He was a perfect target for the signal Garrett wanted to send. It showed that the man responsible for protecting Israeli assets in Europe couldn’t even protect himself.
The report also failed to mention the letter he knew his assets had left at the scene, but he had no doubt Israel had it. One more bit of gunpowder loaded in the shell he wanted to fire.
Garrett smiled and said, “I was beginning to worry those savages didn’t have it in them, but after Interlaken I suppose I should have had more confidence.”
His eyes still glued to the television, Leonardo barked a laugh, almost as if he was embarrassed by what was on the screen. By what he had facilitated.
Garrett sat down behind his desk and used the remote to cut off the TV, saying, “What about our own operation today?”
Glad for the reprieve, Leonardo put a map on the desk, pointing out a position near the coast and saying, “Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael are set. We expect the hit in the next hour.” He looked at his watch and corrected himself, “Actually within the next twenty minutes now. Raph is the trigger. Donnie and Mikey are the hit team.”
Garrett insisted that they never use their true names, no matter what they did, as a protection of the reputation of the Knights if anything went wrong. He wanted to make it as hard as possible to put a link to his martial skill and the Knights’ charitable contribution. Which is why he was hired.
After recruiting them, he’d buried their names to the point that even he couldn’t remember what was on their birth certificates. They’d used false passports created by the Knights for years, but he had to keep them straight, so he’d devised nicknames, no matter the name on the passport.
He had anointed them with the names of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They had all thought it funny originally, but the monikers had taken on a life of their own, with each man liking the tag he’d been given. He, of course, was Splinter. At least to his face. When he was out of earshot, they called him the Eunuch.
Because of his insistence on cloaking their names, they were known derisively as the Turtles to the hierarchy of the Knights of Malta, but the officials using the term had no idea of the violence they were capable of inflicting. They would learn that soon.
Garrett rubbed his face, the blackout sleep not giving him the rest he needed. He said, “Can they do it and project the hit on our partners?”
Leonardo said, “Yes. We have his route, and we’re going to use the same method that Israel does. It will send a signal, and when the car is disabled, we’ll execute him and his wife with a bullet to the head, then throw the letter in the front seat. It will work.”
“How sure are we he’s going to use that route?”
“He’s done it every weekend since Italy opened back up. He takes his wife on a day drive down the Amalfi coast. He eats at a different restaurant, but he takes the same route to get there. He’ll do it again.”
Garrett nodded and said, “Okay. Okay. Good.”
Leonardo nodded, then shuffled from foot to foot. Garrett said, “What?”
“Our contact says he needs more money. We have it, and he needs it for the next hit. The one in Bahrain.”
“We’ve already paid him. He knows that. Is he trying a play here? I know it’s not because he’s a true believer. If he was, he wouldn’t have taken our money to begin with.”
In Syria, before it had all gone bad, the majority of the Turtles’ actions had been paying off various rebel groups—in effect, buying the ability of the Knights to help the very people the groups were harming. To be sure, that in itself had involved significant danger, and when they had to go to the guns, they did, but money was something the Knights had, and it was much easier to pay with cash as opposed to blood. In so doing, they’d found a man who could interface with the various rebel groups, and that was the man they were using now.
Leonardo said, “I don’t think so. He’s scared. He says they’re going to kill him if he doesn’t deliver. I think he’s telling the truth. I think he needs the money to make it happen.”
“Why? We set the parameters before we paid him. If he’s playing us, I’ll cut his heart out.”
“He says Bahrain is more than they expected. More effort, more men, more everything. And we need that hit before we do the big one. We need to build the death count before we trip the final wire. If we don’t, we won’t get the reaction we want.”
Garrett rolled his head back onto his chair, staring at the ceiling and thinking. He didn’t like the choice of paying off a man who had already been a weasel in Syria, skimming off their money to enrich himself. But he had done what he’d said he’d do, protecting the Knights.
He said, “Okay. Pay him what he wants. But this is bullshit. If there’s one place Keta’ib Hezbollah can operate, it’s Bahrain. I mean, they can kill an old chief of Mossad in Switzerland, a Shin Bet head in Paris, but they need more money in Bahrain, a Shia state?”
“It’s because of the level of the target and the Sunni security apparatus. They say it makes it harder to operate than in a European country. And they might be right.”
Garrett rolled his eyes and said, “Fine. Use the cutout account, but this is the last time. We aren’t made of money, and we aren’t in Syria anymore. I can’t steal the money here in Rome like we did there, but I agree. We need that hit.”
Leonardo nodded and Garrett changed the subject. “What’s the status on Raphael? Do we have contact?”
Leonardo raised a cell phone and said, “He’s on Zello. We’ll hear as soon as he has the target.”
Zello was an application that basically turned the cell phone into a multiplex walkie-talkie, with everyone who was tuned to the channel able to listen instead of the usual point-to-point communications of a cell phone.
No sooner did he say that than the phone chirped, “Donnie, Donnie, this is Raph. Target just passed my location.”
Donatello came back, the sound crystal clear, “Roger that. We’re set. What’s the traffic status?”
“You’re clear. He’s a singleton. Light traffic, and they’re running slow.”
In the office, Leonardo smiled and said, “Told you.”
At the same time Garrett was hearing the radio traffic, the small trailer next to the park in the EUR neighborhood was being surrounded with crime scene tape, the body having been found, a small crowd forming outside.
Inspector Lia Vairo parked her car next to the perimeter and exited. She pushed past the tape outside the trailer, saying to the carabinieri at the entrance checkpoint, “Another one?”
“Looks that way.”
She entered the crime scene, thinking she was solving a murder. She had no idea of the threat the death represented.
Most of the people living in the neighborhood didn’t care about the murders happening. In fact, if asked, almost all would say they brought it upon themselves by littering the neighborhood with their trade. Just one more whore killed doing her job. But Lia did care. She was someone who didn’t look at the life of the victim, only the death.
And because of it, Lia held the fate of many more in her hands.
Chapter 7