‘John? Who’s John?’ Is he the old man lying on the sofa?
‘John Doe. The one who saved us in the hospital.’
‘The one lying on the sofa?’
‘No, stupid. So you don’t know them? That one’s named James Phelps. He’s a man about town. The younger one who carries a gun and carried you upstairs.’
‘What did they ask you?’
‘Well, let’s say we reviewed my whole life from birth with more emphasis on last night. Truly therapeutic.’
He didn’t give the impression of having been pressured in any way. He was practically cheerful, smiling.
‘What’s funny?’
‘Who could be named John Doe?’ He laughed out loud.
‘Tea, coffee, milk?’ asked Rafael, who had entered the kitchen unnoticed. Simon’s laugh froze.
‘Coffee with milk.’ Sarah asked for one of her morning favorites.
Rafael quickly turned to a table where everything was ready. He took a cup he’d previously cleaned and rinsed and poured a little coffee in it. Then added milk. Slipped a plate underneath and carried it to the table, where he set it in front of Sarah. He passed the sugar, offered her a clean spoon, and then went to get a tray of chocolate and nut muffins, fresh scones, bread, butter cookies, orange juice, and some slices of York ham and cheese.
‘Where did all this come from?’ Sarah asked, curious and marveling over the delicacies.
‘From the bakery three buildings down on the other side of the street,’ Rafael answered. ‘It’s fresh.’
‘I can back that up. I’ve already tasted it, and I guarantee it,’ Simon added, feeling much better. Rafael’s presence didn’t seem to cause him any fear.
Rafael created a mixture of inexplicable feelings in Sarah. It was almost a year since she’d last seen him, as she never tired of reminding herself. She felt nervous fear and shivers in her stomach, but that could mean a lot of things. What really struck her was the idea that she’d always been with him during this period of time, never absent. Almost like friends in a café or pub who see each other almost every day.
Calm down. Think about it. Stop. He’s a priest.
‘We have to talk. I have a lot of questions that need answering … truthfully.’ She was trying to put her slippery thoughts out of her mind.
‘Eat your breakfast in peace, and then we’ll all have a talk,’ Rafael said calmly. ‘Ah, and if you look back and analyze everything that’s happened, you’ll see that I never said or did anything that wasn’t true.’ He got up and went out of the kitchen, leaving her with Simon and the banquet ready to be devoured.
Sarah didn’t think about the food, but about his words. She was sure that what he’d said was true. He’d never lied. Perhaps he left something out when he felt he shouldn’t be the one to give her certain information, but that was far from lying. He was right. She’d probably been too hard on him.
Simon got up and grabbed some clean silverware.
‘I think I’m going to help. That’s a lot of food for you, and you’re not going to finish it.’
‘He carried me to the bedroom?’ Sarah wanted to know, picking at a delicious-looking chocolate muffin.
‘In his arms,’ Simon said mischievously with a scone stuffed in his mouth. ‘Don’t you remember?’
No, she thought, but didn’t say so. ‘I have a vague impression.’
‘And now, what’s the next step?’ He could barely get the words out of his stuffed mouth.
‘Don’t think about that,’ Sarah warned, sipping the coffee Rafael had prepared for her, prompting a slight smile.
Simon laughed and made her blush.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, a little upset. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked again when he didn’t answer.
‘The two of you aren’t fooling anyone,’ Simon finally answered.
‘Who?’ She wasn’t good at acting as if she didn’t understand.
‘You and John?’ Another chuckle.
‘Come on!’ Sarah rolled her eyes.
‘Good morning,’ a friendly voice greeted them. Phelps’s peaceful theological studies didn’t agree with this rebellious life his clerical destiny had led him into.
‘Good morning,’ Sarah and Simon answered in unison, as required by good manners.
‘Did you sleep well?’ Simon asked.
‘Sort of. Although actually that sofa needs some fixing up. Those springs …’ Phelps complained, rubbing his sore back. ‘But anyone with a roof over his head to shelter him shouldn’t complain. Right?’
‘Sounds like a priest talking,’ Simon joked while chewing away on the food.
‘Don’t go,’ Sarah said. ‘There’s food for one more. Sit down,’ she invited him in a friendly way.
‘Ah, thank you,’ he acknowledged, sitting down at their side. ‘The truth is I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten for hours.’ He didn’t tell them it had been more than a day since he’d put anything in his mouth.
‘There are scones, bread, butter, cheese …’ While she was talking, Sarah passed them to Phelps, who still didn’t find what he was looking for. ‘Do you want some milk, coffee, tea?’
‘Tea, please.’
‘Good choice. It’s still hot.’ She poured a little into a cup. ‘I’m Sarah,’ she introduced herself.
‘James Phelps.’ He got up and offered his hand formally. ‘Nice to meet you.’
Sarah got up, too, and held out her hand. She wouldn’t leave him there with his hand in the air.
‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Yesterday was hard,’ Phelps said in an awkward attempt at generating polite conversation.
‘If you two hadn’t appeared just in time, my mother would’ve been very unhappy,’ Simon said convincingly as he joined the conversation.
‘How do you know Rafael?’ the older man asked politely, sipping a little tea and taking a small bite of a scone.
‘I don’t know anyone by that name,’ Simon replied immediately without thinking.
‘It’s a long story, James. Excuse me, can I call you James?’
‘Of course, Sarah,’ he agreed.
‘Who is Rafael?’ Simon persisted without understanding.
‘I would be delighted to know, if you want to tell me,’ Phelps continued, leaving it in Sarah’s hands and ignoring Simon’s question completely.
‘Later,’ Rafael interrupted from the doorway. ‘I see you’ve all met. Now it’s necessary to dot all the i’s and tell you your jobs.’
‘What jobs?’ Phelps and Sarah asked at the same time.
‘Do you think the danger has passed? This is only the beginning.’
42
Sarah and Rafael were late. They were due in Barnes’s office, ready for a not very cordial interrogation. That time had come and gone, and they didn’t show, except for himself, in the office. His solitude had been broken by brief visits from Staughton and Thompson reporting on the progress, which was nothing, and as the hours passed, that was worrisome. Priscilla had passed by to check on his physical state, and he’d asked her to bring him an order of roast pork with potatoes and oregano, the cravings of a body hungry for victory.
At that moment Herbert entered.
‘Don’t tell me they’ve found a hole to hide in?’
‘Don’t fuck around with me,’ Barnes shouted with irritation. ‘If you were better, you wouldn’t need to walk in our shadow to do your shitty job.’
‘Don’t doubt that if I were the one giving orders, I’d do it alone, with no help. You have hundreds of agents, and not one has managed to find them. As far as we know, they might have left the country.’
‘They haven’t left,’ Barnes insisted firmly.
‘How can you guarantee that?’ Herbert pressed, seeing Barnes worried.
‘My word is enough. They haven’t left the country. And I’ll tell you more. They’re still in the city.’
Even the younger man’s smile was without any feelings. More a grimace, livid, lifeless.
/> ‘You’re basing that on instinct, Mr. Barnes. You Americans are very fond of luck and destiny.’
‘This has nothing to do with luck. I know the suspects well,’ Barnes said. Besides, I know that he’s going to find a way to let us know when he leaves the country. He didn’t speak this thought. You’ve got to have an ace up your sleeve that others don’t know about, even if they’re associates.
Herbert raised his hands in the air as if to say that Barnes’s arguments were worthless, but if he wanted to believe them, fine.
‘I’ve got to inform my superior about the situation in half an hour. What am I going to say? That we haven’t expanded the radius of the search because you have a hunch?’
‘Fuck what you’re going to tell him. My men are doing their job. I don’t have the least doubt that any moment now they are going to come through that door with something solid. If you want to tell him, I don’t think we are going to have any news until nightfall. So prepare him and yourself. It’s going to be a long wait.’
‘Who’s the man who showed up at the hospital? This Rafael who seems to have upset you?’
Barnes paused thoughtfully before responding.
‘A traitor. He infiltrated P2 in order to destroy it from the inside and almost succeeded.’
‘He managed to deceive JC and the CIA?’ A sarcastic smile.
‘You’re in no position to laugh,’ Barnes warned, chastened. ‘For all I know he gave your men a good looking-over three times. They probably don’t even know what happened.’ He laughed in an offensive way that seemed not to affect the other. He congratulated himself, thinking that deep down Herbert must have been angered. Nobody could be so cool all the time.
The office door opened to let in Staughton and the pandemonium of noise from the Center for Operations. Closing the door behind him cut off the exterior noise, leaving a silent movie unfolding on the other side of the window, an agitation without meaning.
‘News?’ Barnes asked, leaning back in the chair to give his younger colleague an impression of calm and control.
‘We’re analyzing the images on CCTV, but it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. We can’t find any Mercedes with continental markings or the license plate in question. We see no bank transfers in the accounts of Sarah Monteiro or Simon Lloyd …’
Barnes laughed dryly.
‘What do you want? Everything tied up all nice and neat for you? It won’t be there.’
‘Where will it be then?’ Herbert asked maliciously.
‘Rest assured you’re dealing with someone who knows how we work. I get irritated, unhinged, fucked up, but we have to be rational.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘That he’s going to appear when and where it seems best to him.’
‘That’s not an option. There has to be a way to find them.’ For the first time a note of irritation could be detected in Herbert’s voice. Barnes was pleased and didn’t take long to show it.
‘We’re doing everything possible already,’ Staughton told him. ‘We have the CCTV on constant alert, not just in London, but over the entire country. All the police and border patrol have their photographs and know what to do if they’re spotted. MI6 is working with us.’
‘It’s okay they’re helping,’ Barnes interrupted. ‘I don’t much like their thinking about their own interests.’
‘There’s nothing else to do,’ Staughton declared.
‘What if we offer a reward?’ Herbert suggested.
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ Barnes protested. ‘Publicize the thing? Have the journalists and public opinion all over us? What do we gain from that?’
‘Catch them sooner. People will do anything for money.’
‘It might not be a bad idea,’ Staughton put in.
Barnes crossed his arms and looked skeptical.
‘We’ve identified the man who took Sarah and Simon to the van.’
That got the attention of Barnes and Herbert.
‘He’s named James Phelps, an English priest assigned to the Vatican.’
‘The what?’ Barnes grumbled. ‘Son of a bitch.’
The three were silent for a few seconds. In this profession everything was a question of strategic analysis. Deciding what route to take to get to a determined objective, speculating about what the others would do. The more facts they had to fill in the blanks, the more accurate their speculation. When there was little information, everything was guesswork and hunches. Trusting luck was not good, but sometimes one had no choice.
‘What if we leave the priest out and send out an advisory on just the others?’ Herbert tried again.
‘It won’t work,’ Barnes said. ‘The woman has an influential position at The Times. It’s only going to hurt us.’
More silence.
‘What time is Littel getting here?’ Barnes asked.
‘Two hours from now.’
Barnes sighed.
‘Very well. Two hours. Until then we won’t do anything. When he arrives, we’ll make a decision,’ he blustered again. ‘Get me something in the next two hours, Jerome. We’re not looking good with our friends in Opus Dei.’ He pointed in Herbert’s direction, who noticed his sardonic tone.
The door opened to let in Thompson.
‘We have news.’
‘Spit it out.’ Barnes jumped up.
‘Between five and six a Metropolitan policeman, returning to his house after his shift, saw a Mercedes of the same description as our alert enter the garage of a house on Clapham.’
‘What are we waiting for, gentlemen?’ Barnes asked as he grabbed his gun.
43
Mirella
May 7, 1983
At the age of sixteen the libido renewed itself every second that passed. The awakening of sensual, lustful feelings, satisfied with the simple stare of a longing male, avid for a contact that is never permitted. The first steps in the art of seduction began, the looks, the signs one body sends to another, under control at this stage or not, affected by an urgent immaturity satisfied by a simple smile, an anxious voice greeting one from a distance, a compliment shouted from a Lambretta that made one blush secretly, the more direct the better, a furtive touch, without delicacy, on a buttock covered with a tight skirt. Triumph was an invitation to go out, or a kiss on the mouth, with or without the tongue, according to what she wanted – it’s always she who asks – or, the gold medal, an invitation to dinner with an older man. Not with just any twenty-year-old student, studying architecture or law, which would also be a victory, but with a man turning thirty-seven or forty, with a car, house, settled life, perhaps divorced, in fact separated, one or two children he doesn’t bother to mention, desiring the new feeling of a younger woman, a woman capable of turning the clock back to former years of passion.
Mirella looked at herself in the mirror for the umpteenth time. One couldn’t run risks in an encounter of this kind. Any error was harmful, able to shake the confidence of an adolescent who considered herself an adult. Of course she wasn’t actually thinking of these technicalities. She acted with an instinct for self-preservation humans can’t escape no matter how intelligent they consider themselves.
Obviously, when she was sixteen, her parents were not going to permit a candlelit romantic dinner, as she imagined, with a man old enough to be her father, enchanted with her femininity, ready to smother her with expensive presents and endless gallantries. So she’d accepted his suggestion to tell her parents she was staying with an old friend from school. That way no suspicions were aroused. Not to do that invited a serious paternal interrogation that would conclude with a prohibition without appeal, tears on Mirella’s part, locking herself in her bedroom for hours lamenting her bad luck and cursing her bad parents, and a long face for days until she found a new source of diversion to make her forget the previous one. But none of that was necessary.
‘Where are you going to eat?’ asked her mother, who had just come in the bedroom where Mirella, elegant and beautiful, wa
s admiring herself in the mirror.
‘At Campo dei Fiori. I still don’t know where,’ Mirella replied without taking her eyes off what looked like the inopportune beginning of a pimple on her chin. ‘What a bother. It’s starting to look red.’
It was one of the dramas of adolescence. Certain bodily assaults one couldn’t foresee or avoid.
‘Pay no attention to it. He’ll have a lot also.’
‘It looks really bad,’ Mirella protested.
Her mother took her chin and turned her face toward her, like an object she owned, which was somewhat true, according to her point of view. She examined the irritated skin of her daughter’s face with a maternal expression. A small red spot could be made out on the right side of her chin, nothing serious.
‘This is nothing. It’s going to take some time before it breaks out,’ her mother declared. ‘You’ve got to learn to live with those.’
‘What did you do to get rid of pimples?’ Mirella asked, interested in the magical formula that, at times, mothers seem to possess.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ her mother answered. ‘Someday you’ll do the same,’ she finished with a smile.
The wise words of a mother or father, not always so wise, fall on deaf ears in anything related to the dramas of surviving puberty. Someday would Mirella stop worrying about the infamous pimples that broke out on her face just before her period? Never. Naturally, she wasn’t, at the moment, in possession of all the information about what her future life would be, no one is, it’s the rules of the game. If she were, she’d know that she’d never have to worry again about cutaneous eruptions, menstruation, classes, excuses, sensual seductions, joking, libidinous thoughts, worrying about conquests, feeling admired, the erections that her simple presence provoked, the calculated, suggestive smile, dinner with older men, her parents … or her life.
It was almost time, and Mirella went to the window to see if his car was already waiting there. She flashed a fascinating smile when she saw him there. He’d arrived five minutes early. A good sign. Romans were not punctual in any way. It was their style to arrive late for everything. Fifteen minutes to a half-hour didn’t seem bad to anyone.
The Holy Assassin Page 23
