The Blue Ring (A Creasy novel Book 3)

by A. J. Quinnell

  The conversation had become serious when Michael had stated flatly that Creasy could no longer move around Italy openly. There were other Mafia families who bore a death grudge, and next time Creasy might not be so lucky. Jens had expected Creasy to take umbrage, but he had taken the implied criticism in silence, merely nodding his head and then saying, ‘In future I’ll be more careful.’

  Jens had remembered the stupidity of Michael and himself, in being so easily snatched in Marseille and Creasy’s subsequent spectacular rescue. He felt that between Creasy and Michael matters were now even. Then he felt something else: Creasy dominated this group of men. Not by what he said, but by his presence, which radiated a strange aura. Everybody around the table had above average intelligence; some, like Colonel Satta, had extreme intelligence. The likes of Miller, Callard, Guido, Michael and The Owl were unquestionably physically hard and experienced men. But none had quite that same aura as Creasy, In time, the Dane guessed that Michael would attain it; perhaps as Creasy moved into old age and Michael moved into the prime of his life. That was quite a few years away.

  He turned to glance at The Owl on his left. The old man had just served dessert and The Owl was tucking into the charlotte di fragole with relish. It was not strange that The Owl was sitting next to him. Somehow, since that long car journey up to Copenhagen, he had never seemed to be more than a few yards away. An ever present shadow. Jens had discovered that The Owl was a strange man. During their conversations he had admitted to killing several people. He had admitted spending most of his life as a criminal until he had gone to work for the arms dealer Leclerc, as a bodyguard. He had no family and, apart from the pistol and the throwing knife he always carried, he was never far away from the small, sophisticated compact disc player and its padded earphones. Jens had been surprised to learn that The Owl’s passion in life was classical music and, in particular, the chamber music of Schubert, the operas of Mozart and the symphonies of Beethoven. On that long drive to Copenhagen the earphones had hardly ever left his head.

  The serious discussion had taken place over the main course. Creasy had informed the gathering that Grazzini had indeed heard rumours of The Blue Ring’ and at this moment was trying to find out if those rumours had substance. In future, Grazzini would be known by the code name ‘Papa’, Creasy had smiled wryly when he passed on this piece of information and added, ‘I suggested it . . . he liked it.’

  Bellu informed them that suspicion had fallen on two men: an Italian in Milan called Jean Lucca Donati and a Nubian Egyptian called Anwar Hussein who lived outside Naples. There was a tenuous link between them which he was following up. In the meantime, their names had been passed on to Papa, who was also using his own network to check them out.

  Creasy had then gone on to say that it was necessary that their group distance itself from the carabinieri forthwith. He had not been apologetic, but had simply said to Colonel Satta, ‘It’s better that way. You don’t want to be implicated or seem to be implicated in what is, after all, an illegal operation on your territory. Similarly, we must be careful not to be associated with the authorities. However, whatever information Massimo can unearth and pass on to us via Guido will be much appreciated.’

  Both Satta and Bellu had nodded. The Ghost looked a little disappointed. He was obviously enjoying himself.

  Jens had to examine his own position carefully. He was a policeman and he was involved in an illegal situation on foreign soil. He had already taken part in a violent kidnapping, and now was part of a group which was actively planning mayhem and murder. He thought about it for several minutes, and made his decision as the old man served the strong black coffee. He looked across the table at Creasy.

  ‘I need to go back to Denmark,’

  Those around the table went silent as Creasy nodded. ‘We understand, Jens, Now that the Mafia is involved this is not for you. We appreciate your help very much and wish you well. If at any time we can return it, you know where to find us.’ He glanced at Michael. ‘Please be sure that Jens has no financial deficit.’

  Before Michael could respond, Jens spoke out. ‘Hold your horses. I said I need to get back to Denmark. It’s my daughter’s birthday the day after tomorrow. I’ll return the day after that.’ He glared at Creasy and then at the others around the table. ‘No one is throwing me out. I was in this from the start and I’ll be here at the end.’ He made a gesture. ‘OK, maybe I’m not as tough as some of you guys . . . or as ruthless . . . but maybe I can contribute something which you need.’ He pointed at Satta and then at Bellu. ‘You’ve just distanced yourselves from the only detectives here. I understand the reason. But now you understand this . . . There will be fighting and there will be pure detective work. I am trained for that. You need a proper operational headquarters which links all of you together; the left hand needs to know what the right hand is doing. There should be proper planning and organisation. It’s no good just charging into battle. Michael did that in Marseille and Creasy did it in Milan.’ He was addressing the whole table now. ‘OK, I know Creasy’s a brilliant and experienced leader, and when the actual battle starts he’ll need no help from me or anyone else . . . But before that some detective work will be necessary . . .’ He ended defiantly, ‘I am a detective . . . and I do have a motive . . . finding these people is my job.’

  Creasy was silent. Both Satta and Bellu slowly nodded their heads. The Owl had a small smile on his face. Satta broke the silence.

  ‘Jens is right. By training and intuition, good detectives have special minds. They see things that other, even more intelligent people, don’t see. Occasionally they see the wood not just the trees. You’ll be getting information from Massimo and possibly from your new friend Papa. That information has to be correlated and cross-referenced and then passed out in a concise manner. I think Jens is a good detective and will be useful.’ That statement, together with the distant chimes of the doorbell, ended the discussion.

  Pietro immediately went inside to the pensione. The old man poured more coffee. Pietro was back in two minutes. He carried a blue envelope. He handed it to Creasy saying, ‘Two men in a black Lancia. They had that look about them. One of them gave me this and said it was for Uomo.’

  Creasy opened the envelope and took out a single sheet of paper. He read the words, looked up and said, ‘It’s from Papa.’ He glanced back at the paper and read out: ‘“The rumours have substance. But there is more to it than just the white slave trade. Much more. It goes as far as the Middle East and North Africa, maybe Tunisia. It will take a few days to get more information. I will be in touch. Papa.”’

  He folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket, and then looked thoughtfully at the Dane.

  ‘OK then, Jens, go to your daughter’s birthday and give her a kiss from all of us. Then return here.’ He looked at Michael, ‘I want you to go to Brussels and arrange for Corkscrew Two to meet you there. We need to establish our own holes in Milan and Rome and possibly Tunisia. They should be equipped as usual. Like we had them in Syria on the last job.’ He looked at Maxie. ‘In the meantime, Maxie, you may as well go with him and see your family.’ He looked at Miller and Callard. ‘Take three or four days off and then liaise with Jens here.’ He looked at The Owl. ‘Will you go back to Marseille for a few days? Do you have family there?’

  The Owl shook his head and glanced at the Dane. ‘No, if it’s all right with Jens, I’ll go to Copenhagen with him. I like that city.’

  Jens nodded in agreement.

  Creasy beckoned to the waiter and spoke a few words in his ear. The old man nodded and went away. He returned a few minutes later with an equally old woman. She was plump, dressed all in black, her grey hair pulled back into a bun. Creasy rose as she approached and embraced her, then introduced her to the others as Ornella, the cook. With the exception of Guido and Pietro, they all immediately stood up and applauded her. She glowed with pride and bustled away.

  ‘What will you do?’ Michael asked Creasy.

  Creasy s
hrugged, ‘I’ll spend a few days in Gozo.’

  Chapter 48

  Jens Jensen and The Owl drove north to Copenhagen in the same BMW.

  ‘It’s sort of become a company car,’ Creasy had explained that morning. ‘Leclerc won’t take it back, so it’s yours. Papers will be forwarded later on.’

  Jens enjoyed driving long distances, listening to pop music on the various FM stations as they passed through Italy without stopping. The Owl sat in the passenger seat with his compact disc player on his lap and the padded earphones over his ears. He was not a large man and had managed to curl up in the comfortable seat. Occasionally he pulled one earphone away from his head to hear what Jens was listening to. He would grunt in derision and push the earphones firmly back into place. Apart from that there was little conversation. Jens was aiming for a small hotel just over the Swiss border. They would spend the night there, have a good dinner and press on to Copenhagen early in the morning. The Owl had insisted that on the way they stop at a Swiss gift shop so that he could buy Lisa a cuckoo clock for her birthday. It was then that Jens realised The Owl was going to become a family friend.

  On the same morning Miller and Callard had taken an early hydrofoil to Capri. They planned to stay in a decent hotel and act as a couple of tourists and pick up a couple of girls.

  ‘Just stay out of sight and let me do the work,’ Callard had said sternly. ‘If they see your ugly face they run a mile.’ Miller had smiled complacently. In spite of his features he had never had problems with the opposite sex. The two men were old friends and companions in war, and were looking forward to good food, autumn sun and perhaps a little physical relaxation. On the hydrofoil they briefly discussed the operation and the rest of the team. They decided that it was well-balanced. As mercenaries they had often fought in different countries with the good and the bad. One weak link in a team could be a disaster. They could find no weakness in this team. Maxie, of course, they had known for many years. They had not met Michael before, but they knew he had been trained by Creasy and that in spite of his youth he had already been under fire and come through. They liked The Owl because he had the quiet confidence about him which comes from experience and professionalism. They had noted how he had already attached himself to the Dane. This was not uncommon within their milieu; men under extreme danger and hardship often bond together in couples. The most obvious example that they knew of had been Creasy and Guido, who had been together since their early days in the Foreign Legion and had gone on to fight side by side through the mercenary wars of Africa. It was a pity that Guido had retired. They knew him as the most lethal exponent of a machinegun in any army in any country. But they understood his promise to his dead wife. Neither of them had ever married, but they shared a very old-fashioned respect for women and wedlock. They liked the Dane too, and had no qualms about him being on the team.

  Michael and Maxie flew to Brussels via Rome. At Rome airport Michael phoned Corkscrew Two, and arranged to meet him in Brussels the next evening. On the flight from Rome, Michael explained his personal motivation for smashing ‘The Blue Ring’. Maxie had not heard the full story of Michael’s early life. He listened in silence and warmed to the young man who was more than slightly emotionally involved with his sister-in-law.

  Creasy took the overnight ferry to Malta. He enjoyed travelling by sea, and even though the ferry was not normally comfortable, the captain was known to Guido and a pleasant cabin had been arranged for him on the upper deck. But for most of the night he stood at the stern, watching the foaming wake and wondering what he would find back in Gozo.

  He found Juliet. He got to the house on the hill at about noon. She was in the kitchen preparing lunch. He smelled the aroma of rabbit stew cooked in wine and garlic. She kissed him briskly on the cheek and ushered him away to take a shower.

  Fifteen minutes later he was sitting by the pool, drinking a cool lager. He had gone into the kitchen to try to help, but she had shooed him out, telling him that Laura had dropped her off early in the morning and she had spent the whole time cooking him lunch and that he was not to interfere. It had only taken him some seconds to realise that the young and shattered child that he had found in that room in Marseille had, within a very short time, rearranged her mental state to fit in with her rearranged life. It was a silent lunch. She served it with aplomb. He recognised the recipe. He had eaten Laura’s rabbit stew many times; it was indistinguishable. During the meal she kept glancing at the gift-wrapped package on the table next to his elbow. She also glanced occasionally at the bandage on his hand. Apart from asking about Michael, there were no other questions.

  After the rabbit she served thin slices of melon with ice cream, and finally large espresso coffees made with the Neapolitan coffee he had brought with him. At last he pushed the package across the table and, like every child, she opened it excitedly. Inside were two brightly coloured silk sarongs.

  ‘I always sleep in them,’ he said. ‘So does Michael. It’s a habit I picked up in the East.’

  She fingered the fine silk and smiled at him mischievously. ‘I also sleep in them,’ she said. ‘I found a drawerful in your bedroom.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘So you’ve been snooping around.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve been through everything. I even found your safe and worked out the combination lock.’

  He grinned at her and said, ‘You’re a little liar. Michael showed it to you.’

  Abruptly, she pointed to his hand and asked, ‘What happened?’

  He lifted his hand and looked at it and slowly unwrapped the bandage and pulled away the dressing.

  She looked at the stump of the little finger and repeated, ‘What happened?’

  Very quietly he told her the story, the whole story.

  That night he reciprocated. He cooked one of his famous barbecues; portions of steak, chicken, local sausage and Lampuki fish. He also cooked the sauces he had learned in Africa: the hot piri-piri from Mozambique, the thick bean sauce from Rhodesia and the green chilli sauce from the Congo. He was wearing one of his sarongs tied around the waist. She came out wearing one of her new sarongs, tied above her small breasts.

  They talked as adults and he explained to her as much as he could about his life. She felt very much an adult. She had many questions and, after a hesitant start, asked them openly and directly. He answered all of them even though some caused him pain. Especially when he talked of his dead wife and child, and of the dead girl called Pinta.

  ‘It that why you brought me here?’ she asked. ‘Because you wanted to replace Pinta and your daughter?’

  He thought about that carefully and then shook his head.

  ‘I brought you here because you had nowhere to go. At least as I saw it. If I had sent you to an institution or even home to your mother it would have been a death sentence.’ His voice went quieter and lower and for the first time she had a glimpse of what lay under the armour that surrounded his feelings.

  ‘I cannot tell you how many children I have seen dead or dying. In war it is always the same. It was like that in Africa, in Asia, in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and all the rest. You see it now in Somalia, the Sudan, Mozambique, and everywhere there’s a bunch of so-called patriots and nationalists, politicians and statesmen convincing themselves they’re doing the best thing for their people. The average person sees it now because it comes into their homes through their television screens. But it has always been like that . . . children, bombed, shot, napalmed . . . and starved.’

  It had grown dark. Abruptly he stood up and went to switch on the pool lights. When he returned she could see that his quiet outburst had disturbed him. Nothing showed on his face but she could feel the disturbance in him. She had the intuition to say nothing. They sat for many minutes in silence, looking out over the lights of the villages below. Finally she stood up and cleared the table.

  After the journey and the traumas of the day before he was tired. He kissed her on the cheek, promised to take her
fishing in the morning, and went to bed.

  She sat for another hour by the pool. There was a little wine left in the bottle. She filled her glass and slowly sipped it. She knew that she had seen a glimmer of Creasy’s real character. She had wanted to react to it but in her youth did not know how. She tried to remember her dead father. She could see his features and his smile, but most of her feelings had been cauterised by the brutality she had gone through. Her instincts told her that she must reach out to Creasy. She did not know how to. She went to bed.

  It was about two in the morning when Creasy heard the soft tap on his bedroom door. He was instantly awake. He heard her voice calling his name, then the door opened. He switched on the bedroom light.

  She was wearing the same sarong. He saw the tears on her cheeks and abruptly sat up.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m sorry . . . mostly it’s all right now. Mostly I can sleep . . . but sometimes I have bad dreams.’

  He patted the bed beside him and she moved forward and sat down. He put an arm around her and pulled her close and with his other hand gently brushed her hair.

  ‘Can I stay with you?’ she said, ‘just for a little.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He pulled a pillow across and she lay down.

  He woke at dawn with the feeling of something warm against his back. She was snuggled up to him, her arms around his big chest. She was asleep. Gently he moved her hands and tucked her up with a couple more pillows. Then he rose to make breakfast.

  Chapter 49

  Fear is always relative. A spider can strike terror into the heart of some people; others make pets of them. Fear can be dulled by ignorance or experience.

  Fear is one of mankind’s greatest weapons. And none was more aware of this than Paolo Grazzini. He had often felt it himself in his younger days. He knew its effect and had witnessed its effect on others. He sat looking at the elderly man across his desk. He had not expected to see fear in those eyes. Torquinio Trento had been in the Cosa Nostra since he was a boy. His father and three uncles had died in prison during the thirties, under Mussolini’s merciless crackdown. They had operated in the semi-civilised world of Calabria. At the age of seventeen, Trento had emigrated north to stay with a distant cousin in Naples and had naturally been initiated into the life of his father and forefathers. He had never risen very high. His first capo had been wiped out in the inter-gang rivalry that had erupted after the war. He had moved further north to Milan, always managing to escape the internal genocide of the Cosa Nostra. He was a survivor, never rising high up the ladder, but always keeping his nose just out of trouble. Life had shown him much and he was generally immune to the shocks of life and death.