David Hewson (38 page)

The
gun felt heavy in his hand. Behind him, Laila was beginning to squirm. If
there'd been an easy and obvious exit he'd have sent her flying
towards it, screaming at her to get the hell out of this makeshift tomb in the
centre of a slumbering, snow-covered city. Instead, all he could think of was
how to hide her from whatever was approaching, how to keep her frail body
protected behind his.

And
even that wasn't enough. When it came, straight out of the darkness, it
came as a storm of pure physical force, furious, relentless. The man was
punching and kicking and screaming, pistol-whipping Peroni's skull with
what felt like a hammer. The gun flew out of Peroni's hand, clattering
across the stonework, spinning into the shadows. He tried to dodge, to find
some way of shifting his frame away from the sudden, vicious onslaught of
violence, but it was impossible. His hands left Laila and tried to cover his
face. He felt his breath flee from his lungs, his mind start to wander off into
another place.

... death, they called it, somewhere this man knew very well indeed.
Somewhere he liked to visit often, in the company of others
.

"Just
let her go," Peroni mumbled, aware that the iron taste of his own blood
was feeding into his mouth as he spoke, bowing his head now, knowing what was
to come. "What can a kid do to you?"

He
saw the butt of the pistol now, racing down towards him through the dark, heard
what the figure at the other end of that powerful, sweeping arm was saying,
over and over again.

Busy, busy, busy, busy
.

He
was a busy man, Peroni thought. That was about all they knew of him. Then even
that was gone once the pistol butt connected, gone into an agonizing blackness
where nothing made sense, not even the words he heard through the rushing
bloody haze inside his head.

"THIS
ZIGGURAT IS UNIQUE, Nic," Emily said. "Read the report. That design
is not uncommon, but an entire room, the holiest of holies, was decorated with
it throughout. There's nowhere like it in the whole of Iraq. Probably in
the world. The place was uncovered back in the 1980s, at which time no one had
the money to excavate it properly. It's only now people are starting to
see what's really there. The irony is the Romans probably knew about this
kind of architecture all along. They borrowed from it for buildings like the
Pantheon. The resemblance can't be coincidence. Hell, it even had an
oculus. Hadrian could have copied the whole damn thing."

"So
what do you think happened?" he asked.

"Let's
start with some facts. He knew my dad. They were in the ziggurat together. My
dad and those other people got out. Kaspar didn't. Work it out."

It
wasn't hard.

"Laura
Lee?" he asked again.

"I
think she was the woman who died in the Pantheon. It's not her real name.
God knows what that is. I tried to look at the files on her this afternoon. All
gone. Buried so deep they might as well not exist. Why would anyone want to do
that?"

The
answer was always the same. "Because something went wrong."

"Exactly.
Listen:
none of this is random. It never has been
. He's had
thirteen years in some stinking Iraqi pit to think about this. So, come this
year, Iraq's free. He doesn't walk up to the nearest American base
and say, "Hey, take me home." For some reason he doesn't want
to come in from the cold. He wants to get even. So he begins on the line that
led to my dad."

There
was something missing. She knew it too.

"Why?"
Nic asked. "If you were in jail that long, why'd you want to
prolong the pain?"

"I
don't have the answer to that yet. Maybe Joel Leapman does, but he isn't
telling. You heard him. Publicly he's just sticking to the line that
Kaspar's insane. But listen to the tone of some of their messages. You
said it yourself. They're offering this guy a lifeline. This sounds
stupid, but I think in some way they still regard him as a hero. It's the
only thing that makes sense. Otherwise, why send an FBI unit and God knows who
else here? Why not just leave it to you people to clean up all the crap?"

"He
doesn't trust Leapman," Costa suggested. "Or anyone."

"I
know. Maybe he really is just plain crazy. Until we get the chance to ask him
there's no way of telling. Hell, if I'd known this last night I
would
have asked. Perhaps that's all it needs. You just have to leech the
wound."

Costa
didn't like the idea one bit. "I don't think that's
your job."

"You
could be right," she agreed hesitantly. "But someone's got to
do it. Bill Kaspar has some entire messy chapter of history running around and
around in his head, and until we understand that we get nowhere. I went back
over the names of his victims again this afternoon. Most of them just
don't exist, but those that do have some interesting histories. The
second victim was an executive with a private oil-distribution service. He'd
worked in Iraq before the war. One of the women had been attached to the US
embassy in Tehran for a while, civilian contract supposedly. It's
obvious, isn't it? They're just the kind of people who could be
involved in this kind of covert activity. One way or another they got out and
he didn't. Now he's back and he's killing his old comrades. One
by one. And I don't think he's done."

The
doubt must have been obvious in Nic's face.

"You
have a problem with that?" she asked.

"Yes.
Why the hell did Laura Lee or whoever she was come here to Rome in the first place?
Surely she must have known. And how did he track down all these people?"

"He's
a professional, remember? It's what he does. You've got to see him
close up to understand that, Nic. He must have been something. Maybe
that's what's eating him up. Knowing he failed."

"It
doesn't answer the question about her. If she knew, why would she
deliberately put herself in danger?"

"I
can give you one simple reason," Emily replied with a grim certainty. "Because
she didn't have a choice. She's still in the service. Leapman made
her come to Rome, just as he made me. We were both bait. She got unlucky.
Kaspar took her from straight under Leapman's nose, snatched her out of
his grip and carved her up. No wonder Leapman's running around like a
bear with a sore head. Imagine what his boss is saying right now."

Costa
could. Men like Leapman attracted their own kind. Someone kicked down on him. He
kicked down in return.

"Are
you with me so far?" she asked.

"I
think so. But what do you want me to do?"

"You've
done it. I wanted you to listen. I was sort of half-hoping you'd tell me
I was crazy."

"You
are crazy. Just not about this."

"Thank
you, Mr. Costa," she said primly, then closed her eyes and gently let her
head slip down onto the back of the sofa. "Jesus, I feel as if I could
sleep for a million years. And, maybe, when I wake up all of this could be
gone, just a bad dream."

She
was close enough for him to smell her hair. A part of him wanted to reach out
and touch a shining, golden strand, know what it felt like under his fingers.

"I
don't know what the hell to do," she said in a quiet, half-scared
voice. "Aside from not dreaming."

He
looked at the wine bottle. It was just about gone.

"I
am going to find us something to eat," he said. "Then..."

It
was just a glance, he told himself. Just an expression in her eyes.

"...
we sleep on it."

She'd
moved against him, just enough for him to feel her shoulder against his. He
hadn't meant it that way. Not consciously.

The
blue eyes fixed him. Nic Costa felt lost in them. She looked grateful. Sharing
the burden of doubts had helped her, brought the two of them closer. A brief
smile flickered on her face. She was very close. On another occasion, under
different circumstances...

He
stirred uncomfortably on the sofa, looking for something to divert the way the
night was moving.

"So
what the hell is the Scarlet Beast, then?" he asked her.

It
worked. There was a flash of delight on her face, an expression he was
beginning to recognize, beginning to look forward to.

"First,"
she said, pushing aside the bottle, "no more wine. We need all the
concentration we've got. And food, Mr. Costa. This odd bachelor pad does
run to food and water, doesn't it?"

"I'll
see what I can do."

"Good.
There's just one more secret. And then"--Emily Deacon made a
conscious effort to get the words right--"I'm through."

LAILA
WAS HALF YELLING, half pleading, in another language, a musical one quite
foreign to him, though he knew somehow what it was. Her own: Kurdish.
He'd heard enough of the street immigrants speaking it to be familiar
with the odd cadences, half Western, half oriental.

And
in his hurting, confused head, Peroni knew what she was saying too.

Please, please, please
.

She
was a thin, dark figure dancing on her light, light feet in this shadowy hall,
pleading for her life from an unseen stranger while the big, burly cop who was
supposed to be keeping her safe curled into a pained ball on the stone floor
like a damaged child.

Please, please, please
.

He
tried to stand and the hammer blow of the pistol came down again, dashing him
to the stones under a flurry of obscenities.

Laila
screamed, louder this time, a noise that might even filter out into the night
air through the open eye of the oculus.

No, no, no, no, no
.

Then
it came to him, with a sudden grim certainty that made him feel more miserable
than ever. She wasn't arguing for her life. She was begging for his. Trying
to bargain with this unseen monster to keep away the hurt and that act of final
silence.

"Don't
waste your breath, Laila," he spluttered through bloody lips. "Run.
Let this jerk have his fun."

Then
the world was moving. A strong, firm hand gripped him by the collar of his
coat, pushed him hard against the wall, into the faint stream of moonlight falling
through the oculus.

A
powerful guy, Gianni Peroni thought. That was a big load he was throwing around
like a sack of potatoes. A big...

Peroni
found himself staring into a face that surprised him. It belonged to a man
about his own age, clean-shaven, handsome in a sharp-featured way, keenly
alert, devoid of emotion. Not the kind of face you expected of a killer, more
like that of an academic or a doctor. He was wearing glasses. Maybe it was the
odd silver light of the moon, but his skin seemed to have an unnatural tinge to
it. Something in his eyes, the engaged, angular line of his mouth, told Peroni
it was worth listening just then. The gun pointing straight at his temple
helped, too.

"Let
the girl go," Peroni said once more.

The
unfeeling, incisive eyes kept boring into him. "What's she to you?
A Kurd?"

"A
kid's a kid," Peroni answered, tasting the warm trickle in his
mouth again.

The
man didn't say anything. The powerful hands grabbed him again, slammed
him hard against the wall.

"Don't
struggle," the man said. "It only hurts more."

Then
he dangled something familiar in front of Peroni's face as it mushed up
against the stonework: a couple of pairs of plastic handcuffs, the sort the
cops kept for special occasions.

"Yeah,
yeah," Peroni grumbled and shoved his hands out behind him, bunched up
the way they did in training, holding his palms together as the cuffs came on,
cutting tight into his skin.

"You,"
the American said, jabbing a finger at Laila.

She
held out her hands in front of her, looking meek and obedient.

He
nodded. "You're a smart little cookie, huh? You want some advice?
Quit stealing. It just leads to trouble."

The
plastic went round her slender wrists with rather more care than he'd
allowed before. Then he bounced Peroni round again, pulled him tight to the
girl, withdrew another cuff from his pocket, looped it to join the two of them
together through the wrist restraints and tied off the join around the narrow
iron support for the altar rail. They couldn't move. Just to ram home the
point, the American reached into Peroni's pocket, took out his phone,
dropped it on the floor, and stomped the thing into pieces.

"I
worked with Kurds once," he said sourly. "They'd call you
brother, they'd give you anything, they'd die for you. Then one
night they'd see you'd got money in your baggage, and they'd
come in and slit your throat, walk out and spend it on a new VCR. You know
why?"

Peroni
sighed. "I'm a cop, mister. I walk these streets. I do my best. I
try to put people like you in jail if I can."

It
was as if the other man didn't even hear. "I'll tell you why.
Because we taught them how. You think about that the next time she steals
something."