The air was sweet and the high, afternoon sun was warm.  To Emily, walking down the tiny hill, away from the villa, it was as if she’d been ill and this was the first day nanny had let her go out and play.  Dreyfus walked behind her with a good view of the iron gate just in case the two men who’d ran earlier decided to retest their courage.  They hadn’t.  And the gate was open and the car had been turned around on the narrow gravel road and, even though it wasn’t over, it felt like it.  At least the light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t going to be the paramedics, anymore.  Through the gate and Dreyfus opened the passenger door.  Emily got in, half sat down, leaned and reached behind her.  She brought up a bundle of detonators (although she didn’t actually know what they were) and handed them to Dreyfus.  He just as casually took them and put them in his jacket pocket as he got in the backseat beside her.

“This is …” Dreyfus realized he didn’t know the driver’s name.

“I’m the driver, Signora.” He said looking at them through the rear-view.

“Of course you are.”  Emily replied, as he started the car.

Emily curled her arm around Dreyfus’ elbow.  “Did you miss me?”

Dreyfus laughed, “Well, I did have the indestructible Ms. Miller to keep me company.”  He stopped and turned his head to Emily, “The woman has skills.”  He turned his head back and faced forward.  “She does a thing with honey that would make your eyes water,” he said and shook his head slowly.  But before Emily could say anything Dreyfus reached his hand forward and shook the back of the driver’s seat. “Stop.  Stop, here.”

The men at the gate had left their car.  Or there was a car, or … it didn’t matter … the car was there and it was an unexpected opportunity.

“Pass me the Dolce bag.” Dreyfus pointed.  Emily handed it across without a word.  Dreyfus reached in and came out with what looked like a large cake of tofu. 

“I’ll be right back,” he said, got out of the car and matter-of-factly walked over to the black four-door whatever-it-was.  The door was unlocked.  Dreyfus opened it, stopped, took a detonator out of his pocket and stuck it halfway into the cake.  Then he broke the cap at the blue mark, put it under the driver’s seat and closed the door.  A half kilo of high explosive in a confined space would rip the pleasant out of this pleasant little valley and, more importantly — bring the carabinieri.  And they’d be very interested in this turn of events, especially after they discovered three dead Albanians up at the villa.

Dreyfus got back in the car.  “Alright, five minutes.”

The car pulled away, quickly but not with any suspicious speed and less than a minute later, at the village by the river, turned into the traffic on the main highway.  Maybe someone would remember the car, but even if they did …

The road was smooth and Emily, leaning into Dreyfus’ shoulder, let her eyes close and half-close and close again.  And the car motor was steady, soft noise.  And she could feel Dreyfus breathing and he was warm and three days of wary and careful and watching slowly dissolved away and Emily’s eyes were too heavy to … closed again … and maybe … and then she was asleep.  And a few minutes later when the air opened up behind them in a long angry rumble of faraway thunder, she didn’t even move.  And that’s the way they drove back to Florence.  Emily sleeping – deep and dreamless.  Dreyfus motionless watching the Tuscan countryside and ignoring the pins and needles tingling in his shoulder and arm.  And the nameless driver, driving carefully with the traffic and seriously wondering — what kind of a woman would a man kill that many people for.    

A little more than an hour later …

Two men were dead, lying in spreading crimson pools, and the third was wheezing scarlet bubbles out of a couple of large calibre chest wounds.  Dreyfus smoothly took the empty clip out of the Beretta, put it in his pocket, and replaced it with a new one.  He slid the chamber back to load it and, trying to keep the fierce out of his voice, said, “Breathe, Emily.  Slowly.  It’s over.  Breathe.”

Emily, who was cowered half-hidden by a lounge chair with her arms covering her head was shaking so badly she thought she’d never breathe again.

Dreyfus waited.  There shouldn’t be anyone else in the house, but he wasn’t ready to take that on faith.  Just in case, he held the gun loosely on his arm for that nanosecond reaction time advantage.  The truth was Dreyfus Sinclair was not a very good shot.  On a static range, he could hit what he was aiming at – most times – but he was never going to win any prizes.  The reason he always walked away (so far) from deadly altercations is he didn’t hesitate.  And when you empty a 14 shot clip into anything that moves in a confined space, you’re not only going to hit something, you’re going to hit everything.  The three men on the floor were testament to that.

He kept his eyes on the far entryway, avoiding the big afternoon sunlight that slanted through the terrace windows.  The place was nice — wine and bread nostalgic Italian, probably built for a Mussolini grandee and, 80 years later, rented by the week or the month to rich tourists, minor film stars and, apparently, Albanian gangsters.  They were never going to get the blood stains off that lamp shade or out of the rugs.  It was an idle thought.  The man on the floor gurgled and died.  Dreyfus didn’t look down.

On the edge of his peripheral vision, he caught Emily unfolding and putting herself against the wall.  She pulled her knees up in front of her.  Her eyes were closed, and she was heave breathing against the rush of adrenaline sickness.  “Slowly,” he reminded her calmly.  “Deep breaths.”  Dreyfus glanced back to the terrace, but it really was over.  They needed to go.  It was always best to leave the scene of the crime quickly before the unexpected happened.  But they needed to wait — at least until Emily put some strength back into her trembling knees.  It wouldn’t take long.  Lady Perry-Turner was stiff upper lip resilient.  Dreyfus had seen this before and he knew enough to let her handle it.  They had time – not much – but time enough.  Dreyfus vaguely wondered why all Tuscan landscapes looked the same.  He had a vision of an army of paint-by-number artists turning them out in a warehouse west of Rome.  Was this one paint or a print?

“Did you kill them all?”

Emily wasn’t particularly bloodthirsty, but these men had been scaring the life out of her for the last three days.  No, they hadn’t touched her.  In fact, they’d been utter professionals and had barely even looked at her really, but Emily had been attacked by a group of men once before and she was under no illusion that she could effectively defend herself if they decided to be nasty.  And now that that unrelenting fear and tension had been released, it felt good to get a kick in.

“No, the two at the gate ran.  They’re halfway back to Florence by now.”

“Are we in trouble?”  Emily stretched her legs out.

With three men dead on the floor, it was a strange question.

“Not really.”  Dreyfus had already warned the Albanians, and he knew from experience that — as long as you didn’t start murdering family members — they were businessmen.  They would tally up their losses and get on with it.  Eight dead, two running and a burning truckload of transplantable organs and unfertilized eggs was a considerable loss.  They’d played their hand with Emily, but now that she was off the table, they were likely to want a truce.  Dreyfus wasn’t actually willing to let them off that easily, but he also knew his boss, Jonathan McCormick, was not going to let him beat on a potential client indefinitely.  So he’d already decided to give his information to the Italians and let them do the dirty work.

“But we need to go,” he said.

“Home?”

“Soon.  Grab whatever you don’t want to lose, and let’s go.”

“All I want is my jewelry.”

Dreyfus shrugged and put the Beretta back in its holster.  Emily slid up the wall.  She was still a little shaky but managed to navigate down the hall to the bedroom.  She opened her luggage, pulled out a couple of leather cases and put them in a shoulder bag.  She turned away, thought about it, turned back and found some underwear.  She balled them up and stuffed them into her bag. “With Sinclair, soon could mean anything,” she thought, and hurried back down the hallway. 

Behind the hotel, Dreyfus opened the car door.  Janet Miller had easily agreed to stay in the room all day and watch Italian TV.

“And no room service!  You’re not going to starve to death in 8 hours.  Eat the Pringles.”

The telephone call from Jonathan McCormick had been a little more difficult.  He had been as vague as always but made his point clearly.  The Italians were not happy with the recent turn of events, and they wanted McCormick to restore the tranquility of their city.  Jonathon McCormick, for his part, assured them that he had no interest whatsoever in whatever was happening in Tuscany; however, as a gesture, he would reach out to his vacationing employee and see when he was coming home.  He also mentioned that it was never a good idea to mix one’s personal affairs with business and that he, Jonathon McCormick, was a businessman.  Dreyfus promised his boss that this would all be over soon and he would make certain that the Italians were pleased with the result.  Then he reloaded his Beretta, reminded Janet – “Nobody through that door, but me” — and left the hotel.

As Dreyfus got into the back seat, he saw a medium-sized Dolce & Gabbana bag and looked forward at the rear view mirror.  The driver was watching.

“Two keys of C-4,” he said and reached his hand over his shoulder.  It looked like he was holding a bunch of pencils.

“You’re a day late.”

The driver shrugged and didn’t comment.  Dreyfus reached forward for the pencils.

“Detonators.  Just break them with your thumb.  The blue line is five minutes and the red one is two.”

Dreyfus looked into the bag.  There were four neat rectangular bars, but what the hell was he going to do with nearly five pounds of high explosives now?  The warehouse job was over, and Jonathon McCormick had just told him to quit doing what he was doing and come home.

“These are your problem,” Dreyfus said, putting the detonators on the seat and making a mental note to rip a strip off Sydney about this.  The driver shrugged again and looked into the rear view expectantly.  Dreyfus handed him another paper napkin from his conversation with Martina Ciampi. “Do you know this place?”

The driver read the napkin.  “Yeah, I know it.  It’s about – uh — maybe,” he drew with his finger in the air, “thirty … forty minutes.”

“Alright, let’s go.”

Ten minutes later, as the traffic out of the city thickened, Dreyfus’ telephone rang.

What the hell?  It was Michael Elliott.

“Hello?”  It was tentative at best.

“How’s Italy?”

Dreyfus chuckled.  “Too much to see but the people are nice.  I’ll send you a postcard.”

“Do that.”

There was silence.

“And?” Dreyfus could hear Elliott smiling.

“And.  Rumour has it that you and your Duchess are running around Italia, masquerading as officers of the Crown.  Do you want to enlighten me?”

Dreyfus thought about it.  This was bizarre.

“Don’t believe everything you hear.”

“Oh, I don’t.  But apparently, there’s a stack of dead bodies with your name on them and I’m told the Federal Italian police are asking questions about the British Secret Service.  You better give me something.”