THE PERFECT KILL (4 page)

The boy felt emboldened.

“Were you a mercenary?” he asked.

“Anyone who works for money is a mercenary.”

“Have you killed many people?”

There was a long silence. The man was looking out, over the undulations and the villages of Gozo, across the blue waters, and over Comino and Malta.

Very quietly, he gave the standard reply, “I can’t remember.”

Then Creasy had stood up, saying, “Can you swim?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s go then.”

“But I didn’t bring my trunks.”

The American had smiled, “You don’t need any, but if you’re shy, swim in your underpants.”

The boy had taken off all his clothes. They swam together. The pool was forty feet long. At one point the man had said, “I’ll race you two lengths.”

The boy was a good swimmer and fast, but he lost by six feet.

As he clung to the edge of the pool, he gasped, “You are strong, Uomo.”

The man had smiled, “I swim a hundred lengths every morning…It’s the best exercise a man can get.”

When the boy was leaving, the man had said to him at the gate in a low and serious voice, “I will talk to you again, Michael. In a couple of days. After that, you can come up here any time you want. Use the pool, help yourself to a lager…but you must always come alone.” The boy said nothing. Halfway down, he had stopped and looked back up at the house. He had stood there for many minutes, totally still, just looking. Then he had continued down to the village.

Father Manuel Zerafa had not slept well. Just before he had gone to bed in his sparse, simple room, a thought had crept into his head. A thought that had troubled his sleep and woken him several times.

In the morning he had phoned the bishop’s secretary and arranged an appointment for three o’clock in the afternoon. Then he rearranged his own day. At exactly one o’clock he was driving his battered twenty-year-old Hillman down the track to Paul Schembri’s farmhouse on the slopes leading up to Nadur. He knew that, like all farmers, Paul Schembri would have come in from his fields at noon and by now would just have finished a hearty lunch.

His timing was perfect. As he brushed past the fly netting across the open door, the farmer and his son Joey were wiping up the last of the gravy from their plates with chunks of bread. Paul’s wife Laura could be seen through the kitchen door, washing up. He had not seen them since the Mass for Nadia and Julia.

Paul was small, dark and wiry, in his mid-fifties. His wife was younger and bigger. A tall, handsome woman. Their son Joey favoured his mother’s looks: also tall, but wiry like his father and with a good-looking, open face. They looked up at the priest, a little surprised.

Immediately, Paul said, “Joey, fetch some wine for Father Manuel.” He gestured at a chair and the priest sat down. “Have you eaten?”

“Yes, thank you.”

While the boy was in the kitchen, the priest said, “Paul, I have to talk to you. Alone.”

“About what?”

“About Creasy.”

The farmer had known the priest for many years. He nodded, popped the last piece of bread in his mouth, stood up and called, “Joey, bring the wine outside and two glasses.”

The priest and the farmer sat on the patio, looking out to sea, talking in quiet voices and consuming the large bottle of wine made by the farmer from his own grapes.

When they stood up the farmer said, “I think you’re right, Father. It can only be that. We both know what kind of man he is. He would never marry again so soon, if ever, unless it was for that reason.”

Both men looked sombre and the farmer said, “Shall I talk to him? Tomorrow’s Sunday. He always comes for lunch on Sunday and stays until evening. Shall I?”

Slowly the priest shook his head.

“No, Paul, thank you.”

He was not a man often to ask advice but he knew this farmer and his wisdom.

“Tell me, Paul, I see the bishop at three o’clock. Shall I mention this to him? I mean about what we think. I have to get his clearance for this adoption, even before it goes to the panel.”

The farmer thought for a long time and then smiled slightly.

“Father Manuel, the bishop is a good man and a holy man with many worries. After all, our thoughts are only speculation.”

The priest drained his glass, reached down and put it on the table.

“You make good wine, Paul…and strong.”

At four o’clock in the afternoon Father Manuel Zerafa arrived at the American’s house. He refused the offer of a drink.

As he sat down under the trellis, the man asked, “Have you talked to the bishop?”

The priest nodded, “Yes, there are no problems, there will be no holdups.”

“Have you talked to the boy?”

The priest shook his head, “No, I’ll talk to him when I leave here, if I’m satisfied with what you tell me.”

The American was sitting opposite him, across the round table and looking at him steadily.

“But I talked to Paul Schembri today. He agrees with me.”

“Agrees with you?”

The priest sighed, “That you are going to use the boy.”

“Use him how?”

The priest wiped a hand across his face.

“For vengeance!” he said.

The American stood up, walked to the pool and stood looking down. He was only wearing a swimsuit. His feet were bare. The priest straightened in his chair and looked at him. Looked at the scars. He sighed again. It was a day for sighs. He spoke softly to the scarred back, “Uomo, I know what you did those years ago in Italy. It was an ungodly act.”

The man did not turn. He remained standing, totally still, looking down at the pool. The priest went on.

“Vengeance belongs to God. Yes, they were evil men, but God gave you no licence to kill them.”

Now the man turned and looked at the priest.

“If there is a God,” he said, “then maybe, just maybe, he hands out a few licences, now and again.”

The priest raised his eyebrows.

“To the Godless?” he asked.

The man’s smile did not reach his eyes.

“Who else?” he said. “If your old car broke down, would you ensure that the mechanic who fixed it was a God-fearing man, or would you worry more that he was a good mechanic?”

The priest gritted his teeth. His old Hillman often broke down and Paulu Zarb was the best mechanic on Gozo. He always fixed it. Knew it like a child. Paulu Zarb was one of the few men on Gozo who never went to church or, if he could avoid it, near one. The American was well aware who fixed the priest’s car.

The priest was slowly shaking his head.

“Creasy,” he said, his voice sad, “nothing will bring Nadia and Julia back.”

The American moved to the table and sat down.

“Exactly. But Father Manuel, apart from believing in God, don’t you believe in justice?”

“Vengeance is not justice.”

The man’s voice was grim. “It is in my book.”

The two men looked at each other across the table, then the priest said, “You will use the boy as a weapon.”

“Only if I have to.”

“But he is only just seventeen…and are you no longer a weapon yourself?”

The scarred man shrugged.

“Yes, but this weapon is getting old. Yes the boy is only seventeen but if I need him it will not be next month or even maybe next year. Vengeance…even justice has patience! It will take time to identify the target.”

The priest drew hope from that last statement.

“Are you sure it will ever be identified?” he asked.

The American immediately sensed his own strategy.

“It’s impossible to be sure,” he answered, shaking his head.

“This adoption is only a contingency. It might take several years.”

“He will have to know,” the priest said. “I’ll only go along with it if the boy knows.”

The man nodded. “I understand your position, Father. You can tell him everything that we have talked of. He is intelligent as you know. He is almost a man. Let him make his own decision.”

The priest shook his head.

“No, Uomo, I will only tell him that you wish to adopt him and only on the condition that you will tell him exactly why you want to adopt him. Then let him make his decision.”

“You accept the word of a Godless man?”

The priest moved toward the gate saying, “I will accept your word, Uomo. I will talk to the boy and if he wishes it, I will send him up to see you.”

At the gate the priest turned and looked at the American.

“There is something you should know, Uomo. When Michael Said was seven years old, a couple from Malta wanted to adopt him. They were a very pleasant couple who could not have children. There’s a system in our rules that if within one month either the parents or the boy wish to break the arrangement, then that is permissible. Within three days, they brought him back to the orphanage, and they would not or could not explain why. When I questioned him, he just shrugged. When he was thirteen, another couple wanted to adopt him. He was a wealthy Arab businessman, living in Rome. She was an Italian. They had adopted two other children, a boy from Vietnam and a girl from Cambodia. They were a fine couple. He talked to them for five minutes and then walked out of the room.”

“Thank you for telling me,” the American said.

Creasy worked in his study in the old part of the farmhouse. It was the only upstairs room and backed directly onto the rock-face of the ridge. Its ceiling was high and arched. Down the length of one wall was a long old refectory table. On it were piles of newspaper cuttings and magazines. Opposite, against the other wall, was a row of heavy steel filing cabinets. His desk was in front of a large arched doorway. From it, he could look down over the surrounding wall at the track which led up to the house.

He was going through a batch of magazines and cuttings which had arrived that morning. He had clipping services in London, New York and Bonn. Anything that appeared in any newspaper or magazine which referred to Loccurbie was sent to him. The flow had slowed down a lot over the last three months but was still enough to keep him busy for two or three hours a day. He was reading an article in Time magazine, speculating about a connection between the bombing and Arab terrorist organisations in Germany and Scandinavia. Occasionally, he jotted a note on a pad beside him. More often, he lifted his head and looked down at the track leading up from the village. Each time he did that, he would then glance at his watch.

It was an hour after the priest had left when he saw the boy far down on the track, walking steadily upwards. He concentrated again on the article. He had left the gates of the house open.

Fifteen minutes later he heard the gates close. He stood up, moved round the desk and looked down. The boy was standing by the pool, wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt and jeans.

“I’ll be down in ten minutes,” he called. “Help yourself to a drink and there’s some biltong in the cupboard above the fridge.”

He went back behind the desk and concentrated on the article.

They walked around the pool, the boy on the outside. There was a faint south-westerly blowing, rustling the palms. They walked steadily for half an hour. When they finally stopped, they stood, looking at the house.

The American said, “When I die, this house will be yours and enough money to maintain it.”

The boy looked at the house for a few minutes, then turned and for another minute looked out at the view of the islands, then back at the American. Almost imperceptibly he nodded his head.

They resumed walking.

“What happened with that first couple who wanted to adopt you?”

The boy spread his hands, “I don’t know. I suppose they just didn’t like me.”

“Did you like them?”

“They were all right. The food was better than at the orphanage.”

Creasy looked down at the boy, “And what about the second couple, when you were thirteen?”

Michael Said shrugged and said, “He was an Arab.”

Creasy stopped walking. The boy walked on a few paces, then also stopped and turned. They looked at each other.

The boy smiled slightly and said in perfect Arabic, “Yes, Uomo, you chose well.”

They started walking again. And talking in Arabic, a language he had learned during years in the Foreign Legion in Algeria, Creasy said, “So why did you choose to come with me?”

This time it was the boy who stopped. He was looking at the house again and then at the vista sweeping beneath it. Reverting to English he said simply, “Uomo, you will know that my mother was a whore.”

At the gate, Creasy reached into his pocket and handed the boy a bunch of keys, saying, “I’ll be leaving tomorrow and will be gone between two and four weeks. Use the house. You will have to sleep at the orphanage until the papers go through in about eight weeks. I will return with the woman.”

They shook hands and the boy walked down the track without looking back. The American stood by the open gate watching until he had disappeared into the village. Then he went back up to his study. He phoned the airport to make his booking and then spent two hours working through the stacks of magazines and cuttings.

She was the seventh out of the fourteen he had interviewed the previous day. This was the second interview, the one where he would tell her the full details of the job and the role.

They sat facing each other across the table in the drab interview room of the Agency office in London, just off Wardour Street in Soho. He had the open file in front of him. It contained a typical actress portfolio. He guessed that the photos had been taken some years ago. She retained a severe attractiveness and from the way she walked and held herself she had obviously kept herself fit. He looked again at the name at the top of the portfolio. Leonie Meckler. She was dressed in a smart, two-piece black suit, with a cream blouse.

He noted her age on the file, thirty-eight.

“When did you last work?” he asked.

“Eight months ago,” she answered. “I had a small part in a TV serial”

“And before that?”

“I did some fringe work at the Edinburgh Festival the year before.”

She had a sad look on her dark face. She smiled grimly, “If I were in great demand, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”