Chapter 124 - The Scent of Wild Fennel
The Land Rover Defender roared to life with a mechanical clatter that sounded like a threshing machine. It was a 1986 diesel, battered and coated in fine white volcanic dust from Mount Etna, but its mechanical linkages were pure steel and its four-wheel-drive transfer case had no computer chips to fail.
Julien, a wiry Frenchman in his fifties with tobacco-stained fingers and a scarred jawline, climbed into the jump seat beside Patrice without uttering a single complaint. Clara sat between Patrice and me on the vinyl bench, her leather satchel clutched against her ribs like a shield.
Through the rear mirror, I watched our villa shrink behind the olive canopy. Just as we crossed the stone culvert leading into the overgrown terraces of wild fennel and dormant grapevines, the first black Mercedes crested the main gate’s driveway.
Two rapid cracks echoed across the valley—the unmistakable percussive slap of suppressed 9mm rounds breaching the front windows of the villa.
"They're thorough," Patrice muttered, checking the magazine of his Kimber before racking the slide with a clean, oily snap. "They don't knock. They sweep."
"They aren't looking for prisoners, Aunt Martha," Clara whispered, her face pale against the dark interior of the cabin. "Donato Rossi died three years ago. His grandson, Marc Rossi, runs the maritime logistics out of Bastia now. He knows the French authorities are closing in on the Corsican ports. Box 402 was his war chest. With that money gone, he has nothing to pay his shipping crews or bribe the customs inspectors in Livorno."
"Then he should have kept better records," I muttered, wrestling the Defender's heavy, unassisted steering wheel as the tires churned through loose basalt gravel and thick brush.
Branches of prickly pear scraped against the aluminum panels with a screech like metal tearing on rock. The Defender leaned precariously at a thirty-degree angle as we traversed the upper rim of the vineyard, bypassing the paved access road entirely. Below us, the Mediterranean Sea sparkled with blinding sapphire clarity, indifferent to the blood feud tearing through the lemon groves.
"Where does this track lead?" Patrice asked, leaning forward to scan the tree line through the cracked windshield.
"It cuts through the abandoned sulfur quarry behind Castelmola," Julien spoke for the first time, his English broken, guttural, and laced with a thick southern French drawl. "From there, an unpaved logging road drops down into the Alcantara gorge. No cameras. No highway patrol."
"And Sarah?" I asked, looking sideways at Clara. "Where is your mother right now?"
"She isn't in Marseille," Clara said, looking down at her hands. "Julien told them she was, to draw Rossi's scouts toward the docks. She’s waiting at a convent in the hills outside Taormina. The sisters of Santa Maria. She came here two weeks ago when the Swiss banks sent the first liquidation warning."
My chest tightened. "She knew I would come to Sicily?"
"Eleanor left three letters in the vault, Aunt Martha," Clara said. "Did you not find the third envelope behind the ledger box?"
My mind flashed back to the brass compartment of Box 402 in Zurich. The cold brass walls, the ledger, the deeds, the bearer bonds. I had found two envelopes—one addressed to Arthur, filled with his own fraudulent customs stamps, and one addressed to me, containing the title deeds to the Penobscot property.
"There was no third envelope," I stated.
Clara’s jaw tightened. "Then someone beat you to the vault before you cleared it. Or Caleb didn't just sell your address—he sold the key code to Eleanor’s private deposit box before you even landed in Switzerland."
The realization hit me like a bucket of sea ice. The bank manager in Zurich had hesitated before leading me into the subterranean vault. He had mentioned a *prior inquiry* from a legal representative claiming to hold a power of attorney from Boston. I had dismissed it as standard bureaucratic friction, assuming Caleb had tried and failed to freeze the funds from across the ocean.
He hadn't failed. He had raided what he could, and when he found only paper instead of gold, he handed the paper to the wolves in Bastia.
"Patrice," I said, my voice dead and cold. "Get the satellite phone. We are calling Boston."
May you like
"To negotiate?" Patrice asked, raising an eyebrow.
"No," I replied, steering the Defender into the shadowed canyon of the sulfur quarry. "To tell Caleb that if he doesn't cut the line right now, I will let the Corsicans have his Boston address before sunset."
