The Three Most Wanted Read online

  Hang on... Jon’s breathing had sped up, his body tensed.

  “Jon? It’s okay. You don’t need to pretend to be asleep.”

  “Margo…” His voice was a thin whisper. “It is you. Didn’t know where we were…”

  “We’re safe. Bane’s asleep just the other side of you. Do you remember getting on the train?”

  “Yes. Could’ve climbed a mountain… then nothing.”

  “You passed out. I think that stimulant of Bane’s was pretty evil stuff. The train took us over the Alps almost to Milan, then the Resistance derailed it, found us when they came to get their loot and carried us off with them. We’re in a safe house and as soon as you’re well, they’ll take us to Rome.”

  “Milan?” He sounded shocked. “Rome? Really?”

  “Really. You just rest and get well. How d’you feel?”

  “My leg hurts a bit. Otherwise fine.”

  “I can hear some understatement screaming for mercy.”

  “Fine, my leg hurts a lot and I feel awful.” I forced my abused muscles into just enough action to place a kiss on his forehead. He smiled. “Feeling better already. Rome. Right. I’ll give getting well my fullest attention.”

  For the next day or so, Jon remained desperately weak and spent most of the time asleep. “You don’t have to stay with me all the time, you know,” he whispered, waking to find me and Bane again chilling out beside him.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said lightly. “There’s not much to do in a safe house, y’know.”

  Actually we did pop up and watch the news sometimes, but whenever we’d been gone for a bit longer—for dinner, say—he seemed worse. The stress of being alone and helpless in a totally unfamiliar place always sapped his strength like nothing else.

  So we stuck around, even though he slept soundly most of the time. Under the regular assaults of a powerful antibiotic, Bane’s arm stopped oozing pus and began to heal, finally. My swollen face and aching muscles subsided and pretty soon Jon started to rally.

  The doctor had ordered he stay off the leg until the wound closed up, but despite his emaciated condition, being so close to our goal revitalized him a little too much.

  “I will sit on you,” said Bane, as Jon made as if to put back the covers.

  Jon desisted. “Don’t you want to get there?”

  “Yes, I do. So I don’t want to be stuck here for days extra because you tore that hole open again with your impatience. I thought you were the most patient one of us!”

  Jon flushed slightly. “Yes, but… well, Resistance safe houses get raided all the time, don’t they? Let’s not get too complacent about our safety here.”

  “Please don’t say that to Luciano,” I appealed. He was very proud of his cell’s security.

  “’Course not. But the sooner we get there the better. From the news, they’re still looking all over the place. What if their spies learn the Vatican is definitely our destination? Then it’ll be a hundred times harder to get in.”

  True. I wanted to be moving and so did Bane. But Jon had to be able to walk—and preferably run, though Luciano swore it wouldn’t be necessary.

  “Ah, good.” Luciano looked up from the table a few days later as Jon appeared in the kitchen doorway leaning on his new hiking stick. “I go down to Rome every few months to liaise with the Rome cell and I’ll be going tonight. The meeting’s all prearranged, so if you three are ready to move, it will be a very uncomplicated way to get you to them. What do you think?”

  Bane and I both glanced at Jon. A few more days would make the world of difference—yet surely it was far safer to go by tried and tested routes to a routine meeting than to depart from normal procedures.

  “I’ll be okay, really.” Jon scratched his unaccustomed moustache. The soldiers had seen his beard, so he’d got rid of most of it. “I managed the stairs fine, now that you finally let me try.” He had limped downstairs without any noticeable difficulty.

  “Okay...” Bane’s eyes questioned me. They’d not got a good look at him so he’d kept his beard.

  “If you get back upstairs okay,” I qualified.

  “Yeah,” said Bane. “So a provisional yes, Luciano, if that doesn’t give you trouble.”

  “Doesn’t make any difference. You either get in the car with me after dinner or you don’t.”

  We got in the car with him. Not so much a car as a four-by-four jeep thing kept out of sight in a little courtyard. Jon winced as he maneuvered up and in, then pretended he hadn’t. Carla and Francesco came out to see us off. Well, Francesco had come to see us off, anyway. “Good luck. Get stabbing with that quill, eh, Signora Silver-tongue?”

  I grimaced at the nickname, but smiled and bid him goodbye.

  “Here.” Carla suddenly acknowledged our existence, shoving a scrap of fabric into my hand.

  I unfolded it and found one of those bandanna hairbands. “Thanks.”

  “Luciano said to find you something.” Stiffly, she added, “Good luck.”

  “And you.”

  Luciano strode out into the courtyard, clipping a magazine into a Lethal. Pausing to tuck the pistol in the back of his waistband and shake his jacket over it, he swung into the driver’s seat and made to slam the door—Carla caught his hand.

  “Be careful.” Sweet on him, definitely.

  He kissed the back of her hand. Did he like her too? Avoiding the perils of romance within the cell’s command structure, perhaps. They were both rather wedded to their cause. Of course, they weren’t Believers, so for all I knew they could be at it like bunnies and just pretending to their subordinates…

  “I’m always careful.” Luciano slammed the door as soon as Carla’s hand was clear. He lowered the window a few inches to say, “Expect me before dawn day after tomorrow.”

  Carla nodded and stepped back. Francesco was opening the gates; Luciano started the engine. In the floodlight’s glare Carla looked more anxious than hostile now. How safe was this run really? Probably safer than walking by ourselves. Probably a lot safer than that.

  Luciano drove out of the courtyard and cruised through what appeared to be a mostly deserted country village. Not quite abandoned, but close to it. From Bane’s map there were a lot of settlements like this in the Italian department. The houses had bright plaster walls, which was about all we could see in the headlights.

  As soon as we’d left the village he turned off the bumpy but nominally-maintained road and onto a quite definitely abandoned road. Decades of locals and Resistance had kept it clear of encroaching trees but that was about it. The jeep tore through bushes, bouncing from rut to pothole like a manic kangaroo. Bane and Jon clung to the roof handles and I clung to them.

  “You all right back there?” Luciano asked after a while. “I perhaps should’ve said—it’s a bumpy ride.”

  “Fine,” said Jon, unclenching his teeth momentarily.

  “We’ll live,” I said.

  Luciano chuckled. “Yeah, well, you can imagine the EuroGov don’t like to send their expensive vehicles onto these roads. Anyway, I’ve got to keep my foot down a bit or it’ll take forever to get there.”

  “We’re fine,” said Bane, just as the roof smacked him on the head again. “Though I think I preferred the train...”

  “It gets better,” said Luciano.

  This humorous warning—as I thought—turned out to be a factual statement. The road bump-bumped its way to a genuinely desolate area and the surface took a sudden turn for the better. Luciano put his foot down even more and we made better time at the cost of fewer bruises. Color returned to Jon’s face, and soon he nodded off.

  The moon came out, and I watched the Italian forest passing, subtly different from the French forest much as the French forest was from our native Fellest. We passed picturesque ruins, these villages fully abandoned. Terracotta roof tiles still much in evidence, but the walls were whitewashed—once whitewashed—stucco and the windows had heavy—sometimes ornate—grills fixed over them...

  ...
The jeep jerked to a halt. I lifted my head from Bane’s shoulder, confused. The grey light of dawn filled the air.

  “Here we are,” said Luciano. “Rome.”

  Rome? I’d just slept through several hundred kilometers of the Italian department.

  I peered out the windscreen. Forest, still. “Doesn’t look quite how I imagined it.”

  “Well, we’re not quite there,” grinned Luciano. “But we change vehicles here. Out you get.”

  Bane and I slid out and hurried around to winch Jon from the vehicle; his leg had stiffened up. White-faced, he gripped his stick and limped along determinedly as we followed Luciano along a forest track, breathing in the fresh morning air. Coming to another clearing, the three of us stopped dead in shock. Or Bane and I stopped dead and Jon stopped with us.

  A city taxi sat there in the middle of the forest. Luciano laughed at our expressions and went up to the driver’s window. The middle-aged fellow was glaring at him.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Luciano grinned. “I had some delicate passengers.”

  What? He had actually slowed down on those early tracks?

  The taxi driver grunted something in Italian.

  “He says it’s going to be a tight fit,” Luciano told us. “He’s right. But it’s not far. Come on.”

  He opened the back door, and by the time we joined him he’d lifted the seat cushions to reveal a hidden compartment running under the back seats and right to the rear of the trunk.

  “Okay, I see what he means.” Bane eyed up the space available.

  “Well, thanks to a certain Free State smack in the middle of Rome, they scan IDs at the city gates. I’m not up for that, and unless you are, we’ll just have to squeeze in. Ladies first.”

  “What if someone rear ends us?” objected Bane. “I’ll go first.”

  I rolled my eyes. Pretty unlikely, though admittedly, with the reputation of Italian drivers… I climbed in next, then Luciano helped Jon in and called, “Move up.”

  “Ha ha,” retorted Bane.

  “Seriously.”

  Jon, Bane and I did our best to imitate sardines, and Luciano finally managed to wriggle into the remaining space. The taxi driver guffawed and slammed the seat’s cushions back down.

  “Glad someone’s enjoying themselves,” said Jon faintly.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Okay with small dark spaces?”

  “I’m fine with small spaces, Margo, but my leg is all bent up so please let’s do this as fast as we can…”

  Luciano shouted something in Italian which sounded rather like the Latin for, “Make it quick, jackass!” The driver guffawed again. But mercifully he started the engine and off we went.

  The road was every bit as bumpy as the early one. It was much like being shut in a sardine tin—or a coffin—and rolled down a hill. Jon suffered especially; he began muttering a rosary under his breath, his body rigid with pain. Luciano ignored him until we heard other traffic around us—a lot of horns beeping. Italian drivers.

  “Hush,” he said then, “we’re coming to the city gates. No one make a sound.”

  Jon fell silent—I took his hand and pressed it and he seemed to be trying not to crush it in return.

  The taxi only stopped, lurched forward and stopped a few times before speeding up again.

  “Get here early and you don’t have to wait in line, y’see,” murmured Luciano.

  We were through the gates! My heart began pounding quite uncomfortably. So close. So close. Of course, we still had to meet the Rome cell and be taken to the tunnel. But by the end of the day? Maybe?

  I swallowed my heart back down. Your will, Lord.

  We passed quickly through the city; we’d definitely beaten the morning traffic. Eventually the taxi drew to a halt and this time it wasn’t a red light, because we heard the back doors open, the seat cushions were lifted and a pistol barrel or two were stuffed into the opening.

  “Relax, all’s well,” said Luciano. I think that’s what he said, anyway, it was in Italian. Whatever it was, the pistols were withdrawn and a hand inserted to help him. He immediately reached back in to get Jon, pretty much dragging him out, with me pushing. By the time I emerged Jon sat on the short flight of steps which connected the garage to the house, head in one hand, the other massaging his leg.

  “Just breathe,” Luciano was telling him.

  “I’m breathing. I’m fine...”

  Bane scrambled out behind me like a rabbit from a burrow and we went to sit beside Jon.

  “Who on earth are they?” The three strangers began speaking in Italian and my brain offered a possible translation to some of it and took a guess at the rest.

  “Hell, I know who they are!”

  “Those three reAssignees.”

  “Not the three most wanted?”

  “It’s them, isn’t it, Luciano?”

  “Yes, it’s them. They just need safe passage into the Vatican and the EuroGov will be cursing fit to burst.”

  “Okay. They don’t speak Italian, I take it?”

  “Of course not” replied Luciano.

  Blearily, Jon opened his mouth to say, actually, he was getting the gist of a lot of it, but I stuck my elbow in his side. His mouth snapped closed again and he went slightly pink. No point giving away any advantage. Especially not to people who seemed so thrilled to see us. Not.

  “Come on,” said Luciano cheerfully, in Esperanto. “Let’s go inside. You good to move, Jon?”

  “Fine.”

  But Jon allowed me and Bane to hoist him to his feet, leaning heavily on the stick as we followed Luciano. Carla’s antagonism to us was hardly unexpected—it was Luciano’s attitude that was more unusual—but I was a little surprised this lot weren’t more welcoming. Surely here in Rome the Resistance should be more used to getting on with the Underground?

  When we reached his office and were introduced to him, Gino, the leader of the Rome cell, warmed up a bit. “You look tired. Just sit down in here and have some refreshments while I take care of my business with Luciano.”

  We smiled and thanked him—we could hardly demand to be taken to a tunnel at once!—and going into the anteroom indicated, settled ourselves on a battered sofa. After a surprisingly short time, a woman came in with a tray of hard boiled eggs, a sort of pasta soup and a loaf of bread. As she left, I could see Luciano sitting with Gino at his desk, talking.

  Hungrily, we demolished the brunch. The last egg eaten, I looked around the little room. We seemed to be unobserved. Slipping up to the door, I put my ear to the hinge. The Italian was fast and quiet and hard to catch.

  “What about the three of… …get them in before I go back?”

  “Haven’t you heard? …didn’t come back from the raid. All taken.”

  “What has that to do with…?”

  Gino said something I couldn’t catch, but I caught Luciano’s response quite distinctly, his voice raised in shock and incredulity.

  “You want to do what?”

  ***+***

  21

  CROSSING THE WHITE LINE

  Bane was suddenly by my shoulder.

  “What’re you doing, Margo?”

  “Eavesdropping.”

  “You don’t speak Italian.”

  “No, it’d help. Hush…”

  Gino was talking: “…the only way to save…”

  Luciano cut in: “Won’t save anything… …no sense at all!”

  “They’re the perfect…”

  “They don’t bargain! …told us what happened to some old hunter… … the same as you’re…”

  “We’ll be careful. Make safeguards…”

  “Can’t believe you’re even considering… …The EuroGov are the enemy. …may be Pregatori but… …more our allies than…”

  “…have my brother! …know what will happen…?”

  “What will happen to us all…” Luciano’s voice was grim. “Doesn’t mean we can ever…”

  “No! …
preaching like one of them! I’ll not let Paulo die, not when thanks to you…”

  “I won’t let you do this.”

  “You think you can stop me? My city…”

  I drew away from the door, my heart pounding now with fear and unease, and said softly to Jon and Bane, “I can’t hear it all and what I can hear I’m not sure I’m understanding correctly. But I’m almost certain—I am certain—Gino wants to sell us to the EuroGov. To save his brother? Something. Luciano’s opposing him, but…”

  Bane went pale.

  “This is Gino’s patch, Luciano hasn’t a hope…”

  Bane bolted across the room to the window—looked out and eased it slowly, cautiously, open. I put my ear to the door again.

  “This is wrong. They…”

  “Now you really sound like…”

  “If you touch that phone, I swear, I’ll…”

  “Just try it, Milan rat!”

  Hurrying to Jon, I led him to the window. “Come on, quickly...”

  Bane shot me a look. “You sure Luciano won’t talk him round?”

  “Sounds like they’re about to come to blows.”

  “Let’s go, then.” He paused to tug the bandanna further down over my forehead, then flung a leg over the sill. “It’s first floor, just hang and drop. Jon, I’ll break your fall.”

  With a grunt of pain as his weight fell on his bad arm, he was gone.

  “Over you go, Jon,” I said.

  “You first.”

  “Get through that window!”

  Glad I’d insisted—he needed help lifting his injured leg over the sill. He hissed for a moment in pain, then twisted onto his stomach and let himself down with me hanging onto his collar to take some of the weight off his arms.

  He and Bane both went sprawling on the ground as he landed, but Bane got straight up so, waiting only to see Jon sit up too, I scrambled out and dropped. Rather sooner than I’d intended—my one arm wouldn’t hold my weight at all, but I didn’t quite flatten Bane and he took the weight off my ankles as I landed.

  Grabbing a nearby broom, Bane poked the window closed so it wasn’t quite so obvious where we’d gone, then we dragged Jon to his feet and headed off down the quiet back street. Bane ventured briefly onto the main street ahead of us to buy football caps for Jon and himself. Why hadn’t I trimmed their hair before we left Milan? Still, the caps hid most of it. It would’ve been good to reapply the makeup on my still conspicuously-bruised face but I didn’t dare spend the time.