He decided on a quick peek to assess things.
He crept ahead.
A narrow green runner ran down the center of the corridor’s wood floor. At the far end a half-opened window allowed in the morning sun and a breeze. He came to the room where the noise originated, the same room he’d been directed to find. Whoever had beaten him here was well informed. He stopped at the open doorway and risked a quick glance.
And saw a stout bear.
Several hundred pounds, at least.
The source of the crash was evident from an armoire that lay overturned. The animal was exploring, swiping odds and ends off the tables, smelling everything as it clattered down. It stood facing away, toward one of the two half-open windows.
He needed to leave.
The bear stopped its foraging and raised its head, sniffing.
Not good.
The animal caught his scent, turned, and faced him, snorting a growl.
He had a split second to make a decision.
Normally you dealt with bears by standing your ground, facing them down. But that advice had clearly been offered by people who’d never been this close to one. Should he head back toward the stairs? Or dart into the room across the hall? One mistake on the way down to the ground floor and the bear would overtake him. He opted for the room across the hall and darted left, entering just as the animal rushed forward in a burst of speed surprising for its size. He slammed the door shut and stood inside a small bedroom, a huge porcelain stove filling one corner. Two more windows, half open, lined the outer wall, which faced the back of the villa.
He needed a second to think.
But the bear had other ideas.
The door crashed inward.
He rushed to one of the windows and glanced out. The drop was a good thirty feet. That was at least a sprained ankle, maybe a broken bone or worse. The bear hesitated in the doorway, then roared.
Which sealed the deal.
He noticed a ledge just below the window, about eight inches wide. Enough to stand on. Out he went, flattening his hands against the warm stone, his spine pressed to the house. The bear charged the window, poking its head out, swiping a paw armed with sharp claws. He edged his way to the left and maneuvered himself out of range.
He doubted the animal was going to climb out.
But that didn’t solve his problem.
What to do next.
CHAPTER TWO
The knight lowered his binoculars.
What a strange sight.
A man standing on a narrow cornice on the third story of a villa, with a bear roaring out a window, clawing at him.
He stood on a promontory about a quarter mile north of the villa, looking down through spring trees. He’d seen the Alfa Romeo driving up the road, a steady, precipitous, corkscrew climb, and took notice when it turned into the villa’s drive. When he’d focused the binoculars on the driver who’d emerged he’d immediately noticed that it was the same man from Menaggio, the one asking questions around town yesterday evening. He’d managed, outside a café, a quick snap of a picture from his cell phone, and had been able to learn an identity.
Harold Earl “Cotton” Malone.
Formerly of the United States Justice Department, once attached to a special intelligence unit called the Magellan Billet. A naval commander, pilot, fighter-jet-qualified, with a law degree from Georgetown University. Malone worked at the Judge Advocate General’s corps before being reassigned to the Justice Department, where he remained for a dozen years. Not yet fifty years old, he’d retired early and now owned a business. Cotton Malone, Bookseller, Højbro Plads, Copenhagen.
An intriguing change of careers.
Malone possessed a distinguished reputation as a competent intelligence operative, one who still occasionally offered his services out for hire. What he’d not been able to learn was exactly why this American of obvious skills and talent was here, in Italy, asking questions about things that only a few people in the world would know.
He turned from the chaotic scene below and stared at the villa’s owner, hunched on the ground, wrists tied behind his back, ankles likewise restrained. A gag prevented the portly Italian from uttering a sound. An associate stood off to one side, keeping a watchful guard.
“You’ve proven to be quite a problem,” he told his prisoner, who watched him with petrified eyes.
He’d arrived at the villa two hours ago. The groundskeeper had appeared without warning and his associate had shot him. He would have preferred no bloodshed, but it had been unavoidable. The villa’s owner was already up for the day, dressed, about to leave. The idea had been to catch him before that happened. He’d asked the owner a few obligatory questions, hoping for cooperation, but no answers were forthcoming. Several more attempts at reason also failed, so he and his associate had brought the fat Italian up here, into the woods, still on the villa’s grounds, where a measure of privacy among the trees offered an opportunity to make his point clear. As if two bullets into the groundskeeper had not been enough to impress the point.
He stepped over and crouched down, the musk of the cool morning filling his nostrils. “I imagine you now regret making that call to the British embassy in Rome.”
A nod of the head.
“You just need to tell me where the letters are that you wanted to sell.”
Supposedly, in 1945, after Mussolini was captured, the contents of two satchels found with him had been inventoried by Italian partisans. But no one seriously believed that any list created by them was accurate. He’d read their entries, which documented little to nothing of interest. Most likely that perfunctory effort had all been for show and the valuable stuff had never made it on the list in the first place. Nor had anything on the actual list ever surfaced in the years since.
And this Italian might hold the answer as to why.
“You’re going to tell me all about those documents from Mussolini.”
Of course the villa owner could not answer and he had no intention of removing the gag.
Not yet, at least.
He motioned and his associate grabbed a coil of rope lying in the leaves. High above stretched several stout limbs. He studied them, finally deciding on one about ten meters off the ground. It took his associate two attempts to toss one end of the coil over the limb. Then he dragged the villa’s owner to the rope. He resisted, but with both hands and feet bound the effort proved futile. The Italian wiggled on the ground as his associate tied one end of the rope to the wrist bindings. With both hands his man then grabbed the end of the rope draping down from the limb and tightened the slack enough to tug on the Italian’s arms.
Which telegraphed the whole idea.
Once hauled off the ground the man’s arms would be extended upward from behind, at an angle that human joints were not meant to experience. The pain would be excruciating, the body’s weight eventually dislocating the shoulders.
“You understand what I can do to you?” he asked.
The villa’s owner gave a vigorous nod.
He reached beneath his jacket and found his revolver. “I’m going to remove the gag. If you call out, or even raise your voice, I’ll shoot you in the face. Is that clear?”
The man nodded.
He freed the gag.
The man sucked in a series of deep, long breaths. He allowed him a moment, then gazed down and said, “The contents of Mussolini’s two satchels have long been in dispute. So tell me, how did you come to acquire anything from them?”