The Atlantis Code (25 page)

Patrizio Gallardo bulled through the port as he folded and pocketed his cell phone. He picked up the pace as he spotted the freighter,
Winding Star
, lying at anchorage about three hundred meters away.

According to his informant’s report, Lourds and his party were nearby.

Four of his men walked with him. All of them had weapons tucked beneath their coats.

A police car pulled into the street beside Gallardo. Two uniformed policemen sat up front. A man in plainclothes sat in the back.

Gallardo’s personal radar for policemen jangled. Instinctively, he turned toward a side street. They’d left a hell of a mess in Moscow, and he had to wonder if it was coming back to haunt him.

Brakes squeaked out on the street. A motor changed pitch.

“The police car is coming after us,” one of the men said.

“Break off,” Gallardo directed. “Cover me if they pick me up.” He kept walking, but he listened intently as the tires of the approaching car crunched across loose gravel.

A voice addressed Gallardo in Russian. He ignored it. A lot of the sailors who came to the port didn’t speak Russian.

“Sir,” a man called out in English this time.

Gallardo continued without pause. Some sailors didn’t speak English.

Car doors opened. Footsteps ran after him.

Calmly, Gallardo reached through the opening in his coat pocket for the 9 mm pistol holstered on his hip. If the police were looking for him, they weren’t just going to ask him a few questions.

A hand fell onto Gallardo’s shoulder.

“Sir,” the policeman said.

Gallardo stopped suddenly and turned. The movement caught the policeman off guard. Gallardo had his pistol against the policeman’s stomach before the man knew what was going on. Holding his left hand behind the man’s head so he could use him as a shield, Gallardo fired three times in quick succession. He would have fired at least one more time, but the pistol’s action jammed on the folds of the coat.

The harsh
cracks
of the pistol filled the alley.

The policeman staggered and slumped against Gallardo. The young man’s features went wide with shock.

The plainclothes inspector and the policeman tried to get out of the car with their weapons drawn. DiBenedetto walked up behind the police inspector almost casually, put a pistol to the back of the man’s head, and blew his brains out.

Realizing the danger he was in, the driver tried to turn around. DiBenedetto shot the policeman in the face twice and kicked him to the ground.

When Gallardo pushed the dead man away from him, the corpse hit the ground. A rectangle of plastic on the man’s left sleeve caught Gallardo’s eyes. He knelt for a closer look.

The rectangle contained a photograph of him. It was the same kind of setup they’d used to get the Russian professor.

“Patrizio,” DiBenedetto called. He held up the plainclothes inspector’s arm. Blood covered much of it, but the plastic rectangle was visible.

They knew who he was.

The cold realization twisted in Gallardo’s stomach. He didn’t know how they had identified him. He’d been careful most of his life, but the police had jailed him a couple of times.

He dropped the dead man’s arm and stood. He opened his coat and freed the pistol. Working quickly, he slipped the magazine free and replaced the spent cartridges.

“We have to get out of here,” DiBenedetto said. “The shots will draw more police, and they’re already searching for you.”

Gallardo nodded and pushed his breath out. “I know. Let’s see if we can find the professor first.”

“Where’s Natasha?” Leslie asked.

Turning his attention from the big ships out in the harbor, Lourds looked at the small store where Natasha had been standing only moments ago. She wasn’t there now.

“She was at the phone,” Gary said. He’d been filming the harbor.

“Well she’s not there now.” Leslie looked at her watch. “When are we supposed to meet with the ship’s captain?”

“At ten thirty,” Viktor said. He looked calm and confident.

Worry gnawed at Lourds’s thoughts. If Natasha had gotten a clue to her sister’s killers, would she tell them? Or would she simply act and leave them? He was pretty sure she would act independently. Natasha obviously didn’t care about the history involved.

“There she is,” Gary said. He pointed at a building just across the street.

Lourds looked and saw Natasha chatting with a middle-aged man who looked rather shabby. Lourds guessed that the man was probably a dock-worker, but didn’t know why the man would be loitering when there was work to be done.

The man gave Natasha a cigarette. She leaned in for a light from the lighter cupped in his hands. Without warning, she stiff-armed the man in the throat and sent him to his knees. A spinning sidekick dropped the man to the ground.

“Bollocks,” Leslie said. “What the bloody hell did she do that for?”

Lourds ran over to Natasha as she crouched down and started going through the man’s pockets.

“What are you doing?” Lourds demanded.

Natasha took a cell phone from the man’s pocket and tossed it to Lourds. “He’s been keeping you under observation.”

The implication staggered Lourds. There was so much about the fugitive lifestyle that he didn’t know. And he had precious little time to learn.

He stared around at the street. Several pedestrians crossed the street to avoid the scene.

“Maybe you could have waited for a more public area to pull your ambush,” Leslie said.

“He was talking to someone on the phone.” Natasha took out a wallet, shoved it into her coat pocket, and then found a packet of pictures in his shirt pocket. When she fanned them out like playing cards, Lourds’s, Leslie’s, and Natasha’s photographs were there.

“He was definitely looking for you,” Viktor said. He waved his hands. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”

Natasha abandoned the unconscious man. “Do you know him?” she asked.

Viktor shook his head and took off down an alley.

Before Lourds could move, gunshots rang out only a short distance away. A short time after that, police Klaxons blared to strident life. By then Lourds and the others were moving swiftly through the dockyards.

Winding Star
hailed out of South America. A lot of pirate ships did, Lourds knew. Modern-day pirates flew flags of convenience, and it was mostly convenient to fly flags out of South America. It had been amusing to note how many landlocked South American countries hosted veritable navies out around the world.

All the ship’s owner or the corporation had to do was pay a fee to the country, and they were officially recognized as a ship from that country. As a result, they were afforded international protection, privileges, and rights. They couldn’t be boarded by police of any other nationality absent just cause without risking an international incident.

Viktor made quick introductions to the lantern-jawed first mate, a man called Yakov Oistrakh. He was in his forties and had scars to show for his years at sea.

“Welcome aboard,” Oistrakh greeted as he made the fat envelope Viktor gave him disappear beneath his coat.

“We should get belowdeck quickly. I’m anticipating some trouble,” Lourds said.

“The gunshots?” Oistrakh raised an eyebrow.

“Perhaps they’re on our account. Men are looking for us.”

“But of course,” the first mate said. “That is why you are coming with us,
nyet
?”

“It is,” Natasha replied. She gave Lourds a shove and got him moving.

“You’ll find no trouble here, Professor Lourds,” Oistrakh said. “We have every right to defend our ship and all those aboard it. Once you are on our deck, you are—in effect—in another country. They will have to have proper documentation to take you. The captain and I were told that the men pursuing you had no such paper.”

“That’s correct,” Natasha said.

Lourds gripped the rope sides of the gangplank and walked up the steep incline. He looked back over his shoulder several times.

Farther down the docks, several police cars converged on an alley between warehouses. The action drew a large group of spectators.

A couple moments later, winded from the long, steep climb, Lourds stood in the stern and looked back at the docks. A radio in the hands of a crewman crackled only a few feet away. Russian voices talked quickly, and Lourds picked up enough of the conversation to realize the man held a police scanner.

“Do you know what’s happening?” Lourds asked the man in Russian.

The crewman, stocky and gray-haired, shrugged. “Some policemen were shot.”

“Professor Lourds,” Oistrakh said, “if you don’t mind me saying so, I think you and your friends would be better off in the galley. You’re too much in the open up here.”

“He’s right,” Natasha said. “A sniper on the rooftop, if Gallardo is so inclined, can put an end to your pursuit of the bell.”

“Who’s Gallardo?” Leslie asked.

“The man who has chased us from Moscow.”

“How did—?”

Oistrakh motioned them along like children. “No more talking. You can talk down in the galley.”

Reluctantly, Lourds went.

Gallardo moved at almost a run with DiBenedetto at his side. The other men trailed only a few feet behind. Gallardo cursed the circumstances that had brought him to this. He was exposed. The police knew who he was.

Thankfully, over the years, Gallardo had done business with the black marketers that did business out of Odessa. There were places he could hide. He went to one of them now.

The bar was one of several that served the needs of the ships’ crews. Neon signs hung in the windows.

Gallardo climbed the short flight of steps and went through the door into the dark smoke-filled interior. Only a few customers lingered at the bar and in the booths. Televisions showing sports channels hung over the bars and in the corners.

Mikhail Richter stood at his customary spot by the bar. He was fat and shaved his head but wore a bushy beard. He had an evil-smelling cigar clamped between his teeth. An apron hung from his waist. Two beautiful women worked the bar under his watchful eye.

“Ah, Patrizio,” Mikhail greeted. “How have you been?”

“Busy,” Gallardo answered. “I don’t have time to talk. I need to use the back door.”

Mikhail nodded at one of the men sitting near the door. The man got up and walked outside.

“A moment,” Mikhail told Gallardo. “If no one comes this way, then I will let you go.”

If no one comes after me, I don’t need your way out
. Gallardo blew out an angry breath. But he bellied up to the bar and accepted the glass of beer one of the women gave him at Mikhail’s instruction.

The man Mikhail had sent outside came back in. He shot Mikhail a look and shook his head.

“You are in luck, Patrizio. Come this way.” Mikhail waved them behind the bar.

Gallardo and his men followed the big man into the back storeroom, then down the stairs to the basement. Mikhail switched on the naked lightbulb that hung from the ceiling. Pale yellow light filled the room.

Across the room, Mikhail rolled a stack of beer kegs out of the way. He pushed a section of the wall, and a stone slab at his feet slid aside to reveal carved stone stairs that corkscrewed downward.

Much of Odessa’s foundations were limestone. As such, it was easily mined. Taking advantage of the local rock, many people quarried the stone for use in buildings and homes throughout the area. Later, when the need arose and smuggling became the highest-paying profession, tunnels were built to connect the mines and create catacombs to store and hide goods.

“Here.” Mikhail took a lantern from the storeroom.

Gallardo touched his lighter to the wick and pulled the hurricane glass back down. When the flame was properly adjusted and burned well, he stepped down into the bowels of the earth.

Lourds and his companions had evaded him for the moment, but Gallardo’s team still had their means of tracking them. However, it was going to be a long time before Gallardo did business within Russia.

Hopefully Lourds wouldn’t be staying in the area. That would be a problem.

PORTO DI VENEZIA
VENICE, ITALY
AUGUST 28, 2009

Lourds sat in the transport boat setting out from
Winding Star
and looked out over the city. The stink of the semi-stagnant water took away some of the allure, but there was nothing grander than Venice in his mind. Late morning hung purple and gold in the east, but tourists already filled the streets and canals.

“You’re smiling,” Leslie told him. She sat beside him on the bench seat. Every now and again the chop of the waves rolled their bodies together in a manner that was altogether too pleasing and too tempting.

“Am I?” Lourds asked. He felt his face as if to find out for himself. But he
was
smiling, of course. “It must be the company.”