Costa 08 - City of Fear (5 page)

“March the twenty-third, 1989,” Palombo noted, clicking through a series of photographs that might have been stills from some contemporary horror movie. “The nymphaeum.”

A classical pleasure garden, built in a stone grove hollowed out from the garden of the villa. In the foreground stood a monochrome mosaic of a marine creature, half man, half monster, riding triumphantly across the waves, a long flute held playfully to his lips, his serpent-like body snaking behind him. Beneath a balustrade supported by four pale stone nymphs etched with algae, green ferns cascading from adjoining rock niches, ran a narrow channel of water disappearing into caves on both sides, its sinuous path drawing the eye to a bare stone plinth set in a semicircular alcove.

The mind knew what to expect: some beautiful, freestanding statue of Venus or Diana, half-naked, enticing, an icon of beauty in a private pleasure ground built for a pope whose private life was very different from the severe countenance he maintained in public.

Instead there were two bodies, torn and mangled, contorted in a way that only death can achieve. A bloodied man and a woman, arms tentatively around one another, necks stretched awkwardly, upturned in
agony. A scrawled, spray-painted message on the algaed stone behind them read, in letters two hands high:
II. I. LXIII
.

The victims in the nymphaeum of Villa Giulia wore only bloodstained underclothes. Their abdomens were terribly mutilated.

Costa didn’t want to look. Or remember. He was only ten years old when this savage murder filled the papers for days on end one hot summer. He could recall the way his father would snatch the morning editions off the table when they arrived, then destroy them. There had been photos in those papers. Costa was sure of it. But not like this.

“Signor Rennick?” Palombo continued, turning to the man by his side. “Please.”

The American was about the same age as the man from the Ministry of the Interior, with a narrow, dark face, and a head of very black hair that might have been dyed. From his seat, in good Italian, with an obvious American accent, he said, “Mr. President. Prime Minister.” The order of greeting was clearly deliberate. Campagnolo smiled. Dario Sordi scarcely noticed.

“The dead man’s name was Renzo Frasca, an Italian American,” Rennick went on. “Born in Sicily, moved with his family to Washington, D.C., when he was six years old. Dual nationality. Degree in English literature from Harvard. A good public servant. When the terrorists who called themselves the Blue Demon seized him, he was an undersecretary in the U.S. Embassy here. Nobody special.” He waited for a moment, then continued. “You understand what I’m saying here? They murdered a bean counter and his wife. Frasca dealt with minutiae. Trade agreements. Tariffs. Then one day …” He pointed at the screen, and the two bodies there. “This happens to him. I won’t bore you with the details of the autopsy. It’s worse than you could imagine. Frasca and his wife, Marie, were butchered. Thirty-two years old, both of them. They had a son, Danny. Three years old. From what the investigators could work out, the boy probably watched his parents die. We never found him.”

A new picture on the screen. A house in the middle-class suburb of Parioli, an area Costa recognized. Then interior shots: an elegant living room, the walls spattered with blood. It looked like an abattoir, worse than any murder scene he’d ever witnessed.

“It was a weekend. The Frascas were due to attend an embassy social function. Partway through that there was a message.”

“What do the numbers mean?” Costa asked.

The American glanced at Palombo. The Italian officer came in and said, “We never understood until it was too late. II. I. LXIII. Two. One. Sixty-three.” He shrugged. “We thought it was a reference to the Bible, not that we could make that work. It didn’t seem that important, in the end. It wasn’t …”

Sordi scowled. “Others made the connection for you,” the president interrupted. “These are act, scene, and line numbers from
Julius Caesar
, the Shakespeare play.”

He glanced at the ceiling, then recited:

The president’s sonorous voice echoed around the vast hall.

“‘We shall be called purgers, not murderers,’”
the American murmured, in what Costa took to be another quotation from the play.

“They were murderers,” Sordi grumbled. “Nothing else. Killers delivering a promise of what was to come. A warning that we would spend a little time in shock and then wake up to the truth: There was a bloody insurrection in our midst, one started by these monsters.” His eyes blazed. “We believed we’d missed the last part.”

A series of mug shots appeared, two men, a girl, none of them much more than twenty. Happy, bright-eyed, smiling for the camera.

Rennick picked up his narrative.

“Students from the University of Viterbo, working at the Villa Giulia as part of their Etruscan studies course. From what your people put together afterwards, these three got hypnotized by their course leader, a junior academic named Andrea Petrakis. Born in Tarquinia, in the
Maremma, to Greek parents who’d lived in the area for a decade or so. Petrakis was twenty-two years old when the Frascas were murdered. He was something of a prodigy. Got his university degree when he was seventeen. Seemed set to become an expert on Etruscan matters. Then …” Rennick grimaced. “The Etruscans originated from Greece. Perhaps Petrakis felt some bond with them. He seized upon their fate as a way of explaining how he felt about Italy at that time. Petrakis was very reticent for one who seems to have made such an impression on those around him. We have no background, no record of real relationships, except with those in his group. No girlfriends, boyfriends, nothing. His parents didn’t mix much, either. A reclusive family. All we have is this.”

It was a blurry photograph of an unsmiling young man with long, dark wavy hair. He was gazing into the camera with a fixed, aggressive expression, very much in control, standing next to the girl from the earlier photograph. A pretty kid, she was staring up at him with an expression that might have been adoration. Or, perhaps, condescension. It was difficult to tell.

“One picture,” Rennick went on. “They worshipped him for some reason. Maybe politics.”

“What kind of politics?” Costa asked.

“The politics of lunacy,” Campagnolo burst in. “These people from the seventies. All of them. Left, right … they were insane. We spent twenty years burying these madmen. Why are they back now?” He stabbed a finger at Sordi. “You take the risk here, Dario. On your head be it. You steal from me my power.”

“Only for a few days,” the president replied carefully. “In line with the constitution—”

“I am the elected leader of this country!” the prime minister roared. “They voted for
me
, old man. Not
you.”

“The constitution …”

“Screw the constitution!” Compagnolo’s dark, beady eyes roved the room. “I have a long memory. Do not forget. Sordi cannot maintain this position for long. If any misfortune should happen, I shall ensure the blame goes where it should.”

“Ugo,” Sordi pleaded. “It’s important you understand this situation.”

The prime minister stiffened with disdain. “I do not need to understand that which I cannot control. Send me a memo.”

Then he got up, cast his eyes around the room, and marched out, the same way he’d entered.

“I apologize for that little scene,” Sordi said when the man was gone. “Palombo. Brief the prime minister in person, afterwards.”

Costa had barely noticed. He was still trying to understand what they’d been told.

“What did the Blue Demon want?” he asked.

“Revolution?” Rennick guessed. “A Marxist state? A fascist one? We don’t know, any more than we understand why they should name themselves after some strange Etruscan devil. They kidnapped the Frascas, killed them, and then a few days later …”

He touched the computer keyboard. “See for yourself.”

Another photo. Black-and-white. A remote, ramshackle two-story house in a bleak field. Carabinieri cars parked in the rough drive. Officers standing around looking lost and miserable.

Palombo took over.

“Five days after the Frascas were found dead, the Carabinieri got a phone call from someone at the Villa Giulia suggesting Petrakis was involved. The staff there hadn’t liked him. He hung around when he wasn’t wanted. They’d found him in the museum after hours.” He grimaced. “Rome sent two officers to the parents’ house. Both of them were dead, shot in bed. A good week before the Frascas. The couple were such recluses that no one knew, except Andrea, I guess.”

More photographs that seemed to be from the same landscape. A tiny shack in an uncultivated field strewn with tall weeds.

“They found material in the house that led them to an abandoned farm the parents owned two kilometers away. No road. No electricity. They weren’t expecting anything. There was a local
carabiniere
with them to help.”

Costa could recall the story from later reconstructions on TV crime shows. One dead officer. Three supposed extremists killed. The loss of the
carabiniere
was a national tragedy, a moment when the country’s heart skipped a beat, waiting to see if the nightmare of urban terror was about to return.

Palombo clicked the keyboard and brought up a picture of a small arsenal, scattered around a grubby stone floor: automatic rifles, revolvers, small handguns.

“These kids started shooting the moment they knew they were cornered. The local officer went down almost immediately. After that they turned their guns on themselves. They were all as high as kites. The place was full of drugs. LSD. Speed. Dope. Pure Afghan opium most of all—so much Petrakis had to be dealing it.”

The photograph changed to an interior one. Three bloodied corpses, faces down, arms outstretched. The pretty girl wasn’t pretty anymore. She had a revolver in her right hand.

“Nadia Ambrosini,” the Italian security man told them. “The daughter of a bank manager from Treviso. The ones from a middle-class background are always the worst. She shot the other two, then turned the gun on herself.”

Then one final image.

It was a poster on the wall of the shack, above a contorted corpse: a lithe and naked devil with a pale blue face. He wore an expression of pure hatred, his muscular arms outstretched, a writhing snake, fangs exposed, in each hand. Blood dripped from his sharp, spiky teeth. An enormous and unreal erection, more that of a beast than a man, rose from his loins. The photograph of Andrea Petrakis they saw earlier was stuck to the poster with tape, as if identifying him with the monster.

Below were the words, scrawled maniacally in tall capital letters,
IL DEMONE AZZURRO
.

The Blue Demon.

PERONI LISTENED TO THE QUIRINALE CAMPANILE START to chime the quarter-hour. The house was midway down the hill, next to a small restaurant with tables on the narrow pavement. The ground-floor windows were cloudy with dust, as if the place had been empty for years.

Mirko Oliva walked up, scrabbled at the glass with his elbow, and peered inside.

“This is no one’s home,” the young officer declared. “It’s a mess in there. Looks like they had the builders once upon a time.”

There were just two nameplates on the door. One was for a marquetry business, an enterprise Peroni felt sure had long departed, judging by the faded card and some newspaper clippings in the window praising the quality of its work. On the bell above was a single word in scrawled handwriting:
Johnson
.

Oliva peered at it. He glanced at them, serious suddenly. “Wasn’t there somebody famous called Moro too?”

“Once upon a time,” Peroni answered patiently.

“Well, if the Moro who called said he lived on the ground floor, he was lying.”

It was a three-story building. Peroni strode into the road to get a better view of the upper floors. The windows on each level looked much the same as those below: old, grimy, and opaque. Except the pair at the top.

He walked to the pavement opposite to make sure. Both sets of panes had been thrown wide open. There was something else odd. Rosa came to stand next to him. “What’s that?” she asked, staring upward.

A black swarm of insects was moving in and out of the window. A cloud of tiny bodies buzzing angrily, as if fighting over something.

“Flies,” Peroni murmured, then looked across the street.

The young
agente
was grinning at him. His finger was prodding at the old red paint on the door and finding little in the way of resistance. Beyond it, Peroni could just make out a dark, bare hallway.

Open
, Mirko Oliva mouthed.

Peroni walked back, pushed the door open, and was greeted by the damp, fusty smell of rotting walls and bad drains. His fist stayed on both bell pushes as he edged into the property. There wasn’t a sound anywhere.