by David Hewson
“Then you go round and pop a bullet in someone’s head. Stop the trouble right in its tracks. Before it gets out of hand. That’s what I’d guess might happen, anyway. What do you think?”
“So Andrea Petrakis didn’t kill his parents,” Falcone mused. “Even though it says the exact opposite in an official parliamentary inquiry?”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Toni replied. “I’ll tell you one thing, though. This kind of thing doesn’t happen often, thank God. You know why?” He grimaced. “Because it’s messy. Usually, it ends in a war. People get angry. People get dead.”
Teresa cut in, “The Frascas died. Those kids in Tarquinia …”
“Who the hell were they?” Toni growled. “Bystanders. Children. What kind of people do you think we are?”
“Best we don’t go there,” she murmured.
“Your charm is short-lived, lady. Something else you need to know?”
“The war,” Falcone said. “You’re saying it didn’t happen.”
Toni clicked his fingers and grinned. “See,” the man said to Teresa. “These two guys are smart. They’re listening to what I’m not saying. If you want to make it as a cop, you could do worse than learn from Peroni. Though it’s a little late for a career change, I’d guess.”
“There was no war?” she asked him. “No retaliation. No comeback from the … winemakers?”
He raised his glass. “The thing about wine is … there’s always another supplier. Or even the same supplier, once you make them see sense. You should be grateful for all this, by the way. Proves the old saying: Nothing beats self-regulation. Most effective form of policing there is.”
“Nothing happened?” Peroni wanted to know. “Nothing?”
Toni shrugged. “Two lying, cheating scumbags lost their lives. The son went crazy and got himself into all kinds of trouble. None of it to do with us. Then … life went on.” He put down his knife and fork for a moment, which seemed to Teresa a sign that something surely baffled him. “You tell me how that came about. I’m just a little guy. Was then. Still am now. Makes no sense. It was like …”
The mob man shook his head, then wound some of the raw meat from his steak tartare into the egg and shallots and capers on the side.
“Hypothetically, it was as if this was the way it was meant to be. Those stupid Greek bastards screwed us around, then got handed over on a plate. It was like there was a sign on the door saying: Shoot here. As if we were doing someone else a favor.” He took a mouthful. “You know what? Looking back, I’m not even sure it was true. We told them good the first time. They knew what was gonna happen if they screwed around again. What the hell!” He shrugged. “We got word they were still dealing. Consequences ensued.”
“Who told you?” Falcone demanded.
“What? That they weren’t listening? I don’t recall. Long time ago. Not the kind of detail you keep.” His bleak face froze for a moment. “All that stuff the son got into afterwards — none of that was about business, was it?” he insisted. “Not ever. It was about something dirtier, something we wouldn’t touch, nor anyone I respect, either, not in a million years. Not directly, anyway.”
“Which was?” Falcone asked.
“Politics,” Toni answered, his mouth full of raw pink beef. “Excuse the language.”
“So what was the Blue Demon in all this?” Teresa asked.
The mob man put down his knife and fork again, picked up a napkin, and wiped his mouth, never taking his dead, emotionless eyes off her.
“It was interesting talking to you all,” he said, then got up and walked out of the door without uttering another word.
32
Costa couldn’t think straight, couldn’t imagine any way out of this. There was no doubt in his mind that the man standing above him was Andrea Petrakis. He looked older, wearier, more dangerous, but this was the same man he’d seen in the photograph they had from twenty years before.
Three against three, under the bright moonlight, though they were now disarmed, disoriented. Mirko Oliva, his face bloodied and ashamed, looked injured. Rosa had ceased struggling.
“I put a call into base when I saw them, boss,” Oliva said quickly, desperately. “There’s backup coming—”
“Liar! Liar! Liar!” Petrakis yelled, so loud it was clear he couldn’t care who might hear.
“We’re police officers,” Costa said calmly. “We’re not alone. You’ll be found. What my colleague says—”
Petrakis kicked Oliva hard in the chest. The big young officer took it with scarcely a flinch. There was a look of thunder in his face Costa didn’t want to see. They had nothing to fight with but their bare hands. There would be no backup. There was only one way to get out of this alive, and that was through talking.
Petrakis leaned down and stared into Costa’s face.
“What were you doing here?” His eyes strayed back to the tomb; his hand indicated the open metal door. “You had no right … no right …”
“You need to think about what we do now, Andrea,” Costa told him. “How we get out of this. All of us.”
“I do?” he asked, laughing.
“Listen to me,” Costa began, then saw, to his horror, what was happening.
“Mirko!” he yelled.
Oliva wasn’t waiting for anything. The young policeman launched himself off the ground, his big, burly rugby player’s body aimed squarely at Petrakis. The impact was sudden and painful. Oliva had his arms around the other man’s torso, might have got somewhere if Costa had the time to get upright himself and help.
The second man, the dark one, intervened, pistol-whipping the figure beneath him brutally. The young cop yelped in pain, then slumped to the earth on his knees, hands cradling his bloodied skull.
Petrakis danced around and around like a crazy man.
“We can still talk about this—” Costa began.
“Talk! Talk!” Petrakis shrieked.
He stalked over to Mirko Oliva, placed the barrel of his weapon against the young cop’s skull, then shot him through the head.
Oliva’s body jumped as if hit by an electric shock and fell in a heap on the dry ground. There was a single gasp of pain and shock, and then he was gone.
Rosa began screaming again.
Mirko, Mirko, Mirko …
The words spiraled toward the velvet Mediterranean sky, to the stars and the bright, heedless moon. Then the man crouched above her delivered another slap and she was silent.
Nic Costa watched Mirko die. It was the way captives were executed in war. Suddenly, without compunction or compassion. Without a single reflection that in an instant a human life would be snatched from the world forever, before its time.
Andrea Petrakis was walking back toward them, the gun in his hand.
There were no prayers, no actions for a time like this. Costa kept his eyes open and watched.
Petrakis was one step away when the sound leaped out of his shirt pocket like an electronic insect bursting out of its cocoon.
For some reason — and Costa wanted to remember this, because he knew it had to be important — the phone call made Andrea Petrakis crazier than ever. Crazier than three cops straying into his private temple. Crazier than the realization that, whatever he did to his captives, it would soon become clear where his team had been lurking as they stalked the citizens of Rome.
Petrakis began screaming, louder than Rosa ever had. Costa rose to a crouch, wondering, waiting for an opportunity.
The other man must have seen, because in an instant the butt of his gun slammed into Costa’s head, sent him clattering, dizzy, to the cold, hard earth.
He wasn’t sure what he heard after that. He thought someone had hurt Rosa. He wanted to fight. To struggle. A line from a piece of poetry came into his head, a snatch of an English work his father had loved toward the end, a paean to rage, a war cry against the dying of the light.
The rasp of his own breathing rose in his ears until it was so loud he thought it mig
ht deafen him. He could feel the blood alive in his veins. With a final effort he tried to move, but the agony sent him tumbling back to the dirt. After a moment damp, warm fingers reached out and clasped his hand. Rosa’s.
A gunshot sounded close by, followed by a shriek. The noise was like the yelp of a child or some young animal. Rosa’s taut, terrified grip on his fingers, something that meant so much at that moment, became still and lifeless. He tried to turn his head to see; it was impossible.
“Do not go …” Costa found himself whispering, feeling no rage whatsoever, or fear, only a sense of failure.
There was another noise, closer this time, loud and long and booming, and then darkness.
PART FOUR:
The Night
Voici le soir charmant, ami du criminel;
Il vient comme un complice, à pas de loup; le ciel
Se ferme lentement comme une grande alcôve,
Et l’homme impatient se change en bête faue.
Behold the sweet evening, friend of the criminal;
It comes like an accomplice, stealthily; the sky
Closes slowly like a great alcove,
And impatient man turns into a beast of prey.
— Charles Baudelaire, from “Le Crépuscule du Soir,” in Les Fleurs du Mal
33
Dario Sordi had never seen the Salone Dei Corazzieri look more magnificent. Beneath Agostino Tassi’s fresco Allegoria della Gloria, before a gathering of the world’s most powerful men, and one or two women too, a string quartet played Haydn’s Sunrise, a bright, optimistic piece that failed to match the president’s mood.
So, after introductions and polite, brief conversations, Sordi contented himself with staying at the periphery of proceedings, chatting with those he found more interesting: waiters and musicians, security personnel and household staff. When they were busy, he watched his guests mingling, shaking hands, talking in the guarded way politicians did, feeling, for his own part, that he had at least performed his duty, even if he’d learned little in the process. Sordi was head of state: No one shared confidences with a figurehead.
He was depressed to see the prime minister walking toward him bearing a glass of what appeared to be vino santo and a plate full of Tuscan cookies and sweets.
“I’ve eaten my fill, thank you,” Sordi said firmly when the man joined him.
Campagnolo jammed a couple of tiny stuffed figs into his mouth. “I wasn’t bringing this for you. I don’t wait tables anymore.”
Before Ugo Campagnolo entered the world of television, he had worked in a tourist camp in Sardinia. In the early days of his political career, this was frequently mentioned in the press, though now that much of the media had shifted to Campagnolo’s camp, the story was less well known. Nor did anyone repeat another tale from those times, of how he had bought the entire tourist camp when he came into money, abruptly firing every manager with whom he had fallen out. Most were in that category, and, in Sardinia, where work was scarce, they did not find new jobs easily.
“So …?” Campagnolo asked. “It was a good evening, don’t you think?”
Sordi felt his blood run cold. “We’re making merry in a velvet prison. Out there,” the president indicated beyond the salon’s shuttered windows, “the city is dead. Empty streets. People sitting in their homes wondering what next outrage will come their way. And you …” He scowled as Campagnolo swigged back his wine and held out the glass without saying a word, waiting for someone to come and fill it. “… you don’t seem to give a damn.”
A dark anger rose in the prime minister’s beady eyes. He watched the waiter depart before answering.
“Never say a thing like that in public. I will crucify you. Already the people out there blame you more than they blame me. You took responsibility.” He waved his hand, as if this were a small matter. “Besides, all will be well. Trust me. In a little while, this will simply be a bad memory. Petrakis is a madman. We will have him before long. Rome will go back to being Rome. In three weeks, everything will be forgotten. The public have short memories, thank God.”
“I doubt the parents of that poor Polish girl or Giovanni Batisti’s widow would agree. By the way, I enjoyed your visit to the Trevi Fountain.” It was an excruciating moment: Campagnolo wandering around the rubble and the stones, still soaked in fake blood, shaking his head, hugging the survivors, eyes moist with tears. “You never miss an opportunity, do you?”
“I’m a politician. What do you expect?”
Dario Sordi wondered when he could make his excuses and retire to the quarters he occupied in the palace, leaving the guests to depart in their armored convoys, tracking through a ghostly city. His own rooms were magnificent, fit for a pope, and quite lacking in all of the attributes — small personal items, a fragrance, a long-cherished view — he associated with the word home. He longed for the modest two-bedroom apartment near the Piazza Navona that he’d shared with his late wife for nearly forty years. Though Nic Costa didn’t remember, he had slept there for a few nights as a child, when his parents were going through one of their difficult patches. The Sordis, if only for a few brief days, had discovered what it was like to be parents, something fate had denied them. Memories of that nature were irreplaceable. Next to them even the hidden microphones that the secret service had placed in their bedroom seemed no more than minor inconveniences, like mosquitoes in summer or the occasional stray intrusion of a mouse.
The past few nights in the elaborate apartment in the Quirinale, Sordi had slept badly. His nightmares had been relentless. One in particular, in which he was back in the Via Rasella, little more than a child, gun in hand, in front of the two young German soldiers, ready to shoot, but unable to pull the trigger.
In the nightmare one of the Nazis kept bending down to ask, “So you’re a coward now, boy, are you? A little late for us, isn’t it?”
“You know Palombo’s people still answer to you,” Sordi said with a sigh. “This is a charade. As you said yourself, I have simply deprived you of the culpability. You should be grateful.”
The prime minister glowered at him. “You stole away my powers.”
It was a ridiculous charge, one that grew more false by the day. Only that morning, Sordi had reviewed the list of new appointments to the judiciary. It was an open secret that they were, almost to a man and woman, Campagnolo’s creatures. The same steady process had been occurring in the police and the civil service and, thanks to the prime minister’s friends in the corporate world, throughout the media. Campagnolo was ruthlessly building himself a power base throughout the nation.
“No, Ugo. I merely borrowed one or two of your powers, for a little while, and for the best of reasons. We need the administration to survive. Not necessarily yours, of course. But we need some authority. A process in which people can believe. A president is just one man. He can easily be replaced. A system of government …” Dario Sordi found he was unable to stifle a brief, wry smile. “It’s ridiculous. We are Romans. We’ve been trying to solve this riddle — how does, how should, one govern? — for so long. Two millennia or more. Still the answers elude us, and we have failed our people so often they begin to despair. If I can avoid one more scandal, one more collapse in public confidence …”
“Poor Dario,” Campagnolo declared as his gaze swept the room. “You speak so beautifully. You’re so clever. Yet you miss the obvious. No one wants to be governed by intellectuals. It makes people feel inferior. They want one of their own. An honest man …” His face creased in a showman’s smile. “It was a lonely and pointless talent that led you here.”
Sordi nodded. “I believe you may be right, Ugo.”
The prime minister’s arm extended to the glorious frescoes. “This place will suit me one day. The art — it makes me feel at home. At one with those who commissioned it, and those who executed it. Politics is an art too. Sometimes highbrow. Sometimes low. Mainly the latter. Some are better at it than others.”
“Do you have a favorite?” Sordi as
ked out of genuine interest. “Among the paintings?”
“All are my favorites!” He indicated the Allegory of Glory. “That one in particular. It’s wonderful. To be able to paint like that …”
“Agostino Tassi,” Sordi said, recalling the delightful hours he had spent walking the palace in the company of the pleasant and attractive female curator of paintings. “He lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, one more follower in the footsteps of Caravaggio. Agostino collaborated with Orazio Gentileschi.”
“Never heard of them.”
“A shame. Agostino was like so many of his peers, a talented though damaged man. He raped Gentileschi’s daughter, Artemisia, another gifted painter.”
The prime minister became interested. “Artists, eh? What do you expect?”
“When the young woman complained, she was herself taken into custody. The authorities … our predecessors … examined her physically. Internally, and quite brutally. Then they tortured the girl by crushing her fingers. A peculiarly cruel torment for a painter, I think.”
“Women …” Campagnolo muttered. “What happened?”
“Agostino went to jail briefly. Afterwards Artemisia became celebrated for painting, repeatedly, the same subject. An Old Testament scene. Judith decapitating the infidel Holofernes — a woman’s revenge on a lustful man. They’re spectacular canvases. If you compare the one in the Uffizi with Caravaggio’s similar work in the Barberini here … There’s something personal in them, some fierce female anger that a man — even a genius like Caravaggio — could never reproduce. You would see this instantly.” He thought of Campagnolo’s reputation as a serial womanizer. “Especially you.”
Campagnolo sniffed and looked back at the crowd. “She got something out of it, then? You make a good tour guide, Dario. If you’re still breathing when I move into this place, you can have a job showing around the visitors.”
Then he raised his empty glass, said “Ciao,” and, to Sordi’s relief, departed.
