The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

“Could be a ruse. There’s a picture of her with today’s newspaper. She could be anywhere in Europe.”

“You need MI5. They can work with the European intelligence services, Interpol even.”

“Not yet,” said King emphatically. He read the text, frowned, then read through again. “I have to go to Italy first.”

“Italy?”

“Tuscany.”

11

 

Four days later

Tuscany, Italy

 

The town of Monteverdi Marittimo was sat on top of a mountain, approximately seven miles inland from the Mediterranean. It afforded excellent views of the sea, mountainsides thick with pine trees and well-tended meadows. On the west side of the mountain, grapes grew in organised rows in vineyards that remained unchanged since the height of the Roman Empire. Olive trees lined the quiet streets, with thick trunks and large canopies, the roots pushing up the paving and causing the road to peak and crack. At harvest time, even these decorative trees were harvested with the use of nets held by the women, and the trees given a shaking by the men, tourists invited to partake amid music and much grappa – the heady and intoxicating fortified liquor made from the waste in winemaking.

King hadn’t bothered trying to order a cup of tea. This was espresso country. He settled for a beer, which came well-chilled and in a frosted glass. The waiter had placed a saucer of nuts beside his glass. King picked at the nuts, sipped the cold beer and watched Luca Fortez order another espresso. King wore dark aviator glasses and scrolled on his mobile phone. Not the phone he had been left in the safety deposit box, along with his orders, in Sweden. He kept that one switched off, the sim card removed, until he needed it. He had removed what he could of the device and inspected it but found nothing unusual. The phone could not be traced unless it was switched on and the sim card was active. King used his own iPhone. Always two models old, but with upgraded software, keeping it as non-descript looking as he could. Between drinking his beer, picking at the nuts and checking his non-existent emails, he studied the folded tourist map, but watched the Italian Mafia boss discreetly in his periphery.

Luca Fortez had been born with a different name. He had then worked his way through another, as hitman and enforcer to the Mafia running everything north of Rome and south of Modena. He had settled on Fortez when he had reached the higher echelons and become a made-man. The killing and violence was not behind him, he ordered such things now, but he had made his way to the top of the pile with the blood of his own friends and family on his hands. His reputation was well-earned, and he commanded respect not so much through fear and intimidation, but by history. People who knew of him, who found themselves in the realms of the mafia’s touch, feared the legend. And that was precisely what the man had become. A legend. Like the Bogey Man.

King had studied the man enough to know he was dangerous. Six-two, well-muscled. His biceps were large enough to indicate he was still extremely physical, despite being in his mid-forties – an age where many Italian men have learned to embrace pasta, wine and middle-age. But it was the man’s eyes that told King he was dangerous. They were the eyes of a killer. The eyes King saw in the mirror every day. Unlike King’s glacier-blue eyes, the Italian killer’s eyes were dark, but they stared hard at everything he looked at. They did not blink either. Like a cobra’s. He wore his sunglasses pushed fashionably high on his forehead, the lenses as dark as his lifeless eyes beneath.

There were two bodyguards. Both big and burly and clearly armed with sizable handguns and spare magazines under their linen suit jackets. They wore dark wraparound sunglasses, open shirts under their white suits and seemed bored. This was a quiet town, a village really, with a few tourists and locals milling through the street. A bakery, a convenience store and several bars and tobacconists. A church and tower were the key points of interest, along with a small piazza and regular open market. King had perused the market, bought some bread, deli meats and cheese, and placed them into a paper bag he had earlier prepared. He had placed the bag on the table, adjusted the lens of the camera to fit the hole he had made in the bag, and was now filming the Italian mafia boss and his two bodyguards, as he sipped his iced beer and picked at the saucer of nuts. King knew enough about surveillance to understand the importance of appearing natural. He looked at the mafia boss like he simply didn’t care, mindful not to allow his stare to linger. He simply took in his surroundings, enjoyed the sunshine and the coolness of the narrow street, which funnelled the air through. A lone traveller, taking his time to soak up the architecture, the simplicity of Italian life in the Tuscan hills.

When the Russian arrived, it was with two security personnel ahead of him, three behind and one bodyguard a pace behind and to his right. All wore the same wraparound sunglasses, black T-shirts and black suits. All five men also wore heavy gold chains around their necks. The lead bodyguard wore more gold than a jeweller’s window. It was by no means subtle. The exact opposite, in fact, a declaration of wealth. At odds with blending into the surroundings and lowering the threat. It was a show of force – the muscle, the wealth, the poor-fitting suits unable to conceal the bulging holstered pistols underneath. And it was as much a show to the Italian security as the rest of the world around them. Many of the people walking through the thoroughfare must have thought a rap video was