hands, bartering for his pay — diamonds for his employer’s life.
This might have complicated Flash’s future, except for the fact that the president was overthrown a week after Flash left the country. He and his brother were executed by the new government. Flash held a private memorial service at a bar he liked in Oklahoma. He was the only attendee.
Nuri found a small restaurant on the outskirts of the city, far enough away from the crowded, medieval streets at the center of town where he could park the car without having to watch it. He was fluent in Italian — he’d spent some of his childhood here — and took charge of the ordering, sticking to basic spaghetti so heartburn wouldn’t be a factor later on.
“So what’s our plan?” asked Gregor after the waiter left.
“Eat,” said Nuri.
“I mean later.”
“The plan is, you go into the city, find a nice hotel with a good bar, and wait for us.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
The waiter returned with water and bread. The inside of the bread looked almost gray in the restaurant’s dim light.
“I’m not going to a hotel,” said Gregor.
“You don’t want to do anything illegal, right?”
“You don’t need backup?”
Flash stayed quiet, slowly sipping the water.
“What happens if something goes wrong when you break in?” asked Gregor. “Who’s going to rescue you?”
“You’re not coming in with me,” Nuri told her. “Flash isn’t either. This is a one-man gig.”
“Your radio tells you what to do?” said Gregor. She was apparently referring to the MY-PID control device.
“No,” said Nuri, a little louder than he wanted. He recalibrated his voice as he continued. “No one is telling me what to do. Flash is going to liaison between the Reaper and me. He’ll be near the estate, down the hill.”
“Who’s going to watch his back while he’s watching yours?”
“Here comes the spaghetti,” said Flash, glancing at the waiter.
Nuri considered what to do while the waiter put down the platter of pasta and served family style. Gregor might be helpful; in any event, it was safer to keep her with them than have her in the city if he couldn’t trust where she’d end up. Most likely she wouldn’t screw him up, but there was always that distant chance that might come back to bite him.
“If you do exactly what Flash says,” Nuri told her once the waiter retreated to the kitchen, “you can watch his back.”
He thought he saw a look of pain pass over Flash’s face, but maybe it was just a reaction to the spaghetti.
“It won’t be illegal, right?” asked Gregor.
“If it is,” deadpanned Flash between bites, “we’re blaming it on you.”
Nuri’s mother’s side of the family came from Sicily, and counted a number of relatives with low-level associations with the Men of Respect, as the mafia was generally known there. The Sicilians and the Neapolitans got along only rarely, but they were alike enough as a general species for Nuri to form a sound dossier on what Moreno would be like: brutal in his dealings with the outside world, but completely complacent and lazy within the confines of what he considered his safe and untouchable haven. Calling him full of himself wouldn’t begin to describe him. It was very likely that the two men watching his estate were related to him, drawing the assignment as a kind of family work program.
The Reaper was due to come on station precisely at midnight. Nuri wanted to be ready to get into the house by then; that would give him plenty of time to get in and out before dawn. If things went well, in fact, he should be out before the last bars closed.
The first sign of a complication came when he drove up the town road to familiarize Flash with the area. It was a little past eleven, and the few people who lived in the hamlet had long since retired; there were no lights on in any of the buildings. But as he drove toward the turnoff for Moreno’s estate, he saw a dark Mercedes E class sedan parked in the center of the road. Nuri slowed down but didn’t stop.
“Two guys inside,” said Flash, who was sitting in the passenger seat. “Didn’t look too friendly.”
“They weren’t there earlier,” said Gregor.
“Is there another way up?” asked Flash.
“That’s the only road. But we can get up there through the vineyards down around the bend here. Just a longer walk, that’s all.”
Nuri drove down the road, showing Flash how the road cut into the side of the hill. The old monastery was to their right, just below the vineyards. They could stash the car near the ruins.
“You two wait here,” Nuri told Flash after pulling down the dirt driveway that led to the ruins. “I want to see if I can figure out what’s going on. I’ll sneak back behind the car and see if I can pick up anything from their conversations.”
“You sure you don’t want backup?” asked Flash.
“It won’t be a problem. One is quieter than two. Test your radio and make sure we have a good signal.”
Nuri got out of the car. He put on his Gen 4 night glasses, fixing the strap at the back of his head. While the glasses were slightly more powerful than the generation 3 glasses that were standard issue in the military, their real value was in their size — they were only a little thicker than swimming goggles, and weighed barely a pound.
Nuri rolled down the thin wire that ran from the right side of the goggles and plugged it into the MY-PID control unit, allowing the computer system to see what he was seeing. He checked his pistol — a Beretta fitted with a laser-dot pointer and a silencer — then did a quick check of the rest of his gear in the fanny pack he had around his waist. He’d taken a small can of mace and two of the hyperemic needles, but in truth he knew if he needed either, he might just as well use the gun.
He walked a few yards farther up the hill, moving through the trees as he approached the intersection where the guards were.
He was about fifty feet away when the dome light inside the Mercedes came on. He held his breath and went down to one knee as a Fiat approached from the main road. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a small microphone that was tuned to gather sounds from a distance. His fingers fumbled as he connected it to the radio headset.
The guard who’d been sitting in the passenger seat of the Mercedes got out and walked to the Fiat as it stopped. Nuri tuned his mike, but the Fiat’s muffler was broken and the car drowned out whatever they were saying.
The guard straightened and waved. Nuri froze, sure that the man was waving at him. But he was only signaling his companion in the Mercedes, who backed out of the way to let the Fiat pass.
He strained to see into the car as it passed but couldn’t see through the bushes.
“Computer, identify the occupants of the car.”
“Query: which vehicle?”
“The Fiat.”
“Unknown. One occupant. Driver. Unidentified female.”
“Female?”
“Affirmative.”
The Mercedes resumed its position blocking the road. The man who’d gotten out walked back over to the passenger side and got in.
“Can you identify the man who just got into the Mercedes?” Nuri asked the computer.
“Negative. Subject is approximately thirty years old. European extraction. Six feet three inches tall. Appears armed with a handgun in a holster beneath his jacket.”
