The Cait Lennox Box Set

by Roderick Donald

  “And Cait, I’ve just checked Google Maps. There’s a whole heap of small farms and farmhouses scattered around the town on the flat land at the base of the rock. It’s got to be it!”

  The more input O’Donnell fed Cait, the clearer the picture of Tariq in her vision became.

  “Tony, I think we’re onto something here. We need to go there. Like, now. How far away is it?”

  “About one hundred and sixty kilometers. I’ll grab a car and we can go first thing tomorrow morning. You okay with that?”

  Ice was now in planning mode, thinking ahead, working out the details for the next mission. After passing her initiation in the safe house raid in Catania, he had accepted Cait as being on the team, so he just naturally expected that she would join him.

  “Sure, sounds like a plan . . . sir,” said Cait in a mocking military tone, secretly pleased that Tony—her partner—was as proactive as she needed him to be.

  “And if Tariq is in Sutera, the problem is then going to be finding him,” said Ice pensively. “Which might be another issue in itself. It’s not as if he’s going to put a sign out the front saying Hey guys, I’m hiding in here.”

  I’ll locate him! thought Cait, a look of steely determination on her face.

  I’m going to get that bastard if it’s the last thing I do. He can’t fuck with me or my family and expect to get away with it.

  Cait was into revenge. She was that kind of girl.

  “Tony, I think I’ve got something for you that you’ll be very interested in,” said Paul, not wanting to give away too much over his mobile phone.

  “Yeah, shoot,” replied O’Donnell brusquely. He was planning tomorrow’s trip to Sutera and he didn’t want to be distracted.

  “I’ve got what looks like an address. It could be where our man’s holed up.”

  Ice instantly flipped to listening mode. “Meet you in thirty minutes at that same bar we went to the other day. Can you make it?”

  “Yeah, sure. I’m on my way from Cara di Mineo now. Will be in Catania in about ten minutes. I’ll get the driver to drop me off there. Wait for me if I’m late.”

  “Paul, play it safe, mate. The bad guys have got eyes and ears everywhere. Get him to drop you off half a kilometer away somewhere around the corner, then walk to the bar. Tell the driver you’ll find your own way back to your hotel.”

  “Sure. Good idea. Don’t want any more car bombs, eh?” Paul was getting quite a rush playing secret agent.

  “We welcome you into our small community, Mohammed,” said Imam Zabiullah Mujahid, showing hospitality and respect to his unexpected guest. The imam was the spiritual leader of the Islamic ummah in Sutera. According to the holy Qur’an, it was his obligation to greet the stranger warmly and provide him with a pleasurable experience. Food and drink were to be expected, along with a duty to make his guest feel comfortable.

  It was the Islamic way. Hospitality in Islam was part of a triangle that linked Allah, the guest and the host, and if a believer was to be accepted into Heaven on the Day of Judgment, then he had to have lived a life that included showing hospitality and respect to strangers seeking help.

  “May the blessings of Allah be upon you,” said Tariq, aware of his own obligations under the Islamic code as a guest of the imam.

  “So tell me, Mohammed, what brings you to our small ummah? We have a strong and growing Islamic community here who follow the Qur’an’s holy teachings.”

  The imam was an Islamic elder who had fled persecution five years ago by his own people in Syria when ISIS had started their bloodthirsty and ruthless jihad. He was a man of God, but the imam was a Kurdish religious leader, and his followers were subject to genocide by the ISIS fanatics who were Shias, so he was forced to flee the Middle East, ending up in Sicily.

  “I escaped from Libya three months ago to find a new life in Europe,” said Tariq in a sad, frustrated but convincing tone, forcing his voice to artificially waver. He paused for effect before continuing.

  “My wife Aya and young son Abdallah are still in Tripoli. My father’s looking after them, but he’s old and not well, and it’s not safe in the camps there. With Allah’s blessing I need to find somewhere to settle, then bring them over here so we can live as a family again. Holy imam, are you able to help me?”

  Tariq was pleading, feigning desperation. What he really needed was somewhere safe to hide for six months or so until all the problems in his life blew over. He had heard about the small Islamic community in Sutera from a contact he had made in Cara di Mineo whose brother had settled there.

  “Of course, Mohammed, you are welcome to join our community. Do you have anywhere to stay, or know anyone here?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I was forced to leave the refugee camp very suddenly after I had an argument with the man in charge. He wasn’t giving us enough to eat. Infidel! So I asked him for more food, and he sent one of the guards to beat me up. He was a nasty man.”

  Tariq was making his story up on the fly, not wanting to give too much away so it couldn’t really be checked or confirmed.

  “And now because I hit the guard in self-defense they want to send me back to Libya. Please protect me here, imam. I’m a good man, a believer, and a follower of the holy Qur’an. I’m frightened they’ll take me away and beat me again, then send me back.”

  “Yes Mohammed, all true Muslims are welcome here. I know a house on a small farm just outside of town where some other refugees and their families from Libya are living. You will be welcome and safe there.”

  Don Giovanni stopped pacing backward and forward, traces of his steps appearing as soft indents on the rich pile of the large handwoven silk Persian rug on the floor of his study. Moving over to the open window to take in the view of the perfectly manicured garden outside—his thinking view—he vacantly gazed across the plethora of flowering shrubs bordering the green grass stepping down to the bottom terrace and the cabana by the side of the large swimming pool. He mulled over the latest news regarding Tariq as he looked down on his wife sitting in the shade by the pool, reading a book.

  His men hadn’t been able to find a trace of him. Tariq had gone to ground and he was yet to surface.

  “Marco, you assured me that you would locate Tariq. That you had eyes and ears all over Sicily. So where is he?” said the Don over the phone to his nephew.

  “How can he have possibly disappeared like this?” Don Giovanni needed a whipping boy again and his nephew fit the bill. The Grand Master was pressuring him on a daily basis to locate Tariq, so Marco was feeling the Don’s wrath.

  Three Fingers’s stomach dropped to his feet as the Don appeared to bawl him out . . . one more time.

  Cazzo! If I don’t find that prick soon, the Don’s going to crucify me. Where can that stronzo have gone to?

  “Don, he has to surface soon, and when he does I’ll know, you can trust me on that,” said Marco unconvincingly. He really didn’t have a clue about Tariq’s whereabouts, and his men had come up with nothing, but he had to keep up a good face in front of the Don.

  It was survival. Marco knew that if he wasn’t able to come up with a result soon, well, that was the end of his rise up in the ranks of the Family. He’d be relegated to lowly soldier at the bottom of the pack. Cannon fodder who had to do everyone else’s bidding.

  The last time Three Fingers had contact with Tariq was in the safe house in Catania four days ago. At the direction of the Don, he was making plans for Tariq’s departure to a safe cell in Germany. The Don had been under strict instructions from the Grand Master to have Tariq moved out of Sicily to avoid the heat, and he wanted him on the road and out of his hair.

  And the sooner, the better.

  “You’ve got forty-eight hours to find him,” the Don ordered Marco. “I want Tariq out of Sicily and on the way to Germany by the weekend. He’s too important to let him find his own way there. You need to arrange a driver to take him to an address in Bochum that I’ll give you once you arrive. It’s a little town eigh
ty kilometers north of Cologne.”

  “And Marco, don’t fuck this up and I’ll overlook the mess you left us in after the failed car bombing.” The Don was playing games, ingratiating Marco to him using a mixture of fear and obligation. He was aware of his nephew’s ambitions, but the lad needed to be put in his place first. Big egos weren’t tolerated in the Family.

  Then his planning flew out the window when those two idiota broke into the safe house in Catania and Tariq fled.

  Fungula!

  The Brethren had a job for Tariq in northern Syria, so they needed him now. A militant cell of jihadists were causing some of the Brethren grief by messing with their illegal arms distribution network. This actually delighted the Don, even though it had nothing to do with the Cosa Nostra, because the quicker this whole botched car bomb investigation went away, the sooner they could get back to gaming the system in the refugee camps. All this press and speculation about corruption and missing euros was bad for business, and the Don’s contacts were running scared, ducking for cover until it all blew over.

  “Mr. Rizzo, would I be able to have a quick word with you?” said Paul to Marco as he was about to get out from his car. Paul deferred to the title of “Mr.” in an attempt to get Marco onside, even though in the past he usually referred to him as “Marco.”

  Neither party could stand each other, so Paul’s greeting and Marco’s response was frosty, to say the least.

  “I’m busy. Wait inside.” With that Marco rudely turned his back on Paul and walked toward reception and his office, leaving Paul waiting in the wings in the parking lot.

  Obviously Three Fingers wasn’t in the mood for talking; it appeared he had other, more pressing matters on his mind. In fact, if Paul had to hazard a guess, he would have said that Marco looked totally stressed out.

  Paul was under instructions from O’Donnell to carry out some “secret agent” work, so he had jumped at the opportunity, especially as he personally hated Marco with a passion and was prepared to do everything in his power to help bring him down. Paul’s investigations to date into the finances of the camp had proven beyond reasonable doubt—well, certainly beyond his doubt—that Marco and his Cosa Nostra buddies were ripping the system off blind, and as far as Paul was concerned, they had to be stopped.

  Then when O’Donnell briefed Paul—albeit a much-condensed version of events—about Cait and his findings at the safe house in Catania, the deal was sealed. Hearing that they found Marco’s phone on the floor created a direct link back to Tariq. Paul simply joined the dots, filling in a few gaps with extrapolation, and reached the conclusion that Marco had to be the person behind the car bombing.

  The bastard!

  And the explosion had dealt a fateful blow that left Dec fighting for his life, so Paul had made up a cock-and-bull story about following up on the welfare of the boatload of refugees that he had checked out in Pozzallo. Paul’s story actually had a half truth to it, as he was genuinely concerned about these poor souls, but now that Three Fingers was involved in Dec’s catastrophic injuries, well, that was it.

  In Paul’s eyes, Marco had just been tried and found guilty, and Paul was the judge and hopefully executioner. He intended to see him go down if it was the last thing he did.

  Paul nodded to the lady sitting behind the reception counter in the main vestibule as he walked inside. The visitor’s office at the refugee camp was in an alcove off the reception area and looked straight across the entrance vestibule into Marco’s office. Paul could see Marco through his open door excitedly pacing back and forth. He could hear him talking on his mobile phone, no doubt to one of his underlings.

  “So what’s the address?” said Marco, in a strangely relieved tone. “Si, about two kilometers out of the town to the east of the big hill. Si . . . si . . . got it. Prego. Now keep an eye on him. Don’t let him see you, and don’t make contact. I’ll get back to you soon.”

  Marco scribbled something down on a notepad on his desk.

  “What? You’re in the town? And he’s there? Si . . . You have photos? Bella, send them to me. And don’t lose him. Okay, stay near your phone, I’ll ring back soon. Ciao.”

  Marco stood still and smiled, a look of relief crossing his previously worried face. Tearing the top page off his notepad, he read it one more time before folding it in half and slipping it in the inner pocket of his jacket. Quickly snatching up his keys and his mobile phone, in a whirlwind move Marco rushed out the door. Paul looked out the window and saw that bastard jump into his Mercedes and speed off, black smoke pouring out of his exhaust as the rear wheels bit in and the car sprinted forward.

  Three Fingers was on a mission.

  In his haste to leave as he bolted outside, Marco left the door of his office ajar. Paul took note but feigned working on his computer while he figured out in his head what to do next. At the same moment, the receptionist left her desk, Paul following her with his eyes to the bathroom down the corridor off the entrance vestibule.

  Paul seized the opportunity. Quietly rising from his workstation, he stealthily crept across the vestibule void and quietly pushed Marco’s door open. Peeking inside as if expecting to find someone hidden behind the door or concealed by a piece of furniture, Paul gingerly took in the room: utilitarian desk facing the door, three discarded take-out coffee cups to one side, two mismatching chairs in front of the desk, a boring print of Mount Etna sitting at an odd angle on the wall framed by a picture-perfect blue sky, bare wooden floor.

  An office that the occupant obviously had no pride in.

  Creeping over to Marco’s desk, Paul pushed a few papers around before focusing on the notepad lying at an angle of the left bottom corner. He picked it up, giving it a cursory look. Marco’s scribbles on the pad had left an indent of his pen putting pressure on the paper! Without giving it a second thought Paul ripped off the top page, glanced down at it in a fruitless attempt to read what Marco had written, then spun on his axis and immediately walked out of Marco’s office and back over to his workstation in the visitor’s area.

  Paul glanced up and saw the receptionist come out of the bathroom: Yes, I’ve got away with it!

  I’m positive Tony will be interested in this, Paul said to himself in his head, a wry smile crossing his lips.

  “I’m sure he’ll be able to get an address from the indentation of the writing on the blank page.”

  Paul packed up his computer and paperwork and prepared to leave. He had to make contact with O’Donnell.

  “Maybe it’s Tariq?” Paul mused, convinced that he had made a breakthrough.

  “Don Giovanni, my men have located this man Mohammed,” said Three Fingers Marco excitedly, looking pleased with himself that he had managed to follow through with the Don’s instructions to find the terrorist. After his bawling out last week he had much ground to make up if he ever hoped to get back into the the Don’s good graces again.

  This should prove to him that I’m worthy of the contract he gave me. Santino, that bastardo son of his couldn’t have found him. But I did, and in less than a week!

  “He’s in a farmhouse just outside of Sutera. He’s staying with a family of moolies,” continued Marco, a case of verbal diarrhea masking his nervousness.

  “Jesus, those cafones must breed like flies. There were a whole bunch of them, and they’re all as black as an eggplant and as ugly as sin.”

  Three Fingers shared a common Cosa Nostra hate for outsiders, especially if they were black and Muslim. As far as he was concerned, they all must have been at the end of the queue when God gave out good looks and brains.

  “Don’t know what that stronzo Mohammed is doing with those fuckers. Apparently he stood out because he was the only white guy among them. One of my men took a photo of him on his phone as a group of them were walking toward a run-down mosque in the town for evening prayers.”

  A smarmy smile crossed Marco’s lips as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his new phone. He was confident that the Don had to be impressed w
ith his groundwork.

  “Here, he sent the picture to me. You can clearly see it’s Mohammed.” Three Fingers located the photo and slid the phone across the large rosewood desk to the Don.

  Don Giovanni had yet to utter a word. Tracing the phone’s movement across the highly polished surface, the Don mentally took in the slight scratch that it had caused and made a mental note to himself to make sure the housekeeper polished the mark out.

  The Don picked up the phone and looked long and hard at the photo of Mohammed among the others.

  “Give me the address. And have your man keep a watch from the distance until I have Mohammed picked up.” No good work, no thank you, no job well done. The Don wanted his nephew to suffer, bleed even, so giving him a compliment was the last thing on his mind.

  A wave of disappointment came across Marco, his shoulders slumping in sync with his dejected facial expression.

  This still needs to be a lesson he’ll never forget, thought the Don. He wanted to make Marco hate him, so that next time he gave him a contract his nephew knew he’d have to try harder, follow it through in its entirety, and not screw up.

  In the Don’s eyes it was a dog-eat-dog world out there, and Marco had to take this in stride and toughen up. There was only room in the Family for one rising star with a big ego, and that was his own son, Santino. Everyone else had to earn their stripes.

  “When my men arrive, make sure your man disappears unseen, comprendere? I’ll take over from here. I can’t afford to have you fuck this up for a second time.”

  “Yes Don, I understand,” said Three Fingers obsequiously. He suddenly realized that the breaking news he eagerly brought to the Don wasn’t received with the praises that he was expecting, but just maybe he’d gotten off lightly. From the tone of the Don’s voice, this was the end of it and there had been no real reprisals other than a tongue-lashing.