Santini sighed, his head now throbbing with a brutal migraine. “Mr. Prime Minister, many of the military contractors under the umbrella of COW were working with allied nations,” he said wearily. “None of us were interested in starting World War III. Caselli, could you tell us the rest, please?”
With some embarrassment, Colomba got to her feet and started talking, stripping her account of any mention of Tommy and leaving out the fact that Leo had declared that he was Dante’s brother before kidnapping him. Exactly as she had previously told Di Marco, she explained that she had taken an interest in the Melases because Lupo had asked her opinion about the double homicide. But she did tell nearly all the facts about Bonaccorso.
“I met him after a shootout, and he pretended that he wanted to help me in my investigation, even though I had been suspended from active duty,” she said. “Together we were able to reconstruct Giltine’s progress through Italy, and together we went to Venice, though unfortunately we arrived too late to understand what was really happening. Also traveling with us was Dante Torre, who provided crucial assistance in our investigation, but I don’t know why Leo kidnapped him. By the same token, I have no idea why he hid Dante Torre in Rimini. It was pure dumb luck that I found him, but I’m glad I did.” Leo’s phone call echoed in her thoughts. Then, in her mind’s eye, she glimpsed his smile as he slashed her belly open, so similar to the smile she’d glimpsed in the mirror on the train. She felt a surge of nausea and sat down again.
The prime minister had listened to her only distractedly, his mind tormented by grim thoughts.
“So you were all in cahoots in concealing the truth,” he said once Colomba had finished telling her story. “Police, Carabinieri, intelligence agencies. And even the previous administration. That’s just … disgusting.”
“Don’t be naive, Mr. Prime Minister,” said Di Marco. “Having friends in the UN or in the top European institutions is much more advantageous than creating a scandal would be.”
“I wasn’t elected to conceal the truth from the Italian people.”
“What the Italian people want from us is to be protected, Mr. Prime Minister. And that’s exactly what we’re doing, in part thanks to the veil of confidentiality we’ve been able to preserve over this investigation.”
“Confidentiality? Cover-up is more like it!”
“Mr. Prime Minister … you know better than I do that the truth is overvalued. And as often as not, people who insist on telling the truth are far less attractive to the larger public than a certified liar.”
D’Amore gave him a smile that wouldn’t have been out of place on a pitchman selling frying pans on TV. “We’ll provide you with a list of foreign officials who’ll be glad to lend you a hand the day you have to enter into some thorny negotiation. Our country paid an enormous price in Venice: Don’t you think we ought at least to gain some advantages in exchange for it?”
9
D’Amore accompanied Colomba and Santini to their car, leaving Di Marco behind to lecture the prime minister about the urgent necessity of full and wholehearted cooperation. Santini made a pit stop in the men’s bathroom and D’Amore took advantage of the opportunity to talk to Colomba confidentially.
“We don’t know anything more about Bonaccorso than what we said during the meeting, but maybe we’ve figured out why he killed Romero: the port.”
“The port?” Colomba asked in some surprise.
“The area around the yacht club where the Chourmo was tied up is notorious as a hotbed of male prostitution,” D’Amore explained. “Romero was identified a couple of days before the Palasport attack in the intimate company of a rent boy. We think that, before leaving Venice again, he returned to the site, just as Bonaccorso was boarding the sailboat with Torre thrown over his shoulder. Maybe Romero offered to help.”
Colomba imagined the scene. “Poor sucker … But didn’t anybody think to look for him?”
“He’d already checked out from the hotel. Is there anything particular that you find surprising?”
Colomba shook her head. Leo had told her on the phone that Romero had been easy to hook up with, but he hadn’t actually and explicitly said that he’d hooked up with him. “Well, if you include him, we have a nice round number,” she said grimly. “Fifty. Without counting the collateral victims like the Melases.”
“The investigation into their murder is going to be handed off to the attorney general, who’ll operate in close coordination with you. But for the work that needs to be done on the ground around Portico, we’d like to have someone we know, someone who understands what’s at stake.”
“Ask Santini. You’ve already got him on retainer.”
Just then Santini showed up, his mustache dripping wet. “I’m going to get some sleep,” he said as he limped toward the car. “You two take all the time you want. Ciao, D’Amore, it’s been indescribably delightful.”
D’Amore watched him go. “He’s already got his hands full. I was referring to you. You found Torre all by yourself, Colomba.” He called her by her given name for the first time.
“Dumb luck.”
“No, it was because you’re one of the people who knows Bonaccorso best.”
Colomba wanted to shout at him, but she lacked the strength. “I don’t know him, all right? He made a fool of me, the same way he’s making fools of you all.”
“Don’t let your dislike of Di Marco lead you astray. He’s always put duty above all else.”
“Unlike the rest of you.” Colomba climbed into the car and put an end to the conversation by slamming the door behind her. Inside, the usual two nonbrothers awaited her, along with Santini, who was already snoring and wafting out clouds of alcoholic fumes. When they arrived in Rimini, the eastern sky was brightening with the onset of dawn. In the hospital, Colomba looked in on Dante behind the plate-glass window, and then stretched out on the single bed for guests, outside the sterile zone, and fell asleep without even taking off her combat boots.
Santini, on the other hand, continued to Rome, dreaming of shirtless barefoot fight scenes.
10
Colomba didn’t leave the hospital again. Alberti, newly appointed head of security for the duration of the hospital stay of “Signor Caselli,” brought her changes of clothing from her house, but she never strayed farther than a couple of yards from Dante’s bedside.
They transferred him out of the intensive care unit and into a single room in the ward, and Colomba paced back and forth in his room like a zombie, while her awareness that he was actually lying there, before her—alive—little by little washed away the clotted mass of pain and sorrow, only to replace it with the fear that Dante might die before her eyes now, just when he seemed to have been rescued, or that he might be crippled for life or suffer permanent brain damage. She was also afraid that Leo might come back to tear him away from her yet again.
To be safe, Dante’s rescue wasn’t made public and Di Marco’s men scoured the area between Portico and Rimini on the invented excuse of a new terrorism alert, which led to the expulsion from the country of a couple of Pakistani migrant laborers and a Moroccan dishwasher, if nothing else to justify the outlay on overtime. Lupo was persuaded by his commanding officers to stop busting Colomba’s balls, which only reinforced Bruno’s suspicions about the cover-up being orchestrated by the intelligence services. He was also relieved of his investigation into the Melas double homicide; it was handed over to the high command, which did no more than to demand custody of all the documentation and then studiously ignore his calls and emails. They told him nothing about Dante, of course. Just as Vigevani kept him in the dark, deciding to go on vacation and blocking Lupo’s number on his cell phone.
Bart, on the other hand, was alerted to the news by D’Amore, at six in the morning on the third day after Dante’s rescue. She woke up to the sound of the dogs howling in the courtyard below and the flap flap flap of helicopter blades overhead.
“Again? What a pain in the ass …” she muttered. She thr
ew a down coat on over her pajamas and then ran outside to get the dogs, who were leaping in the air in their fright, scratching furiously on the neighbor’s doors.
Her neighbor across the landing, a bearded photographer covered with tattoos, opened his door wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. “Would you tell them from me to just go fuck themselves?” he snarled.
“Sorry, it’s not my fault.”
Bart went out the front gate and ran to the weed-ridden field behind the building, where the helicopter was just setting down. A soldier in full camo uniform and a handsome suntanned man in civilian attire both jumped out the hatch and to the ground.
“Are you seriously trying to get me declared persona non grata in my neighborhood?” she shouted. “What have you got against using the telephone?”
“Forgive the earliness of the hour, Deputy Captain!” shouted the good-looking man in civilian clothes, trying to make himself heard over the roar of the rotors, which were churning around at minimum RPMs. He extended his hand: “Pleased to meet you. D’Amore. AISI. Internal Information and Security.”
“Roberta Bartone. What’s happened? Another terror attack?”
D’Amore smiled. “For once, it’s good news.”
As soon as Bart found out what it was all about, she ran inside to get changed, called the dogsitter, and called her assistant to tell him to make other plans.
11
When Colomba awakened, Bart was sitting in the chair next to Dante’s bed, holding his hand.
“Hey.”
Bart turned around, her eyes glistening. “You’re my favorite cop in the world, you know that, right?”
“Ex-cop.” Colomba got up and hugged her. “It’s a miracle.”
“You performed the miracle, sweetheart.”
Colomba looked anxiously into Dante’s face. Did he look healthier? Was his complexion a little rosier? “How is he?” she asked her friend.
“I looked at his chart and talked to the chief physician. I’d say he’s progressing nicely. The infection is subsiding and his blood pressure has been rising.”
“Then why don’t they bring him out of the coma?”
“Give him time, he’s still very fragile. Take a shower, I’ll go get something for breakfast.”
Bart came back with a tray of assorted sandwiches, and found Colomba reading him a novel, dressed in a kimono-style bathrobe. “Where did you find that?”
Colomba dog-eared her page in the book and grabbed three small salami sandwiches. “Someone gave it to me when I was sixteen. It’s been in storage in Mezzanotte all these years.”
Bart smiled. “I’ll bet you were a lot of fun when you were a girl. Hurry up and eat, because I want to hear your version of events.”
Colomba took a swig directly from the water bottle on Dante’s nightstand. “Alberti!” she shouted.
He hurried into the room. “Yes, Deputy Captain?”
“Stay here with Dante until I get back,” said Colomba. “We’re going to take a walk in the garden.”
They went downstairs to the hospital grounds, a park filled with oaks and weeping willows, and strolled past patients in hospital gowns with jackets over their shoulders, pushing IV stands. “Do you really think that the Father has some connection with Tommy?” Bart asked after Colomba was done summarizing what had happened.
“The Father or someone in his place.”
“Do you mean Leo?”
“Dante has always been positive that Leo and the Father knew each other. Leo started stalking Dante immediately after the Father’s death. And if he knows who Dante really is, that might be true.”
“Another psychopath.”
“Dante was convinced that the Father was testing a cure for autism on children, on behalf of Big Pharma.”
“A drug that could cure all the syndromes afflicting those who are on the spectrum would destroy the patient’s personality.”
“But it would be worth a lot of money, right?” Colomba asked.
“Heck, yes.” They moved toward the perimeter wall, where Bart bummed a cigarette off a doctor. “Why didn’t you tell the intelligence agencies about your suspicions? They could investigate in that direction.”
“I don’t trust Di Marco, I never know what his real agenda is. The only thing that I’m forced to recognize is that he’s a patriot. If there were anything dirty about him, the people he’s climbed over to become the chief of counterterrorism would certainly have ratted him out by now.” Colomba threw a pebble, trying to hit the side of a metal trash can. She missed it. “And anyway, they’ve already dug into Tommy’s past and they didn’t find a thing. Has anything occurred to you?”
Bart shook her head. “No. I’ve gone over every square inch of the only two prisons we know anything about, the shipping containers and the camper parking area where you killed the Father. I didn’t find anything that suggested other prisoners had been processed or that there were other torture sites. And by now, I have to say, they’d all be dead anyway.”
“Unless Leo took care of them,” said Colomba. She tried with another, slightly bigger rock, and this time she hit the rim of the trash can with a deeply satisfying tonnng. “I just hope that Dante wakes up soon. In this incredible mess, I really need his twisted brain.”
12
Luckily, Dante’s brain hadn’t suffered any physical damage in spite of the long period under anesthesia. Once he got over the first onset of meningoencephalitis, a week after his arrival in the hospital, the doctors ordered the removal of the breathing tube that connected him to the ventilator and started reducing the level of sedatives being administered. Dante thus found himself swimming through an extremely boring version of heaven, without fluffy clouds or colors. It took forever before the unbroken fields of white started filling up with silhouettes that fluttered in silence. In time, the shapes started to acquire depth and sound. They turned into shadows that danced around him in an endless succession of grumblings and squeaks and buzzes. They were words, but Dante couldn’t understand them: he’d lost all knowledge of language, along with all physical sensations. He didn’t even know that his eyes were open.
That is why, on the tenth day, it was in fact his first physical sensation—thirst—that brought with it the first fully meaningful word.
Water.
The word pulsated, floating overhead. Dante felt icy drops falling on him, little tiny pinpricks.
Rain.
He could taste their flavor in his mouth, as metallic as
Blood.
It almost felt as if his head were filling up, swelling up like a bag of concepts and stimuli that once again made him feel like a
Human being.
Seen from outside, his eyelids were only quivering faintly, but inside, he was turning
Somersaults
of sheer
Joy.
And now the silhouettes were slowing down; he could make out details. A green flash that gave him something like an
Electric shock.
That silhouette in fact became his point of reference. It appeared on the far side of the unscalable mountain formed by the
Bedsheets.
The other silhouettes approached and churned away, but the one with the green flashes was always there. Time slowed down further, as if the words that filled his head were serving as a counterweight. The landscape became definable, the world took on warmth and color.
Odor.
The odor set his brain on fire. Every molecule brought with it sensations and memories of what had been. The silhouette became three-dimensional. It was a woman sitting in an old armchair with a book that was crumbling in her hands. She wore a sweater made of undyed wool and a pair of jeans; her bare feet were perched up on the bed.
When the woman looked up, training her green eyes upon him, Dante remembered her name.
13
Air,” Dante uttered soundlessly, forming the word with his lips.
Colomba leaped to her feet, rang the bell to summon the
nurse, unlocked the wheels on his bed, and pushed him out of the room and quickly down the hall to the emergency exit. Dante’s eyes were darting around furiously, his gaze filled with terror.
When Colomba pushed down on the panic bar, the door alarm went off instantly, summoning Alberti and two other officers, who came galloping down the hall, sidearms drawn. Colomba ignored them and went on running, pushing the bed out onto the balcony.
The fresh air seemed to have miraculous properties. Dante calmed down, trained his eyes on Colomba, and his lips formed a pair of syllables. When Colomba finally figured out that Dante was silently uttering “CC”—the nickname that she had learned to accept—tears came to her eyes and she leaned over to hug him, taking great care not to crush him. He was weirdly light, as if his bones were hollow.
* * *
After a couple more weeks of physical therapy and treatment, Dante was able to be moved, and the powers that be in the intelligence agencies’ protective services started lobbying for him to be transferred to a military hospital. Colomba resolutely opposed that approach and instead convinced them to move Dante to the Portico hospital, where rumors about a certain Signor Caselli rescued from an abandoned clinic hadn’t circulated as they had in Rimini. The hospital, small though it might be, was a perfectly adequate facility and it bordered a thoroughly untended garden, concealed from the public street by a high enclosure wall. In the overgrown, weed-filled garden, they set up a Red Cross field hospital, which became Dante’s new residence; another adjoining tent served as the operations base for the security detail. It was unlikely that anyone could even see in, but just to prevent loose talk, they set up a series of other tents in the garden and put up a sign announcing the coming opening of a camping supplies outlet. This also theoretically served as an explanation for the security detail, who dressed in night watchman uniforms.
At Dante’s request, Colomba opened her pocketknife and made a cut in the canvas and then pushed the head of his bed outside. It was still cold out, in spite of the electric radiators that an army engineer had set up, hooking them up to overhead high-tension wires, but Dante spent nearly all of his time with his face poking out of the tent. And with all the time that he spent looking up at the sky, little by little he managed to learn to focus and understand where he was. His mind was like a broken kaleidoscope. In the days that followed his transfer to the new hospital, it sometimes worked, but other times it just made the noise of shards grinding: in those cases, Dante blathered a mixture of tenses and languages. He recognized a few faces, he took fright if sounds were too loud, and he struggled to detect parts of his own body. He wept frequently, especially at night. More than once, Colomba got up to rock him to sleep, the way you do with little kids. “It’s all right,” she’d tell him. “You’re safe now.”
Kill the King Page 17