The Dauphin of France was down. The Prince of Wales knelt beside him, bandaging his wounded arm with cloth cut from a velvet robe. The prince’s ceremonial sword lay on the ground next to him. By the way things looked, he’d used it to cut the robe. That took presence of mind. It also took a sword with a blade that had been sharpened even though it wasn’t intended to leave the scabbard. Someone on the prince’s staff paid attention to detail.
One Irish prince was binding up his own leg. Another lay ominously still, the blood pooling under his head even redder than his hair. However hard the assassins had tried, they hadn’t slain Lorenzo III. The new Grand Duke shouted orders in Italian too fast and colloquial for Khalid to follow.
Pope Marcellus stared in horror from under the glassed-in bubble atop his armored vehicle. The thick glass bore plenty of fresh scars, but it had stopped everything that came his way.
Domenico Pacelli stared, too: up at the sun out of sightless, unblinking eyes. Khalid looked at him, then looked away. He’d taken so many bullets, he looked almost as much like a piece of chopped meat as like a man. When the shooting started, the guards must have blamed him for it. They’d paid him back the only way they knew how. If God willed it, the Corrector would be answering for his time on earth right now.
Warbling sirens and blazing red lights announced ambulances. Some of the emergency workers who jumped out of them made the sign of the cross at the carnage they faced. Then they got to work, as efficiently as their counterparts in the Muslim world might have done. They did tend to high-ranking victims and guards ahead of ordinary folk among the crowd. That might also have happened in the Maghrib or Persia.
One more shot rang out. Khalid whirled, bringing up his pistol. He lowered it again when he saw an Italian soldier standing over someone he’d just killed. “Son of a whore tried to grab for his rifle,” the man yelled. “Now he can tell his story to Satan in hell.”
“He should have tried to take him alive,” Dawud said. “Then they could have questioned him.”
“And found out what? That he was an Aquinist? That he’s proud to be a martyr for his cause?” Khalid said.
His comrade sighed. “That’s about it, I’m afraid.”
An ambulance wailed away with the Dauphin of France and the wounded Irish lord. The Prince of Wales got to his feet. When he picked up the ceremonial sword, he held it with the air of a man who knew what to do with it. That was more than Khalid could say for himself. Catching his eye, the prince spoke in good if accented Arabic: “This is a terrible day.”
“It is, sir,” Khalid agreed. “You Europeans ought to do something about it, and about the people who cause such black days.”
“Easier for you to say than for us to do, I fear,” the Englishman replied. “Too many people in too many kingdoms will be dancing in the streets because of this. The only thing they will be sorry for is that more people who hope to bring us into the modern world did not die here.”
“Then God—yours, mine, anyone’s—have mercy on you,” Khalid said.
He forgot about the Prince of Wales in the next moment, because Annarita Pezzola came up to look over the horrific scene. She waved away his worries, saying, “I was safe enough. I was far back in the procession. I am only a functionary, after all, and only a woman.” Her mouth twisted. “I told Lorenzo he had to be mad to try to make a public ceremony out of burying his father.”
“He should have listened to you,” Khalid said.
“He wasn’t sleeping with me.” She didn’t try to hide her bitterness. “Neither was Cosimo, but Lorenzo wouldn’t believe that. He wouldn’t pay attention to me. And so we have—this.” She suddenly seemed to notice she was leaving bloody footprints. She doubled over and was sick on the sidewalk.
VI
A newsman scowled out of the television set. “By order of his Supreme Highness, Grand Duke Lorenzo, the vicious organization that calls itself the Monastic Order of Saint Thomas Aquinas is hereby proscribed throughout Italy. All its seminaries are to be closed immediately. All members of the so-called Aquinist Order who do not renounce their vows at once are subject to arrest and imprisonment and interrogation. Resistance will be punished by death without trial.”
“If they’d done that thirty or forty years ago, when the Aquinists were just starting to make trouble, we wouldn’t have this problem now,” Khalid said in the hotel room he shared with Dawud. “Cosimo might still be alive, too.”
“Or he might not, and we might still,” the Jew answered. “You notice this fellow doesn’t say anything about how the crackdown is going, or even if it is going anywhere outside of Rome.”
Khalid sighed. “Italian television is like that.” Italian TV showed what the Grand Duke wanted his people to see. How close a resemblance that bore to what was really going on was a function of the politics and personalities involved. Well, that was true everywhere, but it was much more true in Europe than in the Muslim world.
On the screen, helicopters like the ones that had flown over the funeral procession lashed the Aquinist Seminary in Rome with rockets. Smoke poured from the building. “Thus the Grand Duke punishes the enemies of the state!” the newsman shouted fiercely.
How many Aquinists were left in that seminary, though? Wouldn’t it have emptied out after the assassination, and after Lorenzo seized Corrector Pacelli? The Christian fanatics were enemies, but they hadn’t shown themselves to be fools.
“Reports of fighting in Bari and Naples and Bologna are strongly denied by the Grand Duke’s Ministry of Information,” the newsman went on. “And rail service between Milan and the Adriatic has not been interrupted. Construction on the line has led to a few unfortunate delays, but that is all.”
Dawud looked at Khalid. Khalid looked at Dawud. They both sighed this time, on the same note. Whatever the Italian was denying, that had to be what was really going on. If a couple of foreigners could see as much, didn’t he think his countrymen could, too?
Or maybe he didn’t care. He was getting the official story out. When the official story was the only one the people were allowed to hear, getting it out was important business.
“In other news—” the Italian began. Before he could go on, an explosion shook the hotel. The windows rattled in their frames. One of them broke. Tinkling, sparkling shards fell in on the carpet. The broadcaster must have been in Rome, too, because his jaw dropped. “Dio mio!” he exclaimed, and started to cross himself, but caught himself before the gesture got very far.
“Well, well.” Dawud ibn Musa sounded calm. He also sounded like a man working very hard to sound calm. “I wonder what that was. Nothing small, not by the noise it made.”
“No, nothing small.” Khalid also worked not to show how jittery he was. “I think it came from the direction of the Pantheon.” Warm outside air full of tobacco smoke and auto exhaust started pouring into the room.
On the TV screen, a hand appeared and gave the newsman a scrap of paper. As the fellow read it, his bushy eyebrows jumped. “That thump you may have heard even in this soundproofed building was a bomb gong off inside the Pantheon. It can only have been a time bomb, since security around the building has been impeccable since our beloved Grand Duke Cosimo was lain to rest there yesterday.”
Why hadn’t security at the Pantheon been impeccable before Grand Duke Cosimo was lain to rest there? Because the Italians are a feckless lot, Khalid thought sadly. They were Europeans. Despite long and close contact with the Muslim world, they remained as sloppy as anyone else in this backward corner of the world.
“The Pantheon is badly damaged, if not altogether destroyed,” the newsman went on. “Thus Grand Duke Lorenzo’s murderous enemies show their hatred for Italy’s glorious Roman past. It is a shameful proof of how savage they are.”
“I wonder what the Egyptians would do if one of their political parties blew up the Sphinx because it didn’t like what the government was up to,” Dawud remarked.
“Don’t be silly,” Khalid said. “In countries wh
ere you have political parties like that, they don’t go blowing up people they don’t like—or monuments from ancient days, either.”
“Well, you’re right,” Dawud said, his plump features glum. “Which only goes to show Italy isn’t a country like that. What a surprise!”
The hand passed the newsman another note. It was attached to an arm wearing a tight-sleeved Italian-style tunic. The newsman, by contrast, could have come from Alexandria or Baghdad or Seattle by his clothes: he had on a white robe and a keffiyeh.
“I am informed that, as a result of this latest outrage, Grand Duke Lorenzo has declared martial law throughout his domain,” the newsman said. “All civil liberties are suspended for the duration of the crisis. Citizens are advised to comport themselves accordingly.”
“Well, well,” Dawud repeated, still sounding calmer than he had any business being. “Now we can wonder whether the Aquinists planted that time bomb or…”
He didn’t go on. Khalid could see why. When the room was so likely to be bugged, Dawud had said quite enough. Too much, perhaps. If the Aquinists hadn’t planted the bomb, who had? The other candidate who sprang to mind was Grand Duke Lorenzo himself. If he was looking for an excuse to declare martial law, why not hand himself one on a silver platter?
But Khalid shook his head. “I don’t believe it,” he said, both because he didn’t want to believe it and because he did want to get his friend off the hook. “The fanatics must have done it. They don’t care about pagan Rome, and they hate Lorenzo and his dynasty.”
“You’re bound to be right.” Dawud must have realized he’d overstepped. He sent the lamp on the nightstand a genial smile.
On the television screen, the newsman was saying, “There will be a sundown-to-sunup curfew in place until further notice. Required workers will be exempt, but must have proper authorization from the police.”
Without a doubt, the Aquinists would have people busy forging whatever papers “proper authorization” turned out to represent. Khalid wouldn’t have been surprised if they got their documents before ordinary bakers and nurses and sanitation-plant workers and other folk who had to go out at night did. From everything he’d seen, the fanatics were more efficient than the Grand Duke’s government.
The telephone rang. Khalid picked it up. “Pronto?”
“Annarita Pezzola here,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “In light of everything that has happened, Grand Duke Lorenzo has decided he might be wise to confer with the two of you after all. Please come to the Palatine as soon as you can.”
“We’re on our way. Thank you,” Khalid said.
“What makes you think I had anything to do with it?” she asked.
That was a question needing a long answer, and not one he wanted to give over a line probably tapped. He contented himself with saying, “Thank you for letting us know, whether you had anything to do with it or not.” Then he hung up.
“Where are we on our way to?” Dawud inquired.
“Lorenzo’s decided he does want to talk to us,” Khalid said.
“Happy day. I’m not more than five-eighths sure I want to talk to him.” But Dawud heaved his bulk up off the bed. Pausing only to light a cigar, he followed Khalid out of their room and toward the elevator.
* * *
Rome looked and felt like a city at war. Soldiers and policemen had sprouted on street corners the way toadstools popped up in a shady meadow after a rain. Unlike toadstools, the nervous-looking young men carried automatic weapons. Before too long, some of them would get the jitters and start shooting up cars and passersby for no good reason. Khalid hoped they didn’t start on the taxi that carried him and Dawud to the Grand Duke’s palace.
No, not to the palace. Toward it. Roadblocks made the driver stop several furlongs farther from the base of the Palatine Hill than they’d managed when they went to Cosimo’s ill-fated banquet.
Khalid’s legs wobbled with nerves as he approached the hard-faced men behind the roadblock. No nerves from them: only watchful waiting. They would have been Cosimo’s elite guards, now serving a new master. He hoped his robes kept them from noting the wobble.
When he gave his name and Dawud’s to a sergeant, the underofficer used a field telephone to check with the palace. Lowering the handset, the man nodded. “People by your names are expected, yes,” he said. “Now I need to see your documents, and we’ll frisk you.”
The documents passed muster. The frisking … “If I were a woman and you did that to me, you’d have to marry me afterwards,” Dawud said.
“If you were a woman and I did that to you, I’d enjoy it more,” the sergeant retorted. They grinned at each other.
When the Maghribis actually got to the palace, a different set of guards checked their papers and searched them. They were as thorough as the first batch had been. At last, scowling like dogs that wanted to bite but were ordered not to, they let the investigators go on.
Along with a squad of soldiers, Annarita Pezzola waited inside the entranceway. “I will take you to his Supreme Highness,” she said, first in Italian and then in classical Arabic. The foreign language made the soldiers scowl.
“Grazie,” Khalid said. At his Italian, the armed men in mottled uniforms relaxed as much as they were ever likely to.
This was the same entrance he and Dawud had used on their way to the banquet, but they went in an entirely different direction. Khalid began to get some notion of just how vast the Grand Duke’s palace was. Some windows gave views of blooming gardens—paradises, the Persians would have called them. Then the hallways, though still crowded with art, stopped having windows. Were they dug back into the Palatine Hill? That was how it seemed to Khalid. How far into it? He didn’t know, but if the ground above was shielded with lead and reinforced concrete a man might ride out a nuclear strike here.
Partly thinking along with him, Dawud said, “I’m glad I’m not the kind who worries about how much weight is pressing on the roof over his head.” He used Italian, to keep from making Lorenzo’s guards any more nervous than they were already.
That made Signorina Pezzola glance over at him. “You speak my language better than I thought you did,” she said.
Dawud shrugged. If they checked, he’d given himself away at the roadblock. “Thanks,” was all he said.
She started to say something more, then shrugged and let it go. After a few more turns, she stopped at an unmarked door. It might have been a broom closet, only a broom closet wouldn’t have had more tough men with serious weapons standing in front of it.
Annarita Pezzola knocked on the door. There was no audible answer, but a little red light winked on next to the doorway. Seeing it, one of the guardsmen turned to work the latch.
Inside, behind an ornate, massive marble-topped desk that must have belonged to his father, sat Grand Duke Lorenzo III. His uniform carried fewer showy medals than the one Cosimo had worn. He didn’t look at home in it the way the older man had, either.
As the door swung shut, he nodded to Khalid and Dawud. “You are the men from the Maghrib,” he said. His Arabic was good enough, though not on a par with his father’s or Annarita’s.
“That’s right, your Supreme Highness.” The pompous title of respect tasted odd in Khalid’s mouth. Such flowery honorifics had fallen out of fashion a couple of hundred years earlier on the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
“My father asked you to come here because he feared the rising tide of fanaticism,” Lorenzo said. His mouth twisted. “He did not take fright soon enough, did he? What can you do to help me bring my realm back under my hand? There’s madness in the air.”
“How bad is it outside of Rome, sir?” Dawud asked.
“Worse than it is here. Quite a bit worse.” Lorenzo didn’t pretend not to know what the Jew was talking about. Khalid gave him points for that. The young Grand Duke went on, “In Rome, the army and the security forces and the police have things under control.”
“They’re sitting on things, you m
ean,” Dawud said.
Lorenzo III nodded, unembarrassed. “That’s right. I don’t have so many loyal troops out in the provinces, and the police there.…” He looked as if he’d bitten into a piece of bad fish. “In the provinces, a lot of the constabulary would sooner follow the Aquinists than me. Milan is mostly behind me. Turin also—I think. Some of the other northern towns, I know they are screaming ‘God wills it!’ as loud as they can. And down in the south, they always listen to priests and monks before they pay any attention to the state. How is a man supposed to rule a realm like that?”
He meant it as a rhetorical question. Khalid answered it anyhow: “Carefully, your Supreme Highness.”
Cosimo would have understood him. Cosimo had ruled Italy for more than twenty-five years. He’d spent most of that time nudging his country toward the modern world that beckoned from the far side of the Mediterranean. He’d gone step by step, sometimes digit by digit. When priests or Aquinist monks made his people raise an uproar, he’d taken a step back and waited. He wasn’t in a hurry.
And what had it got him in the end? A tomb in the Pantheon, a tomb wrecked by a—probably—Aquinist time bomb. He’d moved Italy forward, but he would never see it become an ordinary country like the Maghrib or Arkansistan.
In France, King Jean XXIII played the same cautious game. His fundament still warmed the cushions on his throne. But his son lay in a hospital here in Rome. Both Jean and the Dauphin had to hope the guards in and around the hospital followed the Grand Duke, not the late Corrector.
Lorenzo … Lorenzo all but spat on the vast expanse of polished marble in front of him. “I am in no mood to be careful. My father was careful, and they killed him anyhow. If they want to play those games, they will see I can kill them, too. They will see I am not afraid to do it, either.”
“Your Supreme Highness, what will a civil war do to Italy?” Annarita Pezzola asked. “Even if you win it, what kind of land will you have afterwards?”
Through Darkest Europe Page 10
