Blue Moonlight (15 page)

I swallow something hard and bitter. “And your wife?”

“Raped before my eyes and beheaded. When the student radicals were done, they tossed her severed head into my lap and laughed at me. A week later I agreed to speak with your CIA about my experiences and to become an extra pair of eyes and ears for them. Twenty years ago they smuggled me out and brought me here. I have never been back to Iran since that time.”

Looking into this man’s eyes, I can see that the pain of his loss is still fresh. The death of his family did not occur a generation ago, but only moments ago.

“Thank you,” I whisper just as a middle-aged American man wearing a fanny pack approaches the tent. Abdiesus stands, faces the chubby American.

“You wish to purchase a leather jacket?” he asks.

“You ain’t gonna try and rip me off, are you, Abdul?” barks the American.

“I give you good price,” Abdiesus says. “I wish for you only happiness.”

Our eyes meet for one more brief second, and the depth of his suffering flashes inside his. I turn and leave as the American tries to fit himself into a brown leather jacket that can’t possibly be zipped over his beer gut.

I head back across Zannoni to Faenza.

I’m not three steps into my stride before I feel them in back of me. Two men following me from a distance of about twenty feet. I catch their transparent reflection in a plate-glass window when I stop and pretend to stare into a storefront filled with expensive sweets. The tall, football-player-sized one from last night and a short one who might have also been a part of the threesome who nearly cost me a fingertip. Russian goons, just like the Obamas from the night before. But instead of Obama masks they’re wearing sunglasses. I’m not sure they’d fit in here with Obama masks covering their mugs.

I start walking again, and they start following.

They must have been tailing me when I met up with Abdiesus. If they think I know the location of the flash drive, they will follow me until I lead them to it, and then they will kill me and dump my body into the Arno. Or maybe they have somehow gotten wind of the upcoming meet between the three amigos and the Iranian buyers. I feel a cold wave flash up and down my backbone. My throat constricts and the soreness returns to my gut, like I’ve once more been kicked in the groin. If the Russians are aware of the meeting, they’ll no longer feel
the need to keep me alive. They’ll kill me. They’ll torture me for fun and kill me and toss my sad carcass in the river.

They follow, not even pretending to hide themselves, or their faces. Why bother with the Obama masks anymore? They were willing to torture me in order to get what they wanted. My throbbing pinky finger is evidence of that. My premature death nearly a year ago from a senseless beating in an Albany back alley is evidence of that. The surgical staple they plucked out of my side with a bowie knife is evidence of that. And now that it’s likely they know all about the meeting with the Iranians, they will cut to the chase and eliminate me once and for all.

Me walking and the Russian goons following.

We could go on like this all day.

What to do…

I run.

I jerk a right down a narrow alley and out into the Piazza Santa Maria Novella. Behind me, I hear them screaming at one another in Russian. I hear leather soles slapping against cobblestones. I hear my heart pounding in my temples. Looking back, I see them coming. The goons sprinting after me, automatics drawn.

It’s gonna be a shootout in Florence. The Wild West meets the Renaissance.

I reach inside my coat, pull out my piece, thumb back the hammer.

I stop, turn, plant a bead on the big one.

They split up and nosedive to the pavement just as I squeeze the trigger. Twice.

The rounds ricochet against the old cathedral, taking a group of Japanese tourists by surprise. They scream.

I aim lower, squeeze off another round. The sidewalk at the big one’s head explodes, sending shards of concrete and stone into his face. The Walther is definitely a short-range pistol. It’s hard planting a bead at this distance, but not impossible.

I get one off at the smaller one.

Same thing: concrete explodes in his face, followed by shrieks and screams from the Japanese sightseers.

Then, from out of the shadows cast by the tall church just to the side of them, a four-legged animal appears. Only this four-legged animal isn’t a wild animal. It’s a man.

It’s Carlo, the man/dog.

He’s growling and biting at the big Russian’s pant leg. He’s viciously going at the leg, tearing off clothing and skin. The terrified Russian yanks his leg away from the man/dog’s rabid mouth, crabs backward until free. When he manages to get to his feet, he and the short Russian sprint their way out of the plaza in the opposite direction of Carlo and me.

Sirens.

The police are coming.

Carlo canters his way over to me, all grins. “You like my performance, New York?” he poses.

“I’m in trouble.”

“Head for the markets,” he insists. “Disappear in there. No one will find you. Go now.”

A former marine, I know to follow orders without hesitation. Even if they’re coming from a man who walks like a dog.

I make a mad dash for the markets, back the way I came across the Via Faenza to the Via Zannoni to the congested marketplace.

I spot Abdiesus as I make my way past his tent. He looks at me, smiles.

I know precisely what he’s thinking.

Just another day for Dick Moonlight, Captain Head Case.

I head back to the Il Ghiro safe house, or should I say
un-safe
house, bound up the stairs two at a time, head directly to my room without looking to see if Francesco is occupying his office. It’s only when I close the door behind me that I notice how hard my heart is beating and my injured hand is throbbing. And holy crap, have I got to pee or what?

Engaging the deadbolt on the door, I head into the bathroom.

I pull myself out, begin to relieve myself. If you’ve ever felt like you’re standing inside a fishbowl, then you know the feeling: like someone is not only standing behind you, but two more invisible people are standing on either side of you. Even though you’re four-walled, the sensation of eyes glaring at you is enough to make your knees tremble. If you’re trying to pee at the time, you can pretty much forget about it until you make a check on your perimeter.

I zip up, pull my automatic.

To the left of the toilet is a sink and above that a mirror. The bathroom is small, so the mirror reflects the scene behind me in full Panavision. I want to look into the mirror, but at the same time, I dread what I’m about to see. I do it anyway.

The plastic shower curtain is snow white and semitranslucent. Through the curtain I make out the figure of a man. It sends my heart shooting up into my throat.

I whip my body and the automatic around.

“It’s face time, asshole!”

The figure behind the curtain doesn’t move.

Trigger finger at the ready, I reach out with a trembling hand, tear the curtain off the metal rings. The curtain falls, revealing the truth. There’s a man behind the curtain.

A dead man.

My Italian contact hangs from a cast-iron ceiling pipe by the neck. His own fine Tuscan leather belt serves as his noose. Eyes wide open, his blue tongue sticking out at me like he’s only pretending to be a dead guy who’s been hanged in a shower stall. But I know he’s not pretending to be dead, because dripping into the shower basin is the blood that emerges from the gash in his neck, which is located just below the leather belt.

In my head I see the masked man with the bowie knife gripped in his hand. I see him using it on my new friend’s neck.

I hope for Francesco’s sake it was a quick death.

It dawns on me then that I might not be alone inside that guest room. The possibility of an enemy presence lodges itself in my throat and in my gut like a Russian hammer and sickle.

I step out of the bathroom, turn ever so slightly to my right, and eye the closet door, then the rest of the room. There’s nothing else inside the safe house but dead Francesco and the closet’s contents, which include the possibility of people who want to kill me.

Want. To. Kill. Me.

I plant a bead on the closet and empty all nine rounds into it.

When the smoke clears, I release the clip and slap home a fresh one. Even though the wooden door is a splintered relic of what it had once been, I approach with extreme caution, prejudice, and paranoia.

I throw open what’s left of the closet door closest to me, and it simply disintegrates in my hand.

The good news is the closet is empty.

The bad news is the rush I begin to feel of adrenaline-laced arterial blood to my overstressed and bullet-damaged brain.

The even badder news is that I pass out on the spot.