arise.
‘What about you?’ Trent asked Alain.
He smirked. ‘You think I’m a millionaire?’
‘Maybe not. But I think you’re smart. I think if you applied yourself you could come up with a fast way to get your hands on some cash. You’ve worked alongside Jérôme for some time. You must have a few ideas.’
Trent watched Alain carefully. He didn’t say anything more. Didn’t elaborate. But he saw a flicker of light deep inside the bodyguard’s eyes. The slightest contraction of his pupils, as if he were reassessing the situation.
Trent swivelled in his chair. Stephanie was reading back over his prompt sheet. She swallowed hard. Looked from the sheet to the telephone. Stared at it with a mixture of fear and fascination.
‘Look, it has a speaker,’ Trent said. He tapped a button towards the bottom of the keypad. ‘We’ll be able to listen to everything they say. We’ll be right here with you.’
She nodded. Wet her lip with her tongue. Pushed the script alongside the telephone.
‘But don’t keep watching it,’ he told her. ‘You’ll drive yourself crazy. Silence is one of the most powerful weapons the gang have at their disposal. Making you anxious is a key move for them. Be aware of that and see it for what it is. A negotiating tactic. Nothing more.’
She nodded again and summoned a brave smile. It made her appear more scared and more out of her depth than anything he’d seen so far.
‘So what happens now?’ Philippe asked, fighting a yawn.
‘The hardest part,’ Trent told him. ‘We wait.’
Chapter Ten
Two months ago
Trent waited for his mobile to ring. His phone lay in the middle of a sagging bed in a cramped and miserable hotel room in Naples, Italy.
The room was a corner unit located on the fourth floor of a decrepit building that had seemed, from the outside at least, to be tilting fatally to one side. The fake terrazzo floor was covered in a fine layer of grime and grit. The cast-iron radiator burned hot as a furnace and there seemed no way to adjust it or turn it off. The worm-holed furniture smelled of mothballs, and the en suite bathroom was a weakly lit den of discoloured porcelain, leaking taps and cockroach husks.
But then, what else did he expect from a two-star place on the fringes of the Forcella quarter, home to shabby open-air markets selling contraband goods, foul-smelling passageways, the best backstreet pizzerias in the whole of Italy, and a major clan in the Camorra crime organisation?
He stood by an open window, looking out over a tangled intersection of pedestrian alleyways. It was raining hard outside; had been raining for most of the afternoon into early evening. Water thundered down into the crooked fissures between the close-packed buildings, splattering the cracked stone window ledge in front of him, trickling off electricity cables and telephone lines and laundry racks, sluicing down blown-plaster walls layered in decades of overlaid posters and flyers and graffiti, pounding slickened tarmac, running in countless streams and rivulets and channels and tributaries, carrying dirt and filth and litter towards drains that gurgled like desperate men drowning.
His phone didn’t ring.
The vertical red neon sign beside his window blinked disconsolately through the letters H , O , T and E . The L at the bottom wasn’t working. An omen, he supposed. A warning to stay elsewhere.
He’d had the opportunity to do just that. Somewhere to the north, beyond the knot of crooked rooftops and the rain and the smog of low grey clouds, was the conference centre on the edge of the autostrada where the convention was taking place. Corporate Security in the Modern World . A four-day affair. Most of the talks had been given by squint-eyed tech guys, focusing on IT infrastructures and anti-hacking software. Trent had already presented his paper on the risk of corporate kidnapping.
He’d left Marseilles three days ago, seeing it as an opportunity to generate new business and
‘What about you?’ Trent asked Alain.
He smirked. ‘You think I’m a millionaire?’
‘Maybe not. But I think you’re smart. I think if you applied yourself you could come up with a fast way to get your hands on some cash. You’ve worked alongside Jérôme for some time. You must have a few ideas.’
Trent watched Alain carefully. He didn’t say anything more. Didn’t elaborate. But he saw a flicker of light deep inside the bodyguard’s eyes. The slightest contraction of his pupils, as if he were reassessing the situation.
Trent swivelled in his chair. Stephanie was reading back over his prompt sheet. She swallowed hard. Looked from the sheet to the telephone. Stared at it with a mixture of fear and fascination.
‘Look, it has a speaker,’ Trent said. He tapped a button towards the bottom of the keypad. ‘We’ll be able to listen to everything they say. We’ll be right here with you.’
She nodded. Wet her lip with her tongue. Pushed the script alongside the telephone.
‘But don’t keep watching it,’ he told her. ‘You’ll drive yourself crazy. Silence is one of the most powerful weapons the gang have at their disposal. Making you anxious is a key move for them. Be aware of that and see it for what it is. A negotiating tactic. Nothing more.’
She nodded again and summoned a brave smile. It made her appear more scared and more out of her depth than anything he’d seen so far.
‘So what happens now?’ Philippe asked, fighting a yawn.
‘The hardest part,’ Trent told him. ‘We wait.’
Chapter Ten
Two months ago
Trent waited for his mobile to ring. His phone lay in the middle of a sagging bed in a cramped and miserable hotel room in Naples, Italy.
The room was a corner unit located on the fourth floor of a decrepit building that had seemed, from the outside at least, to be tilting fatally to one side. The fake terrazzo floor was covered in a fine layer of grime and grit. The cast-iron radiator burned hot as a furnace and there seemed no way to adjust it or turn it off. The worm-holed furniture smelled of mothballs, and the en suite bathroom was a weakly lit den of discoloured porcelain, leaking taps and cockroach husks.
But then, what else did he expect from a two-star place on the fringes of the Forcella quarter, home to shabby open-air markets selling contraband goods, foul-smelling passageways, the best backstreet pizzerias in the whole of Italy, and a major clan in the Camorra crime organisation?
He stood by an open window, looking out over a tangled intersection of pedestrian alleyways. It was raining hard outside; had been raining for most of the afternoon into early evening. Water thundered down into the crooked fissures between the close-packed buildings, splattering the cracked stone window ledge in front of him, trickling off electricity cables and telephone lines and laundry racks, sluicing down blown-plaster walls layered in decades of overlaid posters and flyers and graffiti, pounding slickened tarmac, running in countless streams and rivulets and channels and tributaries, carrying dirt and filth and litter towards drains that gurgled like desperate men drowning.
His phone didn’t ring.
The vertical red neon sign beside his window blinked disconsolately through the letters H , O , T and E . The L at the bottom wasn’t working. An omen, he supposed. A warning to stay elsewhere.
He’d had the opportunity to do just that. Somewhere to the north, beyond the knot of crooked rooftops and the rain and the smog of low grey clouds, was the conference centre on the edge of the autostrada where the convention was taking place. Corporate Security in the Modern World . A four-day affair. Most of the talks had been given by squint-eyed tech guys, focusing on IT infrastructures and anti-hacking software. Trent had already presented his paper on the risk of corporate kidnapping.
He’d left Marseilles three days ago, seeing it as an opportunity to generate new business and
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