Sacred Cut

by David Hewson

  “Well, well, well,” Leapman spat back at him. “It’s the people on your own side who fuck you up the most.”

  Viale withdrew a photo from the file and threw it on the desk. It was of a group of men and women in casual, semi-military uniform, working on a jeep. The shot looked unposed. None of them knew they were being photographed. The location was wild countryside, maybe Italy, maybe not.

  Leapman glowered at the image in front of them. “What the hell were you doing taking that?”

  Viale scattered some more photos on the desk, all of the same scene.

  “Being prudent,” Viale answered, pointing at one picture. “Look at the date.”

  It was printed on the bottom of the photo: 12 October 1990. “This is before Kaspar even knew about the mission. And there’s Dan Deacon.”

  “That just means Deacon was in on the deal,” Peroni objected. “Doesn’t mean he was running it.”

  “Details, details.” Viale dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. He patted the file. “Kaspar just needs something new to interest him and here it is. Some documents. Some photos. Something that points the finger straight at Deacon. While Kaspar’s looking at that … Can’t you see what I’m offering you?” Viale opened his arms, a gesture of generosity. “These men you have here? They’re good, aren’t they?”

  “They’re good,” Leapman agreed.

  “Then what more can you want?”

  Peroni shook his head. It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. He looked at Falcone, who was watching Viale, idly stroking his silver goatee, not an iota of expression on his lean face.

  “Am I really hearing this?” Peroni demanded. “Do you think we’re just going to stand to one side while you people run up a little assassination squad under our noses?”

  Viale pulled a puzzled face. “What’s the alternative? He can’t go into a courtroom in Italy. That would be much too embarrassing all round. And I don’t just mean for present company either. You don’t think we’re our own masters in all this, do you? We’re just following orders too, from people who want results without having to bear the consequences. It’s an invidious position. It always is. The people who were involved in this are still around. You don’t honestly think you’d be allowed to bring down a minister? Or an entire government?”

  Falcone looked at Leapman. “You can prosecute him. We could arrange extradition.”

  “I wish,” the American replied.

  “I thought he was a hero!” Peroni yelled. “He’s in this situation because you people screwed up!”

  “True,” Leapman said with the merest expression of regret. “But the operative word there is ‘was.’ Before he went really nuts I thought maybe we could just tuck him in a cabin in the woods someplace. Let him spend the day reading his books and taking potshots at the bears. But this latest killing … That woman was nothing to do with him or us. That changes the game for me. He’s an animal. A liability.”

  Falcone stood up and said, simply, “No. This has gone far enough.”

  “Sit down, Leo,” Viale sighed. “Let’s not be over-hasty.”

  “This is not—”

  “Sit down and hear me out,” the SISDE man bellowed. “Or I will, I swear, destroy every last vestige of your career this instant. And his too.” He stabbed a finger at the big cop.

  Peroni leaned forward and gave him the scowl. “It’s rude to point,” he said.

  Viale looked hard at him across the table, then lowered his extended finger. Falcone returned to his seat. The SISDE man nodded.

  “You will both do what I say,” he ordered. “This … creature will get in touch with us before long. We will deal with that as we should. Two of Leapman’s men—”

  “No, no, no!” Leapman objected. “Not enough. You haven’t been listening to what I said. You can’t deal with Bill Kaspar as if he were some kind of street hood.”

  Viale wouldn’t budge. “Two’s all you get. This gets done discreetly or it doesn’t get done at all. I’ve seen the heavy-handed way your people work, Leapman, and I’m not going down because they’re trigger-happy. Take it or leave it. I will deal with the logistics. Falcone will deal with the practical side of things. He can use this goon here. And the other one. Costa. Best keep this between the three of you, Leo. No point in taking chances. Kaspar has to be made to meet someone to take delivery. Once that’s taken care of, then …” Viale didn’t say any more.

  Peroni undid his jacket, pulled his gun from the holster, rolled it onto the table, then flung his police ID on top. “I won’t be a part of this. Not for you, not for anyone.”

  “You already are a part of it,” Viale spat back at him. “If you drag me or anyone else into a court, Peroni, I’ll tell them you knew all along. Same goes for you, Leo. Don’t threaten me, either of you. Ever.”

  “Now, that,” Leo Falcone said thoughtfully, “is an interesting exercise in interagency liaison.”

  Viale’s stony gaze was full of pure hatred. “You stuck-up prick. You think you’re so much better than the rest of us. Use your head, Leo. Did you never ask yourself why I took such a close interest in you in Al Pompiere the other night? You don’t really think you’re still in line for a job here, do you? You blew that years ago. I was just covering all bases. We met. We talked privately. We were seen.”

  He nodded at Moretti. “It all happened with his permission.”

  The commissario stared at his fingertips and remained silent.

  “I seem to recall,” Viale continued, head cocked to one side as if he were remembering something real, “we discussed the ramifications of this case in full then. Don’t you, Leo? And I’d certainly have to mention that if I got asked in a courtroom.” He beamed at them. “After all, a man can’t lie under oath.”

  Falcone thought about this for what seemed to Gianni Peroni an eternity. Finally, he turned to Moretti. “They’ll throw you to the dogs when this is over. You know that, don’t you? The moment it’s convenient. They can’t use you again, not after this. You’re tainted.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” the commissario muttered. “Worry about yourself. And”—Peroni was smiling very hard at him—“your ape.”

  Peroni could feel the doubt and the tension rising inside the man next to him. Falcone had been through civil wars inside the Questura many a time and usually came off best. This was altogether different.

  “Leo …” Peroni began to say.

  Falcone put a hand on his arm and said, “Not now.”

  Filippo Viale smiled. Then he pushed Peroni’s gun and ID back across the table.

  “You two can wait downstairs,” he said. “Call when you hear something.”

  AROUND MIDDAY the caretaker looked up, saw Nic Costa walking towards the booth inside the great bronze doors of the Pantheon and emitted a long, low howl of grief.

  Costa stopped in front of him and took out his ID card.

  The florid, cracked face crumpled into an expression of intense distaste. “No! Why me? Why don’t you bastards turn up on someone else’s shift? I’ve been shot at. I’ve been beaten up and locked in a closet. Stay away. Please. I just do the menial stuff around here. I want a quiet life for a day or two.”

  Nic Costa surveyed the vast, airy interior of the building. There were just five other people there. Four of them—two men, two women—were walking around the walls, idly staring up at the oculus, now letting a bright, blinding stream of white winter sunlight into the shadowy hall. The men seemed too young to be Bill Kaspar. Leapman had officers on the street, though. It was possible they’d gotten wind of the situation and had decided to get into position.

  The fifth person, Emily Deacon, had, Costa presumed, done exactly as she was told. She’d pulled a light metal chair out of the congregation area and placed it on the circle that represented the epicentre of the building, the spot directly beneath the opening above. Now she sat there, hunched over, hugging herself in the lumpy parka, allowing him the occasional glance.

  “We need t
o empty the building,” Costa said.

  “Oh! Really?” the caretaker snarled. “What is it this time? Alien invasion? The plague?”

  Costa was walking over towards Emily, the man following in his footsteps, emitting a stream of sarcastic bile.

  He stopped and turned to face the caretaker. “It’s a bomb scare.”

  “Oh yeah?” The man was furious. “Well, let me tell you, mister. We have procedures for bomb scares. I’ve done training. I know the rules. Someone calls me. Police cars turn up outside big-time making a lot of noise. Not one scrawny little cop who hasn’t got his ugly partner in tow this time …” He remembered something of the night before and added hastily, “Not that I’m complaining, you understand.”

  Costa knelt in front of Emily. She sat underneath the bright white eye, hands on her lap, calm, expectant, the focus of the building’s powerful, living presence. He took her fingers in his and looked into her face.

  “How are you?” he asked quietly.

  “Ready.”

  “Emily …”

  She reached up, flicked open the collar, letting him see the mike. A reminder: somewhere close by Bill Kaspar was listening.

  Besides, she knew what he was going to say. There could be other ways. They could try and sneak in a sniper. Or track down Kaspar before he had the chance to hit the trigger.

  “I want to go through with this, Nic. I need to know.”

  “Understood,” he said, stood up, reached forward, took her face in his hands, kissed her forehead, just for a moment.

  The caretaker was standing beside them, tapping the stone floor with his right foot. The sound echoed round and round the hemisphere, bouncing back from every angle of its curves.

  “So?” the man said petulantly. “Procedures? Where’s the rest of you, huh?”

  Costa ran his hand to Emily’s neck, found the zip, pulled it gently down, carefully, carefully. She was taking shallow breaths, looking at him, not what he was revealing.

  He’d got the zip halfway down when the caretaker saw. Strapped to Emily Deacon’s slight young chest was a military green vest loaded with bright yellow canisters, familiar shapes, joined to one another by a writhing loom of multicoloured wires.

  “It’s a bomb,” Costa said again, hearing the man retreat in a flurry of hurried footsteps behind him. “Several, actually. I’ll clear the building myself. When it’s empty, lock the doors, go to your office and await my instructions.”

  The other four visitors were French, two couples. Not Joel Leapman’s team, not unless they were unusually good at hiding who they were.

  Nic Costa let them out of the building, took a good look around and wondered where and how William F. Kaspar had hidden himself in the tangled warren of alleys that made up this ancient quarter of Rome. Then he took a second chair out of the seating area, placed it next to Emily Deacon and began a long, long phone conversation with Leo Falcone.

  BACK IN THE GREY BUILDING off the Via Cavour, Commissario Moretti squared the closure of the Pantheon on unspecified security grounds, then fled to the Questura pleading other appointments. Viale and Leapman went into a huddle on their own. No one seemed much surprised by the news Costa had imparted through Falcone. No one saw it as anything other than an opportunity to snatch Kaspar either. Peroni was genuinely appalled that the idea of Emily Deacon sitting with explosives strapped to her body, a deadline ticking over her head, one that expired in precisely ninety minutes, seemed peripheral somehow, an inconsequential fact in a larger, darker drama. Even to Leo Falcone, in a way. The game had moved on. It was now about closure and survival. A part of Peroni—not a part he liked—almost envied the way Moretti was able to duck out of the door, hide in his office and try to pretend this was just another ordinary day.

  When Viale gave the order, they left the SISDE building in two cars. Falcone sat in the passenger seat of an unmarked police Fiat as Peroni drove through the slushy, empty streets. The others followed in a plain grey van with a couple of small antennae sprouting from its roof, a vehicle that to Gianni Peroni screamed “spook” to anyone with half a mind and a small measure of imagination.

  Two of Leapman’s henchmen had materialized outside the building as they left, unbidden as far as Peroni could work out. They were anonymous-looking creatures, youngish, short hair, long dark winter coats, hands stuffed deep in their pockets.

  Peroni thought about them as he drove. These men were trained in firearms and covert operations. It was what they did and, in spite of Viale’s doubts, Peroni was in no doubt they were extremely efficient at it. Whereas he was a cop, one who hated guns, hated the use of violence as a means of resolving an issue, saw bloodshed as the ultimate failure. As did Costa. And, Peroni hoped, Leo Falcone.

  The dour inspector made another call, to Costa from what Peroni could make out. It wasn’t easy. Falcone had spent most of the time listening, then asking brief, cryptic questions.

  When Falcone was done, Peroni navigated a couple of patches of grubby snow still staining the Piazza Venezia and decided he couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “You mind if I ask you something, Leo?”

  “Is there an answer I can give that will stop you?” Falcone replied.

  “No. What are we doing here? I mean, even if that SISDE bastard does have us trussed up like a Christmas turkey, what’s the point in making it all worse? If we’re screwed, we’re screwed. Why do it twice over? Why not make ourselves a few friends by throwing up our hands and letting someone else sort out this crapfest?”

  Falcone rubbed his chin and stared at a pair of tourists wandering idly across the road, oblivious to the presence of traffic.

  “Very good question,” he conceded after a while.

  “Do I get a very good answer?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  The grey van was now a couple of hundred metres in front, disappearing towards the main drag of Vittorio Emanuele and the street which turned down to the Pantheon.

  “They’re right in one respect,” Falcone told Peroni quietly. “Kaspar has to come off the street. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Of course I know that!” It was as if Falcone was trying to be exasperating. And succeeding too. “It doesn’t mean we just rub him out. I mean … what kind of a world are we living in? I don’t want to act like I’m judge, jury and executioner. If I wanted that I’d move to South America or somewhere.”

  “Pragmatism—”

  “Bullshit!”

  Falcone pointed to the grey van ahead of them. “Keep up. So what do you suggest we do?”

  “OK! Here’s an idea. We go back to the Questura. We find some nice, powerful uniform one office above Moretti. There has to be someone there who will listen.”

  “In the end,” Falcone agreed. “But then we don’t get Kaspar. Or they get him anyway and disappear off the face of the planet, leaving us to answer all the awkward questions. Plus, there’s the small matter of Agent Deacon. Who’s looking out for her now, do you think? Leapman?”

  Peroni turned that one over in his head. Bombs were terrorism. Terrorism, inevitably, fell outside the Questura’s remit. Everything got handed on, to SISDE and some specialist guys, probably in the Carabinieri. It all took time, resources, intelligence. Everything they didn’t have.

  Falcone observed, “You’ve gone uncharacteristically quiet all of a sudden.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake!” Peroni bellowed. “Stop kicking me in the teeth every time I come up with a suggestion. It’s no wonder you never stayed married. Always the fucking smart-ass, Leo. No one likes smart-asses.”

  It was an uncalled-for outburst. Falcone now sat in the passenger seat giving him that glacial stare Peroni knew so well.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I apologize. I’m a little tense. What do you think we should do? Short of rolling over and letting these bastards screw us any which way they feel like?”

  Falcone let out a curt laugh. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Your own partner understands. Judging by the conversation we ju
st had, he understood straightaway.”

  Peroni thought his head might explode. He took one hand off the steering wheel and waved a fist towards Falcone’s face. “Yeah. That’s because you and Nic come out of the same mould, except neither of you recognizes it. The one marked ‘sneaky bastard, handle with care, will bite when you least expect it.’ Whereas I—”

  “You’re just an old vice cop who got busted down to the ranks for one transgression of a minor and personal nature.”

  “Quite,” Peroni replied and wondered why there was such a wheedling tone in his voice. “Enlighten me, Leo. My head hurts.”

  Falcone glanced at him. Just for a second something in his expression bore a slight resemblance to sympathy. “It’s simple,” he said. “People like Leapman and Viale, they get their power from just one thing.”

  “Which is?”

  “They play outside the rules. They think they’re immune from them. They do that for a good reason, too. The people they deal with—terrorists, others doing the same job—take the same view. They’re all willing to do things most human beings, through matters of breeding and responsibility and taste, would find repugnant.”

  “So …?”

  “So if we want to win, Gianni, we have to do the same. Let’s face it. Given the squeeze they’ve got on us, what’s the alternative?”

  “I wish I hadn’t asked that,” Peroni grumbled. “I wish I’d just stayed ignorant instead. Me and my big mouth.”

  “You and your big mouth. There’s just one problem.”

  Peroni blinked. “Just the one? Are you sure?”

  “We don’t have the people. I’m in. You and Costa too.”

  “Wait—”

  “Shush, Gianni. Let’s not play games now. There isn’t time. I couldn’t call anyone else even if I wanted to. Moretti would know and then it really would be over.”

  “Yeah …” Peroni found himself uttering a brief, mirthless guffaw.

  “And who’d be crazy enough to dump their career alongside ours anyway? Tell me that. Who?”