Sacred Cut

by David Hewson

  Besides, she thought, Falcone was going to have plenty more reasons to go berserk soon. His solitary witness had gone walkabout after that little lecture of hers and she didn’t need to wonder about who’d catch the blame on that one.

  Think about work. It’s what they pay you for.

  “One thing, Silvio. You say the woman’s been cut.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Good. Now calm down and think about this because what I’m about to ask is important: are there any signs someone’s used a scalpel?”

  The voice on the line paused for breath.

  “That and the rest,” Di Capua panted. “You’ve got to get here, Teresa. It’s … scary.”

  She grabbed her car keys out of the bag. At least the kid hadn’t stolen them, too.

  “Twenty minutes,” she told Silvio. “And make mine a quarter pounder with cheese.”

  EMILY DEACON SAT in her small embassy apartment eyeing the phone, wondering what she could say. It had been a month since she’d spoken to her mother, a week since they’d exchanged e-mails. The relationship was close but had boundaries. They’d never really had the right conversation about her father’s death. Even now, she was uncertain how her mother felt about what had happened. Saddened, obviously. But shocked? A part of Emily said that wasn’t the case. And there was only one way to find out.

  She called home, went through the niceties, heard the conversation fade into its customary silences.

  “What do you really want, Emily?” her mother said after a while.

  “I want to bury Dad,” she answered immediately. “I don’t feel I’ve done that yet. Do you?”

  There was a pause on the line. “We were divorced, honey. It wasn’t pretty. By the time he died, he wasn’t a part of my life anymore. It’s different for you, I know. That’s only to be expected.”

  “But you loved him!”

  “ ‘Loved.’ ”

  Her mother could be tough. Emily knew that. Maybe it was all part of being married to her dad.

  “And you hated him? After?”

  “No …” Yet there was no emotion in her voice. In a way, Dan Deacon had vacated both their lives long before his last breath in a temple in Beijing. “I can’t have this discussion over the phone. Let it wait till you get home.”

  “I can’t wait. I’m in Rome. I’ve got memories. I’ve got things happening here …”

  She had to hang on so long for an answer she wondered if the line had gone dead. “Things?” her mother asked.

  “Maybe they’re not connected. I don’t know. It’s just …”

  Connected or not, there was a larger point.

  “Until I know what really happened,” she continued, “until I really know who he was, what he did, why it ended this way … I don’t think he’s quite dead. Not in my head.”

  “He got killed by a lunatic, Emily!” her mother yelled. “What more is there to know?”

  “Who he was. What he did.”

  That pause again. And then the cruellest thing. An act she’d never have expected, not in the harshest, most difficult of times during the divorce.

  “I’m not in the mood for this,” her mother snapped. Then the line really did go dead and Emily Deacon understood. She was the only one keeping Dan Deacon’s memory from the grave.

  THORNTON FIELDING WAS one of the embassy good guys, a long-serving member of the embassy staff who’d gone native over the two decades he’d spent in Rome. Emily Deacon could remember Fielding from her childhood. He was now fifty-five or so, still as slim, as elegant, as ever, today in a dark, fine-wool suit, perfectly ironed white shirt and red silk tie. He’d lost only the big, bushy head of dark hair, a feature which, she recalled, even back then seemed a little outré for the job. Now he was back to a conservative, short, scholarly clip, turning salt-and-pepper grey. This unvarnished admission of age somehow made his intelligent, constantly beaming face even more likeable.

  As a kid she’d had a crush on Fielding, even though she understood he was, in some way she couldn’t quite work out, different. Then, when she finally came back to the Via Veneto under Leapman’s wing, she’d understood. Thornton Fielding stayed in Rome for two reasons. He loved the place so much it was now home. Just as important, Rome didn’t judge him. His sexuality wasn’t an issue here. Professionally, it clouded his career, kept him out of the constant circle of foreign postings that meant promotion in the diplomatic world. Privately—and Fielding was a very private man, she now understood—this city let him breathe, let him be what he was. He’d never have got that in most places, and certainly not at home, amid all the backroom fighting and bitching of Washington.

  Leapman always referred to him as “the faggot,” sometimes within his hearing. Maybe that was because Leapman realized she knew and liked him anyway. Or perhaps she was just being paranoid. Either way, the two men kept out of each other’s company as much as possible. It was for the best, though Fielding’s remit covered the maintenance of security systems. As far as she understood, Fielding was the Bureau’s point man within the embassy, the one they came to when things needed fixing or they had to liaise on relations with other agencies. It was inconceivable they’d be able to avoid each other all the time.

  She had typed the two names she had—“Henry Anderton” and “Bill Kaspar”—into the network and got nothing. She needed more clearance so, after thinking this through and realizing there were so few options, she walked to Thornton Fielding’s office, waited for one of the assistants to finish talking to him and then went in, taking care to close the door behind her.

  Fielding was a smart man. He watched her push the glass shut, then said, “I’m just guessing here, but if you’re about to complain about your boss, Emily, let me save you some time. First, I don’t handle human resources issues for the FBI. Second, even if I did, there’s nothing I or anyone here can do to help you. Leapman is his own man. We just provide you guys with floor space, heating and free coffee. What you do with them is your business.”

  It was amusing, almost. Fielding automatically assumed she couldn’t cope with a prick like Leapman. He couldn’t yet separate her from the kid he’d known more than a decade before.

  “Why should I want to complain about him?”

  “Are you joking? If I had to work with that pig I’d be complaining. Mightily.”

  Which wasn’t true at all. Fielding had too much of the diplomat in his blood for that. He’d have found some way around the problem. “He’s not employed for his manners, Thornton. He’s there because he’s good at his job. He is, isn’t he?”

  Fielding’s eyes immediately went to the glass door. There was no one there. He held his long, slender arms out wide in a gesture of bafflement. “I guess so. Do you know what that job is exactly?”

  The question fascinated her. She’d never met Leapman before this assignment. He came out of nowhere, throwing so many demands and orders in her direction that she’d never thought about his background.

  Fielding answered his own question. “You don’t, do you? Well, let me tell you one thing, Emily. I recognize that kind of guy. If you could pull out his FBI records—and that’s a big if, I doubt even I have clearance to get that far—I’d put good money on the fact he started life elsewhere. Military maybe. I don’t know. Don’t care either. I can live with the FBI, most of the time. You’re just a bunch of people with a job to do. Leapman. He’s something else. Something private’s eating that bastard alive. Don’t know what it is. Don’t care. But if it’s not him burning you up, tell me what is.”

  She pulled up a chair and sat next to his desk. “I’m here to ask a favour. I want you to tell me about my father.”

  “Right now?” Fielding asked. “This sounds like social. I like social. Just not on company time. Couldn’t we have dinner sometime? After the holiday?”

  “Yes, we could. But I’d like to start the ball rolling. Being here … it brings back memories.”

  “I don’t understand the urgency.” He looked baff
led, reluctant to go along with this.

  “Let’s say I have a sudden curiosity. I wondered what you felt about my father. I was wondering what he did while he was in Rome. I was so young. And he wasn’t exactly forthcoming about things.”

  Dan Deacon had been a military attaché. Strictly speaking, that meant his role was to liaise with his counterparts in the country where he was stationed. But it could be one of those catch-all jobs too. She’d learned enough about that from scanning the newspaper files after he died. There was nothing specific about him. But there were stories everywhere, in reputable journals around the world, which made it plain the job could be a cover for something else.

  “I didn’t work alongside Dan,” Fielding replied cautiously. “We just knew one another. He spent a lot of time with the military people here. Really, Emily, I’m the wrong guy. Ask your mom.”

  “They divorced ten years ago. Not long after we left Rome. It all got … difficult around then. He was kind of cranky a lot of the time. Didn’t you know?”

  “I’d heard,” he said shiftily. “All the same, you should ask her.”

  “I have. Either she doesn’t know or she doesn’t want to say.”

  Fielding’s good-natured expression dropped for a moment and, for the first time, Emily felt the distance in years between them. Thornton Fielding had always had something boyish about him. Now it was an effort to keep up the act. “Maybe she’s got her reasons.”

  “Maybe she has. But if that’s the case, don’t I have the right to know, too?”

  “Jesus,” Fielding murmured, then got up and stood with his back to her, staring out of the window, out at the torrent of snow.

  She came to join him. It was an extraordinary sight: a cloud of soft white flakes pouring from the sky, creating a world that was cold and bereft of colour.

  “Will you look at that?” Fielding murmured. “I’ve not seen anything like it in twenty years. I doubt I’ll see it again either.”

  “Why not? It’s just weird weather. It happens from time to time.”

  He glanced at her. “All kinds of weird things happen from time to time, Emily. You just have to sit back, do your best, watch and learn, then put the whole damn circus behind you when it’s over.”

  “Meaning?” she wondered.

  “Meaning your father was a good, brave man who served his country. It’s a tragedy he’s dead. I’m sorry.”

  It wasn’t enough. She wouldn’t leave it at that.

  “Everyone’s sorry, Thornton, but sympathy doesn’t help. I’m trying to understand something here. You can help me.”

  His fine eyebrows rose. “You’re sure of that?”

  “Absolutely! You were here. You knew him. It wasn’t just a casual acquaintance. I was a kid back then. I remember you coming round. There was music. We laughed. I think …”

  It was a distant memory, one so odd it stuck out.

  “We used to dance.”

  He laughed. “The beer used to flow in the Deacon household, Emily. Dancing was just a part of it.”

  “I know. I wasn’t blind, deaf and dumb. I remember things, not the exact detail but the feeling, the atmosphere.”

  He wasn’t taking the bait.

  “I remember how bad that atmosphere got in 1991,” she persisted. “So bad it was what led them to divorce a few years later, I think. So what was it? I know he went away. I remember. It was my birthday. He wasn’t there. That kind of thing never happened. He always came back for my birthday. He used to say …”

  The memory was so sharp, so real, it brought tears to her eyes.

  “ ‘When you’ve only got the one kid spoil ’em rotten.’ He said it all the time. You must have heard it.”

  “Must I?”

  He cast an uncharacteristic look, one that just might have been fear, and returned to his desk.

  “Have you asked Leapman about any of this?” he asked.

  “No. What’s the point?”

  “He’s your boss, isn’t he? This is business, Emily. There are rules.”

  Fielding assumed she knew something. Maybe that was only to be expected.

  “Thornton, I don’t think you understand. Before I came here I was a trainee geek in systems. They put me there because I was so lousy out in the field. I’m in the Bureau because it’s what I was supposed to do. Dad fixed it for me. I don’t pretend I’m good at it. Then, all of a sudden, I’m on a plane to Rome with Joel Leapman in the next seat, staring hard at his copy of The New Republic, not saying a damn word about anything.

  Maybe I’m here because of my Italian. Maybe because I have that degree and I know a little of the background to this pattern he keeps obsessing about.”

  The pattern. That magic weave of curves and angles. She couldn’t get it out of her head.

  “What pattern?” Fielding wondered.

  “This.”

  She picked up a pen and started sketching a sacred cut on his notepad, outlining the part that made the shape of the beast. The man, Bill Kaspar, couldn’t have done it more quickly, more fluently, she thought.

  “I don’t know anything about some damn pattern,” Fielding complained, waving a hand at her. “This is your business, Emily, not mine.”

  “Yes! It is my business.” Her voice rose. “But believe me. I don’t know what the hell’s going on.”

  He thought about that, trying to measure if it were true or not. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No!”

  Fielding rubbed his hand across his mouth, thinking. “OK. Let’s say I believe you. Here’s the first piece of advice: don’t ask Leapman any of these questions. You’re right. You won’t get an answer. And it may just make things worse between you.”

  “Fine,” she persisted. “So let me ask you. Again. What happened in 1991?”

  An uncharacteristic sourness crossed Thornton Fielding’s face. “You’ve got books, haven’t you, Emily? You know what happened in 1991. Desert Storm. A bunch of allies got together to kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait.”

  “My dad was involved in that?”

  “He was the military attaché. What did you expect him to do? Stay here counting paper clips?”

  So that part of her memory was accurate. He had gone away, and for some time.

  “You mean he went there?”

  Fielding shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know the details. It’s a million miles from my job and I don’t want to know the details. Let me just say this. Rome’s a great place for putting together certain kinds of projects. Particularly ones that have to do with the Middle East. You’ve got the communication. You’re near the action. You don’t have the security issues you hit somewhere like Greece. There are facilities, too, out of town. That’s as much as I know.”

  “He was in Iraq?” she pressed.

  “Maybe. Probably. Hell, I don’t know and I’m not about to start asking. There was a whole bunch of spooky people around at the time. I kept clear. I didn’t like what was going on. We had a casus belli there anyway—Saddam had invaded another country, for God’s sake. But we hadn’t thought it through. Which was kind of the opposite second time round, in my opinion. With that we’d done the war games over and over again and never quite found the reason to use them. Not in all truth. I very nearly resigned over that one.”

  She was shocked. The idea of Thornton Fielding walking out of the embassy after twenty years seemed incredible.

  “You thought about quitting?”

  Her bafflement seemed to offend him. “Is that so odd? Do you think we just sit here taking orders, never questioning them? I wasn’t the only one. Some guy in the visa department just left his desk the day the first bombs fell, went outside and joined the crowds. Guess he’s making coffee in a bar or something right now. Stupid move. I can’t believe I nearly joined him.”

  His eyes slid towards the closed door again. Suddenly she felt guilty for putting this decent man in such an awkward position.

  “It’s not always easy to do what’s right, Emily. You h
ave to marry up your conscience with your duty. Sometimes they don’t match too well. One has to make way for the other. Either that or you just start all over again at something new and I’m too old for that. Hell, I’m too good for that. You can walk away or you can wait for another day to fight. I chose the latter.”

  She tried to think back to the blur that was her childhood.

  “He was gone a long time, I think. I remember it was odd. My mom cried at night. She was worried.”

  “He was gone for almost three months,” Fielding said bluntly. “But he came back, Emily. At least you got that. They didn’t all make it.”

  “And now he’s dead. This creep killed him anyway. In a temple in Beijing. Killed him, then carved this crazy pattern out of his back, just like all these others.”

  The connection hovered just out of reach … Fielding was waving a hand in front of his face. “I thought I told you. No details. Don’t give me any details …”

  “Without details I’m lost, Thornton. And I can’t get a single piece of useful information out of the damn system, because it’s blocked off to underlings like me. The moment I get near anything I hit the same barrier: no security clearance. I can’t talk to Leapman. All I’ve got is you and some local cops who maybe know more than they’re letting on.”

  “I haven’t got any more, Emily,” he said with resolution. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. Forget it. You want my advice? Go home. Get sick. Lay a complaint against Leapman or something. You won’t have a problem making them believe that. Get back to Washington, find yourself a comfy desk somewhere and get on with your life. Leave Rome and all this shit behind. There are graves around here you don’t want to start digging up.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  He looked into her face and there was no mistaking his expression. Thornton Fielding was begging her to be gone.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because I met him last night, Thornton, and I can’t just walk away from this now. He could have killed me, but he didn’t. Why? I don’t know. I have to know. Because of who I am. Because … Shit. He’s smart. Maybe he thought that’s why I was here in the first place? To lure him out. And he just didn’t want to play someone else’s game.”