by A P Bateman
The villa that Nikolai had rented was entirely different. But not altogether less secure. A temporary rental, that King had checked with the agents, booked for a duration of six-weeks. A ten-bedroomed, split-level villa with two swimming pools, set amongst twelve acres of private forest and meadows on top of a mountain overlooking the Mediterranean some ten-miles distant. It was hemmed in by a ring of wire fencing that took in a full four acres of grounds. The fencing was to keep out wild boars, which were numerous in the mountains and a local delicacy when cured into hams by specialist butchers in the region. The fence was merely head-high, constructed from concreted metal posts and high-tensile wire, capable of withstanding persistent, three-hundred-pound wild boar intent on getting through to the well-tended gardens beyond.
There was basic security, a CCTV camera on the entrance and a further two mounted on each end of the property. King had taken details of the property from the letting agents - under the premise he was searching for a client interested in making property purchases in the area and all the way up to Siena, and who needed a base for these activities - and had familiarised himself with the layout. He was most interested in ideal surveillance locations and points of entrance and exit.
King was vastly outnumbered. He would be using the strengths and weaknesses of these people to help him with his plan. He had got the idea from the surveillance at Monteverdi Marittimo. The show of force and dominance had entertained King. For two organised crime bosses to meet in a low-key location could have been so easy. The security could have remained discreet. Instead, the meeting had created so much attention and been nothing more than a powerplay. King had finally formulated his plan when he had played back the audio in the car. He knew what the two men were planning, yet neither trusted the other enough to meet on anything other than mutually neutral ground. The Russian had compromised the most, meeting on the Italian mafia boss’s home turf, so King guessed that was why he had turned up with such overt security. Luca had at first been more discreet, but his men had eventually outnumbered the Russians, even if they were not so professional in their approach to their vehicles.
Luca Fortez was going big. He was planning to take out the two competing mafia families and take over half of Italy for himself. To do this, he would need resources. These came in the form of Russian ex-soldiers, now working for Nikolai. The Russian could muster two-hundred and fifty men, and he could bring in the arms and equipment for their coup. They would mount synchronised operations using paramilitary and special forces techniques, and a whole host of heavy armaments from AK47 rifles and Makarov pistols, to explosives and rocket launchers. There would be no link to Luca Fortez, who would be free to cry crocodile tears, but assume the control of the entire region. He would strike while the opposition was down, rounding up the stragglers and either killing them or force them to swear new allegiance. It was a positively medieval plan, but it looked set to work. The coup would be organised and planned for next month, whereby Luca would pay three-million euros down-payment and a significant thirty-percent royalty per year of all money accounted by his new organisation. It was an outsourced operation, with no direct evidence pointing at Luca Fortez and his seemingly untouchable enterprise.
King locked the camera in the glovebox and stepped out of the car. He had parked in a shopper’s carpark in the town of Castagneto Carduci, just five miles from the mountains and the town of Monteverdi Marittimo. The town was made up of many blocks of apartments, supermarkets, business centres and restaurants. It reminded King of towns in America with strip malls and clusters of businesses, each linked by roads running parallel to the main road which ran from Rome in the south to Pisa in the north.
King found a clothes and fashion accessories outlet in a small shopping centre. He made his purchases in cash. It was a twenty-minute walk to a shop he had seen on his way in by road, but before he reached it, he stopped at a tobacconist and stepped inside. The air-conditioning was a relief, it was thirty-degrees centigrade and the sun was strong and high, the sky cloudless and an azure blue from the sea all the way to the mountains, where it appeared washed out with white. The sky above the mountains always seemed to look that way, only to be as blue as the coast once you reached them.
The man behind the counter looked up, nodded, then returned to his magazine. The shop smelled heady with tobacco and leather goods, which ran along the walls. King looked around for a moment, then spotted what he wanted in a glass revolving cabinet towards the other end of the shop.
King always wondered how Britain had such terrible knife crime figures, when there were literally no places like this in the UK, yet throughout Europe, there was a place on every street that sold all manner of knives, and even swords, with as much ease and acceptance as shoes or wallets. King rotated the cabinet and coughed politely. The man looked up, put down his magazine and walked over. King did not want to engage in conversation, anything that would make him memorable. He pointed to a large military bowie-style knife, or what was increasingly called a tactical knife, and the man unlocked the glass door, picked up the knife and sheath and passed them to him.
King tested the blade for sharpness with his thumb, just enough for the blade to feel sticky. He turned the knife over, saw that the blade went all the way through the handle, what is called a full tang, and was happy with the three brass rivets securing it in place. It looked to be a sturdy design and well balanced with a fifty-fifty weight distribution between blade and hilt. The back of the blade was serrated, with an additional feature near the hilt, a W shape cut into the metal. He slipped it into the leather sheath and nodded. King noticed an array of flick knives, each sticking into a solid piece of cork. He reached in, pulled one out and checked it over. He closed the blade, then pressed the button and the blade flicked out and locked tight. He folded it, nodded to the man and handed it to him.
There hadn’t been much change from one-hundred-euros, but the man had wrapped them in tissue and placed them in a thick paper bag without seeming to take any notice. King walked on and after ten minutes he found the sporting goods store. There was an outdoor pursuit section with climbing equipment, canoeing and paddle-boarding gear and mountain bikes. King bypassed all of this and looked at the guns behind the counter. Tuscany was hunting country, with walked-up game birds and wild boar, as well as deer and small ground game. This all required a variety of firearms including various gauges of shotguns, and .22 rifles through to heavy calibre hunting rifles in 7mm and .30-06. There were also a few handguns under the glass counter. King suspected Italian gun laws would be like most of Europe and would require licences, home security and hunting permits. He didn’t even waste his time asking, but he did see the selection of crossbows hanging from the ceiling and he pointed to a rifle-style one that had 150lb written on one of the bow-limbs. The pedantic part of him wondered why it wasn’t in kilos, but he knew the poundage was a universal measurement of power. He had used a fifty-pound recurve bow for a while, thought it would be a good hobby when he found the time, and figured the crossbow would be three-times more powerful. The young man unhooked it and passed it to him. King shouldered it, sighted through the open vee and pin sights and eased on the trigger. He took it away from his shoulder and studied it more closely. There was a safety catch and he could see the locking system, along with a foot loop for loading. He’d find a tree and have a practice when he got back to his villa. He asked for some bolts, knowing they were not called arrows, and the young man nodded and came back with a pack of twelve. Just to be sure, King asked for another pack and paid in cash. Another crossbow had been supplied, packed in a sealed box, which came with a multi-tool for assembly and some paper targets. King paid in cash again, little change from two-hundred euros and carried it in the bag the store supplied, along with his other purchases, back to the car.
The drive back up the mountain took longer than King expected, there was no overtaking room and if it wasn’t clapped-out mopeds or motorcycle-pickup wagons with little in the way of horsepower and tu
rning ability, then it was groups of Lycra-clad cyclists testing themselves on the twisty passes. It took an hour to get to his villa, just fifteen miles from Castagneto Carduci. It was a modest villa of two-bedrooms and a swimming pool set in well-tended grounds. King had taken it over the place he had been told to check into. He hadn’t even considered the pre-paid villa that his paymaster had booked. He needed to perform what was asked of him to save Caroline. So, he would do it on his own terms. He imagined a property bugged and tapped, wired and rigged to cameras. He was damned if he would give Helena that much control. She texted the target, the photo and left documents in the cloud. That was what he needed to get the job done. He wasn’t going to be her puppet. He was doing what he was good at, right up until he stood a chance to save Caroline, or he hoped, give her enough time to get control of her situation and get away. He had never met anybody more rounded, more capable. She was a force to be reckoned with, and she had proven that with her last assignment.
If only King could say the same about himself. He knew that Caroline was held prisoner because of him. Because of his sense of justice, his need to exact revenge. He had rescued Caroline, gone after the person who had attempted to kill her, but he should have done it differently. He shouldn’t have sought justice for her victims. He should have simply detained her or killed her. But he had wanted her to know, to feel what was happening, that what she had done had caught up with her. It had taken him away from Caroline, and it had left her vulnerable. Helena had exploited this in ways King would not have imagined. And now Caroline was paying the price.
14
King laid his purchases out on the bed. He did so meticulously, counting out what he had bought and making a note of anything else he would need. It was too late for rethinking things. Outside forces had aligned locations, people and opportunity. There was no better time than now, not for one man with relatively few resources. He had resigned himself to thinking the plan was fluid at best, unrealistic and doomed to failure at worst. No, at worst it would be the death of him. But he didn’t fear death. He didn’t want to die, but he was not scared of dying. He had finally compartmentalised the emotion. What he feared was not fulfilling his objective. And now, as he started to get into the mindset of the task, it was no different. Ultimately, Caroline’s freedom, her life, would be on the line. But he couldn’t be blinkered by this, he needed to set himself objectives, process steps for the task. A to B to C. Nothing more. Nothing less.
He looked at his watch, figured he had time for a swim. The water and exercise would help him calm and finalise his plan. He stepped through the open glass doors and out onto the patio. The pool glistened in the late afternoon sunshine, the garden taking on shadows as the sun moved past the top of the mountain and warmed the western slopes of olives and grapes and tended meadows. King looked to the east, miles of pine forest mountain slopes, interspersed with the odd church spire or farmhouse.
The water was cool on his skin and he enjoyed the sensation as he swam the first two lengths underwater. He rose to the surface and settled into a crawl and got his rhythm, tumble-turning as he reached the side every ten strokes. He stopped after twenty lengths, pushed backwards and floated on his back, regretting it almost instantly as a persistent horsefly shadowed him, buzzed in front of his eyes and bit his cheek. He got to his feet and fended off other attacks. There were four or five of the insects in all, and they were going to town on him. The bites hurt as much as wasp stings, but the pain thankfully dispersed within seconds. It was both painful and annoying, to say the least. King dived under the water, flipped onto his back and blew through his nose to avoid taking water into his sinuses. He could see the insects buzzing above him, flitting on the surface. He spun, swam and pushed himself up when he reached the side. The flies were coming in again, and he flicked his towel at them as he made his way back up the lawns to the patio. He wondered if other villas in the mountains suffered the same infestations. The mountains were heavily forested, and villas had been constructed amid the wild land, without other habitation or amenities. He knew about the wild boars, had seen some crossing the lane on his way down to the villa. He had seen some sort of mountain goat on an impossibly steep, practically vertical mountainside on his drive down into town. He wondered what other wild animals lurked on the edge of his fenced-off and well-tended gardens.
King showered the chlorine from the swimming pool off his body with cold water, but did not use soap or shampoo, and when he towelled himself dry, he did not apply deodorant either. He would be infiltrating a hostile environment and knew the importance of keeping a neutral odour. Likewise, when he ate a small meal of bread, tomatoes, cheese and prosciutto, he chose not to eat the garlic and chilli olives he had bought earlier. He took his meal on the patio, drinking plenty of iced water and picking at the food as he looked out across the beautiful countryside.
It was the sort of place he would have loved to come to with Caroline. The hills, the mountains and forests, the idyllic mountain towns with its bars and restaurants, the ice cream and gelato parlours. The kind of delis and bakeries and butcher shops where Caroline would shop and prepare delicious meals for them both as they talked and read and watched the sun go down over the Mediterranean. He couldn’t help longing for her, wishing he had not left her to hunt down a cold and callous killer, or that he had not wasted time exacting revenge for a family caught up in someone’s agenda. If only he had stayed with her…
King pushed his plate aside. He was feeling wild and aggressive. He knew the task that lay ahead of him, and he breathed deeply to calm himself. He wanted to hurt the person behind this, but he did not want to lose control and fail. His target tonight was a clinical process, part of an equation which would ultimately lead to getting nearer to Caroline. That was the objective. Not getting even, and certainly not exacting revenge. That had been his downfall. He would learn. He would learn too, from his mistake in France. He had underestimated the ego and vindictiveness of the Russian mafia boss. Again, Rashid, who he had put in place for backup, had fluidly worked with events and saved his backside.
The target tonight was a cold and ruthless killer. A man surrounded by his own security. Those men would be armed, and King doubted the local law enforcement would turn anything but a blind eye. He had seen evidence of this at the town of Monteverdi Marittimo.
King would learn not only from his mistake in France, but from his enemy. Collateral damage was a phrase used by people behind the decisions to use lethal force. King found the phrase abhorrent. It had always been something he fought stridently against and tried to avoid. He had even hung onto his job when the new MI5 director was appointed by vehemently arguing the pros of a man on the ground against the cons of missile strikes by drones. He felt a hypocrite now, because tonight there would be people forming collateral damage in his plan. All he could hope for was that they remained unpunished from previous crimes. He would do his best not to kill, but he also knew the dangers wounded and scared men presented. They often felt they had nothing to lose, or they became charged-up with endorphins and adrenalin, often taking on superhuman strength and a will not easily broken. But King was wounded too. He felt a numbness inside, an emptiness that he knew would not go away until he held the woman he loved in his arms again. And yet, he was driven within by a force he had never experienced before. He would never give up on this. He would get Caroline back. Or he would die trying.
15
There were many tracks leading off the mountain roads. Some led to villas or farmhouses, others led to meadow pastures hemmed in by forest. Others simply seemed to lead nowhere. Enough room to turn a car, or to park a couple of vehicles. King assumed these were the starting points for hunters, climbers or hikers.
King had driven down several of these tracks until he was confident he had found the most suitable. He looked at his watch again, decided he could spare an hour, although he was confident it would take only half that time.
King opened the boot of the car and took out the crossbow
. He had assembled it back at the villa but kept hold of the multitool and spare bowstring to be safe. He had rolled up a thick woollen blanket he had found with the extra bedding in the wardrobe. He had fastened it tightly with a length of washing line that he had cut down from two trees in the garden. He walked out across the opening and placed it against a tree trunk and paced out ten metres. He pointed the crossbow to the ground and slipped his foot into the loop and pulled back the string until it locked firmly in place. The bolt needed to slide back as far as the mechanism would allow and was held in place by a spring clip. King was aware that it felt less safe, less substantial than a gun. He made sure his finger was nowhere near the trigger as he shouldered the weapon and took careful aim at the roll of blanket. He flicked off the safety and squeezed the trigger. The string lurched off its hook and the bolt was shot forward at tremendous speed, but not much accuracy, missing the roll and disappearing out into the forest. King was pleased he’d bought two packs. He reloaded, but this time he was ready for the crude trigger release and the second bolt fared better but hit low of where he was aiming. He kept his aim-point and the next arrow tucked neatly alongside the other. He fired another and was relieved to see it near the other two. This was called grouping, and now King had to adjust the sights, confident that he was firing the weapon skilfully enough. He looked at the two adjusters and twisted the one on the side of the sight four clicks counter-clockwise to adjust elevation. The next bolt struck dead centre and three inches above the other three bolts. King fired two more bolts, and again, he had a grouping. He wound the elevation adjustment twice as much, and after another three bolts, he was bang-on target. He walked forwards and collected the bolts, surprised at the degree of penetration. The blanket was thick and had been folded in three before it was rolled, and King counted off seven layers. At twenty-one single layers, he likened the penetration of the bolts up there with a 9mm pistol. Or at least in the same ballpark.
