David asked Umberto what he thought about the new information and what he proposed to do with it. Umberto said that he had discussed the matter with Piero and they concluded that obviously the device must be within less than 50 km from Padova and probably stored temporarily somewhere close. Piero had already sent his agents to the warehouse and by now they were questioning everybody in the area about a truck equipped with a crane. In addition, they sent an all-point-bulletin alerting police about the Renegade jeep and the Viking driving it, but were not very hopeful considering the time frame and the fact that it was quite a common vehicle in northern Italy and that the artist's image of the Viking was not be as accurate as a photograph but this was all they could do.
Chapter 9
Ollie had arrived in Trieste the previous evening after making the short drive from the farmhouse near San Giorgio delle Pertiche. He stopped at one of the rest-areas on the A4 highway between Venice and Trieste and under the cover of darkness removed the license plates from a car that was parked farthest from the restaurant and replaced the Renegade's plates. He knew that crossing through Slovenia into Croatia with the rented car would not be possible, especially if the car registration and license plates did not match so he left the car in a large parking lot and checked into a small family run hotel.
In the morning he boarded a bus that would take him to Rijeka where he intended to find a ship that would take his container with the device inside it to the Haifa port in Israel. The bus ride went smoothly and no one gave his passport a second look when he crossed into Croatia after a 27 km short stretch through Slovenia. However when he reached Rijeka and talked to a number of shipping agents he found that there was no direct ship from Rijeka to Haifa but that a container could be transshipped through Bari in Italy and Limassol in Cyprus and reach Israel three or four weeks later. Although not happy with the delay he thought that this would give him time to arrange for the release of the container from the Haifa port and its shipment to the target area in Jerusalem. So he made the necessary preparations, and the accompanying necessary cash transactions, to ensure that his container with its marking as agricultural machinery would be loaded on a ship that was to leave Rijeka heading for Bari four days later. He still had to figure out how to transport the container to Rijeka and decided that the best way would be to hire a Croatian company to collect the container from the farm near San Giorgio. This way, even if the truck was stopped Ollie himself would remain untraceable. The manager of the Croatian company said that for a suitable fee he could make sure that the container arrived in Rijeka safely and without delay, meaning without being opened. The "suitable fee" quadrupled the original price but Ollie willingly agreed to pay half in advance and half upon delivery. So he gave the manager instructions for getting to the farm and they arranged for the pick up to take place the next day in the evening. After that Ollie took the bus back to Trieste, retrieved the Renegade from the parking lot and drove back to the farm.
Ollie spent the night sleeping soundly in the bedroom of the farmhouse. He had arrived late the previous night and after checking that the container had not been tampered with parked the Renegade jeep in the barn next to the container. He saw Andreas's body in the living room but was too tired to do anything about it at night. In the morning he managed to move the heavy body to the barnyard and dug a superficial grave in which he placed Andreas's body. He cleaned the living room to the best of his ability since he feared that the Croatian truck driver might want to enter the house on some pretext. He then settled down to wait for the truck.
Meanwhile, back in Padova, Piero summoned all his agents and told them that one of the neighbors who worked not far from the Astraea warehouse had seen a truck equipped with a crane enter the warehouse garage and leave a few minutes later with a standard shipping container. He did not notice the writing on the container but was sure that there was some kind of a sign or emblem on it. He wasn't sure about its color either but said the truck itself bore the name of a local rental company. This information was not very helpful as Piero already knew about the truck and also knew that the truck had been returned to the rental agency. The same neighbor also said that a short while after the truck departed about a dozen men also left the warehouse. When he was shown the photo of Modena he said that he had seen him several times, but did not recognize Dr. Smalley's photo. However, when he saw the artist's image of the blond man and the Viking he said that they were the two people that had been in the truck.
Once again Piero's elite troops set out on a search of storage facilities and farmhouses in the area surrounding Padova. Umberto managed to arrange for a couple of police helicopters to carry out an aerial survey while the rest of the agents scanned the roads. The agricultural area contained many places in which a container could be easily hidden out of sight. Piero supposed that the container may have been transported to the holding area near the port of Venice and sent half his men to search for it among the thousands of containers awaiting shipment. They were all equipped with radiation detectors but were told to focus on the containers listed as having arrived for shipment during the previous 24 hours. In addition he placed several roadblocks on the roads leading out of Padova but did not have enough radiation detectors for all of them.
The Croatian truck driver was stopped a couple of times for examination but his papers were in order and he had all the necessary documentation for a merchandise pick-up in Italy that was to be transported to Rijeka for shipment to Bari. The policemen that checked him asked him why the container could not be shipped directly from Venice to Bari without leaving Italy but in broken Italian the driver grumbled that he was only a truck driver and not the manager of the company. In the evening he arrived at the farm near San Giorgio where Ollie offered him a cup of coffee which the driver declined. They used the truck's crane to load the container on the platform and secure it with straps. The driver told Ollie that he had been stopped a couple of times by police but Ollie told him not to worry as all the paperwork was in order. The truck with Croatian plates heading back to Rijeka with agricultural machinery equipment was only stopped once before reaching Venice but was quickly allowed to continue on its way by the tired and bored policeman after its documentation was examined.
As soon as the container was on its way, Ollie got into the Renegade jeep and drove south to Bologna where he abandoned the jeep at the railway parking lot and checked into a cheap hotel near the station. The following morning he boarded the train to Rome and from there he took a flight to Ljubljana. He rented a car at the airport and drove to Rijeka, contacted the shipping agent where he made sure that the container had arrived and was to be loaded on the ship for Bari and paid the second half of the transportation fee. He knew that he had to get a new identity as he was sure that the truck with the crane and the container would be traced to the farm, and he feared that Andreas's body would be discovered pointing a finger at him. He decided to drive the rented car from Rijeka to the highway connecting Zagreb with Dubrovnik and then cross into Montenegro, ditch the car in Podgorica and from there use public transportation to cross into Albania that was the only truly Muslim country in Europe, not counting Turkey, of course. From Shkoder near the border he took an Albanian bus to Tirana and found a place close to the Tirana International hotel that had a room-to-rent sign.