Berlin Reload

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

“Who was that?”

“Katy, I don't know,” said Grant, frantically turning the steering wheel.

“What just happened?”

“We were attacked… targeted,” he replied, his eyes flicking from the mirror to the road in rapid succession.

“Why? Is this something to do with your old job for the government?”

“Katy, I don't know!”

“Dad – they tried to kill us!”

“Katy, I know. Just stop for a second and let me think! We're safe for the moment. No one is catching us. Not today.” Grant hoped he was right and he hoped he sounded convincing enough, for Katy's sake.

But her question, the one that dug down deep; was this to do with his old job? The attack was definitely targeted against him; Katy would have just been in the way, a nuisance, collateral damage. It had all the hallmarks of a professional hit; weapons, tactics, resources. This wasn't some random terrorist attack nor was it a case of mistaken identity. They had been hunted through the streets. There was a motive behind it. What it was, he wasn't sure yet. But the fact that the blond assassin had called him by his name – no, worse, by his old work-name – meant that hidden forces were moving against him and he had to find out why. But first, he had to get them both into some kind of protection.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. He could feel his daughter's eyes burning into the side of his face as he drove.

“Well, love, we can't go back to my hotel, or your apartment, come to that. If they knew we'd be at the restaurant, chances are they'd been following one of us for a day or so,” he said.

“You mean following me, don't you?”

Grant shrugged. He was experienced in hostile surveillance so knew the telltale signs, but Katy… maybe not so much, so he chose to remain silent.

“Okay, so they were following me. But why?” she asked.

“I don't know yet, Katy, but I am going to find out,” he replied.

That much was true. He hoped the shoot-out at the trattoria would have alerted the Carabineri and spooked the kidnappers… assassins… whatever they were, causing them to go to ground, thus giving Grant and Katy some time to escape. He hoped so, anyway.

They crossed the Ponte Palatino, across the Tiber, and drove into the Trastevere area of the city. The confused, warren-like backstreets of Trastevere would offer them some kind of protection and Grant reckoned they had about another forty-five minutes' grace before they had to move again.

“So what should we do, Dad?” asked Katy, her eyes glazed over in shock. God, she hated herself for sounding so weak, like a stuck record. Get a grip of yourself, she thought.

He thought for a moment, then the answer came to him; old skills, old habits. “We need to get off the street. Dump the car, go underground. I know a man who can help us, maybe? But I need to make a phone call first…”

They dumped the Fiat outside a side-street residential block and simply walked away. The little car had saved their lives and outlived its usefulness.

The streets were maze-like, the same as in any city – Marseilles, Paris, Barcelona, Tangiers – and only the locals knew the routes in and out like the back of their hands. Tourists were tolerated, but they did not belong. The heat of the afternoon had thinned the crowds, potentially making it easier to spot any kind of surveillance, but, in all honesty, it was just guesswork. Grant had no real idea who he was up against yet and what the resources of the enemy were. To do that, he would need to rest and think, and to do that he needed to know that Katy was safe and protected.

They found a bar open in Piazza S. Calisto, ignored the outdoor tables and went into the relative safety of the air-conditioned bar area. They were operational-aware; wall to their backs, escape route out the kitchens on their left – steak knives in a tray by the serving hatch. It wasn't perfect but it was the best they had. Grant ordered them two cappuccinos to nurse and then made his way to use the payphone in a little booth by the coat-stand.

He scrabbled in his pocket for loose change, hoping that he hadn't tipped too well that day and still had enough to make a decent length phone call. Then he breathed, calmed his mind and from his inside jacket pocket he took out his small diary that he took with him everywhere, flicking through the pages until he came to several sheets at the back. To the casual observer, it was a jumble of numbers and letters, code of course, but a one-time code that only Jack Grant knew the key to. It contained the phone numbers of all of his trusted contacts all over the world. He just hoped that it was still up-to-date.

He pushed the coins in and waited. He heard the burr, burr, burr of the connecting line and he waited.

Nothing.

He tried again and again and again. Still nothing. Finally, he returned to the table with his daughter and his cold coffee and he waited. He ordered two more coffees and waited some more.

Then the phone in the bar rang.

He ran. He picked up the receiver and he talked. Fast.

In some ways, her father was an open book to her. In others, he was a forty-two carat mystery. The forty-two carat thing was one of those times now. She watched him as he stood huddled in the phone booth, his white knuckles gripping the receiver, talking in a hushed tone but with a sense of urgency that made his body rack and his head flinch.

The man that she knew was a contradiction in human form. Absent, loving and caring, cold and also empathetic. For most of her life he had simply not been there and in retrospect that had been no problem. You never missed what you didn't have in the first place. Then he had been there and how wonderful that had been! To have a father, a dad… someone to give her a sense of herself instead of her auntie and uncle, God rest their souls.

But then the violence had come. Killers had come to their house. Her father had done things, terrible things so that she could live. She never saw it, only heard the horror and then very soon her dad had been gone again, working, away, never to return. Oh, there were schools and phone calls and trips away during her teenage years, but in many ways her dad was selfish, tired, over it all. It wasn't until she was in her twenties that they had started to regroup and find each other as a family again.

There were always parts missing, of course. Her dad's sadness, the mystery of her mother, but she learned over time not to delve too deeply. It was just too painful for everyone concerned. But just occasionally, a snippet of time, a memory of the past would claw itself to the surface in a long forgotten memory spike and she would revel in it. Usually it was when Dad felt the most comfortable and safe – no intruders, no interlopers and he would open up with all this information that she didn't understand. Most of it was vague, but welcome nonetheless.

She wiped away a tear and watched him as he came back from the payphone.

“We leave in five minutes,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe. It's better that you don't know.”

“Why? I want to know!”

“Katy, it's for the best. It protects you and it protects them,” he said.

“Protects me? But what about you? Don't you need protecting, too?”

“Stop it!” he growled, gripping her wrist tightly, before seeing the pain and releasing her. The shame was apparent on his face. “I'm sorry. Forgive me. Friends?”

She glared, then scowled, then smiled.

“I have to call back in five minutes,” he said. “So we will have to move fast depending on the information I get.”

“Can you trust them, these people, these friends?”

“Love, I trust them with my life.” And yours too, he thought.

Moments later, he returned to the payphone, dialled and listened, his head nodding as he took in the information. Then he was back at the table, leaving notes for their bill and he led her by the hand out of the bar and on to the street.

“Where?” she asked.

“Keep moving we don't have much time.”

“Dad – where are we going?” she repeated, her feet moving quickly on the cobbled streets.

“We have a meeting with an old friend, he can protect us. It's in thirty minutes in the Pantheon.”