Tarantula Page 5

  The restaurant was very different to the one where he had met Ernesto the night before. That had been clean and tidy, cynically imbued with character to appeal to the tourists that passed up and down the coast. This place, though, was something else. It was a small room that had been filled with tables, their Formica tops stained and chipped, the chairs around them old and damaged so that the stuffing peeked out of rents in the leather, black grids of gaffer tape holding them together. It was the kind of place where the produce really was straight from the sea, just hours away from capture, and served with the lackadaisical attitude towards hygiene that guaranteed that the flavour would be good but that eating it was a game of Russian roulette, a guarantee of infection if you ate enough and your stomach was untrained. Milton liked the look of it. In a day when seafood always tasted the same, bland and boring, it was a risk he would have been prepared to take.

  The other tables were full. There were tattooed longshoremen and stevedores, drinking beer and smoking roll-up cigarettes. The atmosphere was heavy with smoke and the smell of sweat and, as Milton pushed the glass door aside, they looked up at him with suspicious, unfriendly eyes.

  Milton ignored them. He scanned the room. Ernesto was sitting at a table towards the back. The two heavies who had accompanied him to Castellabate last night were on the adjacent table. Two other men that Milton recognised were sitting with him: the big man he had beaten in the lobby and his whipcrack thin friend.

  Milton went over expecting trouble.

  “Good day,” he said.

  “Signor Smith.”

  “I got your message.”

  He nodded in the fashion of a monarch welcoming a supplicant.

  Milton faced Ernesto, keeping the two thugs to his right hand side. He could feel the waves of animosity radiating from them.

  “You remember my friends, Signor Smith.”

  It wasn’t a question. “I do.” He stepped around a quarter turn and acknowledged them both with a nod and a tight smile. They both bore the signs of the beating that he had inflicted: the thin man had a bandage around his head and the big man had a livid bruise around both eye sockets. Milton guessed that Ernesto had brought them here in an attempt to buffet him, knock him off guard, but, if that was his motivation, it didn’t work. They stared up at him with baleful glares and he looked back at them, unmoved.

  Ernesto spoke to them in Italian and, wincing with discomfort, they pushed their chairs away from the table and left.

  “Sit, Signor Smith.”

  He did. “Have you given any thought to my offer?”

  “I have given it much thought.”

  “And?”

  “I believe I have two options. First, I could reject it. My organisation has an excellent relationship with Signor Patterson and his brothers. We have worked together for many months, they sell our product and they want more, they are discreet and they always pay their bills on time. All of those are valuable qualities we look for in a partner.”

  “If you choose to do that?”

  “That, of course, would mean that I would have to shoot you and throw your body into the harbour.”

  He said it without emotion or inflection, as if it was the most mundane of chores.

  “The other choice?”

  “That we accept your offer.”

  “I have to be honest,” Milton said, “I prefer that to the first.”

  “I am sure that you do, Signor Smith.”

  “And do you have a preference?”

  “That depends on you. We need a demonstration of your bona fides.”

  “A cash demonstration?”

  He grinned. “Of course. Our friends from Liverpool, when we told them of Signor Grieve and his interest, they demonstrated how important our relationship was to them with a very large financial gesture.”

  “I already told you that: we will double it.”

  “That is a brave statement, Signor, when you don’t know how much they offered to us.”

  “I told you before, it doesn’t matter. You just have to say.”

  “Very well.” He leaned across the table, his tongue darting out of the corner of his mouth to wet his lips. “The merchandise that we provide for our friends is priced at fifty-one thousand Euros per kilogram.”

  “How many kilograms do they buy from you a year?”

  “Two metric tonnes.”

  Milton quickly calculated. “One hundred million.”

  “One hundred and two,” he corrected with an avaricious smile. “And they have agreed to increase the price they pay to fifty-two thousand Euros per kilogram.”

  “One hundred and four million. Two million more.”

  “Which you have promised to double.”

  Milton leaned in, too, and stared right at him. “How about I say we’ll give you a nice round five million?”

  Ernesto clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Anyone can pluck a figure from the air, Signor Smith.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “I would need to see some money now. A concrete expression of interest.”

  “A non-refundable deposit, you mean?”

  “If you like.”

  “How about half a million tonight?”

  “Tonight? Really? You can get it, just like that?”

  “Yes or no, Signor Di Mauro?”

  The Italian’s avuncularity was just a mask, Milton knew that, and now he put it away. He was a murderer, a pimp, a smuggler, with a soul that was black as pitch. The malice and greed shone out of his eyes as he laid a fat hand over Milton’s and squeezed it. “I will eat my dinner here at ten. If you can bring the money by the time I have finished then we have a deal.”

  Milton was not frightened of him. He had seen far worse than this fat Italian braggart, faced those men down and ended their lives.

  And he had the advantage in this negotiation.

  Milton knew everything.

  Ernesto Gorgi Di Mauro knew nothing.

  He had no idea what he was getting himself into.

  If he had, he would have left the table, got into his hundred thousand dollar sedan and driven away as fast and as far as he could.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MILTON RODE to the Stazione Napoli Centrale railway station in the piazza Guiseppe Garibaldi. It was busy, with plenty of passengers gathered in the concourse. Milton bought a ticket for Concordia and took the first train from the underground station that served the local stops.

  This was an SDR—a Surveillance Detection Run—and it was a procedure that had become second nature to him. It was a simple enough thing: a route that was designed to force anyone who was intent on following to reveal himself. The city was so thronged with people that Milton would never have been able to be completely sure if he was being tailed or not. And he needed to be sure. Compromising the identity of the quartermaster would have been an unforgivable sin under any circumstance. The operation would certainly have been compromised. Both the agent and Milton would have been put in mortal danger.

  He disembarked at Via Emanuele and headed back into the city against the flow of the traffic. The carriage was emptier and it made it easier for him to confirm that he was alone. He disembarked when he was halfway back to the station, waiting for the next train to complete his return trip. This carriage, too, was almost deserted, and there was no-one aboard who he recognised. He was confident; it would have been impossible to follow him undetected.

  He took out his cellphone and sent a text to a number that he had stored next to the name Carlo. It was a simple message, asking if Carlo was around this evening for dinner.

  The reply arrived two minutes later. Carlo said that he was going to be at the Museo Cappella Sansevero at nine and that Milton should come too.

  He replied that he would be there.

  He knew to count back seven listings in the sightseeing section of the Time Out Guide to Napoli and to subtract two hours. That meant that the rendezvous was to be at the San Carlo opera house at seven.

  MILTON COLLE
CTED his bike from the station and rode the short distance across town to the opera house. Milton left the Ducati in one of the little side streets around the opera house and approached carefully, his eyes wide open.

  Milton knew very little about opera—he had listened to Radiohead on the flight from Heathrow—but he appreciated stately architecture and Naples’ classical opera house was an impressive sight. It was a vision of gilded opulence, with the regal grandeur of its design and decoration acting as a magnet for visitors for centuries.

  As a site for the meet, it had been chosen well. It was busy, for a start, the crowd of opera fans in their evening finery and the tourists gaping at the building providing plenty of cover within which it would be a simple thing to hide. Those narrow Neapolitan streets and alleys in the vicinity were helpful, too, offering plenty of ways to approach the building and no obvious places where it would be possible to set up and observe the comings and goings. They would provide excellent means of escape, too, should they be needed. Milton approved.

  He walked towards the entrance, his eyes open as he scanned the faces of the people around him.

  He became aware of a woman walking alongside him and, just as she peeled away into one of the alleys, she fixed him with a meaningful stare that he could not mistake.

  He stopped to tie a lace that did not need tying and used the pause to check his immediate surroundings once more. Satisfied that he was unobserved, he stood and followed her.

  SHE STOPPED at a café that had three tables and chairs on the pavement outside the entrance. She eschewed these, continuing beneath the awning and going inside. Milton checked both ways a final time and, satisfied, followed her. It was a small establishment, dark, and full of little nooks and crannies that offered plenty of privacy. The woman took a seat at the front of the café, shielded from the entrance, making sure that she was facing out towards the street. Milton sat down next to her, uncomfortable; that was the way he preferred to align himself.

  The proprietor bustled up to their table and took their order. The woman ordered an espresso and biscotti. Milton took a cappuccino.

  “Number Eight,” she said.

  “Q.,” Milton replied. He didn’t know her name and she didn’t know his. That was the way it was supposed to be. If either were compromised, it would be more difficult to burn another agent when nothing was known about him or her. Her name, who she was, where she lived; all of it was unknown to Milton. Group Fifteen had quartermasters embedded in every theatre in which its agents operated. In practical terms, that meant there was someone in every country of the world. They stood ready to assist; intelligence, weapons, and, in extremis, close support.

  “How are you finding Napoli?” she asked him.

  “Full of bad men.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That is true, and unfortunate. The Camorra are particularly powerful here.”

  Milton had to fight the urge to stare. He had met many quartermasters, but none as attractive as the Q. who operated in this part of Italy. She was extraordinarily pretty, with lustrous dark hair that fell to her shoulders, plump lips, and dark eyes that sparked with life.

  “You were not followed?” she said.

  “Of course not.”

  “Number Three said the same thing. Look what happen to him.”

  “I’m not Number Three.”

  “We shall see.” She sipped her coffee, looking at him over the rim of the cup. “Have you made progress?”

  “Yes. I’ve met them. I’m meeting them again tonight.”

  “And what do you need?”

  “Equipment.”

  “Go on.”

  “A machine-pistol.”

  “MP5?”

  “That would be best.”

  “Then I have one. What else?”

  “A pistol, preferably a Sig.”

  “P226?”

  “Perfect.”

  “And what else?”

  “Grenades.”

  “Fragmentation?”

  “A selection.”

  “I’ll need a little extra time for that, but it can be done. Is that all?”

  “No. I need money.”

  “How much?”

  “A lot. Half a million, by tonight.”

  She didn’t flinch. “Dollars or Euros?”

  “Euros.”

  She stretched over the table and, in the pretence of holding Milton’s hand, dropped a small key into his palm.

  “There is a self-storage business on Via Saggese. Go to box number twenty-eight. Everything you need is there. You will have privacy. Take what you need.”

  “I need a tracker, too.”

  “Yes,” she said, drawing the word out. “There is one there. Although I think perhaps not as small as you would like.”

  He frowned. “How small is small?”

  She opened a gap up between her thumb and forefinger: the size of a small coin.

  Milton rolled his eyes.

  “Bigger than I would like, but the other one,” she gave a particularly expressive Latin shrug, “it is at the bottom of the ocean with Number Three and I have not had the time to find another.”

  Milton sighed, looking up at the sliver of sky between the buildings. “It’s alright for you, I’ve got to give it to them. If they search the money properly, they’re not going to be able to miss something as big as that, are they?”

  She shrugged. “It is reliable.”

  “As big as that? I should hope so.”

  She ignored his irritation. “I have the receiver. Deliver the tracker to them and I will be able to follow it.”

  “And his calls?”

  “He is being monitored. We can meet later to talk about that, and so that you can have your grenades. I will text you.”

  “Very good.” He stood.

  “And then, Number Eight?”

  “And then I’ll go to work.”

  MILTON RODE to the storage facility. There was a one storey office building behind a high wire mesh fence and, arranged behind that, a collection of shipping crates that had been refashioned into storage lockers of various sizes. He went into the office, nodded to the bored looking clerk behind the desk, and went out the rear door into the maze of crates. He followed the directions to number twenty-eight. The blue painted crate had not been sub-divided. He unlocked the door and stepped inside, comfortable that he would have the seclusion that he needed.

  There was a light switch next to the door and he pressed it. A single bulb was installed in a fitting on the ceiling in the middle of the space, and the light it cast out revealed a rack that had been fitted to the facing wall. The rack held an array of weapons: automatic rifles, long guns, machine pistols, semiautos. There was ammunition, too, of every calibre. It was a small armoury.

  Milton went over and took down a new Heckler & Koch MP5. It was the collapsing stock variant with the integral suppressor. Milton was familiar with the gun: sturdy, reliable, accurate and quiet, particularly with the suppressor and subsonic ammunition. It fired from a closed bolt, ensuring accuracy, and was equipped with a Tasco laser sight. There was plenty of spare ammunition. Ideal.

  He put the machine pistol aside, reached back to the rack and selected a Sig Sauer P226. The semiautomatic pistol was a point and shoot gun with no need for a manual safety. There were three spare magazines and a further box of 9mm ammunition. There was a shoulder holster and he slotted the pistol inside it, putting it on and hiding it beneath his jacket.

  There was a leather satchel hung from one of the lower hooks. Milton went to it, took it down, and unzipped it.

  There was a stack of bank notes inside.

  He opened the bag as wide as the zip would allow and took out the money. The half million had been provided in one thousand five hundred Euro notes, the wide purple notes banded together in ten thick bundles. He held the money to his nose, absently breathing in the dusty paper scent, and then stacked them back in the bag again.

  There was a pouch at the front of the satchel. Mil
ton opened it and took out the GPS tracker. He was annoyed afresh. It was a consumer model, a Garmin, not even one that the techs in the basement laboratory next to the Thames had worked on. It was about the diameter of a ten pence piece, and as thick as three of them. The functionality was simple enough: there was a rubber on-off button, a small LED status light and a mini-USB port for charging. It was the smallest tracker available to the public, but it was still ten times larger than the miniaturised models that he had used before. He had seen one that was so thin that it would have been possible to hide it inside a bundle of notes, to remain invisible until the notes were counted individually.

  That would have been safe.

  This? Not so much. There was no way that it would go unnoticed if the bag was searched.

  He put the guns and the tracker into the bag, zipped it up, opened the door and stepped outside.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MILTON RETURNED to his hotel suite. The hair that he had stuck to the jamb and the panel of the door was still in place and, inside, the spread of talcum powder had not been disturbed. Nevertheless, he quickly inspected the rooms, one by one, only relaxing when he was as confident as he could be that no one had been inside while he had been away.

  He opened the safe and deposited the pistol, ammunition and the shoulder holster inside. The MP5 was too large to fit, and so he hauled up the mattress and hid the gun on the slats of the bed’s frame, dropping the mattress back over the top of it.

  He undressed and took a cold shower, standing under the jet until his skin was tingling. He wrapped a towel around his waist and went back to the bedroom. He removed fresh underwear and a white t-shirt from his case and dressed.

  He opened the pouch on the front of the satchel and removed the tracker. He held it in his palm. It was large.

  He was going to have to be creative.

  MILTON rode back to the docks, left his bike and walked to the bar. It was late, ten o’clock, and, although the jetties and wharves were still busy, the darkness filled the avenues between the storage containers, a deep gloom within which it would be a simple thing to hide. As assassin, waiting for him to come back? He wouldn’t need a high powered rifle. He could sit in a darkened spot with a pistol and there would be nothing that Milton could do about it. He felt the roil of apprehension in his stomach, a prickle between his shoulder blades, but he kept going.