by Gregg Loomis
"And how will Reilly and his companion be identified?" Manicci asked. "We have no pictures of them."
The senior inspector hadn't thought of that. "Every male passenger from twenty-five to fifty will have to show papers if it comes to it."
Manicci could only imagine the bureaucratic turf war with Ferrovie dello Stato, the Italian state railway, that would ignite.
XI.
Questure di Aventine
(Aventine Precinct Police Station)
Via di Son Teodoro
Two Hours Later
Deputy Chief Inspector Hanaratti stood behind a series of desks where computers blinked as they scrolled lists. The national railway agency had been surprising cooperative. Or at least they had not been obstructionist. It had been the local police stations that had balked. Only a connection with a higher up in the Carabiniere, the national military police, had produced the manpower to board each of more than a dozen trains. That favor would cost the deputy chief inspector dearly.
So far, the search had produced two Bulgarians who had entered the country illegally, one man with a warrant outstanding for a minor crime and a woman smuggling cigarettes. Hardly a major war against crime. Manicci's men at the airport had lingered until after the flight on which Reilly had reservations had departed.
The net was, so far, empty.
Hanaratti lit his first cigarette in three years, ignoring the signs depicting a cigarette with a red line drawn through it. The first puff made him giddy. Perhaps it was the tobacco that gave him the idea.
"Manicci," he said. "The airline reservation was intended to throw us off the trail, do you not agree?"
Unsurprisingly, the junior inspector did.
"Why, then, would not getting off at Termini also be intended to mislead?"
Manicci was not one to risk giving answers that might conflict with what a superior had in mind. "But, then how would this Reilly man and his companion leave the city? We have sent warnings to the rental car agencies."
Well, perhaps the registered ones. A number of entrepreneurs rented a selection of automobiles out of storefronts or their homes to evade the numerous and burdensome taxes.
"I was thinking," Hanaratti continued, "they might not have left Rome at all."
"Quite possible," Manicci agreed, trying not to make a show of fanning away the cigarette smoke. "But to what end?"
Hanaratti dropped the smoldering butt into a coffee cup, where it hissed angrily. "We do not yet know. The only real connection Reilly has here was the rental car."
"In which he was going to visit Hadrian's villa."
The senior inspector nodded, a teacher encouraging a not-so-bright pupil. "Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps he was the one who drove the car to the place it was destroyed."
"To what end? He could have been killed"
"But he wasn't."
Manicci knew better than to ask the point of his superior's rambling. He said nothing.
"Perhaps he had a reason to have the car so shot up. Or a reason to have it where it was."
"Do we know what that might be?" Manicci ventured.
"No, but I think it might be in order to go back to the Knights of Malta, ask more pointed questions. I do not believe they neither heard nor saw anything last night. Someone must have at least heard gunfire. Someone would have at least looked out of a window. They are a large and wealthy organization. It would not surprise me if they had enemies, enemies who wished to make them appear in a less than favorable light. Having a crime committed on their doorstep might achieve that."
Manicci failed to see how having a sports car shot up outside the priory could reflect anything, good or bad, but he knew better than to admit it. "Shall I call for an appointment? With whom?"
Hanaratti picked up a newspaper. "Happily for us, the media has taken an interest in an event that takes place only every five years." He held up a page, showing a picture of a procession of men in what looked like seventeenth-century attire. "Even publish schedules for the various meetings. Visiting members of their supreme council will be at a function at the Vatican this evening. That should leave the grand master and full-time staff at the priory. I think that would be an ideal time for a surprise visit."
XII.
Circo Massimo Metro Station
Via del Circo Massimo
1830 Local Time
Lang and Jacob had chosen the anonymity of public transportation but now had the long uphill trudge to the priory before them. As they climbed the stairs out of the station, they faced west. Across the Tiber, a bloodred balloon of a setting sun limned the domes and towers of the Trastevere in picture postcard perfection.
Lang was more interested in the steep hill to his left. "How far do we have to go?"
Jacob puckered his lips. "I'd say a kilometer and a half. If you don't think you've recovered enough, lad, I can go it alone."
"Not a chance. How close do we have to get?"
"Hard to say. You saw where I put the device but exactly how close ..."
Lang's legs were already complaining of the climb. "Explain it to me again."
Jacob took out his pipe, thought better of it and returned it to a pocket. "We had three choices: We could have tossed something nasty over the wall that would have wreaked bloody hell. That was a bit of a dice because we wanted to make sure we eliminated the people most likely involved in trying to suppress the James Gospel by killing you or nicking someone close to you. That would most likely be the grand master and his full-time staff. Once we located where they might be, we could have left a timed device, except we had no way of knowing when the sodding grand master and his henchmen would be where. So, the little gem I left can be set off with this."
He held up a small black box.
Lang squinted in the fading light. "Looks like a an automatic garage-door opener to me."
"Right you are! That's exactly what it is. It works by sending out a low-frequency signal that activates the receiver, usually attached to your garage door. The question is, how close to the blooming door do we have to get for the signal to reach?"
Lang paused to bend over and massage his calves. "And we find that out how?"
Jacob paused, too, puffing from the climb. "By the most common of scientific methods: trial and error."
"And suppose the wall prevents us from getting close enough?"
"Well, now, that would be a spot of bother. But it shouldn't. The ad on the telly said this bugger worked up to fifty meters."
Lang began the uphill climb again. "And if it doesn't, you get your money back?"
Jacob looked puzzled for a moment. "Well yes, I suppose I do."
Swell.
XIII.
Aventine Hill
At the Same Time
The dark, unmarked Alfa Romeo sedan pulled up to the massive wooden gates. The driver, a uniformed policeman, got out and rang the buzzer. After a prolonged exchange, the gates swung open and the car drove inside.
"Bloody hell!" Jacob spat. "The sodding coppers are here! Now what?"
Lang stepped back into the shadows that now consumed almost everything at street level. "We'll just have to wait." "Wait? How long? The visiting council members will be back from tea with the pope or whatever they're at."
"I know, but we can't just ignore the fact the police are inside, probably in the building."
"I thought collateral damage wasn't a concern."
"It is where cops are concerned. Kill one of them and every law enforcement officer in Europe will be on our ass."
Jacob shook his head. "I wasn't planning on claiming credit for this any more than I was expecting the sodding Nobel Peace Prize. We either get this done soon or there'll be a lot more people likely to get hurt."
Lang thought a minute. "OK, here's what we're gonna do ..."
Two minutes later, Lang crossed the street like a man without a care in the world. He pushed the buzzer by the gate as casually as though he were a guest invited to a dinner party. The response was immediate
if unintelligible.
"Please tell the police that Langford Reilly wants to see them."
There was a pause before more Italian squawked through the speaker box, then, "Langford Reilly? Police?"
"Yes, si."
It was as if someone had been expecting him. The giant gates began to rumble open. By the time they had parted wide enough, two plainclothesmen and a uniform squeezed through.
Lang easily recognized Manicci. "I understand you're looking for me?"
Across the street, Jacob dialed a number on his cell phone and waited. Two rings later the call was answered. "Prego?"
"The grand master," Jacob said.
The voice switched to English. "How did you get this number?"
"That doesn't matter. Tell the grand master Lang Reilly wishes to speak with him."
Pause.
"Momento, just a moment."
The second voice came so quickly the grand master must have been in the room when the call came through. "Yes?"
Jacob pushed the button on his garage-door opener and winced.
Nothing.
Bloody hell! He had tested the tiny battery before he left London. He pushed the button again with the same lack of result.
"Hello?" The grand master was getting impatient. He wasn't going to hang on the line forever. If he left the room, the explosive device might not do the job.
Across the street, the policeman approached Lang.
"Ah, Mr. Reilly," the older of the two men in plain clothes said in accented English, "we are indeed looking for you. But I am curious, how did you know Inspector Manicci and I would be here?"
"Lucky guess."
The policeman nodded his head slightly. "Perhaps so. Will you be so kind as to step inside? We have much to talk about."
Lang took a step back. "If it is all the same to you, I'd rather talk out here."
Another nod, this time to the uniformed officer. Arms reached around Lang, pulling his hands behind him.
"I regret we cannot accommodate you, Mr. Reilly," the older inspector said. "But I'm sure you understand."
Lang was shoved toward the open gate.
Jacob looked at the device in his hand as though he could actually see it in the dark.
"Mr. Reilly?" the voice on the other end of the line asked.
"Reilly here. I think we might have something to talk about."
Stall, keep the man on the line before he hung up and left the room.
Jacob was holding the phone with one hand, fumbling with the door opener with the other. If the problem wasn't the battery, it must be the contact point. Blindly, his fingers searched for the seam in the plastic casing. He thought he had found it when the thing slipped from his hand. It was pure luck it fell at his feet. It took only seconds to retrieve, but from what he saw across the street, there weren't any seconds to waste.
Lang shoved back. "Look, there's no reason we can't talk out here."
Delay, stall. Standard agency tactics. When things are going badly, make your opponent spend time he hadn't planned on. There's always the chance something will happen. In this case, Lang knew exactly what. But he couldn't figure out why it hadn't already. According to Jacob's announced plan, there should have been an explosion several minutes ago. Lang had a sinking feeling at the bottom of his stomach. Now was not the time for one of his friend's concoctions to fail.
"If you prefer," the older man said, "we can handcuff you and have you bodily carried to a proper place to ask you questions. The grand master has kindly consented to give us an office for the purpose."
Hardly good news.
At the moment, there were only three possibilities, none attractive: Either he would be inside the building when Jacob's contraption went off or he was about to meet the grand master himself. Or both. Lang doubted he would be greeted with anything resembling traditional hospitality.
"And what did you have in mind, Mr. Reilly?" the voice on Jacob's cell phone asked. "I'm not sure I know why you called."
"I think you have a bleeding good notion," Jacob said as he managed to insert a thumbnail into the seam between the two plastic parts of the door opener's plastic casing. Taking care not to drop it again, or dislodge the battery, he pried the two halves apart and blew gently. If condensation on the contact point had been the problem, that should take care of it. If not, Lang was in for a spot of bother.
"What's that you say?" The grand master's temper was getting shorter and shorter.
As slowly as he could manage, Lang let himself be pushed through the gates. The piazza was tastefully lit, hidden lights accenting a number of monuments as well as the facades of buildings. A double file of cypress trees were columns reaching into infinity. In the distance, Rome's lights sparkled like a handful of jewels.
He was being taken to the building he and Jacob had entered that morning.
"I said, we have something to talk about." Jacob fumbled in the dark, trying to get the two halves back together. Across the street, those formidable doors were beginning to swing shut.
He forced himself to take a deep breath. Somewhere there was a catch. He ran fingers made clumsy by anxiety around the edge, found the protruding piece of plastic.
With a snap, the device closed.
Lang and the police were less than fifty yards away from the building.
"Ah, Mr. Reilly?" A man was standing in the open door. "Then who is the grand master talking to ... ?"
He turned to dash inside.
"I'm curious how the grand master of the Knights of Malta knew who you were," one of the policemen said.
Lang wondered. Did the order's power reach into the police, too?
He would never know.
At that moment, night became day, a day with the light of a dozen suns. A wall of heat knocked Lang over as an explosion clapped silencing hands over his ears.
Groggy, he got to his knees, able to see only streaks of light as though someone had fired a flashbulb in his face. His ears felt pressure as if he were in a rapidly descending aircraft. The grip on his arms was gone. He could only guess at the direction of the way out of the piazza and stumbled that way.
Blurs of vision were returning as he reached the gates and squeezed through before they completely shut.
He felt a hand on his arm. "This way, lad!"
His last sight of the piazza was of blazing rubble where the building had been. The flames reflected from the windows of the nearby church. Not a one had been damaged. Then the gates clicked shut, sealing off pursuit.
Lang's sight and hearing had returned by the time they reached the bottom of the hill, just in time to hear the wail of fire trucks on the way. He turned and looked behind him to see a flickering glow that turned the Aventine into a contemporary Vesuvius. The curious, singly and in small groups, were already filling the street as they hurried uphill to see what had happened.
Minutes later, Lang and Jacob were on the metro again.
"You destroyed the entire building," Lang finally said in wonderment, "but I saw not even a crack in the church's windows."
Jacob was sucking on an empty pipe. Public transportation was one of the few places in Rome where smoking bans were actually enforced. "Better bomb than I thought. Artistry is not confined to painting and sculpture."
Lang believed him.
They got off at different stations, since the police, if the two inspectors reacted in time, would be looking for two men rather a single traveler. Jacob at Termini, where they had paid a porter to keep a watchful eye on their suitcases. Lang went on to Tiburtina, from where he would take an Appian Line bus to Venice, cross over into Slovenia and, eventually, to Vienna and a flight to Paris and then home.
XIV.
Excerpt from the next day's International Herald Tribune:
Explosion Rocks Rome Landmark
ROME—A building at the headquarters of the Order of St. James, internationally known as the Knights of Malta, was destroyed yesterday in a blast that killed the grand master and a nu
mber of full-time rank-and-file members.
The order's headquarters, known as a "priory," was filled with members visiting Rome for the every-fifth-year election of leadership and members of the supreme council. Fortunately, all the visiting members were attending a function at the Vatican at the time of the explosion or the casualty list would have been far greater, according to a spokesman for the order who declined to be identified.
Also unharmed were three members of Rome's police force who were on the premises at the time. The police declined to state why they were present.
The same spokesman for the order attributed the explosion to a leaking gas main.
The Order of St. James became known as the Knights of Malta ...
XV.
472 LaFayette Drive
Atlanta
A Month Later
Lang and Gurt stood on a grassy lawn, looking at the house. Lang thought it had vaguely Victorian lines; Gurt saw something slightly more contemporary. Either way, it was typical of Ansley Park, Atlanta's upscale, midtown neighborhood where mansions of frame and shingle were as common as Craftsman cottages. Built in the first decades of the last century, The Park, as it was known to its residents, featured towering oaks, winding streets, a number of parks and grassy squares and a small-town atmosphere. You always knew your neighbors and they always knew your business.
Lang had spent a lot of time at his sister's home only a short distance away. Janice and Jeff, her adopted son, had loved the area. Lang had often thought if he ever had a child of his own, this would be a good place to live. Now he had a son who had already made himself at home on the swing set in the backyard before the final papers had been signed.
The condominium at Park Place had sold for somewhat more than Lang had anticipated. The new buyer loved the fixtures, those that had actually been paid for and installed. The deliveries from Home Depot, as far as Lang knew, continued. Lang suspected the decline in the price of the company's stock might well be attributable to the sizable inventory overflowing Park Place's storage space. For certain, any needs for his future residence would be fulfilled by Sears, Lowe's or some other vendor that did not view itself as a cornucopia of unordered and unwanted merchandise.
