The American Page 22

  This is what they ate, the men of the castle. Hard food for hard men, crude wine for fighters. I am only maintaining the custom.

  Surely this is all I do, me and the girl. Maintain an accepted practice, remove those of power so power may be shared, re-assessed, re-assimilated. And, in time, when the power has corrupted, re-distribute it once more.

  Without the likes of the girl and my technology, society would stagnate. There would be no change save through the gradations of politics and the ballot box. That is most unsatisfactory. The ballot box, the politician, the system can be corrupted. The bullet cannot. It is true to its belief, to its aim and it cannot be misinterpreted. The bullet speaks with firm authority, the ballot box merely whispers platitudes or compromise.

  She and I are the vehicles of change, we are the lions of the veldt-lands of time.

  I do not consume all my picnic. After a few mouthfuls, I stop and spread the food on the ground—the bread with the cheese beside it. Onto the parched earth beside the food, I pour the wine. The bottle empty, I toss it onto the rocks. It shatters in the sunlight like brief water. The sound of breaking glass is barely audible in the heat.

  This, then, is my benediction, my offering at the temple of death.

  I quarter the apple with my pocket knife. It is very tart. After the rough wine, its acids seem to skin my teeth. I throw the segments of core into the bushes. Many years hence, perhaps, there shall fall a harvest of apples in the castle.

  Already, a thin stream of ants has discovered the food. Their tiny mandibles are at work on the bread. They are the ghost army. In each insect dwells the spirit of a man of this castle. They are carrying away the crumbs to stockpile just as the soldiers here stored loot within the caverns of the rocks.

  I move across to a spot from which I can survey the entire valley across which the mountain summits are rising to meet the gathering afternoon clouds. The villages are becoming wraithed in a dusty haze now the sun is lowering its angle through the air. A thread is moving through the valley. It is a train. Minutes late, as it pulls out of a wayside halt, I hear the blow of the horn warning of its arrival.

  The forests below the snowline are darkening. The trees are changing from their daytime lazy green to a deeper, more sombre hue as if night brings them out to discuss serious problems with each other: they are like the old men who gather at the village bars in the dusk to reminisce and regret.

  The roads are busy. The sun is too low to strike off the windscreens but the main routes are a line of motion like the convoy of ants now working on my offering of bread and cheese. On the road into the village tucked under the cliffs there are cars. They are being held up by a motorised farm plough chugging along at a sedate, rural pace. A horse and cart passes it. I see the rachis of filthy smoke pumped out by its exhaust into the still evening. The sun is catching the rocky slopes of the high mountains. They look old and grey yet they are young mountains, still growing, still flexing their muscles like adolescents arm-wrestling, reminding the men in these mountains of their frail fallibility.

  There is a noise beyond the bushes behind me. It is a soft noise, like a quiet laugh. I am instantly alert. It is at these times, when the job is virtually done and the customer ready for the next and final rendezvous, the dangers occur of double-cross, of betrayal. Those who are my clients carry no references, no credentials, no papers, no indentification. There is always the risk they might not be as they seem. So much in my world is dependent upon instinctive trust.

  And then there is the shadow-dweller.

  I slip nimbly to the rucksack and from the outside strapped pocket remove my Walther P5. Mine is a Netherlands police issue model. I thumb the de-cocking lever and, hunched over, move towards the ruins of a building in which is growing a sweet chestnut tree. The spiky orbs are filling on the branches. It will be a good nut harvest.

  I am at the end of my trespass upon earth. If there are a hundred of them—and a whole brigade of carabinieri are more likely than two or three: it is the way Italians do things—then I shall take some of them with me across the Styx. But if there are just a few, and these are not Italian but British, or Americans, or Dutch, or Russians, then I stand a chance; they are trained in the schools and on the ranges of their services. I was trained in the streets. If this is the shadow-dweller, however, things might be different again.

  I cannot believe he has found me here. I was not followed out of the town, across the valley, up the mountain roads. They twist and cavort like serpents and, at each twist, I looked back down the way I had come. There was nothing—not a blue Peugeot, not so much as a farmer’s motorised plough.

  There is no human sound. Now, I am acutely aware of every noise. The murmuring, sawing crickets are raucous: the lizards scuttle as if as played through stereo headphones. I can pinpoint every source of sound. My pulse is the loudest.

  I edge very slowly forward. There is a jag-topped wall before me. I study it for loose stones, branches which may snap underfoot, a bird which might disclose my position.

  Then I hear it again, a mumbled voice. It is Italian. I do not comprehend the words, but recognise the tonal quality. There is no reply. Orders are being given.

  If I can get to the tunnel, I shall be safe until they bring in dogs. I look at the sun. Unless they have them already present as a precaution, it will be dark before then and I shall be clear away.

  There is a hole in the wall. Beyond it I can see a screen of chestnut branches. I decide to risk a glance and move forwards on my knees, slowly, like a hesitant penitent. I can see nothing. Not a movement. No olive green flak jacket, no dark uniform or shiny peak of cap. As my face nears the hole, more of the interior of the building and the trunk of the chestnut come into view.

  The ground around the tree is covered in short grass. It might have been cropped by sheep and kept irrigated, so close and verdant is it. It is an oasis in the centre of a desolation of fallen stone.

  There is the voice again. It seems to be coming from immediately under the hole in the wall. To put my head through the stones would be extremely foolish. Instead, I half stand and, checking to left and right to ensure I am not being outflanked, look downwards.

  On the grass are two lovers. She lies on a green carpet of grass and leaves, her skirt around her waist, her legs apart. She is so close to me I can see the soft down on her belly and her fuzzy black V. He is standing a metre away, removing his trousers. He drops them to the ground beside her slip and knickers. He takes his underpants off and, as they reach his foot, he flips them upwards into his hands. The girl, watching this, laughs lightly. He lowers himself upon her and her arms encircle his waist, tugging his shirt up and pulling him down. His white buttocks contrast with the tan of his legs and the small of his back. He starts to move them from side to side.

  They are oblivious to everything, the tree with its prickle fruit like tiny sins, the bird calling at their presence, the rustle of the lizards and scratching of the cicadas and grasshoppers. If the whole garrison of the castle were to return from the Crusades at this very moment, they should not notice it.

  I move back from the wall. I am not a voyeur. This is not how I get my kicks, thrill my senses.

  Was it not Leonardo da Vinci who said, quite astutely, that the human race would become extinct if every member of it could see themselves having sex? There is something ludicrous in the sight of lovers screwing. There is no beauty in the thrusting buttocks and grinding thighs. There is an urgent animal delight, but this is not beautiful, merely absurd. All that is beautiful about sex is that, for as long as it lasts, it appears you are shaping the world. They believe, those two, that they are approaching their own Armageddon, their own glorious final sunset, their private nirvana.

  This is the fallacy of sex. It seems at the time that one is so utterly indestructible, so completely omnipotent, so totally in control of the whole world. Yet one cannot control the world. One can only change it. Most people do not realise this. They are fast in the big sleep, lulle
d by politicians and power-brokers, by guardians of law and ranks of the judiciary, by game show hosts and soap opera stars, by lottery winners and ministers of faith: any faith, any god, the dollar or pound or yen, cocaine or the credit card. Most of those who realise their ability make no effort to exercise it.

  I am not one of those, the power-dreamers, the waiters on chance. Nor is my lady client. We cannot control the world. We can change it. We are not in the conspiracy of the big sleep. And change is, I allow, a form of vicarious control.

  There are other voices now, from elsewhere in the ruins. The lovers, who are finished, kiss and unhurriedly dress. Another couple appears, holding hands. They know each other and talk lightheartedly but in subdued tones.

  I thumb the de-cocking lever again, pocket the pistol, go swiftly to my rucksack, grab it and head for the tunnel. A glance towards the castle gate shows the bars have been levered further apart: beside the grill, tucked under a bush, is a small hydraulic car jack.

  I am out of the castle and back at the Citroën before the four romantics appear from the direction of the main gate, cautiously, watching out for a vehicle they may recognise.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ I say, politely and in English.

  The men nod at me and the girls smile sweetly.

  ‘Buon giorno,’ one says, the other, ‘Buona sera.’

  They have their car parked close to mine. It is a dark green Alfa Romeo with local plates. I have checked it over before they arrive: it is an ordinary private vehicle.

  I start up my car and push the gear-shift. At that moment, an awful dread climbs my spine. I know the shadow-dweller has arrived. I look in the rear view mirror. Nothing. I look from side to side. Nothing. Only the lovers who are standing now admiring the view.

  Can one of the two men be him? Surely not. I should have known, I should have been able to tell.

  I start the Citroën down the track, the bodywork swaying uncomfortably. Around the first bend, tucked in below a thick bush, is the blue Peugeot with Rome registration.

  Damn him! He has found me this far off the beaten-track, this unprepared. I am underestimating this son-of-a-bitch. And that is dangerous, very dangerous indeed.

  I stop the Citroën alongside, take out the Walther and cock it. Now to see who this bastard is. I open the door and step out, the gun at the ready. In the distance I can hear the courting couples laughing.

  The Peugeot is empty. No driver, nothing on the seats, no clues. I look quickly into the bush. He is not crouched there. I glance around the bush. He is up the hillside, talking to the lovers.

  I shiver. He had chosen his moment and I was utterly oblivious of it. Save for the lovers’ presence, he would have had me at his mercy: but for them, we should have had our confontation and the whole business would have been settled. One way or the other.

  I take out my knife and deftly cut off the valves from two of his tyres, which will stall him here for an hour or two. He must have followed me into the hills, no doubt tracking my progress from the valley below with a pair of binoculars, but he will not tail me back to the town.

  This may be somewhat surprising, yet it is a fact: a man in my line of business has a distinct, not inconsiderable pride in his work. You might assume, because my handiwork is usually temporary, used only the once and abandoned at the site of action, I do not regard it highly.

  I do.

  And I have a trademark.

  Many years ago—I shall not say when, but it was soon after the commencement of my present career—it was my task to provide a weapon for the assassination of a major heroin dealer. In those days, a reputation having to be earned, I spent much more time on my craft than I now do. There is, I admit, a degree of eventual redundancy built into my present-day products, just as there is into every modern car and hi-fi and washing machine. It is in the interest of the manufacturer to have a specific, designed obsolescence. However, I do not, as do the makers of cars and hi-fis and washing machines, produce shoddy work.

  I was shown, at that time, a block of opium. It was fresh from the Golden Triangle, enclosed in grease-proof paper, the covering as neatly folded and sealed as if the package had been gift-wrapped by the counter-staff of Harrods. The corners were creased as if pressed by an iron. Upon this brick of visionary death was branded ‘999—Bewaare of imitatiouns.’ It gave me an idea to which I have adhered ever since.

  Upon every weapon I make, or re-make, in place of the serial numbers or maker’s name, I engrave my own—how shall I term it?—cachet. There is a practicality to this apparent vanity: the engraving cuts into the acid-burns which eradicate the registration numbering. These days, forensic scientists can read an erased number with X-rays as easily as they do the newspaper but the engraving confuses this substantially. Yet I readily admit egotism plays a larger part here than protection.

  When Alexander Selkirk, Defoe’s supposed model for Robinson Crusoe, died at sea of fever on December 12, 1720, he left very little in his bequest: a gold-laced suit, a sea chest which had been with him in his island solitude, a coconut cup he had fashioned, later mounted on silver, and a musket.

  I saw the gun once, long ago. It was a nondescript weapon, out of proof for sure. Yet he had carved upon it his name, the picture of a seal on a rock and a rhyme.

  To put my name upon my handiwork would be to condemn me to the rope, the chair or the firing squad, depending upon which organisation or government found me out. Even a pseudonym was, I considered, risky: I was never one deliberately to seek a sobriquet like Jackal or Fox or Tiger. Better to be known as nothing.

  Ever since, instead of a name, I have put the same rhyme on every gun I have fashioned.

  Tonight, I am etching the Socimi with this little poem, burning it with acid, cutting the words first in wax. It is a simple process and takes but a few minutes, the wax being dripped over the metal and the poem impressed into it with a little steel brand I carved many years ago.

  It is a simple little ditty. I have kept Selkirk’s spelling:

  With 3 drams powther

  3 ounce haill

  Ram me well & pryme me

  To Kill I will not faile.

  I have made mistakes and half-mistakes. I acknowledge this fact. Although I have done my best to avoid errors, they have occurred. I am only human. Every so often, I sit down and recant these blunders, recalling each one individually. In this way, I do my best to avoid repetition.

  There was the gun that jammed, that winged the philanderer and nobbled the mistress. There was, on another occasion, an explosive bullet which did not explode. This did not matter, in the event: it was a head shot and the target was dead in any case. A wooden stock split on a G3 I was adapting. This was not really my fault. The G3 is not manufactured with wood but the customer required it. I found out why in due course, as a result of the international press. The customer was using the gun in a very hot location and he was afraid the plastic stock would warp. A foolish and unnecessary fear, but there it is. I make the guns, I do not dictate the orders.

  My worst errors have not, however, been concerned with my craftmanship but with my own life, or the conduct of it.

  Twice, I have stayed too long in a place. London was one, and that led to my having to bring about the demise of the idiot panel-beater. The other was Stockholm and the fault was mine. I grew to like the place.

  I lie. I grew to like Ingrid. Let me call her that, though that was not her name, but there are tens of thousands of Ingrids in Scandinavia.

  The Swedish are a humourless, sterile race. They regard life as an intensity to be experienced, not a rest from the slog of eternity. For them, there are no lazy hours in the bar, no strolling down the street with an easy gait and a Mediterranean nonchalance. They are like bulldogs, always up-and-at-’em, barking and making an efficient job of it.

  For the Swedes, sex is a bodily function. Breasts are primarily for feeding infants, legs for walking or running on, thighs for bearing the next generation. Like their climate and endless con
iferous forests, they are cold, reserved, unremittingly boring and insufferably pretentious. Their men are handsome Nordics with blond hair and an arrogance borne of being a one-time master race. The women are beautiful, blond, lithe, supple automatons who are as haughty as well-bred race-horses and as punctilious as accountants.

  Ingrid was half-Swedish. She had the looks and body of a Norse goddess. Her mother came from Skellefteå in the province of Västerbotten, three-quarters of the way up the Gulf of Bothnia, two hundred kilometres south of the Arctic Circle: a more god-forsaken spot would be hard to find. Her father, however, hailed from Lissycasey, County Clare and from him she inherited an un-Swedish softness, a lazy voice and a loving nature.

  I lingered too long with her. That was my mistake. I did not like Sweden and I hated Stockholm, but she made up for much of the frigidity of the atmosphere. There was something delicious about going to the countryside with her—she owned the Swedish equivalent of a dacha two hours’ drive from the city—and spending the weekend snuggled in animal furs on a wooden settle before a blazing pine-log fire, fornicating every hour or so and drinking Irish whiskey straight from the bottle. Of course, I was younger then.

  This idyll lasted for as long as I was working on a commission. Once the work was done, I had planned to leave by ferry for Gotland, change clothes and vessels there for Ystad, travel by road to Trelleborg and catch the night crossing to Travemünde. From there I was to hire a car to Hamburg, then fly out to London and beyond.

  Ingrid held me. She knew I was going. I told her so. She wanted one last weekend with me in the snowbound countryside. I let my defences slip and agreed. We drove out in her Saab sedan and arrived late on the Friday night. By Monday morning, she was still not ready to relinquish me to the future. I agreed to remain until the Wednesday.

  On the Tuesday evening, as we walked a few kilometres through the forest and down to a lake frozen solid as stone, I sensed someone in the trees. Conifers are forbidding. They hold a private night beneath them like no other vegetation, deep and impenetrable: I have, since that night, understood why Scandinavian culture has such a pantheon of trolls, goblins and supernatural ne’er-do-wells.