City of Fear

33

Dario Sordi had never seen the Salone Dei Corazzieri look more magnificent. Beneath Agostino Tassi’s fresco Allegoria della Gloria, before a gathering of the world’s most powerful men, and one or two women too, a string quartet played Haydn’s Sunrise, a bright, optimistic piece that failed to match the president’s mood.

So, after introductions and polite, brief conversations, Sordi contented himself with staying at the periphery of proceedings, chatting with those he found more interesting: waiters and musicians, security personnel and household staff. When they were busy, he watched his guests mingling, shaking hands, talking in the guarded way politicians did, feeling, for his own part, that he had at least performed his duty, even if he’d learned little in the process. Sordi was head of state: No one shared confidences with a figurehead.

He was depressed to see the prime minister walking toward him bearing a glass of what appeared to be vino santo and a plate full of Tuscan cookies and sweets.

“I’ve eaten my fill, thank you,” Sordi said firmly when the man joined him.

Campagnolo jammed a couple of tiny stuffed figs into his mouth. “I wasn’t bringing this for you. I don’t wait tables anymore.”

Before Ugo Campagnolo entered the world of television, he had worked in a tourist camp in Sardinia. In the early days of his political career, this was frequently mentioned in the press, though now that much of the media had shifted to Campagnolo’s camp, the story was less well known. Nor did anyone repeat another tale from those times, of how he had bought the entire tourist camp when he came into money, abruptly firing every manager with whom he had fallen out. Most were in that category, and, in Sardinia, where work was scarce, they did not find new jobs easily.

“So …?” Campagnolo asked. “It was a good evening, don’t you think?”

Sordi felt his blood run cold. “We’re making merry in a velvet prison. Out there,” the president indicated beyond the salon’s shuttered windows, “the city is dead. Empty streets. People sitting in their homes wondering what next outrage will come their way. And you …” He scowled as Campagnolo swigged back his wine and held out the glass without saying a word, waiting for someone to come and fill it. “… you don’t seem to give a damn.”

A dark anger rose in the prime minister’s beady eyes. He watched the waiter depart before answering.

“Never say a thing like that in public. I will crucify you. Already the people out there blame you more than they blame me. You took responsibility.” He waved his hand, as if this were a small matter. “Besides, all will be well. Trust me. In a little while, this will simply be a bad memory. Petrakis is a madman. We will have him before long. Rome will go back to being Rome. In three weeks, everything will be forgotten. The public have short memories, thank God.”

“I doubt the parents of that poor Polish girl or Giovanni Batisti’s widow would agree. By the way, I enjoyed your visit to the Trevi Fountain.” It was an excruciating moment: Campagnolo wandering around the rubble and the stones, still soaked in fake blood, shaking his head, hugging the survivors, eyes moist with tears. “You never miss an opportunity, do you?”

“I’m a politician. What do you expect?”

Dario Sordi wondered when he could make his excuses and retire to the quarters he occupied in the palace, leaving the guests to depart in their armored convoys, tracking through a ghostly city. His own rooms were magnificent, fit for a pope, and quite lacking in all of the attributes — small personal items, a fragrance, a long-cherished view — he associated with the word home. He longed for the modest two-bedroom apartment near the Piazza Navona that he’d shared with his late wife for nearly forty years. Though Nic Costa didn’t remember, he had slept there for a few nights as a child, when his parents were going through one of their difficult patches. The Sordis, if only for a few brief days, had discovered what it was like to be parents, something fate had denied them. Memories of that nature were irreplaceable. Next to them even the hidden microphones that the secret service had placed in their bedroom seemed no more than minor inconveniences, like mosquitoes in summer or the occasional stray intrusion of a mouse.

The past few nights in the elaborate apartment in the Quirinale, Sordi had slept badly. His nightmares had been relentless. One in particular, in which he was back in the Via Rasella, little more than a child, gun in hand, in front of the two young German soldiers, ready to shoot, but unable to pull the trigger.

In the nightmare one of the Nazis kept bending down to ask, “So you’re a coward now, boy, are you? A little late for us, isn’t it?”

“You know Palombo’s people still answer to you,” Sordi said with a sigh. “This is a charade. As you said yourself, I have simply deprived you of the culpability. You should be grateful.”

The prime minister glowered at him. “You stole away my powers.”

It was a ridiculous charge, one that grew more false by the day. Only that morning, Sordi had reviewed the list of new appointments to the judiciary. It was an open secret that they were, almost to a man and woman, Campagnolo’s creatures. The same steady process had been occurring in the police and the civil service and, thanks to the prime minister’s friends in the corporate world, throughout the media. Campagnolo was ruthlessly building himself a power base throughout the nation.

“No, Ugo. I merely borrowed one or two of your powers, for a little while, and for the best of reasons. We need the administration to survive. Not necessarily yours, of course. But we need some authority. A process in which people can believe. A president is just one man. He can easily be replaced. A system of government …” Dario Sordi found he was unable to stifle a brief, wry smile. “It’s ridiculous. We are Romans. We’ve been trying to solve this riddle — how does, how should, one govern? — for so long. Two millennia or more. Still the answers elude us, and we have failed our people so often they begin to despair. If I can avoid one more scandal, one more collapse in public confidence …”

“Poor Dario,” Campagnolo declared as his gaze swept the room. “You speak so beautifully. You’re so clever. Yet you miss the obvious. No one wants to be governed by intellectuals. It makes people feel inferior. They want one of their own. An honest man …” His face creased in a showman’s smile. “It was a lonely and pointless talent that led you here.”

Sordi nodded. “I believe you may be right, Ugo.”

The prime minister’s arm extended to the glorious frescoes. “This place will suit me one day. The art — it makes me feel at home. At one with those who commissioned it, and those who executed it. Politics is an art too. Sometimes highbrow. Sometimes low. Mainly the latter. Some are better at it than others.”

“Do you have a favorite?” Sordi asked out of genuine interest. “Among the paintings?”

“All are my favorites!” He indicated the Allegory of Glory. “That one in particular. It’s wonderful. To be able to paint like that …”

“Agostino Tassi,” Sordi said, recalling the delightful hours he had spent walking the palace in the company of the pleasant and attractive female curator of paintings. “He lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, one more follower in the footsteps of Caravaggio. Agostino collaborated with Orazio Gentileschi.”

“Never heard of them.”

“A shame. Agostino was like so many of his peers, a talented though damaged man. He raped Gentileschi’s daughter, Artemisia, another gifted painter.”

The prime minister became interested. “Artists, eh? What do you expect?”

“When the young woman complained, she was herself taken into custody. The authorities … our predecessors … examined her physically. Internally, and quite brutally. Then they tortured the girl by crushing her fingers. A peculiarly cruel torment for a painter, I think.”

“Women …” Campagnolo muttered. “What happened?”

“Agostino went to jail briefly. Afterwards Artemisia became celebrated for painting, repeatedly, the same subject. An Old Testament scene. Judith decapitating the infidel Holofernes — a woman’s revenge on a lustful man. They’re spectacular canvases. If you compare the one in the Uffizi with Caravaggio’s similar work in the Barberini here … There’s something personal in them, some fierce female anger that a man — even a genius like Caravaggio — could never reproduce. You would see this instantly.” He thought of Campagnolo’s reputation as a serial womanizer. “Especially you.”

Campagnolo sniffed and looked back at the crowd. “She got something out of it, then? You make a good tour guide, Dario. If you’re still breathing when I move into this place, you can have a job showing around the visitors.”

Then he raised his empty glass, said “Ciao,” and, to Sordi’s relief, departed.

The president walked outside, down the steps into the garden, to the stone bench beneath the wicker canopy by the side of Hermes, the place where he’d spoken to Nic Costa the day before. It felt like an eternity ago. This was one part of the Quirinale that Dario Sordi loved. Early each evening, work permitting, he retired here and drank a single cup of Earl Grey tea, alone with his thoughts and a plate of special cookies he had sent from England — ones that, in spite of their name, Garibaldi, were unavailable in Italy.

When he first moved into the palace, in an early flush of enthusiasm, he had harbored a fantasy about starting his own kitchen garden on the grounds, one he could oversee himself, growing the Roman vegetables of his youth: artichokes and agretti and the wild chicory he had once gathered in the suburbs near the Porta San Sebastiano during the war, when food was scarce. The taste, sharp and bitter, remained with him still, as did the joy with which his meager pickings, little more than scraps of weed, were received when he brought them home. To have raised this simple vegetable in the gardens of the Quirinale would have brought a smile to the faces of his parents. The same straggly plant grew near the Ardeatine Caves where Sordi’s father and uncle had been among those slaughtered by the Nazis after the attack in the Via Rasella. Its green leaves seemed to struggle from the brown earth in defiance of the climate and the poorness of the soil. Sordi liked this persistence against the odds, though perhaps its proletarian plainness would have looked out of place in the grandiose avenues of a palace.

As he lit a furtive cigarette, a shape moved in the darkness.

“Who is it?” Sordi demanded. “Show yourself.”

Fabio Ranieri emerged from the shadows. “I’m sorry, sir. I was taking another look around. It is my job, you know.”

Ranieri stepped into the light. He was a tall, strong man and his face, handsome and sincere, was a welcome sight.

“We’re here to look after you,” the Corazzieri captain told him. “Not”—he nodded back toward the brilliantly lit palace—“them. I couldn’t help but hear some of the things that bastard Campagnolo was saying. Lord knows he makes enough noise for ten.”

“No,” Sordi scolded him gently. “I will not listen to another word. The men and women in that building are more important than an old wreck like me. Your care is for the position, not the person. Whether you respect Ugo Campagnolo or not, at least respect what he represents — the aspirations of several million of your fellow countrymen.”

Ranieri cleared his throat and stared at the ground.

“Oh dear,” Sordi muttered, with genuine regret. “Things must be bad if we’re beginning to argue.”

“I hate seeing Rome like this. While they”—another angry glance at the Quirinale—“feast like Nero watching our city burn.”

“Bad history. That never happened. Nero wasn’t even here at the time, or so I was always taught.” Sordi stepped forward, keen to see the captain’s face. “Listen to me, Fabio. I will not be here forever. When I go, you must work with the people who come after me. Whoever they are, and your part in their choice is no greater or less than that of any other Italian.”

“I am a captain of the Corazzieri,” Ranieri replied, bowing his head slightly. “My job is to protect the president.”

“And you do it very well. Any news?”

“Nothing.” He thought for a moment, then added, “Except that young Costa called. I told him you were busy.”

“What did he want?”

“He was in Tarquinia. He wanted to know where I was twenty years ago. Apart from that, I’m not sure he knew himself.”

“He must have his reasons. The cell phone, please.”

Ranieri handed him the private mobile that he had organized at Sordi’s request. The president stumbled over the buttons, feeling foolish.

“I don’t remember the number.”

“Here …”

Ranieri dialed, then handed the phone back. Sordi put the thing to his ear, and as he did so a strong female voice said, “Dígame.”

Dario Sordi replied, automatically, “I fear you’re in Italy, not Spain, signora, and I have misdialed. My apologies. Unless you have Sovrintendente Costa with you?”

He waited.

“Signora? Signora …?”

34

They’d needed a drink after the strange meeting in the restaurant with Peroni’s mobster pal. Falcone chose the location, which was why they were in the Via della Croce, drinking Falanghina in the Antica Enoteca, staring at some of the best cold food in Rome, trying to work up an appetite.

The inspector had decided he didn’t want to walk all the way from San Giovanni. Instead he had tried to drive them home in his Lancia. Four armed carabinieri turned them back at the barricade by the Colosseum, glancing at their police IDs, then laughing. That did nothing to improve Falcone’s temper. Now the inspector’s sleek car was abandoned halfway up the sidewalk of a side street on the opposite side of the Corso, near the Mausoleum of Augustus, in the shadow of an ugly fascist-era marble office building. Rome’s shaky traffic-management system had collapsed under the pressure of the street closures and the panic to get out into the suburbs. Much of the centro storico was deserted, isolated by a multitude of barricades. Beyond them, traffic was snarled in every direction.

The old wine bar should have been bursting with people fighting to get to the counter, yelling for their glasses of good Italian wine from Tuscany and Puglia, Sicily and the Veneto, picking at plates of food. Instead, there were just two couples in the place. The waiters looked bored and a little scared. Peroni had chosen the dishes automatically, his favorites whenever they came here. Three generous plates, one of roast pork with prunes, a second covered with cheese, and a third of antipasti, sat on the bar, untouched.

“Was that a good day?” Teresa Lupo asked. “As far as the work is concerned, I mean.”

Falcone scowled and held the Falanghina up to the light. It was perfect: cold and fragrant. “I’ve known better. If it weren’t for your assistant and the Englishwoman …”

“Silvio and Elizabeth are quite a team,” she agreed. “I hope they manage to get some sleep. There’s a limit to how much a computer can tell you.”

The two men stared at her.

“I know, I know!” she objected. “I’m learning, aren’t I? I’d like to think our trip to the Villa Giulia provided a little useful intelligence.”

“I suppose so.…” Falcone looked thoroughly miserable. She found herself feeling sorry for this solitary, difficult man. The inspector hated being excluded from the center of events. More than anything, he detested the idea of losing. All the men she’d come to admire, and in some ways love, did. It was a peculiarly damaged form of heroism on their part.

“Leo?” Teresa asked, carefully. “There’s something I need to get clear in my mind.”

“Ask away,” he responded.

“Our new friend Toni. Walking out like that just because I asked him about the Blue Demon.”

“What about it?” There was a canny look in his eye.

“Well, why? It’s not as if it’s a secret that they’re the people we’re looking for. Why did he suddenly get so touchy?”

“I didn’t understand that, either,” Peroni began, leaning forward. “It was as if it meant something different to him.”

Falcone’s phone bleated. He glanced at it, then turned the handset to face them. It was a short text, one that came, the screen indicated, from the private cell phone of Mirko Oliva. It read, simply: They’re here.

“Is that it?” Peroni asked Falcone. “Where are Nic and those kids now, anyway?”

“Tarquinia,” Falcone told him. “They should be at the hotel by now. I told Nic to do nothing but ask questions. I told him …”

Teresa walked outside, muttering something about indecision and men.

It was still hot. The street was empty. There ought to have been late-night shoppers and couples going out for dinner, arm in arm, laughing. Instead, two carabinieri wandered past cradling automatic weapons, their chests enveloped in heavy bulletproof jackets. They stared hard at a pair of forlorn street musicians, one with an accordion, the other with a trumpet, who were counting their few coins in the light of the fashion store on the far side of the street.

Teresa dialed Nic’s number. The phone rang for a long time before the automatic answer-message kicked in. The same thing happened with Rosa Prabakaran’s phone, and Mirko Oliva’s.

“We can ask someone in Tarquinia to go looking,” Peroni suggested, suddenly at her side. Falcone stood beside him.

“Look where?” Falcone asked.

Teresa called Silvio Di Capua. They had an arrangement with the phone companies. When necessary they could try to track down the location of the cell from which a call was made. It was inexact. But it was something.

Peroni listened and when she was finished asked, “When will they be back with an answer?”

“An hour. Maybe more.” She stared at Falcone. “It’s going to take us longer than that to get there, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer immediately. She knew why. Nic wasn’t supposed to be near Tarquinia.

“Are you going to tell our people in Tarquinia or not?” she asked.

“Tell them what?” Falcone demanded. “That we’ve had a single obscure text message from a young and inexperienced police officer who’s somewhere he doesn’t belong?”

Peroni shrugged. “It’s not like Nic to be out of touch like this. Or Rosa.”

“I know that,” Falcone replied, exasperated. “I also know what the cost will be to them if Palombo finds out where they’ve been. I don’t care about my career. Is it worth risking theirs for two words on a phone?”

“There’s only one way to find out, Leo,” Peroni said.

Falcone didn’t answer the big ugly cop. They followed as he strode to his Lancia on the other side of the Corso.

It was the worst journey out of Rome Teresa had ever known. The main route to the coast was closed. So was the Autostrada Azzurra, which should have been the obvious way north, past the airport’s silent runways.

Falcone fought and argued his way through traffic jams and road checks until they found the Via Aurelia, and followed it until they began to hug the shoreline, past the old Etruscan towns of Ladispoli and Cerveteri, and the choked modern port of Civitavecchia, which took almost an hour to navigate. It was as if everyone wanted to hide, to get home, get indoors, try to believe that safety lay in being outside Rome, behind the walls of one’s own house, joined to the world outside by nothing more than a TV set and a phone line.

Driving through these dead, empty towns and villages, Teresa felt as if she were entering a wasteland.

It was almost a comfort when, as they finally navigated Civitavecchia and the road turned inland, away from the sea, toward Tarquinia, a sign appeared that there was someone alive in the night.

They stopped at a rest area. Peroni needed it. From somewhere over the steady roll of the waves came the noise of an engine. A fishing boat trawling for a catch, she guessed, though it sounded louder than she might have expected, and more highly pitched, and the source of the noise seemed to come as much from the sky as the dark, shifting waters of the Tyrrhenian.

35

The night reminded him of the east: bright and clear, with a luminous moon stuck onto a sky punctured by a million starry pinpricks. The same sky he’d watched for two decades on the run, always waiting, always thinking. Of home and the Blue Demon, of his parents, and what had happened. Lives that had been diverted from their natural courses, turned by events toward unexpected, unforeseen paths.

For twenty years Andrea Petrakis had dreamed of his return to the place of his birth. Not Italy, but Etruria, a place of freedom, a land where one’s future was mapped out by the strength of human will, where everything was possible for those who dared. His father had taught him that it was his legacy, a destiny deep within the blood. He learned how the Greeks prefigured the Romans, establishing a world built on individual freedom, power from a man’s personal fortitude, not birth or position or luck. How the Greeks had crossed the Ionian Sea, colonized the south, the Magna Graecia of modern Sicily, Apulia, and Calabria, home to Pythagoras, an outpost of Athens in Italy. This was the base from which the men of Greece spread north, occupying the land from Naples to the Po, forging the Etruscan identity, bringing philosophy and art, politics and culture, to the primitive tribes that lived there, giving meaning to their little lives. Until Rome grew ever stronger and, in the Pyrrhic War, might defeated right. The Greeks fell everywhere, becoming little more than slaves to the newer, duller, more mundane civilization they had themselves created. Zeus was toppled by an army of bureaucrats and mediocrities, men whose first response upon finding themselves in the foothills of Olympus was to pillage everything that went before.

When he was ten years old, he read Virgil’s paean to Arcadia, an homage to a lost pastoral Greek ideal written for a Roman emperor, Augustus, who himself rued the disappearance of the past. Virgil was an Etruscan too, they said, and Andrea Petrakis didn’t doubt it for a moment.

His father had first taken him to see the Blue Demon not long afterwards. The tomb hidden in the woods seemed like a sanctuary, somewhere holy. Even fleeing the NATO troops in Afghanistan, hiding out in the mountains, in fear for his life, Petrakis could never forget the fire burning in the eyes of the devil who tore apart the Etruscans as they danced and made love on their way to eternity. Or what the creature truly stood for, the real identity of the beast.

Something caught his attention and dragged him back to the present. The headlights of a car flickered through the blackness below his little plane as it cruised a precise two hundred and fifty feet above the dark, gleaming waters north of Civitavecchia. Petrakis responded immediately; he gunned the Rotax to feed some power into a sharp turn to the right.

The port was busy. There would be radar and shipping, the coast guard and other, more shadowy security services. In Afghanistan he had sought intelligence during the planning stages, when he was determined that every eventuality must be considered, every possible twist in the scheme dealt with. It was easy in the modern world, their world, to discover the facts. They could scarcely resist boasting about them, on the Web, through sites he could find with a satellite connection on his laptop, even in a poppy farmer’s tent in the Helmand Valley. Marine ground-radar scanned up to a hundred feet above the sea. The active aviation systems of Fiumicino and Ciampino would detect anything above five hundred, whether it carried a transponder or not. There was a slender gap of invisibility between the two, a layer of darkness into which his tiny microlight could flit undetected.

With his flimsy machine he was able to take off and land from a short, hidden country strip, to evade their radar, to fly slowly down the coastline, south toward Rome, cruising at a modest sixty knots, the craft trimmed out and kept straight and level by the cheap, simple autopilot.

On the passenger seat and in the small space in the rear of the cockpit lay as much explosive from the Etruscan tomb as the weight and balance limits of the plane would allow. Strapped to his back, bulky and uncomfortable, was a two-thousand-dollar BASE ram-air parachute secured from a specialist supplier in Milan, delivered to the villa the week before.

Petrakis had undergone illicit training in BASE jumping at a small airfield near Karachi. A rogue member of the Pakistani air force had taken him aloft three times to teach him the technique, on each occasion reducing the height from which they exited the jump plane. This was no ordinary system. The rectangular chute was designed to cope with low-altitude jumps that were impossible for the conventional skydiver.

There was no room for error, no secondary canopy that could be deployed in the event of failure. These were the devices that BASE jumpers used to leap from buildings and cliff tops. They could function in a descent of five hundred feet or less, a distance a man in free fall would cover in fewer than six seconds.

He thought of the Blue Demon, and the legacy in his blood. Then Petrakis placed his hand on his back and felt the straps there.

The moon was bright and serene, its rippled reflection lying on the surface of the gentle waves as if beached there. Petrakis watched as the mouth of the Tiber approached.

There was not a plane in the sky. The city of Fiumicino, twenty-five kilometers inland, marked by a halo of light, was cut off.

He followed the coast as it turned southeast, marking fifteen kilometers, still at the same height, waiting for the moment. Once he had passed the long, straight road of Via Cristoforo Colombo, named after one more Italian pirate, he was clear. This was the final route from the nearest shore back to Rome. There was nothing after that but flat, empty farmland, all the way to the second airport, Ciampino, where Air Force One and the private jets of most of the visiting G8 leaders sat on the asphalt.

When the marker beeped on the GPS, he turned, setting the final destination of the plane: the apron at Ciampino, directly in front of the terminal building. Latitude 41°48’4.76″N, longitude 12°35’21.49″E. He pictured the destination in his head as he locked the cheap autopilot to the handheld GPS unit.

The modern world was, he decided, like ancient Rome in many ways. It invented the means of its own destruction, in the name of science and knowledge and prosperity, blinded to the threat of its own arrogance. Twenty years before, when he’d learned to fly in a battered old Cessna 152, nothing like this existed. No power on earth would have allowed him to penetrate to the inner sanctum of the state in the way he now planned.

Five kilometers short of Ciampino, the airfield clearly visible ahead, outlined by runway lights, Andrea Petrakis unfastened his pilot’s harness. He took out his second GPS unit, a tiny handheld model meant for walkers. It had long since seized the position. He waited for the waypoint he’d agreed upon with Deniz Nesin and Anna Ybarra before they left Tarquinia: the long, perfectly straight line of the old Appian Way, running almost parallel to Ciampino’s runway, just a kilometer short of the field.

He looked down. A car was there, where it was supposed to be. He watched as it flashed its headlights close to the circular tower of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, the monument’s silhouette clear in the moonlit night.

Petrakis brought the plane up to six hundred feet, aware that at any moment, somewhere in the control room of Ciampino, an air traffic control officer would notice a blip on the radar screen.

It was too late for them to do anything. Even if a military fighter was in the area, it would now have little more than a minute in which to act. No jet could maneuver onto a previously unseen target in such time. They worked the way they had always worked, on the basis that the opposing parties fought by the same rules.

He’d calculated the glide path, the rate of descent. He knew the simple autopilot was working as intended. The laws of physics applied to everyone, equally. Petrakis trimmed the plane down into a steady, accelerating descent — one that would soon rise to a hundred knots or more — checked that the autopilot was locked on the GPS coordinates, then ripped open the flimsy door of the plane and half fell, half leaped out into the black fury of the night.

36

There was a voice somewhere. Female, tremulous, familiar. It spoke his name. Marooned somewhere between wakefulness and dream, he wanted to turn toward the source of the sound.

“Nic …” it said more insistently.

A hand shook his shoulder. Costa found himself being turned upright. He didn’t know where he was. Then the memories flooded back, full of pain and despair. Rosa Prabakaran was staring at him, bleary-eyed, exhausted, frightened.

He said the first words that came into his hurting head. “Why are we still alive?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. Then, as if she hated to say the words, she added, glancing backwards, to some unseen place behind him, “Mirko isn’t.”

Costa dragged himself upright, fighting the crashing stab of hurt the effort brought on. Someone had slugged him hard on the back of the skull. Someone …

Memories. A gun fired close to Rosa. Andrea Petrakis — a man who, they assumed, was working as part of a lone hit team — had taken an incoming phone call, one that had enraged him much more than the presence of three police officers invading his private lair. These things were important, though at that moment Costa lacked the energy and the intelligence to understand why.

He walked over to look at the motionless figure visible beneath the intense, prurient moon. The young police officer’s corpse lay where Petrakis had shot him, stretched on the dry summer grass, arms akimbo, face bloodied and blank. In death he looked like a teenager.

Rosa was by Costa’s side. “They took the car. They took everything. What do we do?”

He looked up at the sky, thinking. “Are you all right?” he asked her.

“My head hurts.”

He stepped forward so that the silver light fell on her face and said, “Show me.”

She turned. He reached forward and touched a matted patch of fine hair behind one ear.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry. It’s not so bad. They …” He fought to remember those last moments. One recollection stood out. “I thought they’d shot you.”

“He fired into the ground. Then they struck me. I was too scared to do anything. I couldn’t even find the courage to run. Then …” Her voice broke. “Mirko … how could someone do that? As if he didn’t really matter?”

“He didn’t,” Costa answered. Mirko Oliva’s life carried no more meaning than that of the golden-haired young man whose body had been riddled with bullets in the Via Rasella. Petrakis had a mission. Nothing would stand in its way.

Yet, somehow, they had survived.

He checked his jacket. Nothing. No weapon. Not even a wallet. His police cell phone was gone. So was the tiny phone Dario Sordi had given him.

“Do we have anything else?” he asked Rosa.

“Just this.” She had a flashlight in her hand. “It was Mirko’s, I think. He must have dropped it.”

“Stay here.”

“You’re leaving me?” she asked, outraged.

“I’m going back into the tomb. Do you want to come? It may be a waste of time. Your choice.”

She didn’t blink. Rosa Prabakaran said, “I’ll come.”

The way seemed shorter the second time around. He didn’t look at the paintings on the wall, in the large chamber or the small. He walked on, feeling Rosa’s arm touching his for safety, for comfort.

When they got to the corpse slumped in the corner, in the room of the Blue Demon, the rats scurried away once more.

Costa bent to look at the man. He’d been shot through the mouth and the chest. It was the same kind of death that had been delivered to Mirko Oliva. Sudden, deliberate, unthinking. The dead man wore a cheap dark suit and a white shirt, now stained with gore, open at the collar.

Costa reached inside his jacket and recovered a wallet. There was a little money and an ID card. It said he was a Greek national called Stefan Kyriakis.

In the other pocket was a very new-looking cell phone. Costa glanced at Rosa as he pushed the On button.

“Wish us luck,” he said.

A light came on the screen. Almost immediately the low battery warning began to bleep.

Together, they got back up the wooden steps as quickly as they could. Beneath the Mediterranean moon, by the corpse of his young colleague, Costa found the weakest of signals.

He called Falcone. The inspector’s familiar, bad-tempered voice barked, “Pronto.”

“Petrakis found us,” Costa said. “They killed Mirko Oliva.”

“And you?” Falcone demanded.

“We’ll live.”

“Where are you?”

Costa told him as best he could.

“This is not what I asked you …” Falcone began.

“I’m sorry. You need to alert Palombo. You need to bring in everyone you can. They’re here, Leo. Not Rome. Here. This is …” He thought of the Blue Demon in the earth beneath his feet. “… their home. Where they came from. What made them.”

He could hear talking in the background. Then Falcone said, “I somehow doubt that. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Five …?”

“Stay where you are. Don’t—”

The last milliamp of power in the phone he’d found on the corpse in the Blue Demon’s tomb expired. The thing fell silent in Costa’s fingers.

37

It took them longer than anyone expected to locate the tomb in the parched grass knoll in the woods. An hour perhaps, even more. Costa found it difficult to speak when they arrived, but he answered the inspector’s questions evenly. Teresa had her arms around Rosa, who wept openly. Peroni stood over the young officer’s body, grim-faced, furious.

After listening to what Costa had to say, Falcone took a flashlight and went down into the tomb. The rest of them waited. Costa didn’t want to see that face on the wall again.

When the inspector came out again, he demanded, “Who is he?”

Costa took out the wallet and the ID card he’d found. “Stefan Kyriakis.”

“No, Nic,” Falcone insisted. “Who is he?” He looked close to losing control. “Who are any of them? The Blue Demon? Jesus …”

“I don’t understand,” Costa replied weakly.

He felt faint. He needed food. And sleep.

“We’re not supposed to,” Peroni interjected. “We’re not supposed to understand any of—”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

Something had arrived in the night sky, something so large it began to block out the moon. The thing wasn’t alone.

The air was rent by the slashing of vast rotor blades. Hulking black shapes descended around them, landing on the spare flat ground by the road. Men swarmed from their bellies, bright, hard beams of light emerging from their heads, weapons tight in their arms.

A voice barked through a bullhorn.

Get down on the ground. Arms outstretched. Don’t move.

Falcone didn’t budge an inch. He glared into their bright beams as if he could stare them down with a single glance.

“We’d best do as they say, Leo,” Costa murmured, and put a firm hand on his inspector’s arm, pushing him down to the hard, dry earth.

38

In the snatched seconds available to Andrea Petrakis between tumbling out of the microlight and opening his ram-chute, he was able to orient himself and aim squarely for the target area: the large patch of open grassland next to the tomb of Cecilia Metella.

He’d briefed Deniz Nesin and Anna Ybarra thoroughly. Their flashlights were clearly visible, sweeping to make two arcs that met at the safest, flattest point of the zone. Petrakis scarcely needed them. The moon was so bright it was like descending under floodlights. His chute opened with perfect precision at four hundred feet above the ground. Petrakis gripped the stays, taking the strain as the deployment fought the wind beneath the fabric and briefly dragged him upward once again.

For a few delicious moments he found himself suspended in the hot summer air, seemingly free of the perpetual drag of gravity. The lights of Ciampino glittered beyond the line of lamps on the highway. A bird — an owl, perhaps — squawked somewhere near his head, as if resenting the intrusion of man into its private world.

Then, slowly, he began to fall earthward, into the heart of the ranging beams of light below.

The glittering horizon was still visible when the tiny plane, loaded with explosive, hit the apron of the airport. Just a little more than a kilometer away, the sky burst into flame. It was as if some deadly hothouse flower had suddenly shot blooming from the earth, Petrakis thought.

He watched and laughed and clung to the chute stays all the way down. It was a gamble. Everything was. There was no way of knowing the precise alignment of the aircraft parked outside the terminal, no certain scheme to ensure one was hit. The little plane could as easily crash into bare asphalt, causing minor damage and a little inconvenience. Yet, watching the searing orange petals of gasoline fire rise into the night sky of Ciampino, he knew immediately this had not occurred. Guided by the amateurish autopilot, the microlight had hit home like a makeshift guided missile, finding the enemy, igniting the combustible fuel in the belly of some grounded leviathan on the apron.

The noise of the explosion came after the beautiful angry flames. Then another, and a third.

At that point the horizon disappeared and Petrakis found himself fighting to regain control of his descent. The ground loomed up, with a shocking swiftness. He bent his legs, crouching for impact. Their lights pinned him to the sky, blinding him. He rolled. The earth slammed into his shoulder, sending him tumbling, spinning like a child’s top.

He wondered if something might break. If the whole escapade might come to nothing more than a fractured bone.

Then the world ceased turning. He found himself on his back, staring up at the sky, the ram-chute wrapped around him like a clumsy shroud. His entire body hurt. But as he gingerly tried to move his limbs, he realized it was a familiar pain, that of nothing more than a bad fall.

By the time the two of them arrived — out of breath, panting, looking at him in amazement — he was on his feet. The sky above the gently sloping hill that led to Ciampino was now a livid line of orange and red. They could hear the secondary explosions bursting in the unseen distance. The stench of burning gasoline was faintly noticeable over the scents of the Appian Way: grass and wild herbs.

“Brother,” Deniz Nesin said, and came forward to embrace him.

Anna Ybarra just stood there.

“Congratulations,” she said quietly.

“Congratulations? Congratulations?” Deniz was ecstatic. He raised his arms to the glowing sky. “This is a wonder, brother. We have struck them deep in the heart. We have brought them the fruits of jihad. They know fear now. They know terror. They know what we have endured all these years.” He thumped his chest with his fist. “We — all of us.”

Petrakis laughed and wondered what was really happening at the airport, how much damage he had truly caused.

“It was just a plane and some explosive, Deniz. None of them were there. No presidents. No politicians. They’re all in Rome. If we have killed anyone, it was a few cleaners and security guards. A mechanic, perhaps, and a couple of cops.”

Cops. The memory of what had happened in the tomb of the Blue Demon refused to leave him. From that moment forward he would, he knew, have to improvise everything on his own. To take unexpected risks, and not listen to them anymore. To decide, swiftly, without compunction, which path to take.

“It’s a beginning,” Deniz told him. “A great one. See …” He indicated the bright orange sky behind them. The smell of burning fuel was beginning to overwhelm everything else, and behind it they could hear the crackling of distant fires and the wailing of sirens. “Tomorrow we bring them something better. Tomorrow—”

“They knew,” Petrakis cut in. “How else did the cops get there?”

Anna Ybarra and Deniz Nesin didn’t answer. Petrakis felt a flicker of anger.

“The Kenyan,” Deniz said. “The bastard must have told them.”

Petrakis shuffled off the parachute. “Joseph never knew about the tomb, Deniz. Only you and I did. We took delivery of the explosives there. Remember?”

The woman stepped back, looking at the ground.

There was an expression on the Turk’s face Petrakis had seen only once before. The day in Helmand he had, out of nothing more than pure curiosity, pushed them too far in training.

“What are you saying?” Deniz demanded. “The Kenyan could have followed us. And so,” he nodded at the woman, “could she. Anyone might have seen …”

Petrakis took him by the arm. “All this is true. And yet …”

He put his hand inside his light summer jacket. The weapon was there, in its holster. “I must ask myself, Deniz. Are these things possible?”

“No!” the Turk yelled. “Do not say this. Not even in jest. Do not …”

Andrea Petrakis wound his hand around Deniz’s tanned, bony skull and pressed the weapon into the man’s temple. Anna Ybarra took another two steps away from them. Her hands were by her sides, her eyes downcast, seeing nothing.

“Even if I’m wrong,” Petrakis said calmly. “If … I must ask myself this, Deniz. What use are you now? Everything has changed. There is no need for your … toys … which, if I’m candid, are your solitary skill.”

He was a commander. A general. He had decisions to make, challenges to face.

“I beg you,” Deniz Nesin said, squirming in his grip. “I would not betray you, Andrea. Ever—”

“Possibly.”

“Ever …”

There was a fresh explosion somewhere off in the distance. It was a good night. There was no guarantee their luck would continue.

“Then I shall be forced to apologize in Paradise,” Petrakis murmured.

He fired — a single shot was all it took.

She watched, trembling as the Turk fell, briefly thrashing, to the ground.

Anna Ybarra had her own weapon in her hand, pointed, half shaking, in his direction.

“You won’t kill me,” she said in a tremulous voice.

It seemed a ridiculous statement. Petrakis stood motionless, studying her.

“Of course not. I need you. As you need me. We shall drive to Ciampino and see what we can. Then I shall show you our new home.” He shrugged. “It’s not so magnificent as Tarquinia, I’m afraid. But we won’t be there long.”

Her gun went down. She still refused to look at the body of the Turk.

Andrea Petrakis smiled and said, “Good. Did you bring some food, like I asked? I’m starved.”

39

They were facedown on the earth, feeling the downdraft of the helicopter blades cutting slowly through the night air. Beyond them, teams of hooded, armed men spread through the area around the tomb.

Costa heard a familiar voice, one he recognized instantly, though he had heard it only once before.

Luca Palombo, the head Ministry of the Interior spook, was storming toward them, speaking loudly on the phone, distracted, it seemed, by events that — from his tone — were much worse than those he had somehow come to discover out in the wilds of the Maremma.

Costa felt Rosa’s hand tighten on his arm, as if she were willing him to be ready for something.

“Get up,” Palombo ordered. “Get up.”

Falcone was first to his feet. Palombo listened to something on the phone, scowled, then dropped it into his pocket.

“How did you get here?” he demanded.

“It’s called police work,” the old inspector answered. “How did you—”

“I ask the questions. Not answer them. How did you find this place?”

Costa rose and stood next to his inspector. “We were following up on a report that someone had been seen near the tomb of the Blue Demon. It was routine.”

“Here?” Palombo bellowed. “In Tarquinia? You heard my orders. You’re supposed to be in Rome, dealing with the kind of work you’re fit for. Keeping order. Watching the streets.”

Teresa Lupo said, “The streets are empty. Didn’t you notice? People don’t dare to go out. If they do, they can’t get home. You’ve closed Rome. There’s nothing for us to do there.”

Peroni added calmly, “We’ve got a dead officer here, friend. Don’t push it.”

Palombo glanced at the shape on the earth and said, “I’m sorry. We will deal with him.”

“He was a colleague of ours,” Rosa said, her voice cracking. “We deal with him.”

“Not on this occasion,” Palombo snapped. “What else is here? I need to know now. I don’t have much time.”

“There’s a corpse in the tomb,” Costa said. “Shot. Petrakis had hidden some explosives. Firearms. Munitions. Whether they’re still there …” He held out the phone he’d retrieved from the hall of the Blue Demon. “This was on the dead man.”

Palombo snatched the handset from his fingers, then ordered two of his men to go down below to take a look, while another group took care of the fallen officer.

A couple of the figures in black began lifting Mirko Oliva’s body onto a gurney. There was a commotion near the tomb entrance. Two men had brought the body to the surface.

“I don’t imagine Stefan Kyriakis was his real name,” Costa said quietly.

“I don’t imagine it’s any of your concern,” Palombo retorted.

“What is?” Falcone asked without emotion. “If you’d care to shed any further light on what’s happened here …”

Palombo’s phone was ringing again. He looked at the screen, swore once, then barked into it, “I’ll call when I’m back. We’ll be in Rome within the hour.” A moment of hesitation, listening, then angrily, “No. I don’t know. Do you?”

The conversation ended. The man from the Ministry of the Interior stared at them, his face haggard and weary in the moonlight.

“I will say this once and once only, and I shall expect Esposito to remind you of it when you finally crawl back to the city. Your duty lies in Rome. Nowhere else. It’s confined to the streets. To keeping people safe and the traffic moving. And staying out of my way. The death of your agente is unfortunate, but it will remain secret until I deem otherwise.

The Carabinieri will investigate, not you.”

“He was a police officer!” Peroni roared.

“This is the Carabinieri’s case. You will not mention his death to anyone. You will not inform next of kin or any other party until I allow it, and that will not be for another day at the very least, until the summit is over.” He glared at Costa. “You’re lucky you’re not dead too. If you breach my order, I will, I swear, make very certain that you wish you were. I could throw the whole bunch of you into jail for as long as I damn well feel like.”

“This is not a police state!” Teresa yelled at him. “You can’t just imprison innocent people for no good reason. It’s not—”

“Listen to me! Earlier this evening, Ciampino was bombed. They flew some kind of aircraft filled with explosives straight onto the landing strip. Two aircraft were destroyed. We think there are fatalities. The president has issued the decree. We’re now in a formal state of emergency. With the anti-terrorist laws I have at my disposal …” His face was grim, yet bore the mark of some satisfaction too. “I can do anything I like.” He glanced at the armed men dealing with the body from the tomb. These people aren’t even looking for evidence, Costa thought. It was as if they already knew what had happened.

“So what do you expect of us, sir?” Costa asked Palombo.

“Go back home. Stay inside. Order a pizza. Turn on the TV. If any of you cross my path again, I shall not be so lenient.”

He watched the second gurney make its way to the nearest helicopter.

“Good evening,” Palombo told them, and then followed it.

The machines stirred into life, their rotor blades chopping through the black night air.

As quickly as they came, Palombo’s team were gone — dark, diminishing shapes against the stars, sweeping south toward Rome.

Peroni picked up a flashlight and marched back into the tomb. The big cop came back a minute later, red-faced, livid.

“They didn’t just take the body, Leo. They took everything. The explosives. The weapons. The ammunition. The evidence, for Christ’s sake.”

“Screw them. I can find things,” Teresa told him. “You can’t clean a crime scene in a couple of minutes. Give me time—”

“We don’t have time,” Falcone interrupted. “Palombo knows that. If I bring in a unit …”

The sequence had already run through Costa’s head. They would need to liaise with the local questura. To establish a forensic team. To involve so many people — it would be impossible to keep the case quiet. Palombo knew exactly what he was doing.

“This has been a long night,” Falcone said. “Palombo may be right. We could put you two in a hotel somewhere nearby. Back in Porto Ercole, perhaps. You could stay out of this.”

“I want to go back to Rome,” Rosa said.

Falcone sighed. He murmured, “Nic?”

“Someone can fetch a change of clothes to the apartment. Silvio can take a look at this,” he added.

He pulled the little object from his pocket. He’d managed to extract it while they were on the ground, waiting, wondering what the helicopters might bring.

They looked at the piece of plastic in his hands.

“It’s the SIM from the phone I found in the tomb,” Costa told them. “I don’t think Palombo needs it. Does he?”

40

They left Deniz Nesin in the field where Petrakis had shot him. This was the last day. She understood that now. By fleeing Tarquinia, they had broken some part of a plan she’d never suspected. A scheme that entailed the steady diminution of the team. First Danny, the strange kid who baffled her with his bad English, Russian, and Pashto. Then Joseph Priest, slaughtered in the street after the outrage at the Trevi Fountain, for which he was not truly responsible.

Now the Turk. When her turn came, she wondered, did Petrakis really think he could attempt the final part of the job — the hardest, penetrating directly into the Quirinale itself — all on his own? This seemed impossible. She was, she thought, meant to die, just as he was, in all probability. But their deaths would be at the end, as part of achieving what they came for.

They took the car Deniz had rented at a deserted Hertz depot on the outskirts of Fiumicino and drove up a narrow lane until they joined the main road running directly past the airport, almost parallel with the single runway. It was impossible to get nearer. The police had blocked the highway. Flames still engulfed the horizon. Fire engines and ambulances fought one another to get through the crush of vehicles. Crowds of bystanders and newspaper photographers were out of their cars, on foot, trying to get closer to the scene.

Petrakis turned the car around, retraced their tracks down the little lane to the Appian Way, and pulled into a farm entrance. There he took out his phone, the fancy one Deniz had given him, and called up the RAI mobile news service. There was video footage of a plane in flames. She moved closer to him from the passenger seat, trying to see. On the aircraft’s tail, burned almost beyond recognition, was the Stars and Stripes, and beneath it a number. The charred outline had the bulbous nose of a 747.

“Air Force One?” Anna Ybarra asked.

Petrakis grinned like a schoolkid. The phone said three aircraft ground staff were already confirmed dead. Another five were missing. All Italian. The crew of the plane, and everyone else in the American party, were in the city when the bomb struck.

“The little people have died,” she murmured. “Again.”

Petrakis snapped the phone shut and glared at her. She remembered the way he’d killed Deniz Nesin, and didn’t say anything else.

He turned around, took another lane behind the Via Appia Antica. Somewhere along the way, he pulled off onto a narrow track. She noticed it wasn’t far from a church with a name that rang a bell. Quo Vadis?

Some distant memory rose in her head. It was Latin: Where are you going? She remembered the connection too. Saint Peter fleeing Rome, in fear of crucifixion, only to find a ghostly Jesus waiting for him on the road south, asking this very question. Where?

The track ended. There was a trailer stranded in a field. It was old, small, the kind of thing a tramp might inhabit.

Petrakis parked the car by the side, got out, and unlocked the heavy padlock chain on the door. She followed him inside. There was an electric light system. When the dim bulbs came on, she saw that the place was as tidy as an office. A single bed in the corner. A desk with a computer. A small gas stove, a refrigerator. Petrakis reached inside and immediately found a bottle of champagne there.

She looked at the label: Krug, 1995. From the expression on his face she guessed she was supposed to feel impressed.

“I thought we might need something to drink if we wound up here,” he said, nothing more.

Anna Ybarra glanced at the desk. There was a set of passports there, shuffled like a pack of cards. So many: British, American, European, South African, Australian.

She flicked through them and saw mug shots of herself and Petrakis, pictures taken in Afghanistan. No one else. Not Joseph Priest or Deniz Nesin anywhere.

Three of the passports were sets, made for a couple who would pose as man and wife.

“I have a name already,” Anna Ybarra told him.

“A good general plans for all eventualities,” Petrakis said, watching her. He’d poured the champagne into two cheap glass beakers. The drink was the color of straw. She let him hand her a glass and took a sip. Vintage champagne didn’t taste like anything she’d ever tried before. It made her throat feel a little numb, made her head spin for a moment.

She took one more sip and put the glass down.

“The passports …” she murmured. “My photo. Anyone would think I get out of this alive, Andrea.”

He toasted her with the champagne. “Is there any reason you shouldn’t?”

“Three I can think of so far.”

“They were drones. There’s something different about you.” He took a long draft of the drink and briefly closed his eyes. “You don’t care, do you?”

“Not much.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Where would we go? Afterwards?”

He shrugged. “Where would you like?”

“Somewhere there’s not many people. A desert island. Antarctica.”

“I’ll book the tickets.”

He took one step forward and chinked his glass against hers.

Petrakis placed his hand against her jacket and began to unfasten the buttons. Then he bent down, pulled her into him with his arm, placed his face in the nape of her neck, kissed her neck with an amateurish roughness.

She put the passports back on the table.

Anna Ybarra couldn’t get their faces out of her mind. Joseph, the stupid Kenyan, thinking he was working his way to a different kind of life. Deniz, miserable, coldhearted Deniz, who had no love for anything.

And the man-child Danny, which was not his real name and never had been. She’d heard him chattering in his sleep, frightened murmurings, the product of nightmares she could only guess at. In those extreme moments he used one language and one alone: It sounded like Russian, and it had the plaintive, pleading tone of a captive.

Petrakis was working at her clothes with awkward, fumbling fingers. She let him. She’d allow him anything at that moment, however much it revolted her. Anna Ybarra knew she was lucky to be alive, and somehow, for the first time in ages, this seemed to matter.

41

It was past three in the morning by the time they got on the road: Falcone at the wheel, Peroni in the front seat, Costa squeezed in the back between Teresa and Rosa, both of whom began to doze as the car worked its way back to the highway on the coast.

He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking. About how Mirko Oliva died and they survived. And the way the black helicopters of Luca Palombo had descended from the night sky unbidden, only to disappear just as quickly once the Ministry of the Interior spook had found what he was looking for.

As they drove from Tarquinia toward the coast and the glittering sea beyond, Costa pulled Teresa’s phone out of her bag and called the Quirinale Palace, asking to be put through to the duty Corazzieri captain.

“Nic …” Falcone began to say testily from the front.

It was too late. The palace switchboard sounded alert and a little frightened. He had to talk his way past three people before Fabio Ranieri answered, sounding tired and close to the end of his tether.

“It’s Costa. I can’t talk to you the usual way. Sorry.”

Ranieri went quiet for a moment, then asked, “What was I doing twenty years ago?”

“Working for military liaison with NATO in Brussels. And looking for somewhere decent to eat.”

“Let me call you back on another line.”

The phone rang again almost immediately.

“This time I do need to speak to him,” Costa insisted.

“Do you have any idea what happened tonight?”

“Some. That’s why.”

There was a moment’s silence, another attempt at prevarication, which Costa avoided. Then he heard a familiar voice and a face rose in his memory: the long, extended features of the Bloodhound, a friendly, inquisitive countenance that seemed to have been ever-present in his childhood.

“This is not the best of times, Sovrintendente,” Sordi said in a tone of mild irritation.

Costa kept the narrative short and to the point, and found he was able to imagine the shock and outrage on Sordi’s sad, pale face as he spoke. He left out nothing that had happened at the site of the tomb of the Blue Demon. Not Mirko Oliva’s sudden end or Luca Palombo’s threats.

When he was done, there was silence. Then Dario Sordi said, with a sigh, “I blame myself. I should never have asked you to undertake this task. You must stop immediately. Let me call Esposito. It’s … busy here, as you may imagine.”

“We can’t stop,” Costa interrupted.

There was a pause. Sordi was unaccustomed to being refused something.

“Why not?”

“Because we lost someone.”

“I’m deeply sorry about that, Nic. I don’t want any more casualties on my conscience.”

Costa sat up straight and was aware of the charged atmosphere in Falcone’s Lancia. “It doesn’t work like that, Dario. You can’t turn these things off and on when you feel like it. You can’t …”

“I am the president of Italy!”

“You’re one more individual under the law. No different from any of us. You gave us this job. We haven’t finished it, and we’ve more reason than ever to do that now. This is where we are, where you sent us.”

“No!”

He was aware that the car had stopped. Falcone had pulled into a turnout on the highway. They were all staring at him.

“What?” Costa asked, looking at the four faces peering in his direction.

“Do we get a say?” Peroni demanded.

“Do you need one?”

“Not really,” the big man answered. “But it would be nice to be asked.”

Falcone held out his hand for the phone. Sordi’s voice was coming out of it, a tinny, angry shriek. The inspector waited and then introduced himself, listened for a moment, and said, “Mr. President, you heard the sovrintendente. We have a dead colleague, and Luca Palombo thinks it’s none of our business. He is wrong. If you agree with him, you are wrong too. Now, kindly answer my colleague’s questions.”

He handed the phone back.

Sordi let loose an old and uncommon epithet, then bellowed, “Who the hell do you people think you are?”

“We’re the police,” Costa responded. “We ask the questions you want answered, but are too polite to ask. We go to the places you want to know about, but dare not enter. You started this, Dario. Don’t think you can call it off now. You can’t.”

“Jesus! You are your father’s son. What was I thinking?”

“I was under the impression you were trying to find out the truth.”

“I was, Nic. I am. But not at any cost …” Costa listened to Sordi’s long intake of breath. It was slow, a little wheezy, the sound of an old man. “Tomorrow morning—this morning — is the principal meeting of the summit. I have the most important men and women in the world under my roof. Sucking up to Ugo Campagnolo because they know he’s the man with the real power, and I’m just some old has-been with the keys to the front door. Good God.” A note of self-contempt entered his voice. “What am I talking about? This is to do with Rome. She’s like a ruin in the wilderness. Full of frightened people, wondering what they did to deserve any of this. And somewhere …” Another long sigh. “Petrakis and his people are still out there, planning. Do you have any idea where they are? What they really want?”

“No.”

“Can you find out?”

“We can try. If you can stop Palombo getting in the way. Why do you think I called?”

“Palombo is Campagnolo’s man, not mine. Now that we have a state of emergency …” There was desperation in his tired tones, something Costa had never heard before. “I’m head of the armed forces. But there are limits. You have to understand. In times like these the power lies with those in the field. Even a commander has little control over individual events, hour by hour. Luca Palombo is much more the master of Italy than I am at this moment, and through him Ugo Campagnolo.”

“Do what you can,” Costa suggested.

“Yes, sir,” Sordi answered drily.

One question bothered Costa.

“I tried to call earlier.”

“Ranieri told me. I’m sorry. I was talking to our charming prime minister, about art and other things he doesn’t understand.”

“I’m sure you meant well when you told Palombo we were in Tarquinia, but in the future …”

“Excuse me?” Sordi interrupted.

“Palombo came straight to us — I assumed …”

“I never told anyone, Nic. I would never dream of such a thing. No one was aware of your work for me, outside the people you know already.”

It was the middle of the night. Costa felt exhausted. He couldn’t think straight. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to accuse.”

“I must go. We have a security briefing. Palombo will believe you were simply overzealous police officers who refused to know their place. If the subject comes up, I shall defend you and insist we have more important matters to deal with. This is true, by the way. Is there something else I can tell you?”

Probably, Costa thought, if only he could find the right question. But he said, “No.”

“Then good night,” the president said. “And take care.”

They were all wide awake and looking at him.

“How did they find you?” Falcone wondered. “Who knew you were there?”

“The women at the tomb in Tarquinia. But”—it seemed inconceivable—“I can’t believe it was them.”

“Look for links,” Teresa suggested.

Rosa moaned, “There aren’t any.”

“There are always links,” the pathologist said patiently. “The hard part is finding them.” She thought for a moment, then said, “How many phone calls did you make from the tomb?”

“Two. One to the Quirinale on that private cell phone Sordi gave me.” Costa shook his head. “Dario isn’t lying. He’s adamant we can trust Ranieri.”

“And the second?” she persisted.

A little light came on, and with it a memory: Luca Palombo snatching from his fingers the phone he’d taken from the corpse in the Blue Demon’s chamber.

He retrieved the SIM he’d got from the handset in the tomb, then looked at her, grateful she’d got this out of him.

“This wasn’t about us. It was about tracking Stefan Kyriakis. For whatever reason. They picked up my call when they were listening for him.”

She nodded. “Good guess. Let’s get that thing to Silvio, shall we?”

42

It was a long, slow drive, one in which Costa drifted in and out of a fitful sleep. Close to the city, he awoke, suddenly alert, to find Falcone driving down some long, winding road, one that finally emerged at the gigantic subterranean parking lot hidden beneath the earth just a short way from St. Peter’s. There was an all-night cafe there. The man behind the counter nodded at Falcone as if they were old acquaintances. Costa wondered how well he really knew this man, even after all these years.

They got coffee and pastries in paper bags, returned to the car, and then he drove them somewhere they all recognized, the summit of the Gianicolo hill nearby, and Garibaldi’s monument, a place every Roman child was taken to at least once. It was a picturesque spot, with wonderful views back to the city. Listening to his father’s tales of the patriots, fighting a desperate battle they would come to lose, Costa, as a child, had found it difficult to equate these bloody stories with the verdant, lovely park to which ordinary Romans retreated of a weekend, seeking a little peace and quiet. He had, he now realized, yet to learn the lesson of adulthood: that evil was a mundane thing, present everywhere, even in places of beauty.

Falcone got out of the car and walked to the balustrade of the viewpoint, popping open his coffee, biting into a cornetto, looking as if he’d done this a million times on perpetual sleepless nights.

The city looked dead, but a ray of light was breaking in the east, rising over the distant Sabine Hills. There was scarcely any traffic on either side of the river. The centro storico seemed devoid of life.

“They might go away, you know, Leo,” Peroni said without much conviction. “Petrakis. Whoever his sidekicks are. They might look at what they’ve done to Ciampino and think, Mission accomplished. They were never the Red Brigades, really. Those bastards lasted years. With the Blue Demon it was over and done with in a week.”

“And isn’t that curious in itself?” the inspector asked.

“It could be it’s over already.”

Falcone eyed the horizon. His face was grim and determined. “And walk away from that? I wish I could believe it. They’re here to destroy what we cherish, Gianni. That’s more important than how many people they kill, how much damage they wreak. They want to make their mark, to have us cower at our own shadows. They haven’t left. Perhaps, after a fashion, they never will. This is the world we inhabit. Best live with it.”

Costa thought of the way Andrea Petrakis had spoken in the bloody dark in Tarquinia, the urgent determined fury in his voice when he took the unexpected call after he shot Mirko. Falcone was right. They were here already, hidden somewhere among the empty streets and piazzas, the echoing subway stations and vacant churches.

Falcone’s phone squawked. The inspector seemed, suddenly, absorbed. He pulled out his notebook with his free hand, walked to the Lancia, and began to make notes on the roof. The others recognized the change in his mood and walked over to join him.

“Grazie,” Falcone said, and ended the call. He looked at Costa.

“That was Di Capua checking something for me.”

The last thing he’d done before they left Tarquinia was to make one more visit to the tomb. Something there had caught his interest. Not that he’d been willing to discuss it with anyone.

“This was on the wall next to the figure of the Blue Demon. Scratched in some bare paint. Someone had tried to rub it out. Palombo, I imagine. He didn’t have time to get rid of it all.”

He held up the page from his notebook. More Roman numerals, this time XII. II. I. CLXXIII.

Costa remembered the cryptic message painted on the wall of the Villa Giulia, behind the bodies of Renzo and Marie Frasca.

“Shakespeare?”

“I assumed that. I asked Di Capua to check. It doesn’t work. Too many numbers.”

“A phone number … a code … Something.”

He was out of ideas. They all were.

“Something,” Falcone agreed. “Let’s go back to San Giovanni, get some sleep, then start again.”