Marco would never forget the next five minutes, nor would he ever clearly remember them; they were just a collage of sights and sounds stuffed into a recess of his brain.
Elena grabbed his arm. “We need to go.”
It was a sentiment with which he concurred, but he knew there would be no true escape, only a change of venue with the same bloody wallpaper. Francesca appeared in front of him, and Elena ushered them toward the front door before returning to the man lying face down on the floor. She rummaged through his pockets, relieved him of his cell phone and a set of keys, and followed Marco and Francesca out.
The guest quarters were positioned at the back of the island. A maze of footpaths cut through the forest of Aleppo pines and cork oaks, connecting the castle, the guest quarters, and the garage complex. Elena led them to a wooded spot near the garage, which was built on a swath of flat land near where the causeway provided the only escape from the island.
“There is a sentry, Marco.”
“Where?”
“Inside the garage.”
“There is only one? Are you sure?”
“Mohammed made me do errands for them. There was always someone inside the garage. I never saw anyone else.” She tossed him the keys she had taken from the dead man. “These are the keys to his van.”
“Which one is his?”
“I’m not sure. Try the one nearest the door. We will wait for you to come out of the garage and join you just before you get to the causeway.”
Marco left them standing there and followed the path behind the garage, trying his best not to kick any loose stones. He peered through the circular window, smeared with decades of sandstone dust. The garage was dimly lit; only a naked bulb of low wattage illuminated the large bay. There was a small door near where he was standing. He remembered seeing the groundskeeper standing in its open frame, smoking Tuscan cigars and spitting on the gravel walk that led inside. He switched the gun to his left hand and tried the handle; it turned with a creak.
There were two passenger vans inside the garage, long Fiat Ducatos equipped to transport a dozen men each. A movement caught his eye, and he shrank back against the wall. Footsteps echoed, and sweat beaded underneath his beard. A head poked out of the door, seeking the cause of the noise.
Marco reversed the gun in his hand and slammed the grip down on the man’s skull, crumpling him to the gravel. He took a second to make sure the man wasn’t going anywhere—and to make sure he hadn’t killed him, which, thankfully, he hadn’t—and passed into the garage. A quick circuit of the bay confirmed he was alone, but there were no windows at the front, so he had no idea if there was a sentry there. He went out again through the back door, stepping over the prone form of the man he had just knocked unconscious, and circled around, finding no one.
Returning to the garage bay, he jumped into the van Elena had suggested. Mohammed’s key fit the ignition. He activated the door opener, waited for the door to glide open, and started the engine. Leaving the lights off—it was just light enough to see without them—he pulled out of the garage and stopped in front of the causeway. Elena got into the passenger seat; Francesca climbed into the back.
The causeway had been in poor condition four years ago, and the passage of time had done nothing to improve things. The asphalt roadway was rutted and full of potholes—some opening up to the water below—and the guardrail was flimsy at best and missing in spots. Halfway across, they drove over the drawbridge used to allow boats to pass through the channel, and Marco stopped beyond the control booth on the far side. He got out and motioned for Elena to follow, leading her to the side of the causeway, where he pointed to a length of white pipe bolted to the supports.
“The phone cable runs inside that pipe.”
She nodded, and he ran back to the control booth. Most of the boats sailing in these waters used cell phones to trigger the drawbridge, but there was a manual mode as well. He toggled one of the levers, triggering a set of flashing lights and lowering the car barrier. When the gate was in place, he pulled the second control, and the hydraulics whirred, lifting the metal grate he had just driven over. When the drawbridge was fully vertical, he sliced all the hydraulic lines with his diving knife and used the butt of his gun to destroy the control mechanism.
Elena was in the driver’s seat when he returned to the van. He jumped into the passenger seat, and she pulled away. At the end of the causeway, she turned onto the main road, which ascended the steep ridge that had kept the Cinque Terre isolated for generations. Olive groves and vineyards glowed in the first light of dawn. Sheep grazed on the narrow terraces of grass cut into the hillside. When they crested the top of the ridge, Elena pulled in to an overlook on the side of the road and hopped out. Marco joined her, and they gazed back the way they had come.
The light had gathered enough to see the island sitting like a sentinel off the shoreline. It was still too dark to make out more than the outline of the castle and the guest quarters, but the garage was visible in the headlights of the van that had pulled out. They watched in silence as it jolted over the causeway and stopped in front of the barrier. Marco imagined he heard shouting, but it might only have been the whine of the breeze or the crash of the waves.
“You didn’t happen to grab the boat keys, did you?”
Elena shook her head. “No, but the main tank is almost empty, and I started pumping the auxiliary tank into the water before we got off. It will be empty by now, though the register is stuck on full. They will run out of gas twenty miles out to sea.”
With these comforting thoughts in mind, they got back into the van and drove away. Elena followed the ridge road for a kilometer and turned onto the local highway heading inland. Marco stared at the lemon groves and listened to Francesca’s breathing as she slept on the middle seat. After a time, they pulled into a rutted track leading through a stand of beech trees and stopped in front of a one-story stucco house. A battered Opel hatchback was parked there, keeping watch over a flock of straggly chickens.
“Wait here.”
Marco had never been to Elena’s father’s house, but she had talked about it so often he felt like he had. Her father was an Iraqi surgeon who had fled Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror and come to Italy looking for opportunity. But the Italian government had refused to grant him a medical license, and so he waited tables at a local restaurant at night and ran a free clinic during the day. His Italian wife had died during Francesca’s birth, and he had raised his daughters as best he could under the circumstances.
Elena helped her sister out of the van, and they disappeared into the darkened house. She came out ten minutes later alone, with a basket of bread and oranges hanging from the crook of her arm, and got back into the driver’s seat.
“How are they?”
“My father picked up Gianna and gave her a sedative. She is sleeping.”
“What about Francesca?”
“He is tending to her now.”
“Did you call the police?”
Her dark eyes narrowed, and her brow furrowed. Her full lips compressed into a line.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison.”
In an effort to cut down on the rising tide of illegal immigration into Italy, the Italian parliament had passed several strict laws discouraging human trafficking.
“But you can explain what happened, how they duped you …”
Her only reply was a slow shake of her head. He remembered the same look from a time long ago. The circumstances had been different—she had demanded he choose between her and Him; he had wanted, begged, really, to keep them both—but the conviction and the finality were the same. No.
“But the Bel Amica is on the island; it will lead them to you.”
“My boat was stolen.”
“Did you report it stolen?”
“I wasn’t aware. I’ve been away.”
“But Francesca and Gianna …”
“They wo
uld never sell me out.”
She let the sentence hang in the air that tasted of oranges and lemons. But how about you, Marco, will you sell me out?
“There might be another way,” he said.
Her breath let out, slowly and almost too softly to hear, but there was no mistaking its aroma, fruity and pungent.
“Those men. They came here for a reason.”
Her head lifted, and her shoulders drew back, accentuating the curvature of her chest.
“If we can find out what they came here to do …”
She turned her head toward him, locking him in her dark gaze.
“But I don’t know who they are. I told you that.”
“You heard nothing?”
“No. They knew I spoke Arabic, so they were careful not to say anything around me.”
After Elena’s mother had died, her father had stopped speaking Italian around the house. Both Elena and Francesca had grown up bilingual.
“You must have heard something. You were with them for a week.”
“No, I didn’t. I swear it.”
They sat in silence watching a feral cat stalk across the road in front of them. Liguria had been overrun with feral cats, which the residents liked much better than the rats they had been brought in to kill.
Something licked at the corner of Marco’s mind, but with the exhaustion, the hunger, and the bloodshed, the smell of which still hung in his nose, he couldn’t grasp it. He opened the glove box and searched through it, but other than the owner’s manual, the rental agreement, and the registration, it was empty. He got out and inspected the back of the van, which only revealed the spare tire and a road emergency kit. And then he remembered the sheet of paper he’d taken from Karim. He fished it out, climbed back into the van, and flipped on the map light.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know. It was in Karim’s pocket.”
He unfolded the sheet of paper and held it up in the light. One line of script had been scratched across a sheet of graph paper, but not in any language Marco could decipher.
Elena snatched the paper from him and examined it. “It’s Arabic.”
“What does it say?”
“It doesn’t say anything; it’s a street address.”
“Where?”
Elena didn’t reply. She fired up the ignition, waited for the navigation system to activate, and punched in the address.
“It’s in Orvieto, a commercial area south of the city.”
Marco had spent two years at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, during which time he had taken the train to Orvieto to attend mass at the cathedral and stroll through the narrow alleys of the old city, but he didn’t know the surrounding area well.
“I’ve delivered things near there before,” Elena said.
He didn’t ask what those things were. Elena had been involved with Antonio even before she had abruptly departed from Marco’s life. He had feared their break-up would lead to more involvement with the ’Ndrangheta, but she had demanded he choose, and he had chosen Him. This involvement also explained the lavish furnishings and expensive artwork in her house, which were well above her pay grade.
“How far away is it?”
“I can make it there in three hours.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know, but if we find something, we can call the police then.”
Not waiting for Marco’s consent, she shifted the van into gear and started winding her way up and over the steep ridge upon which Liguria had been built. Within ten minutes, time that Marco had spent with his eyes closed, silently asking the Savior for guidance and courage, as well as forgiveness, the entrance to the A10 loomed ahead in the dim light. Elena merged into the light traffic heading southwest.
Orvieto—and whatever fate had in store for them there—was three hours away.
Five
Giampaolo Benedetto pulled the brim of his Andalusian hat down low and adjusted the knot of his matching scarf. It was summer in Italy, and the heat was horrifying, even at this early hour, but Giampaolo had spent years cultivating a certain look, and he wasn’t about to let a few degrees Celsius get in the way. It was Sunday, and the traffic on the outskirts of Orvieto was light; only the occasional lorry rumbled past, breaking the quiet of the morning with the heavy drone of its engine and the vibration of its tires on the tarmac.
Giampaolo completed a circle surrounding his destination, stopping every now and again to tighten the laces of his Testoni Oxfords, using the opportunity to steal a glance behind him to make sure no one was following him. He saw nothing other than the outline of the old city rising into the Umbrian sky, and a handful of anonymous vehicles, one of which was the Opel sedan he had rented, parked along the street. It had pained him to leave his silver Mercedes-Maybach sedan in the driveway of his villa in Monti, but there were consequences to the decision he had made a year ago, and his beloved car would not be the only thing he would be forced to abandon.
Checking his Rolex—a gift from the previous pope, a sainted man who had only lasted a year before succumbing to a stroke—he walked across the street and used a key to open the gate; in front of him, a crumbling cement sidewalk led to a dilapidated warehouse. He surveyed the street behind him as he closed the gate; it was empty, but that did nothing to dispel the unease that hung in the air as heavily as the odor of wet clay from the kilns next door. He scanned the warehouse, confirming that nothing had changed from the last time he saw it: the windows were all barred with wrought iron; the adobe exterior was chipped in many places and covered with graffiti in others; and a flight of pigeons lined the edge of the terracotta roof, filling the morning with their cooing.
With a last look behind him, he crossed the rutted sidewalk and used the same key to gain entry to the back of the warehouse, where the office was located. Stacks of old ledgers gathered dust in featureless cubicles; an adding machine lay overturned on the garbage-covered floor. A wood-paneled wall dotted with pin-ups separated the area from the rest of the warehouse. One of the pin-ups, depicting a voluptuous blonde in black lace panties and nothing else, reminded him of one of his girlfriends, and he stared at it for a minute, considering taking it with him as a memento. Deciding against it—he was, after all, leaving her, and several others as well, behind—he walked across the room and stopped in front of a door, knocking twice and then twice more as per the prearranged signal. The door swung open from the inside, and Giampaolo passed through into the wide, rectangular room that abutted the office. A row of lockers was cut into the far wall, each containing a complete uniform, including riot helmet, ballistic shield, and black combat boots.
“You are late.”
Giampaolo turned around to face the man who had addressed him. He was of average size, with dark hair and dark skin, dressed in a pair of gray slacks and a gray pullover. Giampaolo had met him several times before, the first time shortly after the last papal enclave; he hadn’t enjoyed any of the meetings.
“You have the keycards and the permits?”
“You have the money?”
The man nodded. “As soon as you hand them over, I’ll transfer the cash.”
Giampaolo’s face flushed; a bead of sweat trickled down his face and seeped into his silk scarf.
“That wasn’t the arrangement we made.”
“Arrangements change.”
“Not with me they don’t.”
They glared at each other as an overhead fan whirred, creating an anemic breeze that only made the heat worse.
“Perhaps I can convince you to cooperate.” A silenced handgun appeared in the man’s hand, and a smile replaced the scowl.
Giampaolo laughed. “You’ll have to try harder than that.”
The gun—some kind of Eastern European semi-automatic, he thought, perhaps a Makarov—didn’t waver, but the cocksure smile did, albeit only momentarily.
“Give me the keycards and the permits, or I will kill you and take them myself.”
&n
bsp; “I wouldn’t recommend that.”
“No? Why not?”
“Let me show you.”
Giampaolo lowered his hands slowly and removed an envelope from the breast pocket of his blazer, handing it to the man pointing the gun at him.
“Open the envelope, please.”
The man ripped it open, revealing five white keycards.
“Notice the passcodes are not there.”
The deal they had made had specified that the five keycards be accompanied by the passcodes that corresponded to them. But the labels on the cards were blank.
“That wasn’t our arrangement, Signor Benedetto.”
“As you said, arrangements change.”
Something scrabbled overhead, a rat most likely—the damn place was overrun with them—and the wail of a distant ambulance seeped in through a broken window. Neither man moved.
“Put the gun on the floor, kick it away, transfer the funds, and I’ll give you the passcodes.”
It was the other man’s turn to sweat, which he did profusely, darkening the collar of his gray pullover. A foul odor emanated from him, which Giampaolo was at a loss to decipher. A mixture of garlic, onions, and coffee, perhaps, he couldn’t be sure, but he was doubly glad he had applied a second dab of his scent, which had been created especially for him by a parfumerie a few blocks from Vatican City.
“Put the gun down and kick it away.”
The man made no move to comply.
“I am going to leave in three seconds, unless you do as I say.”
The sweat continued to pour off the man, but the gun didn’t flinch.
“One …”
The gun—it was definitely a Makarov, he was sure of that now—started to shake.
“Two …”
The man’s finger whitened on the trigger.
“Three …”
The gun dropped to the floor, coming to rest between them. Giampaolo gave it a nudge with the toe of his shoe, sending it spinning to the other side of the room.
“Now transfer the funds.”
The man produced a tablet from his pocket and started tapping away. A minute later, Giampaolo’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He fished it out and confirmed that five million euros had been transferred into his bank account in Bern.
The Vatican Conspiracy: A completely gripping action thriller (A Marco Venetti Thriller Book 1) Page 4