I got back to Rome this morning before dawn. Melanie was asleep, naked without any sheets covering her. The fan was blasting, and there was a damp ring of sweat around her body. I cracked the window, as the morning air was cooler than the evening had been. I then laid next to her on the bed, also naked, and let the slightly cool air lull me to sleep.
Lucerne didn’t go off without a hitch, but ultimately we accomplished what we needed to. As far as I can tell. I managed to distract Kaszmyric’s handlers, as he finished speaking, and Elliot ushered him away. I tried talking to them about Russian cinema and literature. I was glad to have seen The Battleship Potemkin and read Crime and Punishment. They tried to ignore me, but I pretended to be a bit buzzed, and offered them some whiskey, which they didn’t hesitate on each swigging down.
I bought Elliot about fifteen minutes before they noticed that Kaszmyric was missing, another five of searching the hotel, and then by that point, I just had to hope he’d gotten out of the immediate area and was on his way to the safehouse. I stuck around, keeping up the drunk act, and talking others, just in case the Soviets suspected me. They came over to talk to me, but the people I was talking to vouched that I had been sitting with them for a bit.
When they left the building to start searching, I went down the street to a bus stop, and took the bus across town. Elliot and I had talked about taking different routes to the safe house, just in case he got slowed down and I was followed. I also did a bit of zigging and zagging in order to make sure I wasn’t being followed. It would have been exciting if it wasn’t absolutely terrifying.
We waited a couple of hours until traffic was steady, we thought that waiting until the middle of the night was a bad idea, leaving less people on the road. Elliot drove a rental I had picked up in Milan the morning before.
From Milan, we took the train to Genoa, and that’s where we went our separate ways. From that point out, I have a rough itinerary, in case anything goes wrong for them. Elliot insisted that I get the information out of Kaszmyric while we drove from Lucerne to Milan. We didn’t tell him exactly why we were getting him out, or why we wanted information on his research. We lucked out though in the fact that he was very willing to get out of Soviet control.
Before I get on the plane tomorrow night, Elliot will be calling a payphone down by the Spanish Steps, to let me know he successfully made it to Morocco, and from there, I’ll lose contact. Apparently he made contact with someone willing to take him from Marrakesh to Bermuda on a cargo ship. Then from there they should be able to get a flight to Miami and they’ll drive the rest of the way north.
When I finally woke up, Melanie had walked down to the market, and got a few pastries, and was sitting in a sundress on the balcony. She told me that she’d told housekeeping that I had a stomach bug, and didn’t let them come in. There was some concern over what I might have eaten, and a bit of defensiveness about the food in the area. She told them I had not realized how long we’d had some pizza sitting out, and eaten it. That seemed to satisfy them.
We’re trying to enjoy the last day of our trip to Italy, but I’m distracted. There was a level of distraction before going up to Lucerne, the worry that everything had to go right. Now I just wanted to know Elliot was ok. Even for me, there is a disconnect between the adult man that is a fellow time-traveler, and the baby who is my adoptive son, but still, I worry about him just as much.
Michael Christopher Cole 
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