Detonator

by Andy McNab

  He wasn’t about to disagree. ‘They look at us, and what do they see? A lot of Cs. Italy is the cradle of Christianity, corruption and crime. Our Twitter feeds think it’s all a joke: hostile militants will be beaten by our bureaucracy and our traffic. But you’re right. They’re already coming in with the migrants from North Africa and Syria. We’re the perfect target. And so are you.’

  ‘What else do you know about the Urans?’

  ‘There is a third brother—’

  ‘Not any more there isn’t.’

  ‘Ah. I’m beginning to understand why you are also not welcome in the home of this family. Pasha and I are examining them more closely. For now, all that I can tell you is that they are experts in trafficking – drugs and girls and children and people who have nowhere to go.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘And they are experts in vengeance.’

  I gestured at the photographs. ‘Have these two been seen here?’

  ‘I have asked around – including my police contacts – and there have been no sightings in Naples. But someone looking very like Rexho has been spotted in Brindisi.’

  ‘This place have Wi-Fi?’

  He nodded.

  I pressed the Google button on his laptop and scrolled down the Adler site until I reached the photographs of the depot opening. I zeroed in on the head of logistics and pressed the zoom button. ‘Pasha is already on the case, but could you add this guy to the list of people we need to … examine? I think he’s their boss. His name is Adel Dijani.’

  ‘What do we know right now?’

  ‘Not a lot. Lebanese. Educated in America. MIT. Strong affiliations with the Saudi political elite, but not with any extremist groups. As far as we can tell. On the other hand, he hired Zac Uran as his security chief.’

  Luca knocked back his espresso. ‘Better luck next time, eh?’

  ‘I think he’ll want to keep it in the family.’

  Up went the glasses again. ‘You make him sound like an Italian.’

  ‘Mate, I need to know what’s driving this fucker. If he smells clean, maybe there’s another connection with the dark side. Through someone close to him, maybe.’ I caught the look on Luca’s face. ‘Oh, fuck. You don’t need me to tell you this shit …’

  ‘Apology accepted.’

  ‘He was at the Romeo last night. And I’m pretty sure he’s also on his way east, if he’s not there already.’

  ‘So, where does this take us?’

  It was time to give him the headlines.

  I told him about Frank’s killing. The stuff I’d found in his desk at the chalet. Laffont and the safe-deposit box. Adler and Nettuno. Mr Lover Man’s high dive from the balcony. The fire at Lyubova’s place. The explosion at the bank in Albertville … Finally, I heard myself mention Stefan’s name.

  ‘The boy who was abducted?’

  I shook my head. ‘The fuckers killed him, Luca. They drowned him in a sea of concrete.’

  Luca showed the normal signs of revulsion that people have when a kid is killed but there wasn’t any time for that.

  ‘I thought there was a Putin connection at one point. That maybe this was all part of his plan to cut the oligarchs down to size. But I was wrong. Putin has sown the seed for a lot of this shit by fucking up Ukraine, and he won’t be mourning Frank. But Dijani and the Urans never were his people. They need Frank’s companies – but not for people- or drug-trafficking.

  ‘As you say, the Mafia have been doing all that perfectly happily since the Balkans imploded in the nineties. They don’t need any help from Nettuno. So Dijani and his team must have a different agenda. And if I sort that shit out, I can sort my own shit out along with it.’

  I got the rest of the coffee down my neck and put the glass to one side. ‘Mate, could one of your people locate a container boat for me? With auto ID software, maybe?’ I took out the blueprint and draped it across the desk top. I’d fucked around with it so many times now that it was starting to go at the folds. ‘It’s on its way from Odessa, according to Frank’s banker, and a Nettuno crewman says it’s somewhere between the Bosphorus and Puglia. It’s called Minerva.’

  ‘Ah, Minerva … The virgin goddess of wisdom, medicine and poetry.’ Luca grimaced. ‘But her name conjures up a certain sadness in the southern Italian heart. You know about the Martyrs of Otranto?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘August the fourteenth 1480. Eight hundred and thirteen inhabitants of the city were slaughtered by the Ottoman invaders on the Hill of Minerva. Supposedly for refusing to convert to Islam.’ He paused. ‘What is the significance of this vessel?’

  ‘I’m still working on that. Frank was really worried about it. Laffont was too—’ I stopped in my tracks. Another piece of the jigsaw had fallen into place. Frank hadn’t just left me the blueprint to find in the safe-deposit box. He’d also talked specifically about Minerva in the green room, the night before he was killed.

  I pictured him rotating his laptop screen, the way Luca had done. And this time I saw what was on it.

  Instead of grainy shots of Albanian mobsters, he’d shown me detailed multi-coloured specs of a variety of different vessels. Vivid blues, greens, reds and yellows, representing the configuration of containers in the load space.

  I’d been amazed by how many of those lumps of metal you could fit in the hold, and how many more you could put on the deck without tipping the whole thing over.

  He said I’d missed the point. The vein above his temple had started to pulsate. I wasn’t looking properly. He’d tapped the images of Minerva. ‘Look again …’

  He hardly ever raised his voice. I could still feel his frustration now. But it wasn’t a patch on mine. Once again, the harder I tried to remember what it was that he’d spotted, the further our exchange swam out of reach.

  ‘Nico?’

  I wrenched myself back into the present. Luca was wearing the kind of expression you save for people who have really lost the plot. ‘Sorry. I won’t bore you with the details, but I got a bang on the head when this whole thing kicked off a few days ago, and some stuff got buried. I think a bit of it has just shaken itself loose.’

  I picked up my day sack and extracted Hesco’s HP. ‘There’s something else I could really use your help with. I took this off the third of the Uran brothers. Maybe the answer’s in it.’

  Luca reached across and powered it up.

  ‘I have the pass code: baab al jihad. Lower case. No gaps.’

  His smile returned. ‘The second of the eight gates to Jannah. If only it were always this easy to find your way into Paradise …’

  ‘The problem is, it doesn’t work for the individual files. I’ve already tried all the other gates I could remember, and hit a brick wall every time.’

  He picked an icon at random and tried to open it.

  ‘Have you got a tame geek who could crack them? Quite a few seem to have been downloaded from Frank’s laptop. I think we should start with those.’

  I watched his fingers dance across the keys and his frown deepen as he ran through five or six different strategies and none of them worked. Eventually he shut the thing down. ‘If we can’t do it at the office, there is a guy I know.’

  I handed him Hesco’s iPhone. ‘Maybe he can have a crack at this too. I’ve tried the second gate. And a few of the others. Got me nowhere.’

  As he put Hesco’s gear in his shoulder bag, alongside his own, the door opened. The lad who’d been behind the till poked his head through and made the sort of noises you make when you want to fuck off home. They’re the same in any language.

  I checked the Suunto. We’d passed last light. ‘How many ways out of here?’

  ‘Two. Front and back. That’s one of the reasons we’re here. And the boy tells me he’s padlocked the roller shutters at the front.’

  I asked him when he thought he might have some answers about Minerva and Hesco’s data.

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow evening. More probably the day after. If the vessel isn’t registered on the Automatic I
dentification System, it won’t be easy. And the computer?’ He sighed. ‘We live in hope.’

  ‘Fair one. But I need to go east. That’s where it’s heading. I can’t just hang around at the Romeo’s virtual driving range all day.’

  In fact I couldn’t hang around at it for thirty seconds. I’d never picked up a golf club in my life. Except when I’d nicked some kind of iron from a sports shop in Peckham when I was a kid. I only managed to fence it for 25p. I hadn’t realized you needed the whole set.

  He nodded. ‘Ring me at the office. If I’m not there, your call will be forwarded.’

  All the lights were now off in the store apart from the ones in the rear corridor. At the end of it I could see a door with a push bar to enable a swift exit if there was some kind of health and safety drama.

  I gripped Luca before he opened it. ‘What happens outside?’

  He turned. ‘An alleyway. Then the street.’

  ‘Lit or unlit?’

  ‘Unlit.’

  ‘And how often have you used this place before?’

  He shrugged. ‘Three or four times, perhaps. But not regularly.’

  So, we weren’t as deep in what Luca called the shadows as he believed.

  ‘OK, I’ll go now, and turn left. If there’s anyone out there, I’d rather they followed me than fucked you over and took the laptop. You call a cab, and tell the driver to run you around for half an hour before taking you to wherever you need to go.’

  I peeled off a note and handed it to the boy. ‘Tell him it would be best for him to wait another twenty before leaving.’

  The kid seemed well pleased.

  I gave him a grin. ‘Yup, you should be smiling. A euro per minute beats the shit out of the minimum wage where I come from.’

  4

  I didn’t aim to go straight back to the car. Not because I was in the mood for sightseeing: I just needed to check whether Luca had been followed from his office. He was clearly well able to take care of himself, but maybe his anti-surveillance skills weren’t as highly developed as mine.

  As soon as I emerged from the mouth of the alley, two guys with shiny heads turned away from me and got very busy ordering pizza at the takeaway on the opposite side of the street. Too busy. I’d seen their faces clearly enough to be sure that neither was Elvis. Now I was about to find out whether they were run-of-the-mill Neapolitan muggers or something a bit more switched on.

  By the time I’d moved half a K to the west, and travelled twice the distance in the process, I knew they weren’t just out for a good time. No one orders pizza, then doesn’t wait to collect it. Or turns three corners to walk back on themselves. Unless they’re stupid Brit tourists holding their map upside down.

  But was Luca their real target, or were they after me?

  I was moving west, a few hundred north of the Romeo. The sea about a K to my left, the rest of the town sloping up to some kind of castle on the hill in front of me. I lengthened my stride so that I could increase my speed without breaking into a run. The gap between us stayed the same.

  I slid my UZI out of my pocket, held it in my right hand and twisted out the nib. I thought about turning towards the docks and taking them down there, or going the Gucci route and holing up in the Romeo, but they’d already thought of that. One of my pursuers was waffling urgently into a mobile phone, and when I glanced left at the next junction, so was a guy on a moped, moving purposefully up the cross street towards me.

  I tightened my grip on the UZI and kept aiming for the high ground.

  Thirty ahead and to my half-right was a steep flight of stone steps, which looked like they curved up to a church. As I reached them, the clouds obliterated the moon. That suited me fine. I climbed them two at a time, mostly staying in the shadow of the high wall to my right. They seemed to go on for ever.

  The moped’s engine shrieked in protest as its rider throttled up and sped further along the street I’d just left. I heard footsteps below me. I gulped in a couple of lungfuls of warm, damp Neapolitan air and quickened my pace. It felt like a storm was coming.

  I reached the stretch of level paving that led to the church door and thought about taking them on there, but only for a nanosecond. I legged it past, aiming for the next set of steps. I could still hear movement below, and the odd curse. I hoped the fuckers were leaking. I was. I felt sweat prickle at the base of my spine and the back of my neck.

  I was level with the tops of the fourth or fifth tier of buildings now, and could see streetlamps above me, and the occasional sweep of vehicle headlights. I was closing on the upper road.

  The balustrade that bordered the steps was lower on this flight. I glanced swiftly over each side of it in case there was an opportunity for an early exit.

  There wasn’t.

  Just a sheer drop.

  Nothing to grab on to.

  Nothing to break a fall.

  I spotted a point a hundred or so to my left where one corner of the flat roof of a massive yellow block of flats edged close to the parapet. Close enough for me to jump.

  I kept low as I approached the road. When I got to it I didn’t bother to stop, listen and look. What was the point? I already knew I had two behind me, and at least one in front.

  I bounded out on to the pavement and went immediately left, staying in the crouch, shoulder almost brushing the wall. It gave me good cover from the steps; less good from the streetlights. But why worry about what you can’t change?

  Three-quarters of the way to my target, the night was torn apart by the world’s biggest lightning bolt, followed by a crash of thunder loud enough to drown the sound of the moped careering along the tarmac towards me. As soon as the rumble retreated, I heard it big-time. Fuck crouching. I went into Usain Bolt mode, fast and straight. If those lads were carrying, they were going to do more damage to the stonework at this range than they would to me.

  Fifteen metres from the corner of the roof, the rain began. Not just a gentle shower, an Italian monsoon. Clear air one second, torrential the next. Moped man mounted the pavement five metres away and rode straight at me. I stood my ground, then jinked right and left and he lost it on the kerb. The engine whined as the tyres lost traction and the bike dropped with a clatter, trapping his left leg beneath it.

  His mates appeared at the top of the steps as I took a pace towards him. The climb had slowed them down, but they weren’t going to hang about long enough for me to give this lad a smack and ask him what the fuck they were up to.

  They were ten away when I leapt on to the wall.

  The distance to my landing zone was further than I’d anticipated. I hate it when that happens. I barely had time to steady myself before pressing the launch button, but I was in the air long enough to wonder what the fuck would happen if I landed on the wet tiles that edged it instead of the flat red asphalt-coated expanse I was aiming for.

  I soon found out.

  I buried the UZI into the roofing felt and hung on, but the tiles were slippery as shit, and seemed determined to take me down. My arse was hanging in space. I didn’t even want to think about the distance between my flailing legs and the ground. It wasn’t as big a drop as it had been when I was trying not to follow the Nissan off the edge of the mountain, but it was far enough to be a one-way trip.

  The only solid thing I might be able to grab hold of was a galvanized-tin chimney cowl with four legs and a lid the shape of a pyramid. But it was a metre out of my reach.

  The asphalt coating was like heavy-duty sandpaper. I scrabbled for a grip on it but all I got in return was a set of bleeding fingernails. Apart from the UZI, the only thing keeping me up there was the slight ridge beneath my elbows, where the tiles began, and the friction of my jacket sleeves.

  The rain was part curse, part blessing. It was drowning me, but it was also drowning the noise I was making. And though it was making my life difficult from the waist down, the weight of my wet clothes helped to glue my arms and torso to the rooftop.

  I balled my hands into
fists, wedged my elbows more firmly against the far side of the ridge and levered the top half of my body upwards until I was able to raise my right knee high enough to give it some purchase too. Then I used it to push myself forwards until, at full stretch, I could close my left hand around the nearest leg of the cowl.

  I wasn’t dry, but I was almost home.

  That was when one of the takeaway pizza team joined me.

  He’d misjudged his jump too, but had me to hold on to.

  He landed on my arse and right leg and I felt his chin dig into my lower back. He grabbed at my jacket to stop himself sliding back over the edge.

  I tightened my grip on the cowl, but it wasn’t designed for this kind of shit, and snapped off its mounting. Which meant that if I didn’t do something fast, we were both fucked.

  I managed to bring my right heel up quickly enough to hook it over the ridge as well as my knee. As my body rotated ninety degrees anticlockwise, I lifted my left elbow and drove it back as hard as I could into whatever bit of him was in its arc of fire.

  I couldn’t see a fucking thing, but I felt it connect with the side of his head, like a ball hammer on an eggshell.

  He didn’t make a sound. He didn’t loosen his hold on my jacket either. He tightened it instead. I could feel him trying to wedge his hands beneath me, trying to grip my thighs in a bear hug.

  I slid sideways and back and felt the weight of him and his swinging legs taking me down. I twisted my left shoulder upwards and my head on to the asphalt and managed to bury my fingers in his hair – so it was Mr Moped, not one of his shiny-headed mates – and clamped them strongly enough to be able to bang his face against the tiles.

  Another bolt of lightning confirmed that I’d already smashed his cheekbone into the roof of his mouth and taken some of his eye socket with it. He didn’t look happy.

  I felt his grip slacken, so I did it again.

  And again.

  And one more time, for luck.

  Then I realized that my hand in his hair was pretty much the only thing that was keeping him there. So I let go, pulled myself up with the UZI and rolled the rest of me into a secure position half a metre from the point he’d just disappeared. I didn’t hear him bounce off anything on the way down. Just the noise of a big sack of shit hitting some very wet ground.