The Broker (33 page)

This was it. It was happening. There was no turning back now.

The first stop was the small village of Bazzano, fifteen kilometers west of Bologna. Marco got off the bus and did not get back on. Again, he hid in the restroom of the station until the bus was gone, then crossed the street to a bar where he ordered a beer and asked the bartender about the nearest hotel.

Over his second beer he asked about the train
station, and learned that Bazzano did not have one. Only buses, said the bartender.

Albergo Cantino was near the center of the village, five or six blocks away. It was dark when he arrived at the front desk, with no bags, something that did not go unnoticed by the signora who handled things.

“I’d like a room,” he said in Italian.

“For how many nights?”

“Only one.”

“The rate is fifty-five euros.”

“Fine.”

“Your passport, please.”

“Sorry, but I lost it.”

Her plucked and painted eyebrows arched in great suspicion, then she began shaking her head. “Sorry.”

Marco laid two hundred-euro bills on the counter in front of her. The bribe was obvious—just take the cash, no paperwork, and give me a key.

More shaking, more frowning.

“You must have a passport,” she said. Then she folded her arms across her chest, jerked her chin upward, braced for the next exchange. There was no way she was going to lose.

Outside, Marco walked the streets of the strange town. He found a bar and ordered coffee; no more alcohol, he had to keep his wits.

“Where can I find a taxi?” he asked the bartender.

“At the bus station.”

______

BY
9:00 p.m. Luigi was walking the floors of his apartment, waiting for Marco to return next door. He
called Francesca and she reported that they had studied that afternoon; in fact they’d had a delightful lesson. Great, he thought.

His disappearance was part of the plan, but Whitaker and Langley thought it would take a few more days. Had they lost him already? That quickly? There were now five agents very close by—Luigi, Zellman, Krater, and two others sent from Milano.

Luigi had always questioned the plan. In a city the size of Bologna it was impossible to maintain physical surveillance of a person twenty-four hours a day. Luigi had argued almost violently that the only way for the plan to work was to stash Backman away in a small village where his movements were limited, his options few, and his visitors much more visible. That had been the original plan, but the details had been abruptly changed in Washington.

At 9:12, a buzzer quietly went off in the kitchen. He hurried to the monitors in the kitchen. Marco was home. His front door was opening. Luigi stared at the digital image from the hidden camera in the ceiling of the living room next door.

Two strangers—not Marco. Two men in their thirties, dressed like regular guys. They closed the door quickly, quietly, professionally, then began looking around. One carried a small black bag of some sort.

They were good, very good. To pick the lock of the safe house they had to be very good.

Luigi smiled with excitement. With a little luck, his cameras were about to record Marco getting nabbed.

Maybe they would kill him right there in the living room, captured on film. Perhaps the plan would work after all.

He flipped the audio switches and increased the volume. Language was crucial here. Where were they from? What was their tongue? There were no sounds, though, as they moved about silently. They whispered once or twice, but he could barely hear it.

27

THE TAXI MADE AN ABRUPT STOP ON VIA GRAMSCI,
near the bus and train stations. From the backseat, Marco handed over enough cash, then ducked between two parked cars and was soon lost in the darkness. His escape from Bologna had been very brief indeed, but then it wasn’t exactly over. He zigzagged out of habit, looping back, watching his own trail.

On Via Minzoni he moved quickly under the porticoes and stopped at her apartment building. He didn’t have the luxury of second thoughts, of hesitating or guessing. He rang twice, desperately hoping that Francesca, and not Signora Altonelli, would answer. “Who is it?” came that lovely voice. “Francesca, it’s me, Marco. I need some help.” A very slight pause, then, “Yes, of course.” She met him at her door on the second floor and invited him in. Much to his dismay, Signora Altonelli was still there, standing in the kitchen door with a hand towel, watching his entrance very closely.

“Are you all right?” Francesca asked in Italian.

“English, please,” he said, looking and smiling at her mother.

“Yes, of course.”

“I need a place to stay tonight. I can’t get a room because I have no passport. I can’t even bribe my way into a small hotel.”

“That’s the law in Europe, you know.”

“Yes, I’m learning.”

She waved at the sofa, then turned to her mother and asked her to make some coffee. They sat down. He noticed she was barefoot and moving about without the cane, though she still needed it. She wore tight jeans and a baggy sweater and looked as cute as a coed.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” she said.

“It’s a complicated story and I can’t tell you most of it. Let’s just say that I don’t feel very safe right now, that I really need to leave Bologna, as soon as possible.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m not sure. Somewhere out of Italy, out of Europe, to a place where I’ll hide again.”

“How long will you hide?”

“A long time. I’m not sure.”

She stared at him coldly, without blinking. He stared back because even when cold, the eyes were beautiful. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Well, I’m certainly not Marco Lazzeri.”

“What are you running from?”

“My past, and it’s rapidly catching up with me. I’m not a criminal, Francesca. I was once a lawyer. I got in some trouble. I served my time. I’ve been fully pardoned. I’m not a bad guy.”

“Why is someone after you?”

“It was a business deal six years ago. Some very nasty people are not happy with how the deal was finished. They blame me. They would like to find me.”

“To kill you?”

“Yes. That’s what they’d like to do.”

“This is very confusing. Why did you come here? Why did Luigi help you? Why did he hire me and Ermanno? I don’t understand.”

“And I can’t answer those questions. Two months ago I was in prison, and I thought I would be there for another fourteen years. Suddenly, I’m free. I was given a new identity, brought here, hidden first in Treviso, now Bologna. I think they want to kill me here.”

“Here! In Bologna!”

He nodded and looked toward the kitchen as Signora Altonelli appeared with a tray of coffee, and also a pear torta that had not yet been sliced. As she placed it delicately on a small plate for Marco, he realized that he had not eaten since lunch.

Lunch with Luigi. Lunch with the fake fire and the stolen smartphone. He thought of Neal again and worried about his safety.

“It’s delicious,” he said to her mother in Italian. Francesca was not eating. She watched every move he made, every bite, every sip of coffee. When her mother went back to the kitchen, she said, “Who does Luigi work for?”

“I’m not sure. Probably the CIA. You know the CIA?”

“Yes. I read spy novels. The CIA put you here?”

“I think the CIA got me out of prison, out of the country, and here to Bologna where they’ve hidden me in
a safe house while they try and figure out what to do with me.”

“Will they kill you?”

“Maybe.”

“Luigi?”

“Possibly.”

She placed her cup on the table and fiddled with her hair for a while. “Would you like some water?” she asked as she got to her feet.

“No thanks.”

“I need to move a little,” she said as she carefully placed weight on her left foot. She walked slowly into the kitchen, where things were quiet for a moment before an argument broke out. She and her mother were disagreeing rather heatedly, but they were forced to do so in loud, tense whispers.

It dragged on for a few minutes, died down, then flared up as neither side seemed ready to yield. Finally, Francesca came limping back with a small bottle of San Pellegrino and took her place on the sofa.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“I told her you wanted to sleep here tonight. She misunderstood.”

“Come on. I’ll sleep in the closet. I don’t care.”

“She’s very old-fashioned.”

“Is she staying here tonight?”

“She is now.”

“Just give me a pillow. I’ll sleep on the kitchen table.”

Signora Altonelli was a different person when she returned to remove the coffee tray. She glared at Marco as if he’d already molested her daughter. She glared at
Francesca as if she wanted to slap her. She huffed around the kitchen for a few minutes, then retired somewhere back in the apartment.

“Are you sleepy?” Francesca asked.

“No. You?”

“No. Let’s talk.”

“Okay.”

“Tell me everything.”

______

HE
slept a few hours on the sofa, and was awakened by Francesca tapping on his shoulder. “I have an idea,” she said. “Follow me.”

He followed her to the kitchen, where a clock read 4:15. On the counter by the sink was a disposable razor, a can of shaving cream, a pair of eyeglasses, and a bottle of hair something or other—he couldn’t translate it. She handed him a small burgundy leather case and said, “This is a passport. Giovanni’s.”

He almost dropped it. “No, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can. He won’t be needing it. I insist.” Marco slowly opened it and looked at the distinguished face of a man he’d never meet. The expiration date was seven months away, so the photo was almost five years old. He found the birthday—Giovanni was now sixty-eight years old, a good twenty years older than his wife.

During the cab ride back from Bazzano, he’d thought of nothing but a passport. He’d thought about stealing one from an unsuspecting tourist. He’d thought about buying one somewhere on the black market but had
no idea where to go. And he’d pondered Giovanni’s, one that, sadly, was about to be useless. Null and void.

But he’d dismissed the thought for fear of endangering Francesca. What if he got caught? What if an immigration guard at an airport got suspicious and called his supervisor over? But his biggest fear was getting caught by the people who were chasing him. The passport could implicate her, and he would never do that.

“Are you sure?” he asked. Now that he was holding the passport he really wanted to keep it.

“Please, Marco, I want to help. Giovanni would insist.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“We have work to do. There’s a bus for Parma that leaves in two hours. It would be a safe way out of town.”

“I want to get to Milano,” he said.

“Good idea.”

She took the passport and opened it. They studied the photo of her husband. “Let’s start with that thing around your mouth,” she said.

Ten minutes later the mustache and goatee were gone, his face completely shaven. She held a mirror for him as he hovered over the kitchen sink. Giovanni at sixty-three had less gray hair than Marco at fifty-two, but then he’d not had the experience of a federal indictment and six years in prison.

He assumed the hair coloring was something she used, but he was not about to ask. It promised results in an hour. He sat in a chair facing the table with a towel draped over his shoulders while she gently worked the solution through his hair. Very little was said. Her mother was
asleep. Her husband was still and quiet and heavily medicated.

Not long ago Giovanni the professor had worn round tortoiseshell eyeglasses, light brown, quite the academic look, and when Marco put them on and studied his new look he was startled at the change. His hair was much darker, his eyes much different. He hardly recognized himself.

“Not bad” was her assessment of her own work. “It will do for now.”

She brought in a navy corduroy sports coat, with well-worn patches on the elbows. “He’s about two inches shorter than you,” she said. The sleeves needed another inch, and the jacket would’ve been tight through the chest, but Marco was so thin these days that anything would swallow him.

“What’s your real name?” she said as she tugged on the sleeves and adjusted the collar.

“Joel.”

“I think you should travel with a briefcase. It will look normal.”

He couldn’t argue. Her generosity was overwhelming, and he needed every damned bit of it. She left, then came back with a beautiful old briefcase, tan leather with a silver buckle.

“I don’t know what to say,” Marco mumbled.

“It’s Giovanni’s favorite, a gift from me twenty years ago. Italian leather.”

“Of course.”

“If you get caught somehow with the passport, what will you say?” she asked.

“I stole it. You’re my tutor. I was in your home as a
guest. I managed to find the drawer with your documents, and I stole your husband’s passport.”

“You’re a good liar.”

“At one time, I was one of the best. If I get caught, Francesca, I will protect you. I promise. I will tell lies that will baffle everyone.”

“You won’t get caught. But use the passport as little as possible.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll destroy it as soon as I can.”

“Do you need money?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? I have a thousand euros here.”

“No, Francesca, but thanks.”

“You’d better hurry.”

He followed her to the front door where they stopped and looked at each other. “Do you spend much time online?” he asked.

“A little each day.”

“Check out Joel Backman, start with
The Washington Post
. There’s a lot of stuff there, but don’t believe everything you read. I’m not the monster they’ve created.”

“You’re not a monster at all, Joel.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

She took his right hand and squeezed it with both of hers. “Will you ever return to Bologna?” she asked. It was more of an invitation than a question.