by Mark Dawson
Milton held his breath, adjusted the focus and watched as a man emerged from between the trees. He walked to the car and raised his arm so that his hand was pointed at the driver’s side window. Milton thought he heard the muffled puffs of suppressed gunshots.
Milton judged the distance between the crashed car and the farmhouse. It was half a mile at most, perhaps a little less. It would take the man six or seven minutes to reach the main building on foot. Milton was a quarter of a mile from the house, but he had the disadvantage of more difficult terrain and the need to remain out of sight, both to the occupants of the house and the shooter.
Milton focused on the car again and watched as the shooter turned and left the road, disappearing between the trees again.
Milton couldn’t wait. He left the binoculars, checked his pocket for the zip ties, clipped the sheathed hunting knife to his belt, and started the descent to the farmhouse in the valley.
81
Jessica went outside to the lime tree that was growing between the house and the pool. She reached up and twisted off one of the fruits; it was plump and glossy, and the skin was almost moist from the juice within.
Her father was lying on a lounger, his legs outstretched and his book resting face down on his chest. He had his fingers laced behind his head and he looked peaceful and at ease. His face still showed the bruises that Delgado had inflicted during the night that he had been in the Mexican’s custody, but they would fade over time. He was as relaxed as she could remember seeing him, certainly since her mother’s death. She knew that he had been weighed down by the audacity and risk of the plot that he had mounted against the cartel—or, more particularly, by the consequences that would have been meted out to him in the event that Delgado had realised what he was doing. But Delgado was foolish and her father was smart, and, at least up until the end, the plan had been a remarkable success. The last few days had been as stressful as any she could remember, but they were through to the other side now. They had this house and five million dollars’ worth of Bitcoin, and no one knew where they were. She could allow herself to relax.
It was late now, but still warm.
“What are you doing?” her father said as she plucked a second lime.
“Cocktail hour,” she said. “You want one?”
“I’m good with my wine,” he said.
He reached down for the bottle of red that he had stood next to his lounger, hooked it by the neck, sat up, and poured another glass. The vineyard was tended to by a local man called Carlo, who had been working on the estate for forty years. He came in every morning to check on the grapes, often working all day in the broiling heat. Last year’s crop had produced an excellent vintage. He had big vats of it at his house and had provided several bottles when the Russos had stopped on their way to the property earlier that afternoon.
Jessica went back into the kitchen. She opened the cupboard where she had put the bottle of gin, took a bottle of tonic from the fridge and lifted a bag of ice from the freezer. She put one of the limes on a chopping board, then halved and quartered it. She filled the bowl of the glass with ice, poured in a double measure of the gin, added tonic, then squeezed a piece of the lime and rubbed the pulp around the rim of the glass, finally dropping it into her drink.
Mason had gone to see the girl he had met when he had been out here with his father to buy the house. Jessica had not had the pleasure of an introduction but had been informed—by Mason, so she took everything with a pinch of salt—that she was beautiful and into him. Jessica’s initial reaction to his suggestion that he go and see her tonight was to tell him not to be so stupid, that they had only just arrived and that he should lie low for a day or two. He had reminded her—correctly, she conceded—that there was no need to lie low any longer.
They were safe.
They had done it.
She went outside again and stood next to her father.
“Cheers,” she said, holding her gin out.
He touched his wine glass to hers. “Saluti,” he corrected her.
“Sì,” she said, and grinned. “Saluti.”
Jessica sat down on the lounger next to her father’s and gazed out onto the pool and the vineyard beyond it. She hadn’t come with her father and Mason when they had purchased the property, and the pictures that she had been shown didn’t do it justice. The Tuscan countryside, the climate—hot, but without the brutal heat of Vegas—the food, the wine; it was heavenly. She had no ties to the States, and she doubted that she would miss it. Her father had said that it would be best if they stayed away for a few years, but she wondered whether she would ever go back. His cancer was going to get worse, and she wanted to be here to care for him. The house would pass to her and her brother once he was gone, and she could imagine herself staying.
A bird hooted from somewhere nearby.
“It’s a tawny owl,” her father said. “I’ve seen her hunting in the vineyard. She’s a beauty.”
She was thinking about her father’s love of nature and the satisfaction he was going to derive from it here, when she heard something from the house. The kitchen door squeaked a little when it was opened, and she wondered if it had been that.
“Mason?”
There was no response. She swung her legs off the lounger and stood up, turning towards the house.
There was a man standing on the patio. She had never seen him before. He had dark hair badly cut into a bowl, white skin, and a heaviness to his features. His nose was thick, his brows solid. His eyes were cold. He was dressed in black: black denim jeans and a black denim shirt.
Her eyes were drawn down to the pistol that he was pointing at her.
“Dad,” she said.
Her father grunted as he sat up. “What is it?”
He turned to look back and saw him, too.
“Señor Russo,” the man said. He turned his head to Jessica. “Señorita Russo.”
Jessica swallowed; despite the gin, her throat was dry. “Who are you?”
“I represent the cartel. They have asked me to find the money that you have stolen.”
Jessica’s father stood. “Please,” he said. He raised his hands, palms facing out, and made a calming motion. “Please. There’s no need for unpleasantness.”
“They would disagree. You should not have stolen from them if you were not prepared to face the consequences.”
Jessica thought of Mason. “Where is my brother?”
“I found him,” the man responded, cool and emotionless.
Her father’s face blanched.
The man did not elaborate, but he didn’t need to. Her father took a step toward him, his fist raised, but the man switched his aim and just shook his head. “Señor—you really have no reason to complain. You brought this all upon yourself. Now—por favor—sit back down, both of you. We need to talk about the money that you stole.”
Jessica looked at her father; he was shaking, his hands trembling uncontrollably. “Sit down, Dad,” she said, worried that he was about to collapse. “We can talk this out.”
The man smiled; there was no humour there, no warmth, simply a look of amusement that she still dared to hope.
82
Jessica sat down on the lounger. Her father sat down again, too. The man with the gun took one of the seats from the patio table and set it down so that he could address them both, but not so close that he wouldn’t be able to aim and fire if either of them was foolish enough to try to impede him. Jessica could tell that the man was capable. There was an easy confidence about him: the way he held the gun, relaxed but not too loose; the nonchalant demeanour; the polite way of speaking that might even have been considered pleasant were it not for the pistol.
“Where is the money?”
“You’re looking at it,” her father said.
“No,” the man replied. “You bought this property some time ago, I believe. We can get to that later, of course. But, for now, I am interested in the money that you stole before you left. Five millio
n dollars. I understand that it was converted to Bitcoin. You are going to transfer those Bitcoin to an account that has been set up for that purpose.”
Jessica felt as if she was about to be sick. Her satisfaction with what they had achieved—so pleasing just five minutes ago—had turned to ashes in her mouth. She thought of Mason and the unavoidable implication in the man’s words. She knew enough about the cartel that any emissary that was dispatched to do its business would be ruthless, and that this man would have been given instructions to punish them—or worse—once the money had been recovered. She and her father would have to delay him long enough that an opportunity to save themselves might present itself; the trouble was, they were in the middle of the countryside, with no one nearby and no way of calling for help. She was unarmed, and her father was frail from his cancer and the beating that he had taken. They were helpless against their fate.
“Señor Russo,” the man said, “where is the money?”
Jessica looked at her father. The contentment was gone; it was as if he had been hollowed out, an empty vessel that had now been filled with weakness and fright.
The man aimed the pistol at Jessica while continuing to look at her father.
“This is the last time I will ask in a pleasant way,” he said. “I do not bluff, señor.”
“Dad,” Jessica said, “tell him.”
She saw the flicker in her father’s face, a reaction that he was not entirely successful in suppressing. The man saw it, too, and turned back to the house just as Jessica looked in the same direction. Her first thought, even as she blinked to focus on the shadow that was approaching them through the gloaming, was that Mason was still alive. The shadow took another step, passing through the oblong of light cast through the kitchen window, and she saw that she was wrong. The man wasn’t quite as big, his hair was dark rather than light, and he moved with an animal stealth that her brother would not have been able to match.
The man was clutching something in both hands, his left shoulder slightly further forward as he set his stance and swung as if addressing a fastball over the plate. The swing brought the object—long and thin and sparkling in the light—through a full arc that terminated in the man’s head. He had half-risen from the chair—too late—and now he fell to the side. He landed on his left shoulder, twitched once, and then lay still.
The gun fell free. Jessica scrambled for it, but was too slow. The newcomer picked it up and aimed it back at her.
He shook his head. The man was in the light now, and the glow illuminated his face: the scar across his cheek, the cold blue eyes.
“Sit down, Jessica,” John Smith said.
83
Blood dripped from the tip of the wrench that Milton had used against the sicario. He had found it in the outbuilding that he had passed on his way down to the house, and it had served its purpose well. He had given the sicario a heavy blow, but not—he hoped—a terminal one. They had things to discuss.
Milton held the sicario’s pistol in his hand as he waited for Jessica to sit down. It was a Czech weapon, the CZ 75B Shadow. A smooth-shooting pistol with minimal recoil. Milton had used it before.
“What happened to Mason?”
“He’s dead,” Milton said.
“How?”
“I was watching up on the hill.” Milton nodded down to the unconscious man at his feet. “He was waiting along the track. He stopped the car and shot him.”
Richard Russo’s face crumpled, and Jessica blinked back sudden tears. Milton didn’t care. He wasn’t sorry about what had happened, and he wasn’t about to pretend that he was. Mason had brought it upon himself. They all had. The family had invited calamity, and now that it had visited them, they could hardly complain about the consequences. Jessica and her father were fortunate that he had been here to intercept the sicario, because their evening would have become even more unpleasant than it had already been.
Milton took the homemade cuffs from his pocket and tossed them to Jessica.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
Milton nodded to Richard Russo. “Get up, please. Turn around and put your hands together behind your back. Jessica—you’re going to secure his wrists.”
“There’s no need to—”
“Now,” Milton said.
She looked at him, and he noted that her stubbornness wilted in his withering stare. Her father got to his feet and, at a nod from Jessica, turned around and put both hands behind his back. She looped the first cuff around his right wrist, the second around his left, and, at a curt nod from Milton, she closed them tightly.
“Now you,” Milton said, indicating that she should turn around.
Milton secured her wrists and sent her and her father to stand on the other side of the patio. With one eye on them, he kept the gun trained on the sicario and used his left hand to secure the man’s wrists. Satisfied that all three people were now properly restrained, Milton pushed the pistol into the waistband of his jeans and stood.
“Come with me, please,” he said to the Russos.
He dragged the man down the slope to the pool house that he had visited earlier. He opened the door and deposited the man inside. He secured his feet with another restraint, then closed the door and turned the key in the lock to secure it.
He nodded back up to the house. “Move,” he said to Jessica and her father. “We have some things to talk about.”
84
Richard Russo went first, followed by Jessica and then Milton. The door led into the kitchen. Milton glanced around the room, taking in the details: there was a large stove, cupboards and a dresser that bore a host of colourfully decorated plates. There was a generous-sized oak kitchen table with chairs arranged around it. An open laptop sat on the table, insects buzzing around it, drawn by the light from the screen.
“Sit down,” Milton said.
He waited as they used their feet to drag the chairs out from beneath the table and then sat down awkwardly.
Jessica looked up at him. “Why are you here?”
“Because of what you did,” he said.
“Your friend?”
“He’s dead,” Milton said.
“No, he isn’t,” she shot back defensively. “I read about it online—the police said that he was shot, but that he was going to be okay.”
“He would have been,” Milton said. “But the man who shot your brother killed him. He killed a lot of people, Jessica—a detective, a doctor, a security guard, one of Delgado’s men, and my friend. None of that would’ve happened if you hadn’t done something so monumentally stupid as thinking that you could steal from a Mexican cartel and that nothing would happen.”
She looked as if she was about to reply, but her mouth opened and closed uselessly as she struggled to find the words.
“I’m not here because of you,” Milton went on. “That’s not the main reason, at least, although I am going to see that you pay for what you’ve done.”
“So why are you here?”
Milton nodded his head in the direction of the sicario in the pool house. “I’m here for him. I’m going to find out who sent him, and then I’m going to find them.”
Milton had no interest in a discussion with the Russos, and he wanted to be away from the property as quickly as he could. Salazar had made it clear that the lead to Russo’s Tuscan farmhouse was one that the fraud team in Las Vegas would follow, especially now that they knew that the family had flown to Florence. He didn’t know how long it would take for an arrangement to be made with the Carabinieri, but he doubted that it would be very long. He was counting on that, in many ways, but he would have preferred a delay while he did what he had to do.
“How much?” Russo said.
Milton frowned. “What did you say?”
“How much will it take? How much do I have to pay you?”
“All of it,” Milton said.
“And then you’ll leave us in peace?”
Milton shook his head. “You don’t get it.
You can’t buy me. I don’t care about money.”
“But you said—”
“I have a purpose for the money, but it’s not going to help you.”
Russo started to protest, but Jessica stopped him with a glance. “Fine,” she said. “You can have it.”
Milton glanced at the laptop. “Where is the Bitcoin?”
“On the thumb drive,” she said.
“And where is that?”
“In my bag. On the counter—over there.”
There was a leather shoulder bag on the counter. Milton went over to it, opened it, and tipped the contents out. The drives that he had seen in the briefcase were both there. He took them back to the table and put them down in front of Russo.
“Transfer all of it into a wallet that I’m going to give you. Do you understand?”
Russo looked reluctant but, as Milton held him in his stare, he nodded.
Milton took his knife and sliced through Russo’s cuffs. He watched as the man plugged one of the drives into the USB port on the laptop, navigated to an online cryptocurrency exchange and hit the button to send Bitcoin. Ziggy Penn had explained the basics of cryptocurrency when Milton had called him during his layover in Germany. He didn’t pretend to understand it—his obtuseness had been a source of great amusement for Ziggy—but he had paid attention and knew what to look for to ensure that Russo didn’t try to trick him.
“Where am I sending it?”
Milton took out the details of the destination wallet that Ziggy had provided and put them on the table. Russo typed, slowly and deliberately, as if taking his time about it might cause Milton to change his mind.