About fifty paces away, a man waved: tall, angular, unshaven, pale. In appearance he was all that Carlo was not. It had been a bumpy flight – cross winds had flung them around on their final descent – and Carlo thought the next hop would be worse. The rain was heavy and there was standing water on the apron.
They met. Carlo had been told that the German, from a KrimPol unit, had been in Italy, on a steep learning curve, after the Duisburg massacre in 2007: a quiet industrial town in the west of Germany had played host to a big-time ’Ndrangheta faida – six dead. The country had woken up to news of a large-scale Calabrian infiltration to their society, and what happened when a feud erupted. It had been going on for sixteen years, had started with offence given when a visiting circus had performed in San Luca; insults were exchanged between two families. Killings punctuated the feud, tit for tat, but the big hit had been in Germany where the families had their major money-spinning interests. The word for Carlo was that the German had been sent to the south of Italy and told not to come back until he understood the organised-crime culture of the area. He had managed to extend his stay – and extend it again. Three days before, he had met the missing Briton. It was a start.
A firm shake of his hand. ‘I’m Fred.’
‘How did you come by that?’
‘From Manfred. But always I have been “Fred”. You have a problem with it?’
‘No problem. I’m Carlo.’
‘Are you Italian background?’
‘No.’
It was just the name that he’d attracted while doing his four years as a Liaison Officer of HMRC and attached to the embassy . . . not that he had seen anything of his old stomping ground from the aircraft as it had come in. Dense cloud and the Eternal City was blanketed and they hadn’t broken through till almost on the tarmac.
Carlo said, ‘Did anyone see you off this morning?’
‘When I left Tempelhof? No.’
‘No big boss there?’
‘No.’
‘Did you get a speech – stirring stuff, motivation?’
‘Last night they talked about damage limitation.’
Carlo said, ‘They wouldn’t have wanted guilt by association. I fancy a coffee. I’m to emphasise that we “care passionately about the furtherance of good relations” and also that we “take very seriously an unwarranted intervention” by this crackpot kid. I’m not a senior man, so they sent me.’
‘Coffee would be good. I think they scraped the bottom of a sewer to find me. It is not a job for a man of ambition.’
‘Plumbed the depths in my case. Can I say something?’
There was a shrug.
‘We may not agree on much, but we have a saying – ‘We must all hang together or we’ll hang separately.’ You understand that?’
‘Benjamin Franklin, American . . . You want cappuccino or a latte, yes? We do a job . . . I do not expect to be loved here, or welcomed.’
‘My people say you’re at the heart of this, fielding blame.’
A wintry grin. ‘My people say the same. If my bosses were here, most of them half my age, not yet out of kindergarten, they would be concerned as to who had seniority on the jaunt. It would be important. Who is Alpha and who is Bravo?’
‘But our bosses are not here.’
‘So we are felons freed on a day-release scheme. We achieve a little here and there. We are too lowly to harbour ambitions.’
‘But expert in screwing up the best-laid plans of mice and men.’
‘Approved – which?’
‘Cappuccino, thanks.’
They were at the bar. A fast transfer, then the next leg. Life would get harder – guaranteed.
It was his favourite film. In his opinion, it was the best movie ever made. Marcantonio was watching Al Pacino as the Cuban kid who made the big-time. He had the DVD back at his apartment in Berlin and saw Scarface once a week; he had left his first copy at home when he had gone to Germany. Not that it would have been watched while he was away – his grandmother liked romance, Teresa the programmes on new kitchens. Giulietta had the set tuned to financial news channels. His grandfather, in the bunker, watched crime series. The man Pacino played was a hero to Marcantonio.
It never failed him.