The Collaborator

by Gerald Seymour

  Perhaps it hurt most, and made the worst fear, that he didn’t know how Immacolata Borelli would react when she held his life in the palm of her hand and weighed its value.

  ‘You lied to me. I take much from the shit people I work with – but lying disgusts me.’

  She hung her head.

  Castrolami seemed to tower over her. It was a theatrical, contrived attack. A knock at her door, a request that she come now into the living room. She wasn’t dressed. Castrolami, Orecchia and Rossi were. No coffee had been made for her, no juice laid out, no rolls heated, but she had seen their plates on the draining-board in the kitchen. She thought they had ambushed her.

  ‘You lied. We took you on trust. We diverted resources. All the time you lied.’

  She hung her head because she didn’t understand. She had talked of her father, her mother, her eldest brother. She had listed the names of men who laundered and bought for the clan, who handled transhipments. That day she had prepared herself to talk about Giovanni, the brother she loathed, and Silvio, who had depended and doted on her. She couldn’t think, then, of anything she had said that was untrue. There was, Immacolata believed, genuine anger in Castrolami’s accusation. His jaw wobbled and little froths of spittle were at the sides of his mouth.

  ‘We were about to offer you the contract. You would have read the document, seen what we offered and what we required in return, and it would have been signed by the palace and by you. Now we find you’ve lied to us. I don’t make deals with liars. I prosecute them, I send them to Poggioreale, but I don’t sweet-talk with liars.’

  She saw that he was holding a roll of papers, maybe ten sheets, and she noted a photograph among them. For emphasis, Castrolami hit his palm with it. Rossi was at the kitchen door, sober-faced and impassive. Orecchia was sitting in the hall and neither made eye-contact with her. She was the daughter of her father. She wouldn’t bend the knee.

  ‘I don’t lie.’

  Castrolami took a small tape-recorder from his pocket. He switched it on and held it out. There was the noise of the park – dogs barking, the kids screaming, the rain on the leaves, and his voice: Can they find, hold and hurt, maybe murder, a lover? She heard her own voice, dismissive: No. His voice again, seeking certainty: In Naples there is no lover, no boy? Her own voice again, giving the certainty: No. Castrolami pressed fast-forward briefly. She heard Castrolami first: So there is a boy here… I have to know. Her response: Yes, but not significant. Again, the fast-forward, Castrolami saying: You go to bed. But you say it’s not ‘significant’… yes? She said, crackling on the tape and distorted: He’s just a boy. We met in a park… It doesn’t mean anything. Querying her, testing her: You won’t pine for him? Heard herself snort, then, I’ll forget him – maybe I have already. ‘I believe you had a passionate affair in London, and that your protestation that the relationship was meaningless was a lie.’

  ‘I don’t lie.’

  ‘What was the boy’s name?’

  She didn’t know where he was leading her. She saw the tape-recorder dropped into Castrolami’s pocket, as if its work was done. She said, ‘Eddie.’

  Castrolami repeated the name, rolled it. ‘Eddie… Eddie… and he’s not significant and fucking him meant nothing?’

  So, he was calling her a liar and a whore, implying she slept around. ‘I liked him.’

  ‘Only liked him?’

  ‘Yes, I liked him. There, I liked him. In London I liked him. Is that a sin? Do I go to confessional and blubber it to a priest who has his hand in his crotch? It was good in London. This isn’t London. People go on holiday, they fuck on holiday. People go to work conferences, meet others and fuck. People meet in cinemas in strange towns and fuck afterwards. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s what happens and—’

  She was cut short. The papers were allowed to unroll, the photograph taken out and passed to her. She held it. Her Eddie was leaning on a gate, arms resting on the top bar. There were young cattle around him, nuzzling and nudging him. She could almost hear his laughter. She hadn’t seen the photograph before. She thought it would have come from an album at his parents’ home.

  Castrolami curled his lip. ‘If I was the boy, and you were in my bed, and I said I loved you and asked, with a caress, how you felt about me, and you said I meant nothing to you, I’d be disappointed.’

  She saw a trap, a cul-de-sac, and thought she was led into it. She handed back the photograph. ‘Why did you show it me?’

  ‘Because you lied to me. That boy is huge in your life, as you are in his.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The best boy you ever knew.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Free to sleep with him, fuck him, without your mother criticising who you chose.’

  ‘Not significant.’

  ‘We shall see…’ He dropped his voice, more theatre, and was casual, as in conversation. He smiled and held the photograph of Eddie in front of her face. ‘We shall see, Signorina Immacolata, whether you lie or not. He, your insignificant, meaningless bed partner, was taken off the street in Forcella yesterday. Why should the boy have come to Naples if he’s insignificant and meaningless? Why is he in Forcella? What is your response to him being taken?’

  ‘He’s not important. My evidence is.’

  ‘Another lie – or the truth?’

  ‘I’ll stay the course.’

  ‘A lie or the truth?’

  ‘I’ll go to court whatever—’ Castrolami’s big fingers made a small tear at the top of the photograph, above Eddie’s head, and then, with a sort of formality, he handed her the photograph. She knew what was expected of her. She did it sharply, but looked away, through the window. The sun clipped the roofs, the water tanks and the satellite dishes, and was above the mountain range. She knew, and had judged it, that the rip would go through the middle of his face – his forehead, between his eyes and down the length of his nose. It would split his lips, his chin and his throat. She did it. She let the two pieces fall to the floor. She said, ‘I’ll go to court, whatever is set against me. I’ll go in memory of Marianna Rossetti. Fuck you, Castrolami.’

  He kicked away the two pieces of the photograph, and Rossi came forward to pick them up and bin them. Castrolami said he had to go out. She thought he despised her, but he hadn’t been in the cemetery at Nola.

  She went and lay on her bed, heard the main door open, shut, and the key turn.

  As he went into the via dei Condotti, Lukas understood why the piazza di Spagna had been chosen for the meeting. He came off the main drag and walked past the fashion houses. It was a good place to watch a man approach the steps, and to see whether he had a tail. He appreciated why they would be paranoid about security and didn’t argue with it. He was later than he would have wanted but Duck Johnstone had been on the phone for more than half an hour and had fed him morsels of intelligence that hadn’t been available last night. He reckoned Duck must have worked through most of it. It wasn’t that Lukas admired dogged hard work, just that he couldn’t abide the taking of shortcuts and easy opt-outs. He knew more about the boy, known now in the links as Echo – the girl was India – enough about him to have rated his journey to Naples as dumb-pig stupid, but Echo would still get his best effort – only effort he knew – to have him on a plane, and in a seat, not in the hold.

  He came to the fountain. He knew that a description of his features had been sent ahead, for recognition. He didn’t know whom he would meet, or have a code to exchange. The steps were a good place because he could be watched from more than four and up to seven angles. There were tourists fooling in the fountain at the foot, and locals were waiting to use the water spout for drinking. Lukas went past them, and the museum that was the Keats-Shelley house. He didn’t do poetry – literature – or anything that was outside the confines of freeing poor bastards caught up, usually, in someone else’s fight. Would have said it was full time and… He started to climb the steps. Already the sun flared off the stonework and any shade was filled with sitting yo
ungsters… Hostage rescue, hostage negotiation, hostage profiling and hostage co-ordination were big enough subject areas to swamp Lukas’s mind.

  He had been a sniper on the rescue team. He had once fired a live round to kill. He had carried the rifle and been in full kit on a live call-out close to a hundred times, including Ruby Ridge and Waco, but had fired only once. A death shot but not a clean one: the brains, skull fragments and blood of the robber trying to break a siege and bug out of a bank in Madison, Wisconsin, had spattered across the face and spectacles of the cashier he was using as a shield, and the mess had spoiled her dress. The Bureau’s HRT had been called in because the target had crossed state lines. He’d had the cross-wires on the felon’s head for upwards of thirty seconds and had fired a second after the guy’s attention had gone to his right side and the handgun had been moved out from under the woman’s chin. It was a hell of a shot, the rest of the team told him, but a shame about the dress. God only knew what the hairdresser would have found the next time the woman went. He had moved on, ditched the rifle and the big telescopic sight when the Bureau launched the Critical Incident Response Group.

  Only one way, an old head had told him, to learn the skills of negotiation – and he had to know about negotiation if he was to command those people. ‘Find the construction cranes,’ the old head had said in a corner of the Quantico parkland, ‘and some good high big-span bridges.’

  Suicides went up crane ladders and out on the walkways of bridges. Lukas had taken two years of evenings, days off and holiday time to be on stand-by for a call from a duty officer. Nobody in town, county or state police was queuing to go up a crane to talk to a nutcase who wanted to jump. Cranes and bridges were where ‘teeth were cut’, the old head had said. Couldn’t fail with wannabe suicides and hope to make it in the big-time of terrorist sieges. The way to learn the soft, gentle, persuasive talk, and to calm a situation, was to be a hundred feet up a crane ladder with not much to see of the ‘client’ but the soles of his shoes fifteen further up. He’d met some interesting people and heard some interesting life stories, and had had to breed trust if men and women were to decide to face another day and climb down. He’d never liked heights, but had a top job as a co-ordinator, the negotiator rookies needed to get up high on exercises, and Lukas had had to take them. Leadership was shit. It was said, he heard later, that some jerks climbed and threatened and only wanted the star man to come up after them; he’d gotten a reputation round Quantico and into the suburbs of the capital.

  The sciences of hostage rescue were squashed into Lukas’s mind, which was why he didn’t know about poetry, or about Keats and Shelley… He didn’t look for the guy.

  He reached the top. A big hotel faced him. Fellow Americans were spilling out of a taxi, and staff were bowing and scraping; others were having cases loaded into a limousine. From his crap room beside the station Lukas had come to the meeting by trolley bus, on the Métro and on foot. He didn’t have to justify what some said was eccentricity and others called pathetic obstinacy. A man stepped forward. He would, too right, have watched Lukas traverse the via dei Condotti, climb the steps and wipe away some perspiration.

  ‘You are Lukas?’

  No warmth. A question put without enthusiasm, as if he was a stone in a shoe, a tick sucking blood on his leg, an irritation between the cheeks. He didn’t do point-scoring, but he didn’t do grovelling either.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am here because I am instructed to be here.’

  ‘Thank you for meeting me,’ he said quietly, but briskly.

  ‘I am Mario Castrolami of the ROS. Excuse me, that is the—’

  ‘The special duties unit. I know what the ROS is.’ He didn’t spell out its full Italian name because that would have been to lord his knowledge – and get straight up the man’s nose. He was an intruder.

  Castrolami was heavy-set and overweight. Lukas read him as one of the workaholic guys who slaved through all the hours, and more, and who were the backbone of pretty much every law-enforcement outfit he had come across. They didn’t get promotion, and they didn’t care. And they were busy, had clear-cut priorities, and failed on small-talk.

  ‘It is about Eddie Deacon?’

  ‘It is, and Immacolata Borelli.’ Lukas could have said it was about ‘Juliet and her Romeo’, because he had seen the movie on a flight out from JFK to Jakarta, a long time back, but neither of them wanted imbecile talk. He had to lead, but gently, as if the wind buffeted him when he was stuck up some God-awful crane and looking down wasn’t an option. ‘Can we go get a coffee? I’m told there’s a carabinieri barracks behind the Parliament building – near here, I think – and that a very good espresso is served in the non-coms’ mess. I imagine, Mr Castrolami, that you feel like you’ve stepped in a dog mess and that I’m the mess, but a coffee in the barracks might help to get the smell and the nuisance off your uppers. I suggest, though we’ll be using up your valuable time, that we say no more until we’ve had the coffee.’

  Duck Johnstone had all these things on the file, could hack into them and carry Lukas back six years, an easy ride in the nostalgia stakes. Had taken him there for a reason.

  Of course, Lukas knew where the barracks was, off which street on the far side of the via dei Corso, and how to get there quickest.

  So, he led. It was a cheap trick, but he hadn’t time for subtlety. They exchanged cigarettes, but kept off the talking.

  Carmine Borelli fired. The stock of the sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun was hard against his shoulder. He squinted down the valley between the barrels and fired again. The recoil, twice, rippled through his chest and up his neck. The sensation, shuddering through him, was incredible, and he shed years. The cordite was in his nostrils – extraordinary. It was one thing to have used a pistol the day before and have the retort ripple up his arm, but the shotgun at his shoulder was just pure pleasure.

  One man squealed, held tight to a lamppost for support, then began to hobble towards the car. It was down the street, the doors already open, its exhaust spitting fumes. The other man had ducked down on his knees, then twisted and tried to run but was bent double. He could hear a man in the car shouting for them both to hurry. Carmine Borelli ejected the cartridges, dipped into his pocket for two more and loaded them. He had three of his own foot-soldiers further along the street than the car, and two more behind him. Salvatore, his visor down, was astride the pillion of a scooter across the street. None of the foot-soldiers, or Salvatore, were to intervene unless the life of Carmine Borelli was at high risk. He saw why the man who tried to run was bent: a hand gripped his hip and the tan trousers were bloodstained. Two shots, at twenty metres, and two hits. The two men made the car and it roared away, wheels shrieking as it spun right. There were several hospitals nearby where the passengers could be dropped off, but the Incurabili on the via della Sapienza was the nearest. A good hospital, where his Pasquale had been born and where he had sent many men.

  The street had been empty, now was filled. A woman stopped, set down her shopping bag on the pavement, crouched, picked up the two ejected cases and gave them to him. Briefly, he kissed her hand. She retrieved her bags and went on. A man filled the door of a bar and shouted, ‘Viva Il Camionista!’ and there was applause behind him.

  Carmine saw Salvatore ride off down the street. He knew that those who had been wounded would live now in mortal fear of Salvatore coming after them. The matter concerned the pizzo paid for protection by a shop on that street between the via Cesare Rosaroll and the via Carbonara which sold wedding dresses. Carmine Borelli understood that his granddaughter – no longer spoken of without a spit on the pavement – had fixed the pizzo at five hundred euros a month: chicken shit to the Borelli clan, small change. The previous evening, he had learned early that morning, men from the Misso clan or the Mazzarella clan – it was unclear – had told the shop’s owner that they would take over protection, and the payment would be seven hundred and fifty euros a month. If he had weakened, if it was allow
ed to happen once, if it was seen that he couldn’t fight to defend what he held, the Borelli clan was finished, dead and buried, forgotten. So he had taken the shotgun from the cache where it had lain hidden for more than twenty years, stripped off the damp-proof, oiled wrapping, loaded cartridges and found the old coat with the inner pocket where a shotgun could be secreted. He had been on the pavement when the men had come to collect seven hundred and fifty euros or to slop petrol over the shop’s stock of gowns. He thought he had sent a second message.

  Another shout: ‘Forza Il Camionista.’ He acknowledged it, a slight wave. The scooter came back down the street. Salvatore would have circled the block to see if more men waited in more cars for orders to intervene – it was an old friend who had shouted – and the helmet shook. At this moment, there was no more danger. A gloved hand reached out, snatched the shotgun and the scooter was gone, lost in the traffic. The shop’s owner was behind him, with the padlock that fastened the steel shutters to the loop in the pavement, but Carmine denied him permission to close for the day, demanded he stay open – his sent message would be reinforced by that gesture. He walked away.

  They would now be arriving at the hospital, probably the Incurabili, and would be hustling for the Pronto Soccorso entrance, which was alongside General Surgery, where they were skilled in extracting bullets and pellets. It was near to Trauma – necessary if the wounds were serious – and the chapel was beside the mortuaria – a good design layout and convenient. The first professional man he had hired was from that hospital.

  Sixty-six years earlier: the city starved, women picked dandelions and daisies to boil as soup, kids prised limpets off the seashore rocks and men hung nets to catch songbirds for plucking. Carmine and Anna Borelli made their first fortune from the brothels. Not all the women who went into the cubicles with American soldiers were married. They had to eat, so dropped knickers and opened thighs were the only currency they had, but the Americans had moved on. Carmine Borelli had hired a professore from the hospital, and for a fee per patient of ten thousand lire the eminent medical man restitched the virginity of the unmarried, and Carmine took fifteen per cent of the fee. That professore had delivered Pasquale safely into the world.