Costa 08 - City of Fear (32 page)

The words sounded weak and stupid the moment he said them, and Stackler couldn’t avoid the fury he saw rising alongside the fear in Julia Barnes’s dark, attractive face.

“I want your money and your credentials,” the man said.

Stackler waved his arms higher and nodded. “Take anything you want.”

The contents of his jacket were gone in an instant. He waited, wondering. The barrel of the gun never moved.

“Little people,” the woman said obscurely, and somehow he felt it was a compliment.

A foot connected with his spine. He felt himself falling down the stairs, hands against his head, thinking of home.

When Bernie Stackler came to, he was trussed like the cafe guy next to him. Julia Barnes was in the same state. The solitary light came from a narrow line of glass at the rear, which surely only connected with a courtyard at the back of the building. But he didn’t feel too bad. A part of him wanted to laugh, to call Dan Fillmore in New York and boast, “See, kid. This kind of shit never happens to you.”

But they’d gagged him too, as they’d gagged his reporter. He shuffled upright and made himself as comfortable as he could.

THERE WAS NO BROKEN CIRCLE OF NOISY, ANGRY VEHICLES backed up by the Colosseum, no choking line of traffic behind the bus and tram lines. Falcone found a parking space near the hospital in San Giovanni with ease. They walked to the apartment without passing a single living soul.

Silvio Di Capua had sent out for a change of clothes. Costa tossed him the SIM card from the phone, then he and Rosa went to sleep for a few hours, at Falcone’s insistence. When he got up, Silvio, Teresa, and Elizabeth Murray were already around the computer, chattering and pointing at the screen. Falcone was in the kitchen. Commissario Esposito was there with him, talking quietly as the two men sipped coffees. It could have been any ordinary surveillance scene, were it not for the state of the city outside.

Rosa came in, fresh from the bathroom, her hair still wet and wrapped in a towel. She looked older than a day before, Costa thought. There were signs of a new, unwanted wisdom and dark shadows beneath her eyes. He recalled the journey to the Maremma, Mirko Oliva amusing them all with his stories of a wild childhood on Monte Argentario, raising a rare sparkle in her serious face. He had wondered whether there might, one day, be something between the two young officers. Hoped so, if he were honest. She’d never had a relationship—not that anyone in the Questura knew of, at least, and it was a place
with few secrets. Rosa Prabakaran deserved a little happiness in her life. The years she’d spent with the police had been far from easy.

“Take a look at this,” Teresa said.

Something popped out of the printer in front of her. He picked up the page and shared it with Rosa. It was a familiar item: a police report, this one dated from five years before. The name of Stefan Kyriakis sat at the top. The dead man he’d stumbled upon in the tomb of the Blue Demon was pictured in a standard Questura mug shot. With a rough mustache and an unpleasant, aggressive scowl, he wasn’t a pretty sight. The charges were ugly too: smuggling weapons from Corsica into Italy through the main port of Monte Argentario. Six pallets of automatic rifles, with accompanying ammunition.

“Porto San to Stefano,” Costa said. “That’s a fifteen-minute drive from Porto Ercole. It keeps coming back to the Maremma, doesn’t it?”

“What happened to him?” Commissario Esposito asked. He and Falcone had joined them silently. For once they didn’t look at loggerheads.

“He was charged with arms smuggling and beating up a couple of the officers who apprehended him,” Silvio Di Capua responded. “Never came to court. No reason given. The man doesn’t appear in our records ever again.”

The
commissario
scratched his head and stared at Falcone, as if looking for help. He was in full uniform. His face was gray and tired. It must have been a long night for everyone.

“So?” Esposito asked. “What about this phone lead you have?”

“A SIM card?” Silvio Di Capua said. “That’s a lead?”

“You can find out who he called,” Costa began.

“It’s a SIM card, Nic. The phone logs the calls. Not the card. All that keeps is the network, the number, and any texts. Of which there are none, by the way.”

Teresa gave him a filthy look. “We must be able to find out something.”

“I’ve passed on the details to a couple of phone geeks I know. If we’re lucky, we may be able to track down the account holder. That’s not strictly legal, by the way.…”

“Don’t tell me this,” Esposito warned him. “Do you have no answers at all?”

“We’ve got plenty of questions,” the inspector replied. “Why did those two
carabinieri
come up from Rome intent on killing those kids in the Petrakises’ shack?”

“You don’t know that,” Esposito grumbled.

Falcone shook his head. “What other explanation fits? They murdered those students, and the local officer who happened to be fool enough to go along with them. Nic and Rosa spoke to his brother. He saw the body in the morgue, even though they tried to keep it hidden. The bullet wound was in the back of the neck.”

“It’s not just him,” Teresa intervened. “There was the girl. Nadia Ambrosini.” She hammered at the computer until she found what she wanted: the photograph of the dead students after the attack. “Nadia is holding the gun. The story is that she shot the other two, then killed herself when she realized they were going to be captured. Why? She was a bank manager’s daughter. The director of the Villa Giulia knew her. She was an airhead. Into dope and disco. Not theatrical suicides. Come on”—she waved at the photo on the screen, her face the very picture of disgust—“a weapon in the hand? Please. This is posed. An act. A riddle. Like Giovanni Batisti, shot dead, then butchered to make it look as if he’s some kind of human sacrifice. Like …”

She picked up a piece of paper. It was a page from a police notepad, with Falcone’s writing and the Roman numerals. “Like these.” Teresa shook her head. “Twenty years ago Andrea Petrakis leaves a cryptic message about
Julius Caesar
after he’s butchered Renzo and Marie Frasca at the Villa Giulia. He does the same when he kills Batisti. And next to the body of this arms smuggler, who’s clearly just made some kind of delivery.” She stared at them. “Am I the only one thinking this?”

It had occurred to Costa too.

“It’s a message for the same person. Whoever was supposed to read it back then is still here to receive it now.”

He turned to Esposito and said, “We need to know the schedule for the summit. At least that might help us understand what they’re planning to attack.”

Commissario Esposito, a good man at heart, but a politician too, shook his head and stared at them glumly.

“They could be planning to attack anything. Besides, do you think I’d get an answer?”

“There are questions we need to put to some of those people,” Teresa told him.

Esposito picked up his car keys. He wanted out of this conversation. “We’re in the middle of a national emergency. Palombo is one of the most senior security officials involved. You want me to call him in for an interview in the Questura?”

“If that’s what it takes,” Rosa began. “Mirko—”

The
commissario
glared at her. “Do not dare to use the death of an officer in that fashion, Agente. I answer to those above me, and they answer to Luca Palombo, who has already decreed that Oliva’s death is a matter for the Carabinieri. Find me some facts that will allow me to question that position and I will drag the bastards responsible in front of a magistrate myself.” Then, more quietly, “But a set of numbers scrawled on a wall, a host of suppositions—these do not represent evidence, and on a day like this I will not waste time trying to pretend they do.”

He regarded each of them in turn. “Find me something of substance. If not, then Palombo will have his way and we will see what happens when this madness is over.”

“They buried it once,” Teresa cut in. “They’ll bury it again.”

“Some things are best buried,” Esposito replied. “It’s less painful that way.”

Then he took a theatrical look at his watch and declared, “I have a meeting at the Ministry in thirty minutes. We have nothing else to discuss here. If you find something, come first to me.”

They watched him leave.

Peroni leaped in. “I can try Cattaneo in America again.…”

“It’s four in the morning over there,” Teresa complained.

“I don’t care,” the big man replied.

Silvio Di Capua was printing out another page. “I’ve a name for the Frascas’ housekeeper. A woman. She must be elderly now. Lives in Testaccio. Is that any—”

“I’ll do it,” Costa said, and realized Rosa was watching him.
“We’ll
do it.”

“Good,” Falcone observed. “We’ll go through what we have and see if there’s something that’s been missed.”

Peroni was on the phone already. Di Capua and Elizabeth Murray were printing out more pages from the computer.

Costa went and located the clothes Silvio had got for them, cheap ones bought from a store around the corner, to save time and avoid any security people Palombo might have placed on their homes. He had jeans and a T-shirt. When Rosa came out from her room, she had on a simple lime-green skirt, shorter than anything he’d ever seen her wear, and a skimpy halter top. Big shades too, and a white plastic handbag.

She followed him down the stairs. Outside, she glanced up and down the empty street and said, “We must look like the only two tourists left in Rome. Is this meant to be a disguise?”

Probably, he thought. The address Peroni had found was near the Via Marmorata, a short drive away. Silvio had found them a scooter too, and a pair of fluorescent crash helmets.

“Nic?”

He watched her fasten the helmet. “What is it?”

“I still don’t understand why we’re alive and Mirko’s dead.”

“Perhaps we were lucky. Petrakis got distracted. Or careless.”

“Careless?” she repeated, staring at him.

“Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

“We’re missing something, and you know it.”

“We’re missing lots.”

She watched him get on the scooter. “These people don’t know what’s true, what’s real anymore.”

“We’re real,” Costa said, and brought the little machine to life.

She climbed on behind him, holding his waist tightly as they rode out into the Via San Giovanni in Laterano.

“SIGNORA BARNES?”

The
carabiniere
at the barrier barely glanced at her press ID card, with its new photo carefully inserted beneath the plastic.

“Si?”
Anna Ybarra said automatically as she stepped into the scanner arch erected to deal with the long line of media queuing for the brief press conference. She passed through without so much as a beep.

“Grazie,”
the officer said, and waved her on to join the snaking queue of bodies working their way onto the piazza and the rectangular space marked out for them in front of the palace.

It was just as Andrea Petrakis had said. There were two ways in. The narrow Vicolo Mazzarino that led from the Via Nazionale, the route she’d taken. And, on the opposite side of the square, along the Via della Dataria, which led down the steep hill, toward the Trevi Fountain and the main shopping street of the Via Corso, the way she’d use to leave.

She was wearing the clothes Petrakis had provided, an outfit waiting for her in the trailer: a thin wool pin-striped suit in charcoal gray. The kind of clothes a TV reporter might want for work. He was prepared. Had been prepared. And he’d briefed her too. Quickly, thoroughly, professionally, as they’d dressed that bright, clear morning, in a field where rowdy blackbirds were trumpeting another sunny day on the outskirts of Rome.

The media event went the way he said. Five speeches, mostly in English, for the benefit of the international media. The first came from the
Italian president, Sordi, an upright, distinguished-looking man with a pendulous, sad face and an air of gravity that was impossible to ignore. She had read about him on the little computer they provided in Afghanistan, discovered he had an interesting, intriguing past that was difficult to connect with the august, calm figure she saw on the podium outside the Quirinale Palace. Next came some politics from his own prime minister, the familiar theatrical figure she had seen so many times on the TV in Spain, younger, snappier, more lightweight, yet somehow more powerful.