The Abomination (43 page)

“Why?”

“I'll explain later. But if Daniele Barbo calls with instructions, follow them to the letter, OK?”

Taking Piola's Fiat keys, she and Holly jumped into his car and waved him ahead of them to the exit.

The Predators, circling over the multi-storey car park, had lost visual on the van. In an air-conditioned room in Virginia, half a dozen pairs of eyes scanned the exits, looking for their quarry.

“There,” one of the analysts said suddenly. “Leaving the car park again. They must have been trying to shake us.”

“Keep two UAVs on the vehicle,” the commander ordered. “One stays on the car park. Which way's the van headed?”

“Back over the bridge, towards the mainland.”

Kat waited two minutes, then drove Piola's car to the exit. Pushing Piola's ticket into the machine, she paid the five-euro fee, then filtered out.

“Anything?” she said into the phone clamped to her ear.

Two miles away at Ca' Barbo, Daniele was watching the monitors. “Two drones have gone after the van. The other's still circling over the car park. I think you've got away with it.”

“Excellent.”

“How will you double back to Venice after you've crossed the bridge?”

“I'm going to drive round the lagoon to Chioggia.”

“The ferry to Venice from Chioggia takes quite a while.”

“We're not going to Venice.”

“You know where Melina is?”

“It's just an idea at the moment.”

“Don't say any more over the phone,” he warned. “There's no reason they should have this number, but you can't be too careful.”

In the car park, inside the overheated control booth, the attendant sat reading
La Repubblica
. It wasn't much of a job, to be honest, but he got paid handsomely for it, particularly if he smashed a few car windows occasionally to justify the high prices his bosses charged for the safe-deposit room.

Glancing at his screen, he saw that a ticket corresponding to one of the number plates on the watch list he'd been given had just exited the barrier.

Picking up his phone, he made a call.

“The third drone's just peeled off. I think it's following you,” Daniele reported.

“Damn.” Kat swung round at the end of the Ponte della Libertà and headed back to Venice. “In that case, change of plan.”

“To what?”

“I'm not sure yet.” She thought a minute. “Daniele, Carnivia's an exact replica of Venice, right?”

“Right down to the last stone.”

“Is there any way you can use it to—”

“Yes!” he interrupted. “Kat, that's brilliant. Get to Piazzale Roma, dump the car in the parking lot there, and call me back. I'll do the rest.”

Across Venice, cell phones were beeping. Discreet calls were being answered with monosyllabic grunts. On the Grand Canal, two gondoliers pushed away from a jetty without their passengers and turned abruptly north, up the Rio Novo. In the municipal casino, a man playing a slot machine ignored a sudden shuddering ejaculation of coins over his shoes and walked away without a backwards glance, his eyes glued to the screen of his phone. A hotel porter in Santa Croce handed a laden luggage trolley to the hotel manager with the terse instruction: “Take this. I'll be back later.” A dwarf standing outside Santa Lucia station, a placard festooned with tourist maps around his neck, peremptorily snapped his fingers at a nearby tout.

It's sometimes said that organised crime in Italy is the only thing that is. Within five minutes of Kat turning back towards Venice, a small army of watchers was also converging on the Piazzale Roma.

Daniele logged into Carnivia. On an adjacent monitor he had the video feeds from the Predators. On that monitor, therefore, he could see exactly what those controlling the drones could see.

On the new screen, however, he could see what they couldn't – a pedestrian's-eye simulation of the tiny streets and alleyways of Venice, some no more than a metre wide, into which no sunlight ever penetrated.

And no overhead cameras, either. The passageways and canal pavements formed a labyrinth that even locals sometimes got lost in.

“There's a narrow
calle
to your right,” he reported. “It leads to a fork where you turn into a
ramo—
”

“Daniele, slow down,” Kat said, sounding breathless as she walked briskly down the little alleyway. “If we move too quickly we'll stand out.”

“OK.” Daniele glanced at the Predator feed. The drones were still circling, looking for the two women amongst all the people on the Strada Nuova. “OK, they don't know where you are but they're waiting for you to reappear. I'm going to take you on a walkabout.”

He directed them down several more alleyways, then into a
sotoportego
, a walkway that ran underneath several houses.

“That should fool them for a while,” he said with satisfaction.

Kat's voice said in his ear, “Daniele, I think we were just spotted by a gondolier. He's making a phone call.” There was a pause, then her voice came back. “He definitely spotted us. He's turning round to follow.”

“OK, so now we have to avoid the canals. Do a left up ahead, where the bridge is.”

He took them through a number of other paved passages. “There,” he said at last. “You should know where you are now.”

“Thanks.”

“And I think I know where you're trying to get to. But don't say anything on this line. Good luck.”

Daniele had guided them back towards Cannaregio, the northernmost of Venice's
sestieri
. This was the last remaining part of Venice not to be overrun by tourists. Humble hardware stores, grocers and other working-class businesses were more in evidence here than ritzy fashion stores.

“Here,” Kat said, turning off yet another
sotoportego
into a tiny boatyard that gave onto the canal. “I remembered the address from Barbara Holton's receipts.”

There was a hand-painted sign high up on the wall.
Barche a noleggio
.

Boats for hire.

They asked to rent a small speedboat. The owner wanted ID and a credit card before he'd so much as untie it.

“Look,” Kat said, losing patience. “We'll give you cash
and
have the boat back by nightfall.”

The boatyard owner shook his head. “ID and a card. That's the law.”

Quietly, Holly slipped away from the discussion.

Kat said, “Remember that boat you rented to the tourist who got killed? I'm the
capitano di carabinieri
you spoke to. This is a police emergency, and if you don't rent me a boat right now, I'm going to come back with a search warrant and turn this place over. OK?”

“Well, if you're a
carabiniere
, you can show me some ID, can't you?” the owner said reasonably.

Kat caught the sound of an outboard from around the corner. “I'll be back,” she said, turning towards it.

The yard owner shrugged. Then he heard it too. “Hey! What's—”

The boat came into view, passing the two of them at speed. Without hesitating, Kat jumped, landing neatly in the prow.

“Nice,” Holly said, opening up the throttle.

“I'm a Venetian. We don't fall over in boats.”

Behind them, the boatyard owner reached for his cell phone. Then he hesitated. If she
was
a
carabiniere
, reporting it stolen might be the wrong thing to do. He'd check up the line before he did anything else.

IN THE MCI
surveillance room, an orderly turned to the suited man at the observation desk and said quietly, “Sir, Mr Gilroy's requesting videocon.”

“Put him on.”

“Good day to you, General,” Gilroy said courteously as his face appeared on the screen.

“Mr Gilroy.” There was just the faintest inflection on that “Mister”. None of the men in the observation room were still in the military, but they carried their former ranks with them like invisible limbs. To be plain “Mister” meant you were either a civilian or a spook, neither of which categories of person the general had much time for. “How's the weather in Venice?”

“Oh, it's a beautiful day,” Gilroy assured him. “Good flying weather, in fact. Although I believe I can spot a few clouds on the horizon.”

The general glanced at the sensor screens. “So can I, Mr Gilroy. So can I.”

“In fact, you're probably wondering why you can't see very much at all right now,” Gilroy said bluntly.

“We do seem to have lost sight of our objectives,” the general admitted.

“I can tell you where your quarry is going.”

The general's eyes narrowed. “I thought you wanted them safe and sound.”

“I did. Because I wanted them to lead us to the girl. But once we've established where she is. . .” Gilroy let the words tail off. “But please, no more loud bangs. Do you have someone nearby who can clean this up for us?”

“Our man never left the city. How solid is your intelligence?”

“It comes from someone close to the women. He's cooperating with me.”

“You must be very persuasive, Mr Gilroy.”

“It's what I do,” Gilroy said flatly. “I find that if you give people a good enough reason to help you, they generally oblige. Does your man have a boat?”

“He can get one.”

“Tell him to go out to the lagoon. I'll relay further instructions when he's on the water.” Gilroy disconnected without waiting for the general to say any more.

NEITHER KAT NOR
Holly spoke much as they headed across the lagoon. The tiny outboard protested with a high-pitched whine at the speed it was being asked to do. Icy water exploded in their faces every time they crashed down onto a wave.

Eventually they came within sight of their goal, and Holly slowed.

“The jetty's pretty rotten,” Kat said, remembering. “We can tie up by the shore.”

They cut the engine, and suddenly everything was very quiet. Waves sucked at the boat's keel. They tied up and jumped onto the concrete.

“The old hospital's over there,” Kat said, pointing. “Through the trees.”

“It looks like it's derelict.”

“We'll try the tower. That's where the fisherman said he saw lights.”

They pushed their way through the hospital's broken front door. The authorities still hadn't bothered to come and board up the windows. There was the same debris lying on the floor, the same graffiti on the walls.

“Melina!” Kat hollered. “Melina!” After a moment Holly joined in, the two of them calling at the top of their voices.

Holly held up her hand for silence. “I think I heard something.”

They listened. A bat see-sawed past their heads, tumbling over itself in a frantic effort to get past them to the door.

“Melina!” Holly shouted again.

And then they heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and in front of them stood a dark-haired young woman.

“MELINA KOVAČEVIĆ?”
Kat said gently.

The young woman nodded.

“I'm an officer of the Carabinieri, and this is a friend of mine. We've come to take you somewhere safe.” Fear flashed in the girl's eyes, and Kat added hastily, “Don't worry. From now on, one of us will stay with you all the time. We know you've been in danger. Have you been here all along?”

“Jelena brought me here,” the girl said in broken Italian. “She said it was a safe place. I didn't know it would be so cold.”

So Melina had been here for over three weeks, living off the Pop-Tarts and tinned chickpeas the older women had bought for her. Mentally, Kat kicked herself for not having realised at the time what those supermarket receipts in the women's hotel room, and the smell of fires here on Poveglia, had meant.

“When the police came – me and my boss, and the forensic team – why didn't you give yourself up?” she asked.

“Barbara said not to trust the police.” Melina was silent a moment. “I thought Barbara would come to get me. She said she would. Then my phone battery ran out.”

“I'm afraid Barbara's dead,” Kat said, as gently as she could. “And presumably you know about Jelena.”

“I was here,” she whispered. “I saw the man kill her, right in the middle of Mass. He didn't see me, but I saw him drag her to the sea.”

“Did you get a good look at him? Would you know him again?”

“I think so. It was dark, but there was a moon.”

“Do you know who he was, Melina?”

She shook her head. It was not the moment, Kat decided, for explaining exactly what relation Bob Findlater was to her. “Let's get you back to Venice. Do you have any things here? Clothes? A bag?”

“Just my sleeping bag. It's upstairs.” She glanced sideways at Kat. “I had to burn things to keep warm.”

“Don't worry. No one will care. They should have knocked this place down years ago.”

They went with her to get her sleeping bag. It was marginally less derelict up there, but without heating the nights must have been bitterly cold. It occurred to Kat that without more supplies of food, a phone battery, or a way of getting off the island, Melina would probably have ended up dying on Poveglia.

It was as they were coming down again and making for the front door that a dark figure stepped out from a doorway behind them and said, “Stop.”

They turned. Findlater was holding his pistol two-handed, his body aligned precisely behind it, knees slightly bent. He looked both alert and relaxed, like someone who had stood that way many times before.

“I'm surprised at you, Second Lieutenant Boland,” he added.

“What do you mean?” Holly said warily.

“First rule of hostile territory. Secure a perimeter and your exfiltration point. You're a disgrace to the US Military.”