‘The professionals!’
‘Yes. The professionals.’
‘Those men killed my sister,’ he said, allowing just a fraction of his anger to show. ‘Maybe my whole family too. Don’t I have a right to know?’
‘Of course. And I’ll tell you everything, I promise. But leave the hunt to us, eh? It’s what your taxes will be for.’
They went to pay, only for Baldassare to be told his money was no good there. Without their knowledge, a small crowd had gathered outside, bursting into cheers and applause as he emerged, making him flush with embarrassment. He said a few self-deprecating words then found a rictus grin as they lined up to take their selfies. Then they hurried off at the first opportunity in search of a whitewashed wall to serve as backdrop for his photos of Cesco, before returning together to Baldassare’s BMW. He buckled himself in then muted his phone for the drive, tossed it face down on the passenger seat. There was a slip of paper already on it, tousled at one end from being ripped from a spiral-bound notepad. He picked it up and contemplated it a moment, as if debating with himself what to do with it. ‘One last thing,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘That other appointment I had earlier this afternoon. It was with your friend Carmen. She’s staying just down the road from here, as it happens. I had certain matters to discuss with her, and her passport and phone to return.’
‘So?’ asked Cesco. But then, unwillingly: ‘How is she?’
‘Remarkably well, all things considered. She’s already put the whole horrid business behind her. Except in one respect. She’s still furious with you.’ He chuckled to himself at the memory. ‘That’s some gift you have, to make so kind a woman quite so angry. Especially a woman whose life you saved.’
‘She doesn’t know about that.’
‘She does now,’ said Baldassare. ‘I told her. I told her everything. Even your real identity.’
Cesco stared at him in disbelief. ‘You did what? You had no right.’
‘Of course I had the right,’ said Baldassare, turning on his ignition. ‘More than the right. I had the duty. I owed you that much, and far, far more.’
‘You owed me? And this is how you repay me? By betraying my confidence?’
‘Yes.’
Cesco glared at him. To his consternation, Baldassare looked amused rather than put out. ‘You’re a foolish, proud young man,’ he said. ‘Far too proud ever to have told her yourself. The way you feel about her, the way she feels about you, that would be a shame.’ He passed the note to Cesco. ‘This is the address of the cottage she’s staying in, and her phone number,’ he said. He checked over his shoulder that the road was clear before releasing his handbrake and slowly moving off. ‘I told her you’d be giving her a call. I expect she’ll be waiting for it now.’
III
Massimo had been raised in Altavilla, a mountain village a few kilometres outside Cosenza. He knew all too well what such places were like. A convoy of cars with foreign plates was certain to set tongues wagging, the last thing he needed while hunting for Carmen Nero and her friends – or indeed when the police later arrived to investigate their deaths.
There was a petrol station on the motorway some fifteen minutes shy of Sicilì. He had all three cars in his convoy stop to top up while they had the chance, and stock up on snacks and drinks too. They might well have a long night ahead. Then he and his crew drove in alone to scope out Sicilì while the other two cars waited in a lay-by.
The GPS coordinates Tomas had sent through took them to a wooden bench beneath a pine tree a short walk from the piazza. He parked and got out to stretch his legs. An old woman was watering plants on her balcony. A couple of kids were pulling wheelies down the road. Apart from them, he could see no one – nor any scarlet Renault neither. He checked his phone. The Cilento’s hilly terrain made for patchy signals, but right here it was strong. Maybe that was why Nero had come here. If so, there was every chance she’d be back. He turfed out Orsino to keep watch then headed back out to rejoin the others.
He set his iPad on his bonnet, brought up a road map of Sicilì and its surrounds. It was the usual tangle of lanes and tracks and drives, but most of them led nowhere. In fact, he noted, there were only two roads in and out of town – the one he’d just used himself, and another on the far side that cut across hills to Morigerati and the coast. Everything else was local, meaning that if it came to it they could lock the entire place down with just two cars, while the third went hunting.
But not yet.
He searched online for local hotels and pensiones, divvied them up between the teams. He gave them each a sector to search, house by house, should that initial effort come up dry. ‘Take lots of photos,’ he told them. ‘Any woman under forty. Any man under fifty. Any red cars. Any Renaults. In fact, fuck it. Just photograph everything you see. Send them to the boss whenever you get a signal, and he can sort it out. Questions?’
‘Sure,’ grunted Taddeo. ‘What if we find the bitch?’
Massimo gave him a look. ‘The fuck you think? Kill her, of course.’
IV
Still holding the note with Carmen’s contact details, Cesco glared at Baldassare as he headed out of town. How dare he? How dare he? To betray his confidence like that! It was outrageous, it was beyond the pale, it was… A sudden hotness in his chest, as if he’d just chomped on a chilli. He took a long deep breath. Carmen knew. She knew about him. She knew it all and yet was waiting for his call. But what would he say to her? What would he even say? How to explain himself? Where to start?
He glanced at the note, as if for a prompt. It bore a phone number and an address in a place called Sicilì. He’d never heard of it so he brought it up on his phone. Her house was by a river, he noticed. A river called the Bussento. He frowned in bemusement until he noticed its second ‘s’. A different river, then. But surely the similarity of name couldn’t be a coincidence. Which meant that Carmen was after Alaric still. He laughed delightedly, not least because it gave him a peg on which to hang his call. He dialled her number but was kicked straight into voicemail, and his tongue swelled so suddenly in his mouth that he couldn’t think what to say, and he hurriedly rang off.
Then he frowned.
Baldassare had just returned her phone to her. That’s what he’d said. But how was that possible? He himself had flung it out of his van into a hedgerow. The only people who could plausibly have found it there were the ones who’d infected it with their surveillance app. They could have used its GPS coordinates to retrieve it in order to hand it in along with her passport, so that the police would know it was hers and get it back to her. Then, the moment she turned it on again, it would flash her location like a beacon.
He looked down the road, but Baldassare was already gone. He’d muted his phone for the drive too. Cesco swore out loud then rang his number anyway, to leave him a message. Then he punched Carmen’s address into his phone’s satnav and sprinted for his bike.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I
Carmen got lost in thought as she trekked along the woodland trail. Unfortunately, as she discovered on turning back, she got lost in reality too. She trudged up a path expecting to find Sicilì at the top, only to find it taunting her from the next hilltop along. She took its bearings as best she could, but the woods here were thick and old, and the footpaths kept dividing and then dwindling into nothing. The sun dipped behind the western hills and the sky grew strangely clouded, as if by the paw prints of a pack of celestial hounds. The bristle of the trees softened into a dark fur. She began to fear that night would fall before she found her way home, when, to her great relief, she heard church bells tolling ahead – and, with a reinvigorated stride, she found herself back in a familiar field, the cottage just a short walk away.
Baldassare would definitely have seen Cesco by now. He’d have given him her number and told him that she was expecting his call. For all she knew, he’d already left a message on her phone. Not that she cared, of course. It was
gravity alone that hurried her down the slope to rejoin the road; gravity and a certain abstract curiosity about whether reconciliation with him would even be possible. If he were frank about his dishonesty and sincere in his contrition, she could certainly imagine forgiving him for the wrongs he’d done her. In truth, she already had. She could foresee meeting him again, even enjoying his company. Yet how was she supposed to trust him? That was the nub of it. To put it bluntly, he was too skilled at what he did. And, without trust, could there be friendship worth the name?
She clambered over a farm gate, took the hairpin turn, arrived at the head of the cottage drive. A beast of a black motorbike was parked at the foot. She remembered Baldassare telling her of the Harley Cesco had stolen from those German bikers. She began to walk down towards it with that same childhood dizziness as when stepping off a merry-go-round. Then the man himself appeared around the side of the cottage, phone in one hand, helmet in the other, a harrowed look on his face that dissolved on seeing her into such unmistakeable gladness and relief to find her and to find her safe that without a further thought she ran across the small gap that still separated them, and flung her arms around him.
II
A splitting headache, yes. An upset stomach, yes. Clammy skin, yes. Noah Zuckman had all the symptoms of the flu. Except it wasn’t flu he was coming down with. What he was coming down with, instead, was an existential case of regret. He’d been coming down with it since precisely 7.13 that same morning, when his boss Yonatan had called him at home to order him to report to Ben Gurion Airport with his passport and overnight bag.
Noah Zuckman didn’t do overseas missions. At least, as a former officer of Unit 8200 of the Israeli Intelligence Corps, all the overseas missions he’d ever been involved with had been done from the comfort and safety of a bombproof command centre ten metres beneath the Negev Desert, from which he’d hacked with perfect impunity into the digital networks of Israel’s strategic targets, stealing their secrets, mapping out their infrastructure and planting viruses that – should the need arise – would cripple their militaries, their economies, their power grids and communications systems. Yet here he now was, sitting in the back of a scarlet Renault as it pulled into the car park of a DIY superstore in a mall an hour south of Sorrento.
Dov pulled on the handbrake and turned around to him. ‘You stay here,’ he said.
‘Gladly,’ said Noah.
A contemptuous glance passed between his two bosses. Noah folded his arms and watched sullenly as they went inside, resenting how at ease they both were. It was clear they didn’t trust him. He’d gleaned some details of their mission from the general chatter, but they hadn’t even had the courtesy to brief him on his specific role. He kept an eye on the dashboard clock, though it was actually three minutes slow. Fifty-four minutes passed before the two men came back out, pushing a shopping trolley packed with plastic bags. Noah got out to help them pack it all away in the boot. One of their purchases was a chainsaw. Another was a sledgehammer. He looked at them in alarm. ‘What the hell are we here to do?’ he asked.
Yonatan and Dov exchanged another glance, debating whether the time had come. Dov smiled reassuringly at him. ‘Get back in,’ he said. ‘We’ll tell you on the way.’ They all retook their seats. Dov adjusted his rear-view mirror to look Noah in the eye as he pulled out of the car park. ‘You know about hydroelectric dams, right? They’re one of your areas of expertise?’
‘I’m not sure I’d—’
‘You told us in your interview that you’d written code that would cripple Syria’s hydroelectric system.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Good. Because we’re about to visit a remotely operated hydroelectric dam on Lake Sabetta. It controls the flow of a river called the Bussento, and we need you to stop it running for the night.’
‘But…’ Noah spread his hands, bewildered. ‘Why bring me here for that? I have everything I need back home.’
‘Because you’re not going to hack it. If you do, they’ll know for sure it was people like us. We can’t have that. So you’re going to disable it for us without hacking it. That way, they won’t have a clue.’
‘But… who else would want to disable it?’
‘The dam is owned by a company called Como Energy,’ said Dov. ‘They operate hydroelectric plants all across Italy. They’re building a new one on the Ombrone river, as it happens, and it’s got the environmentalists all riled up. You know the kind of shit. An area of outstanding beauty. The only habitat of some newt called the Arno goby.’
‘A goby is a fish,’ muttered Noah.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m just saying, gobies are fish, not newts,’
‘Newts are fish,’ said Dov.
‘No, actually, they’re salamanders.’
Yonatan laughed and punched Dov on the shoulder. ‘He told you, mate,’ he said. But Noah could tell from his manner that it was actually him he was laughing at, not Dov, as though familiarity with the natural kingdom was something to be ashamed of. He stared glumly out of the window. No wonder they’d delayed telling him as long as possible: to give him no real chance to back out. It seemed incredible to him now that he’d ever agreed to work for these people. But corporate intelligence was the hot new thing, and all the rest of his team were constantly being approached, so he’d been flattered enough to take the meeting when his own turn had finally come. He’d never expected anything to come of it, for he’d loved the army, its discipline and order, the pride of working for one’s nation, of knowing secrets that all the people he was protecting would shit themselves over if they knew. But the size of the offer Gordian Sword had made him had eaten away at him. All that fun he could be having! Holidays, a plush apartment, a fast car, the kind of sharp clothes worn by the kind of men that pretty women always snubbed him for. So he’d approached his commander about a promotion only to be laughed at and ordered back to his desk.
They left the motorway for a main road, the main road for a lane, the lane for a woodland track up which they bumped to a small clearing above a large lake, its surface grey with twilight. ‘That’s our baby,’ said Dov, redundantly. ‘And those are the control buildings down there.’
Noah stared across the lake. There were two cars in the car park. ‘I thought you said it was remotely operated.’
‘Relax. They’re Italians. They’ll leave soon enough.’
‘And if they don’t?’
‘You worry about your end of it. Let us worry about ours. Okay?’
They got out and stretched. Yonatan relieved himself against a tree, so Noah tried to too – except it proved to be nerves, so that barely a trickle came out. They each prepared a backpack with everything they’d need. Dov took a ziplock bag from a pouch of his overnight case. It had a handgun inside.
‘What the hell!’ protested Noah.
‘It’s only a replica,’ Dov assured him. ‘For crowd control only. Or would you prefer to get trapped in there if anyone turns up?’
Noah stared at him, but he and Yonatan simply carried on going about their business as if this was all perfectly normal. He didn’t know what to say, and so the moment passed. Yonatan fuelled the chainsaw then tested it by taking down a few branches. Dov covered their licence plates with fake ones then slapped Greenpeace and WWF stickers all over the bodywork. Then he called the drivers of the two rental vans to see how they were getting on and to give them their current coordinates for the rendezvous.
The sun set. Night began to fall. Still the two cars remained. They sat in the Renault and watched through field glasses until finally a side door opened and a man and woman came out, joking and jostling with each other. They set the alarm and locked the door then climbed into their separate cars and drove out over the dam, the steel security gate closing again behind them. They reached the main road then flashed each other farewell and headed off in opposite directions.
‘Okay,’ said Dov, starting the ignition. ‘We’re on.’
III
It couldn’t last, this glorious sensation of having Carmen in his arms, so Cesco savoured it while it did, her cheek warm against his own and the crush of her embrace and the astonishing fact that she appeared to have forgiven him, even before he’d managed to blurt out his incoherent apologies for everything he’d done. Then he realised that to hold her any longer would be another betrayal to add to his long list, so he let go of her, stepped back, put his hands on her shoulders and assumed his most solemn expression. ‘Baldassare returned your phone to you, yes?’ he said. ‘The one I took from you that day?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Have you used it yet?’
‘I went up the road to check my messages. Why? What’s going on?’
‘How far up the road?’
‘Into Sicilì. The nearest place with a signal. Cesco, what’s this about?’
‘Okay. The thing is this: I think your Cosenza friends are on their way.’
‘My Cosenza friends? You don’t mean…?’
He nodded. ‘I think they did it that first afternoon, after they’d knocked you out. They unlocked your phone with your thumb then downloaded a surveillance app onto it with which to monitor you and the investigation. That’s how they learned about the drone, and that they needed to burn down the Suraces’ farmhouse. It’s how they found us on that road that morning. And now they’ve contrived to have it returned to you, because they want to find you again.’
‘But why?’
‘Those sketches you did. You’re the one person in the world who can say for sure that they truly are of them.’
‘Oh shit,’ she said.
‘Will they be able to find this place?’ he asked. ‘By searching for rentals on the internet, for example?’
‘If they look hard enough.’
The Sacred Spoils Page 29
