by Agent Kasper
“Why in Geneva?” the captain wants to know.
“The DC-8 we want to rent belongs to Jet Aviation in Geneva. The flight will have to be disguised as a humanitarian shipment from the United Nations. I’ve prearranged everything. I’ve already got the documentation that will get us a flight plan and a United Nations call sign—”
“The communications we’ve intercepted recently suggest that your Irish friend is pretty nervous,” the captain points out, interrupting Kasper.
“Maybe he’s having some problems with his Colombian partners. I imagine they haven’t been able to agree yet on how much each producer in the cartel can put on the plane.”
“You think that’s the only reason?”
“I don’t see any other explanation.”
“What if he’s suddenly smelled a rat?”
“I believe we’d know that already from the wiretaps.”
“Maybe so. Or maybe this trip to Switzerland could be hazardous to your health.”
Kasper doesn’t like to contradict the colonel. So he doesn’t try. He knows what they expect of him. They don’t want the cocky secret agent. They want reassurance.
And he gives it to them. He spreads his arms and puts on his best mask. “If I had perceived the slightest danger…but there’s no risk to us. Nothing that can expose us to—”
“Isn’t this strange, this summons to Geneva?” the colonel insists.
“But if I don’t go, it will be much worse. It will be like backing out on the whole deal. A year’s worth of work down the drain. And just when we’re so close—”
“All right,” the general cuts him off. “But if it goes wrong, you’re on your own. You know that.”
Kasper nods.
“So now let’s talk about Cambodia,” the general says. “I still have a few minutes. You all can continue afterward without me.”
There’s a moment of silence. A simple matter of resetting the discussion.
“Cambodia, of course,” the colonel says, getting things going. “Well, it’s pretty straightforward. The data we have tell us that the Mafia, the Camorra, and the ’Ndrangheta are investing more and more money abroad. Central America and Southeast Asia are the two regions where there’s been the biggest increase in money laundering. Various local banks allow money to be cleaned and then reinvested in activities that look legal on paper. Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Cambodia are the Asian countries currently experiencing the greatest influx of capital from Italian organized crime. In many cases, the money comes back into Italy under the cover of apparently legitimate Asian companies and individuals.”
This is a subject Kasper’s familiar with. In Phnom Penh, he often runs into shady businessmen, bankers, and dealers of every kind. They move in high finance and/or governmental circles and are complicit in the corruption and patronage systems of governments and countries that officially loathe one another but when it comes to business—the business that counts—all dance to the same music.
“We’re considering opening an ROS station in Phnom Penh,” the colonel explains. “The work will be totally undercover. No communication with our diplomats in the region, and naturally no agreements with the local police. We need someone already familiar with the scene, someone already known there, someone who has the right contacts.”
The colonel’s eyes narrow slightly behind his spectacles, and then he allows himself something that resembles a smile. “We’ve come to the conclusion that you’re the right man for the job. If you want to take it on.”
If he was looking for an adrenaline rush, well, here it is. “Has it already been decided?” he manages to ask.
“Of course not,” the general replies. “Our project’s still in the planning stage. We need government authorizations and proper financial cover. But we’d like to hear your assessment as to feasibility and margin of risk.”
Kasper measures his words. The structure they put in place should be light, he says. Just a few collaborators, well integrated in the social context, possibly of different nationalities. They’ll need a cover activity, and it can’t be Sharky’s. Not exclusively, anyway. The bar’s frequented chiefly by the diplomats and officials of various embassies.
“And by spies, probably,” says the captain with a smile. “Spies and dealers.”
Smiling, Kasper concedes the captain’s point. They need something more focused. “Clancy and I have already been thinking about opening a consulting service for financial investments in the region. That would lead us straight to our targets.”
The captain nods. “I suppose it’s impossible to do anything without the Company’s knowledge.”
Kasper immediately thinks of Clancy, his close friend for almost twenty years now. Practically an uncle.
They’ve known each other since the early 1980s, when the American was working for an air transport company based in Miami. It used C-123K aircraft to supply arms to the Nicaraguan Contras and organized military support for the Karen insurgents in Burma.
Clancy’s CIA work was principally in logistics and analysis, but his official duties ended in 1985 with the Iran-Contra scandal. Then he was transferred to Singapore as a “consultant” and began to shuttle back and forth between there and Phnom Penh. Officially he was a journalist, but he didn’t write very much, and he didn’t go to bed early.
It wasn’t very long before Kasper and Clancy met up again in Phnom Penh, and in 1994—together with Robert King, the American who had worked as a UN supplier—they decided to open Sharky’s.
Clancy is more than a friend and partner; he’s the radar guiding Kasper through the nebulous galaxy of the CIA. Uncle Clancy is his first option for every kind of connection. He’s also the man who has made it possible for Kasper—after passing through various intermediate stages—to enter into contact with the drug dealers, led by Michael Savage, who want to make Italy their new base, the Mediterranean transfer point for cocaine traveling from Colombia to Europe.
Asking Kasper to set up an ROS station in Phnom Penh and hide it from Clancy is asking him to do something unthinkable. Big Brother USA must automatically be in on such a project.
Will he give his blessing?
Of course he will. Provided, as always, that nothing Baby Brother Italy does or even thinks can interfere with the Company’s games.
13
Tiger Cages
Prey Sar Correctional Center, near Phnom Penh, Cambodia
October 2008
The pigs arrive on motor scooters.
They’re small pigs, Cambodian size. The pig farmers from around Prey Sar bring them to the prison, where they’re purchased and then butchered in the fully operational slaughterhouse. This facility is smack in the middle of the camp, right across from the infirmary and not far from the prison’s rice paddy and the big garden where lettuce, tomatoes, and onions are grown.
The paddy field, the vegetable garden, and the slaughterhouse are symbols of Prey Sar’s vaunted “food self-sufficiency,” a rare example of wise management in the Cambodian public sector.
Inmates receive medical treatment in the nearby infirmary, but above all, it’s the scene of the most sophisticated torture. Forceps and scalpels, combined with copious applications of electricity.
The screams of those inmates who are being “treated” have animal-like sonorities. At certain times of day, they blend with the squeals of the pigs on the way to the slaughterhouse. Terror has an archaic matrix. Distinguishing between men and beasts isn’t ever easy.
When the piglets arrive, they’re bound up like salamis, their spines already broken by clubs so that the poor creatures won’t wriggle around too much.
Likewise, many prisoners arrive with their bones already broken.
Their wrists and ankles chained, they get dumped out of vans or automobiles. Like Heng Pov, the former Phnom Penh police commissioner. He was already in pretty bad shape when he entered Prey Sar. They brought him into the infirmary and kept him in there for hours.
That evening
, the lights in the camp flickered and dimmed several times because of diminished power. Heng Pov’s screams filled the usual silence of the camp curfew.
Torture devices level out social differences and cancel ancient hierarchies. Human beings forget who they are and think only about what they might become.
—
Kasper has learned a lot about Prey Sar during his month there. But there’s a fundamental experience he still hasn’t had: isolation.
One area of the camp is reserved for punitive coercion. It’s run by the director’s brother and consists mostly of cells where prisoners are confined in groups, in the dark, for indefinite periods of time.
And then there are the “tiger cages.”
Many of Prey Sar’s inmates have had the experience. All you need is a hostile attitude and you get a free ticket.
A hostile attitude. How do you gauge hostility in such a place? There’s no code to follow; avoiding all eye contact doesn’t necessarily protect you, nor does acting like a zombie who sees nothing and nobody, no matter how skilled the performance.
The thing is, they want your hostility. They search for it, intent on discovering how much aggressiveness you have in you. They try to draw it out.
And so Kasper fears that he too, sooner or later, is going to get a turn in a tiger cage. He wonders only when it will happen and whether he’ll be clever enough to avoid it.
They come for him on a night more silent than usual. They jump him just as they did during his very earliest days in Prey Sar, when they gave him the “welcome” whose marks are still on his body.
This beating, however, has an instructive purpose; it’s meant to prepare the prisoner for some real extortion. The Kapo, who leads the troop of goons, wants to make Kasper understand that there’s a system in place here, a system with very precise rules. And therefore a prisoner like the Italian can’t hope to save his skin with measly handouts of a few hundred dollars.
That’s small change, good for bellhops and waiters. Torturers cost more.
The story of how Kasper’s family, over the course of several months, sent Lieutenant Darrha nice little gifts amounting to thousands and thousands of dollars has been circulating inside the prison for a while. Everybody knows it.
At the head of the troop comes the Kapo, armed with a rubber-coated iron pipe, as are the other three kapos behind him. A guard carrying a Kalashnikov is their escort.
Kasper senses their arrival. This time he’s alert; his radar is working. He notices the movements of the other inmates in the big room: a word passes rapidly from one to another, and with great alacrity they all move away from him.
The pack in flight, and the night goons on the way. It’s two in the morning.
Kasper’s holding his wok in his hands and waiting. Patiently. Perfectly immobile. He waits until they’re close to him. So close he can hear them panting, breathless with exertion. Or with excitement, it amounts to the same thing.
He welcomes them.
Of course, at that moment, he does feel some hostility inside. In fact, he’s decidedly hostile.
A whirling roundhouse kick to the face fractures his first attacker’s jaw, and he goes down in a heap. Kasper’s gyrating wok knocks down two more. One of them is the Kapo, who usually limits himself to standing aside and barking; this time he falls with a whimper. Kasper kicks the fourth in the groin and, when he bends over in pain, knees him hard in the face.
The only one left is the armed guard, a meter away from Kasper, fumbling with his Kalashnikov. Another Krav Maga blow would suffice to lay him out. And with an assault rifle in his hands, in the middle of a moonless Cambodian night, Kasper knows he could create a goodly amount of agitation.
There are moments that are worth your life. He can stop, or he can go all the way.
He makes the decision he’ll regret for many months.
He stops.
The guard levels his weapon, wavers, and tries to keep Kasper in his line of fire. Kasper keeps still. Perfectly immobile. And he almost, almost wishes that this asshole would squeeze off a burst. A lovely little group of bullets full in the chest, and there the story would end. Once and for all.
But the guard retreats a couple of steps and shouts something to the kapos, who slowly get to their feet if they can, pick up those comrades who can’t, and leave as the other inmates look on, flabbergasted.
From that moment on, Kasper is someone you keep your distance from. To all of them, he’s “the Animal.”
A few hours later, he’s relocated to the bottom of a tiger cage.
—
“I heard you were in solitary confinement.”
Marco Lanna is eyeing Kasper as if he’s just reemerged from the center of the earth.
“People will talk,” Kasper murmurs.
“They say you beat up some of the other inmates.”
“Not the way I should have.”
“And that you disarmed a guard.”
“If I’d done that, I wouldn’t be here now.”
Since their first meeting, the honorary Italian consul has returned to Prey Sar several times. The prison director’s reply to his requests was always the same: “At the moment, unfortunately, he’s in solitary confinement. Come back in a few days.”
About two weeks have passed like that.
“I’ve tried to talk to somebody in the foreign ministry in Rome. Somebody who could give me reliable news about what our government intends to do. For you, I mean.”
“Good.”
“I’ve also talked to Barbara Belli, your attorney. And to Signora Sanchez, who’s assisting your mother…” Lanna pauses and clears his throat. “The news isn’t good.”
“My mother’s not well.”
“Her illness is following its course. Signora Sanchez says it’s getting harder and harder for your mother to do anything.”
Kasper barely nods. Some diseases, like some people, offer no respite and call no truce. They don’t admit the possibility.
“I also inquired into your service record with the Carabinieri,” the consul goes on. “They told me no such record exists. I pointed out that your name nevertheless appears in several newspaper articles in connection with various ROS operations…”
“And what did they tell you?”
“Nothing. The conversation ended there.”
Kasper looks up at the ceiling. How many times have they told him, if something goes wrong, remember you’re on your own?
But he’s never felt as alone as this. “I’m already dead,” he says quickly.
Lanna shakes his head forcefully. “No!” he blurts out. An instinctive reaction, not very seemly for a diplomat. “If you’re really Kasper the undercover agent, and if you’re really all the other people you’ve been, then you can’t say something like that! You have to remember who you are. And what you’ve done. You’re not a man who gives up.”
“I don’t want to remember anything.”
“No. Wrong. That’s exactly what you’re going to do, right now: remember. Tell me the rest of the Operation Sinai story. Talk to me about Michael Savage and the Colombian narcos and your other missions.”
“I don’t feel like doing that, Mr. Consul. I’m tired.”
“Stop it! Look, every detail could be useful to us. One way or another.”
“One way or another,” Kasper repeats mechanically.
“Come on, Agent Kasper. Let’s not waste any more time. Where did we leave off? You were about to go to Geneva…”
14
Exams Never End
Geneva International Airport
June 1997
Mr. Gordon displays a winning smile.
He seems genuinely happy to see him. Kasper doesn’t often get a welcome like this when he arrives in an airport, but he lets himself be embraced. And responds in kind, hugging the bony shoulders.
Mr. Gordon is Michael Savage. A code name, of course.
“You’re in good shape, Kasper, in spite of the spaghetti,” Savage s
ays in his clipped English.
Kasper gives a little nod. He says it’s true, he feels he’s in pretty good shape, while his decrepit Irish companion is visibly aging.
“Fuck you, Kasper,” Michael says, chuckling and showing him the exit.
A few minutes later, they’re in a taxi. Savage asks the driver to take them to the train station. He explains: “We’re going to Zurich.”
“To Zurich. Good.”
“We’re going to meet someone.”
A slight chill runs down Kasper’s spine. Not only because of the way Savage just made his brief announcement. The problem is, until that moment, there’s been no talk of meeting anyone else. Kasper gathers that the announcement is a test to check how he reacts.
He doesn’t react.
He permits himself a long yawn and mumbles, “Maybe I can get some sleep on the train. How long does it take to get to Zurich?”
“Two and a half hours, maybe a bit more.”
“Are we staying somewhere?”
“You’ve got a room reserved at the Mövenpick.”
“And you don’t?”
“I’m staying with friends.”
“I thought Gordon’s friends were mine too,” Kasper says with a smile.
“So did I,” Savage replies. He adds nothing more, because their taxi has already arrived at the train station. Savage pays the fare and says, “Let’s go. The train leaves in a few minutes.”
They enter the concourse. There’s not much activity in the station. Kasper looks around and sees no faces that need to be memorized. Before he and Savage reach their train, Kasper stops in the middle of the platform. Savage takes a few more steps before he turns around and comes back. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“Tell me what’s going on, Gordon.”
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“You tell me.”
He’s elected to play offense. The Irishman doesn’t seem surprised. He looks almost relieved. He comes still closer until he’s standing right in front of Kasper; the people hurrying by avoid them like two inconvenient obstacles.
