by April Smith
“It’s my fault; I let Cecilia go—”
“You didn’t. She was taken.”
He stares, at a loss. “God protect you.”
He kisses me rapidly on each cheek. I hoist the duffel with the money and the tracking device inside and get out of the car. I could not have been an FBI agent all these years without also asking the question that if Nicosa’s ties to the mob are as real as Dennis Rizzio thinks they are, could he not, right now, be setting me up? And what if Sterling, for all his assurances of covering my back, is still not totally in his right mind? Trust whom? Where? Only the clear bright image of the victim’s face before me keeps me walking straight ahead.
“I’m on Banchi di Sotto,” I say into the microphone hidden in my hair. “Going into the Campo.”
“Which entrance?” comes Sofri’s voice.
Of course! There are eleven!
“Jesus, I don’t know!”
“Which side of the Mangia Tower?”
“East. I think it’s east.”
“Is there a café that says Pizzicheria?” Sterling asks.
“Pizzi—what?”
“Tell us what you see.”
“Okay, here’s a street sign. I can’t pronounce it—Mezzolom—?”
“Mezzolombardi-Rinaldi,” Sofri says, and then he and Nicosa overlap. “She’s at Palazzo Ragnoni.”
“Gotcha!” Sterling says. He’s in position somewhere, looking through the sniper rifle, and I am in his sights.
“Going to the fountain.”
“Copy that.”
Although it is barely five days since the Palio, you would never know the square had recently been filled to capacity with life-and-death drama, spectators clinging to every ledge. The track of special yellow earth has vanished without a trace. Where there had been horses crazy to run, jockeys beating one another, mad ecstasy, and underhanded deals on which the fate of the universe seemed to turn, now there are placid globs of tourists checking out café menus, and international students playing Frisbee. Only the contrada banners remain hanging from the palazzos for the second Palio race in August.
I sit on the edge of the Fonte Gaia, the Fountain of Joy, which was totally obscured by human bodies during Palio. How little I understood about Cecilia then, and about the entanglements of this family with the mafia beast, which has infiltrated this proud city through the sewers, despite contrada members patrolling every corner. Without moving my head, I scan for potential traps.
“All clear?” asks Sterling.
“So far.”
I breathe the funky mist coming off the fountain. The she-wolf statue spits a docile stream as on this balmy evening the drama becomes much smaller than the grand pageantry of Palio, down to a subtle eye movement between an American woman perched on the stone and a balding Italian man wearing a white polo shirt and an Oca scarf coming toward her, who stops in the middle of the piazza, turns his back, and lights a cigarette.
“That’s the contact, wearing green and white. The Oca colors.”
Nicosa says something urgently into the earpiece, maybe Sofri does, too, but I don’t hear them. I am in vapor lock, floating in a pool of now. I hoist the duffel and walk toward the man, who is standing alone, larger and more distinct than anything in the square. Objects become magnified and time slows down. I see the sunlight on the bald spot of his skull, reflecting hot as tin. I see the brown uniforms of a Boy Scout troop, and an orange Frisbee slicing by. The multicolored contrada scarves flying from the tourist shack snap in a silent wind.
I hear the first rifle shot. You wouldn’t hear it unless you were listening with extraordinary care. Not even the pigeons move. I don’t stop walking. As far as I know, the gunfire does not concern me. Ten meters from the contact, though, there is a second blast. This one is heard by everybody. It echoes off the palazzos like the mortaretto cannon at the start of the race, sending tourists diving under tables and birds into the air. The balding man lighting the cigarette drops to the ground with sudden impact, as if he fell from the sky. A red micro-cloud of atomized blood and brain appears and vanishes.
I swerve slightly and keep on going, still carrying the duffel, through the first and second waves of panicked bystanders—not like during the riot after Palio, careening into one another’s arms, laughing and crying, but a one-way, horror-driven stampede for all eleven exits, leaving the sprawling corpse in the Oca scarf in the center of the piazza, bleeding out on the sloping brick.
THIRTY-THREE
Back in the car, we are instantly surrounded by the clanging blare of ambulances and police.
“My God, what happened?” Nicosa says.
“Sterling took out the contact.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you right now, but I promise you, he had a reason.”
“He’s crazy! I knew it!”
“We’re okay,” I tell Nicosa soothingly. “Stay calm and just drive normally.”
I have no idea what went down, except that I am still gripping the bag with two million euros, and the chance to recover Cecilia has vanished.
Everything was set. Why is Sterling taking shots at a kidnap exchange?
It takes thirty agonizing minutes to drive just a few blocks and make it outside the walls, during which there is no communication through the earpiece from anyone. My growing fear is that Sterling went on a rampage caused by post-traumatic combat stress. His behavior over the last few days could add up to that; with a loaded weapon in his hand, he might have snapped.
“We killed their man,” Nicosa says. “They’ll murder her. They’ll murder all of us. My son, the whole family.” He looks into the rearview mirror, swerving crazily across the highway. “They could be following us now.”
“Nobody is following us.”
“What went wrong?”
“We’ll find out. Take a breath; you’re doing great. Just get us to the abbey without running into a tree.”
He is taking the hills at seventy kilometers per hour, churning up gravel like sparks. Still, by the time we roar through the gates, Chris’s Fiat is already parked, and Sterling is in the kitchen, downing glasses of water, the sniper bag slung over a chair.
Barely through the door, Nicosa gasps, “What happened?”
“Took the shot,” Sterling says. “Had to be done.”
“You murder a man in the middle of Il Campo? We had an agreement with Cosimo Umberto! They promised to return my wife. Now there will be a massacre.”
“They were lying. The plan was to draw Ana out. Get her out there in plain view. They had a sniper set up in a third-story window.”
“How do you know?” Nicosa demands.
Sterling reiterates what he said to me: “Nobody sees what I see in that gun sight.”
His face is tight; he’s full of adrenaline after the kill.
“And what was that?” asks Nicosa, barely restrained.
Sterling crooks two fingers and jabs at his own eyes, indicating that this is what he saw:
“The eyes.”
Nicosa doesn’t understand. “Whose eyes?”
“The bald man in the Oca scarf. He should have had more faith in his own guy,” Sterling says. “Instead, he looks up at the last minute, wanting to be sure everything’s going according to plan. Big mistake. Because when you’re looking through the magnifying scope of a Winchester 70, you can see something as small as the movement of an eye. I follow the eyes to where the subject’s looking—a third-floor window, where a shooter is set up with a sniper rifle, tracking Ana across the piazza. In half a second, I’m on target and the threat is eliminated. Half a second later, the contact is down, too. The contact looked up at his own sniper,” Sterling explains. “He was a trained assassin, aiming an incapacitation weapon at Ana. There was no other choice.”
Nicosa slams a palm against the wall.
“Why is all this necessary?” he cries in anguish, while I picture a swarm of complications when the police examine the bodies—not the least of which will be
the failure to inform my superior that I was involved in a ransom negotiation that went south. I’m feeling lightheaded, not only because of recriminations at the Bureau, but because the hope of recovering the victim made me expose myself to the mafia’s double cross.
“How is Sofri?” I ask hoarsely.
“When I left his apartment he was still pretty shaken up. Told him to go out and get a cup of coffee and make sure he’s seen around the neighborhood.”
“Mother of God,” says Nicosa. “Were you inside Sofri’s apartment?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you shoot that gun out of his window?”
“It provided the clearest view of the piazza.”
Nicosa smacks his own head. “Are you crazy?”
“Nobody saw, Nicoli. It’s not like I was hangin’ out the window like Billy the Kid.”
“The only way to know where the shot came from would be sophisticated gunshot analysis,” I say.
“You realize the Puppet will immediately murder Cecilia in retaliation,” Nicosa says. “It’s over. Everything is lost.”
“I sincerely trust that is not the case. All I can tell you is they were prevented from killing Ana. That was my objective.”
Nicosa has no idea how breathtaking that is, and what clear-sighted concentration is required. Half a second and on target—twice—at four hundred yards. Through all of this, Sterling has been watching me intently. It’s like the light has come back to his eyes. He saved my life. Inside I’m crumbling, but—code of conduct—all I do is put my arm around his shoulders as he sits in the chair; he puts an arm around my waist. We pull each other close and tight. Nothing has ever felt so good. He’s here. He’s sane.
“Ah,” says Nicosa, scrutinizing. “What is this?” He smiles. “Lei due sono insieme.”
“What did he say?”
Sterling duly translates: “That the two of us are together.” Screw the code of conduct. I kiss the top of his sweaty, buzz-cut head.
But Nicosa has another question.
“Where is Giovanni?”
The last time Giovanni was in our hands was way back yesterday, when he said he had arrived at the priest’s. Since then, we haven’t heard a word. A call to Giovanni’s cell goes to voice mail. A call to the rectory catches Padre Filippo by surprise. He never saw the kid. Never knew he was supposed to have arrived. Not for the first time, Giovanni flat-out lied to his dad. Now it is dark, the suspects know that two of their guys have been taken out, and Giovanni’s absence seems a lot more worrisome than a rebellious sixteen-year-old out making trouble.
Nicosa’s eyes are wide as he considers these alternatives. It must be like the primal terror of realizing you have lost your child in the supermarket aisle. He could be anywhere in the wide world.
“When your son’s in trouble, where does he go?” Sterling asks calmly. “Who does he turn to? A girlfriend? A buddy?”
“The territory,” says Nicosa.
He means the Oca district, specifically the Fontebranda fountain, around which information pivots like the wheeling doves. Of course Giovanni would go back to his childhood neighborhood, where the contrada protects its members. Where there are plenty of the bank of cocaine customers to drop in on, or drug contacts if reality gets too tough. On the other hand, anyone looking for the boy would go there, too.
Sterling says, “I’ll find him.”
“You’ll never find him,” Nicosa says. “Nobody of Oca will talk to you. I’d better go.”
“Better if you and I stay here,” I say. “In case the kidnappers call.”
We agree Nicosa will alert the contrada members that Sterling will be pounding the streets. But none of us can go any farther without food. While juggling calls, Nicosa mixes up a quick omelet with potatoes, sausage, and basil while we put together bread, fresh hard goat cheese, prosciutto, and slices of melon. A double shot of the house espresso, and Sterling is fortified and out the door. I follow to the mailbox car, and we kiss in the balmy night. Up on my toes, I reach around his neck for more.
“Come back soon.”
“I will.”
And then he’s gone. Nicosa appears in the kitchen doorway, looking in the frank courtyard light like he’s aged twenty years since I first met him. He holds out his hand.
“Would you mind waiting with me?” he asks.
We choose the small room where the hospital bed used to be, since returned to normal, a landline phone in place, connected to the tape recorder in the tower. I’ve got a legal pad and the remote receiver from the kitchen. As soon as we settle onto the white couches, fatigue hits like an iron gong. Nicosa flicks on the TV, but within minutes we are both plummeting into deep unconsciousness.
In the dream, I am in a car driving at night. The headlights reveal empty fields. In the distance, there is a palazzo on a mountain—like the one we always pass on the way into Siena—a resort, with lighted umbrellas and molten golden light dripping down the furrows of the hill. The headlights illuminate the fields of sunflower faces weirdly, like inmates on stalks. On the horizon there is a fire.
The phone is ringing—not the landline, but my cell—buzzing in my breast pocket like a device to jump-start the heart. Jerking awake, I realize that in my sleep, I have been smelling smoke. At the same time, someone is pounding on the front door.
“I have Giovanni, but we can’t get through,” Sterling says over the cell. “He was in Oca, like we thought.”
“Where are you now?”
“Bottom of the mountain.”
“What time is it?”
“Two in the morning.”
“What’s going on?”
“The road up to the abbey is blocked.”
Nicosa is snoring away. With the phone to my ear, I open the door and stand on the threshold. The neighbor, Aleandro, has run over from the olive farm, carrying a flashlight and shouting, “C’è un fuoco!”
“Aleandro is trying to say something,” I tell Sterling. “What is fuoco?”
“Fire. There’s been an accident,” Sterling says. “Can’t see it from here. There’s an ambulance and a couple of fire trucks. Looks like a car caught on fire.”
“I can see it from the house,” I say, looking where Aleandro is pointing.
The sky is lit by flames, banging orange light off the low cloud cover, under which you can see black smoke boiling up. I’m shivering in the chill as I recall images of California wildfires feeding on dry brush. Explosive fireballs that jump the road. Firefighters trapped with no way out.
“Are you in danger?” I ask Sterling.
“No; they’ve contained the fire around the car. Put Aleandro on. I’ll tell him it’s okay.”
I hand the cell to the older man. He speaks in Italian to Sterling while nodding grimly. A fire let loose in these hills would be catastrophic. He gives me back the phone. I repeat “Grazie!” until our worthy neighbor waves good-bye and retreats into the night.
“How is it down there?” I ask Sterling.
“We’ll just have to wait it out.”
“How’s Giovanni?”
“Just about like you’d expect. Aw, hell!” Sterling exclaims. “Here comes the coroner. Looks like there were fatalities. Go back to sleep, darlin’. This is going to take a while.”
Two hours later, Sterling and Giovanni are permitted to drive past the site. Under lights set up by crime scene specialists, the smoking, blackened skeleton of Sofri’s black Renault can be seen. As they pass, Sterling gently draws Giovanni close and turns the boy’s head so he is prevented from viewing the corpse. They arrive at the abbey at the same time as the Oca priest, who had followed them up the hill. I open the door and stare at their bleak, heartbroken faces.
Sterling takes me in his arms. “They killed Sofri.”
We all gather close, wondering what might be the kindest way to wake Nicosa from his sleep.
THIRTY-FOUR
When we push through the wooden doors of the questura, every detective and file clerk looks up, a
s if they had been waiting for us to appear. Even spookier is the universal expression of pity in their eyes, tracking as we follow Inspector Martini through the bullpen. Not sympathy. Pity. The odd looks cause my skin to prickle; once again, I’m a clueless outsider. Nicosa, wearing a coal-black suit, skin as transparent as skim milk, is stopped at every desk for a handshake or a glancing hug. Deferentially, I wait a pace or two behind, feet planted and hands clasped in the rest position, as if I were a Secret Service agent protecting the president.
Inspector Martini guides us up a marble staircase with a peculiar bad smell that leads to the executive offices on the second floor, steering us through a jumble of cubbyholes with scummy windows that obscure what could be a spectacular view of the main cathedral in the Piazza del Duomo. Instead, everybody’s face is turned toward a computer screen. At the far end of the room, a pair of mahogany doors with brass knobs opens to the private office of Commissario Dottore Enrico Salvi.
Once more I am impressed with how thin he is for a man with such a heavy-duty job: how narrow the shoulders, how feminine the waist becomes when you have to cinch a belt that tightly. The white collar of an impeccably pressed blue-striped shirt frames a bony face that is shaped like a violin, all cheekbones and hollow eyes. The man is underweight, possibly ill, but remarkably lithe as he slips out from behind the desk, extending a manicured hand.
“My deepest sympathies. This is a terrible situation.”
“We are grateful for your attention,” Nicosa replies.
Inspector Martini slides two packs of cigarettes across the varnished surface of the desk, and the Commissario accepts them off her fingertips without a glance. She excuses herself and backs out, closing the double doors like an obedient servant.
“Sofri was an exceptional man. He will be missed. How well did you get to know him, Agent Grey?”
“Unfortunately, I didn’t know him very long, but in the time that I did he became like an uncle to me. That’s why I’m here. It’s not just official business.”
The chief gives a little shrug. Official. Unofficial. Depends which side of the page is up.
“How can I help?”