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Was it true?
Was it even possible?
I wanted to believe, but – there was one more problem.
“Thank you. I mean it – thank you. But… my situation could actually get worse if a new lawyer starts stirring things up.”
“Why is that?”
“My name isn’t Lars Andersen – it’s Lars Henriksson. I had a fake passport when I was arrested. That’s who I pretended to be, and that’s the name they convicted me under. I think they didn’t look at me too closely because they had me dead to rights with the guns. But if they think I might get out of jail, well… they might start poking around again.”
“Lars Henriksson, eh?”
I nodded.
“Your fingerprints aren’t in a military database somewhere?” Dario asked.
“From what I understand, MI6 deleted them.”
Dario whistled. “What my family wouldn’t pay to be able to do that.”
I smiled, then grew serious. “Look, I came to terms with serving my sentence a long time ago. I figured I made my bed, so I had to lie in it. I don’t like it, but I’ve learned to live with it.”
“Even if it means not seeing Rachel for another three years?”
I clenched my jaw. “That’s the part that hurts.”
“At least let me have Roberto look into it,” Dario said. “We’ll specify that it has to be handled with the utmost delicacy. He won’t allow the lawyer to advance the case without you signing off on it. Seriously, though, it wouldn’t hurt to try.”
“…really?” I asked, daring to hope.
“Really.”
“…okay. Thank you.”
Dario got up from his chair and hugged me. “Believe me when I tell you it is the least I can do for you, my friend.”
Dario was as good as his word. His brother Roberto hired one of the most expensive defense lawyers in all of Italy to look at my case.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the lawyer had worked for the Rosolinis many times in the past. That’s why he agreed to do it.
If I’d called him up out of the blue, he never would have taken me on as a client. And even if he had, his fee would’ve equaled half a year’s pay at MI6.
Three weeks later, an answer finally came back: there weren’t any flaws the lawyer could exploit. Not easily, anyway – and not without drawing undue attention to my identity.
I had to turn down Dario’s offer. If the Italian authorities found out I was using a fake passport… and if it could even potentially lead back to MI6…
I couldn’t take that chance.
“Thanks, but… I can’t,” I said weeks later when Dario told me the news.
He nodded. “I’m sorry, Lars.”
It was hard. Like I had been given a tiny scrap of hope, and then it was taken away from me.
But the one thing I never forgot:
That Dario had offered… then come through for me… even though it would have meant losing his only real ally in San Vittore.
