Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

  They sat watching the traffic going by.

  “You’re still sure Durning’s going to handle this alone?” Gianni said.

  “Absolutely.” Mary looked at him. “Why? Are you having a problem with that?”

  “A bit. What you said in Washington yesterday makes sense. And you sure know the man a lot better than I. It’s just that I can’t see him going to meet Carlo Donatti without security.”

  “I didn’t say he wouldn’t have security. I said he wouldn’t have witnesses.”

  “But if he has no backup, what’s protecting him from Carlo Donatti?”

  “The same thing that’s been protecting him all these years. His safety-deposit box.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He as much as told me.”

  “When?”

  Mary Yung stared off somewhere. “During one of his more vulnerable moments.”

  Gianni didn’t press it.

  “You remember the way back to the airport?” he said.

  “No. I’ll probably get lost and no one will ever know what happened to me.”

  He said nothing.

  She turned and looked at him. “You don’t have to worry about me, Gianni.”

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t. But it happens to be true.”

  Their eyes met and held.

  “So?” she said. “Are you going to at least kiss me goodbye, or just sit there like a half-Jewish schmuck?”

  Gianni leaned forward and kissed her.

  It may not have been the sweetest kiss he’d ever had, but it certainly was the most knowing, with something in it of the unfilled hopes of the numberless men she must have kissed and finally left behind. And all it did as he walked back to his car was make him sad.

  83

  CARLO DONATTI’S LONG-range corporate jet landed at Palermo Municipal Airport at 8:20 A.M. and was met on the tarmac by a single gray sedan.

  No one but the driver was in the car, and no one was standing any place near it. The closest vehicle was an airport service van parked about two hundred yards away, and the only people in sight were working mechanics and other airport personnel.

  Donatti appeared to be the sole passenger. He disembarked alone, carrying a single piece of luggage, and entered the waiting sedan.

  The car made a brief, ritual stop for the special passport accommodation always accorded the don, drove out of the airport, and headed south in the direction of Partinico.

  Nothing followed.

  Don Donatti knew this because he was watching his side-view mirror every foot of the way.

  What he did notice a few minutes later was a nondescript sedan pulling out of a cross road and falling in behind them at a distance of about a quarter mile. The car maintained this interval for perhaps fifteen minutes before finally turning off and disappearing.

  But it was replaced almost immediately by a dark service van of some sort, which also maintained a steady, quarter-mile interval. The van stayed with them until they left the road and entered the long driveway that led to the white villa where Peggy Walters was being held. Watching, Donatti saw the van pass the turnoff and just keep going. But he was almost certain another vehicle would take over within minutes, park somewhere, and watch the house.

  Donatti wasn’t especially concerned. He was usually expecting and prepared to deal with this sort of thing. But in this case it was a bit puzzling because he knew the surveillance wasn’t likely to have anything to do with Henry Durn-ing. Which meant it was either a few of Sorbino’s people operating on their own, or some other local capo jealous of Sorbino’s inside track with the American capo di tutti capi. Not that it mattered. He would be losing them soon anyway.

  The driver carried his bag inside the villa.

  “Leave the car where it is,” Donatti told him, “and get yourself something from the kitchen. I’ll let you know when I need you. It won’t be for a while.”

  The don found Peggy having breakfast on the terrace.

  “A lovely morning, Mrs. Battaglia. Perfect for all good things. I hope you slept well.”

  Peggy’s eyes searched his face for signs, ready to fly off if what she saw there appeared to be bad news.

  “Is it now?” she asked. Her voice, too, was hesitant.

  “Not right this minute. But we should be leaving before too long. Are you ready?”

  “I’ve been ready since the second I got here.”

  Carlo Donatti’s smile was the warmest he had. “Of course. One of my more stupid questions.”

  On impulse, Peggy reached for the don’s hand and pressed it.

  “Thank you,” she said to the man who had once sent Vit-torio Battaglia to kill her, but who now was offering life to her and her son. “Thank you.”

  84

  THERE HAD BEEN strong tailwinds for much of the flight over the Atlantic, so the government charter out of Washington touched down at the Naples airport forty minutes early, at 9:50 A.M.

  Henry Durning left the plane, picked up his bag, and walked through an all-but-automatic customs and passport check with the other passengers. He chatted pleasantly with the two Supreme Court justices in the group and made a point of being especially charming to their wives.

  Then, leaving them, the attorney general put through a call to the Donatello Hotel in Capri. It was pure impulse. Like the need, he thought, to keep touching a fresh wound to make sure it was still there and hurting. It was and did.

  He knew as sure as he was breathing that Mary wasn’t going to be at the hotel, yet here he was, calling. It had to be something primordial, he thought coldly, first put together by a bunch of cells gone wild in his mother’s womb.

  When he had the hotel on the line, he asked the operator to connect him with Melissa Lee, the name on Mary’s current passport. Then he waited.

  “I’m sorry,” said the operator. “Ms. Lee hasn’t checked in as yet. However she did call with a message. She’ll be arriving several hours late.”

  Durning slowly hung up.

  Which meant what? he wondered, and left the terminal.

  The four motor coaches were lined up, engines idling, exhausts turning the air blue. Around them, a large, highly visible police presence was set up to protect the visiting dignitaries from possible incidents.

  The attorney general tried to see if he could pick out some of the CIA people that Artie Michaels had said would be in place to watch over him. He came up with either half a dozen or none at all.

  Naturally.

  When they were good, Henry Durning thought, you could be looking right at them and never know it.

  Then he boarded the lead bus for the drive to the Sorrento hotel.

  Tommy Cortlandt listened to the voice at the other end of the line, asked a few questions, and hung up.

  “Durning just arrived at the Naples airport,” he told Vitto-rio Battaglia. “So we’ve finally got them all here.”

  Vittorio watched from his bed as the CIA chief of station worked the little colored flags on his wall map, shifted some, added others, removed a few entirely. A kid with a new board game, thought Battaglia. Except that all those little flags he kept shoving around just happened to be real people.

  Cortlandt glanced over to be sure Battaglia hadn’t drifted off again. “You with me?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cortlandt had opened and straightened out a wire hanger and was using it as a pointer. “Right now Donatti’s our wild card. We’re not sure what the devil he’s doing way over here in this Sicilian villa. But the general feeling is that he might have your wife there.”

  Vittorio half opened his mouth, changed his mind, and said nothing. Just listen, he thought.

  “Anyway, the don’s not going anyplace unless we want him to. And we’ve got the same kind of lock on the three others. Durning and Mary Yung at the airport, and your friend Garetsky patiently parked near the Amoretto Hotel in Sorrento.”

  “When do you pick up Mary and Gianni?”

  �
�As soon as the buses leave the airport area and Mary follows. We don’t want Durning noticing a possible fuss and getting suspicious. And we can’t pick up Garetsky ahead of time because he and Mary rented cars with phones and he might warn her before we’re able to cut him off.”

  Vittorio Battaglia lay there with it. Fear, anger, and frustration came off him like a poisonous odor. He was sure that if he breathed deeply enough it would choke him.

  “Any chance my son could be in Donatti’s villa with my wife?” he said.

  “Hey, come on. I don’t even know whether your wife is really there.”

  “What the hell do you know?”

  Cortlandt’s eyes stayed soft. “Enough to settle for one small step at a time and not push it.”

  85

  AT A BIT past 10:30 A.M., Carlo Donatti stood at a second-story window, gazing out from the front of the sparkling white villa.

  He saw the wide, manicured lawn sweeping down to the road, and the circular Belgian block driveway leading up to the house, and the gray sedan that had brought him here earlier, still parked in front of the doorway.

  Moments later Donatti watched as two men and a woman quickly left the house and got into the car. One of the men was his driver, the other man was wearing his clothes and was of a similar build, and the woman was the villa’s slender, dark-haired housekeeper, who could easily pass for Peggy at any distance over a hundred yards.

  Donatti saw the car drive off, reach the road, and turn right in the direction of Palermo. After a while, a dark service van passed the villa, going the same way. Then the van, in turn, was followed by what appeared to be the same nondescript car that Donatti remembered having seen behind them for a while on leaving the airport.

  Good, thought Carlo Donatti. But he continued to perform as carefully as if he knew for certain that the house was still surrounded by watchers.

  Collecting Peggy and his bag in the kitchen, Donatti led the way down into the basement, through a hidden door, and into a well-lighted passage that seemed to stretch to infinity but was actually just a little more than a quarter of a mile in length.

  When they came out of it, they were in a small stone hut at the edge of a field surrounded by woods.

  And in the field, a helicopter and a pilot were waiting.

  My God, thought Peggy. How lovely that this most resourceful of men, this capo di tutti capi to end all capi di tutti capi, should suddenly turn out to be on our own ever so sadly needful side.

  86

  PAULIE HAD BEEN counting the minutes for more than an hour. He was waiting for the call to come, almost not believing it ever would come, afraid that even Frank Langiono’s promise of a call would turn out to be just another in the long list of lies that all these people had been telling him from the beginning.

  So when the desperately awaited ringing finally did come, when Paulie heard the shrill jangling suddenly explode against the quiet of the house, he turned white and cold and absolutely froze in place.

  He stared helplessly at Frank Langiono.

  “The phone.” He was barely able to get the words out. “The phone is ringing.”

  Langiono looked at him deadpan. “What phone? You hear ringing? I don’t hear a damn thing.”

  The boy could only point.

  Langiono grinned and picked up the receiver.

  “Yeah,” he said. “No problems. Everything’s on target. The boy’s right here. He’s great. What about your end? Two hours will be fine. Don’t worry. I’ll get set up early.”

  Langiono listened for several moments. Then he checked his watch. “I’ve got exactly eleven oh-six. Right on the nose. Yes, sir. I know every second can make a difference. We’ll go for one oh-six. Sure. Here he is. I’ll put him on.”

  Langiono held the phone out to Paulie. “You interested in talking to anybody? Or maybe you’re too busy right now.”

  “Huh—who?” the boy stammered.

  “Your mom. Who else?”

  Paulie stared at the phone in Langiono’s hand. It might have been a snake.

  “Take it,” said Langiono, smiling again now that he was addressing the boy. “It won’t bite.”

  Paulie gripped the receiver with stricken fingers. He heard a roaring sound and tried to shout above it.

  “Ma! Is that you, Ma?”

  “It’s me, baby. It’s me. How’s my Paulie?”

  “I’m great.” The boy licked his lips and a deep red flush surged up over his collar and stained his cheeks, his ears. He looked straight ahead at nothing, hopelessly. “How… how are you?”

  “I’m fine… really fine.”

  “What about Dad?”

  “I’m sure he’s fine, too.”

  Paulie swallowed hard. If his mother said she was sure, it meant she didn’t know. “What’s all that noise?” he shouted because he suddenly was afraid to ask or hear anything more about his father.

  “I’m up in a helicopter. I can’t wait to see you, darling.”

  “Me, too.”

  “It’ll only be another couple of hours, sweetheart. I have to hang up now. I love you.”

  Paulie’s tongue seemed to freeze between his lips. “I… ”

  Then the roaring noise became louder and the connection was broken.

  The boy stood there, unmoving. The blush seemed to have settled like a permanent blight on his cheek, and he stared blankly at the dead receiver until Langiono took it from his hand and hung it up.

  “Your mom OK?” he asked.

  Paulie didn’t seem to hear him. Tears started from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.

  “What’s the matter?” said Langiono.

  The boy barely managed to get it through despairing lips.

  “I don’t know.”

  A lie.

  Because he did know.

  They were never going to let any of this happen.

  87

  MARY YUNG CAUGHT her first glimpse of Henry Durning as he came out of the airport terminal and knew instantly she was not immune to the several ways he had reached her.

  What a godawful waste, she thought, and was moved.

  She watched him board and take a window seat on the first of the waiting buses, and found herself remembering things that would have been better left forgotten at this particular time.

  She had told Gianni she could use a gun on Henry if it ever came to that, and she knew she could. Yet her deepest hope was that she wouldn’t have to. God, the man had so much. And indeed there had been moments when, despite everything, she had felt a more genuine tenderness rise from him than from any other man she had ever known.

  Such was love with Henry.

  And now?

  And now, as his one true love and chosen heir, I sit spying on him with intent to betray, entrap and, if necessary, perhaps even to kill.

  Moments later, Mary Yung saw the doors close on each of the four luxury motor coaches and the lead coach slowly pull away.

  Giving them time to gain some distance, she picked up the phone and called Gianni.

  “They just pulled away from the terminal,” she said.

  “And you saw Durning get aboard?”

  “He’s on the lead bus, third row from the front, right side, window seat.”

  “Good. The thing you have to watch out for now—besides being spotted yourself—is the chance he might get off before they reach Sorrento, and switch to a waiting car.”

  “What about you?” Mary asked. “Are you in place at the hotel?”

  “I’m parked about a hundred yards past the entrance, just off the main road. I can see anyone entering or leaving.”

  “I’m moving out now. I’ll call again in a little while,” Mary Yung said, and put down the phone.

  Led by two marked police cars, the four big motor coaches were rolling slowly along the road that would take them out of the airport. Behind them, Mary saw another marked police car and two unmarked sedans. Then for a long stretch there was no traffic at all. When the entire convoy of four
motor coaches and five security vehicles had traveled about half a mile down the road, Mary Yung set out after them.

  Watching her back, she saw nothing behind her. She rolled her head on her shoulders to ease the tension she felt forming.

  It took her almost ten minutes to maneuver into the position she wanted. When she finally had it, she was about three hundred yards behind the last security vehicle, with a civilian pickup and a van between them as buffers. There wasn’t a thing at her back that she felt she had to worry about.

  Suddenly feeling the need, she picked up the phone and put through another call to Gianni.

  “Tell me something nice,” she said.

  “Why?”

  Mary thought for a moment.

  “Because sometime during the next few hours, one or both of us might be dead.”

  “Is that your cheery thought for the day?” Gianni said. “Or are you just trying to build up my confidence?”

  “It would be nice if you could say you love me.”

  Gianni Garetsky was silent.

  “What would be so terrible if you said it?” Mary Yung asked softly. “Are you afraid it might upset some kind of divine plan the Lord might have in store for us?”

  “Do you really think now is the best time for this?”

  “When would be better? When we’re dead?”

  Gianni sighed.

  “Don’t you dare sigh at me. We’re not even married.”

  He laughed.

  “Would you like to hear one of the nice things Henry told me the last time we were together?”

  “No,” said Gianni Garetsky.

  “Well, I’ll tell you anyway. He said if I lived to be a hundred, parts of me would still know that no one ever came close to loving me as he did.”

  It took a while for Gianni to respond. When he did, his voice was quiet and without the wryly mocking spin it had held just a moment before.

  “That’s a very lovely, very moving thought,” he said. “Do you believe it’s true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why are you here with me?”