The Game

FIFTY-TWO

Coughlin drove. Leeson sat next to him. Francesca sat behind. Victor sat next to her. Hart sat on the back seat. Victor couldn’t see Hart, but he knew he was watching. The reason for that, however, Victor didn’t know. Maybe Hart was trying to decide if Victor really was Felix Kooi, like he claimed to be. Maybe he was wondering if Victor’s provocation of Dietrich had anything to do with Jaeger’s subsequent attempt to take Leeson’s gun.

They drove through the winding, narrow country lanes between the endless fields of olive trees before joining the motorway north to Rome. Dietrich followed in the Phantom. The drive took fifty minutes. Leeson directed Coughlin on which turnings to take when they reached the city, navigating through the industrial neighbourhoods and business developments of Rome’s southern sector.

Their destination stood between a massive structure housing self-storage units and the row after row of used cars in a dealership, a high chain-link fence surrounding the compound. Steel spikes like shark’s teeth protruded from a metal tube that ran along the top of the fence. Beyond the fence were two buildings. Coughlin stopped the minivan before a gate and Hart climbed out to unlock the padlock that secured it. He pushed it open and waved Coughlin through. The neighbourhood was quiet. An office block stood on the opposite side of the road. There were no residential buildings nearby and little through traffic. Units were shut down for the night.

Security lights illuminated the buildings inside the fence. Both were sizeable but one dwarfed the other. The larger was a prefabricated steel structure, modern and built purely for functionality. The smaller building looked at least a hundred years older, still practical but without disregard for its appearance. Its walls were of rendered brick, painted white. Red tiles formed a sloping roof.

‘It’s owned by a consortium,’ Leeson explained as the team disembarked from the minivan and Hart relocked the gate. ‘Growers from all over the region have their harvest processed here. Some of those families have been bringing olives to this mill for two centuries; one generation after the next following in their father’s footsteps. I think that’s quite beautiful. But it’s also similarly pathetic. We should strive to do better than our parents, not copy them.’

‘When’s the harvest?’ Victor asked, as though he was making conversation.

‘Not for some time.’

‘So the mill is empty?’

Leeson nodded. ‘We have it all to ourselves, yes.’

Victor saw that the white panel van Hart had driven to the farmhouse was parked in the six-metre corridor of space between the two buildings. Parked in front of it, further away from the gate, was another vehicle, almost as tall and wide as the panel van. A number of weatherproof sheets covered it, each tied down by ropes that ringed the vehicle. Victor would have recognised the dimensions even without the information supplied by Coughlin. This was the ambulance he and Dietrich had stolen, parked away from the road and hidden by sheets to ensure it wasn’t identified. It would make a good getaway vehicle, with room in the back for the entire team. Or it might be equally effective at providing a way of getting into a restricted area. He felt Hart watching him but didn’t look to confirm it.

‘One building for traditional production,’ Victor said, ‘and the other to utilise modern methods?’

‘That’s correct, Mr Kooi,’ Leeson answered. ‘There is a feeling — or prejudice, if you will — among some that the more machinery and technology involved in the production, the lower the quality of the oil. Hence one building to pander to such elitist nonsense and one for an efficient enterprise.’

He responded as if Victor was curious about olive oil production and Victor acted as if he was interested in such things and not the likely interior composition of the two buildings so he could begin strategising for his presence in either one. Something was wrong. There was an atmosphere between Leeson, Hart and Francesca that went beyond Jaeger’s recent demise. They all knew what Victor, Dietrich and Coughlin were going to discover and what was going to happen next. Dietrich and Coughlin were oblivious to it, but Victor saw the shift in posture and body language; Leeson’s enthusiasm wasn’t purely because of Victor’s seeming interest in the mill’s product. He was growing increasingly edgy and excited.

Victor thought back to the events of the past twenty-four hours, searching for some indication of what he was about to find. He thought back to the journey with Francesca from Gibraltar to the farmhouse, and further back to the conversation with Leeson on the phone and that first meeting in the back of the limousine.

‘What are we doing here?’ Coughlin whispered.

Victor didn’t answer, because he didn’t know. He saw cigarette stubs littering the ground near the grated drain.

‘Is this where we’re doing the job?’

Victor shook his head. He didn’t know the mill’s purpose, but he knew it wasn’t the strike point. He knew enough to know that. It was obvious. It didn’t need to be deduced. Coughlin should have known that too. That he didn’t meant he wasn’t very smart. Victor looked at him, then at Leeson, at Dietrich, then Francesca and finally Hart. Hart had asked Victor what he thought of his teammates, including Coughlin. Victor had said Coughlin must be good if Leeson had hired him. Because you’re good, Hart had said. Dietrich was good in a fight, and maybe he was good in the field too, but his attitude and mentality were just about as bad as they could be. Coughlin was stealthy but too young to have any significant experience, and he was no thinker. Victor didn’t know much about Jaeger, but he’d got himself killed and death was always the ultimate separator. Kooi had been a competent killer, but he had failed to kill Charters as requested and if not for the attention drawn by the watch merchant would have been killed without incident. Kooi, Dietrich, Jaeger and Coughlin. All average operators. All lacking. Except Hart. He had foiled Jaeger’s mutiny in a matter of seconds.

It didn’t make sense.

‘This way,’ Leeson said.

He led them down the corridor of space between the two buildings, past the white panel van, and to a door that led inside the bigger and newer of the two structures. Victor noted that the fluorescent ceiling lights were already switched on, illuminating the large interior. A corrugated metal roof stood ten metres above, supported by steel girders and pillars. Gleaming modern machinery filled the majority of the floor space. Victor saw conveyor belts and centrifuges, vats and tanks, pipes and chutes and massive presses. Everything was shut down and dormant and strangely silent. Ear defenders hung from hooks near the door for use when the mill was operational, but now the only noise was that of their footsteps on the hard flooring. The whole space was immaculate: diligently and meticulously cleaned after the last harvest had ended.

Coughlin and Dietrich shared an expression of curiosity and Victor made sure to wear a similar one. In contrast Leeson was still excited, Hart relaxed yet purposeful, and Francesca ambivalent.

A door on the far side of the mill led to corridors and to other doors that would lead in turn to testing rooms and offices, changing rooms and toilets and other facilities. Leeson pushed open a door into some kind of meeting room, perhaps where managers and supervisors would discuss the day-to-day business of olive oil production. Whiteboards hung from the far wall. Flipcharts stood before them. A wastepaper bin sat nearby. Cheap plastic chairs, that during the harvest season would no doubt be arranged in uneven rows facing one wall where someone would stand in front of the whiteboards and flipcharts, were stacked against one wall to free up the room. There was another door at the far end.

‘Cool,’ Dietrich said.

Cheap veneered tables that matched the chairs were arranged into a large square in the middle of the room. On top of the tables stood a model. It was made of white plasticard, meticulously cut and glued and arranged to form a scale reproduction of a building. The model was about three feet long by two wide and two high. It had a roof, but that roof sat next to the rest of the building so its interior could be seen: individual rooms, open rectangles for doorways and stairs. The floor could be lifted out to reveal the one below it and the ones below that. The building the model represented was a grand structure, similar in dimensions to a grand country villa or hotel.

Victor had seen models like this before, if not for a very long time. He remembered memorising layouts and angles and likely danger spots and the best points of cover and concealment. He would stand silently with men just like him as they were briefed on the coming mission.

The group spread out around the model without being told. Coughlin and Dietrich stood closest to the arrangement of tables so they could get a good look at the model, leaning over it to see inside and ducking down to peer through the windows.

Victor ignored it because the corners of the flipchart pages were curled and the covers creased, the whiteboards were smeared and marked and the wastepaper bin was full with scrunched-up balls of paper. He moved to a position a couple of metres back from the model, at an angle where he could see without having to turn his head the door through which they had entered and the far one.

‘Gentlemen,’ Leeson began, ‘this is the strike point.’