Private Rome

Chapter 72

“I’ve never known anyone need a second safehouse so quickly,” Valentina said. “You’re quite a celebrity here in Rome.”

I shifted awkwardly as we waited for the Italian hacker’s friend Amr Badawi to unlock the roll shutter of the warehouse that was to be my new temporary home.

“The clever stray is the one who isn’t seen,” Amr added, and I tried not to take offense at him comparing me to a dog.

“Yes,” I conceded. “My notoriety is less than ideal. And I’m sorry about your other place.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Amr replied, working the rusty lock. “The police haven’t linked anything to the apartment. They think the Dark Fates were planning a hit on someone, and if there was police involvement in letting the gang conduct surveillance, whoever was behind it is not going to come forward with the truth.”

Amr managed to force the lock and opened the smaller of two roll shutters at the front of this seemingly deserted warehouse. It was just big enough for people to enter the building, while the larger twenty-foot-wide shutter next to it was clearly designed for freight.

Amr switched on the lights as we stepped inside and illuminated a 60x100-foot space filled with boxes of LCD screens and other electronics.

“One of the places I keep stock,” he explained. “Please don’t damage anything.”

Faduma gave me a disapproving look as I raised my hands in mock deference.

“I won’t do anything,” I said.

“There’s an apartment upstairs. Three bedrooms, living room, kitchen,” Amr said. He handed me the key. “The lock sticks, but you’ll get the hang of it.”

“Thank you,” I replied.

“As I said before, it’s a business arrangement, Mr. Morgan,” he responded. “There is no need for thanks. You are a profitable guest. Trouble, but profitable.”

Valentina nudged him. “Don’t let Amr fool you with his hard-nosed persona. He likes helping people, particularly people he likes. He has a big heart.”

Amr smiled bashfully. “Don’t listen to her lies about the size of my heart. But I do hope you’ll be safer here, Mr. Morgan.”

“Thank you,” I told them both.

“I’d do anything for Mo-bot,” Valentina said. “I owe her.”

“She’s in Rome,” I revealed. “In police custody, I think.”

“Why? What for?”

“Knowing me,” I replied.

“I hope she’s okay,” Valentina said. “I’ll ask around. See if I can find out where she is. Come on, Amr, let’s get out of here before he gets us busted.”

They left the warehouse and I closed the shutter, sealing myself and Faduma inside. We were in another part of Ostia, this neighborhood even more rundown than the first, and I didn’t want to invite any trouble, particularly as the entrance could be seen from the road. The warehouse was located on Via dell’Idroscalo, a road that ran through the estuary marshes to the north of Ostia center, and the building and surrounding industrial estate backed onto the River Tiber.

Twenty minutes later, Faduma and I were in the living room of a musty apartment above the offices at the back of the warehouse. We had a view of the estuary from here and could see the bright lights of buildings on the other side of the river.

Faduma sat beside me on a frayed old couch, the floral pattern bleached by the sun. I’d set up Mo-bot’s and Sci’s computers and was analyzing the hard drive that had been connected up to them. The guy I’d knocked down had been trying to steal data from the machines and was copying the hard drives of both computers, clearly intending to mine them for everything and anything useful. He had a disk-wipe program set up and ready to execute. I was relieved he had prioritized the theft otherwise we’d have lost the surveillance footage being recorded from the devices planted around the Inferno Bar.

As it was, the footage seemed intact, right up to the moment Milan Verde discovered and destroyed the bugs. There were multiple final shots of angry, hostile members of the Dark Fates finding the cameras, snarling into the lenses and cursing before reaching up to send the transmission dark for the very last time.

“So, they found the cameras,” Faduma remarked.

I nodded. “And the listening devices. Thankfully the guy wasn’t able to wipe the hard drives, so we can see what was recorded while Sci, Mo-bot and Justine have been in custody.”

I set up multiple windows so we could view simultaneous feeds from most of the cameras and started scrubbing back through the footage.

It was painstaking work, and my eyes were heavy with tiredness that only pulled at me more as the adrenalin of the night ebbed away. I could sense Faduma’s fatigue, but like me she fought through it.

“There,” she said, and I followed her pointing finger to see a man in a suit enter the bar.

I paused the videos. The timecode showed he’d arrived at 2:13 p.m. He looked uncomfortable and out of place.

I pressed play and the videos ran forward simultaneously. It wasn’t until the awkward-looking man approached the bar that I saw his face.

It was Christian Altmer, Joseph Stadler’s executive assistant, the man Justine had flagged as having something to hide. My mind raced, wondering what a respectable banker was doing in the lair of one of the most dangerous gangs in Rome.