The Stone of Archimedes (19 page)

“I'm so sorry Miss Contardo,” the Greek said.

“Toni, please.”

“Toni. I don't have a doctor aboard, but I do have a man who was a medic in the Greek army. He can at least put that ankle in a walking cast.”

She nodded. “That would be great.”

Petros Caras turned to his two men and said something to them in Greek. Then he switched back to Toni. “They will take you to a compartment and I'll have our man come to you with his medical equipment. Once he's done, they'll bring you to me and we can take care of our business.”

One of the men went to pick up her backpack and Toni grasped it before he could. She slung it over her shoulder and took the man's arm to help her up. “Thanks,” she said.

“These men don't speak English,” the Greek billionaire said. “Our medic speaks only a little English.”

She nodded and the two men helped her to her room. When they set her onto the bed, she glanced around the compartment, which looked like a high-end room on a cruise ship.

Once the men were gone, she opened her backpack and found her satellite phone. She tried to turn it on, but it wouldn't fire up. Then she shook the phone and heard something rattling around inside. Great. That's what had broken her fall when she smashed the deck against her shoulder. She still had her cell phone, but, as she suspected, there was no service. Then she found both of her guns and made sure they were still all right. No problem. She shoved the guns back into the pack when she heard a slight knock on her door.

“Come in,” she said.

The man who came in was an extremely handsome Greek with dark hair and a short beard trimmed along a strong chiseled jaw. He couldn't have been more than thirty-years-old and might have had another career as a model. He carried a large bag and set it on the deck next to the bed. If she had to have someone work on her body, this man would do nicely, she thought.

“You speak English?” Toni asked.

“A little.”

“
Parlate italiano
?” She knew that a lot of Greeks also spoke Italian.

“
Si
,”

So the two of them spoke Italian as this man took off her boot and sock and examined her ankle with a gentle touch. He seemed very concerned.

“I believe it is broken,” he said in Italian.

“Hey, at least the bone isn't sticking out. Do you have casting material?”

“Yes, but the swelling is too great right now. We will have to put a temporary cast on it for now. Then if you are still with us, I will cast it.”

She was only supposed to be aboard the yacht until they got into port in Siracusa. She could wait for the cast until then. “I can wait on the cast. But do you have anything for the pain?”

“Si.” He pulled out a bottle of pills with no indication of what they were and gave her two. Then he went to a small refrigerator and found a bottle of water for her.

“What are these?” she asked.

He said something in Greek and then smiled. Then he tried to figure out the term in Italian but it wasn't coming to him. He finally settled on English and said, “Tylenol with codeine.”

“Nice.” She could live with that.

First he placed some ice around her ankle to bring down the swelling. While they waited they talked about many different things. Toni was able to ask without seeming to interrogate, but she knew she would get much more straight information from this man by just making small talk. He told her everywhere they had gone in the past month. When it seemed to him that she might be flirting with him, he told Toni he was gay. She said that was too bad and smiled at him, even though he was almost young enough to be her son. Before this gorgeous young Greek left her cabin, he wiped down the cold, wet ankle and then put it into a walking cast. He said he would bring her some crutches later, but she should lay down with her leg up for a while first.

Alone in her bed, she lay now and thought about how she wanted to approach this Greek billionaire. He was obviously used to doing things his own way, getting whatever his money could buy. But the Agency had made him and he needed to remember this. Damn, she hated having to clean up messes from before her time.

Instead of dumping the Fiat, Jake and Elisa had decided to keep it for a while. They did disable the GPS, though, once Jake realized he had screwed up by not doing so sooner. He made a calculated decision that the Greeks and the Mafia men wouldn't have the resources to track them by GPS, but he had been wrong. He hadn't realized just how tight the Mafia was with the Polizia in Sicily. This bad choice had gotten Sara kidnapped and almost gotten him killed. He wouldn't take them lightly again. Besides disabling the GPS, they swapped out the license plates with another Fiat of the same year, make and color. This model of Fiat was like a white Ford truck in Texas—everyone had one.

Jake was able to get a call in to his old friend at the Agency, Kurt Jenkins, who had risen now to the DCI position. His conversation had been somewhat stilted. The man wasn't being entirely truthful, Jake knew. Kurt might be able to fool any congressional inquiry with his rhetoric and eloquence of tongue, but Jake knew the man far too long to know when he was blowing smoke out of his ass. Jake had told the man about his case and how he needed the position of the yacht owned by the Greek billionaire Petros Caras. The Agency director seemed to anticipate Jake's needs. Yeah, he knew more than he wanted Jake to understand. Kurt Jenkins cut the call short, saying he would get back with Jake soon.

That call was about fifteen minutes ago, while Elisa was inside a small corner store in the seaside town of Augusta, some ten miles north of Siracusa. Jake was familiar with this town since it housed a fairly large Italian Navy complex, along with U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet port with tankers and munitions replenishment facilities.

Elisa came back and got behind the wheel of the Fiat, setting the bag of goods on the floor next to Jake's feet. “Okay, I got everything you asked for,” she said. “I understand the needle and thread and the super glue, but I'm not sure about the Sambuca.”

“Sambuca works great to clean the wounds,” Jake assured her. “And I also plan to drink a bunch before you poke me with that needle.”

“Right, well we better get someplace soon,” she said, her eyes focused on the dark clouds out to sea. “Looks like some bad weather heading ashore soon.”

They had crossed over the bridge to the island and passed the Naval complex before finding the small store. Since the town was crawling with U.S. and Italian Naval personnel, Jake guessed the Mafia would be less likely to look here for them.

“I once stayed at a small motel on the ocean side of this island years ago,” Jake said. “It's not a great place, but I'm sure they still take cash. Might be a good place to hang low until we can find out where the Greek is.”

Elisa cranked over the car. “Sounds good. Let's go.”

They got to the motel and checked in with cash and one of Jake's fake passports. The older man at the desk looked like he might have recognized Jake from his last visit, but that wasn't likely.

Their room faced the ocean, as did all the rooms in this one-story no-tell motel, where most of the patrons probably stayed in the evening by the hour.

It had just one medium-sized bed and actually had one of those magic fingers machines. Problem was, it would have been out of service for years, since it only took Italian Lira coins, which had been out of circulation for a long time. Hopefully they'd changed the sheets since then, Jake thought.

Jake lifted his shirt over his head exposing the bandage on his lower abdomen left oblique muscle. The white was soaked red but it had turned a dark color, so he guessed the bleeding had stopped. He gently peeled back the bandage and saw the wound was slit open as if the bullet had just penetrated his flesh. Two inches to the one side and the bullet would have missed him completely. Two inches toward his belly button and he could have lost a kidney on the bullets exit.

“I've never sewed someone's skin before,” Elisa said, her gaze shifting from Jake's wound to his eyes.

“But you've used a needle and thread, right?”

“Yes, as a young girl. But not this.”

He found the bottle of Sambuca, opened it, and took a long slug, the clear licorice liqueur coating his throat and taking his breath away. He almost choked. “Maybe I should have had you get some whiskey.”

“Or rubbing alcohol.”

“You can't drink that?” Jake assured her.

“I meant for the wounds.”

Jake took another drink and handed the bottle to Elisa.

She refused to drink, but instead found the needle and poured some of the liqueur over that. She took out a fresh gauze pad, soaked it with the Sambuca and then smiled at Jake. “You ready for this?”

He shook his head and picked up the bottle again, taking a longer swig now. In reality he knew it wouldn't do a damn thing to the pain of the needle going through his skin, but it couldn't hurt him.

Sitting on the bed, Jake then lay back onto his back. The pain brought some discomfort, but wasn't the worst thing Jake had ever felt. The alcohol seeping into his wound hurt more than the needle. When Elisa was done with the stitches, she dropped the super glue over her work to help keep the seal. Then she did the same to the exit wound on his back. She topped off her work with a new bandage on each wound.

“There you go,” she said. “I really wasn't sure I could do that.”

Jake stood and tried to turn his body to feel for any pain. But she had done a nice job. No matter how he twisted, he was only in a little pain. Maybe the Sambuca did help some by now.

He went to the window that overlooked the ocean just a short distance from their back door. On a good day, when the sun was shining, Jake knew he could wander down the rocks to a nice beach. But today the wind was howling and the high waves crashed ashore spraying water to their back doorstep. Darkness should have been a few hours away, yet the clouds and the rain had cut their daylight short.

“Are you all right?” Elisa asked, coming up behind him and placing her hand on his shoulder.

“I don't know. I get these feelings when things are ready to go from bad to worse.”

Just as the words left Jake's mouth, his phone buzzed and he grasped it quickly from his pocket to see who was calling. It read ‘Pizza Hut.' He shook his head and answered, “Nice touch. I could really use a thin crust pepperoni right now.”

“Who said the Agency doesn't have a sense of humor?” Kurt Jenkins asked.

Jake took a seat on the bed and glanced at Elisa, who obviously had no idea who he was talking with, as she was on her small laptop computer checking her e-mail. “You got something for me?”

“First of all, what in the hell are you doing in Augusta?”

“Plotting world domination? What the hell do you think? I'm waiting for your call, trying to keep the local Mafia from killing us.”

“So you're still with the Italian Intelligence Officer?”

Jake tried not to look at Elisa when he said, “Of course.”

“You know she's still officially on leave,” Kurt reminded Jake.

“So. I'm officially retired.”

“Good point,” Kurt said, a slight laugh in his voice. “All right. We have a location on Petros Caras and his yacht. He's right out in the middle of the major squall to the south of Sicily.”

“Great. Then there's probably no way the Greeks could have gotten Sara Halsey Jones out to the yacht yet.”

“True. But we have no way of knowing where they might be bringing her, so their location is uncertain.”

Jake considered that and realized they were screwed until the weather changed. “The Greeks must be holing up like us, waiting for the yacht to come to port. And that won't happen for a while. Do you have any good weather report for us?”

“I thought you might ask,” the Agency DCI said. “Looks like the rain will pass through by morning. Right now Petros Caras is about fifty miles off the coast of Sicily riding the storm out. Since he could have simply headed farther south to avoid the storm, we're guessing he wants to hang out closer to Sicily to pick up the professor.”

That made sense. Most of the storms in the Med were not that difficult to avoid. “You're holding out on me, Kurt.”

Hesitation on the other end. “We got a call from Senator James Halsey an hour ago. He's not happy. His father is dying and he wants his sister there.”

“I know that,” Jake said. “I screwed up. I admit it. I had her and then lost her. But they could have her anywhere right now.” He thought about that and had an idea. Yet, he didn't want to bring it up to the director of central intelligence. “There's something else, isn't there?”

“How in the hell do you know this?”

“I can feel it in my bones, Kurt.”

The DCI explained to Jake the historical relationship the Agency had with Petros Caras. He finished up by saying, “We will be sending a representative to reason with the man.”

“Seriously? You should be sending a jet to bomb his damn yacht under the cover of this storm.”

“I know. The man has gone off the reservation. We believe he's been involved with stirring up the riots in Athens, Syria and elsewhere across the Middle East.”

“To what end?”

“We don't know for sure.”

Jake had a good idea. “I think I know.” He glanced at Elisa as he added, “It's the reason our Italian friend is investigating the man. He's been sending his men to steal all kinds of ancient artifacts under the cover of the riots. It's a perfect distraction.”

“I told you,” Elisa said, suddenly understanding the direction of the conversation.

“All right,” Jake concluded. “So will you keep me informed of their location?”

“Will do.”

With that the two old friends clicked off and Jake shoved his phone back into his pocket. He thought about the conversation with Kurt Jenkins and still thought the man was holding out on him. But that was also the nature of the spy game. Nothing was black and white.