The Broker (32 page)

He’d have to find the friends first.

It was a dream that would not come true.

With Luigi’s very limited cell phone he called Ermanno and canceled their morning session. Then he called Luigi and explained that he didn’t feel like studying.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. I just need a break.”

“That’s fine, Marco, but we’re paying Ermanno to teach you, okay? You need to study every day.”

“Drop it, Luigi. I’m not studying today.”

“I don’t like this.”

“And I don’t care. Suspend me. Kick me out of school.”

“Are you upset?”

“No, Luigi, I’m fine. It’s a beautiful day, springtime in Bologna, and I’m going for a long walk.”

“Where?”

“No thanks, Luigi. I don’t want company.”

“What about lunch?”

Hunger pains shot through Marco’s stomach. Lunch with Luigi was always delicious and he always grabbed the check. “Sure.”

“Let me think. I’ll call you back.”

“Sure, Luigi. Ciao.”

They met at twelve-thirty at Caffè Atene, an ancient dive in an alley, down a few steps from street level. It was a tiny place, with small square tables practically touching each other. The waiters jostled around with trays
of food held high overhead. Chefs yelled from the kitchen. The cramped dining room was smoky, loud, and packed with hungry people who enjoyed talking at full volume as they ate. Luigi explained that the restaurant had been around for centuries, tables were impossible to get, and the food was, of course, superb. He suggested they share a plate of calamari to get things started.

After a morning of arguing with himself up at San Luca, Marco had decided not to tell Luigi about his encounter with the FBI. At least not then, not that morning. He might do it the next day, or the next, but for the moment he was still sorting things out. His principal reason for holding back was that he did not want to pack up and run again, not on Luigi’s terms.

If he ran, he would be alone.

He couldn’t begin to imagine why the FBI would be in Bologna, evidently without the knowledge of Luigi and whoever he was working for. He was assuming Luigi knew nothing of their presence. He certainly seemed to be much more concerned with the menu and the wine list. Life was good. Everything was normal.

The lights went out. Suddenly, Caffè Atene was completely dark, and in the next instant a waiter with a tray of someone’s lunch came crashing across their table, yelling and cursing and spilling himself onto both Luigi and Marco. The legs of the antique table buckled and its edge crashed hard onto Marco’s lap. At about the same time, a foot or something hit him hard on the left shoulder. Everyone was yelling. Glass was breaking. Bodies were getting shoved, then from the kitchen someone screamed, “Fire!”

The scramble outside and onto the street was
completed without serious injury. The last person out was Marco, who ducked low to avoid the stampede while searching for his navy blue Silvio bag. As always, he had hung its strap over the back of his chair, with the bag resting so close to his body he could usually feel it. It had disappeared in the melee.

The Italians stood in the street and stared in disbelief at the café. Their lunch was in there, half eaten and now being ruined. Finally, a thin light puff of smoke emerged and made its way through the door and into the air. A waiter could be seen running by the front tables with a fire extinguisher. Then some more smoke, but not much.

“I lost my bag,” Marco said to Luigi as they watched and waited.

“The blue one?”

How many bags do I carry around, Luigi? “Yes, the blue one.” He already had suspicions that the bag had been snatched.

A small fire truck with an enormous siren arrived, slid to a stop, and kept wailing as the firemen raced inside. Minutes passed, and the Italians began to drift away. The decisive ones left to find lunch elsewhere while there was still time. The others just kept gawking at this horrible injustice.

The siren was finally neutralized. Evidently the fire was too, and without the need for water being sprayed all over the restaurant. After an hour of discussion and debate and very little firefighting, the situation was under control. “Something in the restroom,” a waiter yelled to one of his friends, one of the few remaining weakened and unfed patrons. The lights were back on.

They allowed them back inside to get their coats. Some who’d left in search of other meals were returning to get their things. Luigi became very helpful in the hunt for Marco’s bag. He discussed the situation with the headwaiter, and before long half the staff was scouring the restaurant. Among the excited chatter, Marco heard a waiter say something about a “smoke bomb.”

The bag was gone, and Marco knew it.

They had a panino and a beer at a sidewalk café, under the sun where they could watch pretty girls stroll by. Marco was preoccupied with the theft, but he worked hard to appear unconcerned.

“Sorry about the bag,” Luigi said at one point.

“No big deal.”

“I’ll get you another cell phone.”

“Thanks.”

“What else did you lose?”

“Nothing. Just some maps of the city, some aspirin, a few euros.”

In a hotel room a few blocks away, Zellman and Krater had the bag on the bed, its contents neatly arranged. Other than the Ankyo smartphone, there were two maps of Bologna, both well marked and well used but revealing little, four $100 bills, the cell phone Luigi had loaned him, a bottle of aspirin, and the owner’s manual for the Ankyo.

Zellman, the more agile computer whiz of the two, plugged the smartphone into an Internet access jack and was soon fiddling with the menu. “This is good stuff,” he was saying, quite impressed with Marco’s gadget. “The absolute latest toy on the market.”

Not surprisingly, he was stopped by the password.
They would have to dissect it at Langley. With his laptop, he e-mailed a message to Julia Javier, passing along the serial number and other information.

Within two hours of the theft, a CIA agent was sitting in the parking lot outside Chatter in suburban Alexandria, waiting for the store to open.

26

FROM A DISTANCE HE WATCHED HER SHUFFLE ALONG
gamely, bravely, with her cane down the sidewalk beside Via Minzoni. He followed and was soon fifty feet away. Today she wore brown suede boots, no doubt for the support. The boots had low heels. Flat shoes would’ve been more comfortable, but then she was Italian and fashion always took priority. The light brown skirt stopped at her knees. She was wearing a tight wool sweater, bright red in color, and it was the first time he’d seen her when she wasn’t bundled up for cold weather. No overcoat to hide her really nice figure.

She was walking cautiously and limping slightly, but with a determination that gave him heart. It was just coffee at Nino’s, for an hour or two of Italian. And it was all for him!

And the money.

For a moment he thought about her money. Whatever the dire situation with her poor husband, and her seasonal work as a tour guide, she managed to dress
stylishly and live in a beautifully decorated apartment. Giovanni had been a professor. Perhaps he’d saved carefully over the years, and now his illness was straining their budget.

Whatever. Marco had his own problems. He’d just lost $400 in cash and his only lifeline to the outside world. People who weren’t supposed to know his whereabouts now knew his exact address. Nine hours earlier he’d heard his real name used on Via Fondazza.

He slowed and allowed her to enter Nino’s, where she was again greeted like a beloved member of the family by Nino’s boys. Then he circled the block to give them time to get her situated, to fuss over her, bring her coffee, chat for a moment and catch up on the neighborhood gossip. Ten minutes after she arrived, he walked through the door and got bear-hugged by Nino’s youngest son. A friend of Francesca’s was a friend for life.

Her moods changed so much that Marco did not know what to expect. He was still touched by the warmth of yesterday, but he knew that the indifference could return today. When she smiled and grabbed his hand and started all the cheek pecking he knew instantly the lesson would be the highlight of a rotten day.

When they were finally alone he asked about her husband. Things had not changed. “It’s only a matter of days,” she said with stiff lip, as if she’d already accepted death and was ready for the grieving.

He asked about her mother, Signora Altonelli, and got a full report. She was baking a pear torta, one of Giovanni’s favorites, just in case he got a whiff of it from the kitchen.

“And how was your day?” she asked.

It would be impossible to fictionalize a worse set of occurrences. From the shock of hearing his real name barked through the darkness, to being the victim of a carefully staged theft, he couldn’t imagine a worse day.

“A little excitement during lunch,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

He described his hike up to San Luca, to the spot where she fell, her bench, the views, the canceled session with Ermanno, lunch with Luigi, the fire but not the loss of his bag. She had not noticed the absence of it until he told the story.

“There’s so little crime in Bologna,” she said, half apologetic. “I know Caffè Atene. It’s not a place for thieves.”

These were probably not Italians, he wanted to say, but managed to nod gravely as if to say: Yes, yes, what’s the world coming to?

When the small talk was over, she switched gears like a stern professor and said she was in the mood to tackle some verbs. He said he was not, but his moods were unimportant. She drilled him on the future tense of abitare (to live) and vedere (to see). Then she made him weave both verbs in all tenses into a hundred random sentences. Far from being distracted, she pounced on any wayward accent. A grammatical mistake prompted a quick reprimand, as if he’d just insulted the entire country.

She had spent the day penned up in her apartment, with a dying husband and a busy mother. The lesson was her only chance to release some energy. Marco, however,
was exhausted. The stress of the day was taking its toll, but Francesca’s high-octane demands took his mind off his fatigue and confusion. One hour passed quickly. They recharged with more coffee, and she launched into the murky and difficult world of the subjunctive—present, imperfect, and past perfect. Finally, he began to founder. She tried to prop him up with reassurances that the subjunctive sinks a lot of students. But he was tired and ready to sink.

He surrendered after two hours, thoroughly drained and in need of another long walk. It took fifteen minutes to say goodbye to Nino’s boys. He happily escorted her back to her apartment. They hugged and pecked cheeks and promised to study tomorrow.

If he walked as directly as possible, his apartment was twenty-five minutes away. But he had not walked directly to any place in more than a month.

He began to wander.

______

AT
4:00 p.m., eight of the
kidon
were on Via Fondazza, at various points—one drinking coffee at a sidewalk café, three strolling aimlessly a block apart, one cruising back and forth on a scooter, and one looking out a window from the third floor.

Half a mile away, outside the central city, on the second floor above a flower shop owned by an elderly Jew, the four other members of the
kidon
were playing cards and waiting nervously. One, Ari, was one of the top English interrogators within the Mossad.

They played with little conversation. The night ahead would be long and unpleasant.

______

THROUGHOUT
the day, Marco had struggled with the question of whether to return to Via Fondazza. The FBI boys could still be there, ready for another ugly confrontation. He felt sure they would not be stiff-armed so easily. They wouldn’t simply call it quits and catch a plane. They had superiors back home who demanded results.

Though far from certain, he had a strong hunch that Luigi was behind the theft of his Silvio bag. The fire had not really been a fire; it was more of a diversion, a reason for the lights to go off and a cover for someone to grab the bag.

He didn’t trust Luigi because he trusted no one.

They had his cute little smartphone. Neal’s codes were in there somewhere. Could they be broken? Could the trail lead to his son? Marco had not the slightest idea how those things worked, what was possible, what was impossible.

The urge to leave Bologna was overwhelming. Where to go and how to get there were questions he had not sorted out. He was rambling now, and he felt vulnerable, almost helpless. Every face glancing at him was someone else who knew his real name. At a crowded bus stop he cut the line and climbed on, not sure where he was going. The bus was packed with weary commuters, shoulder to shoulder as they bounced along. Through the windows he watched the foot traffic under the marvelous crowded porticoes of the city center.

At the last second he jumped off, then walked three blocks along Via San Vitale until he saw
another bus. He rode in circles for almost an hour, then finally stepped off near the train station. He drifted with another crowd, then darted across Via dell’ Indipendenza to the bus station. Inside he found the departures, saw that one was leaving in ten minutes for Piacenza, an hour and a half away with five stops in between. He bought a ticket for thirty euros and hid in the restroom until the last minute. The bus was almost full. The seats were wide with high headrests, and as the bus moved slowly through heavy traffic, Marco almost nodded off. Then he caught himself. Sleeping was not permissible.

This was it—the escape he’d been contemplating since the first day in Bologna. He’d become convinced that to survive he would be forced to disappear, to leave Luigi behind and make it on his own. He had often wondered exactly how and when the flight would begin. What would trigger it? A face? A threat? Would he take a bus or train, cab or plane? Where would he go? Where would he hide? Would his rudimentary Italian get him through it? How much money would he have at the time?