Costa 08 - City of Fear (43 page)

Something stirred above them: a stray pigeon that had flown in from the street, flapping between the darkness and the light.

A feather, pale and downy, floated down gently and landed on Rennick’s jacket. Petrakis brushed it aside with a flick of his hand.

“I’ve spent the last twenty years with the men who sold my father that junk in the first place. I’ve watched their children grow. I’ve eaten with their families. I’ve been one of them.”

He took Rennick by the arm, leaned into his ear, whispering, “They’re animals, Renzo. But, like animals, they only know the truth.”

“What truth would that be?”

“My parents, they did stop dealing dope. Both of them. Just as they were ordered. They did it because they were scared. Not of the people you think, either. They were scared because they found out who the Blue Demon really was. What this was really about.”

Rennick struggled to think, to remember. None of this had concerned him. He’d been told what had happened. By the Italians.

“The mob killed them for money,” he said. “What other reason could there be?”

“Knowledge.” Petrakis had come very close and placed a finger over his lips. “Please, Renzo. After all this time. No more lies. I just want to hear you say his name. Just once …”

The American shrugged his shoulders. He felt old and exhausted, and out of words. “You tell me,” he suggested.

Petrakis spoke.

Rennick looked at his watch and sighed. “We can talk about this later,” he insisted. “I need you to get out of that uniform, out of Rome. When this is over, let me buy you a beer. Somewhere warm and safe.”

“I don’t hear you denying it.”

He should never have come alone. He should have foreseen that Petrakis might have become detached from reality over the years.

“I’m not denying it, because it’s too ridiculous for words. Believe me.” He glanced at the door. “Believe—”

The words froze in his mouth. A pained sigh escaped his throat. A cold, stabbing agony was rising from his gut into his chest.

Rennick looked down, saw his hands fumbling for the source, recoiling when they found it.

Andrea Petrakis’s ceremonial sword was buried in his stomach, up to the hilt.

He was aware of blood rising past his lips in a salty flood, of a buzzing, screaming noise in his head. Petrakis leaned forward, pushed once more, then withdrew, taking the weapon with him in a sudden sweep that made the wounded man moan in agony.

In the shadows of Borromini’s church, Renzo Frasca, Ben Rennick—a
man with two names—fell backwards, stumbling to his knees, clutching at the damp, growing pain in his belly, feeling the life pour out of his body.

The figure of a soldier stood above him, his helmeted head silhouetted against the bright circular dome, a static, descending dove at its center.

The American said something and didn’t even understand the words himself.

Petrakis stepped forward to wipe the bloodied blade against the stricken man’s jacket, one damp shiny side first, then the other.

“We shared so much once, Renzo,” he murmured. “Latin and Shakespeare. History and dreams. Smoke and mirrors.”

The American’s vision was narrowing. The agony was turning into something else, a dull, distant sensation.

A cold finger touched his trembling, murmuring lips. He could barely feel it, barely think in the swelling darkness that embraced him, falling all around from the bare stone folds of the church.

TERESA LUPO WAS HALFWAY DOWN THE VIA DEI SERPENTI, trying to make her way back to San Giovanni, when the shouting and cheering started. It came from a little cafe near the Piazza degli Zingari, a modest, friendly corner of Rome where she liked to drink coffee. It sounded as if Italy had won the World Cup once more.

She pushed her way through the crowd, thought of asking what had happened, then didn’t bother. Everyone was glued to the TV. Ugo Campagnolo was there on the screen, beaming, his face shiny with sweat, as if he’d run to the cameras, missing makeup on the way.

The prime minister had a message for the nation. The crisis was over. Rome was safe. One terrorist was dead, out in a field near the Via Appia Antica; another was in custody; and the third and final individual, Andrea Petrakis, the terrorist leader, was attempting to flee the country, pursued by the Carabinieri, stripped of his cohorts, unable to cause further damage.

Romans didn’t like Campagnolo.
Wrong
, Teresa reminded herself. Most of them positively
hated
the prime minister. Even so, she felt some grudging gratitude toward the man as he informed them their city was safe again, and that the strict security measures of the previous two days would soon be lifted.

Glasses were raised, beer and
prosecco
ordered. She caught the eye of an elderly man with a gray face and a salt-and-pepper mustache.

“You believe a word of that?” she demanded.

“I believe that bastard when he says we get our city back,” he answered. “He can’t take that away from us now, can he?”

He was probably right, though she wondered how Campagnolo and the security services could be so certain Petrakis was powerless on his own. This seemed presumptuous, she thought as she wandered back out into the street to the main drag of the Via Cavour. The roadblock near the Forum was being dismantled already. Normal life was returning. She darted into the road to stop a cab that someone farther up the street had already summoned. The driver looked at her with one arched eyebrow. Teresa flashed her police ID and said, “I’m doing this on Ugo Campagnolo’s orders. Take me to San Giovanni.”

Five minutes later, still feeling grumpy and out of sorts, she was outside the former monastery. The more she thought about it, Campagnolo’s victory announcement felt premature and artificial. The men and women in the cafe in Monti surely understood that. Their relief came from nothing more than hearing what they longed for, not any rational consideration of the available facts. Terrorism did that to people. It made them ignore the usual rules and rituals of everyday life. That was what gave men like Andrea Petrakis—and those who pulled their strings—their power.

The apartment appeared to be empty when she stomped inside, which did nothing to improve her mood.

“Silvio?” she yelled.
“Silvio?”

He was in the main bedroom, his podgy form stretched out on the big double mattress, sleepy-eyed, a sandwich and a can of beer in his hands, eyes glued to the TV. It still featured a grinning, triumphant Campagnolo, with some pompous-looking Carabinieri ass by his side, and Luca Palombo in the background.

“Where’s Elizabeth?” she wanted to know.

He shrugged and took a bite of the sandwich, then mumbled, “Must be a long lunch. Anyway, why come back? It’s over. Says so on the TV.”

“I don’t recall saying it was over for you.”

“Who stepped on your bunions? There’s no work. There never was, really. We were just doing some secret stuff on Dario Sordi’s orders, weren’t we? Speculative. A little crazy.” He hesitated. “Very crazy. Infectiously crazy.”

She marched over, snatched the can from his hand, and would have had the sandwich too if he hadn’t managed to wrest it out of her reach. Instead she grabbed the remote and switched off the TV.

“May I remind you that we have one dead politician, his driver, Mirko, and those people at the airport. Do you hear Ugo Campagnolo even
mention
them?”

“Difficult to hear anything with the TV off.”

“Don’t be smart with me.”

She flung the TV remote at his head. The young pathologist ducked. These days he always looked more offended than scared when she lost her temper. She wasn’t sure whether this was progress or not.

“What, exactly, is bothering you?” he asked.

“Everything! Nothing! I don’t know.”

“That narrows it down.…”

Teresa took a swig of his beer and waited for him to say something else. He didn’t. This was not the anxious, gauche young man she’d hired seven years before. He’d matured. And along the way, he’d found infinitely more subtle ways to infuriate her.

“I haven’t done a damned thing to help any of them,” she moaned.

“We might as well have stayed in the Questura, doing as we were told.”

“We were doing as we were told.”

“Huh! Fishing in the dark. What do you mean, Elizabeth is still at lunch?”

“Went to meet a friend. I imagine she heard the news and decided it wasn’t worth coming back.”

Teresa didn’t like that idea at all. “Tell me about the numbers.”

“The numbers?”

“The Latin numerals. The ones you were working on.”

“They don’t matter now, do they?” He looked a little guilty.

“Why? Because Ugo Campagnolo says so?”

“I fell asleep. When I woke up …” He gestured at the dead eye of the TV. “Does it matter?”

“Who knows?” Teresa grabbed his arm and led him back into the main room and the computer and ordered, “Tell me what you have.”

He grumbled something wordless, then sat at the desk, scrabbled through his notes, screwed up his bland, pasty face, and announced,
“Twelve didn’t mean midday. Noon. Not two thousand years ago when they didn’t have clocks. Things weren’t that simple. Time was not easily measured. Here’s a quote I found from Seneca.
‘Facilius inter philosophos quam inter horologia conveniet.’
‘It’s easier to get agreement among philosophers than clocks.’”

“Was that the Elder or the Younger?”

“Um …”

He was turning a touch red, which she found satisfying.

“Oh, for God’s sake. I was only trying to remind you of the futility of quoting dead people. Are you going to tell me something useful, or what?”

“The time of day varied according to the season. So did the hours, which also varied in length.”

“Facts …”

“Facts.” He glanced at a sheet. “The number twelve cannot refer to a specific time. Only an hour. Which isn’t an hour, at least not in the way we know it.”

“What hour?”

“Hora duodecima
. Which in the summer would run from approximately six-fifteen to half past seven in the evening.”

She thought about this. “So it doesn’t mean it’s in the past?”

“If you accept the premise that ‘it’ exists …”

For a moment she felt like slapping him. “Someone wrote it on the wall of the tomb of the Blue Demon. It was a message for someone. Between him and them, whoever they are. Mirko Oliva—”

“Point taken. No need to repeat it.”

“Isn’t there? Here you are, sitting on potentially important information. Then Ugo Campagnolo goes on TV, issues the all-clear, and you take a nap.”

“Twelve could indicate something might happen this evening, I guess,” he admitted. “If Petrakis has become some kind of one-man army.”

“Don’t push me. And the other numbers? I told you. If XII at the beginning does stand for a time this evening, it’s pretty obvious what the rest stands for, isn’t it? What did Petrakis paint on the walls of the nymphaeum at the Villa Giulia?”

He looked at her blankly. “Refresh my memory.”

“Silvio!” she roared, and was surprised to see his eyes turn damp and unfocused. He looked like he was going to cry.

“I’ve been staring at this stupid screen for eighteen, twenty hours a day,” he bleated. “I’m exhausted. I can’t stay awake. If I close my eyes, I see a computer screen. If I sleep, I get … bad dreams.” He stared at her, his face that of a guilty child. “Really bad dreams. I can’t think straight anymore. I’m sorry.”

“Fine,” she said quickly, and patted him on the shoulder before pulling up a seat and sitting down beside him. “The numbers on the wall at the Villa Giulia referred to Shakespeare. The play
Julius Caesar
. Act, scene, line.”

He murmured an apology, tapped the keyboard lightly, and brought up an online version of the play.

Di Capua scrolled down and she found herself recalling the last time she’d seen this dark, compelling drama onstage, at an open-air performance in the park of the Villa Borghese. The subject matter—conspiracy, murder, intrigue, assassination, all contained inside the shadowy, grubby, and depressingly eternal world of politics—came back to her.

“There,” Di Capua said quietly as he reached the right lines.

It was a planning scene from the play: Brutus, a good man, in his orchard, reluctantly considering the plot, and finally shaking hands with the conspirators.

She leaned forward and spoke the words out loud.

They looked at each other, then Teresa Lupo glanced at her watch. Five-thirty.

“Let me get this straight?” Di Capua asked. “What we have here is something written on the wall of the tomb in Tarquinia where Andrea Petrakis kept his munitions.”

“Alongside his friendly Blue Demon,” she reminded him.

“Quite.” His eyes were suddenly sharp and intelligent again. “And it’s a
message
. There for someone Petrakis knows will read it. Someone—a man, a woman—on the inside who’ll understand what it means.”

“He likes riddles and codes. He likes playing with people.”