Adriano sat in his car in the parking lot and reread the directions and map Austin had jotted down on the sheet of notepaper. He gazed up with a bland expression on his face at the neon sign on the flat roof of the low-slung building: GOLD MINE CAFÉ. Then he ripped the paper to shreds, started the car, and drove out of the parking lot onto the Maryland back road.

After leaving Baltazar’s jousting contest, Adriano had driven from Upstate New York to New Jersey and then to Maryland. Austin’s directions had directed him to a rural area not far from Chesapeake Bay and taken him down a series of back roads that had ended in the Gold Mine Café.

He picked up his telephone and called on the direct line that connected him to Baltazar.

“Well?” His employer’s voice came on the phone.

Adriano told Baltazar about the Gold Mine Café. “Too bad Austin is dead,” Adriano said. “I would have made him tell us what we want to know.”

“Too late,” Baltazar snapped. “He escaped. We had to leave the estate. Don’t go back there.”

“And the woman?”

“I have her. We’ll deal with Austin later. I want to see his face when I tell him what I did with his lovely friend.”

Adriano had hoped he would be the last to talk to the woman, but he kept the disappointment out of his voice.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I’ll be back in a few days. Go to ground in the meantime. I’ll call you when I return. You’ll have much work to do. I want NUMA and anyone associated with it destroyed. You’ll have every resource you’ll need.”

Adriano was smiling when he hung up. He had never attempted large-scale killing and looked forward to the challenge mass murder offered.

Life was good, he thought. Death is even better.

NUMA 7 - The Navigator

Chapter 52

THE BOEING 737 MARKED with a bull’s-head logo on its fuselage touched down at LarnacaInternationalAirport and taxied to an area reserved for private corporate jets. The mechanics who normally worked on the planes had gone home for the night. Baltazar had planned his arrival with great care, and it was unlikely anyone would have had more than mild curiosity at the figure being carried down the steps of the plane in a stretcher.

Bandages covered the person’s face except for the eyes and nose. Men in white medical jackets loaded the stretcher into a waiting helicopter. Seconds later, Baltazar descended to the tarmac and got into the helicopter. The helicopter lifted into the air moments later and headed west.

The aircraft landed in a small airport near the coastal city of Paphos. A waiting ambulance drove off as soon as the stretcher was loaded aboard. Baltazar and his men followed in a Mercedes sedan.