Michael Morley - Viper

'Say again.' Jack hoped he'd misheard.

'One of the Internet cookies I traced was Creed's log-in to the FBI's Virtual Academy. Seems that he's been enlisted as a student of the VA.'

The Virtual Academy was a global distance-learning site, jammed with information and famed for helping to hone profiling techniques. Access was restricted to the law enforcement world.

The breach rendered Jack silent.

'You hear me?' asked Howie.

'I hear you. Only now the dots make a picture that I really don't like. The thought of a possible offender being deep inside our corridors of knowledge fills me with dread. We need to find out everything this sonofabitch has read or written, and whoever he's spoken to. And we need to do it fast.'

Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii For a split second Franco Castellani couldn't work out the cause of the sharp slapping sensation inside his head. Still slow and wasted from the heroin, he gradually realized that the pain was coming from his grandfather's hand rather than from the after-effects of the drug.

'What in God's name do you think you are doing? You crazy crazy, child!'

Franco covered his face. Not that the slaps carried much weight. Rosa. His fingers still smelled of Rosa.

'Sit up! Sit up and tell me that this is not what I think it is. Not what I know it is.'

Antonio backed off to give him room. Franco forced his eyes open wide enough to see the syringe and the empty plastic packet being dangled above him. The air was hot and stale. Flies buzzed around a dirty plate near his cousin's bed. Franco finally commanded his legs to move and raised himself into a sitting position. The door jerked open and blinding white light flooded in. Paolo stopped in his tracks, fresh bread and milk in a carrier bag swinging in his hand.

'Get out!' shouted Antonio.

Paolo turned on his heels.

Franco noticed his cousin had been dressed in work clothes. He guessed he'd overslept and his grandfather had come looking for him. 'It's heroin,' he admitted, shielding the light from his face. 'If you were me, you'd be taking it too. Lots of it.'

His grandfather slapped him again. 'Don't give me this self-pity shit. Be proud of who you are, what you are.'

Franco put his hands back to his face; this time the blows had stung. 'What I am? I'm the living dead, that's what I am.'

Antonio hit him again. Slapped hard at the boy's stubborn head. Tried to knock some sense into his thick skull. Then he grabbed him. Shook him and held him. And felt his own tears stream down his face. 'Franco, you shame yourself with this stuff. You disrespect yourself and your family. We are not junkies. We are not cowards. Whatever life throws at us we raise our heads above it and show the world we are proud to be ourselves.'

'But I'm not, Grandpa. I'm not proud.' His voice was shaky and his eyes watery. 'I hate myself and everything that's happening to me.'

Antonio held his grandson by the arms. His brown, liver-spotted fingers dug into the thin white forearms snaked with needle tracks. 'Don't do this, Franco. Be a man. Come on; find your self-respect.'

Franco Castellani searched deep inside himself. There was no trace of self-respect. Only a stinking sump-oil residue of painful memories. His jailbird father, his runaway mother and his current fleapit, hand-to-mouth existence. Finding respect was impossible.

'I'm sorry,' he said and kissed the top of his grandfather's head. 'I know I disappoint you. Mi dispiace.'

Before Antonio could reassure him, Franco had pulled away from his grandfather and was gone. Leaving the wind to slam shut the rusty old door of the van.

Napoli Capodichino Salvatore Giacomo's knees cracked as he bent to pick up the morning mail behind his apartment door.

It was his fiftieth birthday. Not many people knew that. Even fewer cared.

The mail included several free newspapers, an electricity bill, but no cards. He sat alone in the kitchen of his one-bedroomed rental. Although he was a couple of blocks back from the busy A56 he could still feel the steady rumble of traffic. He breakfasted on instant coffee and old cheese slices. As he ate, he thought about his half-century on earth. What did it amount to? A little cash in a number of false bank accounts. Run-for-the-hills money. Start-all-over-again dough. He'd never use it. Never spent much, anyway. He didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't have friends. He just worked and came home. What money the Don gave him went on rent, cheap food and the savings he'd never need. Don Fredo had said to put something away every month, so he'd done that. He'd always done whatever the Don had said.

Sal guessed he saw Fredo as a father figure. A replacement for his old man. He'd been nine years old when his parents had split up. He still remembered the fearful row; his father slapping his mother's face and calling her a cheating slut, then storming off. A father one minute. A memory the next. Then strange men came to stay at the apartment, men who looked at him with spiteful eyes. He hated his mother for letting them in. Into the house. Into his father's bed. It wasn't long before he ran away. Stayed with friends on the other side of Herculaneum or, in summer, camped out in the parkland around Vesuvius, killing wood pigeons and foxes. Then in his teens his mother disappeared and he pretty much made his own way in life. His brains and his fists helped him survive and stay one step ahead of the law.

The distinctive horn of the Mercedes sounding in the street shook him from his thoughts. Valsi had arrived and was waiting.

Sal pulled on the jacket of a navy-blue suit, adjusted his tie in the old tarnished mirror by the front door and, before leaving, checked just one more thing. His weaponry. Sal never opened a door without being ready to deal with anything that was on the other side. It was that level of caution that had got him through the first fifty years of his life, and he hoped would get him through many more years. For that reason, Sal didn't carry just one gun, he carried two. Matching Glock 19s, snugly concealed in a double shoulder holster. The pair gave him a minimum of thirty rounds of 9mm ammunition. What's more, if one jammed or got dropped, then that was no shit, he just pulled the other one. If he was caught in a firefight, he could also throw the spare to whoever was with him. The horn sounded again. Capo or no Capo, the fucker could wait. He took a leak, locked up and left the building.

'Sal, you're slower than a snail,' shouted Dino Pennestri from the driver's seat as he approached the car. 'We should call you Sal the Snail.'

Giacomo said nothing. He slipped in the back, alongside Bruno Valsi, who greeted him with a curt 'Buon giorno.'

They drove in silence for about a minute. Valsi shifted in his seat so he was half facing Sal. He wore an open-necked black and blue striped shirt and had a cream suit jacket across his lap. 'I've got a little surprise for you,' he deadpanned.

Sal waited. Valsi tilted his eyes down to the jacket on his lap. Between the folds of cream cloth something smooth and shiny caught Sal's eye. Unmistakably, it was the barrel of a pistol.

'Given that it's your birthday, I'd thought I'd do something truly memorable.' Valsi flicked away the sleeve of the jacket and Sal could see that his right hand was wrapped around the pistol, his index finger already inside the guard and across the trigger.

For a moment all sound seemed to have been sucked out of the air inside the car. No one dared breathe.

Then the laughter in the Mercedes nearly tore the roof off.

Sal the Snake was the only one not splitting his sides.

'It's yours, you old fool,' said Valsi. He spun the pistol round so Sal could take it off him. 'It's a present. A limited edition Ultimate Vaquero. It's been in the family for years.'