by Rob Jones
“They’re getting closer!” Lea said.
Brad turned and saw the carabinieri closing in. He sighed and returned his attention to Kodiak and the boat in front. “And I bet they know this place like the back of their hands…”
Lea casually pulled her gun out. “Want me to sink ’em?”
“The police? Are you crazy?”
A second round of gunshots rang out, only this time they weren’t going into the air. Karlsson glanced behind and saw a police marksman on the front deck of the police boat. He was aiming a rifle right at the Aquariva. Less than fifty yards were between them and the carabinieri now, and they were still hemmed in either side by the towering walls of some of the city’s grandest hotels. Ahead of them, Kodiak was racing his boat beneath a low stone bridge, the Ponte San Moise. He fired a few shots at them over his shoulder while trying to navigate the speeding boat through the canals. Mazzarro was cowering in the back, covering his head with his arms and trying to dodge the flying lead.
The police shouted a string of commands in Italian through a megaphone, and then a second later fired at the Aquariva. The bullet hit the ridge of the maple inlay stretching around the stern of the boat and sent a shower of splinters flying into the air.
Karlsson took one look at the damage and saw the police marksman aiming for a second shot. “Yeah… on reflection, Lea, I want you to sink them!”
They raced toward the Ponte San Moise, ducking instinctively to avoid hitting their heads on the low stonework of the bridge. As they passed under the bridge the police’s second shot struck the carved face on the bridge’s beam and blasted it into shards of masonry falling into their wake in the canal behind them.
“All right, I’ve had enough of this!” Lea said, and crawled to the back of the boat. She raised the gun and rested her arms on the back seats as she lined the police boat up in her sights. A woman hanging some washing out screamed obscenities at them as they flashed past her and sprayed her with canal water.
Lea ducked to avoid a third bullet which hit the chrome edge of the windshield and pinged off to the left where it lodged into the soft plaster wall of an adjacent hotel.
“Holy shit!” Karlsson said. “That nearly put a hole right through me!”
Lea raised her gun a second time, and aimed for the police boat. “Sorry guys!”
She fired three shots at the bow and all of them hit home, blasting three holes in the fiber glass hull on the portside bow.
The carabinieri responded with more shots from the rifle, but their boat was losing speed. Lea planted another six shots in the port bow. The resulting hole was now so large that they began taking on water and moments later the police boat slowed and its nose sank slowly into the brown canal. What was once a threat was now an amusing scene of flashing blue lights and angry carabinieri trying to avoid a soaking in the water.
Lea spun the gun around her finger like a cowboy from a Western and pretended to blow smoke from the muzzle.
The marksman took one final shot but Karlsson steered the Aquariva around a shallow bend to the left, pausing only to give the police a big fat bird, and then return his attention to Kodiak and the rescue of Dr Dario Mazzarro.
“Wow, that was childish,” Lea said. “They were only doing their job.”
“That was childish, but you pretending to be the Bandit Queen was cool?”
“The who?”
“You don’t know who the Bandit Queen was?” Karlsson shook his head in despair.
Lea smiled. “I know Calamity Jane. Was the Bandit Queen anything like Calamity Jane?”
Karlsson sighed and fixed his attention back on Kodiak who was now speeding as fast as he could through the narrow canals in the older quarters of the city.
“Forget about it, honey. We have work to do.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When Sir Richard Eden handed him Dario Mazzaro’s notebooks, Ryan Bale smiled fully for the first time since Tokyo Bay. What had looked like nothing but illegible scrawl to Hawke looked like the answer to life, the universe and everything to Ryan and he wasted no time in getting stuck into them.
Since they had arrived in Venice and got their hands on Lexi’s picture of the map, they had struggled to translate the glyphs even with the work Alex had already done back in New York, but with the notes they were certain they could make much faster and more accurate progress. Now he and Alex shared a glance which was neither optimistic nor fearful, but said: this is our chance to beat that bastard to the greatest secret on earth.
And the last chance.
Alex once again opened up the digital image of the map that Lexi had taken back in Berlin while Ryan pored over the notes, absent-mindedly tapping his fingers on the wooden desk.
Eden passed a nervous hand over his face as he watched Ryan. “You think you can work out Mazzarro’s work, Mr Bale?”
“I bloody hope so,” Ryan mumbled, without taking his eyes off the pages. “We’ve only translated a couple of glyphs without them, so let’s have some peace and quiet and maybe I might get somewhere.”
Eden raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Everyone was more than a little keen for Ryan to work his magic, and with Alex working alongside him the expectations were higher than ever.
As they worked, Hawke paced the room and waited nervously for word from Lea. Eden had sent her in pursuit of the notorious Russian assassin Kodiak, and now she had been gone a long time – perhaps a little longer than he would have expected – and he was worried. Lea could look after herself in most cases, but he was beginning to realize this Kodiak character was in a different league.
In the other room, Lexi was sleeping on the bed, while Scarlet dealt with the tension in her usual way – stepping out to the balcony and lighting a cigarette. There was nothing any of them could do but wait – wait for Ryan and Alex to crack the code in Mazzarro’s notes and use it to translate the glyphs on the map, and wait for Lea and Karlsson to get in touch and tell them they had secured Mazzarro and were all safe.
Hawke grabbed a beer from the fridge and cracked it open. After downing half of it in a few seconds, he followed Scarlet to the balcony and stood with her while she smoked, looking out over the Grand Canal of Venice, now glittering in the bright Italian sunshine.
“She’ll be all right, Joe,” Scarlet said.
“Eh?”
“Lea – she’ll be fine. She’s pretty tough, you know – almost as hard as me. Plus Brad’s with her. He’s pretty hard as well, and not just when we’re together in…”
“Please don’t finish that sentence, Cairo,” Hawke said, smiling. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”
Scarlet smiled and blew smoke out into the air. Below them, gondolas and tour boats slipped back and forth on the water. A man selling ice creams from a cart called out his prices as Hawke watched a young couple kiss beside a red and white striped mooring pole.
“It’s hard to believe all these people have no idea what’s going on, really,” he said, raising his eyes to the sunny horizon.
“What do you mean?” Scarlet stubbed her cigarette out and went to flick it in the canal, but Hawke grabbed her arm and gave her a look.
“I mean,” he said, pulling the butt from her fingers and putting it in the ashtray on the table, “that they have no idea about the Vetrovs of this world, and what they want to do with it, or these athanatoi or whatever the hell they are.”
“Not scared are you, Joe?” she said, smirking.
Hawke rolled his eyes. “Hardly – I just wonder if sometimes it would be better not to know the truth.”
“Never. It’s up to people like us to know the truth about the world and fight for it.”
Hawke looked at her, his eyes narrowing a little. “You say that like this is just a day job, Cairo.”
“Did I?” She went to light another cigarette but her lighter wouldn’t work. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that.”
“Well, it did. Want to tell me anything?”
“Like what? I think
maybe this bloody useless lighter’s out of fuel.”
“Don’t change the subject, Cairo.”
“I don’t need to change subjects, Joe. If I didn’t want to talk about something I’d just fuck off somewhere else. You know that, darling.”
“Yes, I know that, but I’m still asking you why you just talked about how it’s down to people like you to fight like this. What did you mean by that?”
“Nothing at all – you’re imagining it.”
“Like the way I imagined how after you left the SAS you decided to work for MI5, and yet you accidentally never arrived there?”
Scarlet looked at him sharply, cigarette still hanging from her lip. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come off it, Cairo. I know you never worked for MI5 and I know Sophie Durand never worked for the DGSE. You, and everyone else here has been lying to me from the start and I want answers or I walk.”
She looked at him for a few seconds with the cigarette still hanging off her lower lip. “Yeah - bloody lighter’s packed in. Got a light, Joe?”
Hawke sighed, and fished around in his pockets but found nothing.
“Are you going to talk to me or not?” he said as he searched.
“Just be a darling and get me a light?”
He sighed. “Wait a minute.”
He went inside and pulled the coat he had worn in Russia from his bag and went through the pockets. He found a box of matches and a small slip of paper. He looked at it with confusion for a second and took the matches to Scarlet on the balcony.
“Thanks, darling,” she said, lighting the cigarette. She waved the match until it blew out and then tossed it in the canal. “What’s that you’ve got?”
“I don’t know…” He opened the slip of paper and saw there was a message. It was written in black ink in English and the message read: J. Hawke – Important information about your wife – contact me. Snowcat. At the end of the message was a telephone number.
Scarlet looked up at him. “What is it, Joe?”
He frowned and handed her the piece of paper.
She read it and sighed. “A joke?”
Hawke shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I want the others to see this.”
He and Scarlet walked back into the hotel room and joined the others where he showed them the note.
“Any idea where it came from?” Eden asked, intrigued.
“No. It wasn’t in my pocket when we left New York, and no one who knows me, or anything about me, knew I was in Russia.” He turned to the others and fixed a serious glance in their direction. “Unless, of course, it’s one of you guys?”
All the heads shook at once. No.
“So when did this…” Scarlet took another look at the note. “This Snowcat have time to put the message in your pocket?”
“When we were at the airport,” Ryan said calmly.
Hawke shot him a glance. “Eh?”
“After customs, we stepped out the front of the airport and that woman collided with you, remember?”
“Sure,” Hawke said. “I remember that.” He scratched the stubble on his jaw and slowly nodded his head. “She was blonde.”
“To be honest, I thought she was a pickpocket,” Ryan said.
Scarlet looked at Ryan. “You thought she was a pickpocket but you never said anything until now?”
Ryan shrugged his shoulders. “That’s pretty much right, yeah. Sorry.”
Hawke stared at the note, at a loss for what to do. His mind was filling with problems again – was Lea safe? Why was Scarlet refusing to tell him the truth? And now, why had a random stranger called Snowcat claimed knowledge about his wife? He knew it could be a trap, but at the same time he knew there could be something in it, and there was no way he could risk throwing away an opportunity to know the truth about his wife’s murder after so long.
“I’ve got to contact this person.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” Eden said.
Hawke turned the paper over in his hand once again, staring at the handwritten note. “I have no choice, Richard. I have to know. I need to know the truth.”
Hawke picked up his cell phone and left the room.
*
Karlsson rounded the bend and immediately saw they had driven straight into a trap. Ahead of them, Kodiak’s boat was slowing to a stop. Worse, they could hear the sound of a helicopter approaching from behind them, and then half a dozen armed men appeared on either side of the canal, guns raised and aimed at their heads.
“We’ve been led into a trap!” Lea said.
“Dead end,” the American said, crushed. “We have to stop the boat.”
He slowed the boat down as fast as he could and narrowly avoided colliding with Kodiak, who was now standing on the rear deck of his motorboat with a gun jabbing into Mazzarro’s neck.
Lea watched in despair as a Bell 212 now hovered directly above their boat, the powerful downwash lifting water out of the canal and spraying it all over them and splashing it up the sides of the motorboat. They were trapped and it would be fish in a barrel time if they tried to shoot their way out of it.
Moments later the chopper’s side door swung open and the giant they had seen earlier – whom Eden had described as Kosma, a former KGB operative, leaned out of the door with a Groza assault rifle in one hand and a megaphone in the other.
“Put down your guns!” he shouted. His accent was thick and hard to understand.
“What do we do now?” Karlsson asked, still gripping his Glock. “Maybe we can still shoot our way out?”
“I think we have to do as he says,” Lea said, shaking her head. “If he opens fire with that thing we’ll be so full of holes we’re going to look like a couple of cocktail strainers in less than ten seconds – and that’s not to mention all these goons.” She nodded at the men surrounding them on either side of the canal – they were obviously receiving orders though the small headsets they wore.
Without giving them any chance to think, Kodiak pushed Mazzarro onto Lea’s boat and snatched Lea’s and Karlsson’s weapons and tossed them in the canal. Then he ordered Mazzarro to climb the rope ladder which came tumbling down from the chopper. Kosma’s giant hands grabbed the Italian and hauled him inside the chopper.
“Your turn,” Kodiak said, pointing the gun at Karlsson.
When the American was inside, Kodiak turned the gun on Lea. “Ladies last,” he said, grinning.
Lea climbed into the helicopter, a look of defeat on her slim face. Her hair whipped around in the chopper’s downdraft as she went inside the cabin. A moment later, Kodiak joined them and the chopper pulled up into the sky and banked sharply to the right. Kodiak and Kosma sat either side of Mazzarro, opposite Lea and Bradley Karlsson. Each of the men was armed – Kosma still held the Groza while Kodiak had picked up a compact Bizon submachine gun.
“What are you going to do with us?” Lea asked flatly, and trying not to give away how angry and humiliated she was for getting caught.
“They’re going to shoot us and dump us in the sea, right?” Karlsson said with a fake grin.
“Oh no,” Kodiak said with a snarl. “You two are coming with us. Mr Vetrov needs fresh meat for another sacrifice to his gods.”
*
Eden disconnected his phone and turned grim-faced to the others who were waiting, expectant, for him to tell them what had just happened.
“That was a contact of mine from the Italian police. I’m sorry to say they just found the boat Lea and Brad were using to retrieve Dr Mazzarro.”
“And?” Ryan asked, wide-eyed.
“And it was empty. Eye-witnesses report seeing men with guns forcing them into a helicopter. An MI5 contact of mine has just told me that the chopper went to the airport where they boarded a private A380. It looks like it’s heading south but that’s all they could give me for now.”
Eden, like everyone else in the room was suddenly deflated, and deeply worried about Lea and Karlsson.
Then, Hawke wa
lked back into the room, still holding his phone.
“Ah, the wanderer returns,’ Scarlet said.
“Any news?” Eden asked.
Hawke nodded. “I believe her.”
“Her?” Ryan said.
“Snowcat is a bit of a giveaway codename, boy,” Scarlet said.
“Not necessarily,” he replied.
“I suppose you’re right,” Scarlet said. “Yours would probably be something like Candy Floss.”
“And what was yours?” Ryan replied with a smirk. “Iron-drawers?”
“Ha, ha… ha,” she said in a sarcastic tone.
“Thanks everyone, but this is about Liz,” Hawke said, bringing the banter to an end. “This woman clams she’s in the FSB and says she has important information about what happened in Vietnam, so I’m going to meet her.”
“Where and when?” Eden asked.
“To be arranged.”
“And why is she doing this?” Lexi asked.
“She claims it has something to do with why we were in Moscow, but she didn’t elaborate.”
Scarlet sighed. “And you’re taking the word of someone in the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate? I know you’re SBS and all, but I thought you were smarter than that.”
Alex gave him a look. “He’s not an idiot, Scarlet. He’ll be ready for anything.”
“I guess,” replied Ryan. “Plus this Snowcat chick sounds pretty sexy.”
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Oh please, this isn’t 1971.”
“What? It was just a compliment!”
Hawke looked at them all. “Why do you all look so upset? It’s just a meeting with an FSB agent, and not my first time, either.”
Eden cleared his throat and looked at Hawke. “I’m sorry Joe, but they’ve got Lea and Karlsson. They flew out of Venice a few minutes ago.”
Hawke picked up a Glock and jammed it in his belt. “Then we have to get after them, don’t we?”
“But where are they going?” Ryan asked.
“I’m not a betting man,” Eden said. “But we know their flight is heading south, and we also know Mazzarro’s research points heavily to Egypt. There’s only one place that fits all of this.”
