Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

Lukas craned forward. Far beyond that point, the tipping done. He understood that he saw an opponent. He did not use, verbally or in his mind, a word such as ‘enemy’. In his world emotion and rancour were put aside. He saw an opponent brought under the draped washing, shuffling past the lens, then taken under more washing. They went on through the films and did fast view for the departure of Big Nose, the Lorry Driver and the Pistol. The collator muttered more names, but without enthusiasm, as if they had no part to play. Many images went at jerky old-movie speed across the screen, cigarettes were lit, more coffee was downed.

Their attention, again, was jolted, and silence fell. Lukas could smell the sweat of many bodies, and his own, of socks and underclothing not changed, and his own. Men came down the walkway and gestured dismissively, women went indoors abruptly and kids fled. It was as if a route was cleared of obstruction and witnesses. Lukas saw Salvatore again, and the boy. He was within touching distance. Lukas could have reached out and let his finger brush the screen. The boy went slowly, as if exhausted and hurt. His feet did not have good traction on the walkway and he was mostly dragged; his shoulders were down. Lukas knew him because he had spoken with the man at the hotel, and with the man who sold fish. The fish, yes, the fish presented to the annexe at piazza Dante, the swordfish, was in a freezer tray in the kitchen area of a local restaurant. It would be thawed and cooked if there was a successful outcome, and would go on a rubbish heap if there was not – fuck the fish. He had spoken to both men and knew what clothes the boy had worn when he left the pensione in the morning and when he had met the eye of the fish-seller. Lukas had demanded of them what shirt, trousers and trainers the boy had worn. He saw them in the black-and-white image on the screen, and the hood. Lukas had only once been hooded – in his time as an instructor at Quantico, after he’d come off the Hostage Rescue Team and before he’d got himself lodged with the new Critical Incident Response Group. He had been one of the FBI instructors doing close-quarters battle training: in simulating the storming of a building, they had needed a ‘tame’ prisoner and it hadn’t seemed fair to allocate a rookie. He had done it. He could remember, still, the smell and taste of the sacking, his panic at his inability to breathe deeply, and the fear of what would happen next. He had had on ear protectors when the storm came, blank rounds and thunder-flash grenades. He had been hustled out, the hood had been lifted off, and no one seemed to have much time for him: interest was in the ‘bad’ guys, who were wasted, and the ‘good’ guys, who were heroes.

‘I assume that’s Eddie Deacon.’

Lukas made his first contribution. ‘It is.’

‘He has been beaten.’

‘He has.’

‘If he still lives, he is on the third level of the Sail building in Scampia. It is not my expertise but I would suggest there is no more difficult place inside the state from which to extract a prisoner.’

Lukas said, ‘I don’t intrude, gentlemen, I don’t push or impose my opinions. I’m here to give help if I’m asked for it.’

Castrolami said they would go in five minutes, not a suggestion but a demand.

Lukas knew them now by their familiar titles. The bustle broke around him. He had little to take, nothing of consequence other than his laptop. Some that he knew of made occasional trips into Baghdad or Bogota, for the FBI, DoD or a contractor and travelled with their bespoke flak vest, blood and sterile dressings. Lukas had never bothered. Neither did he have manuals to refer to because everything he needed, and half a ton more, was in his head, but he regretted that he had no fresh socks or underwear in the rucksack.

They had discarded their given names, were identified by those their colleagues used for them. The Tractor, the Engineer and the Bomber were loading big kitbags. There was no more talk of military survival kit, water-resistant socks, small strengthened hacksaw blades and fishing hooks. Lukas had learned how they would operate at the first wave of an ROS assault. The Ingegnere would take off a door or blow out a window for entry. The Bombardiere would put in a handful of XM84 stun grenades, the ‘flash and bang’ gear – the flash was up to seven million candela and the bang 180 decibels. The Trattore would lead the storm guys inside. Lukas had seen it done in practice and for real, sometimes the practice was fouled up but the actual thing went a treat. At others the practice was perfect and the actual a disaster. What the Tractor, the Engineer and the Bomber did was a definition of the old ‘inexact science’, but so was Lukas’s work.

Lukas hung back in the annexe. He heard Castrolami talking in the operations room. The small team, which would fit into one large minibus, would travel to Scampia ahead of a larger squad. Only when the initial group was in place would the numbers for securing a perimeter be deployed. Lukas understood. It was about security, about maintaining secrecy. He thought it a harsh world in which police officers and paramilitary men couldn’t be trusted – might have a place on a gang leader’s payroll.

A last brief act was played out in the annexe. The psychologist announced defiantly that he could monitor, observe, contribute from the operations room. The collator gave as his opinion that he was better employed close to his big computer and his archive. Lukas felt that the reputation of the Sail lay on them. He was not invited. Neither was it suggested that he should find a quiet corner and get involved in basket-weaving. He wasn’t accused of imposing himself. Lukas was on board.

He thought, and it suited him well, that he was barely noticed as they hiked out of the annexe and skirted the side wall of the operations room, the far side from the banks of screens and the illuminated map. Castrolami was given a brief bear-hug by a superior, while others slapped the arms and shoulders of the ROS guys in encouragement. Lukas was offered no warmth, no good will, and flitted out. Apprehension burgeoned. He had seen the face, in monochrome, of his opponent. Had been there so often, looking into a face and wondering which well-trodden path to take to consign the face to the rubbish heap. Had been there so often – was concerned, again, that the magic moment was dulled. God, let it not be said that, almost, he was bored with all the faces.

There was a driver and the driver’s escort, big men, armed with filled holsters and belts that sagged with kit. There was a communications kid, looked no more than nineteen, who carried a steel box and Lukas saw that it was chained by the handle to his wrist. There were six ROS, and Castrolami. A pecking order existed as they loaded into the minibus. The driver and his escort were together. The communications kid and Castrolami were side by side, the link and the decision-taker, there were the men who would make an entry, if it came down to the desperate uncertainty of a storm, and there was Lukas, who was without status and quantifiable expertise and had been there so many times before.

They left piazza Dante.

Lukas sat across the aisle from Castrolami and the communications kid. A map of the Sail was spread out across the investigator’s knees and he used a pencil torch. Lukas gained an impression of the enormity, complexity and threat posed by the building. He did not wish to talk.

He turned away from the map and stared out of the window at the passing streets. It was, he reflected, a city with some of the finest architecturally designed churches in Christendom, which contained some of the greatest works of art, sculpture and painting ever created. There was the beauty of the bay behind them and the crude majesty of the mountain. Sophistication, intellect, culture and glory encircled the minibus. All he had seen of them was the view over the rim of the crater when he had received the warning of hidden and violent danger. There were no such contrasts in Baghdad, or in the mountains and jungles of Colombia, or on the great plains of Afghanistan. The cafes seemed full, and the bars, and outside two restaurants he saw people standing on the pavement in what apologised for a queue, waiting to be given a table. It was so goddam normal.