The Cassandra Sanction

Chapter Fifty-Six

After the Alitalia B737 touched down at Brindisi Airport at eighteen minutes past midday, Ben was one of the first passengers off the plane. Then, after the frustration of passport control, he collected his bag and left the airport at a run.

Outside, he took out the phone to check it once more. Not his own smartphone, but one of those he’d taken from the dead men at Catalina’s observatory. Specifically, it was the one loaded with the software to mate up with the tracking device he’d found attached to the rental Kia, which had enabled the hired guns to tail them there from Munich.

The GPS tracker was a high-end professional piece of kit, capable of monitoring its target anywhere in the world. Ben was no hoarder, but nonetheless, handy gadgets like that weren’t something you threw away. You never knew when you might find a use for them. Which was exactly what he had done after his conversation with Catalina on the beach on Icthyios. The things she’d said had troubled him so much that, later that afternoon, he’d slipped up to her quarters at the top of the lighthouse and hidden the homing device in the lining of her travel bag.

A gamble, based on pure instinctive guesswork, but it had paid off. He’d been following the moving red dot on his virtual map from the moment she’d escaped. Without it, he would have had no way of knowing she was heading for Italy. And without knowing that, he’d have had no proof of his suspicions that she was going after Maxwell Grant.

But it wasn’t all good news. Even as he’d been sitting impatiently in the departure lounge on Karpathos waiting for the earliest flight he could get to Italy, he’d noticed that the little red dot had stopped moving. It was still in exactly the same place now.

It could mean that she’d found the tracker in her bag and ditched it. Or, as he feared, it could mean that she had reached her destination. And that worried him very much indeed, because the location of the dot was over two hundred kilometres southwest of his own.

Right country, wrong place. If southern Italy was shaped like a pointy high-heeled boot, he was right on the heel, and Catalina was near the ball of the foot, all the way down there in Calabria.

Calabria, where she’d said Maxwell Grant’s villa was.

Where the signal had come to a standstill.

Well over an hour ago.

Ben didn’t want to think about what could happen in that time.

From where he was standing outside the airport terminal, he could see part of the ubiquitous car rental offices poking out from behind the buildings. Even assuming he wasn’t banned for life by every hire company on the planet, minutes spent signing forms and fussing over insurance agreements were minutes he should be spending closing the gap between himself and Catalina Fuentes, as fast as possible. Faster.

He needed speed. Public transport was out of the question. Following Catalina’s example and hijacking a business jet from the private terminal wasn’t a practical option.

But as Ben stood facing the airport car park, gazing around him for inspiration, suddenly, staring him right in the face, was the very next best thing. Its roof was so low off the ground that he almost missed it behind the other cars parked around it. The wide-bore twin exhausts pointed at him out of the bright yellow carbon-fibre bodywork like the barrels of a sawn-off shotgun. As he walked towards it, he could read the name LAMBORGHINI in curly chrome lettering between its wide-set taillights.

A petrol-head was one of the many things Ben was not. But even he couldn’t fail to appreciate the nearest road-going equivalent of a Learjet. Especially when the road-going equivalent of a Learjet was the very thing he most needed at the moment — though the Lamborghini’s open-roof cockpit looked more like something copied from a fighter aircraft.

The only problem was the one slouched behind the wheel, puffing on a cigarette with one gold-braceleted arm dangling over the sill. He could have been a drug dealer hanging around the airport to score a deal, or just a rich boy grabbing a quick smoke while waiting to pick up his girlfriend. Ben didn’t much care either way.

‘Nice car,’ he said to the guy in Italian, walking over. ‘Mind if I borrow it?’

The guy lolled his head to peer casually up at Ben through his wraparound shades. He puffed a cloud of smoke and said, ‘Get the fuck out of here, cazzone.’

Ben was pleased to hear such vulgar profanity. The more offensive, the better. It made what he was about to do morally easier to bear. ‘I’ll take those cigarettes, too,’ he said, pointing at the soft pack of Camels on the passenger seat, next to the guy’s leather wallet. ‘You can keep the shades, though. I don’t need to look like a complete tool. That’s your department.’

‘Why would you want my car?’ was all the response the guy could muster, gaping at Ben in open-mouthed stupefaction.

‘Because my need is greater than yours, and because you’re not going to stop me,’ Ben said. ‘Now, it’s up to you how we do this. You can get out nicely, hand over the keys and promise not to report this to the boys in blue. Or we can do it less nicely. Which means you wake up some time tomorrow in the hospital and start the whole painful process of learning to walk again. What’s it to be?’

The guy goggled mutely at Ben for a couple more seconds before he decided to go for the non-hospital option.

‘Leave the wallet,’ Ben said. ‘Except for whatever cash is in it. That way I have your name and address, in case you forget the part about not calling the cops.’

The guy climbed shakily out of the car, and dropped the keys into Ben’s palm. Ben almost felt sorry for him, but not quite. ‘It’s just stuff,’ he said as he took his place behind the wheel.

Ben slid one of the Camels from the pack, lit it up with his Zippo and sucked hard on the smoke. It wasn’t a Gauloise, but you couldn’t have everything. Then he stabbed in the key, and fired up the engine with an exhaust blast that was only about half as loud as Austin Keller’s jet taking off at close quarters, and all but drowned out the scream of the tyres as the Lamborghini did a reverse powerslide out of the parking space. Ben slipped the stubby gearstick into first, punched the gas and the car took off like a spurred horse, leaving its owner standing desolate and on the brink of tears, still clutching the cash from his wallet.

Two hundred kilometres to cover. No time to do it in.

Ben clutched the tiny racing wheel and got ready for the wildest drive of his life.