‘Michael, are you okay?’ Kolchinsky shouted after Graham had climbed into the cabin.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Graham replied, using his sleeve to wipe the blood from his face.
‘I’m flying to Arta in Greece. I’ve got a friend there. An old KGB colleague. We can stay with him for the night then fly back to Switzerland in the morning. His wife’s a nurse, she’ll see to your stitches. Sabrina, put a dressing on the wound. It’ll have to do until we get there.’
Graham unzipped the holdall and whistled softly to himself. Sabrina returned with the dressing and peered over his shoulder. The holdall was packed with bundles of notes. Hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling.
‘That’s some haul,’ she said, flicking through one of the bundles.
‘More than enough to start a new life,’ he replied, taking the notes from her and replacing them in the holdall.
‘Where do you suggest we go?’ she asked with a mischievous grin.
‘How about… Arta?’
She smiled, then dabbed some disinfectant on to a swab of cotton wool and began to wipe away the camouflage cream from around the wound.
The helicopter ascended into the night sky and headed out towards the Ionian Sea.
Fourteen
Friday
Kolchinsky rang Philpott from Arta at two o’clock that morning to brief him on what had happened on Corfu. He didn’t know when they would get back to Berne. Probably late afternoon. Philpott told him not to worry. Calvieri was due to appear at a preliminary hearing in Berne at three o’clock that afternoon. Whitlock and Paluzzi would be there.
The taxi pulled up a block away from the courthouse. The man in the back folded up the morning edition of the International Herald Tribune, placed it on the seat, then picked up his attaché case and climbed out of the taxi. The article he had been staring at for the duration of the journey lay face up on the seat. The headline read: TERRORIST LEADER ON MURDER CHARGES. He paid the fare and included a generous tip for getting him to his destination on time. The driver plucked the notes gratefully from the man’s black-gloved hand, then slid the taxi into gear and drove off.
Richard Wiseman watched the taxi disappear into the traffic, then walked to the small hotel directly opposite the courthouse. It was the second time he had been to the hotel that morning. He had been there three hours earlier to reconnoitre the area. Now he knew exactly where to go. He slipped into a narrow alley at the side of the hotel and paused at the foot of the fire escape to look around him. The alley was deserted. He climbed up the metal stairs to a flat roof. He glanced at his watch: 10.07 a.m. He still had a few minutes to spare before Calvieri was due to arrive at the courthouse.
His mind wandered back over the past two days. He had checked out of the Hassler Villa Medici Hotel when Young had failed to call him from Berne and booked into the more modest Cesari Hotel under a false name. He had used the name ever since. The morning paper had carried the story of the two men who had been found dead in the martial arts centre opposite the Metropole Hotel in Berne. Neither man had been identified but he knew instinctively that one of them was Young.
He had flown to Berne the previous morning but was told by a receptionist at the Metropole Hotel that Calvieri had been out all day. He had rung the hotel at regular intervals throughout the afternoon but each time he had received the same reply. Calvieri wasn’t there. Then, the previous evening, he had seen the report of Calvieri’s arrest on one of the news bulletins. He had found out through one of his more reliable military contacts that although Calvieri was due to appear in court at three o’clock he would, in fact, be taken there secretly at ten o’clock to prevent any attempt by the Red Brigades to spring him. The security at the courthouse would be minimal in the morning and only increased for the decoy convoy that was due to arrive there at two o’clock in the afternoon. It had left him very little time…
He found himself staring absently at the narrow road running parallel to the side of the courthouse. The police van would stop there. He unlocked the attaché case and removed the specially designed detachable Vaime Super Silenced Rifle Mk2. It used subsonic ammunition and had a suppressor to cut the firing noise. It was one of Young’s rifles which he had picked up from a locker at the station. He snapped the ten-round box into place, then settled down to wait for Calvieri.
The police van swept through the open gates at the side of the courthouse at 10.24 a.m. Two police cars followed it in and the gates were immediately locked behind them. Whitlock and Paluzzi were riding in the second car.
The police van stopped beside a door at the side of the building. A policeman jumped out from the passenger side, walked to the back of the van, and unlocked the doors. He climbed inside and unlocked the cage nearest to the doors. Calvieri emerged from the cage, his hands manacled in front of him. He was the only prisoner in the van. He noticed Paluzzi standing beside the second police car, hands in pockets, and paused on the top step to smile disdainfully at him.
Wiseman’s first bullet took Calvieri high in the shoulder, knocking him back against the open door. Paluzzi was still sprinting towards the van when the second bullet hit Calvieri full in the chest, punching him backwards into the van. The policemen scrambled for cover, shouting at each other in confusion as they scanned the rooftops for any sign of the gunman. A captain was quick to take charge and led a team of four men out into the street.
Whitlock hurried over to where Paluzzi was crouched beside Calvieri.
‘The ambulance is on its way.’
‘There’s no rush,’ Paluzzi said, and closed Calvieri’s sightless eyes.
Whitlock punched the side of the van angrily.
Paluzzi stood up. ‘Call Philpott, tell him what’s happened I’m going to see if they’ve found anything out there.’
Whitlock disappeared into the courthouse to phone Philpott at the hotel.
The gate was unlocked again and Paluzzi slipped out into the street. All the activity was centred around the hotel. The two policemen there, one at the main door and the other at the entrance to the alley, were being questioned by the ever-increasing crowd of onlookers who were gathering in front of the hotel, jostling with each other in an attempt to satisfy their curiosity. Neither policeman was saying anything. A police car pulled up outside the courthouse and Paluzzi ordered the two policemen to clear the onlookers, who were already beginning to spill out on to the road. They scrambled from the car and began to disperse the crowd.
Paluzzi showed his ID card to the policeman guarding the alley and was allowed to pass. He was told that the captain was on the roof. He climbed the fire escape to the flat roof and found the captain kneeling beside a discarded rifle.
The captain noticed Paluzzi behind him and got to his feet.
‘The gunman got away,’ he muttered through clenched teeth.
Paluzzi examined the rifle, then looked across to the courthouse yard at Calvieri’s body, which had been covered with a grey blanket. He shook his head.
‘I said there should be more security. But nobody listened. It wasn’t my jurisdiction. It’s certainly going to look good on Kuhlmann’s record. Calvieri gunned down at a courthouse because he failed to sanction the proper security measures. The man’s still living in the Middle Ages. The sooner he goes the better it will be for this country.’
‘Commissioner Kuhlmann’s a fine man,’ the captain snapped. ‘He did what he thought best under the circumstances.’
‘And look at the result.’ Paluzzi walked away then looked back at the captain as he reached the top of the stairs. ‘I wonder if you’ll still be singing his praises when the bombs start exploding in your cities. The Red Brigades won’t take this lying down, you can be sure of that.’