by Trevor Scott
A couple of minutes after 0900, a group of some 15 tourists wandered through the area. They appeared to be older folks from Germany. The tour guide was a man in his early 40s with dark hair and a full beard. He was speaking German with an Italian accent. More importantly, he held a telescoping rod with a light blue flag on top. The tour guide instructed his people to continue down the road and take a right at the end. They could take a bathroom break down there and he would catch up with them.
Jake didn’t make a move toward the tour guide until the tourists were well down the stone road.
Meanwhile, the tour guide had his phone out and was checking something, or pretending to do so. His eyes kept on gazing at Jake, who was trying his best to remain indifferent.
Finally, once the tourists had rounded the corner and were out of sight, Jake drifted over to the tour guide and gave the man the code phrase he had gotten from the Italian in Naples the night before.
The tour guide was suddenly on high alert. “I don’t understand,” he said in Italian.
“Our friend in Naples could not make it today,” Jake explained. “He is a little tied up.”
The man’s eyes shifted like a rat trying to escape from a cat. Then he ran.
“Damn it,” Jake said aloud. “He’s running your way.”
Jake pulled his gun and went after the man. Suddenly, he could see Alexandra step around the corner ahead, her gun out and at the side of her leg. The man stopped in his tracks and turned into a structure.
Both Jake and Alexandra got to the entrance at the same time. “I don’t think there’s a way out,” Jake said. “Wait here.”
Inside, with the sun not up all the way, the structure was dark and gloomy. It was a larger villa, Jake guessed, with an inner solarium and terrace, the floors a patchwork of mosaic tiles that appeared to be under reconstruction.
The first shot came and startled Jake slightly, the bullet striking a wall next to him. It came from up the stairs, so Jake continued forward. He really needed to take this man alive.
“Are you all right, Jake?” came Alexandra’s voice in his ear piece.
“Fine. Moving forward,” he answered.
He could see a set of stairs ahead. Before going up the stairs, which would leave him vulnerable, Jake said, “I just want to talk to you.”
The Italian called him a fucking liar. Harsh.
With his gun aimed up the stairway, Jake kept his body against the right wall and stepped lightly upward as quietly as possible. When he saw movement at the top left, Jake tried to hold back from pulling the trigger. But the man shot twice in his direction. Jake returned fire with one round, shooting low.
Then nothing. Jake could hear his own heart pounding in his chest. Keep him alive, he kept telling himself.
“Come on,” Jake said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
The Italian said some shit about contorting the body in an unnatural way. If men could do that, they wouldn’t need women.
He took a couple more steps upward.
The man rounded the corner again. But Jake was ready for him. Before the man could fire, Jake shot once, hitting the man in the leg and dropping him to the hard surface.
Jake rushed up the stairs and stepped on the man’s right hand, trapping the gun against the ground. Then he pulled the gun out of the guy’s hand and looked at the man who was holding his left leg, blood pouring out of the wound. Damn it.
“Get up here,” Jake said into his mic. Then he stooped down next to the injured man. “This is bad. You need to give me your contact.”
The man grit his teeth in pain. “Fuck you.”
Alexandra ran up and looked down at the man. “Damn.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I hit the femoral artery,” Jake said. “He has less than ten minutes to live.”
The injured man’s eyes widened.
“Let’s just leave him,” Alexandra said in German. “We need to get out now. Everybody had to have heard those shots.”
“No,” Jake said, switching to English. “This guy’s going to give us his contact.”
“You are not Italian,” the man said, his eyes starting to swirl. “Not Italian Polizia? Carabinieri?”
“Hell no,” Jake said. “We’re independent contractors.”
“You must call an ambulance,” the Italian said.
“I must do nothing,” Jake said. “You’re a dirtbag terrorist. I should put a bullet in your head.”
“No, no. I am a simple anarchist.”
“Right. And I’m Santa Claus.”
“It’s true.” The man looked close to passing out.
“All right. Then who do you work for?”
“I am just a messenger.”
“The man from Naples reported to you and you gave him instructions,” Jake said. “That’s pretty organized for an anarchist.” He stopped for a reaction, but the guy was drifting farther from this world. “Who do you report to?”
The man bit his lower lip. Finally, he muttered, “Royal Positano. Bartender.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know her name.”
Okay. A female bartender at a hotel in Positano. That was something.
“Can we save him?” she asked.
Jake pulled Alexandra aside and whispered to her, “Not a chance. He has a minute or two.” He handed the man’s gun to her and then went back to the man, rifling through the guy’s pockets to pull all identification. He needed to make it look like a simple robbery. He even found the man’s blue flag and ripped that from the telescoping rod.
“Kill me,” the man mumbled.
Jake didn’t respond. He simply hurried down the stairs and back out to the old stone street. Alexandra came to Jake’s side and held his arm like the lover she was to him. Together they wandered back out through the ruins toward the exit. They both fully expected the Polizia to be rushing toward the shots fired, but that never happened. The walls were thick and the remote location must have saved them.
As they walked out through the ruins, they met up with Russo.
“Everything all right?” Russo asked.
“Just great,” Jake said. “What say we go to the Amalfi Coast?”
Russo looked up to the sky. “It looks like it will be a nice sunny day on the Amalfi.”
“Did you cut all the camera feeds?” she asked.
Hesitating a second, Russo finally said, “Of course.”
16
Naples, Italy
Elisa Murici and her colleague, Vito Galati, had gotten to the address she had gotten from Jake Adams sometime in the middle of the night. They had simply watched for a while from the street before finally going in to see what they could find. The two of them spent more than an hour sifting through every piece of paper in the apartment.
Meanwhile, Vito had called in to his organization for any information they could find on the man. But the guy had almost nothing on him. A few petty street crimes and protests, resulting in a couple of nights in the local jail to cool down. The guy had no social media profile. Maybe some of these turds were finally starting to get smart, Elisa thought.
Finding nothing of significance, the two of them went to a hotel and got a little rest. Luckily they were able to find a room with two beds.
They slept in, having been up most of the night. Then, around eight in the morning, Vito’s phone suddenly rang.
He picked up and listened carefully. Then he thanked the caller and set his phone back down on the end table.
“Something important?” she asked.
Vito sat up in bed but kept his lower body covered. She couldn’t help but stare at his hairy muscled chest. The guy was ripped, she thought.
“Do you have a problem?” she asked.
He pushed down on his crotch. “Sometimes in the morning.”
She turned her head and pointed toward the bathroom. “Better take a leak.”
Vito got up and went to the bathroom and she couldn’t help taking a glance at his butt
as he left. Very solid.
Moments later and Vito came back, his erection reduced but still prominent in his boxer briefs.
“Put some pants on,” she said. “And a shirt.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I normally sleep naked.”
“Not in my room you don’t. What did the caller say?”
“We have to get going,” he said. “The local Polizia found a man wandering the streets down by the port a couple hours ago. He gave them a story of a man and woman kidnapping him and bringing him to a container to torture him for information.”
“What kind of torture?”
Vito swished his head. “He said it never came to that. A third person came and threatened to do unspeakable things to him and his entire family.”
Her mind went directly to Jake Adams. “Why would he divulge this information freely?”
“Because he fears the Polizia much less than those three people who took him. He wants protection.”
“What did he tell them?”
“Nothing more. He said he wouldn’t talk with anyone but you.”
“Me? Are you sure?”
“He gave the Polizia your name, but not your organization. When they did a search, your name was coded as an intelligence asset. They contacted your agency, and they simply gave them my number.”
This scenario had Jake Adams written all over it. Jake had put the fear of God in this man and then made sure he became a bread crumb to follow.
They checked out of the hotel after getting a quick cappuccino, and then drove down to the Naples Polizia station holding the man.
Elisa went in to the interrogation room alone with the man. He was nervous, no doubt, squirming in his seat like a snake with a predator nearby.
“What time is it?” the man asked Elisa.
“Why does that matter? You will spend a lot of time in prison, where time doesn’t matter.”
The man scratched his head and let out a deep breath. “Please,” he said. “I must know the time.”
She glanced at her wristwatch and guessed it didn’t matter to give him that one bit of information. Perhaps it would make him more open to talk with her. Speed things up. “It’s a few minutes until nine,” Elisa said.
The man smiled and nodded his head. “All right. What would you like to know?”
“Everything.”
“I don’t know everything.”
“Everything you know, then.”
The man said, “I must have protection.”
“From the men who took you?”
“It was two men and a woman. One man and a woman were not native Italian speakers. The woman had a German accent.”
“And the other man?”
“He was Italian.”
“Which man threatened you?” she asked. Not that it mattered.
“The Italian.”
Now that was surprising. She would have expected Jake to do that. “Are you sure?”
“Of course. I was more afraid of the other man. He looked like he would snap my neck for farting. But he let the Italian warn me.”
She waited for the man to explain.
“The Italian mentioned a few names known in the region. Names which I can no longer remember. You understand. Anyway, this man was Malavita.”
Jake was working with a Mafia member. That was strange, she thought. “Are you sure?”
He nodded his head vehemently.
“And what did you tell them?” she needed to know.
Their discussion went like that for another fifteen minutes, with Elisa asking for the simple truth and the man deflecting.
“What time is it now?” the man asked.
She looked at her watch and said, “Almost quarter after nine. Why?”
“I can tell you now because it doesn’t matter.”
The man told her about the meeting he was supposed to have with his contact. The meeting that Jake and his friends would take in his place.
Elisa got up quickly and rushed out of the room. She instructed the Polizia to hold the man until someone from Vito’s organization could pick the guy up. Then she and Vito hurried out of the building.
Once in the car, Vito behind the wheel, he asked her, “Do you think the man is telling you the truth?”
“Yes. Hurry up. Drive to Pompeii.”
By the time they drove the short distance to the Pompeii ruins entrance, Elisa knew that they were too late, which is why the man she questioned was so concerned about the time. Polizia cars lined the street leading to the front gate and an ambulance sat near the turnstiles.
They parked and Vito flashed his AISI credentials to the on-scene commander. “What happened?” Vito asked.
“A shooting.”
Elisa glanced over and saw a group of tourists huddled together. She wandered over and listened to their conversations. Then she used her German to ask what they knew. Some heard shots. Others thought it was fireworks. How many shots? Five. Ten. Mixed reports. But when their tour guide didn’t meet up with them, they got concerned and a few of the men went to look for him. They found the man dead in one of the nearby villas. Since they had just met the tour guide, they didn’t know much about the man. He was Italian, but the tour was given in English.
Moments later a small electric cart rolled down the hill toward the front gate carrying a couple of ambulance workers and a body strapped to the back end covered by a black sheet. She knew that the ruins would do everything in their power to get rid of the Polizia cars and the ambulance. Then they would spread the word that a tourist had experienced a heart attack. Nothing to see here.
Elisa and Vito went to the cart carrying the dead man, and she insisted on looking at the man.
“Any identification?” she asked the EMTs.
“No, ma’am. Not even a cell phone.”
“Where was he shot?” Vito asked.
“In the leg. But the bullet obviously tore through his femoral artery. He never had a chance.”
A leg wound, Elisa thought. That meant that Jake and friends wanted to get information from this man, not kill him. But the shot had been too good nonetheless.
Realizing they would get nothing more from the body, Elisa went back to the on-scene Polizia commander and asked about surveillance cameras. There were many throughout the ruins, the man said. But for some reason they were not working.
The Polizia man turned to a young man standing with another officer. “But this boy got a video of two people leaving the ruins. It might be important.”
Vito took the lead with the other officer, showing the man his credentials. The officer was impressed and immediately gave up the young man’s cell phone with the video.
Elisa and Vito watched the video, which showed a man and woman, hand in hand, strolling out of the park. She took the phone from Vito and watched it one more time. Then she clicked on the video and sent it to her phone by text attachment. Once she did that, she deleted any trace of her action, including the original video. She checked through the young man’s pictures and videos and found nothing else with any evidence of the two people. Then she handed the phone back to the Polizia officer and left him with his young man.
Vito pulled Elisa aside and said, “You recognized someone in the video.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But if that person was involved, then it was a good shooting.”
“How can you be sure?”
She didn’t answer that. But she was. It was clearly Jake Adams in the video, and what she had to assume was his girlfriend. What in the hell was Jake up to? And how did he keep staying one step ahead of them?
17
Positano, Italy
Jake decided not to tell Russo about the bartender at the Royal Positano. Instead, he had given the Malavita capo an assignment in Naples—find out anyone and everyone associated with the man that Jake had been forced to kill in Pompeii. Russo could work his contacts and see if the dying man had told Jake the truth. Jake had given Russo a little lie. He had told the man that he needed
some personal time with Alexandra, since she had not done anything exciting in months. He didn’t tell the Mafia man about their child. Nor did he tell Russo where they were going.
The drive from Pompeii to the Amalfi Coast via Sorrento could take anywhere from forty minutes to a few hours, depending on traffic and weather. At least it was a sunny day and the off season for the coast, with a slight chill in the air. Jake had come to realize that Italians could wear down jackets in June. Especially those in the south of Italy. Their blood ran cold.
With no location or name for this bartender at the Royal Positano Hotel, Jake and Alexandra had some time in the city until the bar opened that evening. So they wandered the narrow streets like the couple they really were, considering the purchase of shoes and leather goods. Jake was thankful that Alexandra was low maintenance and practical, only buying what she needed when she needed it. They could afford much more than they had, so Jake was the one who usually bought her more frivolous items.
Now they sat in a small café with a view of the sea a few blocks away, sipping fresh cups of cappuccino.
“We could just go to the hotel and ask for the name of the bartender,” Alexandra said.
“No. They might tip her off and she’ll bolt.”
She nodded agreement.
“Besides,” Jake said, “we don’t know if the man was telling us the truth. He could have just made up the girl.”
“I don’t think so. A dying man does not think that way.”
Perhaps, Jake thought.
“How do you want to play her?” she asked.
Good question. There was a time when Jake could use charm to extract information. But he guessed he had aged too much for that, especially if the woman was younger. “We’ll have to assess the woman once we get there.”
She checked her watch and fiddled with her phone.
“You want to call and check on Emma,” Jake stated.
“I should.”
Jake’s phone buzzed and he pulled it from his pants to look who was calling him. This was the third time today Elisa had tried to call. She had obviously found the man he had killed at Pompeii. But after a few rings his phone would route her to some other location around the world randomly. One time it could be a tailor in Bangkok. Another time a Nevada brothel. He had programmed in fifty numbers, none of which had any affiliation with Jake.
