“I don’t give a damn if this is your church. You have ten seconds to get out of the way, or else we’ll get you out of the way. Is that clear?”
Infanti shouted the last phrase, and the line of riot cops moved toward the group, raising their shields. Colomba instinctively got between them, flashing her badge in the face of the highest-ranking officer there. “Down, boys. This isn’t helping,” she said.
The director of the mobile unit studied the badge, then studied Colomba. “You’re not in charge of this operation,” he said.
True. And I’m already doing the exact opposite of what I ought to be doing. “Your name is?”
“I’m Inspector Enea Antioco . . . Deputy Chief.”
“Well, Inspector Antioco, if you charge the crowd for no good reason, you’ll be in big trouble. Is that clear?”
Antioco reddened with anger to the tips of his ears, but he ordered his men to stop. Now there’s one more member of the club of cops who hates my guts, thought Colomba. She ordered the Amigos to stay with the Riot Police and caught up with Infanti. “Ciao, Carmine.”
“Deputy Chief Caselli?” he asked with the face of someone chewing a lemon, and a rotten one, to boot. There was a time when they’d been on a first-name basis, but that time was long gone. They walked a short distance away to be able to talk without shouting. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m putting up with all this. All right, so what’s going on?”
“You saw for yourself, they don’t want to let us in. I’m going to have to order my men to charge.”
“Where’s the cultural mediator?”
“There weren’t enough of them. We’re operating in an emergency situation, Deputy Chief. Which is why I’m going in now, and it’s just too bad if someone gets hurt.”
“Look, give me five minutes.” Without waiting for an answer, Colomba went over to the crowd and stopped a couple of feet away from the front row of protesters, then addressed the man in the brown suit right behind them. “Go tell the imam I want to speak to him.”
“There is no imam.”
Colomba took a step forward and gestured toward her own face. “Stop being a fool and get moving. I’m trying to prevent a real mess. Rafik knows me.”
The man said something in Arabic to those near him and vanished indoors. A few minutes later, the crowd in front of the door opened up, forming a narrow passageway through which came an old man with a kufi on his head and a large white djelabba blowing in the wind. He wore a gray beard and a pair of eyeglasses with enormous rims. He moved slowly, as if walking on a beach.
“Deputy Chief Caselli,” he said in perfect Italian when he was face-to-face with her. He didn’t look her in the eyes; he never did with women not wearing a veil.
“Imam Rafik.”
“There are no terrorists here. ISIS is our enemy, too.”
“Sure, but we still have to check, Imam. You know how it works.”
“You’ll have to convince them.” He pointed to the crowd. “I’m not their commander. I’m only their guide.”
Colomba pointed toward the ranks of the Riot Police. Behind them, she now saw men from the NOA, or anti-terrorism operational units, with ski masks on their faces and submachine guns in their hands. “You see them, Imam? I’m not their commander, either, and I’m having a very hard time holding them back. Do you really want one of your faithful to be badly hurt? I’m begging you. There are children here.”
The imam kept looking at some invisible point beyond Colomba’s left ear. “We don’t have anything to do with the train. Allah the All-Merciful condemns the killing of innocent people.”
“I believe you. But I still have to check.”
The imam gave her a sidelong glance—the most he would do—then nodded his approval.
Colomba went back to Infanti, who was smoking and fuming in a slow smoulder. “They’ll move. The imam will act as your guide.”
“About time,” he said, disgruntled.
“But I’m going in, too,” said Colomba. “The imam knows me, and I know the place.”
“I could ask you to leave, you know that?”
“Try it.”
Infanti didn’t try it. With 20/20 hindsight, it would have been better if he had.
7
First the special forces entered the center, then Infanti, Colomba, and the Amigos, leaving the Riot Police outside to do the brute labor of identifying all those present. The interior looked like a bar without alcoholic beverages and smelled of spices and bleach. There were a few wooden tables and a bar where glasses, water bottles, and a large teakettle stood. On the walls hung photographs of Arabic personalities and a flag with a crescent moon. The search continued without interference until they tried to go downstairs into the gymnasium and the imam took up a stance in front of the door. “You have to take your shoes off,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?” Infanti couldn’t believe his ears.
“Downstairs, it’s a mosque. You go into a mosque with bare feet.”
“Now I’m fucking sick and tired.” Infanti jerked the imam aside, and the man threw himself theatrically to the ground like a soccer player pretending to have been tripped, shouting as if someone were trying to slit his throat.
“Cut it out, you asshole!” Infanti barked. “I barely even touched you!”
The imam shouted even louder.
Before Colomba had a chance to calm him down, from outside she heard a cacophony of shouts in Arabic and Italian and a series of dull thuds.
Colomba ran to the window to look out. Twenty or so of the faithful were trying to get in, and the riot cops were blocking their way with billy clubs and shields. A young Arab fell to his knees, grabbing his head, and blood oozed out through his fingers. Others were on the ground, shielding their faces and legs with their hands, as small knots of policemen clubbed and kicked them. From farther off, a few people were throwing glass bottles that shattered against the riot cops’ helmets. Antioco ordered his men to charge, and everything turned into a welter of shouting and human beings hurting each other.
Colomba went running back to the imam, who had been bound with plastic handcuffs and was leaning against the wall, looking as if he could barely stay on his feet. A member of the NOA team tried to block her way, but she sidestepped him easily. “Make them stop immediately,” she told the imam.
“No shoes,” he said again.
“He wants to become a martyr,” said Guarneri behind her.
“Don’t you get started, too,” Colomba silenced him, doing her best to make herself heard above the ruckus.
Meanwhile, Infanti was struggling in vain to open the door to the gymnasium. It was wedged shut and made of metal, impossible to kick down. “Where’s the key?” he asked the imam, but the man didn’t even look up and started praying in a low voice.
“Blow the lock off this door,” Infanti said to the NOA men in exasperation. One of them radioed outside for the necessary equipment.
The shouting from outside was getting louder and louder. There was also the dull thump of teargas shells, and the pungent odor penetrated indoors, making everyone’s eyes itch and stream.
Suddenly, Colomba had an idea, and she assembled the Amigos. “Go get the shoe covers from the car,” she said.
Guarneri, who had understood, growled, “I’d rather hang that guy up by the beard, forget about shoe covers.”
“Don’t bust my balls, Guarneri. And don’t force them to beat you up.” Colomba’s temples were pulsating from her headache.
The Three Amigos went out the door and pushed through the crowd, returning a few minutes later, Alberti with one of the sleeves of his jacket torn.
“Took you long enough.”
“Do you have any idea what’s out there, Deputy Chief?” Guarneri asked, breathing hard and heavy.
She grabbed the cardboard box out of his hands and went back to the imam to wave it under his nose. “You see these? We’ll put them on; that way we won’t track in any dirt.”
The imam looked at the shoe covers mistrustfully. “Are they clean?”
“Don’t make me lose my temper, because I’m the only one here who’s not itching to dynamite the place.” Colomba grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the door. One of the NOA agents followed them, while Infanti and the others looked on in astonishment. “Now it’s your turn,” said Colomba, throwing open the door.
From outside, whiffs of teargas and muffled shouts came in, even though the view was blocked by the last line of riot officers. Antioco lowered the radio when he saw them. “What’s going on?”
“Tell your people to be good for a second,” said Colomba. Then she shoved the imam slightly. “Come on.”
“Take the handcuffs off.”
Colomba rolled her eyes and then used the switchblade to liberate him. “There.”
The imam rubbed his wrists. Then he raised his arms into the air and shouted in Arabic to the faithful clustering in front of the policemen’s shields. The din sharply quieted and then became the silence of the tomb. The imam spoke in a more normal tone of voice, silencing with imperious gestures the questions being shouted from the other direction. The crowd of the faithful stopped pressing forward.
“Be good boys now,” Colomba told Antioco before dragging the imam back inside and shutting the door behind her.
“I like your style, Deputy Chief,” said the NOA agent who had stayed by the door. He seemed to be amused.
Colomba could see only his blue eyes behind the ski mask, but he had a friendly voice. She smiled at him. “Let’s try and file this case away without kicking up any more dust.”
“I’ll let my partners outside know they won’t need the battering ram anymore.”
Colomba looked at the imam. “They won’t need it, will they?”
In response, he simply pulled a key out of a drawer behind the bar and opened the door to the cellar.
The police went down the stairs in their initial formation, the NOA agent taking the lead and the rest following, until they found themselves in a large rectangular room with tiny high windows at street level and a floor made of chipped, battered cement. The temperature was ten degrees cooler, and there was a stench of sweat and dampness. Along one wall, prayer rugs were piled up; on another wall, an arch decorated with miniature flowers and leaves had been painted: the mihrab, indicating the direction of Mecca. The room was empty.
“You see? Nothing there,” said the imam.
“Turn the place upside down,” said Infanti, smoke practically pouring out of his ears. The officers started moving furniture and pulling up floor mats.
“I know that you feel only contempt for our religion,” the imam said to Colomba.
She shrugged. “I’m not prejudiced. If anything, that’s what you feel toward women, it seems to me.”
“ ‘Do not give a woman power over you to trample on your dignity.’ ”
“That’s what I was saying.”
The imam smiled. “It’s the Bible, Deputy Chief, the Book of Sirach. There are fanatics in all religions. Even fanatics who have no religion, however strange that may seem to you.”
Colomba smiled in spite of herself. “I have a friend who would like you, Imam. He always wants to outsmart everyone, just like you.”
“We’re good here,” said the friendly NOA agent. “There’s no one to be found.”
Infanti walked over to the imam. “You know that I could shut this place down?” he snarled.
“Allah the Most Perfect will merely find another, better place for us, in His immense wisdom.”
Infanti shook his head in disgust and then gestured to the others, who filed out. Colomba stopped him. “It turned out all right, and that’s what matters.”
“It turned out all right for you. You humiliated me in front of the other men. To defend those people.”
“I wasn’t defending anyone.”
Infanti lit a cigarette. “You’ve changed, Deputy Chief.”
“Changed how?”
“What happened with the Father. It didn’t do you any good. And now you don’t think like one of us anymore.”
Colomba was too tired to go on arguing. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.
Infanti crushed his cigarette out against the wall, then flicked it into the center of the room with a sneer of contempt. “Agreed. It stinks like an old goat down here.”
Colomba looked at the cigarette butt, ashamed of her colleague’s behavior, then her gaze dropped to some gray marks on the floor. She cocked her head to see more clearly. “Infanti . . .” she said without taking her eyes off the floor.
“Why don’t you have your friend the imam pick it up, Deputy Chief.”
“Don’t be an ass.” Colomba pointed. “What does that look like to you?”
Infanti looked at it against the light. “Footprints?”
“Of someone wearing shoes.”
“So?”
“Who comes in here wearing shoes?” asked Colomba.
Infanti followed the tracks over to a wall where an old set of Swedish exercise bars hung, the only surviving piece of equipment from the gymnasium’s previous life. “Now, that’s strange,” he said, reaching through the horizontal bars toward a section of wall that looked smoother than the rest.
It was too late by the time Colomba realized what Infanti was doing. She shouted at him to stop, but Infanti had already given the wall a push. She heard a metallic sound, and a section of the wall swung on hinges, revealing a cubbyhole where something moved in the darkness.
“Carmine! Come away from there!”
He didn’t have time to move. The last thing he saw was the blinding flash from the muzzle of a twelve-gauge.
8
The shotgun that fired at Infanti was loaded with cartridges for hunting wild boar. Each shell contained nine oversize pellets capable of punching through three stacked planks of wood at point-blank range, leaving a blast hole the size of a dinner plate.
Three of the nine buckshot pellets went astray into empty air, and four more impacted the Kevlar plates of the bulletproof vest, discharging enough kinetic energy to knock Infanti a foot and a half backward. The last two pellets found flesh. The first one penetrated under the left cheekbone, knocking out three teeth and a piece of tongue. The second one found an unshielded area and drilled through the shoulder to the clavicle. Infanti was unconscious before he even hit the floor, leaving an arc of red drops as he fell.
Colomba desperately fumbled for a pistol that seemed to slip out of her grip as she extracted it. The shotgun fired again, this time in her direction, and she heard the pellets whizzing over her head: they slammed into the wall, kicking up puffs of plaster dust. She galloped toward one of the three columns at the center of the gymnasium as the sound of the gunshots continued to echo off the reinforced concrete walls. At that very instant, an Arab in his early twenties, wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of torn jeans, emerged shouting from the cubbyhole. The cubbyhole was an old vertical passageway where the main sewer line once ran, a yard deep and equally wide, where the man had been hiding ever since the police had surrounded the building. Pumping the shotgun, he loaded a fresh shell. Colomba was vulnerable and confused, her head ringing with the blasts, and she couldn’t seem to line up her shot. She was too far from the column to hope for that to protect her, too slow to fire. She felt like an insect trapped in honey, exposed, weighed down. And in spite of the distance, the barrel of the shotgun had become enormous. A black sun that was about to scorch her, engulf her.
About to kill her.
Oh, God.
At that instant Colomba realized for certain that she wouldn’t be able to do it in time. She was going to die in that lightless cellar that reeked of sweat and gunpowder, she was going to die because she had foolishly hurled herself headfirst into something she didn’t understand, into an unstoppable descent that began in a train full of corpses.
As she continued to strain to lift the pistol that moved through the air w
ith all the weight of the world, Colomba saw the other man’s fingers tighten on the trigger. She felt as if she could hear the clicks of the gearing as it transmitted the pressure of his fingers to the hammer and then to the firing pin and the primer at the base of the shell. She perceived the gunpowder as it took flame and the resulting gas expanded turbulently in the shell like a tiny cloud of fire. Then the shotgun barrel vanished, obscured by a shadow: it was the imam, shouting and waving his arms.
Colomba never would find out what the imam was saying—she recognized only the word la, Arabic for “no”—because the gas burst out of the barrel, driving before and dragging with it the pellets and smashing them into the imam’s body at twice the speed of sound. Unlike Colomba, the imam wore no protection against projectiles save that of his faith, which proved insufficient—at least in this world. All nine pellets tore through him between his chest and his lower belly, exiting through his spine. A second ago there had been an intact body in front of Colomba; a second later, a mass of meat disintegrating amid jets of blood.
In the meantime, Colomba’s pistol had completed its upward arc into firing position, and she fired. Her index finger moved so fast on the trigger that the twelve gunshots sounded like a single prolonged explosion. Colomba shouted as she fired and went on shouting as the young man with the shotgun staggered backward, shot in the chest and the face, and then fell against the wall with the sound of wet rags. He stayed glued to the wall for a brief second, then started to slide down it, pushed by his convulsions: his brain was in tatters, but his body’s organism continued to respond to the imperative of survival, the need for flight. Colomba kept pulling the trigger, though it was firing nothing now, without once taking her eyes off that body while it crumpled as if emptied of bones, as if it had become nothing more than a vaguely human-shaped container that was slowly deflating.
Colomba stopped shouting and recovered sufficiently to eject the clip from her pistol and slam home the spare clip, shifting her gaze to the hole behind the Swedish exercise bars, afraid that it might spew forth more armed assailants. But nothing moved, even as, out of the corner of her eye, Colomba saw the space around her transfigured. If she stared right at it, everything slipped away, but just a fraction of an inch outside her field of view, the gym was crawling with shadows and flames, silent screams, tables flying through the air, spinning like Frisbees.
Kill the Angel Page 4
