Steven stepped on the gas as he drove away from the congestion, checking the digital dashboard clock as he accelerated through the gears. He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror, the wind buffeting his shaggy, light brown hair; the beginnings of hairline wrinkles on his tanned face framed his hazel eyes. Not so bad for forty-five, he reasoned, especially considering the mileage.
The road ahead of him opened up and soon he was tearing along at eighty, traffic having thinned to nothing. The vehicular crisis circumvented, he turned his attention to the phone and the missed call.
He reached for the keypad and hit the send button. His office manager Gwen answered.
“Hullo,” she said in British-accented English, her Yorkshire heritage obvious even from the single word.
“Hey, sorry I couldn’t pick up. I was a little busy.”
“How busy can you be on a day like today?” Gwen asked.
“You’d be surprised at how much I have going on,” Steven protested. “What’s up?”
“A strange call came in a few minutes ago. The gentlemen said he needed to speak to you immediately,” Gwen said.
“Okay…did you get a name?”
“Winston Twain. Mean anything?” Gwen asked.
Steven mentally file-referenced Twain. It was familiar, almost on the periphery of ‘very important’, but after racking his brain for a few moments the sensation of familiarity flitted away. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything — he’d been scattered since…
No point dwelling on the unpleasant.
“Not really. What did he want?” Steven asked.
“Just said it was a matter of significant importance.”
“Significant? Fine. What’s his number?”
“He didn’t leave one. Said he’d call back. He sounded like another Yank. I think the call might have been international,” Gwen opined.
Steven considered Gwen’s words — most calls of actual ‘significant importance’ tended to leave call-back numbers. Especially ones from the States, assuming her instinct was correct. Which it usually was. Gwen had been his office manager and handler since the inception of his software business three and a half years ago. She had an uncanny knack of being able to read people and was rarely wrong.
An uncomfortable silence hovered over the line.
“You’re still going to jump today?” Gwen asked.
“Yes,” Steven said.
“Jump out of a perfectly good plane, right?”
“Right.”
“Dropping at thirty-six feet per second, at a speed of—”
“Stop it. I have to go,” Steven protested.
“Cheers, then, and remember: what goes up…” Gwen disconnected.
As he fought the morning traffic towards Lucca, a city roughly half an hour north-west of Florence, Steven suddenly remembered what the name Winston Twain meant.
“I’ll be damned,” Steven muttered to himself.
Winston Twain.
Arguably the most respected cryptologist in the world.
CHAPTER 2
The rustic Tuscan country house seemed to glow in the bright noon sunshine; its mustard-tinged paint blended with the field of green and brown grass surrounding it, creating the illusion it was floating in a rusted verdant sea.
Two figures stood in a quiet embrace on the circular driveway’s stones. A light breeze carried the scent of hay from a nearby barn, intermingled with the smell of garlic drifting from neighboring kitchens. Neither of the pair noticed. They kissed like newlyweds, which was hardly the case — it had been three years since they’d exchanged vows but to any onlooker it would appear that these were teenagers enraptured by the powerful glow of first love.
The woman’s auburn hair stirred as she pulled away from the man and, rolling an elastic hair tie down her wrist, she drew her mane into a ponytail. He held her at arm’s length, as though memorizing every detail of her face, and then hugged her close once more. They kissed again for a fleeting eternity.
The moment passed and the woman glanced at her watch. “Oh, Steven, I’m late as usual. Okay, this is goodbye for real this time. I have to go,” Antonia exclaimed.
“Why are you abandoning me?” Steven asked in a theatrical fashion.
“Cara, it’s only a weekend. And you could have come, but you changed your mind at the last minute. You and your hobby, too busy to keep a girl satisfied, so she has to find diversion elsewhere…” Antonia complained. Her English was fluent, yet the unmistakable Italian accent colored the cadence in a musical way.
“I wish I could go, but I made the arrangements for this meeting weeks ago, and I can’t cancel. It’s taken me a year to get the old bastard interested in selling, and he could change his mind at any time. You know I want to go with you,” Steven declared.
“Si, si, I know. Oh well, then, it will be just me and my uncle…and perhaps the pool boy,” Antonia said.
Steven knew better. Antonia’s uncle, Dante, had a palatial home half an hour south of Venice, as well as ten-bedroom ‘cottages’ in Chianti, Naples, and on the shores of Lake Lugano. There would inevitably be dozens of relatives arriving for his seventy-fifth birthday celebration, and likely everything from visiting heads of state to a reunion of the surviving Beatles to commemorate another year on the planet for the patriarch. It wouldn’t surprise Steven if, upon Antonia’s return, she reported that the Pope had dropped by unexpectedly to wish Dante continued good health.
“Do try to have a good time, would you? I know how boring old Dante can be,” Steven quipped, fully aware that the weekend would comprise non-stop revelry. “Maybe I’ll take the train up and surprise you. I’m hopeful this meeting won’t be a multi-day negotiation, but you know Italy…”
“Yeah, yeah. At least I have the internet. I’ll tweet and let you know how the party is going,” Antonia promised.
“I wouldn’t mind giving you a good tweeting before you go,” Steven fired back.
“There’s nothing I’d like more, but I have to leave. Really, my little sparrow.” She pulled him next to the car. “Ciao, amor. I’ll see you in a few days.”
Antonia kissed Steven’s lips one final time, then opened the door of the silver Audi TT. He couldn’t help but appreciate how magnificent her tanned, lithely-muscled legs looked as she climbed behind the wheel, her fashionably-cut skirt riding up to the top of her thigh. The engine burbled to life, and she shut the door and waved at him through the smoked window as she popped the transmission into gear.
Steven watched the little car pull down the drive and onto the small strip of pavement that passed for a road in their rural area. Antonia tore off as though the devil was on her heels — a sedate pace for her, he knew. He could hear the engine revving into the distance for a full minute before tranquility descended again.
You’re a lucky man, Steven.
It was true. Three years ago he and Antonia had ducked out of the rat race and committed to prioritizing their time together over everything else. They’d roamed Italy for months before settling in Greve, where they could be in Florence within twenty minutes (if Antonia was driving) and yet were still well away from the hubbub of the city.
Not renowned for resting on his laurels, once they’d established their new home in the Tuscan countryside, Steven had become increasingly engaged in his burgeoning hobby of cryptography — pursuing it with single-minded focus until Antonia suggested channeling his energy differently. At her goading he’d started a boutique software company, which had quickly blossomed into a five person organization that managed the efforts of nine remote programmers in Russia, the Ukraine and India. Ironically, neither of them needed the income — Antonia’s travel magazine sale had made her a small fortune, and Steven had accumulated enough in the market to never have to work again.