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knew the exact number of cigars in it, so he could easily tell how many cigars one or another customer had bought.

Meanwhile the money Wolanski had given them was running out. The island of Sardinia

had proved to be far from cheap. Eventually they decided to sell the van since living in it had become unbearable, it was so hot and constantly burning petrol by using the air conditioner was getting too expensive. They made a serious loss on the sale of the van, but they didn’t really have any options. They moved into a budget hotel three hundred meters from the cigar shop and hired a cheap scooter for operational movements around the island.

Their frustration and despair would have overflowed long ago, but after the van, living in a cheap little hotel seemed almost like heaven. The relaxing atmosphere of the cozy Italian island also helped keep their dark forebodings at bay. Their evening walks immediately after the cigar shop closed would beat any psychiatrist treating an onslaught of a depression. Every morning and every evening Isaac jogged five kilometers to the sports ground where he worked out for an hour and then ran back. A little more of that and he would have to buy new clothes again.

Days were exhausting, but evenings after the shop closed was when they could walk to

the port or take a swim, and that inspired them with hope for the next day. The backdrop of luxury yachts and laid-back people had a calming effect on them. Now and again Bikie picked up another female tourist, while Isaac and Michelle exchanged phone calls and messages more and more often. He lied to her, saying that Bikie and he were already in Palermo, fearing that Michelle might decide to come to Sardinia. She probably had loads of friends here. He really did not want her to know that Bikie and he were living in a two-star hotel with a communal shower and a kitchen in the corridor. After Wolanski’s villa, his room seemed like the ultimate slum.

After all, the womanizer Bikie had been right. After Isaac’s promising start with

Michelle, the involuntary separation only enflamed their mutual feelings. This was especially true with Michelle, who was accustomed to men being willing to drop everything for her sake.

The mysterious Isaac had gone zooming off on his own business for nearly a month which made him all the more interesting in her eyes. And what sort of business he had was a mystery too, but he obviously didn’t look like a criminal or a scam artist. No matter how hard she tried to find out

where he was and what he was doing, she got nowhere. Nothing but excuses and evasive explanations.

Isaac was not glad to be stuck on the damned island either. From what the doctors said, Vicky was improving, but there was still no question of recovery without surgical intervention.

He wanted to see Michelle really badly but then he would have had to tell her everything and he couldn’t. It would be bad for the cause, and there was no point in putting the girl to unnecessary risk.

Isaac phoned Vicky’s hospital too having to explain every time that he was her brother, gradually returning him to that role for real, so he decided that his temporary lust for her was a result of stress and purely brotherly concern. Apart from everything else, getting to know Michelle has been very timely in that way too.

Still there was this one detail that was bothering commissioner Pellegrini, and he called back in the Monaco branch of Collective Mind to find out what the board that had disappeared consisted of. The system administrator, now fit and well, told him that the most valuable part lost was a memory card, something that really ought to have been backed up constantly, but the instructions were not to do that, in order to protect from copies being made of the classified data base. Pellegrini frowned with the man’s ability to bore one to death with his work talk, thanked him for assisting the police and hung up without waiting for more explanations. Pellegrini hated people who talked too much and off the point, in fact he was afraid of them. That was just about all that he feared in life.

As an experienced army officer, he had been through a lot and had a reduced sense of

fear. The commissioner had also conducted hostage negotiations at least three times, all of them successful. Even though the last time, the success was relative – he had to shoot the hostage-taker in front of a young teenager. After talking the perpetrator into losing his guard with a promise to meet his conditions and go even further, Pellegrini put a bullet through his head. It was perfectly legal since the criminal was using the kid as a human shield threatening to kill him.

There was also a similar incident, when a deranged drug addict was so desperate for a fix that he demanded his wife sell their only daughter, yelling that she was no good for anything anyway. He was so badly disturbed that he couldn’t even explain who to sell her to, he just yelled with foam on his lips, holding a knife to the girl’s throat.

A neighbor saw the quarrel from the window opposite and called the police. The situation was critical; the junkie’s hands were trembling, leaving scratches at the child’s throat. He could blow his top any moment.

The commissioner decided to act without waiting for the backup team. He assessed the

situation and suggested to the junkie to take painkillers while waiting for heroin to be brought.

Holding out his open left hand with the pills, the commissioner coaxed the freak to make a couple of steps towards him to take a look at them. Seizing the moment when the junkie loosened his grip to transfer the little girl to his other arm and the knifepoint lowered some distance away from the child’s throat, Pellegrini flung up his right hand and put a bullet straight into the man’s heart. In two swift bounds he reached the man before he fell down and grabbed hold of the little girl. The knife and the body fell almost simultaneously. The knife sprang back off the wooden floor with the blade pointing upwards and at that instant the body fell onto it. It was a ghoulish sight. The little girl didn’t even scream, she was completely stunned with fear.

The commissioner liked to recall this story, but it at the same time he didn’t really like it.

Later he visited the girl, made sure that she received free psychological care and even gave a part of his bonus to the mother, so that she could at least buy something for herself. Their home resembled a garbage dump: everything that could be sold or exchanged for drugs was gone and they used all sorts of trash in the household. The atrocious father used to bring home from

the dumps everything that could have any value and there were even two cassette players there, which he obviously had not yet gainfully disposed of.

Two years later when the little girl turned seven, she started calling the commissioner daddy, and he called her his goddaughter.

The most repulsive memory was the way the dropped knife ripped open the man’s

stomach, with guts spilling out and feces flowing out on the floor. Sometimes, when he stayed on late at work, the commissioner summoned up this picture from his memory to suppress his hunger pangs.

Right now it was time to end the working day, but Pellegrini kept on sitting there, going through his notes again while suppressing his hunger. The notepad fell out of his hands and opened at a page with the names of the witnesses to the terrorist attack. One of them was a dark horse, who had been overlooked somehow. Not even Captain Robert had said much; just that he was an ordinary young guy and the captain had checked him out and let him go. Pellegrini arranged a working trip to Monaco in order to meet him.

However the search for Isaac Leroy was futile but Pellegrini, giggling to himself that the police had taken the victim for an accomplice, got a copy of his interrogation at the police station. There also was a registered report from certain Bongardt, a lawyer, and Leroy’s explanatory note. Post-traumatic syndrome as it is, Robert said, and Pellegrini agreed. As a real professional, he very soon dug up a whole heap of information about Isaac, though the guy himself was nowhere to be found. Leroy’s phone has registered for roaming on Sardinia. So he was in Italy, at least.

The fourth week was coming to an end without any developments. After supper they felt

drowsy, and it was time to get back to the hotel. Every time they put this moment off as long as possible since the bench on the street was way better than their room.

“Oh, it’s time to get up,” Bikie moaned. “Get up or get it up? My smartphone always

used to confuse the two meanings, automatically switching to ‘get it up’. The software

developers were obviously guys with a lewd sense of humor.”

As always Bikie had the urge to talk about women.

“It would be good to get it up and in right now. The last one I had was really wild, well you don’t remember, of course… but anyway, she doesn’t count. As for an all night stand there were just the two Swedish girls, and a really long time ago a girl from the beach who was really boozed up and took a mighty effort to entice me.

Bikie told the story with all the details, but Isaac wasn't listening. Now it seemed to him that all the conclusions were far-fetched, that Link wasn't there, the money was running out and the future was obscure.

Another two futile days passed in surveillance of the cigar shop, and their hopes for

success dissipated. They started looking for an alternative lead and reviewed the reports about Link over and over again but no new findings or ideas came up. A couple of times they took off on the scooter following buyers who left the shop. It was all pointless, all futile. The first time the cigars were delivered to a yacht again, the second time to a villa drowning in greenery where a respectable looking little old man met the courier at the gates and immediately lit up a specimen from his purchase. It was the same house in La Margarita that Bikie had already been to. This time they even saw the smoker, and it was not Link.

The fifth week of surveillance was just beginning. The laptop chirped – they had brought a new batch of goods to the shop, but the computer signaled again almost immediately. Isaac looked at the screen. He saw the door of the little shop closing behind an elegant figure in a light dress.

“Bikie! A girl, a girl has gone into the shop! She looked Oriental and quite young, as far as I can tell. She hasn’t been there before. You can’t see her now, but the salesman is rummaging in the fridge!”

They ran out of their hotel, hopped on the scooter, started the engine and stood by

waiting. Within a minute, the girl came out and walked towards her car, holding a large package.

The friends managed to get a good look at her as she got into the driver’s seat. It was Yoshi! Her car set off unhurriedly. Bikie and Isaac followed.

Pellegrini found out that Isaac’s apartment had been repossessed by the bank for debts

and where he lived now was unclear. Questioning the neighbors didn’t turn up anything. Isaac hadn’t been on friendly terms with any of them.

Isaac’s sister was in hospital, in a coma. Pellegrini visited the hospital and asked them to call him immediately if Monsieur Leroy shows up.

The commissioner had a pleasant, warm feeling in his chest — as always when he was

not idling but focused on a case. Events and facts looked strange: Isaac moved out and lives nowhere, came to the Agency, but didn't download. All other donors injured in the attack went through afterwards, and this guy never returned. Though the need for the money didn't disappear.

Maybe his sister is just a cover? On top of that, he sat together with Henri Cavalier, who suspiciously refused to communicate. That statement was strange. Also, judging by the roaming, Isaac visited Amsterdam, and London, and not just in somewhere, but at the University of Link.

Pellegrini was passing down his hotel room like a tiger in the cage. This long-forgotten feeling – it will soon find and reveal the offender. That everything is a coincidence with a lot of accidents occurring around the innocent loser, Pellegrini couldn't believe. Isaac was clearly fishy.

"Suspected partaking in the attack," - the Commissioner made a mark opposite to the name Leroy in his notepad. After writing that, the commissioner decided to speak with the physician of Isaac's sister. This conversation could explain something.

“Let’s go through it again.” Bikie was a bit nervous.

“Again, we’re reporters from a student journal and we’ve come to interview Professor

Link.” Isaac wasn’t nervous, on the contrary, he had calmed down a little. “That cover story works just fine.”

They were standing near the gates of a high wall around a mansion where Yoshi had

dropped out of sight the day before. In the last few days they had thought through lots of different options. The absence of an entry phone seemed strange, they could not see any security cameras either. Bikie had wanted to launch a small drone, but Isaac was afraid its noise would alarm their game. And they did not have the money for an expensive noiseless one.

The request of an interview would astonish anybody who opens the gate.

If the staff in the villa didn’t know who they were really working for, then they must

know him by a different name. They would probably repeat the name “Link” and tell the guys they had the wrong address, but if the person who opened the door knew, he would be startled thus giving himself away. He would ask who had come and say they were mistaken, or

something of the kind only after a pause. Since there were no cameras, someone would open up in person and a person’s face could say a lot.

In any case they would ask to pass on a note that said the following:

“Dear Professor Link,

We kindly request you to grant us an interview. You need have no concern that your whereabouts are known to anyone but us. We are neither enemies nor friends of yours, but we need your help. We ask you to meet us in token of friendship. If you turn us down, it will be pointless for us to keep your location secret.

Yours sincerely, Isaac and Bikie.

“PS. Please call the following number, we are staying in a hotel not far from you.”