Costa 08 - City of Fear (31 page)

“They might go away, you know, Leo,” Peroni said without much conviction. “Petrakis. Whoever his sidekicks are. They might look at what they’ve done to Ciampino and think,
Mission accomplished
. They were never the Red Brigades, really. Those bastards lasted years. With the Blue Demon it was over and done with in a week.”

“And isn’t that curious in itself?” the inspector asked.

“It could be it’s over already.”

Falcone eyed the horizon. His face was grim and determined. “And walk away from that? I wish I could believe it. They’re here to destroy what we cherish, Gianni. That’s more important than how many people they kill, how much damage they wreak. They want to make their mark, to have us cower at our own shadows. They haven’t left. Perhaps, after a fashion, they never will. This is the world we inhabit. Best live with it.”

Costa thought of the way Andrea Petrakis had spoken in the bloody dark in Tarquinia, the urgent determined fury in his voice when he took the unexpected call after he shot Mirko. Falcone was right. They were here already, hidden somewhere among the empty streets and piazzas, the echoing subway stations and vacant churches.

Falcone’s phone squawked. The inspector seemed, suddenly, absorbed. He pulled out his notebook with his free hand, walked to the Lancia, and began to make notes on the roof. The others recognized the change in his mood and walked over to join him.

“Grazie,”
Falcone said, and ended the call. He looked at Costa.

“That was Di Capua checking something for me.”

The last thing he’d done before they left Tarquinia was to make one more visit to the tomb. Something there had caught his interest. Not that he’d been willing to discuss it with anyone.

“This was on the wall next to the figure of the Blue Demon. Scratched in some bare paint. Someone had tried to rub it out. Palombo, I imagine. He didn’t have time to get rid of it all.”

He held up the page from his notebook. More Roman numerals, this time XII. II. I. CLXXIII.

Costa remembered the cryptic message painted on the wall of the Villa Giulia, behind the bodies of Renzo and Marie Frasca.

“Shakespeare?”

“I assumed that. I asked Di Capua to check. It doesn’t work. Too many numbers.”

“A phone number … a code … Something.”

He was out of ideas. They all were.

“Something,” Falcone agreed. “Let’s go back to San Giovanni, get some sleep, then start again.”

Events

“YOU WANT WHAT?” BERNIE STACKLER YELLED INTO HIS phone.

The cafe in the Via dei Serpenti was empty except for a couple at the end of the room. The anonymous contact who’d promised to meet them there had never materialized. It was that kind of day.

The TV cameraman listened to his distant producer, then cupped his hand over the handset and turned to the reporter they’d given him, Julia Barnes.

“You know what this is? This is JP Two all over again. Getting jerked around Rome looking for fairy dust while these fat bastards in New York sit on their butts laughing like baboons.”

He’d hated the funeral of the pope. The Vatican’s security had got so heavy with the media that they’d ordered him and a female reporter to buy a high-def camcorder, dress up as tourists, pose as mourning Catholics, and sneak in past the guards. It worked, almost too well. They’d got right up to the bier, filmed mourners, talked to everyone, got material that was so close, so personal, the network balked at using some of it. Not that New York was happy. Dan Fillmore, the selfsame producer who was on duty now, had been on his case throughout, whining, “But where’s the …
grief?”

Stackler hadn’t managed to get it across to the moron. A very old, very well-respected old man had died, after a long illness. People were
sad. They weren’t desolate. It wasn’t Princess Di. The Rome that the foreign camera crews wanted—“a city in mourning”—didn’t exist outside the imagination of headline writers. Beyond the lines of sad, resigned Catholics bunched together in the streets around the Vatican, life went on pretty much as normal. The only way they could get “grief” was to pay for it, from anyone willing to act. Which was what Stackler resorted to in the end. Not that it would work now.

“What exactly is it you want?” he demanded, trying not to think of the smug smile he knew would be creasing Fillmore’s clean-shaven, executive baby face at that moment. It was so easy to be a desk man these days.

“You need me to tell you?”

“Yes, Dan. Frankly, I do. You see, I’m here. You’re there. I see what I see. I don’t see what you want me to see. So you be a little clearer and let me try to understand.”

“Incredible,” the voice on the line grunted. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. We want something exclusive, Bernie. Remember that word? Long time since you heard it, I guess.”

Stackler fought hard against his rising fury. “You do
watch
the material we send you, don’t you? All the stuff about how this is a ghost city now? How none of us can move anywhere for all the goddamned security? Three people died when they hit Ciampino. There may be more before the day is out. Plenty in the hospital. I could try and talk to some of them.…”

“Sick foreigners in a bed. That’s going to go down big.”

“They’re part of the story.”

“They’re extras. I want the stars. I want pictures of the First Lady looking scared. I want to feel her fear. I want—”

“Funnily enough, they’re not giving interviews right now.”

“We can’t air excuses, Bernie. Sadly. Just do the usual thing. Pay someone to get inside a neighboring building. Go on the roof. Get an overview of the palace or something—people walking the grounds.”

“No one is going to open their door to a stranger today.”

“Helicopter?”

“Oh, please.”

“You could at least try,” Fillmore whined.

Stackler thought of the armed officers with their automatic weapons wandering the streets. The guard posts. The way every rooftop was being watched.

“I am trying. I got a call from someone who said they could get me something. That’s what I’m waiting for.”

“Get you what?”

“If I knew that, I’d be there, not here, wouldn’t I?”

“A call?” The disembodied voice sounded skeptical.

“Someone phoned and said they’d meet us with a lead. No, I don’t know who. Occasionally life works that way. I leave my card in the strangest places.”

“Yeah. Normally ones with a liquor license. If your new friend doesn’t show, you’ve got to come up with something else. Find some viewpoint.”

He groaned. “That would be really smart, wouldn’t it? I stick a camera lens out from some building and get my ass shot off.”

“Oh, I understand.…” There was a long, sarcastic drawl in Stackler’s ear. “You want the safe jobs now. What would you prefer? The Emmys? Skateboarding dogs?”

“Ha, ha.”

Julia Barnes sighed, went over to the counter, and came back with two more coffees and some biscotti. She was as sick of the situation as he was.

“Let me get this straight,” said the voice in New York. “This is the biggest story in the world. Rome is paralyzed. You got some terrorist team carrying out stuff on a daily basis. No one’s coming out of their houses. No one’s allowed to walk down the street much anymore. And what you got to give me? Local color. Wallpaper. Empty street scenes. For Christ’s sake, Bernie. There’s nothing you’ve filed for the last two days I couldn’t have got off YouTube. Sometimes better.”

“Enough,” Stackler said, with what he felt was remarkable restraint. “We have media credentials. There’s one arranged photo shoot outside the palace, in the piazza. You get that. Then anything else we can find.”

“YouTube—”

“Kindly do not say that word in my presence ever again.”

“YouTube.”

Stackler blinked and was grateful several thousand miles separated him and Dan Fillmore.

“Listen,” he went on, trying to sound reasonable. “When I go to Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or some other hellhole you wouldn’t dare set foot in, there I risk my ass for the corporation. In Rome …” It wasn’t right. He knew the city well. He loved the place, had even thought of moving there once upon a time, until he realized he’d never be able to earn a decent living. “Here, you don’t get that privilege. We’re going to play this the way I want. Cautious, meekly. It’s not right out there, and I can’t begin to tell you why.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to hope someone else has got the guts to do a professional job.”

Stackler could picture the man slamming down the phone at that moment. He’d done it so many times, on so many teams around the world.

Julia Barnes was holding out the cup of coffee. He didn’t want it. They’d drunk too much already, wandering the deserted streets, trying to talk their way in through the cordons. The Quirinale was just up the hill, blocked off from everything by closed roads, guard posts, and ranks of armed officers. Come eleven-thirty they’d be able to get through briefly for the media event—if it still happened. But it wouldn’t be anything great. Just a line of distant faces outside the palace, he guessed. It was that kind of assignment.

He nibbled at one of the biscotti and looked at her. “You know what I’d really like to do?”

“What?”

She was pretty. New to the network. Maybe thirty. Someone who’d worked her way up through the grind of little city outfits.

“This guy who phoned isn’t going to show. I say we do the photo call. Then afterwards we go get lunch at this restaurant I know in the ghetto. Artichokes and lamb. A bottle of white wine. An afternoon doze.”

He couldn’t not look at her when he said that.

“That would do my career a lot of good, wouldn’t it?” Julia Barnes said, looking at him as if he were slightly soft in the head.

They weren’t alone anymore. The other couple in the cafe had stood
up and come over. For some reason Stackler glanced at the counter. The old man who’d served them was no longer there. Even this bright, clean city-center coffee bar seemed to have been emptied by the fog of fear that had descended on them all.

“We couldn’t help overhearing,” said the man, a handsome, middle-aged Italian about Stackler’s age, wearing sunglasses even inside. “You’re American media? You need a camera angle or something? On the Quirinale? If you go out back …”

“You bet,” Julia said right away, getting up. “You got one? We can pay.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Stackler tried to say, but she was following them already, out to the door at the rear of the place. “Did you phone us or something? Was that you?”

“Phoned?” the man said. It was impossible to judge his expression. The shades …

Stackler didn’t mind. Not if it was easy. Not if it was safe.

He tried to think this through. He traveled so much, to so many different parts of the world. But he kept a mental picture of each in his head, a map he could use to find the best place to be. It was part of the job. The most important part sometimes.

The Via dei Serpenti, the street of the snakes, some stray thought told him, lay in Monti, downhill from the Quirinale Palace. There’d be views back to the Forum and over to the ruins of Trajan’s Markets. Not that they’d be of any use. But a clear line of sight uphill … He couldn’t imagine it.

The Italian couple stepped back and let him and Julia walk through the narrow door. Then the pair followed and closed it behind them.

There was another door, open—one that led to the cellar, down a long flight of old stone steps. At the bottom, visible under a single naked lightbulb, was the old man who’d served them when they came in. He was trussed up like a chicken, gagged, hands behind his back, frightened eyes staring at them behind a pair of wire-framed spectacles, one lens of which was broken.

Something cold pressed against Stackler’s neck.

He put up his hands, not daring to look, and said, “I got a wife and
kids. Two daughters, four and two. Please don’t make them lose their daddy.” He thought of all the times he’d rehearsed this line, in Baghdad, in Pakistan, in Kabul. “You guys have got a point. We all know it.”