He held his breath and then stopped.
Because Genevieve came around the corner behind the stranger. She moved quickly and silently. Before the man had fully gripped the handle of his weapon, she had slid the razor-sharp end of her butterfly knife into the soft tissues of his throat, inches away from his carotid artery.
The man’s arm went limp. “Okay… I’m not moving.”
“Why are you following us?” she asked, her voice a dangerous whisper.
The stranger swallowed. “Not you. I have no idea who you are!”
“Then why have you been following me?” Tom asked.
The guy shrugged. “I haven’t.”
She put more pressure on the tip of the knife. “Yes, you have.”
The man spoke in a calm, reserved voice. “No. I’ve been following Liu Bianchi.”
“Who’s he?”
“Not he. She. And she’s a notorious assassin. The Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna have been hunting her across Europe for years. Her face was captured just yesterday, when she pursued you into the country.”
“You work for the AISE?” Tom asked. He’d heard of the Agency. They were basically the Italian equivalent of their CIA, Britain’s M16, or Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst.
The man nodded. “If you will permit me, I’ll show you my credentials.”
Genevieve increased the pressure in the knife until the blade was just under the skin. “Nice and slow.”
“Mr. Rigozzi. Luca Rigozzi.” The man removed his ID badge and threw it on the floor. “And you are?”
Tom picked it up and read the details. It looked legitimate, but who knew? He ignored the question and called Elise on his cell phone. He explained the situation and gave the man’s details. She checked with the database, and confirmed Luca Rigozzi did work for the AISE.
Tom turned to Genevieve. “He checks out.” Then, to Rigozzi, he said, “I’m Tom Bower and this is Genevieve.”
Genevieve released him.
Rigozzi took a handkerchief and dabbed the fine blood from his neck. “Thank you.”
Tom asked, “Someone’s been following us since we got here?”
“Yes. Her name’s Liu Bianchi and she’s one of the deadliest assassins the world has ever seen. We thought she might have been killed a few years ago. She went to ground and didn’t come back, until yesterday.”
Genevieve said, “You know she’s been following us since we got here?”
“Yes.”
“Then why haven’t you arrested her?”
He sighed heavily. “I was going to.”
“But?”
“She’s not alone. Whatever’s happening here, it’s big. We might just get to take down a lot of bad people if we get lucky. Whatever it is you’re involved in, someone’s paid big money to bring some of the deadliest assassins out of the woodwork. It must be pretty important stuff.”
Tom nodded. “You have no idea.”
“Now what?” Genevieve asked.
Rigozzi’s eyes narrowed. “You can follow me back to my hotel. We’re not safe here.”
The raspy engine of the idling sports car finally went silent.
The three of them stepped into Via del’Olmo, where an older woman met them. Luca Rigozzi was the first to respond. He got off the first shot. But she fired the next two.
Tom dived to the ground next to Genevieve.
His eyes darted toward Rigozzi. Two bullets were planted right between his eyes. Professional kill shots. Genevieve grabbed the man’s handgun – a Beretta 92 – and started firing.
Chapter Fifty
Tom looked up and spotted their attacker as she kicked in a glass window about thirty feet back along Via del’Olmo. She stepped inside, using it as a partial barrier, and continued to shoot. The shots went wide, and he and Genevieve retreated back into the stone alcove.
The question was, now where could they go?
Tom swept the narrow street with his eyes, searching for a way out. Like many of the laneways throughout the medieval city, this one was filled with the back-end of several small stone buildings, revealing almost no doors or windows – and no other nearby streets by which to escape.
In the alcove across the road, a man was taking some mostly ineffective cover to the side of his little red sports car. Like the garage-like alcove they were already in, the one across the road was a dead end with no rear access.
He looked at Genevieve. “What do you think?”
“About stealing the car?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t like the plan.” She fumbled through the dead man’s coat pockets and retrieved a spare magazine for the Berretta. She pocketed the magazine, taking her total ammo count to fourteen rounds. Five in the this one and nine in the spare magazine.
“You got another idea?” Tom asked.
“No.”
“Okay. I guess that settles it. I’ll go first. Cover me and then follow.”
“Okay, go.”
Tom launched himself running across Via del’Olmo at a sprint some professional athletes would have been proud of. He heard a single shot fire from their attacker, followed by another two by Genevieve. The street then went quiet as their attacker was forced to take cover.
Behind him, Genevieve didn’t wait. Instead, she ran straight after him, while their attacker was taking cover. They approached the car together. The owner of the sports car spotted Genevieve’s handgun.
He raised his out turned hands. “I’m unarmed!”
Tom ducked down next to him. “Where are the keys?”
“What?” the driver asked.
Genevieve pointed the Berretta at him. “The keys. Give him your car keys.”
“I just bought…”
Their attacker stepped out into the street and fired another three rounds. The shots skimmed the leading edge of the alcove. Genevieve aimed and fired the remaining three shots in the magazine. She removed the magazine, loaded a new one, and fired again.
Their attacker turned and started running down the street toward Via Magalotti.
Genevieve returned to the owner of the car, pointing the Berretta at him.
“Take the car. It’s yours!” The owner handed Tom the keys without further questions.
Tom grinned. “Thanks. And sorry to really mess up your day.”
He climbed inside.
It was the first time he took any real notice of the sports car – a brand new Alfa Romeo 4C Spider in competizione red. The two-seater, mid-engine, rear-wheel drive coupé was right out of every wealthy Italian’s exotic car magazine, with Alfa Romeo technology and DNA at its core. It used a carbon fiber tub, front and rear crash box, and hybrid rear subframe out of aluminum, to maintain a curb weight under 2000 pounds.
In the driver’s seat, Tom had to shift the seat all the way back just to squeeze his six foot-four frame inside its carbon fiber shell.
He inserted the key and turned the ignition.
The raspy note of its four-cylinder turbocharged engine came alive. The dashboard was all in Italian.
Genevieve jumped into the passenger seat. “Drive!”
Tom dropped the handbrake, pulled the right paddle shifter, and the car slipped into first gear. He floored the pedal and swung the wheel to the right, launching the 4C north out along Via del’Olmo.
Despite the narrow street, he quickly depressed the right paddle up the gears until they shot out of harm’s way. Approaching a small intersection, he jammed on the brakes and squeezed the left paddle, down shifting the gears all the way down to first.
“It’s clear!” Genevieve shouted.
He gunned the pedal again. Released from the confines of regular inner-city driving, the raspy four-cylinder turbo roared, and Tom was thrown back into his leather seat like a jet pilot opening the throttles to full on take-off.
The end of Via del’Olmo came up an instant later.
Tom braked, quickly depressing the left paddle and changing down the gears again – th
e exhaust grunted smoothly, challenging him to drive faster.
“Which way?” he asked.
Genevieve couldn’t see any street signs. “Go left.”
Tom swerved left around the blind bend onto Via del Paradiso.
Up ahead, a Piaggio Ape – one of those Italian three-wheeled light trucks – was slowly making its way down toward them. It was small, but so was the street. There was nothing Tom could do about it. He jammed on the brake and screeched to a stop.
The driver of the Piaggio Ape honked his horn and yelled something in Italian that Tom guessed meant, something along the lines of, you’re driving the wrong way down a one-way street, you shmuck!
Genevieve turned around and yelled, “Reverse!”
Tom glanced at the carbon fiber center console. An aluminum toggle stood out. He pulled it downward and the dashboard changed to blue and at the base of the screen flashed the words – All weather driving. He flicked the toggle again, and the screen turned red – Dynamic. He pressed it one more time and the screen turned yellow. A lateral G-force measuring device glowed in the middle, followed by the words, Race Mode.
He grinned. “Hey, look I found race mode!”
Genevieve shouted, “That’s great. Now, go!”
“I’m trying, but I can’t find reverse!”
Genevieve glanced at the center console. A single button with the letter R sat directly opposite the number one.
She leaned over and pressed it.
The gear shifted smoothly into reverse.
“Thanks!” Tom said.
He pressed the accelerator down hard, swinging the steering wheel left and turning back onto the end of Via del’Olmo.
He glanced in his rear-view mirror.
An Aprilia RSV4 yellow motorcycle raced toward them. Its female rider drew a handgun. The rider fired two shots, shattering Tom’s side mirror.
Genevieve shouted, “We’ve got company!”
Chapter Fifty-One
Tom pressed the number one button at the top of the center control panel, shifted into first gear, and gunned the engine. The Alfa lurched forward, and Tom swung wide into Via Pecorreli. The 1.7-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine whirred in a symphony of induction noises. The turbo quickly reached 1.4 bars of boost, and Tom felt his stomach lurch as it extracted every bit of the car’s potential 177kW of power and 350Nm of torque.
The narrow cobbled street raced by in a blur.
Tom quickly lost sight of the names of any street signs, not that it was a problem. Away from the main tourist section, he didn’t have a clue where they were heading. It didn’t matter. He was already putting distance between them and their attacker.
Unable to aim and shoot, the rider had backed off a bit. Every now and again, she would gain on them, and Genevieve would fire another shot. The Alfa 4C wasn’t designed for rearward shooting. Its carbon fiber shell and mid-positioned engine made for decent protection, but a lousy shooting platform.
Four or five blocks passed by quickly. The main road separated into two smaller one-way streets. Tom glanced at Genevieve. “Which way?”
“How the hell should I know?” Genevieve asked. “There’s no map. Go right.”
Tom braked hard and swerved right.
The lateral G-force meter read 1.3 gravities. He felt his entire body slide to the left, and then he straightened up and it returned to zero.
The street opened into a small piazza.
“Corso Cavour up ahead!” Tom said, spotting a street sign.
“Go right.”
Tom rounded the corner, without easing off the speed in the process. The G-force meter read 1.6 before the back-end started to slide. He worked the steering wheel and accelerated out of the slide, straightening up in an easterly direction.
“You know where we are?” Tom asked.
“No!” Genevieve smiled like she was enjoying herself. “But look what just fell on me from behind my seat.”
Tom glanced at her. She looked beautiful. Her short brown hair had become tousled in the wind, and her sapphire-blue eyes sparkled as they deliberately fixed on a tourist map of Orvieto. Her lips curled in that mischievous smile that depicted everything he’d come to love and adore about her. “Look what I just found!”
“Nice. Where are we headed?”
“Stay on this one and take the left onto Via della Cava.”
Tom turned left and sped down and under a small bridge.
At the roundabout Genevieve said, “Go left again!”
“Okay.”
Tom took the left onto Str. di Porta Romana. He glanced in the rear-view mirror. The rider was a fair way off, but it wasn’t going to take much for her to catch up once they were out in the open away from Orvieto.
A signed pointed to the entrance to Orvieto.
“Shouldn’t we be heading away from here?” he asked.
“Not yet.” Genevieve grinned. “There’s a sharp bend coming up.”
“I see it!”
“Good. I need you to put as much distance as you can between us and our pursuer. When you get around the blind side of the bend, stop the car and let me out.”
“Then what?”
“Keep going, and I’ll get rid of our tail.”
Tom thought she was crazy, but she had the right idea. He took the sharp bend into Via Ripa Medici at eighty miles an hour. The G-meter went berserk, indicating a 2.1 G lateral force. Tom glanced at it and wondered at what point the little Alfa would cease to defy the laws of physics and roll.
He straightened up and jammed on the brakes.
The car skidded to a stop.
Genevieve jumped out and aimed her Beretta toward the edge of the blind corner. Tom put his foot down and took off again.
In his rear-view mirror, he spotted the Aprilia leaning heavily into the left as it rounded the tight bend. Then he heard the shots fire. Three of them in immediate procession.
The bike wobbled, and the rider threw her body into the right side trying to save it. She might have succeeded, too, if there was more room. But in the narrow bend approaching Via Ripa Medici, there just wasn’t enough time.
The rider realized it at the last moment, but it was too late.
The Aprilia hit the guardrail. In an instant the rider and bike were flung off the edge of the fortress-like wall that surrounded the outer ring around Orvieto – falling more than a hundred feet to the ledge below.
Tom spun the car around and picked up Genevieve.
He took off again. Driving at a normal speed, he turned left at the roundabout and down the winding Via della Segheria.
“Now where do you want to go?” Tom asked.
“Florence airport.”
Tom looked at her and smiled. “Perguia’s closer. That much I know.”
“Sure, but Sam’s jet won’t be here for another three hours to pick us up, and I bet you anything you want, Perguia’s the first place our new-found friends will go to look for us.”
“There’s plenty of things I want.” He smiled lasciviously. “And all of them are with you. But you’re probably right.”
“I’m always right,” she said.
“And magnanimous in your victory, too.”
He pulled onto the A1 Autostrada del Sole and floored the accelerator. The four-cylinder turbocharged engine purred in delight. “It sounds like a great day for a drive…”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Lord Howe Island
The Gulfstream G650 circled the picturesque island.
Sam glanced out the large window to his side at the idyllic sight of a bygone world. Positioned some 436 miles northeast of Sydney, Australia in the Pacific Ocean, the irregular, crescent-shaped volcanic remnant formed a well-protected cove to the west that appeared turquoise from the air. The island was home to a variety of endemic flora and fauna, while its reef boasted the most southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and was filled with a plethora of marine-life.
The aircraft came in to land, using up nearly every sin
gle one of the 2,907 feet of runway. The island normally didn’t accept jets, but today they were just going to have to make an exception. On board during the flight, Sam, Tom, Billie, Genevieve, and Elise were each combing through digital databases of the island for any indication of an old burial ground, or deep underground recess or cave. So far, they’d found nothing.
Sam ended his cell phone call.
Billie looked at him and asked, “Find anything?”
“Yes. We got our first lead.”
“It’s on the island?” she asked.
“No.”
Tom entered the conversation. “Then where are we going?”
“Beneath Ball’s Pyramid.”
Elise was incredulous. “Not much of a hiding spot for a temple, is it?”
Sam smiled at that. “No. But I’ve spoken to Demyan, the volcanologist we met in Hawaii. He tells me that Ball’s Pyramid is the ancient erosional remnant of a shield volcano. He’s crunched the numbers, and given the natural movement of the shape of the earth over time, the location makes a better match for the antipode than Lorde Howe Island.”
“That’s your lead?” Billie asked.
“Think about it,” Sam persisted. “The place is the perfect shape for a hidden pyramid, its set on a volcanic plug, and with a height of 1844 feet, the stone tower would have plenty of mass to fill the sacred stone.”
“How did you plan to get there?” Tom fixed on the more obvious logistical problem. “There are no helicopters on the island.”
Sam said, “A local dive operator’s going to take us out by boat. I’ve explained what’s going on, and he’s happy to help any way he can.”
Billie smiled. “You told him about the sacred stones and the extinction of the human race? How did that go?”
“He took it better than you’d think. All right, so I didn’t quite put it to him that way. I explained it was imperative we reach Ball’s Pyramid and that our ability to solve the problem could have a long-lasting outcome to all life on earth.” Sam took a breath. “He said he knew.”
Billie looked at him quizzically. “He knew?”
“Yeah. He said for the past two days, there have been a series of strange currents and the last three dives he made, the entire reef was devoid of any marine life. He said it was the strangest and scariest thing he’s ever seen – making him think of an old Stephen King book.”
The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3 Page 71
