…"
Adrian grinned. "Na need to be shooting lass, if we right surprise 'em." He pointed. "Jason, you 'n' Maria go back th' way we came. I'll go 'round."
Jason wasn't wild about the idea, but it made more sense than waiting to be surrounded. He nodded, and he and Maria set off down the hill, his hand on the weapon at his back as they descended the stairs.
They had just reached the last step when two men rounded a bend in the path below. Both were red-faced from the exertion. The older of the two, overweight and white-haired, was puffing loudly and was watching carefully where he placed each footfall.
His companion was the first to see Jason and Maria. His right hand went inside his suit jacket. Jason glimpsed a flash of blue steel.
The advantage of carrying a weapon in the small of the back rather than a shoulder holster was that the shooter could assume a firing position without waiting for his gun to come to bear. Jason was in a two-handed stance, the SIG Sauer covering both men, before the other man had cleared his Beretta.
Both of the suited men slowly raised their hands.
Jason turned his head in Maria's direction, unwilling to take his sight off the men for an instant. "Tell them to use their left hands to take their guns out and drop them on the ground."
They complied, the older man speaking angrily as Jason kicked the two automatics well out of reach down the slope.
"He says they are National Security Service and that you will never see the outside of prison if you do not put your gun down immediately and surrender."
Italians knew the second-person form of the verb?
"Ask him to show identification. Slowly."
Before Maria could translate, both men were holding wallets with badges attached. Jason looked carefully, aware that he wouldn't recognize the bogus from the real. Again the older man spoke irately.
"He says you are Jason Peters and you are wanted for questioning by the British and Italian authorities. He also wants to know about an incident that occurred on the highway in Sardinia day before yesterday."
Sardinia? How could he…? The Volvo's tag-the car was registered in Sardinia. Jason leaned closer to read the name on the official ID. From the men's quick response to the request for identification, he suspected one or both understood a fair amount of English. "Please tell Signore Belli he's not exactly in a position to make demands, and ask him what makes him think I'm the person he's looking for."
This time, Maria translated in full before there was a response. Belli jutted out a defiant jaw in a manner reminiscent of pictures Jason had seen of Mussolini. In fact, take away the white hair and he might have been looking at Il Duce himself.
Maria translated. "It is no consequence how he knows who you are. You are arrested."
Jason's gaze followed the line from his gun muzzle to the security man's head. "Maybe. But I'm the one holding the gun." He jabbed it forward in a threatening manner. "And I'm not afraid to use it. Tell him he's got about ten seconds to answer my question."
Jason was now certain the older man understood English. He puffed out his chest in the pose that had become associated with the Italian dictator, as he spoke to Maria.
"He doesn't, er, submit to threats from criminals. To do so would dishonor his country, his service, and himself."
With studied indifference, Jason squeezed off a shot that missed Belli's ear by no more than an inch, close enough that the man could feel its hot breath as it whined by and chipped a piece of rock from the incline behind him. Both Italians were flat on the ground before the first echoes bounced from hill to hill like a volleyed tennis ball.
Maria's eyes were larger than Jason would have imagined nature allowed.
"Tell him the next two will take his ears off one at a time."
Dishonor, it seemed, was preferable to disfigurement.
Belli spoke quickly, shifting an uneasy glance from his prone position from Jason to Maria as he talked.
"The chief of their agency was notified of the body of what appeared to be a Russian in the house in Taormina. Since the bureau I work for is the owner and I had suddenly taken holiday time, they wanted to question me. Then that wreck in Sardinia with all those bullet shells and more dead lying about-he made a connection. You were the only person Interpol suspected of killing Russians, at least outside of Russia, and…"
Jason held up a hand. He had heard enough.
Maria was looking at him warily. "Jason, what are you going to do
…?"
"Do?" A voice came from behind them. Adrian was marching the other two suits in front of a pointed pistol Jason recognized as a government-issue Beretta. The Sten was again slung over his shoulder. One of men looked somewhat worse for the wear. "We'll leave 'em in their bleedin' car an' toss the keys."
"Good idea," Jason concurred.
Moments later the four Italians were stripped of their cell phones and handcuffed inside a black Lancia from which the radio had been removed.
Adrian stuck his head in the open window, making sure all were secure. "Nice 'n' comfy, 'r ye?"
" Vaffancula!" the oldest one muttered.
Adrian grinned. "He's suggestin' I commit an anatomical impossibility."
The tone had suggested as much to Jason. "C'mon; let's get outta here before more show up."
"But they have our license plate number," Maria protested. "Will we not be stopped by the first policeman we see?"
Jason was already climbing into the driver's seat. "It's not the tag that helped them find us, believe me. Besides, isn't Baia just over those hills? We'll be there before dark."
Minutes later, Jason pulled off the pavement beside one of several roadside restaurants, partially shielded from view by a row of plane trees. He waited until two cars, a Smart and a Fiat 1500, parked and disgorged what looked like local workmen.
"On th' way home from work, I'd guess," Adrian said, stuffing his pipe. "Stoppin' by f their pint."
"Grappa's more like it," Jason observed, hoping the pipe wasn't going to get lit until he could get upwind.
He was disappointed. He smelled the sulfur of a match, followed by a sour stench that reminded him of the time Pangloss had gotten too close to a charcoal grill. On second thought, he was maligning the aroma of scorched dog hair.
It was as if Adrian had read his mind. Or seen the wrinkled noses of both the other passengers. "Na' t' worry."
He got out of the car and lay down to look under it.
"There she is!"
He stood, the pipe clinched in his teeth, puffing in exultation. He exhibited a small square of metal about the size of the bar of soap Jason would expect in a hotel bathroom. He trotted off across the parking lot, smoke trailing behind him like a locomotive. He stopped and knelt beside the Fiat.
"What is he doing?" Maria wanted to know.
"Replanting the bug."
Her expression said he might as well have been speaking in Aramaic, Swahili, or jet-propelled Sanskrit.
"The bug, that little black thing he took from under this car. The reason the police didn't have to follow us is because they had a homing device stuck somewhere underneath. Some satellite did their surveillance for them. Good thing about that kind of satellites, though, is that they only 'see' the impulses from the tracking equipment. They don't see whose car it may be attached to."
"But where…?"
"My guess is at the observatory."
"Why not arrest us there?"
"Then they wouldn't know where we were going or if others might be involved in whatever they think we're doing, would they?"
"I guess not. But that car over there, the one Adrian is attaching-"
"Somebody's going to have a real surprise on the way home."
Chapter Thirty-seven