“Who’s they?”
“The Italian Air Force for starters. Who knows who else wants you dead? We know the Italians are most likely being bribed by the Russian mafia to make sure you didn’t get out of Italy alive.”
“Why?”
“It’s a long story. You want a drink?”
Sam nodded. “Yes please.”
“What about food?” Andre asked. “We’ve got sandwiches. I hope that’s okay.”
“Sounds great.”
Sam found a place to sit midway along the fuselage. It was one of those fold down seats, built into the fuselage. He lowered it and took a seat, keeping his small backpack on his shoulders. One of the other men brought him a bottle of water and a sandwich, without speaking to him.
He took a bite. It was corned beef with cheese, mayo, and mustard. It tasted good. He finished the sandwich in about thirty seconds. Real caveman like. Next to him, Andre took a seat and stretched back into it as though he had all the time in the world.
Sam, his hunger and thirst satiated, finally looked at him. “So what happened?”
Andre ran a glance across him, as if trying to judge where to begin. “You want to know why someone erased your mind?”
Sam leveled his eyes at him. “Yeah, that would be a nice start.”
“What do you remember so far?”
“Not much.” Sam thought about that for a second. How much did he remember? “I remember my name… there’s a few memories from my childhood that pop up — you know, things like sailing with my brother, learning to SCUBA dive, stuff like that — but not much. In some of the memories, I’m not even sure who I am. I don’t remember anything about the last decade of my life and I have no idea what the hell I was involved in before this happened.”
Andre nodded as though he expected as much. He smiled supportively. “It must be hard. Look, it will get easier. From what I’m told, you recall distant, more permanent memories first, and then the most recent ones. It will take time, but by the sound of things you’re a fast learner. Maybe a few days, possibly a couple weeks, but soon enough you’ll remember everything.”
“That’s reassuring.” Sam sat forward and crossed his arms. “So what was I involved in?”
“Have you ever heard of a ghost ship?”
“Sure. A ship without any living occupants, lost at sea. Why?”
Andre shook his head. “Not that sort of ghost ship. This is a different sort of ghost ship.”
Sam said, “Go on.”
“The type of ghost ship you were working on board looked like a rust bucket on the outside, but on the inside, it was a state-of-the-art computer hub, with satellite internet connection.”
“For what purpose?”
“Ghost ships have been used by criminal organizations to establish illegal marketplaces on the dark net.”
“Why put it on a ship?”
Andre leveled his eyes, as though such a question was ridiculous. “Why? Because on board a ship, the physical location of the illegal website can be hidden. In this case, if things go wrong, the hard drives can be dropped into the sea, leaving investigators with little more than a rusty ship, and some high-tech satellite communications equipment.”
Sam thought about the rusty ship he’d seen in the harbor of Vernazza when he woke up. “There was one in the harbor. Is that where I came from?”
“Yes.”
“What about the girl?”
Andre’s eyes narrowed. “The girl?”
“When I woke up, I was on a row boat with a dead woman. She had been shot. At the time I was certain I was the one to have murdered her. I’m not so sure now. Do you know who she was?”
Andre nodded. “Her name was Zoya Rasputin and she was your connection with the Russian Mafia.”
Chapter Forty
Sam let out a deep breath. “What was I doing with the Russian Mafia?”
Andre laughed. “I’m sorry, I keep forgetting we erased your memory. It was a secret US program, something the government doesn’t want anyone else to know about. Basically, you offered the Russian Mafia one of the most advanced ghost ships in existence…”
Sam frowned. “And they accepted that?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t as clear cut as it sounds. We left clues that suggested the CIA was trying to track down information you had on ghost ship designs, hidden in the dark web for the Russian Mafia to pick up. As a result, the mafia came after you asking for your help — as a private businessman — not the other way around.”
“The Russia Mafia approached me?”
Andre nodded. “When you reported it to your connection within the Pentagon, you were requested to accept the project.”
None of it made much sense to Sam Reilly, but neither had much else in the previous few days. No reason to start now. So, instead of trying to figure more of it out, he just continued on with the debriefing. “Okay, so I built a ghost ship for the Russian Mafia. What went wrong? How did I end up in Vernazza without any memories?”
Andre made a theatrical sigh. “To be honest… that’s a little complicated.”
Sam unfolded his hands and placed them by his side. “I’ve got nowhere else to be.”
“All right, all right. I don’t have all the details. I’m here as part of an international oversight committee, designed to make certain that intelligence gathering communities around the world, like the CIA, are playing by the rules.”
“So far, I don’t think anyone is playing by the rules.”
A slight grin formed on Andre’s lips. “Yeah, you might be right there.”
“So what happened?”
“You spent the last six months working with the Russian Mafia.”
“In command of the ghost ship?”
“Yes. That’s when things went bad.”
“Why? In what way?”
Andre said, “The Russian Mafia weren’t just using the ghost ship to establish the server for a dark net marketplace…”
“They weren’t?”
“No. They were using the ghost ship to hack into secret military networks around the world, including Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and of course, the USA. Zoya Rasputin in particular, was a famous hacker, and her job was to pry open the doors that kept the Pentagon’s greatest secrets.”
“What did she find?” Sam asked.
Andre shook his head. “I don’t know, but what I do know is that it wasn’t supposed to be found. The Pentagon sent someone to kill Zoya.”
“And to erase my memory?”
Andre suppressed a smile. “Hey, that’s how you know your government loves you. It would have been much easier just to take out a sanction on your life, but instead, they wiped your memory.”
Sam failed to see the humor in it. “Why bother wiping my memory if it was only going to come back?”
“I don’t know. Maybe whatever it was you found was only dangerous for forty-eight to seventy-two hours? Once that time passed, it became no longer deadly?”
Seventy-two hours.
Something about those words rang in the back of his mind. He was supposed to be somewhere within seventy-two hours.
Sam said, “What happens in The Hague in seventy-two hours?”
Andre’s face turned gray, his lips thinned, and his eyes averted Sam’s gaze. “What do you know about The Hague?”
“Nothing. Only that I was supposed to be there for an important meeting within seventy-two hours of landing at Vernazza.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s now closer to thirty-eight hours. So, what am I supposed to do?”
Andre said, “To be honest, I’m not sure. Our orders were to bring you back to the Pentagon for a debriefing.”
“All right,” Sam said. “I suppose I’ll find out what this is all about when I get there.”