Raviv was sitting near the base of the monument when Wells trotted back. “I saw you coming two blocks away. Very subtle.”
“It was an impossible assignment.”
“Don’t whine.”
“Sorry.”
“And don’t apologize. Did you lose them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who were they?”
Wells nodded at the soccer players. “Maybe these guys.”
“Anyone else?”
“A couple joggers looked good to me, but they’re gone now. I get it, Guy. Real CS is a lot tougher than training.”
“There was no one. No team. This idea that any of us have a sixth sense that lets us take three steps in a crowd and know who’s watching, there’s a word for that. Paranoia. You can’t make a team in a place like this unless you have more than thirty minutes. And space to disappear. Or unless they’re completely amateur. Or unless they want you to know. The lesson today is sometimes there’s nobody to lose. Sometimes you’re running from something that doesn’t exist.”
WELLS’S COMPARTMENT HAD A single narrow bunk, barely long enough to fit him but cool and clean and comfortable, its white sheets softer than he expected. Italy. He locked the door and napped fitfully as the train chugged through tunnels carved into the northern Italian mountains. It arrived in Bologna at 11:20 for a three- minute stop.
Wells waited two minutes and thirty seconds, grabbed his bag and briefcase, and trotted off. The station was low-ceilinged and tired, nothing like the grand hall in Milan. At the taxi stand, a half-dozen white sedans waited. Wells walked around to the driver’s window of the first taxi. “You speak English?”
The driver was small and round and stank of cigarettes. “Pretty much.”
“How much to go to Rome?”
“This is Bologna.”
“I know it’s Bologna. I want to go to Rome. The airport.”
“Fiumicino. Three hundred kilometers. Three hours each way. At this time of night, a thousand euros.”
Extortion, but Wells didn’t care, thanks to the magic briefcase. “Done.” He opened the front door. “What’s your name?”
The driver raised a hand. “Before you come in, I like to smoke, okay?” He nodded at a packet of Marlboros on the dash.
“All right.”
“And you pay now.”
Wells peeled two five-hundred-euro notes from his wallet. The driver inspected them, nodded. Wells could read his mind:
“I am Sylvie.”
“Sylvie. My pleasure.” Wells closed his eyes. If Sylvie didn’t smoke too much, he might even sleep a little.
THEN HE HEARD THE engine behind them. He looked in the passengerside mirror to see another taxi, this one a Mercedes minivan, following them from the station. It matched them turn for turn through the city’s winding streets. The driver looked over his shoulder.
“I know.”
“I don’t agree to this.”
Wells handed him another five hundred euros. “Drive.”
So they’d tracked him from Milan, probably all the way from Nice. But he’d bumped them with a simple trick, forced them to chase him in a taxi. Which meant they weren’t pros — not A-level pros, anyway. And they probably didn’t plan to hurt him, or at least had no orders either way. If they did, the train would have been the logical spot. Still. Wells reached into the briefcase, pulled the Beretta.
Sylvie spewed a torrent of Italian. Wells could understand only one word:
“You stop when I say. Not before.” He pulled another five hundred euros from his wallet, put them on the dash. “That’s two thousand euros already for three hours’ work. Get me to the airport and you get two thousand more. No police.”
“All right, all right.”
The ramp to the A1 was a few hundred yards ahead. “Get on.” Sylvie hesitated, then spun the wheel hard left, onto the ramp. The Fiat’s tires squealed. The second taxi followed.
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
In response, Sylvie reached for a Marlboro and lit up. He smoked daintily, twin chimneys streaming from his nostrils. For an hour, he drove in silence, sticking to the center lane and the speed limit of one hundred thirty kilometers — about eighty miles — an hour. The lights behind them neither closed nor faded. An oddly restful chase. But Wells intended to lose his pursuers before Rome.
“How far to the next rest stop?”
“Maybe fifteen kilos.”
“Pull over there.”
“You want a cappuccino? Gelato?”
“Witty.” Still, Wells couldn’t help but like this roly-poly driver.
Ten miles later, a blue sign announced the Montepulciano rest stop. A wide, brightly lit building rested on a platform that spanned the highway. Atop it, a sign proclaimed “Autogrill” in white letters ten feet tall.
“Here?”
“Here. Go to the end of the parking lot.”
They pulled off the highway, drove past rows of gas pumps, bright and yellow in the night, past a parking area where big rigs dozed, toward a run-down building that might have been the original rest stop. The other taxi pulled off, too, keeping well behind them. “Stop here. Turn off the engine.”
As soon as the engine was off, Wells grabbed the key, ignoring Sylvie’s complaints. He stuck the Beretta into the back of his pants, flared out his shirt to hide it. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said.
He hopped out of the car, popped its trunk. Amid empty bottles of antifreeze and crumpled cigarette cartons, he saw what he’d hoped for — a tire iron. He grabbed it, strode toward the second taxi, his feet crackling on the asphalt, his hands high and visible in the headlights. The minivan churned ahead a few yards, then stopped.
When he was fifteen yards from the taxi, its back door opened. A man stepped out. He was Arab, with a neatly trimmed mustache. His hands were empty, and Wells didn’t see a holster. Wells set the tire iron on the asphalt. “Let’s talk peacefully,” he said in Arabic. He walked closer to the guy, confidently, his hands high and empty, making clear he didn’t have a weapon. He stopped ten feet away.
“All right.” The man’s Arabic was as smooth as Abdullah’s. Saudi, almost certainly.
“Who sent you?”
“You’re John Wells?”
“I don’t know that name.”
The Arab shook his head. “I tell you, stay out of this business. It doesn’t concern you.”
“I understand,” Wells said, his voice low and soothing. “That makes sense.” He turned as if to walk away, and in one fluid motion reached behind his shirt and pulled the Beretta. On the
