by Dana Haynes
“No,” she said, setting down her drink. “It’s not my phone. And I’m helping a friend. That’s all. Thought you should know that the White Scorpions are trading up. Do with this information as you will, John Broom.”
“But I—”
“Ciao.” She hung up and set the mobile on the round glass-and-iron patio table.
Gianni bent at the waist, a hand on the back of her head, and kissed her deeply.
“Hmmm,” he said, grinning. “Mia Gatta. You taste like lemons.”
“Really.” Daria whisked away his towel. “And what do you taste like today?”
Seven
Sandpoint, Idaho
The hidden basement level of the American Citadel Electronics R&D offsite facility had a simple layout: a conference room, a control room, and an observation lounge. The last two were set up like a movie theater with a projection room: people inside the control room looked out through a long, narrow window at the backs of the heads of the people in the observation room. A giant array of plasma screens occupied every square centimeter of the far wall. Todd Brevidge had once watched a NASCAR race on that wall of screens, shot from the perspective of a driver, and had almost puked. The system’s vivid detail was unmatched.
The two potential buyers arrived first, followed by more honchos from Corporate. Everyone flew into the one-runway airfield to the north and west of the town, perched on the upper curve of the question mark–shaped Lake Pend Oreille.
The newcomers were escorted to the basement observation room of the American Citadel office. Neither of the guests asked why they had been spirited to the remotest realms of the contiguous forty-eight for this demonstration. They knew why.
The guests were easy to identify. One man, white; one woman, black. He in his sixties; she in her late forties. Both held themselves ramrod straight, arms either at their sides or one fist wrapped around one wrist, behind the back. Tight haircuts. Stiff and formal. In real life the buyers would wear stars and bars on their clothing. The building in which they worked would have five sides, not four.
But during their stay at the American Citadel R&D offsite facility, the white man and the black woman would be called Mr. Smith and Miss Jones. No rank. No insignia. It was the only way to get these two top officials to venture into the American Citadel infrastructure. Just doing so violated half a dozen restrictions placed on the company by the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Six months earlier American Citadel technology had been discovered in the bunkers of soldiers in Sudan and Somalia. Six years before that, American Citadel technology had been used against Allied troops in Iraq.
The company had been saddled with massive and (in the minds of the brass) unfair trade restrictions ever since. A half-dozen federal criminal investigations were ongoing.
Which is why Mr. Smith and Miss Jones were flying in under the radar today.
Cyrus Acton, the tall, gaunt member of the Citadel board of directors, greeted the guests warmly.
Bryan Snow retired to the control room with two of his technicians who, in the parlance of American Citadel research and development, were called pilots. Together they ran through one last diagnostic check of all the systems.
Before the demonstration began, Mr. Acton took Todd Brevidge by the elbow and moved him aside. He winked conspiratorially. “There are those on the board who don’t think you’re ready, Todd. I am not one of them. I am your guy on the board. You know that. Right?”
“Absolutely, sir. I’ve always known that.”
As always, the gaunt man overenunciated his words, as if he’d had a stroke or was mildly drunk and compensating. “Todd, the buyers today are different from most. Do you know why?”
“No, sir?”
Mr. Acton licked his very thin lips. “They have already said no thanks to our product and have placed orders with our competitor.”
Todd nodded. Of course he knew that. They were swimming upstream with today’s sales pitch, and nobody knew that better than Todd Brevidge!
“They want the competitor’s product!” Mr. Acton hissed. “Todd. Today is our opportunity—you’ll note the singular, yes? Opportunity. Today is our opportunity to turn them around. These idiotic sanctions, the wholly discredited criminal investigations. Today we can put all that behind us. Today we can show them that American Citadel makes the finest product on the planet and that their agreement with the competition is…”
Mr. Acton paused, leaned in, and spoke the holy curse. “Bad for business.”
Todd Brevidge said, “Believe me. After this demonstration they’ll fall on their knees and beg for our product.”
Mr. Acton gripped his elbow. The grip itself was incredibly weak.
“Make me proud, Todd.”
“Yes, sir. You just wait.”
Mr. Acton blinked down at him, nodded once, and joined the others in the observation room.
Todd Brevidge excused himself to the men’s room.
Now seemed like an ideal time for a line of coke.
* * *
In the control room, one of the pilots checked to make sure all of the internal communications were off. He turned to Bryan Snow, who sat in the center chair. “Is Brevidge gonna have a heart attack or what? Brown noser looks ready to barf.”
Bryan Snow adjusted his seat. It was designed more or less like the captain’s chair on the Star Trek series. Before him were flat-screen monitors spread out in a 200-degree semicircle. Beyond the screens were the workstations for Snow’s two in-house pilots. Snow adjusted his hipster-framed glasses and began scanning his monitors. He had three keyboards within reach, like a guy playing a synthesizer.
He slid on a headset that had a voice wand attached and punched in the number that he had marked Truck on his console. “Ah, Home Team here. You reading me, Away Team?”
After a one-second pause, a voice came back over the line. “Away Team. Five by five. We good to go for the demo?”
The voice was crystal clear. Remarkable, since it came from the cab of a truck-and-trailer rig parked in a rest stop eight thousand miles to the east.
“The demonstration is a go. Stand by for prep.”
Snow disconnected the line and adjusted his black plastic eyeglasses. He turned to his two in-house pilots. “Let’s see if we can’t give Brevidge a ride he’ll remember. Optics?”
One of his pilots said, “Optics read good.”
“Audio?”
“Audio nominal.”
“Avionics?”
“Green across the board.”
“Comms with Away Team are good,” he informed his guys.
* * *
The Away Team sat in the cab of a truck-and-trailer rig parked at a rest stop. They were thousands of miles from Sandpoint, Idaho. They, too, were called pilots. The gig allowed the two pilots to be airborne without ever leaving the ground. Instead of scratchy long johns and five-point safety harnesses that dug into their crotches, the pilots flew their aircraft while wearing jeans and polo shirts and listening to Aerosmith on the CD player.
For natural-born flyboys, the American Citadel gig was sweet.
Three more members of the American Citadel inner circle had joined those in the observation lounge, along with Cyrus Acton and Mr. Smith and Miss Jones.
Todd Brevidge waited in the corridor and steeled himself, pumped his fist in the air twice for confidence, straightened his tie and his cuffs, then strode into the low-ceilinged room. Through the observation window leading to the control room, his chief engineer, Snow, gave him the thumbs-up.
Brevidge held a Nextel walkie phone, keyed to the control room. “We’re good in here,” he said quietly, then turned to the newcomers. “Folks?”
He waved to the high-definition plasma wall, getting his P. T. Barnum on. The entire western wall of the observation lounge lit up with dozens of screens stretching from floor to ceiling, and from wall to wall. Each screen could present a different image. But now they wer
e slaved, offering one gigantic, panoramic view of a distinctly European city, complete with a massive dome and ornate tower of green and pink and white.
Todd Brevidge turned to the buyers and the brass. “Folks? Welcome to Florence, Italy.”
Eight
Italy
Daria packed all of her belongings into a surplus army duffel bag and hiked to Santa Margherita Ligure, the nearest train station to Caladri.
Her belongings consisted of shorts and tees and some raggedy underthings, plus toiletries and a used paperback. Aging sneakers. Two bikini tops and two bottoms, all mismatched. The black kidskin wrist gloves with the tiny gold zippers along the palm. Plus a steel straight razor, circa 1920, with a hollow steel handle stamped with the word Savila. Daria had modified the hinge of the cutthroat razor so it would lock open. Deployed, it gave her almost eight additional inches of lethal reach.
Everyone has their own definition of travel essentials.
She planned to switch trains at Pisa. About thirty kilometers outside of town, she realized she had the six-seat train car to herself because she looked like an unkempt wild child in her ratty attire and densely packed musculature. Priority number one when she got to Florence would be to purchase some girl clothes.
Daria had plenty of money for shopping. She had squirreled away a couple hundred thousand in dollars and euros at banks throughout the world. Each was under a different false name, the IDs provided by a grateful Estonian gangster who had owed her big-time. During Daria’s exile in Caladri, she had occasionally hitchhiked to Genoa to use a random ATM to make sure her accounts were safe.
That winter’s unfortunate imbroglio had resulted in Daria crossing swords with the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the Israeli Defense Forces, French intelligence, and Italian law enforcement. Plus a shadowy, pro-Israel cabal that, a very long time ago, had saved Daria’s life and childhood, and had given her the closest thing she would ever have to a family.
These things happen, she realized. One minute you’re living in Los Angeles, minding your own business and wearing Gucci. The next, you’re smashing an international conspiracy to kill thousands, your “wardrobe” can fit in a duffel bag, and you’ve become the Typhoid Mary of Western intelligence.
Comme ci, comme ça.
Repairing her reputation had to become Daria’s top priority.
Right after buying girl clothes.
* * *
The woman who called herself Major Arcana hired caterers to drive out to the rented Tuscan villa and to set up coffee and pastries and fresh fruit and juices. All for her team. She firmly believed that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. She also believed that a good leader instilled a sense of well-being and togetherness within her team.
It’s the little touches. Like a thoughtful breakfast.
The setting was an olive farm two kilometers outside Florence, in the gently rolling hills overlooking the Arno River. The farmhouse was only one story and rambling. Wings had been added haphazardly over eighty years.
The team consisted of former soldiers. Most were Serbs, but the crew included several men from countries previously associated with the Soviet Union. None of them currently served any nation’s military. Most of them had been dishonorably discharged. Most had served time in prison.
The blonde was not a member of the White Scorpions but had convinced its financiers and hidden power brokers that their cause was hers.
The Skorpjo soldiers queued up for the food and coffee, then picked web-and-tube deck chairs under umbrellas. The blonde waited until they had tucked into their food before getting down to business. She wore shockingly white trousers and a fitted white, double-breasted suit with no blouse beneath, stilettos, and no jewelry. Her hair was platinum and her skin very pale and unblemished. Her eyes were so light blue as to resemble quicksilver in the Tuscan sunshine. She was tall and languid and cool.
She stepped out onto the patio, and all eyes turned to her. She spoke fluent Serbian with a city accent. “It’s time to tell you about our target. Here are the basic facts: An Italian aerospace designer, Dr. Gabriella Incantada, has created a device. She is unveiling a prototype of the device today to some backers. It’s happening down there.”
She pointed to the oatmeal walls and terra-cotta roofs of Florence, sprawled out on the valley floor like a mediaeval tapestry.
“Dr. Incantada hopes to sell the device to any of a dozen governments around the world. I have blueprints of the venue. One of our teams shot an estimated forty-five hours of video: day, night, morning, afternoon, weekdays, and weekends. That team has distilled the images into the data we will need for the job.
“We have unimpaired access to the communications frequencies used by the Florentine police. We have their computers. Some of the potential buyers have hired their own private bodyguards. We have access to their communications and protocols, too.”
This was the first time that all the individual teams had met. The blonde liked to keep her chess pieces apart during the early phases of any campaign. She turned now to one of the tables and asked a team about handling Florentine police. A couple of clever diversions were planned to keep the patrol cars away from the real target.
She asked another table about transit plans, after the mission. Every contingency was covered.
“We should expect some opposition. Mr. Kostic? How went your interview with the American?”
Kostic and Lazarevic had been sitting at their own table chain-smoking and leaving the butts in their drained coffee cups. Kostic sat forward and fiercely stubbed out his Syrian Alhamra cigarette; cheap to buy but so poorly rolled they tend to dissolve as they are smoked. As usual, Kostic’s polo shirt was dusted in ash.
“We talked to the American. Nothing we cannot handle.”
The smiling blonde studied him a moment. She didn’t move: her smile didn’t falter; her eyes didn’t narrow. But the air pressure on the patio seemed to change. A couple of soldiers glanced at the sky to see if the weather was turning.
She kept her eyes on Kostic but turned her head to take in the other tables. “The American talked?”
Kostic lit another Alhamra from the dwindling pack. “You were right. The Mexican and the American were hired to protect this Incantada woman. The American is out of the way. He said the Mexican likely will go get help. Guzman said that means an Israeli woman, a gunrunner and soldier. Whenever Diego’s in trouble, that’s who he turns to.”
The blonde tilted her head. “And is this gunrunner and soldier by any chance named Gibron?”
The Serb hitters exchanged surprised glances. “That’s her name, yes. You know her?”
Major Arcana laughed, exposing her canine teeth. “Not officially, no. But we’ve traveled in the same circles. Her reputation is … the word impressive doesn’t do it justice. If she’s helping the Mexican, well, this whole thing just got a bit more fun.”
Lazarevic said nothing. He never did. Kostic picked loose tobacco off his tongue and said, “Israeli is dangerous? Worth attention?”
The blonde bit her lower lip. “Yes. She’s dangerous and worthy of our attention. But I think we stick to our plan. If she chooses to get involved … well…” The blonde amped up her smile. “Cool!”
* * *
Diego met Daria at the squat, utilitarian, and ever-bustling Santa Maria Novella train depot in Florence. A steady stream of people flowed through the station. The flow vectored away from Diego the same way leaves in a river divert around a half-submerged boulder. He wasn’t large, and he didn’t glower or threaten. People just avoided him.
Daria, in sneaks, cutoffs, and a ratty T-shirt, threw her duffel over one shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. “Buon giorno.”
His head bobbed in a subtle nod. “Hey.”
“First, find me a clothing store. Then get me a gelato. Then tell me about Gabriella Incantada and the thing she invented.”
* * *
Daria knew Diego had an old-fashioned sense of propriety
. She likely had much more money at her command than he did, but she knew he’d insist on paying, because it was his gig. She chose the Spanish retailer Zara, because the clothes were inexpensive but looked posh, and because Diego wouldn’t know the difference. She found a short, sleeveless sundress in bright daisy yellow and white and black patent sandals with ankle straps. She picked out some panties. In the dressing cubicle she did her hair in a French braid and slid on a pair of expensive, designer sunglasses she’d nicked from Signora Docetti the Current.
She applied enough makeup to cover the cut under her eye. That, plus sundry bruises here and there.
Out on the bustling Via Lambertesca, she let Diego buy her a sturdy but tiny black leather backpack, engraved with the fleur de lis sigil of Florence. The bag was large enough for a wallet, a lipstick, and the cutthroat Spanish razor. Just the basics for a day on the town.
Around them, Florence zipped along at a frenetic pace. Tourists flowed like storm-swept creeks, running over their banks and splashing into museums and shops and restaurants. The lanes were tight and only rarely intersected at right angles. African refugees hawked bright, cheap tchotchkes and buskers performed under gaily painted awnings, occupying the exact same spots their kind had for centuries.
Daria linked arms with the slight man in the cowboy hat and aged boots. “So, what’s the play?”
“Supposed to meet Vince. He’s not at the hotel room. His shit’s still there.”
“And you checked the local bordellos and drunk tank?” Daria didn’t think much of Vince Guzman, and she saw no reason to hide it.
Diego pulled a pack of Camels from his back pocket, plus an old steel lighter. “Yeah. No sign. But the guys with the white scorpion tatts are all over the place.”
Daria mulled that. “Show me the engineer’s hotel.”
* * *
The meeting was set for the Hotel Criterion de Medici, a boutique establishment carved into the hollowed-out, historic shell of an ancillary building adjacent to the sprawling, green Palazzo Pitti. A New Zealand hotel conglomerate had purchased the building and transformed it with enough coaxial cable, Wi-Fi, and blade servers to run a small offshore bank. But the edifice remained undisturbed and elegant, and the hotel’s nine large en suite rooms and five-star kitchen provided old-world elegance and style.
