Costa 08 - City of Fear (29 page)

“No!” the Turk yelled. “Do not say this. Not even in jest. Do not …”

Andrea Petrakis wound his hand around Deniz’s tanned, bony skull and pressed the weapon into the man’s temple. Anna Ybarra took another two steps away from them. Her hands were by her sides, her eyes downcast, seeing nothing.

“Even if I’m wrong,” Petrakis said calmly. “If … I must ask myself this, Deniz. What use are you now? Everything has changed. There is no need for your … toys … which, if I’m candid, are your solitary skill.”

He was a commander. A general. He had decisions to make, challenges to face.

“I beg you,” Deniz Nesin said, squirming in his grip. “I would not betray you, Andrea. Ever—”

“Possibly.”

“Ever …”

There was a fresh explosion somewhere off in the distance. It was a good night. There was no guarantee their luck would continue.

“Then I shall be forced to apologize in Paradise,” Petrakis murmured.

He fired—a single shot was all it took.

She watched, trembling as the Turk fell, briefly thrashing, to the ground.

Anna Ybarra had her own weapon in her hand, pointed, half shaking, in his direction.

“You won’t kill me,” she said in a tremulous voice.

It seemed a ridiculous statement. Petrakis stood motionless, studying her.

“Of course not. I need you. As you need me. We shall drive to Ciampino and see what we can. Then I shall show you our new home.” He shrugged. “It’s not so magnificent as Tarquinia, I’m afraid. But we won’t be there long.”

Her gun went down. She still refused to look at the body of the Turk.

Andrea Petrakis smiled and said, “Good. Did you bring some food, like I asked? I’m starved.”

THEY WERE FACEDOWN ON THE EARTH, FEELING THE downdraft of the helicopter blades cutting slowly through the night air. Beyond them, teams of hooded, armed men spread through the area around the tomb.

Costa heard a familiar voice, one he recognized instantly, though he had heard it only once before.

Luca Palombo, the head Ministry of the Interior spook, was storming toward them, speaking loudly on the phone, distracted, it seemed, by events that—from his tone—were much worse than those he had somehow come to discover out in the wilds of the Maremma.

Costa felt Rosa’s hand tighten on his arm, as if she were willing him to be ready for something.

“Get up,” Palombo ordered. “Get up.”

Falcone was first to his feet. Palombo listened to something on the phone, scowled, then dropped it into his pocket.

“How did you get here?” he demanded.

“It’s called police work,” the old inspector answered. “How did you—”

“I ask the questions. Not answer them. How did you find this place?”

Costa rose and stood next to his inspector. “We were following up on a report that someone had been seen near the tomb of the Blue Demon. It was routine.”

“Here?”
Palombo bellowed. “In
Tarquinia?
You heard my orders.
You’re supposed to be in Rome, dealing with the kind of work you’re fit for. Keeping order. Watching the streets.”

Teresa Lupo said, “The streets are empty. Didn’t you notice? People don’t dare to go out. If they do, they can’t get home. You’ve closed Rome. There’s nothing for us to do there.”

Peroni added calmly, “We’ve got a dead officer here, friend. Don’t push it.”

Palombo glanced at the shape on the earth and said, “I’m sorry. We will deal with him.”

“He was a colleague of ours,” Rosa said, her voice cracking. “We deal with him.”

“Not on this occasion,” Palombo snapped. “What else is here? I need to know now. I don’t have much time.”

“There’s a corpse in the tomb,” Costa said. “Shot. Petrakis had hidden some explosives. Firearms. Munitions. Whether they’re still there …” He held out the phone he’d retrieved from the hall of the Blue Demon. “This was on the dead man.”

Palombo snatched the handset from his fingers, then ordered two of his men to go down below to take a look, while another group took care of the fallen officer.

A couple of the figures in black began lifting Mirko Oliva’s body onto a gurney. There was a commotion near the tomb entrance. Two men had brought the body to the surface.

“I don’t imagine Stefan Kyriakis was his real name,” Costa said quietly.

“I don’t imagine it’s any of your concern,” Palombo retorted.

“What is?” Falcone asked without emotion. “If you’d care to shed any further light on what’s happened here …”

Palombo’s phone was ringing again. He looked at the screen, swore once, then barked into it, “I’ll call when I’m back. We’ll be in Rome within the hour.” A moment of hesitation, listening, then angrily, “No. I don’t know. Do
you?”

The conversation ended. The man from the Ministry of the Interior stared at them, his face haggard and weary in the moonlight.

“I will say this once and once only, and I shall expect Esposito to remind you of it when you finally crawl back to the city. Your duty lies in
Rome. Nowhere else. It’s confined to the streets. To keeping people safe and the traffic moving. And staying out of my way. The death of your
agente
is unfortunate, but it will remain secret until I deem otherwise.

The Carabinieri will investigate, not you.”

“He was a
police officer!”
Peroni roared.

“This is the Carabinieri’s case. You will not mention his death to anyone. You will not inform next of kin or any other party until I allow it, and that will not be for another day at the very least, until the summit is over.” He glared at Costa. “You’re lucky you’re not dead too. If you breach my order, I will, I swear, make very certain that you wish you were. I could throw the whole bunch of you into jail for as long as I damn well feel like.”

“This is not a police state!” Teresa yelled at him. “You can’t just imprison innocent people for no good reason. It’s not—”

“Listen to me! Earlier this evening, Ciampino was bombed. They flew some kind of aircraft filled with explosives straight onto the landing strip. Two aircraft were destroyed. We think there are fatalities. The president has issued the decree. We’re now in a formal state of emergency. With the anti-terrorist laws I have at my disposal …” His face was grim, yet bore the mark of some satisfaction too. “I can do anything I like.” He glanced at the armed men dealing with the body from the tomb.
These people aren’t even looking for evidence
, Costa thought. It was as if they already knew what had happened.

“So what do you expect of us, sir?” Costa asked Palombo.

“Go back home. Stay inside. Order a pizza. Turn on the TV. If any of you cross my path again, I shall not be so lenient.”

He watched the second gurney make its way to the nearest helicopter.

“Good evening,” Palombo told them, and then followed it.

The machines stirred into life, their rotor blades chopping through the black night air.

As quickly as they came, Palombo’s team were gone—dark, diminishing shapes against the stars, sweeping south toward Rome.

Peroni picked up a flashlight and marched back into the tomb. The big cop came back a minute later, red-faced, livid.

“They didn’t just take the body, Leo. They took
everything
. The explosives. The weapons. The ammunition. The evidence, for Christ’s sake.”

“Screw them. I can find things,” Teresa told him. “You can’t clean a crime scene in a couple of minutes. Give me time—”

“We don’t have time,” Falcone interrupted. “Palombo knows that. If I bring in a unit …”

The sequence had already run through Costa’s head. They would need to liaise with the local
questura
. To establish a forensic team. To involve so many people—it would be impossible to keep the case quiet. Palombo knew exactly what he was doing.

“This has been a long night,” Falcone said. “Palombo may be right. We could put you two in a hotel somewhere nearby. Back in Porto Ercole, perhaps. You could stay out of this.”

“I want to go back to Rome,” Rosa said.

Falcone sighed. He murmured, “Nic?”

“Someone can fetch a change of clothes to the apartment. Silvio can take a look at this,” he added.

He pulled the little object from his pocket. He’d managed to extract it while they were on the ground, waiting, wondering what the helicopters might bring.

They looked at the piece of plastic in his hands.

“It’s the SIM from the phone I found in the tomb,” Costa told them. “I don’t think Palombo needs it. Does he?”

THEY LEFT DENIZ NESIN IN THE FIELD WHERE PETRAKIS had shot him. This was the last day. She understood that now. By fleeing Tarquinia, they had broken some part of a plan she’d never suspected. A scheme that entailed the steady diminution of the team. First Danny, the strange kid who baffled her with his bad English, Russian, and Pashto. Then Joseph Priest, slaughtered in the street after the outrage at the Trevi Fountain, for which he was not truly responsible.

Now the Turk. When her turn came, she wondered, did Petrakis really think he could attempt the final part of the job—the hardest, penetrating directly into the Quirinale itself—all on his own? This seemed impossible. She was, she thought, meant to die, just as he was, in all probability. But their deaths would be at the end, as part of achieving what they came for.

They took the car Deniz had rented at a deserted Hertz depot on the outskirts of Fiumicino and drove up a narrow lane until they joined the main road running directly past the airport, almost parallel with the single runway. It was impossible to get nearer. The police had blocked the highway. Flames still engulfed the horizon. Fire engines and ambulances fought one another to get through the crush of vehicles. Crowds of bystanders and newspaper photographers were out of their cars, on foot, trying to get closer to the scene.

Petrakis turned the car around, retraced their tracks down the little lane to the Appian Way, and pulled into a farm entrance. There he took
out his phone, the fancy one Deniz had given him, and called up the RAI mobile news service. There was video footage of a plane in flames. She moved closer to him from the passenger seat, trying to see. On the aircraft’s tail, burned almost beyond recognition, was the Stars and Stripes, and beneath it a number. The charred outline had the bulbous nose of a 747.

“Air Force One?” Anna Ybarra asked.

Petrakis grinned like a schoolkid. The phone said three aircraft ground staff were already confirmed dead. Another five were missing. All Italian. The crew of the plane, and everyone else in the American party, were in the city when the bomb struck.

“The little people have died,” she murmured. “Again.”

Petrakis snapped the phone shut and glared at her. She remembered the way he’d killed Deniz Nesin, and didn’t say anything else.

He turned around, took another lane behind the Via Appia Antica. Somewhere along the way, he pulled off onto a narrow track. She noticed it wasn’t far from a church with a name that rang a bell.
Quo Vadis?

Some distant memory rose in her head. It was Latin:
Where are you going?
She remembered the connection too. Saint Peter fleeing Rome, in fear of crucifixion, only to find a ghostly Jesus waiting for him on the road south, asking this very question.
Where?

The track ended. There was a trailer stranded in a field. It was old, small, the kind of thing a tramp might inhabit.

Petrakis parked the car by the side, got out, and unlocked the heavy padlock chain on the door. She followed him inside. There was an electric light system. When the dim bulbs came on, she saw that the place was as tidy as an office. A single bed in the corner. A desk with a computer. A small gas stove, a refrigerator. Petrakis reached inside and immediately found a bottle of champagne there.

She looked at the label: Krug, 1995. From the expression on his face she guessed she was supposed to feel impressed.

“I thought we might need something to drink if we wound up here,” he said, nothing more.

Anna Ybarra glanced at the desk. There was a set of passports there, shuffled like a pack of cards. So many: British, American, European, South African, Australian.