The Bancroft Strategy (15 page)

Belknap let a long moment of silence elapse before he started on them again. “She has been in touch with you,” he said. “We know this. She has assured you that everything is fine. She believes that everything is fine. But she does not know.
She does not know that she is in imminent danger.
” He made a quick throat-cut gesture. “Her enemies are resourceful, and they are everywhere.”

The Zingarettis' wary gaze told him that they regarded the American interloper as a potential enemy. He had induced a flicker of hesitation, a glimmer of concern where there had been none before; but he had not won them over. Still, a small fissure had appeared in the stone wall, their front of obliviousness.

“She has told you not to worry,” he began again, calibrating his words to their expression, “because she does not know that she has cause to worry.”

“And you do?” the crone in black asked, her mouth a little tent of disapproval and suspicion. Belknap's story had not been the truth, exactly, but he hewed to the truth as closely as he could. He told them that he was from an American agency, part of a high-level international investigation. The investigation had uncovered special
knowledge of
l'Arabo
's activities. Members of the man's personal staff were in jeopardy from a vendetta conducted by a Middle Eastern rival. At the word
“vendetta”
there was a glimmer in the elderly couple's eyes, an echoing whisper from the old woman: This was a concept they understood and treated with proper respect.

“Just yesterday, I saw the body of a young woman who…” Belknap broke off. He noticed the couple's widening eyes, shook his head. “It's too horrible.
Very
upsetting. There are certain images that stay with one forever. And when I think what they did to that young woman, a beautiful young woman just like your daughter, I can't help but shudder.” He stood up. “But I've done all I could here. I have to remember that. You must remember it, too. Now I will leave you in peace. You will not see me again. Nor, I fear, your daughter.”

Signora Zingaretti placed a clawlike hand on her husband's. “Wait,” she said. Her husband shot her a glance, but it was clear that she was in command of this household. She stared at Belknap, making her own assessment of his character, his probity. Then she made a decision. “You are mistaken,” she said. “Lucia is safe. We speak to her regularly. We spoke to her last night.”

“Where is she?” Belknap asked.

“This we do not know. This she does not tell us.” The vertical lines on her upper lip were like the tick marks on a ruler.

“Why not?”

The potbellied man said, “She tells us it's a very nice place. But the location is confidential. She cannot say. Because of…terms of employment.”
Termini di occupazione.
He gave an uncertain grin—uncertain because he could not know whether his words had refuted the worries the American had expressed or given fuel to them.

“Lucia is a clever girl,” said her mother. Her face was drawn with fear; it was as if there were ashes in her mouth. “She knows how to look after herself.” She was trying to reassure herself.

“You spoke to her last night,” Belknap repeated.

“She was fine.” The old man's beefy hands shook as he folded them in his lap.

“She will take care of herself.” The crone's words were a defiant pledge, or maybe just a hope.

 

As soon as Belknap was back on the cobblestone street, he called an old
carabiniere
contact, Gianni Mattucci. In Italy—and Italian law enforcement was no exception—you got things done through friends, not formalities. He quickly conveyed his request to Mattucci. Lucia might have been just as close-mouthed as her parents had claimed, but the phone records would surely be more forthcoming.

Mattucci's voice was as astringent as a young Barolo, and as rich. “
Più lento!
Slower,” he prompted. “Give me the name and the address. I'll run the name through the city database, get her INPS code.” That was the Italian equivalent of a Social Security number. “Then I'll take that to the municipal phone registry.”

“Tell me this won't take long, Gianni.”

“You Americans—always in such a rush. I'll do my best, okay, my friend?”

“Your best is usually pretty good,” Belknap allowed.

“Go have an espresso someplace,” the Italian police inspector said coaxingly. “I call you.”

Belknap had barely walked a couple of blocks when his cell phone buzzed: It was Mattucci again.

“That was fast,” Belknap said.

“We just got a report about the very address you mention,” Mattucci said. He sounded agitated. “A neighbor reports gunfire. We've got a couple of squad cars on their way. What's going on?”

Belknap was thunderstruck. “Oh, Christ,” he breathed. “Let me check it out.”

“Don't,” Mattucci implored, but Belknap clicked off, already
racing toward the ground-floor apartment he had left only minutes before. As he rounded the corner, he heard the sounds of squealing tires—and his heart began to shudder in his chest. The entrance had been left unlocked, and he strode into a room riddled with bullets and spattered with blood. He had been followed: There was no other explanation. He had spoken to the elderly couple of protection, yet had only brought death in his train.

More tires, skidding on cobblestone: this time the sound of arrival. It was a coupe, dark blue save for its white roof. On the roof was a stenciled number meant to be visible to helicopters, along with three lights. The world
CARABINIERI
was lettered on the side, in white, a red racing stripe above it. It was the real thing, and so were the two police officers who, scrambling out of the vehicle, ordered Belknap not to move.

Out of the corner of his eye, Belknap saw another police car coming. He gestured frantically in the direction of a side street, signaling that the assailants had gone in that direction.

Then he ran.

One of the policemen gave chase, of course; the other had to secure the crime scene. Belknap hoped that he had sown enough confusion to discourage his pursuer from shooting at him: They had at least to consider the possibility that he, too, was in pursuit of the
criminali.
Belknap dashed around metal trash canisters, around Dumpsters and parked cars—anything to obscure the sightline between him and the policeman. The line of sight.

The line of fire.

He could feel his muscles burning, his breath coming in gulps, as he sprinted wildly, with the zigzagging movements of a fleeing hare. He was scarcely aware of the ground beneath his rubber-soled leather shoes. Within a few minutes, though, he had climbed into his vehicle, a white windowless van emblazoned with the logo of the Italian mail service:
SERVIZIO POSTALE
. It was one of various vehicles that Consular Operations had at its disposal, and though Belknap did not have authorization, he had little trouble gaining access to it.
It was the sort of vehicle that normally attracted little notice. He hoped that would be the case now.

As he started up the van and sped away, however, he saw, in his rearview mirror, another police vehicle—a Jeep-style
carabinieri
car with a boxy top, meant for holding prisoners. At the same time, his cell buzzed again.

Mattucci's voice, even more agitated than before. “You must tell me what is happening!” he said, almost shouting. “They say this elderly couple has been massacred, the apartment shot up. Evidently the bullets are semi-jacketed U.S. special-op hollowpoints. Do you hear me? The scalloped-copper jackets you happen to favor.
Not
good.”

Belknap spun the steering wheel sharply to the right, making a last-minute turn. To his right was a green tramcar with four rubberized expansion joints, half a block in length. It would block him from the view of anyone on the opposite lane. “Gianni, you can't possibly believe that—”

“A fingerprint technician will be arriving shortly. If they find your prints, I won't be able to protect you.” A pause. “I can't protect you now.” This time it was Mattucci who clicked off first.

Another police car was pulling up behind Belknap. He had to have been spotted getting into the van, and it was too late to change vehicles now. He steadily increased the pressure on the accelerator pedal as he veered through the traffic on the Piazza San Calisto and onto the faster-moving viale de Trastevere, speeding toward the river. Now the police car behind him had activated its own siren and flashing lights. By the time he crossed the via Indumo, he had picked up another cruiser—a Citroën sedan emblazoned with the word
POLIZIA
in backward-slanting capitals of blue and white. There was no room for ambiguity. He was being chased.

Something had gone very wrong.

He pressed the accelerator to the floor, veering around slower vehicles—taxis, ordinary motorists, a delivery truck—and, blaring his horn, shot through the light at the Piazza Porta Portese, slewing
through lanes of traffic. He had lost the
carabinieri
Jeeps, at least. The limestone buildings to his left and right became blurred dirty-gray silhouettes; the pavement in front of him became everything—the small shifting portals between moving vehicles, gaps that appeared and disappeared in rapid flux, openings that would close if not seized at the right instant. High-speed driving was an entirely different activity than ordinary lawful motoring, and, as he crossed the Ponte Sublicio over the dark-green Tiber, toward the Piazza Emporio, Belknap had to hope that the old reflexes would kick in when they were needed. There were hundreds of ways to go wrong, a very few ways to go right. The second cruiser, the Citroën sedan, suddenly found a clear pathway and shot ahead of Belknap.

The box was beginning to form.

If, as seemed likely, a third cruiser were to appear, Belknap's chances of evasion would drop precipitously. He had been hoping to enter the higher-speed thoroughfare that wrapped along the Tiber, along the high, tree-mounded, brick-and-concrete embankment. That was too risky now.

Abruptly he swung the steering wheel to the right, and his vehicle swerved onto the Lungotevere Aventino, the road that ran along the Testaccio side of the river. He felt his torso hurtled toward the left, restrained only by the seat and shoulder belts.

Now he made another sharp turn, onto the café-cluttered via Rubattino, and then took a breath and swung the van back onto the via Vespucci—this time driving the wrong way, against traffic. He only had to traverse a few hundred yards of it before he could turn onto the fast-moving Tiber-side road—assuming he could avoid collision on the Vespucci.

The horns of a dozen cars shrilled and blared as motorists frantically tried to avoid the white postal van that was rushing toward them.

Belknap steered with hands slick with sweat. The task of swerving this way and that to maneuver the van through a stream of motorists
facing the opposite direction required him to anticipate their own evasive swerves. A single miscalculation would result in a head-on collision with the summed force of their opposing velocities.

The world was reduced to nothing more than a ribbon of pavement and a swarming constellation of cars, every one a potential deadly weapon. The underbody of the postal van, with its low-riding chassis, bounced, scraped, and sparked as it descended too fast onto the ramp leading back to the fast-moving embankment road, but he made it over the next bridge, the Ponte Palatino, and, with another sharp, skidding turn, onto the Porta di Ripagrande.

Now he could breathe, he told himself, as he powered the van on the straightaway past grand anonymous buildings. Yet when he looked in his rearview mirror, he saw half a dozen police cruisers. How had they materialized so quickly? Then he remembered the large police station located near the Piazzale Portuense. He steered onto the left road shoulder, gutterballing down it and peeling off onto the Clivio Portuense, one of the faster streets in the area. Once again, only the restraint belts kept him from being flung across the vehicle.

The cruisers swept past him, unable to slow down in time to catch the turn. He had lost them—at least for the moment. He powered down the streets until he reached the via Parboni, and took a left.

Yet what was that ahead of him? He could scarcely hear himself think above the blaring siren, the straining motor, the squealing tires.

It seemed impossible! Ahead of him, at the corner of the via Bargoni, he saw a roadblock. How had they put it up so fast? He squinted, saw that it was made up of two cruisers and a portable wooden barricade. He could try to crash it…

Except that, behind him, roaring up seemingly from out of nowhere, was an unmarked car from the
polizia municipale
's highway-patrol unit, a three-liter-turbo-engined Lancia sedan especially equipped for high-speed vehicular apprehension.

Belknap gunned the van fully, watching four
carabinieri
standing at the roadblock—large men with sunglasses and arms folded on
their chests—scramble out of the way. Then he jerked the gearshift into neutral and seized the parking brake at the exact same moment he gave the steering wheel a half-turn toward the left. The car had slewed around perpendicular to the road, and the tires of the high-powered Lancia screamed as it veered off to the side of the road to avoid colliding with the postal van, shuddering to a halt as its front crumpled into a fire hydrant.

Now Belknap released the parking brake, floored the accelerator, and straightened out the steering wheel. The vehicle juddered, and a loud clattering noise told him that the pressure on the sidewalls had caused the hubcaps to fly off. At the same time, the torque on the transmission had caused oil to surge into the system, and in the rearview mirror he could see a cloud of thick black smoke pouring from his exhaust. But he had reversed direction without pausing. Now he was skimming the wrong way down via Bargoni, except this time the street was nearly empty. By blocking it off at the other end, the police had unwittingly done him a favor. He turned left on the via Bezzi, whipped onto the speedy viale de Trastevere, past the Autorità per la Informatica nella Pubblica Amministrazione—and lost his pursuers.