Brute Force ns-11

by Andy McNab

  'The upshot is, you have to join the bloody United Nations queue for just two booths to have our passports checked. By the time you've got to the front and they've had a quick flickthrough, all the taxis have gone and there's a long wait between buses.'

  'Just as well we won't be using them then, eh?'

  I was feeling confident. I knew my passport chip was going to say exactly what was written on the page.

  To my right I could hear Lynn being very cool and casual, giving it plenty of 'Buongiorno' and 'Grazie'.

  If his passport didn't pass the test and the carabinieri jumped him, I'd carry on alone. From here, fuck it, I could drive to Russia, or get a train and be there within sixteen hours. Or I could even drive to Serbia or Kosovo. No heavy surveillance there: just ask Radovan Karadzic. It'd only take a few hours. It'd actually be quicker than driving from London to Dundee.

  We both sailed through. Brendan had earned his fifteen hundred. Well, sixteen if you counted the hundred I gave him on top for his next three months' worth of Hob Nobs and a bunch of something nice for Leena.

  Rather than getting any of the transport I could see outside, the buses that took you down to the train station, Genoa Principale, or a cab from the rank, I headed for the Hertz office. I thought I'd give Avis a miss. I wasn't worried they'd tie me in to the missing Merc because I was using my cover docs – but their cars didn't seem to be doing me any favours.

  Lynn had said the forty-K drive to Santa Margherita Ligure took about fifty minutes. We could have taken a taxi, but Lynn had a theory that every cab driver in Italy worked either for the Mafia or the government. Besides, we might need to make a quick getaway from his safe house if it turned out not to be so safe after all, and I wanted instant wheels.

  I left Lynn outside and went to the Hertz desk alone. The less time we were seen together the better. The girl processed my card, licence and passport with a big smile, and minutes later I had the key fob to a blue Fiat Punto in my hand and was heading for the car park. It was possible they had cameras at entrance and exit as an anti-theft measure, so I'd told Lynn I'd pick him up just outside.

  He was waiting where I'd told him to. I'd taken the piss out of his Don Corleone overcoat, but now he looked like every other smartly dressed Italian in sight.

  Lynn directed me onto the tollbooths for the A12. The Italians did two things well, I'd always thought: dictators and motorways. The one thing they didn't seem to go in for, I said, was CCTV cameras.

  Lynn laughed. 'You worry about surveillance in the UK, but the Italians are among the most spied-upon people in the world. Seventy-six telephone intercepts per hundred thousand people each year.

  'It's hilarious. The Italian constitution guarantees privacy of information, and they even set up a national data-protection authority in 2003, but wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping are a national sport – not only by the secret services, but also by the judiciary. Prosecutors routinely order wiretaps, citing the fight against the Mafia as their justification. The cost to the Italian taxpayer is enormous.'

  'I always thought "Italian taxpayer" was a contradiction in terms. Who carries out the wiretaps?'

  'The newly privatized Italian Telecom – which the press has been having a go at for years for working hand in glove with the secret services.'

  The two-lane autostrada cut straight through the mountains on its way to the sea. Everyone was driving at 160km an hour and about a metre apart. A mother with a cigarette in her mouth still managed to bollock her kids and her husband as she pulled into the fast lane to overtake us. A motorbike somehow cut her up, and she went berserk. Italians really do talk with their hands.

  Lynn didn't bat an eyelid. He was now in full university lecturer mode. 'A former director of security at Telecom, who had close links with the secret services, was sent to prison not so long ago, together with a former anti-terrorism chief, as a result of a wiretapping scandal.

  'Private conversations of politicians and public figures are taped wholesale. Prosecutors and judges routinely leak details to journalists.'

  We went into a tunnel that seemed to go on forever. Not long after we emerged, Lynn pointed ahead at a small service station cut into the mountainside on the right. 'Groceries are cheaper here than down in the town.'

  Typical officer.

  Alad with a bumbag was filling petrol tanks and taking payment. He was chatting away with the driver in front of us but it looked like they were about to come to blows. There was a small car park to one side for the Autogrill.

  We weren't back on the road for long before the Rapallo turn-off, which was actually past Santa Margherita Ligure. Paying our two and a bit euros at the toll, we drove into a neat little coastal town, and then stayed by the sea for the next five or six Ks. As we drove over the last hill and Santa Margherita spread out below us it was like a scene from a French Riviera movie of the fifties or sixties. I was half expecting David Niven to come over the crest in an open-top Austin Healey.

  53

  'Mussolini used to come here for his holidays.' Lynn waved his hand at the palm trees and grand old hotels and villas. 'A lot of northern Europeans retire here.'

  I wasn't surprised a fascist dictator came here with his bucket and spade. The whole place looked so well behaved even the flowers stood to attention. But fuck that. 'If everything goes to rat shit in the next ten minutes, what are the escape routes?'

  Lynn looked and sounded a bit more lively. Maybe he thought that because we were out of the UK, we were out of danger. 'Back to the airport at Genoa, or the one at Pisa's about a hundred and fifty kilometres.' He was getting the hang of this. 'Portofino's just down the road. If we have to dump the car, the train station is near the centre of the town. It's on the main line to Genoa, Pisa and Rome. Buses run from outside the station. From the harbour, passenger ferries connect the town with other resorts up and down the coast, even off-season.'

  I looked at him. 'You buy or rent?'

  He waved his hand again. 'There's no need to worry about traceability. I wouldn't be here with you now if there was any chance of that.'

  'Lots of cash about?'

  'Property here is now the dearest in Italy, outside of central Rome. It's the only place where the market's gone up every single year since the Second World War. No more building has been allowed and the only thing they can do is dig into the mountains and build car parks in the countryside. But everybody wants to be here. The Russians and oil sheiks are sending prices through the roof.'

  I had to remind myself that this was the man who'd shopped at a service station out of town instead of the local Co-op because his cornflakes were half a euro cheaper.

  My impression that Santa Margherita Ligure was like a film set was holding out. The place seemed to be entirely populated with stars or extras. Even on a winter day, the sun was strong and everybody had their Gucci sunglasses on. A glamorous woman glided past on a moped. As she turned to flick ash from her cigarette, I caught the Chanel logo on the back of her leopard-skin helmet.

  Every shop we passed seemed to be selling either shoes or pashminas. There wasn't an amusement arcade, Mr Whippy machine or hoodie in sight. Maybe I should have gone to university like Lynn and become our man in Tripoli, rather than fucking about at the bottom of the pond.

  We passed a taxi rank on the seafront. All the cabs were white Q7 Audis and big, over-the-top Italian estate cars or Mercedes. I wondered what had happened to mine – or rather, Avis's. Had they done all the forensics and returned it to them yet, or had it been reported as stolen and my credit card maxed out in non-return charges?

  'That low hill above the waterfront is an interesting place. The castle was built in 1550 as defence against the Saracens.'

  He wasn't the only one pointing. We passed a big statue of Christopher Columbus with his arm stretched out to sea. One bit of pub quiz trivia I'd remembered from school: he'd set sail from Genoa.

  The harbour was small and obviously catered for smart yachts, but it still had a fishi
ng fleet. Several boats were unloading opposite a market. A breakwater stretched about three or four hundred metres into the sea, towards a cluster of massive floating gin palaces. I got the system: the bigger the boat, the further out it parked.

  We found a space along the seafront. It was lined with more beautiful old buildings. The arches underneath were inset with cafés, ice cream parlours, bars and restaurants. At the front, elegant Italians in sunglasses and overcoats sat drinking coffee. Behind them, in what looked like caves, were dining areas lined with dark wood panelling and bottles of wine.

  Lynn nodded up at one of the apartment blocks. 'That's me. Great view of the harbour one way, the Basilica the other. Well worth a visit, Nick, to view the gilded chandeliers. Come on, we can see them while I pick up the keys.'

  A tour of the Basilica? Just what fucking planet was this guy on?

  'The British Embassy is in Rome, yeah?'

  'There's a consulate in Genoa, but yes, that's where the embassy is.'

  'How far by road?'

  'Three hundred miles, just about spot on.'

  'How long would it take to drive it?'

  'Five and a half hours, maybe a bit longer this time of year. Why, do you want to go to Rome?'

  I shook my head. 'It's how long it would take them to drive here I'm worried about.'

  The Basilica, it turned out, was stunning. Fifty-metre-high ceilings, massive chandeliers, and more saints' relics and old women on their knees than you could shake a stick at.

  Lynn hadn't brought me here for the view. He headed straight for the furthest confession box, felt under the seat and pulled out two keys taped together.

  'I make sure there isn't anything in the UK to connect me with here.'

  54

  The apartment had two bedrooms and was very simple and very white after what I could smell was a new lick of paint. The building was nineteenth century, with high ceilings and shutters on the windows. The furniture was modern and new. I doubted Lynn had chosen it. In the living room, a pair of high glass doors opened onto a small Juliet balcony overlooking the Viale Andrea Doria, the road that ran along the harbour front and carried on the four K or so to Portofino. Beyond it was the harbour and the Mediterranean.

  I picked up a pair of binoculars. Lynn probably spent hours boat spotting.

  'We still assuming it's the Firm?'

  'What's to tell us it isn't? Who else had the resources to find me in Donegal so fast? Who else could have made and planted a device so fast? Who else knew about Leptis? OK, anybody could have bought a tracker and followed me to yours, but the other stuff still points in the direction of Vauxhall Cross.'

  'But why would they bracket us together? We're hardly a job lot.'

  'It must be linked to Duff somehow. They're cleaning house. It must all come back to the Tripoli job.' I looked up at him sharply. 'Were there drugs on the Bahiti?'

  'You mean anything the Yes Man could have been involved in?'

  I must have looked surprised.

  'I might have left the building, Nick, but I still have friends who haven't. I knew what he was up to all those years, but nobody would listen. He had the ear of the right people. When early retirement came up, I was glad to cut and run, wash my hands of the whole thing.' He looked up. 'You know about Hannibal?'

  'Elephant Boy? Crossed the Alps?'

  'Precisely. Well, we're in Hannibal country here. I've been thinking about his catchphrase: "We will either find a way, or make one." '

  'Which one's your money on?'

  'Make.' He smiled. 'Mark my words, Hannibal knew what he was talking about. He was only in his twenties when he was given command of Carthage's forces. That's Tunisia, these days. Within two years, by 219 BC, he had subjugated all of Spain, which violated Carthage's treaties with Rome. The Romans demanded Carthage surrender Hannibal to them, and the city refused. The Romans declared war, and so began the Second Punic War. But then came his masterstroke: instead of waiting for the Romans to arrive, Hannibal carried the war to their doorstep.

  'That September he set out to cross the Alps with fifty thousand men and forty elephants. He did it in just fifteen days, despite heavy losses of men and animals to bad weather and hostile mountain tribesmen. His army went on to defeat the Romans in the battles of Ticinus and Trebia and occupy northern Italy.'

  'And which bit of that applies to our situation exactly?'

  'The thought that maybe we should carry the fight to them. Maybe we should contact the friends I still have on the inside, find out why this is happening and what we can do to end it.' I scanned the harbour and road below for guys sitting well back in their car seats, or a fishing boat bobbing about with a guy looking back at me through binoculars. I finally put them down and turned to him. 'There's another way of looking at Hannibal, you know.'

  Lynn did a double-take, as if he was surprised I might have an opinion on anything other than what to look for in a kebab or a box-cutter. He might have guessed rightly that I didn't even get close to a GCSE in ancient history, but what he didn't know was that when I was in my twenties, I'd done a paper for my case study on battlefield strategy at the school of infantry in Brecon. The other guys did Rommel, Montgomery and Che Guevara, but Hannibal Barca was the boy for me. He ranked right up there alongside Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington in my book, as one of the greatest generals of all time.

  'He might be famous for taking his army and elephants across the Alps, but he gets more cred from me for leading a successful campaign for fifteen years, far from home, and only by surviving off the land and his tactical wits.

  'He was a soldier's soldier. He shared the same hardship and dangers as his men. Even his enemies said he never asked others to do what he couldn't or wouldn't do himself. No army's ever held its own so long, against such odds.'

  'You're saying we do nothing?'

  'I'm saying let's wait and see. Hannibal showed war can be won by avoiding battle instead of seeking it. He got results by attacking the enemy's communications and by flanking manoeuvres. So we don't have to carry the battle to them. Not yet, at least. We're in a safe house, let's draw breath and do some thinking.'

  'That's all well and good, but we could have a window here that's not going to be open long. There must be deals to be made – there always are. I can catch one of my friends at home—'

  'Not while I'm still about. You can call if you want, but I won't be staying. You'll be on your own when they stuff you in a bin-liner.' I shook my head. 'There's something else Hannibal once said: "When you make friends with the elephant keeper, expect the elephant." '

  I looked along the walls for phone points. Nothing. Lynn knew his stuff. This really was a safe house. 'I'm going out to recce a few things. Give me the keys. If I'm not back in one hour thirty you're on your own. They'll have me.'

  55

  The first thing you do when you arrive somewhere is work out how to get away again in a hurry. If we had to do a runner and got split up, I wanted to know where to run to. I wanted to be able to nominate RVs.

  I was mugged by sunshine the moment I stepped out of the main door. I pulled on my sun-gigs; they were hanging on a string I'd bought in the London ski shop.

  I kept the harbour on my right for about 200 metres, then turned and came back inland on parallel, narrow streets between elegant old buildings. Was nothing ugly in this town?

  I mapped it all in my head as I climbed the low hill dominating the waterfront. Behind the castle Lynn had pointed out was a maze of overgrown passageways prowled by semi-wild cats. Further up the slope was a church with a spookily illuminated Madonna in a rocky grotto, and a public park made up of a series of terraced gardens. All good RVs: Lynn would know them.

  I found a Co-op mini-market on Corso Giacomo Matteotti and went in and bought one of yesterday's English broadsheets for the price of a paperback, and a couple of baguettes to take back to the apartment. I couldn't find anything resembling cheese and Branston so I settled for a coupl
e filled with, well, Italian stuff.

  I followed the road down into Piazza Caprera, which contained the Basilica. The area was pedestrianized. There was a big Christmas tree in one corner, and strings of unlit white bulbs were draped between shops and the church, waiting for last light.

  Everybody was wrapped up, though it didn't feel very cold to me. I went into a café and ordered a cappuccino. The place mat had a history of the town in three languages. Maybe that was where Lynn had hoovered up all his knowledge.

  'Santa Margherita has a long history,' it told me proudly, 'dating back to the Roman town of Pescino, which was razed first by the Lombards in 641 and then the Saracens in the 1100s. In 1229 it became part of the Republic of Genoa, was raided by Venice in 1432, and by the Turks in 1549. It fell to Napoleon, who renamed it Porto Napoleone, then to Sardinia and in 1861 it joined the new Kingdom of Italy.'