by Kai Meyer
“It’s a myth. Probably. But I’ve used that drug on myself, more than once. It stops the transformation for fifteen or twenty minutes. I even had a couple of doses with me in the States.”
Resigned, she shook her head. “And what about Iole? When he mentioned a hunt, did he really mean—”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t see fit to mention this to me?”
He angrily stepped on the gas. “What do you think I should have said? ‘Oh, and by the way, when a new capo takes over as head of the family, tradition says we spend a night hunting human beings?’”
Speechless, she stared at him.
“As it happens, I wouldn’t have had to do it myself,” he went on, “because I’m my father’s heir. If a capo dies and is succeeded by his son, there’s mourning and not a celebration. But if someone else, someone who isn’t a direct heir, takes over as boss, then that’s a victory guaranteeing him and his supporters prosperity for many generations—and that is something to celebrate.”
“And this celebration,” she said tonelessly, “means that the Carnevares go hunting human beings? Hunting and killing a fifteen-year-old girl who’s been through more than we can even imagine? Is that what your family calls a celebration, for God’s sake?”
“I didn’t make the rules.”
“But you don’t question them.” She gave an angry snort. “And you accuse me of not trusting you!”
His knuckles on the wheel were white; blue veins showed on the backs of his hands. “I’ve always told you the truth about everything.”
“But this is about what you didn’t tell me,” she replied forcefully. Then, after a moment, she asked, “How much time do we have left?”
“There’ll be an election. The highest-ranking members of the clan will gather to vote. Then, afterward, there’ll be a ceremony in which Cesare takes his oath as the new capo. All that will take a little time, particularly if he wants to convince the tribunal first that you’re to blame for Tano’s death.”
“When will they kill Iole?”
“The hunt comes right after the swearing in of the capo. In two days’ time, I should think.”
“Not any sooner?”
He brought his hand down on the wheel so hard that the car swerved. “How the hell can I know for sure?” They were both ashen-faced as he got the Mercedes back under control. More quietly, he added, “I don’t think he can manage to discredit me with all the others any earlier.”
“Discredit you because you protected me?”
He nodded. “Iole ought to be safe until then.”
“And you have no idea where they’ll take her?”
He shook his head. “Cesare’s obviously hunted humans on Isola Luna before. That’s why the animals were kept there—he used to enjoy hunting side by side with real lions and tigers.”
Rosa uttered a sound of disgust. “So maybe he’ll decide to go there again.”
“I don’t think so. The capi of other clans are usually invited to a swearing-in ceremony, and they all distrust one another so much, they’d never follow someone like Cesare to a remote offshore island. No, I think he’s picked somewhere on Sicily. I just have to find out where. If I know where the hunt’s going to take place, I can try getting Iole out.”
“By yourself?”
“It’s enough for one of us to risk life and limb.”
“We need help.”
“From the other clans? Forget it.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Who from, then? Your aunt?”
She shook her head. She didn’t even know where Florinda was. And Zoe? It was best not to think about it. She could cope well enough with the risk, not nearly so well with anxiety.
“Well?” he asked.
The road ahead led straight into the sunrise.
“Take me to Catania,” she said again.
An hour later they left the expressway and were racing through ugly industrial estates to the city center, when Alessandro noticed that they were being followed. Rosa was as unsurprised as he was. Cesare had let them go—probably to avoid any eventual accusations that he had anticipated the decision of the Arcadian tribunal—but he was no fool. He had clearly told his people to put her and Alessandro under surveillance.
But it took Alessandro less than ten minutes to shake off the other car in the dense rush-hour traffic.
“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.
“Manhattan. I used to drive down to the city from the Hudson Valley, with a couple of other guys.” He didn’t have to say just what kind of pursuer he had shaken off in the chaotic traffic of the streets of New York. She was sure that he, too, had had plenty of experience with police questioning.
“You made it look easy,” she commented as he glanced in the rearview mirror again, and she saw his frown clear.
“That wasn’t all.”
“You mean there are more of them after us?”
He shook his head. “I’ll bet this car is crammed to the roof with tracking devices.”
“Wonderful.”
“Not to mention it’s probably bugged.”
“They’re listening in on us?”
“No.” He fished his key ring out of his pocket with his right hand. It clinked as he waved it in the air. Among the dangling keys, there was a small silver rectangle. In other circumstances she would have thought it was a lucky charm, or maybe a memory stick.
“Is that a jammer?”
He nodded.
“Where did you get that, Mr. Bond? From Q?”
“From eBay.” His smile was almost cheerful. “All they can hear is distorted noise and static.”
She pointed to his pockets. “Any more secret weapons I ought to know about in there?”
He smiled. “Just tell me where we’re going.”
She gave him the name of the street, but not the number of the building. “Drop me somewhere near there. I’ll go the rest of the way on my own.”
“What are you planning?”
“The less you know, the b—”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, Rosa.”
“It’s enough for one of us … and so on.”
He looked at her in annoyance and programmed the GPS with one hand. “You don’t trust me an inch—but you want me to trust you.”
“That’s because I’m honest.”
She avoided his eyes when the light turned red, and he stopped and looked at her. “Once again: I didn’t lie to you. I truly thought Iole would be safe there. How could I have guessed that—”
“Green.”
He sighed, and drove on. “I’ll find out where they’ve taken her. Cesare won’t pick a place he doesn’t know. If he’s really going to invite other capi to join in, he’ll want to play it safe. He has to know his way around wherever she is.”
Now they were driving down the winding streets of the city center, past tiny supermarkets, with wooden pallets outside stacked high with condensation-covered bottles of water. Past drugstores with barred windows. Past teens on motor scooters. Past bars with the inevitable old men sitting on plastic chairs outside their doors.
The woman’s voice on the GPS announced that they had now reached their destination. Rosa pointed to a street sign high on the corner of a building, among a tangle of power and telephone lines that ran together up there.
“I’ll get out here,” she said.
Reluctantly, he pulled over by the sidewalk. His eyes scanned the facades in vain for some kind of clue. “Are you quite sure? First you were dead set on going to your family, then you changed your mind. What suddenly seemed so important?”
“We need someone to help us. Not just because of Iole, also because of Zoe and Florinda. You know as well as I do that Cesare will never leave us in peace, whatever that tribunal decides.”
He scrutinized her, and she realized that he guessed her plan, had maybe guessed it all along. “If this is what I’m afraid it is, then you’re on the verge of doing so
mething massively stupid.”
“Better stupid than dead.” She opened the car door and swung one leg out. Her metal-studded boot crunched a piece of broken glass.
“I’m coming with you,” he said.
“No. If you do that, you’ll lose the rest of your supporters.”
“You think that would change anything? Maybe it’s better if I look after you.”
“It’s important for me to go alone. Trust me.”
He said nothing, but returned her look with anxiety in his eyes.
“This photo,” she said. “You want to know what it’s all about, too. Where it was taken.”
“You really think that’s the key?”
Rosa took the picture out of her pocket. “Maybe this is proof that our families didn’t always hate each other.”
“It’s only a statue, Rosa. Some ancient artifact down on the sea floor.” But his expression said something else. He seemed uneasy and at the same time hopeful, as if the picture of the panther and the snake had touched him, too, far more than he wanted to admit. “We don’t even know how old it is. Or where the Dallamanos took the photo.”
“That’s exactly what I want to find out.” She put it away again, trying to summon up a smile, but unsuccessfully. “I’ll call you when I’m through here.”
His gaze lingered on her. “Promise?”
She nodded, and was going to get out, but then thought better of it. Her eyes were burning. Her heart was beating much too fast. She brought her leg back into the car, took his face between her hands, and kissed him hard. His arm came around her waist.
When she took her lips off his, he was smiling with a bittersweet determination that almost made her waver in her own decision.
“Okay,” she said, briefly returning his smile. “I have to get going now.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.” With a lump in her throat, she moved out of his embrace and slid into the open air. On the sidewalk, she bent down to him once again. “See you soon,” she said.
“Take care of yourself.”
“You too.”
He shifted the car into gear, but never took his eyes off her. Rosa closed the door, stepped back, and collided with an overflowing garbage container. When she turned to look at the street again, the Mercedes had already threaded its way into the traffic.
She took a deep breath, got her bearings from the nearest building number, and started walking.
The lookout man was leaning with his arms crossed in the graffiti-sprayed entrance to a stairway, next to a dilapidated pet supply store. She felt uncomfortable at the sight of the animal cages behind the grubby window.
“Signorina Alcantara,” he greeted her.
She nodded to him.
“Come in,” said another figure, standing in the shadows behind Antonio Festa.
Rosa’s eyes narrowed. Stefania Moranelli smiled at her. “The judge is expecting you.”
THE PACT
“YOU NEED HELP,” said Judge Quattrini. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have come to us. You weren’t too cooperative last time we met.”
Rosa crossed her legs. She was sitting on a chair opposite the judge’s desk, and could sense the eyes of the two bodyguards fixed on her back. Festa and Moranelli were leaning against the wall behind her. She was sure they had chosen that position on purpose to unnerve her. The whole thing was just like all the other interrogations she’d undergone. She had hoped to handle the situation better this time.
“Let’s get one thing clear right away,” she said. “I’m not telling you anything about Alessandro Carnevare.”
The judge ran her fingers through her short hair. Its color was fading, and gray roots showed at her hairline. She wore the same clothes she had at that hotel in Rome: beige slacks and a brown sweater. Rosa supposed that Quattrini had a whole wardrobe full of them, or maybe just a traveling bag: the same outfit a dozen times over.
“So what do you want?” asked the judge, as she perched on the edge of the desk opposite Rosa. She was a small woman, and the tips of her toes barely touched the floor. “Why did you call me?”
Rosa had been racking her brain for an answer to that very question. What should she say about Cesare and Iole? Or about her own family? It intrigued her to realize that she didn’t feel like a traitor, although she had just committed what, to the Mafiosi, was a mortal sin. In the annals of Cosa Nostra, thousands had been executed for that same offense, shot in the neck or stabbed before their bodies were sunk in water, cast in concrete, or dissolved in vats of acid.
This was a high-stakes game, she knew. If she wanted to get any information from the judge, she would have to offer something substantial in return.
“Out there in the city,” said Quattrini, “there are probably half a dozen young men, no older than you, who have orders from their capi to shoot me or blow me up with a bomb. We have a whole series of safe houses like this apartment, hideouts where we manage our operations and take shelter from the vengeance of the clans. But first and foremost, they’re exactly that: hideouts—and who likes to hide behind drawn curtains, with a fake nameplate by the doorbell? Second, there aren’t so many that we can afford to lose one for no good reason. But that is exactly what we’ll have to do when you leave. Because although I trust you enough to ask you to come here, I don’t know whether someone might be able to force you to give this address away later.” The judge sighed quietly. “What I am saying is this: You’re costing me one of my safe houses, and whatever you have to say had better be worth that loss. So don’t waste our time with whatever fictional story you were about to tell me. Why are you here, Rosa?”
“You say you trust me. Why?”
“I know your records from the United States. I’ve read the transcripts of your interrogations more than once—and the files dealing with your mother, your sister, and your father. I know your previous history.” She let that sink in, as if making sure that Rosa thought about it. “You were not a straightforward child, and these days you’re really complicated. And guess what? I like that. Not because I have a weakness for rebellious seventeen-year-olds, but because most of the Cosa Nostra girls I’ve dealt with are half-wits. But you, Rosa, are unusual. And the young man you don’t want to talk about is also unusual. Except that he’s planning something, and it would be extremely foolish to trust him while he’s devoting all his efforts to becoming the next capo of the Carnevares.”
Rosa smiled mirthlessly. “Go ahead, try manipulating me—it won’t work.”
Behind her, Stefania Moranelli took a step forward.
“Why are you here?” Quattrini asked again.
Rosa pulled herself together. “I want to talk to one of your Mafia witnesses, a man who turned state’s evidence and has been living under your witness protection program for the last six years. In return I’ll give you information about my aunt Florinda Alcantara’s business affairs.”
Quattrini laughed. “You know nothing about her business affairs. Certainly no more than I do.”
“But unlike you, I can get into Florinda’s study without permission from Rome, pack a bag with her files, or copy documents and smuggle them out of the house.”
“You’d do that?”
Rosa nodded. “Or simply answer your questions if I can. As long as they’re not about Alessandro.”
“How do I know you won’t tell me a pack of lies? Or that Florinda didn’t send you here herself to palm me off with a set of forged documents?”
Rosa smiled coldly. “If you thought that was a possibility, you wouldn’t have given me this address.”
Antonio Festa gave a little laugh, earning a dark look from the judge.
“I know I’m asking you for the impossible,” Rosa went on. “I also know what witness protection means. False names, new faces. And I know you’d be crazy to give the niece of a Mafia boss access to someone like that.”
Now even the judge was smiling, which worried Rosa more than her earlier impatience. “Who is it we’re
we talking about?” asked Quattrini.
“Augusto Dallamano.”
“Why him?”
“That’s my business.”
“As far as I know, the Alcantaras and the Dallamanos have never had any—” She stopped short, and her face cleared. “You’re doing this for the boy? He didn’t send you here, did he?”
Rosa kept her face expressionless. “You really don’t know anything about me.”
The judge got off the edge of the desk, went over to one of the windows, and pushed the curtain back a little way. At once Moranelli hurried over to her, one hand on the gun in her shoulder holster. With an abrupt gesture, Quattrini sent her back to her place.
“Do you like cats?” she asked, looking at Rosa.
“They’re okay.”
“I love cats. I really do. If I still had a house and a family, the place would be full of cats. Over the course of all the ops I’ve carried out these last few years—pursuing criminals, taking flight a couple of times—I’ve run over seventeen of them. Seventeen cats, Rosa. And those are only the ones I counted. That brief shock when the tires catch them, or the noise when they rebound off the hood of the car. And do you know what? I didn’t feel sorry about a single one. Because they died for something I believe in. The struggle against the Mafia. For victory over your family and all the others. For an Italy where no one will have to live in fear anymore.”
“I don’t give a shit about Italy,” said Rosa.
“Then why are you here?” The judge sounded neither offended nor impressed. “You feel it too, Rosa. Don’t tell me it’s just your grief for your child. Or Alessandro Carnevare. There’s something more keeping you in Sicily. There’s no place like it.”
She let the curtain fall back, sat in the chair at her desk, leaned forward and looked intently at Rosa over interlaced fingers. “They laugh at us in other countries. When foreigners come here, they’re only interested in where to find the cleanest beaches, the best restaurants, the most chic boutiques. They laugh at us because the country is ruled by cynics, most of whom have been charged with fraud or tax evasion or cooperating with the Mafia. Because our judges can be bribed, and every few years there’s an amnesty on a grand scale, and the worst criminals are let out of prison and claim compensation. Men I’ve hunted down and seen convicted. Others laugh at us because our politicians laugh at us themselves. Because they pass laws preventing me from questioning families like yours and placing most of the evidence I have against you before a court. Laws that won’t allow me to search your houses and properties unless one of you has gone so far as to shoot the prime minister. And that’s not all. Other countries laugh at us because a nude model can get appointed minister of equal opportunities, while the police close down harmless sex shops. Because our politicians may stand in line to kiss the Holy Father’s hand in the Vatican, but at the same time there are seventy offenders with previous convictions sitting in Parliament.” The judge took a deep breath. Her forehead was glistening with sweat. “All that is part of Italy. And although other countries may laugh at it—I think it’s a country worth fighting for, all the same. I think it’s worth all the deaths, and the poor damn cats I hit with my car. And if you think otherwise, Rosa, then you can get out of here, and never call me again.” She leaned even farther across the desk. “But if you think that I’m right, at least to some extent, if you admit that within a few days of arriving you’d fallen head over heels in love with this country, then you can stay and talk to me.”
