by Trevor Scott
“Finish my work.”
Damn it. This whole time, from Tunis to Sicily to Rome to Malta and back to Sicily, Jake had not really thought about what he would do once he found Sara. He had just been glad to get out of that Tunisian prison. But now he had a dilemma. Stick with her and keep her safe or make sure she got on the next plane to Texas.
“How much longer do you need?” he asked her.
She shrugged. “Maybe a week. Two tops.”
Jake had a feeling his mission had just changed from finding an American professor in Europe to working as her body guard. Time for the sales pitch. “Let me help you. I was an Air Force officer before working with other agencies in our government. Since then I have run a private security consulting company here in Europe. I know the region. I promise I’ll contact your brother and tell him you’re all right, but I would like to stick with you. Would that work for you?”
A wave of relief seemed to flush through Sara’s body, her shoulders going from tensed upward to their normal position. She simply nodded agreement.
“All right,” Jake said. “Then let’s go to your next location. Where would that be?”
“Taormina.”
“A beautiful city,” he said.
“You’ve been there?”
“A number of times. We can pick up a train a few blocks from here.”
13
Demetri sat down onto the seat in the train a few blocks from the Catania airport. The four of them had barely gotten away from the airplane after losing Jake Adams and that woman, who somehow were able to land at the joint NATO base at Sigonella, forcing them to turn back and land at their intended destination at Catania.
They had spread out in groups of two on this train car, two in the front and two in the back. He sat across from Niko, who was still in some pain from having been shot in the buttocks on the plane. Although the bullet barely made it under the skin, with very little blood loss, Demetri understood the pain Niko must be in every time he sat down. Kyros, who had medical first aid training from the army, had pulled out the little 9mm round with a needle-nose pliers and patched him up with a first aid kit on the plane. No stitches required.
“How are you doing?” Demetri asked Niko as the train pulled away from the terminal.
“Much better.”
He would have to hold his man in check if they ever ran across Jake Adams again. Niko should have never opened fire on their airplane in the first place, and Demetri had seriously reprimanded the man for his actions. He just hoped word would never get out to Zendo. If they had simply followed Adams and the woman they probably would have landed at Catania’s Fontanarossa Airport. He still wasn’t sure how Adams knew where the American professor was going. How had he found out? Also, there were only two ways for her to get to Messina from Malta—airplane or ferry to Catania and then bus or train. They had no way of knowing how she would get there, but they would catch her there for sure. And he still had no idea what Petros Caras wanted with this American professor. He learned a long time ago not to ask questions like that. Sometimes knowing certain details got in the way of the mission. But at least he thought he got through to his men that the woman must not be hurt. She was no good dead or injured.
A few minutes later and the train pulled into the downtown terminal a few blocks from Catania’s waterfront. Demetri watched the platform as the train slowed. He smiled and then ducked down when he noticed the man standing there with a backpack over his shoulders, a woman dressed completely in black at his side. It was Jake Adams and the professor, Sara Halsey Jones. If he believed in God, he would have thanked him at this very moment for making this happen. Now he tried to think about which of his men might be recognizable to Adams. That depended on his memory. They had all brushed past the man in Rome, and the man with Kyros, whatever his name was, had a close encounter with Adams on the ferry from Tunis to Trapani. No, they were probably all right. Once the train got going he would personally find out which car they were in, and then it would be clear sailing all the way to Messina. Just relax and enjoy the ride.
●
Jake got onto the train around the middle car. He liked to be able to have an escape in either direction if he needed to. His training was taking over his actions now. They took chairs against the back wall of their car, and he saw Elisa on the far end opposite side with a good view of him. Maybe it was time for him to tell Sara about his friend Elisa. Sara sat down against the window next to Jake. She was tired, he could tell, but she was still quite attractive. He wondered why she had not married. He understood not doing so with women in the Agency, especially for those on the covert side of the house. But one would think working at a university would have exposed Sara to a lot of eligible men. Maybe she went the other way.
He took out his phone and punched in Elisa’s phone number from memory, sending her a text that read ‘Taormina.’ He saw her pick up her phone and smile. Then he got this message back: ‘Una bella città.’ Yes, it was.
Jake needed to contact the lawyer in Washington to let him know he’d found Sara Halsey Jones. He considered making a call, but thought it would be more discreet as either a text or an e-mail. He decided on the later. On his phone he typed in the e-mail address for Brock Winthrop and sent him a simple message with the basic facts.
Seconds later he got an e-mail acknowledgment from the lawyer saying that was wonderful. Then the lawyer told him that Sara’s father was quite ill and had been sent back to Texas with only days to live. Her father was asking to see her before he died. He showed her the e-mail from Winthrop and she responded with a concerned look, but more curious than anything.
“You know this Brock Winthrop?” Jake asked her.
She laughed. “Yeah. The man has been trying to get me into bed since I first strapped on a training bra. He and my brother were friends in college, Yale Law. My brother Jim is fifteen years my senior and Brock has been sucking off the Halsey teat ever since. I don’t know what my brother sees in the man. Brock is Jim’s lawyer and advisor. He also handles my father’s estate.”
“Is your father really sick?”
“He’s eighty. My mother died a number of years ago. Dad was diagnosed with some kind of cancer two years ago. The doctors gave him a couple months back then. He’s just ornery enough to hang on for two more years.”
“What did the lawyer mean when he said they sent your father back to Texas?”
“Jim wanted him close to him in Washington. Dad really didn’t want to leave Texas, but he eventually agreed. He did stipulate that he wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near the capital. He wanted to die in Texas. So maybe he is getting worse. I talked to him just before I left for Europe and he sounded all right. But that was weeks ago.”
Jake considered this new information. “Do you want to head back to Texas? We could pick up a commuter flight to Rome and the next flight to the Lone Star state.”
Sara let those thoughts brew within her. Jake could see the calculation, like a mathematician doing calculus in her mind. “This might sound callous,” she said, “but ask how long they expect him to live.”
Pulling out his phone again, Jake typed in the request. A couple of minutes later and the lawyer indicated it could be days or a week. Buck Halsey was a stubborn man. He showed this to Sara.
“All right. We keep at it for a couple of days.”
He nodded and put his phone away. “Could you tell me what you’re trying to discover here? It might help me find out why the Greeks are after you?”
“Greeks?” she asked, confused.
“Yeah, Greeks. That’s who’s after you.”
“Polybius was a Greek historian,” she said. “But he’s just the conduit to my understanding. My real subject is the great mathematician Archimedes from Syracuse.”
Jake had visited Syracuse, or Siracusa as the Italians called it, many years ago with his ex-girlfriend Toni Contardo. They visited all of the Roman and Greek ruins. But at the time they were more interested in exploring the
body of each other.
“So eventually we will end up in Siracusa,” Jake said.
“Right. But to use a football analogy, we’re working our way down the field picking up yards until we’re within striking distance of the end zone.”
“Football? Do the Owls even have a team?”
“Hey, football is like religion in Texas. Don’t mess with our religion our football or our guns.”
Jake was beginning to like this woman. It wasn’t a requirement of his job, but it was a nice perk. He caught the attention of Elisa as he got up, indicating to keep an eye on their new friend. “I need to head to the restroom,” he whispered to Sara. “Be right back.”
The WC was right behind in the car in front of theirs. He got there and saw it was occupied. As the door opened, Jake and the man coming out met with their eyes, with immediate recognition by both of them. The man tried to throw a right punch but his shoulder hit the side of the door frame.
Without thinking, Jake thrust his right foot into the man’s stomach, sending him flying back into the restroom. Then he followed the man inside and forced the door shut behind him. They wrestled in the tight quarters, neither able to get a good punch off. Finally Jake shoved his elbow upward into the man’s jaw and knocked him out. Then he searched the man’s pockets for identification. This was the same man he had encountered on the ferry from Tunis to Trapani after he took the Glock from his friend—the one Jake had just killed in Malta. All he found was a wallet, which he shoved into his pocket. And, of course, another Glock 19 under his left arm and two extra magazines under his right. He had just seconds to get the hell out of there before someone came. Smiling, he decided to make things a little more difficult for this guy. Jake stripped the man’s pants off, along with his boxers, and rolled them up under his arm. Then he put the man back onto the toilet as if he was doing something sordid.
Opening the door slightly to see if anyone was there, Jake saw nobody. He slipped out and threw the man’s pants into a garbage can. Then he hurried back toward his seat. Somehow these guys had gotten on the same train. This could have been a coincidence, but he didn’t like the odds.
Back at his seat he reached down to Sara and said, “Let’s go. They found us.”
“What? How?”
He led her by the hand up the corridor toward Elisa, who could see he was concerned. She got up and said, “What’s up Jake?”
“The Greeks found us,” he said. “Yeah, she’s with us, Sara. I’ll introduce you later. Right now we need to get off this train.”
Lucky for them the train seemed to stop in every one-horse town between Catania and Taormina. But he was sure they would be watching for them. Within a minute the train slowed for a small station. Instead of getting off immediately, Jake held them there until the conductor said the doors were about to close. Just at the last second Jake pulled the two women out onto the platform and hurried away from the train. He didn’t look back until he was sure the train had left the terminal. They had gotten off clean. But now they needed transportation.
“What happened?” Elisa asked.
“Wait. Who is she?” Sara asked.
Jake introduced them and said they were all on the same team. He explained what had happened to the man on the train, then he started to walk outside and handed the Glock to Elisa. “A spare.” He went through the man’s wallet, but it only held a driver’s license with a photo barely recognizable. He kept the forty Euros and threw the wallet into the garbage as they left the tiny terminal.
“We need a ride,” Jake announced. “Any ideas? The rest of the Greeks will get off at the next stop and come back for us. Someone would have been on lookout for us getting off the train.”
The two women looked around. There were no taxis and the bus might come in five minutes or a half hour. However, there was a small parking lot with cars left behind by commuters. Jake went from car to car testing driver’s doors. The only one unlocked was an old beat up Fiat Uno. It would have to do.
“Get in,” Jake demanded.
They did as he said, with Sara running around to the front passenger seat and Elisa throwing her bag into the back and sliding in next to it.
Jake dug around under the dash until he found the ignition wire. He was about to start stripping wires when he saw the hole where the key should go into the ignition. Instead of a key hole there was a simple button. Christ, this guy was asking for his car to be stolen. He pressed the button and the tiny engine sputtered to life. Half a tank of gas. On this car that would almost get them to Rome, if it didn’t break down in a couple of miles. Jake ground the shift stick into first and then burned some rubber and got them onto the road toward Taormina.
Washington D.C.
Toni Contardo stepped lightly through the nice Georgetown brownstone, checking the clock on the fireplace mantel—it was just after one a.m. Her black curly hair was up in a pony tail at the back of her head and she was dressed in tight black clothes, nothing that could possibly get caught on anything, and her shoes were a practical high-top with non-squeak soles. She moved in the darkness as if she actually lived there. She knew there was no dog. No kids. No wife this night. And the security detail had given way to a fallible electronic security system that she had broken in less than fifteen seconds.
When she came to the wooden staircase, she hesitated for a second. These could squeak, she knew. But she could also hear the man upstairs snoring loud enough to wake the neighbors. With great stealth, she kept to the outer edge of the wooden stairs. Not a sound.
She got to the man’s bedroom. The door was open and she could barely make out the man in the bed alone. Next to the bed was a small table with a padded chair under that. Looking in the drawer, she found a little .380 automatic handgun. She picked that up and then sat on the chair and watched the man sleep for a while. Then she clicked on the small table lamp and crossed her legs.
The man startled up in bed, and started to reach for the drawer where he kept his gun, until his wide eyes finally found recognition. “Maria?” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Toni went with it, almost forgetting that the senator only knew her by that persona. “We have to talk.”
Senator James Halsey lay back against his pillow and drew the sheet up to his chin. “Careful with the gun,” he said. “It has a hair trigger.”
She smiled and then put the gun back into the drawer. “Sorry about that, but your first instinct was to reach for the drawer.”
He nodded. “What can I do for you?”
“Our man found your sister in Italy.”
Halsey sat up again. “That’s great. So she’s okay?”
“Yes. As far as we know. You sound surprised.”
“Not at all.” He ran his fingers through his tussled hair. “You have to understand Sara. She’s always believed she’s invincible. She has more guts than most men I know.”
She was confused now, not knowing quite how to broach this subject. “How well do you know your lawyer Brock Winthrop?”
“Pretty damn well,” Halsey said. “We went to college together.”
“What’s his relationship with your father?”
“He’s his lawyer as well.”
“Then you agree with your father going back to Texas?”
“Of course. Nobody tells Buck Halsey where he can die.” He checked the clock on the end table. “In fact, I’ll be following him there today. First I have to vote on an important bill before the senate.”
“When’s the last time you talked with Brock Winthrop?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer to this.
The senator picked up his phone from the night table and checked the call record. “It was earlier this evening. Why do you ask?”
“Because he got an e-mail from Jake Adams saying he found Sara more than an hour ago. Why didn’t he call you?”
Halsey shrugged and then looked at his phone again, checking his e-mail.
“Any e-mail?” She also knew the answ
er to that was no, since she had been monitoring all of Brock Winthrop’s communications, along with those of Jake Adams and the good senator. But she couldn’t let the senator know this without implicating her Agency in domestic spying—a huge violation of civil liberties.
He shook his head. “Hey, how the hell did you get in here?”
She got up to leave and simply stared at him. “Really? That’s what you want to know? You should be asking why your lawyer has failed to tell you about our guy finding your sister.”
“He probably wanted to let me sleep,” Halsey posited. “He knows I’ll have a long day in the senate and then flying back to Texas.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” she said and started for the door.
“Wait. How did you get in here?” he asked her desperately.
She stopped and turned to him. “Through the front door. I’ll send you an e-mail with suggestions on how to upgrade your system. You’ll need to charge it after I leave. Then get back to sleep senator. I was never here.” With that she slipped out through the bedroom door, down the stairs and back outside.
14
The Greeks were stuck on the train all the way to Taormina, not able to get off to find Adams and the American woman. The man whose name Demetri still didn’t know had made quite a scene when he came running from the restroom naked from the waist down, his manhood hiding among the furry forest. They eventually found his pants and boxers in the garbage can, but Niko and Kyros had gotten quite the laugh.
On the train, after losing Adams and the woman, Demetri had called Zendo to get instructions. Zendo had just landed at the Catania airport and would take a bus the 40 kilometers to Taormina to catch up with them within an hour or so. He was not happy that they had lost the American professor after getting so close. She was like a fish that they tried to catch with their hands—the tighter they squeezed the faster she slipped through their fingers.