CHAPTER 57

Lampedusa, Thursday 12 July [Now]

More fucking flash guns than at the Oscars. Colonel Borgenicht kept his assessment to himself, while still regarding it as pretty accurate.

Originally he'd demanded that the event take place during the day and that numbers be limited. He'd been overruled on both counts. His attempts to go over the head of General Mayer, as he found himself referring through gritted teeth to the Professor, foundered when the five-star general he approached was overruled by Gene Newman in his capacity as Commander in Chief.

So Colonel Borgenicht found himself providing security for a Sicilian village emptied of most of its inhabitants and filled with the cream of the world's press, which wasn't exactly how the Colonel thought of the growling and surging mob roped off on one side of a picturesque nineteenth-century square.

After a quick once-over, he'd dismissed the female journalists. Mostly they were scrawny, dressed in black and utterly interchangeable, being short-haired, immaculately made up despite the heat, and thin as teenaged boys. His own tastes were more lush. The men came in two models, ponytailed and those, infinitely greater in number, who sported heads as cropped as any of his own marines.

These ones worried him.

Colonel Borgenicht existed to protect his President, his country, his men and himself in that order. The thought that the President might be killed while he was on duty had given the Colonel a sleepless forty-eight hours and reduced his social skills to zero. All that concerned him was getting through the next two hours.

The time had been chosen because Prisoner Zero needed to show the President the Milky Way. That was what General Mayer had told him. The lunatic wanted to show President Newman some stars. So the entire meeting was timed to coincide with the heavens breaking through the evening sky.

It helped, apparently, that the meeting was taking place on Lampedusa, where light pollution was still in its infancy; although, to make sure, most lights in the village were to be turned off at a preset time.

Colonel Borgenicht had wanted this meeting in broad daylight on American soil. Some place where he had complete control of who was let in. Better still, some place where he was not the most senior officer present. There were, it seemed, a number of good reasons why this was a bad idea. And he could tell, just by looking, how distasteful Petra Mayer found it having to put those reasons into words.

They'd been at breakfast in the officers' mess. (This is what a hand-scrawled note on its door called the place. A vending machine inside selling six kinds of flavoured water, and a row of rubber mats revealed its other identity as the hotel's T'ai Chi room.)

"It should be in the US."

Ripping apart her smoked salmon bagel, Petra Mayer ate the wedge of salmon, having first scraped off all traces of cream cheese. "Ma'am," she said. "You're meant to call me ‘ma'am’."

The Colonel was sure she did this only to irritate.

"It has to be in the US, ma'am."

The officers' mess was meant to be self-service, something to do with recent advances in democratic equality, but the Professor had discovered that spilling a few glasses of orange juice as she carried them to her table was enough to make waiter service suddenly materialize. Besides, she was a general. A very short, rather ill and temporary general, but still a general.

The Professor raised her cup. "Another coffee," she demanded.

Nothing else was said until this arrived and then she sat forward, indicating that Colonel Borgenicht should do the same. "Why," she said quietly, "do you think we're keeping the prisoner here?"

"Because it shows faith in our NATO allies." That was the first among many reasons trotted out by the Pentagon Press Office and the Colonel didn't believe it any more than the Professor.

"No," said Petra Mayer. "I mean really?"

The Colonel blew out his breath. He was having trouble seeing this small woman as a general. In fact, he had trouble seeing her as anything other than trouble. Her brief stint as the President's tutor he knew about. Her intelligence assessments of Beirut and all places similar was on a need-to-know basis, and he didn't.

"Questioning," he said.

Petra Mayer nodded. "Obviously," she said. "Take this man to the US and a whole different set of rules apply. You want that?"

Something was troubling Colonel Borgenicht. "I'd have thought--" The Colonel stopped, considered and wondered how to finish.

"That this is exactly what I would have wanted? Of course it is," said the Professor. "It's also exactly what the US can't risk. At least, according to the Attorney General." Petra Mayer stared at the Colonel, who now leant right forward to ensure their conversation remained private. "What do you think the verdict would have been if this had been tried in an open court?"

"I can guess," he said, after a moment's thought.

"Quite," said Petra Mayer. "You've seen the files."

"He made a confession."

"Indeed," said the Professor. "We're getting really good at letting others do our dirty work. That would be the first thing to go. Throw out his confession and what do we have? A lunatic who should never have been allowed out in public. Unfortunately he also happens to be a genius."

"So we retry," said the Colonel, his words almost a whisper. "Keep the court military."

"And reach what verdict?" Petra Mayer stared at the crop-haired black officer. The man was built like the proverbial shithouse and had biceps that still, fifteen years after he was commissioned, betrayed the fact he'd started in the ranks. Petra Mayer had seen the Colonel's file. She knew about his divorce, last year's less than discreet battle against OxyC, a prescription analgesic better known to most of Dr. Petrov's clients as "hillbilly heroin."

The man had a high IQ fighting to escape the limitations of its uniform.

"It gets worse," Petra Mayer said.

The Colonel looked at her. "How can it get worse?" he demanded.

"The meeting's to be televised in real time," said Petra Mayer. "They're going to walk out there in front of the cameras, look at the stars and shake hands."

"Why?"

"Because it's part of the deal."

"Whose deal?"

"Prisoner Zero's."

"Jesus fuck." From the look on his face, it seemed Colonel Borgenicht finally understood that his certainties were coming unravelled over a cup of cold coffee in a hastily emptied hotel room on an island in the middle of nowhere.

The square was carefully selected. Although it was only chosen after several alternative locations had been considered and rejected; Camp Freedom was the first to go.

As this was Colonel Borgenicht's first choice he expected no less.

The camp was secure, wrapped tightly with razor wire and had high-powered searchlights set up at all four corners on scaffolding towers. Machine-gun encampments guarded the roads in and out. The very qualities that made it Colonel Borgenicht's first choice led to its rejection by Gene Newman.

Razor wire and searchlights said the wrong thing for his administration. They said fear of the world outside. Gene Newman wanted something warmer, more media-friendly. He wanted historic, elegant, statesmanlike...

The town hall in Lampedusa had to be dropped when the ruling Northern Alliance wanted to be part of the handshake. A seventeenth-century palazzo, now functioning as a five-star hotel on Punta Muro Vecchio, reluctantly went the same way, even though it had its own heliport, the terraced gardens were entirely walled and the Milanese manager loved the idea.

Astronomical insurance costs, claimed the owners. The real reason was more pragmatic. Palazzo Muro Vecchio had a wide and loyal Italian clientele who were none too happy with the way the Marrakech incident had been handled and the Swiss group owning the hotel took an entirely sensible decision to protect their investment.