Joe knows it. A hundred meters as the crow flies. “And why should I go there?”
“Because the tapes will be handed over to you. You’ll take in as much as you want to take in, but it’s important that you see them and then report to your boss. Your boss knows, but he doesn’t have the tapes. He knows what they were up to, but he isn’t clear on how and why.”
“What who was up to?”
The bum falls silent, takes a slug, moving the bottle cautiously.
Joe: “And if I don’t do it?”
“No big deal. We’ll find other channels. You, however, will stay in Rome. For sure: How could four shitty Arabs who blew up the Italian Premier in a centrally located church have escaped you? It’s your problem. And your family’s. I think it’s essential that you move them. To understand what I mean, you have to see the tapes.” Ipse dixit. Another slug of liquor. “Only twelve minutes until your boss calls. You should go. You can turn your back on us, there’s nothing more we have to do, we won’t do anything to you.”
Joe Spiazzi is motionless: human granite compressed at the moment of decision.
He turns his back on the bums.
He trusts them.
He goes to Piazza Minerva.
He photographed the two men. What service are they agents of? As soon as he gets back, digital images of their features: They’ll be entered in multiple databases. Joe will know who the players are. And what the game is.
There it is. The elephant designed by Bernini supports a pointed obelisk, dazzling in the chilly morning. The dust of the blown-up church covers everything. He has left traceable footsteps on his way here.
Six meters of monument — faded red granite. An obelisk erected by a pharaoh. Joe remembers when he dealt with sculpture and esotericism in Rome, when there wasn’t a thing to do all day except locate Arabs and blacks in bubu outfits; it was interesting. The elephant, exotic and adorned with hallucinogenic fabric, has a significance: It supports the obelisk.
... a robust mind is necessary to support solid wisdom...
A time when stones radiated, spoke. Even now those stones radiate — the late Italian Premier knows something about it.
The cell phone rings. Fourteen minutes have passed since the bum called out to him.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Robert. Come back to headquarters, it’s urgent. We’ve been hit by an earthquake. You fucked up. Our men have intercepted and captured the four guys who committed the massacre. They say they belong to al Qaeda. Saudis or something like that. We have to plug the leaks. You should have stayed on top of them. They’ve confessed. In less than an hour the news will be given to the press.”
Joe swallows a filament of gastric acid. “I’m coming. I need some time. It’s chaos here.”
Robert cuts off the call.
What’s going on? Joe leans against the elephant: the resistant granite eaten away by weather which erodes everything, which turns everything into excrement. Metabolism: this superhuman, temporal force. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust: even that of a church blown sky high.
“Stay there. Leaning like that. It’s perfect.” The voice, Italian, is deep and penetrating. From under the elephant’s belly, Joe glimpses only an abdomen and the crotch of the man’s Prada pants. The man who is speaking, his voice calm, not commanding. “With your hand propped like that, I can see that you’re holding only one of the Berettas in your pocket. Fifteen shots. There’s no reason to use it. You should know, however, that you are in someone’s sights. The building to your left, third window on the right, on the second floor.”
Joe moves his head with infinitesimal caution. He sees the glitter, guesses that it’s an altered AK-47. He cannot guess who is behind the weapon.
Joe returns to his position. “What do you want?”
“They already told you. Watch the DVD before going back to Third Service headquarters. Turn everything over to Robert Mc-Intire, the section head. You will be given an immediate transfer. Home. They will know that we know. We want one more thing: for you to say that it is now too late. It has begun. It’s already done. Think about your family, Spiazzi. Stay where you are, in that position, for another two minutes, and don’t take your eyes off the DVD that I will now place on top of the monument, here, under the elephant’s belly.”
The hand sets down a small unlabeled DVD case.
The man goes away.
Joe continues leaning against the elephant designed by Bernini: a strong mind, supporting wisdom.
He turns cautiously to the window on the second floor: Nothing glitters anymore, the room is empty.
Two minutes. He grabs the DVD case, opens it: an unlabeled disk.
He looks for an Internet café.
It is not a wise choice, but since it isn’t, it is: an Arabic Internet café. Outside the walls of San Giovanni. Appia Nuova. The opposite direction from his agency’s headquarters. There would be a saturation check on all Arabs. In a few minutes the Italians would be able to raid and inspect. If the DVD was risky for him, the Italian police would nonetheless provide a delay to plot his next moves.
He is the most out-of-the-way customer. No one can see the screen of the computer he’s using. He has the headphones half on, so he can hear what’s happening in the place and at the same time listen to the audio of the DVD.
Twelve files. Twelve film clips. He double-clicks on the first.
Images shot from a video camera outside Palazzo Montecitorio. There is a date and time: an evening twelve weeks earlier. The view shifts, scanning the way to the service exit. A car. Political figures get out. Here is the slain Premier. Leaders and representatives of the opposition. Last: a cardinal. The one most cited for the next Consistory, after the brief parenthesis of the German Pope who won’t last long: He has already had two strokes.
A cardinal at Montecitorio?
The number of guests: eleven.
Change of scene. An interior. Joe recognizes it. The main room of the President of the Chamber. There he is, the President. Bugs everywhere in that place. Joe himself had been there, to replace someone who didn’t show up, passing himself off as one of the Italian Services. The image is blurry, the lighting dim. The President. The Premier. The Cardinal. They are all seated at a large, round table: twelve of them. A table of the Basile school, the Masonic architect who designed Montecitorio’s interiors. Esoteric symbols on the table’s Baroque legs.
They begin. Is it a séance?
The audio jumbled: “... so then let us concentrate, and together, through the visualization taught to us by the Masters, take action on the weak point, which will not give way unless we intervene... Let us invoke the Great One...”
Obsessively they invoke the Great One. It is the Masonic god, the Great Architect of the Universe... Joe wonders what it means. What does it have to do with the massacre on Via Sant’Andrea delle Fratte? They continue invoking the Great One, hands linked to form a chain.
The image shifts. The group emerges from Montecitorio. First to go, the Cardinal with his retinue.
Joe Spiazzi doesn’t understand. He clicks on the remaining eleven clips. The same scenes, few variations, the same participants.
The last one: the date and time: today, an hour before the explosion. The President releases the chain ahead of time, prompted by the Cardinal, who says: “Done. The process is irreversible. Rome is triumphant once again. I must thank all of you. The head of the world will be beheaded. Caput Mundi for eternity: It comes back to right here, it is we...”