Chasing The Dawn (Luke Temple - Book 2) (Luke Temple Series) Read Free Page B

working on?”
    Beltrano stood and checked his watch, then he downed the remaining coffee in one gulp, “Maybe. But first, lunch.”

5.
    The temperature in Teramo at that time of year could be harsh, with gusts of fresh cold sweeping in from the mountains. It was not a large town but one with a rich history. Of course, this was Italy, where saying a town or region was rich in history was like saying a specific diamond in a diamond-encrusted crown was sparkly. It was yet another town Luke could add to the ever-growing list of places that warranted a more relaxing exploration, something he would never find the time for.
    Night had fallen; Luke stuffed a gloved hand into the pocket of his black overcoat and retrieved a mobile phone. He never brought mobile phones with him when travelling into new countries. Tri-band and modern network sharing meant people could travel across different countries without losing signal or service, and that worried him. All electronic signal could be found and traced given time but by purchasing a new phone in each country, Luke made that process more difficult. It was what he was trained to do.
    He checked that the mobile was turned off; the call he was going to make would be entirely faked and he couldn’t risk his phone ringing halfway through it. The street was quiet; Luke tucked himself into the shadows on the opposite side of the road to the small hotel he had booked into earlier in the day. He began chatting away on his phone as his eyes roamed the street, searching for anything unusual or out of place, a person, a car, someone in a window. It was the third time he had watched the street that day, it was always part of his routine when entering a new environment.
    He stamped his feet to keep the blood circulating. He dressed casually on operations, but it was a balance; too causal and people remember a ‘scruffy man’ sat in the corner, too smart and you always catch people’s eye.
    To remember each face and individual he assigned them to an item in the room he kept locked away in his memory. A tall balding man who had come and gone a few times during the day was filed away as an old leather chair. It had been part of his training, a system he was made to practice hour after hour, one time reaching a hundred items on exact recall and association. It was an essential skill to remaining covert in the field. If things were retained in his memory then he never had to scramble for notes or photographs; also if he was lifted the paper trail would be non-existent. What became more complicated was when he began committing to memory who was in the hotel and who was out. To do this he attached labels to the items in his memory room, so if the tall balding man was in the hotel then he would attach a label to the old leather chair in his mind.
    Luke pulled the collar of his coat up higher, now jabbering away about some girl into his switched-off phone. He was always thorough when entering a new environment, it was impossible to conduct an operation if you hadn’t constructed a solid and safe base beforehand.
    The first thing he had done was locate a post office in the town; there had been a few options, but he had chosen one which appeared the least busy, tucked away on a little back street. It had one elderly lady behind the short counter and no cameras. The woman looked aggrieved when he had asked if the office contained any drop boxes or safety deposit boxes. She had mumbled some Italian expletives and waddled out a rear entrance. With great effort she returned and unlocked a cut-away door in the counter, ushering him out back. Beyond a very untidy corridor stacked with cardboard boxes and bundled magazines stood a grid of stained metallic boxes, each with a single keyhole. The woman explained it was twenty euros a week to rent a box. Luke had given her a wad of cash that would last a month, and the presence of fresh euros made the need for formal identification magically disappear. He put a