The Broker (7 page)

They found a fourteenth-century monastery near the medieval village of San Gimignano, complete with housekeepers and cooks, even a chauffeur. But on the fourth day of the adventure, Joel received the alarming news that the Senate Appropriations Committee was considering deleting a provision that would wipe out $2 billion for one of his defense-contractor clients. He flew home on a chartered jet and went to work whipping the Senate back into shape. Wife number two stayed behind, where, as he would later learn, she began sleeping with the young chauffeur. For the next week he called daily and promised to return to the villa to finish their vacation, but after the second week she stopped taking his calls.

The appropriations bill was put back together in fine fashion.

A month later she filed for divorce, a raucous contest that would eventually cost him over three million bucks.

And she was his favorite of the three. They were all gone now, all scattered forever. The first, the mother of two of his children, had remarried twice since Joel, and her current husband had gotten rich selling liquid fertilizer in third world countries. She had actually written him in prison, a cruel little note in which she praised the judicial system for finally dealing with one of its biggest crooks.

He couldn’t blame her. She packed up after catching him with a secretary, the bimbo that became wife number two.

Wife number three had jumped ship soon after his indictment.

What a sloppy life. Fifty-two years, and what’s to show for a career of bilking clients, chasing secretaries around the office, putting the squeeze on slimy little politicians, working seven days a week, ignoring three surprisingly stable children, crafting the public image, building the boundless ego, pursuing money money money? What are the rewards for the reckless pursuit of the great American dream?

Six years in prison. And now a fake name because the old one is so dangerous. And about a hundred dollars in his pocket.

Marco? How could he look himself in the mirror every morning and say, “Buon giorno, Marco”?

Sure beat the hell out of “Good morning, Mr. Felon.”

Stennett didn’t as much read the newspaper as he wrestled with it. Under his perusal, it jerked and popped and wrinkled, and at times the driver glanced over in frustration.

A sign said Venice was sixty kilometers to the south, and Joel decided to break the monotony. “I’d like to live in Venice, if that’s all right with the White House.”

The driver flinched and Stennett’s newspaper dropped six inches. The air in the small car was tense for a moment until Stennett managed a grunt and a shrug. “Sorry,” he said.

“I really need to pee,” Joel said. “Can you get authorization to stop for a potty break?”

They stopped north of the town of Conegliano, at a modern roadside servizio. Stennett bought a round of
corporate espressos. Joel took his to the front window where he watched the traffic speed by while he listened to a young couple snipe at each other in Italian. He heard none of the two hundred words he’d tried to memorize. It seemed an impossible task.

Stennett appeared by his side and watched the traffic. “Have you spent much time in Italy?” he asked.

“A month once, in Tuscany.”

“Really? A whole month? Must’ve been nice.”

“Four days actually, but my wife stayed for a month. She met some friends. How about you? Is this one of your hangouts?”

“I move around.” His face was as vague as his answer. He sipped from the tiny cup and said, “Conegliano, known for its Prosecco.”

“The Italian answer to champagne,” Joel said.

“Yes. You’re a drinking man?”

“Haven’t touched a drop in six years.”

“They didn’t serve it in prison?”

“Nope.”

“And now?”

“I’ll ease back into it. It was a bad habit once.”

“We’d better go.”

“How much longer?”

“Not far.”

Stennett headed for the door, but Joel stopped him. “Hey, look, I’m really hungry. Could I get a sandwich for the road?”

Stennett looked at rack of ready-made panini. “Sure.”

“How about two?”

“No problem.”

A27 led south to Treviso, and when it became apparent they would not bypass the city, Joel began to assume the ride was about to end. The driver slowed, made two exits, and they were soon bouncing through the narrow streets of the city.

“What’s the population of Treviso?” Joel asked.

“Eighty-five thousand,” Stennett answered.

“What do you know about the city?”

“It’s a prosperous little city that hasn’t changed much in five hundred years. It was once a staunch ally of Venice back when these towns all fought with each other. We bombed the hell out of it in World War Two. A nice place, not too many tourists.”

A good place to hide, Joel thought. “Is this my stop?”

“Could be.”

A tall clock tower beckoned all the traffic into the center of the city where it inched along around the Piazza dei Signori. Scooters and mopeds zipped between cars, their drivers seemingly fearless. Joel soaked in the quaint little shops—the tabaccheria with racks of newspapers blocking the door, the farmacia with its neon green cross, the butcher with all manner of hams hanging in the window, and of course the tiny sidewalk cafés where all tables were taken with people who appeared content to sit and read and gossip and sip espresso for hours. It was almost 11:00 a.m. What could those people possibly do for a living if they broke for coffee an hour before lunch?

It would be his challenge to find out, he decided.

The nameless driver wheeled into a temporary parking place. Stennett pecked numbers on a cell phone, waited, then spoke quickly in Italian. When he was finished, he pointed through the windshield and said, “You
see that café over there, under the red-and-white awning? Caffè Donati?”

Joel strained from the backseat and said, “Yeah, I got it.”

“Walk in the front door, past the bar on your right, on to the back where there are eight tables. Have a seat, order a coffee, and wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“A man will approach you after about ten minutes. You will do what he says.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Don’t play games, Mr. Backman. We’ll be watching.”

“Who is this man?”

“Your new best friend. Follow him, and you’ll probably survive. Try something stupid, and you won’t last a month.” Stennett said this with a certain smugness, as if he might enjoy being the one who rubbed out poor Marco.

“So it’s adios for us, huh?” Joel said, gathering his bag.

“Arrivederci, Marco, not adios. You have your paperwork?”

“Yes.”

“Then arrivederci.”

Joel slowly got out of the car and began walking away. He fought the urge to glance over his shoulder to make sure Stennett, his protector, was paying attention and still back there, shielding him from the unknown. But he did not turn around. Instead, he tried to look as normal as possible as he strolled down the street carrying a canvas
bag, the only canvas bag he saw at that moment in the center of Treviso.

Stennett was watching, of course. And who else? Certainly his new best friend was over there somewhere, partially hiding behind a newspaper, giving signals to Stennett and the rest of the static. Joel stopped for a second in front of the tabaccheria and scanned the headlines of the Italian newspapers, though he understood not a single word. He stopped because he could stop, because he was a free man with the power and the right to stop wherever he wanted, and to start moving whenever he chose to.

He entered Caffè Donati and was greeted with a soft “Buon giorno” from the young man wiping off the bar.

“Buon giorno,” Joel managed in reply, his first real words to a real Italian. To prevent further conversation, he kept walking, past the bar, past a circular stairway where a sign pointed to a café upstairs, past a large counter filled with beautiful pastries. The back room was dark and cramped and choking under a fog of cigarette smoke. He sat down at one of two empty tables and ignored the glances of the other patrons. He was terrified of the waiter, terrified of trying to order, terrified of being unmasked so early in his flight, and so he just sat with his head down and read his new identity papers.

“Buon giorno,” the young lady said at his left shoulder.

“Buon giorno,” Joel managed to reply. And before she could rattle off anything on the menu, he said, “Espresso.” She smiled, said something thoroughly incomprehensible, to which he replied, “No.”

It worked, she left, and for Joel it was a major victory. No one stared at him as if he was some ignorant foreigner. When she brought the espresso he said, “Grazie,” very softly, and she actually smiled at him. He sipped it slowly, not knowing how long it would have to last, not wanting to finish it so he might be forced to order something else.

Italian whirled around him, the soft incessant chatter of friends gossiping at a rapid-fire pace. Did English sound this fast? Probably so. The idea of learning the language well enough to be able to understand what was being said around him seemed thoroughly impossible. He looked at his paltry little list of two hundred words, then for a few minutes tried desperately to hear a single one of them spoken.

The waitress happened by and asked a question. He gave his standard reply of “No,” and again it worked.

So Joel Backman was having an espresso in a small bar on Via Verde, at the Piazza dei Signori, in the center of Treviso, in the Veneto, in northeast Italy, while back at Rudley Federal Correctional Facility his old pals were still locked down in protective isolation with lousy food and watery coffee and sadistic guards and silly rules and years to go before they could even dream of life on the outside.

Contrary to previous plans, Joel Backman would not die behind bars at Rudley. He would not wither away in mind and body and spirit. He had cheated his tormentors out of fourteen years, and now he sat unshackled in a quaint café an hour from Venice.

Why was he thinking of prison? Because you can’t just walk away from six years of anything without the aftershocks. You carry some of the past with you, regardless
of how unpleasant it was. The horror of prison made his sudden release so sweet. It would take time, and he promised himself to focus on the present. Don’t even think about the future.

Listen to the sounds, the rapid chatter of friends, the laughter, the guy over there whispering into a cell phone, the pretty waitress calling into the kitchen. Take in the smells—the cigarette smoke, the rich coffee, the fresh pastries, the warmth of an ancient little room where locals had been meeting for centuries.

And he asked himself for the hundredth time, Why, exactly, was he here? Why had he been whisked away from prison, then out of the country? A pardon is one thing, but why a full-blown international getaway? Why not hand him his walking papers, let him say so long to dear ol’ Rudley and live his life, same as all the other freshly pardoned criminals?

He had a hunch. He could venture a fairly accurate guess.

And it terrified him.

Luigi appeared from nowhere.

6

LUIGI WAS IN HIS EARLY THIRTIES, WITH DARK SAD EYES
and dark hair half covering his ears, and at least four days’ worth of stubble on his face. He was bundled in some type of heavy barn jacket that, along with the unshaven face, gave him a handsome peasant look. He ordered an espresso and smiled a lot. Joel immediately noticed that his hands and nails were clean, his teeth were straight. The barn jacket and whiskers were part of the act. Luigi had probably gone to Harvard.

His perfect English was accented just enough to convince anyone that he was really an Italian. He said he was from Milan. His Italian father was a diplomat who took his American wife and their two children around the world in service to his country. Joel was assuming Luigi knew plenty about him, so he prodded to learn what he could about his new handler.

He didn’t learn much. Marriage—none. College—Bologna. Studies in the United States—yes, somewhere in the Midwest. Job—government. Which government—couldn’t say. He had an easy smile that he used to deflect
questions he didn’t want to answer. Joel was dealing with a professional, and he knew it.

“I take it you know a thing or two about me,” Joel said.

The smile, the perfect teeth. The sad eyes almost closed when he smiled. The ladies were all over this guy. “I’ve seen the file.”

“The file? The file on me wouldn’t fit in this room.”

“I’ve seen the file.”

“Okay, how long did Jacy Hubbard serve in the U.S. Senate?”

“Too long, I’d say. Look, Marco, we’re not going to relive the past. We have too much to do now.”

“Can I have another name? I’m not crazy about Marco.”

“It wasn’t my choice.”

“Well, who picked Marco?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t me. You ask a lot of useless questions.”

“I was a lawyer for twenty-five years. It’s an old habit.”

Luigi drained what was left of his espresso and placed some euros on the table. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said, standing. Joel lifted his canvas bag and followed his handler out of the café, onto the sidewalk, and down a side street with less traffic. They had walked only a few steps when Luigi stopped in front of the Albergo Campeol. “This is your first stop,” he said.

“What is it?” Joel asked. It was a four-story stucco building wedged between two others. Colorful flags hung above the portico.

“A nice little hotel. ‘Albergo’ means hotel. You can
also use the word ‘hotel’ if you want, but in the smaller cities they like to say albergo.”

“So it’s an easy language.” Joel was looking up and down the cramped street—evidently his new neighborhood.

“Easier than English.”

“We’ll see. How many do you speak?”

“Five or six.”

They entered and walked through the small foyer. Luigi nodded knowingly at the clerk behind the front desk. Joel managed a passable “Buon giorno” but kept walking, hoping to avoid a more involved reply. They climbed three flights of stairs and walked to the end of a narrow hallway. Luigi had the key to room 30, a simple but nicely appointed suite with windows on three sides and a view of a canal below.