The Collaborator

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘Listen, and you might – after a fashion. That girl he spoke of, the one he promised to bring to meet us, she’s gone. Gone home. No warning, no explanation, but gone. Sadly, he intends to follow her.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said there were other fish in the sea. Apparently not. I said he’d run the risk of hurting himself. He said he was hurting enough as it was and wouldn’t notice any more pain. He’d never said anything like that to me before, bared himself in that way.’

  ‘Extraordinary.’

  ‘I don’t want to be rude, Betty, but I’m wondering whether either of us would have gone chasing halfway across Europe if the other had done a bunk. I doubt that’s unfair. I said I’d look after his Visa bills – and couldn’t think of anything else. Oh, yes, I wished him luck. It didn’t seem sensible to be parental, old and cautionary. That’s it.’

  His wife said, ‘No, I wouldn’t have followed you. She must be very special, that girl.’

  At that time in the morning, the tourists had not yet come to the museums. Lukas had. The bars, coffees and beers were for later in the day, while squatting close to his friend who drew the river, the Louvre and Notre Dame was for the middle. Early, he came with a plastic bottle of fizzy water to sit on a bench and watch the first arrivals. Most would not know a Millet from a Manet or a Monet, but Lukas had no sense of superiority, and could not have made the distinction himself. He came to see people and search their faces, the better to understand them.

  The science he practised affected humble people, average people, ordinary people. It was they who looked at the great statues, the bronzes, outside the former railway station that was now a museum and gazed at the massive charcoal grey bulk of the rampant elephant with flared ears and the rhinoceros that looked ready to charge, both larger than life. It was those people – businessmen, teachers, backpackers, engineers, charity workers, and those of whom it was said ‘Wrong place at the wrong time’ – whom he worked to liberate, to keep alive.

  When the buses came he would settle back and stare into the faces, but not be noticed himself, and he would play mind games. How would they respond, hooded, bound, beaten, videotaped with guns at their heads and knives at their throats as they parrot-spoke denunciations of state policy? His interpretation of how they would react, in circumstances of the greatest stress would govern the guidance he gave and the decisions he took.

  He had no favourites. He was no more on the side of the pretty slim blonde girl with the denim mini-skirt who came off the bus with the Hamburg plates than he was on the side of the guy who walked behind her with a stick. All were equal. So, he was not summoned to the great offices of authority in the power centres of the world. He did not walk echoing corridors, was not brought into carpeted offices and offered sherry or Scotch, because their occupants did not know his name. He worked in dark corners, that were – except once – beyond the reach of long-lens cameras.

  It was rumoured, though five years later it remained unconfirmed, that a photographer from a German news agency had snapped him on a street in Baghdad when he was with a Special Forces crowd. The photographer had been embedded with a marine unit or would otherwise have been hotel-bound. Rumour ran that the sunlight had nicked the glass of the Leica camera so he had seen its owner and strode up to him. He had half strangled the snapper when he pulled off the strap and broke the camera open by stamping on it, destroying maybe fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of equipment. He had taken out the memory stick and had chucked it into the middle of a wide sewer, then had gotten on with his work. The photographer had been told by a gofer alongside Lukas, from the Green Zone, that if he talked about the incident his safety could not be guaranteed. It was a rumour. In the work he did, his anonymity was precious, perhaps even more so than that of an élite bomb-disposal operative. If his face had been known to the enemy, with his reputation, he would have been a prime target, and his usefulness in the field minimised. And, which he had not admitted to another soul he had a rooted aversion to the limelight, almost shyness, disguised under brusque indifference.

  He had no medals, but the people – ordinary, average, humble – coming off the bus of a Hamburg tour company, pretty and ugly, young and old, did not have medals. Most of those freed from the hell-holes, the bunkers where they squatted in excreta and urine, listening for footsteps and wondering if a weapon was loaded or a knife sharpened, would never know of Lukas’s existence. It was better that way. No handshakes at the end, if it had gone well, no hugging and kissing, no names and promises of cards on the anniversary. The only way.

  So, his imagined friends queued in front of him to enter the museum, and one of his real friends sketched in crayon by the river, and several more cleaned café tables and swept floors – and all would be wondering if he would stroll by, spend some time, or whether he was gone, wherever and for whatever.

  That morning he left his bench, went to the kiosk and bought a pistaccio ice-cream. It was his favourite. He thought about it when he was in places that didn’t do that flavour or any other. Some said he was a screwball and unhinged, others that folk should be goddam grateful the lunatic stayed on call and was never far from his phone.

  When he had finished the ice-cream and wiped his mouth, he would head into the museum for the Legion of Honour, and the impeccable garden in the central courtyard with the fine red roses. It was where he went when he had tired of the mind games, and it was where heroes were. He did not see himself as heroic, and if a medal had been offered he would have refused it.

  Many, meeting him for the first time, defined him as ‘that screwball’. A major in the Rangers had. It was Baqubah and they’d helicoptered in from Camp Liberty at the Balad air base between Baghdad and Samarra. There was a single-storey house, breeze blocks and tin roof, on the extreme edge of the place near fields, and the asset handled by Task Force 145 said it was where the hostage was – a Greek-born engineer and expert in electricity supply, and how many guys held him. Difficult to get close, and the usual thing would have been to do three or four days’ reconnaissance, learn the movements and do it from a distance. Lukas was at the command point, four or five klicks back, and was barely tolerated by the major who rated him – FBI background and all – as an unwelcome shoe-in. A forward covert observer would have been on a telescope, reported a jerk coming to the building cautiously and that he carried a canister of milk and a metre-wide roll of clear plastic sheeting. Only Lukas – in the command centre – had reacted. He had demanded – not asked or suggested but demanded – that the storm squad assault the building immediately. It had been agreed. Would have been Lukas’s damn near manic certainty that had won the day: an attack without sufficient preparation, without a model of the interior, and in the bright heat light of the middle of the day.

  Twelve minutes after Lukas had made his demand the first men in the Ranger platoon hit the doors front and back, then the windows, and chucked in stun grenades and gas canisters, like it was Christmas and they were giving them away. They dragged out the Greek, and brought him back from the dead. The Greek said he would have been dead in five minutes, was shouting it because of what the grenades had done to his hearing and choking because of the gas. Then the major asked the man designated a ‘screwball’ how he’d known the attack had to go in without the necessary preparation. Lukas had said: ‘Because they took the plastic sheeting in.’ Would he explain? Lukas had said: ‘They always spread plastic sheeting out on the floor before they saw a guy’s head off with a serrated blade to keep the blood off it.’ There had been a camera, with a charged battery, mounted on a tripod. The major had been awarded another ribbon and his storm squad had commendations, and none of them had ever seen Lukas again. Maybe by now the major had made brigadier or even general, and maybe the Greek had a good position in power supply at the ministry in Athens… and Lukas wandered into the courtyard of the museum for heroes.

  It was how he liked it, staying unknown but being on call.

  6

  H
e had been lucky. He told himself that luck had dictated that a lorry should spill its load on the M11 just north of Harlow, the northbound carriageway, and that a tailback of four miles should delay a family on a budget break to Rome while the rail service had sailed past unaffected. Eddie Deacon would have slept on a bench at the airport, Stansted, but instead found himself aboard a ‘cheap and cheerful’ flight going to Ciampino.

  A rush to get himself on board, a chase down corridors and piers, and he had been the last on to the aircraft. He was not even in a seat before the doors were closed and it was taxiing. He told himself then that he was blessed.

  He had not bought a book, and they didn’t do freebie newspapers with that airline. The child on his left ate chocolate messily and concentrated on a GameBoy, and the woman on his right was rigid with nerves – he reckoned he might have her hand in his lap, for comfort, when it came to landing. Eddie didn’t buy anything from the trolley and sat still, upright, stared ahead and made no contact, eye or physical, with the woman or the child. He thought he might just as well have pulled a pin and rolled a pineapple grenade into his parents’ living room: his father had been monosyllabic and breathing hard, but had coughed up the offer to look after his plastic bill, which was decent, but afterwards they would – together – have been in shock. He had switched off his mobile before catching the train to Stansted. He reckoned they would have tried half a dozen times to phone him, to try to dissuade him, to tell him he should go to the language school and request his job back. His parents, and all their friends, would never march out of regular paid employment without having another position to move to on the following Monday morning. So, the concept of what he had done left him vaguely light-headed. His mind danced.

  What was bizarre about the choreography was that he had not stopped – he hadn’t since he had sat alone in the Afghan restaurant and waited – to consider that Immacolata might have decided that he was a boring no-hoper, a saddo and a loser, and that a summer fling was over as autumn came on. Never thought of it. He had a BA (Hons) in Modern Languages, only a 2:2 – they called it a Desmond at that university in the Thames Valley – and at the end of four years’ study was supposed to possess some capability at analysis. He had left with a good knowledge of German, fair French and some Spanish, with a smattering of Italian, which might take him over the front page of a newspaper.

  He knew Berlin, having walked the pavements and worked in all-night cafés during summer vacations, and could get himself around Paris without glancing every five minutes at a map, and he wouldn’t have been lost in Barcelona. He didn’t know Rome or Naples, but he had once spent two days in Milan, having climbed on the wrong train in Geneva when he should have been going to Montpellier in France, coming from Munich. It mattered not. It was not in the temperament of Eddie Deacon to worry at a problem, as if he needed to untie a tight knot in a length of string. He either ran from problems or tilted at them. If she had indeed walked out on him she could say so to his face: clear, one-syllable words. Not possible, not his Mac. Second point, chewed on briefly in the aircraft cabin: police at the flat, a brother taken away, the flat searched, everything about her hidden from him like her address. Was she ‘dodgy’, or ‘bent’? Weighed it. Didn’t care. She was his Mac.

  There was no doubt. He had to go to Naples. He had to find her. He’d pull a face, she’d grimace and shrug a bit, ask him what the hell he was doing there – in a street, whatever it looked like, whatever via Forcella looked like. He’d say he wanted a fresh roll for his breakfast, maybe some croissants. She would look surprised, astonished, then grin. He’d laugh. Both laughing, hugging and holding tight. It was what he thought. Nothing about a broken door, police on the step, a wild kid who was expert on breaking and entering, maybe no more than ten years old. Nothing about sitting for several hours in a restaurant, hurting, and hurting worse in his bedroom where her dressing-gown hung and her magazines lay about. Nothing about talking to, pleading with a blow-up photograph on a wall. They would do it, meeting again, just casual, as if nothing had happened and no wounds had been cut into him. He never saw her solemn, sullen, serious, because Mac was always the photograph on the wall.

  Who knew what love was? They didn’t talk about love in the little house they shared in Dalston. Love was not an agenda area with the guy from HM Revenue and Customs, the club waiter, the rail-ticket seller or the perpetual student. Love was in movies, books, magazines. Screwing and shagging were real – rare but attainable with a good alcohol flow – but love was off-limits. The definition of love, as known to Eddie Deacon, was an ache in his guts, a yearning and the bloody awful misery of not seeing that face coming round the corner and the little wave, then feeling her touch… And the bloody child had put chocolate on the sleeve of his jacket, and the bloody woman’s hand was on his knee and her fingers were tightening. They were long over the Alps.

  The light was failing, and the sun had dipped below the wing. The child was gobbling chocolate to get the box finished and the woman was going into white-knuckle time because the engine pitch had changed, and Eddie sensed that the descent had started. At that time, he should have been educating a roomful of immigrants – all his chums from the Baltics, the Balkans and North Africa – on the intricacies of Murder in Mesopotamia or Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express, didn’t really matter which. Like pressing a button on the staff-room computer keyboard, he deleted them, erased them.

  It was early in the evening and a city’s lights were on. The aircraft yawed and the undercarriage rumbled as it was lowered. Of course he had come. He was Eddie Deacon, and he wanted nothing more than to see her, hear her, feel her – and there was no logic in it and no more analysis of what he knew.

  The wheels hit, a good landing, feathered, and he didn’t know of anything he should fear.

  He came out of the car fast, slammed the door, waved off the driver. For Mario Castrolami this was foreign territory. What he had seen of Collina Fleming was enough to curl his lip. He tasted the first trace of bile in his throat. He had heard it was a hill for millionaires, the big ones, and the apartments were broad built, their balconies had expensive plants on them and the plots were surrounded by barricades. Dogs barked behind electronically controlled gates and porters patrolled the front doors. He thought the hill was about privilege and wealth. Castrolami, investigator in the carabinieri ROS, detested privilege and lacked wealth. Could have done… Could have blocked enquiries, made files disappear, given advance warning by public phone, with a handkerchief over the mouthpiece, of a raid planned for the following dawn. All of that would have filled an offshore account. He lived in Vomero, the comfortable area of Naples, but on the north side of the Castel Sant’Elmo, and he needed to be a gymnast and to stand on tiptoe on a chair to peer through a skylight for a minuscule glimpse of the sea and the east promontory of Capri. He thought the hill oozed money.

  A woman passed him as he went to the gate. It was late September and Castrolami’s tie was loose and there was sweat in his armpits. She wore a fur coat, and carried a dog under one arm. Where Castrolami lived, on the wrong side of Vomero, there were stray cats that would have killed that toy dog and eaten it. She looked up, saw him, dismissed him as irrelevant and went by – probably thought him a plumber or an insurance salesman. There was no porter on this block and he rang the bell, gave his name and the gate was unlocked. He carried a thin cardboard file and a small overnight bag. He loathed Rome, and hoped the bag would be needed for a night or two, no more.

  He was admitted.

  He asked how she was. Rossi, the young one, gestured – something of amusement and something of frustration.

  The older one was Orecchia. ‘She stays in her room. It was about her mother. We find it often enough. There’s the excitement and drama, the centre-of-stage hour, then the moment of reality and the fear. She’s frightened of her mother. You understand, we’re not interrogators. At this stage we’re here to protect her and maintain the security of the safe-house. She wants
to stay in her room, hide at the back of her cave so we don’t drag her out. She won’t eat, she won’t talk, she won’t…’

  Castrolami smiled. He did a grim, dark smile well.

  He went to the door. It was less than twenty-four hours since he had brought Immacolata Borelli to this address, and less than twelve since he had been told she had refused to speak to the prosecutor, and only half a dozen since the file had landed on his cluttered desk. They used him, at the Palace of Justice, as a bulldozer. That evening, he should have been with his friend, who painted views of the mountain, at an exhibition of modern art in a church on the riviera di Chiaia and afterwards… They took for granted, at the Palace of Justice, that the bulldozer did twenty-four/seven.

  He didn’t knock.

  The light was off, but the blinds were not drawn and the street-lamps far below threw up enough for him to see her. She lay on her back, her legs together, staring at the ceiling. She didn’t turn to face him but said quietly, ‘I don’t want anything to eat or drink.’ He put the light on, hit all the switches, and she jerked her head sideways. He went to the table and put the file on it. Then he walked towards her. He took her right arm at the wrist, heaved her off the bed and she nearly fell. He said nothing and dragged her to the table, her feet slithering on the floor. He kicked back a chair, made room for her, pressed her down on the seat.

  He flicked open the file cover, and spilled out the photographs.

  She saw her mother. Immacolata held the photograph under the table light. She looked at the wife of Pasquale Borelli, the leader of the clan and controller of most business activities in Forcella and Sanità, the woman who did deals that had relevance in the north of Italy, in the South of France, in Spain and Germany, who had ambitions for the opening of opportunities in Great Britain, who aspired to be a player on the east coast of the United States and had links with organisations operating in the west of the former Soviet Union. She looked at the photograph of her mother.