Professor Mayer would then bring out Prisoner Zero, who was to be clean-shaven, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and unmanacled. To bring the prisoner to the President was, in Colonel Borgenicht's opinion, a very basic breach of protocol, since all those President Newman intended to meet should be ready and waiting.
The President had insisted, however. He didn't want any shots of an exhausted-looking Prisoner Zero standing beside an ill, elderly looking Petra Mayer.
"All you do is shake hands." If anything, the Colonel's voice was even tighter. "You step forward, shake hands, step away. Nothing else. And you don't speak until you're spoken to."
"It's going to be fine," Petra Mayer said. "We've been through all this." She turned to the prisoner, who looked almost normal in Levi's, Nike trainers, a Gap sweatshirt and two weeks' growth of hair. "You know what to do, right?"
Prisoner Zero smiled at the small woman with the three gold bangles and a beak-like nose. A crow, Malika would have called her, and in all probability would have been right.
"Well?" Colonel Borgenicht said.
The prisoner shrugged. Whether or not he knew what to do was irrelevant. All that mattered was that the darkness did.
President Newman's helicopter was small, single-bladed and pale blue with the President's seal fixed either side, on both doors. Since that model went into service only in black, camouflage or jungle green, Colonel Borgenicht imagined the craft had been given a rapid paint job. It also flew low over Villaggio Valera on its way to the field, which the Colonel was sure had not been in the flight plan.
"Shouldn't you be with your men?" Petra Mayer nodded to an honour guard who stood at attention in the twilight.
The Colonel knew Professor Mayer was trying to get rid of him. Most probably so she could talk to the prisoner in private.
"I'm going," he said, adding "ma'am" as an afterthought.
Prisoner Zero and the Professor watched the thick-set black officer march out to a prearranged spot, halt with what looked like a complicated stamp of his boots and come to attention.
"The President is entering the square." The voice in Petra Mayer's ear bead was clipped and military, and she watched Colonel Borgenicht nod to himself from his position in the middle of the square as he heard the same message. A ripple of tension ran through the crowd, heads turning and photographers surging forward as they realized what those wired for sound had already been told.
Gene Newman, looking relaxed in light fawn slacks, tan shoes and a summer-weight jacket, strode under an arch and into view, the First Lady half a pace behind him.
He was a Hollywood star who happened to be President. A brilliant mind, a sharp politician, an adequate husband. Most of all, he was a man of the people. Hands stretched out to him, voices called.
Stepping off the path that had been marked discreetly in chalk, Gene Newman reached the barriers and grasped the hand of an old woman, shaking it warmly. From first seeing the crowds until that moment, his eyes had been on a young Sicilian woman in her twenties, a small boy glued to her hips, his thin arms tight around her neck. She had a face straight from La Dolce Vita and breasts full enough to die for.
But the second the old woman behind the girl thrust out her own hand, all Gene Newman's attention locked on to her. "You have a beautiful village," he said, in Italian bad enough to disgrace a child, and around the grandmother, daughter and child, members of the European press practically cooed in delight.
He was brilliant, Petra Mayer had to give her old pupil that. Ruthless, intellectually arrogant in private and occasionally promiscuous but a good president all the same. He didn't talk to the girl next either, instead he pulled a stupid face at her child, then reached out and gripped the toddler's nose lightly between thumb and first finger.
The boy might have burst into tears or buried his head in his mother's shoulder, but this was Gene Newman and the kid just grinned as the President grinned back and a dozen flash guns fired in the dying sun. Only then did President Newman turn to the mother. His words were few and his Italian rudimentary, but he left her staring after him with something approaching open hunger.
The man could have kept a team of anthropologists in research papers for life on how power made middle-aged men unfeasibly attractive to women in their twenties.
"Ma'am," said Colonel Borgenicht, his voice tight in her ear. "You're on..."
This was Petra Mayer's signal to walk Prisoner Zero out into the middle of the square. The sniper rifle in the bell tower would be covering him from beginning to end and the man behind the sights was the best America had to offer, on special loan from the CIA. Whatever happened, that rifle would remain trained on Prisoner Zero's skull. If necessary, the sniper would shoot through anyone who got in the way.
From the look in the eyes of the Colonel when he told her this, Petra Mayer knew he meant every word.
"Time to go," Prisoner Zero said brightly, pushing himself away from the church wall, and Petra Mayer did her best not to look shocked.
Marzaq al-Turq, sometimes living as Jake Razor and now answering only to Prisoner Zero, stepped into the square and began his walk across the dusty cobblestones of Piazza Solforino. Camera flash burnt his eyes and the weight of history hung like a yoke around his shoulders but he barely noticed.
"Look this way..."
"Over here!"
"Hey, Jake..."
Prisoner Zero could hear the demands of the press over the beat of his own heart and he could taste nightfall in the air and smell dog shit, diesel, a distant fire and the stink of sweat that rose from his body. A scrawled echo of the only day that had really mattered in his life.
All the things he'd hoped to develop from Jake's notes remained unfinished. He didn't understand the shape of time, not really. All he had was a matrix of multi-dimensional intimations filtered through a three-dimensional brain, a flicker book masquerading as film.
He was no closer to finding the missing name of God.
"The missing name of what?"
The question came from a man standing in front of him. Gene Newman, President of the United States, the man who refused to sign a space accord with Beijing and the person Prisoner Zero had been instructed to kill.
"You have to take America into deep space," Prisoner Zero said. "You can't let China go it alone."
"That's what this is all about?"
"I think so."
"But you don't know?"
Prisoner Zero shook his head.
"I can't sign the accord," said the President. "Not the way things are in China at the moment. You know how many people Beijing has in prison camps?" He was on firmer ground here. Gene Newman was always on firm ground when it came to statistics.
The man looked at him.
Gene Newman sighed. "That's different," he said.
Around them people were looking anxious. Well, Colonel Borgenicht, the First Lady and Petra Mayer were looking anxious and they counted as people.
Cameras were flashing, voices shouting. But all the President's attention was on one emaciated figure in front of him. Prisoner Zero didn't look a threat to anyone. He looked like someone trapped in a life where genius was not enough.
"You can change history," said Prisoner Zero. As he moved closer to the President than he was meant to get Colonel Borgenicht began to glance between his Commander in Chief and the bell tower.
The Colonel was anxiety made flesh.
"We should put that man out of his misery," said the President. "We'll talk about the other stuff later. Let's do the shake." He spoke as if Prisoner Zero regularly did camera calls. As if the world's gaze came naturally to them both.