‘I didn’t see anyone give him anything,’ Ciccio murmured.
The screen was on. Fabio used his hand to shade the picture. He flipped between the two images. He wondered why a young man would give up life in a suit and tie and a job with a hefty salary to become what they had seen. He wondered, too, how far it would take him. The light was falling. He liked it when dusk came because then they had the chance to crawl out of the hole among the rocks, merge with the trees and stretch, drop their trousers, squat and hold the tinfoil in position. He didn’t see how they could have helped him more, other than by pressing grenades into his hand. He felt inadequate, and reckoned Ciccio did too. He seemed to see the gaunt, stubbled face, the mud on the skin and in the hair, the depth of the eyes beyond anything he could read, and the pain. For what? He cut the picture. The log on the screen showed that Marcantonio – Mike/Alpha Bravo – had returned in the vehicle driven by Stefano, Sierra Bravo, and that the message had been sent. It did not refer to the stranger who shared the hillside with them, whom they had fed and in whose interests they had jeopardised their careers. Funny old world . . . A convulsion would happen soon. Couldn’t say when or what it would be, but blood would be drawn.
‘You all right?’ Fabio asked.
‘Sure. Better than rotting in a jar.’
They had had lunch. They had been to the carabinieri headquarters, on Via Aschenez, had proffered the piece of paper and met those they had been drinking with the previous night. They had been rewarded with a temporary ID slip, which requested that they be granted reasonable co-operation, then had arranged to meet again.
They had seen the gaol in the rain, and the aula bunker where the ’Ndrangheta accused stood before judges in an escape-proof, bombproof underground courtroom so they went for a walk, in sunshine, along the sea front.
It was better, Fred had said, than coming away from Bismarck-strasse in rush-hour. He’d been told that the Dooley Terminal, HMRC section, was a living death.
In 1908, Calabria had suffered an earthquake, thirty thousand killed, and another forty thousand in Messina across the Strait. No historic buildings had survived. They watched men fishing with rods from the base of the monument to Victor Emmanuel III, had seen nothing caught, but it had been worth lingering because the views across to Sicily and smoking Etna were good.
They had visited the Roman baths, part excavated, and looked down on the uncovered Greek walls of the city, dating back eight centuries avanti Christi. Fred had talked of Barbary pirates raiding the city centuries later and taking men to slavery in Tunisia. The money for more digging seemed to have run out. Fred confessed that, already, he was bored with his mission, and that knee-bending rarely suited him. They should get the hell out of this city and head for where any action might be.
Fred said, matter of fact, ‘We said nobody liked him, our boy from the bank.’
Carlo said, ‘And we reckoned that didn’t matter.’
‘We might get to like him.’
‘How come?’
‘He’s out there, sitting, watching and absorbing. Everything is swimming in his mind. When he moves, he’ll make chaos.’
‘He’ll shake the tree violently, which spells . . .?’
‘Mistakes. Bad boys making ‘mistakes’.
‘I’m getting to like your drift, Fred . . . might be entertaining. Mistakes, yes, and they add to vulnerability. Not often that we get a show put on for us.’
‘It would place the boredom, Carlo, on the back burner . . .’
The oleander was in flower, the rubbish bins overflowing. The great magnolia trees gave shade and they sat under one. Fred took a penknife from his pocket, passed it to Carlo and let him perform the first act of vandalism. He gouged the shape of a heart, put an arrow through it, then cut the initials and handed back the knife. Fred scratched ‘KrimPol’ beside the arrow’s head and ‘HMRC’ by its feathers. A gesture of affection between two old stagers in the law-enforcement gig.
‘How old?’ Fred asked.