by Trevor Scott
He swished his black marker on the whiteboard trying to develop a more interesting equation—one which could vault him out of obscurity. Baroni had until recently been a professor of advanced mathematics and physics at the Crotone Institute of Technology, a prestigious school with links to his hero Pythagoras, who had taught there before Christ had been born. To just walk the same cobblestone streets as Pythagoras was a profound accomplishment. Deep down he knew he wasn’t worthy to be uttered in the same breath as that great man, but some had done so years ago. Of course that was when he was a promising young mathematician. Now they had nearly thrown him to the wolves. Officially he had retired. Unofficially, he had been forced to acquiesce to their will.
There was a light knock on his office door but he didn’t turn to see who was there. He knew it could have only been his most trusted advisor, a former student and protégé, Marco.
His man opened the door and peered around the edge. Marco was a handsome, fit man in his late twenties. “Sir?”
Baroni waved the man in, and then turned again to his whiteboard in deep contemplation. “What is it?”
Marco cleared his throat. “We have a problem in Rome.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Two of our men were killed in a shoot-out.”
Baroni swiveled around quickly. “What? How? Why?”
“We don’t know the details yet. Our Italian friend there spoke with his contact. He contacted me.”
That was how Baroni had built his organization, from scratch with concentric layers of insulation, keeping him at least one level away from the frontline workers.
“Who did we lose?” Baroni asked.
“A Syrian and Jordanian,” Marco said.
Not a problem, he thought. That left the Italian and the Turk in that cell. And the Italian was resourceful. He would easily find replacements. Besides, he glanced to the largest of his whiteboards, which contained his grand plan for Italy, they were simply his eyes in Roma. The fingers, the hands and the arms were coming to play soon. And the eyes had nearly finished their work.
But something was bothering Baroni. “Did the Polizia or the Carabinieri kill them?”
“No, sir. They said it was just one man.”
“The man from the Malavita?”
“No, no. The man who met the man from the Malavita the other night in Rome.”
“Who is this man?”
Marco shook his head. “We don’t know, sir.”
Baroni pointed to the large whiteboard. “Do you see that board, Marco?”
His man nodded agreement.
“Do you see this unknown factor anywhere in that equation?”
“No, sir.”
“I don’t either. We can’t have unknown variables mucking up our beautiful equation. Can we?”
“Of course not.”
“Agreed. Have our Italian friend in Roma hire anyone he needs to eliminate that unknown variable.”
Marco nodded.
“That will be all,” Baroni said.
But Marco stood for a moment, his eyes concentrating on the smaller whiteboard, the one his boss had been contemplating when he entered the office.
“What’s the matter, Marco?”
“If I may, your problem. If X is garlic, you might consider increasing that level. Minestrone can always use more garlic.”
Baroni glanced at his whiteboard as his man Marco exited the room. He would consider that. Soup, like everything else in life, required the perfect level of ingredients. Too much of one thing could throw the entire brine into disarray. Again he turned his attention on his grand scheme whiteboard. Who was this unknown variable? And what were the odds of this one man changing the outcome of his equation?
9
Rome, Italy
Before going to the apartment of the Italian and the Turk, Jake directed Alexandra to another location, a hotel just outside the walls of the Vatican, where he checked in under his Austrian persona and dropped the scared Italian woman off, leaving Russo to watch her.
Now, he sat in the front passenger seat of the Fiat in a quiet neighborhood on Rome’s north side.
Alexandra kept the car running, her eyes concentrating on the apartment building less than a block away. “That’s got to be their Audi,” she said.
“I agree,” Jake said.
“How do you want to play this?”
“Alone,” he said. “I can handle these two dirtbags.”
“What if Marisa is wrong, and they have more men?”
She had a point. But he also knew that she was a bit rusty from her time off with maternity. Would she bounce back to her old self? Or was this simply his problem, not wanting either of them to get killed or injured? Their daughter needed at least one of them to survive, and now Jake was questioning his line of work.
He pulled out his phone and punched in a number without regard for the time difference. Then he waited.
“Who are you calling?” she asked.
“Old friends.”
The former Director of the CIA, Kurt Jenkins, came on the line and rattled off a list of crap he had heard was going down in Rome. “What the hell is going on there?”
Jake shook his head. “You know how it goes. Shit happens, Kurt.”
“Well the Agency is pissed,” Kurt said. “Something about two dead men in a restaurant near the Pantheon.”
Jake explained the situation with the woman he had stashed in the hotel and the lead she gave him. “I’m guessing the Agency is only pissed because I didn’t give them a heads up.”
“That’s right,” Kurt said. “They get their feelings hurt when a former officer knows more than their own officers and agents in the field.”
“Now days they’re all a bunch of Harvard educated assholes who try to intellectualize the mind of radicals,” Jake said. “You can’t reason with radicals, Kurt. You can only kill them. They need to hire more ex-military.”
“The new Director is working on that,” Kurt assured Jake. “But it takes time to hire and train these people.” His old friend hesitated. “What do you need from me?”
Jake glanced at Alexandra, who seemed more than a little concerned with his conversation. “I need the Agency to pick up and protect this woman. At least until I can track down all of these assholes who want her dead.”
“Roger that. Where do you have her holed up?”
He thought for a moment and realized he didn’t want the Agency to know too much too soon. Nor did he want them to mess with his Malavita contact, Sergio Russo.
“I’ll get back with you in about an hour,” Jake finally said. Then he cut the call short before Kurt Jenkins could respond.
“Will they help?” she asked.
“Eventually.”
“But you don’t want them learning what she knows yet.”
“That’s right. I need to talk with these assholes before they bolt.” He made sure he had easy access to his Glock as he opened the door and got out.
Alexandra got out and rushed up to Jake.
“You should stay at the car,” Jake said.
“Right. You want me to go to the kitchen and make you strudel?”
“That’s not it,” he said. “But I am a little hungry.”
She hit his arm. “We’re going to play drunken girlfriend,” Alexandra demanded.
Damn it. He hated drunken girlfriend. But she was right. The neighbors would remember a drunken girl more than an imposing man.
So they wandered down the street with Alexandra staggering and hanging on to Jake’s left side to keep from falling over.
Once they got into the apartment building, they climbed to the first floor and drew their guns, making their way down the corridor to the last apartment on the right.
Just as they were about to kick in the door, it swung open and a man with dark hair looked surprised.
Jake shoved his gun at the man and said in Italian, “Drop the bag and back up.”
The man turned his head and started
to say something, but Jake punched the man with his left fist, knocking the man to his knees. Jake shoved his right foot into the man’s chest, taking his breath away. When the second man appeared, Jake started to raise his gun and he heard one shot. The man across the room crumpled to the floor with a great crash.
Jake turned to see Alexandra pointing her gun to his left.
“I had to shoot,” she said.
“Help me with him,” Jake said. “Bring his bag.”
She slung the man’s bag over her shoulder and helped Jake lift the man from the floor. Then together the two of them dragged the man out the door and down the corridor. After her shot, Jake expected to see curious neighbors gawking out their doors. But this wasn’t that kind of neighborhood. This was a keep your damn mouth shut kind of place.
On the ground floor, Jake held the man while Alexandra ran and got the car. He took the time to check the guy for weapons, finding a 9mm CZ-75, Jake’s old weapon of choice, along with two knifes. He stuffed those into the guy’s duffle bag. When the guy struggled to get away, Jake elbowed the guy in the jaw, nearly knocking the man out.
Moments later Alexandra pulled up and Jake hauled the groggy man into the back seat. Then Alexandra took off at a slow pace.
Once they got down the road and away from the apartment, Jake slapped the man across the face, startling him back to life. Jake had assumed that the man shot upstairs was the Turk and this was the owner of the apartment. He confirmed that when he dug out the man’s wallet and read the Italian name. The real confirmation included the man calling Jake every dirty name in the book in perfect Italian with a Naples accent.
“Listen, asshole,” Jake said in English. “I understand every word. Keep talking and I’ll cut off your nuts and shove them down your throat.” According to the man’s expression, he was also fluent in English. Good.
“Where to?” Alexandra asked in German.
“Just drive,” Jake said. “This guy needs to tell us a few things.”
Jake knew that actual torture worked to extract information, but often the subject would say anything to make the pain stop. Better than actually hurting someone was the fear that you would do anything up to and including kill them to make them talk. Police and certain intelligence agencies couldn’t make that work, since they were constrained by things like rules and pesky laws. But Jake was an independent contractor. And as far as this man was concerned, Jake could have been with the Malavita. He used that to his advantage. So, without causing too much pain or disfigurement, Jake was able to extract everything the Italian knew about his activities.
Now the problem was what he needed to do with the guy. If Jake handed the man over to the Agency, they might actually get the same information. And he sure as hell didn’t need them mucking up his operation. No. Jake would have to find another outlet. He had a few associates in Italian law enforcement, but none who could handle the leader of a potential terrorist cell. There was more going on in Rome than Jake was sure about at this time. He needed to find the next man on the rung of the ladder. That was the Italian’s handler or contact. That man was in Naples.
He had a better idea. Years ago he had worked a case with an officer with the Italian External Intelligence and Security Agency. A woman named Elisa Murici. But he had no idea where she might be assigned at this time. Jake pulled out his phone and punched in the number for the officer. As the phone rang on the other end, Jake punched the Italian in the jaw, knocking him out.
Finally, a soft voice came on the phone. “I don’t know this number.”
It wasn’t like Jake wanted to use his name, so instead he simply said in Italian, “The Stone of Archimedes was an interesting find.”
“Jake?” she whispered in English. “How are you doing? By the way, your Italian has gotten quite good.”
“I’ve been living here for a while.”
“In Calabria,” she said.
“You can tell?”
“Just a little. If this is what you call a booty call, I’m not in Italy.”
Jake glanced to the front at Alexandra. “No, this is business.” He quickly explained what he had been working on, up to the point of picking up this Italian at his apartment. “I need to drop him off with a trusted person. Anyone you trust?”
“My people are not authorized to work in Italy,” Elisa explained.
“That didn’t stop you last time.”
“I know. And I almost got fired.”
“Where are you? And why are you whispering?”
Hesitation. “Out of the country. Working a case.”
“I see. Sorry to bother you. But this guy has information about a terrorist attack in Rome. Soon.”
“All right. I know some people at AISI.”
That would be the Italian Internal Information and Security Agency, their version of the FBI.
She gave him a location to drop off the man and said she’d call him back with a contact name.
Jake put away his phone and glanced up to Alexandra.
“Was that another old girlfriend?” she asked.
Not officially, he thought, but they had been involved in a short period of sex. Strictly sex. Before Jake could answer, he got a quick call back from Elisa telling him where to drop off the Italian. Jake thanked her and said to take care.
He told Alexandra where to go. They would make the drop in front of the Colosseum at the exit for the Metro. She turned and headed in that direction.
10
Brindisi, Italy
Elisa Murici stood at the rail of the ferry from Greece to Italy, the early-rising sun reflecting off the white buildings of this Italian coastal city. She had mixed feelings about reaching the shores of her homeland. Since her agency was established by law to only operate outside of Italy, it meant her work on this case would probably come to an end soon. She would be required to pass off this case to her colleagues with Internal Security.
But a lot had happened through the night as she crossed from Patras, Greece to Brindisi. First, she had gotten that unexpected call from Jake Adams, who had captured a suspicious man in Rome and passed him off to her counterparts with AISI. What in the hell was Jake doing in Rome? Then, in the middle of the night, she had gotten word that the captured man had not said a word to AISI. How was that possible? What had Jake gotten from the man? She could only imagine, based on what she knew about Jake, that he had gotten anything and everything the man knew. And then an hour ago she had gotten word from her people that she would pass off the man she had tailed from Athens to an officer with AISI as soon as they reached the Italian port.
She had mostly kept her distance from the man she knew as Zamir, the potential bomb builder from Iraq. With her oversized sunglasses, she could shift her eyes without moving her head much, keeping the man in her peripheral view. She was certain she had not been burned. But once during the transit she had gotten close enough to the man to smell his overpowering aftershave, which seemed like the musk from a mink.
As the ferry closed in on the pier, those with cars were instructed over the intercom to return below deck and prepare to disembark with their vehicles. Walking passengers should make their way to the exits.
Elisa got a text and she checked her phone. It was from an unknown contact, but with the proper authorization code. It was her Internal Information and Security Agency contact. An image popped up, which she put to memory, since it disappeared within a few seconds. The photo was of a young, handsome man with long scraggly hair and tattoos on both of his forearms. He had an infectious smile that gave him the appearance of a barista and not an AISI officer. This man would be on the pier waiting for her with a car.
She followed Zamir at a distance as the ferry slowly docked at the terminal. Considering the number of passengers, this was not an easy task.
Soon, they started to disembark, and Elisa kept her eyes out for her contact and potential threats from Zamir and his people. But she guessed that if Zamir was the bomb builder, he would remain alone until he go
t to a contact somewhere near Rome. Somehow this Zamir had gotten a Greek passport after the Iraq War. Her people thought that the man might have been working both sides back then. Nobody knew for sure. A lot of people fell through the cracks following that conflict. The only reason Elisa had gotten involved at all was due to a number of electronic intercepts from disposable phones from Greece to Italy.
Since Italy and Greece were both part of the Schengen Agreement, customs and immigration was non-existent. They all flowed through the open border like fish through a stream.
Ahead she saw her contact wandering back and forth at the terminal exit, but obviously keeping his eyes open for both her and Zamir. When the Iraqi passed within a few feet of her contact, he didn’t even acknowledge the man. The Iraqi was just another passenger.
Elisa came up to her contact, who smiled at her. They embraced like lovers and kissed each other on both cheeks.
“Vito Galati,” he whispered into her ear as he continued his embrace.
She pulled back and smiled slightly. He was even more handsome than his photo, which she didn’t think was possible. “Let’s go. He just passed you.”
“I know. Black slacks, black leather jacket. A green and black Fila bag over his left shoulder.”
“Good eye,” she said as she strut off.
“My car is here,” Vito said.
She stopped and glanced at an old red Fiat Panda. “Budget cuts?”
“It fits in.” He took her bag and threw it in the back seat, then ran around to the driver’s side.
She got in to the passenger seat and buckled in. “Are you old enough to drive?”
He didn’t answer.
“Well then follow that taxi before Zamir gets away,” she said.
The young officer ground the gears and finally pulled out after the taxi. They wound slowly through the port area and into Brindisi.