The Italian Mission by Alan Champorcher Read Free Book Online Page B

CIA. Hopefully, someone back in Langley had warned her not to carry her government I.D. Still, the South Africans would have ways of finding out her true identity. All they needed was a little time. He picked up the pace, kicking up dust clouds on the deeply rutted road.
    Five minutes of this and a sharp pain in his side stopped him cold. Bending over, he waited for the knife to stop twisting in his ribs. Running on a rubber track in nylon shorts was one thing; running through two inches of dust in hiking boots with a fifty-pound pack another. As his panting slowed, he heard the staccato coughing of an engine coming near. A small, three-wheeled truck chugged up the rise behind him. Without Conti having to so much as wave, the old farmer stopped, swung the door open and gestured for him to climb in. After taking a moment to catch his breath, he began to speak in Italian.
    “ Gratie, gratie , I am in a big hurry.”
    The old man looked at him and laughed. “Who isn’t these days? I will take you as fast this old machine will go.” He patted the dash affectionately. “My uncle bought it in 1958. Still runs like a top.” Conti saw the vehicle’s insignia on the dash, a Poggia Ape . “Yes, the farmer continued, “this will keep going when I am in the ground. I will give it my grandson. My son is a lawyer — useless — but my grandson, he works. Only eighteen and his trees produced four truckloads of peaches this year.”
    Conti was half listening as he opened the tracker and checked the position of the South Africans’ truck. It hadn’t moved in the last ten minutes.
    “Can you take me to” — he squinted at the small screen — “ Via Santa Caterina ? If it’s out of your way, I can pay. A friend of mine is in trouble, and I need to get there right away.”
    The man reached into his breast pocket, took out a half-smoked cigar and, steering with one elbow, lit it. “You are American? Only Americans speak such fancy Italian. Of course I’ll help you. I was in the resistance in World War II, only a young boy but I carried a radio all over the mountains. Sixty kilos. The Americans came just as the Germans were about to pick us up. Otherwise, I’d be dead now.” He laughed, then puffed on the cigar and jammed his foot down on the accelerator. The small engine whined at a higher pitch, but Conti could detect no significant increase in speed.

    The farmer dropped him off a quarter mile from where the icon hovered on the GPS display. He walked quickly over a little rise, keeping in the shadows cast by the tall trees lining the road, until he came to a drive that climbed through lush vineyards. The computer screen indicated the truck was less than a hundred yards up the hill, but he couldn’t see it or the farm buildings from where he stood. He avoided the drive, ducking instead under several rows of vines and clambering over the ploughed soil between them, staying low.
    The buildings sat among tall plane trees at the top of the hill. The largest building was an ancient farmhouse, its various layers of brick, wooden beams and broken plaster fused together into a unified whole by centuries of sun and wind. Ten yards from the house a Quonset hut squatted, surrounded by a muddy field where half a dozen goats calmly munched on stacks of hay. The panel truck was parked on the other side of the hut. Muffled voices came from inside.
    Conti took the sniper’s rifle out of the pack, removed the clip and reinserted it properly. He propped the pack against the backside of a tree and crawled on his belly through the broken slats of a picket fence and behind the row of hay bales toward the hut. The goats watched his progress, chewing their dinner contentedly. When he reached the hut, he pulled himself up on its concrete block foundation until he found a narrow gap between the corrugated steel panels that allowed him to see the interior of the room.
    Jill sat strapped in a battered metal chair, eyes closed, head lolling to the