Fazil shook his head.
‘I can prove it,’ Donaldson said again.
The lone, mystery diner had not been as careful as he should have been. The glass of wine and glass carafe on his table revealed an array of partial fingerprints, as did an examination of the porcelain cistern lid. These were run through the automatic fingerprint recognition system and Fazil’s details were eventually thrown up. He was positively identified from the lifts, but there was not enough detail to support an ID at court.
Fazil shrugged.
Donaldson did not speak, but regarded the man who could be the key to cracking the case he’d been working on solidly for eighteen months — as well as the rest.
Following his appearance at the scene of the shooting in Majorca, Donaldson had been diverted to other tasks through no fault of his own. One of these was the protracted manhunt for the terrorist Akbar that culminated many months later in a tiny square in Barcelona, where Donaldson had come face to face with him and took a bullet that almost cost him his life — though Akbar fared much worse. Donaldson had endured a long period of recuperation and eventually returned to work, picking up the threads of the investigation into the Majorcan murders.
By that time, Fazil had been identified from the traces he’d left at the scene and a full profile had been pulled together on him. He was a Turk involved in people smuggling and drug dealing across the eastern Med. At the time of the murders he was working freelance for a Camorra Mafia family from Naples and was suspected by the Italian police of being a man who collected, delivered and disposed of firearms used in the commission of crimes by that particular clan. Crimes that included murder — and in that part of the world he was kept constantly busy because murder was rife between warring factions.
But Fazil was an elusive man, always on the go, rarely in one place for any length of time. Although he was circulated by Interpol as wanted for questioning in connection with the Majorcan murders, he was never caught.
It was a frustrating time for Donaldson and the FBI, who had a vested interest in apprehending him because the man going by the codename Shark had been deep undercover for years and they wanted to nail the bastard who killed him, who it was believed had been hired by the head of a rival Mafia clan.
Other than occasional snippets of information about the assassin — a man who went by the moniker of ‘The American’ — Fazil was the best lead they had to the shootings, if only they could catch him.
‘We have your fingerprints and’ — here Donaldson stretched the truth a little — ‘your DNA from the scene.’
Fazil shook his head.
‘We can protect you if you speak to us,’ Donaldson assured him, hoping his body language didn’t say anything different. ‘If you admit your part, tell us who you worked for and who pulled the trigger, who set up the hit — everything — we will protect you.’
‘I don’t speak to the law.’
It had taken almost three years for Fazil to surface and that had been only by pure chance and bad luck on his part. He had been involved in running a rigid inflatable boat, an RIB, full of contraband from the southern tip of Italy to Malta and back, and a low-level snitch blabbed to the police in Valletta. He told them that a night run was due to take place to drop off drugs on St Paul’s Bay on the island’s north coast.
Fazil was accompanied by three other men, all Turks.
The police were waiting in ambush. Unfortunately, what should have been a well-planned and executed reception turned into a bloodbath. Fazil and his heavily armed colleagues opened fire on the police in a desperate attempt to evade their clutches and get back out to sea. The only miracle was that Fazil was left standing after the broadside, as his three mates were riddled with bullets and one cop felled by Fazil’s MP5 and almost beheaded by the stream of bullets.
It was the second time in Maltese history that Turkish blood had been spilled in St Paul’s Bay, the last time being in 1565 when hundreds of Turkish soldiers were slaughtered as they lay siege to the island. Their blood made the waters run red.
It was much less dramatic this time in terms of its scale, as three dead smugglers lay at the water’s edge, twitching and bleeding in the surf.
‘And anyway,’ Fazil sneered at Donaldson, ‘you still haven’t told me why you Americans are so interested in feuding Italians.’ Then, suddenly, he had a thought, churning the question through his brain again. ‘Unless…?’ He shook his head and grinned, and he realized he might just have the answer.
Donaldson was relieved to get out of the miserable heat of the dungeons and into the equally hot, but breezy streets of the Maltese capital, Valletta. He slung his light jacket over his shoulder and sauntered through the high, narrow thoroughfares, jam-packed with people and cars. He mulled over what Fazil had quite correctly surmised, although Donaldson had not let on that the prisoner was right, had kept his face as impassive as a professional poker player.
‘One of them was an undercover cop, wasn’t he?’ Fazil had gushed. ‘One of yours.’
Donaldson had sighed and shook his head, then quickly taken his leave, saying he would return later. He left Fazil with his cellphone number just in case.
Outside, he wended across to Upper Barracca Gardens for the splendid view over Grand Harbour, where he thought about Malta’s strategic position in the Mediterranean. That, coupled with the superb harbour, meant this barren little rock had had a torrid history over the centuries, No doubt, he thought, the same would apply for centuries to come.
He sat on a bench savouring the late afternoon sun on his face, his mind once more turning to Fazil, the man who had delivered the weapon used to murder three Italian Mafia men.
Except… one of the men, codenamed Shark, whilst being of Italian origin, had actually been a deep cover FBI agent. And that was why the Americans wanted to catch the killer, because he was one of theirs. A brave, resourceful man who had spent five years undercover, gaining trust, gathering information secretly, before ultimately betraying them. At least that had been the plan.
And Shark was one of the best. Real name Giuseppe Cardini, an FBI agent to the core, who had found himself actually advising members of the Marini Camorra clan on matters of business. And they had met a man who had promised them an entry into the vast US clothing and footwear markets, but he had turned out to be a killer.
An elaborate set up. Lured to Majorca, then murdered.
Donaldson scrunched up his fists in frustration, cursing silently. He was annoyed he hadn’t been able to devote as much time as he would have liked to Shark’s death, but that was often the nature of FBI work. Nor did it help that Akbar’s bullet had shredded his insides, the kind of setback that tends to mess up any plans. When he did return to full duty, there had then been distracting personal issues, like a wife who wanted out, and other sidetracks, so that when he eventually managed to devote some quality time to it, the trail was well and truly chilly. The ‘American’ was still at large and no one had been punished for the crime.
Punished legally, that is.
Donaldson knew that the three killings in Majorca had kicked off a spate of tit for tat murders in Naples and surrounding districts, as several Camorra clans went head to head in a brutal struggle for dominance. More than twelve people had been killed in reprisal and counter reprisal, probably more. It was a very ugly, prolonged war that seemed to have no end.
He fished out his cellphone and speed-dialled a number.
‘Don — it’s me, Karl Donaldson.’
‘Hey, pal,’ Don Barber answered. ‘How’s it going?’ Barber, who was now Donaldson’s line manager at the London embassy following a promotion from the Madrid office, knew exactly where Donaldson was and what he was doing.
‘I’ve spoken to the guy — and so far it’s a no-no. At the moment he’s stewing, literally and metaphorically, in a cell.’