He picked the lock on Paul’s door and entered the room. He risked turning on the overhead light. Paul hadn’t mentioned how long he’d need the truck, but the unusual request in the middle of the night and his disappearance late this afternoon made him suspicious.
He searched Paul’s room. Nothing was different from the last time he’d been here.
He checked the Post-It board and noticed more words and symbols and snapped a picture with his phone. He thought he’d determined the meanings of some of them, but his employer wouldn’t confirm that.
Growing up in rural West Virginia, his family had been dirt poor. Or dirt rich, depending on how you looked at it. They’d lived on a half-acre of dirt. The soil was too rocky for farming and the dirt was too dry and too barren for anything to grow. They had running water from a well on the property and electricity when his family could pay the bill. His father had worked in a coal mine until it was shut down. After that, his only job was collecting welfare checks and drinking.
His parents weren’t bad people. They were defeated by life. But Chuck hated them. He vowed never to be like them. But their lives had limited his options. They had no car and the nearest school was twelve miles away by foot. He attended as often as the weather and life would allow.
When he couldn’t stand being the poor kid with dirty clothes who everyone laughed at, he forged his birth certificate and enlisted in the army.
At first, it was amazing. Three meals a day. A good roof. Hot shower. But the drills became annoying and the rules chafed him. Then came the Iraq War, a desert war with more dirt than Chuck had ever seen. He wanted to get out. But desertion wasn’t possible. The army would find him no matter where he went.
Toward the end of his tour, he learned the army was hiring mercenaries to do special work. They offered more pay and had fewer rules. He signed up with them. For the next two years, he learned about the mercenary life. He also learned that governments, corporations, and certain individuals paid a lot of money for mercenary work.
Chapter Sixteen
Franco stared out the window at the night lights of Rome. The apartment building was tall and offered him a perfect view of the ancient buildings and stone facades. He knew most tourists loved Rome at night, with its lighted fountains and broad walkways. He’d travelled to the city several times, but could never get past the smell of diesel exhaust.
Whimpers and muffled cries sounded behind him. He turned and appraised Sandra Hepburn and her daughter. They were tied to the dining room chairs, their mouths taped shut. Sandra was comely but a little overweight. The daughter was about sixteen with auburn hair, a thin body, and an attractive face. She wore trendy peach lipstick.
He remembered their shock as he’d barged into the tastefully decorated apartment. Sandra had lunged for her gun, but he’d tackled her, beaten her, then subdued the daughter. Then he’d sat down and eaten their eggplant Parmesan. It needed more salt.
The daughter’s cries grew panicked. Her eyes darted to her mother in a questioning glance. Sandra behaved differently. Her eyes focused on Franco with appraisal.
Seeing the two women at his mercy made his heart pound. He stepped closer to the daughter and caressed her cheek. If he’d been in Calabria, he would have taken her to his villa. There, he would have made the girl his pet and eventually put her in his show. But he wanted Paul’s location more than he wanted her submission.
He pushed the daughter’s chin up so their eyes met. Tears ran down her face. He said to her, “Your mother has information I want. She doesn’t want to tell me. She’s even been trained to resist telling me. But I’m very good at what I do.” He stared at Sandra as he plucked each button off the girl’s blouse. They made a soft ‘pop’ as they tore from the fabric.
Sandra screamed through the gag. Franco leaned toward her and removed it.
“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” Sandra said. “Just don’t hurt my daughter.”
“Eight months ago, you helped a man named Paul escape Italy. Where is he?”
Sandra’s eyes turned soft. Defeated. “He died shortly after getting here. His injuries were too severe.”
Franco had broken many women. He knew Sandra’s expression was fake.
“You’re lying.”
Franco focused on the daughter. His heart raced as he thought again about all the training he could give her. He tore the top button off the girl’s jeans, revealing her panties. “Tell me the truth.”
“I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t know!”
Franco knew he was breaking her. He gripped the daughter by the back of the neck and pushed his thumb into her mouth. “Tell me everything you know.”
The agony of indecision spread across Sandra’s face, as if she vacillated between duty and love.
“Tell me!”
Sandra stared at her daughter. “I’ll tell you everything. Just let her go.”
Franco paused, then removed the bonds on the daughter’s legs, but left the chest restraint intact. “Only after you tell me.”
Sandra’s shoulders slumped and Franco savored the feeling of dominating her.
“I knew him as Paul,” she said. “We didn’t use last names. We’d coordinated various protocols for extraction before he went undercover. An attaché from Naples drove him here. He’d been tortured. I tried to get him a visa to leave, but the Italian government blocked his exit. Something to do with payback for the rendition of Abu Omar in 2003.” Sandra paused.
Franco thrust his thumb deeper into the daughter’s mouth. She whimpered.
“A day later,” Sandra quickly continued. “A blond woman named Shelly arrived from the States. I don’t know how she did it, but she acquired medical transport for him back to the U.S.” The mother stared at Franco and said, “That’s all I know. Please,” she begged, “let my daughter go.”
“What was their destination?” Franco said.
“I don’t know! But they left on a U.S. military transport from Vicenza.”
“Was there anyone else you spoke to about this? Anyone who might have known about Paul?”
“There was a FBI operative. But he was on vacation at the time.”
Franco wondered if this was the informant helping the Ndrangheta. “What was his name?”
“I never knew his real name.” Her eyes darted to her daughter. “That’s all I know. I swear!”
“I believe you,” Franco said, moving in front of the mother. He grabbed her by the neck and wrenched it sideways. The daughter screamed through the gag.
Franco brought out his phone and snapped a picture of the dead body and sent it to his brother.
The information Sandra had given was useful. Even though the informant would give him the next lead, he’d have Antonio bribe officials for the flight log and crew manifest. It might help him learn more about Shelly, someone who obviously cared about Paul. It might also help identify the other FBI operative. Information that could prove useful.
He stared at the daughter sobbing. Again, he thought she’d be perfect for his show. But the faster he killed the next victim, the quicker he’d find Paul. He snapped her neck.
When the mother didn’t report for work tomorrow, embassy personnel would come looking. He’d dispose of the bodies and clean up the apartment, which would buy him a few more days of hunting, but someone would eventually figure out Sandra Hepburn had been killed. He didn’t know if they’d tie it to Paul, but time was running short. He had to find Paul before the agent learned he was hunting him.
Franco’s phone beeped and the text message showed the address of the next victim. He was going to America.
Chapter Seventeen
The nightmare memory started the same as it had since he’d experienced it in Italy. Paul smelled diesel fuel and salt air. Ropes cut into his skin. His chest ached. Each breath sent shockwaves of pain through his body and blood dripped into his mouth.
The knife was raised high above him, its wielder still hidden behind a ghostly image. As the
knife sliced across his chin and slammed into his shoulder, however, the scene dissolved like smoke blown by a strong wind. In its place was an image of Franco Grimaldi running toward him on a cobblestone street. His normally slicked-back hair was frazzled like a bird’s nest. Anger contorted his face like a grotesque Halloween mask.
He was soaking wet and cold. Franco gained on him. Paul had no weapon. Blood covered his shirt. He knew he had to get away. Someone’s life depended on it, but he couldn’t remember whose. He glanced over his shoulder. Franco aimed his pistol. He ran faster, then…
His eyes popped open. He was lying in his bed. He hadn’t bolted upright. He hadn’t screamed, but sweat covered his body and his pulse raced like an engine. Was this progress?
After grabbing his coffee and drinking until the caffeine revived him, he completed his morning ritual of fiddling with the Post-it board and dressing in another blue shirt and khaki pants.
His mind drifted to the previous night in Montreal. No one on campus, except Chuck, seemed to know he’d left. And Shelly dragging him back into his old life hadn’t affected him mentally. He actually felt good about going on the offensive. Taking his life back. He still wanted to distance himself from his past, but he didn’t feel like his old life crushed him anymore as it had after he’d been tortured.
Paul waded into the empty hall and sipped his coffee as dawn broke. Dusky purple gave way to a brilliant red, seeped into orange, and finally surrendered to a bright yellow sun. As he focused on his moment of zen, an image popped into his head. He was swimming in murky water, his shoulder and neck blazing with pain. He started, nearly spilling his coffee.
It was only a flash, but he knew he’d just remembered a small fragment of what had happened after he’d been tortured. He thought about Jacob Li’s idea to focus on an image to trigger memories. That freaking psychobabble worked.
He dashed back into his room and wrote the image on the Post-it board. The idea that he was making progress filled him with mixed emotions. On the one hand, he was pissed he hadn’t been able to figure it out himself. On the other, he still feared his amnesia might be a precursor to the dementia his mother had. The one thing he’d always been able to count on was his mind. He’d done extremely well in school with very little effort. Finished the FBI training at Quanitco at the top of his class and been able to outthink the criminal organizations he’d been sent to infiltrate. He didn’t think he’d be able to handle the gradual realization he was losing his mind.
His alarm went off. He silenced it then went to wake up the students.
At the end of the day, he was walking downstairs and spied David. He was scrolling furiously on an iPad.
“What’s got you so interested?” he asked.
David glanced up and smiled at him. “The Founder’s Day project you wanted me to do.””
“Care to share?” Paul asked, moving closer.
He pursed his lips in thought. “I want it to be a surprise.”
Paul peeked over this iPad and saw an article titled, Explosive chemical reactions and how to attain them.
“Not going to blow up the school, are you?”
David looked puzzled. “No,” he said haltingly.
Paul was a little concerned, but glad David was so happy.
As David hurried away, he said. “Thanks Mr. Taylor, er, I mean Mr. T. I think this is really going to work.”
Paul smiled then noticed he was late. He hurried into Conference Room C in Founder’s Hall feeling pretty good.
“Hey, Paul,” Jacob Li said, standing up and shaking hands. “I take it things are going better than yesterday?” He wore another suit and tie.
Paul sat down on the couch and propped his feet up on the coffee table. “Yeah, Doc. How’d you know?”
“You’re smiling,” he said, sitting down and taking a swig of Diet Coke. “What happened?”
Once again, the old hesitancy gripped him. He remembered the shrinks at the FBI facility. Conversations about the weather or sports or TV that suddenly shifted to, “Did you steal sixty-four million dollars?” in an amateur attempt to gauge his pupil dilation or something.
But Jacob had pledged not to be like them, and he had promised himself that he’d work through his fears so the people who the Grimaldis had killed wouldn’t have died in vain. He lay down on the couch and said, “I helped a student.”
Jacob smiled. A warm, caring smile. “Really? How?”
So he told him everything about David.
“And doing that made you feel good?”
Paul looked at him quizzically. “Yeah, why wouldn’t it?”
“Because not all people react that way. In your years of undercover work, how many people did you meet that would be happy helping another person if they didn’t gain anything from it?”
“That’s not the same,” he said.
“Why not?” Jacob asked, leaning back in his chair.
“Because that’s a different world. They’re criminals—murderers, drug dealers, and human traffickers. They don’t think the same way everyone else does.”
“But you lived in that world for years. You worked with killers, broke bread with drug smugglers, and socialized with human traffickers. You convinced them, very successfully, I might add, that you were the same as them.”
“Never like them,” he snarled. Paul sat upright on the couch and leaned forward. He felt his body tense. His scar itched furiously and he scratched it.
“What do you mean?” Jacob asked.
His expression was questioning, as if he didn’t understand why Paul was angry.
The wall around his psyche returned, higher and thicker this time. He didn’t want to have to justify himself to someone who’d never had to fear every second of every day that the slightest gesture could mean brutal torture or, at best, instant death. Or that if you failed, thousands of people would be sold into sexual slavery. No one in the civilian world could possibly understand how difficult it was for a good person to watch, or even do, bad things when your soul raged like a hurricane against your actions—even if you knew what you did would ultimately save people’s lives.
“Paul, remember what we talked about. Share your thoughts, please.”
He put his elbows on his knees and tightly clasped his hands together. Anger built inside him like a pressure cooker.
Jacob, however, just sat there with that damned innocent look. He took a sip of Diet Coke and waited.
He met Jacob’s eyes and suddenly understood how he’d tricked him. He’d made him so mad that he’d confronted what he hated most about his previous job. What he’d hated most about himself—how he’d had to let terrible things happen.
He remembered that he’d mentioned that last session, and how he’d said they’d get back to it. This was his way of doing exactly that, and making sure Paul didn’t back out. He realized Jacob was unusually clever for a psychologist.
He unclenched his fists and exhaled. He’d won this round. “Everyone thinks undercover work is like acting,” he began, leaning back on the couch. “That you just pretend to be someone else. It isn’t like that. You have to become that character. Become someone totally alien to the core of who you are as a person. Many agents get lost, forgetting who they were.”
“Did you ever forget?”
That question reminded him of fake sincerity from all the other shrinks the FBI had hired. But he saw the genuine interest in Jacob’s eyes. “No.”
“You just said many agents lose themselves. How did you stay grounded?”
“Every time I thought I was getting in too deep, I remembered one of my informants.”
Jacob gestured for him to continue.
“The girl had been kidnapped from her home in Greece and smuggled into Italy. There, she was beaten, hooked on drugs, and forced to have sex with a dozen men every night. I was eventually able to free her, but I never forgot how they thought addiction, slavery, and forced prostitution was an acceptable business practice.”
“But
there were other women you couldn’t save.” Jacob leaned forward. “Did you compromise your core values by leaving them at the mercy of the mafia?”
He wanted to scream, ‘No!’ That he never compromised who he was, that he had focused on the greater good: taking down the whole Ndrangheta and saving thousands of girls from sexual slavery instead of a few. But there were things he’d done as an undercover agent or, more accurately, things he’d let happen, which had destroyed people’s lives. And he never wanted to be that person again.
Jacob sat across from him with quietly questioning eyes. Paul realized he’d goaded him again. Before he could react, Jacob said, “Do you think you might have sabotaged the operation because you didn’t like who you had to be?”
Paul felt like someone had slapped his mind. He’d never considered that possibility. He searched through his memories and tried to gauge his thoughts during the last days of the operation. He remembered being focused on getting enough evidence to take down the Grimaldis. But he also remembered hating what he’d had to do.
“No,” he said hesitantly.
“But you’re not sure?” Jacob asked.
Paul looked out the window. Wind blew through the bare winter trees. How can I be sure about what I’ve forgotten?
Silence stretched between them. “Let’s pick up where we left off then,” Jacob said. “You’d arrived at the boathouse and the Grimaldis had a person, a supposed FBI agent, tied to a chair.”
Paul nodded slowly. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it. He’d recalled this memory at the recovery facility, and it was already in the report. The FBI shrinks had gone through it dozens of times in the hopes of jogging the rest of his memories or determining if he was lying to them or himself. But they’d never shined a light on how those events conflicted with who he was as a person. He guessed, in the back of his mind, he’d always understood the forces struggling in his psyche, but he’d never formalized them like he’d done today. Or, rather, how Jacob had forced him to.
He felt something unlock in his brain, but he couldn’t face it. Instead, he rushed to tell about his past.
The Italian Deception Page 9