The Blue Demon

by David Hewson

  He punched up a fuzzy photograph of a clean-shaven man in Western dress. His hair was long and gray, dirty, wavy. He was wearing sunglasses and peering in the direction of the camera, as if suspicious.

  “Everything referred to an operation that was code-named Il Demone Azzurro. We’ve never encountered any kind of document in Italian in situations like this before. It took a while before we were able to make the connections. Then we got a DNA match from the house. There was physical evidence on file from his parents. It’s Andrea Petrakis. No doubt about it.”

  Falcone scratched his silver goatee and looked decidedly unimpressed.

  “You’re saying a student wanted for murder twenty years ago fled the country and ended up working with Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan?” He sounded incredulous. “Why?”

  “His motives are irrelevant at this point,” Palombo cut in. “Four men and one woman were spirited from Helmand into northern Pakistan in March. We have reason to believe that Petrakis is their leader. In April they reached Turkey. After that we lost them. Until last night.”

  “If you’d shared this information with us earlier,” Commissario Esposito complained, “we might have been alert to the threat. Giovanni Batisti. That poor woman …”

  “Batisti knew he was supposed to be careful,” the ministry official responded without emotion. “There was nothing sufficiently concrete to warrant anything more than a heightened alert. What would you have done, Commissario? What could any of us have achieved in the face of such a generalized and vague threat?”

  “We can’t possibly know, can we?” Falcone demanded.

  “If the combined forces of the Italian and American security agencies were powerless, Inspector,” Palombo replied icily, “I fail to see how the state police might have made a difference. The plain fact is that the Blue Demon is back with us in the shape of Andrea Petrakis. The security arrangements that were communicated to you previously have clearly been compromised. From this moment on we start afresh. In a few hours we begin building a physical ring of steel around the Quirinale Palace. A fence five meters high around the perimeter. No one comes in without accreditation. Fiumicino and Ciampino airports will close until the summit is over. No traffic will move in any of the nearby roads. We have been in touch with the Vatican authorities. As of this evening, all public buildings, including St. Peter’s, will close to visitors, until the emergency is over.”

  The displeasure on Dario Sordi’s face was plain.

  “We’ll have snipers on rooftops,” Palombo continued. “Armed officers in every part of the city from which some kind of attack—by mortar, by rifle, by chemical or any other means—might be launched. The immediate area outside the exclusion zone will be patrolled constantly, with spot checks on anyone in the vicinity.”

  “This is a city of two and a half million people,” Falcone objected. “You can’t shut them out of the place they live.”

  “What choice do we have?” Palombo shot back.

  “We?” the inspector demanded. “Who exactly is ‘we’?”

  “For the most part, the elite services will be in charge. Carabinieri units. Special forces. You are to be the visible presence. Your hands will be full with traffic, crowd control, the rest.…”

  Esposito shook his head. “Don’t you see how the public will interpret this?”

  “Tell me,” Palombo demanded.

  “They will think you’re erecting special protection for the summit. A degree of security that is not afforded to the ordinary citizens of Rome!”

  “This is a security exercise. We leave the public relations to you. Our job is to defend the Quirinale.” Palombo’s hand pointed toward the long, elegant windows at the edge of the room. “Beyond that wire …”

  The atmosphere in the grand hall went down a few degrees. There was silence until Dario Sordi observed, “I sympathize with our friends in the police, I must say. This is a disgrace. Campagnolo knew the risks when he chose to invite the world here, not some place in the country where all these great men could have talked day and night and heard nothing but the birds outside the window. I didn’t even know until the decision was made.” He frowned. “But …” Those wide arms, thrown open in despair again. “We must live with what we have. This is the reason why I am taking control. I never thought I would see fences erected around this place in order to keep out the ordinary citizens to whom it belongs. As Palombo says, there is no alternative. We must be swift, efficient and … careful.” The president shook his head. “I want no more deaths. Perhaps that is already wishful thinking. If so, let poor Batisti be the last.”

  The three police officers on the other side of the table sat mute for a moment.

  “You brought us here to tell us we’re crowd control and a brick wall against which the public may vent its fury?” Falcone asked.

  “We summoned you so that you might be fully informed,” Palombo responded without emotion.

  “A young woman was murdered on the streets of Rome last night,” Costa pointed out. “That’s a crime. Our crime.”

  “It’s a crime indeed,” Palombo agreed. “And it will be investigated. By the Carabinieri. No arguments, please.” He waved his hand around the room. “If the Blue Demon should succeed in penetrating this place, can you imagine what damage they might do?”

  “Palombo speaks the truth,” Dario Sordi said emphatically. “These leaders are our guests. Their security is our first responsibility. In this room …” His eyes fell to the paintings on the walls: portraits of foreigners, ambassadors, from the Far East and Arabia, Africa and beyond, all in the dress of the seventeenth century, looking down on proceedings as if amused and interested observers still. “… will sit the men who rule the world. If we fail them, we fail those they represent. And ourselves.”

  The president gazed at the four of them. “I do not expect you to like what you’ve heard. These are difficult and dangerous times. Every one of us knows our details are on Batisti’s computer. My address is well known. Our colleagues, our friends from other nations …” Sordi shrugged and there was a trace of a smile on his exaggerated face. “For me, it’s odd to be under a death sentence again. The last was more than sixty years ago and came from the Germans, a race with whom I now dine, with all good grace and gratitude, as fellow European citizens I respect and admire.” His finger stabbed the table. “We can defeat this madness if we work together.”

  It was a short, self-deprecating speech, and the rare mention of Sordi’s distant past was enough to silence them all.

  “Good,” he announced. “Then I will leave you to your work. Nic?”

  “Sir …?”

  “I was abroad for your father’s funeral. I’ve never felt happy about that. Let me make some small amends now. Will you join me outside in the garden for a moment?”

  Their eyes were on him, those of his colleagues, and of Palombo and the gray intelligence man from America. None expected this. None quite understood, any more than Costa himself.

  8

  “GET AWAY FROM THE WINDOW, MIRKO,” PERONI ORDERED again, keeping his weapon trained on the strange creature that had emerged from the shadows. “Rosa?”

  “Backup’s coming,” she said. Peroni stole a glance to his right. She had her gun on the semi-naked young man who was staring at them in silence from across the room, knife in one hand, incense in the other.

  They could see something on his chest, a red, dappled stain. Blood, overlaying the blue dye there. Lots of it, and not his own.

  “Put down the knife,” Peroni ordered.

  The boy’s head moved from side to side as if he were trying to comprehend.

  Mirko Oliva had sidled next to the older officer, his weapon up too.

  “Put down the knife!” the young officer barked.

  Nothing. Just the head, turning from side to side, and a look in the eye, one that said … not quite right.

  “Who are you?” Peroni asked.

  “I don’t think he understands what you’re s
aying,” Rosa said. “Listen!”

  The young man was mumbling to himself, a constant, low drone of words. None of them recognizable.

  “What language is that?”

  “Drop the knife!” Oliva screamed, in English this time.

  A baffled look, fearful. The blade twitched in his shaking hand.

  “If he can’t understand us, Mirko,” Peroni muttered, “shouting doesn’t really help. Here’s an idea. Let’s stop waving our guns around, shall we? It’s making me nervous. All the kid has is a knife.”

  “He’s used it, boss,” the young officer objected.

  “So it would appear,” Peroni observed, and let his own weapon fall to his side, loose in his grip, then gave them the look. Rosa scowled and did the same. Oliva was the last.

  The blue-painted youth shook his long golden hair, watching them. The knife descended slowly and came to rest next to his hip.

  Peroni was a father himself, used to dealing with the young, to judging their moods, recognizing their fears and uncertainties. There was something very simple and childlike about this troubled individual. As if he’d spent his entire life in fear and servitude, cowering, waiting to be told what to do, what act to perform, always seeking approval, guidance. The bright, darting eyes, constantly looking for someone, some form of comfort, spoke of dependence. Captivity, even.

  Peroni relaxed his fingers and let the service revolver slip from his grip and clatter noisily onto the floor.

  He smiled, then extended his big, fleshy fist into the stab of sunlight falling through the windows and the cloud of black-winged insects swirling angrily there.

  “Mi chiamo Gianni,” he said slowly, with confidence. Then again, in English, “My name is Gianni. Come ti chiami? What’s your name?”

  A look of bafflement, a little less fear. The painted figure with the bloodied chest stared at Peroni’s huge hand, open toward him in a gesture that was more universal than words. He placed the knife carefully on the table across from Giovanni Batisti’s body, wiped his dirty, leathery fingers on his naked thighs, then stretched them tentatively into the dazzling shaft of yellow sunlight in the center of the room.

  He was saying something too, not mumbling this time. It was clear and utterly incomprehensible.

  Rosa was making a noise. Peroni took his attention away from the figure in front of him for a moment and asked, “What?”

  “My dad’s got a friend who talks like that.”

  The day got stranger. In the light, it was now clear the youth’s hair was an almost artificial shade of blond. Beneath the grime and the wrinkles of a harsh life he was European, surely.

  “You’re telling me he’s talking Indian?”

  “There’s no such language as Indian,” she replied drily. “He’s not talking Hindi, anyway.”

  The young policewoman said something else and it struck a chord in the strange figure opposite them. A light went on in his eyes. The golden boy began babbling.

  “It’s Pashto,” Rosa said. “From Pakistan. Afghanistan. And so is he.”

  The three cops looked at one another.

  “Add an interpreter to the list,” Peroni ordered. “Can you ask him anything?”

  “I can ask his name.”

  “Do it.”

  She took one step forward until she was almost in the beam of golden light streaming through the window and pronounced, very slowly, very clearly, “Sta noom tse dai?”

  The incense sticks fell from his hands. He smiled: white teeth, marked with decay, but there was something handsome, something strangely attractive, about him anyway.

  “Sta noom tse dai?” Rosa repeated, holding out her hand this time, smiling too.

  The others would be here soon, Peroni thought. An interpreter among them. They could clean up this mess, bring in Teresa and forensic, start on the long, detailed process demanded for homicide cases—one that would, he understood, result in this strange, damaged individual being charged with Giovanni Batisti’s murder, probably before the night was out.

  Something still troubled him.

  The painted figure finally stepped closer to the sun. This close, the blue dye was vivid, on his face and upper chest, and the blood was everywhere, on his hands, his torso.…

  What made it worse was the smile. He was grinning, happy, ecstatic.

  A word escaped his lips. Peroni shook his head and asked, “What?”

  “Danny,” the creature repeated, with a triumphant joy, as if this were some rare privilege. “Danny.”

  He lifted his reddened arms to the ceiling.

  “Danny, Danny, Danny …”

  The picture on the wall behind him caught Peroni’s eye again and he stared at the long, careful letters beside it.

  He doubted this strange, crazed individual dancing into the sunlight could read or write at all.

  Least of all in a strange, dusty room in the Via Rasella in a country that was surely foreign to him.

  Peroni blinked, half remembering something about the name of this street.

  The address had a reputation, a curse, one that went back to another bloody scene, another massacre, more than half a century earlier.

  Perhaps that was why, unconsciously, he’d ordered Mirko Oliva to keep away from the window.

  The old cop glanced outside.

  He could see a single dark shape in a room in the house opposite. A man stood there, his face in shadow. There was something black and deadly in his arms, aimed in their direction.

  9

  THE PALACE GARDENS SEEMED TO STRETCH FOREVER, A sprawling formal park of geometric paths running through vast lawns, ornate flower beds, and cool, dark groves of lush trees. It was hard to imagine the city beyond the high perimeter walls. Even the traffic noise seemed muted on this high green plateau above Rome’s bustling heart.

  “What do you think our friends are saying back there?” Sordi asked as they strolled away from the building behind.

  “I’ve no idea, sir.”

  “Please, Nic. You were one week old when I first saw you. There was a time—you were very young, I’ll admit—when you called me Uncle Dario. You won’t recall …”

  But something did come back, and it made Costa smile.

  “I remember a very tall, very friendly and generous man who always brought me presents. He enjoyed …” it was impossible not to say this, “… making faces.”

  Sordi laughed and stretched his long features into a comical expression, the kind an adult would use to amuse a child.

  “When you look like this, you might as well use it. Your father didn’t call me the Bloodhound for nothing. Don’t worry. I’ve had to put up with a lot worse in my time.”

  He sat down on a stone bench beneath a wicker canopy covered in roses, beckoning Costa to join him. A classical statue of an athlete, fastening his sandals against a rock, stood next to this shady spot.

  Sordi gazed at the figure’s handsome young features. “This is my friend Hermes. A copy, of course. The original was found at Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli. He’s the protector of travelers, an important fellow. Look …” He drew Costa’s attention to the sandals. Two perfect tiny wings projected from the sides of both. “That’s how we know he’s a god. He’s a good listener, Hermes.”

  A pair of corazzieri in blue uniforms watched them from the palace steps. Sordi pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. His fingers were stained by decades of tobacco. The two that held the cigarette were the color of old leather.

  “Faithful, loyal servants of the state, every one of them,” the president observed, glancing at the officers. “I don’t imagine anyone can hear us. Inside those walls …” His long features fell into a frown, his voice to a growl. “Every damned word in that place gets picked up by someone. I assume we may talk freely here. I have to.” His gray eyes stared at Costa. “As you may have gathered, Ugo Campagnolo is not pleased that I have intervened in this way. Were it practical, he would be in the courts right now trying to fight me to the last.”
>
  “Why doesn’t he?”

  “He’s an actor at heart, and actors always have a good sense of timing. It would take days to mount a challenge, and by then the summit would be over, his guests long gone, his moment on the world stage ruined by petulance. Campagnolo would risk everything if he went public with his displeasure, and he knows it. The man’s no fool. Now he has money, friends in the media, so many politicians in his grasp.…”

  Costa remained silent.

  “I’m sorry,” Sordi apologized. “I should not say such things to a police officer, for whom politics have no interest. But understand this …” He nodded back toward the palace. “You and your colleagues are the only ones with any sense of independence to pass through that room today. The rest, the foreigners, Palombo—they’re Campagnolo’s. It’s only understandable. I can take control for the duration of this emergency, no longer. They will have to deal with him when he has his hands on the reins of state once more. I don’t blame them for taking sides, any more than I would you, if you felt the same way.”

  “I detest the man,” Costa said without thinking. “He’s made Italy a laughing stock.”

  Sordi glanced at the Quirinale again and raised his eyebrows. “Careful, Nic. Even gardens may have ears. I take tea here, you know. Every evening. A habit I learned from a friend in London. Earl Grey tea, made with good Calabrian bergamot, and a very special kind of English cookie of which I’m fond. First sip when Il Torrino chimes six-thirty, at which point I pinch myself and continue to try to understand why the son of a laborer from Testaccio is sitting here, at the summit of the caput mundi. Old men live by habits, you know. It’s all we have left. You should indulge me with a visit sometime.”