The Italian Mission (8 page)

“This is our little captive, is it?” He grabbed Jill’s face with a calloused hand and jerked it towards his.

“Leave me alone or you’ll regret it!” Jill shouted.

“Oh, American, eh? Why don’t you tell me who you’re working for, then? I doubt that you just happened to walk in on my guys in the middle of the woods as they were trying to, um … restrain a Chinese criminal.”

“I don’t know anything about any Chinese. I had to pee.”

“With a drawn pistol?”

“I’m afraid of snakes.”

“You know, I might believe you if you weren’t carrying this gadget. He picked up Jill’s watch from the table. “Not like anything you can buy in a store, is it? Very James Bond. I’ll be interested to see what it can do once you give us the code.”

“I won’t give you anything.”

“Oh, yes you will. I’ll ask again. Who are you working for?”

“I’m on pilgrimage. Hiking the
Via Francigena
to the Vatican.”

Mustache laughed. “In that case, you were going the wrong way. My boys saw you and your friend coming north on the trail this morning. O.K., enough messing about, we can’t stay here all day. Get out your tools, Tony.”

The stocky man opened a toolbox and pulled out a metal file and a small bottle of liquid.

“You wouldn’t think to look at him but my friend here is an expert manicurist. With a difference. He doesn’t stop when he reaches the finger — what’s that called, Tony? The sensitive part under the nail?”

“The quick.”

“Right. The quick. Just keeps going. Of course, he pours a little turpentine on it for lubrication. So, let me ask you one more time. Who are you working for?”

Jill spat in his face.

The man forced a thin smile. “Right, then. Proceed, Tony. You’d best tie her arms down a little tighter. One loop won’t be enough once the fun begins.”

Tony took off his belt and wrapped it around Jill’s right forearm, fastening it more tightly to the chair. Then he twisted her index finger back roughly and began to file away at her nail. After only a few passes, the nail was flush with the tip of her finger. Then the file began to gnaw at the skin. Tony stopped for a moment, opened the bottle of turpentine and poured a little on the raw tip of the finger. Jill’s muscles went rigid as if she’d had an electric shock. She screamed.

“Just getting started, aren’t we?” the leader lit a cigarette and blew smoke in her face. “Unless, you’ve changed your mind.”

Jill gritted her teeth and said nothing.

Conti watched in horror — it took everything he had to keep silent. Desperately, he searched for a way into the hut. A few feet away, he spied a steel panel with several bolts missing and carefully moved in that direction. He reached out and tested it. With a little leverage he could force it open enough to wedge his body through. He turned so that his back was against the hut, then pried open the loose panel. Squeezing through, he leapt onto the dirt floor, and pointed the rifle at the South Africans. “Drop your weapons. Now! Or you’ll all be dead in five seconds.”

The man with the shaved head slipped a pistol from his belt, bent over and placed it on the ground.

Conti took a few steps closer to the men. “Untie her.”

Mustache nodded and the stocky South African untied Jill’s arms and legs from the chair. She rubbed her wrists, then stood up twisting her neck from side to side.

“Pick up the pistol and come on over here,” Conti told her.

She bent over and picked it up, but instead of crossing the room toward him, she turned to her persecutor, her face only six inches from his. Before he could react, she brought the butt of the pistol up and under his chin, knocking him savagely backward to the ground.

“Jill. No. That’s not necess ….” Before Conti could get this out, she’d kicked the fallen man hard, first in the ribs then, when he tried to roll away from her, in the kidneys.

Finally, breathing heavily, she snatched her watch from the table, turned, and stalked across the room to Conti. As they all stood there in stunned silence, a thumping began to vibrate the metal roof of the hut. The mustachioed man’s grimace slowly morphed into a smile. Conti gripped and regripped the rifle in his suddenly sweaty hands, realizing a helicopter was about to land in the field next to the hut.

12.

“Let’s get out of here!” Conti grabbed Jill’s arm. “Nobody move! I wouldn’t mind shooting you all!” He kept the rifle pointed in the direction of the three men, pushing Jill toward the hut’s door. They slipped outside in time to see a black helicopter bounce to the earth in a fenced pasture behind the Quonset hut, then ran up a small hill next to the farmhouse, which led into a dense stand of woods. As they entered the trees, Conti turned and fired a few rounds into the side of the hut. The door, which had been cautiously opening, slammed shut again.

Jill was running on the path in front of him when Conti stopped, skidding on the gravel. “Wait. Forgot the pack. Got to go back.”

“No, don’t.” She clamped down on his arm. “They’ll kill you.”

Conti hesitated for a moment, then nodded in agreement.

Ten minutes later, they stopped and listened for pursuers. “I can’t hear anything except my heart pounding,” Conti gasped. “I think we’re O.K. for the moment.” They both collapsed to the ground. Just then, the helicopter flew low over the trees, circled, and headed off to the north. “I think they’re after bigger game.”

He leaned over, gently pushed back the torn shirt that Jill held tightly wrapped around her shoulders and examined her wounds. “Not too terrible. Nothing that requires stitches anyway. Does this hurt?” He pressed gently on her ribs.

“Ouch!” She flinched. Then she started to sob quietly.

Conti rubbed her shoulders. “That was quite a performance back there. I’ll never accuse you of being a Langley wimp again.”

She looked at him. “He was horrible, hurting me and laughing about it. I couldn’t control myself. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands.”

“You almost did. Impressive uppercut. Where’d you learn that?”

“Curves — the women’s gym in McLean. Better than the three-hour self-defense class we all had to take at the Agency. But I never thought it would feel like that.”

“Like what?”

Her jaws tightened. “So good.”

“What do you want to do now?” Conti asked. “We can get someone up here to get you out. Maybe they can get a copter. You’d be back in Rome in an hour or two. I’m going to make my way back to the trail and head north. Those monks are going to need help.”

“I’m going with you,” Jill replied. “I finally feel like a real CIA agent after twenty years. All I’d do back in Rome is worry about you anyway. But we’d better call Mobley and see what he thinks.”

She put a code into the watch/phone/GPS, then dialed a number and waited for the call to go through. “Even has a speaker function.”

“Well, well, well.” The speaker projected the world-weary voice of Mobley with surprising clarity. “Did you get kidnapped by the Chinese? Or were you just too busy to call?”

“Your first guess is closer,” Jill responded. “And, by the way, you’re on speaker. Conti is here. I was kidnapped — but not by the Chinese. He saved my ass, so watch what you say.”

“Kidnapped? No shit. By whom?”

“South Africans.”

“Aha. South Africans. I thought they might be involved in this.”

Conti and Jill glanced at each other in surprise. “You did?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Mobley said. “There’s a lot going on back here. Is there a chance anyone else can hear this conversation? Other than Conti, that is?”

“No. We’re out in the middle of the woods. What’s up?”

“I found out who you’re chasing. Brace yourself.”

“Who is it?”

“The Panchen Lama.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

“No. The authentic Panchen Lama. Second most important religious leader in Tibet. Been under house arrest in China for the past twenty-five years.”

Jill and Conti stared at the phone, dumbfounded. Conti spoke for the first time. “That’s crazy. We don’t know even know what he looks like — or if he’s still alive. Nobody’s seen him since he was five years old.”

“The Chinese Ambassador himself visited me half an hour ago. First time he’s ever come to Langley. Apoplectic. Somehow the Lama escaped from his compound in Sichuan. They moved him there a few years ago because they thought he was becoming friendlier to their point of view. They’d planned to introduce him to the Tibetan public next year — as a modern leader who sees things their way. Everything was going according to plan. Until he disappeared last week.”

Conti rubbed his temples. “And now he’s running around the hills of Italy in the company of some radical monks? If it’s true, the Chinese must be petrified there’ll be trouble back home.”

“It’s already started. The Ambassador told me that the ‘splittists’ — that’s what they call the Tibetan nationalists — are hacking into the Chinese Internet spreading the rumor — well, the news — that the Panchen Lama had escaped from China and is about to lead them in an uprising for independence.”

Conti whistled under his breath. “Jesus!”

Mobley went on. “A monk incinerated himself today in Lhasa. And there have been some small demonstrations. A few Chinese-owned stores looted. They aren’t exactly acting like Buddhists. And the political fallout is starting here in Washington too. I’ve gotten calls from half the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees.”

After a moment of silence while they processed this new information, Jill spoke up. “Why in the world are the South Africans involved?”

There was no answer for a moment. Then Mobley said, in what seemed like a chastened tone. “Yeah, the South Africans. I’m working on that. Just stay out of their way for the time being. Gotta run. White House is on the line. Stay on top of this and don’t talk to anyone but me.”

13.

Jill disconnected. “That was strange, wasn’t it?”

“What?”

“Mobley’s not telling us everything he knows. Not by a long shot.”

“But what he did tell us is incredible. The Panchen Lama on the loose. Imagine if they can’t get him back.”

Jill fussed with her now buttonless camo shirt, finally tying the tails together in a sort of Caribbean look. “I had an in-depth assessment of Chinese strategy done last month. They’re staking a lot on Tibet. It’s key to their development plans for the next century. Minerals of all sorts — and water, that’s the big thing.”

“Water?”

“The rivers that supply most of Asia rise in the Himalayan plateau. It’s a giant freezer storing fresh water for the entire continent. And, of course, the population isn’t getting any smaller. Whatever the shortages are now, they’re going to be much worse in fifty years. The Chinese realize it, even if no one else does. Water will be more valuable than oil in the future. Whoever controls it will control Asia. The one thing that could screw up their plans would be a resurgence of the Buddhist theocracy in Tibet. Led by the real Panchen Lama.”

Conti nodded. “They appointed their own Panchen Lama, didn’t they? When they put the guy we’re chasing under house arrest?”

“Yes, but no one in Tibet thinks their man is legit. The people will follow the real Lama if he suddenly appears on the scene.”

Conti stood up and brushed the dust off his pants. “We’d better get moving. I’d like to put some distance between us and this place. What was Mobley implying about the South Africans? He said he thought they might be involved.”