voltagabbana – the turncoat – retracts evidence. You have a half-hour. Look for the time on your arm. Half an hour. In half an hour, no promise of retracting evidence, he is dead. Believe me, dead. You have a half-hour. You decide.’

Eddie shivered. The cold was on his skin, but the warmth of the night made him sweat. It was a new cold, and it came from fear. The rifles, he saw, never wavered in their aim and were on his head and his chest, and he was perhaps forty paces from them, and they would have a killing range of a quarter of a mile.

He sucked in great gasps of air, would have collapsed if the arm and the belt had not held him.

A man among them pushed himself up. He had been flat on his stomach, went to his knees, then used his hands for leverage. It was the man who was slight and inconsequential, who wore a creased, dusty shirt and crumpled trousers, and who was unshaven and had the short pepper-coloured hair. His face was weathered and worn and had the texture of hardship. He stood at his full height, then arched his spine as if to get stiffness from it… Salvatore breathed hard on Eddie’s neck, beside the pistol barrel. The marksmen had not shifted, nor a big-bodied man who wore a suit and held a pistol loosely, uselessly, in his hand.

Eddie watched the man who stood, saw him cup his hands across his mouth, as if that was the way to be heard.

‘Do they believe me?’ a shrill whisper in Eddie’s ear. Then the firearm’s blast near his ear, and the hair above it was scorched, the stink of firing on his skin. Concrete dust came down and settled on his face. Eddie blinked, squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again, and the rifles were still aimed at his head and chest. ‘I think, now, they believe me.’

The man had paused, as if at an interruption. Now he stood his ground and called to them.