De Payns walked south of the restaurant precinct and past a car dealership on Via Roma. He took his Nokia from inside his pack, removed the battery and put the SIM in his back pocket. Via Roma suited him because it was one-way for traffic, making it hard for cars to follow him and allowing him to focus on pedestrians.
He walked a zigzag route that would eventually bring him to the Church of St Peter and St Paul three blocks west. The ramifications of the night’s events were serious—two people dead in a popular public place. One of them was face down on the floor outside the toilets of a bar. That would bring the police and, because Sicily was an island, the airports and ports could be shut down if the police thought it was a professional job. And what about Sayef Albar? If they had the two Turkish thugs on foot and a vehicle waiting out the back of Bar Luca, then they had at least five people in the field, probably six including Murad. De Payns reckoned that translated to at least two vehicles doing the rounds of the streets and checking out hotels and bars.
Murad had known about those passports and had accelerated the timeline to avoid the trap de Payns had set. If de Payns and his team were worried about walking into a trap, that’s what they would have done—change the meet, change the parameters, change the time, take control and see what happens. But why was Lambardi killed? Either Murad had been spooked when de Payns walked into the loading zone, or they were always going to kill the migration agent. And if they were always going to kill him, did that mean the Company’s mission was blown?
The exit plan was to cleanse himself and put his sticker on the plan de support—a noticeboard at the ferry terminal—before the ferry departed. But if there was a leak from inside the Company, as he now suspected, the plan de support was compromised. To go ahead with it would bring the watchers and hinder his exit. Instead, he decided, he’d move through an IS to clear himself of tails. If he still wasn’t satisfied, he’d go into hiding and ask the Company in Paris to exfiltrate him.
A group of Dutch tourists strolled past him and a slightly intoxicated straggler smiled and said something in English. De Payns smiled back and answered in French. The Dutchman went straight into perfect French, telling de Payns about the bars they’d just visited and the seafood restaurant they were heading for. They made small talk, de Payns walking on the building side of the footpath, giving him a view of the approaching traffic. No Mercedes, no tall Turkish thug.
The group closed on the crossroads of Roma and Cavour, and de Payns turned left onto a four-lane, leafy boulevard with two-hundred-year-old buildings on each side. The older ones didn’t exceed four storeys, while some of the newer apartment buildings were higher. American jazz floated from an old apartment above him while Algerian rap bellowed from a passing car. Via Roma was bathed in a golden glow, the last embers of the Mediterranean sunset illuminating the street. Ahead he saw a silver Mercedes 4x4 flashing across the street, but it didn’t slow. There were thousands of silver SUVs driving around Europe in the dusk, de Payns reminded himself; it could have belonged to anyone.
He walked north for twenty minutes and ducked into one of Old Palermo’s medieval lanes, which became narrower and more winding as he progressed. Vespas and Japanese scooters were parked against ancient apartment walls, and he pricked his ears for the echo of footsteps behind him, but all he could hear was the blaring of a television and women raising their voices.
At the end of the lane was a small square with a narrow church fronting it. He’d discovered this place during a walk he’d taken six weeks earlier, when familiarising himself with the city and looking for a good place to do an IS. It was perfect for what he wanted—the front door was ajar and he walked into a candlelit church. A priest in short sleeves spoke with two elderly women off to his right, and de Payns kept walking along the left of the pews, through a side door and down the corridor to another door. He opened it and looked out to a street on the next block. Many old churches in European cities covered one block, but they’d been built around over the centuries. Once you’d passed through and were out the other side, you could disappear into the surrounding streets while the followers in vehicles had to go the long way around the block. If walking followers really wanted to stick with you, they were walking through a point de passage obligé—a choke point they had to move through—and were hence declaring themselves.
Palermo was in darkness as de Payns emerged onto the street and immediately crossed the road to enter another small street. His IS validated that he was not being followed, and he walked eastwards for ten minutes, towards the port. The bars became louder, the footpath patrons drunker as he neared the bay. He veered south slightly to a ‘rupture’ route at the Palermo Centrale. De Payns had discovered the 1870s railway station as he’d walked to the Botanical Gardens to assess a huge Moreton Bay fig tree used as a dead drop. He liked the Centrale because there was an entry that passed through a post office—creating another passage obligé.
The post office was lit up although the services booths seemed to be closed. De Payns pushed through the doors and walked across the lino floor towards the exit. As he did, he kept his peripheral vision alert for followers and parking cars. He seemed clean. The exit took him directly onto the Centrale platforms and he walked down one towards the police station in the main building. There were no more than thirty people milling around but it was enough to create a distraction for a follower, when you factored in the alignment of the pillars. He stuck with the flow of people and, having passed the police station entry, turned hard left into the main entrance foyer. From there he skipped down the main steps and disappeared into the dark streets, heading east for the ferry terminal and for home.
He paused at the pedestrian traffic lights at the impressive boulevard of Via Crispi. To his left, the hulking dark blue shape of a ferry loomed at the terminal. He asked a woman walking beside him with two children if it was the Naples ferry and she confirmed that it was, adding that it departed in thirty minutes.
De Payns veered off to the right as the pack of tourists moved left onto a large concrete apron leading towards the ferry. Keeping to the shadows, he walked towards the berths south of the ferry terminal. The lights played on the smooth water and de Payns smelled diesel and sewage. It was always like this—when he was anxious, he smelled everything.
An African man fished and smoked on the wharf, a bottle of wine keeping him company. De Payns walked away from him, southwards around the curved quay. When a large trawler was between him and the fisherman, de Payns took the pieces of his phone from the pack and threw them in the harbour. He paused and positioned himself for a see but not seen look around his environment. It was important not to look furtive. A disco beat pounded out of a bar and bounced on the water. He walked south again, broke down the CZ and disposed of it in separate pieces into the greasy Mediterranean.
He kept walking away from the fisherman towards a rubbish bin in the shadows back from the quayside. He pulled two of the passports from his pack, tore them up as best he could given the plastic and the chips in them, and deposited the pieces in the bin. With his eyes on the fisherman he walked towards another bin fifty metres up the wharf. There he destroyed two more passports. Just twenty metres further along was a commercial dumpster, in near darkness. He ripped up the last passport and threw it in the dumpster, along with the envelope and Lambardi’s waist pack. He’d usually make a better spread of a destroyed document, making it almost impossible to find or identify, but time was short—he had to get on that ferry.
He walked back along the quay to the ticket office, emerging into the fragrant evening air a few minutes later with his ticket. From there he headed to the large timetable board affixed to the side of the administration building. De Payns reached into his pack and grabbed a red sticker with a cross marked through it, then placed the red sticker at the bottom right of the timetable. The support team would see that sticker and understand that de Payns was okay, but the operation was paused and he was leaving.
De Payns looked over his shoulder as he walked across the wharf apron towards the ferry. He could see a slow-moving vehicle’s roof above the concrete bollards that surrounded the port precinct. A loudspeaker made a beeping sound, followed by a male Italian voice making an announcement; then the same voice in English announced the night sailing to Naples. Passengers were advised to please board the vessel immediately.
As he reached the ferry’s stern ramp, the seamen were readying to raise it and commence the night sailing. Relieved, he was about to board when, above him an old Italian leaned over a railing and barked at the seamen to stop. De Payns glanced to where the older man was pointing, and saw a vehicle pulling to a stop a hundred metres or so across the wharf apron. A door opened, and the top of a man’s head was visible. Then he was hurrying towards the ferry, accompanied by two more men. De Payns tried not to stare but he needed to identify them—they looked local. Probably not Sayef Albar, he concluded, but maybe police?
He turned away, handed his ticket to the purser, walked up the ramp and turned back to the quay, where his elevated position revealed that the two men were younger, and they were hugging the older man in an affectionate farewell. The older man turned and walked up the ramp, carrying an overnight bag.
As the stern ramp started lifting into place, de Payns felt slightly relieved but entirely unrelaxed.