Sydney Moya

 ©2013

All rights reserved

Synopsis

Interpol working with a multinational taskforce of Anti-Organised crime agencies is closing in on Mario Di Michele and his ‘Ndrangheta crime family, His father, uncles and his three brothers and two sisters have been arrested or killed. He is a wanted man in North America, Europe and Latin America. There seems to be only one way to evade capture or certain death and it is by being true to his nature

Chapter two

Mario knew she needed to get out of Croatia urgently, besides that she needed new travel documents which would require a new name too. She had picked one a few years ago but never allowed herself to use a woman’s name or to think of herself as anyone but Mario for fear that she would succumb. Names have power and having a girl’s name would have weakened his resolve to be Mario.

In almost every country there is a criminal class that supplies all manner of illicit things. Croatia on the fringe of the E.U was no exception. The Albanian’s had cornered the market on fake identities and human trafficking. Her father had taught her to avoid the Albanian’s where possible because they simply weren’t to be trusted. However at the moment she had no choice, they were the only people she knew who could help her out of the bind she was in.

She didn’t realise that as a single woman things might go a bit differently.

The girl who walked down the street pulling a suitcase looked quite attractive and elicited more than a few admiring glances making her smile to herself. She’d been nervous she’d be made as a boy but the looks on some the men’s faces made it clear she passed quite well.

She happily made her way to a cafe she knew doubled up as the office of some Albanian’s her brother’s had once done business with.

A waiter appeared as soon as she took a seat at one of the tables.

“How can I help you miss?”

“I need some documents,” she said in fluent Albanian.

Besides having a talent for money Mario had a gift for languages, she spoke nine besides her native Italian in varying degrees of fluency; English, French, German, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Albanian, Russian, Japanese and Serbo-Croat. Albanian was one she’d learnt to help her father deal with the Albanians who were encroaching into W. Europe traditionally the turf of the ‘Ndrangheta and Sicilians.

The expression on the waiter’s face changed slightly.

He excused himself in English and left.

She saw him talking to someone who looked like bouncer at the entrance to what seemed to be some offices. The bouncer made his way inside. Minutes later he returned and the waiter came back to her.

“Please come this way miss,” he said politely.

She was led to the offices. The bouncer once out of sight of paying customers decided to pat her down.

‘What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, knowing no self-respecting girl would allow a strange man to search her. The bouncer stopped before he touched her looking confused. He decided to let her go in, she looked harmless enough.

The pair of them entered the office. Mario felt like she was entering a lion’s den. A burly man sat at the table and looked at her with interest. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Ms,” he said in English.

“Ms Mitchell,” said Mario without batting an eyelid.

“Ms Mitchell, yes and you would like some documents,” he said with smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Yes, two passports, one American and the other British, in the same name by the end of today,” she said.

“And what makes you believe a family establishment such as this would deal in such things?”

“I was referred by an old friend,” she said in Albanian.

The man’s eyebrows rose.

“You don’t look Albanian,” he said, still taken aback by her perfect accent.

“Looks can be deceiving,” she said in the same language.

“Yes so how can I be sure you’re not a cop?”

Mario mouthed the code word people in the know used to gain access to them.

“Everybody but the guilty sleep in the night,” she told him in Albanian, “I am such a person.”

He smiled; he decided he liked this one. He briefly wondered if he should keep her.

“All right, it’ll cost you $30 000 for both of them, collection at 6pm,” he said more business-like.

“Okay but I will pay half upfront the rest when I have them,” she said.

He nodded; this one was clever he thought. She would make a change to the girls he usually kept.

He gave her a paper and asked her to fill out the details she needed on the passport. Mario took it and wrote down the name she’d decided to use last night.

Ava Marylyn Mitchell.

D.OB: 24/06/1987 London.

Ava passed the piece of paper back to the Albanian man before she was led to a booth were passport photos were taken before she took her leave. All she had to do was return later in the day and pick up the documents and pay the remainder of the price.

She felt safer already, once she had travel documents she’d be out of here like a shot. She smiled at the name she’d chosen. Ava was the alter ego she’d had created when she was in the UK by paying a very good hacker. Legally she did exist; it had been an insurance policy in case she ever decided to transition. Her father was a man not be crossed and she’d seriously thought of doing just that by transitioning when she’d been in London and had decided she’d need a new untraceable identity.

In the end she’d decided it wasn’t worth the grief and had resigned herself to being a man for the rest of her life, though she indulged her feminine side with one or two things like the hair removal.

Now however she could be the girl she’d longed to be, not in the circumstances she’d have hoped but well every cloud has a silver lining.

“Follow her,” ordered the man she’d been talking to when she’d left the restaurant.

Trieste, Italy

Director Rossi picked up his twentieth cigarette of the day. It was a number he usually reached in the evening unless he was stressed.

He was stressed.

There was no sign of Mario Di Michele. He’d gone to ground and he had no idea where he was. Their information had suggested he might board a truck a truck and head for Central Europe. A raid had been done but Di Michele hadn’t showed, for the first time their information had failed them and there were no leads as to where he was.

Alerts had been put out in Croatia but nothing so far and Rossi wondered if he’d even gone there. Catching Di Michele wasn’t meant to be this hard, after all he was just gifted in hiding money and he was not the hard core criminal his brothers and father had been. Yet he’d managed to evade them even with the loss of his bodyguard.

He sighed; Di Michele had obviously picked up a few things from the old man after all and wasn’t going to be the easy catch they’d thought he would be. He wondered what he was going to tell his superiors.

With the way the day was going he’d be lucky if they didn’t tear him a new one.

Somewhere in Croatia

Ava sat in the plaza, enjoying her meal. She felt quietly hopeful that things might work out after all. She hadn’t been clocked as a man the whole day, to her joy which meant the cops wouldn’t be looking at her.

On a personal level she felt a sense of peace despite being on the run. After years of suppressing her identity, just being a woman felt so liberating and if she could she might skipped about in joy. She looked like a typical tourist and her voice hadn’t given her away, she’d never had a particularly deep voice and increasing its pitch hadn’t been too hard, with practice she could be perfect. People looked at her but not to eyeball a man in drag but to check out a pretty girl and she felt rather pleased that this was so.

In her joy she failed to notice the two Albanians who’d been shadowing her the whole day. She was too wrapped up in her feelings to notice and had the police been watching too she might have been in trouble.

As it was she didn’t notice them but took out her laptop and began planning her trip out of Croatia and what she’d do afterwards. She needed a place where she could lay low for a bit while getting hormones and finding a doctor to facilitate her transition. Money was definitely not going to be a problem as she had access to an immense amount of money placed in various virtually untraceable accounts not to mention the cash on her person. She went shopping for a few more clothes when she realised the outfits she had were too meagre for a woman.

Ava tried on her first skirt in 16 years as well as her first dress and she was pleased by her appearance, she had nice legs. So she bought a number of skirts and dresses as well as blouses to fill her suitcase which was nearly empty after disposing of her male attire that morning.

Things were looking up.

When the time she’d specified for collection of her documents neared, she hailed a cab to drive her back to the Albanian restaurant which served as a front for the Albanian mafia in that area. As she was about to reach her destination she noticed a car following not too subtly. She asked the driver to circle the block. When the car continued following she knew she was being followed. Her appearance ruled out the police so it had to be the Albanian’s.

She wondered what they wanted then realised that since she wasn’t dressed as Mario she was a potential target for the sex-trade the Albanian’s dealt in. European girls especially those who spoke English were rather popular and she realised she was in danger.

“Damn it!” Ava cursed in her native Italian.

She told the driver to drive her out of this town and to a hotel in the nearest one. Naturally the cabbie had no objection since that would earn him more money at the inflated “tourist rate.” Their tail followed at first discretely behind one or two other vehicles not knowing they’d been made. She told the driver to floor it in exchange for a bonus and he gladly obliged her. As their car accelerated their tail realised they’d been made and they duly increased their speed. The taxi driver suddenly realised that they were being chased and in his panic he also increased his speed. The next twenty kilometres were travelled at breakneck speed.

Luckily their chasers had a clunker chasing their Mercedes and the driver drove straight into the first police station he saw at Ava’s behest. She’d made a plan and hoped it would pan out.

She picked up her phone and called the Albanian.

“I don’t appreciate being followed,” she said coldly.

“What on earth are you talking about? Come and get your things,” was the man’s calm response.

“Listen, Enver. Yes I know your name. I’m not one of those little girls you like to kidnap. I’m ‘Ndrangheta and if you do not give me my papers my family will shut you down, there will be a war and you will be the first to die. So if you want to live, come to the police station in Kastav in 25 minutes and give me my things. And don’t try anything if anything happens I have already informed my family to hold you responsible,” said Ava in the calmest tone she could manage.

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“Very well,” the reply finally came.

The cabbie gulped as listened.

Seeing this, Ava smiled.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be safe and don’t ever tell anyone what you heard. When we’re done lose this car and get a new one. I’ll pay for it,” she said easily.

Twenty five minutes later a car arrived and two men walked up to the car.

Ava pulled out the nine millimetre pistol she kept for personal protection, though she’d never shot anyone she was trained in the use of firearms. She’d become an expert shot in her time in the States when Luciano had made use of the widespread gun ranges in that country and had made her come along. However she’d chosen the police station so as to reduce the potential for violence. The Albanians were not likely to start something there thus assuring her safety. The two men handed her a package through the window while Ava kept a gun trained on them.

She told the driver to open the package and check if there were two passports, one British, one American. He confirmed it and she handed over €15 000.

“Tell Enver to let this lie and not to look for me or this cab, it belongs to us. Should anything happen to the cabbie or his family, his life is forfeit,” she warned, “and don’t follow us or the same thing applies,” she finished.

They nodded and walked off.

Ava told the driver to take her to the Slovenian border after they drove off.

to be continued