Next morning they drove to the Al Basilisco, reaching the street at 6.18 a.m. Lolo opened the Toshiba and activated the tracking program that would place the Fiat on a map and give them its exact location.
‘I guess I don’t have to know this either way,’ said Lolo, shining an apple he’d taken from the hotel lobby’s fruit bowl. ‘But is the target a good guy or a baddie?’
‘We don’t know,’ said de Payns, who’d scored a banana from the same bowl. ‘Let’s just say he’s implicated in some interesting meetings, and because we’re nosy, we’d like to know who he is.’
De Payns dropped Lolo at the Gatto Bianco and parked up the street from Starkand’s hotel. Then he walked past the hotel to a cafe at the intersection. It was a quiet street and cats wandered around as if they owned the place.
De Payns ordered a coffee and sat outside with a view of the hotel, wearing a padded jacket against the early morning cold.
At 7.34 a.m. Starkand left his hotel. As he walked towards the Fiat, de Payns tried for some pictures, which he knew would not be good enough. Starkand drove past the cafe and de Payns walked to the car, calling Lolo as he did. Picking up Lolo, they drove south for eight blocks, following the red dot of the tracker on Lolo’s screen. They closed in on the Fiat in time to see Starkand take a left into an old alleyway. De Payns paused at the alley’s entry and they watched Starkand emerge from the Fiat carrying his briefcase. He veered into a building and disappeared.
De Payns couldn’t see the street numbers of the buildings, so he asked Lolo to go for a walk. As his colleague got out of the car, de Payns lit a smoke and also alighted from the car, crossing the road and setting himself up at a stack of t-shirts outside a tourist knick-knack store. He made a mental note to himself: if he operated in Genoa’s old town again, he’d perhaps try a scooter instead of a car.
Starkand left the building two hours later and de Payns found Lolo at a bus shelter.
‘Twenty-six Falamonica,’ said Lolo, clambering into the car and giving de Payns the address he’d been sent to find. De Payns pulled the Renault into traffic to tail Starkand.
‘There’s a brass plaque beside the front door that says Istituto Ligure.’
‘Ligurian Institute,’ said de Payns. ‘Have a look—let’s see what he’s up to.’
Lolo pulled up the website on his laptop as Starkand drove north, up the valley behind Genoa. Lolo read out what he could find: the Ligurian Institute was a think tank focused on European economic policy. It held conferences and published reports that were forwarded to European governments and corporations. Subject specialties included monetary policy, immigration, fiscal policy and energy.
‘In their publications section they list a document called “Connecting Europe: the argument for natural gas pipelines to support renewables”,’ said Lolo.
‘So, they’re realists,’ said de Payns, fairly sure he’d trigger his young colleague.
‘I agree,’ said Lolo.
They swapped a look and Lolo smiled. ‘Not all young people are Marxist degrowthers,’ he said. ‘I mean, I want to reduce our use of fossil fuels, but I’m not going to live in a cave.’
De Payns laughed. ‘Okay, you pass the sanity test. Now you’re ready for the secret handshake.’
They followed the black Fiat up into the hills behind Genoa, past the Staglieno Cemetery with its acres of statues and monuments, and then swung around the massive spiral where the A12 freeway crossed over itself and subsequently aimed south. The Mediterranean sparkled under a cold haze to their right and it seemed likely that Starkand was heading for Portofino.
They kept behind the Fiat for the next forty minutes, sometimes relying on the tracker’s signal, sometimes on sight. De Payns pulled closer as they came into the cramped surrounds of Portofino, but to his surprise Starkand didn’t stop but kept driving south, through Portofino and out onto the penisola.
‘Dammit,’ said de Payns, under his breath.
‘What’s the problem?’ asked Lolo, looking around at the lush greenery and medieval mansions abutting the seafront. ‘This is beautiful.’
‘Yes, but on the peninsula you can’t see the cafes from the road, and parking is a bitch,’ said de Payns. ‘You thought Genoa was a pain? Wait till we get to the end of this road.’
They drove down the peninsula coast road, through postcard scenery, and came to the superyacht marina at the end of the spit, looked over by Brown Castle on the headland. The yachts were even larger than those they’d seen in Monaco, some of them akin to small cruise ships, sitting in the blue waters of Portofino like jewels set in lapis. Cafes, bars and luxury-goods shops populated the waterfront road, but the quay itself was invisible from the road.
Starkand’s Fiat slowed and stopped in front of an old building with an awning that said Winterose Wine Bar.
A parking valet greeted Starkand and took his car. De Payns checked his watch and saw it was 11.28. De Payns assumed Starkand was early for an 11.30 meeting.
‘You’ll have to go in,’ he said, looking around for parks and seeing none.
‘Photographs?’ asked Lolo, watching Starkand enter the wine bar.
‘Not yet,’ said de Payns. ‘I want you to do a look-see.’
Lolo nodded, understanding. His job was to go into the wine bar, ask for a menu and look around, see who the target was meeting with. He’d assess other details that they couldn’t see from the road, too, such as whether the wine bar had rear access or an al fresco section.
As Lolo crossed the road to the Winterose entrance, de Payns idled along with the other cars and the pedestrians and then pulled over at the Italian Yacht Club, making a U-turn that brought him back to the Winterose. He looked for vehicles that had tried to follow his U-turn, and seeing none he drove back up the peninsula, waited for two minutes on the shoulder of the road, and pulled another U-turn. As he drove past the Winterose again, Lolo emerged from the restaurant and saw the Renault.
‘He’s with a woman, brunette,’ said Lolo, slipping into the passenger seat. ‘She sounds American but is comfortable with Italian. And I think Starkand might be German, but with very good English.’
‘You heard them speak?’
‘Snippets. They spoke in English and they won’t be there for long. She ordered coffees only.’
‘Rear access?’
‘All of these restaurants and bars connect to the terrace along the waterfront. She can leave on foot or by boat, or maybe her car.’
The valet glared at them and de Payns found another parking perch further down the road.
‘Tell me about the woman,’ said de Payns.
‘Mid-thirties, athletic build, classy dresser and a Jackie Kennedy haircut.’
‘Does she have a phone?’
Lolo paused, remembering. ‘Not on the table.’
De Payns nodded. ‘Bring the spinner. We’ll try our luck when she leaves the meeting, see if we can grab a number.’
‘Okay,’ said Lolo, pulling his laptop up from the footwell.
They ordered coffees at a cafe that looked on to the Winterose entrance and waited.
‘What’s she wearing?’ asked de Payns.
‘Orange silk top, sleeveless, and white cotton shorts. Brown leather loafers, suede.’
‘Who ran the meeting? What was the body language?’
‘Woman seemed to have the authority,’ said Lolo. ‘She spoke and he listened.’
Twenty minutes later, Starkand left the Winterose.
‘He’s alone,’ said de Payns. ‘We tracking the target’s car?’
‘It’s being driven to the wine bar,’ said Lolo, looking at his Toshiba screen.
‘Wait here,’ said de Payns, standing and picking up his backpack. ‘Call me if the woman leaves by the front door.’
He crossed to the harbour side of the street, walked west for thirty paces and took a right into the apron of the Portofino Coast Guard building. The side alley connected to the waterfront terrace that ran to the marina’s main piazza. He walked towards it with a tourist’s gait but keeping a good pace. He clocked middle-aged Germans and cashed-up Americans in their early thirties sitting on the terraces behind the restaurants. Tender boats pulled up and departed, disgorging visitors to spend their cash on the world’s most overpriced coffee and wine.
He saw the orange silk top about thirty metres in front of him, walking away. She lifted a phone to her ear.
De Payns keyed his burner phone and called Lolo. ‘She’s just taken a call,’ he said and hung up, hoping Lolo would capture the number.
He stayed twenty metres behind the woman, noticing she walked confidently and that, as she spoke into the phone, she made gestures with her free hand that indicated she was giving orders. De Payns closed in on her as she paused in front of a building called the Royal Apartments, a yellow-painted building with green shutters. He pulled back and tucked in behind a group of Germans who loudly asked one another where Detlev had got to. Still drunk from last night, said one of them, and they laughed at a volume guaranteed to annoy other European nationalities.
De Payns got a line of sight; she was fifteen metres from him and trying to get off the phone call while holding up her hand to a man who was keeping a speedboat idling alongside the wharf. De Payns slipped the Canon 5D camera from his pack, powered it up and acted like a tourist taking photographs. As the woman disconnected, de Payns nailed three direct front-on shots. She climbed onto the idling white-and-blue speedboat, which immediately pulled away from the quay. De Payns grabbed shots of the boat’s transom, and the name Melissa written in black script. Bringing out his burner phone he called Lolo. ‘The woman just hung up ten seconds ago, and now she’s on a speedboat heading out of the bay. Could you isolate an IMSI?’
He stowed the camera and retraced his steps, looking for watchers while keeping an eye on the Melissa. It hit top speed, skating across the blue-green harbour towards open waters, slowing beside a glossy black superyacht. He took out the Canon again and raised it to his eye, moved to his right eight paces to get a better line of sight, and looked through the telephoto lens. The superyacht was also called Melissa, and off the back of the transom it flew a Cypriot flag.
When de Payns got back to the cafe, the images he’d taken now deleted from the card for retrieval at the Bunker later, Lolo was already moving towards the hastily parked car, which was being eyed by a policewoman.
‘It’s my fault, scusa,’ said de Payns, starting the car. The cop wasn’t impressed but the two Frenchmen kept smiles on their faces as de Payns injected the Renault into the traffic and pulled away.
They stayed twenty cars back from Starkand on the westbound A12. Lolo was able to track the Fiat when they lost visual contact as they sped in and out of a series of tunnels cut into the hills. They passed the huge road spiral above Genoa and continued west, towards the junction where traffic could go north for Milan or south towards Marseille. They followed the Fiat south into the Genoa Airport precinct, which turned into the Hertz drop-off car park. De Payns kept going to the main departure apron.
‘You drive,’ said de Payns as he alighted with his backpack. ‘Get that tracker off our friend’s car, and circle back where I can see you.’
There was a party of Chinese travellers whose bags were being unloaded from a small tour bus and onto several large baggage trolleys. De Payns stood between the bags and the terminal windows and fished his Canon from the pack. It had a 135mm EF lens on it, which was not the strongest telephoto lens but, because of its compact shape, was the lens least likely to announce itself as professional equipment.
He waited for Starkand to show, and after six minutes saw him walking with other travellers along a pedestrian path towards the terminal. When he filled the viewfinder, de Payns took five quick shots then deleted the images before returning the camera to his bag. Starkand swept by, carrying a leather carryall, and de Payns followed him into the departure hall. While Starkand punched in his numbers at the check-in kiosk and got a boarding pass for his flight, de Payns pretended to be engrossed in the magazines at the newsagent.
Starkand moved towards the security screening gates, but detoured to the Poste Italiane box, pausing at it briefly. He walked past de Payns at ten metres distance and de Payns could now see Starkand was mid-fifties and well kept. The target glanced at his watch as he put his bag on the security screening conveyor, as if concerned about making his flight.
There was an announcement in Italian, and Starkand hurried away to his gate on the other side of the security screening. De Payns walked to the departures board and looked from the top down: the only flight currently boarding was LH6921—Lufthansa, to Munich.