‘I would have talked to you this morning, but you had breakfasts, check-outs, the Dutch complaining about the hot water…’
Still dry: ‘I had the New Zealanders who wanted a reservation in Sorrento for two nights and the Greek couple had fucked – excuse me, sir – till four in the morning, my friend told me, and broke the bed. They want a replacement not repair.’
‘It’s about the boy.’
‘I understood that, sir. Forgive me, sir. The world comes across my lobby, dresses in many ways and has many ages, many disguises. You’re not a tourist. You have no map and no book, and do not ask directions to the Palazzo Reale, the Castel dell’Ovo or the Teatro San Carlo, and no businessman stays here. I understand, sir.’
‘We have to trust each other.’
‘I expected you – someone. I made a telephone call. Perhaps I regret it. I realised afterwards there would be consequences. Someone would come. It is a city where humble people – myself – do not seek attention. I have to trust you… or I walk off the beach and into the sea.’
‘You have my word,’ Lukas said. His right hand took the day manager’s, his left lifted the beaker and brushed it against the other’s. He held the hand while he sipped bad brandy. He respected informants – many did not. The Brits, he knew, had put up bureaucratic barricades to block entry to Iraqi collaborators. They were lonely and unloved by most handlers, seldom thanked for the risk taken. He knew it from the FBI days. Lukas would have thought that a few hundred euros palmed across the desk would have insulted the integrity of the day manager. He did good sincerity when he guaranteed his word – and meant it. Many he had known, attached to Task Force 145 out at Anaconda in the Balad base, who did a year’s Iraq duty, had handled agents, milked their udders dry, then cut them adrift. Lukas had little sentiment, but he appreciated that agents who volunteered help were vulnerable – like the day manager. ‘My word is good.’
‘I telephoned the family of Eddie Deacon.’
‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘It is not yet in the newspapers, his capture.’
‘They’re trying to keep it suppressed. Can’t do that for many more days.’
‘I did not see him taken.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I was brought a piece of card. It is what we give to guests, our address and phone, and we write on it his room number. It was dropped in the street.’
‘And picked up and brought to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘By a witness?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who was the witness?’ Lukas saw the squirm on the day manager’s features. One thing to have involved himself, another to involve his informant. Lukas understood, in this culture and in this city, what would be an informer’s reward: death would come like mercy. Twice the day manager seemed to rehearse a statement but nothing was said, then… Lukas could have sworn, did not. An Australian couple, young, handsome, bronzed and near to collapse, came through the door. His eye was already closing and the bruise had started to swell, while below the hem of her shorts the knees were grazed. He backed away. Heard the babble about her handbag, the snatch from the motor scooter. Her dragged along the gutter. Him catching the shoulder of the snatcher who rode pillion and being lashed clear by the driver’s elbow. In the bag were passports, plastic and some cash and – Christ, did they think they were in bloody Woolagong on the Bondi? Christ, didn’t they know they were in Naples, Italy? He knew about Woolagong from a Special Forces guy who had a girl there and they’d spent long hours waiting for the assets to turn in something of value. Lukas thought he had lost his man.
He hadn’t.
The brandy was produced again. More beakers were found. The Australians were given alcohol, were sat down. The day manager said he was going to telephone the police, but as he lifted the phone he murmured into Lukas’s ear: ‘In via Forcella, at the bottom, is the home of Carmine and Anna Borelli, old people. He came out from their home and was taken. There is a stall for fish beside the outer door. He is Tomasso. He will have returned from the market at dawn. He saw it. Have I killed myself? Have I killed him?’
‘I gave you my word. The key, please.’
The day manager dialled, 112, then started to shout. He did well. He stood in the corner of the robbed couple and demanded an appointment for them the following morning. Lukas thought it all bullshit, but the Australians would have been pleased with his vigour. While he shouted, he handed Lukas his own room key and a second. He thought the Greeks had had their bed repaired or a new one had been moved into their second-floor room. He went on up, climbed a further flight.
There was police tape on the door.
He broke it, used the key and went inside. He experienced the feeling that a law-enforcement man never lost on going into private space with entire legitimacy but as a trespasser. The room had been searched, but he reckoned the check had been perfunctory, done without interest or enthusiasm.
Later he would sit on the bed, think and contemplate. He believed in the value of association, with a suitcase, clothes or just where there had been a presence. So little of Eddie Deacon was there. The bag, clothes on the floor, including the previous day’s socks and boxers. There was a passport, a wallet with a few euros. Lukas thought the boy had left behind as much as possible before venturing out. In the wallet was the photograph. The picture brought alive the girl he had seen run in the gardens; more important, it brought alive the boy. He had been, perhaps, a hundred yards from her in the villa Borghese gardens; here he was close and could touch her, could almost smell her, and hear the laughter that seemed to ring from the picture, infectious. He saw the prettiness, the vitality and the youth, not matched in Rome seen at a distance. He knew, holding the photograph under the ceiling light, why Eddie Deacon had crossed the continent to bring back the girl. In his trade, he was not supposed to feel emotion and relate to victims – it was thought dangerous for involvement to feature. He knew about hostage rescue, hostage negotiation and the co-ordinator’s job of evaluating talk against force, and his whole life was the work… Lukas had never loved.
The work made do as his family. Could have been inside the broad family of the Bureau, or in the gargantuan family of the military, or in the close, tight-knit family of Ground Force Security. Love was now, had been in the past, absent from Lukas. He had admired his mother. He had felt affection for his wife, Martha, at first. He had not reacted to his son’s birth on a date after the divorce was finalised. He looked a long time at the face of the girl.
Then, he had seen enough.
He left everything as he had found it, except the photograph from the wallet. He laid the picture with care in the breast pocket of his shirt, careful neither to bend nor mark it. It was the photograph that screwed Lukas’s intention to deny any emotional involvement. He looked around him for a last time, switched off the light, closed the door, locked it, then resealed the jamb with the adhesive police tape. He went off down the corridor and down the stairs, and the Greeks were still at it. He felt, as if it was a weight on him, the picture in his pocket, saw the smile and heard the laugh.
Good if it had been possible to make promises.
‘Can’t do it, kid,’ he murmured. ‘It’s not a business where promises are possible. Sorry, but you have to appreciate that.’
His own room would be so empty, and without a photograph to light it.
Gerald Seymour
The Collaborator
13
He didn’t know how long he had slept but, blessed relief, it had been dreamless, without nightmares. He had rubbed his eyes hard, stretched, scratched and had started again to search.
He talked quietly to himself, a whisper or a murmur – seemed to take the guys in the Dalston house as an
