She asked, “What?”
“I just remembered that Holland isn’t the country’s real name.”
She shrugged. “Many people call it that.”
“I know. I’m not being pedantic. I’m just surprised that I remembered it. The fact that it stirred some sort of hidden indignation suggests maybe I have some connection to the country. Could that be the case?”
“Not that I know of.”
Sam tried to process the meaning. Failing to do so, he returned to the original question. “Do you know why I was on my way to the Netherlands?”
“No.” She closed her eyes, trying to think back to the conversation. “Wait. You said you had an important meeting at The Hague!”
He arched an eyebrow. “The Hague?”
“You know, the third largest city in the Netherlands?”
“Right,” Sam said, trying to picture the coastal city, but failing to have any visual memory of the place. “The area of the former County of Holland roughly coincides with the two current Dutch provinces of North Holland and South Holland in which it was divided, which together include the Netherlands' three largest cities: the de jure capital city of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, home of Europe's largest port, and the seat of government of The Hague.”
Catarina said, “It’s also inside the traditional region of Holland that has its roots traced back to medieval times.”
“That’s interesting. You think that maybe there’s a connection to why I was so indignant about the use of the country’s misnomer?”
She smiled. “I have no idea.”
Sam asked, “Any chance I mentioned what I was supposed to be doing there?”
She shook her head. “Afraid not.”
“Maybe I was sightseeing?”
“I doubt it. You sounded like whatever it was that you wanted to talk to me about was really important… I tried to talk you into coming here, but you wouldn’t hear of it… you just told me that you had a meeting at The Hague on the fourth, and couldn’t risk missing it.”
“The fourth?” Sam frowned. “What day is it today?”
She paused, as though suddenly considering the date. “It’s the first.”
“Okay, so I have, what… seventy-two hours to find out what’s so important in The Hague?”
“No. It’s already eleven o’clock. That means you’re down to sixty-one.”
Sam thought about that for a moment. “So, I need to find a way to get to The Hague in the next sixty-one hours. It might be difficult without money…”
“I can lend you money for the flight,” she said without hesitation.
“Thanks, but I’m not sure it will do me much good without a passport.”
“No. That might be difficult. We could go down to the US embassy in Florence. We could drive there today and get you an emergency travel passport.”
Sam thought about that. “They’re still going to want to know how I got into the country, where I’ve been, and who knows what I have done since losing my memory? Besides, I don’t have any form of ID. What are they to go on?”
“You sure you don’t have anything? Not even a license in a pocket or something?”
“No. Nothing at all.” Sam paused a beat. “Wait! When I woke up on the rowboat, I was carrying a suitcase.”
“What was in it?”
“I don’t know. It was locked and I didn’t have time to try and break it open with all the… you know, bad guys trying to kill me and all.”
“So where’s the suitcase now?”
“I hid it.”
“Where?”
“There’s a building with 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 — I stashed it up there.”
“All right. I’ll go get it as soon as the morning wave of tourists disappears.”
“Why you and not me?”
“Because no one knows me.”
“Okay, thanks.” Sam grinned. “The tourists… they come in waves?”
“Yeah, the morning train drops off hundreds of tourists at Riomaggiore, where they make their way along the famous Cinque Terra coastal hike. As a result of that influx, and despite your escapades last night leading the polizia to cordon off large sections of Vernazza, there will be hundreds of tourists swarming through the town for the next few hours.”
“So we have a few hours to wait.”
“Afraid so.”
“It’s frustrating when the only thing I know is that I somehow need to be in The Hague in less than three days.”
Catarina sighed. “There’s nothing you can do about it. I mean, if you want you can gamble trying to get it during the peak time, but it’s almost a certainty someone will spot you — and I can’t say what might happen if they do.”
Sam nodded. “I know. I can imagine what would happen if you were caught. With so many polizia around, you would be forced to open the suitcase, and then who knows what they would find — maybe the truth about my past, and maybe something that incriminates me.”
“I doubt it. Whatever’s happened, you’re not a criminal.”
Sam crossed his arms. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because you’re not.”
“What about organized crime?”
She laughed and fixed her gaze on his. “Jesus! You’re serious! Why are you asking?”
“I just need to know. That’s all. I was attacked by three men who I’m pretty certain were part of the Russian mafia. They said I was a bad man and my death wouldn’t be missed by anyone.”
“My god, how did you escape?”
Sam recalled the incident. He’d killed two of them within seconds, with the ease of a trained assassin. He swallowed. “I defended myself and ran off.”
“So you’re worried you might have been part of the mafia?”
“It certainly crossed my mind as a possibility.” There was unexplained guilt in his voice. “After all, you should have seen how well I defended myself. I was barbaric.”
She didn’t recoil at his admission. “Last time I saw you, you had joined the marines. I assume you learned to defend yourself there.”
“Yeah. Maybe. This seemed a little more than just basic training in hand to hand combat.”
“It comes naturally to some people. You’ve obviously retained muscle memory from your time in the marines.”
“But you’re certain I didn’t join the Russian mafia?”
“No way in the world.”
“Why?” Sam persisted. “Is it that impossible to think that my life had changed that much in the past fifteen years?”
“Yes. I find it impossible to believe.”
He met her eye. “How can you be so sure?”
“For a start, I know you…” She grimaced, slightly hurt, and looked away. “Or at least I did, once. Besides, you just simply didn’t have the sort of personality that leads someone to enter the world of organized crime.”
Sam said, “People change.”
She shook her head emphatically. “Not that much. No one changes that much.”
He turned his gaze to avoid her eyes. “There’s something else you should know about me.”
“What?”
Sam swallowed hard. “I’m pretty certain I murdered a girl last night.”
Chapter Eleven
Sam filled her in with what he knew about finding the dead woman on the rowboat with the execution style bullet holes in her head, and the Russian built Makarov semiautomatic handgun in his pants, the fact that he instinctively knew how to disassemble the weapon — and that it was missing two rounds.
“You didn’t kill that woman.” Catarina’s words were emphatic.
Sam arched an eyebrow. “What makes you so sure?”