Tarantula (7 page)

There was a light switch next to the door and he pressed it. A single bulb was installed in a fitting on the ceiling in the middle of the space, and the light it cast out revealed a rack that had been fitted to the facing wall. The rack held an array of weapons: automatic rifles, long guns, machine pistols, semiautos. There was ammunition, too, of every calibre. It was a small armoury.

Milton went over and took down a new Heckler & Koch MP5. It was the collapsing stock variant with the integral suppressor. Milton was familiar with the gun: sturdy, reliable, accurate and quiet, particularly with the suppressor and subsonic ammunition. It fired from a closed bolt, ensuring accuracy, and was equipped with a Tasco laser sight. There was plenty of spare ammunition. Ideal.

He put the machine pistol aside, reached back to the rack and selected a Sig Sauer P226. The semiautomatic pistol was a point and shoot gun with no need for a manual safety. There were three spare magazines and a further box of 9mm ammunition. There was a shoulder holster and he slotted the pistol inside it, putting it on and hiding it beneath his jacket.

There was a leather satchel hung from one of the lower hooks. Milton went to it, took it down, and unzipped it.

There was a stack of bank notes inside.

He opened the bag as wide as the zip would allow and took out the money. The half million had been provided in one thousand five hundred Euro notes, the wide purple notes banded together in ten thick bundles. He held the money to his nose, absently breathing in the dusty paper scent, and then stacked them back in the bag again.

There was a pouch at the front of the satchel. Milton opened it and took out the GPS tracker. He was annoyed afresh. It was a consumer model, a Garmin, not even one that the techs in the basement laboratory next to the Thames had worked on. It was about the diameter of a ten pence piece, and as thick as three of them. The functionality was simple enough: there was a rubber on-off button, a small LED status light and a mini-USB port for charging. It was the smallest tracker available to the public, but it was still ten times larger than the miniaturised models that he had used before. He had seen one that was so thin that it would have been possible to hide it inside a bundle of notes, to remain invisible until the notes were counted individually.

That would have been safe.

This? Not so much. There was no way that it would go unnoticed if the bag was searched.

He put the guns and the tracker into the bag, zipped it up, opened the door and stepped outside.

MILTON RETURNED to his hotel suite. The hair that he had stuck to the jamb and the panel of the door was still in place and, inside, the spread of talcum powder had not been disturbed. Nevertheless, he quickly inspected the rooms, one by one, only relaxing when he was as confident as he could be that no one had been inside while he had been away.

He opened the safe and deposited the pistol, ammunition and the shoulder holster inside. The MP5 was too large to fit, and so he hauled up the mattress and hid the gun on the slats of the bed’s frame, dropping the mattress back over the top of it.

He undressed and took a cold shower, standing under the jet until his skin was tingling. He wrapped a towel around his waist and went back to the bedroom. He removed fresh underwear and a white t-shirt from his case and dressed.

He opened the pouch on the front of the satchel and removed the tracker. He held it in his palm. It was large.

He was going to have to be creative.

MILTON rode back to the docks, left his bike and walked to the bar. It was late, ten o’clock, and, although the jetties and wharves were still busy, the darkness filled the avenues between the storage containers, a deep gloom within which it would be a simple thing to hide. As assassin, waiting for him to come back? He wouldn’t need a high powered rifle. He could sit in a darkened spot with a pistol and there would be nothing that Milton could do about it. He felt the roil of apprehension in his stomach, a prickle between his shoulder blades, but he kept going.

The restaurant was busy again, rowdy with drunken banter. Ernesto Gorgi Di Mauro seemed surprised to see him, as if he had secretly suspected that Milton had spun him a line earlier in order to get out of the bar in one piece.

“Signor Smith. You have returned.”

“Of course.”

“I will be honest, I did not think we would see you again.”

“I told you I was serious, Ernesto. I don’t play games. I mean what I say.”

“How serious are you?”

Milton lifted the bag and deposited it on the table in front of him.

Ernesto displayed no concern about being seen with so much money in a public place. He opened the satchel, brazenly, and tipped the banknotes onto the table.

He nodded appreciatively.

“Where do you find this much money in such a hurry?”

“I went to the bank,” Milton replied, smiling a little, enough to make them wonder whether he might even be telling the truth.

“The bank? It must have impressive service, Signor Smith, to be able to find this much money so quickly.”

“My organisation is a very good customer. They try especially hard to please us.”

“I can see that.” He waved his hand across the scattered bundles of notes. “It is all here? All five hundred thousand?”

“Count it if you don’t trust me.”

Ernesto looked at him slyly, assessing, but Milton held his eye. He knew that he dare not look away first. Any sign of weakness, even of a lack of confidence, and he knew that his control of the situation would quickly be lost. He was unarmed, in a room full of murderers. He might be able to take two or three of them out with his hands and feet, perhaps even disarm one and use his weapon, but they would be able to overpower him eventually. And then… well, Milton knew what would come next. Number Three’s demise would be pleasant by comparison.

“No,” Ernesto said, “no, I believe you. Why would you be foolish enough to try to take advantage of us for the sake of a few thousand Euros?”

“The opportunity to work together is too valuable.”

“You know what would happen if you did, yes?”

He was reminding him about Grieve. Seeing if it would make him buckle.

It did not. Milton held his gaze.

He became aware that the other men had stopped talking. They were all watching him to see how he would react.

Milton did not buckle. He stood there, implacable, cool.

Ernesto laughed—a big, explosive laugh—and his men took their cue and laughed with him.

“My apologies for doubting you, Signor Smith.”

“No apology needed.”

He turned in his chair and called across to the bar. “Grappa,” he barked out. “A drink for our English friend.”

The waitress brought over a bottle and two shot glasses.

Ernesto took it and showed the label to Milton. “Bocchino Cantina Privata Grappa. The best you can buy.”

He put the glasses on the table, opened the bottle and prepared to pour.

Milton put his hand over his glass. “No.”

“No?” Ernesto looked as if he could be offended very easily.

“We haven’t concluded our business yet.”

“What?” Ernesto said. “The practicalities? The supply? You should not worry. It will be a simple enough thing.”

“Not just that.” Milton’s face was calm and composed.

“What? We are done for tonight.”

“Not yet,” Milton said. “There’s something else that I want.”

Ernesto looked at him for a long moment, a frown on his chubby forehead, and then he smiled a cold, cruel smile. “Ah, yes. Our friends. I understand.”

“They must be removed.”

“When would you like it done?”

“As soon as possible. Tomorrow.”

Ernesto looked up to one of his captains. “È possibile?” he asked.

The man shrugged, his lip curling up, and then he gave a curt nod. “Può essere fatto.”

“He says it can be done,” Ernesto said.

Milton nodded, too. “Good.
Now
we’re finished. I’ll have that drink.”

THERE WAS celebrating to be done to mark the conclusion of their agreement.

Milton paced himself carefully. He knew his limits and he did not want to exceed them. Ernesto and the others drank freely and Milton kept just a glass or two behind them, not so much as to draw attention to himself but enough so that he would be able to do what he needed to do. There were more bottles of grappa, and then wine, and then bottles of vodka and gin. Ernesto drank heavily, but it was obvious that he had a prodigious capacity for it. His conversation became more effusive, his jokes bawdier, but the same glitter of concentrated evil remained steady and unstinting in his eyes.

Milton finished his glass, pushed it across the table and started his act.

The big man from the restaurant in Castellabate, the man whose nose Milton had broken, was at the bar. He had been watching him all night. There was hatred in the way he looked at him, the way he levelled his stare at him whenever he thought that Milton was looking in his direction. Milton encouraged it, looking at him for a moment longer than he needed to, an unspoken challenge, a questioning of his stomach. The man was big, much bigger than Milton, and the ease with which he had been bested must have eaten at him. Perhaps he had been teased by the others, about how the Englishman, five inches smaller and a hundred pounds lighter had dealt with him without even breaking sweat.

Milton was counting on all of that.

Milton stood and turned so that he was looking straight at him.

“What?” he said.

The big man frowned at him, confused, before his natural aggression reasserted itself. He cocked an eyebrow and pushed away from the bar, rising up to his full six foot five.

“What are you looking at?” Milton asked him.

The man glared back.

“You got a problem with me?”

The man said nothing.

“What is it? Lost your tongue?”

Ernesto was still at the table. He sat back, his arms folded, and watched. He said nothing.

Milton leered at the man. “I thought you would’ve learnt your lesson. The last time… your nose.”

The man dabbed his fingers against the tape on his nose before he knew what he was doing.

Milton stepped forwards until there was less than the span of his arm between them.

The other men quietened down. Ernesto still did nothing.

The man with the broken nose tried to hold Milton’s eye. Milton could see that he was nervous, but that he was doing everything he could to suppress the evidence. He couldn’t back down in a room full of his peers. Milton had anticipated that.

He ducked his head at the man, a sudden and unexpected movement that made him flinch.

It must have looked aberrant, the difference in size between them, the smaller man behaving as if he was calling the bigger one out.

The other men in the room laughed.

Ernesto smiled.

Milton watched the big man: the way his right fist clenched and then unclenched, the colour that gradually rose in his face, the change in the distribution of his weight, so subtle that he might not even have noticed it, the alteration that would make it easier for him to lead out with a punch.

Milton had been trained to recognise the signs.

Another prod.

It wouldn’t take much more.

“I was surprised,” Milton said, speaking to Ernesto although he didn’t take his eye off the big man. “Sending someone like this to intimidate me.” He indicated the blowsy woman behind the bar with a sharp nod of his head. “You would’ve had more luck sending her.”

That was all the big man was prepared to take. Milton noticed his fist clench and stay clenched, the whiteness around his knuckles speaking to the tension in his hand. He adjusted his own balance by small degrees as he anticipated the trajectory of the blow, watched the man draw back his right fist and throw a powerful, ugly, and ineffective cross.

He stepped forwards, pushing his forearm up and blocking the punch enough to deflect it harmlessly against his shoulder. The man was unbalanced now, and it was easy for Milton to grab the lapels of his jacket and sweep his legs. He pushed down, the man crashing into the floorboards with Milton on top of him.

Milton had to hurt him now.

He drew back his right fist and pummelled the man in the face.

Blood splashed onto the bar, across the floor, over Milton.

His fist throbbed, but he drew it back again, punched again.

More blood.

He drew it back a third time, his knuckles on fire, and drilled it down again.

The man’s head lolled helplessly.

Another one or two punches and he would kill him.

Milton drew back again.

Ernesto got out of his chair and went to Milton, pulling him away from his bloodied lieutenant.

“Enough,” he said firmly.

Milton had one chance. He turned into Ernesto, as if unsure who had just accosted him, ready to attack again. He was close enough so that the sharp motion of his arm across the Italian’s chest was not unusual. He was close enough so that it would have been difficult to notice how his index finger widened the opening of Ernesto’s jacket pocket. Most importantly, he was close enough that only someone watching him intently would have seen the tracker as he let it drop from between his forefinger and ring finger and into the open pocket. And no-one was watching him intently. The others had been captivated by his sudden explosion of brutality and, now, the barely credible prospect that he was about to attack their boss, too.

Ernesto stumbled backwards. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a holstered pistol. He aimed it straight at Milton’s head.

Milton raised his hands. “Sorry.”

Ernesto held his aim steady. The big man groaned on the floor. Milton knew: this could go either way. He was counting on Ernesto’s greed.

The fat Italian drew his bottom lip back between his teeth, sucked in his breath, and then started to laugh. It began as a twitch at the corner of his mouth, and then a glint in his cruel eyes, and then a chuckle that became louder and more vociferous.

Milton stepped back and manufactured a wry expression. He shook out his fist for emphasis, shrugging as if to say that he knew what he had done was stupid and reckless, and that served to amplify Ernesto’s hilarity. The atmosphere changed on a sixpence, the men taking their cue from their capo.