Chapter 20
Jet met the Mossad operative a block from the hotel with Matt and Hannah in tow. He pulled to the curb in a blue diesel Nissan van and waited as they loaded into the little vehicle, scanning his mirrors and the street with a vigilance Matt and Jet knew well. When they were seated and the doors closed, he signaled and accelerated into traffic with the daredevil machismo of the locals, the engine clattering like a can filled with pebbles.
“So what should we call you?” Jet asked him.
“Gino.”
“Gino?” Matt repeated incredulously.
The operative switched to English. “When in Rome.”
“Where are we headed?” Jet asked.
“It will be tricky getting out of Milan. There are reports of roadblocks.”
“Isn’t that unusual for something like this?”
Gino nodded. “It would appear that the CIA has exerted some pressure on the Italians since you disappeared. They apparently aren’t happy.”
“We knew they’d be in the mix soon enough.”
“Yes, but we didn’t expect them to be so aggressive.”
“Then how do we slip past them?”
“You’re to split up. They’re watching for a woman, so you’ll be smuggled to the coast in a truck with a false compartment. The girl and your friend will stay with me.”
Jet crossed her arms. “No. We don’t separate under any circumstances,” she said.
Gino scowled and shook his head. “This isn’t a negotiation. That’s how it’s going to go down. Either that, or you might as well turn yourself in now, because if we’re stopped leaving town, you’re as good as arrested again.”
“Why can’t you get me a diplomatic passport or something?”
“We don’t have time.” He paused. “What’s your concern?”
“My concern is I never see my daughter or Matt again, and I’m your prisoner. Obviously.”
“Those aren’t my instructions. You have the director’s word you’ll be treated fairly.”
“All due respect, he’s lied to me before, so his word means less than spit.” She hesitated, thinking. “Matt and Hannah can ride with the driver.”
Gino shook his head. “That would be a red flag.”
“Then give them a car and they’ll follow the truck. We can stay in contact via phones or radios. We’re not going to be separated. Figure out a way,” she said, her voice hard.
Gino placed a call on his encrypted phone and had a murmured discussion, and then hung up and caught her eye in the rearview mirror.
“Fine. We’ll supply a vehicle. You do have a driver’s license and passports if you’re stopped, right?” he asked Matt.
“Don’t worry about us,” Matt said. “Just get us a ride and a phone.”
They traversed the city and entered an industrial area with long warehouses stretching from the street, the road degrading with the neighborhood. Gino swung into an anonymous yard filled with bobtail trucks and a yawning gate, no signs of life anywhere. He ground to a stop on the gravel, shut off the engine, and unclipped his safety belt.
“Follow me.”
They piled out of the van, Hannah and Matt with their backpacks, and made their way to a door near a loading dock. Paint was peeling from the walls, and discarded plastic bottles and wrappers clogged the drain grid that ran along the base of the building. Gino tried the handle and then knocked, and they waited as footsteps thumped inside, echoing off the high steel roof.
A man with no neck and pig eyes stared at them from the doorway and stepped aside without a word. Gino led them into the cavernous warehouse to where a truck was waiting near a stack of pallets. Another man in his thirties with a long ponytail and a goatee was leaning against it, listening to music on his phone. He looked up as they approached.
“You’re late,” he said.
Gino shrugged. “Traffic.”
“Same problem leaving town.”
“How long will we be on the road?” Jet asked.
The goateed driver shrugged. “Five hours. Maybe six.”
“Where are we going? Genoa?”
Gino shook his head. “Porto Ercole, down the coast. There’s a marina there. You’ll board a vessel that will take you to Sardinia, where we’ll have a plane waiting. The boat captain will give you the details.” Gino glanced at the driver. “You have the car?”
He nodded and tossed Gino the keys. “Out back. Brown Fiat. Full tank. Registration’s in the glove compartment.”
Jet held out her hand to Gino. “Phone?”
The driver opened the driver’s side door of the truck and returned moments later with a cheap disposable Nokia that was at least five years old. He gave it to Jet, and she turned it on and then entered Matt’s number. She saved it and eyed the battery indicator with approval.
“You need to use the bathroom, now’s your chance,” the driver said.
Jet took Hannah by the hand, and they followed the driver to a door at the far side of the warehouse while Matt waited. When they got back, the driver shifted some of the cargo in the truck aside and opened a compartment in the floor. “There’s cushions in there that should make it a little better than nothing, but it’s not going to be a picnic. That’s normally used for…special cargo, not people.”
She looked to Gino, who shrugged. “Weapons. Contraband. Whatever.”
“Hope you don’t get claustrophobic,” the driver said.
Jet met his eyes without flinching. “I don’t.” She turned from him, leaned over, and kissed Hannah. “Be good, okay? I’ll be right here. You’ll be following in a car with Matt.”
“Can I go with you?”
“No, sweetie. Mama’s got to do this alone.”
Hannah’s eyes welled with moisture and her lower lip trembled, but she nodded understanding, if not agreement. Jet swallowed a golf ball-size lump in her throat, gave Matt a peck, and climbed into the truck. She lowered herself in to the compartment and was reassured that it had sufficient space for her to adjust her posture somewhat and ventilation from a series of crude grills near her head. The driver looked down at her with a slight grin and slid the flooring back into place, and then she was enshrouded in total darkness.
Matt followed Gino to the rear of the building where the Fiat was parked. The Mossad operative climbed into the car, started the engine, and stepped out. He faced off with Matt, who was taller by a good six inches, and eyed Hannah.
“Stick on his tail. If he gets stopped, keep going and wait at the nearest place you can. There’s only one main route down the coast, so you shouldn’t have any problems once you’re out of Milan.”
Matt nodded and helped Hannah into the passenger seat, stowing their backpacks in the rear, and rounded the hood to the driver’s side. He slid behind the wheel, adjusted the mirror and seat, and then pulled the door closed and eased the car into gear.
A rolling steel door rose at the back of the warehouse and the truck pulled out. Matt glued himself to the taillights and bounced down the drive, the afternoon light fading into the gloaming. His phone rang, and he reached for his shirt pocket.
“Hey,” he answered.
“This sucks,” Jet said, over the engine noise from the truck exhaust roaring in the background.
“You knew it would.”
“You following?”
“I’m on your tail.” He paused. “Good call on not splitting up.”
“Over my dead body.”
“You got enough air?”
“That’s not the problem. It’s the vibration and the bumps. Thing has no shocks.”
“Well, good luck.”
“Thanks. I’ll call periodically to verify you haven’t bailed on me.”
“Now’s our big chance.”
There was a long pause. “I hope we did the right thing.”
It was Matt’s turn to hesitate. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “We’ll know soon enough.”
Chapter 21
The truck braked to a stop a
t the end of a long line of cars. Ahead, police car roof lights strobed off the vehicles as officers scrutinized the occupants before waving them through. Matt’s phone rang and he thumbed it to life.
“What’s happening?” Jet asked.
“Roadblock. Appears the rumors were true.”
“How thorough does it look?”
“They’re definitely paying attention. Probably a couple hundred cars ahead of us, so they’re taking their time.”
Jet disconnected and Matt slid the phone back into his shirt pocket. Hannah was watching him with intense interest, and he forced a smile. “Mama called to say she’s fine.”
“Why is she hiding?”
“Bad men.”
Hannah had heard the answer often enough before to accept it and nod knowledgeably. “Oh.”
Matt felt for his fake Canadian driver’s license and passport in his backpack with his right hand. The column of vehicles crawled forward as darkness fell, and he watched as the truck eventually reached the checkpoint. After several moments the driver appeared with two officers toting machine guns and rolled the door of the cargo bay up so they could see inside. One of the cops climbed awkwardly into the bed and rooted around the cartons, and Matt’s breath caught in his throat – the police were taking this far more seriously than he’d have expected, no doubt due to the Italian intelligence service pulling out all the stops.
The officer hopped down and the driver pulled the door closed again, and then it was Matt’s turn. A flashlight beam blinded him and a gruff voice growled a question in Italian through his open window. He shook his head and spoke English.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand. No Italian.”
The cop looked annoyed and shined the beam on Hannah for several seconds, and then on their backpacks. Matt forced his breathing slower as the cop appeared to lose interest, and then his phone trilled again, drawing the cop’s attention.
Matt pointed to his shirt and smiled sheepishly. The cop gave him a disgusted look and waved him forward. Matt answered the call, his voice tight.
“We’re through,” he said.
“No problems?”
“Nothing fatal.”
The drive south took longer than advertised, and it was midnight by the time the truck rolled into the tiny waterfront town of Porto Ercole and shimmied down the uneven road that led to the marina. The white hulls of private yachts reflected off the inky water in the pale moonlight that gilded the surface of the swells, the boats straining at their mooring lines with the Mediterranean surge as the trucker guided the bobtail the final yards to the parking lot and shut off the engine.
Matt wheeled in beside him and got out of the car. The area was still, the air redolent with the salty tang of the sea, and there were only a few lights still on in the surrounding homes. After glancing around, the driver moved to the rear of the truck and opened the bay. A minute later Jet joined Matt by the Fiat with Hannah, rolling her head to get a kink out of her neck, her muscles stiff from lying immobile in the confined space for over six hours.
A figure limped toward them from the marina gate, and a crusty man in his sixties with a hand-rolled cigarette stuck to his bottom lip approached, his blue turtleneck sweater and fisherman’s hat black in the dim light. He inspected them with alert eyes and then turned to the driver.
“This everybody, right?”
“Correct. They’re all yours now.”
The old-timer grunted and looked hard at Jet. “You speak Italian?”
“Yes.”
“My name’s Giuseppe. I’m the captain of the boat that will take you to Sardinia. Is that all you have?” he asked, motioning to Matt’s and Hannah’s backpacks.
“Yes.”
“Good. Then let’s get under way. I want to be there by morning, but even with favorable sea conditions, it’ll be a push.”
The captain led them down a grade to the water, where a sleek Euro-style yacht was moored, its stern facing the jetty. A passerelle bridged the gap between land and boat. Jet went first, followed by Matt and her daughter, the captain bringing up the rear, his steps confident on the narrow teak gangplank.
Giuseppe depressed a button and the hydraulic passerelle retracted into a compartment in the stern with a whine, and then made for the pilothouse. The big diesel motors started with a rumble, and he returned to the stern and slipped the mooring line from a cleat before making his way forward and doing the same on the bow, his limp less pronounced as he moved with surprising speed, given his age and infirmity.
Back at the wheel, he slipped the transmissions into gear and idled to the breakwater at the mouth of the small harbor before pushing the throttles forward. The big boat surged ahead as the bow rose, and the captain’s face glowed from the radar and instrument screens. The yacht picked up speed until the speedometer display read twenty-eight knots, and Giuseppe turned to where Jet was standing.
“There’s food and drink below. Three staterooms. Use whatever you like. Self-explanatory, if you’ve ever been aboard a boat before.”
“We have.”
“Good. I’m single-handing this trip, so there’s nobody to explain things to. Go ahead and get some shut-eye. We should be in Fertilia by nine.”
“How far is that?”
“Couple hundred knots. But the report says it’ll get bumpy when we reach the middle, so we’ll have to slow some.”
“You’ve done the crossing before?”
“Often enough to never take the sea for granted.” He paused. “Only thing worse than unexpected squalls would be an Italian patrol boat taking an interest in us.”
Jet’s eyes narrowed. “What are the chances of that?”
He shrugged. “Slimmer the further out we get. But it’s always a risk.”
“Then what do we do?”
“You have papers?”
She shook her head.
“How well can you hold your breath and swim?”
Her face was stony. “Is that a joke?”
Giuseppe grinned. “Don’t worry. Most of them know me. I’m sort of a regular along this stretch of coast.”
“Then why mention it?”
He winked. “Full disclosure, nothing more.”
Jet threw him a dark look and edged to Matt. “We should try to get some rest.”
A trace of a smile tugged at his lips. “I didn’t want to interrupt your talk. You two seemed to be becoming best friends.”
“He says to expect some ugly seas ahead, and I’m to swim for it if patrol boats board us – which is him being funny. Hopes to have us in Sardinia by nine. That about covers it.”
Matt eyed Hannah and nodded. “Let’s hit it. Lead the way.”
The master stateroom was amidships, the full width of the hull, and was opulent by any standard, with polished exotic hardwoods and marble and granite everywhere. Jet plopped onto the bed, bounced twice, and winked at Hannah. “Last one asleep has to scrub the toilet.”
“Ew,” the little girl exclaimed, and threw herself beside her mother, giggling. Matt used the bathroom and then lowered himself onto the sheets beside Jet, suddenly as weary as he could remember.
“It’ll be nice when we can actually sleep without being fully clothed,” he said.
She sighed. “No argument.”
The captain’s warning of rough water proved prescient, and three hours into the trip the engine pitch lowered to reduce the hull from pounding. Fortunately, they were at the lowest point in the boat, so the rocking from beam seas was mitigated enough for them to snatch at least some uneasy rest.
When the sun rose over the azure horizon and Giuseppe inched the throttles forward again, Jet joined him in the pilothouse while Matt and Hannah slumbered. The captain had brewed a pot of rich Italian coffee, and they clutched steaming mugs as they eyed the sea, the water now nearly flat as they approached the strait between Sardinia and Corsica.
“How much longer?” she asked.
“An hour until we’re between the islands, and then ano
ther hour until we moor. I was able to make better time than I thought, even with the slop.”
“So…eight?” she asked, checking her watch.
“Or thereabouts.”
“Are there customs agents or immigration at the marina?”
He laughed. “Not today.”
She didn’t ask how he could be so confident, satisfied that he was.
Matt poked his head from the salon half an hour later, Hannah by his side, looking a trifle green. Jet led her to a window and encouraged her to stare at the water.
“It’s an old sailor’s trick. Keep your eyes on the sea and you feel better. You’ll see.”
Hannah did as instructed, and they stood together as the big boat plowed along, engines rumbling beneath their feet, only a few cotton puffs of high clouds drifting across a turquoise sky. Eventually green and brown hills jutted from the water in the distance, and the captain turned to them with a twinkle in his eye.
“Corsica on the right. French. Sardinia on the left. Italy. Both of them crazy in their own way. Common on islands – the populations go nuts over the years.”
“Bigger than I thought,” Jet commented, taking in the massive island.
“Oh, sure. Corsica’s almost a hundred and sixty kilometers long, and Sardinia’s nearly twice its size.”
“Wow.”
“Most people don’t realize what sits off the coast. I’ve always thought it amazing.”
Another hour passed, and they rounded Sardinia’s northernmost tip and made a course for Fertilia – where, Giuseppe informed them, they would be met by someone who would drive them to the airport. “We’re going there because it’s smaller than the larger marina at Porto Torres,” he explained. “Porto Torres also has a big customs presence because of the ferry traffic.”
Jet nodded. “Whatever works. We don’t care.”
The marina at Fertilia was filled with sailboats when they idled past the breakwater and pulled up to the fuel dock. They disembarked from the cruiser and were met on the dock by an unshaven young man with long hair, a grubby T-shirt, and a pronounced slouch, who nodded a greeting to them.
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