of them knew of Mitchell’s Marine background, of course, each had laughed at the upturned helmet now used as a flower pot and the Marine Corps badge next to the family photographs, but few had noticed the scuba mask and parachute wings above the main emblem, and none had asked. Haslam had, of course, but Haslam knew anyway, because after Vietnam some of the boys from Force Recon had served with the Rhodesian SAS and Haslam had met a couple when, years later, they’d passed through London.
The evening was quiet and relaxing, the others at the front end of the sun deck and Haslam and Mitchell by the barbecue at the rear.
‘Make the Hill this afternoon?’ Mitchell checked a steak.
‘Yeah.’ Haslam was tired but relaxed.
‘Meet Donaghue?’
‘Briefly.’
‘What you think of him?’
‘Impressive, though all he had time for was a handshake. Quince was suggesting he might run for president.’
‘So I hear.’
Mitchell flipped the steak on to a plate and called for someone to collect it.
‘How’d you know Donaghue?’ Haslam poured them each another beer.
‘How do I know Jack Donaghue?’ Mitchell threw two more steaks on the grill. ‘Long story, Dave, long time ago.’ He hesitated, then continued. ‘You know what Force Recon was about, behind the lines most of the time, never off the edge. I was lucky, came back in one piece. Thought I’d come home the hero.’ He laughed. ‘Like the old newsreels of the guys coming back from World War Two, girls and cheer leaders and ticker-tape welcomes. Instead they treated us like shit.’
Criticize the war, Haslam remembered Mitchell had once said, but don’t criticize the kids who left home to fight in it.
‘No job, no past that anybody wanted to know, so no future.’ Mitchell was no longer tending the barbecue, instead he was staring across the river, eyes and face fixed. ‘Ended up doing the wilderness thing in upper New York state, a lotta guys up there, then joined the Forestry Service.’ He laughed again. ‘Finally I ended up on the coast, Martha’s Vineyard, picking up any jobs I could. One day I bumped into Jack Donaghue.’ When Donaghue and Cath and their first daughter – there was only the one then – were on holiday and he himself was serving take-outs at Pete’s Pizzas in Oak Bluffs. ‘Jack told me about GI loans.’ The following morning, drinking beer in the rocking chairs on the veranda of the wood shingle house on Narangassett Avenue which the Donaghues had rented, the smell of summer round them and the ease of the Vineyard relaxing them. ‘He and Cath talked me into taking one, hassled me in to going to law school.’ He laughed a third time, but a different, more relaxed laugh this time. ‘Didn’t even ask for my vote.’
When Haslam left it was gone eleven. He was asleep by twelve. The telephone rang at four.
Could be West Coast, he thought; three hours’ time difference so it was only just gone midnight in LA. Unlikely though. Or Far East, where it would be mid-afternoon, though he had few contacts there. Most probably Europe. Nine in the morning in London, ten in the rest of the Continent.
‘Yes.’
‘Dave. This is Mike.’
London, he confirmed. You know the time? he began to ask.
‘The two o’clock flight out of Dulles this afternoon. You’re on it. A job in Italy.’
The thoughts were like wisps of cloud in the sky. Paolo Benini reached up and tried to pull them down, to bring them into contact with that thing called his brain, his mind, his intellect; so that he would have something to anchor them to, so that his brain would have something to work on.
Something about the fax.
He was not aware of the process of thinking, not even fully aware of the thoughts, was only aware of the images which represented them. He was in his room at the hotel, taking the telephone call about the fax and phoning reception back and checking with them. He was opening the door and feeling in his pocket for a tip, was going backwards into the room, the vice round his throat, the men on top of him and the needle in his arm. Was being bundled along the corridor and down the emergency stairs at the rear of the hotel. Was being pushed into the boot of a car, the lid slamming shut and the car pulling away.
Something about the fax, and if it was about the fax it must be about one of the accounts he’d been working on. His mind still struggled to find a logic in the disorder. If it was about one of the accounts it would almost certainly be one of those he’d just dealt with, probably the last one. And if it was the last one it would be the account code-named Nebulus.
The car was stopping – ten, fifteen minutes later, perhaps longer – the boot opening, the hands holding him and another needle in his arm. He was being lifted from one car to another. Was coming round, the boot suffocating like an oven and the smoothness of the autostrada beneath him.
The road was rougher, probably a country road, the car climbing. The road was no longer a road, was a track, the car bumping along it and the vibrations shuddering through his body. He was being blindfolded and lifted out, was being half-dragged, half-pulled, half-carried across a patch of ground. Illogical, his mind was telling him, you can’t have three halves. He was lying down, the blindfold no longer over his eyes but a pain round his right ankle.
Something more about the fax, something still confusing him. The last account he had checked was Nebulus, but reception had said the fax was from Milan and Nebulus was London. Therefore it wasn’t about Nebulus.
He was waking from the nightmare. The pain was still round his ankle and the hotel room was still dark, only the globe of the morning sun through the lines of the curtains. Perhaps not the sun, perhaps the bedside lamp, except that he hadn’t switched it on. He reached for it but found it difficult to turn, his hand going through the lamp or the lamp further away than he had thought.
He jerked awake.
The hurricane lamp was on the other side of the iron bars and the bars themselves were set in concrete in the roof and floor of the cave. The cave was small and the floor was sandy. Against the bars – his side of the bars – were two buckets, and the mattress on which he lay was made of straw. He was wearing his shirt, trousers and socks, and the pain was caused by the manacle clamped round his right ankle, the chain some four feet long and ending in a piton driven into the wall.
Paolo Benini curled into a ball and began to cry.
* * *
The line of passengers stretched through customs and the ranks of friends and relatives waited outside, the drivers holding the names of their pick-ups on pieces of paper in front of them.
Welcome to Milan, Haslam thought, welcome to any airport in any city in any part of the world. Same noise and bustle inside, same chill of air-conditioning. Different smells once you stepped outside, of course, different degrees of heat or cold, and different levels of affluence or poverty. Different reasons for being there.
Santori was standing by the coffee bar.
Ricardo Santori was the company’s man in this part of Italy. Not full-time but paid
