Pietro gestured for silence again, then stood motionless, head tipped, sleepy eyes suddenly alert. He was listening intently. All I could hear was the rain. He edged up to the window, his back against the wall, and scanned the street, shielding his body behind the casing. I was reminded of a hundred old movies. This was the scene just before the final barrage of bullets from the cops killed all the bad guys. Or maybe it was Indians, arrows, and ranchers.
Pietro turned back to us. "That's it. We're going right now. You, close the suitcase and pick it up," he told Croce. "You"—me again—"grab the rest of them and let's go."
"What do you mean, grab them?"
"Just scoop them up. Hurry up."
"Scoop them up?" I echoed. "You mean just—just—"
With his left hand Pietro reached around the side of the gun's barrel. There was a click that I recognized (those old movies again) as the safety being released. I gulped, bent to the table, and, as carefully as I could, gathered them up in my arms, all twenty-two of those precious, irreplaceable masterpieces, like so many old window shades to be taken down to the dump.
"Now," Pietro said, "out the door."
But at that moment the door, about four feet to Pietro's right, exploded from the wall with a window-rattling crash. Even before it hit the floor a stream of men in heavy vests and blue police uniforms burst into the room, shouting incomprehensible orders and brandishing handguns and rifles. Croce was swept out of the way. Pietro was still blinking with surprise, waiting for his brontosauruslike nerve impulses to make it to his brain and tell him what was going on, when the gun was deftly plucked from his hand. Two burly officers spun him roughly around and shoved him face-first against the wall. More men crowded in; there were brown carabinieri uniforms along with the blue ones. The room was all dust and pandemonium.
I couldn't believe it. I was so relieved I wanted to cheer. I think I did cheer. I know I laughed. "Your timing's great!" I shouted over the racket. "We—"
"Alto!" several of them screamed. "Zitti!" I didn't have to be told that these amounted to the Italian equivalent of "Freeze!" At the same time three pistols—heavy, malevolent black weapons, nothing like Pietro's shiny tiny toy— were thrust out at me, trained on the bridge of my nose. All were held by palpably overstrung men in the classic shooter's posture: tautly crouched, gun hand stiffly extended and supported at the wrist by the opposite hand. All three of the weapons were quivering.
Me too. It took me a moment to find my voice. "Gentlemen," I said in my softest manner and without moving a finger, "I . . ."
I what? I wasn't really heading for the door with $100,000,000 worth of stolen art in my arms? It only looks that way? I shrugged and closed my mouth. Things would work themselves out. The worst was over.
Almost. A slight figure approached from the side and peered at me. There was a long-suffering sigh.
"Weren't you supposed to be in America?" asked the Eagle of Lombardy.
"I can explain," I said, staring straight ahead. "Really."
"If you will put those paintings down over there," he said quietly, "I will do my utmost to see that these gentlemen don't shoot you."
At his nod and a few murmured words, they lowered their weapons—rather reluctantly, it seemed to me—and turned away. Antuono, in his black undertaker's suit, looked down his fleshless nose at me as I placed the rolled-up canvases back on the table.
"Colonel—"
"You could have been killed," he said. "Worse, you might have ruined the entire operation."
His prioritizing of possible outcomes did not escape me. "Colonel—"
"Do you know," he said musingly, "if you hadn't turned up blundering about in the midst of things—with the best of intentions, of course—I think I would have felt a sense of disappointment . . . of incompleteness."
He hadn't wasted any time getting under my skin again. I faced him angrily. "I didn't have to be here, you know—"
"Indeed."
"I put my life on the line for those paintings. If you'd let me, I could have been helping you all along."
"No doubt."
"Damn it, I told you days ago that Croce was involved, didn't I? But no, you—"
His attention had wandered. He was looking over my shoulder, a slow smile actually lighting up his pale eyes. "Wonderful work, Major," he said. "A year's effort—congratulations!" He reached around me to shake hands. "I believe you already know dottor Norgren?"
I turned.
"Sure, we're old friends," said Filippo Croce.
Chapter 23
Yes, that wonderful facility of mine to make razor-sharp character judgments had done me in again. The odious, transparently disreputable Filippo Croce was in fact Abele Foscolo of the Comando Caribinieri Tutela Patrimonio Artistico; one of Antuono's most trusted undercover agents. Antuono, in what I now recognized as one of his little jokes, had practically described him to me at our first meeting, specially grown mustache and all.
For almost a year Foscolo-Croce had been working meticulously to establish his credibility as a shady dealer, first building a suspect reputation in Sicily to provide "credentials" that could be checked when he appeared on the scene here. Antuono and Foscolo had quickly zeroed in on the Salvatorellis, but as Antuono kept telling me, it was the paintings he was after, not the people. The important thing was to get the pictures safely back.
And so, just about the time I got to Bologna, Foscolo had begun working his oily charms on Bruno (Paolo had just been killed). The two Pittura Metafisica paintings "discovered" in the Trasporti Salvatorelli warehouse had of course (in retrospect, "of course") been planted by the police. Salvotorelli had truly known nothing about them. The raid had been staged to give him convincing proof that Foscolo was indeed the crook he appeared to be, and that he had art-world connections. More important, he was shown to be a "trustworthy criminal"—the phrase was Antuono's, delivered with a straight face. What he meant was that, inasmuch as no arrests were made, "Croce" demonstrated his reliability at keeping names to himself when required.
In a way, this had all been explained to me days ago by Antuono himself, on our drive back to town from Trasporti Salvatorelli. He'd neglected to mention only a couple of trifling particulars: It was fact, not surmise, and Croce happened to be working for him.
And all this time I'd gone along thinking he didn't have much of a sense of humor.
"You must see, dottore," he said now, leaning over the table and clasping his hands, "that I couldn't very well let you in on our plans. I had to mislead you just a little. I hope you accept my apology."
We were in the Palazzo d'Accursio, not in Antuono's makeshift warren of an office, but in a big, handsome upstairs chamber that he had commandeered, with thick, wall-to-wall red carpeting, red-flocked wallpaper, and massive old furniture. I had been making statements and signing depositions in one part of the palazzo or another for the last three hours, except for a twenty-minute break I'd insisted on to call Anne and tell her what had happened to me.
"I was starting to wonder," she'd said dryly when I reached her. "You hear these stories . 'Yes, well, the last time I saw him he said he was going down to the corner for cigarettes. That was back in '54, of course.' . . ."
But I'd heard the breathy tremble in her voice, and it had warmed me. And now for the last hour I'd been basking in a different kind of warmth, one not experienced before: the freely given gratitude of a relaxed and expansive Eagle of Lombardy. Antuono had been openly impressed with the information I'd provided on Max and Blusher. He had immediately arranged to have Max placed under arrest for murder and attempted murder, and since then he'd been—well, friendly. And unless I'd misheard him, he'd actually offered an apology a moment ago.