Tesla Secret, The (13 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Ronnie, Nick and Lamont met Korov at the airport terminal in Florence. From there they would drive southwest toward Pisa and Foxworth's villa on the Arno. Ronnie watched Korov coming toward them across the terminal floor. The Russian wore a brown jacket, dark brown pants and shoes, a white shirt open at the collar. The collar on his shirt had wide points. He carried a cheap blue airline bag.

"Reminds me a lot of you," Ronnie said to Nick. "We could have used him, back in the day."

"Back in the day, he was probably helping people shoot at us."

"Yeah. Times change."

Korov came up to them. "So. We are a team again." He shook hands all around. "It is good to see you. Selena is not with you?"

Nick was tight lipped. "Hello, Arkady. Not this time. Let's get going."

Korov looked a question at Ronnie. He made a slight don't ask gesture with his head. They followed Nick out to the parking lot and their rented Alfa.

"I still say we should have got the Ferrari," Lamont said. "Always wanted to drive one of those."

"We would have needed three of them."

"Christ, Nick. Lighten up."

They tossed their bags in the trunk and got in the car. Lamont followed signs out of the airport and got on the E76 toward Pisa. Nick and Korov sat in back. Nick opened a folder with satellite photos of the villa and a road map of the region. Outside, the peaceful countryside rolled past.

Tuscany, one of the world's great destinations, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance and some of the greatest art, literature, architecture and music in the world. It had been the home of the Medicis, of dukes and popes and kings. It was a land of good wine, good food, passion and beauty. It was also a land drenched in treachery and blood.

"We stay on this road until Pisa." Nick traced the route on the map. "At Pisa we go south toward the coast. Foxworth's place is right on the Arno, here, upriver from where it empties into the Ligurian Sea." He handed the photographs to Korov.

Korov studied the pictures. "Only one road in. Fortified. What's his security?"

"Foxworth has a dozen guards. Most of them are concentrated up top. They've got Uzis. The way the villa is built in tiers means we'd have to fight through them and down three levels. I want to come in from the river."

Nick showed him another set of photographs, taken from the river.

"This big stone landing is the river access. Behind it, there's a boathouse." He placed his finger on the photo. "We can either go up those steps on the outside or through the boathouse to get into the main building. We do it quiet, the guards up top won't know we're there. We grab Foxworth, get out and take him someplace where we won't be interrupted."

"The steps are exposed," Korov said. "They can fire from above. We wouldn't make it."

"That's why I'm thinking the boathouse is the best bet. There has to be an inside entrance to the villa."

"What about the gate to the boathouse?"

"Lamont will handle that. He'll go underwater and open it."

Lamont wove in and out through the traffic. The speedometer on the Alfa held at a steady 130 kph, about 80 mph. Traffic was heavy and rules absent. The Italians all drove as if they were in the Grand Prix. Lamont passed a truck and dodged a battered red Fiat. The driver raised his finger in a universal sign.

"There must be alarms. Sensors." Korov shuffled the pictures.

"That's a problem," Nick said. "We don't have enough intel. We have to play it by ear."

"By ear?" Korov had a puzzled expression.

"An idiom, Arkady. Means we improvise."

"You have a boat ready?"

"Waiting for us at Tyrrhenia, on the coast."

Harker had arranged everything. Someone was coming after dark and bringing the weapons and gear they'd need.

"And when we have the target?"

"We make like Napoleon." Nick smiled. "We head for the island of Elba. An isolated house. No one will be looking for us there, not at first. It will give us time. To talk."

Less than an hour later they reached the outskirts of Pisa and turned south. After a short while they turned off on a road to the shore. A house on the beach waited for them. It had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living area with a sofa. Nick planned to hit the villa around three in the morning, when the guards would be bored and least alert.

"Better get some sleep," he said. "It's going to be a long night." He went into one of the bedrooms and closed the door.

Korov looked at the closed door, then at Ronnie and Lamont.

"What is wrong? Nick is not the same. Is there trouble?"

Ronnie told him about Mexico. "He thinks it's his fault about Selena. Problem is, he's partly right. It's eating him up inside."

"And he thinks this man Foxworth is responsible."

"Right."

"I don't think I would want to be this man," Korov said.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

It wasn't much fun, lying awake at three in the morning. The floor outside Selena's room was quiet. She'd asked the duty nurse to leave the door open. The open door was just enough to keep the demons at bay. It was quiet, this early in the morning. Sometimes someone passed outside. Sometimes she could hear voices from the nurse's station down the corridor, or a call over the hospital speakers for a doctor.

She didn't need to feel isolated and alone on top of everything else. It was bad enough that a catheter drained her body waste, bad enough that she still had no feeling in her legs.

The pain killers kept her awake. Her mind turned things over in a drugged half sleep. She couldn't get out of the bed by herself. Lying there with a night light throwing shadows on the pale walls, she had nothing to look at but the monitors and the steady spikes of her heart beating across the screen in digital green.

She'd demanded they cut back on the drugs. She hated the fuzzy feeling that came from the morphine or whatever they'd been pumping into her. She could push a button for a hit, if the pain got bad, but she kept her finger away. It was too easy to let herself drift in a monotonous, monochrome sea of disturbing thoughts and images.

The pain told her she was alive. She thought she'd felt a twinge in her foot, an hour or so ago. She might have imagined it.

She fought the thoughts, the fear she would never walk again. Never run. Never swim. Never jump from an airplane or go shopping without a wheelchair or just go to the damned bathroom like a human being.

Never feel the adrenaline rush that came when her finger was pressed against the trigger and people were trying to kill her. She didn't like the killing, but she couldn't lie to herself. She'd come to crave the adventure, the danger, the sense of being on the edge.

The edge had caught up with her. More than caught up, she'd fallen off it.

She tried to think about anything except the possibility she'd be crippled for life. She remembered good days spent with her brother and parents, before the accident took them from her. She remembered her uncle laughing as he took her around Paris and showed her the glories of the Louvre, introduced her to her first taste of good wine and French cooking.

The City of Light,
he'd said,
a beacon of culture in a barbaric world.

She remembered the first time she'd seen Nick in Harker's office and the look of surprise he couldn't quite hide.

She smiled. He'd been expecting someone else, probably a dried up academic. She remembered the first time they'd made love, in his cabin. They were good memories. In every one of them she'd been standing on her own two feet. Well, except for making love. Sometimes even then.

She had no feeling below the waist. If she was paralyzed, her relationship with Nick was over. She would never allow him to stay with her, even if he swore he wanted to.

She pushed back tears.

Pain from the surgery was a steady fire in her abdomen. They were feeding her intravenously, to give her intestines time to heal. She was losing weight. When she got out of here she'd look like one of those anorexic models on supermarket magazine covers.

When she got out of here.

What would she do?

She felt a wave of self pity lurking and shut it down. She was going to beat this. She thought about Master Kim, her martial arts teacher and friend. What would he do? He would never surrender, never give up. Neither would she.

She closed her eyes and took a breath and began the meditation on the warrior's way.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

"Cool," Lamont said.

Their boat was docked in a private marina in a secluded cove. It was 46 feet long, shaped like a bullet and painted black. It looked sleek and fast and sinister.

"Nice boat," Korov said.

"Nice? This is more than nice. This is a Ferrari of boats, the best. It's a rich man's boat. I know about these. It's a Rough Rider XP, top of the line. Two Mercury engines, turbo charged. I'll bet it's got a hell of a stereo."

"How much power?" Ronnie asked.

"A lot. 2700 horse or more. This is one fast son of a bitch. I wonder who Harker knows? We'd better take good care of it."

"2700 horsepower for a fiberglass sport boat?" Nick said. "You have got to be kidding."

"I told you, rich man's boat, built for racing. Something like this costs three quarters of a million dollars. I never thought I'd get to drive one."

"Who said you're driving?"

"I'm the water guy, remember? We had cigarette boats in the Seals. They're kind of touchy. You don't want to make a mistake."

"Cigarette boat?" Korov had that puzzled look again. "It doesn't look like a cigarette."

Lamont and Ronnie laughed. "They call them that because smugglers used them to run cigarettes past the Coast Guard. Nobody does that anymore, now it's drugs. Too fast to catch. Before that they were called rum runners."

"Enough with the history," Nick said. "Saddle up."

They stowed the gear in a small cabin in front of the cockpit. The boat sat six. There would be room to strap Foxworth in. Korov ran his fingers over the smooth tan leather of the seats.

Lamont started the engines. The sound at idle was subdued, a gentle rumble in the night.

"Cast off," Lamont said.

The boat came free of the dock. He eased the throttle forward. They moved away toward open water. The grumble of the twin Mercurys was steady, soothing.

The line of instruments on the dash threw a soft, green glow across the cockpit.

"Boat's got it all," Lamont said. "GPS. Livorsi instruments, touch screen navigation, radio if we need it. Probably plays Jimmie Hendrix in mood light LEDs if you want." He eyed the stereo.

"Don't even think about it," Nick said.

The night was black except for the radiance of the stars. Lamont headed a little way offshore and turned in the direction of the Arno River. He opened the throttle a bit more. The bow lifted and the boat surged ahead. With their low profile and black paint they were an arrow-like phantom on the water. The air smelled of salt and seaweed and the shore passing on their left. There was a steady, cool breeze.

In twenty minutes they came to the mouth of the Arno. Lamont steered into the river and headed upstream. He looked at the GPS.

"Getting close."

"Check your gear," Nick said.

Vests. MP-5s. Flash bangs. Pistols. If this went wrong, every cop in Europe would be looking for them. They'd be in the middle of an international shit storm. The world saw Foxworth as a rich and successful businessman, a philanthropist, a man to be emulated and admired. The world had no idea who he was behind the public mask.

Foxworth's villa appeared ahead on their left. Lamont throttled down and stayed in the middle of the river. The engines made low burbling noises. Nick watched the house through night vision lenses as they idled past.

"One man on the garden terrace, smoking a cigarette. One headed topside on the steps coming up from the pier. His weapon is slung and he's looking at his watch. Bored."

Then they were past and around a long bend in the river. Lamont continued up river for a short distance, then throttled down and brought the boat around. The engines idled. They drifted with the sluggish current downstream, toward the villa.

"All right. We get around the end of the pier and up to the boathouse. Ronnie, someone spots us, be ready to take him out."

Ronnie nodded.

"Let's do it."

Lamont touched the throttle. They came back down around the bend. The promontory and their target lay ahead. Most of the villa was dark. Dim lights showed behind tall French windows on the ground floor. The courtyard by the main gate was lit. The boathouse was shrouded in darkness.

"Coming down the steps," Korov said in a low voice.

A single guard started down the long flight of stairs from the villa to the pier. Ronnie had his MP-5 up against his cheek, tracking the unsuspecting man through the night scope. The gun was suppressed, but a silenced weapon wasn't all that silent. If he fired, the noise could be enough to alert others. Better if they didn't have to shoot. Lamont applied just enough power to keep headway and guided the boat toward the landing.

Nick watched the guard.
Once we reach the end we'll be hidden. Unless he comes to the edge and looks down.

Lamont killed the engines. The boat glided silently into the dark channel of water leading to the closed boathouse gates. Momentum carried them forward. Lamont cut the helm over. They turned sideways and bumped up against the gates with a soft, scraping sound. Korov reached for the steel bars and held the boat steady. They waited.

The guard's footsteps sounded on the landing above and stopped. A sudden stream of liquid splashed down into the water, ten yards from where they waited. They heard the man sigh, the sound of a zipper. The footsteps started again and receded.

Nick felt a headache beginning. He unclenched tight fingers from his MP-5.

The gates were made of stainless steel and opened in the middle. They didn't move when Nick pushed against them. They weren't chained or locked. There had to be a controlling mechanism somewhere inside. Like a garage door, operated by a remote when coming in from the river.

Lamont stripped down to his shorts, rinsed out a pair of goggles and put them on. He lowered himself over the side, took a deep breath, another, then submerged into the black-green water.