Costa 08 - City of Fear (26 page)

Dario Sordi wondered when he could make his excuses and retire to the quarters he occupied in the palace, leaving the guests to depart in their armored convoys, tracking through a ghostly city. His own rooms were magnificent, fit for a pope, and quite lacking in all of the
attributes—small personal items, a fragrance, a long-cherished view—he associated with the word
home
. He longed for the modest two-bedroom apartment near the Piazza Navona that he’d shared with his late wife for nearly forty years. Though Nic Costa didn’t remember, he had slept there for a few nights as a child, when his parents were going through one of their difficult patches. The Sordis, if only for a few brief days, had discovered what it was like to be parents, something fate had denied them. Memories of that nature were irreplaceable. Next to them even the hidden microphones that the secret service had placed in their bedroom seemed no more than minor inconveniences, like mosquitoes in summer or the occasional stray intrusion of a mouse.

The past few nights in the elaborate apartment in the Quirinale, Sordi had slept badly. His nightmares had been relentless. One in particular, in which he was back in the Via Rasella, little more than a child, gun in hand, in front of the two young German soldiers, ready to shoot, but unable to pull the trigger.

In the nightmare one of the Nazis kept bending down to ask, “So you’re a coward now, boy, are you? A little late for us, isn’t it?”

“You know Palombo’s people still answer to you,” Sordi said with a sigh. “This is a charade. As you said yourself, I have simply deprived you of the culpability. You should be grateful.”

The prime minister glowered at him. “You stole away my powers.”

It was a ridiculous charge, one that grew more false by the day. Only that morning, Sordi had reviewed the list of new appointments to the judiciary. It was an open secret that they were, almost to a man and woman, Campagnolo’s creatures. The same steady process had been occurring in the police and the civil service and, thanks to the prime minister’s friends in the corporate world, throughout the media. Campagnolo was ruthlessly building himself a power base throughout the nation.

“No, Ugo. I merely borrowed one or two of your powers, for a little while, and for the best of reasons. We need the administration to survive. Not necessarily yours, of course. But we need some authority. A process in which people can believe. A president is just one man. He can easily be replaced. A system of government …” Dario Sordi found he
was unable to stifle a brief, wry smile. “It’s ridiculous. We are Romans. We’ve been trying to solve this riddle—how does, how
should
, one govern?—for so long. Two millennia or more. Still the answers elude us, and we have failed our people so often they begin to despair. If I can avoid one more scandal, one more collapse in public confidence …”

“Poor Dario,” Campagnolo declared as his gaze swept the room. “You speak so beautifully. You’re so clever. Yet you miss the obvious. No one wants to be governed by intellectuals. It makes people feel inferior. They want one of their own. An honest man …” His face creased in a showman’s smile. “It was a lonely and pointless talent that led you here.”

Sordi nodded. “I believe you may be right, Ugo.”

The prime minister’s arm extended to the glorious frescoes. “This place will suit me one day. The art—it makes me feel at home. At one with those who commissioned it, and those who executed it. Politics is an art too. Sometimes highbrow. Sometimes low. Mainly the latter. Some are better at it than others.”

“Do you have a favorite?” Sordi asked out of genuine interest. “Among the paintings?”

“All are my favorites!” He indicated the
Allegory of Glory
. “That one in particular. It’s wonderful. To be able to paint like that …”

“Agostino Tassi,” Sordi said, recalling the delightful hours he had spent walking the palace in the company of the pleasant and attractive female curator of paintings. “He lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, one more follower in the footsteps of Caravaggio. Agostino collaborated with Orazio Gentileschi.”

“Never heard of them.”

“A shame. Agostino was like so many of his peers, a talented though damaged man. He raped Gentileschi’s daughter, Artemisia, another gifted painter.”

The prime minister became interested. “Artists, eh? What do you expect?”

“When the young woman complained, she was herself taken into custody. The authorities … our predecessors … examined her physically. Internally, and quite brutally. Then they tortured the girl by crushing her fingers. A peculiarly cruel torment for a painter, I think.”

“Women …” Campagnolo muttered. “What happened?”

“Agostino went to jail briefly. Afterwards Artemisia became celebrated for painting, repeatedly, the same subject. An Old Testament scene. Judith decapitating the infidel Holofernes—a woman’s revenge on a lustful man. They’re spectacular canvases. If you compare the one in the Uffizi with Caravaggio’s similar work in the Barberini here … There’s something
personal
in them, some fierce female anger that a man—even a genius like Caravaggio—could never reproduce. You would see this instantly.” He thought of Campagnolo’s reputation as a serial womanizer. “Especially you.”

Campagnolo sniffed and looked back at the crowd. “She got something out of it, then? You make a good tour guide, Dario. If you’re still breathing when I move into this place, you can have a job showing around the visitors.”

Then he raised his empty glass, said “Ciao,” and, to Sordi’s relief, departed.

The president walked outside, down the steps into the garden, to the stone bench beneath the wicker canopy by the side of Hermes, the place where he’d spoken to Nic Costa the day before. It felt like an eternity ago. This was one part of the Quirinale that Dario Sordi loved. Early each evening, work permitting, he retired here and drank a single cup of Earl Grey tea, alone with his thoughts and a plate of special cookies he had sent from England—ones that, in spite of their name, Garibaldi, were unavailable in Italy.

When he first moved into the palace, in an early flush of enthusiasm, he had harbored a fantasy about starting his own kitchen garden on the grounds, one he could oversee himself, growing the Roman vegetables of his youth: artichokes and
agretti
and the wild chicory he had once gathered in the suburbs near the Porta San Sebastiano during the war, when food was scarce. The taste, sharp and bitter, remained with him still, as did the joy with which his meager pickings, little more than scraps of weed, were received when he brought them home. To have raised this simple vegetable in the gardens of the Quirinale would have brought a smile to the faces of his parents. The same straggly plant grew near the Ardeatine Caves where Sordi’s father and uncle had been among those slaughtered by the Nazis after the attack in the Via
Rasella. Its green leaves seemed to struggle from the brown earth in defiance of the climate and the poorness of the soil. Sordi liked this persistence against the odds, though perhaps its proletarian plainness would have looked out of place in the grandiose avenues of a palace.

As he lit a furtive cigarette, a shape moved in the darkness.

“Who is it?” Sordi demanded. “Show yourself.”

Fabio Ranieri emerged from the shadows. “I’m sorry, sir. I was taking another look around. It is my job, you know.”

Ranieri stepped into the light. He was a tall, strong man and his face, handsome and sincere, was a welcome sight.

“We’re here to look after you,” the Corazzieri captain told him. “Not”—he nodded back toward the brilliantly lit palace—“
them
. I couldn’t help but hear some of the things that bastard Campagnolo was saying. Lord knows he makes enough noise for ten.”

“No,” Sordi scolded him gently. “I will not listen to another word. The men and women in that building are more important than an old wreck like me. Your care is for the position, not the person. Whether you respect Ugo Campagnolo or not, at least respect what he represents—the aspirations of several million of your fellow countrymen.”

Ranieri cleared his throat and stared at the ground.

“Oh dear,” Sordi muttered, with genuine regret. “Things must be bad if we’re beginning to argue.”

“I hate seeing Rome like this. While they”—another angry glance at the Quirinale—“feast like Nero watching our city burn.”

“Bad history. That never happened. Nero wasn’t even here at the time, or so I was always taught.” Sordi stepped forward, keen to see the captain’s face. “Listen to me, Fabio. I will not be here forever. When I go, you must work with the people who come after me. Whoever they are, and your part in their choice is no greater or less than that of any other Italian.”

“I am a captain of the Corazzieri,” Ranieri replied, bowing his head slightly. “My job is to protect the president.”

“And you do it very well. Any news?”

“Nothing.” He thought for a moment, then added, “Except that young Costa called. I told him you were busy.”

“What did he want?”

“He was in Tarquinia. He wanted to know where I was twenty years ago. Apart from that, I’m not sure he knew himself.”

“He must have his reasons. The cell phone, please.”

Ranieri handed him the private mobile that he had organized at Sordi’s request. The president stumbled over the buttons, feeling foolish.

“I don’t remember the number.”

“Here …”

Ranieri dialed, then handed the phone back. Sordi put the thing to his ear, and as he did so a strong female voice said,
“Dígame.”

Dario Sordi replied, automatically, “I fear you’re in Italy, not Spain, signora, and I have misdialed. My apologies. Unless you have Sovrintendente Costa with you?”

He waited.

“Signora?
Signora …?
”

THEY’D NEEDED A DRINK AFTER THE STRANGE MEETING in the restaurant with Peroni’s mobster pal. Falcone chose the location, which was why they were in the Via della Croce, drinking Falanghina in the Antica Enoteca, staring at some of the best cold food in Rome, trying to work up an appetite.

The inspector had decided he didn’t want to walk all the way from San Giovanni. Instead he had tried to drive them home in his Lancia. Four armed
carabinieri
turned them back at the barricade by the Colosseum, glancing at their police IDs, then laughing. That did nothing to improve Falcone’s temper. Now the inspector’s sleek car was abandoned halfway up the sidewalk of a side street on the opposite side of the Corso, near the Mausoleum of Augustus, in the shadow of an ugly fascist-era marble office building. Rome’s shaky traffic-management system had collapsed under the pressure of the street closures and the panic to get out into the suburbs. Much of the
centro storico
was deserted, isolated by a multitude of barricades. Beyond them, traffic was snarled in every direction.

The old wine bar should have been bursting with people fighting to get to the counter, yelling for their glasses of good Italian wine from Tuscany and Puglia, Sicily and the Veneto, picking at plates of food. Instead, there were just two couples in the place. The waiters looked bored and a little scared. Peroni had chosen the dishes automatically, his favorites whenever they came here. Three generous plates, one of roast
pork with prunes, a second covered with cheese, and a third of antipasti, sat on the bar, untouched.

“Was that a good day?” Teresa Lupo asked. “As far as the work is concerned, I mean.”

Falcone scowled and held the Falanghina up to the light. It was perfect: cold and fragrant. “I’ve known better. If it weren’t for your assistant and the Englishwoman …”

“Silvio and Elizabeth are quite a team,” she agreed. “I hope they manage to get some sleep. There’s a limit to how much a computer can tell you.”

The two men stared at her.

“I know, I know!” she objected. “I’m learning, aren’t I? I’d like to think our trip to the Villa Giulia provided a little useful intelligence.”

“I suppose so.…” Falcone looked thoroughly miserable. She found herself feeling sorry for this solitary, difficult man. The inspector hated being excluded from the center of events. More than anything, he detested the idea of losing. All the men she’d come to admire, and in some ways love, did. It was a peculiarly damaged form of heroism on their part.

“Leo?” Teresa asked, carefully. “There’s something I need to get clear in my mind.”

“Ask away,” he responded.

“Our new friend Toni. Walking out like that just because I asked him about the Blue Demon.”

“What about it?” There was a canny look in his eye.

“Well, why? It’s not as if it’s a secret that they’re the people we’re looking for. Why did he suddenly get so touchy?”

“I didn’t understand that, either,” Peroni began, leaning forward. “It was as if it meant something different to him.”

Falcone’s phone bleated. He glanced at it, then turned the handset to face them. It was a short text, one that came, the screen indicated, from the private cell phone of Mirko Oliva. It read, simply:
They’re here
.

“Is that it?” Peroni asked Falcone. “Where are Nic and those kids now, anyway?”