Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

Once a week, regular as clockwork, Davide locked the door of his apartment, on the third floor of the Sail, and took a bus. It carried him from the architectural disaster zone that was Scampia into Naples, and there was a memorised sequence of meeting-places: the steep Funicolare climbing from the via Toledo, a gentleman’s hairdressing salon on the corso Umberto, the giardini pubblici in front of the royal palace of the Bourbons, the open ramparts of the Castel dell’Ovo, or one of the distinguished coffee houses of the city. When he was in any of those places, with tapes and cassettes in the hidden pockets sewn at his trousers’ waist, he was Delta465/Foxtrot.

He sat on the bus that morning.

He was not reckless, took no unnecessary risks in harbouring the secrecy of his double life, and felt no fear. In both his identities – Davide and Delta465/Foxtrot – he understood that the fate of an agent of the AISI, if uncovered, was death. Not negotiable. If it was discovered that a man from the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna was living in the Sail death was certain, with much pain beforehand. He lived with the threat. He had a compartmentalized mind, and could keep fear at arm’s length. That ensured he was an agent of quality and valued by his handlers. He enjoyed meeting them in the funicular carriage, the barber’s or in the gardens and would ask after their children and be told of their holidays – make-believe, of course, but it enabled him to feel he was inside a family, which was important to him. They had given him a number for the Apocalypse Call, but he doubted he would ever use it. He had no idea what his life might be outside the Sail and without the weekly meetings.

Nothing to report that week. Nothing that would interest the men and women who met him. They were interested only in material of high-grade importance. He had seen, through his obsessionally polished windows, nothing of that category. Neither did he believe there was anything on the tapes from the cameras in his living room or from the audio cassettes linked to the microphones buried in the outer wall. The position of his apartment, where a flight came up from level two and another down from level four, had not been chosen randomly: it was a meeting-place – men stopped, talked and took little notice of the cleaned windows, the blaring television and the old man slumped in a chair with his back to the walkway. He knew of nothing that week to intrigue his handlers.

She was no fool. Anna Borelli was as adept at losing a tail as any man half, a third or a quarter of her age. She did back-doubles, shop windows, was last on to a trolley bus on the corso Umberto, and went into the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore by the main entrance and out by the narrow emergency door. Only when she was satisfied that she was not under surveillance, or had lost it, did she head for the meeting-place. She carried a filled plastic shopping bag.

She was another elderly lady, keeping death at bay for perhaps another year or only another month, and she wore black from stockings to scarf. She was unnoticed. She rang a bell. She was admitted through high gates. She crossed a yard of cannibalised vehicles and a door swung open when she prodded it with her toe. She was inside the building that had once been a car-repair business, but was now a place where stolen Mercedes, BMWs, Audis and the best models from the Alfa and Fiat factories were brought and dismantled. The parts would be shipped into Moldova or Ukraine, then moved further east. It had been an excellent business but was now slack and the yard was deserted, except for the scooter tucked against a side wall. The building seemed empty, but for the cigarette smoke that curled from beneath an inner door.

Then she was met.

She showed Salvatore what she had brought. There was bread, cheese, two slices of cheap processed ham, two apples, three small bottles of water, and the morning’s edition of Cronaca di Napoli – on the front page a photograph of a man sprawled dead, half in a gutter, outside a bar. She had not read it. She thought that by now her husband would be home. She approved of what he planned to do, and she would appreciate that when he sat in his chair, with her beside him, he would be clean and not smell as was usual. Salvatore had a camera on the table, and the man who rode the scooter was stretched out on a sofa, asleep, with a pistol on the floor beside his head.

There was a corridor to the back, and a storeroom off it.

A trapdoor was lifted and a torch shone down.

A stench came up through the hole’s opening. She saw that the boy was hooded, bound, and that his arms were behind his back. She remembered him in her living room, his simplicity; remembered also when Immacolata, her husband’s angel, had been in the same room, had sat in the same chair, drinking from the same set of cups and eating off the same set of plates. She remembered the boy, his almost shy smile, the flush of gratitude when he was told that a man was coming to take him to Immacolata. She felt no sympathy.

The torch showed the discolouration at his groin. She had not felt sympathy for the women in her brothels who had contracted syphilis from the American officers and had had to tell their husbands of the disease they carried. She had not felt sympathy for those widowed when she and her husband had climbed but others had been pushed aside, or for Gabriella when the births of Vincenzo and Giovanni were complex and brutally painful, or for Carmine when he was taken three times to Poggioreale. She did not even feel sympathy for herself.

She watched.

Salvatore rolled up the hood so that it cleared the mouth and nostrils but covered the eyes. He pulled off the binding tape and the young man, Eddie, cried out in pain because it had happened without warning, but then – so quickly – his face settled. Anna Borelli understood. Then Salvatore unlocked the handcuffs and allowed him, Eddie, to work his fingers over his wrists and bring back the circulation. She wondered if he was Edmondo or Eduardo. Then the hands were put together in front of his waist and the handcuffs went back on. Anna Borelli thought, from his face and the little gestures, that he was a fighter – it didn’t matter to her.

She passed down a bucket and the newspaper she had brought.

She knew a little English from the Americans. Salvatore told the young man that he should use the bucket, that he could eat, that he was to put the hood back on his head each time he heard movement over the trapdoor. If he didn’t he would be beaten. The bucket was stood in a corner. Salvatore had the camera. The newspaper front page facing the lens was placed in the young man’s hands and held up. The torch was switched off. Anna Borelli thought then that Salvatore would snatch up the hood and immediately take the photograph. The flash lit the bunker, and the white face, the scars on it and the blood smears – easier to see in the flash than in the torch beam.

When the torch went back on, the hood was in place again.

The newspaper was left beside the bucket. The food was in the plastic bag beside the young man’s knee. Anna Borelli saw the young man’s ears and fingers, the stain at his crotch, and felt no sympathy. She accepted, however, that she didn’t know how her granddaughter would react – what her response to the pressure would be when it built.

Salvatore climbed out, the trapdoor fell back into place and the bolt was pushed home.

With the tab from the camera lodged in her brassiere, Anna Borelli set off for the office of the family’s lawyer.

Castrolami watched. He thought it a performance for him and no others. He was sitting in the canteen area on the second floor of the barracks, the coffee in front of them with a plate of sweet biscuits. The swing door had been pushed open, and an officer – probably a maresciallo – had come in, looked around, seen the man, Lukas, and come to him, arms opening wide. Hugs, kisses – and Castrolami believed he saw tears. Not Lukas who wept, and not Lukas who kissed.