Zero Sum

by Russell Blake

  All he needed to put it to bed was the Canadian document on the Russians, assuming one was forthcoming. He was getting close to end game.

  When he refreshed the screen, he saw a response from Cliff in Canada, and it had an attachment. He read the message:

  [This can never be published. It’s an internal document; not secret, but still, not for public viewing. Please use it judiciously. Hope it does the trick. C]

  He opened the attachment, the first page of a Canadian government report on the activities of the newly developed Russian Mafiya players and their various known fronts. Most were blacked out, but Adriatic Trading was not. It left nothing to the imagination.

  Cliff had removed any information that could lead back to him, had sanitized his end so his role in obtaining the document was effectively masked. Steven understood he’d gone far above and beyond the call of duty, and that his debt to Peter was getting paid off rapidly. Cliff was an honorable man.

  Now he had everything.

  He sent an e-mail off to Stan Caldwell about Cavierti:

  [Cavierti’s alive, saw him in Argentina, have the pictures to prove it. My theories as to why he faked his death are:

  1) He found out from a leak at the FBI he was going to be indicted and had to disappear in a way that would shut down any further investigation.

  2) He discovered Griffen had found out from a leak at the FBI he was going to be indicted, and that Griffen was planning to have him eliminated, so Cavierti beat him to the punch.

  He’s now either acting as a conduit between Griffen and the Wolfsatz, or is working with them unbeknownst to Griffen, helping them build out their business, perhaps with his New Jersey mob connections. Either way, it looks ugly for our man Griffen.]

  Antonia had come into the little study and stood watching him. He told her how he’d completed constructing the case, how this was the final stretch. She smiled, sharing his victory, but there was a hint of something else. He couldn’t place it.

  She walked over to him and put her arms around his shoulders.

  “So everything drops into place, no? Now, are you ready to see the town?”

  “You bet. Although I have a feeling I’m already looking at the most precious treasure that Italy has to offer,” Steven reasoned.

  “Enough. I’m already sleeping with you. No need to charm your way into my underwear,” she admonished, but the compliment had set her eyes sparkling. “Come, let’s walk around.”

  Checkmate: Chapter 16

  Dante sat in his car outside of the walled city, speaking in rapid Italian to a black-haired man in his fifties, who nervously rubbed his pock-marked face. The discussion didn’t take long. The man watched as Dante’s Mercedes disappeared around the bend, and then he turned and walked through the gates into Todi; just another non-descript Italian in a black leather jacket, carrying a medium-sized travel bag.

  ~ ~ ~

  Dante’s townhouse stood thirty yards off the main square; where a beautiful old church occupied the place of prominence at the far end of the Piazza, which also accommodated some small coffee shops and bookstores. Lining both sides of the narrow streets, many of which really were no more than paved footpaths, were small restaurants and cafes, and every type of store imaginable.

  Summer tourists ambled around here and there, but the hill town didn’t have an aura of being crowded or overwhelmed.

  Steven and Antonia spent the afternoon exploring; wandering the small alleys and side streets off the main arteries. Many of the building doors were from the Middle Ages; five and six and seven hundred years old, their original coarse key slots evident alongside the retrofitted newer locks. The street cobblestones were grooved from centuries of wooden wheels grinding into them, their passage still palpably evident from the erosion. Steven could imagine rats scuttling down these same arteries during the black plague, and the wooden carts for the fallen making their slow procession, as the cries of ‘bring out your dead’ echoed around the walls.

  His internal eye saw prosperous merchants decked out in their finest velvet and plumes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, riding atop their steeds, as peasants carrying bundles of vegetables or firewood hurried to get out of their way. It was a place redolent of the past, and more than anywhere he’d ever been he was conscious of the ghosts of generations gone by still inhabiting the city’s walls.

  Evening was spent at Antonia’s favorite restaurant, a small trattoria at the base of the town, whose owner greeted her as though she was his long lost daughter. Antonia seemed to have that effect on people. As they ate, he reflected upon how close he’d come, several times, to a fatal termination of his crusade, and he was grateful they’d been fortunate enough to escape unharmed. He just hoped they were insulated enough now, in this little nowhere hill town, so the demons chasing him would lose the scent.

  It seemed inadequate, but that hope was the best he could muster.

  The next morning Steven arose early and suggested they go for a run. Antonia reluctantly agreed. Soon they were sprinting down the narrow streets and out through the walled town ramparts to the winding road below. The business of life in Italy was just getting underway, with horses pulling plows in the fields and old women carrying baskets on their heads, exactly as their predecessors had for the last millennium.

  It was wildly incongruent to see a new Porsche with Swiss plates stopped at an intersection waiting for a flock of sheep to cross the road, but that was a scene they passed as they made their way around the bleached stone walls.

  Steven was getting a feel for the country’s history, and his own relative insignificance in the scheme of things. Undoubtedly, every person who’d lived in Todi had nurtured dreams and hopes and passions and fears they believed were uniquely important and distinct, and they’d all lived their lives out to whatever end was destined, rich or poor, young or old, beautiful or ugly, tragic or happy. Yet what really endured were the walls and the earth. He was experiencing how it was hard to take yourself too seriously in Italy.

  It had all been done before.

  Antonia explained the region’s past to him, with tales of many other walled cities throughout the area, each one with its own character and charm. She described the feuding families and the long-standing rivalries that spanned centuries; one town she wanted him to see was San Gimignano, a walled city in Tuscany where there were dozens and dozens of towers constructed by the wealthy town aristocracy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Some were magnificently built, each vying with the other for the title of tallest or most extravagant; the vanity and excess of the past still standing long after the petty competitions were over, their sponsors and builders deceased for many centuries.

  He was captivated by Antonia, and equally captivated by the country they were running through, as she told tale after tale. She was a purebred, and he was again struck by the strange and improbable confluence of events that had resulted in their meeting, much less falling in love. It was an odd world.

  They ate a peasant lunch outside the town walls, and by the time they returned to the house it was morning in the U.S.. Steven rinsed off and requested a couple of hours to finish up some odds and ends on the computer and finalize his case against Griffen.

  She hugged him, before breezing upstairs to make some phone calls.

  As the day wound down, the sun slowly dipped into the Umbrian hillside.

  “Honey, where do you want to eat tonight?” Steven asked. Food played a central role in Italy, which fit with his temperament; a guy’s gotta eat.

  “What about Albierto’s?” Antonia called from the bathroom.

  “Again? Isn’t that the fifth time in the last few days?” Steven was just giving her a hard time. He loved the little place, and the owner treated them like royalty.

  “Do you know anywhere else that has pesto like theirs? Come on, my treat, eh? You can buy the Sambuca afterwards.”

  She made a compelling case.

  They took their time getting ready, and enjoyed
the early evening stroll to the little trattoria, looking for all appearances like newlyweds completely engrossed in each other’s company.

  A figure trailed them at a distance, blending into the small groups of tourists still lingering from the afternoon’s sightseeing; stopping occasionally at the odd shop, pretending to look in the windows. He watched Steven and Antonia enter the restaurant, and situated himself at a café on the small side street adjacent to the entrance, keeping an eye on it. He shook a package of Gitanes, lit his thirty-second cigarette of the day, pulled out a newspaper and ordered an espresso. He didn’t have the air of a pleasant man. Nor a patient one.

  But it wouldn’t be much longer now. He inhaled the acrid smoke from the black tobacco, sat back, and waited.

  After dinner, Steven and Antonia strolled hand-in-hand up the dark, winding street. The hike wasn’t unpleasant; it had become a ritual for them to walk the town after dinner before stopping in for a nightcap at the café on the square.

  Seventy yards behind them a figure ambled slowly, the only noteworthy feature of his otherwise nondescript appearance his long overcoat. Though it had drizzled a little that morning, the rest of the day had been sunny, lending the coat an air of eccentricity.

  The man in the overcoat dropped his cigarette butt on the street, leaving it smoldering as he followed them. A light breeze carried the wisps of smoke back down the hill.

  Steven was excited at the imminent prospect of putting this whole episode behind him. He felt vindicated, but it was a bittersweet victory; he couldn’t help but think of all the people who’d lost their lives during the unfolding of the complicated affair. Antonia sensed his melancholic mood, and silently hoped to herself that time would heal his wounds.

  And they had the rest of their lives to enjoy each other’s company and create a compelling future together.

  The man watched the happy couple meandering up the cobblestone street, and smiled to himself, his tobacco-stained teeth making for an unpleasant visual. This was going to be too easy. He flipped off the safety on the silenced Beretta pistol he clutched in his right-hand pocket. They were now the only ones on the road. No moon, little illumination.

  This was his chance.

  He carefully extracted the pistol from the long coat and picked up his pace. Sixty yards. Fifty yards. Forty yards. He was getting close to his kill zone, padding silently on crepe soles. Twenty yards with a silencer was the maximum distance for reasonable accuracy. Thirty yards. He closed the distance and steadied his gun hand against a pillar; Steven’s head fell dead in his sights. He squeezed off a shot.

  Antonia tripped on the cobblestones, her heel catching in one of the fissures in the ancient road. Steven caught her, stooping forward quickly in the process. He heard a ricochet off the stone ahead of him, and simultaneously felt a burning in his shoulder; he’d been shot. He’d heard that sound before, in Buenos Aires, so he didn’t need the searing pain from his scapula to alert him bullets were flying.

  Fuck.

  He pulled Antonia up and pressed them both against the wall, using an abutment to shield them from any fire, looking up and down the narrow winding street as he probed the back of his shoulder. The wound was superficial, a graze. He’d been lucky. It was very dark, and the occasional overhead bulb would do little to help him see their assailant. But that could work both ways; the million-dollar question was where had the shot come from?

  He whispered to Antonia: “Don’t say a word…someone’s shooting at us. Take off your shoes and be ready to run.”

  She looked panicked. He didn’t blame her; he was no match for a gun. Their only hope lay in speed, surprise and darkness. She stepped out of her heels.

  “You’re hit,” she whispered, taking in his bloodied shoulder blade.

  He heard a rustle from down the street, just a few yards from where she’d stumbled. The gunman was approaching.

  “When I say run, do it…as fast as you can,” Steven instructed.

  She nodded.

  He tensed. “Now!”

  Steven grabbed her, and they bolted fifteen feet to the next small lane on their right – more a passageway than a road – and ducked around the corner. Pitch black, no lights. That was good.

  Then the distinctive barking of a silencer. A ricochet. And another.

  Antonia let out an abrupt cry, and went sprawling down into a heap just as they’d made it into the alleyway. She clutched the side of her abdomen, blood seeping through her fingers, tears of anguish streaking her face, pain and shock etched in her expression. She looked up at him and shook her head.

  “Leave...me. It’s you...they’re...after.”

  Steven picked her up, wincing at her groans of pain, and staggered over to the shadows of a doorway; an ancient arch built in the eleventh century. He put his finger over his lips, signaling silence.

  She was breathing heavily, hoarsely.

  Muffled footsteps approached at a run from the other street. The gunman. Steven pressed himself against the doorway, confirming Antonia was out of sight.

  The footsteps stopped at the corner and the gunman peered around, squinting down the small lane. He scanned further up the larger street they’d been on, cocked his head, listening – then made his choice. He came running down their alley.

  As the gunman came level, Steven spun in a crouch, sweeping the gunman’s legs from underneath him, noting with satisfaction that the killer had pitched heavily onto the cobbles.

  But he hadn’t let go of the gun. This was no amateur, like the Islanders; he was a pro. Steven had to move quickly.

  He jumped on the gunman.

  More scorching pain as a bullet seared through his right leg. He had to get the gun away. He struck his assailant in the face, delivering a series of brutal blows, and then his head exploded and his vision blurred. The gunman had smashed him in the temple with the butt of the pistol.

  Steven was momentarily dazed, borderline blacking out, incapacitated. The man pushed Steven off him, and stood up, still gripping the weapon, slowly raising it to finish the job.

  “Arrivederci, alito della merda,” he said, wiping blood from his eyes.

  Antonia screamed from the alleyway.

  “Noooo!”

  As he prepared to squeeze the trigger the gunman registered a noise behind him, and was startled when his legs gave out, simultaneous with a spike of pain in his lower back. What the hell? He collapsed onto the cold cobblestones, face first, the pistol clattering harmlessly into the gutter.

  The black-haired man extracted the ice pick from the gunman’s spine and leaned over his paralyzed body. He carefully pushed the spike through the man’s ear and into his brain. The gunman’s legs twitched spasmodically, stiffened, then lay still.

  He looked around, satisfying himself that no one was in the area besides Steven and Antonia; nobody had seen or heard anything. He scooped up the gun and quickly pulled the dead assassin into a doorway, leaning him into a drunken sitting position. There wasn’t much blood; ice picks weren’t messy. The body looked like a reveler taking a nap, not an unheard-of occurrence in Italy in the evening. It only had to look convincing for a short while. He’d swing by with his car in a few minutes and retrieve the corpse. He moved over to the doorway where Antonia was lying, and spoke to her in Italian.

  “Where are you hit?”

  “In...in my...lower stomach, the side,” she moaned. She looked around, and switched to English. “Steven...Steven...are you...are you all right?”

  The man pulled her hand away from the wound and took a quick look. She was bleeding heavily.

  Dark blood.

  He quickly put her hand back to stem the flow, took off his black leather jacket and put it over her shoulders. He turned to Steven, who was struggling to his feet, and addressed him in halting English.

  “You. Okay...walk?”

  Steven touched his swollen upper leg where the second bullet had penetrated. It had missed bone, passing through the outer muscle. He was losing blood, but
not enough to be terminal any time soon.

  “Yeah. Si.”

  “You help she. I come car pronto. Go ospedale.” The man was struggling with the language, but his message was clear.

  Steven nodded, and staggered over to where Antonia lay. The ice-pick-man vaulted around the corner and ran down the hill. Steven collapsed next to her, and took her hand. Her skin was pallid and cold. She looked very scared.

  “He’s going to get a car. We’ll get to a hospital and they’ll have you fixed up in no time,” he promised. She tried to smile, and then he saw her eyes go out of focus and her hand drop from her abdomen. His heart let out a whimper.

  “Antonia. ANTONIA!” He shook her shoulders.

  “Antonia, don’t fade on me. Stay with me. I love you, Antonia. More than anything. Don’t leave me now.” Steven’s voice trembled with horror and anxiety and grief. She was silent, her breathing shallow, blood soaking her side. He heard a motor working its way up the hill.

  “Antonia, hold on. Help is coming. Just hold on.” He lifted her from the doorway, cradling her body. She weighed so little. His leg shrieked bolts of agony, and his shoulder was on fire, but he didn’t care. He’d eat the pain as just dessert for his recklessness.

  “Please hold on, Antonia, please, don’t die, don’t die...” He rocked her, whispering her name as a mantra until the car finally came around the corner. She stirred, her eyes fluttering open momentarily, and looked at his beaten-up face, streaked with tears. “I...love you...caro...” she murmured, and then she was gone again.

  “I love you too...” he said, nuzzling her with his bloodied nose. “Just stay with me a little longer.”

  Their mystery protector jumped out of the car and threw open the back door of the Audi sedan. Steven carefully placed her in the back seat and then crawled in with her, holding her upper body while applying pressure to the wound. The door slammed shut, and he registered the trunk opening, and the man dragging the corpse over and stuffing it into the back. Finished, the man hurried back to the driver’s side and slipped behind the wheel, tossing a towel to Steven.