Chapter Text
"If I can't be the best of the best, I'm gonna make sure to be the best of the worst."
-- Clark Olofson*
“Good afternoon. We’re reporting live from Banca d’Italia here in Naples, where Feliciano Vargas has just arrived at the scene at the demand of his older brother Lovino Vargas, the man currently holding four people hostage inside the bank. The younger Vargas has yet to step out of the car that police escorted him in, but already curious civilians have gathered outside the police’s barrier to see him. His face is one many will recognise, a notorious criminal and playboy who until now has been jailed in Tuscany since April last year after several scams, many targeted toward Deutsche Bank, whose vice-director just so happens to be one of the older Vargas’ hostages. My name is Luis Russo reporting on the hostage drama at Banca d’Italia in Naples, and you’re watchi–”
A woman steps onto the screen beside the reporter. She's wearing a beige trench coat over her dress shirt and skirt, and the edge of a police badge is visible beneath the coat’s light fabric. Her face is bare, freckled, and sour, and she has her hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She takes the microphone from the reporter’s hand.
“We have deduced that vice-director at Deutsche Bank is not one of the hostages,” she announces in a curt British accent before returning it.
The reporter takes the microphone and directs a quick, confused glance toward the camera before speaking again. “Uh– Right. Update directly from the police here at the scene: the vice-director at Deutsche Bank is not one of the hostages. I apologise for my earlier misinformation. My name is Luis Russo reporting on the hostage drama at Banca d’Italia in Naples, and you’re watching the national news.”
“Perfect,” a man behind the cameraman assures the reporter, and the camera turns off.
The reporter smiles hastily, half-heartedly, and turns to the woman beside him. He recognises her as Alice Kirkland, head of the counter-terrorism branch on Scotland Yard, who had arrived at the scene along with her colleague, Alfred F. Jones, mere hours after Lovino had seized control of the bank. She was the one who had –through misunderstandings and frustration– negotiated demands with Lovino.
“Are you sure he’s not in there?” the reporter asks her, sceptical.
“She lied. He’s in there, but Lovino doesn’t know that, and he has to remain oblivious,” her colleague, Alfred answers from where he stands slightly behind Alice. He's wearing a pair of thinly wired glasses, and a polished police badge is visible on his shirt. “Do you know the leverage it’ll grant him if he finds out?”
“Precisely,” Alice agrees.
On the other side of the plaza, Feliciano is still waiting inside the car. His hair is long, strands of hair reaching well past the curve of his neck, and he's wearing a patterned silk shirt and red pants as he had refused to leave the jail in anything but the current trending fashion. He's strangely giddy and has been talking non-stop the entire ride about this and that --his trip to Tokyo and his near-death experience in Copenhagen-- from the backseat where he sat cramped between a tall man with Netherlandic heritage, Lars, he introduced himself as, and Antonio, a familiar face from Feliciano’s childhood. Feliciano reckons that it’s been Antonio who has arrested him half of the time, which is probably also why he got away with so much at first; Antonio is too kind to be a policeman or at least a good one. Antonio is only in his early forties, yet there are already streaks of grey near his temples, and the firm line of his broad shoulders has become rounder than the last time Feliciano saw him.
“You know what to do?” Antonio asks and his breath, smelling of pink gum, is hot against the side of Feliciano’s face, and Feliciano nods. Really, he doesn’t.
Lars taps a wiry finger against the car’s window and throws a glance at the people leaning against and over the barrier, waving and shouting in the car’s direction, “You’ve got quite a crowd.”
“Nice to know I still got it,” Feliciano smiles, and Antonio laughs. Lars only looks at him with a stoic expression.
“Shall we?” He asks instead and opens the car door.
The temperature outside hits Feliciano with the force of a wave crashing onto the shore, heavy and smothering, and he hasn’t seen this many people in months. He has never before been incarcerated as long as he has been now, locked in his room like an animal locked in a hunter's crate. The world seems endlessly big as it spreads out in front of him. It’s a little scary, a lot exhilarating to be back outside.
The car he stepped out of stands parked near the corner of the plaza. Barriers have been reinforced across the place’s middle, separating the several police cars parked near the bank from onlooking civilians, journalists and reporters. There are only a few meters of empty ground between the police and the entrance to the bank; it is an invisible line no one dares to thread, and in the middle of the pseudo-death strip, there's a pool of blood, staining the cobblestones with its still wet, red shine. Neither Lars nor Antonio told Feliciano that anyone had been hurt. Feliciano adjusts his sunglasses, pretends not to think of the blood that could very well be his brother's, and follows Antonio into the centre of it all, where a majority of the police force is gathered in front of the bank. They're all sweating in their dark uniforms, complaining and pulling at their clothes, trying not to have any sweat stains visible when the journalists snap pictures of the scene.
“Feliciano!” A woman, among the civilians outside the barrier, shouts after him. She's a pretty, young thing with long hair and a short skirt, and Feliciano thinks he recognises her from a dance floor in Sorrento --or maybe he doesn’t and she’s just one of those loons who sent him erotic letters while he was in jail. He smiles at her either way –he did read and enjoy those letters after all– and Lars pushes at his shoulder, silently telling him to keep moving.
A woman with a bare, freckled and sour face and a man with glasses greet him, seriously and enthusiastically respectively. All of the police activity seems to circle around the two of them, the white and black cars are parked in the form of an arch behind them as though they have their own gravitational pull, and the woman, despite not usually being Feliciano's type, certainly has a pull on him, high heels and bare legs and green eyes.
“Kirkland, Alice Kirkland, and this is my colleague Alfred Jones,” the woman says, shaking Feliciano's hand.
Alfred shakes his hand as well, "I've heard a lot about you, man. Did you really--"
"Jones," Alice says sharply and turns to Feliciano. "I hope Fernandez and Bakker have already briefed you?”
"Yes, though I wish it was you," he says and smiles at her in a way that shows his dimples. The stare Alice gives him reminds him of the stares he used to receive from disappointed teachers and from judges who were sick and tired of seeing him in court; Feliciano fixes his mouth and straightens his back.
“Good, then no more idle chatter. Jones, get him the things,” Alice asks, and Feliciano watches the man's broad back as he disappears behind the police cars. He sees the pool of blood again, velvet red and though he knows it is shallow it seems to be a few hundred meters deep, shining like an ill star in the sunlight, and suddenly he feels nervous, as though the gravity of the situation has finally hit him.
“You don’t happen to have a cigarette on you?” Feliciano asks Antonio in the hopes that some nicotine will quench his anxiety. Antonio, kind as he is, hands one to him and lights it for him as well. Feliciano takes a long desperate drag and exhales to the side.
“Do you have one for Lovino as well?” he asks, and though they’re about the same height he looks at Antonio through his eyelashes.
“You’re not here to be his delivery boy,” Alice quickly cuts in, but Antonio is already handing Feliciano another.
Feliciano looks at Alice when he takes the second cigarette and tucks it behind his ear, saying in his sweetest voice: “Thanks, Toni.”
Alice is unimpressed with both of them.
"I'm back and I have the goods," Alfred announces loudly and comes up beside Alice, in his hand he carries a beretta that he stretches out towards Feliciano.
"Jones!" Alice whispers in a harsh tone and takes it from her colleague. She looks around nervously before offering it to Feliciano again, more discreet this time. "No one can know we gave you this."
The sun is suddenly too hot, too bright in Feliciano’s eyes, and his vision nauseatingly blurs and sharpens in tempo with his pulse as he looks at the gun presented in Alice's palm. He feels ill just looking at it; a tiny, black thing, so carefully put together for one devastating intention. He knows he has to take it, not that he doubts Lovino, but because they won’t let him inside the bank otherwise --to not take it is an immediate claim of loyalty to Lovino. Feliciano reaches for it with unsteady hands and stuffs it into the back of his pants, pulling his shirt down to conceal it. It presses cold and hard and unwelcome against the small of his back. His hands shake.
It’s Alice’s turn to smile at him, and her eyes are narrow, holding no warmth whatsoever. Antonio’s smile is much kinder. He puts a gentle hand on Feliciano’s shoulder in the same way he used to do when he caught Lovino and Feliciano stealing football cards as kids; it helps centre Feliciano’s thoughts.
“You don’t have to use it, kid,” he says quietly, “It's only a safety precaution.”
“Though, we encourage its usage,” Alice adds.
“Fuck yeah, blast him!” Alfred agrees
That’s my brother you’re speaking of, Feliciano wants to say.
“Right,” Alice says, “That’s all. We don't have endless amounts of time. I believe you know how to enter a bank, Mister Vargas.”
Feliciano finishes his cigarette and discards it on the ground despite Alice’s harsh glare, killing any burning embers with the toe of his crocodile leather shoes (that he specifically asked for). Antonio, Alfred, and Alice watch him leave.
It’s as if time doesn’t exist, he’s aware of everything and nothing at once, the sun’s bright light and everyone’s eyes on his back, the murmur of anticipation, scepticism and hope. A soft breeze soughs in the trees surrounding the plaza and his feet feel light, the blue sky above him reflecting in their polished surface. The gun has become warm in proximity to his body, clings to his skin with sweat and weighs heavily on his body and mind. He passes the pool of blood and sees a mirrored version of himself pass in it, red and blurry, warping in form as he steps over it. He adjusts the collar on his silk shirt. If nothing else, he’ll make this a funny memory to look back on when he’s back in jail; if everything, he’s going to give every European watching the entertainment of a lifetime.
In the distance behind him, he hears the familiar crisp voice of reporter Luis Russo from the national news.
“Feliciano Vargas has stepped out of the car and is, after a conversation with officers Kirkland, Carriedo Fernandez, and Jones, on his way toward the bank, where his brother Lovino Vargas awaits him. I am now talking with two of the officers that spoke with the young Vargas, Kirkland and Fernandez Carriedo. Kirkland and Fernandez Carriedo are also responsible for leading the police operation here on the site, and the question on everyone’s minds, at least mine, is: was it really a good idea to send in Feliciano Vargas, the robber's brother and one of recent Italy’s most notorious conmen?”
The camera zooms in on Antonio’s face, appearing in black and white on television sets across the country. He exhales cigarette smoke through the side of his mouth and looks at the reporter when he answers, “I believe with my entire heart in the young Vargas.”
Alice's face, half concealed in the smoke from Antonio’s cigarette, stares at the camera, and her face is stone. I don't, she wants to say, but national panic is the last thing she needs to deal with right now.
“It’s not a matter of good or bad ideas, the point is that the situation is developing. We have met one of Lovino’s demands and through that, most likely, earned valuable time to plan our next move.”
The bank's doors close with a thud behind Feliciano.