A heel kick to his shin deadened his left leg and he buckled; an uppercut to his chin caught him hard enough to make his eyes roll back. A couple of jabs followed by a right hook, and he crumpled like a dead weight.
I heard sirens approaching and knew I didn’t have long before the place filled with cops. I needed some time alone with this man before he was taken into custody. There was no telling the true extent of Roman Verde’s influence within the local police department, and no guarantee conventional methods of interrogation would yield any useful information.
I grabbed the man’s arms and dragged him toward the place where I knew I could make him talk.
Chapter 49
“Everybody out!” I yelled as I dragged the unconscious Michel into the small commercial kitchen at the back of the restaurant.
The head chef, her assistant and a waitress didn’t need to be told twice. They hurried away through the fire exit. The door had been propped open by a food-waste container and I could see the place opened onto a narrow alleyway that ran behind the neighboring buildings.
I dropped Michel on the floor and shut the door to the restaurant, ignoring the inquiring looks from a man who was brave enough to peer down the service corridor. I locked the interior door but knew it wouldn’t hold long against the police.
The distant sirens grew louder as I ran across the kitchen, dragged the bin away from the fire door and allowed it to swing shut.
I didn’t have long and started with a physical search. I took the man’s phone, tossing his wallet away because it contained nothing but cash and an Automobile Club swipe card.
I searched his pockets and rolled up the sleeves of his lightweight jacket to check for any distinctive markings. When I uncovered his left upper arm, I saw something that stopped me dead.
After a beat, I grabbed my phone and took photos of a tattoo of a fleur-de-lys inside a Jerusalem Cross. I’d seen this marking before in Rome; it signaled the man’s membership of Propaganda Tre, the secret society linked to the Dark Fates that I thought I’d eliminated in the Eternal City.
The sirens were close now, their shrill notes rising above the bubbling sounds from pots on the stove.
I had to be quick. I slapped the man, who stirred.
“Who are you targeting?” I asked.
His eyes rolled so I slapped him again and he came to, suddenly snapping awake with a start.
“Who are you targeting?”
He focused on me and smiled. “You shouldn’t have meddled in Rome,” he said, his heavy French accent drawing out the word “meddled.” “Everything that’s happened during your time here was planned.”
So, there was now no doubt we had been targeted because of our involvement in solving the Vatican murders.
“Who do you work for?” I shook him while I glanced around the kitchen for something to threaten him with.
I didn’t believe in torture, but intimidation might get me the answers I needed.
“Is Roman Verde calling the shots?” I asked. “Is this revenge for his brother? Or does he answer to someone else?”
My eyes settled on a meat cleaver, resting on a butcher’s block on the neighboring counter. I stood up to grab it, but Michel surprised me by kicking me in the chest and jack-knifing to his feet.
I was knocked into the counter and grabbed the cleaver as he pulled a knife from a nearby sink.
The sirens were almost on us as we faced each other.
“Are you going to take me, Jack Morgan? Can you do it before the police arrive? And if they take you instead, will you be safe in jail? Where do you think is beyond our reach?”
I heard cars pulling up outside and reached a decision.
I dashed across the kitchen. Michel gave chase. I slammed into the fire door, flung it open, and swung it shut behind me.
There was a dumpster beside it, which I shoved over just far enough to block the door. Michel cursed when he found his exit route blocked.
Satisfied I wasn’t in immediate danger, I set off along the alleyway that ran behind the terrace of buildings. I didn’t stop running until I was certain I was safe.
Chapter 50
A low afternoon sun bathed the room, tinting our faces rose-gold so we looked a little like gilded statues as we sat trying to absorb the day’s revelations.
Mo-bot and Sci had reached the apartment by the time Justine and I regrouped there, and they’d told us about their interview with Baba Saidi and how the French — Somalian gangster had confirmed Roman Verde’s identity. Armed with the man’s real name, Mo-bot had been able to pull his official records from the Italian Ministry of the Interior. He was a former special forces soldier turned criminal and had served time for gun and drugs smuggling.
We shared our account of the discovery of the man calling himself Michel Augarde at the Automobile Club, my arrest, and the intervention of the corrupt cops.
“So, we’re up against an organization with resources and connections?” Mo-bot remarked.
Sci nodded. “Not just any organization. The Dark Fates.”
“And Propaganda Tre,” I added.
I told them about Michel’s tattoo, which signified his membership of the influential secret society.
“Flip sides of the same coin,” I explained. “The Dark Fates handle the street-level stuff while Propaganda Tre operates in the corridors of power.”
“And they want someone or some people dead,” Justine responded. “They involved us because they want revenge for what we did to Roman’s brother Milan, but we’re not the primary targets.”
I nodded and decided to voice a thought that had been nagging at me since my encounter with Michel. “Did you pull anything from Duval’s phone? Michel Augarde said every aspect of my trip here was planned.”
Mo-bot rose from her perch on the end of the couch and went to her workstation.
“Nothing on the main files,” she said, shaking her mouse to bring her monitor to life. “But he installed Signal.” She was referring to the secure electronic messaging app that was supposed to be impervious to most hackers. “I left a combination-cracker running while we were in Marseilles.”
She opened a file that showed an exchange of messages from the secure Signal app and scrolled through them.
“Friends, family, nothing unusual,” she noted. “But let’s see if there’s an echo, the remnants of deleted messages.”
She typed some commands. A shimmering icon appeared by a phone number that materialized at the top of the message list.
“Messages from this number were set to automatically delete after they were read, so I can’t see what was said, but why would he instantly trash messages from just one number he hasn’t even stored in his contacts?”
“Affair?” Sci suggested.
“Maybe,” Mo-bot replied. “Or perhaps they implicate him in something?”
“The original attack took place outside his building,” I remarked. “And I was suspicious of Duval until our background checks cleared him, but what if Propaganda Tre reaches as far as the government of Monaco? What if he was just very good at covering his tracks?”
“It’s possible,” Mo-bot conceded. “He knew where you’d be and when.”
“And he knew we’d discovered Justine’s location in the Utelle Valley,” Sci remarked. “He might have been the one who warned Roman we were on to them.”
I nodded and thought about all the phone calls Duval had made while we were preparing for the expedition. Even when we were on the mountain, he’d stepped away under the guise of calling Chevalier, but maybe he’d been warning Roman.
“So, what now?” Justine asked.
“I think we need to pay him a visit,” I replied.