by Trevor Scott
“Nailed it.”
She slapped his chest. “That’s not nice to say.”
“I didn’t mean sexually,” he explained. “I meant I got it right.”
“Sure.”
Jake thought about what had just happened, a great distraction from the reality of life, such as it was. He had been with just one other woman since Anna’s death, a German friend of his who worked for their intelligence service. They had been good together, but they had parted ways when she went back to work. He had no idea the nature of their relationship, or if they even had one currently. They had defined it more like friends with benefits. Something they both needed at the time. Perhaps that’s what just happened tonight with Elisa.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah. I’m just a bit confused with this case.”
“That makes two of us.”
He hesitated, like a poker player about to reveal his winning hand. “When did you plan on telling me?”
Her brows furled. “Tell you what?”
“That your agency told you to stop your investigation of the Greek billionaire, Petros Caras,” he said. He had gotten that brief message from Toni at the CIA, along with a short briefing on Caras. “Why would they stop you?”
She threw the covers away from her, exposing her smooth skin and perhaps trying to distract him. Letting out a long breath, she said, “I don’t know for sure. They were all for it and then they were all against it. I got mad and they sent me on vacation.”
Jake could easily relate to that sentiment. The same thing had happened to him when he was active in the Agency. “So, they have no idea what you’re doing.”
“I don’t think so,” she demurred. “But you know how our governments work. They seem to know much more than they should.”
Yeah, he knew. It was one of the reasons he left government employment. Why he allowed himself to get pulled back in was a constant disturbance in his mind. This time, of course, had something to do with spending the rest of his life in a Tunisian prison. When that government abolished the death penalty for cruelty reasons, like all do-gooder-governments, they did those on death row no favors. It was far more cruel to leave someone in a prison with those conditions for the rest of their life than to allow them to leave this earth with some dignity intact.
“When do they expect you back to work?” he asked.
She rubbed her hand over his body and stopped on a scar. “I have another week or so. I haven’t taken vacation in a while. What happened here?”
“I got shot.”
“And the knee?” She slipped her hand across one of the scars on his left knee.
“I got shot there also. Had to have a knee replacement.”
“My God, what about this long one on your waist?”
“Now that was a knife.”
“I hate knives,” she said. “You don’t have a chance for them to run out of bullets.”
He couldn’t argue with that. “What do you plan to do with the Greek once you have enough on him?”
She shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Maybe I can turn everything over to Interpol.”
“Sounds like a plan. Now, you should get back to your room.”
“Am I being dismissed?”
“I think you might need your sleep also. Tomorrow could be a long day.”
Reaching down between his legs, she grasped him and started to stroke him back to life. “First, I think we should do this one more time.”
It was damn hard to disagree with her under these circumstances.
●
Elisa got back to her room a half hour later and she picked up her cell phone on the table. She never forgot her cell phone. But maybe she needed that uninterrupted distraction. She had two text messages. The first one was from her boss in Rome telling her to enjoy herself on vacation, which made her smile considering her encounter with Jake Adams. The second message was from her contact. It just read ‘Midnight.’ She checked her watch and realized it was just a few minutes to midnight right now. Glancing at the two small beds in the room, she could see that the American professor was still out of it, her breathing hard and constant. Nearly snoring.
She drifted off toward the restroom and waited for her call, which came right at the designated time.
“Everything all right?” Elisa asked her contact in Italian.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “We were at dinner in Messina when this man with long hair, a man named Zendo, came in and sat down for a drink.”
“You’re in Sicily?” she asked, her voice a little louder than she wanted.
“Yes. We came here today from Malta. Anyway, this Zendo was ordered to go to Syracuse to find the American professor and this man named Adams.”
They had discussed Jake Adams in the past, but Elisa had been cryptic with her knowledge of the man.
When Elisa didn’t say anything right away, the woman asked, “Are you in Siracusa?”
“Yes. But how did Petros Caras find that out?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “and it’s not like I can ask the man. He thinks I don’t speak or understand Greek. Should I get off the yacht?”
Her contact sounded scared and desperate—two characteristics Elisa had not seen in her before. “Anything else?”
“Petros said not to harm the American professor, but that Zendo can do anything he wants with Adams.” She paused. “And you. They’re going to kill him.”
“They can try,” Elisa said.
“You don’t understand. It’s not just the Greeks now. They have hired the Sicilian Mafia to help them. And they might already be there. The Greeks will be there in the morning. Someone’s coming.”
The line went blank and Elisa just stared at her phone now. She wasn’t normally concerned with the Mafia. At least not in northern Italy. But those in Calabria and Sicily could be quite brutal. Could she tell Jake? Warn him? If so, how would she explain how she knew this?
17
Somehow Jake had been able to fall asleep, but he didn’t stay that way for long. He woke up a number of times. Got up for a drink of water and to relieve himself.
It was one of these times when he thought he heard a noise outside his door. Perhaps it was Elisa coming back for round three, he thought. But something didn’t seem right. The hair on the back of his neck caught the breeze from the ceiling fan and sent a chill down his back.
He picked up the gun on the nightstand and quietly peered out the peep hole. All he could see was darkness. Damn it! He dove to the floor just as a bullet smashed through the peep.
Scurrying to the end of the bed, the door crashed in followed by three flashes.
Jake shot twice, the report of his 9mm breaking the silence, and he rolled to his right.
More flashes with bullets hitting the floor where he’d just been.
Then he heard another crash and he realized the intruders were going into the room across the hall. Raising his gun up over the bed, two more shots came his way. He was pinned down. Nowhere to go.
Two loud shots broke through the night air and the familiar sound of a man hitting the ground a second later. Followed by yelling in Italian. A man and a woman. Elisa.
Jake rushed to his feet and to the edge of the door. As he aimed his gun out, he saw Elisa across the hall crouched only in her undergarments, her gun trained in his direction. She pointed toward the staircase to his left. A man lay on the floor outside his door, so Jake dove out behind the man and aimed his gun down toward the staircase.
Nothing. The other one had gotten away.
Checking the man’s pulse, Jake shook his head at Elisa. He was gone.
“You all right?” Jake asked her.
She simply nodded.
“And Sara?”
“Still out cold.”
“Let’s go. Get dressed and gather your stuff. We can’t explain this to the local Polizia.”
Within less than a minute they had gotten back into their clothes and rounded up their backpacks. J
ake hoisted Sara Halsey Jones over his shoulder, thankful the woman was petite. They hurried downstairs, Elisa leading the way in case the other man was waiting downstairs for them. At the bottom of the staircase was the old man who ran the pension, his stomach and chest bloody from knife wounds.
Just as they got through the patron entrance, a car cruised by on the street out front. Jake grabbed Elisa by her collar and yanked her to the ground as the bullets flew from the front passenger window. They rolled onto the pavement unable to shoot back as the car squealed its tires and rushed off around the corner.
Jake checked over the two women on the ground. “Are you all right, Elisa?”
She brushed herself off and got up. “Yeah. How is she?”
“She’s fine. She landed on me.”
He got up and was able to lift the professor back over his shoulder with ease.
Sirens sounded in the distance and Jake knew they had just moments to get the hell out of there. But they had no car. There was only one way to go and that was back through the narrow streets of the old town of Siracusa—streets that dated back a few hundred years before Christ. As the sirens got closer to their former residence, Jake could hear the cars a few blocks away. They were swiftly putting distance between the Polizia responding to the shooting and their escape. But he couldn’t carry this woman all over the city. Someone would notice them and conclude something wasn’t right.
When they came across a small, dark park, they sat onto a bench to rest, Jake taking the time to slap the professor a few times across the face to try to wake her.
“Christ, how much did you give her?” Jake asked.
“Not that much,” Elisa said, concerned.
“We’ve gotta keep moving, but we really stand out with her over my shoulder.”
“What about a taxi? We could say she had too much to drink.”
“No. They might have heard about a shooting. Siracusa is still a pretty small town. Did you get a good look at any of the shooters?”
Elisa shook her head. “Only the one I shot. You?”
“Same here. But I don’t think either of them, three with the driver, were Greek. They looked like local talent.”
“Mafia,” Elisa concluded.
“Great. Now that Greek billionaire has hired the Mafia? We’ll be lucky to get out of Sicily.” Who knew how many the Mafia had killed over the years and either sunk in the waters off the coast or buried somewhere in the surrounding mountains? But at least he understood their motivation. They worked for money and not ideology. He could deal with that. “Watch her. I’ll get us a ride.”
Jake ran off toward a bar at the edge of the park. He went inside and took up a position at the end of the bar. This place resembled a bar in the U.S. more than those found in Sicily. It was dark and the music was provided by a jukebox. At this hour, after midnight, he guessed most of the patrons would be well on their way to forgetting all of their various troubles. He ordered a beer and paid the young bartender when it came. By then he had identified his target—a young man who looked trashed—just a few positions down the bar from him.
He couldn’t wait for the guy to get up and go to the bathroom. Instead, Jake sucked down half his beer and then got up to go there himself, his beer in his right hand. As he got close to the man, he tripped and dumped the beer on the drunk young man. Apologizing profusely, Jake helped the man wipe the beer from the guy’s clothes. Then he gave the man twenty Euros to clean his clothes, and Jake walked out of the bar.
He looked at the keys he’d taken from the drunk and saw they were for a Fiat. He hoped it was nicer than the last one he acquired at the train station. Glancing about the street, Jake saw five potential Fiats. But when he pressed the button on the key only one flashed its lights. Nice, a Punto sedan in aqua blue, not the flashy red. Perhaps he was doing the drunk a favor.
Jake got in and drove around to the other side of the park, where he left the car running as he collected the women. By now Sara Halsey Jones was awake somewhat. Enough to be confused and groggy. They got into the car and Jake drove off toward the outskirts of town. He had no idea how the Polizia would respond to the death of two men, but he had to guess they would set up roadblocks on the autostrada.
“This is much nicer than the last car you got us,” Elisa said.
He ignored her. “Did you explain the situation to Sara?” he asked.
“Yes,” Sara said from the back seat. “I feel hung over.”
“It’s been a long day,” said Elisa.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Jake shook his head and smiled. He turned to Elisa and asked, “Do you know where we can go and hide for a few hours?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere out of town. Someone will report this car stolen.”
Jake guessed that might take a while, since the owner was really drunk and wouldn’t want to admit he was going to drive it right then. “I think we have a little time on that front.”
He just continued to drive until he found a deserted road that led up into the mountains to the northwest. Finally he found a narrow farmer’s road that ran along the edge of a vineyard. He drove up until he was sure they would be out of view from the road below and then shut down the engine and lights. From up there they could view the city of Siracusa below in the distance.
He turned to Sara and said, “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m just a little confused. Why would this man hire men to kill us? I thought he wanted something from me. My research.”
Elisa took this. “Perhaps these men were only supposed to find you and kidnap you. Maybe they acted without thinking.”
Strange, Jake thought. It was like Elisa was apologizing for the Mafia men. He quickly pulled his gun and aimed it at Elisa’s chest. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”
Elisa was shocked.
Sara yelled from the back, “What are you doing, Jake?”
“You immediately concluded the men were Mafia,” Jake reasoned. “Why is that?”
The Italian woman’s head dropped to her chest but she refused to answer his questions.
“You think you can screw me and I’ll somehow lose my edge?” he asked, his jaw tight.
“Wait,” Sara said. “You two are doin’ it? Now I really feel left out.”
“It was nothing,” Elisa said, turning to Sara in the back seat. “Just a distraction.”
Jake poked the gun into Elisa’s ribs. “Yeah, it was nothing three times. What the hell do you know and are not telling me?”
“Put the gun away.”
“Yeah,” Sara agreed. “Put the gun away.”
“Not until she answers my questions.”
They all sat in silence now.
Finally, Elisa said, “I just found out after our little adventure that the Greek had hired some local Mafia men to find us. But according to my contact they were not supposed to hurt Sara. I don’t believe they care about me.”
“What about me?” Jake inquired.
“Our friend with the long hair, Zendo, was given the green light to kill you. As long as he didn’t hurt Sara. I’m sorry. I swear that I just found out after you already went to bed.”
“From your contact close to Petros Caras,” he said. “You have an agent in his organization.”
Elisa hesitated, searching for the right words. “Not really in his organization. A woman.” She left it at that.
But Jake understood. “She’s with the Hellenic National Intelligence Service.”
“No,” Elisa said. “We thought this man would know most of the players there. Or his men would. So we found an outside source.”
“From where? CIA?”
“No. Petros Caras isn’t fond of American women. He likes the Slavs.”
“So,” Jake said. “She’s Czech like you.”
“How did you know?”
He smiled and put his gun away. “You just told me.”
“Just a minute,” Sara said. “I’m confused.”
Elisa said, “Petros Caras is under
investigation. . .”
“No, I get all that. I’m thinking about the two of you having sex. I mean I understand the attraction. You’re both gorgeous. If I went that way, I’d probably do the both of you at the same time. But you’re both supposed to be working this case.”
“Ask her about that,” Jake said, pointing his thumb at Elisa. “I was just taking a little nap until she came in and raped me.”
“Oh, right. Like I forced myself on you.”
“You showed me those nice flotation devices,” he said. “What you think would happen after that?”
“He has a point,” Sara said.
“Well, that massive erection started before I lifted my shirt.”
Sara cleared her throat. “Massive? Well, he does have huge hands.”
Embarrassed somewhat, Jake said, “Can we get back to the case at hand? How much more work do you have here in Siracusa, Sara?”
“Really? You want me to transition back here from massive erection to Doric Greek dealing with Archimedes?”
Jake looked at the professor in the rear view mirror. “That would be nice.”
Hesitating, Sara Halsey Jones finally said, “All right. The translation is complete. But now I need to get into the catacombs. Somehow I believe there’s more information down there.”
“I was there years ago,” Jake said. “There wasn’t much to see, though. It was picked over by grave robbers a long time ago.”
“Those are the ones open to the public,” Sara said. “The most famous to tourists is the Catacombs of San Giovanni, with some twenty thousand tombs under that Norman church. Originally they were used by the Greeks for a couple centuries before Christ as aqueducts. Saint Paul the Apostle preached on that site, so it’s considered holy ground. But I’m more interested in the catacombs that are not open to the public. And there are dozens of them around the city of Siracusa.”
“Then how do we choose?” Elisa asked.
Jake turned to see a smiling professor.
“That was part of the translation,” Sara explained. “I have a virtual underground map of a specific set of catacombs.”
Great, Jake thought. Now they just had to survive the Greeks and the Mafia long enough to gain the information she needed.