The bus was pulling out, picking up speed. Arturo was following, but keeping a safe distance. There was a GPS tracking chip sewn in the bottom of the soccer bag. He could see it, a red icon on his laptop, the screen displaying a map of Rome.
The bus stopped at St Peter's Basilica. Arturo was watching Signor Tallenger emerge and walk to Piazza San Pietro. He was standing in the middle of the immense square, the white soccer bag hanging from his right shoulder, as if he was waiting for the team to arrive, the bag looking out of place on a man his age, the senator long past his playing days, glancing in different directions.
Arturo was parked behind the taxi queue at the east end of the square on Via della Conciliazione. He watched Grossi and Pirlo walking in opposite directions, disappearing behind columns in the colonnade. He glanced at Luciano next to him in the front seat and said, "How long have you been engaged?"
"Four years."
"Four years? How do you do it?"
"It's not me. It's her. I want to get married, Carmen has a career, her own apartment."
"You don't live together?"
"A few days a week." Luciano grinned. "It's not bad, I have to tell you. She has her space, I have mine."
Arturo knew he was old-fashioned, but this was crazy.
Luciano said, "It might be the new model for a modern relationship."
Arturo was going to tell Luciano he was out of his mind. If you have a disagreement, how do you work it out if you both have your own apartment? He watched Signor Tallenger take out his mobile phone and hold it up to his ear, listening and then moving, running awkwardly with the heavy bag.
Instead of proceeding east out of Piazza San Pietro toward the open street, he went south through the colonnade. Pirlo radioed him and said Signor Tallenger got in a taxi. He glanced at the map on his laptop: the red icon was moving south toward the river. Grossi and Pirlo were running to the car. They opened the doors and got in the rear seat.
"Go straight and take a right on Via Pio X," Arturo told Luciano.
They were waiting to turn when the taxi passed them, Signor Tallenger in the rear seat, clearly visible. They followed, took the bridge over the Tiber and drove along the river, giving the taxi plenty of room. Arturo was thinking he should radio backup and tell them what was happening. The taxi was going left now, slowing down and stopping at the Pantheon.
They parked on the street across from Replay, a clothing store. It was interesting to watch Signor Tallenger step out of the Fiat with the heavy bag, the weight of it pulling him to one side. The kidnappers had this rich, powerful man running around the city and he was clearly not used to this. He was standing with his back to the Pantheon, standing out among the tourists posing in front of the famous church, or was it a temple? Signor Tallenger, the only person not staring at it, smiling, pointing, admiring it. His body language saying he was waiting for something to happen.
A few minutes later Signor Tallenger reached into his jacket pocket and took out his cell phone and brought it to his ear. He listened for several seconds and then he was moving again, running, or trying to, the bag weighing him down. He crossed the square, Arturo picturing the maze of streets behind the Pantheon, narrow and congested, difficult to follow in an automobile. He sent Grossi and Pirlo after the senator. Then he radioed his backup units, explaining what was happening. He had two cars, four Gruppo di Intervento Speciale, GIS, in each. One car was standing by at Palazzo Ruspoli, the second on Via Nazionale east of the Forum.
Arturo watched the red icon wind slowly around to Via del Corso and stop, not moving for several minutes and then resuming, going faster now, heading toward the Piazza Venezia. Pirlo checked in and told him Signor Tallenger had gotten on a bus.
"What number?"
"Twenty-three."
Arturo said, "Where is it going?"
"I called transit dispatch, a man named Fortuna said Via Labicana," Pirlo said. "East of the Colosseum."
Arturo glanced at Luciano. "What is on Via Labicana?"
"I don't know."
They turned right on Via del Corso and they drove past Piazza Venezia and the Wedding Cake and the Forum, the red icon moving southeast. Arturo could see the green 23 bus a few car lengths ahead. The bus slowed and stopped when it got to the Colosseum. He saw Signor Tallenger get off and move to a taxi and get in.
The taxi drove around the Colosseum, turned right on Via Claudia and right again on a narrow street with a church straight ahead.
"What is this place?" Luciano said.
Arturo glanced at him and said, "Santi Giovanni e Paolo, a church and monastery."
The taxi stopped in the piazza in front of the church. Signor Tallenger emerged with the soccer bag over his shoulder.
"The second church," Luciano said.
"The third if you count the Pantheon. It is a church or a temple? I suppose that depends on what you believe."
"It was built as a temple and used as a Catholic church." He paused.
"Maybe the kidnappers are priests," Luciano said, his eyes smiling again.
"They're robbing tourists because the Vatican has run out of money," Arturo said, taking it to another level of absurdity.
"The Vatican has more money than the Italian government," Luciano said.
They watched Signor Tallenger enter the church and watched the taxi drive off.
"Captain, is this going to be another false alarm?"
"I wish I could tell you." All he knew was the ransom would eventually exchange hands and he hoped he would be there to arrest the kidnappers. But as they entered the church, it occurred to Arturo that yes, they had followed the senator to two other churches, but this was the first time he had actually entered one of them, so he believed this was where the exchange would take place.
Chapter Nine
They crossed the small piazza lined with palm trees in terracotta planters. Arturo glanced at the bell tower that was Romanesque, and the front of the church that was medieval. He walked between two lions guarding the entrance, dipped his fingers in the holy water font, and made the sign of the cross. The interior was narrow and not very deep from front to back, maybe fifty meters, a series of columns left and right, extending the length of the nave, forming a semi-circle where it met the altar. It was a well-preserved gem, with mustard-color walls that had a marble pattern, trimmed in dark green and brown.
He looked down the main floor for Signor Tallenger. It was dark and difficult to see. There were a few tourists moving around, but no one carrying a white soccer bag. He was looking up at the engaged columns with jutting pilasters. Words remembered from an art history class taken at the university thirty years before. It was difficult to admit it had been that long. But, it was true. Arturo was going to be fifty-one in March. Fifty-one! Remembering his father, a laborer at that age, used up and on the decline, his life almost over.
He moved along the transept to the right, glancing through the columns, trying to find Signor Tallenger. Luciano went to the left and they would meet near the main altar.
Arturo had gone almost as far as the altar before he saw him, the man standing in the shadow of a column as Arturo came up behind him, the shape of the soccer bag unmistakable. Signor Tallenger seemed to be waiting for a tourist group that was huddled together, looking up at the ceiling of the nave. When they finally moved away, continuing their tour, Signor Tallenger approached the altar and placed the white bag somewhere on the floor next to it, and walked down the main aisle toward the front of the church.
Arturo looked up over the altar at the shafts of light angling in from the clerestory windows, and he had a feeling that something was wrong. That the money had already exchanged hands. In his mind, he saw Tallenger meeting a kidnapper on the 23 bus and discreetly transferring the money into another identical bag. The notion actually seeming intelligent and likely to be true.