Venice Black

by Gregory C. Randall

  “On the right is the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, a wonderful art museum,” Marika continued. “Roberto, please take us to the Gritti Palace hotel. There’s a restaurant that overlooks the canal, and even on a dreary day like today, it can be comfortable. I’ve asked for a special lunch for the two of us.”

  “Is this your surprise?”

  “Yes, I hope you will enjoy it.”

  “This day is definitely getting better and better,” Alex said as Roberto slowed the launch and allowed the wind to push it against the hotel mooring, where nearby a dozen tables under umbrellas filled the terrace. A young man took the line and secured the boat. The women stood and slipped their handbags over their shoulders. As Marika and Alex moved toward the gunnel to exit, the boat lurched hard and almost tipped from the violent collision of another water taxi crashing into their starboard side. The women grabbed the rails to keep from falling. Roberto spun toward the attacking water taxi and froze. Three men jumped from the boat, guns drawn. Two of the men grabbed Alex and Marika and pulled them over the gunnels to two more men waiting on the other boat.

  Roberto saw the syringes as the boat pulled away. In seconds it was traveling full speed toward the massive San Giorgio Maggiore Monastery.

  Roberto grabbed his phone and punched in a number.

  “Nox, they snatched the girls. I’m at the Gritti Palace. Tell Castillo, I’m going after them.” He pulled away from the pier.

  Roberto kept his eyes on the escaping water taxi. His launch was more powerful, and he gained on the fleeing boat. He called the police and yelled into the phone what had happened. The kidnappers’ boat weaved in and out of the traffic on the Giudecca Canal. Horns blared across the water from the other boats. When Roberto was less than fifty yards from the taxi, his windshield shattered from a volley of bullets. He dropped below the console, hoping that the wood would at least give him some protection. A sharp pain from his right shoulder screamed otherwise. His launch lurched hard to starboard. He turned and saw smoke rising from the disabled engine. He was losing speed; the other boat was now a hundred, then two hundred yards away. He shut off his boat’s engine; his craft slipped in a long slide before stopping. Roberto jammed a folded towel under his shirt to stop the bleeding; the pain was like a torch to his skin. Standing on the deck of his rocking launch, he watched the taxi disappear around the far point, with its massive monastery. His right arm, now limp from the wound, fell to his side.

  He called Nox again.

  “They’re gone, Nox, they got the girls. Goddammit, who the hell are these guys?”

  CHAPTER 19

  “At least your morons didn’t kill them,” Maja Stankić said as she walked the room, a cigarette in one hand. She looked out the window. Venice floated in the distance. “It was a mistake to bring them here. You could have been seen.”

  “My men knew what to do,” Kozak said with a laugh. “They brought them up the back stairs. They were not seen. And both are trussed up like pigs waiting for slaughter, they are not a problem. So, don’t worry.”

  “How can you be sure? You are all idiots. We talked about this. We can handle the press and anything the Americans can say. And you, Colonel Vuković. I am surprised at you.”

  “Fuck you, you witch,” Vuković answered. “With her missing, they have nothing.”

  Stankić ignored the man’s insult. “You are all fools. Now they will come looking for her. The Americans will do everything to find her, and the first place they will look is here. And look, you ass, there are two of them. You don’t even know which one is the real Jurić.”

  Both women were tied to separate chairs, gagged and blindfolded. Kozak grabbed the arm of the woman on the right and jerked up her sleeve.

  “Nothing, see?” he said.

  Then Kozak slapped the woman, who moaned.

  “Here, on the other bitch, the dagger tattoo—this one is Jurić. I don’t care who the other woman is. She’s probably the one who threw our man into the canal. I’m sure Vladimir and Egan will want a little playtime—to get even.”

  “There’s no time for that,” Stankić said. “Get rid of her. All we need is Jurić. You think the American might be connected to that CIA agent?”

  The slapped woman moaned, while a muffled cry came from Marika on the left.

  “We’ll move Jurić later tonight and hide her until after the conference,” Kozak said. “Then you will see. Colonel, remove that one’s gag. I have a few questions.”

  Vuković removed the gag. The woman said nothing—she just moved her head around, obviously trying to dislocate the blindfold. She was sweating profusely. With the gag pulled away, she took in a great gulp of air. Vuković tightened the blindfold.

  “Now, my pretty little pain in the ass,” Kozak said as he patted the woman’s reddened cheek. “Speak up. Who the hell are you? We know you are not Marika Jurić.”

  “Try English,” Stankić said.

  He repeated the question. Even though the English accent was harsh, the woman reacted by rotating her head toward the sound. She still said nothing, pulling hard against the restraints and trying to free her legs from the chair.

  “Spirited too,” Stankić said with a laugh. “The other one.”

  Vuković pulled out Marika’s gag; she spat on the floor.

  “You are all assholes!” Marika yelled in Croatian. “Butchering assholes!”

  Kozak slapped Marika, hard.

  “How quaint,” Stankić said. “Now, Ms. Jurić, what should we do with you? This little game you are playing is one you will not win. The people are behind General Kozak; they want a strong leader, one who can stand up against the elites and politicians in Europe. They are tired of being treated like ignorant children who must bow and scrape to Brussels.”

  “The people will have nothing to do with you and your fascists,” Marika said. “They do not want a return to war. They are too smart to put a criminal in office.”

  Marika was slapped again.

  “Never underestimate the people. They are afraid, they want order. The crush of Muslims and refugees is changing the country. We can stop that.”

  “With what? Walls and fences, camps like twenty years ago? Death squads, assassinations? They will never accept that.”

  Another slap echoed in the room.

  “Stop it!” the other woman screamed. “Stop it!”

  “I told you she is American,” Stankić said. “Our imposter has a voice, a strong one at that.”

  The woman tensed and seemed ready for a fist to her face. When nothing happened, she asked, “Why did you kidnap us?”

  “If you are to play the double,” Kozak answered, “your government should have trained you better. The men in my army know precisely what is expected of them. No wonder your country is so incompetent.”

  “I don’t know anything. I’m a tourist—that’s all. Your people are making a mistake. You stupidly mistook me for her. She is just a friend.”

  “And that CIA agent?” Stankić said. “Yes, we know all about him. We know that the three of you are working together to subvert the election. If you are who you say you are, just a friend, did it ever occur to you that you are the one being played for a fool?”

  The American waited, but Marika said nothing. “I’m just a tourist,” she repeated. “In the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Sometimes, my dear,” Stankić said, “we are all in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  CHAPTER 20

  After he had left Milan, Javier received word from Nox—the train could not reach Venice fast enough. Nox met him at the water taxi stand outside the train station, in the safe house’s motor launch. They speedily crossed Venice and slipped into the garage under the rear of the safe house.

  In the office, Nox pulled up one of several computer images the CIA’s Milan office had sent five minutes earlier. This one showed an irregular chunk of land surrounded by water, with a large building on its right side and numerous smaller buildings scattered about the
rest of the island. Lounge chairs and umbrellas encircled a rectangle atop the larger building.

  “That’s a rooftop pool,” Nox said. “I am guessing that’s the floor where Kozak is staying. We have confirmed that he and his entourage checked in yesterday.”

  “The women have to be there,” Javier agreed. “No other option, for now. They will have to move them later. We only have a few hours.”

  “Unless he’s killed them,” Nox added.

  “Right now they are worth more alive than dead—after the conference, I’m not sure. That’s why it has to be tonight.”

  “The Italian authorities should not be brought into this. They are looking for a different boat than what the kidnappers escaped in. Roberto was deliberately less than helpful when he provided a description.”

  “I will thank him when this is over, and yes, nothing would be gained. Our strategy?”

  For an hour the two men planned the recovery. The sun set in the meantime, and as eager as they were to act, they needed to wait until later in the evening. Hopefully, most of the hotel guests would be in Venice celebrating the last night of Carnevale. The two men would leave the safe house just after ten p.m. and wind their way through the canals and then across the lagoon.

  Javier emphasized no guns. Kozak’s people might go crazy, and the last thing he wanted was a gun battle in the hallways of a luxury hotel. Careers had been destroyed over less, and besides, it might not guarantee a clean recovery.

  “Inside job,” Nox said. “The only way. Stealthy and no guns.”

  Nox called the Marriott. “Money is no object,” he said in Italian. “I’m exhausted. Just arrived. I’m at the airport. Anything would be acceptable.” He wrote the price on a tablet on the desk. He hung up. “Pirates.”

  Three hours later they dropped one duffel bag and one expensive suitcase in the stern of the motor launch. The craft was unremarkable and looked like any of the hundreds of water taxis in Venice. Nox carefully motored the boat through the maze of canals until they reached the open water of the Grand Canal and lagoon. The earlier storm had finally cleared; a stiff, dry breeze now blew in from the Adriatic. Even from a thousand yards, the JW Marriott hotel was unmistakable. The windows blazed like a well-lit ship on the dark gloom of the water. Nox aimed at the center mass of the island.

  The plan was simple: Nox—unknown to the Croats and Kozak—would enter the hotel as a last-minute guest and check in. Javier would drive the boat, to blend in like one of the local water taxi drivers delivering a fare. After leaving his bag in his room, Nox would walk the halls until he located or, at worst, guessed where Alex and Marika might be held. The giveaway would be guards in the halls or being refused entry to a particular area of the hotel. His ruse would be a hotel bathrobe.

  “I’m sure no one would suspect a rescue by a man in a white hotel robe,” Javier had said with a laugh.

  “I’ll call you when I find out,” Nox said, tapping his earbud.

  After Javier dropped off Nox, he would head back out into the lagoon and then motor to a nearby pier, adjacent to some ancillary buildings on the far side of the island. He would tie up and work his way back to the hotel. Always in contact on their phones’ earbuds, they would coordinate their actions after that.

  “Ever done this before?” Nox asked Javier as they crossed the lagoon. The cold waves bounced them about. They stayed out of the spray in the small forward cabin.

  “Other than Afghanistan, once, about five years ago,” Javier answered over the drone of the engine. “We had intel that a cartel bigwig was holed up in a condo on Fisher Island in Miami. Two teams were sent in to snag the guy, one from the land, the other from the water. It was a mess from the start, as is typical with any joint operation with DHS, DEA, FBI, and us. The only way on and off was by ferry. The two teams headed out; the land team missed the scheduled ferry. I was in a high-speed cigarette speedboat, some Homeland Security idiot’s Miami Vice wet dream. They’d confiscated the yellow nightmare a few months earlier. We pulled up to a pier near the target condo building and waited until the ferry got to the team on the mainland side. Then we had to wait for them to arrive on the next ferry to the island in three ultrasinister black Tahoes—so macho, so typical, so stupid. Just as they landed at the dock and drove off the ferry, now an hour and a half late, we stormed in from the south and moved toward the mid-rise condominium. When we hit the front entry, we heard the whomp-whomp of a helicopter. It flew over our heads, landed on the golf course, picked up our guy, and disappeared. All we got was his mistress, who said absolutely nothing. Last we heard he was somewhere in Colombia. It’s all about planning, Nox, all about planning.”

  “What does it say about this?”

  “The screwed-pooch margin is huge.”

  They switched places at the helm just before entering the narrow, T-shaped private cove located in front of the hotel. Nox waited in the boat as Javier did a reasonably professional job putting the craft against the dock. An attendant tied the boat to the mooring. Dressed well in a dark suit, Nox stepped onto the dock and waved to Javier as he backed the launch out of the cove.

  Javier, after moving down the shore of the island, gently slid the launch up against the piers of a short dock, threw one of the lines around a mooring pole, and secured the boat. He stripped off his taxi-driver striped shirt—worn over a thick sweater—and put on a black nylon jacket that covered his ballistic vest and shoulder holster. They were not going to storm the hotel like in some action movie, shooting everything in sight trying to find Alex and Marika, but he sure wasn’t going to die executing this rescue. He also put on a black ski cap that snugly secured the phone earbud under the cap’s double brim. He tightened the web belt that held flash grenades, a Taser, and duct tape. Feeling ninja-like, Javier quietly worked his way to the hotel and then through the mass of shrubbery at the edge of the garden, to the opposite side of the building. He looked at his watch. 12:05. Carnevale was now officially over.

  WEDNESDAY

  CHAPTER 21

  Javier’s earpiece buzzed. “Go. Status?” he whispered.

  “I spotted what had to be two of Kozak’s men in the lobby—as obvious as skunks at a bridal shower. They ignored me. I have an extra key card, room’s not bad for a last-minute reservation. Maybe I’ll stay the night.”

  “Funny,” Javier said.

  “I’m on the third floor, west end. Kozak and the women, I believe, are up a floor. Give me five minutes to change and gear up; then I’m out exploring. I’ll call you.”

  A small grove of trees stood to the side of the extensive gardens flanking one side of the hotel, and walkways radiated diagonally outward from the building and disappeared in the dark. Javier stood in the shadow of the trees.

  Chic. Nothing like it in Waco.

  His earpiece buzzed again. “Go.”

  “East end of the building. I’ll drop the key card.”

  Javier looked up the face of the building to a balcony on the third floor. A man walked to the railing.

  “Got you. I’m below and to your left.”

  A small box fell gently from above and landed on the grass. Javier retrieved the box and slipped back into the trees.

  “I’ll keep the phone on—just looking like a poor soul searching for the spa.”

  “Take a selfie,” Javier whispered. “Just love to see you in a bathrobe.” There was no response from Nox, just the sound of elevator music.

  Javier heard the elevator door slide open and a mechanical voice say “quarto piano.” He then heard the door slide closed and the music stop.

  “Walking the fourth floor,” Nox said. “Nothing forward or to the rear. Double doors at the end of the hallway. Hold on—two men just walked out the double doors. I recognize one from the lobby. This has to be the suite.”

  “What you want?” Javier heard the guard ask in broken Italian. “Go away.”

  “Sorry, just looking for the spa,” Nox said.

  “Not here, pretty boy. Go away.”
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br />   “That’s cool, no problem,” Javier heard Nox say. “You heard?” Nox asked. “I’m back in the elevator—holding. I’ve locked its doors.”

  “Not very friendly, are they?” Javier said. “West end, top floor. I passed a glass stair tower; the key card should get me in.”

  “Stair exits across the hallway from the double door. When you are at the top of the stairs, let me know.”

  “Almost there, three minutes,” Javier answered.

  Javier began to count from one; he needed to be at the top of the stairs at one hundred and fifty. He double-timed along the garden side of the building, to the far end of the hotel. The stairway, visible through the glass enclosure, zigzagged up the face of the building. Twenty, he mentally counted. He looked around a corner, toward the same plaza and cove where he’d dropped off Nox. Two launches were arriving. From the noise and singing, they were returning from Carnevale. He looked up the stairs—no guard.

  “What’s that?” Nox asked.

  “Guests returning from Venice. Now or never. The key card worked—going up the stairs.”

  Javier took the stairs two at a time and stopped at the third-floor landing. “Nox?”

  “Go.”

  “I’ll check the door when I reach the floor, to see if the card works. If so, I’ll tape the latch. Then the floor is yours.”

  “Roger that.”

  Javier took the last flight of steps, then slipped the key card in the door’s lock. It clicked green. He pushed the door slightly open and placed a small square of duct tape over the lock.

  “Done, go.”

  Seconds later Javier heard the voice over the speaker say “quarto piano” again, in a pleasant yet annoying voice. He heard the door slide open as Nox reopened the doors.

  “Two guards at your end.”

  “Roger that,” Javier answered.

  “I told you, no spa,” he heard a gruff voice say.

  “I was told it was up here. What can I say? I’m going to take a look,” Javier heard Nox respond in Italian. A few seconds passed. “Now,” he told Javier.