by James Bruno
"It is with great sadness and shock that I receive you here today," began Ambrolini, an urbane politician descended from Italy's former royal family. Innes recalled that he was a rare straight arrow among Italian politicians, unbesmirched by involvement in the country's pervasive corruption.
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"Since I spoke with Mr. Baldwin yesterday, we have uncovered little new information, but the investigation continues. If we look closely at the facts, we find the following: Ambassador Mortimer was without his bodyguard, he was found in a section of the city that foreigners usually do not venture into and he was killed at approximately 2:00 am."
An aide pointed to the location of the murder on a mounted map of the city of Rome. Two other display boards exhibited black and white photographs of the body and surroundings where it was found.
"A key question is, what was Ambassador Mortimer doing out in that part of the city without protection, without his driver, all alone?" asked Ambrolini. "We know it was not robbery; his money and valuables were untouched."
In paced deliberate motions, Bernard J. Scher pulled a pipe from his worn tweed jacket, patiently loaded the tobacco, not once lifting his eyes from the task at hand.
Only after two calculated puffs did the State Department's chief lawyer fix his zinc irises on the Minister.
"Now, the way we see it, this assassination of the President's envoy to this country comes on the heels of the bombing of the Egyptian embassy, a plane hijacking to Sudan, the unexplained escape from one of your high security prisons of Abu Khalid Jihad -- key hitman for the Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- and a spate of threats against American military personnel here by al-Qaida and assorted exiled Saudi radicals, all within the past four months," Scher pontificated, totally ignoring the line Ambrolini was pursuing. "I don't think that I need to emphasize that Roland Mortimer was a staunch supporter of Israel, had conducted assiduous fund-raising among Jewish voters in his state. This alone would mark him as a target for Middle East Muslim extremists."
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The Minister stiffened. "I see what you're getting at," he said. "But this case has none of the hallmarks of a terrorist attack. If you will bear with me for a moment, our experts will outline for you the details." He gestured to a uniformed police officer. "Major Arno, of our domestic intelligence division, will give an analysis of --"
"What measures have you taken in the last twenty-four hours to track the movements of and collect intelligence on the Islamic radical groups and Middle East crazies that are running around freely in this country?" Scher demanded as he calmly placed his briar on the conference table exactly equidistant between his reposed arms.
"Believe me, Mr. Scher, we will pursue all leads--"
"Pardon my bluntness, Minister, but while your people are tracking down 'all leads' the perpetrators are getting away. Let's face it, the current political climate here is not exactly conducive to getting quick action against evildoers." Scher was alluding to the political turmoil Italy was going through over corruption scandals rocking the government and mafia murders of judges and mayors in the south.
His carefully calibrated coolness melting steadily, Ambrolini retorted, "While we are speaking frankly with each other, I would like to note that Ambassador Mortimer associated himself with people which an ambassador normally does not befriend. My government has gone to exceptional lengths to protect the late ambassador's reputation. We all know his fondness for putane, for reckless behavior, for prowling around bars and bawdy houses. This man invited trouble."
"God knows, he escaped our purview all the time, never wanted to cooperate with security," added a nodding RSO
Kobalski, trying to be helpful.
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Scher shot a frosty gaze at Kobalski with the implied message of "Shut your big trap you dumbass."
The meeting went nowhere.
After five days, with the investigation going in circles, the embassy was divided between those who bought off on the Italian scenario and those inclined to believe that terrorists had greased the ambassador. The security types leaned toward the former, while the intelligence people largely supported the latter. Chargé Baldwin tried his best to be an impartial searcher of the truth, while simultaneously seeking to avoid an open split with the Italian government. Innes had had it. The cables he drafted back to Washington reflected divisions and ennui.
It was 6:00 pm, he had put the finishing touches on that day's cable to Washington ("Mortimer Sitrep: No Leads as Italian Authorities Go After African Gangs").
His conversation with his wife earlier in the day had gone badly. No surprise really. He phoned in to check on things. Davey had the flu. She was working double shift this week. When would he be back? No Hello darling!
How's Rome? How's the food? How's the investigation going? Innes had been wanting to take the family off to Mazatlán for a week. Somehow, it kept being put off. He had to work things out with Carolyn. Start off with a nice dinner at the Balkan Crown, their favorite, the night after he got back. Just the two of them. Line up a babysitter, call in sick on the night shift…hmmm.
He sat slumped at a desk in the political section of the embassy, mulling this over, sipping a warm coke. Colleen McCoy, Ambassador Mortimer’s staff aide, entered to shred the day's classified traffic.
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"Hi, your cable went out okay. It was the last for the day," she said, more as small talk than to inform.
"Last and useless," Innes said sharply, regretting too late his sarcastic slip.
"What do you think, will this investigation get anywhere? You may as well see this now. It just came in."
She showed him a Nodis telegram from the Department.
Nodis -- No Distribution -- was the channel reserved for sensitive correspondence between the Secretary of State and his ambassadors. In actual practice, however, quite a number of bureaucrats had access to Nodises, but photocopies were strictly forbidden. Staff aides, like Colleen, as controllers of the information flow to their bosses, saw most everything they saw.
SECRET/NODIS
TO: AMEMBASSY ROME, IMMEDIATE
FROM: SECSTATE WASHDC
FOR SCHER
ALSO FOR CHARGE
SUBJECT: MORTIMER INVESTIGATION
1. SECRET - ENTIRE TEXT.
2. DEPARTMENT AND WHITE HOUSE REMAIN
CONCERNED OVER LACK OF PROGRESS ON THE
MORTIMER INVESTIGATION. HOUSE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FOREIGN OPERATIONS IS
PLANNING TO SCHEDULE HEARINGS. MEDIA ATTENTION CONTINUES TO BE STRONG.
PRESIDENT HAS DECIDED TO FORM AN
INTERAGENCY WORKING GROUP TO
RESTRUCTURE INVESTIGATION.
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3. FOR SCHER: IN LIGHT OF LACK OF EVIDENCE
AND APPARENT INABILITY OF GOVERNMENT OF
ITALY TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS CASE, YOU ARE INSTRUCTED TO PREPARE YOUR FINAL
REPORT AND RETURN TO WASHINGTON BY END
OF THE WEEK.
4. FOR CHARGE: IN LIGHT OF CONTINUING LACK
OF RESULTS, REQUEST THAT YOU RAISE USG'S
CONTINUING CONCERNS AT THE HIGHEST
LEVELS OF THE GOI. TALKING POINTS WILL BE
FORWARDED VIA SEPARATE TELEGRAM.
DENNISON
"The papers and the networks are all over the administration on this thing," Colleen said as she handed Innes the daily wireless file, a compilation of headline stories in the major U.S. papers.
"U.S. Envoy's Murder Still a Mystery," declared The New York Times. "State Department Bungles Murder Investigation," announced The Washington Post.
Innes shook his head as he read. "This is bad, real bad.
But you know, they're right. This whole so-called investigation is a total farce. Both we and the Italians are barking up the wrong trees."
Colleen
looked at him with a start, her ear-length chestnut hair falling forward on her cheeks. "Do you know something that the rest don't?"
"No. But they're going in the wrong directions. Scher seems to have some political agenda. In any case, he's obsessed by terrorists, and the Italians have Africans on the brain. Kobalski doesn't know what he's doing except to try frantically to cover his fat behind. If everybody is so well aware of Mortimer's meanderings, even though they've kept 30 JAMES
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some kind of conspiracy of silence about them, then why not just go to his haunts and start asking questions? The guy's dead, for Christ sake. Who cares about his reputation now?"
"Maybe that's just it. Maybe the Secretary and the White House are more concerned with keeping any whiff of scandal from the administration. Next year the President's up for re-election, right? Which headlines would you prefer if you were him? 'Al-Qaida Assassinated U.S. Ambassador' or 'Horny Envoy, President's Pal, Offed by Pimps'?"
Innes's haggard face broke into a smile, the first since he left D.C.
"Tell me this. Here you worked closely with Mortimer for a year. You must've known about his private life. Just the bits and pieces we heard in Washington, sounded like he was the Flying Walenda of the boudoir."
Colleen bit her lip, shifted her eyes as she contemplated. She gripped her left elbow with her right hand as she leaned against a low cabinet piled high with back issues of La Stampa, Corriere della Sera, and International Herald Tribune. She was clad in a smooth pink skirt ending just above the knee and a simple white blouse. At all of 24 years of age, Colleen McCoy, lost in thought, looked vulnerable and scrumptious.
"I don't know," she began uncertainly. "It's not like he was around all that much when you come down to it."
"You mean he played hooky from the office?" Innes tried to shift nonchalantly in his chair in such a way as to conceal his hard-on. Colleen caught it and stifled a knowing smile. She folded her arms and took three paces in the direction of the ambassador's office which lay across a circular foyer. She stared at the office across the way.
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"You know, this has not been an ideal first tour. I've been in for a year and a half, I come to this huge embassy and end up working for a wild non-career ambassador who was a virtual stranger at the office and a public embarrassment." She swung around, arms still folded in front of her.
"I don't know. We really never knew where he would go off to after hours. Even during work hours we didn't know his whereabouts half the time. Joe has kept things on an even keel. Everybody went to Joe -- embassy folks, the prime minister, foreign minister, you name it. This place has been like a ship with a ghost captain. But somehow, we kept it on course."
Innes leaned forward at his desk and shot back the remainder of the stale Coke. He was now limp.
"In the Department we kept hearing rumors of wild parties at the residence and the ambassador carousing at all hours in town."
"He had friends -- outside friends. The drivers apparently know a little bit. They've whispered around that Ambassador Mortimer frequented several bars and other establishments in the red light areas. But it's strange. Since his son died in a car accident last summer, he was spouting off about repentance, 'Jesus loves us.' Religious stuff like that."
"So, the man was full of contradictions. What's his driver's name?" Innes asked.
Colleen looked into his eyes. "Pietro. Pietro Molinaro."
Catching on to Innes's thinking, she quickly added, "He's still here, I think. If we run, we might catch him before his quitting time." She took his hand and pulled him out of his chair with a forceful tug. The two raced through the foyer, down the gray marble staircase and out of the chancery toward the motor pool.
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They caught Pietro Molinaro just before he headed out of the embassy front gate.
"Signore, Signorina, I have worked for eight ambassadors. Some were good men. Some, not so good.
Most okay. Ambassador Mortimer, he was kind to me, always making the jokes. I don't think his heart was into this work, I will tell you frankly. He was not comfortable being America's ambassador. I think, after a while, he longed for people like he knew in America before coming here. His son's death, very bad. I drove him to church in the last few weeks. A Protestant church. He went there to pray." Molinaro, 55, gray, but still slim, obviously gave careful forethought to his statements.
"Pietro, can you tell us where he hung out when he slipped away at night?" Innes queried.
"Eh, you know, I did not drive him normally to unofficial things. Sometimes, he take a taxi, sometimes, friends pick him up. Even he drove himself at times."
Molinaro wiped his brow with his chauffeur's cap. "But two, three times, I drove him to a bar in the east of the city.
It is called…" He scratched his chin as he searched his brain. "Si! 'La Dolce Vita.' I think other drivers, they take him there too. You ask them."
"La Dolce Vita" was one of several dozen unextraordinary drinking establishments that catered largely to male German tourists, working class northern European visitors on the prowl and the occasional Korean or Japanese traveling businessmen with lots of money but zero sense of what constituted class on the European continent. A really bad jazz band boomed a barely recognizable Al Jarreau tune.
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Armed with a newspaper photo of the late ambassador, Innes and Colleen shouted above the din to the bartender and waitresses, asking if they had seen the man in recently.
The bartender, a bald middle-aged nonentity with a keenly honed sense of how to mind his own business, simply shook his frowning face as he idly wiped the bar. "No, non mai l’ho visto." Never seen him. Ditto with the waitresses.
Either they hit the wrong shift, or here was another kind of conspiracy of silence, or Mortimer had never patronized the place, or at least not frequently.
"Let's try some of the other joints nearby," Innes said.
Colleen checked her watch. It had been a long day. But with a deep breath of resignation and a quick shrug, she indicated, why not?
Same results at the "Il Gatto Nero," "La Casa Bianca,"
"Il Trovatore," "Dude's" and a handful of similar watering holes that Innes and Colleen wouldn't dream of stepping into under normal circumstances.
"Club Il Oriente é Rosso," "The East is Red Club,"
beamed down in hot pink fluorescent lights. Ersatz bamboo decked the front. In the window, Chinese parasols flanked an oversized balloon bottle of Tsingtao beer.
"Bob! Let's quit," whined Colleen as she slumped her arms forward in a gesture of exasperation. "I'm tired, it's late and this is getting to me."
"Last one, Colleen. Promise!" Innes grabbed Colleen's hand and pulled her along, her feet dragged like those of a child when being taken to the dentist.
Their eyes needed time to adjust to a murky interior in which a blue haze of smoke permeated the darkness. Dim bulbs enclosed in Chinese paper lanterns, which hung here and there from the low ceiling, provided the only light except for the tiny flickers of candles encased in red glass holders that sat atop minuscule round cocktail tables. A 34 JAMES
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panorama of a south Pacific beach served as backdrop to the long curved bar, itself sheltered by panels of rough thatch in what obviously was some interior decorator's adolescent vision of an exotic eastern locale. Hostesses, mostly Asian and decked out in red silk tunics, chatted it up with a male clientele that reminded Innes of extras from the movie "Good Fellas." Bethatched private cubicles lined the walls. A poster mounted next to the stage featured an enlarged photo of three grinning scantily clad Asian women, one wrapped around a saxophone, another caressing an electric guitar, the center one clutching a microphone with both hands. "The Gang of Three," shilled the advertisement. "Direct from Taipei!"
Colleen gaped wide-eyed and slack-jawed around her.
"They've got to be ki
dding. This must be somebody's idea of a bad joke," she said.
"Hello! Table for two?" asked a thirtyish Asian woman in English.
"Uh, yes," answered Innes. He signaled to a corner table.
"You like a drink?" asked the hostess as they were seated. "Special house cocktail is Kon Tiki Cooler. You Americans, huh?"
"How about a Ricard straight up and…"
"An Orangina," finished Colleen.
Innes answered her question, "Yes, we're Americans.
Do many Americans come here?"
"Oh, some in summer months," the hostess replied, obviously pleased to converse with Yanks.
Wasting little time, Innes pulled out the now fraying newspaper photo of Mortimer. "Ever seen this man in here?"
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"This man look familiar," she responded as she studied the picture closely. "I think Mikki know this man. I get her. You wait. Drinks come in a minute, okay?"
A Ricard, an Orangina and Mikki all appeared exactly eight minutes later.
"Hi, where are you from?" a tired Innes asked in a feeble stab at small talk.
"Thailand," answered Mikki, a diminutive female in her early twenties. Mikki fidgeted, eyes flitted nervously. She held her right wrist with her left hand.
"Well, er, do you know this…"
"Yeah," interjected Mikki. "I see him sometime. He come. Not too often. Only see. Nothing else."
Two tables away, a fat man with bushy black-gray hair snorted. "Eh, Mikki! Ven aca, Mikki! Che cosa stai facendo tu?! Eh!" he yelled, cranking his arm in a gesture to return. Innes recognized instantly the strong Sicilian accent.
Mikki looked anxiously over her shoulder. Her eyes said "I have to go."
Innes pulled out one of his cards and quickly scribbled his hotel and room number. "Give me a call. Please."
"Yeah. Maybe I do," she rejoined; she took the card and stuffed it into a side pocket of her red tunic.
As if on cue, Colleen and Innes looked at each other with raised eyebrows expressing "Bingo!"
It was showtime as the Gang of Three strutted out onto the small stage, clad only in teensy gold G-strings. A greasy emcee introduced them.
A wiry, beetle-browed man with a scowl affixed to his pock-marked face sauntered over from the fat man's table, held a menacing gaze on the Americans, then grabbed Mikki by the arm, abruptly turned and pulled her back.