Descriptions on the Spot: Enjoy your stay in Italy [An espionage thriller short story]

Lee Guller lifted up the binoculars and scanned the bridge again. The smell of summer flowers and lazy waters was rising up to the balconet where he was crouched. In the distance, Guller could hear a band playing a staccato march on brass and accordion. Guller's wrists had begun to ache and he was sweating in the heat.

"Anything?", a voice came from behind him.

"Still nothing", Guller said, and he put the binoculars back down. He turned to look at Major Jordan Haviland, who was lying on a single bed in the dark room. Haviland held a folded copy of La Gazzetta dello Sport over his face. Guller couldn't tell if the major was reading the paper or just using its pink pages as a fan.

"I'm not worried", Guller said, "T minus 2 minutes until the target should arrive. He should know how to use a watch, after all".

"T minus 2 minutes", Haviland repeated in a mocking tone. "It's not a rocket launch, Guller".

"No, Major", Guller said, but he was biting down on his annoyance.

Guller went back to his binoculars. The stone bridge was all but deserted, just half a dozen tourists milling about, admiring the columns and the green waters below. He scanned once to the left and then once to the right. He paused on a couple taking a selfie. The angle of their phone seemed, briefly, to point in his direction, but everything else about their tradecraft - if it was tradecraft - was all wrong. The risk that they were here for him seemed tiny compared to the reward of letting the op play out.

Keeping the binoculars in place, Guller reached with one hand to his radio. "Sparrow, take your position."

"Leaving the nest", the crackling reply came immediately from his chest.

From behind him, Guller heard Major Haviland snort. But, still, the bed creaked as the major got up to join Guller at the window.

Haviland yawned and ran a hand over his close-cropped silver hair. "A good man, this 'Sparrow' of your's?", he asked.

"Weaver, you mean? Yes, sir. As good as they come." Guller was trying to hold back his annoyance with Haviland - in fact, had been trying to hold back his annoyance ever since he had requested a team to execute the operation and had, instead, been given a major to supervise it. If you had read the briefing notes, Guller thought, you would know that Weaver is as good an agent as you could hope for.

And here was Weaver now, emerging from the right-hand side of the bridge, where two blossom-filled trees partially blocked Guller's view. The left-hand side of the bridge, which headed into the centre of Vicenza, was clear. Weaver was a tall and strong-looking African American in his thirties. His clothes were cheap and threadbare, but he wore sharp sunglasses and a fake designer watch. He was carrying a bundled sheet in front of him. When Weaver reached the centre of the bridge he unwrapped the sheet on to the floor, revealing dozens more pairs of sunglasses and watches. He leaned back on the parapet of the bridge, facing Guller, scanning each entrance to the bridge in turn. The few tourists on the bridge seemed uninterested in Weaver's merchandise. The young couple had put their phone away, and were dancing ironically to the sound of accordion and brass, which had got a little louder. They looked at Weaver, then at each other, and burst out laughing.

"Make anything of those kids?", Haviland said, gesturing at the couple with his smaller set of binoculars.

"It's nothing, I think", Guller said.

Haviland nodded. "I'll take a photo anyway". He bent down to the tripod between them, adjusted the zoom lens, and, a few seconds later, the shutter clicked open and close.

The radio crackled and Weaver's whispered voice came through. "Target incoming. Town side".

Guller's heart raced as he pulled the binoculars across. Outlined against the peach wall of the last house before the bridge, he could see a man approaching. The man walked with a cane; his limp was practised and methodical, and he was approaching with an agonising slowness. A flash of anger: why hadn't they known about the cane?

"Push the timings for each section out by a minute. Target is slow", Guller said into the radio.

"This is your Dr Behmardi?", Haviland said, as the figure reached the base of the bridge.

Weaver was kneeling down, arranging his stock of watches into neat rows on the sheet. "Visual confirmed on target", his voice came over the radio.

Guller didn't reply immediately but, instead, watched Dr Behmardi make his way across the bridge. Older than the photographs that they had of him: thinner in the face, thicker in the body. It was strange to see him moving, finally, and not caught at odd angles or hidden by poor lighting or some obstruction. But, yes, it was him. The limp, and the upward curve of the bridge, made Dr Behmardi bob up and down in the binoculars' viewfinder. He was wearing an unseasonal woolen coat and carried a small black valise.

"That's Behmardi", Guller said.

Haviland nodded and took another photograph. "Well done, Guller, well done".

Dr Behmardi had reached the centre of the bridge now, and stood against the parapet opposite Weaver, with his back to Guller and Haviland's window. Guller continued to watch him through the binoculars. Dr Behmardi had a neat black beard and gold-rimmed glasses. He was nervous: his nose twitching and the cane vibrating in his hand.

"Give him a minute, make sure we're all clear", Guller said into the radio.

"Roger that", Weaver replied.

"Shit!", Guller said. The young couple had approached Dr Behmardi and engaged him in conversation. Guller could see the older man shifting around, looking uncomfortable, shaking his head. The young couple seemed to be trying to persuade him to do something: the man smiling at first, then frowning; the woman pouting.

"What's happening?", Guller said into the radio.

The crackling voice was accompanied with the tinny echo of accordion and brass. "I can't hear anything", Weaver said. "Want me to move closer?"

Guller glanced at Haviland. The bored and amused look that the major had worn for the past few days was gone. Now, Haviland looked taut and worried: he shook his head at Guller.

"Negative. Hold your position. Do you have a visual on those musicians?", Guller said.

"Negative. Music's coming from beyond the trees. Getting closer though", Weaver said.

Dr Behmardi seemed to have relented because he was handing his valise to the young woman and, in return, she was handing him her phone. The older man started to limp out to the middle of the bridge while the couple arranged themselves for a photograph.

"A photo?", Haviland said incredulously. "I don't like this."

Guller felt the heat closing in on him and the dizziness of the brass and accordion spiralling closer.

He was about to order Weaver to move in on Behmardi immediately when the radio sparked again. "Visual on the musicians. Tree side. There's a dozen of them."

And then a boy with one of the tourist families screamed - at first in fear and, then, in delight. The boy was pointing towards the peach house, on the city-side of the bridge, and laughing. The other tourists turned towards the house and a few of them began to clap. Dr Behmardi had also turned to look, and his eyes had widened.

"Back up requested", Weaver said on the radio, "city-side is getting busy. Ten people at least. Masks."

The young woman gestured at Dr Behmardi to take the photo.

"Vehicle team", Guller said, "move on foot to the bridge. We are extracting the target direct."

Guller could see the masked group emerging onto the city-side of the bridge now. Carnival masks: over-sized, papier-maché things, in nightmarish shapes that loomed high and wide above the wearers' heads. They were spreading out in a line along the near-side of the parapet, jostling each other, shaking their masks in time to the music coming from the other side of the bridge. As each masked participant passed a new section of the bridge, Guller found his view blocked. Soon Dr Behmardi would be out of sight.

"Get close to him, now", Guller said to Weaver over the radio.

The young woman had skipped over to Dr Behmardi and was examining the photo he had taken, with a hand on his shoulder. She shrugged, pointed in the direction of the musicians and made a dancing gesture. Dr Behmardi looked frustrated.

"I need you down there", Guller said to Haviland. His stomach felt like ice. Haviland was already strapping on a radio and his pistol. He nodded and left. They had perhaps a minute, and Haviland would take forty-five seconds to reach the bridge.

The musicians had reached the bridge now, and the music was cacophonous. Guller could hear nothing but the noise of accordions and trumpets echoing along the river, and the blood rushing through his ears. The sight of the band seemed to drive the masked crowd into a frenzy because they now broke into a run, and the last that Guller saw of Dr Behmardi, the young woman was still at his side, and the young man was moving to join them. The young woman was smiling at him and moving her shoulders in time to the march of the music.

Guller could see Weaver approaching Dr Behmardi's position from behind but the masked crowd were cutting off the view of his approach too. A second later, Guller could see nothing except the crowd. The musicians, dressed in all black, were now passing through the masked men. They had brought a trail of stragglers with them, and the bridge was now packed.

"Weaver, report", Guller said, urgently. There was no reply.

"Vehicle team, ETA?", Guller said.

"Sixty seconds".

The music on the bridge reached a crescendo. The musicians were weaving in and out of the masked men, and the stragglers were dancing and clapping at their sides. The images flashed and revolved in the viewfinder of Guller's binoculars and, in the heat, it became a feverish vision. He thought he saw Weaver dancing with the young woman, Dr Behmardi scattering secrets from his valise - even Haviland drawing his pistol as he was knocked to the ground. A dozen faces and bodies danced in and out of focus in the viewfinder, but nothing became clear.

"Weaver!", Guller said again, and again he got no reply.

And then, as one, the musicians and the masked crowd began to filter off the city-side of the bridge, and the music began to quieten, slowly at first, and then, almost at once, it stopped altogether. Guller heard a car door open and shut, and an engine move off. All that was left on the bridge was the tourists.

The young couple was gone. Weaver was gone. Dr Behmardi was gone.

"ETA 10 seconds", Haviland said over the radio.

"It's too late", Guller said, "everyone's gone".

The tourist boy screamed again, and this time his mother pulled him in close. Guller pulled the binoculars up and saw that Weaver was still there, lying motionless behind his sheet of fake watches. Guller could still hear the song the band had been playing, a tightening loop in his head.

Haviland arrived on the bridge and checked on Weaver.

"Sorry, Guller", he said into the radio, and Guller could see him shake his head on the bridge.

The major looked around and then spoke into the radio again. "Behmardi's bag is still here. Maybe the girl dropped it in the ruckus."

Guller felt a brief moment of hope. "Anything in it?"

Guller watched the major walk over to the valise, kneel down and open it up. He picked something out.

"Just a leaflet", Haviland said through the radio.

"What does it say?", asked Guller.

Haviland turned his face towards Guller up on the balconet. "It says, 'Enjoy your stay in Italy'".

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Thanks to @thebluepanda for the amazing #descriptionsonthespot photo of Vicenza, Italy that I used as inspiration for this story.