by Jonas Saul
“All right, just spit it all out. I’m writing everything down.”
“Aaron called me. The Toronto police had surrounded his vehicle. There was gunfire, then the phone died. I haven’t heard a thing. Can you find out if Aaron has been hurt, killed or arrested? Also, get everything you can on Agent Kierian.”
“That it?”
“Yeah. How long will this take?”
“Call me back in thirty minutes.”
“Really?”
“Call me back. Whatever I have, I’ll give to you.”
“You’re a prince.”
“Do you need me to come to Italy?”
“No, I just need information for now. Then I’m coming back.” A thought struck her. “Can you also look up Sam ‘The Dealer’ Marconi and give me the breakdown on who he is and what his agenda might be?”
“Consider it done. Call me back.”
The line went dead.
Sarah set the phone down, longing for the old days when Parkman had her back. Without him, she would be dead right now. He had followed her to that FLDS compound all those years ago and saved her. Then he followed her to Europe and helped her hunt Armond Stuart, an international human trafficker.
She missed Parkman, but life had taken her in another direction.
The stores were opening in Termini. Within forty-five minutes, she completely changed her wardrobe and even bought a small wallet to hold the money Kierian had given her. After another espresso, she threw her old clothes in a waste basket and headed for the pay phones again.
The entire time, she looked for the cowboy but caught no sight of him or anyone else paying any kind of special attention to her.
At the phones, she dialed Parkman, her stomach turning at what he might have found out.
“Parkman here.”
“It’s Sarah.”
“What do you want first, Kierian, Aaron or Marconi?”
“Aaron.”
“Nothing. At least that’s what you get at the first level. Then I called Detective Waller, retired. Remember him?”
“How could I forget the man who wanted to kill me?”
“He checked in with his old buddies and called me back. Aaron has been arrested for murder.”
“What?” Sarah yelled. She looked around having caught the attention of passersby. She hunkered in close to the phone. “How is that possible?”
“According to Waller, they have the car, the murder weapon, actually two murder weapons, and his prints in the car of the deceased.”
“But Aaron didn’t murder anybody. I was there.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
Sarah explained what happened the night she was warned against coming to Italy.
“And you still went?” Parkman asked. “Yeah, of course you did. Almost forgot who I was talking to.”
“I have to get back to Toronto. I can clear it up. I was a witness. The guy was still breathing when we left and it was Kierian and me who shot his wrist and hand, not Aaron.”
“Speaking of Kierian, you want him next?”
“Shoot.” Her stomach was in knots. Her fear for what Aaron was going through made her physically sick. It was all her fault for agreeing to come here. When this was over, Marconi would pay the ultimate price.
“There’s only bad news when it comes to Kierian.”
Her stomach dropped further. “What do you mean?”
She checked her back.
“There is no Special Agent Kieran who works for the FBI. Never was and isn’t now.”
Sarah was stunned speechless. How could Kierian have fooled Detective Lyson in Toronto for so long? How could he fool her?
With an authentic-looking badge.
“How accurate is this information?” she asked.
“One hundred percent. No doubt. Agent Hanover called all the way upstairs. The last thing she wants is to be responsible for you getting in trouble. I told her your life was at stake. She almost failed you twice. Trust me, she is absolutely sure there is no Agent Kierian anywhere in their system. Even if he’s deep undercover, the system she looked into would at least have a name, but she found nothing.”
“Then who does he work for?” she said, almost to herself.
“I thought the same thing so I looked his name up. Nothing remotely matches what you gave me.”
“When I get back he is going to have a lot of explaining to do.”
The pay phone timer warned her of a minute left.
“One sec, Parkman. I have to put more coins in the phone.”
Once that was done, the timer showed three minutes and she was out of coins.
“We have three minutes until it cuts off. I’m out of coins. But that’s okay, because I have a fake FBI agent who I have to go kill.”
“Sarah, be careful. You don’t know who he is.”
“What have you got on Marconi?”
“Too much for three minutes, but the highlights are, he’s a hired assassin. The Mafia has used him for over a dozen years. He’s known around the world, like Carlos the Jackal. Serious player. If you’re going after him, you can’t do it alone. He has a team of mercenaries as security men.”
“After I’m done with Kierian, or whoever he is, I won’t be going after Marconi. This job sounds like it’s over.”
Unless it’s Marconi who’s fucking with Aaron.
“Recently Marconi popped up in the news for claiming responsibility for the killing of a politician who was running for re-election, the Minister of Agriculture.”
“How would the Minister of Agriculture be in the same league as Mafia Dons?”
Sarah looked around, but still no one seemed to be paying her any special attention.
“Don’t know, but this guy is not someone you mess with. Even if you get lucky and kill a man like this, they have contingency plans in place, they have—”
The phone died.
“Shit.”
She hung up. There was no time to get more change.
She had a man in a hotel room using the name Penn Kierian who needed to be hospitalized but not until he explained who he really was.
Since no one knew they were in Italy, she could break a dozen of his bones, get on the Terravision bus outside the train station and head to the airport where she had enough cash to get on the next plane heading to Toronto before noon.
She would fly as Mrs. Cooper with the passport in the hotel room and get to Aaron’s side within fifteen hours.
No wonder I don’t trust the authorities.
She hit the escalators heading back up to the street level with the first real smile on her face in days.
This was the part she was going to enjoy.
Kierian had no idea the world of pain that was coming his way.
Chapter 10
At the street level, cars, Vespas, and buses were stopped, caught up in a massive traffic jam in front of the station. Even before nine in the morning, this area of Rome bustled.
She meandered through groups of people going every which way and got to the road where she sidestepped between two taxi cabs.
How could Kierian pull off that lie for so long?
Her anger grew with every step. Parkman was a trusted source and Agent Hanover didn’t just owe Parkman, she owed Sarah. There was no way the information could be wrong.
Kierian was a fraud.
Her anger almost boiled over when a tourist stopped in front of her talking animatedly on his cell phone about the police.
Instead of shoving him aside, she slowed to listen.
“Yes, I think the guy was murdered.” The man stopped, turned to Sarah who had edged closer and frowned at her. He moved away, whispering into his cell about strange people.
Emergency vehicles blocked the side street her hotel was on, which had caused the rush-hour-like conditions.
She pulled her hair together and rolled it into a bun, shoving the tip inside to secure it.
Then she moved toward the small crowd that had gathered at th
e police line. The twenty-four hour warning from Marconi’s men came to mind. Could this police response be for Kierian? Did someone attack their room?
Her anger, cooled now by self-preservation, a sense of change if Kierian had been hit, made her falter. If it was Kierian, were they watching her right now?
She looked around, but everyone in close proximity was paying attention to the roped-off area. She edged closer, pushing by a few people to see down the street.
An ambulance was parked at the door to her hotel. Seven police cars lined the street around the ambulance in various states of parallel and double parking. Bumped by the crowd around her, she pushed to stay near the front.
A young couple with British accents talked quietly beside her about the murder. She tilted her head to listen better.
“A man was standing on the balcony, looking at the street below,” the male Brit beside Sarah said. “Someone shouted something. The man on the balcony looked up. At that exact moment he jerked his head back. Then he fell backwards, out of sight.”
“And you saw all this?” his companion asked.
Sarah maneuvered in front of the British man and woman. “Which balcony?” Sarah asked.
The man, clearly shaken at what he had seen, his face pale, pointed up at the hotel. “The one that officer is standing on.”
Sarah followed his finger and fixed her gaze on the balcony of the room she and Kierian had rented as Mr. and Mrs. Cooper. An Italian cop stood on the balcony, a man in a white crime lab coat on his hands and knees beside him. The cop was reading something he held in his hands.
Our passports.
A hush over the crowd grew momentarily as emergency personnel were coming out the front door. Two men wheeled a stretcher into view. The body and face was covered in a white sheet that was strapped down. It was the approximate size and shape of Kierian.
Moments ago she wanted to kill him, but her anger had dissipated.
If she hadn’t gone out this morning, she would be dead, too.
Where’s Vivian?
Kierian’s murderer was close by. Whoever did this would still be in the area, looking for her. This wouldn’t end until they found her.
The threat in Toronto was real.
If the killer or killers had entered the room at any point in search of her, they would know the name she was using.
That meant a commercial airliner was out of the question.
She fixed her gaze on the cop on the balcony to confirm what he was holding. The officer scanned the crowd below and then looked back at the document in his hand. His eyes turned to the crowd again.
He’s looking for the woman in the passport.
A realization dawned on her. With her passport, even if she wanted to, she could never get on a plane. She couldn’t leave the Euro zone.
But the trains didn’t need a passport to travel.
All she had was the money in her pocket.
The officer on the balcony continued to search the crowd below. His head swiveled back and forth. He shouted something to an officer on the ground, then continued his search. When he turned her way, she spun around, offering her back, slipped behind a few people and pushed forward.
After she had gone past half a dozen people, she looked over her shoulder.
The cop of the balcony was staring at her.
“È lei,” he shouted, pointing at her. “Tra la folla. Fermala. Sta scappando!”
Sarah ran, having no idea what the cop shouted, other than it probably meant that he wanted her to stop. She bumped into people, knocked someone’s shoulder and almost spun out of control as she tripped over the edge of a piece of luggage dragged by an overloaded tourist.
At the street corner, the crowd lessened, giving her more options. The street was still jammed, but vehicles were starting to get through. She ran between two buses and turned to get lost in the train station.
On the far corner she caught sight of the cowboy. He leaned against a wall, watching her escape.
Any other time, she would change direction and chase him down, but now she had no option but to clear the area. They had her fake passport. They had a dead body. There was a brand new Smith & Wesson in the room with only her prints on it, unless Kierian had touched it after she left.
Nothing looked good right now. She needed to get somewhere safe and clear her head. She needed to find out what happened and what was happening.
She got across the street before the authorities at the front of her hotel fought through the crowd of people milling around the cordoned off area.
Inside the train station, she ran along the tracks searching destinations for a city name she recognized.
Ancona, Firenze, Napoli, Perugia …
She stopped running.
Perugia. She had been to Perugia years ago with Parkman. She remembered that area well.
The train was leaving in three minutes.
Perfect.
None of the police had emerged through the large opening to the train station by the road where she had entered. But they weren’t far behind.
She ran to a ticket machine. Conscious of her pursuers, she hit the British flag button that turned the language of the machine to English. Then she followed the steps needed to buy a ticket. The train’s sign now said it was leaving in a minute.
She looked at the gaping door to the train station.
Over twenty uniformed officers entered the terminal.
She turned back to the machine, her breathing coming in ragged gasps as her ribs were reacting to the pressure with protest.
She hit the buy ticket button and it asked for a credit card.
There was no cash option. She looked up. At the top of the machine, it said it was a credit card machine only.
She had no time to redo the purchase.
She slinked away from the ticket unit and ran along the train to an open door where she hopped on.
She took a seat beside a woman on the second class coach. A moment before the doors closed and the train started moving, three more people got on, none of them police.
All three moved through her car looking for a seat in the crowded train. As the last man past her seat, he smiled down at her. She didn’t smile back. He had dark skin, hair pulled back into a tiny ponytail but otherwise clean-cut, dressed in jeans and a tight T-shirt.
He sat far enough away not to bother her.
The doors shut and the train pulled away from the station.
Only then did she relax. The cowboy had missed the train.
Not once did she see a cop peek in the windows. They had to think she was still in the station somewhere.
If, during the course of the trip, a train employee walked the train car and asked to see her ticket to validate it and she didn’t have one, they would kick her off at the next station. Then she would buy one at that station for the rest of the journey and get the next train to Perugia. Unless the ticket guy would sell her a ticket.
No one would know where to look for her or what train she had jumped on. Soon she would be three hours north of Rome.
Whether it was the police looking to question her or a madman looking to kill her, she would hide for a few days and then call Parkman for advice. He would know what to do.
It would all work out. She had done nothing wrong.
But neither had Aaron.
Chapter 11
The man in the T-shirt and jeans pulled his cell phone out and dialed.
“I’ve got her,” he said quietly in Italian.
“Has she been terminated? Tell me, Frank, can we move forward?”
“She is still employed.”
“What? Why hasn’t she been terminated?”
“I think the cowboy is going to be a problem.”
He waited as the man on the other end of the phone paused to think. The train cleared Roma Termini and turned in a wide arc to head north out of Lazio province and into Umbria.
“What are you proposing?”
“Infiltration.”<
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“Infiltration?”