De Payns had other ways of contacting his team. Called liaisons clandestines, they included dead letterboxes and unobservable visual signals. One of these involved gommettes, or stickers—on a wall-mounted poster that advertised Peroni, the support team would leave a round white sticker in the final half-hour before the ship docked in Sicily. If the white gommette was on that poster, the op was on.

Lambardi reappeared at the table, and for a split second de Payns thought he caught a pair of eyes look at him then dart away. They belonged to a tall, swarthy man in his mid-thirties who was entering the restrooms that Lambardi had just exited. Just the blue rats, de Payns assured himself, a reference to the paranoia that can haunt field operators. The man was most likely a polite Pakistani who didn’t want to make eye contact.

The revs lowered on the ferry engines and the vessel tipped forward. De Payns took a quick breath and glanced over his shoulder at the beer poster.

In the bottom right-hand corner was a white gommette. Palermo loomed and the game was on. Falcon was go.

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER

TWO

Michael Lambardi wanted to drink, so they headed for Bar Luca, their regular watering hole. They dodged tourists who were drinking and lounging around in the famous glow as dusk settled on Old Palermo. The day’s breeze had died down and the warm air was infused with seafood, wine and music—typical of the Mediterranean. De Payns sensed Shrek behind him, but didn’t look, as they worked their way through the summer crowds.

Lambardi turned to him. ‘Let’s do this tonight,’ he said, then moved with the foot traffic across Via Francesco Crispi into the bar and restaurant district.

‘Do what?’ de Payns asked, feeling the reassuring weight of the CZ 9mm handgun in the outer pocket of his Adidas pack. He didn’t make a habit of carrying arms when operating under an assumed identity, but the trip from Cagliari to Palermo with Lambardi had been a spontaneous decision and the support team hadn’t had time to establish the usual safeguards. So he’d collected the CZ from a dead drop at Cagliari’s Bonario cemetery before meeting Lambardi at a cafe with some rich Nigerian clients.

‘The passports,’ said Lambardi, breathless as he marched across Crispi.

De Payns accelerated and got alongside the Italian’s right shoulder, keeping his voice low as they passed sidewalk tables loaded with French and Austrian drinkers. ‘I don’t have them on me, Michael. They’re at the office.’

‘We’ll drop by,’ said Lambardi. Spying a gap between the taxis and minicabs, he darted across the road.