The Italian Mission (20 page)

Jill surveyed the situation from the stone staircase that wound up the spine of the serpentine street. The Chinese agents were deployed closest to the brick row house where Conti and the Panchen Lama were being held. Twenty yards behind them, an Italian SWAT team laid out their paraphernalia on the deck of an armored vehicle. Next to that, two Italian technicians wearing headphones sat in the back of a panel truck that sprouted multiple antennas. Beside her, also reviewing the scene,
Commandante
Pascal Tipalongo from AISI, the Italian internal security agency, stood ramrod straight. He spoke softly, in barely accented English, as he gazed through powerful binoculars.

“We will try to accomplish this peacefully. I’m going to give the Chinese one chance to talk the South Africans into releasing the hostages. If they can’t, my people will move in. Agreed?”

Jill didn’t answer immediately. She hated to cede authority to either the Chinese or the Italians. But Stalin’s comment came to mind: How many divisions has the Pope? Like the Pope, she had none. And no chance of getting any soon. She was about to agree to the Italian plan when something white emerged from one of the windows of the house. “What’s that?”

“A flag of truce, I think
,
” Tipalongo answered. “It looks like they want to talk. I expected this.”

Jill shot him a sidelong glance. If he had expected it, he certainly hadn’t let on. She saw a chance to regain some semblance of control. “It might be best for me to talk to them first. If you go in and this blows up, the press will blame the Italian government.”

Tipalongo considered this, but said nothing. She went on
.
“And it would be dangerous for the Chinese to approach the house. They’re heavily armed, and they aren’t fluent in English. Too much chance of a misunderstanding.” The
Commandante
nodded.

She knew he’d been waiting for clear direction from the Minister in charge of his department, who’d become conveniently unreachable on a sailboat in the Mediterranean. She’d guessed that Tipalongo wouldn’t mind shifting the responsibility to the Americans. He reached into his breast pocket and took out a handkerchief. Jill expected him to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Instead, he unfolded the white silk square and handed it her. “Give me five minutes to get my snipers in place, put on a vest, then walk slowly carrying this above your head.”

It took ten minutes before everything was in place. Jill made her way down the concave slate steps toward the street. At the bottom, she turned left toward the house, waving the handkerchief. Although her pulse pounded in her temples and her legs wobbled, she kept going. The South Africans remained out of sight, but had tied their own white cloth on the handle of the open window. When she reached the front door and raised her fist to knock, a small porthole opened and a rough voice snapped, “Drop any weapons on the ground.”

“I have no weapons,” she replied in a shaky voice. She held both hands up in the air.

Murmuring inside the door, followed by a harsh, “Alright, then, keep your hands up in front of you and come inside.” The heavy door opened no more than a foot, hinges groaning.

“No way. If you have something to say to me, say it through the door.”

More grumbling, then Skinhead’s anger-tinged voice, “Have it your way. We want to make a deal.”

“What sort of a deal?”

“Free passage out of the country in return for the lives of your three friends.”

Jill folded her arms, then asked a question to give herself a moment to think. “How would that work?”

“Simple. The Florence airport’s only five miles from here. We drive there. The Italian authorities allow one of our mates to land a small plane. We fly to Tripoli. You have someone meet us there, and we turn over the Lama, his girlfriend, and your boyfriend.”

For an instant, Jill wondered what made him think Conti was her boyfriend, but her mind quickly turned to the problem at hand. While she’d never worked in the field, she had managed more than one hostile negotiation from Washington. She was good at it.

“Not going to happen,” she said. “The Chinese won’t buy it — they’ve no reason to believe you’d keep your end of the deal. Not to mention the Italians. They’d look like fools letting you off scot-free. They hate bad press. Nope, I’m afraid you don’t have the leverage to pull that off. On the other hand, if you turn over the hostages unharmed right now, I’ll make sure you get out of this house alive and get a fair trial.”

Instead of an answer, the door opened another few inches and an arm reached out. Jill jumped back before she realized the South African was handing her something. Something small. The hand opened to reveal a flash drive. “Take it,” Skinhead said from behind the door.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Another message from the Panchen Lama to the people of Tibet. It should interest your Chinese friends.”

“What’s it say?”

“Let’s just say it makes his previous one seem tame. Tell them I’ll give them all the copies, plus our computers, phone equipment and files before getting on the plane. We’ll all board naked if you want.”

“As attractive as that sounds,” Jill began, “it wouldn’t prove anything, would it? You’ve probably already sent the file to your associates. Or I should say, co-conspirators.”

“Your Chinese and Italian pals can reassure you on that score, with all the radio equipment they have out there. There’s no Internet connection in this house. All we have is wireless. We haven’t made a call for more than an hour. The video is time stamped. Twenty minutes ago. In fact, my knuckles are still bleeding.”

“How do we know you won’t send the message from the car?”

Jill could just make out Skinhead’s face through the porthole. She thought he rolled his eyes. “Christ! Give me your phone,” he said.

“Why?”

“I’ll give it to your boyfriend, and you can be on the line with him the whole time. If he sees us messing about with a computer or a phone, you can have the dagoes blow us up with an antitank missile.”

“What if the Chinese won’t buy it?” Jill asked.

“Well, we’ve all got to go sometime, don’t we? But if I’m going, I’ll guarantee you, I’ll take the others with me. I need your answer in ten minutes, otherwise the message goes out.”

Jill, Tipalongo, and the Chinese agent in charge, huddled together, peering over the shoulder of an Italian technician in the back of the panel truck. The computer screen flickered for a moment. Then the image of the Panchen Lama appeared. The strain was evident on his face, but there were no cuts or bruises that Jill could see. Someone else, probably Li Huang, had paid the price for any resistance.

“
Piu forte
, louder,” the Italian said as the Lama began reading from a prepared statement. The technician hit his keyboard several times and the quavering voice filled the cramped space.

“I, the Panchen Lama, ask all Tibetans to stand with me at this critical time. I have reports from all parts of our country and I know that our people are rising up. This is the moment we have waited for. In support of our independence movement, it is necessary to send a clear message to the Chinese tyrants. For this reason, I have ordered our people to destroy another Chinese installation in Tibet each day, starting tomorrow. The Chinese cannot doubt this. They have seen the destruction of their power stations at Manwan and Zangmu. Next there will be larger facilities. This will be accompanied by demonstrations in every Tibetan city and village. I ask you to put aside considerations of personal safety and join me in this crusade so that Tibet may be free once again. Now is the time for action.”

The tremulous young man on the screen stopped, apparently waiting for direction from someone behind the camera, then read the statement twice more, in Tibetan and Chinese. Only when he had finished all three versions did anyone in the panel truck speak.

“What do we do?” Jill asked.

The Chinese agent, Cho Lin, grimaced and inhaled through clenched teeth, “I must speak with my superiors. Two alternatives. Attack now, or make a deal.” She bowed slightly to Jill and the Italian. “Before I call them, please give me your opinion.”

Tipalongo spoke first. “I would not like to attack. We have tried to evacuate the street, but there are some people who can’t be easily moved. Also, I have been informed that reporters are demanding access to this area. My ministry will not be able to resist their requests for long.”

Jill didn’t see how this made much difference to the position. Press or no press, an attack would not work. “An assault would be a disaster. The hostages would likely be used as human shields and caught in the crossfire. And the South Africans would immediately send the new recording to their compatriots, probably out of the country, to preserve their leverage.”

“Do they have the capability to send this message to someone on the outside?” Tipalongo asked the technician in Italian.

The man at the console stroked his gray beard. “Probably. We can monitor their signal and try to jam it. But it’s difficult to cover all the possible frequencies and react in time — unless — we shut down all the mobile switches within ten miles. That will take time, and cause a good deal of disruption.”

Tipalongo translated the answer into English for the others.

“Thank you,” Cho bowed again. “I must call Beijing.” She climbed down and disappeared around the side of the panel truck.

The two South Africans sat on either side of the rickety kitchen table. Skinhead drummed the fingers of his left hand, while he smoked with his right. Tony picked at the gauze bandage on his injured arm.

“Now what do we do?” he asked.

“We wait. What do you think?” Skinhead threw his cigarette butt down on the worn linoleum floor and mashed it with his foot. “They’ll take the deal. They can’t risk us sending out this message. Then we meet the plane at the Florence airstrip and get the hell out of here. We tell them we’re going to Tripoli where we’ll hand over the monk and his pals.”

“But if we hand them over, how can we collect the money? Didn’t Matthis say Yinglong wanted to see the Lama dead before he’d pay?”

Skinhead made a gargling noise of frustration. “The Lama will be leaving the plane somewhere over the Mediterranean, along with the others.”

“But they’ll be waiting for us in Tripoli.”