“So…?”
“So if we want to win, Gianni, we have to do the same. Let’s face it. Given the squeeze they’ve got on us, what’s the alternative?”
“I wish I hadn’t asked that,” Peroni grumbled. “I wish I’d just stayed ignorant instead. Me and my big mouth.”
“You and your big mouth. There’s just one problem.”
Peroni blinked. “Just the one? Are you sure?”
“We don’t have the people. I’m in. You and Costa too.”
“Wait-”
“Shush, Gianni. Let’s not play games now. There isn’t time. I couldn’t call anyone else even if I wanted to. Moretti would know and then it really would be over.”
“Yeah…” Peroni found himself uttering a brief, mirthless guffaw.
“And who’d be crazy enough to dump their career alongside ours anyway? Tell me that. Who?”
Falcone had leaned back in his seat now, eyes closed, calm and cool as they come.
“Just a crazy person, I guess,” he said and flicked a sideways glance in Gianni Peroni’s direction, one that, to Peroni’s astonishment, made the big cop feel more miserable than ever.
THE TALLER OF Joel Leapman’s spooks was called Friedricksen. He had the face of a blond-haired teenager and a mature, muscle-bound body that spoke of long painful workouts in the gym. Costa stood next to Peroni and Falcone and watched Friedricksen step around the seated figure of Emily Deacon, poking at parts of her zipped-up parka with a pencil, bending down, sniffing, moving carefully on. Peroni wished they’d had one of the old guard from the city bomb-disposal squad there. They looked like professionals. This guy had all the conviction of someone who’d taken the classes and then moved on to aerobics.
Then Emily herself muttered a low curse and pulled down the front of the jacket, exposing the two lines of yellow metallic shapes there and the nest of brightly coloured wires running between them.
“Holy fucking shit!” Friedricksen barked and leapt back a couple of feet in shock. “Do you know what they are? Do you have any idea what this crazy bastard’s messing with?”
Emily let out a long, bored sigh and stared at her boss. “My, Joel, I am so disappointed you didn’t introduce me to your goons. They fill one with such confidence.”
Leapman glowered at the man. “You’re supposed to know munitions, Friedricksen. Talk.”
“I do,” the spook complained.
“What is it?” Peroni asked. “Dynamite or something?”
The young American pulled one of those sarcastic faces that always improved Peroni’s mood. “Yeah. Sure. The sort you get in the cartoons. Bang. Bang. This stuff’s like nothing on earth. You wouldn’t get it on a Palestinian. The wiring, maybe. Though that looks a hell of a lot more professional. More complicated too. It’s these…”
Gingerly, he pointed to the metal canisters.
“Unbelievable,” he groaned, shaking his head all the time. “I couldn’t get hold of them. No way, man.”
“So give us a clue,” Costa suggested.
“They’re BLU-97s. Bomblets. You read all that stuff about unexploded munitions in Iraq and Afghanistan blowing up little kids who pick them up because they’re bright, shiny and yellow? These are those babies. Jesus…”
He worked up the courage to get a little closer. “They come with a parachute cap that lets them down slowly from the main container. Looks like your guy’s taken them off and put in some kind of electronic detonator stub instead. What a lunatic. That thing’s got PBXN-107 inside, which makes dynamite look like Play-Doh. You got three hundred or so preformed fragments built into the case. These bombs are made for piercing armour, not anti-personnel stuff.”
Now Peroni thought about it, the bombs strapped to the khaki vest did look remarkably like soft-drink cans. No wonder kids picked them up.
“Eight,” the American said. “If he detonates them now, we’re all ground beef. Probably enough force in the blast to bring down this creepy hole too.”
Filippo Viale, who had been staying a safe distance behind everyone throughout, came further to the front. He stared at the young woman in the chair and asked, “Disposal?”
“Yeah! Right!” The idiot actually laughed. “Get some guy with an X-ray machine, a week to spare and a death wish and you might just stand an outside chance.”
Viale bent down in front of Emily Deacon, peering into her face like a teacher staring at a recalcitrant child. “What did he say to you, exactly?”
“Who the hell are you?” she asked.
Viale didn’t even blink. “Someone who might be able to save your life. What did he say?”
“Exactly? He said he was giving me precisely ninety minutes from noon. Then he’d push the button. He’s got this mike thing…”
She flipped the collar and showed them the mike.
“He’s got plenty of range,” Costa said. “He could be listening to us from as far away as the Campo or the Corso. Somewhere”-he thought about what she’d told him-“busy.”
“Why do you say that?” Falcone asked.
Emily answered. “He’s got another one of these vests. I saw it. He’s not fooling. He’s wearing the damn thing himself. He said he planned to go somewhere where there are lots of other people. Perhaps a department store. A cafe, I don’t know. The idea is that if you’re dumb enough to try to track him down he can take out dozens of people. He just presses a couple of buttons and I’m gone, so’s he and anyone near either of us.”
Leapman emitted a short, dry laugh. “Jesus. I said he was the best.”
“Comforting,” Costa observed, then he looked at his watch. Kaspar had set the time frame they had to work with. It was too tight to contain any room to manoeuvre. He knew precisely what he was doing. “We’ve got just over an hour. So what are we going to do?”
Viale nodded at the mike on her collar. “He’s listening to this? Every word?”
“That,” Emily said with an icy sarcasm, “is the whole point.”
Joel Leapman pushed in front of Viale and announced, “Let me deal with him.
“Listen to me, Kaspar,” the American said in a loud, clear voice. “This shit has to come to an end. We’ve got some documents you can look at. We can prove you’ve got the people you wanted.”
Viale reached into his leather briefcase, pulled out the blue folder and waved it at Leapman as a reminder.
“We’ve got it with us right now,” Leapman continued. “All you’ve got to do is come and collect. Then you can take off your jacket, put your hands up and come catch a plane home, because I am not wasting any more time on you, man. Maybe we do owe you an apology. Maybe you’ll get one and we can keep you safe somewhere nice and private, in spite of everything. You’ve got to see these things we have for you here and put an end to all this. It doesn’t leave any room for doubt. But you have to pick it up yourself. This is all deep, deep stuff and I am not letting it out of my sight, not for one second.”
“Won’t work,” Emily Deacon said quietly. “What kind of idiot do you think he is? He won’t walk straight in here just on a promise.”
“He has to!” Leapman insisted. “I can’t have a bunch of secret files going astray in a foreign city just because he says so.”
“Kaspar gave you his word!” Emily yelled. “Give him some proof and this is all over!”
Leapman threw his arms up in the air and started yelling, so loudly his cold, metallic voice rang around the circular hall, rebounded from each shady corner. “His word? His word? Fuck his word. The guy’s a loon. A loose, out-of-control maniac. I don’t give a damn-”
Costa walked over and grabbed him loosely by the collar, forcing him to be quiet.
Then Emily Deacon was screaming, writhing on the chair, not knowing whether to move or stay still. A noise was coming from her jacket, a noise that was making her stiffen with shock and anticipation. There were seven men in the hall at that moment. Leapman and his team scurried for their lives, disappearing into the shadows, Viale trying to keep up with them. Nic Costa looked at his two colleagues. Then he walked over to Emily Deacon, found the hidden pocket on the jacket’s front. Something was vibrating beneath the fabric, making a wild, electronic noise, a butchered kind of music, a short refrain that rang a bell somewhere in his head.