Both of them barefoot, Julie took Scottie’s hand in hers and led her through the boxwood labyrinth to the grotto.
Scottie followed Julie down the steps into the darkness, where they found two men, their white sport shirts unbuttoned, their faces lit by a torch burning in an iron sconce shaped like a dragon’s head. One man was on his knees, the other standing, facing him, leaning back against the stone wall. Scottie, behind Julie, stopped and stared, while Julie studied her face intently. The man on his knees had turned to look at the two women, the other man’s large erect penis in his hand. In the torchlight, the chin of the kneeling man glistened, and so did the sweat on the chest of the other, whose eyes were closed. As they stood there, very still, the standing man moaned a little and thrust his hips forward.
14.
At least the villa was cool inside, the moonlight filtering between the uneven slats of the heavy green shutters. Gordon had strongarmed Michael into a lively poker game inside.
“Straight,” said Gordon with a smirk, laying down his cards. “Have you seen my grotto?”
Michael disliked his type of queen. That kind of behavior made straight people uncomfortable and gave homosexuals a bad name. It smacked of decadence and libertinism. It was the kind of thing people laughed at on a movie screen—Edward Everett Horton playing with dollies, or Cary Grant in a frilly robe—but condemned in real life. The Brits—they all seemed a little gay to him. But why couldn’t Gordon keep that kind of thing behind closed doors, like the rest of them did?
Still, Michael had always wanted to see a Renaissance-era grotto, so he followed Gordon’s directions, past the pool, through the labyrinth and down a set of stairs. Two women were silhouetted in the flickering torchlight, partially blocking his view of …
“Scottie. Scottie?!” Scottie was here, here. standing on the steps of the grotto, watching … watching.
“She deserves to know,” said a voice, and Michael focused on the other woman.
Julie walked past him up the stairs and disappeared.
15.
Michael grabbed Scottie’s arm hard and dragged her out, up the stone stairs. Her feet slipped, but he roughly pulled her until they were back in the garden again.
“Wait,” Scottie said.
“The car is this way,” said Michael.
“I have to find my shoes. I have to tell Carlo I’m leaving with you. And Ecco—we can’t leave the dog, Michael. Stop, you’re hurting me.” She pulled away from his grasp, and he turned on her.
“I thought you were—where is the marchese?”
“I don’t know. He disappeared. His wife was … ill.” She was furious with Carlo, she realized, but when Michael frowned, she added quickly, “I made him bring me here. I wanted information about Robertino.” A flashing series of images coalesced in Scottie’s mind, setting off a feeling of unease in her. “But Michael. Why are you here?”
“There’s something I have to tell you,” he said, casting his eyes downward. “I should have told you before, but I couldn’t.”
“What?”
He paused, glanced around, then said, “I work for the CIA.” The words hung in the air before them, erasing ugly images from Scottie’s mind.
“You do?”
“I’m here in Italy to get information on Communists. Information we can use against them to help our side.”
And then she kissed him. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, deep and hard on the mouth. She held him tight, and then slipped a hand down and ran it over the front of his pants.
“A spy,” she said. “You could have told me.”
ELEVEN
LA CHIOCCIOLA, THE SNAIL
“AT A SLOW AND STEADY PACE, THE SNAIL DESCENDS INTO THE CAMPO TO TRIUMPH”
JULY 4, 1956
1.
Signor Banchi was grateful to the americana for coming to see him in the hospital, but it was hard to convey to her what he needed. He strained to say the name.
“Robertino.”
“Yes,” she said, spooning some cool lemon gelato into his mouth. “Sì, sì, we’re all looking for him.” He was lying in a group ward in the Ospedale Santa Maria della Scala, only a stone’s throw from the Duomo, the hospital where sick travelers and plague victims had been brought since 1090. Italian hospitals did not provide food; your relatives brought it to you. A situation like his—widowed, no surviving children, grandson missing—was considered tragic. He would have to count on nuns and neighbors to take pity on him. Scottie’s gelato was especially appreciated by the old man, who was mostly surviving on the nearly inedible creations of Nonna Bea, the only bad cook in all of Italy.
When Banchi looked at Nonna Bea he saw what Scottie could not—not a comic old crone, but a woman who gave selflessly to others, who had done so for nearly ninety years. Nonna Bea was part of an army of women who had kept Italy going through its darkest hours, which had lasted seemingly forever. During the invasions, the occupations, the wars, the famines, the plagues stretching back to the fall of Rome, Nonna Beas had nursed, fed and tended others in complete invisibility, never receiving a medal or a citation or having a statue erected in their names. Mammas and nonnas were loved but also teased and ignored. It was the way of things, that their sacrifice was expected, not honored. Sometimes the anger and resentment the women felt made them cruel and manipulative matriarchs, but for every Lucrezia Borgia or even Matilda of Tuscany, there were millions of nameless old women in black, always in mourning for someone, perhaps for their lost youth as much as any departed husband. Nonna Bea may have been provincial in her mind-set, negligent in her personal hygiene and inept in her cooking, but she was, in Banchi’s mind, every bit as much a saint as Catherine herself.
His daughter would never grow old, never wear black. He had cast her out, which he was not sorry for, but he had not said good-bye to her, which he was sorry for. The last time he had seen her, the day the Americans arrived, he had averted his eyes. I should have looked at her, he thought.
He watched Scottie smooth his sheets and plump his pillows. So young and beautiful, like a spring day.
“I fed and watered Lapo and Cecco,” Scottie said. Her voice sounded far away. “And the chickens and rabbits. It’s a holiday today in America. Independence Day.”
It would soon be time to harvest the wheat. He tried to tell her, tried to sit up—
“We are all here to help,” she said. “You must concentrate on getting well. We will find Robertino.”
He lay back in his hospital bed and looked up at the frescoes over his head, imagining his great-great-great-and-more-grandfather also staring up at them. The images were mundane, but chilling. A man in a black hat and cape examined a man who was wearing only underpants. Another physician looked as if he were preparing to bleed the healthy leg of a man with a gaping thigh wound. Faces stared impassively down from a blue ceiling dotted with black stars. The Black Death. An unimaginable pestilence. It was foreigners who had brought the disease. In 1453, three-fifths of the people died. From a thriving city-state Siena was reduced to a ghost town. Religious pilgrimages ceased, and without the revenue from travelers, the city lost the money to pay its army. His city, beloved Siena, was conquered by Florence, and slowly sank into five hundred years of poverty.
The newspaper said that the American ambassador, Clare Boothe Luce, was coming to Siena for the Palio in August. What an honor, everyone said.
Foreigners. This lady was nice enough, but the other American had come to see him, too. The man who wanted to buy his property and put a hotel on it. “You and your grandson will be rich,” he said. He had held out the papers for Signor Banchi to sign, but Nonna Bea had come in and chased him away, threatened to sic the nuns on him.
Money felt like another form of plague to him, a dark force threatening them all. He had watched the rise of fascism, but found this more insidious somehow. There were no rallies or children dressed in black shirts. Instead, the children were wearing shiny shoes, pushing shiny bicycles. No
one thought to question its hold on them. What was wrong with wanting nice things? “Wait,” he wanted to tell them, “wait. It will never stop. It will drive us apart.” Status had always been a part of Italian society; the sins of pride and greed were always rampant. The monuments they had built to themselves! On the backs of the poor! But at least lust for money and status were seen as sins. Now they were seen as virtues. He had fought with his grandson, yelled at him to stop denigrating their lifestyle. His last words to him were “If I put a knife through your chest, is there a heart in there for it to strike?” And now, with these horrible words burning on his tongue, with his daughter dead in a ditch, the boy missing, God had struck him down, rendered him a hostage inside a useless body.
“Where is that rascal grandson of yours?” Nonna Bea appeared in place of the American girl, put some soup to his lips. “Out cavorting with foreigners, no doubt, while his poor grandfather lies dying.”
Signor Banchi coughed. He didn’t feel like he was dying. He was just very tired.
“The devil’s got him. I’m going to take a switch to him when I see him,” she said.
2.
Scottie woke up on the Fourth of July almost crying with relief at the revelation that her husband was a CIA officer—it explained all of his odd behavior. Of course he couldn’t tell her anything about his work, but she guessed that he had been recruited at Yale. Half the CIA was from Yale, she’d heard. She wished she could write to Leona. Leona had found Michael “furtive.” “See?” She could say. “He’s furtive for a reason—he’s a secret agent!” That would shut Leona up. It had shut Scottie up—she had felt her earlier doubts were disloyal.
“We’re here to defeat communism,” he had said in the car as they drove home from Sebastian Gordon’s villa. “To get as many Italians as possible to see that our way of life is better. To sway hearts and minds.”
“I can help you,” she told him at breakfast, but he had refused, and motioned her to silence. Though they did not talk openly about it, they both knew that Scottie was the more gregarious by far. So why wouldn’t he let her help?
“It’s just not a good idea,” he said. He had made her come with him. They were walking outside the walls of the city. She noticed that Michael continually glanced around them. He had warned her that their apartment might be bugged by the KGB. She was never, ever, ever to say anything to anyone or even aloud to herself about who Michael worked for.
“It’s so exciting,” she said.
“It’s dangerous. Very dangerous. There are bad people around.”
“Please let me help you. I can move around the city, talk to people, much more easily than you can. I have every reason to chitchat. Plus, people talk in front of me all the time. They assume I don’t speak Italian and have no idea what they’re saying.” She thought of Fiammetta and Rodolfo. “Like the other night—I can sit at a table next to someone and eavesdrop if you need me to. I’m just a dumb American girl,” she said.
“You most certainly are not,” he said, and kissed her cheek. He was leaving for the train station—he had to go to Rome again.
“Does your friend Duncan work for the CIA, too?”
“No,” said Michael sharply. “Julie is a terrible gossip. I’d prefer it if you didn’t pursue a friendship with her.”
“What are you going to do in Rome?” she whispered.
“I wish I could tell you,” he said with a smile. “Look, I know you care for Robertino, but we can’t help, and it’s none of our business,” he said.
“But…,” she said.
“What?”
“Hunting for Robertino, which everyone already knows I’m doing, is a great way to get to know people. I’ll be friendly. That’s good for the mission, right? You can’t hate someone you’re friends with, even if they’re a capitalist and you’re a Communist.”
He considered this. “You’re not trained,” he said. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I won’t. I’ll just ask questions about Robertino, and observe. I’ll go to the stable where he works. Ask about the horse.”
Michael reluctantly agreed. “Only to the stable. I already know you’re better at this than I am,” he said. “But I really can’t stress enough that you have to be careful. It’s not a game, Scottie.”
“I understand,” she said.
She used the moka to make an espresso, skipped the makeup, donned a pair of cropped, slim tan pants and a loose, sleeveless polka-dotted top that hid her growing belly, slipped on some sandals, put her hair under a blue-green scarf and added a pair of sunglasses. It wasn’t a spy’s traditional trenchcoat and fedora, but it would have to do.
After seeing Signor Banchi, she stopped by the scooter rental place.
“No charge,” the young mechanic said. She stiffened, afraid it was some kind of sexual overture. But then the mechanic said, “Find him. Find the boy for poor Gina, God rest her soul.” He crossed himself and kissed a crucifix that hung around his neck.
She installed Ecco in his usual spot, and the Kelly bag Michael bought her as a wedding present on the floor of the scooter in front of her. She zoomed out of the city through Porta San Marco, then sped down the long winding road to the farms on the valley floor. She picked up the gently curving road for Rosia, turned down a gravel lane for Sovicille. The landscape changed, the cheerful farms giving way to a steeper, rockier ground that she guessed took a lot more out of its inhabitants. Still, each little plot carved out of the forest had a small vineyard, a few olive trees and pigpens. Huge chestnuts arched over the road. The air was cooler here, and she could smell rain coming, hopefully after she made it back to Siena. She took the turnoff for Centro Ippico ai Lecci as a low rumble of thunder sounded in the distance.
A few people taking a lesson in the main ring looked at her curiously as she zipped into the stable yard and parked. There was a stout woman with short red hair like a halo of fire barking commands at them in heavily accented Italian. Scottie guessed she was British. She snapped on Ecco’s leash to keep him from decimating the barn cat population and headed down the cool aisle of the main barn toward the manager’s office.
The same man who’d been harassing the young horse last time was now sitting at a desk, looking at an agenda. Tom Cats. He looked very intent. This, Scottie knew, was par for the course at any stable—meticulous records were kept about which horse was on what medication and when, who signed up for riding lessons and when, and which horses needed to be exercised and for how long.
“I haven’t seen the boy,” he said, scowling when he saw her.
“I’m buying a horse, and I’d like to stable it here,” she said, aiming for just the right mix of flirtatious and distant. “What are your rates and rules?”
He brightened considerably and first rattled off a long list of information in no particular order, from shoeing costs to extra straw, then handed her a piece of paper that duly spelled out everything he had just said.
“I can assist you in purchasing a horse, signora,” he said. “In fact I have several here for sale. All very lovely and well trained.”
Scottie remembered how hard he’d been on the horse she saw, and how his poor technique ensured the horse would hate its job and all humans.
“I’d love to see what you have for sale,” she said. “Though I can’t buy today. My husband will come back with me for that.” That would give her an out if he pressed too hard.
“Of course,” he said with a patronizing smile.
He led her down the barn aisle to a stall where a huge chestnut gelding stood weaving back and forth.
“He’s a dancer, see?” said Gatti. “Very special horse. I think he likes you.”
Scottie knew that the horse weaved because he was bored, and that weaving was a form of obsessive behavior—like cribbing, in which a horse repeatedly sucked air while fastening its teeth on a stall door or anything else it could find. Both of these “vices” caused health issues. She immediately wanted to buy the big red and turn him o
ut somewhere, but she reminded herself that she was not here today to save horses.
Next he showed her a small, fat bay mare with an utterly adorable face. “She’s lovely,” said Scottie, meaning it. The mare had large liquid eyes that showed no fear, just calm. If she had really been horse shopping today, she might have bought this mare on sight. She’d be perfect for Michael.
“You are the right size for her,” Gatti said, giving Scottie a very long and appraising look. “She belongs to a man whose feet nearly drag on the ground when he rides her. I have convinced him it is not dignified.”
You’ve convinced him to sell a good horse so you can make a commission, plus another commission on finding a new horse that will need expensive training, she thought. Stable managers were the same everywhere.
“Robertino Banchi spoke very highly of a horse he knew here,” she said. “Though I’m not sure if it was a horse he exercised or just one he admired.”
Gatti frowned. “He rode several horses,” he said. “An excellent rider. I am having trouble finding someone as good as him.”
“Perhaps he will return soon,” she said.
“I hope so.” Scottie could feel him not telling her something.
“Is there a horse he’s particularly fond of?” she asked. “I heard that a horse disappeared after he was gone.”
Gatti frowned again, and then sighed in anger.
“You are speaking of Camelia,” he said. “It has never happened before that a horse has been stolen from here. I myself sleep on the property to ensure the safety of all of our clients’ horses.”
“I’m sure it’s not your fault,” she said quickly. “Do you think Robertino stole the horse?”
“Possibly,” he admitted. “He was very angry at the way she was treated. She is a difficult horse and he is a very softhearted boy who thinks he knows everything.”
“Who owns her?”
“A fine man. An excellent rider. Robertino had no business sticking his nose in.”
“Yes, he can be impulsivo,” she said. It was Robertino who had taught her that oh-so-easily translated word in Italian, but she did not feel guilty about using it against him. She would do whatever it took to find him. “What happened?”
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