by David Hewson
Signora Campitelli was wielding her loaf once more. Totti had found sufficient courage to start yelling abuse in all directions. The figures in black slunk back to their armored vehicles and started the engines noisily.
As they fled, Commissario Vincenzo Esposito stomped into the piazza, his face like thunder, marching across the cobblestones like a man possessed.
“Good day, sir,” Prinzivalli declared cheerily as he arrived.
The commissario stared at the departing troops. They were leaving to a flurry of merry abuse and a series of obscure and frequently obscene hand gestures from the largely elderly mob now milling around the square.
“A good day, Sovrintendente?” Esposito bellowed. “A good day? Is it?”
Prinzivalli was beaming from ear to ear as he watched the crowd bid the black vehicles farewell.
“Yes, sir,” he replied. “I do believe it is.”
58
Ben Rennick — he thought of himself this way, had done for more than two decades — strode out of the Quirinale, back to Borromini’s church, where earlier he’d been confronted by the state police. He almost felt grateful to them for inadvertently suggesting the location. It was a good, private place for an important meeting.
Behind him in the palace all was well, or as well as he might have hoped in the circumstances. The guests were departing for the Vatican. The story Rennick had been aching to release was running everywhere. The emergency was over. A desperate attempt to murder the politicians of the G8 summit in the heart of the Quirinale had been prevented at the last moment, and the terrorist cell behind it destroyed.
Coverage of the events in the Salone dei Corazzieri would be easily controlled, with enough manipulation, enough pressure. The details of the story were already set. The Spanish woman had entered the room with an automatic weapon. She’d been disarmed by security guards after firing off a few wild shots, which happily caused no injuries. Intelligence information indicated that the leader of the Blue Demon group, Andrea Petrakis, had fled the city after the failure of the attack. All exit points would be subject to extra security in an attempt to locate him. There would be disruption to international travelers for some days to come. But a sense of normality would start to return to Rome that very afternoon, and by the following day the city would begin to resemble the place he had loved since the moment he first set eyes on it more than two decades before. A place he felt guilty about despoiling, about using.
There were items to tidy. Eyewitness accounts of events in the Quirinale needed to be checked and corrected, where necessary. The crippled weapon the woman had used was, happily, in Palombo’s hands, where the fake shells and the crippling device that had jammed it could be quietly removed, if need be. A standardized version of the attack would soon be agreed upon and adhered to. Most of those in the Salone dei Corazzieri had witnessed little except a brief altercation, ending in shots. It would be easy to convince them of what they had seen. Even the loss of Anna Ybarra posed no great difficulties, since she knew nothing of what had gone on behind the scenes.
No opportunity for recrimination, no time for regrets, the American told himself, and walked back into the darkness of the church, heading for the fluid shadows, the site they’d agreed on.
The building was empty. In the half-light of the nave, there was no sound at all, not even the distant murmur of the city.
Then something touched his arm and Ben Rennick almost leaped out of his own skin.
“Jesus …”
A soldier was there, close to him. A corazziere dressed in ornate regalia, a sword at his hip, a plumed helmet on his head.
“Who the hell …?” Rennick began, then stopped as he looked at the eyes beneath the shining metal. Dark, dead eyes. Familiar.
“Andrea?” he murmured.
The man removed his headgear, stood there, arms open, beaming like a teenager.
“Andrea!” Rennick repeated, and embraced him, trying to hide the shock he felt at seeing the man’s face for the first time in twenty years.
The lines, the tanned, leathery skin, hair desiccated by sun and worry — it was as if life itself had been slowly withdrawn from Andrea Petrakis. And in its place? A husk. A shell.
“Renzo.” His voice sounded different, not just older, but as if it belonged to another man.
“Renzo’s dead,” the American told him, stepping back a pace, taking another good look. “Don’t forget.”
“How could I? I killed him.”
“You did,” Rennick agreed. Twenty years was a long time, and neither of them had any idea what had filled that void in their separate lives. “I owe you an apology. When we put you with the Afghans. No one had any idea it would take this long.…” There hadn’t been many options at the time. After the deaths of the Petrakis couple, and the risk of exposure of the Gladio network, no one else in Europe could be trusted to take a young Italian who knew too much. “Or that they’d become the enemy. They were ours back then, Andrea. The mujahideen — we made them. If I’d guessed …”
Petrakis stopped smiling. “Please. Those people in Washington knew what they were doing. They put me in there because you needed someone on the inside.”
Rennick sighed and admitted, “Maybe you’re right. I was just a foot soldier. What you’ve become.” He looked him in the eye. “So you understand exactly how that works, huh? We’re always in the dark. If you’re right, it was someone else’s idea. I was just trying to save all our hides. If what had been going on became public …” He looked at the stranger in front of him. “We offered to get you out. You know that. All the same, you stayed. We’re grateful. It was brave. It was selfless.”
“What else was I supposed to do?” the man in the corazziere uniform asked. “Come back here under an assumed name? Pretend to be someone else? Why? Why should I do that?”
“What happened after your parents died was a kind of madness. People were panicking. Everything we’d been doing looked like it was going to unravel. I wanted you out of that. Me too. I wanted us clear so that we could sort things out later.” The American frowned. “I never knew there’d be so much blood along the way. Or that we’d be using a stay-behind man, still needing one, after all these years.”
“I left you a message,” Petrakis said. “I always leave you a message. Now you don’t want me to me finish the job, do you? Why is that?”
“You mean those crazy numbers? Jesus, Andrea. Why do you do that? I never understood the need for them back then. Now—”
“I like to leave my mark. Something that lingers. Pictures on a wall.”
Rennick laughed. “You mean like the Etruscans?”
His amusement didn’t seem to impress Petrakis.
“Like the Etruscans. I like to finish the job too,” the man in the uniform insisted.
“Well, I guess communication has not been our strong point in this venture. I never got your message. Maybe Palombo was too busy.” Maybe, Rennick thought. “This job is finished. Done. Over.”
He’d realized that as soon as he saw the final message, in the hands of a cop in this same church little more than an hour before. Rennick knew Julius Caesar almost by heart. He had guessed instantly what that coded riddle had to mean and confirmed it, to his alarm, when he got back to the palace. “How the hell did you get this idea in your head? Tell me.”
“I thought you put it there,” Petrakis answered immediately. “Or maybe the Blue Demon did. Who knows?”
“There is no Blue Demon, Andrea. There never was. We invented all that stuff, remember? Your old man came up with the name when we were trying to put together one more lunatic bunch of terrorists to keep Gladio going. When he got killed, we just adopted it as a way of covering up what we’d been doing. If we hadn’t, everyone’s cover would have been blown. It was the only way—”
“He didn’t make it up,” Petrakis insisted.
“What?”
“He … didn’t … make … it … up. The Blue Demon’s real. I know.”
&nb
sp; This was crazy. Petrakis was crazy.
“Listen to me, Andrea. This has gone far enough. The Etruscans, the tombs. The idea someone might fight for some dead race wiped out centuries ago. That was your father’s idea. It was one more operation we were going to run. Then, when he died …”
They had been grasping in the dark that week. Everything — the panic, the fear of the network’s discovery, the desperation — remained etched in his memory. Clutching at the idea of another fake terrorist gang, paid for by illicit Gladio money, seemed the only way out, even if it came at a frightful cost. The loss of innocent lives. The end of his own identity. A terrible exile.
“He didn’t make it up. So who really runs the Blue Demon, Renzo?”
The American sighed. “My name is Ben Rennick, not Renzo Frasca.”
“Who …?”
“Leave all this to me. I’ll deal with it. Your work here’s done. Excellently done.” He made a grateful gesture with his hands. “We’ve reminded people this is a dangerous world again. That they should place their trust in those who govern. Very soon they’ll believe you’ve managed to flee the country, gone for good. You’re free. You can be whoever you want.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not. I’m trying to keep you safe. This has gone further than I intended. Giovanni Batisti …” Rennick shook his head. “I don’t understand why his death was necessary. Or the airport. That was never part of the plan.…”
“Nor was a bunch of cops prying into what I was doing in Tarquinia. In the tomb. I would have killed them all if you’d let me.”
“You should have phoned me when you were supposed to,” Rennick told him. “You should have called when you found those officers. We’re not murderers.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. Those cops stumbling onto you — it was an accident. These things happen.” He peered into Petrakis’s dark, dead eyes. “Like Stefan Kyriakis, I guess.”
“Kyriakis was a gun runner. A thief. He asked too many questions. He knew, Renzo. He would have sold us.…”
“He was one of ours. One of mine. It doesn’t matter now.”
“I was out there. In the field. You were behind a comfortable desk.”
“True,” Rennick agreed. He hesitated, trying to ensure Petrakis understood what he was saying. “I may — I do — regret some of the details of the last week, but there’s nothing here that can’t be dealt with. We’ve covered up worse in the past. Everything will work out so long as we stop now. I want no further actions.” He led the man deeper into the shadows, looking around them. “You can go wherever you want. I’ll see to the money. A new identity. A fresh start. Not Europe, I think. Maybe South America. Australia.”
“I like the East. Afghanistan.”
“Not an option.”
“It’s what you want, isn’t it? Their heads on a plate.”
“Not anymore. You’ve done enough. I won’t allow it. I can’t.”
Petrakis nodded as if he were listening. Rennick felt a moment of relief. “So my mission’s ended?”
“Finally,” the American agreed. “Yes.”
“I don’t get to lead you to the high command?”
“It wouldn’t work,” Rennick told him. “They’re not stupid. There’s not enough …”
The show at the Trevi Fountain. A dead politician. A handful of innocent civilian victims at the airport. A failed assassination attempt. If things hadn’t started to unravel, perhaps there was a chance. But not now. There was too much risk. And most of that would, he knew, come from the man in front of him.
“Not enough blood?” Andrea Petrakis’s eyes gleamed, interested.
“I guess you could put it that way. After today, the Blue Demon is history. It stays that way.”
Petrakis was shaking his head, looking crazy, saying, “No, no, no …”
“I’ll get you out of Rome tonight. Out of the country by morning. The farther, the better.”
“Easier if you just kill me.”
“Don’t say that,” the American snapped, aware his own voice was rising. Then, more softly, “Don’t even think it.”
“Easier if you slaughter me, the way you slaughtered my mother and father.”
Rennick blinked. “The Mafia murdered your parents. They wouldn’t stop their little sideline. Dope. That’s the truth. And you know it.”
The sham corazziere leaned forward. He seemed taller than Rennick remembered. “Don’t you see the problem, Renzo?”
“Please don’t call me that.…”
Something stirred above them: a stray pigeon that had flown in from the street, flapping between the darkness and the light.
A feather, pale and downy, floated down gently and landed on Rennick’s jacket. Petrakis brushed it aside with a flick of his hand.
“I’ve spent the last twenty years with the men who sold my father that junk in the first place. I’ve watched their children grow. I’ve eaten with their families. I’ve been one of them.”
He took Rennick by the arm, leaned into his ear, whispering, “They’re animals, Renzo. But, like animals, they only know the truth.”
“What truth would that be?”
“My parents, they did stop dealing dope. Both of them. Just as they were ordered. They did it because they were scared. Not of the people you think, either. They were scared because they found out who the Blue Demon really was. What this was really about.”
Rennick struggled to think, to remember. None of this had concerned him. He’d been told what had happened. By the Italians.
“The mob killed them for money,” he said. “What other reason could there be?”
“Knowledge.” Petrakis had come very close and placed a finger over his lips. “Please, Renzo. After all this time. No more lies. I just want to hear you say his name. Just once …”
The American shrugged his shoulders. He felt old and exhausted, and out of words. “You tell me,” he suggested.
Petrakis spoke.
Rennick looked at his watch and sighed. “We can talk about this later,” he insisted. “I need you to get out of that uniform, out of Rome. When this is over, let me buy you a beer. Somewhere warm and safe.”
“I don’t hear you denying it.”
He should never have come alone. He should have foreseen that Petrakis might have become detached from reality over the years.
“I’m not denying it, because it’s too ridiculous for words. Believe me.” He glanced at the door. “Believe—”
The words froze in his mouth. A pained sigh escaped his throat. A cold, stabbing agony was rising from his gut into his chest.
Rennick looked down, saw his hands fumbling for the source, recoiling when they found it.
Andrea Petrakis’s ceremonial sword was buried in his stomach, up to the hilt.
He was aware of blood rising past his lips in a salty flood, of a buzzing, screaming noise in his head. Petrakis leaned forward, pushed once more, then withdrew, taking the weapon with him in a sudden sweep that made the wounded man moan in agony.
In the shadows of Borromini’s church, Renzo Frasca, Ben Rennick — a man with two names — fell backwards, stumbling to his knees, clutching at the damp, growing pain in his belly, feeling the life pour out of his body.
The figure of a soldier stood above him, his helmeted head silhouetted against the bright circular dome, a static, descending dove at its center.
The American said something and didn’t even understand the words himself.
Petrakis stepped forward to wipe the bloodied blade against the stricken man’s jacket, one damp shiny side first, then the other.
“We shared so much once, Renzo,” he murmured. “Latin and Shakespeare. History and dreams. Smoke and mirrors.”
The American’s vision was narrowing. The agony was turning into something else, a dull, distant sensation.
A cold finger touched his trembling, murmuring lips. He could barely feel it, barely think in the swelling dar
kness that embraced him, falling all around from the bare stone folds of the church.
59
Teresa Lupo was halfway down the Via dei Serpenti, trying to make her way back to San Giovanni, when the shouting and cheering started. It came from a little cafe near the Piazza degli Zingari, a modest, friendly corner of Rome where she liked to drink coffee. It sounded as if Italy had won the World Cup once more.
She pushed her way through the crowd, thought of asking what had happened, then didn’t bother. Everyone was glued to the TV. Ugo Campagnolo was there on the screen, beaming, his face shiny with sweat, as if he’d run to the cameras, missing makeup on the way.
The prime minister had a message for the nation. The crisis was over. Rome was safe. One terrorist was dead, out in a field near the Via Appia Antica; another was in custody; and the third and final individual, Andrea Petrakis, the terrorist leader, was attempting to flee the country, pursued by the Carabinieri, stripped of his cohorts, unable to cause further damage.
Romans didn’t like Campagnolo. Wrong, Teresa reminded herself. Most of them positively hated the prime minister. Even so, she felt some grudging gratitude toward the man as he informed them their city was safe again, and that the strict security measures of the previous two days would soon be lifted.
Glasses were raised, beer and prosecco ordered. She caught the eye of an elderly man with a gray face and a salt-and-pepper mustache.
“You believe a word of that?” she demanded.
“I believe that bastard when he says we get our city back,” he answered. “He can’t take that away from us now, can he?”
He was probably right, though she wondered how Campagnolo and the security services could be so certain Petrakis was powerless on his own. This seemed presumptuous, she thought as she wandered back out into the street to the main drag of the Via Cavour. The roadblock near the Forum was being dismantled already. Normal life was returning. She darted into the road to stop a cab that someone farther up the street had already summoned. The driver looked at her with one arched eyebrow. Teresa flashed her police ID and said, “I’m doing this on Ugo Campagnolo’s orders. Take me to San Giovanni.”