A Cold Flame

by Aidan Conway

  “So the code wasn’t cracked?”

  Rossi shook his head.

  “Uncrackable, so far at least. Gab’s never seen the like of it. I told him to put on a little show when we came round. Which also got me thinking and not just about why someone didn’t want us to make the link with the cardinal.”

  “And perhaps you might let me in on these other thoughts of yours,” said a more than slightly disgruntled Carrara as they approached the Alfa.

  “I will,” said Rossi. “I promise. Now, where were we? I think we’d better get straight on to Dario. I’m sure Maroni won’t mind waiting. And he should be in for a pleasant surprise if Silvestre knows what’s good for him.”

  Rossi called Iannelli, who answered on the first ring.

  “OK, Dario. I think we need to meet,” said Rossi, after listening first to Iannelli’s general preamble and then scribbling down some notes and the new address. He closed the phone and turned back to Carrara.

  “Well,” said Rossi, “things appear to be hotting up on the anonymous e-mail front. Dario’s got another message and another name. He passed it on to Maroni.”

  “And what does he make of it?”

  “We’ll find out when we speak to him. But not yet.”

  Iannelli too had got lucky. He was in one of the new top-floor apartments overlooking Piazza Vittorio in Rome’s Esquilino district. The original six-storey building had been bombed out during the Second World War and, for as long as Rossi could remember, had remained a ruin, until the council and developers had got their act together and restored it to something like its former glory.

  “The place belongs to a friend of a friend,” said Iannelli. “He’s in the States for a month and I get to stay. A perk of my situation, shall we say.”

  “Very nice,” said Rossi opening the blinds just enough to be able to admire the view over Rome’s biggest piazza, which, from above, was now a vivid, leafy emerald rectangle. “Too high up to see the rats.”

  “The least of our worries,” replied Dario. “Come and look at this,” he said, indicating his laptop on the glass-topped dining table in the centre of the room. “I feel like I have turned into a middleman. What’s next in your humble opinion?”

  Rossi leaned over to look. The message was as chilling as it was terse.

  Something big. A major incident. Central Rome. Soon.

  “And signed ‘D. H.’,” said Rossi as he turned away from the screen to think and gaze out over an imagined city. “They’re both writers,” said Rossi. He wheeled round to face Iannelli and Carrara who had flopped into the white leather sofa and armchair respectively. “D. H. Lawrence, Tennessee Williams.” Two trams were approaching from opposite directions on the street below and ringing their bells in a sign of warning. “A streetcar,” said Rossi. “A Streetcar Named Desire. Rome’s full of trams. What if that was the reference?”

  “So you think it’s a code?” said Iannelli, fascinated now and intrigued at being in on the very investigative process itself.

  “The terminus is just down the road behind us, at Porta Maggiore,” said Carrara reclining, enjoying the comfort. “And then the station, Termini.”

  “But trams traverse the whole city,” said Rossi pacing in front of them. “If they do something on a tram we can’t defend against it.”

  “Fill them with agents,” said Carrara. “As many as we can spare.”

  “But low profile,” said Rossi. “That’s the trouble with a tip-off, if it’s to be believed. If we show our hand, they can get cold feet and abort the whole op. Or improvise. If we’re talking about a device, they might dump it anywhere.”

  “If it’s real,” said Iannelli.

  “That’s a chance we’ll have to take,” said Rossi, sitting down next to Iannelli on the sofa. “What did they say when you relayed the info?”

  “Nothing,” said Iannelli. “Maybe they didn’t put much store in it.”

  “Maroni knows most of it now, though,” said Rossi. “I gave him the full spiel. But he’s not having anything to do with my more controversial theories.”

  “And what would they be?” said Iannelli feeling he was approaching the inner sanctum of another Rossi intuition.

  “Off the record, Dario, naturally,”

  “Goes without saying,” he said, rising then and walking over to open the doors to an elaborately inlaid cherry and walnut drinks cabinet under the window. “Drink anyone?”

  Carrara desisted. Rossi was a given.

  “Even got your own personal tipple here, Michael,” said Iannelli as he produced a halffull bottle of Jameson Select Reserve and a couple of weighty crystal tumblers that could have doubled as handy weapons.

  Rossi gave Iannelli a brief summary of where their thinking had so far brought them, omitting only to include the possible revelation the CCTV images had thrown up and glossing over their entrapment of Silvestre.

  “How do you see this?” said Rossi. “The President’s in on the deal somewhere, I can feel it.”

  “The way I see things,” began Iannelli, arranging the glasses on the table, “you’ve got a cell, or maybe more than one, out there, and your man Jibril’s involved in some capacity. Whether he and whoever he’s fallen in with was behind the university bomb or not, I don’t know. As I told you, I nurse my own theories on that front. There’s a lot going on geopolitically. There’s always the chance someone was sending the Israelis a warning shot. And I don’t hold with the idea that attacks on these targets are always fanatics hitting the Zionist oppressor. I think other stuff could come into play. Deals. Weapons. Defence systems. Even cyber stuff, software, encryption technology. The Israelis are players in that game. Maybe someone wants to muscle in.”

  “Encryption?” said Rossi.

  “Just a thought,” said Iannelli. “A client who didn’t pay up or keep their part of the deal. They could have had other interests on the side.”

  “Are you referring by any chance to the esteemed rector of the Israeli university in Rome?”

  “You said it.”

  “So he’s got form?”

  “They all have,” said Iannelli, pouring a couple of decent measures of whiskey. “In one way or another. Either it’s property deals, currency capers, cover-ups, making sure someone gets his precious degree even if he can only sign his name. I exaggerate, of course, but not that much.”

  “And it’s worth a bomb?” said Carrara.

  “It was relatively small,” said Iannelli. “Military-grade explosive though. Remember that little omission?”

  “So a wholly private matter?” said Rossi.

  “Which takes the lives of a few innocent bystanders, a detail if there are under-the-table multimillion dollar deals at stake. And if you don’t mind me extending the metaphor, we could well be on two completely separate tracks here and the trams have very different drivers.”

  Iannelli headed to the kitchen and came back with water for the whiskey.

  “What’s happening in the city in the next couple of days?” Carrara called after him. “In terms of high profile, big crowds, political gatherings.”

  “There’s at least one demo planned for Friday,” said Iannelli, returning and then scanning his diary lying open on the table. “Two actually. Students protesting against the public sector cuts and there’s the LGBT cross-party alliance for equal rights. That’s going to be big. It’s national. All the progressive groups, the left, a smattering of enlightened conservatives, the centri sociali, even ANPI, the partisans’ association.”

  He poured water into Rossi’s drink and handed it to him.

  “And much, much more,” said Rossi, taking a first sip, “all for the amazing price of—”

  “Could be targets. Could be nothing,” said Iannelli. “No way of knowing unless our oracle decides to speak.”

  “I wish he could be a little less oracular and a bit more time and place and method,” said Rossi savouring the smooth Reserve.

  “And blow his cover?” said Carrara. “If
this is an inside man, then he has to hold back, like we said. Too much detail and he compromises himself.”

  “So we get drip-fed the information. Unless it turns out to be a nasty joke,” said Rossi, pondering the bitter possibilities along with the whiskey. “And, if you are the vital line of communication in this, I suppose it means we’re going to have to make you a deputy, Dario.”

  “Swear me in,” he replied raising his glass in his right hand for the oath.

  “You’ll need to hook up with Gigi here. If and when you do get any further news, put them straight through to him. It means 24/7 though.”

  “I hardly sleep anyway,” said Iannelli knocking back his drink neat in one. “It won’t cost me much to have my ear open for a notification.”

  “What about a radio link?” said Carrara turning to Rossi. “At least on these demos. Dario’s in a perfect spot too. We’ve got a strategic position here.”

  “That can be arranged,” said Rossi. “We can go via your bodyguards. Where are they, by the way?”

  “I told them to take a couple of hours off,” said Iannelli with an air of detachment mixed with the mild recognition of his own carelessness. Rossi said nothing but sized up the apartment’s sniper vulnerability in the vast expanses of thick glass, on its north and east facing sides, albeit shielded for now by blinds.

  “Shouldn’t you be somewhere safer?” said Rossi, indicating the windows.

  Iannelli smiled.

  “Bulletproof,” he said. “I didn’t tell you who the place belongs to, did I?”

  Rossi shook his head.

  “Well, that’s because I can’t.”

  Sixty-Eight

  “Franchie?”

  “Yes,”

  “Are you on, for tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Where do we meet?”

  “Piazza Repubblica. It’s going to be a great day.”

  “Definitely.”

  “For freedom.”

  “For freedom. For liberty.”

  “Liberty, equality, fraternity. We need that in Italy,” said the voice crackling on the end of the line. “We need a revolution in Italy. That’s why things don’t change.”

  Francesco knew the well-worn dialectic but went along with it all the same.

  “Not like in France.”

  “Exactly. They take it seriously there. They shut the whole city down. They shut the country down. And what do we do? We go on a march if the weather’s nice, smoke a joint and go home, and then complain about everything. Am I right?”

  “Too right,” said Francesco. “It’s an important cause, for everyone.”

  “Like slavery, like votes for women. The fight goes on, brother.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “And be ready,” the voice said.

  “I’ll be ready,” said Francesco.

  “Hasta la victoria, compagnero!”

  “Hasta la victoria!” echoed Francesco, feeling foolish as he did so, as the line then went dead.

  There was so much to do and so little time. There had been innumerable visits to lawyers’ offices, phone calls, video calls. Then there was the bank, the accountant. The contracts to finalize. The small print Yana insisted on reading and having explained. She wasn’t taking any shit from guys in suits telling her to trust them and that it was all a formality. She had to know. She had squeezed the life out of them, made them earn their salaries. She laughed. They would be sick of the sight of her soon. What if she was a rompi-palle, a ball-breaker? She didn’t give a damn.

  She was leaving on Friday. She checked her tickets. Termini. Roma-Milan. The day after tomorrow. And Michael and she had not parted on good terms. Parted in the sense of leaving. Not leaving. What did she mean? She didn’t know herself. She felt bullied by the vocabulary. They hadn’t left each other; it was a hiatus. A distance caused by circumstances but bridgeable. She preferred that image. The torrent below, the two banks, and the two of them ready to start building again. But what if they lost the will to build, and moved on, each on their own side of the divide?

  The clock was ticking. There was so much to do and Marta needed more help than she had envisaged. She was good but she lacked some basics. Too late to go back now. She would manage. She looked around the flat. Most of the essential stuff was in boxes, both the things she would bring and that which would remain for now. She was glad she wasn’t a hoarder, unlike someone else she knew.

  Olivia still couldn’t quite believe it. The school had given her a couple of days off “to get herself together”. The inspector had explained everything, they’d said, so she wasn’t going to be fired. There was plenty of in-business work they wanted her to do. It wasn’t the same but a job was a job, though it would mean taking the train every day to the offices of the multinationals where more or less enthusiastic foreign executives were intent on learning the beautiful Italian language.

  But she still felt the gaping hole of absence. There had been no news from or about Jibril and now that she had confided in her friends, they had advised her to forget.

  She crossed the strangled, blaring traffic and skew-whiff vans and buses and doubleparked Smart cars on a rubbish-strewn Via Marsala then delved into the great echoing cathedral of the station. Today, as every day, its impersonality and swift-flowing change washed over her, but today it was as if she were a rock in its stream. The glowing shop fronts, the fashion models, those real and those larger than life in the posters above her head, the whole kaleidoscope of colour and sound that had once transfixed her could not breach her consciousness.

  She stopped still, staring into space. She didn’t know what to think. Commuters and travellers bumped into her or gave her funny looks but she didn’t seem to care. She was trying not to think at all, to feel nothing, to be as impervious as a stone to all her fear.

  Sixty-Nine

  “Well,” said Maroni, “it seems Silvestre’s memory has been playing tricks on him.”

  “Really?” said Rossi from the other side of the desk.

  “He says there was a mix-up, that there was a side door open after all. ‘A breakdown in communication’ as he put it. An easy mistake to make, I suppose,” his suspicious gaze fixed on Rossi and then on Carrara.

  “I’m just glad it’s all been straightened out, sir,” Rossi replied. “So we can go back to thinking about what to do next.”

  “Yes,” said Maroni. “And guess what?” He held up a piece of paper.

  “An anonymous ransom demand. For the safe return of the mortal remains etc, etc.”

  “I have the feeling that one might drag on a bit,” said Carrara.

  “And then be quietly forgotten, maybe,” said Rossi.

  “Whatever does happen, it’s the least of my worries, gentlemen. I am rather more concerned with the living at this moment in time. Now, tell me what it was you wanted to see me about.”

  “The tip-offs. And Iannelli,” said Rossi.

  “Go, on,” said Maroni. “I’m all ears.”

  “We think it’s genuine.”

  “And?”

  “Well, we think an attack might be real and possible, imminent even. And we have a hunch about targets.”

  Maroni was shaking his head already.

  “The alarm hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s come down a peg. There’s been nothing from intelligence to suggest any heightened risk or specific targets. The alert remains high but that’s the new reality, isn’t it? Let’s face it.”

  “Don’t you want to see what I’ve put together, at least?” said Rossi. “We can present it to the security committee. You can present it.”

  “And look like the bloody idiot if it goes tits up?” said Maroni. “I don’t think so, Rossi. Thanks for the offer and all that. Let’s have it then. Your hare-brained scheme, number whatever it is.”

  “If these tip-offs are genuine we need to heed them,” Rossi began, “and I’m sure there’s a code.”

  “A code?” said Maroni.

  “The na
mes on the e-mails. Tennessee. D. H. They’re literary references.”

  “Literary?” Maroni snorted. “You sure this isn’t more wishful thinking on your part, Rossi? The frustrated intellectual.”

  “I’m convinced,” said Rossi, absorbing the body blow. Maroni looked rather less certain but was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

  “So what do they mean then, Rossi, in your interpretation?”

  Rossi took a map of central Rome from the folder and began to outline his theory.

  “The tram, the number 3, goes along here, past the Colosseum, where the Christians were thrown to the lions, by the way. And then here, near the corner, there’s a bar called the Rainbow.”

  “The Rainbow?”

  “It’s the title of a D. H. Lawrence novel.”

  Maroni was staring up at Rossi.

  “Do you seriously believe all this?”

  Rossi continued, oblivious.

  “We step up the undercover presence on the line and around the area.”

  “And divert resources from the major basilicas and the station and the underground?” countered Maroni. “We haven’t got unlimited resources, Rossi. And we can’t play follow my literary leader without having something more concrete from intelligence. Are you out of your mind? And you expect me to go before the commission with this? It’s more than ridiculous. It’s comical. D. H. bloody Lawrence! Do you think our man is some errant man of letters with an exploding copy of The Divine Comedy? Do me a favour, Rossi, for the love of God! Go out and do something real for once. And tomorrow we want you both on general surveillance, as per usual when there’s a demo on. Those students are looking for trouble. So make sure they get some if they step out of line.”

  “Am I allowed to bring in your daughters if they get involved,” said Rossi, unable to resist a barb.

  “They’ll be there over my dead body,” said Maroni.

  Seventy

  “I suppose that’s what you might call short shrift then,” said Carrara as they wandered back to the office where Katia was working over case notes and suspect profiles.