The Absolution (27 page)

“Does it still work?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I guess. If you could ever figure out how to turn the damn thing on.”

On one of the desks was a neat stack of operating manuals. She picked up the top one and opened it.

Autodin circuit facilities are constructed using the RED/BLACK protocol, in which unencrypted data lines (RED side) are kept physically separated from the encrypted circuits (BLACK side). A typical data circuit is connected from the Accumulation and Distribution Unit to the RED patch panel in Technical Control.

There was no way she'd ever figure it out. Besides, it looked like it would need a small army of technicians to operate it.

A doorway marked “TAPE SEARCH” to one side led to a small alcove. The walls were lined with shelves of tape reels and diskettes.

“This here's the vault,” Kassapian said, following her in. “Like your ‘Sent Messages' folder, only probably with a lot less storage capacity. The switch automatically made a copy of every message. If it got lost, the operator could track it down here and resend it.”

She looked along the neat rows of boxes. Some were labelled with the names of long-ago missions. “Operation Angel Fire”; “Operation Mountain Cross”; “Operation Sea Freedom” . . .

“This is the safest place, isn't it?” she said, almost to herself. “Safe from nuclear attack. But more to the point, safe from anyone who came looking. Only a handful of people even knew this facility existed. If my dad had to keep something hidden, this is where he'd have brought it.”

Kassapian shrugged. “Maybe.”

She continued to look along the shelves. “Operation Hollow Road”; “Operation Open Sea”.

And then she saw it.

“Operation Unconsidered Earth”.

And as if he were standing just behind her, she heard her father's voice, reciting those lines from Kipling:

                   
Cities and Thrones and Powers

                   
Stand in Time's eye,

                   
Almost as long as flowers,

                   
Which daily die:

                   
But, as new buds put forth

                   
To glad new men,

                   
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth,

                   
The Cities rise again.

She reached for the box. Inside was a reel of magnetic tape and a stack of half a dozen eight-inch floppy diskettes.

Whatever it was her father had almost died for, she was now holding it in her hand.

They were walking back to the jeep when she heard a muffled clanging sound echoing down the corridors. Kassapian gave her a sideways look. “Badgers, most like.”

Another clang, louder this time. “A badger that can kick open steel doors? I don't think so.” She quickened her pace. “Is there another way out of here?”

He shrugged. “In theory. These tunnels go right through the mountain.”

“Why ‘in theory'?”

“I doubt anyone's used the secondary exits for a while. They may even have welded them shut when they mothballed the place.” He waved his hand dismissively in the direction of the noise. “It's probably just someone saw us on the CCTV, thought they'd better check us out. We'll speak to them.”

There was another clang, then another. “No!” she said. “I can't take that risk.”

He frowned at her jumpiness. “We should really get permission before you take those disks, as well. They'll probably have to be signed for.”

She looked at him. In his sixties, soft on beer and pizza. He was too proud to show it, but he wasn't in any condition to get into a fight. Instead, he'd take the easy option and play things by the book.

“Staff Sergeant Kassapian,” she said desperately, “what sort of man was my father?”

“Well . . .” He considered. “Ted was solid. One of the best.”

“He hid these disks because he didn't want anyone else to
find them. And now his daughter's got them. You think if he was here, he'd want us to go talk to whoever's up there? Or would he say, ‘Let's try that other way out'?”

He sighed. “I'm too old to be getting into stuff like this.”

“Then let's stay out of it,” she said, heading for the jeep. “And I've got a strong feeling the best way to do that is to get out of here before whoever that is comes and finds us.”

They drove down another long tunnel. The air was musty from disuse, and cobwebs brushed Holly's face.

Eventually they came to another blast door. It seemed to be unlocked, but it was too stiff for the two of them to open.

“Let's use the jeep,” she said.

Kassapian shook his head. “Can't risk scratching the fender.”

From somewhere deep in the tunnels behind them she caught the growl of a vehicle. “I'm real sorry if you get a dressing-down, Staff,” she said, climbing into the driving seat. “Just blame me, OK?”

She edged the jeep up to the door, then pressed down on the gas. The back wheels spun, and oily smoke poured out of the exhaust.

“If you're going to do it, do it right,” Kassapian shouted over the din. He pointed. “Put it in four-wheel drive, then low range.”

She did, and tried again. The blast door creaked open on rusty hinges.

“Women drivers. Women
kid
drivers. One year off my pension, and I get this,” he muttered as he got in beside her. “That's if they don't take my goddam pension away from me.”

At the base she switched back to her own car and left Kassapian, still grumbling, to his mounds of shredded paper, though not before she'd embarrassed him by giving him a big hug.

Was it her imagination, or did the guard who swiped her card to let her out of the main gate take a few moments longer than he needed to? Was that some message, flashed onto his screen, that caused him to turn his head for a moment, before turning back to her and saluting, his face impassive?

She took the coast road home, scanning her rear-view mirror. Up the A12 to La Spezia, then the A15 inland. She varied her speed constantly, to help identify any watchers. More than once she thought she'd spotted a tail, only for it to drop away or overtake.

Which either meant she was just being paranoid, or that the watchers were professionals. Not that the
real
professionals would need a tail. She knew she'd never spot the drones from Sigonella or Aviano, criss-crossing the skies at ten thousand feet; much less the orbiting Atlas V and Delta IV satellites, several miles above that.

When she was near Venice she stopped at a service station and took out her phone. To her surprise, Daniele answered straight away.

“Can I come and see you? There's something I need you to take a look at.”

“OK.”

He rang off without saying goodbye. And this time it surely couldn't have been just in her imagination that she heard a whisper-quiet echo of his voice, bouncing back from the other side of the world: the chatter of satellites on a disconnected line.

DANIELE HEARD HER
out, frowning occasionally. When she'd finished, he held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

She handed it over and he took out the battery.

“Your CAC card too.”

He wrapped both in kitchen foil, then walked to the fridge and put them in the freezer compartment. “Follow me.”

Upstairs, he disconnected his television, then went to his computer and accessed his router.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm turning off my wi-fi. Do the same in your apartment. And get yourself some burner phones – there are booths round Santa Lucia where you can buy a pay-as-you-go SIM with no questions asked. Have you ever left your phone unattended?”

She thought back. “I don't think so.”

“Well, that's something. But they don't actually need the physical phone any more. The NSA have a piece of spyware called DROPOUT JEEP which gives them remote access to every application on your iPhone. They can turn on the camera, activate the microphone, even track your location via the GPS.”

“Maybe my burner better not be an iPhone, then.”

“Or an Android, or a BlackBerry. If it's called a smart phone, chances are it's a dumb choice.”

“What can be on those disks that matters so much to them?”

“I don't know. If I had an eight-inch floppy drive, I might be able to read them. Unfortunately, I haven't seen one of those for decades.”

“Any way you can get hold of one?”

“Let's try eBay.” He went to his computer and did a search. “There are still a few around second-hand,” he reported. “Amazing the prices this old hardware fetches.”

“What about the tape?”

“That may be harder. I'm guessing, though, that the tape and the floppies contain the same data. He would have stored a copy in each medium, for safety. But bear in mind that all magnetic material decays over time. The disks may have dried out, or their contents may be encrypted. There are no guarantees.”

It struck her that Daniele seemed different from the last time she'd seen him: his speech patterns more fluent, his eye movements less evasive. “How have the sessions with Father Uriel been going?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I've persuaded him to give me electric shock treatment.”

She stared at him. “Isn't that rather . . . barbaric?”

“Only in the movies,” he said calmly. “These days it's done under general anaesthetic. And they're very sparing with the current.”

“Even so, it doesn't sound like the kind of thing Father Uriel usually goes in for.”

“It isn't.” He didn't explain how he'd persuaded the psychiatrist to give it to him.

“I should go.” She crossed to the window. Scanning the
calle
below, she caught sight of a beggar in a doorway, his hoodie pulled up to hide his face. A junkie, by the looks of him.

She remembered the kid in the multi-storey car park near her apartment. “It's the same guy,” she said slowly.

“Who is?”

She showed him. “I wouldn't forget him. I almost sprayed pepper in his face.”

He glanced at her. “You can stay here if you want. Actually, I'd like that.”

She hesitated. It was true that she'd rather not be on her own. And having faced down her fear at entering the bunker earlier, she felt more ready for what he was suggesting than she had done in months. But she also knew from experience that with Daniele, you couldn't always rely on inference or assumption. “Just so I'm clear, if I stay . . . are you asking me to sleep with you?”

He considered. “I think it would be good for you if you did.”

She laughed out loud. “You have some great chat-up lines, you know that?”

He looked puzzled. “Why? Am I wrong?”

“No,” she said. “I think you're probably right.”

Four miles away in Mestre, Kat's arm ached from mixing olive oil into shredded cod. She'd already prepared
seppie in nero
, cuttlefish cut into thin slices and simmered in its own ink with onion, white wine and garlic. It had been plopping gently on the stove for forty minutes now, almost as long as she'd been stirring her
baccalà
.

What did it mean, she wondered, that she was cooking for Flavio the two dishes that, for her, most epitomised the Venetian cuisine of her childhood? True, the cod came not from the lagoon itself but from the Lofoten archipelago in Norway, high in the Arctic Circle, where the fish were caught and then hung out to dry in the cold summer breezes. But
Venetians had been traders for as long as they had been fishermen, and there was no more traditional dish in the city than
baccalà mantecato
. She'd already boiled the cod in milk until it was soft. Now she had to beat it with the olive oil, drop by drop, as if she were making mayonnaise. Usually she employed an electric mixer for this part, but real traditionalists like her
nonna
always insisted that a wooden spoon was best.

She'd tell Flavio she'd used a mixer, she decided, so that he wouldn't expect her to use a spoon every time. Plus, if he believed she'd done it this well with a mixer, he'd never nag her to do it the more time-intensive way.

The thought of deceiving him so cleverly over a culinary matter made her smile. Their life together – she still couldn't quite bring herself to use the word “marriage” – was going to be a battle of wills as well as a meeting of minds, she knew that. She found she relished the prospect of fighting with him almost as much as she looked forward to being loved by him. And how many men could one say that about?

She looked at the clock: it was past midnight. He'd phoned earlier to say he'd be working late. “It's going well,” he'd said. “I've developed some compelling leads. This goes right to the heart of power, Kat. There are some very important people who had good reason to make sure Tignelli didn't succeed.”

“Rome?” she said softly. Ever since she'd found the ravaged body, half-eaten by eels, in the
peschiera
, she'd been asking herself the investigator's most fundamental question:
cui bono?
Who stood to benefit most from Tignelli's death? And the answer, surely, was to be found in the point that Vivaldo Moretti had made to her, over lunch at La Colomba. If Tignelli had succeeded in removing the wealth of the Veneto from Italy's coffers, Italy would have been bankrupt. She doubted any government minister or official would have given a direct
order on such a matter, but Tignelli's assassination had all the hallmarks of a convulsion by Italy's
stato profundo
– the “deep state”, the shadowy and ever-shifting alliance of politicians, security services, industrialists and white-collar criminals for whom influence and corruption were simply two sides of the same coin. With a single bullet, Italy had been saved – which was perhaps the greatest irony of all; the whole corrupt mess had been saved from its would-be cleanser, who was, in any case, no better and no worse than the rest.

“Not exactly. I can't talk on the phone. I'll tell you all about it when we meet,” he'd promised.

“I'll have the food on the table at ten past twelve, and not a minute later.”

He'd laughed. “Then I'd better not be late, had I?”

Usually,
baccalà
was served on grilled polenta or even bread, but tonight she was doing it the Istrian way, with some ribbons of pasta, a few chopped anchovies and a handful of breadcrumbs. It was the dish her
nonna
had made every Christmas Eve, when they were supposedly fasting before the big day.

She opened a bottle of cold Tocai and tasted the
baccalà
one last time. It was, she thought with satisfaction, perfect. Her phone buzzed. Glancing at the screen, she saw he'd sent a message.

With you in two. xxx

Humming, she filled a saucepan with water for the pasta, then crossed to the window. Flavio's car was just drawing up in the street. She watched him get out, and her heart skipped a beat. He bent down to speak to the bodyguard, then slapped the car roof, telling the man to drive on.

He looks energised, not tired
, she thought.
It's been a good day
. But the thought was barely forming in her mind when a flash lit up the street. She couldn't tell at first where it had
come from – lightning? A camera? – but even as she was wondering, the sound reached her – a low pressure-punch, like water crashing up a borehole, that forced in her cheeks and squeezed her solar plexus, followed by a brilliant pulse of petrol-orange flame that erupted upwards from the car's buckling roof like some savage, monstrous jellyfish. She was dimly aware of metal shrieking and spinning through the air. All around her, windows collapsed, liquid as waterfalls: the pane she was looking through shattered as a fragment of tarmac whistled past her head, burying itself in the wall behind. Cars piled up in the street, higgledy-piggledy – she thought for a moment it must have been a traffic accident, a collision of some kind, but as the ring of thick black smoke cleared, she saw the vehicles had simply been hurled out of their parked rows by the force of the explosion. Where Flavio had been standing – where the car had been, the bodyguard, everything:
my love, my whole life
– there was now only a crater. Debris still rained down, thumping and bouncing on the roofs of cars and buildings; and after that, in the ringing silence of her deafened ears, there was just some rather beautiful grey ash, fluttering down on the whole scene like cherry blossom blown off a tree by a strong wind.