Supernotes by Agent Kasper Page B

for money. Including flying an airplane full of cocaine from Colombia to Italy. And not some small-load flying machine, but a DC-8 Cargoliner with a whole lot of capacity.
    Ten thousand kilograms of the very purest stuff. That’s the coup Michael Savage wants to pull off. The big score, all at once.
    “You understand what I mean?” Savage asks, stressing every word and staring at Kasper. Blue eyes, Irish rebel freckles.
    “Ten thousand kilograms is ten tons,” Kasper remarks pedantically.
    “Does that sound like too much to you?”
    “It doesn’t to you?”
    “It sounds like enough to me.”
    “It can be done,” Kasper replies. And then he names his price: $2 million.
    They like each other right away.
    Savage asks him to come up with a plan. He wants the plane to land somewhere in Northern Italy, or at least in Central Italy, but no farther south than, say, Tuscany. A large portion of the cargo will have to be transported to northern Europe by truck. The less time a truck spends on the road, the fewer risks it runs.
    “I want a plan that’ll work, no matter what. No bullshit,” Michael warns him. “Remember, I know Italy well.”
    “Excellent. Then you’ll be able to judge for yourself without too much asking around.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “You Irish run your mouths too much. That always causes major problems.”
    “Whereas you Italians…”
    “My father’s an American.”
    “Italo-American bastard.”
    “Irish arsehole.”
    It’s a beginning, and a good one, too.
    Michael has no idea he’s one of the ROS’s next targets. He also doesn’t know that a few years previously, Kasper contributed to the successful outcome of a similar operation, Operation Pilot. A web is being woven around Michael that will not leave either him or his band of Irish and Colombian accomplices any escape.
    Kasper has been working hard during the past few months. He and Savage have met in Bangkok, Phnom Penh, and Europe. Kasper has constructed the plan piece by piece before his eyes. Now everything’s ready; all that’s lacking is the Irishman’s definitive okay. Once he gives it, Operation Sinai will enter its final phase.
    Kasper too is ready.
    He’ll be on that plane. Its belly will be loaded with cocaine in Medellín, he’ll be in the cockpit, and he’ll fly the beast to Pisa. Ten thousand kilos: a mountain of coke. The biggest drug bust ever pulled off in Italy.
    Sinai will be even more sensational than Pilot.
    —
    A soft gust of wind blows through Villa Ada and carries off Kasper’s last words. The general keeps his dark eyes fixed on Kasper as he speaks, his lips pressed together under a moustache that looks as though it was drawn on with a pencil.
    “Ten thousand kilos in one shipment,” the general says, barely nodding. “How many did we seize in Operation Pilot?”
    “A thousand, sir.”
    “And this Irishman wants to bring in ten times as much. How much does that come to in dollars?”
    “Half a billion, more or less.”
    “Only cocaine?”
    “Maybe a little crack too, but crack is generally destined for the American market.”
    The general and the colonel look at each other. It seems to be a signal: the colonel arranges his mouth into a bizarre grimace. “Now, tell me something,” he says. “What’s this business about a meeting with Savage in Switzerland?”
    Kasper’s been expecting that, too. “We’re supposed to meet sometime in the next couple of weeks in Geneva,” he replies, in the tone of a man offering the most natural explanation in the world.
    “Why in Geneva?” the captain wants to know.
    “The DC-8 we want to rent belongs to Jet Aviation in Geneva. The flight will have to be disguised as a humanitarian shipment from the United Nations. I’ve prearranged everything. I’ve already got the documentation that will get us a flight plan and a United Nations call sign—”
    “The communications we’ve intercepted recently suggest that your Irish friend is pretty