message would have been sent out in clear to the FARC that the missionary tag was bogus. The man passed him and there was a murmur, lips barely moving, which might have been two words: ‘Thank you.’ Probably was. He didn’t acknowledge. The captain, Pablo, was not inside the loop and didn’t know that the freeing of an American asset was the sole reason for this mission. Lukas, no one else, would have been permitted by the Agency to give the crucial advice on the rescue of their man. He had the reputation… but he shunned pride.
There was a colonel on the Chinook. He slapped him on the arm, and bayed, ‘Good work, Lukas. We lost a local politico, but he was a left sympathiser, and the Frenchman. We’ve saved the judge, who has good connections with central government, and God’s man, the Canadian and a mayor from this region. The injured will live. Fine work.’
A hand was offered but he kept one of his in a pocket and the other cupped a cigarette end. He did not do courtesies. It was not that he intended rudeness, more that the pleasantries seemed unimportant, and he wouldn’t have considered such a refusal might offend. Guarding the cigarette was a greater priority.
But, later, at the ramp of the Chinook, he permitted Pablo to hug him briefly.
It would be an hour’s flight to the military base attached to Bogota’s civil airport.
He would be in time to catch the Avianca night flight out of the Aeropuerto Internacional El Dorado for the long haul over the wastes of the Atlantic before the European landfall, then the short commuter ride to his home. The families of the survivors would be at the El Dorado, with jerks from the embassy, flashlights, government ministers and a ratpack of hacks. He would be well clear of them.
He would sleep on the long-haul flight. He always slept well coming off an assignment: win, lose or draw, he’d sleep.
2
The glass-sided box of the public telephone was ahead. The pavement was crowded at that time of the early evening and it slipped in and out of her view but she kept her eye on it, as if it was the Holy Grail.
She had not slept the previous night and had not eaten that day. She had missed an all-day seminar on insolvency, had walked the streets and sat in a park, with Downs Road behind her and the open expanse in front where mothers pushed prams, smoked and gossiped, where kids threw off their hoods and kicked a ball, and where work-gangs – sullen, resentful and bored – cleared dumped litter under supervision. She had watched them all. Had seen the old walk arm in arm or dragged along by a dog on a tight lead and the young drift. She had watched the high windows and balconies of the tower blocks on the west side of the park, and seen wet washing put out on lines to dry and dry washing taken in. The hours of the day had been eaten up. It was about betrayal, a big word, as big as any she knew in its weight.
It had rolled in her mind. Tradimento. It had made her – in her bed, unable to sleep – shiver and feel dread, because she knew the reward that waited for those who betrayed their own.
Her hand was tight on her shoulder-bag as she walked down the shallow slope of the street towards the telephone box. It was occupied. Three boys in baggy trousers and oversized sweat tops were crowded inside it: she wondered why they used a public phone, not mobiles – and whether they bought or sold. She looked to see if any others were hovering to use the phone, and thought not. Where she came from, that culture and that society, the word tradimento had a taste as bitter as poison. Betrayal was an ultimate sin, was stamping on the face of Christ… and she had sat through today on the bench in the park. She had kept her hands tight on the bag’s straps and had watched but not absorbed. She had agonised on the implications of betrayal. Her first act of betrayal had been that morning when she had come out of the bathroom, dressed, and had crossed the living room. Vincenzo was lounging in a chair, smoking, a towel draped across his stomach as he turned the pages of a football fanzine about Napoli SSC. She had gone into her bedroom and come out a moment later with the bag that contained the notes she took in her classes. He had asked, without interest, about her day. She had answered, a mutter, that she had a seminar on insolvenza. She had needed to carry the work bag if she was to support the lie that she was attending her classes. She had lied to her brother and started the process of betrayal. Vincenzo had grinned – the idea of insolvency amused him. He, his father and mother, his brothers, his sister were worth hundreds of millions of euros, would never know insolvency… She had sat on the bench and watched, her stomach had growled, and she had steeled herself.
Was there something else she could do to reflect her feelings? Like what? Join a religious order and say prayers? Become involved with a charity, and help the mentally handicapped, alcoholics or HIV sufferers? Sign up for a campaigning political group and attempt to bulldoze change through a ballot box? Walk out, lose herself, try to forget what had been a part of her life? As alternatives, they had all – during the night – seemed inadequate and degrading to the memory of her best friend. Immacolata had found the strength to go to the telephone box.
When the self-doubt was worst she would stare out over the trees and up into the clouds, feel the rain on her skin and take herself back to those hours. Not many of them. She had been able to look at her watch and think that twenty-four hours earlier she had been hurrying along the verge of via Saviano, or that it was the moment her heel had snapped, or that she was hopping, hobbling, along a path between the family chapels, or that she was in the centre of the cemetery at Nola, staring across white gravestones to a far wall where the family slots were. She had recalled the hands taking the bundle and carrying it up the ladders. Clearest were the images of her clothing being ripped, her shin kicked, and the denunciation of her family’s part in the death of her friend.
Had she known of the trade in the disposal of toxic waste? Of course she had.
Had she known of the profits to be made from shipping contaminated rubbish from factories in the north to dumping grounds in the fields and orchards of the south? Of course she had.
Had it ever intruded into her thoughts that her family would fear responsibility for the killing of her friend? Never… She remembered the flowers, bent, worthless. What she remembered best gave her the strength to commit the act: tradimento.
She stood by the telephone box. She eyed the boys. Had she been at home, on her own streets, and ragazzi had used a telephone she was waiting for, she would have been recognised, the call terminated, the booth offered, and respect would have been shown to her. Maybe, even, one of the kids – had she been at home – would have wiped the receiver on his T-shirt to leave it clean for her. Two of the boys stared at her, challenging. Here, on Kingsland Road, in Dalston against the border of Hackney, the boys with hoods on their heads, Nikes and new tracksuits ruled and did not expect to be stared out. She thought they were shit. One, the biggest, seemed to make a decision about her. He didn’t pull a weapon, but ended the call and dropped the receiver, letting it dangle on its cable, then slouched out, his shoulder brushing hers. It was probably the nearest he had come to a moment of submission. She heard, behind her, another spit at the paving-stones.
She lifted the receiver. She knew the number. Anyone in her family knew the number, and the occupant of the desk on which the call would ring out. She had not thought of the young man. Perhaps he, too, was betrayed. He was ignored, didn’t matter to her, as she stood in the glass-sided box. The headlights of cars, buses and vans glistened on the street, the lamps above her were bright and threw an orange wash over the windows of shops, banks, building societies and betting shops – all closed now. The young man didn’t matter to her and had no place in the fierce heat of the cemetery at Nola. She put a Visa card into the slot and the display panel responded.
She dialled. She would not have needed to know the number. Neither would any of her family have ‘needed’ to know it. Knowledge of the number was power. Having it showed the tentacle reach of the clan. The direct line would have been listed only on the most confidential sheets and would have circulated only among a chosen, trusted few. Knowing it was a demonstration of the power of the clan to which she was integral. She took a deep breath, allowed it to whistle shrill from her lips.
The call was answered. She thought she had interrupted a meeting in the office on the upper floor of the Palace of Justice and that a subordinate had picked it up. She named the prosecutor. She was told he was unavailable. Who wished to speak to the dottore?
The moment of betrayal came fast, stampeded her. For a moment she couldn’t speak. Then she straightened her back and jutted her chin. ‘I think he’ll find time to speak with me. Tell him I’m Immacolata Borelli…’
He walked into the classroom. A chorus of voices, in scattered accents, greeted him. For Eddie Deacon it had been a bad day and now it was evening. The chance of improvement was minimal. The language courses often took place after working hours and his foreign students flocked in when their daytime employment, legitimate or not, had
