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“Send me in with Verity instead of Zep and Magnet,” said Poseidon. “Then we can get rid of the translator. If you allow Oleander to interrogate the second guard, you can do the same thing.”
“She speaks Maltese?” Zep asked.
“Fluently, along with ten or twelve other languages,” Poseidon responded.
Zep turned to me. “Okay if I go in with her?”
“Affirmative.” I’d heard the tactic of eliminating a translator worked on one of the task force’s previous ops that took place while Ares and I were in Mexico, raiding a different shipping container, one headed across the Pacific. According to Nemesis, she’d made the call to dismiss the translator after suspecting the two men being interrogated spoke English. I doubted that was the case with these two, but given Poseidon was from Malta and Oleander spoke the language, they could effectively communicate what the two men would face from us if they didn’t start talking.
Unlike when we were at Vauxhall Cross, we wouldn’t have the benefit of being able to watch the interrogations taking place from an anteroom. In this case, given Oleander was conducting one of them, I wondered if it was to our advantage. Unit 23 played by their own rules—better put, no rules—so having the sole witness to whatever she threatened the guard with be someone who didn’t speak Maltese meant we didn’t have to worry as much about repercussions from the higher-ups. Not that I was sure there’d be any from the UN anyway, given they, too, played by their own set of rules.
The same would be true for Poseidon. There was a good chance Verity would pressure him to use tactics he otherwise wouldn’t resort to.
As far as I was concerned, both guards could be threatened within an inch of their lives if it resulted in one or both of them leading us to Bexli and Mithras.
After an hour,there was no report from either of the interrogation teams. Those still out searching for Bexli were talking about starting door-to-door inquiries. Most units backing to the alley we’d seen her run into were commercial—mainly restaurants and retail shops—forcing the search teams to wait until later, when they opened for business.
When exhaustion hit, I dropped hard, falling asleep moments after I finally sat down for longer than a couple of minutes.
“Cayman?” A woman’s voice jarred me awake. I opened my eyes and saw Kima Sakari, code name Delfino, seated beside me. She was a member of the Maltese task force.
“My apologies. I must’ve dozed off,” I said from my slouched position.
“I’m sorry to wake you, but Oleander asked me to brief you on something one of the guards said.”
I sat upright and scrubbed my face with my hand. “It is about Bexli?”
“Yes. A lead, at least. She showed him a video of the alley where Bexli disappeared and asked if he recognized it. He finally relented and admitted the mother of one of the women who works for Moretti owns a restaurant that backs to it.”
“A restaurant?” I repeated, feeling hopeful for the first time in hours.
“It’s called Nonna Vella’s.”
“The woman who works for Moretti, what does she do?”
“She’s one of the nurses responsible for administering the drugs each night.”
The ramifications of this news raced through my mind. “Do you think she aided Bexli in her escape?”
“It’s one theory. A credible one in that she ran directly to that particular alley, then disappeared.”
“Does the guard know what time the woman, err, nurse, left the villa last evening?”
“It was her day off.”
“Interesting,” I murmured. If that was the case, she may not be aware of Moretti’s departure. I checked the time. It was seven hundred hours. “When are the teams scheduled to begin?”
Delfino studied something on her mobile. “Some of the businesses open at nine. In the meantime, they’re continuing to canvas the area.”
I tapped the comms device I still wore to activate it. “Abort door-to-door inquiries, and go dark, over,” I said.
“Copy that,” responded Tank followed by three more confirmations of receipt of the orders.
“Why?” Delfino asked.
“If Bexli has found refuge in this restaurant, inquiring about her with neighboring businesses might result in them relocating her or increasing their efforts to hide her.”
“What do you have in mind?”
