Dante's Quest

The hotel

Upon reaching the shore, the guests maintained their hysteria, it was logical in spite of everything, we had caused a great commotion, many had fallen into the water and many others had been thrown, in retrospect it had been a lot of fun. Having stopped the boat, many decided to jump into the water or towards the dock, our group met at the side door that allows to go out on the port side, when descending I looked towards the place where we would launch Billy, he looked towards the boat while splashing in the water, then we started walking to finally get lost in the main street of the coast.

We had enough money to take the first taxi that passed in front of us and we asked him to take us to the farthest inn that he knew in that place, the driver looked at us suspiciously but began to drive without asking any questions, the trip was silent it became eternal at that time, although it really lasted only 45 minutes

Driver: this is the best place I know away from the marina area

We opened the doors and got out of the vehicle, Alina, being the one who had the money with her, leaned out of the front window of the vehicle and paid the bill, I don't know how much she would give, I just know that the guy at the wheel gave a big smile before going on his way, but not before giving our comrade his card with the phrase 'if you need me again you can call me'

Erick: I don't even want to ask how much tip you gave him, but without a doubt he left happy

Alina: think of this moment as if it were an investment, a necessary one, since we are still on the run

Karla had gone ahead and spoke cordially with the young receptionist

Karla: we need a room with 4 beds and a table, do you have room service?

Receptionist: oui maddam

Karla smiled widely when she heard the girl's French accent, and without wasting time she started a conversation with her in which they exchanged many laughs, I'm not sure that others could understand her like me, however I let her speak at ease, that always brought us positive consequences, after a while the young woman handed her a key and explained the path she should take, without wasting another second we followed our friend through the various corridors of that gigantic construction

Karla: She told me that she had given us one of the best rooms in the complex, apparently not many people have come here lately so she offered us a discount and said there would be a special surprise waiting in our room, she also mentioned that there is a pool and a Jacuzzi in case we want to relax for a while

Alina: that sounds like an excellent idea

Erick: I think the same thing

Dante: then there is nothing to discuss, but first let's get to the room

The room was spacious, a double bed, two single beds, a small sofa, an old TV, a small round table with four chairs, a spacious bathroom with a shower and a bathtub.

Dante: is there enough money to buy some clothes and food in addition to paying for the room?

Alina: sure yes, those guys on the ship each had a lot of money on them

Erick: I also registered a couple and I agree with Alina, they had a lot of money on them, all of them

Dante: at some point it seems suspicious to me, but for now I just want to eat something and buy the right clothes to get into that jacuzzi

The door chimed softly, as Alina approached cautiously looking through the magic eye of the door

Alina: who is it?

Voice behind the door: I am one of the bellboys in this place, they sent me to bring you a bottle of champagne

Karla: that must be the surprise that the receptionist talked about

Alina: I need to know, who does that girl want to flirt with?

Karla: she watched Erick a lot, so I think with him

Alina: typical

She opened the door, and a young man of medium height entered the room, taking with him a tray in which he brought a bottle, ice, four glasses and napkins, he placed everything delicately on the table and prepared to leave.

Dante: Alina, I think he deserve something for your service

Alina put her hand in her pocket and took out a 20 euro’s bill, the bellboy looked at him with surprise and smiled, thanking her, he retired closing the door

Erick: a tip of 20 euros, wow, how generous

Alina: it is the lowest denomination banknote that I have

Dante: Did you match the bundles of bills you got on the ship?

Alina: no, at that time I wasn’t worried about that

Erick: I didn't do it either, I was more concerned with saving our asses

Dante: please check them and count the money

Alina and Erick emptied their pockets and began to separate the small packages of money

Karla: even though I plan to go into the pool and jacuzzi, I want to take a shower first, even if that means staying in a towel in front of you

Alina: there is nothing in you that I have not seen already ha, ha, ha

Karla: yes, don't remind me that

Erick looked up and stared at me

Alina: you are a hopeless case, do you remember that adventure in Morocco, when we went to the Ouzoud waterfalls?

Erick: how can we forget it, that's where we met Nasra and we ended up fleeing for our lives as usual

Alina: right, do you remember that we went through a quagmire near the waterfall?

Erick: I remember, I thought that Karla would die buried in that place and I also remember our intrepid friend here present releasing a rope at my feet to hold him while he jumped without even hesitating to rescue her

Alina: after that we took a bath in the waterfall and took off our clothes to wash them, she had to take them all off because she was sunken up to her neck, I did it so she wouldn't feel self-conscious and it worked

Erick: I see, what a good friend you are, would you do the same for me?

Alina: you wish ha, ha, ha

Dante: Did you finish counting the money?

Alina: Yes, taking into consideration the tip I gave the boy, plus the cost of the taxi, which I paid from the same group of bills and taking into consideration that there are two well-defined groups of bills, those of 20 euros and those of 50 euros, which add up to 5,000 and 7,500 euros each respectively, I managed to take 5 packages of 50 plus 2 of 20 for a total of 47,500 euros

Erick: I have two packages of 20 that are 10,000 euros and one of 50 for a total of 17,500 euros

Dante: We are talking about 65,000 euros, assuming that among the guards that we could not review there were 35,000 euros more, that means that they all carried 100,000 euros, even if it is a mere speculation is a lot of money for a security guard to carry with him and a very round number to be a coincidence, apparently they did not want all the money to go in one pocket, this seems very curious to me

Alina: do you suspect it was to make a payment of some kind?

Dante: I just know that if I'm correct, someone will be looking very desperately for the rest of 100,000 euros very soon

Erick: That means we can't stay here too long

Dante: I agree

Alina: where should we go now?

Dante: I'm not sure, maybe after eating something and relaxing a bit we can come up with an answer to that question

Erick: say no more, where is the restaurant information?

Karla: it's over the TV

Karla came out of the bathroom covered with a towel, turned the double bed around and lay down on the far side.

Karla: please, I want a succulent Schnitzel accompanied by Kartoffelbrei, wake me up when the food is here

Alina: I think I'll follow in their footsteps

Alina went to the bathroom and closed the door behind her

Erick: what are you going to want for eat?

Alina: I want a hot Borsch and a Shashlyk

Erick took the restaurant chart and began to review it

Erick: I want a delicious Kjottkaker

Dante: do you really think that in a small hotel in southern Italy you’re going to find typical dishes from your countries?

Erick: hey, hey, dreaming doesn't count at all, don't be like that, if you want to, order yourself, I don't want to be the one to tell the girls that there isn't what they ordered

I took the chart and started to go through it, almost all the options were pasta, which did not surprise me at all, I picked up the room phone and dialed the room service extension

Erick: Wasn't it weird that we met a French receptionist in southern Italy?

Dante: as rare as a Russian, a German and a Norwegian traveling with a Venezuelan all over the world and constantly getting into trouble by the way

Erick: good point

Receptionist: oui? how can I help you?

Dante: Mademoiselle I spoke to you from room 777, I would like to order 4 pizzas, a prosciuto e fungi, a four stagioni, a capricciosa and a quattro formaggi, s’il vous plait

Receptionist: oui monsieur

Erick: pizza?

Dante: hey, no matter what part of the world you are from, a good pizza will always be known and will be delicious

Erick: good point

Alina came out of the bathroom like Karla, covered with a towel, she approached the nearest edge of the double bed and was asleep shortly after, I picked up the phone again and once again dialed the reception extension

Receptionist: oui? how can I help you?

Dante: pardon mademoiselle, is there a boutique in this place?

Receptionist: bien sur que oui monsieur, it is located at the end of the hall to the right of the reception, there is a complete selection of clothing for ladies and gentlemen of all classes

Dante: merci beaucoup

I hung up the speaker and watched Erick, who had started to change the TV channels but without sound so as not to disturb the girls, on a news channel they talked about a problem on the coast, involving a group of thieves who had gotten into on a yacht where a party was being held

Erick: It seems that Billy is not going to identify us more than as a group of thieves

Dante: the funny thing is that with all the cameras on the boat he doesn’t bother to give any information to the police or the press from what I see, do you know what that means?

Erick: it means that he will haunt us himself

Dante: I am afraid that it is and I am sure he will spare no expense for it

Erick: you know that our friendship goes beyond all this, we are more than friends, we are family, there is no one in this group who is not willing to give his life for you, what is so important to Billy that he is willing to look for us all over the world?

Dante: Do you remember that hack that I carried out in his company, when we were looking for information about the relics that he has illegally stored?

Erick: Of course, that's why we started to investigate him more closely, according to your findings, he has a security vault in which these relics can be, as well as several bank accounts where they love exclusivity and discretion.

Dante: I didn't know at that time, there were many lists of names, bank accounts, but it turns out that the list of names that I found at the end of all that contained people of a very particular payroll

Erick: what was it about?

Dante: I only knew after investigating, since the names were very particular to me, they were obviously from different places, it turns out that it was a payroll of high government officials, judges, members of special police forces, even INTERPOL agents

Erick: a payroll of bribes?

Dante: it is possible; otherwise why would he be so interested in recovering it?

Erick: he may just be stupid

Dante: you know as well as I do that he can be anything but stupid

Erick: that's the reason why he didn't want to kill us right away, he needs to know how much information we know about him before that

Dante: that is why we must assume that he will not give information to the police or the local media, he will keep it private to be able to take charge and if he has connections of that caliber in the moment we step on a port or an airport with our passports he will find us

Erick: there is something I don't understand; how did you know where to look for the names on that list? It's not easy to access that kind of information, even for a high-level hacker like you.

Dante: Alina helped me, remember that she was part of the Russian secret police, she knows where to look to find this kind of information, the problem now is that I don't know where we can be safe, given the circumstances

Alina: that's simple, we just have to change our passports, change our identity at least to travel

Dante: weren't you asleep?

Alina: you said it, I was, but your talk woke me up

At that moment there was a knock on the door and Erick decided to go open it, he looked first through the peephole before speaking

Erick: who is it?

Voice behind the door: I've brought your order

Erick confirmed that it was the same boy who brought us the champagne and opened the door, this time he appeared with a small cart where he carried the food

Alina: leave the cart and then come back for it, there is no space on that table for all the orders

The boy smiled and nodded, leaving the little car turned around and started to leave the room, not before Erick gave him a tip of 20 euros again

Buttons: enjoy your food

Alina woke up Karla and we sat down one at the time in the table, leaving the small cart close enough to be able to reach the food without problems

Erick: I have a question; what kind of business should you do to have a whole payroll of international bribes?

Alina: it can be anything thinkable or unthinkable, small and large arms, drugs, support for insurrections, overthrow of governments, assassinations, everything is possible

Karla: Are you talking about the information we took from Billy?

Alina: exactly

Karla: Since Dante told me about it, I have thought a lot about that, someone like Billy is only interested in power, however he is a very balanced and calculating person, someone like that is not interested in drugs, that is a business in which that he should always be watching his back and it is not his style, it could be weapons or politics, it would make more sense, it puts him in a position of power, although it could also be influence peddling, state secrets and blackmail, he is a person who pays to be informed of anything that can be used to advantage in the future and that is more similar to his style

Dante: it makes no sense for us to speculate about this information, what we do know is that he is aware that we have it and that puts us in danger, we cannot simply hand it over to a competent entity because we are not sure how far his influence reach and we cannot just look in another direction like that, for now we must investigate a little more, surely at the right time we can use it properly

Erick: the main problem is that he must be thinking that we will use that information to blackmail him, which is without a doubt what he would do and that puts us at a disadvantage, because it makes him desperate

Alina: on the contrary, I believe that if he believes that we will use that information to blackmail him, he will not be in such a hurry, he will wait prudently for us to contact him with our demands, at which time he could try to locate us

Karla: why do you think that?

Alina: he does not know any of us, therefore he cannot make psychological profiles of any of us or know our intentions, he could know that we acquired the information through a hack, however he does not know that we were looking for something completely different, which puts him in the situation of having to think that this was the information we were looking for from the beginning, with the solid purpose of extorting him, his legal fortune is well known so a monetary exchange would not be such an out of place idea

Dante: be that as it may, I am very sorry to have put you all in this situation where our lives are in danger at best and we already have evidence of that, given today's situation

Karla: I am almost sure that I speak for everyone when I say that no matter where all this takes us we will always be here to help you

Alina: maybe it's time to get in touch with some old friends, well, friends of my father to be more precise, from the old school of the Russian secret service, those guys never leave the work completely and can always find information on anyone anywhere in the world, they are also fully trusted

Erick: old Russian spies? are you serious? Can you tell us who your father was?

Alina: my father was a member of the KGB for many years and then an advisor to the government of the Russian Federation on security matters when he changed the country's policy

We all saw our faces being completely stunned

Erick: and how did you end up here with us?

Alina: I spent many years working in various intelligence offices for the government, always seeking to make my father proud, but when he died my world stopped making sense, so I quit and decided to travel the world, see with my own eyes the places that I was always doing research for other people, knowing new things, living and all that I achieved thanks to the advice of a great friend when I was plunged into the deepest of depressions, he was simply passing through the city of Moscow, I did not even know him He found me drowning in a bottle in a small bar and he approached me perhaps out of compassion, I will always remember his words 'you cannot leave the past behind if you are always in the same place, you must move forward'

Karla: really a very wise advice, I am happy to know that you found that friend in that very necessary moment of your life

Alina: it really was, I was so impressed that I stumbled out of that place looking for him everywhere, I found him near the entrance of the bar and I asked him, 'How was I supposed to do that?' And he replied, 'Come on, have a coffee with me and I'll tell you everything you need to hear ', I still don't know why I followed him without hesitation, but that coffee changed my life forever, all the loneliness and helplessness I felt disappeared and to this day I follow the bastard no matter where he goes

Karla and Erick raised their heads and looked at me at the same time

Karla: you mean…?

Alina: that's right, I mean our fearless leader, I've never told you, but thank you, you really saved my life at the time

Nobody dared to say anything else after those words, we simply concentrated on eating and enjoying the company