To get to the computer he had to get into the estate, but that wouldn’t be difficult either. A Reaper drone would provide real-time imaging through MY-PID, telling Nuri where the two outside guards were with the help of a synthetic imaging radar. The radar could penetrate the earth to roughly one hundred feet; it would have no trouble seeing into the house. The aircraft also had a small cesium magnetometer and an electronic field sensor aboard; the devices were sensitive enough to detect burglar alarms and computers, even when off — in effect telling Nuri not only what to avoid, but where to go.
Vineyards and olive groves surrounded the estate on three sides. A small booth near the top of the driveway about two hundred feet from the house looked to be the only permanent guard post. The two men who watched the place came out of the hut every thirty to forty minutes. Though their schedule was unpredictable, their route wasn’t: one walked around the house to the west, one went east. They met at the back veranda, continuing onward back to the hut.
Approaching through the eastern olive grove would be the easiest; hedges blocked most of the view from the post, and a pair of farm buildings near the house would make for a natural jumping off point.
The house was an old stone structure, at least six or seven hundred years old. It had three stories aboveground and one below. A portico ran along the east and north of the building, a kind of two-story porch flanking the kitchen and main living area. A pool was located on the northwestern side. Nuri wouldn’t know where the office was until the Reaper made its first overflight, but he suspected it was somewhere on the second floor, very possibly near the mafioso’s bedroom.
Or in it.
Given that possibility, he decided he wasn’t going to let insomnia jeopardize his mission: he armed himself with several syringes of an etomidate derivative, a powerful anesthetic that would put Moreno into a deep slumber almost instantaneously.
He was tempted to use one to get rid of Gregor. She clung to him like glue when he went to Naples International Airport, Ugo Niutta, to pick up Flash and the gear he needed, which had been flown in from the States via the Aviano air base.
In one breath she would say she didn’t want to do anything illegal, in the next she would ask how they were getting onto the estate. Nuri kept the details to himself. He didn’t need her, now that Flash was with him. The question was how to ease her from the picture.
A cliff would have done nicely.
Flash was flying on a diplomatic passport, and brought in a “pouch” of weapons and backup com gear. “Pouch” was a diplomatic misnomer — it was actually a small metal crate, securely locked. To carry it, they had to each take a handle at the side and walk out to the car.
“You could open the trunk for us,” Nuri grunted to Gregor as they approached the rented Fiat.
“You didn’t give me the keys,” she said.
True, but somehow it felt like it was her fault. They packed up the car, then went off for something to eat.
Flash had been in the Army for just over ten years before deciding to work with a private security contractor. That gig, three months in an African hellhole, hadn’t worked out the way he had hoped. He told Nuri in Iran that he’d spent his time guarding the brother of an African “president”—aka dictator for life. The man had a thing for guns, and liked to fire them at all hours of the night, and not always in appropriate places or directions. This wouldn’t have been so bad if Flash had been paid as promised. In the end he had to take matters into his own 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.