Rizzo finally came to his conclusion. “And that is where we are today,” he finally said.
The minister looked up.
“Do you feel that any arrests are imminent?”
“Arrests, Signore?”
“Arrests,” the minister said in a tired voice. “Surely you know what arrests are because I’m certain you’ve made a few in your long career.”
“Arrests in Rome are unlikely,” Rizzo said, “as I strongly suspect that the gunmen have fled the country by now. As to identifying them and asking one of the other police agencies in Europe to effect the arrests, well, that-”
“Let’s save the wishful thinking for later, shall we?” the minister said, cutting him off. “Are there any Ukrainian or Russian gangsters in Rome now whom you feel that we could pin this upon?”
Rizzo’s eyes widened, clearly ill at ease with the notion.
“Pin?” he asked. “As in ‘frame’?”
He became conscious of a slow tapping on the table by the minister’s right hand.
“I believe that’s what you would call it.”
Rizzo stared at the political appointee in front of him. His eyes were fixed and steady. In a flash, he put much of the reasoning together and didn’t like this one bit. After spending twenty-two years with the homicide brigades in Rome, he was going to be asked to fudge evidence, to squander the case, to perjure himself before a magistrate, just to ease a politician out of some sort of squeeze. And if the whole thing backfired, well, his own career would crash down, he could go to prison, there would go his pension, and Sophie would end up in bed with some young musician punk like the ones he was in the habit of arresting.
He thought quickly. “No, signore,” he answered. “I know of no such criminal who would fit our needs so conveniently,” he said.
The minister looked at him with thinly veiled dismay. “Very well,” he finally said. “We will take another approach. How many detectives do you have working with you on this case?”
“Four of the best in Rome,” he said.
“And I assume each of them has an assistant?”
“That would be true, signore.”
“So that makes nine of you. What is your individual caseload?”
Rizzo did some quick math. “I would guess, each of us might have twenty, give or take. So somewhere between one hundred fifty and two hundred among all the detectives involved.”
“Bene,” said the minister. “Put them all back to work on their other cases.”
“Excuse me?”
“I think you heard me, Rizzo. And I think you understood me. Reassign everyone and make no further efforts on this case yourself.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“I’m afraid you don’t either, Gian Antonio. This case will most likely conclude itself. Remain available. You will need to liaison with an American agent sometime within the very near future.”
The minister motioned to the newspaper. There was a copy of Il Messaggero on the table, the headlines blaring about Kiev.
“Do you speak English?” the minister asked. “Well enough to liaise with an American?”
“Not very well, sir. I understand a little, but-”
“Strange,” the minister said. “Your file says that your father was in an American POW camp after the war. Your father spoke it quite well.”
“The memory of spoken English was not pleasant to my father,” Rizzo said. “We spoke Italian in our home.”
“Yes. Of course. What else would Italians speak, correct?”
“Latin, maybe,” Rizzo answered.
“Your sense of humor is not appreciated right now,” the minister said.
“I do have someone in my department, an intern, who could be of service with English,” Rizzo said.
“What about French, Rizzo? Do you speak French?”
“French?”
“Yes. It’s what they speak in France.”
“Si, signore,” Rizzo answered.
“Good. That’s all. Remain ready.”
Rizzo opened his mouth to ask for more details, more of an explanation. But the minister cut him off.
“Do you like art, Gian Antonio?” the minister asked, changing the subject.
Rizzo was perplexed. “Art?”
“Italian art! The works of Bernardo Cavallino, for example. Guido Reni. Seventeenth century. Ever heard of them?”
Rizzo had never heard of either. Nor did he care to. “Of course I have,” he said.
“If so, you’re the first policeman I’ve ever met who has. Do you think the works should be in Italy?”
“If they’re Italian, of course.”
“I agree. That is all, Rizzo. Grazie mille.”
The double doors opened. The minister’s guards barged in to escort Rizzo out. He left without a protest.
SIXTY-FOUR
Alex had not been to the Venezuelan capital for six years. She found it much as she had remembered it, hemmed in by green forested hills that rose to each side of the city. Caracas squeezed the tremendously wealthy and the desperately poor into a single chaotic metropolis. The fascinating disorder was reflected in the gravity-defying skyscrapers at the center of the city, which were a short walk from the teetering shantytowns that covered the surrounding hills.
In the evening, a Señor Calderón presented himself at the hotel. He was a lanky Venezuelan in his twenties. He was an emissary of Mr. Collins and worked for Collins’s foundations in South America.
They spoke Spanish. He asked her to call him by his first name, Manuel.
Manuel Calderón would be her guide to the village of Barranco Lajoya. He would pick her up the next morning at 9:00 a.m. and take her to a small private airport east of Caracas. A private helicopter would take her and Calderón to Santa Yniez, which was a small clearing in the jungle. Calderón explained that the airfield had been built by smugglers who brought cocaine into Venezuela from Colombia and Brazil. But it had then been seized by the government in the 1980s following the collapse of Pablo Escobar’s empire and had been sold to pro-Western business interests. President Chávez kept threatening to nationalize it, but so far, he hadn’t.
“Pack your jungle gear in the backpack and have your weapon accessible just in case,” Manuel said. “Dress accordingly. Temperatures will probably be a hundred, at least.”
“Will the gun be a problem at the airfield?” she asked.
Calderón laughed. “You’re in Venezuela,” he said. “Everyone has a gun.”
The next morning, Calderón led her to the airfield, which was on the edge of the city. They found their way to a rickety old helicopter, a thirty-year old Soviet SU-456. They buckled in for a flight to Canaimo. Two members of the national police joined them, needing a lift to Santa Yniez. One of them was in his forties, the younger one in his twenties.
The early morning heat was already stifling. Alex needed only a tan T-shirt and cargo shorts. She wore new hiking shoes and heavy socks. Before leaving the hotel, she had applied DEET to her neck, arms, and legs and packed her digital camera in a convenient pocket.
The two national police officers seemed perplexed, even amused, that a good-looking woman was to be on the flight. She could tell they were trying to figure her out. She engaged them in a conversation in Spanish and kept deflecting their questions about her nationality, as they waited to take off.
“As police, we could ask to see your passport,” one of them said, quite amiably.
“Mi madre fue mexicana,” she said, trying to deflect it further. “En realidad, chilanga.”
“Así, ¿usted es mexicana?” one asked.