Supernotes (5 page)

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Palazzo della Farnesina, Rome

September 2008

The young functionary looks tired; his face is drawn.

The office is immense, with two big windows open to let in the light of a sparkling September day in Rome. The sounds of the capital are carried on the northwest wind, with the eternal drone of traffic along the Tiber in the background.

Barbara Belli finishes her coffee and reflects upon the fact that she finds herself in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the third time in the past four months. No, it's the fourth time. Maybe even the fifth. The futile pilgrimages of a lady lawyer to the Farnesina Palace.

Since the first meeting, everything—apart from the coffee, which has clearly improved—has gone downhill.

Things had started off so well: at the end of July, the minister himself had written her a letter in which he guaranteed that he'd look into the case. It was an official letter, a registered document with all sorts of reference numbers.

Barbara had thanked His Excellency; the letter was an important gesture on his part. Nevertheless, in a subsequent meeting she had felt duty bound to point out to His Excellency's courteous staff that the letter unfortunately contained some rather significant inaccuracies.

To begin with, her client had not been arrested; he'd been kidnapped. Furthermore, her client wasn't being held in a prison, but in hiding places in various tiny, scattered villages, a fact that seemed to demonstrate the serious irregularities of his detention. Insofar as no official document regarding his case had been issued by any local Cambodian authority whatsoever, her client could not be said to have a legal situation. And finally, it was a little difficult for her client to enter into contact with the local Italian diplomatic and consular authorities, as his days were rather full: he was spending them being tortured and undergoing decidedly harsh interrogations conducted by members of the Cambodian military; from time to time, interestingly enough, such sessions took place in the presence of individuals who were United States citizens.

“Pardon me, but how do you know all this?” the ministry functionary had asked her.

“I know it because his family is sending extortion money to a Cambodian officer. And thanks to those payments, every now and then my client manages to communicate with his loved ones.”

“Have you got proof?”

“I have records of the money transfers his family has made. I've given you copies of all that, you've got everything….”

“That money could have gone to anyone.”

“Anyone…”

“Even to your client himself…you understand me.”

“Are you suggesting that my client has invented this whole story in order to extort money from his mother while he's in Cambodia?”

“That's not what I said,” the functionary had replied, backing down. “But my dear Ms. Belli, you must admit that the situation is clearly very complicated.”

Clearly.

And besides, as the same ministry official had explained to her with a self-satisfied smile, a letter personally signed by the minister for foreign affairs was not a thing to be sneezed at. As if to say: we're not the United States, we may not even be France or Great Britain, but if our government takes a step, however small, then something must surely happen.

Since that meeting, another two months have passed. Two months of futile pilgrimages to the Farnesina.

Until this late September day.

“My client's in a hospital,” Barbara Belli says, placing her espresso cup on the table in front of her. She takes a page of notes out of a folder. “He's been in Preah Monivong Hospital in Phnom Penh for weeks and weeks.”

After gazing briefly at his assistant, who's staring at his computer and raising an eyebrow, the ministry official—the same young functionary she has dealt with from the start—says to Barbara, “In a hospital? Is he wounded?”

“He's very sick.”

“How do you know that?”

“An American friend managed to see him and then reported to his family.”

“An American friend. What kind of friend?”

“A pretty normal kind of friend. A mechanic, if I've understood right.”

The assistant looks up from the computer. “It says here it's actually a prison hospital.”

“That's a piece of good news,” the ministry functionary points out.

“Good news? Good in what sense, if I may ask?”

“Well, if nothing else, he's being held in an official facility now.” The functionary spreads his arms. “Therefore, evidently, the local authorities have brought the case back into the legal system.”

Barbara scans the assistant's equine features and points to his computer. “There's nothing about the fact that humanitarian organizations consider that hospital a concentration camp?”

With an expression of mild skepticism the assistant checks some of the other results of his Google search. His expression becomes rather less bored. “Mm-hmm, yes, in fact I am seeing something like that,” he confesses. “But still, these sites aren't…I mean, we know nothing about them. We'd have to look into how trustworthy they are….”

“We'll talk to our representative over there,” the young ministry official says. “Within a week, the honorary consul—”

“Honorary consul? Fucking hell!” cries Barbara, unable to contain herself. She slams her briefcase down on the table. The espresso cup overturns, but it's empty; various documents escape the case but do not fall.

Among them is a photograph of her client. It's a close-up taken some years ago, and it probably doesn't correspond very closely to the way he looks today. She picks it up with both hands and shows it to the two men, brandishing it theatrically. This time she's pissed off. “God damn it!” she says. “Don't you realize this man has been kidnapped? Unlawfully detained since last March! An Italian citizen, abducted in a foreign country! They've imprisoned him, they've tortured him, they're extorting money from his family. What else has to happen before Italy takes some steps to help him?”

“I really don't understand your reaction,” the functionary objects. His assistant shrugs and curls his lip.

Barbara snatches up her purse and heads straight for the door while the functionary is still reminding her that His Excellency the minister wrote her a letter and even signed it with his own hand. “You tell me, do you think that's something to be sneezed at?” he asks.

Fuck His Excellency the minister too, Barbara thinks, stepping out into the interminable corridor.

The sun is setting when Barbara and the
senatore
take a table in Piazza del Popolo. He takes a deep breath and gestures at the cherry-colored sky: “What a spectacle. Why do people ever leave Rome? Why travel, when you can stay here, in this fabulous city?”

Barbara nods and sips her drink. She knows all too well how this meeting will go. She'll obtain neither redress nor consolation from her former mentor. So she takes what's on offer: several quips, some observations, a few more or less verifiable theories. And questions. One of them takes her by surprise: “This kidnapped, arrested, or disappeared Italian citizen, rotting away in that shithole of a place—have you at least been able to form some sort of idea about who he really is?”

“His girlfriend maintains that some magistrates are persecuting him.” Barbara sighs and raises both hands. “I'm reading all the documents I've been given so far. Maybe what she says is true.”

“How about the mother? What does she think?”

“I've never been able to speak to her again. She's sick, and she's gotten worse recently. I know she's withdrawn a lot of her savings and sold some property to send money to the people holding her son….I've seen the transfers. She's already paid more than a hundred thousand dollars since March.”

“My goodness!” the
senatore
says in surprise. “What do our magistrates here in Rome say about all this? They should be taking some steps as a matter of course…”

“They say our man has had various run-ins with the law in Italy. He's got a right-wing past and dangerous friends, they say. They've been watching him for years. I get the impression that there are some judges using him to catch bigger fish. People in the upper echelons of the intelligence community that the judges want to settle accounts with.”

“What a fantastic country this is!” the
senatore
says, chuckling.

“I read everything I could find about him on the Internet,” Barbara continues. “Confused information. Many contradictions. But I've realized I can't delay any longer. Manuela…I must see Manuela. She probably knows him better than anyone. I can't explain to you why she knows him, but I have my suspicions….”

“So this is a guy with nine lives, so to speak?”

“Maybe not nine, but…Look, I have the distinct impression that he's not simply a former Carabiniere who became an airline pilot and did some consulting work for the ROS.
^*
He's something more than that. Maybe a lot more.”

She pauses. The
senatore
seems less distracted now. “Go on,” he says.

“Well, I found several newspaper articles, including a recent one in the
Phnom Penh Post,
which is published in English. It reports the arrest of an Italian and an American, our man and the guy they call Clancy. According to the newspaper, the two of them were investigating something…something odd.”

“Investigating? A pair of bar owners who investigate. Strange.”

“They were investigating something, that's what it says. The other guy, Clancy, is described as an ex-CIA agent. And there's a word that keeps recurring: ‘supernotes.' ”

“Supernotes. And they are…?”

“Supernotes are counterfeit U.S. banknotes, hundred-dollar bills, very high quality, practically perfect. Significant quantities of them are circulating in various countries, apparently, for example, Cambodia and North Korea. The only big Western paper that has done any reporting on this topic is the
Frankfurter Allgemeine.
The articles were all written by the same journalist, Klaus W. Bender, who also wrote a book on the subject a few years ago.”

“So somebody's producing this fake money,” the
senatore
murmurs.

“Fake, but very well done, apparently. So perfect they seem real.”

“You think our ex-Carabiniere may be in trouble for having discovered…”

“I don't know yet,” Barbara replies. “But I remember what Giovanni Falcone used to say…”

“ ‘Follow the money.' ”

“Exactly. Why shouldn't that apply in this case too?”

*
Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale, the Special Operations Group of the Carabinieri, the Italian national police force. The ROS specializes in investigating terrorism, organized crime, and drug and arms trafficking.

Preah Monivong Hospital, Prison Ward, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

September 2008

The American arrived a few days ago.

His name is Thomas Rolfe, an entrepreneur doing business in India. He'd been hoping to expand into Cambodia, but then he was asked to pay some bribes. His response was to tell the collector on duty to go fuck himself. He didn't know that in Cambodia, bribery's a serious matter. If you don't pay, it can mean only one of two things: either you have someone powerful protecting you, or you haven't yet figured out where you are.

The cops accused him of molesting two young girls. Then they gave him a severe beating, so severe that he's now three beds away from Kasper. Considering the marks on his face when he arrived, Kasper guessed that Rolfe wasn't prudent. He must have taken many body blows as well, because he could barely stand up, and every time they moved him he made sounds like a mistreated animal. But his mind was clear. Clear enough, at least, to take in his surroundings.

He noticed that there was another Westerner in the hospital. He made some signs in Kasper's direction that first day, and asked him if he spoke English. When the answer was yes, his blue eyes lit up. “Where are you from?” he stammered.

“I'm an Italian, but part American,” Kasper said with a smile. “Rest. There'll be time.”

Now Kasper and Thomas are inhaling some fresher air together in the little courtyard outside the big room. On one side of the courtyard are armed guards; on the other, the gate that leads to the two-meter-high pyramid of refuse in what must once have been a garden. And beyond the ex-garden, separated by a little wall a meter high, Boulevard Pasteur.

The traffic around the capital's central market is like a basso continuo punctuated by high-pitched sirens, unmuffled motorbikes, screeching brakes. Every now and then detonations that sound like gunshots can be heard.

Thomas lights a cigarette. He's recovering. The American embassy has let him know that they're going to have him released. A couple of days, a week at most, and then he'll be able to leave this terrible place.

“Tell me how I can help you once I get out of here,” the American asks Kasper.

“You can't,” says Kasper, smiling. “The U.S. is the reason I'm in here. As far as they're concerned, I'm supposed to die in here.”

“Not all Americans are the same.”

“Maybe I got mixed up with the wrong Americans.”

Kasper has told Thomas his story without giving any details. He hasn't told him exactly what he was working on, just that what he was doing was justified. But Thomas Rolfe isn't stupid. He looks Kasper in the eye and says, “Listen, my handsome Italian pilot, I don't know what skies you've been flying in, but I know you can't stay here. They don't just blow you away here. Here they kill you slowly.”

Kasper nods. And wonders: Can I trust him? Trust this American who dropped in here out of nowhere? He could be one of them.

“That stuff you're hooked up to,” says Rolfe. “That IV they drip into you every day—”

“Vitamins.”

“Vitamins my ass. I asked a friend of mine, a doctor at the embassy. That's Ritalin.”

“Ritalin,” Kasper repeats.

“Do you know what that is?”

“It sounds familiar, but I can't…”

Rolfe lowers his voice and looks away. “It's a drug like an amphetamine. It weakens you. It breaks you down. And in the long run, it turns your brain to mush. I'm not clear about how much time that takes, but when they're putting the stuff directly into your veins, the way they do with you…well, I don't think you can hold out very long.”

The nurse has hooked up the IV and left the ward. Kasper's lying on his cot. Rolfe comes over and pretends to chat with him while shielding him from view. Kasper disconnects the tubing from the needle in his arm, thrusts the IV line under the
krama
spread over the metal frame of his cot, and lets the liquid drain onto the floor.

Let the rats and cockroaches have his Ritalin.

Kasper wants to determine whether the stuff that's been dripping into his veins is really what the American said it was. Before many hours pass, he gets his answer. The wave of fatigue that comes over him is weaker than usual, but at the same time he's afflicted by panicky spasms he quickly identifies: drug withdrawal symptoms.

He spent years tracking down cocaine and heroin dealers, he's seen more tons of dope than he can count, and now he's a poor addict. Hooked on Ritalin and who knows what else.

Later he and Thomas go out into the courtyard with all the others. The American scrutinizes his companion, trying to gauge the storm raging inside him at the moment. Kasper's swallowing hard, sweating, fidgeting. He knows that if the nurse approached him with some Ritalin right now, he'd probably hug him and hold out both arms, veins up.

A zombie among dozens of other zombies.

But not Thomas Rolfe.

The framed and thrashed American will soon be getting out. Fellow Americans will come and collect him. Like in a John Wayne film: the cavalry, the flag, the bugle calls, and all the rest. He's probably the only nonaddict in the place. The only one capable of seeing things in their true light.

Kasper decides to trust him. After all, what has he got to lose? He says, “I'm planning an escape.”

Thomas stares at him with tight lips.

“You heard me right,” Kasper murmurs. “I've got a plan.”

He begins with Brady Ellensworth, whom Rolfe had met the day before.

Brady had been informed of Kasper's plight by Jan van Veen, and when he heard what the Dutchman had to tell him, at first he couldn't believe his ears. Then he got busy, requesting and obtaining permission to visit his friend.

“What…what the hell have they done to you?” Brady whispered.

“They're killing me,” Kasper said.

“Shit, I can see that.”

“Can you help me?”

“Whatever you want me to do, I'm there for you.”

“You have to take me away from here,” Kasper said. Then he explained how.

And now he explains the plan to Thomas.

During the daily hour in the courtyard, while someone distracts the guards, Kasper will climb over the gate and launch himself onto the pyramid of garbage. He'll roll down from there, run to the opposite wall, jump over it, and drop onto Boulevard Pasteur.

Brady will be easy to spot. Helmet, leather jacket, his best bike. They'll make for the Cardamom Mountains, on the border with Thailand. There they'll separate, and Kasper will try to get across the border on foot.

“The Cardamom Mountains?” Thomas stammers. “I've heard about them, but Jesus…It's madness, there are tigers up there, and bears…and…and the locals are genuine savages.”

“Brady will bring me the right shoes.”

“Shoes…Ah, right, in that case there's nothing to worry about.”

“Well, as for that, the area's also full of antipersonnel mines,” says Kasper, smiling. “But if you asked me what I'd give to be there right now, I'd tell you: anything at all.”

“Anything at all,” Thomas repeats.

“Because the big problem is getting there. It won't be simple.”

Kasper gestures toward the guards. At the moment there are five of them, distracted by their own noisy chatter. The gate's about twenty meters from them, and climbing it will not be a piece of cake. Not so long ago, he could have done it easily—it's only about two and a half meters high—but now he feels like an old man, plus he's got mashed hands and feet. Two and a half meters look like two hundred.

But he has to make it.

All he needs is someone to distract the guards.

He looks at Thomas.

Thomas looks at him. “What do you want me to do?”

“You have to feel very sick.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning. If you're still here.”

The next day Thomas Rolfe has a visitor, an official from the American embassy. The guards allow them to step out of the ward for a private talk.

Kasper watches them go and thinks about how, once again, he's rolling the dice. Challenges are fraught with possibilities, he tells himself, with the fatalism of one who's swaying on a cord suspended over the void.

First possibility: the embassy official's here to spring Thomas. He comes back into the ward, bids Kasper farewell, and goes away forever. Or maybe he doesn't even come back in. End of story.

Second possibility: Thomas spills the beans to the official and tells him what Kasper has planned for this very day. Well, if that's the case, he'll see the effects soon enough.

Third possibility: Thomas comes back in, helps him to dump his dose of Ritalin, helps him to escape, and then God will provide. For him and also for Thomas, he hopes.

Kasper assigns the probabilities.

First hypothesis: 45 percent.

Second hypothesis: another 45 percent.

Third hypothesis: 5 percent.

Other eventualities: the remaining 5 percent.

From which he deduces that, realistically speaking, all hope is lost.

Thomas returns and goes over to him. Kasper's IV has been hooked up and the Ritalin drip has just begun. Kasper thinks that today a double dose might not be so bad, given how things are probably going to turn out. But the American screens him and helps him disconnect the tubing. Once again, the Ritalin will go to relaxing the rats.

“I asked permission to leave tomorrow afternoon instead of tomorrow morning.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Kasper asks.

“I made up a story. I told the embassy guy I have to talk to the doctors and nurses tomorrow morning. I said that as an American citizen, I want to ask them to treat the people I've met in here better. More humanely. I made a long speech about American values. The guy from the embassy looked touched. He's from Boston, seems like a nice kid.”

“You were supposed to get out tomorrow morning….”

“A few hours later won't make any difference.”

“The guy from the embassy must have thought you were crazy.”

“So did I,” says Rolfe with a smile.

Phnom Penh's rumbling more loudly than usual. It's out there, practically around the corner. One hundred meters away. Maybe less.

Kasper looks up at the sky and thinks this is a good day for escaping. Maybe also for dying. Be that as it may, he has no intention of dying in here.

He considers the guards on this hot morning. There are four of them at the moment, engaged in the usual distracted chattering while the zombie-prisoners are taking the air and smoking. Near the guards, a single Kalashnikov stands propped against the wall.

Thomas is worried. Very worried. But he's just guaranteed Kasper that he won't back out. “It shouldn't be hard for me to act like I feel sick. I feel sick already. Seriously.”

Kasper looks at him. His greenish complexion confirms what he said. His liver's working overtime. Luckily, there are still Americans like this, Kasper thinks. Americans like Thomas Rolfe and Brady Ellensworth. Men who help others. Who, when their country has committed an injustice, can admit it.

At his signal, Thomas will walk toward the guards and collapse to the ground in convulsions. That will be the moment.

The difficult part will be the jump. One single jump. Once he's over the gate, he'll simply have to make a dash for the street.

Simply.

The street's where Brady, astride his Yamaha, will be waiting. They'll take a carefully planned route, down side roads and over terrain inaccessible to automobiles, a route that will be difficult for their pursuers to follow.

“Are you ready?”

“I'm ready,” Thomas whispers.

“Okay, let's get started….”

“Listen, pilot,” says Thomas with a wink and a daredevil smile. “If something goes wrong, we'll meet in the next life.”

“Everything's going to be all right. All you have to do is feel sick.”

Thomas staggers off in the direction of the guards. Nobody notices him. In Preah Monivong, everyone staggers, more or less. It's a scene that Kasper has imagined dozens of times. The American will crumple and fall, the guards will surround him, so will the other prisoners. No one will pay any attention to Kasper, and he'll do what he has to do.

That's exactly how the scene will play out.

But at that precise moment, Kasper sees him.

The man in the blue shirt.

Kasper recognizes him at once. He's one of the political prisoners, one of the most respected. He can't be forty yet, skinny as a rail, his face so hollow it looks like a skull, his expression that of a man possessed. He emerges from a small group of Cambodians that opens like the corolla of a flower when it lets the insect inside fly away. And this insect flies. A blue blur, he heads straight for the gate, throws himself on it, and starts to climb.

But slowly. Too slowly, Kasper thinks. He wonders if he would have been as slow as that.

The prisoner hauls himself up to the top of the gate and swings one leg over it.

Now he's got a chance. All he needs to do is jump.

The burst of rifle fire sends everyone sprawling. Everyone except the fugitive. He remains where he is, straddling the gate as though nailed to it. Then, slowly bending from the waist, he falls forward onto the top rail. His hands clutch the metal, and then the strength seems to drain from his arms. They dangle in the wind. But he's not dead. Not yet. His body jerks; he tries to move, barely raises his chest off the gate, leans to one side. He holds that position for a few seconds before plummeting back into the prisoners' courtyard.

The guard with the Kalashnikov walks over to him and turns him over with his foot. He points his rifle at the fallen man's head and fires a single shot, blowing out his brains.

Thomas has been vomiting for a long time. Kasper watches him and at the same time observes the other prisoners as they writhe in their beds.