by David Hewson
Teresa Lupo sat outside a cafe. She looked at him and tugged her thick coat around her, then sipped at a cup of something that steamed in the cold, dry air.
Costa stopped by her table and scanned the square. It was almost deserted.
“Did it work?” she asked.
“I believe it did,” he answered. “And one day you’re going to have to tell me how.”
“Just some predictable pleas and threats.” She sighed. “I’m not really cut out for this, Nic.”
Just for a moment he smiled. “You could have fooled me. Here.” He threw the file on the table. “Keep it safe.”
She glanced at the folder, opened it, flicked through the sheaf of papers, each with the SISDE log on top, each marked “secret.”
“Oh my,” she said softly. “Are we in deep now?”
“Keep the faith,” Costa said and walked on, to the far side of the square, and waited a good two minutes.
Then the phone rang and he heard Kaspar’s now familiar voice.
“You got good people, Costa. I like this. So where are you going?”
“Piazza Sant‘ Ignazio,” Costa said.
“Good. I guess you really are who you say you are. But just to be safe I’ll send you someplace else—”
“Time!” Costa yelled.
“Walk fast, brother. Via Metastasio. You know it?”
“Of course!”
“Good. Look for someone dressed just like Little Em. Big parka, hood tight up to the face. I’m not taking any chances.”
“Sure.”
The line didn’t go dead. “You didn’t ask.”
“Ask what?” Costa wondered.
“Whether I’d really stick to the deal.”
“What’s the point?” Costa asked. “You’re going to do what you’re going to do, aren’t you?”
“Of course, Mr. Costa,” Kaspar said, laughing.
It was just a sound on the cold, thin wind. But Nic Costa could have sworn that Kaspar had let his guard down at that instant. Some real snatch of his voice had carried into the square from nearby. If only…
He pushed the idea from his head. He wasn’t up to taking on William F. Kaspar. None of them were.
“I’m sorry I interrupted you last night,” the voice said. “She’s an interesting kid. Much more so than her dad.”
“If she dies, Kaspar…”
The man seemed offended. “If she dies, I’d say you’ve really fouled up. Now go.”
Nic Costa strode rapidly through the narrow back streets, hands thrust deep into his pockets, thrashing through the slush.
He looked at his watch. There were twenty minutes left before the deadline ran out. Fifteen, by the time he got back. Hopefully accompanied.
Trying to kick the doubts out of his head, to convince himself there really was no other way, Costa looked ahead.
He was there, just as promised. Wrapped tightly in a parka that was identical to Emily’s, bulky underneath with the same kind of deadly gear.
Nic Costa walked up and said, “Let’s go.”
There wasn’t an answer. He hadn’t expected one. There wasn’t even an expression Costa could read. The hood was pulled tightly over his head, so that all the world could see was a couple of bright, intense slits for eyes, so narrow it was hard to gauge whether there was any expression there at all.
The two of them set off down the street in silence, walked into the square and ascended the low steps in front of the Pantheon, where Costa called to Leo Falcone and waited for the bronze gates to open.
TWENTY METRES AWAY, shivering from the increasing cold, Teresa Lupo gulped down the last of her cappuccino, watched them go inside and pulled out a phone. She had to think about the number. It wasn’t one an employee of the state police was used to dialling.
They took an age to answer.
“Typical,” Teresa whispered to herself.
Then a jaded male voice came on the line. “Carabinieri.”
Even on the phone they sounded like pricks. “I don’t know if I’m calling the right number, Officer,” she said, trying to act as stupid as possible.
“What do you want?” the bored voice sighed.
“You see, the problem is, I could be imagining this. But I swear I just saw a policeman—a state policeman—getting frog-marched into the Pantheon by some man with a gun in his hand. And the place is closed too. All shut up. When it should be open. That’s not right, now, is it?”
“You saw what?”
She couldn’t believe she had to repeat herself. At least the idiot went quiet when she did, adding a very few details for verisimilitude along the way.
“The thing is,” she added, “it was a police officer. I suppose I shouldn’t be calling you really. I suppose I ought to call them.”
Some slow-burning spark of intelligence began to glow on the other end of the line.
“We’ll deal with it,” the man said. “The Pantheon?”
“Exactly.”
“And your name?”
She took a good look around her, pulled the phone away from her face, made a bunch of the most disgusting noises she could think of straight down into the mouthpiece.
“Sorry,” she shrieked, holding the thing away from her face, “you’re breaking up on me now…”
And hit the off button. They had ways of tracing you, even when you withheld your number. Besides, Teresa reasoned, she didn’t need the phone anymore. She just had to wait until those big bronze doors opened.
“Hate waiting,” she murmured, then dashed back into the cafe for another cappuccino before returning to her cold and solitary chair by the cheery stone dolphins.
IT WAS LEAPMAN by the doors, trying not to look triumphant. Costa came in behind the figure in the huge parka, watched him shuffle to the centre of the room, heard the huge door close behind them.
“Nice work,” the American murmured, thumping Costa on the back, then striding to catch up with the parka.
“You’re welcome,” Costa replied and stealthily slipped his hand into his pocket, retrieved the pistol, holding it low and hidden by his waist.
The jacketed figure came to a halt in front of the group in the centre of the building: Viale and the two Americans, now joined on either side by Falcone and Peroni.
“Bill Kaspar,” Leapman murmured, no mean measure of respect in his voice. “What a man. You just walk right in here, bold as brass, like you promised. You read that stuff, huh? You happy now? I hope so, Kaspar. Because we’ve been waiting for this moment a long, long time.”
Leapman’s hand came up to the parka hood, a big service revolver in it.
“So you just unwire yourself and the infant here. No tricks. Nothing. We’ve kept to our part of the deal. Indulge us in a discussion and then we’ll be taking you home.”
The only part of the man that was moving was his head, swaying from side to side, as if he were trying to shake something away.
“It’s not as simple as that.”
Leapman blinked, lowered the gun for a moment, turned and glowered at Emily Deacon as if her words were some impudent intrusion into his day. “What?”
“She said,” Costa muttered into his ear, letting the barrel of his own weapon slide with some deliberate menace onto Leapman’s cheek, “it’s not as simple as that. I’m taking your weapon, Agent Leapman.” He glanced at the others. “And the rest of you.”
“What the—?” Leapman yelled, letting the pistol fall into Costa’s grip even as he did so. “Jesus, Falcone—”
To the American’s fury, Falcone and Peroni were relieving his agents of their guns too, with a careful, professional attention that didn’t brook any resistance.
Falcone pocketed Friedricksen’s piece and watched Peroni do the same for his partner. “You’re making too much noise, Leapman,” Falcone replied. “Stop yelling and start listening.”
Then he looked at Viale. “You?”
The SISDE man was flushed with outrage, even under the grey afternoon light. Hi
s gloved hands waved at them in anger. “This is insane. What on earth do you think you’re doing?”
He pulled out his phone and started stabbing at the keys.
“Peroni!” Falcone ordered.
The big man was over in two strides, relieving Viale of the phone.
“Check him,” Falcone barked. “He probably thinks he’s too far up the damn ladder to carry a gun but I’d like to know.”
Viale held his arms loose at his side as Peroni gave him a none-too-delicate frisk. “You three are really at the end of the road, you know. You can’t fuck with people like me, Falcone. I’ll crucify you, I swear it.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Peroni grumbled. “Clean,” he announced. “I guess he expects others to do his dirty work for him. Foul mouth, though. If I hear much more, I’ll have to do something about that.”
“As good as dead!” Viale yelled. “All of you!”
Peroni stood very close in front of him and looked down into the SISDE man’s apoplectic face and said, very slowly, in that tone Costa instantly recognized, the one that could silence the meanest street hood: “Now be a good boy and shut the fuck up.”
“Later,” Viale spat, but fell silent. Peroni pushed him up to the silent, resentful Americans.
“So, Miss Deacon?” Falcone said. “Where do we go from here?”
“Straight to the point.” She got up, faced the figure in the parka, and tugged down the hood, exposing the shaking head, then ripped the fat slice of shiny metallic duct tape straight from the man’s lower face.
Thornton Fielding screamed with pain, shot his fingers to his mouth, pulled them away, astonished, then stared at the small assembly of people in front of him as if he’d just woken up from a bad dream, only to find himself slap bang in the middle of another one.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” Fielding yelled. He was looking in horror at the vest strapped to his chest, with its yellow canisters and loom of wires. “Are you serious, Leapman? What the hell is this? Get it off of me. Now!”
Nic Costa was watching the expression on Leapman’s face all along, wondering. There was nothing there but shock and surprise. Leapman screwed up his eyes and turned to Falcone. “What is he doing here?”
“Talking,” Costa said, intervening. “If he wants to stay alive.”
Emily came up to close to Fielding, looked at his jacket, then at hers. “These are BLU-97 bomblets, Thornton. Adapted for the task, specially for the two of us. I watched Kaspar do it this morning. A cap detonator in each. Wired to a remote only he controls. He knows what he’s doing. Also”—she flipped the mike on her collar—“he can hear everything we say.” She nodded at Leapman. “If he doesn’t like what they do, I get to be the martyr. If he doesn’t like what he’s hearing from you—bang, it’s you. Or maybe both of us. Who knows?”
There was a cast of stark terror in Fielding’s eyes. “Sweet Jesus, what does that lunatic want from me?”
Emily stayed close. “The same thing I want, Thornton. Some answers. About what happened here in Rome, back in 1990. You do remember that, don’t you?”
He shook his grey head in astonishment. “What? What are you talking about? Listen…”
He looked at Leapman, then at Falcone, appealing to them. “This is the truth. I swear. One hour ago I’m at my desk in the embassy. I get some crazy e-mail from Emily here saying she was in big trouble with you guys somehow and I had to go to some place near the Corso right then.”
Leapman scowled at him, then at Costa. “She was here an hour ago. She couldn’t possibly have sent that.”
“It was internal!” Fielding screamed. “Came from her PC, goddammit! Made it sound like the world was falling in or something. Like it involved me, too.”
“That’s because it does, Thornton,” Emily said quietly.
“This is ridiculous,” he shouted.
Leapman walked up to Fielding, interested. “What happened?”
“I get there and some hulking lunatic in a uniform jumps me, drags me into an alley, puts this stuff on me, and says if I don’t wait where he says until some guy comes to fetch me I’m dead. And sticks that stinking tape over my mouth too. And that’s exactly where I stay until he”—Fielding pointed at Costa—“turns up.”
Costa got a withering glance from Leapman and smiled wanly in return.
“So what the hell is going on here, Joel?” Fielding demanded. “If this is one of those damn training exercises of yours—”
“It’s no exercise,” Leapman responded. “You were here? In Rome? In ‘90?”
“Sure!” Fielding yelled. “It’s no secret. It’s no secret why I’m still here either. I’m the resident queer, remember? I didn’t get moved around back then because I was a security risk. I don’t get moved around now because I’m part of the furniture. Big deal.”
“I didn’t know that,” Leapman said quietly.
“Get this crap off of me!” Fielding screeched.
Costa walked up, took a good look at him. “Can’t do that. Kaspar put it on you. He’s the only one who can take it off.”
Fielding’s face screwed up in disbelief. “You bastards sent me out to meet that lunatic?”
“Looks like it,” Leapman observed. “So where the hell is he now, Mr. Costa?”
“Search me.” Costa shrugged. “I just took the phone call. Could be anywhere in the vicinity from what we understand. He said that, unless he got some answers, he’d start setting those things off in”—Costa looked at the watch again—“a little under ten minutes. If you believe him, that is. What do you think, Mr. Fielding? Do you think he’s really capable of that?”
Fielding wasn’t playing this game. “I never met the man! Not till you tell me he just leapt out and put me in this crap. Joel—this isn’t going to look good on anyone’s record.”
Emily Deacon reached forward and touched one of the wires on Fielding’s vest. He jumped back like a man who’d had a sudden shock.
“He’ll do it, Thornton,” she insisted, “unless you talk. Now’s the time. We’re good listeners.”
“About what?”
“About the Babylon Sisters. About who was behind—”
“Jesus, Emily! I told you. I did everything I could. Didn’t you read what was there? Didn’t you get the message? Do I have to spell it out for you?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “You do.”
“Fine! All that crazy private army stuff was Kaspar and your old man’s idea. Dan was the boss. Kaspar was the soldier. Just a couple of old hippies with guns and a blank cheque from the CIA or someone. You wonder it all got screwed up?”
“No!” She was adamant. “You showed me what you wanted to, Thornton, and for a reason. It was nothing to do with me. It all was about protecting yourself.”
“This is insane. What the hell are you talking about?”
“You!” she yelled. “You were pulling the strings then, you’re still pulling them now. I couldn’t figure out why there was just one document left on the system when you let me in. Was that an accident? Of course not. It was the document that pointed straight to my dad, not to you. That was why you put it there. For me to find.”
“Joel? We need your men in here.” Fielding wasn’t budging. Costa thought of the minutes, ticking away, and wondered how long the unseen Kaspar would wait.
Emily Deacon stood directly beneath the oculus and allowed herself a glance through the eye above. “It’s about places, Thornton. That’s what Kasper’s been trying to work out for himself all along. Places like this. He and my dad used to meet here, talk things through. He told me so. But my dad was discussing that mission with someone else too. Someone in the Piazza Mattei, someone Kaspar never did get to know.”
That scared him. Just a little. “What of it?”
“That’s what my dad said to Kaspar. Before he died. The one thing. That he wished he’d never gone to see the man in the Piazza Mattei. Kaspar thought he’d found that man, too. He went back there a couple of months ago. He’d
worked out there was a property in the square the spooks had been using for years and years. He attacked the guy living there, trying to get some information out of him. He didn’t kill him, though. This wasn’t his man. He was just after intelligence and the man had none. Kaspar didn’t kill just anyone. Not then.”
