Tarantula

by Mark Dawson

  The restaurant was busy again, rowdy with drunken banter. Ernesto Gorgi Di Mauro seemed surprised to see him, as if he had secretly suspected that Milton had spun him a line earlier in order to get out of the bar in one piece.

  “Signor Smith. You have returned.”

  “Of course.”

  “I will be honest, I did not think we would see you again.”

  “I told you I was serious, Ernesto. I don’t play games. I mean what I say.”

  “How serious are you?”

  Milton lifted the bag and deposited it on the table in front of him.

  Ernesto displayed no concern about being seen with so much money in a public place. He opened the satchel, brazenly, and tipped the banknotes onto the table.

  He nodded appreciatively.

  “Where do you find this much money in such a hurry?”

  “I went to the bank,” Milton replied, smiling a little, enough to make them wonder whether he might even be telling the truth.

  “The bank? It must have impressive service, Signor Smith, to be able to find this much money so quickly.”

  “My organisation is a very good customer. They try especially hard to please us.”

  “I can see that.” He waved his hand across the scattered bundles of notes. “It is all here? All five hundred thousand?”

  “Count it if you don’t trust me.”

  Ernesto looked at him slyly, assessing, but Milton held his eye. He knew that he dare not look away first. Any sign of weakness, even of a lack of confidence, and he knew that his control of the situation would quickly be lost. He was unarmed, in a room full of murderers. He might be able to take two or three of them out with his hands and feet, perhaps even disarm one and use his weapon, but they would be able to overpower him eventually. And then… well, Milton knew what would come next. Number Three’s demise would be pleasant by comparison.

  “No,” Ernesto said, “no, I believe you. Why would you be foolish enough to try to take advantage of us for the sake of a few thousand Euros?”

  “The opportunity to work together is too valuable.”

  “You know what would happen if you did, yes?”

  He was reminding him about Grieve. Seeing if it would make him buckle.

  It did not. Milton held his gaze.

  He became aware that the other men had stopped talking. They were all watching him to see how he would react.

  Milton did not buckle. He stood there, implacable, cool.

  Ernesto laughed—a big, explosive laugh—and his men took their cue and laughed with him.

  “My apologies for doubting you, Signor Smith.”

  “No apology needed.”

  He turned in his chair and called across to the bar. “Grappa,” he barked out. “A drink for our English friend.”

  The waitress brought over a bottle and two shot glasses.

  Ernesto took it and showed the label to Milton. “Bocchino Cantina Privata Grappa. The best you can buy.”

  He put the glasses on the table, opened the bottle and prepared to pour.

  Milton put his hand over his glass. “No.”

  “No?” Ernesto looked as if he could be offended very easily.

  “We haven’t concluded our business yet.”

  “What?” Ernesto said. “The practicalities? The supply? You should not worry. It will be a simple enough thing.”

  “Not just that.” Milton’s face was calm and composed.

  “What? We are done for tonight.”

  “Not yet,” Milton said. “There’s something else that I want.”

  Ernesto looked at him for a long moment, a frown on his chubby forehead, and then he smiled a cold, cruel smile. “Ah, yes. Our friends. I understand.”

  “They must be removed.”

  “When would you like it done?”

  “As soon as possible. Tomorrow.”

  Ernesto looked up to one of his captains. “È possibile?” he asked.

  The man shrugged, his lip curling up, and then he gave a curt nod. “Può essere fatto.”

  “He says it can be done,” Ernesto said.

  Milton nodded, too. “Good. Now we’re finished. I’ll have that drink.”

  THERE WAS celebrating to be done to mark the conclusion of their agreement.

  Milton paced himself carefully. He knew his limits and he did not want to exceed them. Ernesto and the others drank freely and Milton kept just a glass or two behind them, not so much as to draw attention to himself but enough so that he would be able to do what he needed to do. There were more bottles of grappa, and then wine, and then bottles of vodka and gin. Ernesto drank heavily, but it was obvious that he had a prodigious capacity for it. His conversation became more effusive, his jokes bawdier, but the same glitter of concentrated evil remained steady and unstinting in his eyes.

  Milton finished his glass, pushed it across the table and started his act.

  The big man from the restaurant in Castellabate, the man whose nose Milton had broken, was at the bar. He had been watching him all night. There was hatred in the way he looked at him, the way he levelled his stare at him whenever he thought that Milton was looking in his direction. Milton encouraged it, looking at him for a moment longer than he needed to, an unspoken challenge, a questioning of his stomach. The man was big, much bigger than Milton, and the ease with which he had been bested must have eaten at him. Perhaps he had been teased by the others, about how the Englishman, five inches smaller and a hundred pounds lighter had dealt with him without even breaking sweat.

  Milton was counting on all of that.

  Milton stood and turned so that he was looking straight at him.

  “What?” he said.

  The big man frowned at him, confused, before his natural aggression reasserted itself. He cocked an eyebrow and pushed away from the bar, rising up to his full six foot five.

  “What are you looking at?” Milton asked him.

  The man glared back.

  “You got a problem with me?”

  The man said nothing.

  “What is it? Lost your tongue?”

  Ernesto was still at the table. He sat back, his arms folded, and watched. He said nothing.

  Milton leered at the man. “I thought you would’ve learnt your lesson. The last time… your nose.”

  The man dabbed his fingers against the tape on his nose before he knew what he was doing.

  Milton stepped forwards until there was less than the span of his arm between them.

  The other men quietened down. Ernesto still did nothing.

  The man with the broken nose tried to hold Milton’s eye. Milton could see that he was nervous, but that he was doing everything he could to suppress the evidence. He couldn’t back down in a room full of his peers. Milton had anticipated that.

  He ducked his head at the man, a sudden and unexpected movement that made him flinch.

  It must have looked aberrant, the difference in size between them, the smaller man behaving as if he was calling the bigger one out.

  The other men in the room laughed.

  Ernesto smiled.

  Milton watched the big man: the way his right fist clenched and then unclenched, the colour that gradually rose in his face, the change in the distribution of his weight, so subtle that he might not even have noticed it, the alteration that would make it easier for him to lead out with a punch.

  Milton had been trained to recognise the signs.

  Another prod.

  It wouldn’t take much more.

  “I was surprised,” Milton said, speaking to Ernesto although he didn’t take his eye off the big man. “Sending someone like this to intimidate me.” He indicated the blowsy woman behind the bar with a sharp nod of his head. “You would’ve had more luck sending her.”

  That was all the big man was prepared to take. Milton noticed his fist clench and stay clenched, the whiteness around his knuckles speaking to the tension in his hand. He adjusted his own balance by small degrees as he anticipated the
trajectory of the blow, watched the man draw back his right fist and throw a powerful, ugly, and ineffective cross.

  He stepped forwards, pushing his forearm up and blocking the punch enough to deflect it harmlessly against his shoulder. The man was unbalanced now, and it was easy for Milton to grab the lapels of his jacket and sweep his legs. He pushed down, the man crashing into the floorboards with Milton on top of him.

  Milton had to hurt him now.

  He drew back his right fist and pummelled the man in the face.

  Blood splashed onto the bar, across the floor, over Milton.

  His fist throbbed, but he drew it back again, punched again.

  More blood.

  He drew it back a third time, his knuckles on fire, and drilled it down again.

  The man’s head lolled helplessly.

  Another one or two punches and he would kill him.

  Milton drew back again.

  Ernesto got out of his chair and went to Milton, pulling him away from his bloodied lieutenant.

  “Enough,” he said firmly.

  Milton had one chance. He turned into Ernesto, as if unsure who had just accosted him, ready to attack again. He was close enough so that the sharp motion of his arm across the Italian’s chest was not unusual. He was close enough so that it would have been difficult to notice how his index finger widened the opening of Ernesto’s jacket pocket. Most importantly, he was close enough that only someone watching him intently would have seen the tracker as he let it drop from between his forefinger and ring finger and into the open pocket. And no-one was watching him intently. The others had been captivated by his sudden explosion of brutality and, now, the barely credible prospect that he was about to attack their boss, too.

  Ernesto stumbled backwards. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a holstered pistol. He aimed it straight at Milton’s head.

  Milton raised his hands. “Sorry.”

  Ernesto held his aim steady. The big man groaned on the floor. Milton knew: this could go either way. He was counting on Ernesto’s greed.

  The fat Italian drew his bottom lip back between his teeth, sucked in his breath, and then started to laugh. It began as a twitch at the corner of his mouth, and then a glint in his cruel eyes, and then a chuckle that became louder and more vociferous.

  Milton stepped back and manufactured a wry expression. He shook out his fist for emphasis, shrugging as if to say that he knew what he had done was stupid and reckless, and that served to amplify Ernesto’s hilarity. The atmosphere changed on a sixpence, the men taking their cue from their capo.

  “You are a crazy man, Signor Smith,” he said, accentuating his point by stabbing the gun in the direction of his head.

  “I didn’t like the way he was looking at me.”

  “I nearly shot you.”

  Milton shrugged. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  Ernesto convulsed with laughter.

  “The deal would have been off, yes? But business, Signor Smith, I can make allowances for business. It is the only thing that matters. Guiseppe”—he indicated the man on the floor—“he is an oaf. He gets what he deserves.”

  Milton spared the man a glance: he had come around and two of the others were dragging him onto his feet.

  Ernesto holstered the pistol and clapped Milton on the shoulder. “You are foolish, Signor Smith, but you are a dangerous man. Your fists… you know how to use them.”

  More dangerous than you could possibly know.

  “Now,” the Italian said. “One more drink.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MILTON RETURNED to the hotel. His room was still undisturbed. He moved quickly, taking the P226 from the safe and the MP5 from beneath the mattress. He wore the Sig Sauer in the shoulder holster and the H&K on its shoulder strap, both hidden by his leather jacket. He packed his bag and then spent an hour cleaning the room. He wiped down all of the surfaces, paying special attention to those that he knew he had touched, cleaning away his prints. When he was done, he took his passport and his credit cards, and slipped them into his pocket. He took his bag downstairs and went to reception.

  “I’d like to check out,” he told the late duty clerk. “Room six hundred and one.”

  “Of course, sir,” the man said. He busied himself with his computer and, when he was done, looked back up at him and smiled. “Thank you for your custom, Signor Smith. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “Yes, there is. Could you see to it that my bag is delivered to the airport, please. I’m flying with British Airways tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  Milton paid the man and went down to the parking lot. He started the Ducati, letting the engine growl through the basement, and pulled away, traversing the slope onto street level and then gathering speed as he pulled away.

  He rode south, out of town, stopping in Pontecagnano. It was an empty lot on the edge of the town, facing out to sea. He took off his helmet to let the salty air wash over his hot skin. The rolling tide was all he could hear, the waves washing up the sand. There was nothing else, not even the crying of gulls. It was as if he was the only person abroad at that hour.

  He looked down at his watch, the luminous hands showing three-thirty.

  He got off the bike just as he heard the sound of tyres rolling over the gravel at the edge of the road. He reached into his jacket for the pistol. A pair of high-beams swung across the darkened space, glowing yellow against the rolling emerald waves down on the beach, and then they winked out.

  Milton walked across, the gun held ready in case it wasn’t who he was expecting. He held the pistol in a steady two-hand grip, trigger finger indexed above the trigger guard.

  As he got closer, the moonlight revealed that it was a soft-top Lancia Flavia.

  The door opened. “Number Eight,” said the quartermaster as she got out of the car.

  He relaxed and shoved the pistol away.

  She was carrying a slim documents case. She went around to the trunk and popped the lid. “Here,” she said, pulling back the oil-stained blanket that had been spread across the compartment, exposing the case that had lain beneath it.

  Milton unclipped the case and opened it. There were ten grenades inside, little metallic nuggets nestling in a foam insert.

  “Fragmentation, stun, and smoke.”

  “Very good, Q.”

  Milton closed the case, latched it shut, and left it in the trunk. He went around to the Lancia and got inside. She did, too.

  “Did he call out?”

  “He did,” she said. “Two times. First of all, he spoke to the Englishmen.”

  “Saying?”

  “That he wanted to see them tomorrow morning. He said he had news on their business, that it could only be delivered in person. And then he made this call.”

  She took an iPad from the case and, flipping the lid back to wake it, she touched the screen to activate an app and waited for it to boot.

  A list of MP3 audio files was displayed.

  She hovered her finger over them selected the one she wanted, and tapped the screen.

  Ernesto Gorgi Di Mauro’s voice was unmistakeable.

  “It’s me.”

  “Si.”

  “I have something I need you to do. The four Englishmen, from today. You know?”

  “Si.”

  “They are staying at Il Palazzo Decumani. Do you know it?”

  “Si.”

  “Tomorrow morning. Antonietta will call you. Clean and quick. No mistakes.”

  The call ended.

  “Where is the hotel?” Milton asked.

  “The Via del Grande Archivio. You need my help?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll find it.”

  She nodded.

  “What about the money?”

  She swiped the MP3s away and opened another app. A map of southern Italy appeared on the screen.

  “The tracker is working very well.”

  “I should hope so. It’s as
big as a house.”

  She ignored that.

  “Here,” she said, resting a manicured fingernail against the screen.

  Milton looked at it. The map showed Naples, Salerno and the curve of land to the west that included Messina and then, finally, at the tip of the boot, Palermo. There was a single, small red dot that pulsed on and off. The dot was steady and unmoving, just to the west of Agropoli, north of Castellabate and just a few miles to the south of where they were now.

  “Great,” Milton said. “A yacht. I should’ve guessed.”

  “You are going to get wet.”

  “Do you have—”

  “A wetsuit? Yes, in the back. I have estimated the size you will need. And there is a waterproof bag for your equipment.”

  “You think of everything.”

  “It is my job, Number Eight.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT STARTED raining soon afterwards.

  Milton stocked the waterproof bag with the wetsuit, grenades and his weapons. He slung it onto his back, got on the bike and rode back to Naples. He found a twenty-four hour café and bought himself breakfast and a pot of strong coffee. He took a seat next to the window and watched the sun rise over the horizon, the sea transitioning through black to deep blue to emerald blue as the light was thrown across the dark vault of the sky.

  He meditated quietly, allowing himself to slip into a peaceful state where the noise from the kitchen, the thickening traffic and the chink of cutlery on china were all phased out. He pictured what needed to happen, laid out each of the tasks that he had to accomplish in order to fulfil the parameters of the assignment. Infiltration, execution, exfiltration. He would need to repeat the process two times. Each was dangerous, with a multitude of things that could go wrong. Unknowable things, things that could not be predicted and planned around, things that he would have to react to, on the fly.

  That was the norm.

  Acceptable.