Conor Fitzgerald - The Namesake

‘They’ve had three days already to find out what this Hoffmann is up to. He doesn’t sound as if he’s going to fall for my undercover stuff. If he starts asking me about the Camorra, that file you gave me the other night was pretty thin even for bluffing purposes.’

‘I realize that. If at any point you feel that he should simply be stopped, let us know. Bear in mind also that we or his bosses in the BKA might come to the same decision and intervene. But in the meantime, why not see what we can find out? I see this as a perfect opportunity for you to get a feel for what working undercover might be like.’

Blume looked doubtful.

‘The best way to see what Hoffmann is up to is to let him start doing it without letting on. Covertly track where he goes, who he meets. Not assign someone to him.’

‘That’s exactly what the BKA wanted, but we really can’t let that happen. We can’t have a German agent apparently freelancing in a delicate area, just ahead of the Ndrangheta summit, too. Our first idea was just to stop him. Assigning someone to him was a compromise, and we only agreed to that once we were as sure as we could be this was not some sort of set-up.’

‘Good job you trust them, I’d hate to see what distrust looks like.’

‘Use that phone to report to us and keep it on you at all times so we can see where you are.’

Blume turned to the BKA chief and said in English, ‘Your rogue agent will cancel whatever plans he had as soon as I turn up.’

‘ Ich bitte Sie, das ist doch offenkundig! ’ Weissmann muttered something else that Blume failed to catch, then laughed, stood up and, for some reason, gave Massimiliani a blow on the back, presumably intended as a friendly gesture. ‘Sorry, I must speak English.’

Massimiliani had claimed he liked the German commander, but Blume caught a flash of outrage on his face at being thumped so heartily on the back.

‘I just said it was obvious he would have changed his plans,’ explained Weissmann, ‘if his plans are something he means to keep secret, which they may not be. It is also possible that he has something so urgent that he means to do it anyhow, or it is possible that by putting you in his company we are preventing him from doing something. We will continue to examine his files and movements until we find out something.’

‘Why not just follow him discreetly?’ asked Blume. He could see Massimiliani was annoyed he was repeating the question to Weissmann. ‘I mean before now,’ he specified.

‘That is what we have been doing since Friday evening,’ said Weissmann. ‘But we have been monitoring him only at a distance, using his phone and credit card, without the direct involvement of any Italian police. He has been in the Tyrol, like many Germans, but now he is heading south.’

‘You called him,’ said Blume. ‘So now he knows his movements are being observed. Frankly, this does not seem to have been particularly brilliant.’

Weissmann grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. He had a fat silver ring on the base of his thumb and a tiny cobweb tattoo on his palm. ‘It was so dumb, yeah, so dumb.’

But it was not so dumb. To follow a rogue agent in Italy, the BKA either had to launch a large and expensive surveillance operation using their own people, and risk getting caught and losing trust with the Italians, or they had to rely on a team of Italian police doing the surveillance for them on one of their own men, which he could see was not an attractive prospect either. Add to that the fact that Blume and this Hoffmann character seemed to be tilting more or less in the same direction against the same locale in Germany, and were both prepared to use unorthodox and secretive ways to do it, and they seemed made for one another. Blume also realized, with a flush of shame, that he and the German must also appear as two fools on an errand. Hoffmann’s disguise had been penetrated at once, Blume’s forging of Maria Itria’s transcript was discovered within hours.

Weissmann gave him a friendly nod and, for good measure, another thumbs-up.

‘Babysit him and talk to him,’ continued Massimiliani in Italian. ‘Try to find out whatever you can while we and the BKA try to find out about this new connection between Domenico Megale and the Camorra.’

Weissmann came up and extended his hand, but vertically, like he wanted either to high-five or do one of those hand-grab, shoulder-bump, buddy-buddy moves that young people seemed to favour.

Blume chose to ignore it. Weissmann dropped his hand by his side, smiled understandingly, then aimed a left-handed punch at Blume’s bicep.

‘I appreciate this, Commissioner. You will do good work.’

Blume left the room, rubbing his arm.

Rome

A dip in the terrain outside the perimeter fence of the DCSA compound gave the illusion that the area towards which they were headed was contiguous with the car park surrounding the IKEA emporium about half a kilometre away.

They left the air-conditioned building, and Blume thought the heat outside was not as bad as he had feared, but a few paces and the soaking sensation on his back reminded him that Roman heat was cumulative as well as humid. The no-man’s land that separated them from IKEA was filled with yellowing fennel, run to seed, which clogged the air with a scent of hay and aniseed that threatened to make him sneeze. As he kept up with Massimiliani, who walked at a quick pace, he caught flickering glimpses through the railings of broken ancient Roman brickwork and low mounds, beneath which lay tombs emptied of their treasures.

‘You were meant to hand in your phone, Blume.’

‘What’s this thing about my phone?’

‘It’s standard undercover procedure. You get a phone full of innocuous-looking numbers, nothing that connects back, nothing that can compromise.’

‘I see,’ said Blume. ‘Except I’m not going properly undercover, am I?’

Massimiliani hesitated.

‘Am I?’ said Blume.

‘No,’ said Massimiliani finally. ‘We considered it. We even set in process a procedure to get you some different ID… but you’ve never been trained. A three-day course will do at a pinch… Just try to sell Hoffmann the idea you are working undercover and have more to hide than him.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Great! There it is: that camper van parked under the pink mimosa.’

‘There is no such thing as a pink mimosa,’ said Blume. ‘That’s a Persian silk tree.’

‘Really?’

‘That’s its proper name,’ said Blume. He pointed to the vehicle underneath the tree. ‘Look at the state of that piece of junk. Thirty years old if it’s a day. It’s hard to tell how much of that brown and orange is design from the ’70s or whenever, and how much is rust. I’d be surprised to see it move.’

‘It’s a Fiat Hymer,’ said Massimiliani.

‘Where’s the car we’re using?’ said Blume. ‘You guys have a load of great cars confiscated in asset seizures. If I could choose…’

‘I’m sorry, I thought you understood. You’re going with him in the van. It helps to hide your identity and his. A camper van is just the sort of thing a pair of German tourists would use. Two men in a saloon car: police; two men in an camper van…’

‘Queer,’ said Blume.

Massimiliani nodded sympathetically. ‘I can see how you might think that,’ he said. ‘But think of it as an advantage in undercover terms. I don’t expect you to sleep in there with him. I’ve made some bookings in a nice place, a hotel in Positano,’ said Massimiliani. ‘Separate rooms,’ he added.

‘Jesus,’ said Blume. ‘Also, is it normal for people with camper vans to use hotels?’

‘Probably not, but I figured you might not want to go along with what Hoffmann professes was his original plan, which was a campsite in Salerno.’