Chapter 8: The Sea Route

The antibiotic had left a cold ache in Leone’s left arm. Sweat dampened the collar of his shirt, which now smelled of mud and stone dust. His left eye had narrowed to a blurred slit, and the bruise around it pulsed whenever he moved his jaw.

Nivàra was far away, but the mountain cold seemed to have remained inside him.

The black sealing wax, Efisio’s face when the flashlight went out and the sound of the sea returned without order. He thought of his father’s rough hands cleaning hunting rifles and of the black ring still hidden inside his jacket. Then Corrias appeared behind his desk, the movement at the corner of his mouth returning with the memory of his words.

Cagliari offers more opportunities.

What opportunities? Being beaten in an attic? Drowned between the silos?

Each time Leone tried to connect one detail to another, the sequence broke apart. Efisio had not seemed afraid of him. His caution had appeared only after Leone spoke the Crown’s name.

Mira closed the switchboard panel and locked it with the brass key. She slung the canvas backpack over her shoulder and pulled the straps tight.

“Let’s go. In an hour the resupply crews will fill the quay. If Efisio sees us here again, he won’t need to send Gavino. He’ll just nod at one of the dockhands.”

Leone stood with one hand against the concrete wall. The loss of depth in his swollen eye forced him to judge the distance to the door before moving.

“The ship. Who handles the passage?”

Mira stopped on the threshold, outlined against the first gray light.

“No one handles anything. There’s a Panamanian merchant ship unloading fertilizer at the salt pier. The second officer takes whatever money you have and points you toward a locker near the engine room.” She adjusted the bag on her shoulder. “If you reach the destination, good. If the Guardia di Finanza looks too closely, the locker stays shut.”

“You’ve done it before?”

She turned slowly. The hood covered half her face, and her mouth had drawn into a bitter line. “I’m not getting on that thing.”

“Then why come to the pier?” Mira stepped into the mist.

“Because after Raimondo, Sardara will use me as fish bait if I stay in the Marina. I put you on the ship, my debt is cleared. That’s all.”

Leone did not know whether she meant a debt to Sardara, to the people behind the sealing wax or to someone she had not mentioned.

They followed the edge of the quay beside the dead tracks of the freight railway. The port was waking. Refrigerated trucks idled near the markets, and gulls cried above the roofs.

Leone watched the spaces between the containers. Raimondo or Gavino could have been waiting in any one of them.

As they passed beneath a cargo crane, he noticed small marks of white chalk on the ground.

Three short diagonal strokes had been drawn on the rusted iron of an old buffer stop, converging like one half of the broken crown.

Leone stopped.

“Move,” Mira said, catching the sleeve of his uninjured arm.

“That mark.”

“Customs. Old cargo markings.”

She did not look at it. Her hand tightened and pushed him forward. “Watch the people ahead of you, not the dirt.”

Leone could not know what the lines meant. Yet Mira’s refusal to acknowledge them, and the guarded tone she used whenever he approached the subject of the ammunition box, suggested they were more than routine markings.

They might have indicated a warning. Perhaps a boundary.

Ahead, the merchant ship rose against a pale blue sky. Thick smoke poured from its main funnel while workers moved along the upper deck.

No sailor stood beside the wooden gangway.

A man in a dark coat reaching almost to his ankles waited there instead. His clothes were too clean for the quay, and no mud or rust marked his shoes. He smoked without looking toward the dockhands farther along the pier.

The coat proved nothing.

He was, however, standing beside the only route onto the ship. Leone stopped several meters away.

If the man belonged to the Saint, the road north ended at his feet.