He walked briskly along the wet pavement, turning confidently out of one street into another and, ten minutes later, halted beside a small black Fiat sedan. He opened the door, lifted the corner of the carpet and found the ignition key at once. A few moments later he was driving away.
On the outskirts of Bari, he stopped and consulted the map that he found in the glove compartment. Matano was about twelve miles away on the coast road running south to Brindisi. An easy enough run, although the fog was bound to hold him up a little.
He lit a cigarette and started off again, concentrating on his driving as the fog grew thicker. He was finally reduced to a cautious crawl, his head out of the side window. It was almost an hour later when he halted at a signpost that indicated Matano to the left.
As he drove along the narrow road he could smell the sea through the fog, and gradually it seemed to clear a little. He reached Matano fifteen minutes later and drove through silent streets toward the waterfront.
He parked the car in an alley near the Club Tabu as instructed and went the rest of the way on foot.
It was dark and lonely on the waterfront, and the only sound was the lapping of water against the pilings as he went down a flight of stone steps to the jetty.
It was quiet and deserted in the yellow light of a solitary lamp and he paused halfway along to examine the motor cruiser moored at the end. She was a thirty-footer with a steel hull, probably built by Akerboon, he decided. She was in excellent trim, her sea-green paintwork gleaming. Not at all what he had expected. He examined the name Buona Esperanza on her counter with a slight frown.
When he stepped over the rail, the stern quarter was festooned with nets, still damp from the day’s labor and stinking of fish, the deck slippery with their scales.
Somewhere in the distance the door of an all-night café opened and music drifted out, faint and far away, and for no accountable reason Noci shivered. It was at that moment that he realized he was being watched.