tension in the air that Victor might fail to decipher that another layer had been added to it. Then they could corner him in the kitchen or a corridor where there was nowhere to run or pick his battlefield.
He would fight, because while he drew breath he still had a chance. But Dietrich would have a knife and he wouldn’t easily be disarmed of it, which would give Jaeger more than enough time to grab Victor from behind. Then it was over.
He knew he could have smuggled up a cup of olive oil from the kitchen to grease the old hinges of his bedroom door, but the muted squeal they made was the only true defence the door offered. Dietrich and Coughlin hadn’t made a noise for four hours. Jaeger’s snores were loud and regular.
Victor opened the door. He did so quickly, so the squeal was louder than it might have been had he done so slowly, but it was over within a second instead of lasting several. Jaeger’s snores didn’t change. Maybe Dietrich or Coughlin might have stirred at the sudden sound, might even have awoken, but with silence restored when their eyelids opened and no further sound following, they would fall asleep once more and not even remember the incident come morning. The door stood open for five minutes before Victor stepped through it.
He had the limousine’s valet key in his pocket. He wasn’t planning on using it – yet – but he wanted to keep it on his person at all times. He walked with his boots hanging from a fist by their laces, keeping as close to the short corridor’s wall as possible, so the most worn floorboards in the centre did not suffer his weight. He did the same on the stairs. They creaked and groaned with every step. He waited at the bottom for another five minutes to see if the noise drew a response from any of the three killers upstairs. It didn’t.
The kitchen’s stone flooring was cool through Victor’s socks. He left via the kitchen door and circled around the building so he was beneath his window with fields of olive trees before him. He laced up his boots and made his way slowly down the steep slope and into the field. He ran.
The village wasn’t far and the stars were bright enough that the journey was easy to navigate. He exited the field and found a gap in the hedge at the far end. He crossed the narrow road into another field, running alongside its boundary hedge to avoid leaving his footprints because the earth felt softer underneath his boots. He jumped a stream and slowed to a stop at the edge of a copse of trees. A two-lane road lay before him. On the other side stood the first building of the village.
It was a tiny habitation of maybe two dozen buildings as old as or older than the farmhouse. Victor made his way to the centre of the village, following the road that snaked between the buildings. He speculated that in a village this far from modernisation there would be a public telephone, probably near the centre; if not, he would break into a non-residential building to use their phone. But he found a phone box outside what appeared to be the only commercial establishment in the village: a post office.
He dialled the operator and requested a reverse-charge call to the number Muir had given him. Since it was an overseas call the operator was hesitant, but did as he asked.
After a moment, he heard Muir’s voice say, ‘Janice Muir speaking.’
The operator asked her if she would accept the call. Muir didn’t understand Italian.
‘It’s me,’ Victor interrupted, ‘tell the operator si, accetto.’
Muir did so and the operator left them to the call. She said, ‘Don’t go anywhere. I’ll buzz you back. I’m driving.’
Victor set the receiver down on the hanger and snapped it back up midway through the first ring eighty-two seconds later.
She said, ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘I’m currently in a phone booth in a village about fifty kilometres south-east of Rome.’
‘What the hell is going on?’
‘Stop saying hell and I’ll tell you.’
‘Sorry.’
He summarised meeting Francesca in Gibraltar, travelling by boat to Italy, meeting Dietrich, Jaeger and Coughlin, and the shootout with the Georgians. Muir listened without responding until Victor had finished. ‘This is more dangerous than I anticipated. Far more. I promise you I did not expect any of this. The plan was for you to