The president of Global Group's eyes widened. Either the old man was tempting him with the money or he had no idea of the market price for this work.
"You have that much money?"
"I have three hundred thousand euros on me now. If we shake hands on this, I'll give it to you as a down payment. The rest, as the job is done."
"Who do you want to kill, Saddam Hussein?" "No."
"Who is this man? Do you have recent photos?"
"No, I don't have any photos of him. He'll be an old man, older than me—around ninety. He lives in Iraq."
"In Iraq?" Martin's surprise now bordered on disbelief.
Hans opened his briefcase. "Yes, I believe Iraq. At least, one member of his family has a house there. Here are some photos of his house. I'm not positive whether he himself lives there or not, but the person who does is a member of his family, and she is to die too—but not before she leads you to your objective."
Tom Martin picked up the photos of the Yellow House that had been taken by the men on Marini's team. He examined them carefully. The house was a colonial-looking mansion, well protected, judging by what the cameras had caught.
In some of the photos, an attractive woman in Western dress appeared; she was accompanied by an older woman wearing a burka that covered her from head to toe.
"This is Baghdad?" he asked.
"That's right—Baghdad."
"And this is the woman," Martin stated more than asked. "Yes. We believe she is a relative. She has the same last name. She can lead your men to him." "What is the name?" "Tannenberg."
The president of Global Group pondered that for a moment. This was not the first time he'd heard that name. Not long ago his friend Paul Dukais had asked him if he had any men he could send to infiltrate an archaeological expedition organized by this woman, this Tannenberg, who apparently wanted to keep something that didn't belong to her, or at least not just to her.
From what he was seeing, the Tannenbergs had enemies everywhere, ready to do whatever it took to get rid of them. Did this man want the same thing Dukais did, or was his beef a different one?
"Will you take the job, then?"
"Yes."
"Wonderful. Let's sign a contract."
"Mr. . . . Mr. Burton, you don't sign this sort of contract." "I am not going to give you a single euro if we don't have a contract."
"We can draw up a general contract—say, to investigate a certain individual in a certain place."
"Yes, but the individual's name can't be in it. I want absolute discretion."
"You are asking for a lot. ..."
"I am also paying a lot. I know that what I'm paying is much more than you generally charge for this kind of work. So for two million euros, you will do things as I want them done."
"Of course, of course."
"And another thing, Mr. Martin. I know that you're the best, or so you're reputed to be. I am paying you so generously because I don't want failures and I don't want betrayals. If you betray me, my friends and I have much more money than this—enough to find you under any rock where you try to hide, if we should be forced to. There will always be someone ready to do the work, even someone inside here."
"I won't be threatened, Mr. Burton." Martin pronounced the name with a clear hint of irony. "You don't want to do that, or this conversation is over."
"But it's not a threat. I just want things clear from the beginning. At my age, I'll never be able to spend the money I have, and you can't take it with you, can you, Mr. Martin? So I'm investing it in order to see that my last wishes are respected—while I'm still alive, that is."
"Mr. Burton, or whatever your name is, in my business we don't betray our clients. How long would we last if we did that, eh?"
Hans Hausser gave Martin all the information he had. It wasn't much.
Two hours later, Hausser left the offices of Global Group, sensing that at last they were close to the hour of revenge.
He wandered about aimlessly, sure that Martin had had him followed. He walked into the Claridge Hotel and made his way to the restaurant, where he had lunch, though he didn't have much of an appetite. Then he went into the lobby and got into an elevator; anyone following him would think he was staying here, so he pushed the button for the fourth floor. There he got off and went to the stairs, where he walked down to the second floor. Once there, he caught another elevator and went down to the garage level.
A valet asked where his car was parked, but Hausser didn't bother to respond—he simply smiled, as though he didn't understand English. At his age, he knew he looked like some dotty old man. He wandered through the parking lot and then up one of the ramps outside. At the first corner he turned and walked away from the hotel. He hailed a taxi and asked to be taken to the airport. His flight for Hamburg was to leave a few hours later. From there, he would take another flight to Berlin, and from there, to his home in Bonn. He didn't know whether he'd managed to shake Tom Martin's men, but at least he'd made it hard for them.
"It's me."
Carlo Cipriani recognized his friend's voice. He knew Hans would be calling, since he'd received a coded e-mail and had replied with the number of the new cell phone where he could be reached. Then he'd throw the phone in the trash, the calling card into the Tiber.
"Everything's fine so far. Tom Martin's taken the job, and he'll be going to work immediately."
"There were no obstacles?"
"He was surprised, but Mr. Burton was very persuasive." Hans Hausser laughed delightedly.
"When will he have something? "
"In two or three weeks. He has to put a team together, send it out. ... It takes time."
"I hope we've made the right decision," Carlo mused.
"We're doing what we have to do, and surely we'll make a mistake somewhere along the line, but the important thing is to keep going. We can't afford to stop."
In the background on the other end of the line, an impersonal voice was announcing the departure of the flight to Berlin.
"I'll call you as soon as I know something. Call the others."
"I will," Carlo promised.
Hans hung up the public telephone from which he had made the call at the Hamburg airport. He'd call Berta from Berlin. His daughter was worried by all these comings and goings, and she had started to insist that he tell her what was happening. So far he had lied, telling her that he was traveling to meet some former colleagues, retired like him, but Berta didn't believe a word of it. Of course she could never have imagined her father going to London to hire a hit man. She would have sworn that her father was a man of peace—at the university he had always been among the most vocal protesters against any war or expression of violence, whatever it might have been. He had been adamant in his defense of human rights around the world, signing petitions, attending conferences, and contributing money to good causes; his students worshipped him, and the university had made him professor emeritus. He still gave a course or two every semester—no one had wanted him to retire completely.
Mercedes Barreda rushed into the bedroom. She'd left her purse on the bed, and now her disposable cell phone was ringing.
She fumbled at the closure, then dumped the purse's contents on the bed, terrified that the phone would stop ringing before she could answer it.
"Calm down," she heard Carlo say, even before she could catch her breath to say hello.
"I had to run," she said.
"It's all right—we've started things rolling."
"Is everything going well?"
"No problems so far. In a couple of weeks we'll know more." "So long ..."
"Don't be so impatient. What we want to do isn't easy."
"I know, but sometimes I'm afraid I'll die before we finish this."
"Look, I fear the same thing. I even have nightmares about it—but now we're almost there."
When the conversation ended, Mercedes fell back on the bed. She was bone-tired. She'd been inspecting a couple of projects that her construction compa
ny was involved in, and then she'd had a meeting with several of the architects and quality inspectors who worked for her.
Money had never interested her. She'd made a lot of it, it was true, but she'd never had any real use for it, any cause to put it to. She'd made a will: When she died, everything she had would go to several NGOs and an animal-welfare organization, and the shares in her company would be divided equally among the employees who had worked for her for so many years. She hadn't told anyone about this, because she wanted to be able to change her mind, but for the moment those were the terms of her estate.
It struck her, though, that all the money she'd made during her long life was going to do some good, at last, because she'd invested it in murdering Alfred Tannenberg.
Her housekeeper had left a dinner of salad and chicken breast for her in the kitchen. She put it on a tray and went and sat with it in front of the television, as she had done almost every night since her grandmother had died, so many years ago.
Her house was her refuge; she had never invited anyone into it except the only three friends she had in the world: Hans, Carlo, and Bruno.
Bruno was just finishing dinner when the cell phone in his jacket pocket startled him. His wife, Deborah, went on the alert. She knew that for some time, since he'd returned from Rome, her husband had been buying and destroying cell phones and calling cards without explaining why. Not that he needed to. She knew that the past was still present in Bruno's life. Neither children nor grandchildren had managed to erase it. For Bruno Miiller, nothing was as important as what he had gone through sixty years ago.
Deborah bit her tongue—she was determined not to speak a word of reproach, especially that night, when Sara and David were having dinner with them. It was rare that the couple's two children came to visit at the same time, since David, a concert violinist, was constantly traveling, playing with the world's premier symphony orchestras.
Bruno excused himself and walked into the privacy of his bedroom, well out of earshot of his family.
"Everything's going well," said Carlo.
"Oh, thank God. That takes such a load off my mind." Bruno sighed. "I was worried."
"You always are. Hans is on his way home again, and within two or three weeks he'll have something for us."
"So they took the job?"
"Yes—he made them an offer that was just too hard to refuse." "Are we going to meet again, the four of us?"
"Maybe when we have something concrete. For the moment I don't see the need."
"Hmm. Have you talked to . . . her?"
"We just got off the phone. She's all right but impatient. As impatient as the rest of us, I suppose."
"We've waited so long, Carlo. ..."
"Yes, but we're very close to the end now."
"Or so we hope."
When Bruno hung up, he took the SIM card out of the cell phone and cut it into tiny pieces, then went to the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet, just as he'd been doing each time he spoke to one of his friends since his return from Rome.
Luca Marini was waiting for the receptionist to tell Carlo Cipriani he was here. He'd spent the whole morning in his friend's clinic, suffering through lab tests as part of his annual checkup. Carlo's son Antonino wouldn't be giving him the results for another couple of days—and even then, they'd be evaluated by Carlo himself. But now he and Carlo would be going out for lunch.
Carlo strode into his son's examining room and embraced his old friend.
"I'm told you're in great shape—right, Antonino?" "Apparently he'll outlive us all." The son smiled. "I can't find a thing to worry about!"
"What about my shortness of breath?" Marini asked in concern.
"Has it never occurred to you that it might just be old age?" Carlo joked. "That's what Antonino tells me when I complain."
When they reached the restaurant and were seated, Carlo asked his friend straight out about what had been worrying him. "Have you had any more news from your old colleagues in the police department?"
"I had dinner with several of them a couple of days ago, at a friend's retirement party. I asked them in passing and they told me they hadn't completely given up on the case, but it was on the back burner. After the first few days, there was less pressure to solve it, so my friend in charge of the investigation decided to let it slide a bit. If he starts to get pressure again, he'll say he's on it."
"That's all?"
"That's a lot, Carlo—it's the most I can ask. He's doing me a favor. If he starts getting pressured, he'll tell me."
"Do you think they may want to talk to Mercedes again?"
"Perhaps. But wanting to know what's happening in Iraq is not a crime. That's what could save you."
"You have friends, Luca—that's what's saving us."
"Of course I have friends—you're one of them. But I have to tell you—I think she's a nightmare."
"She's not, really—she's a wonderful person, with qualities you can't even imagine. The bravest person I've ever known."
"You really like her."
"Tremendously."
"So why have you two never married?" "She's a very dear friend, that's all."
"Whom you happen to admire above all other women. When you two are together, it's obvious there's something between you."
"Don't try to see what's not there. Honest, Luca. To me, Mercedes is more than family; she's incredibly important to me, but so are Bruno and Hans."
"Your dearest friends—how long have you four known one another?"
"For so long that if I add it all up I'll realize how old I am!"
Carlo delicately changed the subject. He never said more than he had to about his friends, much less about the shared past that united them—united them in a friendship that transcended good and evil.
24
you didn't have to be sherlock holmes to see that
the tall, ruddy-faced dirty-blond was the alpha male of the group standing around laughing as they waited beside the luggage carousel for their bags to come out.
They'd arrived on an earlier flight, and Gian Maria was surprised to hear them talking about archaeology. Apparently, they were heading to an excavation in Iraq, and the priest thought yet again that there was no such thing as coincidence—if he'd stumbled onto a group of archaeologists on their way to Iraq, providence had put them in his way.
He heard them mention that they were going to Baghdad but they'd be staying in Amman overnight before crossing the border the next day.
Gian Maria swallowed hard and touched the tall man's elbow. "Excuse me—may I speak to you?"
Yves Picot turned to look at the man, whose face was red as a beet. "Yes? What is it?"
"I couldn't help overhearing that you were going to Baghdad. . . ." "Yes, that's right."
"I know this will sound strange, but. . . but is there a chance I might accompany you?"
"Go with us? Why? Who are you?"
The young priest flushed even redder. He didn't want to lie—he couldn't; it wasn't in him—but he also couldn't tell the whole truth.
It had been hard to convince the higher-ups in his order to allow him to make the journey. He had explained his sudden quest as a spiritual obligation to do something for those who needed help most; he couldn't sit idly by, he said, and watch the Iraq tragedy from a distance—he had to go and do something. At last his superiors gave way to his undeniable passion and relented, though without much enthusiasm. A friend who had a relative within the Rome headquarters of an NGO called Aid to Children had helped Gian Maria with visas and other paperwork that would allow him to work in the Baghdad branch. NGOs normally preferred monetary aid rather than enthusiastic volunteers, who sometimes got in the way more than they actually helped, but his friend's uncle had finally overcome the NGO's reluctance, and now he had made it to Amman, on the way to Baghdad.
"My name is Gian Maria, and I'm going to Iraq to see what I can do."
"What do you mean, see what you can do?"
"Well, I
want to help. Some friends of mine are working with an NGO that helps children in the poorest areas of Baghdad and provides medicines to hospitals. The country needs everything, because of the blockade. People are dying because there are no antibiotics—"
"I know what's happening in Iraq. But you just decided to come and see what you can do? Just like that?"
"I told my friends I was coming, but they can't come to Amman to get me, and I. . . Really, I've never done anything like this before, but if I could go along with you to Baghdad ... I could help you however you might need me."
Yves Picot laughed out loud, touched by the young man's diffidence and painful shyness.
"What hotel are you staying at?" he asked. "I don't have one."
"And how had you planned on getting to Baghdad?" "I didn't know. I figured someone here could tell me how to go about it."
"Tomorrow at five a.m. we're leaving the Marriott. If you're there, we'll take you with us. Ask for me—my name is Yves Picot."
With that, Picot turned and strode away, leaving the surprised young priest no chance to thank him.
Gian Maria sighed with relief. He picked up the little black suitcase that contained his few belongings and left the terminal to find a taxi.
He'd ask the taxi driver to take him to the Marriott—with luck, they'd have a room for him and he'd be near the archaeologists.
The taxi left him at the entrance of the hotel. Gian Maria strode optimistically into the lobby, where the air-conditioning made the heat of the city almost bearable. Picot's group was at the front desk registering, and he lingered in the background until they had finished.
The Bible of Clay Page 23
