Private Rome

Chapter 95

I drove for ten kilometers before we turned off the road onto an extremely overgrown track that looked as though it hadn’t been used for years. We bounced and bumped our way over long grass that grew in tufts along the median, and the suspension rattled and clattered as the wheels encountered hidden rocks and ruts. I didn’t stop until we crested a rise and went down the slope on the other side. I turned off the track onto rough terrain and parked in the shade of a cluster of stone pines. I cut the engine and jumped out to ensure we couldn’t be seen from the road or any buildings. There was nothing in sight except deserted countryside. I ran over to the Land Rover as Antonelli and his daughter staggered from the vehicle. I opened the passenger door and dragged the dead man out.

Antonelli came over as I set the bodyguard gently on the ground. The man’s eyes were open, but he would never see the beauty of the branches above him.

“Aldo was a good man,” Antonelli said, his voice faltering. “They all were.”

“I’m sorry,” I responded.

Luna joined us. “So, what is the truth, Papà?”

Antonelli shrank from her. “I don’t know. I didn’t mean—”

She interrupted him.

“You’re not getting out of the deal you made. Mr. Morgan risked his life for us.”

Antonelli looked ashamed. For the first time, I saw him as a tired old man rather than a powerful gangster.

“You’re right of course,” he said, stroking her cheek. “Like your mother always was.”

He hesitated.

“I wish she was still with us. She was a good person.”

“Tell him what you know, Papà,” Luna insisted. “Tell me.”

Antonelli smiled.

“I could never refuse my girl. I am a founding member of Propaganda Tre. It was started after the fall of the Berlin Wall to protect this country against anti-Christian socialist ideologies.”

“Oh, Papà,” Luna said, her disappointment so intense I could almost feel it in the air around us.

“I’m sorry, Luna. I was young. I thought I knew what was good for Italy. For Rome. For us. I found myself allied to wicked men with ambitions and plans they did not share with me. Secret plans. Dishonest plans. I thought our group would be different — not like Propaganda Due — but it wasn’t. We lost our way.”

His voice trailed off.

“And?” I prompted.

“We got involved with espionage, extremist groups. Like our predecessors, we laundered money, financed terror all around the world, drifting further and further toward an ideology I didn’t recognize. Not left or right, but one that worships only money.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Luna asked.

“Because he was worried you’d feel it was your duty to investigate,” I replied for him. “And that would have put your life in danger.”

Antonelli nodded. “I swore an oath of loyalty,” he said. “A blood oath. Any betrayal or attempt to leave the organization will result in death. Not just for the renegade, but for everyone they love.”

“So, what’s happening here in Rome? Why the power play? Why have so many died — some of them men of God?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “That’s the thing — I just don’t know what’s going on. I asked Trotta to pay Milan Verde a visit, to see if he could find out who the Dark Fates are working for. Milan is a psychopath. He’s ruthless but doesn’t have the ambition to play at this level, so he’s working for someone higher up.”

“Do you know the other members of Propaganda Tre?” I asked.

“Only the ones in my chapter,” Antonelli replied. “Now Trotta is dead, so is Christian Altmer, and—”

“Altmer?” I exclaimed. “He was in Propaganda Tre?”

Antonelli nodded. “As is his boss, Joseph Stadler.”

I was dumbfounded and took a moment to absorb this revelation.

“What about Cardinal Vito Peralta?” I asked when I found my voice.

“Yes. The Church is represented.”

I paced around for a moment. “What if Stadler didn’t hire Private to solve the case? What if he hired us in order to keep tabs on what we were doing? He knew I’d look into Father Brambilla’s death and I represented a risk to the organization if I was doing things they weren’t aware of. By hiring us he could share what we found, enabling him to gauge the threat of Propaganda Tre being exposed.”

I hadn’t had the chance to make any formal interim reports to Stadler, but I looked back on my informal meetings with our client and thought about all the useful information he would have gleaned from them. Each meeting with him had happened before an attack or an encounter with someone who’d led me into a trap. After our first meeting, Luna and I were shot at by the assassin who tried to kill us out near Poli. I hadn’t made the connection before, but if Stadler was behind everything, those incidents hadn’t been coincidences.

I took out the new phone Mo-bot had given me and connected to Private’s secure server. I sent a message to Justine, Mo-bot and Sci.

We need to meet. Parco di Monte Ciocci, near Vatican City. Two hours.

I pocketed the phone and turned to Antonelli.

“You could have saved us a lot of time if you’d shared the truth of your involvement with this group sooner.”

“I’m sorry. The oath... They would kill me and my daughter. I thought I could handle it. I thought I could—”

Luna cut him off. “Could what? Kill someone? Buy someone off? How can we share the same blood? These are bad things. The way you live your life, the way you make your money, the people you associate with, the things you’ve done...”

“Luna,” Antonelli pleaded, but she left him nowhere to go.

“I’m sorry, Papà. I can’t look away anymore. I can’t pretend. Your business goes against God and man,” she said. “To be under your protection is to be aligned with you. I cannot agree to live my life like that.” She faced me. “Are you going back to Rome?”

I nodded.

“Will you deal with this Stadler?”

I nodded again.

“Then take me with you. I want to help. I want to see him face justice.”

I admired her bravery and couldn’t believe that only a short while ago I’d thought she might be in league with her father and responsible for Father Brambilla’s murder.

“What about me?” Antonelli asked.

“Luigi Calio’s farm is over that hill. He has always been loyal. Stay with him and his family until this is over,” Luna replied.

She walked back to the Land Rover and got in the driver’s side.

“Come on,” she said to me.

“What about us?” Antonelli asked pathetically.

“We’ll talk when this is over,” his daughter told him.

He looked broken, but I didn’t feel sorry for him. Luna was right: his dishonesty had cost lives.

I got in the Defender. Luna said nothing as she started the engine. She eyed her father, who seemed much diminished, standing hunched and dejected in the deserted landscape, a dead man lying close by. She kept her eyes fixed on him in the mirror as she turned the car around and we began our return to Rome.