'I was tried and convicted in Italy, and there was no hope of extradition. Having dual nationality — English and French — only made the legal side of it even more tangled, complicated, hopeless. And to put the cap on it, current European law made it imperative that I was tried 'in the country where the crime was committed for any serious offence against nationals of the said country'. Well, you can't get any more serious than murder, which was their term for what I'd done, even if I called it an act of justice! And finally, if found guilty — which of course I was — I would have to serve out my time in that same country.
'That's why I think it was Castellano who set the trap for me, and baited it with his own man. Castellano's a Sicilian, or an Italian if you like. And it's like Trask says: the gangs are highly organized now — computerized, integrated and all — and as always they have their fingers in every pie.
'So, why do you reckon this bastard thug would want me in an Italian jail? Obviously, it was one of those pies in which he had a finger! Jake Cutter was a dead man. If not immediately, then soon.
'But to me the hell of it was I'd never been able to get a sniff of Castellano himself. The villa in Marseille was always guarded to the hilt, and if he'd ever left it… well, I certainly didn't know about it. How could I? I still didn't — still don't — even know what he looks like. This is one secretive son of a bitch! But I will find him one day, and when I do…'
'But not while you're working for E-Branch,' Liz broke in. 'The one thing you mustn't do is compromise the Branch. They're your protection, Jake. And you've got to remember: Trask is the only thing standing between you and a return visit to that cell in… where?'
'In Torino,' Jake answered. 'Turin, where they're alleged to have found The Shroud, and where I was being fitted for one! I tell you, Liz, there were some hard men in that jail. It took me maybe — oh, twenty-four hours? — to figure out that I wasn't getting out in one piece. The looks, the nudges, the winks. But what I said earlier about the size of my… er, you know what, that wasn't true; could have been but wasn't. No one came sidling up to me offering their protection for a little buggery on the side; I guess because the word had gone out that I couldn't be protected, and that anyone who tried it might well need some protection himself.
'And there were a couple of narrow squeaks. Knife fights I wasn't involved in to start with, that I somehow got involved in. And once in the prison hospital — I was in for abdominal bruising and a suspected fractured rib… yes, another one — when someone tried to inject me with a hypodermic full of human shit…
'Anyway, I'd been in there for eleven weeks when this guy — just a guy, no one sinister, I thought, but someone who probably pitied me — got me on my own and told me that it was coming. And when it was coming. I had a week to live, he said. And no good going to the prison staff; they were in on it, and the governor was a man who knew which side his bread was buttered.
'Then a funny thing. This same little fellow said he was working in the machine shop. He gave me a rough key — just a strip of metal, really — showed me how to make an impression of the lock on my cell. This was an old, old prison, Liz. Not like the home from home you'll find in a lot of modern English jails. Anyway: 'You take the impression,' he said, 'and I make finish the key.'
'So what was in it for him? He already had his own key, he said, and a plan. But he couldn't do it on his own. And he figured I might be just desperate enough to go along with him. Oh, he supposed I had seen those old prison movies — of the double double-cross kind? — but hey, it was his life, too, wasn't it? Did I think he was suicidal or something? So maybe he was, but he'd got one thing right at least: I was desperate enough.
'Okay, my reasons for wanting to escape were plain enough: I wanted Castellano dead, and couldn't do it from inside where my own life seemed destined to be a pretty short one. But what about my new-found friend's reasons?
'Apparently it was for a woman. 'A dear old friend of mine, he fucking my Maria,' he told me, grinning emotionlessly. 'The last man who did that, he dead… is why I in here. This time I going fuck loth of them, Maria, too. After that I not care.'
'Funny thing is, I understood him well enough. Just didn't realize how far he'd go to clear this little matter up, that's all.
'Came the night. We got out into the exercise yard way too easy and I felt it was all wrong, all fixed. But it was far too late to go back and lock myself in… and what if I was simply being paranoid? I mean, this was my one last chance. It was his one chance, too, this bald, scrawny little Italian murderer who made the keys.
'His plan was simple: he had a length of chain he'd welded hooks to. Between us and freedom there was a twelve-foot wall, barbed-wired at the top. He was a little guy; he would get on my back, use his chain like a grapnel to grab at the barbed wire. He'd tried it in the workshops and it worked. By God, it also worked out there in the exercise yard!
'So Paolo scrambled from my shoulders up the chain, took a prison blanket from around his neck and tossed it over the barbed wire, which his weight had pulled flat. He balanced himself up there with a leg over the wall, stretched out a hand for me. But when I was on the chain and as I was reaching for his hand… he withdrew it! And I saw his eyes, looking beyond me into the night. I glanced over my shoulder, saw them:
'Prison guards, armed and taking aim! I looked up at Paolo, his face staring down at me. 'I sorry, Jake,' he shrugged. 'But they promise me…' And then, cutting him short, the crack! of a rifle shot…'
Jake paused, swerving to avoid a pothole, and Liz took the opportunity to ask:
'Is that when it happened? When you… moved?'
He shook his head. 'Not quite. But Liz, you know how they say you don't hear the one that kills you? Well, it's true. I know because I heard the bark of that first shot, but I didn't feel a thing. Paolo, on the other hand… his blood splashed me as his right eye turned black. Then he was falling, and taking me with him.
It was only a few feet, but with him on top of me I hit the ground like a ton of bricks. Just as well because there was more shooting, shouting, the flash of bullets sparking where they spanged off the wall.
'That's when it happened. But exactly what happened… I don't know to this day. And something very weird: if you don't hear the one that kills you, how about seeing it? I mean, did you ever hear of anyone actually seeing a bullet in flight? Of course not; and please, no cracks about phoney stage magicians who catch them in their teeth!
'Yet I saw… something. A flash of fire from a ricochet? It could be. But it didn't look like fire. It was tiny, bright, and it came came right at me — at my head — and couldn't have missed me. If it had been a bullet, then I was dead…
'… But it wasn't, couldn't have been, and I only thought I was dead.'
Liz nodded, her mouth suddenly dry. Because for a moment, as Jake had finished speaking, she had received a vivid impression of something alien to all science and knowledge, something from outside. She'd 'seen' his meeting — his confrontation? — with what he'd described. A transitory thing, it came and went, like a bright flash of fire reflecting from the surface of his mind… or still burning in his mind?
'That was when you did it/ she said hoarsely, and cleared her throat. 'That was when you moved, took the Mobius Route.'
'There was an indescribable darkness,' Jake told her. 'More than darkness, a nothingness. It was death; I mean I thought it was death, for what else could it be? But I was drawn into and through it, towards a point of light.'
'A typical out-of-body experience,' Liz said. 'A near-death experience, as certain survivors are supposed to have known it. The Light, which you refused to enter.'
But Jake shook his head. 'Refused nothing; I had no choice; I was dragged right in! But suddenly there was gravity, weight, and I'd been struggling with the darkness — whatever it was — and the wrong way up. I emerged upside down, fell, smacked my head against something… a desk, as it turned out. So you see, the second bout of darkness wasn't nearly so drastic. I was merely unconscious. Or about to be.
'Anyway, even as I passed out I remember there were alarms going off, someone hammering at a door, a voice shouting. Then nothing more.'
'Not until you came to at E-Branch HQ in London,' Liz said. 'That's where your talent had taken you: to Harry's Room… sanctuary.'
He shook his head in denial. 'Not my talent. Oh, someone's, as it appears. Harry's, maybe? But not mine, Liz, not mine…'
The radio crackled into life, Trask's voice saying: 'All call-signs, but especially Hunter One, this is Zero One. Maybe five miles up the road from here, the chuck wagon. Base camp, where we eat, drink and debrief. Those with beds in the ops vehicle, use 'em. Tentage for the rest. Or should you prefer to stretch your legs you can put up your
