“Get in,” Jake demanded.
They did as he said, with Sara running around to the front passenger seat and Elisa throwing her bag into the back and sliding in next to it.
Jake dug around under the dash until he found the ignition wire. He was about to start stripping wires when he saw the hole where the key should go into the ignition. Instead of a key hole there was a simple button. Christ, this guy was asking for his car to be stolen. He pressed the button and the tiny engine sputtered to life. Half a tank of gas. On this car that would almost get them to Rome, if it didn’t break down in a couple of miles. Jake ground the shift stick into first and then burned some rubber and got them onto the road toward Taormina.
Toni Contardo stepped lightly through the nice Georgetown brownstone, checking the clock on the fireplace mantel — it was just after one a.m. Her black curly hair was up in a pony tail at the back of her head and she was dressed in tight black clothes, nothing that could possibly get caught on anything, and her shoes were a practical high-top with non-squeak soles. She moved in the darkness as if she actually lived there. She knew there was no dog. No kids. No wife this night. And the security detail had given way to a fallible electronic security system that she had broken in less than fifteen seconds.
When she came to the wooden staircase, she hesitated for a second. These could squeak, she knew. But she could also hear the man upstairs snoring loud enough to wake the neighbors. With great stealth, she kept to the outer edge of the wooden stairs. Not a sound.
She got to the man’s bedroom. The door was open and she could barely make out the man in the bed alone. Next to the bed was a small table with a padded chair under that. Looking in the drawer, she found a little .380 automatic handgun. She picked that up and then sat on the chair and watched the man sleep for a while. Then she clicked on the small table lamp and crossed her legs.
The man startled up in bed, and started to reach for the drawer where he kept his gun, until his wide eyes finally found recognition. “Maria?” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Toni went with it, almost forgetting that the senator only knew her by that persona. “We have to talk.”
Senator James Halsey lay back against his pillow and drew the sheet up to his chin. “Careful with the gun,” he said. “It has a hair trigger.”
She smiled and then put the gun back into the drawer. “Sorry about that, but your first instinct was to reach for the drawer.”
He nodded. “What can I do for you?”
“Our man found your sister in Italy.”
Halsey sat up again. “That’s great. So she’s okay?”
“Yes. As far as we know. You sound surprised.”
“Not at all.” He ran his fingers through his tussled hair. “You have to understand Sara. She’s always believed she’s invincible. She has more guts than most men I know.”
She was confused now, not knowing quite how to broach this subject. “How well do you know your lawyer Brock Winthrop?”
“Pretty damn well,” Halsey said. “We went to college together.”
“What’s his relationship with your father?”
“He’s his lawyer as well.”
“Then you agree with your father going back to Texas?”
“Of course. Nobody tells Buck Halsey where he can die.” He checked the clock on the end table. “In fact, I’ll be following him there today. First I have to vote on an important bill before the senate.”
“When’s the last time you talked with Brock Winthrop?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer to this.
The senator picked up his phone from the night table and checked the call record. “It was earlier this evening. Why do you ask?”
“Because he got an e-mail from Jake Adams saying he found Sara more than an hour ago. Why didn’t he call you?”
Halsey shrugged and then looked at his phone again, checking his e-mail.
“Any e-mail?” She also knew the answer to that was no, since she had been monitoring all of Brock Winthrop’s communications, along with those of Jake Adams and the good senator. But she couldn’t let the senator know this without implicating her Agency in domestic spying — a huge violation of civil liberties.
He shook his head. “Hey, how the hell did you get in here?”
She got up to leave and simply stared at him. “Really? That’s what you want to know? You should be asking why your lawyer has failed to tell you about our guy finding your sister.”
“He probably wanted to let me sleep,” Halsey posited. “He knows I’ll have a long day in the senate and then flying back to Texas.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” she said and started for the door.
“Wait. How did you get in here?” he asked her desperately.
She stopped and turned to him. “Through the front door. I’ll send you an e-mail with suggestions on how to upgrade your system. You’ll need to charge it after I leave. Then get back to sleep senator. I was never here.” With that she slipped out through the bedroom door, down the stairs and back outside.
14
The Greeks were stuck on the train all the way to Taormina, not able to get off to find Adams and the American woman. The man whose name Demetri still didn’t know had made quite a scene when he came running from the restroom naked from the waist down, his manhood hiding among the furry forest. They eventually found his pants and boxers in the garbage can, but Niko and Kyros had gotten quite the laugh.
On the train, after losing Adams and the woman, Demetri had called Zendo to get instructions. Zendo had just landed at the Catania airport and would take a bus the 40 kilometers to Taormina to catch up with them within an hour or so. He was not happy that they had lost the American professor after getting so close. She was like a fish that they tried to catch with their hands — the tighter they squeezed the faster she slipped through their fingers.
Now, regrouped and standing at the base of the mountain at the Taormina-Giardini train station, Demetri glanced up the mountain and decided they needed to take a taxi the two kilometers to the top. After being up all night flying from Malta, his men needed a little break. And some food.
“Anyone hungry for some breakfast?” Demetri asked them.
Agreement all around with nods and shoulder shrugs.
Demetri said, “Kyros get us a taxi.”
Their designated driver ran off to grab a taxi out front.
“What about Jake Adams?” Niko asked.
“Now we wait for Zendo in town,” Demetri said. “Get something to eat, some coffee. Then we move on to Messina.”
Out at the curb Kyros shoved a man and woman out of his way and when the man looked like he would fight Kyros, he simply lifted his shirt a little to show his gun. The man and woman drifted away.
Demetri shook his head. That man could mess up a free night with a whore. With a flick of his head, the three men joined their friend at the taxi.
Jake followed the directions given to him by Sara Halsey Jones from the little village to a church near the ancient ruins of Taormina, their acquired Fiat sputtering along but still running. He guessed they would have most of the day to drive it before they had to dump it, since the owner had probably driven it to the station and commuted to Catania, where traffic could be a nightmare.
He shut down the engine and turned to Sara. “Before we go any farther, I need to ask you a few questions.”
She looked concerned. “Sure. What do you need?”
“What information did you get from the professor in Malta?”
“Nothing to do with this place in Taormina,” she assured him. “He talked with me about places in Messina and Siracusa.”