by Dale Nelson
Aleksander was gone.
Sirens were loud now. They wouldn’t have long before this place was crawling with Carabinieri.
Jack and Castro met in the middle of the street.
“He’s gone,” Castro said. “Goddamn it,” though that seemed mostly to himself.
Cars were riddled with bullet holes. Amazingly, thankfully, there were no civilians on the street when the fighting started, but they could see faces in the windows now. Jack walked over to the BMW.
“Don’t fucking touch anything,” Castro shouted.
Jack ignored him and ducked into the car. His backpack was lying on the floor. Aleksander wouldn’t have wanted to leave that in his safe house. Too many questions. Jack reached in and grabbed it and checked for his phone. He stepped out of the car. Castro was standing there with his arms comically wide.
“Ah, crime scene?”
“You don’t get to decide when you’re going to be a cop and when you’re not,” Jack said.
Castro ignored him. “I have no fucking idea how I’m going to explain this,” he said. “But my story would be a hell of a lot easier to make up if you weren’t in it.”
Did he just hear that right?
“What are you saying?”
“What am I going to tell them? Gentleman Jack Burdette provided surprising fire so that my men and I could engage a Pink Panther gang?”
“I mean, that’s basically what happened,” Jack said.
“No one is going to believe that, and when people don’t believe something, they start asking questions. The last thing we need right now is for your FBI to start poking into this mess.”
“What about me?”
“I’ll say …” His voice trailed off. “I’ll say that, shit, I hid you after the bank thing. You went with one of my men. Just keep your head low for a few hours.”
Jack looked at Castro’s car for the first time. The windows were shot out, that much he knew, but the hood and the door were also covered. Bullets had flown right over his head, and he never knew it.
Think. What was the next move?
“What about Aleksander?”
“We’ll get him.”
I know where he’s going, Jack thought. But I got there first.
He had to get in touch with Enzo. Jack powered his phone on and checked his messages.
There was one text from a number he didn’t recognize.
We have Enzo. Let’s trade. - RC
Rafael Castillo.
They had Enzo?
Enzo was in Alicante. He’d flown there on Jack’s signal.
He was to break into Aleksander’s safe and remove the contents. Jack believed that any blackmail material Aleksander would have on him would be in that safe. He needed that material to prove his case that Aleksander was extorting him. He also assumed that some of what Aleksander had on the officials he’d been bribing would be there too. He’d want records of it just in case.
More importantly, he wanted to make sure that whatever Aleksander had on him didn’t make it into the hands of the police.
Jack looked back at his phone.
The timestamp on the text was ten minutes ago.
Castillo must have known that the bank job had gone south already.
But what would Jack have to trade?
Jack looked over to Castro. “How much time can you buy me? With Danzig.”
He couldn’t just tell the police about it. First, they’d never get there in time, not with god knew how many different jurisdictions would be involved. Enzo would be dead by the time they even sorted out who was in charge. Second, Aleksander would have detailed information not just on Frank Fischer and his associates, but on jobs that Jack had done in the past—at least anything he did with Ozren Stolar. Jack’s immunity deal was only for Paris. If the police got ahold of what was in that safe before he did, Jack would definitely go to jail, and for a long time.
Castro looked around the street. “I don’t know, a few hours. I’m going to be tied up with this for a long time, so I’ll have a good reason to duck her calls.”
Jack did the math. He needed at least ten.
“That’ll have to do.”
“Okay, but if you run, I can’t help you. All I can tell Danzig is the truth, which is that after we released you, Aleksander forced you to rob the bank, and I lost you in the chaos. There’s only so much of this that she’s going to believe.”
“Ok,” Jack said. “I understand. I’ll be back. You have my word.” Jack handed Castro his gun. “You’re probably better off with this than me,” he said. Jack turned to leave.
“Jack,” Castro said.
Jack turned.
“Thank you. You saved my life.”
“You did the same for me.”
Castro nodded, and Jack ran.
He bolted up two blocks and then found a cross street that would take him in the direction of the Colosseum. He stopped to catch his breath, leaning against a building. The sounds of sirens were everywhere now.
Jack took several deep breaths and tried to calm himself.
Megan flashed in his mind.
The number of chances he’d blown to have a quiet life with her started to tally in his mind.
Jack called Rusty.
Rusty answered immediately.
“What in the fuck is going on?” he asked. “I’ve been watching the news. It’s like all hell broke loose.”
“You’re not far off. I’ll explain when I see you,” Jack said. “Just tell me it worked.” He continued moving south until the Colosseum came into view.
“It worked,” Rusty said. “It worked. We got them.”
Jack smiled.
“How much?” Jack asked.
“All of it.”
They did it. They actually did it.
“How soon can you pick me up?” Jack asked.
“I’m leaving now.”
“Ok. I’ll see you soon. I’ll be on the north side of the Colosseum roundabout, near the food carts.”
“See you soon.” Rusty hung up.
Jack realized he was still wearing the ill-fitting black suit jacket and driving gloves. He removed them both, balled them up, and dropped them in a city trash bin as he walked toward the Colosseum.
Jack couldn’t help but smirk as a black Maserati Quattroporte pulled up to the curb. Jack got in, and Rusty pulled into traffic before the door was even closed.
“Where are they?”
“Back seat, with Vito.”
Jack flashed a grim smile.
There were about eighty million dollars’ worth of diamonds in the car.
Give or take.
Twenty-Six
A real heist was a thing of beauty.
But this, this was a work of art.
The best jobs were the ones that didn’t look like a crime. In this case, a well-dressed man in his early seventies walked into a bank, showed identification to the bank manager, and asked to access the contents of his safe deposit box. Upon verifying the number of the box, the manager said that it appeared he hadn’t been there in some time. The man said that was true. He was given his box and a private room in the vault.
There, Vito removed most, but not all of the diamonds.
After all, no one could agree on how many had actually been stolen. If the police found a quantity, enough to make it look like it was worth the trouble not to mention an amount that matched Bartolo’s account of the heist, they’d believe that’s all there was. It pained Vito to leave almost twenty million dollars in diamonds behind, but what he took with him would make them rich for the rest of his days.
It was surprisingly easy.
The best thefts were.
Vito knew the aliases that Bartolo used during the School of Turin days, because he’d procured all of them. Bartolo made the plan up on the fly and wouldn’t have had time open a new safe deposit box under a new identity. That would’ve defeated the purpose anyway because it would’ve tipped his uncle that he was using the bank
for something.
Rusty got an ID made with the alias Vito believed Bartolo was using at the time. Vito simply signed the stones out. Unlike today, where law enforcement was more sophisticated and identity requirements tightened in the mid-2000s, in the late nineties, someone could get a lot of miles out of a fake identity.
Today, they burned like matchsticks in a dry field.
Vito simply dumped the contents of the box into a bag in his private room, thanked the bank manager for his time, and walked out. Rusty met him in a car outside, and they were gone, all while Jack was being grilled by the FBI.
The original plan called for them to fly to Switzerland on a private jet that Rusty chartered. Now, they were going to adjust the flight plan to take them to Alicante and liberate Enzo.
Rusty and Vito would wait on the plane with the diamonds. Jack would have wanted backup, but trust only went so far.
Jack stepped out the private plane into the dry, warm air of Spanish night. He half-turned in the hatchway at the mention of his name. Rusty followed him to the doorway.
“Jack,” Rusty said, “the pilot tells me that there’s a quiet hours restriction here. We’ve got to be wheels up by eleven.” Rusty would stay on the plane with the diamonds. If something happened and Jack didn’t make it back, Rusty would have the pilot fly to Switzerland, and Rusty would hide the stones.
“Understood.” It was just after nine.
“Are you sure you don’t want backup?”
Vito was in the back of the jet and out of earshot, but the pilots were about ten feet away. Jack spoke in a hushed voice. “No, you stay here. I trust Vito, but not that far.” Rusty nodded. “I hid a gun here, so I won’t be going in unarmed.”
“Good luck.”
Jack descended the steps and headed for the terminal.
Because the flight originated within the EU, they weren’t required to clear customs. Jack didn’t need to worry that Danzig still had all of his identification.
Jack found Aleksander’s Ferrari in the parking lot where he left it. He made Aleksander’s house in fifteen minutes.
Jack used the keypad and opened the gate on the driveway, hoping that if there were guards here, they weren’t in the driveway.
Aleksander’s house was the last on its side, before the street dead-ended at a cliff that spilled haphazardly into the Mediterranean. The pavement went right up to the edge, where it abruptly stopped, as though it wasn’t until then that someone figured out there was nothing left to pave but open air. They had been thoughtful enough to put up a metal barricade.
There were no sidewalks either. The road wasn’t graded, but it was sloped in the center to allow for runoff to a gutter. Rain was infrequent here, but it must have been hell when it did. Since there was no curb, Jack pulled the Ferrari right up next to the eight-foot wall that enveloped Aleksander’s property. There wasn’t enough space between his door and the wall to open it, but that’s not how he was exiting the car anyway. Instead, he stood and planted his foot where the back seat met the stowed convertible roof. He made sure that the Beretta was secured in his waistband and grabbed onto the decorative balustrade at the top of the wall.
Jack’s sides erupted in fresh, raw pain as he pulled himself up. He used the soles of his shoes to grip on the knobby stucco and provide some extra traction. He pulled himself up and over the top, then slowly lowered to a hang on the other side. Jack released his grip on the balustrade and dropped the remaining few feet to the soft grass. It still hurt like hell. Jack pulled the Beretta.
Castillo wouldn’t keep Enzo in the house. Even if Basia and Guilia were gone, Jack didn’t think there was a good spot to hold someone. Certainly not if interrogation was part of it. Jack thought briefly of Aleksander and whether he’d come back here. It didn’t seem plausible that he’d have a plane on standby, but what about anything that happened since Paris was?
Reasoning that Enzo would be kept in the garage, Jack padded over to the side of the outbuilding and worked his way around the left side, staying between the garage and the wall. This was poor security. There was ample ground lighting, in the form of spots that shone up from the base of the wall to illuminate the side of the garage, but unless someone was looking down from one of the rooms on the second floor, you couldn’t see an intruder using this pathway. The first floor wall was solid and windowless on this side, likely because they would only have a view of a wall. Jack thought it possible that there were motion sensors here, but unlikely.
Jack made his way around to the far side. He now had an angle on the front door of the main house. First floor lights were on, backlighting the various square and rectangular shapes of the windows. There were also recessed exterior accent lights. Jack stood next to a door. There was a concrete path from this to the driveway, and this was the main access point for guests staying in the suites above the garage. Jack tested the door. It wasn’t locked. He opened it and slid through. There was a stairway leading to the second floor immediately in front of him and a hallway that extended off to his left that led to the garage. Through the glass door at the end of the hall, Jack could see the garage lights.
He crept down the hallway and chanced a look through the door. All of the cars were out of the garage. Enzo was in a chair in the middle of it, hands bound behind his back. Aleksander’s bulky heavy, Mijo stood near him. Castillo paced in front of Enzo, and Jack could see the man’s anxiety from here. Castillo’s phone was in his hand. Jack looked down at his own to make sure it was silenced. Mijo would certainly be armed. Jack doubted Castillo would be, and if he was, the lawyer would likely only be a threat to Enzo. Enzo moved his head slightly, confirming that he was alive.
Jack took a risk in coming here without acknowledging Castillo’s message. Castillo would know Jack had seen it. As a precaution, Jack turned off any notifications on the home screen, so someone would have to unlock the phone to see any phone calls, texts or emails. Jack gently turned the door handle, and then gripping the pistol with both hands, he pushed against the door with his shoulder, opening it quietly. He slid through the gap and brought the pistol level.
Jack spent a lot of time over the last four years practicing with a firearm. He even took one of those high intensity self-defense courses designed for those with a combination of excessive wealth and paranoia. But none of that was a substitution for practical experience under the stress of violence, of which Jack had very little. He moved forward slowly and cautiously, but with a long stride to close the gap as quickly as possible.
Castillo spotted him when he was halfway across the garage.
“Hands where I can see them, both of you,” Jack said, voice resolute.
Mijo looked to Castillo for guidance.
“No,” Jack said in a louder voice. “I’ve already shot one person today.”
“Jack?” Enzo said.
“I’m right here, buddy.”
Castillo and Mijo complied. But as Castillo turned to him, Jack saw the gun in his left hand. It had been blocked from view when the lawyer was pacing. Instead of aiming it at Jack, Castillo leveled it at Enzo, who was mere feet away. At that range, it wouldn’t simply be a kill shot, it would blow most of his head off.
“It seems that we still have something to talk about,” Castillo said.
“Not really. You guys failed. His crew was trapped in a standoff in the bank. They didn’t make it.”
“I see that,” he said.
“Aleksander escaped, but not for long. He’s got every cop in Rome looking for him now.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“You can’t buy them all, Rafael. But I think you’ve made a bigger enemy than the police. Haven’t you? You took a swing at the mafia, and you missed. They can reach you where the police can’t. Oh, and you should know that I cut a deal with the authorities.”
“You’re lying.”
“No,” Jack said nonchalantly, “I turned myself in, figuring my chances were better with them than the inevitable double-cross I was g
oing to get with you people. They were very interested to learn about you, Rafael. Thing about cops is that they absolutely hate when people try to buy off other cops.”
Castillo waved the gun at Enzo.
“Then it looks like I’ll need to keep your friend a little while longer. Mijo, pick him up.”
“There’s nowhere to go, Rafael.”
“We’ll see about that. Mijo?”
“You were the one Basia was waiting for, weren’t you, Mijo? The other night after Aleksander left, when I snuck back here.”
Mijo looked from Jack to Castillo and back.
“I take it she’s still in the house. She wouldn’t leave without you, and you guys weren’t going to make a break for it if there was a chance that Aleksander got away with it. You’ve got a few hours; you guys can still get away.”
“He can still do that,” Castillo hissed, “after he puts Mr. Bachetti in the car.”
Mijo pulled his gun, put it at the back of Enzo’s head, and cocked it, all in one practiced motion.
Everything slowed down. Bright white crystal clarity from the rows of lights above them.
“Whoa, Mijo,” Jack said.
“I kill him,” Mijo said to Castillo, “you’ve got nothing to trade. Burdette fucking kills you.”
“I don’t care about the girl, and I don’t care about you,” Castillo said. “I care about getting out of here.”
“All I want is my friend,” Jack said.
“Put the fucking gun down, Mijo,” Castillo said, his voice riddled and strained. Castillo raised his pistol from Enzo to Mijo.
Mijo slowly extended his arms out to the sides and gently knelt beside Enzo’s chair.
As Mijo was lowering himself to the gray concrete floor, Castillo said, “Now you,” to Jack and moved the gun from Mijo to Jack.
In one fluid motion, Mijo snapped his arms together and fired. Castillo fell back in slow motion, one leg in the air and arms falling wide. The gun, a silver-plated pistol, glinted once in the white light and clattered to the floor. Castillo landed on his back, a circle of red already on his chest and getting larger.
