The Collaborator

by Gerald Seymour

  He didn’t look into the faces of the two men, just glanced and saw the long, wispy beards and hair, the blood of bullet wounds on filthy clothing, and the grimaces because they were in shock and the morphine had not yet taken effect. Three men now emerged from the Huey and they were helped down, then led away bent low from the spinning rotors. They looked weak and near to collapse. He did the equation. Intelligence had reported six hostages – a French tourist who was an irresponsible idiot, a Canadian water-purification-plant engineer whose light aircraft had come down three years earlier, a judge who had been kidnapped eighteen months back, two local politicians who had been snatched four and a half years ago, and a missionary who was said to have Peruvian papers. One dead, two wounded, three unharmed was a good return.

  Two soldiers were walking wounded. Five bodies were dumped from the hatch; they’d be FARC guys. A Chinook was coming in now. Would have been called up when the ‘Contact’ report had come in over the communications. A monster with a double rotor system and a full medical team. It was a good return – he’d seen the missionary walking towards him, and had seen him also, politely, shake off a hand that tried to support him. It was all because of the missionary. It was not for the tourist or the engineer or the judge or the local-government people; they could have been forgotten and left to rot. If it had been Special Forces, Americans, on the ground, the message would have been sent out in clear to the FARC that the missionary tag was bogus. The man passed him and there was a murmur, lips barely moving, which might have been two words: ‘Thank you.’ Probably was. He didn’t acknowledge. The captain, Pablo, was not inside the loop and didn’t know that the freeing of an American asset was the sole reason for this mission. Lukas, no one else, would have been permitted by the Agency to give the crucial advice on the rescue of their man. He had the reputation… but he shunned pride.

  There was a colonel on the Chinook. He slapped him on the arm, and bayed, ‘Good work, Lukas. We lost a local politico, but he was a left sympathiser, and the Frenchman. We’ve saved the judge, who has good connections with central government, and God’s man, the Canadian and a mayor from this region. The injured will live. Fine work.’

  A hand was offered but he kept one of his in a pocket and the other cupped a cigarette end. He did not do courtesies. It was not that he intended rudeness, more that the pleasantries seemed unimportant, and he wouldn’t have considered such a refusal might offend. Guarding the cigarette was a greater priority.

  But, later, at the ramp of the Chinook, he permitted Pablo to hug him briefly.

  It would be an hour’s flight to the military base attached to Bogotá’s civil airport.

  He would be in time to catch the Avianca night flight out of the Aeropuerto Internacional El Dorado for the long haul over the wastes of the Atlantic before the European landfall, then the short commuter ride to his home. The families of the survivors would be at the El Dorado, with jerks from the embassy, flashlights, government ministers and a ratpack of hacks. He would be well clear of them.

  He would sleep on the long-haul flight. He always slept well coming off an assignment: win, lose or draw, he’d sleep.

  2

  The glass-sided box of the public telephone was ahead. The pavement was crowded at that time of the early evening and it slipped in and out of her view but she kept her eye on it, as if it was the Holy Grail.

  She had not slept the previous night and had not eaten that day. She had missed an all-day seminar on insolvency, had walked the streets and sat in a park, with Downs Road behind her and the open expanse in front where mothers pushed prams, smoked and gossiped, where kids threw off their hoods and kicked a ball, and where work-gangs – sullen, resentful and bored – cleared dumped litter under supervision. She had watched them all. Had seen the old walk arm in arm or dragged along by a dog on a tight lead and the young drift. She had watched the high windows and balconies of the tower blocks on the west side of the park, and seen wet washing put out on lines to dry and dry washing taken in. The hours of the day had been eaten up. It was about betrayal, a big word, as big as any she knew in its weight.

  It had rolled in her mind. Tradimento. It had made her – in her bed, unable to sleep – shiver and feel dread, because she knew the reward that waited for those who betrayed their own.

  Her hand was tight on her shoulder-bag as she walked down the shallow slope of the street towards the telephone box. It was occupied. Three boys in baggy trousers and oversized sweat tops were crowded inside it: she wondered why they used a public phone, not mobiles – and whether they bought or sold. She looked to see if any others were hovering to use the phone, and thought not. Where she came from, that culture and that society, the word tradimento had a taste as bitter as poison. Betrayal was an ultimate sin, was stamping on the face of Christ… and she had sat through today on the bench in the park. She had kept her hands tight on the bag’s straps and had watched but not absorbed. She had agonised on the implications of betrayal. Her first act of betrayal had been that morning when she had come out of the bathroom, dressed, and had crossed the living room. Vincenzo was lounging in a chair, smoking, a towel draped across his stomach as he turned the pages of a football fanzine about Napoli SSC. She had gone into her bedroom and come out a moment later with the bag that contained the notes she took in her classes. He had asked, without interest, about her day. She had answered, a mutter, that she had a seminar on insolvenza. She had needed to carry the work bag if she was to support the lie that she was attending her classes. She had lied to her brother and started the process of betrayal. Vincenzo had grinned – the idea of insolvency amused him. He, his father and mother, his brothers, his sister were worth hundreds of millions of euros, would never know insolvency… She had sat on the bench and watched, her stomach had growled, and she had steeled herself.

  Was there something else she could do to reflect her feelings? Like what? Join a religious order and say prayers? Become involved with a charity, and help the mentally handicapped, alcoholics or HIV sufferers? Sign up for a campaigning political group and attempt to bulldoze change through a ballot box? Walk out, lose herself, try to forget what had been a part of her life? As alternatives, they had all – during the night – seemed inadequate and degrading to the memory of her best friend. Immacolata had found the strength to go to the telephone box.

  When the self-doubt was worst she would stare out over the trees and up into the clouds, feel the rain on her skin and take herself back to those hours. Not many of them. She had been able to look at her watch and think that twenty-four hours earlier she had been hurrying along the verge of via Saviano, or that it was the moment her heel had snapped, or that she was hopping, hobbling, along a path between the family chapels, or that she was in the centre of the cemetery at Nola, staring across white gravestones to a far wall where the family slots were. She had recalled the hands taking the bundle and carrying it up the ladders. Clearest were the images of her clothing being ripped, her shin kicked, and the denunciation of her family’s part in the death of her friend.

  Had she known of the trade in the disposal of toxic waste? Of course she had.

  Had she known of the profits to be made from shipping contaminated rubbish from factories in the north to dumping grounds in the fields and orchards of the south? Of course she had.

  Had it ever intruded into her thoughts that her family would fear responsibility for the killing of her friend? Never… She remembered the flowers, bent, worthless. What she remembered best gave her the strength to commit the act: tradimento.

  She stood by the telephone box. She eyed the boys. Had she been at home, on her own streets, and ragazzi had used a telephone she was waiting for, she would have been recognised, the call terminated, the booth offered, and respect would have been shown to her. Maybe, even, one of the kids – had she been at home – would have wiped the receiver on his T-shirt to leave it clean for her. Two of the boys stared at her, challenging. Here, on Kingsland Road, in Dalston against the border of
Hackney, the boys with hoods on their heads, Nikes and new tracksuits ruled and did not expect to be stared out. She thought they were shit. One, the biggest, seemed to make a decision about her. He didn’t pull a weapon, but ended the call and dropped the receiver, letting it dangle on its cable, then slouched out, his shoulder brushing hers. It was probably the nearest he had come to a moment of submission. She heard, behind her, another spit at the paving-stones.

  She lifted the receiver. She knew the number. Anyone in her family knew the number, and the occupant of the desk on which the call would ring out. She had not thought of the young man. Perhaps he, too, was betrayed. He was ignored, didn’t matter to her, as she stood in the glass-sided box. The headlights of cars, buses and vans glistened on the street, the lamps above her were bright and threw an orange wash over the windows of shops, banks, building societies and betting shops – all closed now. The young man didn’t matter to her and had no place in the fierce heat of the cemetery at Nola. She put a Visa card into the slot and the display panel responded.

  She dialled. She would not have needed to know the number. Neither would any of her family have ‘needed’ to know it. Knowledge of the number was power. Having it showed the tentacle reach of the clan. The direct line would have been listed only on the most confidential sheets and would have circulated only among a chosen, trusted few. Knowing it was a demonstration of the power of the clan to which she was integral. She took a deep breath, allowed it to whistle shrill from her lips.

  The call was answered. She thought she had interrupted a meeting in the office on the upper floor of the Palace of Justice and that a subordinate had picked it up. She named the prosecutor. She was told he was unavailable. Who wished to speak to the dottore?

  The moment of betrayal came fast, stampeded her. For a moment she couldn’t speak. Then she straightened her back and jutted her chin. ‘I think he’ll find time to speak with me. Tell him I’m Immacolata Borelli…’

  He walked into the classroom. A chorus of voices, in scattered accents, greeted him. For Eddie Deacon it had been a bad day and now it was evening. The chance of improvement was minimal. The language courses often took place after working hours and his foreign students flocked in when their daytime employment, legitimate or not, had finished.

  It had been a long-standing promise, made at least a month ago, that he would go in the morning by train from London to Chippenham. His father had collected him at the station, and they’d had a desultory conversation in the car about the state of the railways, the weather, the roads, his father’s pension, and just as they had exhausted all common subject matter, they’d reached the family home.

  He’d had to go. He couldn’t have brought himself to call and tell them he had a problem and couldn’t make it. He would have heard undisguised disappointment, in whichever of them he had spoken to, and he’d known that for the last two days his mum would have been planning lunch: she worked, front-desk receptionist, at the offices of a local building contractor and would have told everyone there that she was taking the day off because her lad was coming down from London. They’d be waiting the next morning for a bulletin on how it had gone and how he was progressing, and from the way she told it, most would reckon he was a college lecturer and something of a highflier, not a language teacher who helped a cocktail of youngsters to speak basic English, and wasn’t concerned with chasing ‘prospects’. His father had taken early retirement on his fiftieth birthday, and pottered round the house fixing things that didn’t need fixing. Eddie Deacon had damn near nothing that connected with the lives of Arthur and Betty, his parents. What he couldn’t deny was the love they had for him. A bit humbling, actually. Like having a pillow shoved over his face that half suffocated him. There was love and there was expectation for his future. After lunch, if he was lucky, he’d escape for an hour, put on the old pair of boots that were kept on the shelf in the pristine garage, and walk by the river, maybe see a kingfisher in flight, lean on a field gate and have a herd of heifers nuzzle his sleeve. Then a quick tea, a pointed look at his watch and talk about the train he could catch.

  He’d been up early. He had walked across from Dalston into Hackney and had turned up at the college where she was enrolled on the accountancy/book-keeping course. He’d asked for her at the administration office. ‘Something urgent,’ he’d said, ‘and I need to see Miss Immacolata Borelli. She’s a student on the B4 course. It really is important…’ They knew who he was because he was there three or four evenings or lunchtimes a week to meet her. Whenever she finished a class and he didn’t have one, he was there. A shrug… She hadn’t been in. Had she called in sick? She had not, just hadn’t turned up. Another shrug… He couldn’t go soft, begging and pleading, and ask for a sight of her home address. Couldn’t, because it would have shown up the biggest hole in their relationship – no address and no phone number. Then, an escape route – a walk in the fields, where the heifers were grazing, and down to the river.

  The former soldier, from a bungalow down the lane, had been on the bank. Eddie Deacon was a good listener and didn’t reckon to wipe his own views over another’s and compete in conversation. He didn’t know the guy – Dean – well, but his mother had told him grisly stories. Not much older than Eddie, but there was a tattoo of a paratroop’s wings, and Dean had been Special Forces. Now he did contract work in Iraq and was gone for four months at a time. Listening seemed important and he noted that by staying quiet and lending an ear, the guy’s hands stopped shaking, the fingers didn’t clasp and unclasp, and the voice lost its breathiness. He didn’t hurry him or glance at his watch, and learned a bit about the airport road, procedures to counter vehicle ambush and command wires, things that had nothing to do with the river, the flight over the water of the kingfisher – twice – or the patrol of a heron. When it was done, the guy had gripped his fist – as if the listening had been important. At home, he apologised to his parents for having been away so long and told them where he’d been and why he’d stayed out. He’d sensed then that the world of a psychologically troubled ex-soldier was a route march away from that of his mum and dad, and his own.

  He’d headed for Paddington and the main-line train, a later service than intended.

  Not that Eddie Deacon knew too much about the workings of the KGB, old time, or the intelligence services, present time, but he liked to joke that his mum, Betty, would have had an interrogator’s job – no messing – if she ever chose to turn up and offer herself. It was a routine area. ‘Relationships’. The village seemed to him a rabbits’ breeding warren. Everyone they knew had children who were shagging and producing, some in marriage and others not. In everyone else’s house there were framed photographs of babies with red-eye. So, was there a girlfriend? Had he met anyone? Was there anyone important in…? As if he had to shove his thumb in a fractured dike, he’d done what he could to cut off the questioning. Stupid, but it was what he had done. Eddie had opened his wallet and taken out a photograph – Mac smiling, close up. He had seen his father’s jaw drop and his mother had purred in appreciation. Showed, really, what they thought of him… they could hardly comprehend that the layabout, the tosser, their only child, had a photograph of such an attractive, star-quality girl in his wallet.

  To get to the river, he’d had to make a promise. Yes, next time he came down he was definitely going to bring her with him. Guaranteed, safe as a supermarket ‘special offer’. He’d told them a bit, not much. She was Italian, she was clever, she was going to be an accountant. Didn’t tell them he’d sat in an Afghan restaurant for three hours the previous evening with an empty place laughing at him across the table, that she’d stood him up. Did tell them that she was friendly, warm and made him laugh. Didn’t tell them that she had skipped classes that morning and hadn’t phoned in with an explanation… Didn’t tell them she hadn’t given him her home address or a contact number. Didn’t tell them he’d never walked her home. Did tell them, with his eyes, his face, and with the way he held the photo, that she was t
otally important to him. The sight of the girl, Mac, had silenced them, and he’d escaped to his river walk. Said it out loud, ‘Mac, for heaven’s sake, where the hell are you? Mac, where have you gone? What are you doing?’ Behind him, in the kitchen, the dishwasher would be churning, Arthur and Betty would be muttering about a girl coming at last into their boy’s life. All the time, down by the river, listening and offering a shoulder, she wasn’t out of his mind. He’d thanked his mum for lunch, promised again that he would bring Mac next time he came down, thanked his dad for the lift to Chippenham, and come back to London.

  Hadn’t known what to do… and had gone to work. She throbbed in his mind.

  ‘Good evening, everybody.’

  It came back at him, surf rolling on shingle. ‘Good evening, Mr Deacon.’

  ‘I hope everybody’s had a very good day.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Deacon.’

  He’d had a hideous day of hurt, wounds and anguish. No Mac and didn’t know where to find her. He was important to her, wasn’t he? Definitely he was, had to be. He knew it because she’d told him so… had told him when they were in bed. ‘Right, settle down. We’re going to continue this evening with our Agatha Christie story, and we’re going to pick up on page forty-nine. Let’s get there.’ When they were in bed, naked, ecstasy shared, she’d told him how important he was to her. She wouldn’t lie, would she?

  It had been enough to bring Mario Castrolami in his car through red stop lights, then to get him as close to running along poorly lit corridors as he knew how.

  Castrolami steadied himself, his hands clamped on the back of a chair. The fog of smoke made his eyes water and irritated his throat. Four men and two women in the prosecutor’s office had cigarettes alive. The desk and the mahogany table in the window were scattered with open files. The prosecutor headed the section in the Palace of Justice that attempted to combat the power, influence and control of the city’s Camorra clans. With him were his deputy, who had responsibility for the inner-city clans of Naples, his carabinieri liaison officer, who worked from the palace, his secretary and the archivist he most trusted. Castrolami knew them all, knew also that each man and woman in the room could be trusted implicitly. The liaison officer, Castrolami had heard, personally swept that office each morning for electronic devices. And a radio played – tuned to a rock programme on a commercial channel. The screen on the prosecutor’s desk showed the soft-focus close-up image of a young woman whose features he knew, whose history he had studied, whose importance he recognised and whom he had never met.