Costa 08 - City of Fear (33 page)

The British leader then spoke, since his country held the current presidency of the European Union, and afterwards the American, and finally the Russian, the only one who needed an interpreter.

She stood there, mesmerized. All of these men talked of the same thing. Of their sorrow at happenings in Rome, their sympathy with the relatives of those who had lost their lives, the determination such acts instilled in them to fight the good fight, for as long as it was needed.

Anna Ybarra never thought she would be so close to those who ran the world. Close up, even separated by a barrier and a small army of soldiers, police officers, and plainclothes security personnel, they looked quite ordinary as they began to sweat beneath the keen summer sun. They sounded sincere. They looked grave and stern and serious. There was conviction in the air. She could feel it, touch it, see it acknowledged by the nods of the reporters around her, whose questions, when they were allowed, seemed sanitized and predictable, organized in advance, tame invitations to an answer waiting to be delivered.

It took no more than fifteen minutes. Then the leaders stood still, barely smiling, for the cameras. It was over, too quickly, before anyone had said anything that mattered.

She found it impossible to dismiss from her head some of the things she had read about Dario Sordi. These mattered, yet not a single professional journalist around her had thought fit to raise them. Or perhaps they were simply too scared.

Before she knew it, Anna Ybarra found herself pushing to the front of the crowd, a question rising in her head, one she had to voice, though she accepted it was not part of the plan, and that Andrea Petrakis, if
they ever met again—and that she doubted somehow—might kill her for its utterance.

“Mr. President! Mr. President!”

They were turning to go back into the palace. It was a stupid thing to shout. There were so many presidents there at that moment, and she really only wanted to talk to one.

“Presidente Sordi?”

The tall, elderly figure on the podium turned, hesitating.

Without thinking, she exclaimed,
“Dígame!”

He gazed in her direction. There was puzzlement in his eyes, and perhaps something else. Then he walked back to the microphone and asked, “Do I know you, signora?”

“No, sir,” she shouted, heart beating quickly, her mind full of fear that she had gone too far. “Not at all.”

“You have a question?”

“I wondered …” The reporters around her were staring. She was out of line, asking something that was unexpected, unwanted. The security guards were closing ranks between the barrier and the figures outside the palace. There was so little time.

Anna Ybarra held up her media badge for all to see and said, “Of all the men and women here, you alone know what it is like to be called a terrorist. You’ve killed men in the street for no other reason than their nationality. How is this different?”

Dario Sordi gazed across the bright space between them and shrugged, an ordinary, humble gesture.

“I killed soldiers in uniform, with rifles in their hands. Not ordinary men and women struggling to get by. It’s a small difference, though not an insignificant one, I think. This was many years ago, when we were a nation at war, occupied by the enemy, fighting for our own freedom.” He thought for a moment, then added, “For what it is worth, there is not a day goes by when I do not see the faces of the two human beings I murdered, do not remember the surprise I saw in their eyes. They did not expect their lives would come to an end at the hands of a child. As a fellow man I regret this constantly. As a former soldier”—his face grew longer—“I did my duty. But I repeat”—he waved a finger at her across the piazza—“that was in a time of combat, and this is not the case now,
however much my colleagues here, with their so-called war on terror, may wish to disagree.”

She wanted to ask something else, but the words refused to form.

“Are you sure we’ve never spoken before?” Dario Sordi added, his old, gray eyes closing on her.

“That’s not possible, sir,” she answered, and slunk to the back of the crowd, disappearing into the huddle of bodies already marching toward the exit, chanting into cell phones, talking to their newsrooms, in Italy, elsewhere in Europe, and beyond. Some, she could hear, were starting to mention the comments she had elicited from Sordi, words that would never have been spoken if an interloper, an impostor, had not sought them.

Petrakis had taken her through the next part, bit by bit, using a map of the city. It was easy to follow his instructions, leaving by the steps on the palace side of the square. She found the alley he’d told her about, narrow and shadowy, partway down the hill. It ran for a short distance, then there was a right fork into the Via della Panetteria. To her right ran the old palace stables, and after a little way the street named after them, the Via della Scuderie, running beneath the Quirinale walls to the Via del Traforo, with its tunnel beneath the palace, the stopping point for buses visiting the Trevi Fountain.

Look for a stable door
, he said,
marked with a red paper circle, the kind a child might use at school
.

It was one of many similar entrances, halfway along the narrow street. She checked up and down the road to make sure no one was looking. Then she turned the worn brass circular handle on the door and walked through.

The room beyond was vast and dark. Anna Ybarra took out the small flashlight he’d given her and found herself in what looked like a stable set into the barracks at the back of the Quirinale Palace: a bare stone chamber like the nave of some tiny country church, with a couple of saddles on the wall, and the brittle remains of an ancient carriage.

In the corner, beneath a broken cartwheel, she found what she was looking for. In a cheap suitcase lay another change of clothes: a long, flowing evening dress, floor-length, cut low at the front, and a pearl necklace. By its side was a large instrument case. It contained a shiny
baritone saxophone the color of gold. The name
Yamaha
was stamped on the bell.

She took out the instrument, reached into its mouth, and removed the package hidden inside. Petrakis had briefed her on this too. It was the kind of weapon she could never have imagined until they took her to Afghanistan. Now she knew its name. Somehow his sources within the palace had provided a black Uzi Para Micro, a tiny machine pistol developed for Israeli special forces and counterterrorist units. The magazine was hidden in the accessory area of the case along with a slender shoulder stock. Petrakis, who had coached her through the task of learning about firearms, said it contained thirty-three shells. There would be no spares. The entire load of ammunition could be expended in under two seconds, if she wanted. This was a weapon for slaughter, not marksmanship.

Anna Ybarra put on the evening dress, which fitted a little awkwardly around her strong shoulders. Then she cradled the Uzi, stock against her arm, practicing, trying to imagine what it would be like in the room he’d mentioned, the Salone dei Corazzieri. Standing on the platform with the musicians, pretending she was a last-minute replacement for someone who couldn’t show. Letting them play a few notes, then stepping off the stage, walking into the melee of dinner suits and glamorous dresses, wondering which way to arc the weapon in the single burst she’d be allowed.

Her head was full of questions. Too many.

She pulled out her phone, found his number, and sent him the single one-word message they’d agreed.

Inside
.

Less than a minute later came his reply.

Wait
.

She sat down on an old, rickety chair, next to the wrecked carriage. There was a single small, high window through which the bright summer day streamed, illuminating the dark, dusty interior of the stable. The shaft of light fell, almost deliberately she thought, on something that must have stood there for years: a crucifix attached to the side wall, a tortured bronze figure of the dying Christ, head bowed, awaiting release.

LETIZIA RUSSO’S HOME WAS A NEAT THIRD-FLOOR APARTMENT in a block by the river in Testaccio. She was an unsmiling, pinch-faced woman, thin and birdlike, with a sharp, spinsterish manner.

They sat on an old-fashioned sofa. She watched them from an armchair in the window, the light falling so that the shadow of the curtain fell on her face.

“You do know why we’re here, signora?” Rosa asked.

“I can guess. What do you want of me?”

“Memories,” Costa answered.

“Is that all?”

“For now. We’re trying to picture what happened. It’s not easy.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“The Frascas. What were they like?”

“Not the best family I’ve worked for. Not the worst. I was just the housekeeper. I came in and cleaned. Looked after the little boy from time to time. They were kind, after their fashion. I was”—she stabbed her skinny chest with a finger—“a servant. I never forgot that.”

“The boy …”

“Daniel was beautiful. I taught him to talk like a Roman. They didn’t like it. They said”—her voice changed accent, became hard—“we don’t want him speaking like some cabdriver. Huh! Daniel was as bright as a button. And now …” The sour look came back. “The papers say the
poor boy was shot dead somewhere only the other day. That he killed someone and was soft in the head. Not my Daniel.”

“No,” Costa agreed. “Perhaps he wasn’t.”

Her expression never changed. She asked, “Then where is he?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s so much we don’t understand. We’re trying.”

The old woman nodded at the window. There was scarcely any traffic running along the riverside road. On the Tiber itself he could see two high-speed Carabinieri launches racing toward the city, armed officers upright at the bows. Overhead the clatter of a helicopter flying low rattled the rooftops.

“Not doing much good, is it?”

“Would you prefer we did nothing?” Rosa asked tartly. “What happened on the day they were killed?”

The corners of Letizia Russo’s thin-lipped mouth turned down in a gesture of ignorance. “It was the weekend. I was visiting a relative in Civitavecchia. First I heard was on the news.”

Costa asked her the usual details. What she found in the apartment. What she was asked by the investigating officers. She listened, staring at him.

“Why don’t you know this, if you’re police?”

“Because it was twenty years ago and the investigating team then—they were from other agencies.”

“I didn’t get into the apartment for a week. By then they said these animals who called themselves the Blue Demon were dead or gone. Daniel too. When they finally let me in …” Another casual frown. “It looked the way it always did.”

Costa recalled the photographs they’d seen in the briefing in the Quirinale. “The blood on the walls …”

“I saw no blood.” She stopped, thinking. “They said they’d cleaned up before me.”

Rosa was staring at him. “Why would they do that?” she asked. “Daniel Frasca was still missing. Could they cover all the points?”

“Maybe,” he responded, unsure himself. “What was different, signora? About the apartment?”

“Nothing.” She hesitated. “Especially that room they said they’d
cleaned. It was the way it always was. Signora Frasca was not the most house-proud of women. There were always things left for me to tidy away. Things another woman would have dealt with herself. Coffee cups. Danny’s toys.”

“Their friends?” he asked.

“There weren’t many. Not that I saw. A few Americans came around. English. All foreign. Mainly embassy business, I think. I never understood this. Signor Frasca spoke excellent Italian. He was Italian. By ancestry. I never knew him to have Roman friends. They were not the most sociable of couples. They adored Danny, I’ll say that for them.” Her face hardened. “Then one day they’re dead. Buried in America, the papers said. Not so much as a memorial service in Rome. I was only a housekeeper. This was none of my business, I imagine. All the same, I would have mourned, if anyone wanted it.”

Letizia Russo seemed to be struck by some stray thought.

“What is it?” Rosa asked.

“When people die, there are decisions you have to make.”

“Who gets what? Who does what?” Costa said. “Anyone who loses someone—”

“I asked if I could help,” the woman cut in. “I asked what might become of the Frascas’ things. Police. Carabinieri. You never think of such matters. This was a family. They had a home. Belongings. Items that would be precious to someone, some relative. Some of it—you would never have shipped everything all the way to America. So I asked for a memento.…” Her skinny hand waved through the air. “They cut me dead. The embassy would take care of everything. How? Daniel’s little paintings? He loved to draw. Who would want them? Who would pay to send them all the way across the ocean?” A low Roman curse escaped her bloodless lips. “I am not a thief! I asked for nothing that anyone might want. Many foreign families have employed me. Once the ambassador of Egypt, who has a beautiful house on the Aventino. No one has ever accused me of stealing something. It’s unthinkable. Always, when I finish service, I receive a gift. It’s tradition. If the family is dead …”