by James Phelan
Walker felt Clara’s body tense.
“Let’s find a cab,” Walker said.
Clara walked from him, and he watched her settle at the curb, looking right and left for a passing taxi. Walker knew that there were certain truths in the world, and one of them was that with a body like Clara’s, cab drivers would fight for the fare. In another life . . .
Walker looked back toward the internet cafe. He spotted someone, but his eyes didn’t linger. A split second, that’s all it took, all he needed to know that the moment had changed.
Walker made a guy who didn’t belong, the type of guy who had no place in an internet cafe full of backpackers and tourists. He was not from the security company, responding to Walker’s soft break-in. And he was not alone—his accomplice was across the street, waiting.
25
Italy had the most police per capita than anywhere in Europe, and at least two of them were tailing Walker. Plain-clothes cops.
Walker did a casual sweep of the area and could not see any others.
These two could be checking the break-in at the internet cafe; they might even have a lead that it was—
Walker knew what they were there for when one of the cops scanned the faces in the street and locked on Walker: recognition.
Damn.
Two career cops, used to dealing with criminals of all kinds. Not used to former special-forces operatives who had no time to be detained and no desire to answer questions. Walker almost felt sorry for them; then he remembered Clara. They had seen her with him just now. Maybe they were specifically looking for her, too. It was an unfortunate complication, and he knew in that moment that returning to the apartment this morning went counter to everything he had learned in year after year of training and practice. Instead, it was a decision based solely on a primeval part of his brain that yearned for company and comfort; that same tiny speck of gray matter that said going to the farmhouse in Palermo to drink and fuck was a great idea; the same bit of him that wanted to take Clara in his arms and let no harm come to her.
“In here,” Walker said, taking Clara firmly by the elbow and guiding her into a bridal shop. He led her quickly toward the back, her feet sliding on the floor as he pulled her along. He glanced behind.
The two cops were in pursuit, entering the store at a wary half-run, talking into police radios.
•
“Local police are pursuing Walker on foot,” Ben Hobbs said, driving an Alfa Romeo from the US embassy’s pool down the oncoming traffic lane to overtake a jam, a Bluetooth earpiece relaying information from the police net.
“I told them not to approach!” Somerville cried.
Car horns blazed as Hobbs bleeped the Alfa’s hidden siren and blasted through an intersection.
“They must have been made,” Hobbs replied.
“Tell them to back off.”
He touched his ear, said, “We’ve lost contact with them.”
“How far away?”
“Just up the road here.”
“Hurry!” she said. “We can’t let Walker slip through again.”
26
The shop attendant shouted something but Walker could not make out the rapid-fire Italian. The tone he recognized, though, as he led Clara into the rear of the store and through the first door: a storeroom set up with a maze of stuffed clothes racks.
“What is going on?” Clara called, struggling to keep up with Walker’s pace.
Walker pulled Clara behind the doorway and pressed her against the wall.
He turned, waited a beat, then held his arm out straight to the room—
Clothes-lining the first cop through the doorway, Walker’s forearm chopped hard against the guy’s windpipe. The wide-eyed cop’s hands clutched at his throat, as though trying to pull it open to let air pass through.
The second cop was a step behind and hesitated, seeing his partner down and now out as Walker kneed him hard in the ribs and then brought the Beretta down on the back of his head.
The cop raised his hands at the sight of the pistol, but his forward momentum and surprise worked against him, and Walker rushed the two steps to close the gap.
The policeman’s reaction was instinctive and showed some decent training and street smarts as he tried to disarm Walker, grabbing his wrist and twisting it into a compliance hold, the weapon pointed away.
Walker had no intention of shooting the guy, not here, not like this, not when he had other options. He pulled his arms in, drawing the cop close, then quickly twisted his arms across to spin the guy around him into a choker hold, holding, squeezing, tightening his biceps and forearm around the cop’s neck until he felt the guy go limp. He slid to the floor with a dull thud.
“Come on,” Walker said to Clara as he grabbed her wrist and pulled her behind him through the doorway.
“They were police!” Clara said, pointing back at the guy’s open jacket to his badge and holstered pistol.
They exited the rear door, out into the service alley he’d been in earlier this morning. Walker headed right, to the busy street forty meters ahead, still holding Clara by the arm, when she suddenly stopped.
•
Andrew Hutchinson was in the plain office of a State Department official named Stephanie Nell.
“So, you’re telling me that Walker’s alive?” Nell said, after hearing Hutchinson out.
“Yep.”
Nell didn’t seem shocked by the news. “What’s he been doing?”
“We don’t know.”
“Where’s he been?”
“Don’t know that either.”
Nell scratched at a notepad and said, “And you want what with him, exactly?”
Hutchinson said, “He’s touched on an ongoing investigation that we are running.”
“We—you and McCorkell’s little UN intel outfit?”
Hutchinson nodded.
“What’s that about?”
Hutchinson said, “Can’t say.”
“Walker’s involved how?”
“It’s too early to tell.”
“And why are you here,” Nell said, leaning forward on her desk, “aside from telling me that our guy didn’t really die in the desert?”
“I need a better sense of Walker.”
“A better sense?”
“Motivations. Alliances. Suspicions. The kind of thing that doesn’t make it into human-resources reports.”
Nell leaned back, considering Hutchinson. “My advice would be to let him be,” she said. “Whatever he’s doing, it’s not as bad as you think it might be. Whoever he’s up against, that’s where you should be looking. That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
Nell nodded. “That’s all.”
Hutchinson pushed his luck, said, “What work did he do for you?”
“I can’t say.”
“Has he been in contact with anyone here since Yemen?”
“You mean, since he and an Agency paramilitary officer were killed by a CIA drone strike?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“What can you tell me about Yemen?”
“It’s a shit hole.”
“The mission.”
“Nothing.”
“You know I’m here representing Bill McCorkell.”
“I know. And if he wants to go begging the President to change a whole bunch of secrecy laws, then good luck to him.”
Hutchinson smiled, looked around the office. “What sort of work does this office do?”
Nell returned his smile. “We could go round and round in circles all day, but I really do have important work to do.”
Hutchinson stood, paced around the room. There was nothing telling. An American flag, several legal books, a computer, a plastic plant. It looked like the room had been set up just before he arrived.
“You know,” Hutchinson said, “I’ve heard rumors of a secret State Department group. The Magellan something-or-
other. A group of special investigators, traveling the world, setting things right, stuff no one else could do.”
Nell matched his stare, allowing silence to fill the room for a few long moments. “Sounds like fiction.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Hutchinson fell silent.
A minute passed, and then Nell leaned forward on her desk and said, “All right, Agent Hutchinson, I’ll give you something. But this doesn’t come back to me.”
27
“Please, stop, tell me what is going on!” Clara was panicked, and Walker didn’t have time for her to fall to pieces.
Walker looked both ways in the busy street and led her onward, merging them with the mass of pedestrians as he replied. “They’re after me. I pushed my luck being here. I was careless.”
“Who are you running from—the police? The CIA?”
“Them, and the guys who killed Felix.”
“But back there—they were police!”
“And if they found us, then the others won’t be far behind.”
“Us?” Clara said, and Walker could see her face cloud over with mistrust and worry.
“I’m sorry you got involved in this,” Walker said. “You need to get out of town, stay with a friend, lie low for a couple of weeks.”
“Why? Please, tell me, what is going on here?”
“Clara, I can’t tell you.”
“You are a criminal, aren’t you?”
“No. It’s . . . this is something I’ve been trying to piece together for almost a year, and I need to keep going just a bit longer.”
“Why?”
“Because something terrible will happen if I fail.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“But what is it?” She stopped walking in the crowd and looked at him, her big dark eyes wet, the tears holding but not for long. “I want to know. I need to know.”
“I’m trying to set something right,” he said. “There are people involved who will think nothing of hurting me or you to stop me from doing this.”
“The men who killed Felix.”
Walker nodded. “He was killed for a reason, and he was killed on an order.”
“And you want to find out who was behind it.”
“Yes.”
“Why you? Let the police handle it.”
“They can’t. They won’t.”
“Let it go while you have a chance.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I do not understand!”
“Look, Clara, just get out of town, okay? Some place quiet and safe—your friends’ place in the countryside sounds good. Go there and see them. Take a holiday.”
“A holiday?”
“Out of town. Stay there for a week. Maybe longer. As long as you can. Forget you ever met me.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine,” Walker said. He took her hand and they moved to where the street met a bustling four-lane road. As they emerged onto the corner footpath, Clara started to say something but Walker had tuned out as a new threat appeared.
A black BMW sedan pulled up hard in front of them.
28
“We’ve lost all contact with the cops on scene,” Hobbs said, hammering the embassy’s Alfa Romeo, blue magnetic light on the dash, a Chevy SUV with DSS agents riding close behind them.
Somerville hit the dashboard with her fist. “Shit! Where is it?”
“We’re two blocks out,” Hobbs said, leaning on the car’s horn and blasting a way through the traffic to enter the oncoming lane. “Thirty seconds!”
•
Walker did not stop moving.
From the passenger seat of the BMW a large guy got out—Walker dropped him with a heel-kick to the kneecap, followed by an elbow striking down squarely on the guy’s forehead where his brow met his nose. The guy stayed motionless on his knees, as though frozen in time and stuck in a shocked state of semiconsciousness, his nose running with blood.
Walker kept moving. He knew these guys were not cops, even before the driver pulled a silenced pistol from inside his jacket.
“Down!” Walker called, spinning around and grabbing Clara’s arms and pulling her out of the line of fire.
PFFT. PFFT.
Two silenced gunshots hit the brick wall behind them, the passers-by oblivious to the gunfire and the dust kicked up by the slugs.
Walker lifted the large guy to his feet to face him. He was sucking for air through the running blood flow.
The driver aimed.
Walker had the big guy between him and the shooter, held his Beretta in hard against the guy’s chest and fired two rounds that were muffled by the close contact, the 9-millimeter slugs drilling through him and into the driver. The dead man’s chest cavity acted as a suppressor, so the sound was little different to a car’s backfire, and did not draw attention. Carrying through with the same movement, Walker put the big guy back into the passenger seat, closed the door, hid the Beretta under the back of his waistband and then spun around to Clara.
“Move,” he said, and grabbed her hand. They walked quickly and deliberately down the street, joining the morning commuters. “Keep moving, that’s it, keep going . . .”
Ahead of them a taxi pulled up to the curb and a couple got out. Walker had Clara in the back seat before she could protest. He told the driver to take her to the Stadio Olimpico, then paid fifty euros and shut the door. The cab took off into the morning traffic. In thirty minutes she would be at her destination across the Tiber, a safe distance from here. With any luck, by then he would be heading for a border.
The last image he had of Clara was her looking back at him, her face over the back seat and framed through the rear window, her lips mouthing something he could not hear.
29
Il Bisturi watched the shooting of two of his Camorra employees and was impressed.
Walker was a resourceful man. Quick to react. A challenge.
He’d seen the gunfight from across the road. Saw Walker put the woman into the cab. Saw him a moment later get into a cab of his own, headed the opposite way. And now, he watched as a black Alfa Romeo pursued the cab at a safe, precise distance, driven by a young black guy; a woman next to him. Another car was behind them, this one a big SUV with blacked-out windows. Americans.
Il Bisturi kicked his Ducati into gear and followed the convoy.
•
Walker sat in the back of the cab, headed to the Termini railway station.
His hands shook from the adrenaline of recent action. He breathed deep, settling breaths. The wound in his side stung. He concentrated on that to calm his thoughts and plan his next moves.
•
“Easy. Don’t spook him,” Somerville said.
Hobbs nodded, and concentrated on driving coolly and calmly, the blue light of the Alfa stashed away.
Ahead, Walker was in the back seat of a cab. A little old VW beetle was between the cab and their car.
Somerville checked her side mirror to confirm that the SUV was still close behind.
“What’s our move?” Hobbs said.
“Follow him, see where he goes,” Somerville said. “Take him down when we have him cornered.”
•
“The Americans are following,” Il Bisturi said via the Bluetooth connection to his cell phone, riding behind the SUV chase car.
Bellamy said, “Who?”
“Walker.”
“No, who are the Americans?”
“I don’t know.”
“Describe them.”
“Black man driving, woman passenger. SUV chase car following.”
“Send me a photo from your phone for ID.”
“Okay.”
Bellamy was silent, then said, “Watch and report to me. Let them take him in if you have to.”
“Why?”
“I want to get an ID on them before you move. Stick close to the embassy; they’ll be taking Walker there. I’ll work at having him released. Don’t let
him out of your sight until then.”
•
Walker pushed through the throng of tourists passing through Termini station and headed for the storage lockers.
He opened the locker. His backpack was as he had left it yesterday before heading to Felix’s apartment. He checked its contents: a clean passport, more than a thousand in used euros, a couple of new throw-away cell phones and a change of clothes.
He put on his cap and sunglasses, took the backpack from the locker, slung it over his shoulders and pulled the straps tight. In the confines of the locker he emptied the Beretta, wiped it down and then left it behind the locked door.
Walker turned and headed for the ticket booths, ditching the old passport he had forged himself and clocking the train times as he moved. Fifteen minutes until the next Eurostar left for the two-hour journey to Naples. Perfect.
But Walker never got to buy a ticket.
He didn’t even make it halfway to the booth.
A voice—American, female, assertive—rang out, shouting, “Down! Down! Down!”
30
Bill McCorkell touched down at Rome International Airport and skipped the immigration lines, flashing his UN diplomatic passport and heading for the taxi stand. He called Hutchinson as he moved.
“Are your ears ringing?” Hutchinson said.
“Nope. How are you getting on?”
“State’s all done. I’m about to walk into Langley now.”
“Get anything from their Crystal City office?”
“A little bit of the Yemen op.”
McCorkell stopped at the cab rank. “And?”
“A cell-phone number.”
“Whose?”
“That’s just the thing: no one knows, not for sure, except maybe Walker.”
“Anything else?”
“You sitting down?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t go falling down and breaking one of your frail old-guy hips,” Hutchinson said. “The number? It was one of the cell numbers found on bin Laden.”
McCorkell let out a sigh, part whistle, part wonder. “Walker was working on that? For State?”
“Yep. His CO there told me that Walker had tracked it to an SMS message placed to a courier, the guy in Yemen; the one he was watching when he was supposedly cooked by a drone strike.”