The Broker

What had happened? What had Luigi seen or heard, or been told? Who, exactly, was Luigi in the first place and who was he taking orders from? As Marco yanked his clothes out of the tiny closet and flung them toward the bed he asked all these questions, and many more. When everything was packed, he sat for a moment and tried to collect his thoughts. He took deep breaths, exhaled slowly, told himself that whatever was happening was just part of the game.

Would he be running forever? Always packing in a hurry, fleeing one room in search of another? It still beat the hell out of prison, but it would take its toll.

And how could anyone possibly have found him this soon? He’d been in Treviso only four days.

When his composure was somewhat restored, he walked slowly down the hall, down the stairs, through the lobby where he nodded at the gawking clerk but said nothing, and out the front door. Luigi snatched his bag and tossed it into the trunk of a compact Fiat. They were on the outskirts of Treviso before a word was spoken.

"Okay, Luigi, what’s up?" Marco asked.

"A change of scenery."

"Got that. Why?"

"Some very good reasons."

"Oh, well, that explains everything."

Luigi drove with his left hand, shifted gears frantically with his right, and kept the accelerator as close to the floor as possible while ignoring the brakes. Marco was already perplexed as to how a race of people could spend two and a half leisurely hours over lunch, then hop in a car for a ten-minute drive across town at breakneck speed.

They drove an hour, generally in a southward direction, avoiding the highways by clinging to the back roads. "Is someone behind us?" Marco asked more than once as they sped around tight curves on two wheels.

Luigi just shook his head. His eyes were narrow, his eyebrows pinched together, his jaw clenched tightly when the cigarette wasn’t near. He somehow managed to drive like a maniac while smoking calmly and never glancing behind them. He was determined not to speak, and that reinforced Marco’s determination to have a conversation.

"You’re just trying to scare me, aren’t you, Luigi? We re playing the spy game-you’re the master, I’m the poor schmuck with the secrets. Scare the hell out of me and keep me dependent and loyal. I know what you’re doing."

"Who killed Jacy Hubbard?" Luigi asked, barely moving his lips.

Backman suddenly wanted to go quiet. The mere mention of Hubbard made him freeze for a second. The name always brought the same flashback: a police photo of Jacy slumped against his brother’s grave, the left side of his head blown away, blood everywhere-on the tombstone, on his white shirt. Everywhere.

"You have the file," Backman said. "It was a suicide."

"Oh yes. And if you believed that, then why did you decide to plead guilty and beg for protective custody in prison?"

"I was scared. Suicides can be contagious."

"Very true."

"So you’re saying that the boys who did the Hubbard suicide are after me?"

Luigi confirmed it with a shrug.

"And somehow they found out I was hiding in Treviso?"

"It’s best not to take chances."

He would not get the details, if, in fact, there were any. He tried not to, but he instinctively glanced over his shoulder and saw the dark road behind them. Luigi looked into his rearview mirror, and managed a satisfactory smile, as if to say: They’re back there, somewhere.

Joel sank a few inches in his seat and closed his eyes. Two of his clients had died first. Safi Mirza had been knifed outside a Georgetown nightclub three months after he hired Backman and handed over the only copy of JAM. The knife wounds were severe enough, but a poison had been injected, probably with the thrust of the blade. No witnesses. No clues. A very unsolved murder, but one of many in D.C. A month later Fazal Sharif had disappeared in Karachi, and was presumed dead.

JAM was indeed worth a billion dollars, but no one would ever enjoy the money.

In 1998, Backman, Pratt amp; Boiling had hired Jacy Hubbard for $1 million a year. The marketing of JAM was his first big challenge. To prove his worth, Hubbard bullied and bribed his way into the Pentagon in a clumsy and ill-fated effort to confirm the existence of the Neptune satellite system. Some documents-doctored but still classified-were smuggled out by a Hubbard mole who was reporting everything to his superiors. The highly sensitive papers purported to show the existence of Gamma Net, a fictitious Star Wars-like surveillance system with unheard-of capabilities. Once Hubbard "confirmed" that the three young Pakistanis were indeed correct-their Neptune was a US. project-he proudly reported his findings to Joel Backman and they were in business.

Since Gamma Net was supposedly the creation of the US. military, JAM was worth even more. The truth was that neither the Pentagon nor the CIA knew about Neptune.

The Pentagon then leaked its own fiction-a fabricated breach of security by a mole working for ex-senator Jacy Hubbard and his powerful new boss, the broker himself. The scandal erupted. The FBI raided the offices of Backman, Pratt amp; Boiling in the middle of the night, found the Pentagon documents that everyone presumed to be authentic, and within forty-eight hours a highly motivated team of federal prosecutors had issued indictments against every partner in the firm.

The killings soon followed, with no clues as to who was behind them. The Pentagon brilliantly neutralized Hubbard and Backman without tipping its hand as to whether it actually owned and created the satellite system. Gamma Net or Neptune, or whatever, was effectively shielded under the impenetrable web of "military secrets."

Backman the lawyer wanted a trial, especially if the Pentagon documents were questionable, but Backman the defendant wanted to avoid a fate similar to Hubbard’s.

If Luigi’s mad dash out of Treviso was designed to frighten him, then the plan suddenly began working. For the first time since his pardon, Joel missed the safety of his little cell in maximum security.

The city of Padua was ahead, its lights and traffic growing by the mile. "What’s the population of Padua?" Marco asked, his first words in half an hour.

"Two hundred thousand. Why do Americans always want to know the population of every village and city?"

"Didn’t realize it was a problem."

"Are you hungry?"

The dull throbbing in his stomach was from fear, not hunger, but he said "Sure" anyway. They ate a pizza at a neighborhood bar just beyond the outer ring of Padua, and were quickly back in the car and headed south.

They slept that night in a tiny country inn-eight closet-sized rooms-that had been in the same family since Roman times. There was no sign advertising the place; it was one of Luigi’s stopovers. The nearest road was narrow, neglected, and virtually free of any vehicle built after 1970. Bologna was not far away.

Luigi was next door, through a thick stone wall that went back for centuries. When Joel Backman/Marco Lazzeri crawled under the blankets and finally got warm, he couldn’t see a flicker of light anywhere. Total blackness. And total quiet. It was so quiet he couldn’t close his eyes for a long time.

After the fifth report that Critz had called with questions about Joel Backman, Teddy Maynard threw a rare tantrum. The fool was in London, working the phones furiously, for some reason trying to find someone, anyone, who might lead him to information about Backman.

"Someone’s offered Critz money," Teddy barked at Wigline, an assistant deputy director.

"But there’s no way Critz can find out where Backman is," Wigline said.

"He shouldn’t be trying. He’ll only complicate matters. He must be neutralized."