“I don’t know. I really don’t have any idea what’s about to happen. But, maybe. Can I knock on your door if I make it back?”
“Please do. Be careful out there.”
He stood in the shadows of Via Minzoni for a few
minutes, not wanting to leave her, not ready to begin the long journey.
Then there was a cough from under the darkened porticoes across the street, and Giovanni Ferro was on the run.
28
AS THE HOURS PASSED WITH EXCRUCIATING SLOWNESS,
Luigi gradually moved from worry to panic. One of two things had happened: either the hit had already occurred, or Marco had gotten wind of something and was trying to flee. Luigi worried about the stolen bag. Was it too strong a move? Had it scared Marco to the point of disappearing?
The expensive smartphone had shaken everyone. Their boy had been doing much more than studying Italian, walking the streets, and sampling every café and bar in town. He’d been planning, and communicating.
The smartphone was in a lab in the basement of the American embassy in Milan, where, according to the latest from Whitaker, and they were talking every fifteen minutes, the technicians had been unable to crack its codes.
A few minutes after midnight, the two intruders next door evidently got tired of waiting. As they were making their exit, they spoke a few words loud enough to be recorded. It was English with a trace of an accent.
Luigi had immediately called Whitaker and reported that they were probably Israeli.
He was correct. The two agents were instructed by Efraim to leave the apartment and take up other positions.
When they left, Luigi decided to send Krater to the bus station and Zellman to the train station. With no passport, Marco could not buy a plane ticket. Luigi decided to ignore the airport. But, as he told Whitaker, if their boy can somehow buy a state-of-the-art cell phone PC that cost about a thousand bucks, maybe he could also find himself a passport.
By 3:00 a.m. Whitaker was yelling in Milano and Luigi, who couldn’t yell for security reasons, could only curse, which he was doing in English and Italian and holding his own in both languages.
“You’ve lost him, dammit!” Whitaker screeched.
“Not yet!”
“He’s already dead!”
Luigi hung up again, for the third time that morning.
The
kidon
pulled back around 3:30 a.m. They would all rest for a few hours, then plan the day ahead.
______
HE
sat with a wino on a bench in a small park, not far down Via dell’ Indipendenza from the bus station. The wino had been nursing a jug of pink fluid for most of the night, and every five minutes or so he managed to lift his head and utter something at Marco, five feet away. Marco mumbled back, and whatever he said seemed to please the wino. Two of his colleagues were completely comatose
and were huddled nearby like dead soldiers in a trench. Marco didn’t feel exactly safe, but then he had more serious problems.
A few people loitered in front of the bus station. Around five-thirty activity increased when a large group of what appeared to be Gypsies came bustling out, all speaking loudly at once, obviously delighted to be off the bus after a long ride from somewhere. More departing passengers were arriving, and Marco decided it was time to leave the wino. He entered the station behind a young couple and their child and followed them to the ticket counter where he listened as they bought tickets to Parma. He did the same, then hurried to the restroom and again hid in a stall.
Krater was sitting in the station’s all-night diner, drinking bad coffee behind a newspaper while he watched the passengers come and go. He watched Marco walk by. He noted his height, build, age. The walk was familiar, though much slower. The Marco Lazzeri he’d been following for weeks could walk as fast as most men could jog. This fellow’s pace was much slower, but then there was nowhere to go. Why hurry? On the streets Lazzeri was always trying to lose them, and at times he was successful.
But the face was very different. The hair was much darker. The brown corduroy cap was gone, but then it was an accessory and easy to lose. The tortoiseshell eyeglasses caught Krater’s attention. Glasses were wonderful diversions but so often they were overplayed. Marco’s stylish Armani frames had fit him perfectly, slightly altering his appearance without calling attention to his face. The round glasses on this guy begged for attention.
The facial hair was gone; a five-minute job, something
anyone would do. The shirt was not one Krater had seen before, and he’d been in Marco’s apartment with Luigi during sweeps when they looked at every item of clothing. The faded jeans were very generic, and Marco had purchased a similar pair. The blue sports coat with worn elbow patches, along with the handsome attaché, kept Krater in his chair. The jacket had many miles on it, something Marco could not have acquired. The sleeves were a bit short, but that was not uncommon. The briefcase was made of fine leather. Marco might somehow find and spend some cash on a smartphone, but why waste it on such an expensive briefcase? His last bag, the navy blue Silvio he’d owned until about sixteen hours ago when Krater grabbed it during the melee at Caffè Atene, had cost sixty euros.
Krater watched him until he rounded a corner and was out of sight. A possibility, nothing more. He sipped his coffee and for a few minutes contemplated the gentleman he’d just seen.
Marco stood in the stall with his jeans bunched around his ankles, feeling quite silly but much more concerned with a good cover at this point. The door opened. The wall to the left of the door had four urinals; across were six lavatories, and next to them were the four stalls. The other three were empty. There was very little traffic at the moment. Marco listened carefully, waiting to hear the sounds of human relief—the zipper, the jangle of a belt buckle, the deep sigh men often make, the spray of urine.
Nothing. There was no noise from the lavatories, no one washing their hands. The doors to the other three stalls did not open. Maybe it was the custodian making his rounds, and doing so very quietly.
In front of the lavatories, Krater bent low and saw
the jeans around the ankles in the last stall. Next to the jeans was the fine briefcase. The gentleman was taking care of his business and in no hurry about it.
The next bus left at 6:00 a.m. for Parma; after that there was a 6:20 departure for Florence. Krater hurried to the booth and bought tickets for both. The clerk looked at him oddly, but Krater couldn’t have cared less. He went back to the restroom. The gentleman in the last stall was still there.
Krater stepped outside and called Luigi. He gave a description of the man, and explained that he appeared to be in no hurry to leave the men’s room.
“The best place to hide,” Luigi said.
“I’ve done it many times.”
“Do you think it’s Marco?”
“I don’t know. If it is, it’s a very good disguise.”
Rattled by the smartphone, the $400 in American cash, and the disappearance, Luigi was not taking chances. “Follow him,” he said.
At 5:55, Marco pulled up his jeans, flushed, grabbed his briefcase, and took off for the bus. Waiting on the platform was Krater, nonchalantly eating an apple with one hand and holding a newspaper with the other. When Marco headed for the bus to Parma, so did Krater.
A third of the seats were empty. Marco took one on the left side, halfway back, by a window. Krater was looking away when he passed by, then found a seat four rows behind him.
______
THE
first stop was Modena, thirty minutes into the trip. As they entered the city, Marco decided to take stock
of the faces behind him. He stood and made his way to the rear, to the restroom, and along the way gave a casual glance to each male.
When he locked himself in the restroom, he closed his eyes and said to himself, “Yes, I’ve seen that face before.”
Less than twenty-four hours earlier, in Caffè Atene, just a few minutes before the lights went out. The face had been in a long mirror that lined the wall with an old coatrack, above the tables. The face had been seated nearby, behind him, with another man.
It was a familiar face. Maybe he’d even seen it before somewhere in Bologna.
Marco returned to his seat as the bus slowed and approached the station. Think quickly, man, he kept telling himself, but keep your cool. Don’t panic. They’ve followed you out of Bologna; you can’t let them follow you out of the country.
As the bus stopped, the driver announced their arrival in Modena. A brief stop; a departure in fifteen minutes. Four passengers waddled down the aisle and got off. The others kept their seats; most were dozing anyway. Marco closed his eyes and allowed his head to drift to his left, against the window, fast asleep now. A minute passed and two peasants climbed aboard, wild-eyed and clutching heavy cloth bags.
When the driver returned and was situating himself behind the wheel, Marco suddenly eased from his seat, slid quickly along the aisle, and hopped off the bus just as the door was closing. He walked quickly into the station, then turned around and watched the bus back away. His pursuer was still on board.
Krater’s first move was to sprint off the bus, perhaps arguing with the driver in the process, but then no driver will fight to keep someone on board. He caught himself, though, because Marco obviously knew he was being followed. His last-second exit only confirmed what Krater had suspected. It was Marco all right, running like a wounded animal.
Problem was, he was loose in Modena and Krater was not. The bus turned onto another street, then stopped for a traffic light. Krater rushed to the driver, holding his stomach, begging to get off before he vomited all over the place. The door flew open, Krater jumped off and ran back toward the station.
Marco wasted no time. When the bus was out of sight, he hurried to the front of the station where three taxis were lined up. He jumped into the backseat of the first one and said, “Can you take me to Milano?” His Italian was very good.
“Milano?”
“Sì, Milano.”
“È molto caro!” It’s very expensive.
“Quanto?”
“Duecento euro.” Two hundred euros.
“Andiamo.”
______
AFTER
an hour of scouring the Modena bus station and the two streets next to it, Krater called Luigi with the news that was not all good, and not all bad. He’d lost his man, but the mad dash for freedom confirmed that it was indeed Marco.
Luigi’s reaction was mixed. He was frustrated that
Krater had been outfoxed by an amateur. He was impressed that Marco could effectively change his appearance and elude a small army of assassins. And he was angry at Whitaker and the fools in Washington who kept changing the plans and had now created an impending disaster for which he, Luigi, would no doubt get the blame.
He called Whitaker, yelled and cursed some more, then headed for the train station with Zellman and the two others. They’d meet up with Krater in Milano, where Whitaker was promising a full-court press with all the muscle he could pull in.
Leaving Bologna on the direct Eurostar, Luigi had a wonderful idea, one he could never mention. Why not just simply call the Israelis and the Chinese and tell them that Backman was last seen in Modena, headed west to Parma and probably Milano? They wanted him much more than Langley did. And they could certainly do a better job of finding him.
But orders were orders, even though they kept changing.
All roads led to Milano.
29
THE CAB STOPPED A BLOCK AWAY FROM THE MILANO
central train station. Marco paid the driver, thanked him more than once, wished him well back home in Modena, then walked past a dozen more taxis that were waiting for arriving passengers. Inside the mammoth station, he drifted with the crowd, up the escalators, into the controlled frenzy of the platform area where a dozen tracks brought the trains. He found the departure board and studied his options. A train left for Stuttgart four times a day, and its seventh stop was Zurich. He picked up a schedule, bought a cheap city guide with a map, then found a table at a café among a row of shops. Time could not be wasted, but he needed to figure out where he was. He had two espressos and a pastry while his eyes watched the crowd. He loved the mob, the throng of people coming and going. There was safety in those numbers.
His first plan was to take a walk, about thirty minutes, to the center of the city. Somewhere along the way he would find an inexpensive clothing store and change
everything—jacket, shirt, pants, shoes. They had spotted him in Bologna. He couldn’t risk it again.
Surely, somewhere in the center of the city, near the Piazza del Duomo, there was an Internet café where he could rent a computer for fifteen minutes. He had little confidence in his ability to sit in front of a strange machine, turn the damn thing on, and not only survive the jungle of the Internet but get a message to Neal. It was 10:15 a.m. in Milan, 4:15 a.m. in Culpeper, Virginia. Neal would be checking in live at 7:50.
Somehow he’d make the e-mail work. He had no choice.
The second plan, the one that was looking better and better as he watched a thousand people casually hop on trains that would have them scattered throughout Europe in a matter of hours, was to run. Buy a ticket right now and get out of Milano and Italy as soon as possible. His new hair color and Giovanni’s eyeglasses and old professor’s jacket had not fooled them in Bologna. If they were that good, they would surely find him anywhere.
He compromised with a walk around the block. The fresh air always helped, and after four blocks his blood was pumping again. As in Bologna, the streets of Milano fanned out in all directions like a spiderweb. The traffic was heavy and at times hardly moved. He loved the traffic, and he especially loved the crowded sidewalks that gave him cover.