Last to Die

A jail cell diminishes any man, and so it was with Icarus.

Viewed through the bars, he seemed smaller, inconsequential. Now stripped of his Italian suit and his Panerai wristwatch, he wore a lurid orange jumpsuit and rubber flip-flops. His solitary cell was furnished only with a sink, a toilet, and a concrete shelf bed with a thin mattress, on which he was now sitting.

“You know,” he said, “that every man has his price.”

“And what would yours be?” I asked.

“I have already paid it. Everything I ever valued has been lost.” He looked up at me with bright blue eyes, so unlike the soft brown eyes of his dead son Carlo. “I was speaking of your price.”

“Me? I can’t be bought.”

“Then you are merely a simpleminded patriot? You do this for love of country?”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “I’ve heard that before. All it means is that the alternative offer was not high enough.”

“There isn’t any offer high enough to make me sell out my country.”

He gave me a look akin to pity, as if I were feebleminded. “All right, then. Go back to your country. But you do know, you’ll go home poorer than you need to be.”

“Unlike some people,” I taunted him, “at least I can go home.”

He smiled, and that smile made my hands suddenly go cold. As if I were looking into the face of my future. “Can you?”