The Sacred Cut nc-3

by David Hewson

  Leapman glowered at the man. “You’re supposed to know munitions, Friedricksen. Talk.”

  “I do,” the spook complained.

  “What is it?” Peroni asked. “Dynamite or something?”

  The young American pulled one of those sarcastic faces that always improved Peroni’s mood. “Yeah. Sure. The sort you get in the cartoons. Bang. Bang. This stuff’s like nothing on earth. You wouldn’t get it on a Palestinian. The wiring, maybe. Though that looks a hell of a lot more professional. More complicated too. It’s these…”

  Gingerly, he pointed to the metal canisters.

  “Unbelievable,” he groaned, shaking his head all the time. “I couldn’t get hold of them. No way, man.”

  “So give us a clue,” Costa suggested.

  “They’re BLU-97s. Bomblets. You read all that stuff about unexploded munitions in Iraq and Afghanistan blowing up little kids who pick them up because they’re bright, shiny and yellow? These are those babies. Jesus…”

  He worked up the courage to get a little closer. “They come with a parachute cap that lets them down slowly from the main container. Looks like your guy’s taken them off and put in some kind of electronic detonator stub instead. What a lunatic. That thing’s got PBXN-107 inside, which makes dynamite look like Play-Doh. You got three hundred or so preformed fragments built into the case. These bombs are made for piercing armour, not anti-personnel stuff.”

  Now Peroni thought about it, the bombs strapped to the khaki vest did look remarkably like soft-drink cans. No wonder kids picked them up.

  “Eight,” the American said. “If he detonates them now, we’re all ground beef. Probably enough force in the blast to bring down this creepy hole too.”

  Filippo Viale, who had been staying a safe distance behind everyone throughout, came further to the front. He stared at the young woman in the chair and asked, “Disposal?”

  “Yeah! Right!” The idiot actually laughed. “Get some guy with an X-ray machine, a week to spare and a death wish and you might just stand an outside chance.”

  Viale bent down in front of Emily Deacon, peering into her face like a teacher staring at a recalcitrant child. “What did he say to you, exactly?”

  “Who the hell are you?” she asked.

  Viale didn’t even blink. “Someone who might be able to save your life. What did he say?”

  “Exactly? He said he was giving me precisely ninety minutes from noon. Then he’d push the button. He’s got this mike thing…”

  She flipped the collar and showed them the mike.

  “He’s got plenty of range,” Costa said. “He could be listening to us from as far away as the Campo or the Corso. Somewhere”-he thought about what she’d told him-“busy.”

  “Why do you say that?” Falcone asked.

  Emily answered. “He’s got another one of these vests. I saw it. He’s not fooling. He’s wearing the damn thing himself. He said he planned to go somewhere where there are lots of other people. Perhaps a department store. A cafe, I don’t know. The idea is that if you’re dumb enough to try to track him down he can take out dozens of people. He just presses a couple of buttons and I’m gone, so’s he and anyone near either of us.”

  Leapman emitted a short, dry laugh. “Jesus. I said he was the best.”

  “Comforting,” Costa observed, then he looked at his watch. Kaspar had set the time frame they had to work with. It was too tight to contain any room to manoeuvre. He knew precisely what he was doing. “We’ve got just over an hour. So what are we going to do?”

  Viale nodded at the mike on her collar. “He’s listening to this? Every word?”

  “That,” Emily said with an icy sarcasm, “is the whole point.”

  Joel Leapman pushed in front of Viale and announced, “Let me deal with him.

  “Listen to me, Kaspar,” the American said in a loud, clear voice. “This shit has to come to an end. We’ve got some documents you can look at. We can prove you’ve got the people you wanted.”

  Viale reached into his leather briefcase, pulled out the blue folder and waved it at Leapman as a reminder.

  “We’ve got it with us right now,” Leapman continued. “All you’ve got to do is come and collect. Then you can take off your jacket, put your hands up and come catch a plane home, because I am not wasting any more time on you, man. Maybe we do owe you an apology. Maybe you’ll get one and we can keep you safe somewhere nice and private, in spite of everything. You’ve got to see these things we have for you here and put an end to all this. It doesn’t leave any room for doubt. But you have to pick it up yourself. This is all deep, deep stuff and I am not letting it out of my sight, not for one second.”

  “Won’t work,” Emily Deacon said quietly. “What kind of idiot do you think he is? He won’t walk straight in here just on a promise.”

  “He has to!” Leapman insisted. “I can’t have a bunch of secret files going astray in a foreign city just because he says so.”

  “Kaspar gave you his word!” Emily yelled. “Give him some proof and this is all over!”

  Leapman threw his arms up in the air and started yelling, so loudly his cold, metallic voice rang around the circular hall, rebounded from each shady corner. “His word? His word? Fuck his word. The guy’s a loon. A loose, out-of-control maniac. I don’t give a damn-”

  Costa walked over and grabbed him loosely by the collar, forcing him to be quiet.

  Then Emily Deacon was screaming, writhing on the chair, not knowing whether to move or stay still. A noise was coming from her jacket, a noise that was making her stiffen with shock and anticipation. There were seven men in the hall at that moment. Leapman and his team scurried for their lives, disappearing into the shadows, Viale trying to keep up with them. Nic Costa looked at his two colleagues. Then he walked over to Emily Deacon, found the hidden pocket on the jacket’s front. Something was vibrating beneath the fabric, making a wild, electronic noise, a butchered kind of music, a short refrain that rang a bell somewhere in his head.

  Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries.” All reduced to a series of beeps on a piece of silicon.

  Costa lowered the zipper and removed the phone.

  “Jesus, Nic,” Emily whispered. “I never knew that was there.”

  He touched her blonde hair, just for a moment, and murmured, “He’s improvising. So should we.”

  Then he looked at the handset, working out the buttons, hit the one for speakerphone and placed it on the chair Filippo Viale had so hastily vacated seconds before.

  “Mr. Kaspar,” Costa said evenly, “it’s now a little under twenty minutes to one. By the timetable you set, we have just forty minutes or so to resolve this matter. Best we make this a conference call, don’t you think?”

  * * *

  Twenty-five minutes before, after briefly calling in at the morgue to pick up some props, Teresa Lupo had taken a taxi to the Via Veneto, then used her police ID to talk herself into reception at the US embassy. She’d checked her notes. She remembered the officer who’d been sent round to clean up after the death in the Pantheon, the one who forgot to take the clothes. In her book, dumb acts denoted dumb people. So she looked up his name from her scribbles and told the security officer at the desk in reception she needed an urgent audience with Cy Morrison that very moment. The uniforms on the door had scarcely looked at the box she was carrying. A bunch of clothes in plastic evidence bags didn’t seem to make much impact on their security scanners.

  Morrison, a weary man in his mid-thirties, came out straightaway. He looked overworked and more than a little grumpy. “What can I do for you?”

  She held out the box, placed it on the counter and smiled. “Your nice Agent Leapman needs these. He wants them in his office. Now.”

  He really didn’t look the brightest of buttons. Or the kind to argue too much. “I tried to call him earlier,” he said. “Agent Leapman’s not here at the moment. I don’t think Agent Deacon’s in the office either. I’ll make sure Leapman gets them.”


  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “Should I?”

  “The Pantheon. Two days ago. You came to pick up the body.”

  He swore under his breath. “Oh. That.”

  “You forgot something.”

  “Miss-”

  She flashed the police ID at him. “Doctor.”

  “Doctor Lupo. I will take these things and make sure they go to the proper place.”

  “Yes, well, you won’t mind if I make sure.”

  “What?”

  She sighed, as if she were trying to keep her patience. “You left them in the Pantheon, Morrison. I had Joel Leapman screaming down the phone at me this morning as if it were my fault or something.”

  “What?” he asked again.

  “You came to pick up the body, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah! Which we did. Hell, I’m not running some damn funeral-home service here. We shouldn’t be doing this kind of stuff anyway.”

  She tapped her shoe on the shiny reception floor. “You took the body. You left her stuff. You wouldn’t be fit to run a funeral home. If it wasn’t for me, these things could have been lost for good. Not that I’m getting any credit for it. Do you wonder Joel Leapman’s going berserk over this?”

  The woman behind the counter was starting to stare now. She had a little “serve you right” smile on her face. Joel Leapman couldn’t be that popular around here, Teresa thought. But maybe Cy Morrison wasn’t either.

  Morrison walked a little way away from the desk to get a touch of privacy. “Listen,” he said in a low, furious voice, “I’m not interested in what Joel Leapman thinks. I don’t work for him. I’m damned if I’m supposed to clean up whatever mess he leaves behind either. Just give me the things and it’s done.”

  “No,” Teresa snapped. “I’m not having him screaming at me because you fouled up again. I want to see them in there. If they turn up missing again he’s going to go ballistic again and I don’t want that coming in my direction.”

  “Dammit!” Morrison yelled. “Since when did you get the right to give orders here?”

  She took out Emily’s security card and waved it in his face, keeping the photo side away from him, hoping, hoping. “Since Joel Leapman told me to go see ”that moron Morrison,“ gave me this and told me not to let go of this stuff until I saw it safely on his desk with my own eyes. Now, do you want to accompany me there? Or should I just find my own way? God knows,” she lied, “I’ve seen enough of that place and that man these past few days.”

  Cy Morrison peered at the security card. Someone like Joel Leapman wouldn’t give these things out lightly, Teresa guessed. It had to mean something. Still, Morrison ought to at the very least check the photo, and some inner reminder of that seemed to be just beginning to work its way into his consciousness.

  “Plus,” she improvised, wondering if she was going to foul up here, and what trying to talk your way into a secure office in the US embassy meant for your career, “he needs these urgently.”

  Teresa Lupo dug deep into the bottom of the box and retrieved one of the bags she’d taken from the apartment the previous day.

  “This was yesterday’s woman,” she said. “You heard about that? Turns out she was American too. Maybe I’ll be calling you to pick up her corpse before long. She was decapitated,” Teresa said, getting his attention on the bag. “While wearing this nightdress.”

  The scarlet garment lay in a large evidence bag, the bloodstains black and stiff beneath the plastic. Morrison eyed the bag sideways. He looked queasy.

  “Of course if you want to take responsibility yourself…” he managed, “I’d just have to tell Leapman you’d done that, you understand. So if it went missing, if anything got tampered with, damaged, lost, altered in any way which meant it couldn’t be used in a court of law…”

  Scaring men was fun sometimes, she thought. A skill to be cultivated.

  “You do know about rules of evidence, don’t you?” she demanded. “You do understand what happens if this doesn’t get handled in exactly the right way? If one thumbprint goes in the wrong place?”

  “Frankly,” Morrison muttered briskly, “I don’t give a shit. If the guy gave you his card, go wherever the hell you want. And find your own damn way out too.”

  With that he stormed off, in the opposite direction, away from the office she wanted, the one just round the corner and down the hall.

  Teresa Lupo whistled a little tune as she walked there. Then she ran Emily Deacon’s ID through the security slot, waited for the lock to retreat and walked in.

  She’d been thinking this through all the way there, phrasing the right message, tweaking the nuances. She’d had an uncle who took her hunting once, when she was a kid. She’d hated the entire experience. All except for the dog. The wonderful dog who was as lovable as they came but could flush out a single pheasant in a field of corn just by scenting where the bird lived and emitting a single bark in its direction.

  A minute. That was all it would take to type a simple e-mail, swiped with Emily’s ID card to authenticate it as genuine, mark the message as urgent as hell, hit Send and stand back to see what happened.

  She hammered the keyboard with her fat, clumsy fingers.

  “Now run, you bastard,” Teresa Lupo said to herself and hoped to God this made a difference. Those hard canisters she felt as she hugged Emily Deacon’s scared, skinny body kept popping pictures into her head of what they could deliver on her cold, shining table if anything went wrong.

  “That was a piece of cake,” Teresa Lupo whispered to herself. “You should do this more often.”

  The box lay on Leapman’s desk now. Rightfully most of the contents belonged to him. But not the nightdress from the apartment. She had just brought that along as a last resort, for effect. And that was evidence of her own, something she could need for a crime that remained in the jurisdiction of the state police.

  “Wasted on these people,” she sniffed. “All of it.”

  They’ll know, too, she thought. When the dust settled, Leapman would be able to look at that odd box on his desk, retrace her steps, work out how this was done.

  “What the hell?” Teresa Lupo murmured, then picked up the evidence packet with the blackened, stained silk shift, dropped it in her bag, went out and called a cab for the centro storico.

  * * *

  “Look around you, gentlemen. Enjoy the view.”

  Costa had placed the phone on the empty chair next to Emily. Now they crowded close to it, listening to Bill Kaspar’s voice crackling out of the speaker, clear and determined.

  “Can you imagine being in a hellhole like that, watching your buddies going down one by one, clinging to a piece of webbing as if it could keep out the fire? All because some asshole you thought you could trust wants a cut of the action?”

  “We get the point,” Leapman grumbled.

  There was a pause. “OK. I hear you. The man from the Agency. Or wherever. Right?”

  Viale made a gesture to Leapman: Pursue this.

  “Listen, Kaspar,” Leapman continued. “It doesn’t matter who I am. All I want to do is make sure you understand something. We know what happened. Washington’s got no doubts. Not anymore.”

  “You think you know-” the tinny voice interrupted.

  “You got screwed! Live with it! You’re not the first. So you and your people went down there. That’s tough. In war you get casualties.”

  Kaspar waited before answering. It was a scary moment. “We were ”casualties“?”

  “You and lots of others. Except they let it go. I don’t know. I don’t get…”

  Leapman was struggling. Viale sat down and stared at him, disappointed.

  “You don’t get the symmetry,” Kaspar said calmly. “Understandable. I guess you needed to be there.”

  Leapman fought to get a grip on himself, glanced at Emily, then said, “Look. Dan Deacon fooled us all. You, me, Washington, everyone. We never even began to guess until a good way t
hrough all this. I’m sorry. Is that what you want to hear?”

  The voice on the phone-hidden somewhere they could only guess at-sighed. “Ignorance-such a rotten excuse. Being smart’s not about when or where you’re born, you know. It’s about who you are. That’s history, man. The guy who built that place you’re in-he was called Hadrian, a little history for you there. He could fight battles. Run empires. Think about life. He could sit right where you are now and imagine a whole cosmos in his head.”

  Leapman blinked hard, looked at Viale and made the “crazy” sign with his right index finger.

  “I slept above his mausoleum last night,” Kaspar continued. “I thought I’d dream about him. I didn’t. It was just the same damn shit I always hear. Which doesn’t make sense, since they’re all supposed to be dead now. You follow?”

  “So we’re going through all this because of your dreams, Kaspar?” Leapman asked. “Are you listening to yourself? That’s how crazy people sound. That’s what-”

  The voice from the tinny speaker cranked up several decibels. “Crazy! CRAZY! This seem crazy to you?”

  There was a sudden, unexpected noise behind them. Something coming out of Emily Deacon’s jacket and not a phone this time, a pop, like the report of a small gun, and she was screaming again, terrified to move, terrified to stay still. A bright spark, alive and fiery, was worming its way out of the uppermost yellow canister on the vest.

  The men were scattering again. Costa took a good look at the jacket, walked over, tried to hold her still, wrapped a handkerchief around his fist and jabbed at the burning object. It came out, stinging his fingers. He threw it to the floor, where it fizzled ominously.

  “Don’t play games,” Costa barked at the phone. “She didn’t deserve that.”

  “You don’t know what you deserve!” Kaspar yelled back. “You don’t have a clue.”

  Costa wasn’t listening. He was back with Emily, hand to her head, noting the tears in her eyes, the look of terror there.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry.”

  Kaspar’s laugh rattled out of the phone. “Good! Are you people learning something here? Improvisation’s everything. A man needs tricks up his sleeve. What you got there was the demo. A little firecracker to keep you on your toes, folks. Still leaves me with seven real ones, though. Plus the set I got here, somewhere you’d never guess, full of lots of people who surely wouldn’t want to die without knowing what Christmas presents they’ve got. Ask your munitions moron to stick his nose round Little Em’s vest. This is real, people. Don’t ever forget that.”