Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021), A BATEMAN [urban books to read TXT] 📗

calibre of your target.” She paused, staring at both men. “Think what you like, but I’m right and unless you’re both deranged, you know it, too. And yes, I have someone nearby.”

“How much has Milo Noventa told you?” Fortez asked, annoyance in his tone. He turned to the loitering guard and waved him away, but the man only walked a dozen paces and stood facing them with his back to the lake and his hand near the 9mm pistol.

“Not the target’s name, just that they work for the British intelligence services and that the man killed your sons. Or one of them at least and was responsible for the death of the other.”

“Killed him like a dog…” Fortez said coldly.

Caroline nodded. She didn’t know how much Fortez had discovered about his son’s death, but it involved being injured by a gunshot and going down in a light aircraft. Hardly a dog’s death, but since Fortez had elected not to attend the inquest he had probably built up a picture in his grieving mind. She did her best to pull out the chair at the table, and Fortez walked around the table and helped her. “Thank you,” she said, attempting to rest both crutches against the round table, but they slipped and so she rested them carefully on the table instead.

He nodded like it was nothing and took his own seat. “I have arranged for coffee and amaretto biscotti,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“I am surprised you came alone,” he said. “No wires or weapons. I’d have expected more in your line of work.”

“You should have expected less,” she replied. “It was pretty obvious that I would be subject to a search. And if I turned up here armed, what would that prove? That I work in a dangerous business? You already know that much, otherwise why else would I be here?”

Fortez smiled. “Why else indeed…” He looked over to the villa where a traditionally dressed maid in her thirties stepped outside with a serving tray. “Ah, coffee!” He waited until the maid had silently placed the tray on the table, then smiled as he took the silver pot and poured the coffee into both demitasse cups. “Sugar?”

Caroline shook her head. “Nor cream, thank you” she said.

“Your injuries,” he ventured. “An accident perhaps?”

“Of sorts,” she replied.

He looked at her crutches on the table, at her white linen gloves. “Your hands are injured as well?”

“No,” she replied. “But the crutches have given me bad blisters and they are rather unsightly.”

Giuseppe Fortez nodded. “So, to the point. The target. Noventa did not tell you the target’s name?”

“No.”

“But he told you what the man is, who he works for?”

“Yes.”

“But Noventa is dead, surely?”

Caroline looked at him curiously. “Why would you think that?”

***

“She’s blown! Get her out of there!” Durand said urgently.

“And where the hell is Dave? He’s meant to be with her…” Thorpe stood up abruptly, staring at the screen.

“Wait…” Ramsay watched the monitor. Big Dave had rigged the camera on the neighbour’s property and Durand had given Caroline a working watch with a microphone built in. It was larger than she was used to wearing, but it was the fashion for many women to wear men’s stainless steel diving watches on a loose strap. “Let’s see where he’s going with this…”

“You can’t be serious?” Sally-Ann Thorpe asked incredulously. She dialled on her phone and said, “Dave, where the hell are you?”

“She wanted to go in alone. You know what she’s like…”

“Damn it! Are you close enough to get her out?”

“Sure. What’s going down?”

“She may be blown…”

“She said she’d give me a signal if the meeting takes a wrong turn. I trust her, so I’ll wait until I hear it.”

“Hear it?”

“Going now, I need to keep my phone line clear…”

“He’s hung up on me.” Thorpe grimaced. “Bloody hell! I knew she wasn’t the best person for the task. And she’s not fit enough to move if she has to!”

***

“I live here in relative exile,” Fortez pontificated upon his fate and continued, “I am a lesson to others. My sons died, my empire was weakened, and I was spared. Like a stud horse who cannot service the mares, I am left to grow old and fat and ignored.” He shrugged. “But I can live with that. I can live without seeing the wives of my sons, and their children. Because I play the long game. I will amass strength and when my enemies least expect it, I will strike. Perhaps it will be someone else who does the killing, or perhaps, eventually, it will be me. But the killing will be done and the people who stood by idly and watched my fall from grace will pay. If not with their lives, then with their wallets and the threat of the spectre of death at their shoulders.”

Caroline nodded. “Well, perhaps when I complete this contract, you will bear my organisation in mind for some repeat business.”

Fortez nodded and smiled sagely. “So, if Noventa is dead, why are you here? And what’s more, did you have anything to do with it?”

“Noventa was greedy. Tell me, how did you know?”

Fortez shrugged. “People talk,” he replied. “I have people everywhere.”

“Well, I’m here for the contract,” she replied looking perplexed. “You still want it fulfilled, don’t you?”

Fortez ignored her question, instead focusing his gaze on the lake. “My son, Gennaro was a hothead. But he knew enough about the man he went to England to kill. He put enough pressure on the man’s boss to learn some key facts, and he learned of the man’s weaknesses. He also learned all about the woman in the man’s life. A colleague. Wounded terribly. Broken arm, two broken legs… one so badly that she would have been left with multiple operations and months