by David Hewson
Five minutes later, still feeling grumpy and out of sorts, she was outside the former monastery. The more she thought about it, Campagnolo’s victory announcement felt premature and artificial. The men and women in the cafe in Monti surely understood that. Their relief came from nothing more than hearing what they longed for, not any rational consideration of the available facts. Terrorism did that to people. It made them ignore the usual rules and rituals of everyday life. That was what gave men like Andrea Petrakis — and those who pulled their strings — their power.
The apartment appeared to be empty when she stomped inside, which did nothing to improve her mood.
“Silvio?” she yelled. “Silvio?”
He was in the main bedroom, his podgy form stretched out on the big double mattress, sleepy-eyed, a sandwich and a can of beer in his hands, eyes glued to the TV. It still featured a grinning, triumphant Campagnolo, with some pompous-looking Carabinieri ass by his side, and Luca Palombo in the background.
“Where’s Elizabeth?” she wanted to know.
He shrugged and took a bite of the sandwich, then mumbled, “Must be a long lunch. Anyway, why come back? It’s over. Says so on the TV.”
“I don’t recall saying it was over for you.”
“Who stepped on your bunions? There’s no work. There never was, really. We were just doing some secret stuff on Dario Sordi’s orders, weren’t we? Speculative. A little crazy.” He hesitated. “Very crazy. Infectiously crazy.”
She marched over, snatched the can from his hand, and would have had the sandwich too if he hadn’t managed to wrest it out of her reach. Instead she grabbed the remote and switched off the TV.
“May I remind you that we have one dead politician, his driver, Mirko, and those people at the airport. Do you hear Ugo Campagnolo even mention them?”
“Difficult to hear anything with the TV off.”
“Don’t be smart with me.”
She flung the TV remote at his head. The young pathologist ducked. These days he always looked more offended than scared when she lost her temper. She wasn’t sure whether this was progress or not.
“What, exactly, is bothering you?” he asked.
“Everything! Nothing! I don’t know.”
“That narrows it down.…”
Teresa took a swig of his beer and waited for him to say something else. He didn’t. This was not the anxious, gauche young man she’d hired seven years before. He’d matured. And along the way, he’d found infinitely more subtle ways to infuriate her.
“I haven’t done a damned thing to help any of them,” she moaned.
“We might as well have stayed in the Questura, doing as we were told.”
“We were doing as we were told.”
“Huh! Fishing in the dark. What do you mean, Elizabeth is still at lunch?”
“Went to meet a friend. I imagine she heard the news and decided it wasn’t worth coming back.”
Teresa didn’t like that idea at all. “Tell me about the numbers.”
“The numbers?”
“The Latin numerals. The ones you were working on.”
“They don’t matter now, do they?” He looked a little guilty.
“Why? Because Ugo Campagnolo says so?”
“I fell asleep. When I woke up …” He gestured at the dead eye of the TV. “Does it matter?”
“Who knows?” Teresa grabbed his arm and led him back into the main room and the computer and ordered, “Tell me what you have.”
He grumbled something wordless, then sat at the desk, scrabbled through his notes, screwed up his bland, pasty face, and announced, “Twelve didn’t mean midday. Noon. Not two thousand years ago when they didn’t have clocks. Things weren’t that simple. Time was not easily measured. Here’s a quote I found from Seneca. ‘Facilius inter philosophos quam inter horologia conveniet.’ ‘It’s easier to get agreement among philosophers than clocks.’”
“Was that the Elder or the Younger?”
“Um …”
He was turning a touch red, which she found satisfying.
“Oh, for God’s sake. I was only trying to remind you of the futility of quoting dead people. Are you going to tell me something useful, or what?”
“The time of day varied according to the season. So did the hours, which also varied in length.”
“Facts …”
“Facts.” He glanced at a sheet. “The number twelve cannot refer to a specific time. Only an hour. Which isn’t an hour, at least not in the way we know it.”
“What hour?”
“Hora duodecima. Which in the summer would run from approximately six-fifteen to half past seven in the evening.”
She thought about this. “So it doesn’t mean it’s in the past?”
“If you accept the premise that ‘it’ exists …”
For a moment she felt like slapping him. “Someone wrote it on the wall of the tomb of the Blue Demon. It was a message for someone. Between him and them, whoever they are. Mirko Oliva—”
“Point taken. No need to repeat it.”
“Isn’t there? Here you are, sitting on potentially important information. Then Ugo Campagnolo goes on TV, issues the all-clear, and you take a nap.”
“Twelve could indicate something might happen this evening, I guess,” he admitted. “If Petrakis has become some kind of one-man army.”
“Don’t push me. And the other numbers? I told you. If XII at the beginning does stand for a time this evening, it’s pretty obvious what the rest stands for, isn’t it? What did Petrakis paint on the walls of the nymphaeum at the Villa Giulia?”
He looked at her blankly. “Refresh my memory.”
“Silvio!” she roared, and was surprised to see his eyes turn damp and unfocused. He looked like he was going to cry.
“I’ve been staring at this stupid screen for eighteen, twenty hours a day,” he bleated. “I’m exhausted. I can’t stay awake. If I close my eyes, I see a computer screen. If I sleep, I get … bad dreams.” He stared at her, his face that of a guilty child. “Really bad dreams. I can’t think straight anymore. I’m sorry.”
“Fine,” she said quickly, and patted him on the shoulder before pulling up a seat and sitting down beside him. “The numbers on the wall at the Villa Giulia referred to Shakespeare. The play Julius Caesar. Act, scene, line.”
He murmured an apology, tapped the keyboard lightly, and brought up an online version of the play.
Di Capua scrolled down and she found herself recalling the last time she’d seen this dark, compelling drama onstage, at an open-air performance in the park of the Villa Borghese. The subject matter — conspiracy, murder, intrigue, assassination, all contained inside the shadowy, grubby, and depressingly eternal world of politics — came back to her.
“There,” Di Capua said quietly as he reached the right lines.
It was a planning scene from the play: Brutus, a good man, in his orchard, reluctantly considering the plot, and finally shaking hands with the conspirators.
She leaned forward and spoke the words out loud.
“‘Let’s kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;
Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds.’”
They looked at each other, then Teresa Lupo glanced at her watch. Five-thirty.
“Let me get this straight?” Di Capua asked. “What we have here is something written on the wall of the tomb in Tarquinia where Andrea Petrakis kept his munitions.”
“Alongside his friendly Blue Demon,” she reminded him.
“Quite.” His eyes were suddenly sharp and intelligent again. “And it’s a message. There for someone Petrakis knows will read it. Someone — a man, a woman — on the inside who’ll understand what it means.”
“He likes riddles and codes. He likes playing with people.”
“Elizabeth disappeared the moment I told her about those numbers,” Di Capua murmured. “I saw her flick through that Shakespeare book. Then
she was gone. What was I doing? How could I—?”
“You were dog-tired,” she interrupted. “It takes energy to think the unthinkable.”
“Between six-fifteen and seven-thirty Petrakis is going to kill someone. A head of state,” Di Capua said. “And our trusted companion — who knows everything we’ve done, every thought we’ve had — is out there somewhere.” He hesitated before saying what was in his head. “She understands the message and she never told us. Was the message for her?”
“I don’t know.”
“So who the hell do we call?”
She gave him the look and said, “Now, that is a stupid question.”
Costa answered on the first ring.
“Don’t ask why, just give me a straight answer,” Teresa said immediately. “Where are all the big G8 people, the ones God talks to, between six-fifteen and seven-thirty this evening?”
“In the Vatican. Formal reception. There all night. Why?”
She felt like screaming. There was no way anyone from the state police force was going to get inside the private nation on the other side of the river.
“You might want to warn them to be careful. We’ve decoded those numbers on the wall of the tomb. They seem to say there’ll be some kind of assassination attempt at that time.”
There was a short silence, then Costa asked, “Against whom?”
“Whoever counts as the modern Julius Caesar, I guess. Take your pick. You’ve got eight to choose from, haven’t you? Ugo Campagnolo? Any of them.”
“I don’t think Campagnolo is with them. Things get tricky with events in the Vatican. Besides, no one can get in there, Teresa. Not even Andrea Petrakis. The Vatican security …”
“I know, I know. But I wanted to tell you.”
Di Capua was tapping her shoulder. He was wearing the smug expression he used when she’d made a mistake.
“What is it?” she snapped.
“Campagnolo is an elected politician. Julius Caesar was only appointed by the Senate. Strictly speaking, it’s a bad analogy.”
“Oh, don’t be so damned pedantic, Silvio! We don’t run the country like that these days.”
He didn’t say a word, just leaned on the table, placed a forefinger against his chubby cheek, and stared her in the eye as if to say, Really?
“Oh, my God,” she murmured. There was still someone appointed by the politicians alone. She should have seen it immediately. “Nic. This may not be what we were thinking. Where will Dario Sordi be tonight?”
There was a pause on the line, followed by a barely audible curse, a word she’d never heard him utter.
Then he replied, “Where he always is.”
60
Fabio Ranieri looked up from his desk in the Quirinale’s administrative wing. It was twenty to six. His immediate concerns — for the safety of the president’s guests — had been relieved by the transfer of the G8 parties and their followers to the Vatican. The aftermath of the attempt on their lives was now the business of the police. This was a rare moment of calm in a day he would long remember, for all the wrong reasons. The security of the palace had been breached. He had no idea how, nor was there likely to be much opportunity to investigate until late the following day when the summit visitors left for home, and the Quirinale would return to his full control once more.
The door opened. Palombo entered, followed by Carabinieri officers in full uniform. All were grim-faced.
“This isn’t going to be pleasant,” the Ministry of the Interior officer declared.
“It’s been that kind of day. Make it brief, please. I have work to do.”
“Not anymore. These men are taking you into custody. You will be held by the Carabinieri this evening. Tomorrow I will consider charges.”
Ranieri didn’t move. “Charges? What charges?”
“Obstruction of the security services in their legitimate duty. A breach of your secrecy obligations. A loose tongue, which may have cost us dear …”
“What in God’s name are you talking about?”
“You know.”
Ranieri had his hand on his phone. Palombo strode across the room and replaced the handset.
“I am formally relieving you of your duties, Captain. Your men have been confined to barracks, except for those on the gate. I don’t wish the Corazzieri’s failings to be any more apparent to the outside world than they already are.”
“This is a disgrace. You have no right to obstruct the security of the Quirinale Palace—”
“I have every right to question the actions of a man who allowed a terrorist to penetrate a room that held some of the most important politicians in the civilized world.”
“Allowed?”
Ranieri rose. He was still wearing his plain dark suit, but his height made him stand out as a corazziere. Involuntarily, Palombo retreated a step. The uniformed officers behind him didn’t move.
“There will be a full investigation into how that woman got into this palace, make no mistake,” Ranieri told them all. “I wish to know the answer to that as much as anyone. But this is our job. In this building, you will not interfere with the role of the Corazzieri. We have our duties and our rights—”
“Do you deny you’ve been in secret discussions with other parties about the security arrangements here?” Palombo interrupted. “Do you deny you made a covert visit to the house of an unauthorized individual two nights ago to discuss these things? That you have been making repeated contact with people outside the list of approved officials sanctioned by me?”
It was, Ranieri thought, impossible to avoid this. He’d always known it, and so had Dario Sordi.
“I do not answer to you for my actions,” he said.
“Oh, but you do. No denial, I see.”
“I confirm or repudiate nothing. I’ll come with you for this farce. My deputy shall act in my place.…”
There was a brief, curt moment of amusement on Palombo’s narrow, cold face. “Your deputy is confined to quarters, along with the rest of your officers. I act in your absence. I would advise you to admit to everything that has occurred these last few days. It will be easier in the end.”
“There has never been a moment when the Corazzieri have not guarded the Quirinale, not since we became a nation. How dare you!”
“Tradition is dead, man. If you think otherwise, you’re a fool.”
Palombo walked around the desk and went to the window, pulling the velvet curtain wider. There was a long, angled view of the palace gardens, over to the spot where the president liked to take his evening tea.
Ranieri followed Palombo’s icy gaze. He loved this room, loved being able to look out over the green space beyond and see the old man with his china cup and plate of cookies. The Corazzieri’s disposition within the palace and its quarters were, to him, a bulwark of safety and stability in an uncertain, fractured world. That was what hurt most about the afternoon’s events. Not the abortive attack itself, but the very fact that someone had wormed her way through all his careful safeguards and brought the bloody, cruel business of terror into this oasis of sanity.
Two officers in Carabinieri uniforms now stood on either side of him. Ranieri picked up his favorite pen from the desk, placed it in his jacket pocket, and walked toward the door. Palombo fell into his large leather office chair, swinging from side to side.
The Corazzieri captain turned and surveyed the man, this arrogant bureaucrat in an expensive suit. The smirk on Palombo’s face was designed to infuriate. It succeeded.
“If anything should happen while I’m away from here,” Ranieri warned, “I will hold you responsible. Personally, man to man. Not as a soldier.”
“You’ve spent too long in fancy dress, Ranieri. Your world is gone. It will never return. After what we’ve seen today, I will make sure the Corazzieri never again strut around this palace as if they own it. You can go back to being real soldiers, not toy ones. Detain him in a room somewhere until I decide where to take him,” he told his men.
“I will not allow—”
Two strong arms restrained him. Palombo sat there, leering. It was over, Ranieri realized. There was no way to protest or fight back.
The ring of Ranieri’s cell phone on the desk broke the silence. Palombo leaned forward and picked it up, peering at the screen. Then he hit the red button to reject the call.
“It’s private,” Ranieri insisted.
“It certainly is. No caller ID.” He pressed a few buttons. “No address book. Lots of calls, though. In and out.” He turned the thing off and pocketed it. “I’ll get my people to take a look at this later. Now take him away.”
61
It was getting cooler on the roof of the outpost of the CESIS offices overlooking the Quirinale gardens. Elizabeth Murray hugged her stolen protection jacket and checked her watch one more time. Just past six. Leone, the officer she’d slugged, was still in the little cabin on the roof, securely bound and gagged next to the watering cans and tubs of fertilizer. He wasn’t going anywhere. But perhaps he had people to meet, people who’d worry about where he was. Perhaps they even went through some kind of automated checkout procedure these days, some kind of smart card that logged you in and out and started to scream when something went wrong.
Machines, she thought. There were too many of them, and too few human beings. That was all the services seemed to rely on now. Computers and procedures. Rule books and protocols. It hadn’t been like this in the 1970s and 1980s. In those days, everything was more flexible, open to interpretation.
A lot easier to hide too.
That thought prompted her to go and check out Domenico Leone once more. Judging by the fierce look in the sniper’s eyes, he wasn’t getting any less livid as the hours went by. She pushed some more furniture against the door blocking the stairs from the floor below, then went back to her viewpoint at the edge of the roof.