DAMAGED - A Bad Boy Romance (55 page)

A woman walked passed the window and began to open the door.

I relaxed, but I noticed that my host was not put at ease. In order to hide his obvious discomfort, he proceeded to roll another cigarette.

The woman entered, and at once I recognized her from the photo in the bedroom. Her hair was cut short, well above her shoulders, but her jawline was a strong, distinguishing characteristic that I immediately placed as coming from her father.

“Piper, Mia Bella,” the man said, turning to face his daughter.

She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. He paused for her kiss, and the contact brought a slight smile to his eyes. His lips, however, remained in a dour expression.

Within moments, he had finished rolling his second cigarette, and with the practiced care of a man who has lit far too many matches, he ignited the end of it. I could tell by her expression that she was not pleased by the habit, but she didn’t bother to call him out.

“You have a guest,” she said, starting her inquisition on a non-personal topic.

“Yes, we were just talking a bit about social history.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, do you remember the story of the Anarchist Fisherman?“

“Of course. One of my favorites.”

“Ah, yes,” the man replied, looking my way. “Piper, you see, she has the spirit of someone who understands our great culture, but in practice, she is missing out on some of the core principles mentioned in the lesson.”

The woman scoffed and turned around toward the stove to heat the kettle.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said.

“Your friend speaks Italian very well for a foreigner,” she said.

The man took another drag from his cigarette.

“I’m sure he has many surprises and skills. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit today, Mia Bella?”

Her dark eyes gave me a calculating glance, and then, as though preoccupied — she diverted her attention to the stove. As she got some coffee grounds out from the canister on the counter top, I noticed she had a tattoo on her left shoulder. The image was a black cat, arching it’s back within a circle. I stared at the symbol, feeling a strangeness wash over me. I had seen that symbol before, but I couldn’t quite place where.

“I’m here to ask you a favor,” the daughter replied.

“I see. You would perhaps like a small loan, so you can resume your studies at the University?”

The woman scoffed.

“We’ve been over this. The University wouldn’t know what to do with a mind like mine. If my future were up to you, I’m sure you would have me writing doctoral dissertations on the meaning behind the Anarchist Fisherman.”

Her tone of voice was acerbic. I could tell that the exchange between the two was a reserved form of a long-standing argument between father and daughter.

I held my tongue and continued to observe their interactions.

“Not that such a dissertation would be a poor use of your time,” the father said.

“Which,” the woman quickly added, “I believe is the one thing that you misunderstand about that fable.”

“It is not a fable. It is the history of our people.”

“
Your
people. Those who earn a living pulling life from out of the sea.”

“You act like this is a bad thing,” the man said, stubbing his cigarette out on the table. “Perhaps you forget that you were raised on the life which was pulled from the ocean.”

“You never cease to remind me,” she said, now preparing a cup of espresso for herself.

“It was a good childhood. The best I was able to offer. Was that not good enough?”

“Oh, it was good enough. I’ve expressed my gratitude, and I’ve shared my rationale for abstaining from fish.”

“That you have,” the man replied, flicking the butt of his cigarette into Laguna Veneta.

The woman paused, and bit her lip. I could tell that she wasn’t happy about falling into an old pattern of argument with her father. But there appeared to be axiomatic differences between the two, and the argument continued. Family relationship dynamics were painfully obvious when observed from a third party perspective, but hopelessly frustrating when a person is caught within them.

I kept my mouth shut.

The woman regained her composure and sipped deeply on her cup of espresso.

“I came here because I have a favor to ask of you,” she said. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable speaking in front of your friend.”

“He is a friend of mine. If you have something to say, then I suggest you say it publicly.”

The woman inhaled sharply.

“Fine then. I need you to hold onto something for me. I wouldn’t have come here, but I don’t have any other options.”

She walked over toward the table and released a pack that had been on her back. As she dropped the item down on the table, I got a closer look at the cat tattoo on her shoulder.

“Will you help me or not?”

I could see the man’s face grow more solemn. Obviously, he was not enthusiastic about the situation, but to his credit, he retained his composure.

“You know, Mi Bella, what you have presented is a false dichotomy. A human always has more than one option, regardless of how constrained they may feel their decision-making process has become.”

Exasperated, she set down her unfinished cup on the countertop and walked over to the table to pick up the bag.

“Looks like my options are more limited than I thought.”

When she tried to lift the bag off the table, the man held his hand out and anchored the bag firmly on the tabletop. I could see the fervor present in his arm strength. He knew what he was doing, but he was not pleased with the end result.

“Principles are not the same thing as action, Mi Bella.
That
is the moral of the story.”

“And faith without works is dead,” the woman replied.

“Yes, this is also true, but there is a difference between the actions designated by faith and direct action.”

The man’s final words echoed in my mind in conjunction with the image of the cat tattoo on her shoulder.

My mind flashed back to a moment where I saw a man sporting that same tattoo on his hand. It was a photographed picture on a surveillance screen. The man was dangerous and was targeted as a major terrorist threat. The image was a video clip in my mind where he was speaking to a group of people about the value of direct action as a tool for radical social change.

More images flashed in front of my mind, and I found it difficult to focus.

“What the heck is wrong you?” the woman asked, targeting her question toward me.

“Nothing,” I shook my head and offered a smile. “It’s been a rough day.”

She nodded, accepting my statement, and turned back to face her father.

“I’ll be back to pick this up in a week or so. Can you put it somewhere safe between now and then?”

“Of course. Anything for you, my daughter.”

She leaned in to kiss him on the forehead, and I saw the man’s face relax into a state of ease. It was obvious to me that he loved her very much, even in spite of the fact that her decisions were causing him some degree of anxiety.

“Have a good chat with your friend,” she said, casting a glance of uncertainty toward me. “I hope he is as good of a friend as you think he is.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, Mi Bella. When you live as long as I have, you tend to be an excellent judge of character. You’ll figure that out soon enough.”

The woman left the room with a roll of her eyes and stalked off to conquer the next set of events within her day. She was driven, and I could tell that there was a lot on her mind. When she was gone, the man stared at the bag in front of him, and then stood up to stretch.

“That was Maria, my daughter.”

“Charming girl,” I replied.

He let out a laugh.

“Just like her mother,” he said, seemingly lost in thought.

“Look, friend,” I said, keeping the pretense of familiarity up for the moment. “Looks like things are getting heavy around here. I think it might be best for me to leave.”

He nodded.

“I see. And where will you go? To the American Embassy, I suppose.”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

The man nodded again.

“Do you have a name?”

Thomas Reydan,” I replied automatically, “I’m a Canadian.”

“Is that so? And what are you doing in Italy?” the man asked, ignoring my desire to leave.

“I don’t know.”

“Ah, probably an unfortunate tourist. Got mugged, perhaps, and fell into Laguna Veneta. You are a miracle.”

I shook my head. He was getting a bit agitated, and his patterns of speech were increasing in rapidity.

“Do you like soccer?” he asked, not pausing for a response. “Perhaps you made a bet with some of the locals, without understanding the passion of Italia.”

He nodded at himself.

“Surely there is a reason why I dragged your unconscious body out of the water five days ago, only to surgically remove a bullet from your left shoulder. Not to mention letting you rest in an unconscious state for the majority of the last week.”

I paused, thinking about the context of his statement. He knew more than he was letting on. I thought about trying to change the subject, but I was tired. I couldn’t focus, and to make matters worse, the man was stressing me out. If I had been in a better state of mind; if my body had been healed; if I wasn’t so completely and utterly at a loss for how to move forward in this scenario, I might not be so easily distressed. All I can say is that losing track of your memories, and waking up in the middle of a foreign country is not an easy process to work through. I had to simplify, and I had to act promptly.

“What’s in the bag?” I asked.

“Not sure I should tell you. After all, there is actually very little you have told me. And let’s be honest, not a bit of it is the truth. So until you are comfortable enough to know where you are going, and how you will achieve that goal without any money, or papers or friends — I suggest you stay put.

You could go to the embassy. Of course, unless you’re willing to tell people that you are actually an American, you’ll first have to figure out how to get to Rome, which is not a small journey. After all, Rome is where the nearest Canadian Embassy is. If you’re going, to be honest about yourself, and share that you are an American, then you can go to the U.S. Consular Agency near the airport.”

“How did you know I was an American?” I asked, letting my hand fall down to my side.

“Did I mention that incidentally, right now the police are looking for a group of Americans who blamed for an attack on Italian civilians last Tuesday night? Apparently three women and one child went missing in Giudecca, and three men were killed in an explosion of some kind.”

He bit his lip, and I could see tears starting to form in his eyes.

“Not that you would know anything about that. You’re a Canadian Tourist, right?”

He stood up and walked away from the table.

My hand reached out toward the small of my back. I couldn’t remember if I had attacked those people or not, and I decided that to be on the safe side, I should be prepared to defend myself in the event that this man thought I did.

“The funniest thing about the current here at Laguna Veneta,” the man continued. “Did you know that there is a riptide that travels exclusively between Giudecca and Lido?”

He walked into the other bedroom and began to lift some of the furniture from its position.

“That’s where we are right now,” he laughed uncomfortably, “Lido.”

I stood up from the table in order to watch him. He didn’t have to pry too hard. The mattress was moved, and some loose flooring was cast aside. Then, the man was on his hands and knees digging through a concrete cell located just below the floor. After a moment, he produced a handgun.

Acting on instinct, I charged at the man.

The knife was in my hand and soon the hilt of the blade was smashing down on the grip of his pistol hand.

With a smooth sequence of movements, I had positioned myself behind him, just to the left of the hidden alcove on the floor. The blade was pressed up against his throat and I held him just off balance.

He was a strong man for his age, but I still had him. The training that I had used was second nature to me. There was no room for hesitation. Had I had wished it to be the case, he would have been bleeding on the floor beneath my feet only seconds after my attack.

I would have probably killed him, but I noticed a set of dog tags fall down on the floor next to the gun. The tags had fallen out of the man’s closed fist when I had positioned myself behind him. He instinctively reached up to try and pry my arm away from his neck and had dropped the tags trying to defend himself. Seeing the tags brought a torrent of memories to my mind.

“Those are my tags,” I said. “That’s my gun. Why didn’t you tell me you had my things?”

I removed my arm so the man could speak, but I continued to hold the edge of the knife against the weathered skin of his neck.

“I was going to show you,” the old man said, “that I know you are more than you claim to be. Though, I feel as though given your demonstration of abilities, that is no longer necessary.”

I lowered the knife to my side, and I felt him relax.

He stepped over the gun and walked out to the kitchen in order to roll himself another cigarette.

“By the way,” he muttered, “your tags say your name is Tyler Franks. Not a lot of trust shown to the man who saved your life — you can’t even offer a real name.”

While the man was in the next room turning on the kettle once more, for another cup of pacification, I was holding the firearm in my hand.

The weapon felt like a natural extension of my body. Holding the weapon was like a ticket to a private theater. I stood arrested by my thoughts as the major events from the attack came rushing back into my mind.

It was late in the evening when we reached the dock outside of the mainland. The night was clear, and all of us were ready to go. We had been prepped before the flight over to Venice, and each of us knew our positions for the upcoming strike. There were five of us total. An elite team of SEAL operatives taking care of an international terrorist threat before the incident became too big for anyone else to handle.

The organization we were striking against was posing as a set of freedom fighters, but their desire for armaments posed a threat to neighboring countries. The Commander and Chief of the US military called for an assassination job on the primary target before things got out of hand. We were supposed to intercept an arms deal, eliminate the threat, and get out without anyone being the wiser.

The operation was fairly standard, and this wasn’t my first trip overseas for an assignment like this.

One member of our team was a rookie, named Joel, and we all teased him a bit about breaking him in on a mission like this. There was a certain amount of blind, macho, nationalistic bravado that pervaded the group. We all thought it was going to be a clean strike. After all, we were the best, and there was no reason to believe that things would go sideways.

Our equipment was light because this was primarily a stealth operation. The plan was to take the channels up through Venice, and into Giudecca. There was a warehouse building there, adjacent to the waterfront. Our intelligence had informed us that the hand-off was due to take place at midnight.

There were two marks.

One of them was an Afghani arms dealer named Benoit, and the other was the leader of an Italian rebel group we went by the name, Maurice. We thought we would go in, make the strike, get out, and be back home on American soil for brunch the following morning.

We couldn’t have been more wrong.

The boats we took across the water were styled after the classic rowboats of Venice. Wearing raincoats, we were able to disguise our comings and goings without having anyone take a second glance at our equipment. If anyone saw us, at most, perhaps they thought we were a late night athletics club, out for an evening on the water. Of course, the preliminary disguises were completely useless. Nobody was out on the water, and very few people were out on the street. If someone did notice, us, they didn’t give us a second glance.

We made our way across the primary channel, and into the close corridor waterways of Venice. There were no interruptions to speak of, and all of our minds were diligently focused on the task at hand. We were professionals, and we were in our element. The water was a comfortable friend that each of us had trained with as an integral part of our task force.

We exited the inner channels of the closest island and crossed the final waterway over to our strike point on Giudecca. Climbing out of the boats, and tying them up to one of the metal rungs set aside for that purpose was our first step. Leaving behind the coats, and stalking through the streets toward the warehouse was our second step. The warehouse was located in an alcove of buildings, and we only had to negotiate a couple of alleyways in order to find the entrance point. We were early by about fifteen minutes, which meant that we were right on time to intercept the parties before the main event took place.

With the coast clear, we popped the lock on a basement latch and ducked into the building.

The room was dark and smelled like a mixture of metal filings, dust, and the water from the channel. Not a single member of the team made a sound, as we cleared the basement. There weren’t any signs of lie present within the lowest floor of the building.

When we reached the inner stairwell which lead up from the basement, we knew something wasn’t right.

Joel had actually been the first to notice the sound, and the rest of us caught on quickly. A faint sound of crying could be heard through the thick door, and down into the stairwell of the basement. The crying sounded like it was coming from a child.

I began to grow uneasy.

Civilian presence went against the diagnostic plans we had made for our strike. The SEAL team is designed to be adaptive for all possible scenarios. Naturally, we needed to push forward, but I could tell that the rest of the team mirrored my anxiety in moving forward. When an element of civilian vulnerability is introduced into a strike scenario, the stakes are raised. The initial bravado of the attack is replaced by a more pensive and cautious sentiment.

The door which lead toward the first floor of the warehouse was latched shut from the other side with a deadbolt. Our security specialist produced some military grade lock pick equipment from a leather case attached to his belt and made short work of the deadbolt.

In spite of how quiet we had been throughout the entrance to the building, and in spite of the precautionary oil that was placed on the hinges, the door blew our cover.

The rusted hinges creaked sharply when the door to the main room was opened. The sounds of crying stopped and my heartbeat began to thump wildly in my chest.