by David Hewson
Every eye in the room was on her.
Some of these faces were familiar: politicians, men mainly, whose features appeared daily on television, in newspapers, everywhere, usually smiling, always in control.
Now they seemed smaller, more human. A few moved in front of the women by their sides, as if to block them from what was about to occur. One or two had begun to stride swiftly toward the back. From the corner of her eye, Anna could see others, anonymous figures emerging from the shadows, starting to stir into action, and she knew who they were, knew what they would do.
Only two things ran through her head, Zeru and Josepe—Zeru more than any—though the words of Dario Sordi continued to haunt her, and suddenly she knew she could never, as she’d intended, scream the names of her slaughtered child and dead husband at these elegant strangers as they stood frozen with fear.
None of them would understand. None of them would ever know.
The trigger of the Uzi fell beneath her finger, the way they’d taught her in the hot, primitive training camp on the wild stretch of the Helmand River where the NATO forces never dared to venture. Anna Ybarra gripped the Uzi and began a sweep of the bodies in front of her, not looking too closely at the suits and cocktail gowns, not thinking about what came next.
Her finger jerked the trigger. The weapon awoke. There was a sudden staccato burst of sound, and the Uzi leaped in her arms like a wild animal startled from a terrible dream.
Someone screamed. A woman. A man.
She arced the shuddering weapon once to the right, once to the left, and then it was silent.
Too soon, she thought. In Helmand it had lasted longer.
Desperately, she tried again. There was nothing. The magazine had jammed, perhaps. The thing was dead.
She let it drop from her fingers, to clatter on the shiny, polished floor of the Salone dei Corazzieri.
Dark, anonymous figures from the periphery of the hall were starting to close in. They held handguns the way the Taliban did—in a taut, outstretched arm, threatening death with a fierce, unwavering certainty.
Her hands fell to her sides. Tears stung her eyes, tears of fury at her own failure and her stupidity.
There was not a single casualty among the crowd in front of her. Men gripped women by their shoulders. Some of those who had retreated to the rear of the hall were beginning to return. One she recognized from the TV: a man who had been the first to flee—Ugo Campagnolo, the prime minister.
No one had died. No one had been hurt. Whatever bullets she’d managed to loose off before the weapon failed had simply vanished into thin air, as if they’d never existed at all.
Anna Ybarra thought of the Kenyan Joseph Priest and the fiasco at the Trevi Fountain. How he’d fought to do what Deniz Nesin had told him, only to find it didn’t work at all, not until Andrea Petrakis, unseen, had pushed the button.
Dead Joseph. Dead Deniz. Dead …
The armed men in suits were so near she could see the curling wires emerging from their earpieces. She raised her arms, realizing she was the spectacle now, the intended victim all along.
Quite deliberately she closed her eyes, wishing she could say something that held meaning, if only there was time, and the right words.
A hard and powerful blow sent her wheeling off balance, down to the polished floor. She opened her eyes, found herself thinking, automatically, that she ought to locate the source of the blinding pain.
A tall, stiff, commanding figure stood over her, and he was furious, bellowing—at the circling figures, at everyone, it seemed.
It was Dario Sordi, and he was shouting a name she didn’t recognize.
“Ranieri! Ranieri!”
The president’s hands reached down to grip her shoulders, tugging her torso toward him. She found herself reaching for his long legs, clinging to them, like a child seeking protection.
“Dammit. Ranieri!” Sordi yelled again, and finally a man in a blue suit forced his way through the line of figures with guns. Behind him came several officers in ceremonial uniform, shining breastplates, swords, plumed helmets.
There was another man too, one with a long, angry face.
This one pushed his way to the front, stared at Sordi, and said, “Sir …”
“Be quiet, Palombo. I’m in charge here. Ranieri—”
“Sir!” the angry one cut in. “You must leave this to my people.”
“Leave what, exactly?” the president roared. “An execution? Or rendition, as you call it, to some country beyond our control? I see no dead here. No danger …”
“We were lucky.”
“Good. The state police shall take this woman into their custody. They will decide what charges she must face. Corazzieri!”
The silver uniforms barged through the suits. Anna Ybarra let go of the old man’s legs, struggled to her feet, taking the hand of one of the soldiers, finding herself in their midst. The one who’d helped her up did not let go. She looked at him and saw the face of the officer she’d met, and deceived, in the courtyard outside. She glanced at the shining floor, feeling ashamed and confused and lost.
“I cannot allow this,” the one called Palombo declared. “I must insist—”
Sordi confronted him.
“You cannot allow? I am the president of Italy. This is the Quirinale Palace. These are the Corazzieri, and they do my bidding. Officers! Take this woman to my apartment to await the police. Allow in no one without my permission.”
“Mr. President—”
“Those are my orders.”
“Mr. President.” It was the one he’d called Ranieri who was speaking. “You’re bleeding.”
Sordi wiped his forehead with the arm of his jacket, then stared at the stain on his shirtsleeve. “Well, at least it shows I’m alive.
“Ladies, gentlemen,” Dario Sordi told the crowd. “I apologize for this interruption. We will get to the bottom of it, I promise. And I am grateful that the only injury is a scratch to an old man’s head. Now …” He glanced at the orchestra, and then the assembled crowd. “I think this event is at an end. Your transport leaves for the Vatican very soon, perhaps sooner than originally intended. I suggest you retire to your quarters here till then. My staff will be in touch. Please …”
The man in the blue suit took Anna’s arm. They left by the ornate gilt door through which she had entered, never expecting when she did so to live for a minute or more. In her head she could hear the sound of the plainchant in the quiet distant monastery she had visited as a child.
The words echoed in her head, her lips moved to match them.
Be not angry, O Lord, and remember no longer our iniquity.
The imposing figure of Dario Sordi caught up with them as they strode along the corridor, matching the younger men, step for step.
“Get this woman into the hands of Costa and his friends as soon as you can,” he ordered.
57
FIVE MINUTES LATER FALCONE’S BLUE LANCIA SET OFF for the Quirinale. They left Teresa at the church. There was no room in the car, no time for arguments. She was to find her own way back to San Giovanni while the others extracted the woman from the Corazzieri. Afterwards they would attempt to get their captive safely into the maximum-security area in the basement of the Questura in the back streets behind the Pantheon.
Costa drove. Falcone somehow talked his way through the security cordons, then spent the rest of the journey on the phone. Peroni and Rosa sat in the back, silent, listening to the car radio. They pulled onto the pale cobbles of the Quirinale piazza to be greeted by a sea of armored limousines.
A group of officers in gleaming silver stepped outside the portico as they drew up. Falcone told Costa to deal with it, and quickly.
“Captain?”
Ranieri was at the head of his men. He moved to reveal a dark-skinned young woman in a long black velvet dress, in the midst of the corazzieri. She looked shell-shocked. Her eyes seemed bleary, as if she couldn’t decide whether to burst into tears.
“This woman is called Anna Ybarra. She is a Spanish citizen. She will confess to an attempted terrorist attack.” Ranieri nodded at the palace. “The president wishes you to charge her as soon as possible. Once she is inside our legal system, it will be difficult for anyone to take her out of it. This is important.”
“Is anyone hurt?” Costa asked.
“No,” Ranieri replied urgently. “Turn on the TV when you have the time. Palombo is about to brief the media. He can’t wait.” The tall officer coughed into his hand and stared at Costa. “Her gun jammed, it seems. The bullets didn’t work. Something like that. We will discover. Not that she was to know. Perhaps we were very lucky. Perhaps … We can discuss this later. You have little time.”
Costa glanced at the woman. She wouldn’t meet his eye. He knew why.
“We’ve met before,” he said, and led her to the rear of the car.
Falcone was still on the phone, talking, listening, issuing rapid instructions to someone on the other end.
Costa got behind the wheel and gunned the muscular engine.
“Esposito is at a liaison meeting with the Carabinieri,” the inspector revealed when he ended the call. “He’ll know what’s happening by now, but at least he isn’t in the Questura.” He reached beneath the dashboard, pulled out the blue light, opened the passenger window, and set it on the roof. “Let’s get there before he does.”
Costa wheeled the powerful Lancia around the cobbles, sending the limousine chauffeurs scattering, filling the Roman afternoon with the screech of a klaxon.
They roared down a deserted Via XXIV Maggio, into the roadblock near the Via dei Fori Imperiali. Falcone had the window down before they even got to the Carabinieri post there, screaming at the officers to open the barriers into the empty road by the scattered ruins of the Forum.
For once the men in dark blue didn’t argue. The street was open to them the moment the Lancia arrived. They were through, racing toward the Piazza Venezia.
Only a few pedestrians wandered across the bare cobbles, anxiously striding out of the way of the approaching police car with its siren blaring and light flashing.
Costa flung the Lancia into the main street of Vittorio Emanuele, found a further Carabinieri unit opening another barrier for them, one that would take them back into the traffic beyond Palombo’s ring of steel.
“Everyone’s very cooperative,” Peroni observed from the backseat.
Costa glanced in the mirror. The big cop and Rosa sat close on either side of the Ybarra woman, who seemed lost, as if none of this were quite real.
Peroni had a point. This had been so easy.
He forced a half-empty bus to the curb, then maneuvered his way to a side street that led into the Renaissance warren of alleys and lanes that made up the centro storico. The Piazza di San Michele Arcangelo was just blocks away. There, befuddled tourists who wandered into the piazza, from the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona, and all the other great sights, usually saw nothing special in the Polizia di Stato’s little square. Just a small shop, a tiny cafe, some offices, and a tall, grimy building surrounded by squad cars parked in a haphazard fashion in the street.
Costa passed Bernini’s comic stone elephant with an obelisk on its back, marooned in the Piazza della Minerva, and cut into the dark, narrow lane that led home.
They turned the corner, rounding the cafe run by Totti, a foulmouthed misanthrope whose only saving grace was the quality of his coffee and the cheapness of the cornetti.
“Oh …” Peroni said simply from the back as the Lancia slid screeching to a halt just twenty meters short of the Questura’s front door.
The entire piazza was packed with black armored vehicles. Dark-clad figures, hooded and bearing rifles, swarmed everywhere.
A group of them fell upon the Lancia, ripping open the doors. Costa felt himself seized by strong arms, hurled out into the street, onto the worn cobblestones he knew so well. Falcone was arguing. So was Rosa. Costa could hear their voices, angry and shrill, as he rolled upright to find himself facing the barrel of an automatic weapon.
There must have been twenty or more. They didn’t have badges or even an obvious sign of rank.
“Get up!” the one with the gun barked.
Costa did as he was told. There was a cry. It was Rosa. One of the men had pushed her back hard against the car. Falcone stepped forward, protesting. The inspector got a rifle butt in the gut for his pains and went quiet, clutching his stomach.
Peroni was still in the Lancia, his beefy arm around Anna Ybarra.
“We’re Roman police officers performing our legitimate duties!” Costa barked at the faceless figure in front of him. “I will have every one of your names, and tomorrow I will see you in court.”
There was laughter behind the black wool hood.
A small crowd was gathering. Totti was there, abandoning his cafe, never willing to miss a fight. Some shoppers. A couple of stray tourists and Signora Campitelli, an old woman who came in most weeks to complain of some imaginary misdemeanor. People were beginning to wander out from the station too: Prinzivalli, the uniform sovrintendente, was on the steps, arms folded, watching everything like a hawk. Next to him was the gruff and none-too-bright plainclothes officer Taccone, and Emilio Furillo, Teresa’s friend, a onetime cop who’d switched to Systems.
“Tell your gorilla we want the woman,” the soldier demanded, waving his rifle toward the car.
Color rose in Falcone’s lean face. He rubbed his stomach, looked at the man, and replied, “Don’t ever speak about one of my officers that way. You will—”
Armed men closed in on both sides of the Lancia’s open rear doors. Falcone and Rosa got pushed out of the way. The one who seemed to be in charge bellowed, very slowly, “Get. Out. Now.”
The little piazza filled with police officers and civilians. There was a mood Costa could feel. A pressure building. They’d lived with the ring of steel for too long, lived with seeing these faceless armed men in black everywhere, on rooftops, on street corners. The city had been stolen from the ordinary men and women to whom it belonged.
Peroni struggled out of the car, keeping his arm around the woman.
The hooded figure took an instinctive step back. With his huge frame and ugly, scarred face, the big cop could do that to people. Peroni looked calm, almost content. The rifles stopped him after he’d taken one step toward the Questura.
“She’s in our custody now,” the lead one told him.
Peroni shook his head. “No,” he said flatly. “This woman is the prisoner of the Polizia di Stato. On the orders of the president of Italy. No one takes her from me.”
“We’ve got orders too—” the man began.
“You?” Peroni interrupted, narrowing his eyes. “Who are you?” he asked. “A mask and a rifle? I don’t hand over my prisoner to a man who won’t show his face. Ever … Now get out of my way. We’ve work to do.”
The Spanish woman stayed tight under his right arm, her eyes on the weapons as they rose again.
“Gianni—” Costa began.
Something shattered the atmosphere. Signora Campitelli, the little old woman who pestered Prinzivalli and his colleagues on the front desk constantly, about lost cats and noisy teenagers, was moving, with a manic and angry intent Costa recognized only too well. The old lady elbowed her way through the crowd of black figures, dragging her ancient wicker cart behind her, crammed as usual with old clothes, litter she’d picked up from the pavement, and a couple of paper bags with bread and groceries from the store on the corner.
Behind her came the fat little grocer, who had a loaf in his hand, one he kept pressing toward her back while making whimpering noises. She forgot a lot of things.
“Not now, you old witch!” another soldier yelled, and that was it. She burst into life with a stream of vivid and ancient curses the like of which Costa hadn’t heard in a long time, epithets that mixed the sacrilegious with the scatological in a flowing, near-poetic stream that no mere foulmouthed teenager
could ever achieve.
A shocked silence descended on the piazza. Signora Campitelli kept on walking, to the lead figure who’d been haranguing Peroni. With a surprising turn of speed, she was on him, lunging at his head.
The attack came so much out of the blue that the soldier was utterly lost. Before he could react, the old woman got both hands on him and managed to rip off the hood completely. Exposed to the bright Roman afternoon, he looked no more than twenty-five, with a somewhat weak, pale face and a head of curly dark hair.
Signora Campitelli turned and grabbed the loaf still being offered to her by the shopkeeper.
“No maschere a Roma,” she screeched, and fetched him a hard blow around the skull with the bread. “No masks in Rome!”
Peroni glanced across the crowded piazza, caught Costa’s eye, and winked.
“No maschere a Roma,” Costa shouted too.
Others began to take up the cry. The shopkeeper. Totti, the angry cafe owner. A couple of other pensioners tried to drag the hoods off two soldiers close to them.
The sovrintendente Prinzivalli pushed his way through the sea of bodies and got between Peroni and his prisoner, and the men in black. Furillo, the timid bureaucrat from Systems, did the same. He was immediately joined by Taccone. More officers began to stream out of the Questura into the crowd.
No maschere a Roma.
You could push the people of this city only so far, Costa thought. The limit had been reached. He joined the phalanx of bodies growing around Peroni and his charge, creating a living, shouting, almost joyous barrier between them and Palombo’s faceless minions.
Toni Grimaldi, the Machiavellian old Questura lawyer they all turned to when things got awkward, materialized in the mob. Next to him was a tall, elegant woman in a very fashionable light suit. She had chestnut hair, a little too bright to be real, piercing green eyes that were fixed on the young curly-haired officer Signora Campitelli had exposed, and the rather timeless look of many professional Italian women, one that made it impossible to guess her age.