Extreme Denial

  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 cafe 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.”

  Decker concealed the tense emotion that made him briefly silent. The assassination of Ambassador Robbins had been the outrage that caused extremely powerful figures in Washington to lose their customary caution and demand that something be done to stop these monsters—one way or another. The covert pressure on Decker’s superiors was the reason McKittrick had attracted so much favorable attention among them. If McKittrick’s contacts could positively identify the terrorists responsible for the assassination, half the problem would be solved. The other half would be what to do with the information.

  “Maybe they just happened to be in the area,” Decker said.

  “They drove away laughing.”

  Decker’s throat felt constricted. “Do you know where they live?”

  “Renata gave me that information,” McKittrick interrupted. “But obviously they won’t stay at the addresses forever.” He gestured for emphasis. “They have to be dealt with soon.”

  Yet another lapse in tradecraft, Decker noted with concern. Contacts should never know what a handler is thinking. And what did McKittrick mean by “dealt with”?

  “Renata tells me they have a club they like to go to,” McKittrick said. “If we can get them all together ...”

  6

  “What the hell were you doing in there?” Decker asked as he walked angrily with McKittrick after the meeting was over.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Decker glanced tensely around. Squinting from the glare of numerous passing headlights, he noticed an alley and gripped McKittrick’s left arm to guide him away from the area’s clamorous nightlife.

  “You compromised the assignment,” Decker whispered hoarsely as soon as he was away from pedestrians. “You gave them your real name.”

  McKittrick looked awkward and didn’t respond.

  “You’re sleeping with that woman,” Decker said. “Didn’t your trainers explain to you that you never, never, never become personally involved with your contacts?”

  “What makes you think I’m sleeping with ...?”

  “Your imitation of stand up mouth-to-mouth resuscitation this afternoon.”

  “You followed me?”

  “It wasn’t very damned hard. You’re breaking so many ru
les, I can’t keep up with.... From the smell of alcohol on you, I have to assume you were partying with them before I arrived.”

  “I was trying to get them to feel comfortable with me.”

  “Money,” Decker said. “That’s what makes them comfortable. Not your winning personality. This is business, not a social club. And what did you mean by ‘dealt with’?”

  “ ‘Dealt with’? I don’t remember saying ...”

  “It sounded to me as if you were actually suggesting, in front of outsiders, that the people we’re after are going to be ...” In spite of his low tone and the relative secrecy of the alley, Decker couldn’t bring himself to say the incriminating words.

  “Extreme denial,” McKittrick said.

  “What?”

  “Isn’t that the new euphemism? It used to be ‘terminate with extreme prejudice.’ Now it’s ‘extreme denial.’ ”

  “Where the hell did you hear ...?”

  “Isn’t that what this operation’s about? Those bastards will keep killing until somebody stops them permanently.”

  Decker pivoted, staring from the darkness of the alley toward the pedestrians on the brightly lit street, afraid that someone might have overheard. “Have you gone insane? Have you told anyone else what you just told me?”

  McKittrick hesitated.

  “The woman?” Decker demanded. “You told the woman?”

  “Well, I had to introduce the idea to her. How else was I going to get them to do it?”

  “Jesus,” Decker muttered.

  “Plausible deniability. I’ve invented a rival network. They take out the first group, then phone the police and call themselves the Enemies of Mussolini.”

  “Keep your voice down, damn it.”

  “No one can prove we’re involved.”

  “The woman can,” Decker said.

  “Not when I disappear and she doesn’t have physical evidence.”

  “She knows your name.”

  “My first name only,” McKittrick said. “She loves me. She’ll do anything for me.”

  “You ...” Decker leaned close in the darkness, wanting to make certain that only McKittrick heard his fierce whisper. “Listen to me carefully. The United States government is not in the business of assassination. It does not track down and kill terrorists. It accumulates evidence and lets the courts decide the appropriate punishment.”

  “Yeah, sure, right. Just like the Israelis didn’t send a hit team after the terrorists who killed eleven Jewish athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.”

  “What the Israelis did has nothing to do with us. That operation was canceled because one of the men they killed was innocent. That’s why we're not in the assassination business.”

  “Fine. Now you listen to me,” McKittrick said. “If we let those bastards get away because we don’t have the guts to do what’s right, both of us will be out of a job.”

  “Noon tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  “Go to your apartment and stay there,” Decker said. “Don’t do anything. Don’t contact the woman. Don’t go out for a newspaper. Don’t do anything. I will knock on your door at noon sharp. I will tell you what our superiors have decided to do about you. If I were you, I’d have my bags packed.”

  7

  Happy fortieth birthday, Decker told himself. In his bathroom mirror, the haggard expression on his face confirmed how poorly he had slept because of his preoccupation with McKittrick. His headache from jet lag and the choking haze of cigarette smoke he had been forced to breathe persisted. A late-night room-service meal of fettuccine and chicken marsala sat heavily in his stomach. He seemed to have gained a few more lines of character in his rugged features, the start of crow’s-feet around his watchful aquamarine eyes. As if all of that wasn’t enough, he found a gray hair in his slightly long, wavy, sandy hair. Muttering, he jerked it out.

  Saturday morning. The start of the weekend for most people, Decker thought, but not in my line of work. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt the sense of leisure that he associated with a true weekend. For no reason that he immediately understood, he remembered following McKittrick down the Spanish Steps and past the house where Keats had died. He imagined Keats coughing his life away, the TB filling him up, choking him. So young, but already having achieved greatness.

  I need some time off.

  Decker put on jogging clothes, tried to ignore the hazy automobile exhaust and the crowded sidewalks, and ran to the international real estate consulting firm that he had reported to the day before, satisfied that his erratic route would keep anyone from following him. After showing his identification, he was admitted to an office that had a scrambler attached to its phone. Five minutes later, he was talking to his supervisor at a similar international real estate consulting firm in Alexandria, Virginia. The supervisor had a scrambler calibrated to the same frequency as was Decker’s.

  The conversation lasted fifteen minutes and made Decker even more frustrated. He learned that McKittrick’s father had been informed of Decker’s intentions, probably by means of a phone call that McKittrick had made to his father late the night before (Decker could only hope that McKittrick had used a pay phone and spoken with discretion). The father, not just a legend in the intelligence community but a former chairman of the National Security Council who still retained considerable political influence, had questioned Decker’s own professionalism and accused Decker of attempting to have McKittrick transferred so that Decker could take the credit for McKittrick’s achievement in finding the terrorists. While Decker’s superior claimed that he privately sided with Decker over McKittrick, the fact was that prudence and his pension forced him to ignore Decker’s warnings and to keep McKittrick in place. “Babysit him,” the superior said. “Prevent him from making mistakes. Verify the rest of the information in his reports. We’ll pass the information to the Italian authorities and pull both of you out. I promise you’ll never have to work with him again.”

  “It’s right now I’m worried about.”

  Decker’s run back to his hotel did nothing to ease his frustration. He placed towels on the floor of his room and did 150 push-ups, then the same amount of sit-ups, sweat dripping from his strong shoulders, narrow hips, and sinewy legs. He practiced several martial-arts moves, then showered and put on fresh jeans as well as a clean blue oxford-cloth shirt. His brown leather jacket covered his pistol. His stomach continued to bother him.

  8

  It was noon exactly when, as scheduled, Decker knocked on McKittrick’s door.

  No one answered.

  Decker knocked again, waited, frowned, knocked a third time, waited, frowned harder, glanced to each side along the corridor, then used the lock picks concealed in the collar of his jacket. Ten seconds later, he was in the apartment, securing the door behind him, his weapon already drawn. Had McKittrick stood him up, or had something happened to him? With painstaking caution, Decker started searching.

  The living room was deserted. So were the bathroom, the kitchen, and the bedroom, including the closets. Decker hated closets—he never knew what might be crouching in them. His chest tight, he completed the search, sat on a padded chair in the living room, and analyzed the possibilities. Nothing in the apartment seemed out of place, but that proved nothing. McKittrick could be in trouble somewhere else. Or it could be, Decker thought for the second time that the son of a bitch stood me up.

  Decker waited, in the process conducting another search of McKittrick’s apartment, this time in detail: in, under, and behind every drawer; under the mattress and the bed; under the chairs and sofa; in the light fixtures; in and behind the toilet tank.

  What he found appalled him. Not only had McKittrick failed to destroy his notes after sending in his report but, as well, he had hidden the notes in a place not hard to predict— beneath shelf paper in the kitchen. Next to the names of the members of the group Decker had met the previous night, he found addresses, one of which was for the apartment building into which M
cKittrick had gone with Renata. Decker also found the address of something called the Tiber Club.

  Decker memorized the information. He put the notes on a saucer, burned them, crumbled the ashes into powder, peered out the kitchen’s small window, saw the brick wall of an alley, and let a breeze scatter the ashes. Hunger fought with the discomfort in his stomach. He cut a slice from a loaf of bread, returned to the living room, and slowly ate, all the while frowning at the front door.

  By then, it was two in the afternoon. Decker’s misgivings strengthened. But what should I do about them? he wondered. He could go back to the international real estate consulting firm and make an emergency telephone call to warn his supervisor that McKittrick had failed to be present at an appointment. But what would that accomplish, aside from creating the impression that Decker was determined to find fault with McKittrick? The guy’s tradecraft was sloppy—Decker had already made an issue of that. So wasn’t it likely that McKittrick had either forgotten or deliberately ignored the appointment? Maybe he was in bed with Renata right now.

  If that’s the case, he might be smarter than I am, Decker thought. When was the last time I was in bed with anybody? He couldn’t remember. Because he traveled so much, he had few close female friends, all of them in his line of work. Casual pickups were out of the question—even before the spread of AIDS, Decker had avoided one-night stands on the theory that intimacy equaled vulnerability, that it didn’t make sense to let down his guard with someone he knew nothing about.