‘Wait! Don’t you even want to know what it is?’ Faulks asked with a frown.
A pause.
‘Will I make any more if I do?’
‘No,’ Faulks conceded.
‘Then why should I care?’
FORTY-SIX
Via del Governo Vecchio, Rome 19th March-11.32 a.m.
The streets were dark and narrow here, the buildings seeming to arch together over Tom and Allegra’s heads like trees kissing over a country lane. It was busy too; people carefully picking their way along the narrow pavements, dodging around the occasional dog turds and an elderly woman who was furiously scrubbing her marble doorstep. The traffic, meanwhile, was backed up behind a florist’s van which had stopped to make a delivery. Alerted by the relentless sounding of impatient car horns, a few people were leaning curiously over their balconies, some observing events with a detached familiarity, others hurling insults at the van driver for his selfishness. Glancing up, he made an obscene gesture, and pulled away.
Allegra was silent, her eyes rarely lifting from her shoes. She was hurting, Tom knew, probably even blaming herself for Aurelio’s betrayal, as if his selfishness and pride was somehow her fault. He tried to think of something to say that might comfort her and relieve her imagined guilt. But he couldn’t. Not without lying. The truth was that in time the floodwaters of her anger and confusion would recede, leaving behind them the tidemark of their lost friendship. And whatever he said, that would never fade. He, of all people, bore the fears of betrayal.
‘What other Phidias pieces are there?’ he asked, stepping to one side to let a woman past holding on to five yapping dogs, the leashes stretching from her hands like tentacles.
‘There’s a torso of Athena in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris that’s been attributed to him,’ she replied without looking up. ‘And they found a cup inscribed with his name in the ruins of the workshop at Olympia where he assembled the statue of Zeus.’
‘But nothing like the mask?’
‘Not even close.’ She shook her head. ‘If Aurelio’s right, it’s priceless.’
‘Everything has a price,’ Tom smiled. ‘The trick is finding someone willing to pay it.’
‘Maybe that’s what Cavalli was doing the night he was killed,’ she said, grimacing as an ancient Vespa laboured past, its wheezing engine making the windows around them rattle under the strain. ‘Meeting a buyer. Or at least someone he thought was a buyer.’
‘It would explain why he had the Polaroid on him,’ Tom agreed. ‘And why he hid it when he realised what they really wanted.’
‘But not where he got the mask from in the first place.’ She paused, frowning, as the road brought them out on to the Piazza Ponte Sant’Angelo. ‘What are we doing here?’
‘Isn’t this where you said Cavalli was killed?’ Tom asked.
‘Yes, but…’
‘I thought we should take a look.’
A steady two-way traffic of pedestrians was streaming over the bridge’s polished cobbles, the hands and faces of the statues lining the parapet seeming strangely animated under the sun’s flickering caress, as if they were waving them forward. For Tom, at least, the wide-open vista was a welcome relief from the narrow street’s dark embrace.
‘Where did they find him?’ he asked, hands shoved deep into his coat pockets.
‘In the river. Hanging from one of the statues.’
‘Killed on the anniversary of Caesar’s murder, only for Ricci to be murdered on the site of Caesar’s assassination,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘With both Ricci’s and Argento’s deaths staged as a re-enactment of a Caravaggio painting.’ She nodded impatiently. ‘We’ve been through all this.’
‘I know.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just that everything about these murders has been so deliberate. The dates, the locations, the arrangement of the bodies, the careful echoing of some element of the one that had preceded it. It’s almost as if…they weren’t just killings.’
‘Then what were they?’
Tom paused before answering. In the distance the glorious dome of St Peter’s rose into the sky, massive and immutable. Around it swarmed a flock of pigeons, their solid mass wheeling and circling like a shroud caught in the wind.
‘Messages,’ he said eventually. ‘Maybe someone was trying to have a conversation.’
‘If you’re right it started with Cavalli,’ she said slowly, her eyes narrowing in understanding.
‘Exactly. So why kill him here? Why this bridge? They must have chosen it for a reason.’
Allegra paused a few moments before answering, her face creased in thought.
‘It was originally built to connect the city to Hadrian’s mausoleum. Before becoming a toll road for pilgrims who wanted to reach St Peter’s. And in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, famously of course, they used to display the bodies of executed prisoners along it as a warning.’
‘A warning to who?’ Tom frowned, then nodded at the weathered shapes looming over them. ‘What about the statues? Do they mean anything?’
‘Commissioned from Bernini by Pope Clement IX. Each angel is holding an object from the Passion. Cavalli’s rope was tied to the one holding a cross.’
‘Which was then echoed by Ricci’s inverted crucifixion and Argento being found in a church.’ Tom clicked his fingers as two more small pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
‘That’s not the only thing,’ Allegra added excitedly, a thought having just occurred to her. ‘Cavalli’s not the first person to have been killed here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A noblewoman called Beatrice Cenci was tortured and put to death on the Piazza Ponte Sant’Angelo in 1599,’ she explained. ‘It was one of Rome’s most notorious public executions.’
‘What had she done?’
‘Murdered her father.’
Tom nodded slowly, remembering the deliberate violence with which Cavalli’s house had been ransacked.
‘Patricide. Treason. Maybe that’s it. Maybe Cavalli had betrayed the League and this was his punishment?’ He gave a deep sigh, then turned to her with a shrug. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Come on, let’s try and call Archie. He should have landed by now.’
They turned and walked to the end of the bridge, Tom reaching for his phone as they waited for a break in the traffic. But before they could cross, a large armoured truck gunned down the road towards them. Two men jumped down holding what Tom recognized as what the Sicilian mafia called a Lupara-a traditional break-open design shotgun, sawn off a few inches beyond the stock to make it more effective at close range and easier to manoeuvre and hide. The weapon of choice in old-school vendettas.
A woman behind screamed and Tom could hear the fumbling scramble of panicked feet behind him as people scattered.
‘Get in,’ one of the men barked.
FORTY-SEVEN
Lungotevere Vaticano, Rome 19th March-11.53 a.m.
Looking around him, Tom could see that the truck’s interior had been furnished like an expensive office, the floor laid with thick carpet, the sides lined with a cream wallpaper decorated with tropical birds. To his left a red leather sofa abutted what he assumed was a toilet cubicle, its door latched shut. In the far right-hand corner, meanwhile, stood an elegant cherrywood desk on which a brass banker’s lamp illuminated a laptop and a police scanner spitting static. Overhead were four flat-panel screens, each tuned to a different news or business channel. Most telling, perhaps, was the gun rack opposite the sofa, which contained four MP5s, half a dozen Glock 17s and a pair of Remington 1100s. Neatly stacked on the shelves below were two dozen grenades and several boxes of ammunition. Enough to start and win a small war.
The gears crunched and the truck swayed forward with a determined snarl. The gunman who had followed them inside waved at them to sit down and then instructed them to handcuff themselves to the hoop bolted to the wall above them so that their arms were held above their heads. Stepping forward, he made sure that the r
atchets were tight against their wrists and then emptied their pockets and Tom’s bag, pausing over the FBI file and the Polaroid of the ivory mask. In the background, Tom could make out the opening aria of the Cavalleria Rusticana.
There was the muffled sound of the toilet flushing. The latch clicked open and a man walked out, placing a folded newspaper down on the desk as he turned to face them. Tall and square faced, he had a thinning head of hair that rose in white waves at the front and then foundered into a black expanse at the rear. He was smartly dressed in a grey Armani suit and gaudy Versace tie with matching pocket handkerchief. The collar of his white shirt, however, appeared to be several sizes too small, as if he had gambled on not buying a new one in the belief that he would lose some weight. If so, it was a bet that he appeared destined to lose, his once sharp cheekbones sinking into his face like smudged lines on a charcoal drawing, a fleshy crevice forming in the cleft of his chin.
The guard handed him the file and the Polaroid. He glanced at each of them, then sat down. Swivelling to face them, he adjusted his cuffs, carefully covering his watch.
‘Welcome to Rome, Signor Kirk.’ He spoke in a thick accent, his eyes fixing them with a cold, mortuary gaze.
‘You know him?’ Allegra’s voice was both angry and disbelieving.
Tom frowned as he tried to place the face, then gave a small shake of his head.
‘Should I?’
‘Should he?’ the man asked Allegra, his face creased into a question.
‘He’s Giovanni De Luca,’ Allegra replied unsmilingly. ‘The head of the Banda della Magliana.’
Tom’s eyes flickered in recognition. So much for tracking the Delian League down and the element of surprise. Instead, one half of it had come looking for them and sprung its own trap.
‘Felix doesn’t know me,’ De Luca said, his flickering smile suggesting he was pleased that she had recognised him. ‘But I had the pleasure of meeting his mother once.’
‘My mother?’ Tom breathed, not knowing whether to sound angry or astonished.
‘A fundraising dinner many years ago. A beautiful woman, if I may say so. A terrible loss. Of course, it was only many years later that I heard of you.’
‘Heard what, exactly?’ Allegra asked, eyeing Tom with the same suspicious look she’d had back in Cavalli’s house when she’d first met him.
‘It’s hard to be good at what Felix does without word getting out. He has a special talent.’
‘Had,’ Tom corrected him. ‘I got out a few years ago.’
‘And yet, from what I hear, you’re still running.’ He nodded towards the scanner.
‘Is that what this is about?’ Tom asked impatiently. His arms were beginning to ache and every gear change and bump in the road was making the cuffs saw a little deeper into his wrists.
‘What’s this?’ De Luca waved the photo at him.
‘We found it in Cavalli’s car,’ Tom explained. ‘We think he was trying to sell it.’
‘What do you know about Cavalli?’ De Luca shot back, spitting the name out in a way that revealed more than he had probably intended.
Tom nodded slowly, immediately guessing at the truth.
‘Why did you kill him?’
De Luca paused, then inclined his head in a small bow, as if acknowledging applause.
‘Strictly speaking, the river killed him.’
‘Did he work for you?’
‘Pfff! He was one of Moretti’s.’
Moretti. Tom recognized the name as the person Allegra had identified as supposedly heading up the other half of the Delian League. De Luca’s supposed business partner.
‘What had he done?’ Allegra asked.
‘I only kill for two reasons. Theft and disloyalty.’ De Luca counted them off on his fingers as if he were listing the ingredients for a recipe. ‘In Cavalli’s case, he was guilty of both.’
‘You mean he’d betrayed the League?’ Tom asked.
‘It seemed fitting to mark his treachery on the spot of an earlier treason,’ De Luca nodded, confirming what they’d already guessed on the bridge.
The van turned sharply left. Allegra slid across the seat, pressing up against Tom.
‘And Ricci?’ Allegra asked.
‘I took care of Cavalli to protect the League. But Moretti, the old fool, got it into his head that I was about to make a move on the whole operation.’ De Luca’s tone hardened, his jaw clenching. ‘He had Ricci killed to warn me off. Argento was me evening the score.’
Tom nodded as the realisation dawned that far from being a conversation the careful echoing and symbolism of the various deaths had in fact been the opening shots of a very public, very acrimonious divorce.
‘And now it seems my accountant in Monaco has disappeared,’ he continued angrily. ‘Well, if Moretti wants a war, I’m ready for him.’ He struck his chest with his fist, the dull thud revealing that he was wearing a bullet-proof vest under his shirt.
‘What did Jennifer Browne have to do with your war?’ Tom demanded angrily.
‘Who?’ De Luca frowned.
‘The FBI agent you had killed in Vegas.’
‘What FBI agent?’
‘Don’t lie to me,’ Tom shouted, his wrists straining against the handcuffs.
‘Cavalli was going to sing, so I clipped his wings,’ De Luca said in a low, controlled voice. ‘Ricci and Argento-that’s just business between Moretti and me. But I had nothing to do with killing any FBI agent. I’ve never even heard of her.’
‘She was closing in on the Delian League, so you had her taken out,’ Tom insisted.
‘Is that what this is about? Is that why you’re here?’ De Luca picked up the FBI file and glanced at its monogrammed cover with a puzzled shrug. ‘Well, then maybe somebody did us a favour. Either way, I never ordered the hit.’
‘Well, somebody in the League did,’ Tom insisted. ‘And I’ll take you all down to find them, if I have to.’
There was a pause. De Luca blew out the sides of his cheeks, clearly mulling something over. Then, with a shrug, he nodded.
‘Yes. I expect you probably would.’
Tom felt the needle before he saw it, a sharp stab of pain in his neck where the guard had stepped forward and pulled the trigger on an injection gun. Allegra was next, her head slumping forward as he felt the room begin to spin and darken. The last thing he was aware of was De Luca’s voice, deepening and slowing as if being played back at half speed.
‘Do give my best to your mother.’
FORTY-EIGHT
Sotheby’s auction rooms, Quai du Mont Blanc, Geneva 19th March -1.32 p.m.
Short, perhaps only four feet high, she had braided hair that fell across her forehead and down her neck. Dressed in a simple tunic that hung from her body in smooth folds, a hunting strap ran down from her shoulder and across her breasts, pulling the material tight against their firm slope. Gazing straight ahead, she wore a slight smile, lips parted as if she was about to speak. Her arms were cut off at the elbows.
‘Statue of the goddess Artemis; fourth century BC,’ Archie murmured to himself as he looked down from the marble sculpture to the auction catalogue and scanned through the entry again. ‘Believed to be from a settlement near Foggi. Private Syrian collection.’
This last detail made Archie smile. Even if Tom hadn’t asked him to investigate this lot, the fact that it had supposedly come from a Syrian family would have made him suspicious anyway. The simple truth was that, while the contents of most major European and American collections were well documented, little, if anything, was known about the majority of Middle Eastern and Asian private collections. Anyone trying to disguise the fact that an artefact was looted, therefore, was far more likely to tie it back to some obscure family collection where they could convincingly claim it had been languishing for the last eighty years, than to risk the awkward questions that a European provenance might trigger.
He stepped back and pretended to study some of the other lots, ignoring the call on
his phone which he guessed, from the New York prefix, was the lawyer they’d met at Senator Duval’s funeral still trying to arrange a meeting with Tom. Next time, he’d know better than to hand out his card so readily, he thought to himself with a pained sigh.
Looking up, he caught sight of Dominique de Lecourt standing near the entrance. Seeing her now, blonde hair cascading on to her delicate shoulders, it struck him that her pale, oval face mirrored something of the goddess Artemis’s cold, sculpted and remote beauty. There was a parallel too, between the statue’s simple tunic and her tailored linen dress, and perhaps even an echo of the carved hunting strap in the rearing stallion that he knew Dominique had had tattooed on her shoulder when younger. But any resemblance was only a fleeting one, the illusion shattered by her Ducati biker jacket and the way her blue eyes glittered with a wild freedom that the marble sculpture would never taste.
She was too young for him, although that hadn’t stopped him thinking about what might have been from time to time. Still only twenty-five, in fact. Not that her age had prevented her from successfully running Tom’s antiques business, having helped him transfer it from Geneva to London after his father died. This was her first time back here since then, and he could tell she was finding it difficult, however much she was trying to hide it.
She had been close to Tom’s father-far closer, in fact, than Tom. The way she told the story, he had saved her from herself, offering her a job rather than calling the cops when he’d caught her trying to steal his wallet. With it had come a chance to break free from the spiralling cycle of casual drugs and petty crime that a childhood spent being tossed between foster homes had been steering her towards; a chance she’d grabbed with both hands. All of which made what they were about to do that much more ironic.
He nodded at her as Earl Faulks turned to leave the room, leaning heavily on his umbrella. Even if the auctioneer hadn’t accepted the carefully folded five-hundred-euro note to finger him as the lot’s seller, Archie would have guessed it was him. It wasn’t just that he had returned four times during the viewing period that had marked him out, but the questioning look he had given anyone who had strayed too close to the statue. It rather reminded Archie of a father weighing up a potential boyfriend’s suitability to take their teenage daughter out on a date.
The Geneva Deception Page 19
