Nate's plane touched down at Fiumicino Airport at 1410, or just past two in on Friday afternoon. There were no direct flights out of Hamburg, so Nate flew Swiss Airline through Zurich. After turning of the runway, the aircraft crept along the maze of taxiways to Terminal 1.
Since the flight was entirely within the European Union, it was considered a domestic flight for customs purposes. There were no passport checks, no declarations, and no delays. Nate walked past the throngs of weary travelers who were waiting seemingly forever at the baggage carousels. He headed for the main doors with holding his carry-on suitcase in his right hand and his laptop case was strapped over his left shoulder.
A friend from work recommended he use Uber, so he pulled out his smartphone and called up the app he had installed in Hamburg. He had never used Uber before. Germany's reception to the upstart taxi company was cool at best - outright hostile in some cities, and so there was no opportunity for Nate to test the service before this trip. He typed in Piazza di San Pietro as his destination, and the Uber instantly displayed a driver named Fabio would pick him up in a green Fiat in four minutes. The app estimated the fare to would be 42 Euros and would take 41 minutes, which Nate understood was about half the regular cab fare.
He pushed open the heavy glass doors, and stepped on to the curb of the airport arrivals lanes. The bedlam of Italian traffic assaulted his senses with acrid exhaust fumes and an unending din of motors and agitated voices. The October afternoon was on the cool side of warm. His smartphone read 22 degrees Celsius - perfect tourist weather. Nate had checked the Rome weather before he left Hamburg. It was supposed to be like this for a week, and he packed accordingly. As he waited for the Uber taxi, Nate pulled up Martha's new cell number on his contacts list, and sent a text. "Just landed. ETA St Pete Sq 45 min."
He switched back to the Uber app to check on Fabio's progress when his phone buzzed with an incoming text. "Great!" was her instant reply with a smiling emoticon. A rush of memories flooded back to Nate at seeing her happy message. It had been three months since he watched her disappear through the doorways into the Berlin hotel. He had been busy since then. Sarah and Dillon visited him in August. In September he flew to Washington for a weeklong conference, and from there he flew to Canberra, Australia. Although not part of NATO, Australia shares strong ties with the North Atlantic defense alliance, and has seen its share in global cooperation in counterterrorism.
When he returned to Hamburg in late September, the post-summer work cycle was in full swing at the office, and Nate has been running ragged since. He welcomed the break to see Martha, although his client was less enthused with this vacation plans, even though he had re-accrued all the overtime he had burned off when Briana and Martha were in Hamburg.
Somehow during that frenetic period, Nate found time to purchase Martha's house in Canada. He worked through a real estate agent, his bank, his accountant, his lawyer, a house appraiser, a property manager, a painter and light contractor, and a home stager. Thankfully the real estate agent was savvy enough to handle a lot of the initial grunt and coordination work until the property manager took over after the sale, but it still left Nate sifting through dozens of emails and faxes that demanded his attention at every hour of the day between the European, American, and Australian time zones.
Martha decided she wanted to move out before the snow flies, and so she picked September 30 as the closing date. Nate gave the property manager the first two weeks of October to fix up the house with help from the cleaners, the painter/contractor, and the home stager. With luck it would rent by November first. As of October 24, it was still on the market.
While Nate did not have much time to dwell on memories of Martha, he still couldn't shake a few steamy images. For some reason, the visual that haunted him most frequently was Nate lying on his back when Martha fucked and sucked him while Briana kneeled over him on all fours, letting him suckle those big, juicy, hanging tits while he finger fucked Briana's pussy.
Standing at the outdoor arrivals, Nate grew self-consciously aware his forbidden mother-daughter memories were firming up a hard-on. He shook off the mental image, and stepped diagonally sideways a few times, hoping the movement would smooth out anything resembling a bulge in his pants. Nate looked up the multi-lane roadway, and picked out a green car slaloming between parked and slow moving cars with no regard for the lane markings. As it drew closer, Nate recognized the Fiat emblem on the front of the hood. He raised up his hand up toward the driver, holding his Uber app smart phone to draw attention.
The green car veered left, away from Nate, cutting off a vehicle in the lane beside him, and disappeared behind a parked bus, and moments later, the green car nosed around the front of the bus, obstructing all hope of escape for the much larger vehicle. The green car came to a stop at a 45 degree angle to the curb. Nate picked up his suitcase with his laptop case still strapped over his shoulder. The young fellow hopped out of his car and burst into a staccato of Italian words, not one of which Nate understood. The driver was no more than 25 with black hair in shiny, tight curls. He had a rough, unshaven beard that didn't work with his face. His dark brown eyes scanned Nate while he continued chattering with hyperactive abandon. He wore a plain black T shirt, jeans, and sneakers. His twitchy, wiry body exuded the kind of restless energy that never stops. If ever there was a case for Riddlin, Nate thought.
"Uber?" Nate asked, holding up his cell phone to the driver, hoping no further translation was required. Nate's one-word utterance catapulted the already agitated driver into a hysterical tirade Nate didn't understand, but at least the manic driver gestured Nate to come toward the car as he popped open the trunk. Nate set the small suitcase in the empty trunk, but he kept his laptop case with him. Nate opened the back right door, and settled into the seat while the driver continued jabbering excitedly. He continued ranting even after Nate closed the car door and it was obvious no one was listening. Nate looked around at the vehicle's austere interior. At least it was clean.
The animated driver sat in his seat and closed his door, still chatting endlessly, not one word of which Nate recognized. The car, which was angled parked in front of the bus, lurched forward toward without warning. Fabio yanked the steering wheel hard left, narrowly missing a young family waiting for their own ride, and raced away from the arrivals curb, evidently unaware or unsympathetic to the single family holocaust he nearly committed. Nate understood that, by having typed in his destination on the smartphone app, the driver already knew his destination, which was one of the great advantages of Uber in a city with a foreign language.
Fabio continued his excited one-sided discourse as he careened the car left and right, accelerating into traffic gaps Nate would have guessed were too small, even for the compact Fiat. Nate pulled his seatbelt over his shoulder, and secured it tightly across his lap, and checked it several times during the trip.
Once they reached the A91 six lane highway, Fabio seemed to relax, and his driving improved to only treacherous. Nate followed their progress on his GPS smartphone app, and he verified they were headed in the right direction. After about ten minutes the driver took the exit to the A90 north, and ten minutes later, he exited to another six lane highway marked the SS1 on Nate's GPS map. Ten minutes again, Fabio made several turns, and soon Nate realized they were driving alongside the outside wall of Vatican City. He put the GPS away and enjoyed the view. The massive stone wall made several sharp angled turns, and Fabio zipped around the blind corners that hugged the wall without slowing down.
They passed an arched gateway on the right with the words Musei Vaticanai inscribed across the top of the arch. Even Nate knew that translated into the Vatican Museum. A long line-up of people waited to pass through a smaller entrance. The line-up extended far down the road's sidewalk. Nate guessed these were visitors of the museum, and was surprised to see so many at three in the afternoon. Street vendors scattered around the triangular shaped parking lot next to the larger museum entrance. Fabio continued down the road, past the museum as he raced beside the line-up of pedestrians on the sidewalk. Thankfully a railing separated the road from the sidewalk, sparing the pedestrians from an untimely fate as Fabio sped past. The little Fiat came so close to the railing, there was no room for Nate to open his passenger door if he tried.
They made another high-speed sharp right turn around a corner of the Vatican City wall, and passed another entrance into the city that was gated barred by heavy wooden doors. Soon the wall retreated to the right, and Fabio plunged the compact car into a maze of tiny streets. It was here that Nate appreciated the benefit of driving a small car. A larger vehicle could not have squeezed between some of the parked cars.
Fabio wheeled the car into a left turn, and a right, and then another left onto a short cobblestone road. Ahead Nate saw the street end at a forest of concrete pillars. Fabio stopped the car. Nate noticed an alert policeman observe the stopped car, and he walked toward the car. Fabio jumped out and called something to the policeman, who halted his advance, but watched carefully.
Fabio opened Nate's door, and announced some grand proclamation in Italian, which Nate took to mean they had arrived. He pulled his laptop case strap over his shoulder, and stepped out. Fabio had already dropped Nate's suitcase on the ground beside the car. Nate closed the passenger door, and Fabio climbed into his driver's seat, still yapping at no one in particular, and the Fiat lurched into a U turn and roared back up the cobblestone road.
Nate walked the rest of the way down the cobblestone road, and passed through the forest of pillars, He found a steel railing circling the perimeter. He walked along the railing until he found an opening, and there before his feet lay St. Peter's Square - strangely named, because it was round. The famous basilica loomed high at the far end. Nate had seen the square in pictures, on the news, and in movies, but nothing did justice to the experiencing vast magnificence in person.
At least a thousand people milled and stood around the plaza. It would take Nate hours to find Martha.
"At St Pete Sq - where are u?" he texted to Martha.
