Havoc (16 page)

“If the concussion was mild, why were you unconscious for so long?”

“I wondered that, too. They think it was caused by hitting my jaw when my head landed on the floor. They said if it’s hit in just the right spot, you can be knocked out for a good, long while.”

“Like a boxer, I guess,” said Alton. He stepped back to assess her overall appearance. Other than looking tired and having a bandage on her temple and an abrasion on her jawline, she seemed reasonably well. “I’m sorry I wasn’t at the hospital when you awoke. Did they tell you what happened?”

“Well, they tried to, but between my injury and their accents, I’m not sure I followed it all.”

“Let’s find a seat. I’ll give you the run-down. Inspector, would you care to join us?” said Alton to Donati, who stood at a discreet distance.

“Yes, I come with you.”

They found an unoccupied corner of the spacious lobby, and Alton took five minutes to recap the events that had transpired since Mallory had been knocked unconscious.

“So the last step, I think, is to see if we get a hit on the suspect’s fingerprints,” said Alton. “I assume you took them, Inspector?”

Donati looked at his shoes. “No, we did not think he was a suspect, remember? We are not gonna fingerprint a hospital patient.”

“What about prints on the perp’s baton?” asked Mallory. “They should be all over it.”

“Yes, my men are working on that now,” replied Donati.

“Can you let us know what you find out?” asked Alton. “Our lives could ride on tracking this man down.”

“Sure. And I tell Inspector Rossi, too. He thinks it will help his murder investigation.”

“I agree with him,” said Alton. He turned to Mallory. “In the meantime, we need to get you back to the hotel to rest.”

“I can’t argue with that,” said Mallory. “I’m exhausted. Let’s just hope we don’t have any more excitement today.”

CHAPTER 41

A warm summer breeze greeted Zane Crowe as he exited through an employee entrance located at the end of a long hallway in the hospital’s ER wing. He knew he had to lose the medical garb as soon as possible. The ruse of dressing as an employee had worked flawlessly for escaping the hospital, but it couldn’t be relied on now that he stood outside. The hospital staffers would discover the unconscious orderly in his bathroom within minutes, maybe as long as an hour if he was lucky. Once that happened, everyone in Florence would be on the lookout for the guy limping around in hospital scrubs. Plus, the police had already gotten a good, hard look at him. Crowe knew he was better off leaving the city for good.

Traveling on foot to the hostel would have been a long walk for a person in good health, but with his leg wound, the distance was impossible to traverse. A taxi represented Crowe’s best alternative—his only one, really, if he wanted to avoid the crowd of potential witnesses on a bus.

But first, he had to change his clothes. After zigzagging across a patchwork of side streets, Crowe turned onto a busy thoroughfare. He headed away from his hostel, knowing a taxi would take him there soon enough. If the police managed to track down someone who saw him walking, they would probably extrapolate his eventual destination from his direction of travel. If so, the cops would end up searching in the opposite direction of his hostel.

Crowe spotted a shop for secondhand clothes and ducked inside. Thankful he had remembered to grab his wallet on the way out of the hospital room, he purchased the most nondescript set of clothes he could find: faded jeans, a dark brown shirt, and a black corduroy cap.

After the purchase, Crowe locked himself in the shop’s dressing room. He removed the hospital scrubs and tore the garments into strips, which he looped around the bandage on his leg to provide additional compression on the wound. Tightening the last knot, he took a few steps to assess whether the makeshift bandage would staunch the flow of blood that had already begun to seep from the site of the injury. Once he left the store, he couldn’t afford the sudden appearance of a crimson stain. It would raise too many questions, especially once the police alerted citizens to watch for a man of his description with an injured leg.

The tourniquet seemed to hold. Crowe eased the new jeans around his impromptu bandage and stuffed the remnants of the hospital scrubs into a trashcan on the way out. He limped down the street until he spotted a pharmacy. He stole inside to buy two boxes of adhesive bandages, a tube of antibiotic ointment, a bottle of peroxide, a generic bottle of ibuprofen, several bags of snack foods, and a six-pack of
Beverly
, a local soda.

Pulling his cap down low, Crowe hailed a taxi and instructed the driver to take him to Sandetole, a hamlet about two kilometers shy of his hostel. It was the closest Crowe dared go, far closer than he would have traveled had he not been injured.

The taxi pulled into the parking lot of
L'ubriacone
, Sandetole’s only tavern. After paying the driver, Crowe mumbled “thanks” in his best Midwestern accent. No point in making it too easy for the police to track him down. Crowe watched the taxi pull out of sight, then began limping towards his hostel.

Upon arriving in his room, Crowe removed his jeans and peeled back the strips of hospital uniform, now stained with blood. Now that he could get off his feet, the wound should stop bleeding. Tossing the makeshift bandages into the trash, he limped into the bathroom and rinsed the gash on his leg with peroxide. After the application of antibiotic ointment and a fresh bandage, the wound appeared less serious but still throbbed like mad. Crowe chased three ibuprofen tablets with a shot of the
grappa
he had purchased on his way up from Rome two days ago, relaxing as the alcohol’s warmth spread throughout his chest.

For the first time since his injury, Crowe no longer had to devote his full attention to escaping from his immediate surroundings. He could now stop and assess the status of the job he had been hired to execute.

Crowe knew he had erred—badly. He had not gathered sufficient intel before launching his strike on the Americans. The allure of the fortune associated with Wells’ cellphone had led him to cut corners in his research of the targets. As a consequence, the mission had failed, at least so far. Here he was, holed up in a grimy hostel room with a gunshot wound, and the targets were still alive. He had seen the woman—Wilson—groaning as she had been loaded into the ambulance at the grotto, so he knew she had survived. Of course, Blackwell was also alive and well, the bastard.

Crowe grimaced at the thought of Blackwell. How had he missed the man’s military background? Crowe hadn’t bothered to check Blackwell’s employment history prior to Kruptos, figuring the man must have spent his entire post-collegiate career with the high-tech firm in order to climb so high on the management ladder at such a young age. How had such a young man had time to join the Army and still become a senior manager at a civilian company? Clearly, Crowe had underestimated the target. He should have researched Blackwell’s work history more thoroughly, gone further back. He wouldn’t make that mistake again, especially now that the chase had taken on a more personal nature.

Determined as he was to complete the job of taking out Blackwell and Wilson, Crowe knew he must first regroup. His initial priority would be gathering new, better intel. In the morning, he would call Gino Piazza. Hopefully, his Sicilian Mafia friend could reach out to his mole at the Roman
Polizia di Stato
to drum up information concerning the latest whereabouts of Blackwell and Wilson.

Next, Crowe knew he needed a new plan of engagement with the targets. He prided himself on his capacity for extracting intelligence from each battle—intelligence that could be used against his opponent the next time around. Crowe pondered…what had he learned from today’s encounter? For starters, Blackwell had let slip his superior marksmanship with handguns. That had been a tactical mistake on the part of his opponent. Why tip your hand to the enemy? Today’s episode had also demonstrated the superiority of Crowe’s retractable baton over handguns. The noise of Blackwell’s gunshot had drawn the police from their guard shack, helpful today but normally a consequence to be avoided.

Moving forward, Crowe decided to continue employing silent weapons, but not a baton—Blackwell and Wilson would be expecting that. A knife was silent, of course, but it had limited range. Sometimes objects not intended to serve as weapons made the best choice; should he take this approach? Finally, rather than locking down on a specific weapon, Crowe decided to first determine his targets’ next destination, then improvise a plan of attack specific to that location. He knew that whatever plan he chose, he would need to engage the targets at close range, before Blackwell would have a chance to draw his Beretta.

Before any plan could be put in motion, though, Crowe would need at least a couple of days to recover. As much as he wanted a rematch with Blackwell, he knew his injured leg represented too great a disadvantage in its current state. If he had to jump, fight hand-to-hand, or run, his leg had to be up to the task. Hopefully, two days would provide sufficient healing for the relatively light wound he had sustained.

With that settled, Crowe recommenced his online search for the buyer of Duncan Wells’ cellphone and the elusive payday that device represented. After sitting in the room’s stiff, wooden chair for a few minutes, Crowe shifted his weight as his leg began to throb. Stretching out his injured limb and remembering the day’s humiliating defeat, he couldn’t contain a rising tide of anger.

“Blackwell, you son of a bitch,” he murmured, “it’s personal now. You nicked me today, and you can damn well believe I’m gonna return the favor.”

CHAPTER 42

After Inspector Donati dropped Alton and Mallory off at their hotel, the couple headed for their quarters and ordered room service, too exhausted to visit a restaurant.

“How are you feeling now?” asked Alton as he fastened the door’s deadbolt lock.

“Not bad, actually,” said Mallory. “I would have thought I’d feel terrible. Maybe the Tylenol is helping.”

“I’m glad,” said Alton. “So no dizziness or nausea?”

“Nope.”

“And your memory seems fine. You haven’t repeated any questions, at least.”

“Yeah. This might not be the best night to…um…resume your PT regime, but otherwise, I feel pretty decent, all things considered.”

Alton exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “That’s a relief. I was worried about you.”

“I know, Mr. Protector.” She smiled.

Within minutes, their room service arrived, and the couple fell into silence as they consumed their first meal since the early lunch in Boboli Gardens.

After dinner, Alton set the room-service tray down in the hallway and relocked the door. He brushed his teeth and returned to the bedroom to find Mallory asleep on top of the comforter, still fully clothed. He knew she had experienced an exhausting day, but he also recalled past medical advice warning that a person should be discouraged from sleeping for the first few hours following a concussion. Had enough time passed since the injury to alleviate this concern?

He laid a hand on Mallory’s arm. “Honey, are you feeling okay?”

She cracked a sleepy eye. “Yeah, Sweetie. I’m just pooped. Don’t worry. My head’s feeling much better.”

“Okay, good. Let’s get you under the covers, then you can go back to sleep.”

After pulling off Mallory’s shoes, Alton slid the comforter up to her shoulders and switched off all the lights except for a small desk lamp. Mallory drifted back to sleep in no time.

Alton sat in the room’s plush armchair and watched his girlfriend breathe. He had anticipated excitement on this vacation, but not the type they had encountered. He had seen a tourist murdered, helped with a police investigation, engaged in a shootout with Mafia underlings in Pompeii, battled another hired thug here in Florence, and been arrested twice—if he counted his involuntary transport to the police station on the night of Duncan’s murder as an arrest.

And he had learned of Tom, Mallory’s earlier interest. Yes, this vacation had been full of surprises.

CHAPTER 43

That same evening, Feng Wu waited at a restaurant table in a state of nervous anticipation. Like before, he had dressed the part of a tourist: navy shorts, a white polo shirt, a fisherman’s hat, and sunglasses. The precious phone lay secured in a special compartment sewn inside his shorts. A similar concealed pocket had been prepared inside every pair of pants he had brought with him on this trip. He would never trust a hotel safe to protect such an irreplaceable asset.

The meeting spot lay a good thirty minutes from Wu’s hotel. It was a local joint, a hole in the wall, really. A “Ristorante di Scalotti” neon sign hung over the door. The inside of the establishment being crowded, Wu had requested an outdoor table. Not only did such a location afford better privacy, but it also provided a better line of sight to oncoming patrons and an easier escape route if things turned ugly.

A new customer approached the hostess stand. He wore the prearranged signal: a yellow handkerchief hanging out his pants pocket.

Wu waved to the man with his left hand and simultaneously raised his sunglasses onto his head with his right, his countersignal. The customer, who had identified himself as Mr. Brookings, weaved through the patio’s circular tables and arrived at Wu’s spot. He took a seat across the table.

A waiter arrived within moments. Wu ordered green tea, while Brookings ordered a local beer.

“Good evening,” said Wu once the waiter had scurried away. “I’m so glad you could come.”

“Didn’t really have a choice, now, did I?” said Brookings, who lit a cigarette and took a long drag. “So do you mind telling me how the hell you got your hands on highly confidential Vidulum files?”

“Come now, surely you must know. I didn’t find them on the street.”

“Let’s cut to the chase,” said Brookings, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “What do you want?”

“Your colleague was a good businessman. He understood the value of these plans on the open market and was willing to make a deal.”

“Yeah, and look where it got him: the Italian morgue.”

Wu lit his own cigarette, a disgusting European brand. “I had nothing to do with that, but his death does highlight the need for you and me to act with extreme discretion.”

“You got that right. I’m not planning on taking one for the team. I intend to get out of this mess alive and with the plans recovered.”

“Let me be frank, Mr. Brookings. I possess only half of the Silverstar files. My mission is to procure the remaining plans, not surrender the ones I already have.”

Brookings folded his arms. “As I said, that’s not why I’m here.”

The two men discontinued their conversation as the waiter returned with their drinks and checks.

Once the restaurant employee left, Wu continued. “Then you’re not willing to produce the remaining files—for a fee?”

“For a fee, huh? Would this fee be paid to me or to the Vidulum employee I represent?”

“To whoever can procure the files. You give me the files, you get the payment.”

“How much are they worth to you?”

“Why don’t you make a proposal?”

“You’re not gonna like my number. I promise.”

“Okay. I can offer you one million…in cash.”

Brookings snorted in derision. “Are you kidding me? I didn’t just fall off the wagon, buddy. I’m fully aware of the value of ionic-storage technology.”

Wu leaned back in his chair and took a turn folding his arms. “I’m not authorized to offer more.”

“Well, you’d better call your handlers and ask for one hell of a pay raise.”

“What do you suggest as a fair price, Mr. Brookings?”

“Fifty million, to be deposited to an account number I’ll provide in our next meeting.”

Wu sputtered the tea he had been sipping. “That’s preposterous. There’s no way the people I represent will agree to such a sum.”

“Fine with me. But you might want to ask them first. That’s still a hell of a bargain. The only reason I’m not asking for a hundred million is ‘cause I like you. Meet me here at nine a.m. the day after tomorrow so we can close the deal.”

“How do I know you can procure the rest of the files?”

“If you went to all the trouble to track down the person I represent, you should know he’s fully capable of obtaining the remaining files. Plus, if he didn’t have access to the domains where the Silverstar files are stored, how would he have known the scanning tunneling microscope file you sent was legit? That’s the only reason he agreed to the meeting, remember?”

“True,” replied Wu.

“I’ll see you in two days, then,” said Brookings. “If you have any questions in the meantime, you know how to get in touch with me.” The man stood to leave and tossed his restaurant check in front of Wu. “Oh, and thanks for the beer.”

Brookings left the restaurant and lost himself in the flow of pedestrians streaming along the sidewalk. Wu remained and finished his tea.

Across the street and two buildings down, a figure crouching in an ancient alley lowered the directional microphone he had held up throughout the conversation. The figure’s place of concealment between a dumpster and the alley wall had proved to be a perfect spot for reconnaissance.

“‘See you in two days’?” asked the figure. “What makes you think you’re going to be here that long?”