The Abomination Read online

  Sixty-eight

  JUST SOUTH OF Rimini Kat pulled off the road into the pine woods that blanketed the beach. In summer, these woods contained camping sites and nudist beaches. Now, in the depths of winter, they were utterly deserted.

  Turning off the engine, she said, “Let’s get this over with.”

  Holly nodded. They went to the back of the van and pulled out the trussed driver. Blood still seeped from his head where Holly had knocked him out.

  They slid him none too gently onto the ground and loosened the boat rope from his mouth.

  “This is how it’s going to be,” Kat said, squatting down beside him. “You’re going to answer some questions. And if you don’t, we’re going to hurt you until you do.”

  “Go fuck yourself, whore,” the man spat.

  Kat sighed. “You think we won’t do it? Because we’re women, perhaps?” She brought her bag out and started showing him what was in it. “This paint scraper, for example, is the perfect size for scraping your pathetic cock and balls right off your body. This nail here, that’ll go through your hand. The boathook, well, maybe we’ll get that into your armpit and pull you about a bit. Oh, and if you think we’re too weak and feeble to keep this up for very long, bear in mind we’ve also got the van. When we get tired, we’ll just reverse back and forth over what’s left of your legs. You know what? We might even turn the radio on, so we can listen to some nice girlie music instead of you screaming. And then, whether you’ve told us what we want to know or not, we’ll leave an envelope on you with three hundred euros and a note of thanks, so that the scumbags you report to can spare us the hard work of finishing you off.” She brandished the paint scraper in his face. “Now, I’m going to ask this once and once only. We’re looking for a Croatian girl called Melina Kovačević. She was smuggled over on the same supply route we came on, about a year ago. Where is she now?”

  “Piss off, bitch,” the man said.

  “Not good enough. Holly?”

  Holly opened the man’s trousers and, with a flicker of distaste crossing her face, pulled out his genitals. Kat placed the sharp edge of the paint scraper underneath his testicles.

  “Pull it good and tight. . .” she said to Holly. “That’s it. Ready? On three. One—”

  “I heard they were going to move her,” the driver said quickly. “I don’t know where to, I swear. But they never found her.”

  “Why not?”

  “She got away from her pimp, somewhere in Venice. They put a watch on the train station and the ferry but she never showed up. Word went out she was to be killed when she was found, to set an example to the other girls. But she just vanished.”

  “I think I believe him, Kat,” Holly said carefully.

  Kat put away the paint scraper. “Sadly, I think I do too.”

  As they drove off, leaving the hapless driver still trussed in the woods, Holly glanced at her. “That was pretty convincing.”

  “You think I’d actually have done it?”

  “Back there, I wasn’t sure.”

  “Neither was I,” Kat admitted. “So, where does it leave us?”

  “Three options. Either Melina’s dead, or she somehow evaded the Mafia and got out of Venice undetected, or—”

  “Or she’s still there, and has been all along.”

  “Wherever she is, she must be well hidden. Venice is a small place, but neither Findlater nor the Mafia could find her, and they must have been looking pretty hard.”

  Sixty-nine

  DANIELE TYPED IN a URL address ending in .ru, the suffix denoting an internet site based in Russia. In fact, he knew very well that this particular site was owned and run by two MIT dropouts currently residing in London who had made a fortune from applying permutation theorems to online gambling. One of them, known by his internet handle of Snap, was like Daniele a member of the Knights of the Lambda Calculus, a loose-knit association of programmers and mathematicians who delighted in solving abstruse coding problems.

  This fraternity, despite defining themselves as hackers, considered it bad manners to steal or make alterations to another person’s code: such activities were for crackers, and thus by definition lusers, lamers, script kiddies and leets. Daniele was careful, therefore, to observe the appropriate courtesies when he visited Snap’s bulletin board.

  hello world, he typed.

  After a moment another board user replied. hi2u2. long time, defi@nt.

  Snap about? he wrote.

  Last time I heard he was in deep hack.

  IRQ? Daniele typed, meaning: is he interruptible?

  Snap here, the board owner typed, joining the thread. Just parsing some joe code. My box is crunching, so I’m in laser chicken state. Whassup?

  Meaning: while my computer processes a rewrite of some over-complicated code, I’m eating a Chinese takeaway and catching up on the news.

  I’m after some deep wizardry, Daniele wrote.

  Last time I looked you had pretty good privileges yourself, Def.

  Thnx, but I need a specific kluge and I don’t have time to lift the bonnet.

  What’s the frob?

  A Pr3D47OR Dron3, Daniele wrote, using leet substitutions to avoid alerting any roving search engines.

  Hmm. I for one welcome our new insect overlords. Meaning: messing with government shit is not to be undertaken lightly.

  Daniele waited. There was every possibility that his friend would refuse to help – not because he was afraid to hack into a Predator, or because it was illegal, or too difficult, but because of the ethical complexities involved. Tampering with matters of national defence was Bad Manners. He was hoping that Snap trusted him enough to help anyway.

  Do you need knobs? Snap asked at last.

  Nil. Just visuals.

  Sec.

  There was a pause of about three minutes before Snap returned.

  My friend, your quest is almost done. Have satellite/p?

  Certainly.

  There’s a kluge called Skygrabber. I’ll hop over to foovax and FTP it. There shouldn’t be any ice. HTH.

  Indeed, it helps a lot. Thnx.

  According to Newsweek, the Taliban have been hacking drones for years. Some of them even claim they can spoof the GPS. YMMV.

  W00t. Thnx again.

  Daniele logged off from the board and downloaded the software Snap had directed him to. If the hacker was right, all he had to do was install it, point his satellite dish at the sky and scan the airwaves for the Predator’s video feed, just as if it were any other signal bouncing around the ether. According to Snap there wouldn’t even be any Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics.

  While he was waiting for the program to install he did a quick search. His friend was right: astounding though it seemed, Newsweek had indeed reported that feeds from Predator drones had no encryption whatsoever. Apparently, captured Taliban laptops had been found to contain, in some cases, hundreds of hours of intercepted surveillance footage. The Pentagon claimed that the problem was devising an encryption system that could be shared with allies on the battlefield. Daniele suspected the real reason was much simpler: whoever had designed the drones’ software systems had made the mistake of assuming that their enemies were unintelligent, and that just because they didn’t have running water they were incapable of writing computer code.

  Twenty minutes later he had a menu on his screen that offered him a choice between twenty Italian satellite porn channels and the feeds from three Predator drones.

  He opened a voice link and spoke to Gilroy. “I’m in.”

  “Can you see them yet?”

  Daniele was flicking between the Predator’s video feeds as the other man spoke. From the look of it, two of the drones were locking onto a small van heading northeast from Padua. “I think so.”

  “Good. Let me know if anything changes.”

  Seventy

  AS THEY CAME over the Ponte della Libertà, Holly looked across at Kat. “Now what?”

  “We’d better drop off our p
assengers, I guess.”

  “If we leave them wandering the streets, the Mafia will scoop them up.”

  “I know. And if we hand them over to the police, they’ll be deported back to Croatia, and the gangs will get them at that end.”

  “Any thoughts?”

  “It’s not ideal. But there’s someone I can trust to do the right thing.” Turning on her phone for the first time since she’d reached Italy, she dialled a familiar number.

  “Aldo Piola,” came the answer.

  “Colonel, it’s Kat Tapo.”

  There was a moment’s stunned silence. “Where are you?”

  “In Venice.”

  “I was told two days ago that you’d been killed in an explosion in Croatia.”

  “As you may have gathered, those reports were exaggerated. But it might be a good idea not to correct them just yet,” Kat said. “I’ll explain later. In the meantime, I have an immediate problem I need your help with.”

  This time the silence was more nuanced. “Kat, I’ve given my word. . .”

  “I’m with a group of young women who have been trafficked into Italy from Croatia. The Mafia wants them as prostitutes. If they’re sent back home, they’re probably dead. They need a knight in shining armour, Colonel.”

  Another pause. “Where are you?”

  “We’ll be at the Tronchetto car park in about fifteen minutes. I’ll pull up as close as possible to your car.” She rang off before he could ask any more questions, then called another number. It was answered immediately.

  “Daniele?” she said. “We’re back in Venice.”

  “So I gathered. In fact, I’m watching you on my screen right now, courtesy of our friends at MCI.”

  “There are Predators on us?”

  “Three of them.”

  “We need to lose them.”

  “Indeed. I suspect the only reason they haven’t killed you already is that they’re waiting for you to lead them to Melina.”

  “But we don’t know where she is either. Only that she’s somewhere in Venice.”

  “Yes, but maybe they aren’t aware of that. Either way, I’d suggest you’ve only got one shot at finding her. Once they realise you’re as much in the dark as they are, they’ll have no reason not to strike.”

  “Then we definitely need to get rid of the drones.”

  “Kat. . .” Daniele paused.

  “What?”

  “How much do you trust Holly Boland?”

  Kat resisted the instinct to glance sideways at the American. “As much as I trust anyone,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. “Which is to say, quite a lot but not completely. Why?”

  “It’s just that I’ve been speaking to Ian Gilroy. He’s clearly been running her. And although he’s got an explanation for everything, it’s all a bit too neat. I’m still not sure I trust him. And that means I don’t trust his agent, either.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind. Now, can you help us deal with the Predators?”

  “I can certainly try. Where are you headed now?”

  “Into the Tronchetto car park. We’re meeting Colonel Piola there. He’s taking the girls.”

  “That’s perfect. A little risky for Piola, but perfect.”

  Fifteen minutes later, when Piola reached the Tronchetto, he found the van waiting by his Fiat.

  “Here,” Kat said, giving him the keys. “You’re taking the van to Vicenza. We’ll take your car.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain later. But if Daniele Barbo calls with instructions, follow them to the letter, OK?”

  Taking Piola’s Fiat keys, she and Holly jumped into his car and waved him ahead of them to the exit.

  The Predators, circling over the multi-storey car park, had lost visual on the van. In an air-conditioned room in Virginia, half a dozen pairs of eyes scanned the exits, looking for their quarry.

  “There,” one of the analysts said suddenly. “Leaving the car park again. They must have been trying to shake us.”

  “Keep two UAVs on the vehicle,” the commander ordered. “One stays on the car park. Which way’s the van headed?”

  “Back over the bridge, towards the mainland.”

  Kat waited two minutes, then drove Piola’s car to the exit. Pushing Piola’s ticket into the machine, she paid the five-euro fee, then filtered out.

  “Anything?” she said into the phone clamped to her ear.

  Two miles away at Ca’ Barbo, Daniele was watching the monitors. “Two drones have gone after the van. The other’s still circling over the car park. I think you’ve got away with it.”

  “Excellent.”

  “How will you double back to Venice after you’ve crossed the bridge?”

  “I’m going to drive round the lagoon to Chioggia.”

  “The ferry to Venice from Chioggia takes quite a while.”

  “We’re not going to Venice.”

  “You know where Melina is?”

  “It’s just an idea at the moment.”

  “Don’t say any more over the phone,” he warned. “There’s no reason they should have this number, but you can’t be too careful.”

  In the car park, inside the overheated control booth, the attendant sat reading La Repubblica. It wasn’t much of a job, to be honest, but he got paid handsomely for it, particularly if he smashed a few car windows occasionally to justify the high prices his bosses charged for the safe-deposit room.

  Glancing at his screen, he saw that a ticket corresponding to one of the number plates on the watch list he’d been given had just exited the barrier.

  Picking up his phone, he made a call.

  “The third drone’s just peeled off. I think it’s following you,” Daniele reported.

  “Damn.” Kat swung round at the end of the Ponte della Libertà and headed back to Venice. “In that case, change of plan.”

  “To what?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” She thought a minute. “Daniele, Carnivia’s an exact replica of Venice, right?”

  “Right down to the last stone.”

  “Is there any way you can use it to—”

  “Yes!” he interrupted. “Kat, that’s brilliant. Get to Piazzale Roma, dump the car in the parking lot there, and call me back. I’ll do the rest.”

  Across Venice, cell phones were beeping. Discreet calls were being answered with monosyllabic grunts. On the Grand Canal, two gondoliers pushed away from a jetty without their passengers and turned abruptly north, up the Rio Novo. In the municipal casino, a man playing a slot machine ignored a sudden shuddering ejaculation of coins over his shoes and walked away without a backwards glance, his eyes glued to the screen of his phone. A hotel porter in Santa Croce handed a laden luggage trolley to the hotel manager with the terse instruction: “Take this. I’ll be back later.” A dwarf standing outside Santa Lucia station, a placard festooned with tourist maps around his neck, peremptorily snapped his fingers at a nearby tout.

  It’s sometimes said that organised crime in Italy is the only thing that is. Within five minutes of Kat turning back towards Venice, a small army of watchers was also converging on the Piazzale Roma.

  Daniele logged into Carnivia. On an adjacent monitor he had the video feeds from the Predators. On that monitor, therefore, he could see exactly what those controlling the drones could see.

  On the new screen, however, he could see what they couldn’t – a pedestrian’s-eye simulation of the tiny streets and alleyways of Venice, some no more than a metre wide, into which no sunlight ever penetrated.

  And no overhead cameras, either. The passageways and canal pavements formed a labyrinth that even locals sometimes got lost in.

  “There’s a narrow calle to your right,” he reported. “It leads to a fork where you turn into a ramo—”

  “Daniele, slow down,” Kat said, sounding breathless as she walked briskly down the little alleyway. “If we move too quickly we’ll stand out.”

  “OK.” Daniele glanced at the Predator feed. The drone
s were still circling, looking for the two women amongst all the people on the Strada Nuova. “OK, they don’t know where you are but they’re waiting for you to reappear. I’m going to take you on a walkabout.”

  He directed them down several more alleyways, then into a sotoportego, a walkway that ran underneath several houses.

  “That should fool them for a while,” he said with satisfaction.

  Kat’s voice said in his ear, “Daniele, I think we were just spotted by a gondolier. He’s making a phone call.” There was a pause, then her voice came back. “He definitely spotted us. He’s turning round to follow.”

  “OK, so now we have to avoid the canals. Do a left up ahead, where the bridge is.”

  He took them through a number of other paved passages. “There,” he said at last. “You should know where you are now.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And I think I know where you’re trying to get to. But don’t say anything on this line. Good luck.”

  Daniele had guided them back towards Cannaregio, the northernmost of Venice’s sestieri. This was the last remaining part of Venice not to be overrun by tourists. Humble hardware stores, grocers and other working-class businesses were more in evidence here than ritzy fashion stores.

  “Here,” Kat said, turning off yet another sotoportego into a tiny boatyard that gave onto the canal. “I remembered the address from Barbara Holton’s receipts.”

  There was a hand-painted sign high up on the wall. Barche a noleggio.

  Boats for hire.

  They asked to rent a small speedboat. The owner wanted ID and a credit card before he’d so much as untie it.

  “Look,” Kat said, losing patience. “We’ll give you cash and have the boat back by nightfall.”

  The boatyard owner shook his head. “ID and a card. That’s the law.”

  Quietly, Holly slipped away from the discussion.

  Kat said, “Remember that boat you rented to the tourist who got killed? I’m the capitano di carabinieri you spoke to. This is a police emergency, and if you don’t rent me a boat right now, I’m going to come back with a search warrant and turn this place over. OK?”