16 days, 2713km, or an aeroplane flight, three rickety boat trips and two truck trailer journeys later...
Train stations were loud places to be. Italian train stations were positively insane.
Alex stood in line at La Spezia Centrale, waiting in a queue of impatient people to hand over his two unmarked fifty Euro bills in exchange for a train ticket that would take him from his current location on the north-western coastline, all the way to Villa San Giovanni on the southern tip of the mainland.
As he moved to the front of the line, he extracted his identity card a flashed it at the teller behind the counter, who didn't even blink. Italian personal identification still had not progressed past a rectangular printed card, as despite the best efforts to adopt an electronic system, there had been little success.
Italians, in their current economic state, simply didn't care enough, and had meant that making Alex a forged Italian ID card had been simple enough that he could almost have done it himself. Of course, Smithers' replica was flawless, not that it had needed to be.
Alex handed over his hundred Euros, taking his eight Euros in change as well as a single trip ticket to the other end of the country.
The late evening breeze was brisk as he boarded the train, and Alex settled himself into an economy class seat at the rear of the train, ready to commence the 12 hour journey that would take him almost to his final destination.
As the train sounded its horn, and the light whir of electronics buzzed as they moved away from the platform, Alex paused to recall his odyssey to even make it to the Italian mainland.
His journey over the previous fortnight would not go down as one of his favourites. In fact, it had been something approaching a nightmare.
He had flown to the military base at Gibraltar two days after the fiasco at Gibson Hall, on a moderately sized cargo plane containing only him. He never even saw the pilot's face, before Ms. Jones met him on the runway, and ushered him into a separate wing of the airport for final briefings.
Observe and analyse had been the message that was repeated over and over again to him by MI6's deputy head, and to learn what he could about the history and relationships of the individuals involved from the lengthy yet sparsely informative mission preparation folder that had been sent ahead, which contained much speculation, but little hard evidence.
In the dead of night he had been dropped into the northern part of Algeria by a low level reconnaissance plane that had been specially co-opted in to enter the airspace below effective radar level. He had landed on the outskirts of an Algerian town called Annaba, known as 'the people smuggling capital of Africa'.
The Annaba Coast is one of the most infamous illegal immigration sources in the world, with individuals from all corners of the globe coming to the city to negotiate passage into the European world of opportunity and prosperity.
It was perfect for Alex then to slip in through the Italian border without ever appearing on an airport or docks' CCTV camera, nor having an entry appear on the police or border security database, regardless if it was under an alias or not. This mission was being conducted with the utmost paranoia, and no shortcuts would be taken in its execution.
After negotiating passage from Annaba to La Spezia, where his false identity's family had been based according to the narrative of his backstory, he had boarded a ship to transport him on the perilous journey from North Africa to Europe. The craft that he had chosen was the most solid looking on offer, and given that price meant nothing to him, he had no qualms about parting with a large portion of his funds.
He couldn't afford to take any great sum of money with him for fear of arousing suspicion, so any excess would have to be dumped. His conscience wanted him to gift it to someone who needed it, but it was too risky; his fingerprints were all over crisp five hundred and one thousand Algerian Dinar notes, which he didn't want circulating in Italy.
The boat had taken him from Annaba, Alegeria to Sardinia, where the occupants of the craft were met during the dead of night at the docks at Pula on the south coast, and unceremoniously loaded into a shipping container. From there, a truck drove them north to another port, where the container was placed on a barge that traversed the narrow straight between Santa Turisa Gallura, the most northern point of Sardinia and Bonofacio, Corsica's southern tip. From there they picked up another truck and then finally another ship, which was supposed to be transferring empty containers back to the mainland. The trip in the container from Corsica to the port in La Spezia was one of the most unpleasant journeys of Alex's existence.
Huddled into a tiny rectangular shipping can, the twenty-two adults and seven offspring slept as best they could in the virtual pitch darkness, punctuated only by the occasional flash of the single torch with which they had been provided and the screams and cries of hungry and uncomfortable children. Needless to say the container was not opened for any reason during the journey, and when Alex finally arrived on the Italian port in the early hours of the morning he had stripped off and thrown himself into the sea to cleanse himself of the smell and filth that naturally the 40 hour trip had built up.
Most of the other illegal immigrants had organised to go onwards on their journeys to join up with family members or for specific jobs on farms or in factories, and departed immediately. Alex, however, took three days in La Spezia familiarising himself with the city as best he could, to make sure his cover was airtight. No amount of pre-mission reading could replace spending time in a location as prep work.
The city of La Spezia looked out over the Gulf of La Spezia on the Ligurian Sea. It was a town whose entire existence centred around the sea, providing livelihood and employment for most of the residents. La Spezia was Italy's biggest naval port, as well as a fishing town, housing the largest navy base in the country. This accounted for both of Alessio's fathers professions, making it the perfect cover story.
And finally he had come to the last leg of his journey. The train stopped at almost every station on its 12 hour route south to Villa San Giovanni, but that was planned also. Alessio Rinnovato was the son of a single, poor fisherman who had been discharged from the Navy base at La Spezia ten years prior; he would be unable to realistically afford anything better than the cheapest fare on offer.
The back-story for Alex's persona was neither particularly deep nor complex. He was the son of an Englishwoman who had abandoned her partner to flee back to Britain when Alessio had only been a year old, and his father was a dishonourably discharged sailor in the Navy, who had drowned in rough seas while working on a fishing trawler. The purpose of Alessio's current passage to the island of Sicily was to go to live and work with his father's brother, Roberto Rinnovato.
Roberto Rinnovato was a real person, but the official records showed he had a brother, who had given birth to a son. In reality, he was an only child with no living relatives. His Sicilian heritage had made him the perfect candidate for MI6, who had planted him as a sleeper agent nine months before the mission had even been mooted for Alex.
Ms. Jones had insisted Roberto had been placed there for very basic surveillance and had not been put there in preparation for the operation, but Alex wasn't so sure. MI6 were always thinking several steps ahead.
Alessio's uncle Roberto was, like his imaginary brother, a fisherman with his own barely seaworthy boat and a business selling to the local market that scarcely kept him out of bankruptcy. Of course he would have a nice fat MI6 account waiting for him when this was all over, but who knew how long that would take. He had no family, and no close ties. He was a quiet and private man, who kept to himself, and nobody knew much about. In short, he was perfect.
'Alessio' would go to work for his uncle while he bided his time and waited for an opportunity to present itself, if one ever did.
Much had been made in the mission briefings that Alex had received, as well as being printed on every second information document he had been given, that the families of Sicily were as tightly held and insular as any group could possibly be. Outsiders were generally not welcome in the inner sanctums, and individuals not known to the families were wasting their time and potential risking their lives by trying to force their way in.
Alex would not make that mistake. He would be patient, he would wait for the chance to arise, and he would pounce on it.
The coast sped past as the train thundered south down the western seaboard, and Alex watched as the tracks slowly moved them away from the ocean on his right on the approach to Roma Termini, the largest station in the in the largest city in the country.
La Spezia Centrale was a station in somewhere between a small city and a large town. Compared to Rome however, even at midnight, the hustle and bustle seemed miniscule. He had boarded the train from La Spezia at 8 o'clock that evening, and it arrived for its scheduled half an hour changeover in Rome almost four hours later, at nearly midnight.
Alex's only travelling gear was his rucksack, which was full of appropriately dishevelled clothing that he had purchased with some of his remaining Euros while he had traversed his pretend home town. Alex had discarded all his extra cash into the sea before he'd arrived at the station, to make sure it could never be traced back to him, and so found himself with no way of purchasing any kind of snack or refreshment. Instead he sat on the bench at the far end of the platform, and waited for the next train.
Alex would, under normal circumstances, have stayed awake during a journey such as the one he was undertaking currently, making sure he was alert and attentive to everything that was going on around him. The voyage in the shipping container had taken its toll however, and two consecutive nights of screaming children and the constant smell of bodily functions had made him feel exhausted and nauseous. He broke his two hour sleeping rule, and placing his rucksack on the unused seat next to him, curled up in the back corner seat of the back carriage, and dozed off.
The remainder of the journey, all eight and a half hours of it, was little different from the first four hours, except slower. The train stopped at even more stations now, as weary travellers hopped on and off his carriage every few minutes. Alex, despite his lapse into a more normal sleeping pattern, slept lightly and awoke every time the train stopped purely through force of habit.
His fitful rest came to a halt with the arrival of the train at the station in Villa San Giovanni, and Alex hauled his rucksack over his shoulder and disembarked from the train onto a quiet, early morning station platform.
Bordered on each side by elderly and decrepit housing blocks, the train station didn't possess a particularly inviting feel; it wasn't hard to spot the economic divide between the north and south of the country in a place like this. Nevertheless, Alex exited the train station into the brisk morning air and sort to make his way to yet another sea port.
Alex wandered north, in no particular hurry to get to the crossing point as he neither had a ticket nor a timetable for the ferry. The town held little appeal to outsiders, but then again the south of the country was like being in a completely different state. Alex wouldn't quite have called this part of southern Italy developing world, but it was approaching something resembling it.
The sea port was a dull mixture of rusted ships, squawking seagulls and grey, overcast weather when Alex arrived on the docks, staring out over the expanse of water towards his destination; Messina, the sea town on the coast of Sicily.
This was the last part of his journey, and he was relishing being able to finally start what he had come to do.
Ferry tickets cost nearly 30 Euros each, and while even the train ticket had seemed a bit of a stretch for the son of a poor fisherman, MI6 in their wisdom had declared that it would add 'legitimacy' to his back-story if Alessio Rinnovato arrived as a stowaway on the Stretto Messina ferry.
It had seemed a good idea at the time. Now, to Alex's mind, it seemed like a waste of time and an annoying inconvenience.
The rucksack was a pain in the rear end. It was heavy despite carrying very little, it was unwieldy and he was constantly banging into things when he turned around. It had made pick-pocketing a ticket from another passenger a great deal harder than it otherwise would have been, but Alex persevered. First he scanned the crowd waiting for the ship to lower the ramps, looking for eligible targets.
Next it was picking his way through the crowd. Unfortunately the Italians were not very forgiving about what was perceived as queue jumping, and the mutterings of discontent and displeasure made blending in very difficult. Similarly, having multiple pairs of eyes watching you meant the actual act had to be seamless.
In the end, Alex sidled up behind a man in a business shirt with his suit jacket hung over the briefcase he carried. Waiting until the ships bridge was lowered for boarding, Alex used the natural surge of the assembled crowd towards the boat to mask a stumble forward, as he bumped into the back of the businessman, and removed the ticket that was sticking out the pocket of his formal slacks with a minimum of effort and movement.
As the man bent to pick up his dropped briefcase and dust off his jacket with a scowl, Alex swept past him and flashed his ticket to the inspector on the pier, before boarding the ship and disappearing into the depths of the large ferry. A minute later, a shout of anger and frustration could be heard from the docks, as the victim realised he'd 'misplaced' his ticket.
After he was sure that his theft wasn't going to be found out, Alex stood at the bow of the ship, watching as they closed in upon the Sicilian coastline with a small sense of trepidation. This was going to be his home for the next few months, and while the island was more the twenty-five thousand square kilometres in area, he knew there was nowhere to hide if things went pear shaped. If you were no longer needed or wanted, this was a place where you could disappear and never be found.
A/N: A couple of things here. Firstly, it's been a while, I know. A good long while, it's been Christmas and holidays but it's no excuse, two months is a very long time between drinks. Also, this chapter isn't that enthralling to my mind, and you've waited so long for it. So here's the good news; I've already written the next chapter and I'll post it tomorrow or the day after, I promise, to hopefully make it up to those of you still reading :)
As always, any feedback at all is greatly appreciated