Gerald Seymour
The Collaborator
18
When there wasn’t much worth saying, Lukas usually stayed silent.
Castrolami seemed tight, knotted, and would have had cause. They had left the city and climbed on to the plateau area inland, to the east, and the dense housing was behind them. The ground opened: scrub, rubbish, abandoned construction, more scrub, more rubbish, more half-finished projects, and more scattered lighting. The traffic blockages of the old city were back down the hill. Lukas saw the towers.
He was near to making progress calls on his mobile, but not yet. He was not one of those who went off radar and only called in when he had success or failure to report, but he wouldn’t call unless he had hard information. At Ground Force Security they paid his wage and put a roof over his head; if he didn’t have them, he might just have to ship out and go back to Charlotte, a trailer park, a wife who might tolerate him if he was around to do handyman jobs and a son who would ignore him. He’d eat doughnuts and fries, drink grape juice, maybe hike some Carolina trails, and worry about a Bureau pension that had been cut short in contributions and would keep him light on cigarettes. He wouldn’t walk away willingly from his employer, and he would call when he had information.
The towers speared up and alongside them there were big shoeboxes laid on their sides. Way back, when he was young in the Bureau and there was a shortage of personal-protection guys for an overseas detail, he had taken a short straw and had gone in the director’s entourage to a terrorism conference in west Berlin. There had been a chance of a day across the other side: they’d been bussed through the Wall, and he had seen the forests of towers on the outskirts of the eastern sector. Lukas could live in an attic apartment under the eaves off the rue de Bellechasse in the heart of a great old city, or he could live in a cabin up high in a treeline – like the guy at Ruby Ridge had. He couldn’t have lived in a tower block in east Berlin, or one out on the darkened flatlands east of Naples. Castrolami had hold of his sleeve and tugged at it, then pointed at the map. The pencil torch caught the outline of the big block, and Castrolami pointed out through the window. It was massive. It was indeed a sail. The towers now seemed dwarfed by it. The lights from windows etched in its shape. There seemed to Lukas to be a hull to the building, then what was almost forward decking and then twin sail shapes rose, climbed high.
They were close now.
What Castrolami had not asked him: could he maintain the same hunger for his work as in the past when his reputation was made? Did he have the same fascination for the techniques that would undo his opponent?
Inside the minibus there was the murmur of the comms kid’s voice as he spoke into a button microphone. His metal-lined case was open and dials were lit. Twice a separate microphone was passed to Castrolami and enveloped in his ham fist as he spoke. There was the scrape of weapons being armed. He thought the Tractor was the leader, the Bomber was the joker, and that the world’s roof would have to collapse before the Engineer contributed.
A contested entry was a disaster. Lukas knew it – they would all know it. He thought the place would be, from Castrolami’s plan, like a gopher warren of tunnels and entries, exits, climbs and descents, like the ground squirrels used. The navigation was done by the driver’s escort, who would lean back and whisper into Castrolami’s ear. He had said, himself, that he needed to be as close as was possible to the hostage and the hostage-taker, and he didn’t think it needed saying again. He had seen a sign, crazily askew, for the via Baku: he wondered what the connection might be between an asshole corner of southern Italy and the capital city of Azerbaijan, but doubted it mattered. Another sign told him they were on the viale della Resistenza. The torch flashed on the map and the pudgy finger pointed to the location.
They were slowing.
Lukas felt the tightness in his gut – always there when the action came near.
Castrolami said, quiet but breathy, ‘It is unlikely we will be met with armed resistance, but it is possible. If we are, stay close to my back. You do not show anyone your voice, your accent – damn Yankee. We may be confronted with passive opposition, crowds, abuse, heckling, man-handling. Stay close to me, hold on to me. I expect barricades, steel gates, blocks to slow us – the Ingegnere will deal with them, and for hostile people we have the Bombardiere. We attempt speed, but we do not know what we find and we do not have the luxury of time for reconnaissance. What do you wish to say?’
‘I’m here. I can give advice if it’s wanted. I don’t impose.’
Castrolami punched his arm, a good hard jab, made it hurt, and it seemed to Lukas a gesture of affection – might have been respect. There was no call for respect.
The minibus came to a stop.
They had rocked on to a pavement and the weight had broken a slab. The roll had barely stopped when the Trattore had slid back the side door and was out. There was a stampede.
Lukas had never jumped with a parachute. He had been on an aircraft from which men had jumped, at night, over a targeted farm where a contract worker was reported to be held. What had lasted with him was the sight of the dispatcher by the open hatch as he booted the guys out and into the void. The driver’s escort had that job. Half of the ROS guys, then Castrolami and the comms kid, the rest of the ROS guys, and Lukas. The escort’s fist caught him, as if he was the runt of the damn litter, threw him forward and he cannoned first into a big backpack, then the one with the bolt-cutters damn near speared him with a handle. He steadied himself against Castrolami’s backside and most of the wind was squeezed out of him. He gasped. He was in his forty-eighth year – did that matter? Maybe not the statistic, but he didn’t run on pavements or do gym sessions, and guys with a childhood heritage of trailer parks didn’t play tennis. He’d never had the time or inclination to learn golf, and mountain hiking was more a dream than real. He felt old. He sucked in air – felt old, feeble, but there was no young bastard pressing up against him. Why could Ground Force Security rent out the services of Lukas, a hack who had seen better days? Because negotiators and co-ordinators were happy to work a Stateside beat or to be in London or Berlin, but declined postings to Mosul, Jalalabad or Medellin, any goddam place where there were shit, flies and a building like the Sail – and a wretch who was looking at a knife or a pistol.
They were running, except the driver and his escort who were left behind.
Lukas didn’t play at heroes, was separated from Castrolami’s back by a cigarette-paper thickness. He saw, past the big shoulders, the shadows in a dark doorway. Lukas thought, then, there was brief negotiation, a few seconds, two or three exchanges, and the shadows were done and the way ahead was clear. There were pounding feet, and he imagined the heavy boots encasing water-resistant socks, and more boots behind him, which was as welcome a sound as any. The Tractor had a flashlight in one hand, turned it on. In the other he held a handgun. He wore a vest, and had a machine pistol slung on a strap looped at his neck. His chin jutted. No debate, negotiation or discussion. The Tractor led them through – as if he was crossing a water-filled ditch or rode a sand berm – and men made way for them. Lukas was given no explanation, but he factored that their entry on to a staircase was not impeded. That was a little victory, minimal, but a victory of sorts.
The smell of the place hit him.
The flashlight, used intermittently, guided him up.
He would do the best he could – had no more to offer.
It was as if a signal had been given from the base of the stairwell and sent on up to the floors above. The flashlight caught men and women, children with them. They were dressed, the smaller children in night clothes, and carried cases and bundles. One child had a puppy clasped to his chest, and others had prime toys. He sensed the mood of evacuation – as if a deck was cleared. There was no eye-contact between those on the stairs coming down, stumbling under their loads, and those going up, bowed under the weight of the kit. Two groups not acknowledging each other. Lukas thought he did dirty work: it was work that decent people should not be asked to perform. He went up the stairs and Castrolami’s shoulders bounced in front of him.