“You’ve never tasted me.”
“I have in my dreams.”
It was so clichéd. She knew Ugo had no real attachment to her. He was playing a game. And so was she.
She removed her foot from its shoe and retaliated, stroking his thigh with it. He choked a little and had to sip his wine.
“How do you feel about NATO?” she asked, her toes brushing against the growing bulge in his trousers.
“I am not opposed to … NATO,” he said gruffly. He was managing to eat his soup, which was impressive under the circumstances.
“Because NATO could be very good for the Italians,” she said. “Very good.”
His eyes closed a little. She felt like Mata Hari.
A plumber carrying a sack of wrenches clapped Ugo on the back and gave him a hearty greeting.
“I should probably go,” he said reluctantly, downing a glass of water and dropping bills on the table. “I would very much like to take you somewhere and ravish you, but I have a campaign meeting in ten minutes. Damn it.”
“I just want you to know that there’s no reason for us to be enemies,” she said. “Quite the opposite.”
They walked together back toward the Campo. He was teasing, flirtatious, but also respectful, in a way that no American would ever master.
“I hope your meeting goes well,” she said, as the piazza opened before them.
“Listen, cara, there is something I think you should know about the missing boy,” he said, a hand on her arm.
“Robertino?”
“I believe he was the one who stole something from my office.”
She frowned. “Robertino? A thief? I don’t believe it,” she said.
“I fear he may have fallen in with some very dangerous people.” He paused, as if deciding how much to tell her.
“Who are these people?” she asked. “Mafia?”
“I think it is someone closer to you than you think,” he said, then paused again. “I can’t say more, except be careful,” he said at last.
A shiver ran through her. Was he implying … Michael?
“Okay. Thank you again,” she said abruptly, and walked away. She was unnerved by this. Was Rosini playing her? Or genuinely warning her?
She went back to the office, but Michael wasn’t there. His note said he had gone to lunch. She thought about what Rosini had said. Would Michael have asked Robertino to steal something from Ugo? He would never have put the boy in such danger. Except … She thought about all the months that he had kept his true profession from her. Did she really not know him at all?
What secrets was he still keeping from her?
She stopped in front of the locked cabinet in the back part of the office. She looked at her watch. She had time before he got back from lunch.
FIFTEEN
LA CIVETTA, THE OWL
“I SEE IN THE NIGHT”
1.
Michael went straight home. Scottie was strange when he arrived. He told himself she couldn’t know about him and Sebastian, but it was like she did. She looked pale. This was worrisome. She was sitting on the pink couch in the living room. There was no book, no teacup, no magazine, nothing to suggest she’d been doing anything other than staring into space before he walked through the door.
“Are you ill?” he asked.
“Just tired,” she said. “I have a headache. I might sleep in the guest room if you don’t mind.” She stood up, and he saw shadows under her eyes.
“Of course, darling. Are you sure you’re all right? Is the baby—?”
She put her hands on her belly and gave him a smile that seemed falsely reassuring. “Yes,” she said. “I’m fine. He or she is kicking me a lot, that’s all. How was your lunch?”
He glanced up anxiously at the overhead light fixture, to remind her they might be overheard. “Ford’s got new models coming out they’re very excited about,” he said. “There are some customs issues to get through, but I think we’re going to have a bang-up fall.”
She nodded. He had never seen her look this way. There was something else besides pain on her face. He put a hand on her arm and she pulled away.
“Sorry, hot,” she said.
“What’s the matter?” he whispered. “Are you really all right? How was Rosini?”
“Friendly. I just need to lie down.” She went into the guest room and closed the door.
The dog looked up at Michael.
“What?” he said.
Ecco stared at him for a moment, then went to the guest room door and scratched at it. It opened a crack, he slipped in, and the door shut again.
* * *
He went to early mass and confession. What had happened with Sebastian was a mistake. It would never happen again. He put a pebble in his shoe so that he would feel the pain of his sin all day. The door was still closed when he got back from mass, and still closed when he limped off to work. He would encourage Scottie to see a doctor, though he didn’t trust Italian doctors. It was time they made arrangements for her to go back to America to deliver her baby. He didn’t want his child born in an Italian hospital, or on Italian soil. He stopped at the office. Signor Brigante waved to him and intercepted him on his way into the Ford warehouse.
“I sold two yesterday,” he crowed.
“Complimenti,” said Michael, stepping around him.
“Things are looking up! We’ll pull these rotten Tuscans out of the Middle Ages, yes? Not that they don’t all deserve to be eaten alive by mosquitoes while tied to a tree.”
Michael slipped into the cool, dark, tiled expanse of the warehouse. The tractors by now were old friends. He took off his jacket and ran a dust cloth over them. There was nothing decorative or stylish about them—everything had a purpose. They were honest. The good part of America. The part they did well.
His heart stopped. The cabinet had been jimmied open. He peeked in. Everything was there—the printing press, the money, the comic books, the Minaccia Rossa posters and leaflets, the gun. It looked like whoever opened it had taken nothing.
Except … oh God, he thought. Who would take only that?
* * *
He drove up to Sebastian’s villa. It seemed clear to him that Sebastian had kept him out of the office yesterday afternoon for a reason. He hated himself for falling for it. The villa looked less glamorous than it had at the party. The stucco was pitted, and tiles were hanging precariously.
He rang the bell several times, and finally shutters and a window upstairs were thrown open.
“Who the hell dares to appear at this hour?” Sebastian bellowed. “Oh, it’s you. Come up.”
Michael was a little nervous at seeing Sebastian again. He waited in the living room—Sebastian probably called it a salon. At last he appeared, wrapped in a Chinese silk dressing gown complete with tasseled tie. Of course, Michael thought. Then he noticed something on Sebastian’s face.
“Why are you wearing makeup?”
Sebastian sighed. “I ran into some unpleasant fellows in an alley last night.”
“Are you all right?” Michael was suddenly concerned and a little angry, too. And afraid. “They beat you up?” He had a vision of Sebastian, poor pompous Sebastian, his white linen suit stained with blood, being kicked in the stomach by a gang of thugs. Damn it, this was why you couldn’t be flamboyant. You just couldn’t.
“Pushed me around a little. I got much worse at boarding school. Now I’m making coffee, and you can’t stop me.” Sebastian waved him toward the kitchen at the back of the villa.
“I’d have thought you’d have had a houseboy or something for that.”
“He’s gone to the sea for the summer. That’s the problem with Italians. They expect vacations.”
“How ungrateful of them. Did you break into my office?”
Sebastian stared at him, seemingly as shocked as he. “No,” he said. “But that sounds bad.”
There was the sound of a truck outside, and within moments, a crew of workmen came filing past them and headed up the main sta
ircase.
“The army is here, thank God,” crowed Sebastian. “Upstairs, my dears, to work, to work!” He handed Michael a cappuccino and growled, “Some damn fine asses in that group, weren’t there?”
“You want to get beaten up again? What are they here for?”
“I’m finally having the plumbing redone, the roof fixed and the electricity modernized. And I’m building myself a stunning walnut-paneled dressing room.”
“Relative die?”
“You might say that. How are you fixed for cash, old boy?”
“That’s a bit personal.”
“Pretty wife, she shouldn’t be wearing last season’s clothes.”
“She doesn’t care.”
“All women care. If I’m not wrong, you have a baby on the way, too. Those things are expensive.”
“We’re fine, thank you. I have a good job.”
“Yes, of course. The great Ford Motor Company. Putting a nation on the road, fueled by gasoline from all the world’s most interesting places.”
Michael followed him outdoors, where Sebastian plunked down into a chair under a grape arbor. The table was full of half-filled glasses and candle wax. Michael moved an empty bottle of port away from his place and set his coffee down.
“Looks like it was a good party.”
Sebastian nodded and looked thoughtful, which was unusual.
“I have friends who are very wealthy,” he said at last.
“Nice for you. Better for them.”
“Very nice for me. They paid for a copper roof on the limonaia last year.”
“Well, at least the lemons will have a roof over their heads. Look,” he said, “about yesterday. It’s very important to me that Scottie not be hurt.”
“Who would hurt her? She’s utterly charming. I grew up with lots of horsewomen, of course. She’s much more vispa than most of them.”
That was the word Rodolfo had used about her.
Sebastian went on. “She’s bright. And sly, I think. She wants people to underestimate her.”
“You won’t tell her.”
Sebastian smiled. “My friends would love to know you.”
“I’m always happy to meet people.”
“We would talk, and I would pass on your thoughts to them.”
Michael paused.
“It would be well worth your while.”
“They need tractors?”
Sebastian stood up. “Better. They only need information. Back in a jiff.”
He disappeared into the villa.
Michael smiled to himself. He was being recruited for British intelligence. How funny. But of course Sebastian would be working for the Brits. The right background, the right schooling, the connections, living abroad … Though in theory the Agency and MI6 were allies, that happened at higher levels, and he wasn’t allowed to admit anything about his own employers. But it was still funny.
Until he remembered what was missing from the safe.
Sebastian returned with a plate of small, dry cookies.
“Best I could find, I’m afraid. I ate these in the nursery as a child.” He bit into one and grimaced. “Possibly this same package.”
“Did you break into my office?”
“No, I didn’t,” said Gordon cheerfully.
“Are you MI6?”
Gordon smiled. “They approached me a few years back. I was resistant at first. Not my cup of tea at all. I had an older brother in the service, died parachuting into France. Secret codes, passwords, exploding pens, those ghastly trenchcoats—I wanted no part of it.”
“Serving your country, though, isn’t it?”
Sebastian smiled. “I thought about it. About what they were asking. Only for information, the kind of thing anyone could pick up if they spoke the lingo. If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else, wouldn’t it? Someone else would be collecting all that lovely lolly. But still I said no. And then the Beni Culturali came after me.”
“The Culture Ministry?”
“Told me I had a legal obligation to maintain the villa. Historic site and all. I told them I wanted to maintain the villa, but it’s bloody expensive. They told me certain repairs had to be made or I would lose the property. My own mother’s house! They were going to take it away from me and make it into some ghastly museum, or worse, just shut it up. I love this place.”
“I know.”
“I want to die here.”
“You said that.”
“People don’t understand. All they see is a building. But it’s…”
“History?”
“Yes. Think of all the people who have laughed and loved and cried in this place. The ghosts! They don’t want sour-faced schoolchildren and bloody Americans with cameras traipsing through. They want parties, and drinking and sex. I can’t fail them. People think because you’re a lord you’re rich, but they forget that the older brother gets it all in England. Usually they make at least an attempt to look after the siblings, but my brother’s a first-rate rotter. Told me I wasn’t to show my face in London or he’d run me out of there. So I went to work as a publicist, as you know, hawking Italian luxury goods. I’m good at it, it turns out—that bamboo-handled bag I gave to Liz Taylor just sold out. But, as so many have pointed out, an honest living is not enough.”
“So you give your friends information?”
“I do, yes. Not much more than anyone could read in a newspaper, really. I mean, yes, maybe sometimes a bit more, but it’s all quite innocent. You would like it, I think. You and I would just be friends, as we already are, and we’d chat, and the things we’d chat about I’d tell my friends. It’s nothing more than that. It’s a way to defuse tensions, I think.”
“Not much tension between us and the Brits.”
Sebastian reached over and turned on a radio. Doris Day was massacring “From This Moment On.” That’s a bit loud, Michael thought.
From this moment on, you and I, babe, we’ll be riding high, babe …
“Oh, I’m not talking about the Brits, dear.” Sebastian smiled.
Michael’s heart sank. “The Italians?” he asked weakly.
Sebastian shook his head.
“Oh Lord,” said Michael. “I need to sit down.”
“You are sitting down. Have a whisky.”
“It’s nine a.m.”
“Then have two. Long day ahead.” Sebastian upended the crystal decanter into Michael’s coffee cup. The scent of the overflowing ashtray was making him gag.
Michael tossed back the whisky and closed his eyes. “You’re a … you work for…” He whispered, “The Soviets?” He hoped that when he opened his eyes, Sebastian would be shaking his head and looking horrified.
He was smiling and nodding. “It’s really quite a good thing when you step back and think about it,” Sebastian said. “Back channels and all that. As I said, defuses tensions. When people really know what the other man is thinking, it can avoid misunderstandings.”
“I have to go,” said Michael.
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“I can’t see you again, I’m afraid.”
“That’s being rather hasty. Look, I know you’re CIA and all, but once you’re in bed with one of these chums, you may as well bed them all, don’t you think?”
Michael stared at him.
“Well, it’s true. They’ve all got designs on poor little Italia, when she’s barely out of nappies. The Americans ride to the rescue with their millions to repair the damage they inflicted, in exchange for a few bases, of course. The Soviets fund and seduce the Reds, who already have momentum. Everyone wants to sell, sell, sell their products here. The best thing Italy can do is confuse them both.”
“Confuse them?”
“Just let them think things are chaotic here.”
“Things are chaotic here.”
“Exactly. There is a certain stability in chaos, you know. At least that’s the line I’m feeding my side.”
“What makes you think I’m CIA?”
“What you are is a terrible liar.”
Michael frowned.
“Look, this would be easy for you. I know your boyfriend is Dulles’s nephew or something. I hear he’s very chummy with the ambassadress. Very chummy.”
Michael paled. “Did you…”
“No, for God’s sake, don’t ask me again if I broke into your office. I didn’t, but you’d better find out who did. My friends are prepared to pay you ten thousand dollars a month,” Sebastian said.
SIXTEEN
IL VALDIMONTONE, THE RAM
“UNDER MY BLOWS FALLS THE WALL”
1.
Scottie sat on a bench in the park outside the Fortezza, her mind racing. It had been since the previous afternoon. Ecco, who would usually have been sniffing every bush and blade of grass and liberally sowing his scent, was sitting in front of her, staring at her, worried. Finally he barked, once.
She burst into tears and gathered him on her lap.
“What am I going to do?” She put her face in the dog’s fur.
The Minaccia Rossa posters in the cabinet she’d busted open were confusing. So Michael was … a Communist? But for her, that was the least of it. The money was not surprising—as a CIA agent, he had to have access to cash. The American comic books. She would have found this charming, except as she flipped through them she realized that they were the same comic books that Robertino had been reading. Batman. Superman. Lash Lightning. These comics weren’t on sale here—the boy could only have gotten them from an American. And who brought comic books to Italy? It hadn’t seemed strange to her at the time to see them in Robertino’s kitchen.
It made sense. Michael had been getting information from Robertino. Robertino had access to the hotels; he talked to everyone. It was perfect spy logic, except for the fact that he was a child, and making him an asset made him a pawn in a global game of Battleship.
Ugo said Robertino had stolen something from his office. He had implied that Robertino was mixed up in something bad. Had he stolen it for Michael?
That made her angry. And a little sick, to think that Michael would do that, and that he would keep it from her, even after the boy disappeared.
Michael could have killed him to keep him quiet.
She tried to shake off the thought, tell herself that she knew her husband, that he wasn’t capable of such a thing.
The Italian Party Page 27
