Into his radio, Dufort ordered his team to wait until they had a clean shot at the man — or better yet, were in a position to take him in.
A moment later, a priest stepped out of the Santa Margherita d'Antiochia and, having spotted the woman’s body and the blood, had determined to challenge the man.
Spooked, the man froze for an instant, and then turned to run.
Dufort shouted into his mike, “He’s on the move! Take him out!”
He squeezed the trigger, sending a .338 Lapua Magnum round down the barrel at a speed of 3100 feet per second. The shot struck the sand directly behind the running man, sending an explosive spray of sand skyward.
A second shot fired before Dufort had the chance to squeeze the trigger again. It was from another sniper rifle. The shot had gone wide by about six feet, meaning that the owner either was a poor marksman or really far away.
The question was, who even knew he was there, let alone wanted to take a shot at him? The thought was unsettling.
Dufort still had a job to do.
He shifted his aim and fired a second round, but the man was already gone.
Chapter Three
He heard the snap of a rifle shot.
In a fraction of a second, his mind tried to compute all the information coming in and make a decision on his next move, concentrating on the most important questions. Where had the shot fired from? Who fired it? It wasn’t the priest. That was one thing. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had to go on. There was no one else in sight across the harbor, toward the church, that placed his shooter from the opposite direction — most likely somewhere up on the ramparts of the old castle.
It wasn’t a lot to work with, but it was enough to act on before the next shot fired, which came almost an instant later — only this one came from the opposite direction, and unlike the first shot, which had nearly struck him, this one had obviously passed way over his head.
He ducked behind the safety of the multi-colored pastel terraces and started to run east, uphill along Via Visconti into the heart of the small coastal village.
He slowed for a moment to catch his breath. He was still holding the suitcase in his right hand. It suddenly seemed to stand out to him. It wasn’t leather. Instead it was metallic, kind of giving him the impression of the nuclear football — the same sort of thing someone carried around with the US president.
Suddenly he felt the need to get rid of it, as though the case somehow marked him as being a wanted man.
But he couldn’t do that.
Not yet anyway.
The question remained, what was so valuable inside that his hand had been practically locked onto its handle since he woke up?
Would it incriminate or exonerate him?
Fear rose in his throat. He knew he needed to do something. He couldn’t go on carrying the damned thing while he was being hunted. But neither did he want to get rid of it permanently. Somewhere at some stage — if he survived the next few hours — he would need to come back and retrieve it. He felt certain that somewhere, hidden inside, were the answers he needed to find from his past — whatever they might be, he wanted to know.
Still, for the time being, he would need to stash the case.
It wouldn’t take the priest very long to notify the police, and once they had found the body in the rowboat, a massive search would be underway.
His eyes swept the rows of pastel colored tower houses that lined Via Visconti for a place to hide it. He traced the buildings and cobbled street with his eyes, before landing on the drain way. It was roughly the size of the suitcase. He might be able to slip it inside and then retrieve it later. He bent down to examine the opening. It would probably work, but he dismissed the idea almost as soon as he had it. The fact was, if he’d had that thought, so too, would anyone else who had gone in search of it.
And someone would know the truth about his past, even if he didn’t.
No. He needed a better hiding spot.
But where?
He kept moving, his gaze raking the landscape for somewhere to hide the case.
About two hundred yards along Via Visconti he stopped.
There was a small gap between a bright yellow tower house and a teal one. It was barely wide enough to reach into, and far too narrow to squeeze through. About twelve feet up, a horizontal drainpipe blocked one’s vision of the space above.
It was the sort of hiding in plain sight that appealed to him.
He looked up and considered how to reach it.
Taking a deep breath, he stuck his left foot into the gap and tried to stand up. His foothold held. He then slid his left hand into the gap, before rotating it sideways and making a fist. It formed an iron tight wedge in the gap, the same way a rock climber might climb the crack in a mountain.
He placed his other foot higher up on the wall and shifted his weight to it. There was still the problem of moving up while holding onto the suitcase. He tentatively placed it in the crux beneath his chin and his chest. With his now free hand, he reached up and climbed higher by locking that hand into the gap, the same way he had done for the first.
Stopping just below the water pipe, he gripped the handle of the suitcase again and slid it onto the horizontal drainpipe.
The suitcase was clearly visible side on, but he doubted it could be seen from below.
He didn’t wait to find out. He climbed down. A cursory glance upward revealed nothing more than a gap between two tower houses and an almost horizontal pipe.
He grinned.
It was the first bit of luck he’d had all day.
He turned to keep running east.
The man reached Via Roma — roughly three hundred feet away — before two Italian police officers shouted, “Fermare! Polizia!”
In the back of his mind, he realized that he must have been in Italy. It was a small detail, but he felt pitifully grateful to have something at last to grasp onto.
The men hadn’t drawn their weapons, which told him that it wasn’t the police who had taken a shot at him. Even so, they would as soon as they found the dead body, which would happen only minutes after they apprehended him — so that wasn’t an option.
He turned and ran toward the harbor.
The police officers were older and overweight. They shouted at him, and immediately attempted to pursue him. He heard the thump of their heavy boots echoing between the narrow confines of the cobbled stone street — but they were no match for his speed.
His heart pounded.
At the end of the street he reached the harbor. His glance darted toward the rowboat. It was pulled up on the beach, and under the faint glow of a streetlight, revealed the grizzly mess of his past for all to see — possibly even the evidence needed to convict him of the murder he couldn’t remember.
The priest stared at him and pointed. “He’s over there!”
The man turned left and followed a narrow set of masonry stairways that hugged the natural rocky harbor, meandering upward and around the elegant buildings that lined it. The trail narrowed as he climbed toward the point.
He passed an open door, leading into the rocky face of the harbor.
Something in the deep subconscious part of his brain told him there was something wrong with an open door at this time in the morning. People are at home in bed during the dead of night, or if they were working, they would be moving — but no one would leave a door open.
The man’s ears pricked up.
Someone was following him. He darted into a small lookout dug into the mountainside. It was an enclosed section of a rock that overlooked the sea. He stepped inside.
And was greeted by two men with guns.
Neither looked like police officers.