Janet Miller was sitting in the hotel lobby when Dreyfus got there.  Even in a grey sweatshirt and no make-up, she had her business face on, and the only thing missing was her coil notebook.  She stood up; Dreyfus gestured to the elevator and stopped at the reception desk to get his key.  When the elevator doors opened, they both stepped in, but before they closed again …

“What the hell is going on?”

“I need your help.”

“At two in the morning?”

“Please.  Let’s just get to the room.”

At the door, Dreyfus awkwardly used the key with his left hand.  He pushed it open with his shoulder and they went in.  The door closed behind them, Dreyfus walked across the room and sat down heavily in a chair by the window.

“I got shot.  It’s nothing …” Dreyfus decided against lying, “… Something’s not right, and it’s my right arm — so I can’t fix it myself.”

There was a second of disbelief.  Then Janet’s face became Ms. Miller again. “Stand up and take your jacket off.”

Dreyfus stood up and used his left hand to try and tug at his jacket.  The pain was visible.

“Stop, stop, stop!  Turn around.” Janet stepped forward, lifted Dreyfus’ jacket at the shoulders and slid it down his arms.  There was a shudder when she pulled it away from his forearm.  Dreyfus’s shirt sleeve was covered in blood, but it was mostly caked and dry — with only a thin, wet line showing where the open wound was.  Dreyfus instinctively reached.

“Don’t!  Just stay still.  You need stitches and a hospital.”

“No.  We’re going to do this.  I’ll talk you through it.”

The look told him he was out of his mind.

“I can’t go to a hospital.  Too many questions.  Police …” Dreyfus raised his hand and shook his head, “Okay, let’s just bandage it up then.  I’ve got…”

“Stop!” Janet put her hand out. “Just be quiet.  I – I need to think.”  She turned her head away from Dreyfus and looked vaguely out the window.  Across the Arno there were scattered hotel and streetlights that shimmered back at her in the moving water.  It was hypnotic.  God Almighty!  Ordinary people don’t get shot in the middle of the night, or kidnapped, or God only knows …  Janet exhaled.  But this wasn’t going to go away, and she was fed up with being treated like a mushroom.  She reached forward and picked up the hotel key from the table.

“Just sit– and don’t do anything.  I’ll be right back.”  As she stepped past the minibar, she opened it, pulled out two tiny bottles of whisky and handed them to Dreyfus.  “Drink this, and don’t touch it.”  It was a scold.  And then she left.

Dreyfus unscrewed the first bottle with his teeth, opened his mouth and the cap dropped.  He drank half and held the whisky in his mouth for a second; then he swallowed.  He felt the warmth.  This wasn’t the best situation, but Miller was his only option.  And as much as he didn’t want to, he was already hardening his benevolent feeling towards her — just in case she decided to be difficult.  He drank the rest of the whisky and flexed his fingers.  The muscles still worked, but it hurt – more than it should.  And there was a swell of blood.  He put the first bottle down and picked up the second one.

He was thinking about a third bottle when Janet came back into the room.

“We need to …”

“No,” she said abruptly, pointing her finger at him.  It was the tone that made Dreyfus hesitate. “You called me.” She paused, “So just be quiet and let me do this.”  She set a couple of white, cloth napkins, a small jar and a serrated knife on the table.

“Stole them from the breakfast room,” she said, anticipating the question.  She turned and opened the minibar again, moved a couple of things and found a small bottle of cognac.  She opened it and set it on the table by the napkins.

“Alright,” Janet took a deep breath, “This is going to hurt, but it’s only your arm — so I’m just going to do it.  Put your arm on the table.”  She waited for Dreyfus to say something, and when he didn’t, she opened her handbag and took out a plastic lighter.  She set it down with everything else, pushed up her sleeves and picked up the knife.  She exhaled and stabbed it into Dreyfus’ shirt just above the elbow, then ripped it all the way around.  She reached one hand into the torn sleeve and lifted it away from his arm.  It stuck where the wound was, and she pulled.  There was a wince, and it came free.  She set the knife on the table and rolled the sleeve down his arm.  Then she poured just a bit of cognac on her hands and rubbed them together.  With her thumb and index finger, she spread the wound just slightly and used her fingernails to pick out a couple of stray threads that were trapped in the blood.  Satisfied that she’d got them all, she poured some of the cognac onto the gash and dabbed it with one of the napkins.

“That’s as clean as it’s going to get,” she said, holding the napkin tight. “You’ve nicked a blood vessel.  It’s not bad, but we need to close it.  This part is going to hurt like hell.  Make a fist.”

Dreyfus tensed his muscles, and Janet poured the rest of the cognac on the wound, dropped the bottle, and as quickly as she could, grabbed the lighter, snapped the flame and touched it to Dreyfus’ arm.  There wasn’t enough alcohol for it to flare, but it did burn.  Dreyfus clenched his teeth against the tears.  There was an acid whiff of burning hair in the air and a hint of cooked bacon.

“Hold still.”  Janet opened the jar from the table and stuck the knife in.  She pulled it out, loaded with honey and smeared it across the blackened wound.  She smoothed things with her fingers, wiped them on the napkin and cleaned the knife.

“It isn’t real honey, but it’ll do,” she said, snapping the lighter again and holding it under the knife.  She waited until the lighter was too hot to handle and then pressed the flat side of the heated knife hard against the wound.  Dreyfus shuddered and clenched his teeth again.  After a few seconds, Janet pulled the knife away.  Then she took another napkin from the table and cut it into two long strips.  She wrapped Dreyfus’ arm in the first one, then tore the second about halfway down the middle, wrapped his arm again and tied the loose ends together – tight, but not too tight.  Then she simply slumped into the nearest chair, and for the next several minutes, the two of them sat there, breathing.

Dreyfus moved first.  He unbuttoned the cuff of his torn sleeve, slid it down his arm and dropped it on the floor.  He twisted his fist a couple of times.  It hurt, but it was sturdy.  He got up and opened the minibar.

“I’ve got another whisky – uh — vodka, gin and red wine?”

“Vodka,” Janet said, standing up. ‘Do these windows open?”  But before Dreyfus could answer, she’d opened one.  She reached back for her handbag and pulled out a cigarette, lit it from the lighter on the table and blew a long billow of smoke into the air.  Dreyfus opened the small bottle of vodka and handed it to her.  He opened his own bottle and sat back down at the table.

 “Cheers!” he said, raising his newly bandaged arm. They both drank, generously.  “Ms. Miller, you amaze me.”

Janet turned her head. “My father was the gamekeeper at Pyaridge, and my brothers played rugby.”  She turned back to the night.  “You’re going to have a major scar, but it’ll be alright until somebody can look at it.”

There was another long silence.

“Now,” Janet leaned her upper body back into the room.  “You’re going to tell me exactly what the fuck is going on here, and what’s happened to Em — or I swear to Christ, Dreyfus, I’m going to get on that telephone and starting screaming until I have the Royal Marines out looking for her.”

Dreyfus smiled.   He didn’t laugh.  He knew she meant it.

A little further north, not quite in the Tuscan hills, Besnik Kovaci was frantically trying to telephone his lawyers.  He had a house full of Federal police, two incoherent half-cousins hiding in his garage and a brother who wasn’t answering his phone.  This was serious.

Dreyfus Sinclair was invisible.  In the bright light of day, he would have looked foolish, lying in the dirt, but on the edge of the murky half-light night, as long as he didn’t move, no one could see him.  Twenty minutes earlier, he had casually walked through the chain link gate (a distressed motorist looking for a telephone) of the warehouse yard he’d watched the night before.  He found a spot on the open ground where the shadows were deepest and simply melted down into the darkness.  Now, he waited.

He slowly moved his feet to dig through the gravel so he wouldn’t slip when he jumped forward, but aside from that, he was motionless.  He’d learned long ago that most of what he did was hours of inactivity, slowly coiling the muscles for a sudden explosion of deadly action.  He’d once had a short correspondence with a Canadian military sniper who called it “planned impatience,” and that explanation suited him.  He had no illusions about the Zen of anticipation or the fear that was gathering in his armpits.  He wanted to move, wanted to rush forward, wanted to get it over with, wanted to walk away, sick with adrenaline — but he didn’t.  He waited, suspended in the darkness, unable to determine time until time began again.

There was a crack of light.  The warehouse doors opened, and the light widened as if two huge electric hands were parting the darkness.  Dreyfus could see two men.  They paused and disappeared back into the light of the building.  He felt his legs and arms tighten.  There was the noise of a truck that slowly rolled into the light and stopped.  A man got out of the passenger door and started walking to the back of the truck.  Dreyfus waited – one, two, three.  He steadied himself with one hand and pushed with his feet, springing into the air.  The sudden movement caught the man by surprise, and he flinched for the microsecond Dreyfus needed to shoot him twice.  Both bullets caught the man in the chest, and he dropped– not quite dead from the fatal wounds.  Dreyfus ignored him and ran to the back of the truck.  He went around it and dropped to one knee, shooting blindly into the dark silhouette of the walking driver.  The first bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the truck, but the second caught the man in the stomach and he folded forward.  Dreyfus put a third bullet into his slumping shadow.

Then he turned and sprayed the rest of the clip — waist-high — through the open warehouse door.  That would keep anyone who might be inside from getting brave and give Dreyfus the few seconds he needed to stuff a long futbol scarf into the truck’s fuel tank.  He pushed it down until he could smell the fuel; then he replaced the clip in the Beretta, turned, and emptied it into the open door.   He replaced the clip again, and with the other hand, snapped a cheap plastic lighter and held the flame to the scarf.  It didn’t catch, and Dreyfus moved it away before it ignited the fumes.  There was the sound of shots coming from inside the warehouse, but no distinctive whiz, so they weren’t close – yet.  He snapped the lighter again, and even though it gave away his position, he held it high and carefully lowered it to the fabric.  (Semtex would have worked so much better!)  The lighter was getting warm, but he held it steady to the tassels of the scarf.  There was a metallic crack, a tinny ting, and before he heard the whiz, a razor sting across the meaty part of his forearm.  Son of a bitch!  But the tassels were burning, and one … two … three — for God sake, c’mon! … seconds later, there was a jolt of flame, and Dreyfus released his thumb and pushed the hot lighter down into the fuel tank.  He waved the Beretta back at the warehouse door, fired several shots, turned and ran for the gate.  There was a gush of heat behind him as the fire hit the fuel, and the night sky lit up in front of him.  (Vehicles don’t actually explode when they catch fire, but they do burn vigorously.)

 It didn’t matter, Dreyfus knew the truck and everything in it was gone, and he was already through the gate, across the road and into the high weeds before he stopped and looked back.  He wasn’t the only one in a hurry to get out of there.  Three cars were already moving as the flames soared into the sky.  He touched the sting on his arm and his fingers came away wet.  It didn’t hurt – but it would.  He turned and walked, deep-breathing to settle his heart and lungs, down to the car waiting on the highway.  He got in, and as they drove away, Dreyfus reached for his telephone.  He tapped at it.

“Ms. Miller.”

“Dreyfus, it’s the middle of the night!”

“Come meet me for a drink at the hotel, and bring a needle and thread,” he said, giddy with adrenaline.

The next morning, by the time Riccardo Ciampi got to his mother’s house for coffee, he was already having a great day.  Lotta was going to take the children to Roma for the weekend, and someone (rumour had it, the British Secret Service) had shot up a couple of the Kovaci brothers’ nightclubs.  Apparently, they’d made the mistake of kidnapping a member of the British Royal family.  And he could hardly wait to give his momma a more than gleeful told-you-so lecture.  Riccardo had been of the opinion that a shooting war with the Albanians would be bad for business – although, as their power grew, he had begun to regret that decision.  Unfortunately, changing his mind meant admitting to his mother that she was right, and he was wr – wr – wr – not right.  A bitter pill to swallow.  Now – well – someone else was doing the shooting, and even though it was more good luck than good management, Riccardo was very willing to take credit for his patience and wisdom

“Buongioro, Momma,” he said, leaning forward and kissing Martina Ciampi on the cheek.

In a newer suburb home, not quite in the Tuscan hills, the Kovaci brothers were still in shock.  Their information had been that an insurance investigator had come to Florence to pursue a wrongful death suit against them over some English teenager.  And although they had no idea who this teenager was, they didn’t like, want or need anyone looking into their various business practices.  Their solution (a popular one, in their line of work) was massive intimidation — which always killed these sorts of inquiries long before they were ever born.  Unfortunately, the information had been wrong, their response ill-advised, and now, on a bright Italian morning, they found themselves “thrown headfirst into a pot of shit soup.”  (A favourite expression of their maternal grandfather.)  Three dead bodies, three closed businesses, three police investigations — and, more importantly, no place to go to negotiate — had stunned them.  They’d made their own inquiries and found out very quickly that not only was this Dreyfus Sinclair a bad man to cross, but he was also connected to people who were even worse.  Albanians, as a rule, aren’t shy about trading heavy-handed violence with anyone (they don’t scare worth a hiccup) but they’re not stupid – and they are businessmen.

“What?”

“Have Guzim take the English woman her suitcase.  We need time to think.”

“Guzim is gone.  His mother’s sick.  He went home.”

Emily was not having a very good morning.  Yes, she was enjoying the cappuccino, cornetto and raspberry jam, the terrace was quiet and the view was remarkable.  The problem was she hadn’t slept well, and it hadn’t helped that three men had burst into the room in the middle of the night, asking her who she was and rummaging through her handbag for her passport.  The side effects of being kidnapped she thought — with gallows humour — and smeared jam on another cornetto.  Actually, aside from the midnight intrusion, the men had kept their distance, but Emily could feel them there, and there were a lot of them.  She trusted Sinclair, but was very aware that he wasn’t there.  And it’s one thing to know the cavalry’s coming, but you still have to survive until they get there.  She needed an advantage, a weapon.  She looked at the jam spoon and the butter knife – too delicate.  Besides, the older woman who’d brought breakfast was probably watching her and would, no doubt, count the cutlery.  Better to act as if the whole thing was as normal as crossing the road.

“Any chance of an orange juice?” she said, loud enough to be heard.

Dreyfus was asleep.  He’d spent most of the night lying in the weeds across a gravel road from two long, corrugated metal buildings.  There had been no activity until a truck with medical markings drove down the road.  The driver had opened the gate.  He didn’t use a key.  Then, suddenly, several yard lights came on, and four men came out of the first building.  They opened a big double door, and the truck drove in.  Then the lights all went out, and there were cigarettes and low, foreign language discussions with some laughter.  Later, a car drove away with only the driver inside.  Dreyfus waited until there was too much pre-dawn light and then crawled away — back to the car sitting with its hood up on the highway.  When he got back to the hotel, the night manager told him that the woman Janet Miller had checked out and left him a message that she was staying with the Montroses.  Good, old, dependable Ms. Miller! He’d call her tomorrow afternoon.  Then he went to the room and was almost instantly asleep.