Supernotes (8 page)

Clancy's CIA work was principally in logistics and analysis, but his official duties ended in 1985 with the Iran-Contra scandal. Then he was transferred to Singapore as a “consultant” and began to shuttle back and forth between there and Phnom Penh. Officially he was a journalist, but he didn't write very much, and he didn't go to bed early.

It wasn't very long before Kasper and Clancy met up again in Phnom Penh, and in 1994—together with Robert King, the American who had worked as a UN supplier—they decided to open Sharky's.

Clancy is more than a friend and partner; he's the radar guiding Kasper through the nebulous galaxy of the CIA. Uncle Clancy is his first option for every kind of connection. He's also the man who has made it possible for Kasper—after passing through various intermediate stages—to enter into contact with the drug dealers, led by Michael Savage, who want to make Italy their new base, the Mediterranean transfer point for cocaine traveling from Colombia to Europe.

Asking Kasper to set up an ROS station in Phnom Penh and hide it from Clancy is asking him to do something unthinkable. Big Brother USA must automatically be in on such a project.

Will he give his blessing?

Of course he will. Provided, as always, that nothing Baby Brother Italy does or even thinks can interfere with the Company's games.

Prey Sar Correctional Center, near Phnom Penh, Cambodia

October 2008

The pigs arrive on motor scooters.

They're small pigs, Cambodian size. The pig farmers from around Prey Sar bring them to the prison, where they're purchased and then butchered in the fully operational slaughterhouse. This facility is smack in the middle of the camp, right across from the infirmary and not far from the prison's rice paddy and the big garden where lettuce, tomatoes, and onions are grown.

The paddy field, the vegetable garden, and the slaughterhouse are symbols of Prey Sar's vaunted “food self-sufficiency,” a rare example of wise management in the Cambodian public sector.

Inmates receive medical treatment in the nearby infirmary, but above all, it's the scene of the most sophisticated torture. Forceps and scalpels, combined with copious applications of electricity.

The screams of those inmates who are being “treated” have animal-like sonorities. At certain times of day, they blend with the squeals of the pigs on the way to the slaughterhouse. Terror has an archaic matrix. Distinguishing between men and beasts isn't ever easy.

When the piglets arrive, they're bound up like salamis, their spines already broken by clubs so that the poor creatures won't wriggle around too much.

Likewise, many prisoners arrive with their bones already broken.

Their wrists and ankles chained, they get dumped out of vans or automobiles. Like Heng Pov, the former Phnom Penh police commissioner. He was already in pretty bad shape when he entered Prey Sar. They brought him into the infirmary and kept him in there for hours.

That evening, the lights in the camp flickered and dimmed several times because of diminished power. Heng Pov's screams filled the usual silence of the camp curfew.

Torture devices level out social differences and cancel ancient hierarchies. Human beings forget who they are and think only about what they might become.

Kasper has learned a lot about Prey Sar during his month there. But there's a fundamental experience he still hasn't had: isolation.

One area of the camp is reserved for punitive coercion. It's run by the director's brother and consists mostly of cells where prisoners are confined in groups, in the dark, for indefinite periods of time.

And then there are the “tiger cages.”

Many of Prey Sar's inmates have had the experience. All you need is a hostile attitude and you get a free ticket.

A
hostile attitude.
How do you gauge hostility in such a place? There's no code to follow; avoiding all eye contact doesn't necessarily protect you, nor does acting like a zombie who sees nothing and nobody, no matter how skilled the performance.

The thing is, they want your hostility. They search for it, intent on discovering how much aggressiveness you have in you. They try to draw it out.

And so Kasper fears that he too, sooner or later, is going to get a turn in a tiger cage. He wonders only when it will happen and whether he'll be clever enough to avoid it.

They come for him on a night more silent than usual. They jump him just as they did during his very earliest days in Prey Sar, when they gave him the “welcome” whose marks are still on his body.

This beating, however, has an instructive purpose; it's meant to prepare the prisoner for some real extortion. The Kapo, who leads the troop of goons, wants to make Kasper understand that there's a system in place here, a system with very precise rules. And therefore a prisoner like the Italian can't hope to save his skin with measly handouts of a few hundred dollars.

That's small change, good for bellhops and waiters. Torturers cost more.

The story of how Kasper's family, over the course of several months, sent Lieutenant Darrha nice little gifts amounting to thousands and thousands of dollars has been circulating inside the prison for a while. Everybody knows it.

At the head of the troop comes the Kapo, armed with a rubber-coated iron pipe, as are the other three kapos behind him. A guard carrying a Kalashnikov is their escort.

Kasper senses their arrival. This time he's alert; his radar is working. He notices the movements of the other inmates in the big room: a word passes rapidly from one to another, and with great alacrity they all move away from him.

The pack in flight, and the night goons on the way. It's two in the morning.

Kasper's holding his wok in his hands and waiting. Patiently. Perfectly immobile. He waits until they're close to him. So close he can hear them panting, breathless with exertion. Or with excitement, it amounts to the same thing.

He welcomes them.

Of course, at that moment, he does feel some hostility inside. In fact, he's decidedly
hostile.

A whirling roundhouse kick to the face fractures his first attacker's jaw, and he goes down in a heap. Kasper's gyrating wok knocks down two more. One of them is the Kapo, who usually limits himself to standing aside and barking; this time he falls with a whimper. Kasper kicks the fourth in the groin and, when he bends over in pain, knees him hard in the face.

The only one left is the armed guard, a meter away from Kasper, fumbling with his Kalashnikov. Another Krav Maga blow would suffice to lay him out. And with an assault rifle in his hands, in the middle of a moonless Cambodian night, Kasper knows he could create a goodly amount of agitation.

There are moments that are worth your life. He can stop, or he can go all the way.

He makes the decision he'll regret for many months.

He stops.

The guard levels his weapon, wavers, and tries to keep Kasper in his line of fire. Kasper keeps still. Perfectly immobile. And he almost, almost wishes that this asshole would squeeze off a burst. A lovely little group of bullets full in the chest, and there the story would end. Once and for all.

But the guard retreats a couple of steps and shouts something to the kapos, who slowly get to their feet if they can, pick up those comrades who can't, and leave as the other inmates look on, flabbergasted.

From that moment on, Kasper is someone you keep your distance from. To all of them, he's “the Animal.”

A few hours later, he's relocated to the bottom of a tiger cage.

“I heard you were in solitary confinement.”

Marco Lanna is eyeing Kasper as if he's just reemerged from the center of the earth.

“People will talk,” Kasper murmurs.

“They say you beat up some of the other inmates.”

“Not the way I should have.”

“And that you disarmed a guard.”

“If I'd done that, I wouldn't be here now.”

Since their first meeting, the honorary Italian consul has returned to Prey Sar several times. The prison director's reply to his requests was always the same: “At the moment, unfortunately, he's in solitary confinement. Come back in a few days.”

About two weeks have passed like that.

“I've tried to talk to somebody in the foreign ministry in Rome. Somebody who could give me reliable news about what our government intends to do. For you, I mean.”

“Good.”

“I've also talked to Barbara Belli, your attorney. And to Signora Sanchez, who's assisting your mother…” Lanna pauses and clears his throat. “The news isn't good.”

“My mother's not well.”

“Her illness is following its course. Signora Sanchez says it's getting harder and harder for your mother to do anything.”

Kasper barely nods. Some diseases, like some people, offer no respite and call no truce. They don't admit the possibility.

“I also inquired into your service record with the Carabinieri,” the consul goes on. “They told me no such record exists. I pointed out that your name nevertheless appears in several newspaper articles in connection with various ROS operations…”

“And what did they tell you?”

“Nothing. The conversation ended there.”

Kasper looks up at the ceiling. How many times have they told him, if something goes wrong, remember you're on your own?

But he's never felt as alone as this. “I'm already dead,” he says quickly.

Lanna shakes his head forcefully. “No!” he blurts out. An instinctive reaction, not very seemly for a diplomat. “If you're really Kasper the undercover agent, and if you're really all the other people you've been, then you can't say something like that! You have to remember who you are. And what you've done. You're not a man who gives up.”

“I don't want to remember anything.”

“No. Wrong. That's exactly what you're going to do, right now: remember. Tell me the rest of the Operation Sinai story. Talk to me about Michael Savage and the Colombian
narcos
and your other missions.”

“I don't feel like doing that, Mr. Consul. I'm tired.”

“Stop it! Look, every detail could be useful to us. One way or another.”

“One way or another,” Kasper repeats mechanically.

“Come on, Agent Kasper. Let's not waste any more time. Where did we leave off? You were about to go to Geneva…”

Geneva International Airport

June 1997

Mr. Gordon displays a winning smile.

He seems genuinely happy to see him. Kasper doesn't often get a welcome like this when he arrives in an airport, but he lets himself be embraced. And responds in kind, hugging the bony shoulders.

Mr. Gordon is Michael Savage. A code name, of course.

“You're in good shape, Kasper, in spite of the spaghetti,” Savage says in his clipped English.

Kasper gives a little nod. He says it's true, he feels he's in pretty good shape, while his decrepit Irish companion is visibly aging.

“Fuck you, Kasper,” Michael says, chuckling and showing him the exit.

A few minutes later, they're in a taxi. Savage asks the driver to take them to the train station. He explains: “We're going to Zurich.”

“To Zurich. Good.”

“We're going to meet someone.”

A slight chill runs down Kasper's spine. Not only because of the way Savage just made his brief announcement. The problem is, until that moment, there's been no talk of meeting anyone else. Kasper gathers that the announcement is a test to check how he reacts.

He doesn't react.

He permits himself a long yawn and mumbles, “Maybe I can get some sleep on the train. How long does it take to get to Zurich?”

“Two and a half hours, maybe a bit more.”

“Are we staying somewhere?”

“You've got a room reserved at the Mövenpick.”

“And you don't?”

“I'm staying with friends.”

“I thought Gordon's friends were mine too,” Kasper says with a smile.

“So did I,” Savage replies. He adds nothing more, because their taxi has already arrived at the train station. Savage pays the fare and says, “Let's go. The train leaves in a few minutes.”

They enter the concourse. There's not much activity in the station. Kasper looks around and sees no faces that need to be memorized. Before he and Savage reach their train, Kasper stops in the middle of the platform. Savage takes a few more steps before he turns around and comes back. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“Tell me what's going on, Gordon.”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

“You tell me.”

He's elected to play offense. The Irishman doesn't seem surprised. He looks almost relieved. He comes still closer until he's standing right in front of Kasper; the people hurrying by avoid them like two inconvenient obstacles.

They're face-to-face.

Kasper can see a hint of both apprehension and curiosity in Savage's eyes, and on his neck a blue line: a throbbing vein, the outward sign of his temper.

“We have someone to meet in Zurich,” Savage murmurs.

“You already told me that.”

“This someone claims to know you. He says you're not what you seem to be. He says you screwed them over once before, the Colombians who—”

“Screwed them over how?”

“He says you're not just a pilot. You're a narcotics agent, according to him.”

“The asshole who's telling you all this shit. Is he a Colombian?”

“Yeah…”

“It's him we're going to meet? He's the one who claims to know me?”

“Exactly.”

“Good. Let's go then,” Kasper says, pointing at the train. “I want to meet him. I want him to look me in the eye and repeat that bullshit.”

They travel in first class, seated facing each other. The carriage they're in is half-empty.

The train speeds through the Swiss landscape. Kasper reads a worthless magazine he's found on the seat beside him. Articles on trout fishing and horses. Every now and then he looks out the window. Michael does the same, closely observing Kasper the whole time. Kasper wants Savage to make the first move. So he waits.

“Are you hungry?” the Irishman asks a half hour into their trip. “Do you want to eat something?”

“I just want to get there,” Kasper replies.

“Are you pissed off?”

“Extremely. I can't wait for us to get this business settled and call it a day.”

“What does that mean?”

“Kasper disappears.”

“What the fuck are you saying?” Savage hisses, leaning forward a little.

“I'm not working with someone who believes what he hears from some random Colombian cokehead and then tells me nothing about it for days….”

“I wanted to tell you in person.”

“Now I understand all the recent delays, all the hesitation. I understand—”

“I was waiting for the right moment to talk to you about it.”

“Because you wanted to see how I would react. Well, here I am. Let's go and talk to this Colombian jerk-off and hear what he has to say. But I want proof. I want him to specify how, where, and when. We'll see what he's got, and if I'm a dope cop, okay, you get to shoot me in the head. But if your Colombian pal is full of shit, I walk, and you have to pay me all the same. And then you find another pilot to fly your fucking plane.”

“You can't back out.”

“You'll see if I can't,” says Kasper, grinning. “And now, if you'll allow me, I'm going to piss.”

In the train toilet, he looks at himself in the mirror and considers his performance thus far.

Not a bad start. But it's only the beginning. Now he must go back there and play at least one more hand. The stakes are pretty high. His skin is on the table.

Michael smiles at him as he resumes his seat. “I got us two cheese sandwiches,” he says. “And two beers.”

“Not Irish beer, I hope.”

“No, it's some German crap. High alcohol content,” Michael says, handing him a can.

“My favorite.”

They eat and drink in silence, but Kasper knows that Michael won't let the subject drop. Before he hands Kasper over to his Colombian friends, Michael wants to be certain. He won't do anything unless he's absolutely sure it's right.

And that's what Kasper has to gamble on. But at the proper time.

The conductor informs the passengers that they'll be arriving in Zurich right on schedule.

“Fucking Swiss,” Michael chuckles when they're alone again. “Are you worried? If you're all right, the flight's still on.”

“And who's going to certify that I'm ‘all right'? A Colombian's word against mine, or rather against Wanchai's? How long have you known Wanchai, anyway?”

“Longer than I've known you,” Michael says, nodding placidly.

“And your new Colombian buddy?”

“Never met him before. I'll lay eyes on him for the first time tonight.”

“Perfect. Wanchai will be delighted when he hears about this.”

“I just want you to see him. I want him to be able to go back to Medellín and tell his guys he was wrong.”

“Do you know those people or not?” Kasper growls, close enough to breathe on his companion's freckles. “Every one of them would sell his mother's ass on her deathbed if he thought it could help him rise in the hierarchy!”

“We'll see.”

“So we will, and now let's stop talking about it. We're not far from Zurich, fortunately.”

Kasper's room is on the third floor.

Michael Savage has told him to wait there. Kasper's sure their Colombian was in the lobby when they arrived at the Mövenpick. And probably not alone.

Kasper didn't even look around. He knew that any move he might make, any possible sign of nervousness, would be instantly noted and interpreted.

He puts his small black rolling suitcase on the bed and opens it.

He's carrying no weapons, obviously. But he has his wedges. After a quick check of the room he jams the wooden wedges into the four inside corners of his doorframe, thus barricading himself inside. Anyone wanting to enter would have to stave in the center of the door, and therefore—theoretically—Kasper would have enough time to do something.

Jump out the bathroom window, for example. There's a rooftop a few meters below. A plausible escape route.

He sits on the bed and tries to put his thoughts in order.

He could call Wanchai and tell him his Irish friend has been taken in by one of the Colombians' little tricks. He imagines the telephone call and his necessary conclusion: “I'll do what I have to do, my dear Wanchai, and then I'm pulling out. Too bad for them. I don't work with amateurs.”

Would it do any good? Probably not.

Kasper reflects back on that meeting with Wanchai and Savage in Bangkok a year ago. They hammered out the details on the roof terrace of a skyscraper that was still under construction. Savage led the meeting, which included two Thais who work with him and an Israeli. A Mossad agent looking to finance undercover operations whose costs couldn't appear on the official balance sheets.

In fact, it was the Israeli's idea to increase the shipments from Colombia to Europe, if possible to Italy. Which is why it occurred to Kasper to call the job born in that rooftop meeting “Sinai.”

The telephone rings in his Zurich hotel room.

“I'm downstairs in the lobby,” Michael Savage says. “The meeting's been postponed until tomorrow.”

“What's the matter, your Colombian friend ran out of dope?”

“You're a little too sour for my taste.”

“If I wanted to vacation in Zurich, I'd get a Swiss girlfriend.”

“See you in the morning. Sleep well,” says Michael, and hangs up.

Kasper decides not to call Wanchai. It could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. And if they've already decided to take him out, a phone call to Wanchai will surely not suffice to save his ass. He'll have to save it himself.

He checks the room again, more closely than before.

No hidden bugs or similar devices, apparently. He carefully closes the curtains, rummages in his suitcase, and takes out a spare cell phone with a new SIM card. Then he calls Clancy and explains what's going on.

“If the Irishman wanted to take you out, he wouldn't bring you all the way to Zurich to do it,” Clancy observes. “Which means he doubts the Colombian's story.”

“That's what I think too.”

“But it's always better to be prepared. We have someone in the area. I'll see what I can—”

“All I want is a piece. You know which one I prefer.”

Kasper hangs up, calls the colonel in Rome, and outlines his situation, giving only the essential details. Still too many, as far as the colonel's concerned.

“I could send a team to cover you, but we'd need an authorization. And even if I request one, hours could pass. Or I could call the local—”

“Don't do either one.” Kasper explains that he'll be in contact with someone from the Company right here in Zurich. “I'll feel better once I have a weapon,” he tells the colonel.

“If they've decided to take you out, a pistol won't save you.”

“I just have to convince Savage that the Colombians are trying to screw him over.”

“And if you don't?”

“I will.”

He leaves the hotel and gets in a taxi.

It's late in the afternoon, almost evening, but there's still a lot of light.

They take a long, meandering ride. Kasper's sure they aren't under surveillance; nevertheless, out of an abundance of caution, he has the cabbie stop behind a gas station for a while and makes him change his route several times.

Nine minutes later, the taxi stops in Bellevueplatz. Kasper pays the fare and gets out of the old Mercedes.

The bar across Rämistrasse has a row of little outside tables, all of them occupied. A woman wearing eyeglasses and sitting at the second table from the left is reading the
Financial Times.
She's had her eye on him ever since he got out of the taxi. He walks over to her and asks her what time it is.

“It's the right time. Good evening, Kasper.”

She points to the empty chair on her right. Kasper sits askew on the chair, his back against a column. He orders a
caffè Americano.
She gets another Coca-Cola.

“I was told to stay just a few minutes,” she explains in a heavy Texas drawl.

“I can imagine,” he says with a smile.

She's rather young, not yet thirty. Now that she's removed the spectacles, her pretty face looks even fresher and more luminous. The dark eyes scrutinize him without a trace of uncertainty.

“We'll get to know each other better next time,” he promises her.

“Sure,” she says, giggling as if she was really amused by his inane flirtatiousness. “Were you careful coming here?” she asks. “I hear there's a lot of traffic on your side of town.”

“No problem. The hard part will be getting back in the hotel. You know how it is, I might find the room occupied.”

“You'll find what you need in the bag under the table. I was told it should be enough….”

“Yes, very good. It'll be enough.” Kasper knows this isn't a response. It's a mantra he's repeating to himself.

She nods and asks, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Not at the moment, unfortunately.”

“Well, I wish you good luck. With everything.” She takes two sips of her Coke, stands up, and shakes his hand briefly in farewell. Code name: Gloria. Kasper will never learn her real name.

The piece he prefers. A Glock 18C, with two 33-round clips.

God bless the CIA, he thinks, sitting on his bed and checking the pistol once again. Perfect. Used, but perfect. The serial number has been thoroughly filed away; the 9X19 cartridges in the clips are Chinese and therefore untraceable. The gym bag contained nothing else, apart from a nylon holster for the gun and a couple of towels to wrap it in.

Returning to his hotel required more time and effort than the first half of his excursion. Getting back into his room was particularly troublesome. The suspicion that a South American committee would be lying in wait subsided only after he sat down on his bed again. To be sure, he'd taken the precaution of sending one of the hotel's bellhops into the room first, on the pretext of wanting him to check the air-conditioning.