A Glancing Light

Chapter 14

This girl I met at the museum is driving me up to the Riviera for the weekend.

How, I wondered glumly, did the guy do it? I'd been at the museum most of the afternoon myself and nobody'd invited me on any weekend jaunts. I hadn't even spoken to a woman. I didn't remember even seeing a woman But Calvin had seen, spoken, and conquered (had he used his nifty little pocket translator?), and tomorrow he was off to the Riviera with her.

Life was like that for him back home, too. In Seattle I'd attributed it to his Porsche, but he didn't have his Porsche here, so it wasn't that. I don't mean to say there's anything wrong with Calvin; looks and brains aren't everything and he's a nice enough guy in his own way, but I just couldn't understand why he seemed to turn up at every show reception with a new woman, while I came alone. And left alone.

Since Anne and I had broken up I'd been in a funk as far as females were concerned. Oh, there'd been a few, but I just didn't seem to have the energy anymore, or maybe it was the patience, for the get-acquainted routine: the games, the goofy questions, the tedious self-histories ("So—now tell me about you"). I suppose if I'd stuck with it I might have met somebody, but the chances were so slim—the number of normal- looking, superficially rational screwballs wandering around had astonished me—that it just didn't seem worth the effort.

With Anne it had been different: no games, no goofy conversations. I still had no idea what her sign was. There had just been a sweet, growing appreciation and attachment, a sense when I was with her that the world was a pretty fine place after all. Until that miserable episode in San Francisco had turned everything sour.

But now, back in Europe where we'd met and things had gone so well for us, San Francisco no longer seemed to overshadow everything. There had been extenuating circumstances. Making an end to a ten-year marriage, no matter how rotten, was unlikely to bring out the best in anybody. So there'd been a few bad days. Anne had never thrown them up to me; I was the one who'd made all the fuss at the time, and I was the one who was still making a fuss about them. She'd even called me, and here I was, still dithering.

Now look, Norgren, I said, you know you're going to call her back, so instead of cerebralizing for the next hour, why not save yourself the time and the angst and just do it? The hell with what Louis might think about it.

And so I did. I got out my address book and dialed her number at the U.S. Army installation at Berchtesgaden. Finally.

"Hello?"

She had answered promptly on the first ring, startling me into a tongue-tied panic. I almost hung up. It occurred to me I could have done with a few more minutes of cerebralizing. Stricken mute, I stood there with the telephone at my ear.

After a moment she spoke again, softly. "Chris?"

That tentative, quiet syllable flowed over me like warm, perfumed water. The tension drained out of my neck. My shoulders unhunched. I sat down heavily on the bed. "God, it's good to hear your voice."

The next twenty minutes were a blur of laughter and explanations, of cut-off sentences as we both tried to talk at once, of catching up with each other and trying to find our old familiar groove again. Then, gradually, the momentum slowed. We caught our breath.

"I've wanted to call a hundred times," I said.

"I know. Me too."

"It's just . . . well, I felt so bad about the way things went."

"We picked a rotten time to get together, that's all. It was my lousy idea, if you remember."

"It wasn't a lousy idea, it was a good idea. I was lousy company."

"You were awful company. Where are you calling from, Chris? Are you still in Europe?"

"I've been here all week." Briefly I told her about the show I was working on, omitting several of the more colorful experiences of the last few days. "I only got your message last night."

"When do you go back?"

"Monday—"

"Monday!"

That little cry of dismay did me a lot of good. Until then, I hadn't been sure if she wanted to see me again, or if that initial call to say hello had been a civilized way of saying good-bye.

"I'm in Bologna right now," I told her, "but I'm going down to Sicily for the weekend. Is there any chance you could come, too? You'd like Ugo, and he'd love to have you. And I don't have that much to do; we'd have some time to ourselves. Maybe drive around and see some of the island." I held my breath.

"Ah, Chris, I'd love to, but I can't. I'm tied up all weekend with a NATO subcommittee meeting in Rotterdam, at the Naval Institute. Things are like a zoo right now. Damn."

"Look," I said "I'm supposed to leave for home Monday morning, but I can shift it to Monday night. Will you still be in Rotterdam then?"

"I can be."

"All right, save Monday for me, will you? Maybe I can fly out through Amsterdam and stay for most of the day. It's just a quick train ride to Rotterdam."

"Don't bother about that. I'll meet you in Amsterdam. Oh, Chris, could you really do that? It'd be wonderful!"

"Don't worry," I said, my spirits higher than they'd been in months, "I'll work it out. Give me a number where I can reach you tomorrow. That'll give me a chance to figure out the logistics, okay?"

The telephone rang the next morning at about eight, just as I finished shaving. I toweled off the shaving cream and picked up the receiver. "Pronto."

"Dr. Norgren," the prissy voice said in English, "I am sorry to disturb you. I am Mr. Marchetti, the assistant manager You are leaving your room today, this is correct?"

"Yes, that's right." With the towel I dabbed at some cream behind my ear.

"We are having a small problem at the desk. Through a misunderstanding, a shortage of rooms has developed. May I ask if you will be staying until check-out time?"

"I can check out early if that would help."

I heard a relieved sigh. "Thank you so much."

"What time did you have in mind?"

"Would ten o'clock be too early? We don't want to inconvenience you."

"No, in fact I can be out of my room in half an hour if you like."

"Ah, that would be wonderful. You're sure it's no trouble? If you wish, you can leave your luggage with the bell captain until you need it. I will send up a boy."

"That's all right, I'll take it down myself."

"As you wish. You will be going to the airport? You would like a taxi?"

"Yes, it takes about half an hour, doesn't it?"

"On Saturday morning, about twenty minutes."

"All right, could you have one here at eleven-thirty, please? Or better make that eleven-twenty to be on the safe side."

"With pleasure. Molte grazie, signore."

"Non c'è di che."

By eight-thirty I had settled my bill, made arrangements for a room when I got back on Sunday night before flying on to Amsterdam the following morning, and left my bags with the bell captain, who wrote out a receipt and placed them with the rest of the luggage that lined one wall of the reception lobby. Then I went into the dining area and had breakfast, a good one: juice, a bucket-sized cup of strong caffè latte, and a basket of crusty, warm rolls, toast, jam, and cheese.

All the same I didn't linger over it. This was, in fact, the first meal I 'd had there. The Hotel Europa, as Calvin had implied, was not big on ambience. The building was an early nineteenth-century palazzo that had been reasonably well- maintained, with large public rooms, head-high paneling, and decent nineteenth-century fakes of good eighteenth- century paintings hung high on the walls. But there was a depressing, anonymous feel to the place, perhaps from the 1950s imitation-leather sofas, or from the total absence of amenities like flowers, or vases, or rugs, or ornaments on the tables. If you've ever stayed in a Moscow hotel, you know the feeling. Everyone else in the place seemed to be a businessman in for the trade fair, which apparently had to do with mattress and cushion manufacture, or so it seemed from the snatches of conversation I heard around me.

I finished the last of the coffee and walked to the Municipal Archaeological Museum a couple of blocks away on Via Archiginnasio. It was the only museum in Bologna I'd never been to, and I was anxious to see the well-known head of the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV it had on display. Well, moderately anxious. And once I'd seen it my interest in the remaining Egyptian exhibits quickly waned. There is, you have to admit, a certain numbing sameness about pharaonic heads. After you've looked at them for a few minutes, you're no longer sure if you're looking at Thutmose II or Thutmose III, or maybe even Amenhotep I. You don't much care, either.

There I am, being provincial again. I apologize. Pharaonic heads can be terrific, but I guess I just wasn't in a museum mood for once. After a few more minutes, with over two hours to kill, I walked several hundred feet farther down Via Archiginnasio, sat down at an outdoor table at the crowded Caffe Zanarini, ordered an espresso that I didn't really want, and thought about how to pass the time.

The café looked out over the Piazza Galvani, already buzzing with streams of well-dressed people, mostly women, mostly elegant, who had the steely look of serious Saturday shoppers in their eyes. At the center was a modest statue of the locally born Galvani, and beyond that, at the corner of Via Farina was an ancient but ordinary-looking apartment building with a marble plaque that was too small to read from where I sat. I knew what it said, however: Guido Reni had died there on August 18, 1642. At the other end of the piazza loomed the facadeless back of the basilica with its crazy jumble of 600 years' worth of changed plans, there for all the world to see in the stops and starts and metamorphoses of its naked brickwork.

It was the kind of scene that ordinarily would have occupied me for a reflective hour, but this morning I was restless, impatient to get on to Sicily. I jumped up after a few minutes, went to a telephone, and called the airport. Yes, I was told, there was an earlier Aer Mediterranea flight to Catania, departing at 10:15 A.M., and yes, they would be happy to reassign me to it.

That left an hour. I walked quickly back to the hotel, picked up my bags, and got the desk clerk to get me a taxi. I was at the Borgo Panigale Airport at 9:45, which left barely enough time, because security precautions in Europe, and in Italy in particular, are painstaking. If I'd been on an international flight, or had had anything but carry-on luggage, I wouldn't have had a chance to make it. As it was, I had to stand in a men-only line (the women had their own) to enter a booth where I was patted down and gone over with a metal-sensitive wand. Then I was directed to another line, this one heterosexual, first to have my bags go through the X-ray scanner, and then to put them on a counter where they would be opened like everyone else's and meticulously gone through.

Almost. I got as far as the X-ray machine. My suit bag had just come through the scanner without incident, and I was waiting for my old red duffel bag, when the conveyor belt stopped moving. A few seconds passed.

"C'è una problema?" I asked the woman behind the machine.

She stopped her whispered conference with a guard. "No, davvero, " I was told with a cheerful smile. "Va bene."

All the same, the conveyor wasn't moving. I checked my watch, wondering if I'd make the flight after all. Well, no real problem if I didn't. I'd just catch the one I'd originally planned to take. I realized I'd forgotten to call Ugo about the change, so it might not make a difference anyway. Still, I would have preferred to be up and away rather than waiting around the airport.

My thoughts were going along in this lazy manner when the area erupted into noise and activity.

"Everybody out!" one of the nearby guards shouted suddenly in Italian. "Hurry, back to the lobby!"

Travelers in this part of the world do not need to be told such things twice. The orderly line flew apart as people scrambled helter-skelter for the main terminal. The woman behind the X-ray scanner turned and fled with the rest of them. I started to do the same thing but found myself tangled up with my neighbors, as did many others. There was quite a bit of yelling going on now as people tried desperately to unsnarl their arms and legs from other people's luggage straps.

"Scusi, " I shouted above the noise, and tugged hard to free my arm. It didn't budge. The grip on it tightened. So did the grasp on my other arm. Startled, I glanced around and found a uniformed guard, a big one, on either side of me, holding tight.

"Che c'è? " I stammered. What's the matter?

For answer I was pulled roughly out of the line and pushed down the passageway in the opposite direction from everyone else.

"Faccia presto! " I was told. Hurry up.

It wasn't as if I had any choice. They had never let go of my elbows, and now they hustled me down the aisle between them. I can't say my heels were actually dragging on the floor, but if I'd tried to hold my ground they certainly would have been. These were big men, and they meant business. I could see two other uniformed guards trotting close behind us with semiautomatic weapons unslung and at the ready. Not teenagers this time, but grown men, square jawed and intense. Their eyes roved nervously, looking for—what? Fellow terrorists trying to rescue me?

Another guard, a senior officer from the look of him, also moved grimly along with us. Five armed men, for God's sake, and all of them convincingly out of sorts. A bomb, I thought dazedly. Somebody's planted a bomb in my duffel bag.

"Che c'è?" I pleaded again. I tapped my chest. "Sono americano! "

This had all the effect it deserved, which was none, except possibly to increase the tempo of the quick-marching. At such times one's life flashes before one's eyes. In my case it was the previous two hours, starting with the request from Mr. Marchetti that I leave early. Even at the time, it had struck me as unusual, and now all I could think about was how my bags had lain in the packed lobby for almost an hour, nominally under the supervision of the bell captain, but in reality available to anyone who chose to tinker with them. The duffel bag would have been especially easy prey. I'd lost the key to the tiny padlock years ago, and had never bothered to get another. I used the bag for underwear, socks, and shoes; nothing valuable.

I was brought to a jolting stop in front of a gray metal door that said PRIVATO on it, then made to wait while one of the guards unlocked it, and then shoved roughly inside. The older officer and the guards with the semiautomatics crowded into the bare little room with me. There was only a metal table in the center with a couple of battered chairs around it. These were not put into immediate use. Instead, I was jammed up against a wall and patted down again, this time more harshly.

"Il passaporto," the officer said and stuck out his hand.

I handed it to him. He barely glanced at it before putting it in his pocket. He was a bulky man of about fifty, tense and breathing hard.

"Parla italiano?" he asked. His lips barely moved when he spoke. He was keeping a tight rein on his anger. With each breath his nostrils flared.

I nodded. I was feeling less flustered, more pointedly frightened. The room was very small and private, the guns very big, the men hard-bitten and tough-looking. I knew that one of the reasons the police forces of Italy had put together their admirable record against terrorists was that they did not always observe the same niceties of behavior toward accused or suspect persons as did, say, the police in America.

If you had asked me how I felt about that a few minutes earlier, when I was just another passenger at an airport in a city that had suffered more than its share of terrorist horrors, I would have told you I felt just fine about it; no problem. But now that I appeared to be a suspected terrorist myself, I seemed to have developed a finical concern for the civil rights of detainees, or prisoners, or whatever it was.

"I don't know what you found in that bag," I began in Italian, "but—"

Sit down, I was told.

I sat. One of the guards moved behind my chair, out of my sight. The other continued to watch me coldly from across the table. I could smell the oil from the guns.

"This morning," I said, "my bags were left in the lobby—"

Abruptly the senior officer took off his cap and slammed it on the table. I jumped.

"I want to know what activates that bomb," he said tightly. "I want to know how to dismantle it."

So there actually was a bomb. In my old red duffel bag, traveling companion since my college days. I'd understood that, of course, yet I hadn't really believed it. I still didn't really believe it. A single, cold drop of sweat rolled down my side.

"I don't know anything about a bomb," I said numbly. "All I know—"

He leaned forward suddenly and twisted the collar of my jacket in his hand. "You bastard, I've got two good men on that thing, you understand?" He was a squarish man with close-cropped gray hair that grew low on his forehead, and thick, curled ears. When he spoke, knobs of gristle shifted and crackled in his cheeks like lumps of tobacco. He gathered more material into his fist and twisted, hurting my neck, forcing my face closer to his. "Do you have any idea what's going to happen to you if they get hurt?"

You will understand when I tell you that I felt very much alone at that moment, and scared, too. Big, angry, powerful men and brutal weapons seemed to fill the anonymous little room. I felt like a character in a Kafka story, intimidated and confused and acutely aware that the situation was not under my control. But I was offended, too, and that stiffened my spine. I stared steadily back at him, waiting for him to let go of my jacket.

When he did, I spoke. "I don't know anything about a bomb," I said as coolly as I could. "My bag was left in the lobby of the Hotel Europa for an hour this morning. This was at the instruction of a Mr. Marchetti—or somebody who called himself Mr. Marchetti—the assistant manager."

"You left it open?" Even the skepticism was an improvement. At least he was listening.

"Unlocked. There wasn't anything valuable in it. Look, I'm an art curator. I'm here working with the Pinacoteca and the Ministry of Fine Arts. The carabinieri will vouch for me. You can talk to Colonel Antuono."

His heavy gray eyebrows unclenched themselves for the first time. "You're working with Colonel Antuono?"

"Uh . . . well, yes, you could say that."

It was delivered with less than perfect assurance. The heavy eyebrows drew ominously together again.

Antuono had given me his card, on which he'd penciled his Bologna telephone number. I took it out of my wallet and handed it to the officer. "Go ahead and call him."

There was a telephone on the wall. He went to it at once, but turned and leveled the card at me before picking up the receiver. "If you're wasting our time, if one of my men is harmed . . ."

"Look, if I knew there was a bomb in that bag, do you think I'd calmly walk up, put it on the X-ray counter, and just hang around waiting to see what happened?"

He considered this for a moment, then picked up the telephone and spoke without dialing. "Cristin, get me a Colonel Cesare Antuono, two-three-nine-two-eight-five. I'll take it in the west office."

The receiver was slammed back into its holder. "You wait here," he told me, and headed for the door.

"I have a ten-fifteen plane," I said, not very hopefully.

"Not today." He turned to the guards. "Stefano, you stay here. Be careful. Don't speak to him. Call me each ten minutes until I return. Maurizio, I want you outside. Both of you, be alert; we don't yet know what's happening."

Stefano followed his instructions to the letter. He pushed one of the chairs against the far wall, about ten feet from me, and sat down to watch me relentlessly, holding the semi-automatic in his lap, one hand on the barrel, the other at the finger guard; a posture that did not encourage conversation. His eye never left me, even during the telephonic check-ins. There were four calls in all; forty slow, silent minutes, lots of time to think.

With more than enough to think about. Somebody wanted me dead. Enough to blow up a few hundred innocent people who happened to be on the same airplane. There were other possibilities, of course: that someone else on the plane was the target, or that this was a terrorist action not aimed at any individual, and that—in either case—the selection of my bag for the bomb was random, or if not quite random, then merely a matter of convenience and accessibility.

The second telephone call hadn't been made yet before I rejected this as not credible. If I were just a tourist, or on some other business, then maybe it might have happened that way. But I'd been asking a lot of questions about the thefts, I'd been seen with Antuono, and I'd already been involved in a murderous street assault—during which, as Max had pointed out, I'd seen the faces of our attackers. I'd even tried to identify them at the police station. With all of that going on, it was asking too much to treat the finding of a bomb in my bag as no more than an unhappy coincidence. There was no question in my mind that I was the target, and that it was related to the thefts.

Yet the idea of killing so many people just to get to me was so monstrous I couldn't make myself believe that either. What could I know that anyone found so dangerous? Max's idea that I could identify the two thugs didn't hold water; I'd already failed to do it once. Did someone think he'd told me the names of the five people who knew his security arrangements? Well, he hadn't, not that I hadn't asked, and even if he had, how was anyone to know I hadn't already been to Antuono with it? So what did I know? What did someone think I knew? Or was someone afraid of what I might find out? Well, like what, for instance? And if it wasn't something I knew or might find out, then what was it?

This got me nowhere. I took a different tack. Who knew that I was flying to Sicily this morning? That question gave me more answers than I knew what to do with. When I thought back over my conversations of the last few days I realized I'd blabbed to everyone about it. I'd told Salvatorelli, I'd told Luca and Di Vecchio, I'd told Clara, I hadn't missed anyone. I'd told Max, I'd told Calvin, I'd told Tony. Not that I entertained any suspicions about the last three, but who knew whom else they'd mentioned it to?

Of them all, in fact, there was no one, even Salvatorelli, whom I could seriously cast as a murderer in my mind. Certainly not as a mass murderer. Yet one of them must have . . .

Croce. Filippo Croce, the sleazy art dealer from Ferrara, the man with the pointy-toed shoes who'd come to Antuono with his story about the Pittura Metafisica paintings in the Salvatorelli warehouse. Had he still been in the room when I'd told Clara I'd be visiting Ugo, or had he already left? No, he'd been there. It had been right at the beginning; he hadn't yet delivered his harangue on revolutionary perspectival structure. Filippo Croce .. .

When the door finally opened, it wasn't the senior officer who came in, but Colonel Antuono, in his natty uniform, but looking cross and tired in spite of it. "You can go," he muttered to Stefano, who rose meekly and left. I heaved a sigh, grateful to see the last of the semiautomatic.

"You understand I have no jurisdiction here, in this matter of the bomb," he said. "My official concern is with the pictures."

"I understand." Whatever the reason he was there, I was glad to see him. Under these circumstances he qualified as an old friend.

He pulled the vacated chair up to the table and wearily sat down. The tunic strained across his stooped shoulders. He undid a button. He tapped slowly on the table, regarding me with something close to resignation.

"Why do you do these things?" he said at last, very quietly.

"Do what? What did I do?" I said, not that he seemed to expect an answer. "All I know is, at eight o'clock this morning I got a call from a man who said he was Mr. Marchetti, the assistant—"

"There is no Mr. Marchetti. The name of the assistant manager is Pugliese."

"Well, sure, it was just a ploy. I've already figured that out. It was just a way for someone to put a bomb in my bag." When I heard my own words, I came perilously close to letting out a nervous giggle. What was I doing in a situation like this?

Antuono wondered the same thing. "And why," he asked with testy patience, "would someone wish to do such a thing?"

"I have no idea why, but I think I might know who." I told him what I'd been thinking about when he came in.

"Again you persist with Croce," he said when I'd finished. "Why would Filippo Croce want to do you harm?"

"I don't know, goddammit! Didn't I just say that?" I was getting a little testy myself. It hadn't been my idea of a wonderful morning, and the idea that someone had tried to end my life—and was likely to try again—was still filtering through the unreality of the last hour. "But he was right there when I told Clara I'd be on that plane."

"And no one else knew? Only Croce and signora Gozzi?"

"Well, no, I also told Salvatorelli—"

"Ah? Is that so?" He took out a little notebook and scribbled in it.

"—and Benedetto Luca and Amedeo Di Vecchio."

"Luca . . . Di Vecchio. " He nodded without looking up and kept on writing.

"And Ugo Scoccimarro, of course. And I think I mentioned it to Tony Whitehead . . ."

The pen stopped. He glanced up at me under lifted eyebrows.

". . . and Calvin Boyer—he works with me in Seattle. He's here in connection with the show."

"I see." The notebook was snapped closed and put away. "Perhaps we go about this the wrong way. Is there anyone in Bologna you forgot to tell? It would make not so long a list."

I wasn't in the mood for Antuono's arid wit. "Well, why the hell would I keep it a secret?" I said. "Why should I think anyone would try to kill me, let alone blow up an entire planeload of people, just to get to me?"

`No, no, they are not such monsters as that. You were carrying a time bomb, dottore. It has been disarmed. The detonation was set for eleven thirty-five."

"At which time the plane would have been over the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea."

"Yes, but that would have been your fault, not theirs."

"My—I don't understand."

"Your reservation was on Alisarda flight number 217, no? You were to leave at noon."

I shook my head. "No, I changed that to a ten-fifteen flight."

"Yes, but when did you change it?"

I realized what he was driving at. I had called the airport at 9:15, after my bags had been in the lobby for almost an hour. Then I'd gone quickly back to the hotel—no more than a three-minute walk—to get them. If someone had put a bomb in the duffel bag, which someone had, it had been done between 8:30 and 9:15, at which time "Mr. Marchetti" had believed that I was booked on the noon flight—half an hour

after detonation.

"The taxi," I murmured. "He ordered a taxi for me. At eleven-twenty. The bomb would have gone off while I was on my way to the airport."

"Yes, that's what it was designed for. It's not a subtle device; it had no chance at all of getting through airport security—a point in your favor with Captain Lepido, by the way. Also, it was not large. It was what is called an antipersonnel bomb, capable of demolishing the inside of a taxi, yes; of bringing down an airplane, highly unlikely. So you see, we are not dealing with a monster after all. It was you alone he was after."

"He was willing to sacrifice the cab driver."

"One person, not hundreds."

"Well, that's very comforting, Colonel. I can't tell you how much better I feel knowing that."

He allowed himself a wry smile. "Signor Norgren, I have a favor to ask you. I think it might be helpful if the person who tried to kill you were to believe he succeeded. It would be safer for you if he thought you were, ah, out of the way, and it would perhaps be useful to the police in apprehending him."

"All right. What's the favor?"

"As I said. To pretend you are killed, at least insofar as Bologna is concerned. For a few days only. Go to Sicily and do your business, but no telephone calls back to Bologna, no contact of any kind."

"I don't get it. You said the Sicilian Mafia is involved. If I go to Sicily and do my business, they're likely to find out I'm alive, aren't they?"

"Not the people that matter. They're here in Bologna."

"But you told—"

"I told you the Sicilian Mafia is behind the thefts. They are. But those concerned are now here." Even in that tiny, secure room, with no one else around, he leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Things come to a head; we will very soon have those paintings back. The arrangements have already been made " He held up a finger. "I speak in confidence."

Arrangements had been made, and word of my survival might somehow spoil them, so would I kindly shut up, stop poking around, and play dead; that was what he was telling me. Still, I dearly wanted to see those paintings back, too. So if it would help, I would go along with it even if I didn't like it.

"All right," I said tentatively, "but I'd like to let my friends know I'm all right. I wouldn't want them, to hear I'd been killed."

He waved his hands. "No, no, no, don't worry, they won't think so I will see to it that the newspapers and the television report only that a taxi was blown up on its way to the airport, resulting in the death of the passenger, but that his name is being withheld until his family is notified. I will say that terrorists are believed responsible. To your friends, it will mean nothing. To the people who planned it, it will mean everything."

I nodded. "Okay."

"There is one more thing. I hope I am correct in thinking that you will go directly home from Sicily, that you are not returning to Bologna?"

The back of my neck prickled. Since coming there, I had been beaten up by thugs and run down by a car; I had very nearly been blown up; I had been told that things would be better if I were dead, or failing that, if I could at least have the good grace to act as if I were. Now I was being given the carabinieri version of a get-out-of-town-by-sunset-and-don't-come-back speech.

"Are you telling me not to come back here?" I said hotly.

"I merely ask the question. You will admit my work has not been made simpler by your presence."

It was hard to argue with that. "There aren't any direct flights from Sicily to Seattle," I told him. "I'm coming back Sunday night at ten o'clock and I'm getting the first plane Monday morning—six-thirty, I think. I've already booked a room for Sunday night at the Europa. They're holding the rest of my luggage." I didn't feel I had to tell him about Anne and Amsterdam.

"You arrive at ten at night and you leave at six-thirty the next morning?"

"Yes," I said. "You have to admit, even I couldn't screw things up too much in that amount of time." You wouldn't guess it, but I was feeling pretty surly.

He nodded and rose. "That will be acceptable. If you make your statement to Captain Lepido now, you can still be on the noon plane."

"Fine." God forbid that my continued existence in Bologna should complicate his life any more than necessary.

As we were going out the door he put a hand on my arm. "A word of advice?"

I paused.

"When you get your luggage from the Europa. . . ?"

"Yes?"

"Look inside."