The Sacred Cut nc-3

by David Hewson

  “I’m sorry if I’ve not exactly been normal lately,” he said, his voice choking a touch, doubtless from the aftermath of the lemon gelato.

  “If I wanted ”normal,“ Gianni, do you think I’d be dating you?”

  “No, I mean…”

  The words dried up. He was terrible at this. He just hoped she got the message.

  “Can I go back to my head now?” she asked. “This isn’t the right way to have a conversation like this.”

  “OK.”

  “And by the way-thanks for phoning.”

  He heard her cut the call, looked at the empty Piazza Trilussa, and said, “You’re welcome.”

  Then Gianni Peroni went back into the cafe, smiled at the girl, said thanks, and sat over a newly replenished bowl of ice cream thinking about what Teresa Lupo had said.

  Laila stole something. Where? In the Pantheon, surely. Laila hid that something. Where? In the Pantheon. Where else?

  He looked at his watch and thought about that miserable, florid-faced caretaker and the hours he kept. The place closed at seven-thirty. Maybe she’d been there already. But if that was the case why hadn’t she tried to get in touch? Wouldn’t she wait till the very last moment when there were hardly any people around? Or-and this thought appalled him-had she left the thing somewhere that meant she had to spend another night there to recover it?

  The waitress was reading a magazine. He placed a ten-euro note on the counter and got up.

  “Hey, kid,” he said. “You want to know why that boyfriend never calls you?”

  The green eyes looked at him with steady, intrigued intent. “Possibly…”

  “Because he’s a jerk. That’s why.”

  * * *

  William F. Kaspar sat in the yellow Fiat Punto he’d ripped off from the cavernous underground car park by Porta Pinciana, waiting, thinking, watching the steady, light fall of snow descend on the deserted Via Veneto, listening to nothing but static from the tiny device clipped into his ear. This could go on forever. Not that he was worried about being caught. The weather meant the car park was dark and dead and deserted. He’d been able to swap the Fiat’s plates with those of a dusty Lancia that hadn’t moved in days. Even when the theft got reported they’d be looking for the wrong car.

  That was the kind of thing the old Bill Kaspar would have done. This recent carelessness wasn’t like him. He’d tested his luck in the Net cafe and, for once, got away with it. Still, this was bad. This was unlike him. He knew who he was: William F. Kaspar. He knew where he came from: Kentucky, a big old stud farm outside Lexington, where the horses flew like the wind across green fields that stretched forever, where family meant family, a tight, unbreakable bond of love, and you could get good whiskey straight from an illicit still if you knew where to ask.

  Kentucky was where he’d grown up, where he’d loved his first woman. After college in Alabama (and the memory alone sent a Dan song, with its refrain about the Crimson Tide, spinning through his head), a Kentucky military academy had started him on the long, hard road to becoming a soldier, filled him with a love of the classical world through studying the campaigns of Hadrian and Caesar and Hannibal. A Kentucky congressman, no stranger to the covert world himself, had first marked him out as someone whose talents could be used outside a conventional military career.

  Memories. Fading ghosts, blurring the line between reality and illusion.

  It was a lost world now, a distant sea of faded, two-dimensional mental pictures. He couldn’t return there even if he wanted to. He’d assembled his team, the best team, the Babylon Sisters (shake it, his head said immediately, right on cue) and he’d screwed up, been betrayed, whatever. There’d been blood on the ground, the holy ground, on the floor of the ziggurat, gore tracing the outlines of the patterns there, a red stain on the filigreed stone tattoo Hadrian himself had once touched. He’d wrapped the corpses of his own men and women in that same pattern, trapped in something as mundane as camouflage webbing. Then, before he’d had the chance to go down with them, bad luck got in the way. Thirteen wasted years that changed forever what he was and what he could be.

  A killer.

  No, that didn’t worry him. Bill Kaspar had killed plenty in his career. Never unnecessarily, never without good reason. It went with the job. Sometimes it was the only way to stay alive. He’d killed in the jungles of Colombia and on the streets of Managua. He’d taken men down in Afghanistan and Indonesia. And the Middle East. He’d been there a lot, enough to speak good Arabic, Kurdish and Farsi. Enough to help him convince a few people who should have known better, men who, temperamentally, hated everything American, that he really could be on their side, put some weapons their way, provided they had the money and information to share.

  He’d read every last book he could find on Hadrian, knew every twist and turn of his career all the way from Italica to Rome. Long before these new voices came to occupy his head, Bill Kaspar had thought he heard Hadrian talking to him sometimes, a strong, educated voice carrying across almost two millennia. The voice taught him lessons that kept a man like him alive. How it was impossible to fight battles on multiple fronts, which made it necessary, on occasion, to convert an enemy into a friend. How important it was to be a true leader, one everyone could look up to. And how the ambition was, invariably, more important than the achievement because, in the end, everything was dust and death and failure, a shallow, temporary grave in a foreign place far from home.

  Hadrian had been rash sometimes, too, and arrogant. The mind that could imagine a building like the Pantheon had also seen fit to slaughter those who stood in his way. Kaspar had murdered Monica Sawyer brutally, his head full of screaming voices, feeling his power enter her body, and still he couldn’t quite work out why, still he knew that the patterns he’d painted with her blood, the holy frieze of interlocking shapes, was powder over a stupid misdeed, a disguise that failed to hide the enormity of the crime. Monica wasn’t a part of the endgame now playing out on the streets of Rome. She hadn’t-there was no avoiding the thought-merited that particular death.

  He was Bill Kaspar. He could have prevented that, locked her in the bedroom with a gag round her overactive mouth, and stayed safe and warm in her apartment knowing not a soul could see there was anything wrong. He could have tried to explain to her that he was in his own frame of reference, an honourable man set upon an honourable mission. A man who had been abandoned, cheated, robbed, even here in Rome.

  Bill Kaspar didn’t kill people because he wanted to. Only because he had to. Hadn’t he let Emily Deacon live that night? The bug was a long shot. He was lucky it provided anything. Or was his reluctance to kill a symptom of a greater problem? Had some unconscious part of his head now started to operate on its own, demanding a victim, any victim, just because it hated the idea of being cheated?

  Hadrian, the brightest emperor of them all, the man who set limits to the empire, who said this far, no further, was crazy by the end and Bill Kaspar knew he couldn’t even hope to stand in the shadow of that colossus.

  He wasn’t sure about any of this. He wasn’t sure it was worth worrying about either. What mattered was finishing the job. For the life of him he couldn’t think of any way he could do that without involving Emily Deacon. It was possible she was the key to the whole damn thing anyway, and that Steely Dan Deacon, in spite of appearances, in spite of the way Deacon had protested his innocence just before he died, had been in charge all along. Kaspar knew he was running out of alternatives. He didn’t dare hang around Net cafes anymore in case they were being watched. Steely Dan’s girl had to provide the answers. Somehow.

  The headphone came alive just after dawn, the sound of the thin traffic working its way just far enough up the hill to break through over the embassy’s electronic fog. Then a car engine, something like the notching of gears.

  She was in a vehicle. Kaspar pulled the Fiat forward until its yellow nose edged out into the Via Veneto and watched the big iron gates. A red Ford was coming through them
, Emily Deacon behind the wheel.

  “Little Em,” he said to himself.

  Kids didn’t get to pick their parents. It wasn’t her fault Steely Dan turned out the way he was. From what he’d seen, what little he’d heard on the hidden mike, she wasn’t even part of the current plan. They’d just brought her in for old time’s sake, maybe. Or to tease him, to say: Look, the Deacons just go on and on.

  In that case, he thought, they ought to look after their precious belongings more carefully.

  There was scarcely any traffic. A good agent-and he knew Emily didn’t fit into that category just from watching her the night before-should have been alert, should have seen that a little yellow Fiat was dogging her all the way.

  Little Em drove and drove, all the way out to the Via Appia Antica, where she took a turn into what looked like a farm drive, barely passable in the drifts. He drove on for a few hundred yards before pulling into a deserted bus stop. He loved this place. In happier times he’d walked miles and miles along the Appian Way, thinking about the tombs, wondering about the dead feet that had trudged this way over the centuries.

  He popped in the earphone and turned up the volume on the radio. Two voices: Little Em and the young Italian he now recognized.

  Bill Kaspar listened intently, wondering all the time about his options.

  Then he realized he couldn’t stay here. He heard something he should have figured out long, long before.

  You’re getting old and careless, white boy, the ghost of the black sergeant whispered in the back of his head. Git out there and find what belongs to you.

  He reached into his bag and pulled out the digital music player he’d stolen from a backpacker in the Corso a couple of weeks before. It had all his favourite music on there: the Dan, the Doobies, Todd Rundgren and a couple of hundred others, all good hippie listening for a sixties child turned spook.

  It had stacks of spare space for more recording too and a full battery charge, enough to store another ten hours of conversation right alongside the holy grooves.

  There was a spare mini-jack in the bag. He connected the radio to the player and hit the record button. Then he placed the kit carefully in a dry patch behind the bus shelter, where it was hidden, not that anyone was going to walk along this deserted piece of imperial Roman highway on such a bitter, hostile night.

  It was a good twenty or thirty minutes to the centro storico and the more he thought about the journey, the more William F. Kaspar realized he was in danger of losing the gift. The voices inside him were getting louder all the time. It was a question of killing them before they killed him.

  * * *

  Nic Costa was nodding off on the sofa when the doorbell rang. Emily Deacon walked straight in, grinning, looking bright and rosy, as if she could go without sleep forever.

  She had a briefcase in her hand and a notebook computer bag slung over her shoulder. “Where is everyone? Gianni? Laila?”

  “Short version: she ran away. Gianni’s looking for her now.”

  “Oh no,” she murmured, genuinely shocked.

  “Don’t worry. Gianni will find her. He won’t stop till he does. I got a call from him half an hour ago. He wanted to check out a theory Laila stole something from our friend, then dumped it in the Pantheon. Maybe she’s going back to retrieve it.”

  She considered the idea. “I think possessions are important to the killer. Perhaps that’s why he wanted to find Laila. But the idea she could leave something in the Pantheon… Wouldn’t you have found it?”

  “Not if it was hidden. I’m starting to come to the conclusion that anything’s possible right now. Besides, if you knew my partner better, you’d understand there’s not much point in arguing.”

  He looked at her, trying to remember what he’d promised to do.

  “You forgot, didn’t you?” she asked with a smile.

  He was trying to drag that morning’s conversation back from the depths of his memory. So much had intervened in the meantime.

  “I promised I’d check a couple of names for you.”

  She held up the laptop case. “It’s OK. I came prepared. I’ve been following the logs. I know what’s been happening. A busy day.”

  Costa doubted she knew half of what had really gone on. He led the way to the living room and watched her set up her gear on the coffee table in front of the low sofa.

  “You can say that again. Coffee?”

  “I’d rather have a real drink,” she said, throwing the black jacket over the back of the sofa, getting straight down to work. “You do have wine here?”

  “Wine,” he sighed and wondered how much longer he could keep his eyes open. Then he went to the kitchen, opened a cold bottle of Alto Adige Sauvignon and brought back a couple of glasses. The hard mountain grape had a kick in it. He ought to be able to stay alert for a little while before crashing completely.

  Emily looked animated, a little too much for his liking. The more Leapman froze her out of the case, the more she seemed determined to find herself. It was an attractive transformation to witness and the distraction was beginning to worry him.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “You look exhausted.”

  “I’ll survive. You said you know what happened?”

  She shrugged. “Just from what I’ve seen in the log. Leapman isn’t updating me on anything at all. I heard a woman was killed. And that you guys managed to find where.”

  The memory of the little room, and a head rolling crazily off a chair, John Wayne screaming in the background. “Oh yes.”

  The blue eyes blinked at him. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

  “I’m sure.” He sighed. He didn’t want to go into detail. “It was different though, somehow. Let’s leave it at that.”

  She opened the computer, scanned the room for a phone socket, plugged in the machine, then returned to the sofa, motioning for him to join her. “Different… that’s interesting. I don’t think our guy likes different.”

  “You think you’re starting to know him?”

  “I gave you his name this morning. Now I’ve got a story. A hell of a one. A story that was supposed to end differently, I think, with heroes and victory and what we like to call ”closure.“ ”

  Nic Costa took another sip of the wine and tried to convince himself he wasn’t that tired as he sank into the cushions by Emily Deacon’s side.

  She hit a key and a couple of images popped up on the screen.

  “These are photos I took of some documents I found in the embassy. Leapman may be acting as if I don’t exist but I got a little help there anyway. It took me to places I couldn’t visit before.”

  “Photos,” Costa repeated.

  “That’s right. They’d have my hide if they knew I had them.”

  He groaned and went to the kitchen, returning with a dish of peanuts.

  Emily Deacon cast a wry glance at them. “You Italians really know how to treat a woman.”

  “Yes and I’ll show you sometime. So you’re stealing information from your embassy?”

  Her narrow, pale eyebrows rose perceptibly. “I thought that’s what you wanted. Besides, this is not the kind of stuff you can photocopy, Nic. Are you turning prissy on me? Do you want to hear about it or not?”

  He raised the glass and toasted her. “Talk away, Agent Deacon. I’ll try not to fall asleep on you.”

  “This is a story that begins in 1990. The Gulf War is about to happen. We were kids then. You do remember the first Gulf War?”

  “Sort of. My old man was a Communist Deputy at the time. I remember him burning the Stars and Stripes outside your embassy.”

  She stared at him. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Not at all. He took me with him. We’re an unusual family.”

  “I can believe that,” she conceded. “So you do remember the war. Better than me, but then, you’re a couple of years older. It’s like any war. Each side, naturally, wants some intelligence. And they want it before the fighting even starts. So they p
ut people in beforehand. For reconnaissance. To establish links with the Iraqi opposition. Name the reasons, it really doesn’t matter. They’re putting together a team, mainly American, maybe a couple of Iraqis for local knowledge. They’re putting it together here, in Rome. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do. They don’t want anyone outside their immediate circle to find out. Does that sound plausible?”

  Military affairs weren’t Costa’s scene. His late father had a favourite rant about the army. Something along the lines that war was a hangover from another era in mankind’s development, one they’d soon leave behind. Marco Costa hadn’t lived long enough-quite-to see how wrong he was.

  “It’s a story,” Costa said.

  “No, Nic,” she said firmly, “it’s the truth. The man we’re looking for now was the leader of that team, on the military side anyway. William F. Kaspar. And somehow what happened to him then is behind what’s happening now.”

  She paused. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “You smoke?”

  “Sometimes. I have been known to have a boyfriend on occasion too. Are you shocked? What is this? A monastery?”

  “Not always,” he answered. “But no one-and I mean no one-smokes in here. If you need a cigarette, do what everyone else does-go outside.”

  She looked at the door.

  “Later,” he added. “Please.”

  He was thinking about what she said. Every military campaign had to be preceded by some kind of covert activity. It still seemed light-years away from a bizarre streak of killings more than a decade later.

  “This is all a long time ago, Emily.”

  She shook her head vigorously. “Oh no. Only for those of us who were young then. For the people who fought there it’s like yesterday. That’s what wars are like, Nic. Haven’t you talked to an old soldier? It’s the first thing you notice. It lives with them, day in, day out, often for the rest of their lives. Usually it’s the most important thing that ever happens to them.”

  “This is Italy. We don’t have many old soldiers.”