The Broker

"What do you know about the city?"

"It’s a prosperous little city that hasn’t changed much in five hundred years. It was once a staunch ally of Venice back when these towns all fought with each other. We bombed the hell out of it in World War Two. A nice place, not too many tourists."

A good place to hide, Joel thought. "Is this my stop?"

"Could be."

A tall clock tower beckoned all the traffic into the center of the city where it inched along around the Piazza dei Signori. Scooters and mopeds zipped between cars, their drivers seemingly fearless. Joel soaked in the quaint little shops-the tabaccheria with racks of newspapers blocking the door, the farmacia with its neon green cross, the butcher with all manner of hams hanging in the window, and of course the tiny sidewalk cafes where all tables were taken with people who appeared content to sit and read and gossip and sip espresso for hours. It was almost 11:00 a.m. What could those people possibly do for a living if they broke for coffee an hour before lunch?

It would be his challenge to find out, he decided.

The nameless driver wheeled into a temporary parking place. Stennett pecked numbers on a cell phone, waited, then spoke quickly in Italian. When he was finished, he pointed through the windshield and said, "You see that cafe over there, under the red-and-white awning? Caffe Donati?"

Joel strained from the backseat and said, "Yeah, I got it."

"Walk in the front door, past the bar on your right, on to the back where there are eight tables. Have a seat, order a coffee, and wait."

"Wait for what?"

"A man will approach you after about ten minutes. You will do what he says."

"And if I don’t?"

"Don’t play games, Mr. Backman. We’ll be watching."

"Who is this man?"

"Your new best friend. Follow him, and you’ll probably survive. Try something stupid, and you won’t last a month." Stennett said this with a certain smugness, as if he might enjoy being the one who rubbed out poor Marco.

"So its adios for us, huh?" Joel said, gathering his bag.

"Arrivederci, Marco, not adios. You have your paperwork?"

"Yes."

"Then arrivederci."

Joel slowly got out of the car and began walking away. He fought the urge to glance over his shoulder to make sure Stennett, his protector, was paying attention and still back there, shielding him from the unknown. But he did not turn around. Instead, he tried to look as normal as possible as he strolled down the street carrying a canvas bag, the only canvas bag he saw at that moment in the center of Treviso.

Stennett was watching, of course. And who else? Certainly his new best friend was over there somewhere, partially hiding behind a newspaper, giving signals to Stennett and the rest of the static. Joel stopped for a second in front of the tabaccheria and scanned the headlines of the Italian newspapers, though he understood not a single word. He stopped because he could stop, because he was a free man with the power and the right to stop wherever he wanted, and to start moving whenever he chose to.

He entered Caffe Donati and was greeted with a soft "Buon giorno" from the young man wiping off the bar.

"Buon giorno," Joel managed in reply, his first real words to a real Italian. To prevent further conversation, he kept walking, past the bar, past a circular stairway where a sign pointed to a cafe upstairs, past a large counter filled with beautiful pastries. The back room was dark and cramped and choking under a fog of cigarette smoke. He sat down at one of two empty tables and ignored the glances of the other patrons. He was terrified of the waiter, terrified of trying to order, terrified of being unmasked so early in his flight, and so he just sat with his head down and read his new identity papers.

"Buon giorno," the young lady said at his left shoulder.

"Buon giorno," Joel managed to reply. And before she could rattle off anything on the menu, he said, "Espresso." She smiled, said something thoroughly incomprehensible, to which he replied, "No."

It worked, she left, and for Joel it was a major victory. No one stared at him as if he was some ignorant foreigner. When she brought the espresso he said, "Grazie," very softly, and she actually smiled at him. He sipped it slowly, not knowing how long it would have to last, not wanting to finish it so he might be forced to order something else.

Italian whirled around him, the soft incessant chatter of friends gossiping at a rapid-fire pace. Did English sound this fast? Probably so. The idea of learning the language well enough to be able to understand what was being said around him seemed thoroughly impossible. He looked at his paltry little list of two hundred words, then for a few minutes tried desperately to hear a single one of them spoken.

The waitress happened by and asked a question. He gave his standard reply of "No," and again it worked.

So Joel Backman was having an espresso in a small bar on Via Verde, at the Piazza dei Signori, in the center of Treviso, in the Veneto, in northeast Italy, while back at Rudley Federal Correctional Facility his old pals were still locked down in protective isolation with lousy food and watery coffee and sadistic guards and silly rules and years to go before they could even dream of life on the outside.

Contrary to previous plans, Joel Backman would not die behind bars at Rudley. He would not wither away in mind and body and spirit. He had cheated his tormentors out of fourteen years, and now he sat unshackled in a quaint cafe an hour from Venice.

Why was he thinking of prison? Because you can’t just walk away from six years of anything without the aftershocks. You carry some of the past with you, regardless of how unpleasant it was. The horror of prison made his sudden release so sweet. It would take time, and he promised himself to focus on the present. Don’t even think about the future.

Listen to the sounds, the rapid chatter of friends, the laughter, the guy over there whispering into a cell phone, the pretty waitress calling into the kitchen. Take in the smells-the cigarette smoke, the rich coffee, the fresh pastries, the warmth of an ancient little room where locals had been meeting for centuries.

And he asked himself for the hundredth time, Why, exactly, was he here? Why had he been whisked away from prison, then out of the country? A pardon is one thing, but why a full-blown international getaway? Why not hand him his walking papers, let him say so long to dear ol’ Rudley and live his life, same as all the other freshly pardoned criminals?

He had a hunch. He could venture a fairly accurate guess.

And it terrified him.

Luigi appeared from nowhere.

LUIGI WAS IN HIS EARLY THIRTIES, WITH DARK SAD EYES AND DARK hair half covering his ears, and at least four days’ worth of stubble on his face. He was bundled in some type of heavy barn jacket that, along with the unshaven face, gave him a handsome peasant look. He ordered an espresso and smiled a lot. Joel immediately noticed that his hands and nails were clean, his teeth were straight. The barn jacket and whiskers were part of the act. Luigi had probably gone to Harvard.

His perfect English was accented just enough to convince anyone that he was really an Italian. He said he was from Milan. His Italian father was a diplomat who took his American wife and their two children around the world in sendee to his country. Joel was assuming Luigi knew plenty about him, so he prodded to learn what he could about his new handler.

He didn’t learn much. Marriage-none. College-Bologna. Studies in the United States-yes, somewhere in the Midwest. Job-government. Which government-couldn’t say. He had an easy smile that he used to deflect questions he didn’t want to answer. Joel was dealing with a professional, and he knew it.