by Paul Aertker
“What?” Kerala asked.
“I don’t have a license to rent a moped.”
“No worries,” Kerala said. “I have fake IDs and driver’s licenses for five different countries.”
Outside the store there were hundreds of mopeds backed up to the curb. Kerala rented a brand-new Vespa. Lucas straddled the seat, but Kerala pushed him back.
“I rented it and I’m driving,” she said, throwing a leg over and sitting in front of Lucas. “You may have a map of Rome in your head, but I learned how to drive in Rome.”
A Curukian in a black T-shirt gave Goper a set of keys, and the two gladiators crammed into a tiny Isetta microcar. Since Ekki couldn’t fit in the passenger seat, he squatted in the back with his entire upper body sticking out of the sunroof.
Kerala cranked the gas on the Vespa. She drove so fast that Lucas nearly fell off the back. He clutched her waist as they zipped down the cobblestone streets. Kerala cut the moped hard right and rattled down via Milano, past scaffolding, and through a tunnel whose entrance was draped in vines. After ten minutes, Lucas told her to park outside a shoe store. They hopped off the Vespa and passed the shoe store doorway, which smelled of clean leather and air-conditioning.
Lucas thought about using the store as a diversion, but to his surprise, Goper and Ekki unfolded themselves from the tiny car behind them.
“I guess you know that we’re almost at the Trevi Fountain,” Kerala said.
“The plaza will be crowded,” Lucas said.
“It’s a perfect place to lose someone.”
The fountain took up most of the piazza, and the rest of the space was jam-packed with tourists. Lucas could feel the crush of the crowd around them, but it felt safe and protected. He and Kerala tunneled through the throng. In the middle of the crowd Lucas got a good look at the famous fountain that he’d only seen online. The facade at the back stood some twenty meters high. At the center, a marble statue of Neptune, god of the sea, dominated the fountain. Water was flowing from underneath his shell-shaped chariot and down to the marble horses by the pool.
“Beautiful,” Kerala said.
“It is.”
Events that Lucas hadn’t anticipated were unfolding in his favor. Tourists were clamoring to have their pictures taken with the pretend Roman gladiators. Lucas figured he would double down on his good luck. He took out two coins and gave one to Kerala. They tossed them over the crowd and into the fountain and made wishes.
The Good Company gladiators broke away from the tourists and separated. Goper went down the first street, and Ekki took the second. The Trevi Fountain was named for the intersection of three streets—tre vie.
Lucas and Kerala took the third.
“Let’s go in here,” Kerala said, pointing to a cafe. “It’s hard to chase people who are not running.”
The sweet smell of coffee and gelato covered them like a sugar blanket. The place was packed and loud. Mostly tourists. A silenced TV showed the news with Italian subtitles. Lucas checked out the crowd and then did exactly what you’re supposed to do in a gelato shop. He ordered something to eat. He got stracciatella and Kerala got limone. When they finally had their cups, they found a tiny marble table in the corner with only one chair remaining. Kerala gave Lucas her cup of gelato.
“I can feel my makeup running,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
Lucas sat and he took stock of his position. His eyes clicked back and forth from the open doorway to the TV. A few minutes later Kerala came through the noise of the cafe and back to the table. She was wearing no makeup, and she’d slicked her hair back with water. Lucas’s mouth dropped. He couldn’t believe how pretty she was. His inner gentleman kicked in, and he stood and gave her the chair.
“Wow,” he said. “I’ve never seen you without makeup.”
“It’s horrible, isn’t it?”
“Just the opposite,” Lucas said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said with a huge smile.
“You know, you’re weird,” Lucas said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Lucas said. “You wear Goth makeup and clothes, and you know all these languages, but don’t speak much. And then when you were speaking Italian with the passport guy, you seemed really happy.”
“Funny that you noticed,” she said. “I feel like I’m more myself when I’m speaking other languages. It’s like I don’t have makeup on—that I don’t have to hide who I am.”
“Well you did just show up one day at the Globe Hotel Luxembourg, and no one knew anything about you. And that’s all anybody still knows. So . . . what is your story?”
Kerala took a bite of gelato and looked up at Lucas. “My mother was from Gothenburg, Sweden, and my dad was Russian, and they both worked in IT. They were expats and worked all over the world. I was born in Kerala, in India. Hence the name. And I grew up speaking Swedish and Russian at home. We had an Indian nanny and I learned Urdu—Hindustani—from her. I studied English and Chinese at school and learned Italian here in Rome. So speaking different languages feels like home to me.”
“How did you get to Luxembourg?”
She paused, and her face became ashen. Then she blurted out, “My parents were murdered here in Rome.”
“What?!”
“Yeah,” she said. “Apparently my father found someone stealing computer data, and they didn’t like what he knew. They killed him and my mom. The Roman police found me, and child services put me in an orphanage. I lasted like three months, and then I broke out on my own, finally making it up to the Globe Hotel Luxembourg, where Mr. Benes took me in.”
“That’s an awesome but really sad story,” Lucas said. “You should talk more often.”
They both got quiet and ate their gelatos. Lucas half watched the TV and half kept his eye out the door looking for Goper and Ekki.
“Uh-oh,” Kerala said, reading the subtitles on the screen.
“What?”
“Apparently the Roman police really are looking for you,” she said.
Lucas looked at the TV and saw his Interpol picture. “I always wanted to be on TV,” he said.
“Ha-ha,” Kerala said. “There are blockades all over town.” Her eyebrows dipped. “I can’t get caught here, Lucas. I just know the Roman police would love to question me about why I fled.”
“If we can get to Vatican City,” Lucas said, “then that’s a whole nother country.”
Lucas moved to the doorway and checked out the scene. Goper and Ekki were clomping down the street straight toward the cafe where Lucas was standing. Goper gritted his teeth and slapped his metal visor down.
Forget the gelato, Lucas thought, dropping the cup onto the floor.
He snatched the chair out from under Kerala. “How do you say sorry in Italian?” he asked.
“Mi displace,” Kerala said.
She nodded to Lucas like she knew exactly what he was going to do. And she would help by creating the distraction.
She yelled out into the cafe like a bank robber, “Everybody get down!” She repeated it in Italian, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, and Urdu. Just in case.
The entire cafe, tourists and waiters alike, dropped to the ground.
Goper stood in the doorway and leaned his head inside.
Lucas rotated, swinging the chair above the people squatting in the café. The metal seat clocked Goper’s helmet so loudly that it sounded like a church bell ringing. The force and trajectory of the chair was so great that the Good Company guard stumbled backward into the street. He fell into Ekki behind him, and both collapsed, clattering onto the cobblestones like two felled trees.
“Mi dispiace,” Lucas said to the gladiators moaning in the street. Then he picked up his gelato cup and spoon and set them on the table.
Kerala and Lucas glanced at each other. They didn’t speak. They ran. They bolted back to the Vespa and took off toward Vatican City.
A STORM BREWING
Ancient Romans were imaginative in building their gre
at society. They used architecture and new construction techniques to create aqueducts, the Roman Forum, and of course, the Colosseum. They designed their roads to encourage people to come into the city center.
This network of streets also made for a perfect series of roadblocks that were now preventing Lucas and Kerala from getting out of the city. They were forced to go against the grain in a completely roundabout way to get to the Vatican.
Kerala buzzed the Vespa past the Forum ruins and around the Colosseum where thousands of gladiators, warriors, and animals fought and died to provide entertainment for ancient Roman spectators.
They stopped at a bridge that would take them beyond the Tiber and into the Trastevere neighborhood. On the other side a blue Lamborghini with the word Polizia written on its side waited.
Kerala pulled the Vespa up onto the sidewalk under the plane trees. She and Lucas stared down at the collection of plastic bottles that bobbed on the dam in the river.
“We could take a boat,” Kerala said.
“We have a boat to catch,” Lucas said.
“What time is it?”
Lucas closed his eyes. “Six minutes after five.”
“That policeman in the Lamborghini is looking at us.”
Lucas knew they couldn’t outrun the fastest car in the Roman police department. The GPS in his head recalibrated, calculating a new way through a narrow cobblestone maze.
“Right after this tram passes, cross the tracks and head up that way,” he said, pointing.
A police siren screeched from some narrow lane, and Kerala steered the Vespa in the opposite direction. They motored through streets that were almost not big enough for one moped. They zigged and zagged their way past cafes and sidewalk restaurants and apartments with flowers in the windows. When they cut across the campo de’ Fiori, Lucas told Kerala to stop at the statue in the center of the piazza.
“What’s up?” Kerala asked as she kicked her legs out to balance the moped.
“Nobody’s following us,” Lucas said. “You lost them. And I just wanted to see this statue of Bruno.”
“Why?”
“He’s my favorite mathematician.”
“Sorry, but I don’t have a favorite mathematician,” Kerala said. “Who does? And why this guy?”
“Giordano Bruno was a mathematician who was burned at the stake on this very spot.”
“Why?”
“Because he was a freethinker,” Lucas said.
“Like you.”
“And my mother.”
Kerala motored the Vespa around the city workers who were cleaning up the piazza from the farmers’ market earlier that day. Seven minutes later they crossed the Tiber and drove past St. Peter’s Square and the Vatican, where the pope’s guards must not have known that Lucas was wanted by Interpol. They cut left, and four minutes later they arrived unnoticed at the Roma San Pietro train station.
They boarded the next train and arrived at the port of Civitavecchia an hour later.
Lucas looked to the west past Fort Michelangelo. It had been a beautiful day in Rome. Now out over the Mediterranean Sea dark clouds were gathering.
It was clear: A storm was brewing.
ALL ABOARD
Groups of Curukians working as stevedores on the docks scanned stacks of shipping containers.
Lucas watched them for a second as they seemed to verify every number they encountered. He hoped they were still looking for pi, the wrong number he had given Ms. Günerro at her hotel in Las Vegas.
Kerala moved through the maze of metal boxes. Lucas followed between the rows of giant containers. Some were red, others blue and gray. They passed an entire stack of yellow crates with Chinese lettering. They weaved in and out of the labyrinth until they saw a cargo ship with the name Leviathan written on the side.
On the dock below, Astrid and Travis stood in the doorway of a brand-new container. Solar panels on its roof soaked up the sun.
Lucas and Kerala made their way over to the container.
“The phi container,” Lucas said, pointing at the Leviathan, “the one we’re looking for, is on that ship right there.”
“And,” Astrid said, leading lead them into the new container, “this lovely little bungalow will be our home away from home for the next twenty-four hours. So come on in and make yourselves comfortable!”
“Did you do a sweep for a tracking device?” Lucas asked.
“It’s clean,” Travis said.
The shipping container was a metal box with six flat rectangular sides that had been converted into a cabin straight out of summer camp. On one side, seven narrow bunks were built into the wall. At the far end of the room there was a small table with foldout seats. The container also had a stovetop, microwave, fridge, porta-potty, and shower. One-way windows allowed them to look out safely. Three stand-up air conditioners kept the place freezing cold, and solar panels on the roof provided nearly unlimited power.
Jackknife, Travis, Mac, and Alister were already stretched out on their bunks, and Kerala collapsed on the first available mattress. Within the hour, the gantry crane locked in on the New Resistance container and lifted it. The big metal box swung over and onto the ship. The drone-operated crane slipped the New Resistance container on top of the others like a giant Lego block, making it completely indistinguishable.
LIKE MOTHER LIKE SON
Siba Günerro stood on the balcony and watched the storm over the Mediterranean Sea block out the setting sun.
Over the top of her glittering glasses she eyed T, who was dabbing her face with more makeup. The women waited in silence as they listened to Charles Magnus, who again was on the phone managing a problem.
“What do you mean?” Magnus said into the phone. “You sort of lost them? You either lost them or you didn’t. Which is it?”
Magnus pressed the phone to his ear.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “The New Resistance kids are now stowaways in a private shipping container on a ship called the Leviathan? Is that correct?”
He nodded a few times.
“I’ll turn on the homing device as soon as they set sail.”
There was a pause.
“We’ll meet you there,” he said.
Magnus hung up and faced T and Ms. Günerro.
Ms. Günerro asked, “Where are they headed?”
“Barcelona,” Magnus said.
T said, “We can drive.”
“How long is the drive?” Ms. Günerro asked.
“A little better than thirteen hours,” Magnus said.
“Perfect,” T said. “We’ll drive up the Italian coast, cross southern France, and be in northern Spain for breakfast.”
“That sounds nice,” Ms. Günerro said. “But we’re still missing too many opportunities. The man you hired to work the passport office at the Rome airport was a clown. And Magnus, your bus driver was obviously incompetent, and now it seems like your stevedores were unable to find container number two nine five one four one dash three.”
“But—” Magnus said.
“While we cannot correct your past mistakes,” Ms. Günerro said, “you must do better in the future!”
“I have some North African Curukians,” Magnus said, “who are dying for a fight.”
“As soon as this storm blows through, dispatch the boys and have them board the Leviathan in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Tell them to secure my container and lock up the New Resistance in their little private hideaway. In the meantime tell Goper and Ekki to get the car ready to take us to Barcelona.”
“Will do,” Magnus said. “But I’ll have to get new drivers for us.”
“Why?”
“Goper has a bad headache.”
“And Ekki?”
“He’s stuck,” Magnus said. “He can’t get out of his gladiator suit.”
“Very well then,” Ms. Günerro said. “Get someone.”
There was a lull as Ms. Günerro turned and faced the Vatican and the lights of Rome surrou
nding it.
“If I may add something,” T said.
“Go ahead,” Ms. Günerro said.
“Lucas Benes’s mother was a freethinking troublemaker and he’s surely no different. Maybe this a case of ‘like mother like son.”
“What are you getting at?” Ms. Günerro asked.
“I know firsthand that his mother hated water, dark water, especially,” T said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if the boy has a similar fear.”
Magnus asked, “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting the obvious solution,” T said.
Ms. Günerro said, “Magnus?”
“Yes?”
“Let the North African Curukians in on Lucas’s weakness. As soon as our contact has identified the container, tell them to get rid of the Benes boy, permanently.”
PHI
The container ship motored through the Tyrrhenian Sea west of Italy. As the night sky grew darker, thick clouds collided and blocked out any remaining twilight. It was going to be a stormy night.
An upper-level disturbance that had been brewing all evening hit the Leviathan at ten minutes before ten. The New Resistance kids had already been asleep when the rain started falling. Lucas’s eyes popped open as he woke to what sounded like machine guns pelting their metal cabin.
The storm was fast and furious. Waves began to lift the bow and slam the ship down. Sheets of rain and bombs of thunder and lightning attacked the ship and its cargo, making a deafening noise inside the bunk room. The only thing louder than the squall was the groaning crunch of the metal containers as they slammed against one another.
The sea swells began to increase, and the waves grew larger and more powerful. Travis jumped out of his bed and hit the safety light, which cast a dull yellow across the room. Then a massive roller—a wave bigger than most—slammed into the ship, soaking the Leviathan and half of its cargo in seawater. The stacks of containers rocked like toy blocks.
A giant clap of thunder exploded right overhead and briefly shorted out the electrical current. The cabin fell into complete darkness.
Kerala screamed, “We’re all going to die!”