I love to feel the sweat from your body drip onto mine when we make love . . . I love to feel you deep inside . . . I love to taste . . . I love to . . .
Garvey threw the letter to the floor and collapsed into the granny rocking chair. She raced on the rocker as though it might transport her to a better place.
She had supported him in his desire to rise to the top of the law firm like pond scum. And this was her reward?
She slowed to a standstill, falling into fitful slumber. A banging on the door shattered her nightmare of choking on a ball of blonde hairs. She awoke from her long nap.
“Let me in, Nicole. It’s me.”
“I found your lover’s letter.”
“That’s an old letter.”
“One little problem, Mr. Einstein. It’s dated a week ago.”
“It’s all a mistake.”
“It sure was.” Her marriage was a corpse. “We’re finished. Get the divorce.”
“Come on, Nicole. You can’t mean that.” He paused. “I’ll see a counselor.”
“You have the wrong Nicole.” She bolted the safety latch on the door. “The one you want doesn’t exist anymore. Now, go away.”
Chapter Sixteen
First responders salvaged bodies from the rubble heaped up inside the Basilica of San Clemente. Commissario Marco Leone used his jacket to warm a survivor sitting dazed against a broken-limbed tree. Fragments of the church facade lay scattered on the ground. Paramedics either zipped up body bags or treated survivors while the wail of ambulances going and coming drowned out the moans of the wounded. Thick black smoke curling through gaps in the basilica roof stung the membranes of his nose. Leone asked, “Are you certain?”
The victim repeated his story. During the well-attended funeral Mass for a prominent politician, the closed casket in the center aisle had exploded in a blinding flash, like a resurrection. The victim paused to thank the saints for his late arrival, requiring him to take a position in the rear near a protective pillar. He fell unconscious after the blast until rescued.
Paramedics cut off the explanation and took him away on a stretcher. Before departing, a paramedic donated a cigarette to Leone. The commissario wanted to believe he could kick the habit by bumming cigarettes instead of buying them. Taking a drag, Leone took stock of the case. The victim’s account fit the little he knew. In an abandoned flat not far from the basilica, his men had found the tuxedoed corpse. Whoever perpetrated this had used a remote-controlled explosive in place of the politician’s corpse.
That day, many churchgoers didn’t know the funeral would be their own. Early in his career, Leone had investigated a ransom case in the Campania where kidnappers had amputated the victim’s ears. And in Rome, he had unraveled the cases of a drug-induced beheading of a baby and a student burned alive by her ex-boyfriend. He exhaled a blast of smoke.
Mondo cane. It’s a dog’s world.
As a schoolboy, he had visited the Basilica of San Clemente. A twelfth-century church built over a fourth-century church in turn built over a first-century apartment building. A street once separated the apartment building from a mansion owned by a Roman consul turned Christian convert and presumed martyr. The apartment building and mansion had buried even more ancient buildings destroyed by the Great Fire in the time of Nero. Rome struck him as a historical compost pile where the miasma of the past blemished the present.
“Commissario Leone . . . Come,” Inspector Renaldi yelled from the police car.
Leone arrived to hear the dispatcher’s voice from headquarters crackling over the radio. “A message to media outlets from an unidentified source claims this is the first installment of reparations owed by Christians. A terrorist group called the Egyptian Phoenix is suspected.”
“I don’t believe it.” Leone threw his cigarette on the ground. “They’ve denied it. It’s too sophisticated an operation for them.”
“Questore Malatesta thinks they did it.”
“Your godfather is gullible and delusional.” With his foot, Leone ground the discarded cigarette into smithereens. “The Egyptian Phoenix wants the return of the obelisks, not reparations. Christians didn’t take the obelisks. Ancient Romans did.”
“But the questore says—”
“Nonsense.”
It would not have surprised Leone if the perpetrators of the San Clemente bombing turned out to be homegrown visionaries drunk on desperation. Like contemporary youth, he had once felt the same anarchic urge to smash the existing social order to avoid suffocation. The Years of Lead—that time of youthful rage unleashed by the Red Brigades—changed his mind. They left only a terror trail of blood and bullets for him and his fellow officers to mop up.
The winds of change, whether the Reformation or the Enlightenment blowing across the lands of the north, had stopped at the Alps. Even the glories of the Renaissance, let alone the fiasco of Fascism, harkened back to the future. Change had no chance. Italy would remain smothered by the overflowing wealth of its history and culture even if it meant its inhabitants had to live the life of privileged custodians locked away in a marbled Disneyland museum.
His only wish was to seize the chance of escaping to Chicago for fresh air.
Near the basilica he interviewed a suspect his men had picked up in the vicinity. The detainee had nothing to do with the bombing. Yet, for their efforts, he thanked his inner circle of trusted officers nicknamed the Leone Squad for their devotion to him.
“How bad is the damage?” he asked a junior officer guarding the entrance.
“The inside’s a mess. But the underground part, the ancient tunnels, including the pagan chapel dedicated to Mithras . . . some god or other . . . is intact.”
“That will make the tourism bureau happy.” Something clicked in Leone’s brain. “You’re supposed to be off duty after the bust yesterday.” He held out his arms and flexed his muscles. “Who do you think you are? Hercules?”
“I want to help you here.”
“Aren’t you worried Malatesta might discipline you for violating policy?”
“Malatesta’s—” The junior officer hesitated. “Malatesta’s an asshole.”
“A little respect, if you please,” Leone said with a wink.
“The boys know he let you take the fall for the dead Somalian drug dealer.”
“Get out of here, and get some sleep. That’s an order.” The commissario tapped the officer’s shoulder. “Before I get you exiled to a Sicilian donkey town.”
In a world other than mondo cane, this man could have been the son he never had.
Chapter Seventeen
“He has to go.” Jesse Soames watched the hungry poor of Rome shuffle up to the food table with empty bowls. “His son, Professor Fisher, lives here in Rome. Fisher can take him in.”
“Out of the question. He’s at the gates of death.” Lucio Piso pushed his forefinger against the American’s chest. “This operation belongs to Piso Global Enterprises. You run it at my pleasure.”
“I don’t mean to be ungrateful.” Soames stepped back from Piso’s touch. “But I can’t stand him around here. Let his son take care of him.”
“The son wants nothing to do with him. He even Anglicized his surname to Fisher from Fischer.” Piso pointed to Otto Fischer, leaning on his walker and ladling out minestrone with a trembling hand. “And the poor man is too ashamed to look up his son in Rome, even though he yearns to.”
“And he damned well should be.” Soames jutted his chin. “I know why he fled the States. The Justice Department there is after him for his Nazi war crimes.”
“He was just an underage youngster in the German military. They drafted him nonetheless because they needed more soldiers. He had to follow orders.”
“My conscience won’t let me do it.”
Piso took Soames by the shoulders. “We must shelter this doddering old man, now a fugitive.
If the Italian authorities learn he’s in Rome, public hysteria will force his arrest for participation in the Ardeatine Caves affair.” Piso shook Soames. “We are his only hope, my dear friend.”
“How can you defend him? He was part of the SS execution squad. They shot over three hundred of your countrymen in the Ardeatine Caves, their bodies piled up like stacks of cordwood.”
“Blame the partisans. They attacked the German column. Today the partisans would be called terrorists. Only one thing counts.” Piso held up one finger. “Fischer helped me, a defenseless youngster, during the German occupation. Nothing else counts.”
“Look, Lucio, I appreciate the favors but—”
“Let us get one thing clear. I do no favors. I collect debts, and you owe me.”
Otto Fischer stumbled, knocking over a basket of bread. An assistant rushed out of the kitchen to help him regain his balance.
“Owe you?”
“In Buenos Aires you promised to shelter a friend.”
“I didn’t know your friend was a war criminal.”
“You must honor your promise.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Must it come to this?” Piso motioned for Fischer to approach them. “This poor man was present when his German comrades interrogated your grandfather about his terrorist activities with Italian partisans,” Piso said to Soames.
The businessman helped the fugitive into a chair. “Now tell the colonel’s grandson what you know.”
Otto Fischer related how the Nazis captured Colonel Soames as a secret OSS agent sent by the Americans. Fischer stopped momentarily to catch his breath. Then he added that under interrogation, the colonel had revealed the names of his partisan accomplices, including one Benjamin Leone.
“You expect me to take the word of this Nazi?”
“You should. He shot Benjamin in the back of the head in the Ardeatine Caves.”
“Who’d believe this fugitive’s lies about a dead American hero?”
“Recognize this?” Piso took a black diary from his pearl-handled briefcase and handed it to Soames. It couldn’t be. The handwriting was his grandfather’s.
“Look,” Piso said, “at the entry for April 28, 1944.”
In the diary, Colonel Soames bemoaned the weakness of his flesh in revealing the names of Italian partisans to the Axis inquisitors.
“I can’t believe it.” Soames turned away from the diary. “They must have tortured him beyond endurance.”
“He squealed so readily,” Piso said, “that they spared his life.”
“Another lie by this fugitive.”
“Your grandfather had more than one weakness of the flesh.” Piso leered. “He and La Sirena carried on an affair. She bore a child.”
“La Sirena was my grandmother, and her daughter . . . my mother . . . was illegitimate.” Soames blew out his lips. “So what? It’s old news.”
“There is more.” Piso turned to Otto Fischer. “You had better tell him.”
Jesse Soames put his hands over his ears, not wanting to hear that La Sirena had carried on a simultaneous affair with both Colonel Soames and Benjamin Leone. The father of La Sirena’s child was Benjamin Leone and not Colonel Soames. Yet the mother told Otto Fischer she would claim the colonel as the father. She wanted her daughter to find a better life in the New World, even though Benjamin was the love of her life and the colonel just an enemy spy caught in her honey trap.
“No-o-o.” Soames walked toward Otto Fischer with a raised fist. “I don’t take the word of this Kraut. My daughter is the great-granddaughter of Colonel Soames and no one else.”
Piso pushed him back. “Then look at this.” He handed Soames a ragged sheet, browned by time. “It is an Italian birth certificate Fischer took from Benjamin Leone’s pocket after the execution.”
The sealed document listed Benjamin Leone as the father and the woman called La Sirena as the mother.
“You think this is enough to keep me quiet about this war criminal?”
“If not,” Piso said, “how about that untoward incident in Vietnam? The My Lai Massacre. A participating officer escaped detection. Did you ever wonder who it could be? My sources know.”
“How did . . . ?” Soames turned pale. “I did nothing wrong.”
“The sources know how the officer falsified records to hide his involvement.”
“I was just following . . .” He sat down and hung his head, his clenched fists banging against his cheeks.
“Exactly like Otto Fischer.” Piso patted Jesse Soames on the head. “I can bury the past . . . as long as you follow my orders.” He put his arm around Fischer. “This man stays here as long as I want.”
Chapter Eighteen
At his desk, Commissario Marco Leone thumbed through the investigative report of the San Clemente bombing while his secretary stonewalled journalists clamoring for an interview. But one thought drove out all others: someone had betrayed him. Just like Uncle Benjamin.
He fished out of the bottom desk drawer a black-and-white photograph. Uncle Benjamin wore a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, his chest hair curled and sleek like the fur of a black sacrificial lamb. The picture was all he had left of a hero he never knew but admired from afar. Cut down in his late twenties by the Nazis, his uncle was everything his father wasn’t . . . adventurous, independent, charming, and full of Torah righteousness even unto death.
Leone had little enough in common with a father who begat him late in life. A man of sullen silences, his father refused to tell him anything about the younger brother killed in the Ardeatine Caves. Leone turned to outsider hearsay about his uncle’s feats and molded them into the role model of his imagination.
Inspector Riccardo Renaldi entered with an armful of files. “Here are the dossiers on the cold cases you wanted to review.”
“You backstabbed me.”
“I what?”
“Questore Malatesta told me I’m off the San Clemente case, and my trip to Chicago is on hold.” He hooked his thumbs under his belt and looked up at Renaldi. “But I keep the Basso case. Stay out of it and away from me.”
“I didn’t squeal what you said about his views on the Egyptian Phoenix.”
“How would you know the reason unless you snitched?”
“I might have complained a bit but . . .” Renaldi stopped speaking and dumped the files on Leone’s desk. “What’s the use? Nothing will change your mind.” He backed away. “I tried, but you shut me out, just like everyone else who doesn’t think you walk on water . . . including your ex.” He pointed at Leone. “You doubled-crossed yourself.”
“You can screw her, but don’t screw with me.” Leone brushed away the files. “You sold me out to Malatesta. Without him you wouldn’t be here.”
“Where would you be if not for your father’s service in the Polizia di Stato?” Renaldi asked. “If your father were alive, he’d investigate the Egyptian Phoenix.”
“The very same words used by Malatesta about my father . . . if he were alive, he’d investigate the Egyptian Phoenix.” Leone leaned back in his chair. “Beyond coincidental, don’t you think?”
“You never appreciated me.” Renaldi walked to the door and turned. “You’re not half the detective your father was.”
His wonderful father who set a Fascist record for confessions by forcing castor oil down the throat of suspects until they shit in their pants.
“My father?” He stood up and leaned forward on his desk with both hands. “When you and your cronies drink to his memory, does anyone mention how he became so famous by sucking up to Fascists?”
“What kind of son are you? He was a patriot.” The inspector’s face reddened. “If you were fair—”
“If life were fair, I’d be able to transfer you to a remote beat where you’d spend the rest of your days directing tourists in bad English to the ne
arest ATM machine. But as the great JFK said: Life is not fair.” Renaldi took several steps toward the door. “Come back. Where are you going with that file?”
“Quite interesting. It’s about your father and the Ardeatine Caves. It was misfiled. But since you don’t care about him . . .”
“Give it to me.”
The inspector tossed the Ardeatine Caves dossier on the desk. “You’re making a mistake.” His voice sounded hoarse. “You will regret your mistake.”
“Get out of my office.”
***
Leone slipped out the side door of headquarters to evade reporters demanding answers to the San Clemente bombing.
He had worsened relations with Questore Malatesta by rejecting the Egyptian Phoenix theory and attacking Renaldi. Now that Chicago receded into the distance, only the antagonism toward Renaldi broke through his emotional numbness.
As early evening dimmed the city, he zigzagged down narrowing streets flanked by crumbling buildings to evade a reporter. He turned onto a crime-ridden backstreet reeking of uncollected garbage from a sanitation strike. On the upper floor of a tenement, a couple argued over money in the rising and falling melodies of an opera duet.
A shadow bobbed along behind a row of garbage bags. A tall bag tumbled over, spilling out stinking fish entrails. He fingered his concealed pistol. The shadow emerged from the protection of the last garbage bag . . . a dog with a missing hind leg. Tail wagging and tongue panting, the rib-prominent pointer hobbled toward Leone with burrs entangled in its hair.
Leone cursed relief and walked away down the center of the deserted backstreet. The three-footed clacking of claws on cobblestone trailed him. He clapped to scare off the pointer. The dog mistook the clapping as an invitation. Leone picked up his pace to shake off the unwelcome canine. Yelping came from behind. The pointer had tumbled over on the cobblestones made slippery by soapy water dumped into the street. It struggled to right itself but flopped over. He slipped a foot under the dog, probably infested with vermin, and gave it a leg up to standing position. White with orange blotches over each eye and an orange snout, the pointer looked up at Leone and whimpered.
The Mithras Conspiracy Page 6
