narrowed it down. Ended up leaving a note on the Vespa of a man who was his target. He guessed right. My brother left a phone number and went back to France. We have relatives in Marseilles. He suggested a meeting there.”
Ahmet’s voice tailed off.
“And?” she asked.
“Apparently, Hassan overstepped,” Federov said, almost happily. “When he arrived to pick up his baksheesh, his tender young throat got caught in some piano wire.”
Ahmet gave an involuntary shudder.
“Nonetheless,” Alex said. “The explosives are still out there. Correct?”
“Correct. And worse,” Rizzo said. “I assume the tracker is gone.”
“Yes. It’s gone,” Ahmet said.
“These people are bloody amateurs!” Rizzo snapped with contempt, still in Italian. “The whole lot of them. No wonder they get killed or caught or both.”
“That’s my
“Yes, of course it is,” Rizzo said. “Hard to tell which of you was dumber. You for being here tonight or him for getting decapitated.”
The tension on Ahmet’s face was suddenly great. And a sweat broke as he glared at Rizzo. Federov’s gaze was frozen on him, but Rizzo was still focused on payback for the needle in his backside.
“He wasn’t included very well when the brains were handed out, though, was he, your stupid dead brother? Imagine going to pick up a payoff and not bringing a backup. Typical Arab, really. Plenty of desire, plenty of firepower, but not much between the Muzzy ears. That’s why the ears ended up lying on the sidewalk, along with most of the head. Sort of like one of those pig’s or goat’s heads you see in a butcher’s window, revolving on the skewer.”
“My brother!” snapped Ahmet.
“You show me a happy Islamic fanatic,” growled Rizzo, “and I’ll show you a gay corpse.”
Ahmet made a sudden openhanded lunge toward Rizzo, who started to laugh.
Alex made a move away from the table, but it was Federov who once again reacted and intercepted. Ahmet’s chair retreated and tumbled to the floor and Federov, rising, slammed the Arab down hard onto the floor, breaking the legs of the chair as he threw Ahmet on top of it. Ahmet stayed on the floor and began sobbing. Federov kicked him.
“That’s pretty much all of it,” Federov said, turning back to his guests. “Does it help?”
Alex flipped her notebook shut. “I think it does,” she said. “And I think it will take me back to Madrid first thing tomorrow.”
“Then we’re finished here,” Federov said.
He turned to his guard at the door. “Take care of things, Grisha,” he said flatly. Ahmet started sobbing louder.
A few minutes later, the group of visitors was back downstairs, moving toward the door, Dmitri preceding them as they stepped out into the night. There were still stars. The moon had traveled a great distance across the sky.
Dmitri had drawn his pistol again and stood guard at the end of the driveway. Peter, Alex, Rizzo, and Federov moved toward the car under a bright night sky.
When the group was almost to the car, the stillness in the heavy air was broken by the sound of a man shouting within the house. The voice came from the upstairs window, loud enough and frantic enough for Alex to glance upward in that direction.
It was a loud voice and very frightened, intensity rising, speaking in Arabic. Obviously, Ahmet.
Then there was single loud shot within the house. The voice ceased. The group moving to the SUV froze. A second shot followed. Rizzo’s eyes found Alex’s. Alex felt sick. They looked at Federov who at first said nothing. But he kept moving. As he opened the car door, he finally felt obliged to say something.
“It’s my business. I’ll run it the way I always have,” he growled.
“I’m assuming we weren’t supposed to hear that,” Alex said. “The execution was probably meant to happen after we left.”
“Does it matter?”
“Oh, I don’t suppose it does,” Rizzo said. “How could it?”
“Ahmet and his brother were stealing from me, stealing from the entire world. They had no honor, no backbone. Why should you care about such men? They were not your friends, they were your enemies.”
“And you’re still a complete bastard, aren’t you?” said Alex. “I’d almost forgotten.”
He shrugged. “I’ve done all of you a favor,” he said. “The world is better off without such people. Or do you think otherwise?”
“Murder is murder,” Alex said.
Federov shook his head. “And war is war,” Federov said. “I did you a service, and you get angry with me. Your government should give me a medal.”
Alex didn’t answer. She slid back into the van. This time she took a backseat window and retreated into a corner. Peter turned to her.
“Mr. Federov is right, Alex,” Peter said.
“What? You agree with what he just did?”
“I agree with what he just did.”
“You’d have done the same thing?”
“In one way or another, yes,” he said. “Isn’t that what we’re
She looked away, then back. “Sometimes I prefer not to,” she said.
“Then why are you here tonight?” Peter asked.
“Leave me alone, all right?”
“Don’t have an answer to that, do you?”
She glared back at him.
“All right,” Peter said. “I’ll leave you alone.”
Alex was suddenly quite exhausted, quite horrified, and didn’t have much to add.
“A Russian can never trust Sicilians,” Federov finally muttered to anyone who would listen and when they were finally moving. “Except the dead ones. The dead ones don’t bother you.”
It was almost a benediction.
“That depends on who finds the body,” Rizzo answered, more amused than he should have been.
Federov laughed. “No one’s gonna find that one.”
No one said anything else for most of the time en route back toward Genoa. Alex closed her eyes and slept part of the way. In the moonlight, the van wove its way eastward on the winding motorway back to the city.
The world is better off without such people.
Federov’s words echoed in her mind with the same volume and impact as a pair of gunshots, and, for that matter, so did Peter’s.
FIFTY-EIGHT
GENOA, ITALY, SEPTEMBER 17, AFTER MIDNIGHT
Alex crashed into bed long after midnight but did not sleep well. The two gunshots that had killed Ahmet Lazzari replayed themselves endlessly in her head. She wondered what Federov’s people were doing with the body.
Chopping it up? Dumping it at sea? Burying it in concrete?
She tossed and turned all night. Then, out of sheer nerves and anxiety, and plagued by these dark images, she awakened at eight in the morning, reminded herself that she was still in Genoa and went directly to her laptop.
