Or at least it feels like that.
The wind kicks up again, and with it comes the first spit of a light shower. Valentina uses it as an excuse to hold Federico close to her, his face all but buried between her breasts.
Not that he minds.
She glances at her watch. Almost five past. There’s no sign of Louisa.
She swivels her head and looks around, as would anyone innocently trying to find their boss at a public meeting point.
Nothing.
All stake-outs and stings get the adrenalin rushing, and this one is no different. Both Valentina and Federico are fully tanked, and they have to use all their professionalism not to do anything rash.
A group of pensioners emerges from the church, chattering enthusiastically.
Valentina takes some comfort from the fact that Tom is inside somewhere.
If she needs him, she knows he’ll come through for her.
The shower starts to become more of a downpour. The rain driving into her face gives her an idea. ‘Come on, let’s get you back to the car before you get soaking wet.’ She turns a bewildered Federico round and all but frogmarches him towards her Fiat.
‘Hey!’ he whispers anxiously, head pressed to her arm as they walk. ‘What are you doing?’
Valentina ignores him.
Her instincts tell her they’ve already been spotted.
She’s pretty certain the kidnappers will recognise her motive as just being protective of a sickly patient.
But it’s a gamble. A big one.
She pulls open the passenger’s door and gently manoeuvres the swathed Federico inside. She leans into the car and whispers, ‘Keep your head down. Wait until I’m all the way back inside the courtyard, and then drive off and park up a few streets away.’
Valentina doesn’t wait for an answer.
She shuts the door, turns around and takes out her cell phone.
In the distance she sees movement near the fountain.
Not Louisa.
A tall, wiry man.
Staring at her.
She looks down and pulls up Louisa’s cell number on her phone.
She dials and looks up again.
The man is walking towards her.
Louisa’s phone is ringing out.
Valentina takes a long, slow breath to calm the thumping in her chest and starts to walk towards the staring man.
95
Louisa’s phone is ringing.
Purple Cloak is sitting behind the wheel of the four-by-four in a side street adjacent to Santa Cecilia. He takes Louisa’s ringing phone out of his jacket pocket and reads the display. ‘Valentina?’
‘My assistant.’
He hands it over the back of his seat. ‘Put it on speakerphone and watch what you say.’
Louisa presses the accept button, fearful that she might miss the call, then switches to speaker function. ‘Valentina, ciao. Where are you?’
‘Ciao.’ She tries to sound unstressed and normal. ‘I’m just walking to the fountain. I had to take Anna back to the car because it’s raining hard and she’s really not too well. I thought she might pick up an infection. Where are you?’
Louisa looks to her captor.
He mouths back, ‘In the church.’
‘I’m inside Santa Cecilia. Wait for me by the fountain, I’ll be out in a second.’
Purple Cloak nods his approval.
She switches off the phone and hands it back to him.
Or at least that’s what he thinks she’s done.
He slips it back into his jacket, unaware that Louisa never ended the call. The line is still open and will stay open providing Valentina doesn’t hang up.
‘What now?’ asks Louisa.
‘My brothers and sisters will look after things. You sit tight. When we have Anna, I will let you go.’
Louisa suddenly realises she’s made a mistake.
A big one.
She assumed that only Purple Cloak and his two henchmen had come to the church with her.
Now she knows she’s wrong.
He mentioned sisters. No women travelled with them.
Louisa looks through the rear window.
Parked tight to their bumper is an old Land Rover, with a man behind the wheel.
She drops her head into her hands. He must have been driving several members of the gang to the scene.
She realises she’s put Valentina in grave danger.
And herself.
96
Valentina knows the line is still open.
The voice that followed Louisa’s is too muffled for her to understand, but she can make out that it’s a man.
There’s also no trace of echo.
That means that it’s more likely that Louisa is in a car, rather than in the church as she said.
Valentina glances ahead. Rain is falling hard again and the man in her sights near the fountain has paused and is getting soaked as he answers a call on his own phone. Normally, someone would just let it ring and call back when they got somewhere dry, so he’s pretty much blown his cover. She listens to Louisa’s open line, and it’s now obvious that whoever is with her is talking to the guy standing by the fountain.
Valentina starts to piece the puzzle together.
If Louisa is in a car and not in the church, then she can’t be far away. Logically, if the vehicle is close by, it’s most likely to be in one of the official bays in Via di San Michele, off to one side of the piazza. Kidnap gangs never park illegally; they don’t want to risk drawing any kind of attention to themselves.
Valentina pauses under the main gated archway and reception block at the entrance to the courtyard.
She has to act fast.
Lightning fast.
The man by the fountain finishes his call and looks towards her.
She stops and kills the open line to Louisa.
Casually she calls Tom. ‘Louisa’s in a car. Probably in a bay by the right-hand side of the courtyard when you come out. I’m almost with the targets.’
She rings off and walks towards the fountain.
Despite the rain, the courtyard is still busy with people coming and going. Multicoloured umbrellas sprout up around the flower beds like fast-growing exotic blooms.
Valentina’s nerves jangle as Tom comes within ten metres of her.
He doesn’t even glance her way.
As far as she can tell, there’s no panic in his movement. He’s walking briskly, but not so fast that the rainfall doesn’t easily explains his haste.
She allows herself a small smile.
He’d make a good cop.
The tall, wiry man in the courtyard is now barely three metres away.
He’s in her peripheral vision but she’s avoiding eye contact.
To her surprise, he walks straight past her.
Then he stops and turns.
Only now does Valentina realise he’s not alone.
97
Tom finds it hard not to stay in the courtyard and protect Valentina. He knows she’s a professional soldier, trained to deal with situations like this, but his instinct is to hang around and make sure she’s okay.
Once he’s passed under the arch of the entrance block and emerged into the piazza, he picks up his pace.
He turns sharp right and then goes around the corner into Via di San Michele.
Immediately he’s confronted by dozens of parked cars.
All their windows are obscured by the falling rain.
People moving around with umbrellas make his view even more difficult.
Opportunistically, a guy with Rasta dreadlocks is standing near a wall, selling cheap brollies.
Tom pays ten euros for the first one he can grab.
He doesn’t give a damn about the price or about getting wet; he wants it to hide beneath as he moves from car to car studying the occupants.