Extreme Denial (2 page)

The man he was speaking to was someone with whom he had not worked before: Brian McKittrick, thirty years old, six foot one, heavyset. He had short blond hair, beefy shoulders, and the kind of square jaw that Decker associated with college football players. Indeed, there was a lot about McKittrick that reminded Decker of college football players—the sense of pent-up energy, of eagerness to get into action.

“No nap,” Decker said. “What I want is to catch up on a few things.” He glanced at the lamps and the wall plugs, deciding not to take anything for granted. “How do you like staying here? Some of these old apartments have trouble with roaches.”

“Not here. I check every day for bugs. I checked just before you came over.”

“Good.” Satisfied that the room was free of electronic surveillance, Decker continued. “Your reports indicate that you’ve made progress.”

“Oh, I found the bastards, all right.”

“You mean your contacts did.”

“That’s right. That’s what I meant.”

“How?” Decker asked. “The rest of our people have been searching everywhere.”

“It’s in my reports.”

“Remind me.”

“Semtex.” McKittrick referred to a sophisticated plastic explosive. “My contacts spread word in the kind of hangouts these bastards like to use that Semtex was available to anyone willing to pay enough.”.

“And how did you find your contacts?”

“A similar way. I spread the word that I’d be generous to anyone who supplied the information I needed.”

“Italians.”

“Hell yes. Isn’t that the point? Cutouts. Plausible deniability. An American like me has to start the ball rolling, but after a while, the team has to be made up of nationals from the country where we’re working. The operation can’t be traced back to us.”

“That’s what it says in the textbooks.”

“But what do
you
say?”

“The nationals have to be dependable.”

“You’re suggesting my contacts might not be?” McKittrick sounded testy.

“Let’s just say the money might make them eager to please.”

“For God sake, we’re hunting terrorists,” McKittrick said. “Do you expect me to get informants to cooperate by appealing to their civic duty?”

Decker allowed himself to smile. “No, I believe in the old-fashioned way—appealing to their weaknesses.”

“Then there you are.”

“But I’d like to meet them,” Decker said.

McKittrick looked uncomfortable.

“Just to get a sense of what we’re dealing with,” Decker added.

“‘But it’s all in my reports.”

“Which make for fascinating reading. The thing is, I’ve always been a hands-on kind of guy. How soon can you arrange a meeting?”

McKittrick hesitated. “Eleven tonight.”

“Where?”

“I’ll have to let you know.”

Decker handed McKittrick a piece of paper. “Memorize this phone number. Got it? Fine.” Decker took the specially treated paper into the kitchen, poured water on it, and watched it disintegrate, dissolving down the drain. “To confirm the meeting, call that number at eight tonight, or every half hour after that, up to ten. But after ten, don’t bother. I’ll assume you couldn’t get your contacts together. In which case, try for tomorrow night, or the night after that. Each night, the same schedule for calling. Ask for Baldwin. My response will be Edward.”

“The phone’s at your hotel?”

Decker assessed him. “You’re beginning to worry me. No, the phone isn’t at my hotel. And when you call that number, make sure you don’t do it from here.”

“I know the drill.”

“Call from a pay phone you’ve never used before.”

“I said I know the drill.”

“All the same, it never hurts to be reminded.”

“Look, I know what you’re thinking,” McKittrick said. “Really?”

“This is the first time I’m running an operation. You want to make sure I’m up to the job.”

“You’re right, you do know what I’m thinking,” Decker said.

“Well, you don’t need to worry.”

“Oh?” Decker asked skeptically.

“I can handle myself.”

3

Decker left the apartment building, crossed the busy street, noticed a passing taxi, and motioned for the driver to meet him around the next corner. There, out of sight from where McKittrick might be watching from his apartment, Decker apologized to the taxi driver, saying that he had changed his mind and wanted to walk a little more. As the driver muttered and pulled away, Decker went back to the corner but didn’t show himself. The cafe on the corner had windows that faced the main street and the side street. From the side street, staying out of view as much as possible, Decker could look through the side window and then the front window, providing himself with a view of McKittrick’s apartment building. Sunlight reflecting off the front window would help to make Decker unobtrusive.

Sooner than Decker expected, McKittrick emerged from the apartment building. The stocky man drew a hand through his short blond hair, looked nervously both ways along the street, saw an empty taxi, eagerly hailed it, and got in.

While waiting, Decker had needed something to do so he wouldn’t appear to be loitering. From a lamppost, he had unchained a motorbike that he had rented. He had unlocked the storage compartment, folded his navy blazer into it, taken out a brown leather jacket and a helmet with a dark visor, and put them on. With his appearance sufficiently changed that McKittrick would not recognize him if he checked for surveillance, Decker started the motorbike and followed the taxi.

He wasn’t encouraged by the meeting. The problems that he had sensed in McKittrick’s reports now seemed more manifest and troubling. It wasn’t merely that this was the first time McKittrick had been given a position of authority. After all, if the man was going to have a career, there
had
to be a first time, just as there had been a first time for Decker. Instead, the source of Decker’s unease was that McKittrick was too damned sure of himself, obviously not fully skilled at trade-craft and yet not humble enough to know his limitations. Before flying to Rome, Decker had already recommended to his superiors that McKittrick be assigned to another, less sensitive operation, but the son of a legend in the profession (OSS, charter member of the CIA, former deputy director of operations) evidently couldn’t be shuffled around without the legend demanding to know why his son wasn’t being given opportunities for advancement.

So Decker had been sent to have a look, to make sure that everything was as it should be. To be a nursemaid, Decker thought. He followed the taxi through congested traffic, eventually stopping as McKittrick got out near the Spanish Steps. Decker quickly chained the motorbike to a lamppost and went after him. There were so many tourists that McKittrick should have been able to blend with them, but his blond hair, which ought to have been dyed a dark, nondramatic color, made him conspicuous. Another lapse in tradecraft, Decker thought.

Squinting from the bright afternoon sun, he followed McKittrick past the Church of the Trinita dei Monti, then down the Spanish Steps to Spanish Square. Once famous for its flower sellers, the area was now occupied by street merchants, with their jewelry, ceramics, and paintings spread out before them. Ignoring the distractions, Decker kept after McKittrick, turning right past Bernini’s Boat Fountain, shifting through the crowd, passing the house where Keats had died in 1821, and finally saw his quarry enter a cafe.

Yet another mistake in tradecraft, Decker thought. It was foolish to seek refuge in a place with so many people outside; someone watching would be difficult to notice. Choosing a spot that was partially sheltered, Decker prepared himself for a wait, but again McKittrick came out sooner than expected. He had a woman with him. She was Italian, in her early twenties, tall and slim, sensuous, with an oval face framed by short dark hair and sunglasses tilted on top of her head. She wore cowboy boots, tight jeans, and a red T-shirt that emphasized her breasts. Even from thirty yards away, Decker could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra. McKittrick had his arm around her shoulders. She, in turn, had an arm around his hips, her thumb hooked into a back pocket of his slacks. They proceeded down Via dei Condotti, took a shadowy side street on the right, paused on the steps of a building, kissed hungrily, then entered the building.

4

The phone call came through at 9:00
P.M.
Decker had told McKittrick that the number didn’t connect with Decker’s hotel. The number did connect, however, with a pay phone in a hotel down the street, in the lobby of which Decker could wait, reading a newspaper, without attracting attention.

Every half hour, starting at eight, he had strolled to the phone, waited five minutes, then returned to his comfortable chair. At nine, when the phone rang, he had been in place to pick it up. “Hello?”

“Baldwin?” McKittrick’s vague New England accent was recognizable.

“Edward?”

“It’s on for tonight at eleven.”

“Where?”

McKittrick told him.

The location made Decker frown. “See you.” Uneasy, he hung up the phone and left the hotel. Despite what he had told McKittrick, he did have jet lag and would have preferred not to work that night, especially since he had been busy for the remainder of the afternoon, going to the international real estate consulting agency for which he ostensibly worked, reporting in, establishing his cover. His contact at the agency had been keeping a package, about the size of a hardback novel, that had arrived for Decker. After returning to his hotel room, Decker had opened the package and made sure that the pistol he removed, a Walther .380 semiautomatic pistol, was functional. He could have chosen a more powerful weapon, but he preferred the Walther’s compactness. Only slightly larger than the size of his hand, it came with a holster that clipped inside the waist of his jeans, at his spine. The weapon didn’t make a bulge against his unbuttoned blazer. All the same, it didn’t reassure him.

5

There were five of them—the tall, attractive woman whom Decker had seen with McKittrick, and four men, all Italian, from early to late twenties, thin, with slicked-back hair. Their appearance suggested that they thought of themselves as a club—cowboy boots, jeans, Wild West belt buckles, denim jackets. They even smoked the same brand of cigarettes— Marlboros. But a stronger factor linked them. The facial resemblance was obvious. They were four brothers and a sister.

The group sat in a private room above a café near the Piazza Colonna, one of Rome’s busiest shopping areas, and the site for the meeting troubled Decker. Not only was it in far too public an area but with short notice, McKittrick shouldn’t have been able to reserve a room in what was obviously a popular nightspot. The numerous empty wine and beer bottles on the table made clear that the group had been in the room for quite some time before Decker arrived.

While McKittrick watched from a corner of the room, Decker established rapport, then got to the point. “The people we’re after are extremely dangerous,” he said in Italian. “I don’t want you to do anything that puts you at risk. If you have even the slightest suspicion that you’ve attracted their attention, ease off. Report to my friend.” He gestured toward McKittrick. “Then disappear.”

“Would we still get the bonus we were promised?” one of the brothers asked.

“Of course.”

“Can’t ask for anything fairer than that.” The young man finished a glass of beer.

Decker’s throat was beginning to feel scratchy from the dense cigarette smoke in the room. It didn’t help the headache that his jet lag had begun to give him. “What makes you confident you’ve found the people we want?”

One of the brothers snickered.

“Did I say something amusing?” Decker asked.

“Not you. Them—the group we were asked to look for. We knew immediately who they were. We went to university with them. They were always talking crazy.”

“Italy for Italians,” their sister said.

Decker looked at her. Until now, she hadn’t said much. Since the afternoon, she’d changed her T-shirt. Now it was blue. Even with a denim jacket partially covering it, she obviously still wasn’t wearing a bra.

“That’s all they talked about. Italy for Italians.” The sister had been introduced as Renata. Her sunglasses remained tilted up on her boyishly short, dark hair. “They couldn’t stop complaining about the European Commonwealth. They kept insisting that lowering national barriers was just a way for Italy to be contaminated by outsiders. They blamed the United States for backing the unified-European movement, for trying to create a vast new market for American goods. If the rest of Europe wanted to be corrupted, that was fine, but Italy had to fight to keep the United States from dominating it economically and culturally. So when American diplomats began being killed in explosions, the first people we thought of were this group, especially when they made those phone calls to the police, calling themselves the Children of Mussolini. Mussolini was one of their heroes.”

“If you suspected them, why didn’t you go to the police?” Decker asked.

Renata exhaled cigarette smoke and shrugged. “Why? These people used to be our friends. They weren’t hurting
us.
But they
would
hurt us after they were released from jail because of insufficient evidence against them.”

“Maybe the authorities could have found sufficient evidence.”

Renata scoffed. The movement of her slim, sensuous body made her breasts move under the T-shirt. “I assure you, these people are not fools. They wouldn’t leave proof of what they had done.”

“Then I’ll ask you again. Without proof, what makes you sure you’ve found the people we want?”

“Because after Brian started paying us”—she gestured toward McKittrick, alarming Decker that McKittrick had given her his real name—”we kept a close watch on our friends. We followed them one night. They were in a car a half block behind the limousine when the explosion killed your ambassador as he was being driven back to the embassy after attending the opera. They must have used a remote detonator.”