Tarantula (8 page)

“You are a crazy man, Signor Smith,” he said, accentuating his point by stabbing the gun in the direction of his head.

“I didn’t like the way he was looking at me.”

“I nearly shot you.”

Milton shrugged. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

Ernesto convulsed with laughter.

“The deal would have been off, yes? But business, Signor Smith, I can make allowances for business. It is the only thing that matters. Guiseppe”—he indicated the man on the floor—“he is an oaf. He gets what he deserves.”

Milton spared the man a glance: he had come around and two of the others were dragging him onto his feet.

Ernesto holstered the pistol and clapped Milton on the shoulder. “You are foolish, Signor Smith, but you are a dangerous man. Your fists… you know how to use them.”

More dangerous than you could possibly know.

“Now,” the Italian said. “One more drink.”

MILTON RETURNED to the hotel. His room was still undisturbed. He moved quickly, taking the P226 from the safe and the MP5 from beneath the mattress. He wore the Sig Sauer in the shoulder holster and the H&K on its shoulder strap, both hidden by his leather jacket. He packed his bag and then spent an hour cleaning the room. He wiped down all of the surfaces, paying special attention to those that he knew he had touched, cleaning away his prints. When he was done, he took his passport and his credit cards, and slipped them into his pocket. He took his bag downstairs and went to reception.

“I’d like to check out,” he told the late duty clerk. “Room six hundred and one.”

“Of course, sir,” the man said. He busied himself with his computer and, when he was done, looked back up at him and smiled. “Thank you for your custom, Signor Smith. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Yes, there is. Could you see to it that my bag is delivered to the airport, please. I’m flying with British Airways tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

Milton paid the man and went down to the parking lot. He started the Ducati, letting the engine growl through the basement, and pulled away, traversing the slope onto street level and then gathering speed as he pulled away.

He rode south, out of town, stopping in Pontecagnano. It was an empty lot on the edge of the town, facing out to sea. He took off his helmet to let the salty air wash over his hot skin. The rolling tide was all he could hear, the waves washing up the sand. There was nothing else, not even the crying of gulls. It was as if he was the only person abroad at that hour.

He looked down at his watch, the luminous hands showing three-thirty.

He got off the bike just as he heard the sound of tyres rolling over the gravel at the edge of the road. He reached into his jacket for the pistol. A pair of high-beams swung across the darkened space, glowing yellow against the rolling emerald waves down on the beach, and then they winked out.

Milton walked across, the gun held ready in case it wasn’t who he was expecting. He held the pistol in a steady two-hand grip, trigger finger indexed above the trigger guard.

As he got closer, the moonlight revealed that it was a soft-top Lancia Flavia.

The door opened. “Number Eight,” said the quartermaster as she got out of the car.

He relaxed and shoved the pistol away.

She was carrying a slim documents case. She went around to the trunk and popped the lid. “Here,” she said, pulling back the oil-stained blanket that had been spread across the compartment, exposing the case that had lain beneath it.

Milton unclipped the case and opened it. There were ten grenades inside, little metallic nuggets nestling in a foam insert.

“Fragmentation, stun, and smoke.”

“Very good, Q.”

Milton closed the case, latched it shut, and left it in the trunk. He went around to the Lancia and got inside. She did, too.

“Did he call out?”

“He did,” she said. “Two times. First of all, he spoke to the Englishmen.”

“Saying?”

“That he wanted to see them tomorrow morning. He said he had news on their business, that it could only be delivered in person. And then he made this call.”

She took an iPad from the case and, flipping the lid back to wake it, she touched the screen to activate an app and waited for it to boot.

A list of MP3 audio files was displayed.

She hovered her finger over them selected the one she wanted, and tapped the screen.

Ernesto Gorgi Di Mauro’s voice was unmistakeable.

“It’s me.”

“Si.”

“I have something I need you to do. The four Englishmen, from today. You know?”

“Si.”

“They are staying at Il Palazzo Decumani. Do you know it?”

“Si.”

“Tomorrow morning. Antonietta will call you. Clean and quick. No mistakes.”

The call ended.

“Where is the hotel?” Milton asked.

“The Via del Grande Archivio. You need my help?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll find it.”

She nodded.

“What about the money?”

She swiped the MP3s away and opened another app. A map of southern Italy appeared on the screen.

“The tracker is working very well.”

“I should hope so. It’s as big as a house.”

She ignored that.

“Here,” she said, resting a manicured fingernail against the screen.

Milton looked at it. The map showed Naples, Salerno and the curve of land to the west that included Messina and then, finally, at the tip of the boot, Palermo. There was a single, small red dot that pulsed on and off. The dot was steady and unmoving, just to the west of Agropoli, north of Castellabate and just a few miles to the south of where they were now.

“Great,” Milton said. “A yacht. I should’ve guessed.”

“You are going to get wet.”

“Do you have—”

“A wetsuit? Yes, in the back. I have estimated the size you will need. And there is a waterproof bag for your equipment.”

“You think of everything.”

“It is my job, Number Eight.”

IT STARTED raining soon afterwards.

Milton stocked the waterproof bag with the wetsuit, grenades and his weapons. He slung it onto his back, got on the bike and rode back to Naples. He found a twenty-four hour café and bought himself breakfast and a pot of strong coffee. He took a seat next to the window and watched the sun rise over the horizon, the sea transitioning through black to deep blue to emerald blue as the light was thrown across the dark vault of the sky.

He meditated quietly, allowing himself to slip into a peaceful state where the noise from the kitchen, the thickening traffic and the chink of cutlery on china were all phased out. He pictured what needed to happen, laid out each of the tasks that he had to accomplish in order to fulfil the parameters of the assignment. Infiltration, execution, exfiltration. He would need to repeat the process two times. Each was dangerous, with a multitude of things that could go wrong. Unknowable things, things that could not be predicted and planned around, things that he would have to react to, on the fly.

That was the norm.

Acceptable.

None of it was new to Milton.

He stayed there until six o’clock, paid his bill and got back onto the Ducati.

He rode further into the city. It was awake now, with commuters setting off to their offices, trucks delivering produce, queues of traffic that clogged up the main roads and jockeyed impatiently as they waited for the lights to change. Milton rolled up to the front of the queues on the outside, the engine of the big bike grumbling restively.

The hotel was on the crossroads where the Via del Grande Archivio was bisected by another, smaller road. The street was narrow, a canyon that ran between opposing ranks of grand five storey buildings. Cars were parked on both sides meaning that it was only possible to pass along it slowly, and in single file. The hotel was set back a few feet from the thoroughfare, sheltered behind a double row of parked cars and a collection of small trees. It, too, was five storeys tall, painted in cream and brown, boasting a chocolate covered awning upon which its name, Il Palazzo Decumani, was stencilled in tasteful gold letters. It was a luxury, boutique establishment.

Milton positioned the Ducati in the smaller street that ran into the Via del Grande Archivio. He wheeled the bike backwards so that the front end was pointed out, rested it on its kickstand and then sheltered from the rain in the recessed doorway of a branch of the Poste Italiane. It offered him a good view of the hotel and the road that approached it but it would be difficult to notice him.

He took out a packet of cigarettes, put one to his lips and lit it.

HE HAD been waiting for forty minutes when he saw the four men emerge from the front door of the hotel. They were expensively dressed, wearing suits that they might, perhaps, have had tailored for them during this trip. Two of them were big, obviously serving as muscle, following a few paces behind the pair of smaller men in front. Milton recognised both of those men from the information that Control had provided him with. One of them, slender and with an acne scarred face, was Curtis Patterson, the scion of the Patterson criminal family that ruled the drug market in the northwest of England. The man to his right was his brother, Leon. Both of them lived in big mansions in the Wirral and had fortunes that measured in the seven figures. The police knew very well that they controlled the family’s affairs, but the men were shrewd and careful and they had been unable to lay a glove on them.

That was unfortunate. A life in prison would have been preferable to what was about to happen to them.

Milton flinched as he saw a fifth person emerge from the hotel. It was Antonietta Agosti. She was wearing jeans, tight enough to accentuate her natural curves, and vertiginous high heeled shoes. She kept a few paces behind them, aware of what was about to happen—aware of
some
of what was about to happen—and keen, no doubt, to make sure that she could easily get out of the way. Curtis Patterson paused, though, and turned back to her. He said something that Milton couldn’t hear and then held out his hand. She managed a thin smile, caught up with him and took it.

Milton felt a flicker of irritation that she was involved. She was a proud, strong-willed woman, and it struck him as offensive that she should be used by the Camorra in this fashion: as bait, effectively, prostituting herself in order to entice the victims to their doom. But he caught himself. What else was she to do? Say no? That, he knew, was not a choice that she would have been able to make.

He reassessed.

She was a complication.

He would try and protect her but, ultimately, she was not his problem.

He checked his watch.

Eight-fifteen.

Milton prickled with anticipation and the first tweak of adrenaline.

He watched, continually reassessing.

The street was beginning to thicken with traffic from the Via Duomo and the Corso Umberto. A refuse lorry was slowly making its way from the south, municipal workmen in orange boiler suits transferring the contents of the overflowing bins into the gnashing jaws of their truck. Pedestrians were about, some of them carrying styrofoam cups of coffee, others with their phones pressed to their ears or held out in front of them so that they could read from the screens.

The four men and Antonietta were walking towards the row of parked cars.

“
Mi scusi
,” a woman said, standing before him with a key for the post office door in her hand.

“
Scusate
,” Milton replied, standing aside.

Milton saw Antonietta looking down the street.

He followed her gaze, looking for the shooter, and saw the motorcycle rumbling across the uneven cobbles towards them from the south.

The man on the motorcycle wasn’t wearing a helmet. His face was black with ink, almost as if it had been stained. Heavily tattooed, like a Maori warrior. It was only as he drew closer that Milton could make out the shape of the spider that had been drawn there, the legs reaching back around his shaven scalp, on his cheeks and beneath the line of his jaw.

Antonietta saw him too. She was looking in that direction and, had the four men been paying closer attention, or had they displayed the wariness and suspicion that should have been automatic when dealing with the Camorra, they might have seen him, too. As it was, they were distracted and by the time they saw the man, it was already too late.

Antonietta blanched.

Milton pushed away from the doorway, stepping around the woman with the key and reaching into his leather jacket for the P226.

The man on the motorcycle was less than ten feet away when he rolled to a stop.

Antonietta yanked her hand from Curtis Patterson’s grip and started to run.

Milton was behind the man with the tattooed face, unseen.

The rider reached into his open jacket for the 9mm mini-Uzi submachine gun that he wore on a sling. The buttstock was folded back and he held the weapon in both hands.

He fired, fully automatic, six hundred and fifty rounds a minute. The Pattersons were the main focus of his attention, the brothers taking the majority of the rounds, arms windmilling as they stumbled backwards, tripping over the curb and landing on their backs. The two security men reached for their hidden weapons but they were too slow and there were more than enough bullets for them, too.

The woman from the post office screamed.

Milton raised the P226 and drew down on the rider. He was too close to miss. He aimed into the man’s body and fired. The round hit home, punching into the man’s ribs. He swung around but the pain in his side robbed him of his ability to rotate quickly and the Uzi was in the wrong hand.

Milton took another step, aimed again, and fired.

A killshot.

The bullet punched into the man’s temple, a plume of blood following after it as it exited through the opposite side. His body jerked and then went limp, his standing leg collapsing and the bike tipping over. He fell to the road and lay still, the bike pinning him there.

Milton stepped up so that he was over him, aimed down, and fired a final time. The spider tattoo was punctured, blood running down and obscuring the lurid ink. It trickled down his scalp, dripped down, and pooled between the cobbles.