One Minute Out Read online

  “I’ve been going back through everything I have on the Consortium, all the relationships between all the companies, all the capital equipment I can trace to them: the plane, the yacht, stuff like that. I’ve traced bank accounts to the Caymans and the Dominican Republic and Crete and Luxembourg . . . but I’m no closer to finding out who the people are who run this thing.”

  I was hoping she’d be able to pull a rabbit out of her hat with her research, because I have serious doubts about my plan for tonight. Still, I see that she tried. “Sometimes there is no answer.”

  “There is an answer, it’s just not available to me. If someone could hack into one of the law firms around the world that set up these offshore accounts, then they could swim upstream into the account information.”

  “You think the name of the Director of the Consortium would be tied to these accounts? I don’t know much about money laundering, but I know they keep an air gap between themselves and the illicit money.”

  “Of course the accounts won’t have the names of the people in charge, but they will have information on where the transfers came from: investment firms, hedge funds, real estate brokers. That could . . . no . . . that would lead me to the actual men and women who run this whole thing.”

  Her plan sounds about as likely as mine now. “Yeah, but you can’t hack into the law firms. Can you?”

  She shakes her head. “No. I can’t. I mean, there are people out there who can, but they are criminals, and they sure as hell won’t work for me.”

  “Do you know who they are?”

  “Some of them. Europol is involved with investigations around the EU where we have identified hackers.”

  “Are they in jail?”

  She shrugs, rubbing her neck. “Some are. Most aren’t. The wheels of justice move very slowly in Europe. It’s not like in America, where they put you in the gas chamber the day after they know you did it.”

  Her English is amazing, but her knowledge of the nation of my birth is lacking.

  An idea comes to me slowly, and even as it begins to form, I ask her about it. “These people under investigation. Do they know you are watching them?”

  “Well, technically Europol isn’t watching them. Their nations’ law enforcement entities are. But I do know who some of these people are.”

  “Where is the closest hacker who has the skills to do what you need?”

  She thinks this over carefully. It looks to me like she enjoys the mental exercise of remembering the names and locations.

  She says, “There’s some good ones in Romania.”

  “Do they have protection?”

  “Well . . . they work with organized crime, but virtually all of the black-hat hackers at this level do.”

  “Virtually all? Is there someone who isn’t tied to any crime syndicate?”

  Again she thinks in silence. “Well . . . for what I need, there is one man who has the skills and is not aligned with any known mafia group.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s in Amsterdam, which, coincidentally, is only an hour or so from my office and home in The Hague. His name is Maarten Meyer. We’ve been watching him for a while. He used to work in private banking for ING Group, a Dutch multinational, but he was caught embezzling. They fired him but did not prosecute him—they thought they’d lose private clients if they made too much noise about it.”

  “If they didn’t prosecute, how do you even know about him?”

  “We only learned of this after he was suspected by Dutch authorities of data theft at ABN AMRO, another large bank in Amsterdam. He was interviewed, he was suspected, but again, he was not prosecuted. There was some question at Europol about whether he was paying off high officials. We never found out, but the investigation into him continues. Interpol is looking into some data thefts in Antigua and Barbuda, and some others in the Caymans. He is highly skilled at picking the cyber locks of banks.”

  “You think he could get into the bank transfer records you need to identify where the money is coming from?”

  Talyssa nods. “I know he can.”

  I lift up my phone and change my GPS destination. “Here’s what I need—”

  “You want to go find him, and beat him up until he agrees to do what we need.”

  “No. Finding out who runs the Consortium might save Roxana, but it won’t save the girls we’ve been chasing. I have to go to Venice to try to find out where they are being sent.”

  She’s confused. “So . . .”

  “So,” I say, “I need you to go to Amsterdam to convince Maarten Meyer to work with us.”

  “But . . . even if I could get him to do the hack, that’s totally illegal.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Talyssa, but the ‘doing things by the book’ ship sailed a long time ago. You’re pretty much an international criminal already.”

  She says nothing, so I finish my thought. “If there is some way to find out that intel, even if it’s illegal, we probably should be considering it.”

  Slowly she nods. “But . . . how do I convince him to help us?”

  “Tell him he’s under investigation. Tell him you’ll tip him off to a raid when it comes if he does what you want him to. Tell him you’ll destroy evidence to help his case. Tell him anything to get him on board with us.”

  “But I . . . I can’t do any of those things.”

  “You don’t have to do anything, you just have to say you’ll do something to help him.”

  “What, then we just fuck him over?”

  “Pretty much. Look, think about your sister.”

  Now she looks at me with hard narrow eyes. “Think about my sister? That’s all I am doing! I can’t think about anything else at all other than what has happened to her, and what will happen to her if I can’t get her back! Don’t tell me to think about my sister!”

  “I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say. I just need you to start breaking some dishes here. I need you to go to Amsterdam and convince Maarten Meyer to help us find the money launderers. If I could do it myself I’d put that guy’s nuts in a vise and start flaying him, but I have to stay here.”

  “I am not going to put his nuts in a—”

  “You won’t have to. You just need to use what you have to get his compliance, and that is information about the international warrant being prepared against him.”

  I can see she’s still pissed at me, but slowly she begins to calm down. “I can do that.”

  “I know you can. We’ll go to the airport, and then you’re going to Amsterdam.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  La Primarosa made good speed for Venice, arriving just after eight a.m. Jaco Verdoorn was all but in command on the vessel now; the captain did little more than drive the boat while the big South African organized the quick and efficient disembarkation of the product. He knew he had to get all the merchandise along with all the evidence off in case the Gray Man had resources to have the yacht boarded. The Consortium controlled a portion of local law enforcement here, but it certainly didn’t control all law enforcement, so there was a definite threat as long as the yacht was in the area.

  By noon Verdoorn had removed his people from this potential compromise, relocating all twenty-three pieces of merchandise shipped on La Primarosa to a large private residence in Venice proper, on the Rio della Sensa, a canal on the northern side of the city. The impromptu safe house building was run by the Mala del Brenta, one of the local mafia groups here in northern Italy, and now all items were sequestered in several rooms on the second and third floors while armed Italians guarded them.

  As was always the case on market days, the women and girls were well fed and given plenty of time to bathe. Clothing was brought in by stylists, hair and makeup would begin at five p.m., and Dr. Riesling spent the entire day speaking with each one of them privately, checking their mental state
for what was to come.

  Jaco Verdoorn established a secondary security cordon around the building, positioning most of his White Lion men in the streets and along the canals, eyes open for any hint of Courtland Gentry.

  A couple more men had overwatch on the route Cage would take to the safe house, and Verdoorn was in near constant communication with Sean Hall so they could perfectly coordinate the movement of the principal during his short walk.

  Verdoorn himself planned on taking an overwatch position, both today for Cage’s arrival at the safe house and this evening as Cage and his security men went to the market. The South African had a Belgian FN F2000 rifle with a scope and a laser, and he wished for nothing more in this world than to see Gentry in his sights today or tonight.

  He was experienced enough to recognize that there was an extremely low probability of he himself killing the target, but this was his op, these were his men, and they’d received his training, so if any one of his boys took out the American assassin, he’d consider it his kill.

  * * *

  • • •

  After dropping Talyssa off at the airport I take the causeway to Venice and park the car at a lot on the western side of the 121 islands that make up the city proper. I climb out, stretching my legs and back. It’s just past noon; I have some time before my two p.m. appointment, so I use it to do some shopping and to rent a room for the night. I find a little place in Santa Croce on the Rio de Santa Maria Maggiore, and here I take a shower and then, with scissors and a razor purchased during my stop at a pharmacy, I go to work.

  I’m wearing a suit I bought off the rack an hour and a half ago, and cherry wingtip shoes purchased just after that. My face is clean-shaven for the first time in months and my hair is slicked back with product, and although this is hardly my normal look, I’ve made a career out of blending in with my surroundings, and I am certainly dressed for the part I’m about to play.

  Then I go back out onto the street to walk to my nearby meeting.

  Venice is a tourist trap; the narrow streets and passages are packed so tightly with foreign travelers that you shuffle along like cattle, restaurants all sell the same food, and gift shops all sell the same few dozen items.

  It’s the Disney World of Italy.

  I’ve only been here once, doing a job for the Goon Squad a few years back. The Agency was tailing a Tunisian lawyer they thought had ties to Al Qaeda, and my unit of Ground Branch operators was brought in to roll him up, which we did in an alleyway near his flat on a moonless night.

  It was a textbook op; we shuffled the guy to a waiting Cessna Citation, and then we watched it climb into the Italian sky.

  Never heard what happened to the lawyer, or even if he was, in fact, tied to AQ, but that was standard operating procedure back then. I was a sled dog on a team; nobody told me where we were going, and my job was simply to respond to the crack of the whip.

  Now I have authority over my actions, and I have discretion to move forward or to pull back. But Venice seems so much more ominous today, while working on my own, than it did back then as part of a cell of American operatives.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  At two p.m. I step up to the nondescript door of an equally nondescript building on the Fondamenta Santa Caterina. There is construction going on around this building and those nearby, and I look over some of the workers and wonder if they are really who they purport to be.

  I’m guessing not. I’m assuming a lot of them are armed, and I’m pretty sure all of them knew I was coming.

  I really hate being looked at, but in times like these, it’s part of the job.

  I’m frisked inside the door by a pair of young guys wearing coveralls. I know for certain they are Italian mafia, and they are just wearing the blue-collar work duds as a cover. They take my phone and wallet, but I’ve left my pistol and the rest of my gear at the rental unit so as not to get anyone excited. A woman descends a wooden staircase and shakes my hand, then escorts me back up. She’s all smiles, but I see the armed goon watching me from the mezzanine and feel the presence of one of the guys I met at the front door looming close behind me now as I ascend.

  Soon I enter the library and find myself face-to-face with Giancarlo Ricci, the security chief for the Alfonsi crime family, one of several mafia concerns here in northern Italy. The Alfonsis aren’t as connected and don’t have as much reach as some of the Sicilian and Calabrian groups, and they are nowhere near as powerful in Venice as the Mala del Brenta organization, but regionally they are relatively big players.

  I’ve spoken with Ricci before but never in person. I’ve done work for him, and he’s been happy with the service I provided, so as soon as I knew I was heading to Venice without any support from the Agency, I decided to reach out to him.

  Still, I’m going to have to do one hell of a dance to get any assistance from the Alfonsi clan. Just like the CIA, the Italian mob doesn’t simply hand out favors for the asking.

  I’m wearing the suit and I’ve combed my hair and shaved my face for one reason only. I can’t come in here looking like the flailing, scrambling, exhausted, beat-to-shit, lost puppy that I am right now. I need an air of control, a visage of power, and at least a modicum of authority. Ricci would have me tossed out on my ass here if he didn’t think I was in a position to do something in exchange for what I am about to request from him.

  Giancarlo Ricci stands and shakes my hand, but I can see that his eyes are wary. More than once he flashes a glance in the direction of the two men standing nearby, and their hands are crossed in front of them, where they can quickly reach inside their jackets to pull a weapon.

  I wait for Ricci to talk, showing him the respect I imagine he garners from all his subordinates.

  When he does talk I’m reminded how good his English is. It’s flawless, in fact. He has the look and demeanor of a European who grew up not in his home country but in a Swiss boarding school, where he was no doubt taught five languages.

  He doesn’t ask me to sit down. Instead he says, “I spoke with the Gray Man over the phone a few times, as I recall. But I’ve never met him in person, and I’ve never seen a photograph. How do I know . . . that you . . . are you?”

  “I did a job for you three years ago. I can go into detail if that will help.”

  “No need. Just tell me what I told you when it was done.”

  “You gave me a warning, in no uncertain terms. Told me not to double-cross you. You said the Alfonsi family wasn’t the largest organization around, but you have a lot of friends, and the right kind of friends to settle scores.”

  “Almost correct. My employer, Luigi Alfonsi, he has friends. I myself do not have any.” He shrugs. “It comes with this life. You certainly understand that, don’t you?”

  I don’t answer. I am not prepared to agree that his life and my life have any points of connection beyond this meeting.

  Instead I say, “Well, since I didn’t double-cross your employer, I hope you will consider me a friend now.”

  With a smile and a dramatic shrug, Ricci says, “I must confess . . . I am confused. They say you are invisible.” A pause as he looks me over head to toe. “But I see you.”

  The man may be a mafia security chief, but he’s also hilarious.

  I reply, “When I want to be seen, I can make it happen. When I want to disappear, same thing.”

  Ricci nods again; he appears more relaxed now, and he motions to a chair in front of where he had been sitting when I entered. “Sí. Very good.”

  We both sit while coffee is poured, and I don’t hesitate to drink down a hot gulp. Ricci makes no small talk, and I’m glad for this, because I don’t have a hell of a lot of time.

  I say, “You want to know why I am here, right?”

  With another flash to his security men, Ricci says, “I don’t think you are here to kill me. Most of the people who want me dead insist on trying t
o do it themselves. They don’t hire someone else. I have that effect on people, for some reason.” He smiled, at ease now, considering the situation. “So . . . yes, I want to know why you are here.”

  “I need something from you.”

  The man shrugged. “Maybe I need something from you, too.”

  “Of course you do. I understand how this works, signore. You help me, and I help you. You will have my services at your disposal as soon as I’m done with the project I’m involved in now.”

  “Who are you working with?”

  I sip more coffee, and a man in a fitted blue suit refills my cup. I say, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “People lie to me all the time, so you may be right about that. But tell me anyway.”

  “I am not working with anyone. I am on my own.”

  “That seems hard to believe. You are one of the highest-paid assassins in the world.”

  “I didn’t come here to lie to you.”

  Ironically, that itself is a lie. I’ve come here to do just exactly that.

  The man does not speak for several seconds. “Bene. What do you need?”

  “A group of trafficked sex slaves is in town. They will be sold at a market tonight. Here, somewhere in Venice. I’d like to know where this is.”

  Ricci drinks coffee, then raises an inquiring eye to me. “You are speaking of the girls from the pipeline?”

  He knows, as I knew he would. Now I can only pray he’s not involved with it. If he is I’m diving out the window in front of me, or else I’ll go after the closest armed man and fight to get his weapon out of his hand.

  But I know both of these options would come with a very low probability of success.

  Ricci puts his cup down and leans back. “The pipeline. Are you wondering if they are us? They are not. The Consortium is aligned with Mala del Brenta here. Bad men in that organization.”

  I just nod and say, “I’m not a fan of the MdB.”

  He says, “They are our competitors. Disrupting their operations, as long as it can’t be tied to us, would give us pleasure.”