The Sacred Cut

by David Hewson

  She began reading from the screen. “ ”So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.“ ”

  Costa’s head reeled. “Emily—”

  “Stay with me, Nic. It gets weirder. A couple of sentences later: ”And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.“ Seven mountains, Nic.”

  His mind was a blank. This was so far from his normal realm of experience.

  “Here’s a clue,” she said. “Think of it as seven hills instead. And another clue. The image of the woman was often used as a cipher meaning ”church.“ ”

  There was only way to interpret that, surely. “You mean the Scarlet Beast is Rome?”

  She nodded. “Exactly. These guys are just doing what lunatics have done forever. Rewriting history the way it suits them. Revelation was written at a time when Christianity was being torn apart by oppression from Domitian or whoever. They really did face their own particular apocalypse, but it wasn’t a supernatural one. It was real and it came from Rome. Because the Christians were under such threat, they had to refer to it in code. Later, people just started to like the code because it’s a code. When the Church split off into factions the same message that was supposed to encourage solidarity among Christians was used to make the case against Catholicism. That the pope’s just the new Roman emperor, the Antichrist.”

  More blind alleys, more complexity. “So Kaspar’s a religious fanatic?”

  “I doubt it.” There was no stopping her until this particular thread was through. “This is someone playing a game. You need code names for projects like this. So they compete to come up with the craziest ones. It started all those years ago when the Babylon Sisters got together. Maybe Kaspar thought of all this terminology. Maybe he comes from someplace out in the boondocks where this kind of stuff isn’t uncommon. It was appropriate on another front too. Rome was where they all met to begin the mission. Here’s another chunk of Revelation. Same chapter. ”And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.“ You see?”

  “Sort of,” he lied.

  “It’s a joke within a joke. They have to use fake names and IDs. It’s that kind of job. Why not have some fun along the way? These guys were just hamming it up among each other. Scarlet Beast. Babylon Sisters. Throw in some backwoods fundamentalism, mix it in with a bunch of old jazz-rockers called Steely Dan…”

  “Who?” He was wondering how much longer his head could contain all this.

  “A band. A very good one, actually. I remember my dad playing their records when his buddies came around and the beer started to flow. Just bear with me, Nic. These people were having fun, playing spooks, everything NTK, just like he says.”

  “NTK?”

  “ ”Need to know.“ They’re the rules you play by when stuff is so secret you don’t tell anyone anything—your real name even—unless you absolutely have to. It’s all a game and my dad used to love games. He was always coming up with some crazy ideas.”

  She’d been racing ahead until that memory, which made a little of the brightness go out of her eyes.

  “At least, he was back then. They were just playing with words. He did it all the time. These guys are still doing it. Remember what your boss asked Leapman? How did we know he’d come to Rome? Remember his answer?”

  Costa did. The FBI man flatly refused to deal with the question.

  “I remember.” He considered what he’d seen on the screen. “He couldn’t say it, could he?”

  “Kaspar came to Rome because he got invited.”

  Costa read the new screen out loud. “ ”Let’s get together again back in the old places, folks. Reunion time for the class of ‘91. Just one spare place at the table. You coming or not?“ Which translates to ”Come to Rome, we’re waiting for you.“ ”

  Emily punched his arm lightly. “See! You can get there.”

  “Thanks.”

  There was more to the argument, though, and he was surprised she hadn’t seen it.

  “This all begs a big question.”

  She gazed at him, amused, bright and attractive again. “I thought it begged several, actually. A couple of dozen, in fact, right off the top of my head.”

  Suddenly there was surprise on her face, as if she’d seen something unexpected.

  “Nic. For a moment there you stopped staring at me as if I’m the cleverest kid in the class. I don’t like that. I am the cleverest kid in the class. Aren’t I?”

  “Of course you are, Little Em.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said coldly, drawing back from him. “Don’t ever call me that.”

  “I’m sorry. It was stupid of me.”

  “Yes…” She was almost pouting now. She was young and old in the same body. Costa wanted to laugh. More than that, though, he wanted to kiss her.

  Instead, he reached over and messed with the computer.

  “What are you doing?” she asked nervously.

  “Looking for something. Here: ”Honor his memory.“ And here. In the original memo: ”The Scarlet Beast was a generous Beast.“ ”

  She blinked. “So?”

  “You’re right about the place, Emily. I don’t doubt it. But listen to the words. It’s more than that.”

  He read the two sentences aloud again. She listened carefully. Costa watched her lively intelligent eyes, saw them glitter when she understood.

  “Christ,” she murmured. “How could I have been that stupid?”

  “It’s a riddle. It’s meant to be obscure. Besides, there’s no saying my interpretation’s the right one.”

  She waved away his doubts. “Of course it is. I was just reading into it what I wanted to see. This is a place and a person, isn’t it? The Scarlet Beast’s the paymaster. He’s the man even Kaspar was ultimately beholden to.”

  “I think so.”

  “Is he the bad guy, then?” she asked. “Does Kaspar blame him for this? He thinks he was betrayed somehow?”

  Costa threw up his hands in desperation. “It’s just guesswork.”

  “Then who the hell was he? If it wasn’t Kaspar?”

  Costa searched for the memo on the computer, found the sentence, highlighted it with the cursor.

  “It’s just a guess. That’s all.”

  They looked at the sentence from the document: Let it be known that I, William F. Kaspar, the Lizard King, the Holy Owl, Grand Master of the Universe, etcetera, etcetera, shall be attending the court of the Scarlet Beast presently.

  She screwed up her face in bewilderment. “Someone in Rome? Does that make sense?”

  “What was that you said about ”need to know‘?“

  “OK. OK. Point taken. Distance does makes sense. So maybe even Bill Kaspar doesn’t know who’s really in charge. Maybe he’s guessing right now…”

  Emily was thinking hard. She looked at him with scared eyes. They both knew where this was going.

  “Or maybe he does,” Costa finished quietly. He scrolled through some of the sentences in the original memo, pointing them out.

  The Scarlet Beast—where do they get these names, Danboy? This one of yours or what?… We possess a God-given duty to deliver and it is a mighty relief to old Bill K this faceless bastard has volunteered you already. Though I cannot help but wonder, dear friend, whether you didn’t understand that all along. NTK, huh?

  “No, no, no, no, no!” she said with conviction. “My dad was lots of things but he wasn’t a traitor. That just isn’t a possibility.”

  “Kaspar could be wrong.” Costa suggested it without much enthusiasm.

  “So what are you saying?” she asked brusquely. “Kaspar thought my dad was taking part in his own escapade? Funding it and playing along, too?”

  “Can you rule that out?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Emily was going to stick
up for her old man, but not in face of the facts. “Theoretically I guess so. The way these operations were funded was pretty secretive. Someone just dropped a bag of money out of nowhere and let the team get on with it. You had to have someone running finance, logistics. Dad was big time here in Rome. But…”

  She leaned back on the sofa and, for a full minute, covered her face with her hands. When she took her fingers away from her cheeks there were tearstains there and naked fury in her eyes.

  “I still don’t get it. I’m awful at this crap. I can’t believe my dad was too, and that’s not just family talking. He was so damned organized, Nic. If you knew him you’d know he couldn’t just screw it all up in the desert, get away with his own hide, then leave that poor bastard to go crazy in some Iraqi cell putting one and one together all the time over the years, working out who to blame. My father was a good man. He wouldn’t…”

  She couldn’t go on. Costa wondered whether he could bring himself to say it, then realized he’d be selling her short if he didn’t.

  “They thought Kaspar was a good man at the time, Emily. Now look… You said it yourself. Something changed.”

  “No,” she insisted. “You didn’t know him. Maybe you can believe that’s a possible answer. But listen to me, it isn’t. Not for one moment.”

  “I can’t think straight this late,” he sighed. “Let’s open this out a little in the morning.”

  Her eyes scanned his face, searching for the doubts and prevarication. “What do you mean by that? You call your boss, I call mine? We tell them what we think, then walk away and hope it’ll turn out right?”

  “No. I don’t think it’s that simple. Also, I don’t walk away from things, not until they’re done. It’s a family flaw.”

  She let out a low, spontaneous burst of laughter. “You are so not the Roman cop I thought I’d meet.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “It’s meant that way.”

  “Good. And you…” He had to say this because it was true. “It’s odd. You don’t know it but you could pass for Italian. Most of the time anyway. When you’re not around Agent Leapman. I never did believe that line about people spitting at you on buses.”

  “It happened once,” she confessed with a shrug. “People like preconceptions. They’re compartments you can use so that everyone feels safe and comfortable for a while. They mean you don’t have to think too hard.”

  “One more reason to avoid them.”

  “Well, I’m certainly getting lots of preconceptions shaken straight out of me right now,” she said, smiling, looking around the old, airy room, with its dusty corners and faded paintings. “This is a beautiful place. If I lived here I don’t think I’d ever go beyond that front gate. You could just stay here and never get touched by the crap.”

  “Or anything,” Costa said quietly. “I’ve been there.”

  “Really.” Americans had an astonishing, unnerving frankness sometimes. She’d turned to stare straight into his face, trying to work out what to make of that last statement. “I guess we all get there sometime. When I was a kid I thought we’d never leave Rome, you know. It was how life was supposed to be. Safe. Happy. Secure from all those big, black surprises you never learn about till you’re older.”

  “You’d rather not know about the surprises?”

  “No.” Her smile dropped. “But I can try to understand why it all fell apart. I can… Oh shit.”

  Her hands were covering her face again. He wondered if she was crying. But it was exhaustion probably, nothing more.

  Emily Deacon slowly rolled herself sideways, over towards his shoulder, let her head fall softly onto him, didn’t move as his fingers took on a life of their own, reaching automatically for her long, soft hair.

  Eyes closed, in the shy way strangers use when they kiss for the first time, he tasted her damp, supple mouth, felt her lips close on his, slowly working, until that moment of self-realization came and they both broke off, wondering, embarrassed.

  She kept her head on his shoulder. He stared at the dying embers of the fire.

  “I’m making a hell of a mess of this professional relationship, Mr. Costa,” Emily Deacon murmured into his ear. “Are you OK with that?”

  He closed his eyes and wished to God he didn’t feel so exhausted. “I’ll think about it.”

  She brushed his cheek briefly with her lips once more, then said, “Give me a moment.”

  Nic Costa watched her walk upstairs to the bathroom and wished he wasn’t so gauche with women. He’d no idea what the hell she expected of him next. To follow her into one of the big, airy bedrooms? To wait so they could talk some more, not that he felt there were many words left in him after this long, long day?

  He hadn’t planned any of this. He hadn’t wanted it, not now, in the middle of a sprawling black case that involved her more than was safe. Sometimes life just refused to do what it was told. Sometimes…

  “WHAT’S HIS NAME? This guy from the embassy who tells you nothing?”

  Peroni’s thoughts were wandering. The nausea wouldn’t go away. Still, this wasn’t a time to lose focus. He glowered at the gun, not saying a word. There was a point to be made here, a kind of relationship to be established.

  “Joel Leapman,” he said, once the guy got the message and lowered the barrel. “You know him?”

  The American grimaced. “If he’s in the business, I think names don’t mean a lot. Besides, I’ve been away for a while. What does he say he is? CIA? FBI? Something else?”

  “Why ask me?”

  The barrel of the weapon touched Peroni’s cheek. “Because you’re here and because you’re not dumb either.”

  “He says he’s FBI. He’s got people with him who are FBI. One, anyway. You met her. Last night.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Glad you didn’t hurt her, by the way. She’s a nice kid.”

  He was thinking. Peroni judged it best to let him reach some decisions on his own.

  “No accounting for breeding sometimes,” the American said in the end. “I need someone to deliver a message. That makes you a lucky man.”

  Peroni tried to offer up an ironic smile. “You could have fooled me. Right now I feel something just drove over my head.”

  “You’ll live. You”—he waved the gun at Laila—“and the thieving little kid. I’ll give you a couple of hours to figure a way out. Don’t make it sooner. I might still be around. You’ll find that idiot who was supposed to be in charge round the corner, peeing himself, I guess. Tell him he’s damn lucky. When you’re paid to look after a place like this…”

  He cast his sharp eyes around the shadows of the Pantheon.

  “… you’d best do it properly.”

  “And the message?” Peroni mumbled.

  The smart, deadpan face neared his. “I was coming to that. Tell this Leapman fellow I’m running out of patience. I’m bored looking. This time, he delivers. Or the rules change.”

  “Delivers what?” Peroni wondered.

  He got a grunt of impatience in return. “He knows.”

  “You’re sure?”

  That cold, dry laugh again. “Yeah. But just in case, you tell Leapman this. Tell him I talked to Dan Deacon before he died. He planted some doubts. I want to know if I’m done.”

  It was the last thing Peroni was expecting to hear. “Listen to me,” he urged. “You’re done. Is that good enough?”

  “Don’t fuck with me!” The American went from placid to furious instantly. The gun was waving around crazily again.

  “OK,” Peroni agreed quietly.

  “I want proof. Tell Leapman that.”

  This was important. “Done.”

  The gun caressed his cheek again. Peroni lifted his neck to get away from the cold, oily metal.

  “I hope so,” the American murmured. “Because if Leapman’s not listening it all turns to shit around here. Tell him I’ll give him a little present real soon just as a reminder.”

&nb
sp; “Turns to shit?” Peroni heard himself saying, without consciously forming the thought, watching the American walk away, out towards the night, not listening anymore, which was a shame.

  Peroni believed him. Every single word. This man had rules. He could have killed them both. Maybe somewhere else, in different circumstances, when the pieces of the puzzle happened to fit, he would have done so, too. All he wanted were the right words, written on a piece of paper, all neat and geometrical, lined up in the magical order he sought.