I sigh as my eyes drift over that name again. Diana Cristina Amatore. Father Emmanuel is listed as Moses Ngari on the phone registration.
I glance across the bed at the sole member of my team, and she catches my eye. She gives me an encouraging smile, and I stare at the numbers again before highlighting one. My phone prompts me, asking me if I want to call it, and I hit yes.
It rings, and on the fifth buzz, a female voice answers cautiously. “Pronto,” she says.
“Diana, it’s Reed,” I say, and wait to see if she hangs up.
She doesn’t, but she makes a noise of deep disgust. “What do you want now?”
“I figured out what Anselmo is up to,” I say, faking confidence in my tone. “He’s going to kill the Prime Minister.”
“Idiot,” she hisses, “this is an open line, anyone could be listening! I’m hanging up—”
“He wants to be a god, doesn’t he?” I ask, and she falls silent. “He wants to be like you and yours were, bring back the good old days, but with him in charge?” I’m playing a hunch here and hoping it’s right, just based on the little I know of the guy. It’s one hundred percent supposition, but hey, when you’re dealing with an egomaniacal lunatic like Anselmo, assuming he wants some sort of throne upon which he can sit while everyone kisses his feet and pays homage, is probably not a bad bet. “He’s gonna kill his way to it, put himself in charge.” I catch a horrified glance from Isabella as she locks her eyes on mine, and I figure maybe I’ve got it.
Diana is silent for a moment. “Sure,” she says, wearily, “that sounds like him. But what can you do to stop him?” This comes out resigned, like I’m complaining about the weather. It’s hopeless, she tells me without telling me.
“What I can do to stop him is fricking stop him,” I say and wonder if that makes any sense. “And unless you really love the thought of your homeland falling right into that pig’s grasping, lecherous fingers, you’ll at least meet me to talk about what we can do together.”
“You are a fool,” she snaps, but she still doesn’t hang up. “How many does he have? Metas, I mean,” she adds.
“Himself and the other two we’ve already faced,” I say. “Plus as many mobsters as he can muster. But we’ve got a wild card to play.”
She holds for a moment before biting the bait I’ve laid out, and I’m almost afraid she’s going to let it pass. “When and where should I meet you?” she asks, and I pump my fist in silent triumph because now at least I’ve got a few ounces of hope.
64.
It’s after dark when I show up to the café down the street from St. Peter’s Basilica with Dr. Perugini in tow. Father Emmanuel is already waiting for us, his head down. I had to coerce and cajole to get him to come out and talk with us, but it’s worth the guilt as I sit down across from him at the table and Isabella takes the seat at my side.
“Shall we begin?” Emmanuel asks me in that thick accent of his, but I shake my head. “Why not?”
“We’re waiting for our plus one,” I say, catching movement out of the corner of my eye as Diana, wearing a touristy ball cap pulled down to cover her face slides into the seat next to him. “And here she is.”
“Who is this?” Diana asks, her voice a low hiss. There’s one other patron in the café, and he’s way toward the back and looks about seventy-five. The young man working behind the counter is fully absorbed in cleaning an oven, his back turned to us.
“Father Emmanuel, the goddess Diana,” I say, smiling tightly at the thought of the blasphemy I was tossing out. “Diana, Father Emmanuel.” They look at each other with great wariness but shake hands reluctantly. Diana looks disgusted and Emmanuel looks curious. Then they turn their attention to me, and I’m compelled to speak.
“Anselmo Serafini is planning to kill the Prime Minister of Italy the day after tomorrow, either before, during or after his visit with the Pope.” I look straight at Father Emmanuel. “That’s why Fintan O’Niall is still hiding in the Vatican.”
Father Emmanuel can’t even disguise his look of horror. “You have to warn them, immediately,” he says in a hushed voice two notes from runaway panic.
“The Italian government isn’t going to believe a word of it if it comes from me,” I say, shaking my head. “Do any of you have connections that might allow for a warning?” I look at Diana, but she has her head bowed, the bill of her cap keeping me from seeing her eyes. “Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?”
“No,” Diana says sharply. “But in our conversation before you promised that Anselmo was up to more than petty assassinations. Killing the Prime Minister of Italy is hardly enough to grant him apotheosis as you suggested.”
“It’s all about fear,” Isabella says, leaning in to take part in the conversation for the first time. “Think back to Giovanni Falcone. This Prime Minister has been talking about organized crime and a crackdown on a very high level for a while, not taking any action. But if three metahumans were to jump out tomorrow and kill him, put the fear into people that anyone can be killed at any time—”
“Then it will be exactly like any other time dealing with the Cosa Nostra or ’Ndrangheta or Camorra,” Diana says with a shrug of her shoulders. “This is always a threat. Falcone knew it before he was killed, and everyone knows it now. How is this different?” She looks across the table at us. “Other than a bigger target, this is—I don’t mean to be cold enough to say it is not bad, but it is an affair of state, not the end of Italy.”
I’m out of straws to grasp at. “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what his next move is after that, but you’re right. Killing a man who hasn’t even made much of a threat to him is not going to be the end of whatever Anselmo has planned. There’s more. There has to be more, and I don’t know what it is.” I put my palms flat on the table. “But you know the man, and you know he’s not some amateur who’s going to sit back and coast. He’s got ambition, some intent to do real harm. He’s talking pretty grandiose, and I’d bet he’s intending to back that talk up.”
“But how?” Father Emmanuel says, listening intently. “If he is this … corrupt and horrible man that you say he is, then surely he would not commit to such a monumentally dangerous course of action without something to back it up. Surely he would fear reprisal. Surely he would fear … some response?”
I think about that for a second. “He thinks he’s invincible,” I realize slowly.
Diana makes a low sound in her throat. “He is.”
“Could a bomb blow him up?” I ask, focusing intently on her.
“No,” she says with a shake of her head. “Perhaps a nuclear one, or the sort that burns extremely hot—perhaps—but not a conventional one, no. His skin is immune to the fragments, no matter how hard they are propelled.”
“He doesn’t care about anyone,” I say. “Not a soul. He cares about himself and power, and he’s making a play to aggrandize one and seize the other.” I sigh and shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know how, I’m sorry. But it’s happening. I know in my gut that he’s going big, not going home.”
“Perhaps we’ve been thinking about this all wrong,” Isabella says, her voice quiet. She glances sideways at me then looks at the others. “Anselmo is a corrupter of people, yes?”
“One of the worst,” Diana agrees.
“But he’s hardly the only one,” Isabella says. “The other familias—Sacra Corona Unita, ’Ndrangheta, La Cosa Nostra—every last one of them has people in different places, has different parts of the country as their territories …” She falls silent.
“Yeah?” I ask, prompting her, and her eyes widen.
“The meeting,” she says. “He has a meeting tomorrow—”
Something clicks into place, something telling. The head of a crime syndicate doesn’t just have a meeting, like it’s another day in a boardroom.
“He wouldn’t treat it like it’s this important—not if it’s with his underlings,” Isabella says, spelling it out for me. “He made it sound important, and that means that who
ever he is meeting with is important—to him, at least.”
Diana leans back in her chair, and I can see her eyes. She’s gotten there, figured it out, and I can see that there’s some little hint of concern buried underneath all the effort at concealing it. “He’s going to unite them. He’s going to bring them all together.”
Isabella nods slowly. “And when he does, he will own every corrupt politician that they own. And with that much power, that much authority concentrated while everyone else argues and bickers at the fall of the Prime Minister—”
“They find themselves in control of Italy itself,” Diana says, and her voice is a deathly whisper.
65.
Anselmo
“Thank you all for joining me early,” he says, and he walks around the pool deck. The house lights are shining, Firenze is glittering below, and around his long table sit more mafiosi than have been assembled together in a long, long time. Don George sits to the right of his empty chair at the head of the table, his place firmly established. There is unease among them, Anselmo can feel it, a strong scent of fear that is driven by the knowledge—the suspicion—of what he is about to ask of them. “I apologize for summoning you this evening rather than waiting until the appointed hour tomorrow, but … unfortunately, events have necessitated that we hurry things along.”
“Hurry what things along?” This from Vicenzo, the head of one of the smaller families of the south. An upstart, a fool. Anselmo knows he wants the purpose spelled out, to have it clearly stated so that he can register his fear, spit his insults, and leave.
But he has no idea what Anselmo is planning.
“Things,” Anselmo says, with a mysterious smile. The hour is dark, and that darkness is hiding the bloodstains upon the concrete. It would not matter if it did not, however, because the truth is likely already known to at least some of them. “Important things.”
“You play word games with us, Don Serafini,” Vicenzo says abruptly. Anselmo calculates he is seconds away from standing, from storming out in an insulted huff.
“I tease,” Anselmo says, smoothing it over. There is a ripple of amusement down the table, and Vicenzo blushes. “Sit, sit, and I will explain everything.” He takes long steps behind each of the men, behind their seats. There are only a dozen or so. He knows each of their names, but knows each of their territories better still. “Do you not all weary of the constant worry about the Carabinieri? Wondering if you have paid the right people, if you will get word before they take one of your drug houses? Before they crash one of your construction rackets? Before some do-gooding politician with more righteousness than brains intends to make his name by exposing your attempts to barter for government contracts?”
“Does a Carabinieri fuck a pig he’s left alone with?” Vicenzo says with a wide grin, prompting a laugh that ripples down the table.
Anselmo laughs, too. “Very clever. But if you are laughing, you know the truth of these things. There was a day when we could operate freely, when our kind had the reins of power, and no one disputed it. No prosecutor would dare to harass us, no Prime Minister would call us by name, and no president would breathe a word against us.”
“There was also a day when we would kneel to a king instead of elect a Prime Minister,” Vicenzo says. “I doubt we are going to go back to that.” This prompts another laugh down the table.
“Why not?” Anselmo says, this time stopping the laughter cold. He waits, feels the unease settle over the table. “Why not?”
“Because the people would oppose it,” Vicenzo says, as though he is speaking to a fool.
“And the people are the power, yes?” Anselmo smiles.
“Yes,” Vicenzo says. “They are.”
“No,” Anselmo says, “they are not. They perhaps think they are, but it is an illusion.” He grips the back of a chair and swings his other around in a gesture. “The power belongs to those whom the people fear. If we make them fear us, then we rule them.”
“And we get our heads cut off when the power swings the other way,” Vicenzo says, shaking his head. “What is this foolishness you speak?”
“The world has changed,” Anselmo says, taking the slow walk toward the end of the table. “The world has changed and most people have not noticed. The governments of the world pay lip service to this idea of change, of metahumans, but that is all. They pretend that the low numbers will spare them, even as they plot to hoard their help for themselves. But the balance of power has shifted, my friends, and I think it is time to drive that point home for our own purposes.”
Vicenzo has the look of a man bewildered by an idiot. “Let us assume for a moment that you are right,” he says. “We have all read about these people, these wondrous people. But you are a fool if you think they can stand against the Carabinieri, or the army—”
Anselmo pulls a pistol out of his jacket and the table falls silent. He slides it down the table and it comes to rest perfectly in front of Vicenzo. “The Carabinieri bring guns and bullets. The army brings more of the same.”
“And these things will kill these metahumans you speak of,” Vicenzo says, nodding at the pistol in front of him. “They will kill them dead, even if you assembled an army of these powerful men—”
“Perhaps some,” Anselmo says, and he wears a muted smile of his own. “But not all.” He nods at the pistol. “Shoot me, Vicenzo.”
Vicenzo’s smile is plastic, cold, disbelieving. “You are a fool, Anselmo.”
“Perhaps that as well,” Anselmo says, grinning. “But shoot me anyway. In the face, in the head, in the chest if your gentle, womanly heart prefers—” There is a round of nervous laughter around the table.
Vicenzo needs little provocation. He pulls the pistol and jerks the trigger. His aim is true, and Anselmo feels a slap to the right breast. He shrugs it off, no more than a light shove. Vicenzo fires again, then again, then again.
Anselmo rips the buttons off his new shirt, pulls open the front and displays his bronzed chest. “Care to try again?” he asks, taunting Vicenzo.
Five shots are his answer, and not one of them does anything but hit him and fall onto the concrete.
Anselmo holds his hands open, catching the last of the bullets as it falls. He holds it up, flat-headed at the tip from impact. “Between all of us, we have paid more in bribes than this country is worth. We pay to grease the wheels. We pay to keep ourselves hidden, to keep ourselves from troubles, to allow the rackets and extortion to continue as unimpeded by the system as we can manage.” He walks the length of the table, then turns back to look at all of them. “I am sick of working around their system. I want to own the system, to make it work for me.” He holds up the bullet. “And the way to that goal is power. To seize it, to make it ours, to work the levers for our own profit.”
“How do you do that?” Vicenzo’s calm defiance is all gone now. His mouth hangs slightly open, and when Anselmo’s eyes fall upon him, the man is cowed enough to avert his eyes.
“Fear,” Anselmo says, and he knows he has them all now by the balls. “We make them fear us, and then run them in the direction of our choosing.” He squeezes his hand closed, as though he is placing it around a neck. “We seize the power, corrupt what we must, and take control of the rest.” He pushes his hands together so tightly that a fly could not survive between them. “We kill the old, we crush all who oppose us—make them fear us—and then we take it all for ourselves.”
66.
Reed
“Look,” I say into the silence that has fallen after Diana and Isabella’s grim pronouncements, “I realize we’re no Avengers, but maybe we can do some good.”
“What does this have to do with Diana Rigg?” Diana asks, her face a mask of confusion.
“Who is Diana Rigg?” I ask. She gives me a furious look, like I’ve just insulted her.
“I am sympathetic to your concerns,” Father Emmanuel says, “but I just don’t see what the three of us can do against these men. Even discounting their powers, just th
inking of how many followers with guns they have …” He shrugs. “It seems like to much for us to handle.”
“Maybe it is,” I say quickly. “Maybe it is. And maybe I’m the last person who ought to be putting this together. I mean, I’m no Captain America—”
“I don’t understand. You are from America, yes?” Diana asks, looking at me, brow furrowed.
“Okay, so, you didn’t see the Avengers movie,” I say, and let my gaze slide to Father Emmanuel. “Did you—?” I cut myself off midway through the question. “Of course not. Never mind.”
Father Emmanuel looks a little insulted. “I saw it in Mombasa. It was very enjoyable. I like tales of good versus evil.”
“Huh,” I say. “That’ll teach me to assume.” I search for my angle of reasoning again and get back on track. “I know this looks impossible. And I know that the idea of the three of us—” Isabella coughs, and I can see her ire out of the corner of my eye without even turning, “four of us,” I amend without missing a beat, “are—on paper, anyway—out of our league. Outmatched.” I look from Father Emmanuel to Diana. “I’ve been fighting those kinds of fights for a little while now, though, and Anselmo is a piker compared to the last guy I went up against who was threatening conquest.”
“That your sister went up against, you mean,” Diana says. She leans in and lowers her voice. “I don’t mean to offend you, but your little winds are nothing compared to the power of an unleashed succubus. If she were here, I could see this being a fight. But with you, me and a priest?” She shakes her head and turns to Emmanuel. “Can you even fight?”
He thinks about this for a second. “I can fight. I will not kill, though. That is where I draw the line. There is a difference between protecting God’s flock and committing murder.”
In the Wind (Out of the Box Book 2) Page 17