Gun Metal Heart (7 page)

Everyone has their own definition of travel essentials.

She planned to switch trains at Pisa. About thirty kilometers outside of town, she realized she had the six-seat train car to herself because she looked like an unkempt wild child in her ratty attire and densely packed musculature. Priority number one when she got to Florence would be to purchase some girl clothes.

Daria had plenty of money for shopping. She had squirreled away a couple hundred thousand in dollars and euros at banks throughout the world. Each was under a different false name, the IDs provided by a grateful Estonian gangster who had owed her big-time. During Daria's exile in Caladri, she had occasionally hitchhiked to Genoa to use a random ATM to make sure her accounts were safe.

That winter's unfortunate imbroglio had resulted in Daria crossing swords with the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the Israeli Defense Forces, French intelligence, and Italian law enforcement. Plus a shadowy, pro-Israel cabal that, a very long time ago, had saved Daria's life and childhood, and had given her the closest thing she would ever have to a family.

These things happen, she realized. One minute you're living in Los Angeles, minding your own business and wearing Gucci. The next, you're smashing an international conspiracy to kill thousands, your “wardrobe” can fit in a duffel bag, and you've become the Typhoid Mary of Western intelligence.

Comme ci, comme ça.

Repairing her reputation had to become Daria's top priority.

Right after buying girl clothes.

*   *   *

The woman who called herself Major Arcana hired caterers to drive out to the rented Tuscan villa and to set up coffee and pastries and fresh fruit and juices. All for her team. She firmly believed that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. She also believed that a good leader instilled a sense of well-being and togetherness within her team.

It's the little touches. Like a thoughtful breakfast.

The setting was an olive farm two kilometers outside Florence, in the gently rolling hills overlooking the Arno River. The farmhouse was only one story and rambling. Wings had been added haphazardly over eighty years.

The team consisted of former soldiers. Most were Serbs, but the crew included several men from countries previously associated with the Soviet Union. None of them currently served any nation's military. Most of them had been dishonorably discharged. Most had served time in prison.

The blonde was not a member of the White Scorpions but had convinced its financiers and hidden power brokers that their cause was hers.

The
Skorpjo
soldiers queued up for the food and coffee, then picked web-and-tube deck chairs under umbrellas. The blonde waited until they had tucked into their food before getting down to business. She wore shockingly white trousers and a fitted white, double-breasted suit with no blouse beneath, stilettos, and no jewelry. Her hair was platinum and her skin very pale and unblemished. Her eyes were so light blue as to resemble quicksilver in the Tuscan sunshine. She was tall and languid and cool.

She stepped out onto the patio, and all eyes turned to her. She spoke fluent Serbian with a city accent. “It's time to tell you about our target. Here are the basic facts: An Italian aerospace designer, Dr. Gabriella Incantada, has created a device. She is unveiling a prototype of the device today to some backers. It's happening down there.”

She pointed to the oatmeal walls and terra-cotta roofs of Florence, sprawled out on the valley floor like a mediaeval tapestry.

“Dr. Incantada hopes to sell the device to any of a dozen governments around the world. I have blueprints of the venue. One of our teams shot an estimated forty-five hours of video: day, night, morning, afternoon, weekdays, and weekends. That team has distilled the images into the data we will need for the job.

“We have unimpaired access to the communications frequencies used by the Florentine police. We have their computers. Some of the potential buyers have hired their own private bodyguards. We have access to their communications and protocols, too.”

This was the first time that all the individual teams had met. The blonde liked to keep her chess pieces apart during the early phases of any campaign. She turned now to one of the tables and asked a team about handling Florentine police. A couple of clever diversions were planned to keep the patrol cars away from the real target.

She asked another table about transit plans, after the mission. Every contingency was covered.

“We should expect some opposition. Mr. Kostic? How went your interview with the American?”

Kostic and Lazarevic had been sitting at their own table chain-smoking and leaving the butts in their drained coffee cups. Kostic sat forward and fiercely stubbed out his Syrian Alhamra cigarette; cheap to buy but so poorly rolled they tend to dissolve as they are smoked. As usual, Kostic's polo shirt was dusted in ash.

“We talked to the American. Nothing we cannot handle.”

The smiling blonde studied him a moment. She didn't move: her smile didn't falter; her eyes didn't narrow. But the air pressure on the patio seemed to change. A couple of soldiers glanced at the sky to see if the weather was turning.

She kept her eyes on Kostic but turned her head to take in the other tables. “The American talked?”

Kostic lit another Alhamra from the dwindling pack. “You were right. The Mexican and the American were hired to protect this Incantada woman. The American is out of the way. He said the Mexican likely will go get help. Guzman said that means an Israeli woman, a gunrunner and soldier. Whenever Diego's in trouble, that's who he turns to.”

The blonde tilted her head. “And is this gunrunner and soldier by any chance named Gibron?”

The Serb hitters exchanged surprised glances. “That's her name, yes. You know her?”

Major Arcana laughed, exposing her canine teeth. “Not officially, no. But we've traveled in the same circles. Her reputation is … the word
impressive
doesn't do it justice. If she's helping the Mexican, well, this whole thing just got a bit more fun.”

Lazarevic said nothing. He never did. Kostic picked loose tobacco off his tongue and said, “Israeli is dangerous? Worth attention?”

The blonde bit her lower lip. “Yes. She's dangerous and worthy of our attention. But I think we stick to our plan. If she chooses to get involved … well…” The blonde amped up her smile. “Cool!”

*   *   *

Diego met Daria at the squat, utilitarian, and ever-bustling Santa Maria Novella train depot in Florence. A steady stream of people flowed through the station. The flow vectored away from Diego the same way leaves in a river divert around a half-submerged boulder. He wasn't large, and he didn't glower or threaten. People just avoided him.

Daria, in sneaks, cutoffs, and a ratty T-shirt, threw her duffel over one shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. “
Buon giorno.
”

His head bobbed in a subtle nod. “Hey.”

“First, find me a clothing store. Then get me a gelato. Then tell me about Gabriella Incantada and the thing she invented.”

*   *   *

Daria knew Diego had an old-fashioned sense of propriety. She likely had much more money at her command than he did, but she knew he'd insist on paying, because it was his gig. She chose the Spanish retailer Zara, because the clothes were inexpensive but looked posh, and because Diego wouldn't know the difference. She found a short, sleeveless sundress in bright daisy yellow and white and black patent sandals with ankle straps. She picked out some panties. In the dressing cubicle she did her hair in a French braid and slid on a pair of expensive, designer sunglasses she'd nicked from Signora Docetti the Current.

She applied enough makeup to cover the cut under her eye. That, plus sundry bruises here and there.

Out on the bustling Via Lambertesca, she let Diego buy her a sturdy but tiny black leather backpack, engraved with the fleur de lis sigil of Florence. The bag was large enough for a wallet, a lipstick, and the cutthroat Spanish razor. Just the basics for a day on the town.

Around them, Florence zipped along at a frenetic pace. Tourists flowed like storm-swept creeks, running over their banks and splashing into museums and shops and restaurants. The lanes were tight and only rarely intersected at right angles. African refugees hawked bright, cheap tchotchkes and buskers performed under gaily painted awnings, occupying the exact same spots their kind had for centuries.

Daria linked arms with the slight man in the cowboy hat and aged boots. “So, what's the play?”

“Supposed to meet Vince. He's not at the hotel room. His shit's still there.”

“And you checked the local bordellos and drunk tank?” Daria didn't think much of Vince Guzman, and she saw no reason to hide it.

Diego pulled a pack of Camels from his back pocket, plus an old steel lighter. “Yeah. No sign. But the guys with the white scorpion tatts are all over the place.”

Daria mulled that. “Show me the engineer's hotel.”

*   *   *

The meeting was set for the Hotel Criterion de Medici, a boutique establishment carved into the hollowed-out, historic shell of an ancillary building adjacent to the sprawling, green Palazzo Pitti. A New Zealand hotel conglomerate had purchased the building and transformed it with enough coaxial cable, Wi-Fi, and blade servers to run a small offshore bank. But the edifice remained undisturbed and elegant, and the hotel's nine large en suite rooms and five-star kitchen provided old-world elegance and style.

It also was out of the way, down a twisted alley to the south of the Ponte Vecchio, the famed pedestrian bridge with its hobbit-sized jewelry hutches and maddening throngs of tourists. You'd never stumble on it by accident.

*   *   *

The owners of the Criterion de Medici had decided the economic doldrums were coming to an end and it was time to expand. The New Zealand conglomerate bought a three-story building adjacent to the hotel. It, too, had been an outbuilding for the old Pitti Palace, part of the livery and stables for the royal court. The place was old and unsafe. Interior work had begun and the face of the building had been surgically removed, exposing the rooms within. The entire façade was covered in a kind of cheesecloth, a square slate-gray shroud, three stories tall, that blocked off the potentially dangerous construction from guests entering and leaving the Criterion.

The result was to create one beautifully restored, seventeenth-century façade adjacent to a grim and grimy scrim, making the old livery building look like the Ghost of Architecture Past.

It also made for half a dozen extremely easy routes into and out of the upscale hotel, all of which bypassed the lobby.

*   *   *

Daria wanted a gelato and Diego bought. He got himself a coffee to go, American style. This was something new for Italy, Daria noted. Even two years ago one would never have seen a lidded coffee cup with a cardboard sleeve. She decided she wouldn't get violent about it until a Starbucks popped up in Venice's Piazza San Marco.

Diego waved the cup forward and to their right. “Place is just over the bridge. Near the palace.”

Daria took a long lick of
stracciatella
and her eyes fluttered in near-sexual bliss. “Near the palace? Risky,” she said. “City police, state police, and private security from the national registry of historic places.”

Diego nodded.

Daria reached into the tiny backpack over her left shoulder and withdrew a sheet of printer paper that she had folded twice.

“I looked up your Hotel Criterion, last night. Posh. Not many rooms.”

They were about a third of the way over the ancient Ponte Vecchio. Normally going was tough across the bridge, which was more narrow than the streets on either end. People parted naturally to give the Mexican his space. Daria found it easy going by drifting in Diego's wake, riding his fear factor.

A portable wooden stage had been set up, off near the edge of the bridge, for street buskers. In this case, a man in a ratty Uncle Sam costume and three girls in red, white, and blue. Uncle Sam held out a top hat for donations.

“
My country 'tis of thee,”
the girls sang sweetly. They wore pigtails. They sounded like Americans. Most of those donating coins looked like Americans, too. “
Sweet land of liberty…!”

Daria had stopped walking. She watched them.

Diego sipped his coffee, his eyes shaded by the hat. “A year ago, you were living in the U.S. You looked happy.”

“I don't much want to talk about that.”

He nodded.

Daria snapped herself out of her reverie. “Now I'll have that song stuck in my head. Lovely.”

“Hotel's just ahead.” He deftly changed topic, and Daria wrapped her arm in his.

“While I was living in the States, I had a side business as a translator. I stayed at a dozen boutique hotels like this. They're pretty much of a kind. I can find my way around inside all right.”

Diego let it drop. “Guzman and me dogged this engineer for five days. Between here and an industrial plant out near San Jacopo.”

Daria licked ice cream off her knuckle. “East of here on the Arno.”

“Yeah. They moved between San Jacopo and the Hotel Criterion. Made the same trip every day. In a Hyundai.”

Daria looked startled. “Good lord. Neither fast nor armored. Terrible transport.”

Diego motioned toward the sea of bobbing heads before them. “Engineer's old. Walks with a cane.”

Daria absorbed that. “The Serbs could have snagged this Gabriella Incantada anywhere between San Jacopo and the hotel. Anywhere along the SS67, really.” She had a basic familiarity with the highways that feed into most northern Italian cities. “Meaning the engineer isn't the only target.”

Diego said, “Nope,” and tossed the lidded cup into an iron garbage can filled to more than overflowing. “Something they want at the hotel, too.”