A Cold Flame

by Aidan Conway

  “Burning the midnight oil again,” said Rossi. She checked her watch.

  “A normal working day you mean?”

  Rossi slumped down into his chair. Maybe his theory was forced. Outlandish, inappropriate.

  “You told him about the oil stain, under the bath?” he said to Carrara, who had taken up a similarly despondent stance. He nodded.

  “So, the previous occupants might have stored some guns there. It still doesn’t give us anything solid to go on.”

  “But we’re looking for Jibril.”

  “Not exactly easy. He’ll be in a safe house, sticking to crowded places. Moving at night. Public transport.”

  Katia looked up.

  “Oh, there was a call for you, Michael. An African lady.” She looked down at her notes. “From an organization called The List of Shame. Says she might have something for you and could you drop by tomorrow.”

  Returning to his apartment alone, for Rossi, was, as a rule, comforting, but tonight was different. Yana was going the next day, and he wouldn’t even be there to say goodbye. Everything was on standby again. The two demos, his own concerns, the threat hanging over them and the city. The night was heavy and warm, as if a storm were coming, but the sky was clear. From his balcony he looked away to the hills and beyond the hills to the stars. In Milan, she would see the same sky and the same sun and moon. He wondered if she would feel alone or free or a combination of the two, just as he did now.

  Yet at the same time, guiltily, he was experiencing something that was a little more than professional admiration for Katia. Maybe it was just her enthusiasm for the job, her all-round lack of cynicism that had been like a breath of fresh air that was tugging now at the first cobwebs of his early middle-age. It was cowardly, he knew that. When the going gets tough, what do we do? Jump ship? No. At least not like this. But there was a magnetism he could not deny.

  He turned his thoughts back to the job. He, Gigi, and Katia would be in and around the centre the next day. Over dinner they had discussed strategies, his theories, the codes or possible codes in the messages. Iannelli was hooked up to Carrara’s account. If an e-mail warning came through to Iannelli, Carrara would get it too, in real time. But with no specific target, they had decided to roam and circulate. Rossi and Carrara were going to cover an area from the Colosseum to the Esquilino Hill with a direct line of communication with uniformed reaction groups.

  He went back in and poured himself a nightcap, but a modest one. He would need a clear head in the morning. They had talked weapons too. He took up his own automatic, spread a cloth on the table and began stripping it down. He cleaned it, oiled it, and then slipped the components into place. Then he took the magazine and one by one cleaned and reloaded the shells. A soldier cleans his gun. It’s his best friend. All the clichés, but true. He went over to his cabinet and opened the secret compartment with a key. He selected a second weapon. A revolver. Backup. Gut instinct told him he might need it.

  ***

  Rossi woke early with a start, in bed and not in his clothes. His head was clear. He got up and looked in the mirror. Tired, yes. Exhausted nervous energy would keep him going now. He showered and dressed and headed out to meet Carrara for breakfast at the office. He too was looking sharp despite the efforts of the past few days, weeks even. He was poring over a map, identifying blind spots, potential targets, ways in and out, simulating worst-case scenarios – the suicide attack that preyed always on their minds. The coordinated, multiple attack. The Metro hit. Even the dirty bomb, but intelligence, thank God, had not indicated that any such apocalyptic outcome might be on the cards. Not yet.

  But a piece was missing from Rossi’s puzzle, if there was a puzzle. The List of Shame. He dialled again. This time they answered.

  “I’m sorry, Inspector, but the lady who would deal with these matters is not here right now. Can I ask her to call you back? I do know she has been looking into your query.”

  “Can you tell her that any information could be of the utmost importance,” said Rossi, “And to call me on my mobile phone as I will be out of the office all day.”

  He thanked her and put the phone down.

  “Shall we go?” he said.

  Seventy-One

  The day was fine and the crowds were making the best of the very generous leftovers of a Roman summer. Rossi and Carrara were cruising in the Alfa. They had been circulating and stopping periodically to reconnoitre on foot. Katia too was busy with a squad of uniforms in the east of the city. Demonstrators, meanwhile, were converging on the centre. Rossi and Carrara were descending along Via di San Giovanni, in the direction of the Colosseum, at no more than a brisk walking pace.

  “There’s the Rainbow,” said Carrara pointing at the bar with it’s hand-painted sign.

  “Suppose we’d better take a look,” said Rossi, “and see if we can grab a bite while we’re at it.”

  They parked the Alfa, made a quick sweep of the bar then took a table on the footpath. They ordered sandwiches and settled back to gaze up at the Colosseum’s mighty bulk while trying to fit in as best they could among the LGBT+ crowd.

  “Think how long that’s been there,” said Carrara.

  “Only an earthquake could bring that down,” Rossi replied.

  Rossi had almost allowed himself to settle into the near-perfection of the scene. It could go on like this for ever. This was the Eternal City, after all. Eternity. The never-ending. How small they were in the grand scheme. He watched the crowds strolling by. This was certainly one of the perks of the job – the sun, the food, the views. The worries were there, big as houses, but for a moment, they had shrunk to the size of the plastic memorabilia on sale at the side of the road. Carrara’s phone buzzed Rossi out of his shallow daydream.

  “There’s an e-mail.”

  Rossi’s heartbeat began to accelerate as his colleague focused and flicked through the screens.

  “Iannelli. A message. It says ‘Termini’.” Carrara was looking up now at Rossi.

  “Is it signed?” said Rossi.

  “‘Oscar’.”

  Oscar, thought Rossi. Oscar. The Rainbow. Tennessee. And then it clicked.

  His radio crackled into action in his inside jacket pocket.

  “It’s Maroni,” he said, pressing the earpiece harder to his ear against the traffic noise.

  “Rossi! Where are you. We’ve got a situation here! And you’d better move fast.”

  Rossi snapped into action and thrust a twenty onto the table.

  “Termini station,” said Maroni.

  “We know,” said Rossi into the mic in his sleeve cuff. “We’re on our way.”

  “It’s a bomb alert,” said Maroni, “and Iannelli may or may not have saved the day.”

  “We’re on our way,” said Rossi again as they broke then into a fast jog back to the car. “What do we know?” he asked into the concealed mike as they neared the Alfa.

  “A rucksack, red, unattended.”

  Maroni sounded solid, clear, the years of experience showing through. “We got a phone tip-off too. We don’t know if it’s real but it was detailed, so we treat it as real. OK. Very real. The place is swarming and they’re evacuating already but police presence is minimal. We have to man the conference at all costs. It’s going to be chaos but get there and find it. Fast.”

  Carrara surged through red light after red light, criss-crossing taxi lanes and tram tracks until they swerved onto the pavement under the station’s grey, overhanging bulk.

  “They’re going to hit the demo,” said Rossi.

  “But it said the station,” Carrara shot back.

  “They’re hitting both,” said Rossi. “It’s the code. I’m sure of it. We go the back way,” he said as they leapt then from the car and cut through a security barrier and onto the tracks, racing in to the station along one of its forgotten platforms and avoiding the bedlam that had broken out at the main entrance.

  “It could be out in the open; it won’t be in a bin. It’ll b
e too large,” Rossi shouted.

  “Toilets?” said Carrara.

  “Checking them now,” said Rossi. “Get those uniforms there,” he said beckoning to a group of local police. “That leaves the forecourt, the shops, the platforms.”

  At the station proper, the evacuation effort was underway but ragged and confused. Some tourists were shaking their heads and laughing, refusing to take it seriously, others were protesting about missed trains and the language barrier wasn’t helping.

  “Get out of the station!” Rossi boomed. “This is a bomb alert. Leave now!” he shouted as he physically propelled a middle-aged couple towards the piazza. More uniforms were streaming in as Rossi and Carrara darted in all directions giving orders. Katia had arrived too and began marshalling station staff on the platform.

  “Stop all trains coming in!” she said to a passing official clutching a walkie-talkie. “Keep them out!”

  Carrara had a radio clamped to his ear. He signalled to Rossi.

  “Suspect package,” he said, “by the news stand, main concourse.”

  “Let’s go!” said Rossi. The station was something like half-empty but the situation was critical. The tube trains below were still disgorging hundreds of passengers who, largely unaware of the danger, were being siphoned up on the escalators as officers attempted to divert the flow into the relative safety of the piazza.

  A bright red rucksack was propped against the corner of the abandoned news stand. A cordon of police was fanning out and officers were hand-gesturing to the public to get back. A stout-looking carabiniere came sprinting up to Rossi and Carrara.

  “Any news on the bomb squad?” said Rossi. The place was buzzing with police of every description.

  “They’re on their way,” he said, panting after his exertions.

  “But the tip-off said fifteen minutes,” said Rossi.

  “If we can trust it,” said Carrara.

  “Just evacuate,” said Rossi, “as far away as possible.”

  He watched as a lone figure emerged from behind the news stand, pushing a shopping trolley filled with plastic bags and oddments of every type. It was the station’s resident bag lady, blissfully unaware or unfazed by the drama now unfolding. Time seemed almost to stop as she tottered around on the bare forecourt, the lone actor in a piece of absurdist drama. She looked up for a moment at the confusion before her then dropped her head again, shaking it in disbelief.

  From a safe distance officers continued shouting and gesticulating to her to leave, but she carried on regardless, noticing the rucksack and going right up to it, where she stopped and began to undo its straps. Rossi stared for a second as the tall and once-handsome lady, now a mass of matted curls and ragged ill-fitting garments, started to poke about at the top of the bulging backpack. He stared for a second more; then, as if exploding out of the starting blocks, he ran straight towards her. He threw an arm around her waist, catapulting her onto the trolley and sending them and it careering across the white-flecked marble floor away towards the other side of the station like some bizarre pair of ice dancers.

  The last few officers had gone through the main doors when the shockwave flung them on to the pavement.

  As the smoke cleared Rossi got to his feet. The powerful odour of the unwashed had been substituted by the all-pervading reek of explosives. Amidst the alarms and the tinkling of falling masonry and glass, he began to hear a first few coughs and splutters from the direction of the news stand. It was gone, disintegrated. Then he saw limbs moving through the debris. The living, he thought. The lucky.

  And now for the dead.

  Seventy-Two

  Checking first that the bag lady was uninjured, he picked his way through the rubble towards the blast scene. An officer had been killed outright, his uniformed body motionless on the forecourt in an expanding pool of blood and dust. The injured list would be long, but a quick evaluation suggested that none was in immediate danger.

  “Thank God it wasn’t a nail bomb,” said Carrara, prematurely aged by a coating of white dust but otherwise unharmed. They had been lucky. This time. That was for sure. But as the saying went, they had only to be lucky once.

  “This isn’t over,” said Rossi, scanning the zone around them. “There’s going to be more.”

  He called to Katia who had just applied a tourniquet to a uniform’s badly bleeding leg. He had been watching her hands – they were steady as a rock as she took a lipstick and wrote a big “T” in plain sight for the medical personnel.

  “Stay here,” Rossi said, “and coordinate.”

  She nodded back. She was doing it already. She’d shed her jacket, and she tapped the Beretta in her shoulder holster. Rossi’s ears were ringing, and through the dust he indicated the main entrance in the direction of Piazza Repubblica and broke into a jog.

  “How do you know?” said Carrara, checking his own weapon as they began to run through the crowd.

  “The code,” said Rossi over his shoulder to Carrara. “They’re all gay writers. Tennessee, D. H., Oscar. That’s the message. They’re going to hit the demo too.”

  Jibril was moving through the crowd of protestors who had begun running and trampling all before them – the weak, the slow, the young – as soon as the blast hit. He had seen the explosion but now he was moving fast, weaving, homing in. They wouldn’t start until he did but they would be growing impatient, their nerves stretched to the limit. Ali would be uncontrollable.

  Jibril’s eyes were scanning the crowd. He had to see them first. As if by providence, in answer to his jumbled prayers, a gap opened in the mass of people in front of him and there they were: Ali and Yusuf, side by side, ready to begin.

  Seventy-Three

  Rossi’s phone was ringing. He was sure it could only be Maroni, but the ID said “unknown caller”.

  “Inspector Rossi?”

  “Yes,” replied Rossi as he and Carrara headed for the piazza.

  “I’m calling from List of Shame. Can you talk?”

  “We have a situation here,” said Rossi. “If it’s quick.”

  “It’s about your query. Well, it seems that there was no one called Jibril connected to the President and no one of that name involved in a suspect death.”

  Rossi’s hopes fell. He had been sure there was a link with Jibril.

  “Is there anything else, about the President?”

  “Well, it took some searching but we believe the person you refer to was responsible for the death of a certain Banjoko, a promising literature student. He was was lynched by a mob for being gay.”

  Rossi’s interest was heightened now. The literary connection, it had to be.

  “The so-called President,” she went on, “was implicated in the killing as the prime instigator. I’m sure you know he is a very nasty piece of work.”

  “Banjoko?” said Rossi. The name itself meant nothing but he remembered what Olivia had told them.

  “Did this boy have a brother by any chance?”

  “Yes, I believe there was a family. Several sisters and one brother, but much younger.”

  “A name?” said Rossi.

  “No, I’m sorry,” she replied.

  “Thank you,” said Rossi. “You have been most helpful.”

  He shoved his phone into his pocket. “The hotel,” he said to Carrara. “He’s heading for the hotel.”

  Jibril sank down on to one knee and unzipped his bag in one swift motion. He took out the weapon wrapped loosely in a jacket. Ali had spotted him, his hand too, inside his own sports bag, poised on the trigger. So this was it. Ali waited for Jibril to begin, as had been agreed, as the crowds in fibrillation scattered in all directions.

  On the battlefield where Jibril had faced his enemies only the quick survived. But Ali’s realization of what now awaited him was not quick enough, Yusef’s even less so. As Ali’s eyes met Jibril’s, his expression changed from glee to surprise to rage as Jibril swung a fraction to his left and squeezed off a rapid couple of rounds with a sniper’
s accuracy into Yusef’s right shoulder and another then to shatter a knee. It all happened in a fraction of a second as he sealed Ali’s fate with three pummelling shots to his body, knowing that had he let Ali live he would only ever have taken more innocent lives. As he fell backwards onto the fountain, his weapon flew from his flailing hand and he crumpled to the ground.

  Jibril yanked the magazine out of Yusef’s weapon and tossed it far into the fountain. He dropped his bag and ran on then through the crowds, heading for the Incantevole Hotel.

  “Automatic fire,” said Carrara. “From Piazza Repubblica.”

  He grabbed his radio. “Reports coming in of shots fired in Piazza Repubblica area. Can you confirm. Over. Possible multiple casualties. Suspect seen moving in the direction of Piazza Barberini.”

  “Come on,” said Rossi, his ears still whistling from the blast. “He’s heading for the Incantevole!”

  They sprinted through the piazza littered with every form of human detritus. There were the walking wounded who had been crushed in the stampede, bleeding from cuts sustained from broken glass, some groaning or gasping for air. Wallets, trainers, shoes, bottles, cans and backpacks of all descriptions were scattered around as some of the protestors who hadn’t run cowered behind improvised barriers while others stood zombie-like looking about themselves in shock. Smoke from the explosion hung in the air. The traffic in and out of Piazza dei Cinquecento had ground to a halt. Sirens wailed as ambulances nudged forward in fits and starts along the strangled streets, striving to reach the injured.

  “Police!” shouted Rossi as he and Carrara tried to barge their way through the sea of stunned demonstrators still barring the way to the central fountain. He could see a body on the ground and blood spattered across the flagstones. He was dead. Another figure, splayed next to him, was alive but being watched by a crowd of nervous but vigilant onlookers, as if he were a poisonous snake coiling to strike. Rossi strained to try to make out what was happening and glimpsed the injured terrorist’s hand crawling towards his jacket. His movements were laboured and he was using his left to get to the weapon he couldn’t reach with his shattered right arm. But Rossi and Carrara were too far away to get there in time. Both had their weapons drawn but neither could get a clear shot as figures zig-zagged back and forth in the line of fire.