Kill the Angel

by Sandrone Dazieri

  “If I promise not to say a word, will you tell me who I am?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Do I really have a brother?”

  “You know that you’ll never get an answer out of me about that. Why are you here?”

  “Giltine.”

  “The name means nothing to me.”

  “She’s a woman who goes around killing people, using LSD and psilocybin to do it.”

  The German said nothing, and even his expression remained unchanged. For Dante, he was impossible to read, even more inscrutable than Maksim.

  “She was born in Ukraine,” Dante continued. “In a place called the Box. She was a professional killer for the Russian Mafia, and then she retired to private life until someone killed her girlfriend.”

  The German went on pretending to be a statue. But something told Dante that the man was listening with growing interest.

  “I don’t know who the Father worked for, but there are many similarities between what was done to me and what was done to Giltine, even though that might have been on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain. Therefore, you almost certainly know something. You have looked into the competition, haven’t you?”

  The German threw his head back and laughed with a sound like rusted iron scrap. It was something he probably hadn’t done in years. “It was a good idea to leave you alive. You’re funny.”

  “And why would you have let me go?”

  “People talk of prisoners growing fond of their jailers. It happens the other way around, too. Even though I was ordered to kill you, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  Dante shook his head with his eyes closed. “It’s what I always wanted, you know?” he whispered. “For you to come and tell me something like that.” He opened his eyes. “But I was just a kid when I used to wish for it. Now I’m all grown up, and I know what I was for you: a job. And I know that it was the Father who told you to let me escape. So quit trying to manipulate me.”

  The German’s smile turned into a grimace of contempt. “You really have turned into a little man,” he said ironically. “Even if I did know something, why should I tell you?”

  “Because it can’t hurt you in any way. And because you’re happy I came to see you. How boring it must be in here . . .”

  “If you already know about the Box, you know all you need to.”

  “No. I want to know what happened afterward. When it all collapsed. What happened to people like you.”

  “Free market,” said the German.

  “So you’re saying the Box was sold to the highest bidder?”

  “Like always.”

  “Why do people need superkillers in a world where the fighting is done by drones?”

  “No one does. But are you sure that’s what the Box was for? Maybe the woman you’re talking about was an unexpected event. If there had been others like her, we would have known it, right?”

  Dante scrutinized him and once again got nothing for the effort. “What was it for?”

  “It’s been nice to see you again.”

  A distant cell phone emitted a sound of chiming bells. It was the timer that the plump-cheeked officer had set on his cell phone. “Signor Torre. Time’s up,” he said out of the darkness.

  Dante waved his hand in the air, astonished at the German’s sense of timing. “Okay. Just a minute,” he said. He’d only received confirmation of what he already knew, but he had been hoping for better.

  “Give me a cigarette, please,” said the German.

  Instinctively, Dante handed him the pack, but instead of taking it, the German grabbed his wrist with his free hand and yanked him close. Their faces almost touched. “This is the second time I’ve spared your life, so don’t forget it,” he whispered. For an instant Dante turned back into a child and let out a piercing shriek, jerking frantically to try to get free. The German released him, and Dante almost fell to the ground.

  Police officers and prison guards came running. The German let himself be dragged off to the cells. Just as he was about to exit through the gateway that led into the prison yard, he turned around to look at Dante, standing in the middle of the scrum of men from the MOG. “Look out what you poke your nose into, boy,” he said. “Someone might get angry.”

  Then they pushed him away.

  13

  Dante was taken out of the prison along the same route he’d used to enter it: the side gate for armored vehicles, which led directly onto the street. Even so, he felt ready to explode and, at the same time, exhausted. In the presence of the German, he had felt all the energy sucked out of his body, as if his old jailer had been a small black hole. He felt cold, and he wanted something to drink. Something in a big glass, as his adoptive father liked to say. A very big glass, for sure.

  Right outside the gate was a black SUV with two other officers and Colonel Di Marco, in his inevitable dark blue suit. “There’s a positive side: this is the last time you’ll ever be able to do anything like this.” The colonel handed Dante two typewritten pages covered with official embossed stamps and a fountain pen he’d pulled out of a jacket pocket.

  Dante read through the papers, leaning against the gate.

  “As per the agreement for our authorization of your visit with the prisoner,” said Di Marco, “this is your sworn statement that you have no useful information concerning the mass murder on the Milan-Rome train, the death of the two killers, or any danger to our nation, past, present, or future. If you were to lie, you could be charged with espionage and undermining the security of the nation.”

  Dante went on scanning the text. He would have preferred to have Minutillo beside him, but he hadn’t wanted to involve him in this undertaking. “I thought you didn’t need excuses to arrest people,” he said.

  “We live in a democratic state. But thanks to the sheet of paper in your hand, it’s going to be transformed into North Korea.”

  Dante grinned his grin, though this time it came out slightly off-kilter. “And what if I refuse to sign? I’ve already met with the German, thanks to you.”

  “Then I’d have to detain you while awaiting instructions from my superiors.” The colonel pointed to the prison behind Dante. “Would you care to try?”

  Dante signed both copies. The colonel put them away in his briefcase.

  “Now that I’ve signed, can I ask you a question?” asked Dante.

  “No.”

  “I’m going to ask anyway. You are an exemplary paragon of the classic fascist asshole, but you’re not an idiot. You know perfectly well that there are some unclear points about this terror attack. Are you uninterested in getting to the bottom of them because they have nothing to do with you, or is it because you already know what’s behind them?”

  “If there really were any unclear points, as you seem to imply, rest assured that I would behave only and exclusively as the best interests of my country dictate. But that’s something you’re incapable of understanding.” Then, without a word of farewell, Di Marco headed back to the SUV. His men climbed in and the vehicle screeched away.

  Dante pulled out his cell phone to call a taxi, but a voice from the darkness interrupted him. “Need a ride?”

  “You were at CRT when I was arrested. NOA, right?”

  “My compliments. You have quite the eye, seeing that I was wearing a ski mask. My name is Leonardo Bonaccorso. I’m a friend of Colomba’s.”

  “Yes, so I’d gathered. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m happy to give you a ride over. It was my squad that escorted you here; that’s how I knew where to find you. Was your meeting with the German useful?”

  “No. And I think I’m going to call a cab.”

  “Too bad. We’re going in the same direction. To your hotel.”

  “Why?”

  Leo smiled, and Dante decided that he disliked him. A lot. “Colomba called an all-hands meeting in your suite. I think she wants to take care of Giltine once and for all.”

  14

  Gi
ltine walked down the Calle Sant’Antonio in a darkness broken only by a couple of streetlamps. Behind her was the glow of the Grand Canal; ahead of her was the little campo that was the site of the street market by day. Now there remained only the odor of rotten fruits and vegetables piled up in the dumpsters, which Giltine could barely smell over the scent of her own body and its medications. It seemed as if the dank atmosphere of Venice had accelerated the progression of her disease. Or maybe it had been the train trip she’d just taken to Rome in an effort to make sure that nothing (especially not Dante Torre, she brooded in her deepest thoughts) could compromise what she had so meticulously constructed. When she had heard the Italian policeman make a phone call to the son of the woman she’d killed—the wrong son, luckily—on the line that she continued to monitor on a regular basis, she had realized that the staves and guy-wires holding up her house of mirrors were starting to creak ominously. And so she’d set out for Rome, driven by a sense of haste and by the liquid voices of the dead, by their glowing lights. On the trip home, though, weakened by the pain from her sores and by her exhaustion, suffocated by the pancake makeup that stung like acid on the wounds on her face, she’d asked a question for the first time in her life. Had she actually been wrong to kill him? Could she really frighten or hinder the new hunters who had started following her tracks, the way she had scared off, hindered, and ultimately killed all those who had hunted her in over twenty years, turning her into what she was today? Or had she perhaps only made them more furious and ravenous?

  While still aboard the train, connecting to her servers via her cell phone, she’d opened the gates to the shark tank, giving those sharks a purpose, a target, and a reward. She couldn’t know how many would actually respond to her appeal. They were unpredictable, and they’d have to act without her direct guidance. Another unknown factor, another risk for her, someone who’d grown up planning her every move, who had grown old waiting patiently for the right moment, the way a rose of Jericho waits for water. But the questions, now that she was walking through the deserted calli, a shadow amid the shadows, had vanished step by step. And now she was preparing for the final step, which would lead to the completion of her undertaking, the last step before the peace she’d never known.

  Giltine had come to the enclosure wall around a hotel. She climbed it and jumped down into the grounds within, then deactivated the security camera and went in through the service door. She climbed four flights of stairs and used a small sheet of metal to jimmy open the magnetic lock of the suite at the end of the hallway. The noise she produced was imperceptible. She went into the room and set down the shoulder bag she was carrying, careful to make no noise: the half-drunk sleeping man in the bed piled high with pillows continued to breathe quietly. Giltine searched the room in the dark, using only her hypersensitive fingertips to identify the bug and isolate it without turning it off. Then she leaned over the man and clapped her hand over his mouth. He opened his eyes, confused, incapable of focusing.

  “I have a job for you,” Giltine told him.

  Francesco could do nothing but nod.

  15

  The meeting in Dante’s spare suite was much less cheerful than the previous one, and the food was left mostly untouched. Colomba introduced Leo to the two surviving Amigos, who stood up to shake hands with him, seeing the difference in rank. Leo, who seemed to be the only one not feeling uneasy, served himself from the espresso maker that Dante had moved over from his old room. Dante, intensely irritated, turned to Colomba and pointed at Leo. “What’s he doing here?”

  “He’s here because he can give us a hand,” she replied.

  “He’s from the antiterrorism division,” said Alberti. “He works with the task force. No disrespect intended, Detective.”

  “Right now I’m on vacation,” Leo said, drinking his espresso. “Wow, that’s really good.”

  “Don’t try to butter me up,” said Dante. He didn’t like the glances that Leo and Colomba had been exchanging when they thought no one else could see them. “I wish I’d been consulted on the new member of the team.”

  “This isn’t the time to be a nitpicker, Dante,” said Colomba. “Not now that Giltine has just killed our partner.”

  “Are you sure it was Giltine, Deputy Chief?” asked Alberti.

  Colomba told the story of the scorpion, making the two surviving Amigos turn pale and almost making Dante vomit. “Giltine wanted to make sure I had absolutely no doubts about the message.”

  “Even if it didn’t kill you,” said Dante with an acid taste in his mouth, “she wanted to make sure you knew whose toes you were stepping on.”

  “And maybe make sure I’d rethink it.”

  “But why now?” asked Esposito.

  “Because of what we found out in Germany.” Colomba and Dante took turns telling what had happened with Maksim, conveying the impression that the man had left under his own power after speaking to them at length, and as far as they were able, they then answered questions. Esposito seemed incredulous about the whole thing; Alberti seemed scared. Leo, in contrast, remained very calm, perhaps because Colomba had briefed him in advance by Snapchat. He was the first person she’d reached out to once she got her cell phone back. Except for her mother, who was still waiting to have lunch with her.

  “Giltine can feel us breathing down her neck,” Alberti said finally.

  “And she wouldn’t be feeling it if she weren’t still in Italy,” said Dante.

  They all turned to look at him. “Are you sure?”

  “Otherwise, why would she bother giving us such a hard time? If she were operating on the other side of the world, she’d pay no attention to us.” Pushing Leo away from the counter, Dante made himself another espresso with the TopBrewer.

  “So you think she stayed here after the train,” said Leo.

  “She’s racing against time. She started eliminating the people connected to the Box after Maksim tried to kill her in Shanghai, with months between each murder. What would it have cost her to just go to ground and try again in a year?”

  “How many other murders are you sure she was behind?” asked Leo.

  “Sure, for sure?” Dante shrugged. “That depends on whether you ask me or Colomba. Reasonably sure, I’d say at least three other mass murders: Greece, Sweden, and France. And the one in Greece was the last one chronologically before the train. A very long interval.”

  “She was making her preparations,” said Alberti.

  “Right. And now I’d like to know why she picked Guarneri out of all of us. What did he do before dying?” asked Colomba.

  “Like you asked us, Deputy Chief, we looked for any connections between the victims on the train and Russia. And we did find one. It seemed trivial, but after what you’ve told us . . .” said Alberti. “The children of Chernobyl.”

  A shiver ran down Colomba’s back. “What children?”

  Alberti explained that after the explosion at the nuclear power plant, hundreds of associations had sprung up around the world that offered contaminated children rest and recuperation stays in countries outside of the radioactive zone. “In Italy alone, there are still fifty or so of these associations.”

  “Even my sister took in a child,” said Esposito. “He stayed at her house for a month, then went back.”

  “About sixty thousand children came through Italy,” Alberti added.

  “Until when?” asked Colomba. “By now those children must all be adults.”

  “But new children have been born, and the associations are continuing to look after them. Actually, it seems like a good thing to me.”

  “Of course it is,” Dante said immediately; when he’d had money to spare, he’d donated to a dozen such associations, ranging from Doctors Without Borders to Save the Children. “What’s the best hiding place for a coffee bean if not a roastery?”

  “Don’t twist the words of Father Brown,” said Colomba, trying to make a lighthearted joke. Despite the seriousness of the situation, she felt uneasy
about being there with Leo. She was afraid he might find her uninteresting.

  “I just reworked the concept. What’s the connection between the dead people on the train and the children of Chernobyl?”

  “There was a doctor . . . maybe he worked for the Box,” Colomba ventured.

  “Paola Vetri,” Esposito said instead.

  “The PR agent for the powerful and the famous? The last one I would have expected,” said Dante.

  “She was in charge of public relations for an association called Care of the World,” Esposito went on. “It’s a European foundation that was one of the first to work on the Chernobyl emergency. It brought over at least a thousand children from Belarus.”

  “Aside from Italy, where else did they send them?” asked Dante.

  “Especially to Greece,” said Esposito.

  “After the sinking of the Greek yacht, Giltine dropped out of sight for a year and a half. Maybe she’d discovered something on that occasion,” said Dante.

  “Like who was behind all the people who’d assumed she was dead,” said Colomba.

  “First she eliminated the guards; then, after Maksim, she worked her way up to the bosses,” said Dante.

  “We need a complete list of those who were drowned,” said Colomba. “Any ideas?”

  Leo raised his hand. “Interpol.”

  “Do you know anyone there?”

  “With all the operations I have to coordinate? Maybe I know too many people.”

  “Any of them trustworthy?” Dante asked seriously.

  “One or two,” Leo replied with a smile.

  He made a couple of phone calls, and twenty minutes later, they’d learned that the wife of the shipwrecked shipowner was of Ukrainian descent and a founding member of the Greek branch of COW. The news hovered in the air, an almost palpable presence. An enormous one. It was Dante who broke the silence in a hesitant voice. “Have we really found them?” he asked.