Havoc (9 page)

CHAPTER 26

“Who the bloody hell is that?” grumbled Zane Crowe as he turned away from the computer he had been using in an attempt to track down Duncan’s buyer.

He picked up his cellphone. “Hello? Who is this?”

“This is your employer,” replied the caller. “How’d the job go the other night?”

“Pretty well, I’d say.”

“Do you have the phone? The one Wells was selling?”

“No. Wells tried to run, and of course I wasn’t having any part o’ that. The chap who bought the phone ran like a man afire once he heard me shootin’. Then two civilians—bleedin’ hearts, I reckon—rounded the corner, and I figured the police wouldn’t be far behind. So I got my arse outta there as fast as I could.”

“You ran? I thought you were former UK Special Forces.”

“I am. And one thing they teach you is don’t try to take on a whole bloody army. I knew half the
Polizia di Stato
would be there in a minute or two. And they’re armed.”

“I see. It’s unfortunate you didn’t retrieve the phone, but we can’t change that now. I have a new job for you.”

“Not ‘til I get me notes for the first one.”

“Of course, but only the base fee, not the bonus I offered for procuring the phone.”

“Wait a bleedin’ minute—”

“That was our agreement,” interjected the caller. “I’ll deposit the base amount we previously discussed. You’ll see it by nightfall.”

“How about you deposit it right now, and then we’ll have a little talk about this new job. It ain’t that I don’t trust you in particular. I’m just not a trustin’ kind o’ guy.”

“Fine,” replied the caller. “Stand by while I initiate the transfer.” Two minutes of silence elapsed before the caller spoke again. “Check your account.”

Crowe stabbed at his cellphone with a beefy finger, accessing a savings account in the Cayman Islands. “That’s all right, then. So, what’s this new job all about?”

“It’s actually related to the old job. A risk has developed, and I need you to deal with it.”

“What kind o’ risk?” asked Crowe as he began to stroll about the room.

“A couple of America tourists happened to be nearby when you took out Duncan. They were probably those bleeding hearts you mentioned a minute ago. Unfortunately, one of the Americans is an FBI agent, and the other is her helper.”

“So what’s that to you or me? They ain’t part o’ the investigation, are they?”

“We can’t underestimate them. They’re not part of the
official
investigatory team, but they’ve been assisting the Roman police. Since they were on-scene that night, the Americans may recall some detail that would help the police solve the crime. That’s a risk neither of us can afford.”

“So you’re looking to eliminate the risk—for good?”

“Yes,” replied the caller. “Both of them.”

“And what sort o’ timeframe are you wanting them to be taken out?”

“Immediately. They’re on their way to Naples. Get down there as soon as you can and deal with them.”

Crowe remembered his search for Duncan’s missing cellphone. “Now? I got another job that’s gonna keep me here for nearly a week.”

“A week? We can’t wait that long! What the devil—?”

“Now don’t get excited,” soothed Crowe. “I have an associate in Naples—name o’ Gino. I’ll give him a call to let him know you’ll be in touch.”

“We need to minimize the number of people with knowledge of our activities, not increase it. How do I know I can trust him?”

“He’s a friend o’ mine, originally from Sicily. Don’t you worry. He’ll know what to do and how to do it.”

“It appears I don’t have a choice, do I?” said the caller. “I’m not crazy about bringing in someone else, but I’m even less thrilled with waiting a week.”

“That’s the ticket. You give old Gino a call, and he’ll fix you up. It ain’t gonna be cheap, but then, when you wants quality, you have to pay for it.”

“Fine. Just give me his number. You call ahead tonight, and I’ll contact him in the morning.”

Crowe read out his associate’s phone number and ended the call.

He stared at the wall of the hotel room for a moment, lost in thought. “That’s right,” he murmured to himself. “You worry about the Americans down in Naples. And I’ll worry about tracking down the chap who bought Wells’ phone. That’s where the real money is.”

CHAPTER 27

Alton drove his rented Audi around a bend in the coastal highway, and the city of Naples slid into view. Ancient and modern buildings seemed to jostle for space from the edge of the volcanic foothills to the shores of the sparkling Bay of Naples. The slopes of Mount Vesuvius formed a beautiful yet ominous backdrop to the otherwise placid scene.

“So what do you think?” asked Alton. “Nice, huh?”

“It’s incredible,” replied Mallory. “I can’t wait to look around.”

After checking into their hotel, the two lovers spent the remainder of that day and all the next exploring the city. They wrapped up their second day in Naples with a leisurely circuit around the exterior of Maschio Angioino, a thirteenth–century medieval castle located on the shore of the bay.

Mallory leaned over to Alton. “So if you were an Italian prince, I guess that’s where we’d live, huh?”

“Yeah—I’d probably have to fight off the other Italian princes, though, if they knew you were inside.”

“Flatterer.”

The next day, Alton and Mallory traveled to Pompeii. After paying their admission, the couple walked along a paved road leading to the ancient city’s entrance.

“You know,” said Alton, “back in middle school, I wrote a science paper about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius burying Pompeii.”

“Really?”

“Yep. It’s always captured my imagination, but I never thought I’d have a chance to see it in person.”

“Me, neither,” said Mallory. “The eruption happened a long time ago, right?”

“Yep. Seventy-nine AD.” They walked along in silence for a minute before Alton continued. “Pompeii has only been excavated in the past two hundred and fifty years, so it’s quite well-preserved. About a third of it still lies beneath solidified ash and pumice.”

“Cool, Mr. History. Now let’s go see the parts they
have
dug out.”

After entering the city, they spent the better part of the day winding through an amphitheater, a large estate, a bakery, a brothel, and innumerable residential avenues, eventually finding themselves on a main thoroughfare.

Alton studied the surface of an ancient street. “I read about this. The roads here doubled as sewers. That’s why they’re slightly recessed. And see those raised stepping stones leading across the road from one sidewalk to the other? They let people cross without stepping in the muck. And notice those grooves between the stepping stones? They’re from chariot wheels.”

“Holy crap,” replied his companion. “That’s amazing.”

“Isn’t it? It’s not
as if
we’re walking through history here. We
are
walking through history.”

“I can see why you wanted to include Pompeii on the itinerary. I bet Brent Tanaka would love this.”

“Ha!” replied Alton. “Yeah, I bet he would.” Brent, a co-worker at Kruptos, shared Alton’s affinity for historic and scientific sites.

They reached an intersection. Both roads stretched far into the distance.

“This place is far bigger than I realized,” said Mallory. “You could probably spend two or three days looking around here.”

“Yeah, as long as you were properly provisioned. This heat is brutal.” The bright Italian sunshine reflected off paver stones and brick structures, sending waves of heat onto the bands of curious tourists.

The couple made their way into an ancient building that had been converted into a makeshift museum. In the foyer, a glass case enclosed the plaster cast of a terrified citizen whose final earthly pose had been captured in the cooling ash of the volcano’s pyroclastic flow.

As they emerged from the museum, Alton noticed a trio of tourists standing about fifty yards down the road from which they had traveled. An alarm sounded in his head.

“Don’t turn around just yet,” he said, “but in a minute, look back down the road we were just on. Act like you’re sightseeing as usual.”

Mallory complied, and Alton continued, “All the men we’ve seen today have been wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirts. But look at those three guys in suits. Don’t they seem overdressed for such a hot day?”

“Yeah, they do,” replied Mallory.

“And they seem curiously uninterested in this pristine site surrounding us. Everyone else we’ve seen has been fully engaged examining the city.”

Mallory raised her phone to take pictures and slowly moved in an arc until the men lay only slightly to her right. “They’re still there. Alton, what does this mean? Do you think they’re tracking us?”

“There’s only one way to find out. Let’s walk down this road, casually, away from those guys, then turn right at the next corner.”

Alton and Mallory continued to point and converse as they walked down the street. Upon turning the corner onto a long thoroughfare, though, they picked up the pace.

“Now let’s go behind the milling stones in the old bakery,” said Alton. “Quick!”

They moved though the derelict bakery’s courtyard. Alton crouched behind one massive milling stone, while Mallory hid behind the other.

Before sixty seconds had passed, Alton heard a noisy Italian conversation. He couldn’t be certain the voices belonged to the suited men, but no other tourists had occupied this section of road as he and Mallory had entered the bakery. Who else could it be?

As the voices began to recede, Alton slid enough of his head around the backside of the milling stone to cast a glance down the road. The men in suits moved along it in a V formation, peering into each structure as they passed.

Once the voices had faded completely, Alton retreated to Mallory’s stone and crouched behind it with her.

“They’re definitely tracking us,” said Mallory.

“Yeah,” replied Alton. “They must be tied up with the Duncan Wells case somehow.”

“It’s a pretty safe bet their intentions aren’t good,” said Mallory. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t need all this cloak and dagger.”

Alton nodded. “Let’s get out of here.”

They emerged from behind the stone and approached the street from which they had fled. Peering down the avenue in the direction the suited men had traveled, Alton could see no one.

“Okay, let’s roll.” As they began walking up the street, Alton placed a call to Inspector Rossi. “Inspector, it’s Alton Blackwell.” He looked behind him as he walked. The street remained deserted.

“Mr. Blackwell. How are—?”

“I’ve no time to talk. Mallory and I are in the Pompeii excavation site. Three guys in suits are tailing us. We’re headed for the exit, but I was hoping you’d have some friends you could call to help us out.”

“I will call them. What are you wearing, so the police will know you?”

“Khaki shorts and white polo shirt for me, navy shorts and white top for Mallory.”

As a precaution, Alton glanced over his shoulder as he made his way up the avenue. To his dismay, the three suited men were back on the street, running towards them and closing ground quickly.

“They’re coming, Inspector. Got to go!” Alton ended the call and shoved the phone back in his pocket. “Come on!” he said to Mallory. “Head for the museum. It’s a defensible location.”

As they raced for the structure, Alton turned his head once again. The suited trio had already cut their distance by nearly a third. The museum lay only a few dozen yards ahead, but would he and Mallory be able to reach it in time?

CHAPTER 28

Feng Wu sat on the bed of his hotel room and contemplated his next steps. Fortunately, the care he had taken to avoid the Roman police had apparently also shielded him from the criminal who had attacked Duncan Wells in the Colosseum. Unfortunately, though, the last few days had proved fruitless for making any real progress. After enjoying no success tracking down the remaining files via the usual IP black-market blogs, Wuhad contacted Xing Z
hǔ
xí for permission to try a new approach and now awaited the CEO’s confirmation.

As afternoon light poured into his hotel room, Wu powered up his laptop. He held his breath as his e-mail application opened.

There!
Xing Z
hǔ
xí had approved his request for unrestricted access to Cúnchú’s IT systems and programs—including those used to hack into corporate and government networks. Wu breathed a sigh of relief. Without those programs, his chances of tracking down the other half of the Silverstar files would have been negligible.

Still, having access to the programs was one thing, but deciding how to best employ them was a different matter altogether. Some networks, such as Vidulum’s, were so heavily fortified and so reactive to intrusions, they’d take weeks or even months for a single person to crack. With his window of opportunity consisting of a few days at best, a direct assault on such systems would represent an exercise in futility.

To identify a more suitable approach, Wu began by speculating on the fallout from Wells’ murder. He guessed Vidulum would send an employee or two to Rome in response to the death of one of their employees. And since Duncan Wells had been a top manager, perhaps Vidulum would send another high-ranking person to join in the investigation. If so, Wu could extend an offer to this new Vidulum manager: instant retirement into a life of luxury in exchange for the second set of Silverstar files. It was the same bargain into which Wells had entered. Why wouldn’t it work with another greedy American?

Wu contemplated the wisdom of making a lowball offer to this new person. If he could bring home the files at a lower-than-expected cost to Cúnchú, even more honor would accrue to his mission. And if the new Vidulum contact drove a harder bargain, hopefully the new price wouldn’t exceed Wells’ by too much.

If bribery didn’t work, there was always the implied threat. Almost everyone had some dirt in their past, and Cúnchú’s hacking programs excelled in digging up the most carefully concealed secrets. What did the Americans say? A carrot and a stick? Wu had both at his disposal.

To make this approach work, Wu knew he would have to somehow identify any Vidulum employees traveling to Rome. Since he couldn’t hack Vidulum’s networks directly, he spent several hours searching for vulnerabilities in Italy’s immigrations database. Luckily, this domain wasn’t as closely protected as most government networks, and Wu managed to break into it before dusk fell. He downloaded the personal information of all passengers arriving in Rome throughout the three days following Wells’ murder. Next, he filtered the list to show only those passengers who departed from San Francisco or San Jose, California, the two closest airports to Vidulum’s geographic site.

This approach narrowed the search down to several hundred travelers. Cúnchú’s recent success in breaking into the US Internal Revenue Service systems would assist with the next step. Wu used the IRS database to pull up each traveler’s employer. Only two worked for Vidulum.

Wu scanned the internet for Vidulum press briefings to assess the importance of the two men to the company. He found a two-month-old article that listed one of them as a member of Wells’ project team. The man couldn’t have held a better position. Surely he would have access to the remaining Silverstar files. The other employee’s role in Vidulum remained foggy, but given the first man’s background, Wu didn’t much care. He felt his earlier despair melt away in the warmth of this encouraging turn of events.

Wu returned to the stolen Italian immigration data. The first Vidulum employee had listed Hotel Imperiale, the same hotel in which Wells had resided, on his immigration form. Hopefully, this declaration, unlike Wu’s, had been truthful. The second man hadn’t listed a Rome address. Wu accessed social media networks to obtain a photograph of each man. He brought up their profile pictures and sent copies to his phone for easy reference.

Settling back into his chair after the long day’s research, Wu’s mood improved from cautiously optimistic to practically giddy. He could see the path clearly: make contact with the first Vidulum employee and propose the exchange. The transaction could proceed as if Wells’ murder had never happened.