“Is everything okay? Come in,” she said, but he stood in the doorway, grinning.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said. “Get dressed. Pants.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
“I told you, it’s a surprise.”
She changed her clothes and followed him down the stairs and through the big wooden front door. Robertino was there, grinning, holding the reins of a fat gray horse.
“You were upset when I said women couldn’t ride in the Palio,” said Michael. “It’s a stupid rule. But no one can stop you from riding tonight.”
She laughed out loud. “You two cooked up this idea?”
They both nodded bashfully.
“I told him not to bring a fast one,” said Michael. “I don’t want you to get hurt.” He looked worried.
“This is Alisso,” said Robertino. “He’s a good boy.” Robertino’s cast was off.
“Should you be walking around on that leg?” she asked. “It’s only been what—six weeks?—since you broke it.”
“Nearly seven,” said Robertino dismissively.
Scottie ran her hand over the neck of the gelding, put her nose against his fur and breathed in his scent. Heaven.
“You don’t have to,” said Michael. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”
She grinned. “Give me a leg up.”
“Watch that curve at San Martino,” Robertino said, pointing across the piazza. “But after that, let him out.”
The little gray gelding jigged anxiously underneath her, and Scottie patted his neck.
“Three times around slowly,” said Michael.
“Three times around.”
Scottie trotted out onto the track. The sensible thing would have been to gently canter the horse around the undulating, terrifyingly tight course. Instead Scottie let the gelding have his head. They shot toward the first curve. She tried to slow the horse, but had to settle for leaning back and aiming him high into the curve, so that she would have time and space to keep her legs under her and make it around.
The horse’s stride shortened, jarring for a moment, and then lengthened again as he shot out of the curve like a slingshot. They galloped flat-out along the straightaway past the Torre del Mangia, and then had to slow for the sharp uphill turn that marked the transition to the long curve of the fan-top of the piazza. They raced up the hill, then crested and began the dangerous downhill gallop again. With every stride Scottie’s joy grew.
Michael and Robertino were cheering as she galloped past them.
TWENTY-ONE
L’ORSO, THE BEAR
BLUE SHIELD WITH A GOLD LION
AUGUST 16, 1956
1.
Scottie looked down at the gathering crowds, filling up the bleachers and the vast central part of the piazza.
The sound of drums came from everywhere as she leaned out the window and watched the Corteo Storico wend its way around the piazza. Huge floats depicting the symbols of the contrade were followed by archers, drummers and flag bearers in full action. The jockeys—fantini—were in ridiculous medieval costumes atop draft horses, looking hot and crabby, she thought. She waved to Robertino, who was riding for Istrice, but he seemed lost in his own world.
She looked across the piazza to the tall windows of the Palazzo Comunale, where Michael would watch the race with the American ambassador, Clare Boothe Luce. “As Ford’s local representative,” he had reminded her. “I’d love to invite you, but there are only enough chairs for the dignitaries, so you wouldn’t see the Palio at all,” he said.
There was a knock at the front door, and she found Signor Banchi on her doorstep, having been helped up the stairs by Nonna Bea.
“Come in,” she said. “VIP seating right this way.”
She set chairs in the windows for them, and brought chilled white wine. Banchi announced that he had decided not to sell his farm to the American developer. Robertino could do whatever he wanted after the old man was gone, but Banchi was determined to die in his own bed. “And not any time soon,” he added, vigorously tossing back his glass of wine. Together they watched the Corteo Storico finish its procession.
Scottie knew that Robertino and Gaudenzia were now safely inside the courtyard of the Palazzo Comunale, waiting for the signal to mount up. The gray mare and the other nine contenders would be tied to the wrought-iron circles on the columns.
“You see those whips?” said Nonna Bea, pointing to a man walking toward where the riders were gathered. He was carrying an armful of strange curled sticks. “They’re made from a dried bull’s penis.”
“From a bull’s what?”
Nonna Bea laughed so hard Scottie thought she would have a stroke.
“It’s true,” said Banchi. “The jockeys beat each other with them.”
Leave it to the Italians, she thought.
2.
Michael packed his briefcase very, very carefully with C-3 explosives. He had driven up the mountain and practiced setting off some smaller charges to test his skills, terrified out of his mind. But it turned out he was good at this. It required neatness, and precision, and color coding, all of which he was excellent at, and which pleased him. Still, it was nerve-wracking to think he was going to carry a bomb across a crowded piazza and into a government building.
* * *
A few hours later, Michael stood in a pale yellow room with tall ceilings next to the woman in gold, watching her wave to the crowds in the piazza. She did look almost exactly like Luce, he thought. It was Pisano who had found her. Pisano, who longed to oust the Reds as much as he did, though Pisano’s goal was not democracy but the return of the Italian king from his exile in Portugal. He strode back and forth in his office while lecturing Michael about how a monarchy confers stability, values, a connection to history. “It eliminates corruption and upheaval. It is the only answer for a place like Italy,” he thundered, his black boots shining in the light. Michael had nodded, both exhilarated to have found an ally and unsettled by Pisano’s intense loyalty to Umberto II, who had ruled for exactly one month in 1946, and who Michael thought had all the leadership qualities of a head of cabbage.
The woman who would pretend to be Luce was an American Pisano had met in Naples during the war, a nurse. Michael suspected they had had an affair. She was from Louisiana, she had whispered to Michael. Pisano had lined up a black limo, and Michael had added small American flags to it. Pisano provided security guards, who were not in on the ruse. Only he and Michael and the woman knew what was happening, and Luce herself, who was safely on Niarchos’s yacht in the Aegean. He hadn’t told Duncan. He wanted it to be a surprise, the triumph of his Siena mission, the daring move that would once and for all sway the Sienese away from the Communists. A Communist attempt on the life of the American ambassador herself.
“No one will be hurt?” Pisano had asked when Michael explained the plan to him.
“No one,” said Michael. But in truth, there would be one victim.
3.
Banchi gave a yell and clambered to his feet as the horses and jockeys exited from the hidden courtyard. The crowd began to scream. Nonna Bea jumped up and down.
Loyalty, thought Scottie. She felt she would never really understand it. Team sports, politics, patriotism and religion—she felt left out of these passions that electrified people. She was a party of one.
Scottie could see Robertino in the Istrice colors, his thin legs hanging down Gaudenzia’s sides. The contrada had given him the nickname Mezz’etto, which roughly translated to Half Pint.
They rode uphill to a spot in front of Scottie’s favorite ceramic shop. There, they stopped. Two ropes were raised, one in front of the horses and one behind. The horses were restless. Gaudenzia spun once, but Robertino put a hand on her neck and she calmed.
“Don’t waste your energy, mare,” Scottie whispered. The entire crowd held its breath.
There were two false starts when nervous horses broke through the rope. Scottie felt faint. She was worried Banchi wo
uld have a heart attack.
“Give him a grappa,” called Nonna Bea, fanning herself with a copy of Vogue she grabbed off a side table.
Finally, with the boom of a cannon, the rope dropped and the horses sprang forward.
4.
The nurse posing as Luce, caught up in the excitement of the race, was startled when Michael grabbed her arm firmly.
“Go. Now,” he said.
She strode quickly across the empty yellow room and slipped out the door to where the carabinieri were waiting outside. They would escort her down to the waiting limo that would speed away, out of the city. “La Luce” would have narrowly escaped death at the hands of a Communist fringe group.
Pisano had told him to make sure he was well clear. But this way was better. An American death would make it a real event. And he would die a hero, if only in his own mind. It wasn’t as good as his brother’s death, but it was dramatic, and it had a purpose.
Michael looked at his watch. He set the briefcase down in the window and waited. The cheering from the piazza was tremendous. It seemed to make the building itself shake.
There would be a bang, some smoke, and the carabinieri would rush in and find him. “Luce” would be seen as the intended target, safely escaped, the Reds blamed, the honor of the Palio insulted, and the Catholics embraced for their sense of safety and security and tradition. Vestri would win the election, and Italy would not go Communist. World War III would be averted. Scottie would get his life insurance, and a fresh start. He hoped she would understand.
I hope she names the baby after me, he thought. A nice funeral, maybe at Arlington … lilies … some white roses …
5.
Pantera and Onda broke first, but collided on the first San Martino, and both jockeys hit the ground and rolled to safety, arms over their heads like potato bugs. The riderless horses bolted forward.
“They can still win, those two horses,” said Nonna Bea. Scottie nodded.
“Istrice!” shouted Banchi. Robertino and Gaudenzia were in sixth position. It would be a tough road to victory from there. They made it safely through the Casato turn, and finished the first lap.
“Two to go,” muttered Scottie.
“Twenty-one years we haven’t won!” shouted Nonna Bea. “Come on, you scoundrel!”
They rounded San Martino for the second time. Robertino slipped past the Ram and the Owl, putting him in fourth. The track sloped sharply down, then up again. Scottie remembered every bone-jarring foot of it from her wild ride the other night.
Bruco fell at the Casato turn, and the horse swerved, letting Robertino and Gaudenzia slip past into third.
“One more!” she shouted.
Gaudenzia masterfully negotiated the third San Martino, and slipped past the Eagle. Istrice was now in second, behind Snail.
Scottie shifted her binoculars up away from the race, saw Michael alone in the window. The one person who knew everything about her, who loved her despite all of her flaws, who had committed his life to her, was Michael.
I have to tell him, she thought. Right now.
“Go go go!” shouted Banchi at the horses as Scottie slipped out of the apartment. She made her way down the stairs but could hardly get out of the building, the crowds were so thick. She pushed her way through.
Scottie paused before she ducked into the building where Michael was. She saw Robertino’s helmet fly off. He ducked his head and kicked Gaudenzia forward, and the mare leapt past Tanaquilla.
Scottie slipped past the security guard, who was too intent on the race to notice, and ran up the stairs.
“Michael,” she said as she threw open the door of the yellow room. “Michael, I love you.”
Michael paled as he saw her, shouted, “Scottie! Get out!”
6.
Banchi and Nonna Bea cheered as Robertino raised his whip in victory. His contrada members poured onto the track and surrounded him, and he was raised up to the sky. After twenty-one years, Istrice was victorious. It no longer mattered who his parents were. Robertino was reborn, a son of Siena, a hero to his people.
And that was when the bomb went off.
TWENTY-TWO
LA QUERCIA, THE OAK TREE
BLUE SHIELD WITH BLACK AND WHITE STRIPES, OAK GARLAND
1.
Pisano hoped the papers would call him a hero. He had been the first to rush into the bombed-out room, followed quickly by firemen. To his horror, there were two people lying inert on the floor. No one was supposed to be here! And what was worse was that he saw the person on top was the American. He went to him, rolled him gently over. Michael’s body was shielding that of … “Dio mio!” he shouted. “Get a doctor!”
It is all my fault, he thought, while at the same time coming up with many ways to deny his involvement should it ever come to light.
He thought the Americans were dead, but to his infinite relief the woman sat up as they kneeled over her.
“Michael,” she said, reaching for her husband, grabbing his hand.
For what seemed like a thousand years, he didn’t move.
And then, thanks to the infinite grace of the Madonna, whose name Pisano swore he would never take in vain again, the stupid American’s eyes opened.
2.
Once again resting under the frescoed gaze of the sufferers of the Black Death, Scottie made Michael tell her the whole plan. Everything. He told her all about the Dark Arts, that he was sent to sway the election, that he was supposed to arm a militia in case of a Communist victory, and that he had planned to be the only casualty of the false flag attack by Minaccia Rossa.
“So you were leaving me to raise our child alone?”
“I hoped you would remarry. One of those Social Register types.”
“Eew,” she said.
They were checked over, and found to be miraculously unhurt, with the exception of some tiny pieces of window glass in Michael’s back.
Ugo Rosini denounced Minaccia Rossa as a violent fringe group, and was photographed bringing flowers to Michael and Scottie in the hospital.
Michael had mixed feelings when he received flowers from Ambassador Luce addressed “to a true American.”
3.
“I thought life would be easier for you without me,” Michael told Scottie when she asked him to move back into the apartment with her and Ecco.
“We’re going to have to figure this out day by day,” she said. “Today, I want you here.”
“But don’t you want to return to the U.S. to have the baby?”
“There’s time,” she said, and left it at that. He moved into the guest room. He was surprised the first day she came to his room in the morning with the newspapers and a basket of rolls and butter and got in bed with him, but after that it became their new morning routine, to lie next to each other, Ecco on their feet, and go over the news, the gossip and the movie listings.
“Gina Lollobrigida’s in a new version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” she said.
“You could be in that one,” he said, patting her tummy. “You could play Quasimodo, except the tragedy is that the hump is on your front.”
She swatted him with the paper.
They went back to work together at the Ford office. It made sense that she be the one to get out and talk to people, get a feel for what was happening with the election. She was just better at it. She also helped him draw moral lines. No more Dark Arts. Michael focused on the bureaucratic aspects of the job that gave him a sense of making order from chaos. He had taken the cash that Duncan sent from Rome for Vestri and other shadowy purposes and stashed it. He told himself it wasn’t theft—it was just safekeeping. He knew the Agency did not—could not—keep track of where it went.
He had promised to give Pisano the map that indicated where the arms cache was hidden, but after talking to Scottie he burned it. Pisano was angry, but what could he do? They were both operating outside of all laws.
Scottie talked to everyone. She had a real feel for the job, he had to
admit. Her reports made you feel like you were on the ground, living in the culture. She was an excellent intelligence officer, if without any counterintelligence instincts. Michael liked it that way.
They were a good team.
4.
A heavy envelope with the crest of the Chigi Piccolomini family arrived, addressed to Scottie. She held it for a moment, not opening it, just feeling its weight. She had caught a glimpse of Carlo and Franca one day coming out of San Domenico with Ilaria, but she had stepped into a doorway, unwilling to intrude. They looked happy, she thought. Finally she opened the envelope, and there was a short note from Carlo: Franca and I are going overseas for an extended trip. To show our gratitude we have left a small gift for you with Signor Banchi. Do keep an eye out for porcupines and wild boars …
Curious, Scottie wandered down to Banchi’s with Ecco. There, standing between the two enormous oxen, she found the small black mare she had ridden at Carlo’s. The mare nickered at her, and Scottie put her face against the horse’s neck.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
5.
Her days now began with a ride. Michael was anxious about her falling off, but Scottie reassured him that she and the little mare took leisurely strolls that allowed her to meet and chat with country people, who often invited her in for a coffee, a glass of wine or, in the case of a shepherdess, a wedge of freshly made pecorino. Being atop a horse gave her a different perspective on the landscape and the people who lived in harmony with it. She dismounted to join the vendemmia, or grape harvest, greeted mushroom hunters under the oaks, and chatted with old women gathering chestnuts in the forests. The horse-crazy little girl who had fought for blue ribbons and acceptance was still inside her, but was now just one part of a different Scottie who saw the mare as a way to connect with the world rather than conquer it.
6.
Michael finally made good on his promise to teach her to cook. They began one Saturday morning with his sfogliatelle recipe. He described the laborious process of creating fine pastry, layer by layer. “Your turn,” he said, pushing the sack of flour toward her.
“Not even going to try,” she said, pouring some grappa into his orange juice.
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