The Broker (31 page)

When Marco arrived a few minutes later, the two brothers greeted him like family. “La professoressa la sta aspettando,” one of them said. The teacher is waiting.

The fall on the gravel at San Luca and the sprained ankle had transformed her. Gone was the frosty indifference. Gone was the sadness, at least for now. She smiled when she saw him, even reached up, grabbed his hand, and pulled him close so they could blow air kisses at both cheeks, a custom Marco had been observing for two months but had yet to engage in. This was, after all, his first female acquaintance in Italy. She waved him to the chair directly across from her. The brothers swarmed
around, taking his coat, asking him about coffee, anxious to see what an Italian lesson would look and sound like.

“How’s your foot?” Marco asked, and made the mistake of doing so in English. She put her finger to her lips, shook her head, and said, “Non inglese, Marco. Solamente Italiano.”

He frowned and said, “I was afraid of that.”

Her foot was very sore. She had kept it on ice while she was reading or watching television, and the swelling had gone down. The walk to the restaurant had been slow, but it was important to move about. At her mother’s insistence, she was using a cane. She found it both useful and embarrassing.

More coffee and water arrived, and when the brothers were convinced that things were perfect with their dear friend Francesca and her Canadian student, they reluctantly retreated to the front of the restaurant.

“How is your mother?” he asked in Italian.

Very well, very tired. She has been sitting with Giovanni for a month now, and it’s taking a toll.

So, thought Marco, Giovanni is now available for discussion. How is he?

Inoperable brain cancer, she said, and it took a few tries to get the translation right. He has been suffering for almost a year, and the end is quite close. He is unconscious. It’s a pity.

What was his profession, what did he do?

He taught medieval history at the university for many years. They met there—she was a student, he was her professor. At the time he was married to a woman he disliked immensely. They had two sons. She and her professor fell in love and began an affair which lasted almost
ten years before he divorced his wife and married Francesca.

Children? No, she said with sadness. Giovanni had two, he didn’t want any more. She had regrets, many regrets.

The feeling was clear that the marriage had not been a happy one. Wait till we get around to mine, thought Marco.

It didn’t take long. “Tell me all about you,” she said. “Speak slowly. I want the accents to be as good as possible.”

“I’m just a Canadian businessman,” Marco began in Italian.

“No, really. What’s your real name?”

“No.”

“What is it?”

“For now it’s Marco. I have a long history, Francesca, and I can’t talk about it.”

“Very well, do you have children?”

Ah, yes. For a long time he talked about his three children—their names, ages, occupations, residences, spouses, children. He added some fiction to move along his narrative, and he pulled off a small miracle by making the family sound remotely normal. Francesca listened intently, waiting to pounce on any wayward pronunciation or improperly conjugated verb. One of Nino’s boys brought some chocolates and lingered long enough to say, with a huge smile, “Parla molto bene, signore.” You speak very well, sir.

She began to fidget after an hour and Marco could tell she was uncomfortable. He finally convinced her to leave, and with great pleasure he walked her back down Via Minzoni, her right hand tightly fixed to his left elbow
while her left hand worked the cane. They walked as slowly as possible. She dreaded the return to her apartment, to the deathwatch, the vigil. He wanted to walk for miles, to cling to her touch, to feel the hand of someone who needed him.

At her apartment they traded farewell kisses and made arrangements to meet at Nino’s tomorrow, same time, same table.

______

JACY
Hubbard spent almost twenty-five years in Washington; a quarter of a century of major-league hell-raising with an astounding string of disposable women. The last had been Mae Szun, a beauty almost six feet tall with perfect features, deadly black eyes, and a husky voice that had no trouble at all getting Jacy out of a bar and into a car. After an hour of rough sex, she had delivered him to Sammy Tin, who finished him off and left him at his brother’s grave.

When sex was needed to set up a kill, Sammy preferred Mae Szun. She was a fine MSS agent in her own right, but the legs and face added a dimension that had proved deadly on at least three occasions. He summoned her to Bologna, not to seduce but to hold hands with another agent and pretend to be happily married tourists. Seduction, though, was always a possibility. Especially with Backman. Poor guy had just spent six years locked up, away from women.

Mae spotted Marco as he moved in a crowd down Strada Maggiore, headed in the general direction of Via Fondazza. With amazing agility, she picked up her pace,
pulled out a cell phone, and managed to gain ground on him while still looking like a bored window shopper.

Then he was gone. He suddenly took a left, turned down a narrow alley, Via Begatto, and headed north, away from Via Fondazza. By the time she made the turn, he was out of sight.

25

SPRING WAS FINALLY ARRIVING IN BOLOGNA. THE LAST
flurries of snow had fallen. The temperature had approached fifty degrees the day before, and when Marco stepped outside before dawn he thought about swapping his parka for one of the other jackets. He took a few steps under the dark portico, let the temperature sink in, then decided it was still chilly enough to keep the parka. He’d return in a couple of hours and he could switch then if he wanted. He crammed his hands in his pockets and took off on the morning hike.

He could think of nothing but the
Times
story. To see his name plastered across the front page brought back painful memories, and that was unsettling enough. But to be accused of bribing the President was actionable at law, and in another life he would have started the day by shot-gunning lawsuits at everyone involved. He would have owned
The New York Times
.

But what kept him awake were the questions. What would the attention mean for him now? Would Luigi snatch him again and run away?
And the most important: Was he in more danger today than yesterday?

He was surviving nicely, tucked away in a lovely city where no one knew his real name. No one recognized his face. No one cared. The Bolognesi went about their lives without disturbing others.

Not even he recognized himself. Each morning when he finished shaving and put on his glasses and his brown corduroy driver’s cap, he stood at the mirror and said hello to Marco. Long gone were the fleshy jowls and puffy dark eyes, the thicker, longer hair. Long gone was the smirk and the arrogance. Now he was just another quiet man on the street.

Marco was living one day at a time, and the days were piling up. No one who read the
Times
story knew where Marco was or what he was doing.

He passed a man in a dark suit and instantly knew he was in trouble. The suit was out of place. It was a foreign variety, something bought off the rack in a low-end store, one he’d seen every day in another life. The white shirt was the same monotonous button-down he’d seen for thirty years in D.C. He’d once considered floating an office memo banning blue-and-white cotton button-downs, but Carl Pratt had talked him out of it.

He couldn’t tell the color of the tie.

It was not the type of suit you’d ever see under the porticoes along Via Fondazza before dawn, or at any other time for that matter. He took a few steps, glanced over his shoulder, and saw that the suit was now following him. White guy, thirty years old, thick, athletic, the clear winner in a footrace or a fistfight. So Marco used another
strategy. He suddenly stopped, turned around, and said, “You want something?”

To which someone else said, “Over here, Backman.”

Hearing his name stopped him cold. For a second his knees were rubbery, his shoulders sagged, and he told himself that no, he was not dreaming. In a flash he thought of all the horrors the word “Backman” brought with it. How sad to be so terrified of your own name.

There were two of them. The one with the voice arrived on the scene from the other side of Via Fondazza. He had basically the same suit, but with a bold white shirt with no buttons on the collar. He was older, shorter, and much thinner. Mutt and Jeff. Thick ’n’ Thin.

“What do you want?” Marco said.

They were slowly reaching for their pockets. “We’re with the FBI,” the thick one said. American English, probably Midwest.

“Sure you are,” Marco said.

They went through the required ritual of flashing their badges, but under the darkness of the portico Marco could read nothing. The dim light over an apartment door helped a little. “I can’t read those,” he said.

“Let’s take a walk,” said the thin one. Boston, Irish. “Walk” came out “wok.”

“You guys lost?” Marco said without moving. He didn’t want to move, and his feet were quite heavy anyway.

“We know exactly where we are.”

“I doubt that. You got a warrant?”

“We don’t need one.”

The thick one made the mistake of touching Marco’s left elbow, as if he would help him move along to where they wanted to go. Marco jerked away. “Don’t
touch me! You boys get lost. You can’t make an arrest here. All you can do is talk.”

“Fine, let’s go have a chat,” said the thin one.

“I don’t have to talk.”

“There’s a coffee shop a couple of blocks away,” said the thick one.

“Great, have some coffee. And a pastry. But leave me alone.”

Thick ’n’ Thin looked at each other, then glanced around, not sure what to do next, not sure what plan B entailed.

Marco wasn’t moving; not that he felt very safe where he was, but he could almost see a dark car waiting around the corner.

Where the hell is Luigi right now? he asked himself. Is this part of his conspiracy?

He’d been discovered, found, unmasked, called by his real name on Via Fondazza. This would certainly mean another move, another safe house.

The thin one decided to take control of the encounter. “Sure, we can meet right here. There are a lot of folks back home who’d like to talk to you.”

“Maybe that’s why I’m over here.”

“We’re investigating the pardon you bought.”

“Then you’re wasting a helluva lot of time and money, which would surprise no one.”

“We have some questions about the transaction.”

“What a stupid investigation,” Marco said, spitting the words down at the thin one. For the first time in many years he felt like the broker again, berating some haughty bureaucrat or dim-witted congressman. “The FBI spends good money sending two clowns like you all the way to
Bologna, Italy, to tackle me on a sidewalk so you can ask me questions that no fool in his right mind would answer. You’re a couple of dumbasses, you know that? Go back home and tell your boss that he’s a dumbass too. And while you’re talking to him, tell him he’s wasting a lot of time and money if he thinks I paid for a pardon.”

“So you deny—”

“I deny nothing. I admit nothing. I say nothing, except that this is the FBI at its absolute worst. You boys are in deep water and you can’t swim.”

Back home they’d slap him around a little, push him, curse him, swap insults. But on foreign soil they weren’t sure how to behave. Their orders were to find him, to see if he did in fact live where the CIA said he was living. And if found, they were supposed to jolt him, scare him, hit him with some questions about wire transfers and offshore accounts.

They had it all mapped out and had rehearsed it many times. But under the porticoes of Via Fondazza, Mr. Lazzeri was annihilating their plans.

“We’re not leaving Bologna until we talk,” said the thick one.

“Congratulations, you’re in for a long vacation.”

“We have our orders, Mr. Backman.”

“And I’ve got mine.”

“Just a few questions, please,” said the thin one.

“Go see my lawyer,” Marco said, and began to walk away, in the direction of his apartment.

“Who’s your lawyer?”

“Carl Pratt.”

They weren’t moving, weren’t following, and Marco picked up his pace. He crossed the street, glanced quickly
at his safe house, but didn’t slow down. If they wanted to follow, they waited too long. By the time he darted onto Via del Piombo, he knew they could never find him. These were his streets now, his alleys, his darkened doorways to shops that wouldn’t open for three more hours.

They found him on Via Fondazza only because they knew his address.

______

AT
the southwestern edge of old Bologna, near the Porto San Stefano, he caught a city bus and rode it for half an hour, until he stopped near the train station at the northern perimeter. There he caught another bus and rode into the center of the city. The buses were filling; the early risers were getting to work. A third bus took him across the city again to the Porta Saragozza, where he began the 3.6-kilometer hike up to San Luca. At the four-hundredth arch he stopped to catch his breath, and between the columns he looked down and waited for someone to come sneaking up behind him. There was no one back there, as he expected.

He slowed his pace and finished the climb in fifty-five minutes. Behind the Santuario di San Luca he followed the narrow pathway where Francesca had fallen, and finally parked himself on the bench where she had waited. From there, his early-morning view of Bologna was magnificent. He removed his parka to cool off. The sun was up, the air was as light and clear as any he’d ever breathed, and for a long time Marco sat very much alone and watched the city come to life.

He treasured the solitude, and the safety of the moment. Why couldn’t he make the climb every morning,
and sit high above Bologna with nothing to do but think, and maybe read the newspapers? Perhaps call a friend on the phone and catch up on the gossip?