‘This has nothing to do with luck. I know the suspects well,’ Barnes said. Besides, I know that he’s going to find a way to let us know when he leaves the country. He didn’t speak this thought. You’ve got to have an ace up your sleeve that others don’t know about, even if they’re associates.
Herbert raised his hands in the air as if to say that Barnes’s arguments were worthless, but if he wanted to believe them, fine.
‘I’ve got to inform my superior about the situation in half an hour. What am I going to say? That we haven’t expanded the radius of the search because you have a hunch?’
‘Fuck what you’re going to tell him. My men are doing their job. I don’t have the least doubt that any moment now they are going to come through that door with something solid. If you want to tell him, I don’t think we are going to have any news until nightfall. So prepare him and yourself. It’s going to be a long wait.’
‘Who’s the man who showed up at the hospital? This Rafael who seems to have upset you?’
Barnes paused thoughtfully before responding.
‘A traitor. He infiltrated P2 in order to destroy it from the inside and almost succeeded.’
‘He managed to deceive JC and the CIA?’ A sarcastic smile.
‘You’re in no position to laugh,’ Barnes warned, chastened. ‘For all I know he gave your men a good looking-over three times. They probably don’t even know what happened.’ He laughed in an offensive way that seemed not to affect the other. He congratulated himself, thinking that deep down Herbert must have been angered. Nobody could be so cool all the time.
The office door opened to let in Staughton and the pandemonium of noise from the Center for Operations. Closing the door behind him cut off the exterior noise, leaving a silent movie unfolding on the other side of the window, an agitation without meaning.
‘News?’ Barnes asked, leaning back in the chair to give his younger colleague an impression of calm and control.
‘We’re analyzing the images on CCTV, but it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. We can’t find any Mercedes with continental markings or the license plate in question. We see no bank transfers in the accounts of Sarah Monteiro or Simon Lloyd…’
Barnes laughed dryly.
‘What do you want? Everything tied up all nice and neat for you? It won’t be there.’
‘Where will it be then?’ Herbert asked maliciously.
‘Rest assured you’re dealing with someone who knows how we work. I get irritated, unhinged, fucked up, but we have to be rational.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘That he’s going to appear when and where it seems best to him.’
‘That’s not an option. There has to be a way to find them.’ For the first time a note of irritation could be detected in Herbert’s voice. Barnes was pleased and didn’t take long to show it.
‘We’re doing everything possible already,’ Staughton told him. ‘We have the CCTV on constant alert, not just in London, but over the entire country. All the police and border patrol have their photographs and know what to do if they’re spotted. MI6 is working with us.’
‘It’s okay they’re helping,’ Barnes interrupted. ‘I don’t much like their thinking about their own interests.’
‘There’s nothing else to do,’ Staughton declared.
‘What if we offer a reward?’ Herbert suggested.
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ Barnes protested. ‘Publicize the thing? Have the journalists and public opinion all over us? What do we gain from that?’
‘Catch them sooner. People will do anything for money.’
‘It might not be a bad idea,’ Staughton put in.
Barnes crossed his arms and looked skeptical.
‘We’ve identified the man who took Sarah and Simon to the van.’
That got the attention of Barnes and Herbert.
‘He’s named James Phelps, an English priest assigned to the Vatican.’
‘The what?’ Barnes grumbled. ‘Son of a bitch.’
The three were silent for a few seconds. In this profession everything was a question of strategic analysis. Deciding what route to take to get to a determined objective, speculating about what the others would do. The more facts they had to fill in the blanks, the more accurate their speculation. When there was little information, everything was guesswork and hunches. Trusting luck was not good, but sometimes one had no choice.
‘What if we leave the priest out and send out an advisory on just the others?’ Herbert tried again.
‘It won’t work,’ Barnes said. ‘The woman has an influential position at The Times. It’s only going to hurt us.’
More silence.
‘What time is Littel getting here?’ Barnes asked.
‘Two hours from now.’
Barnes sighed.
‘Very well. Two hours. Until then we won’t do anything. When he arrives, we’ll make a decision,’ he blustered again. ‘Get me something in the next two hours, Jerome. We’re not looking good with our friends in Opus Dei.’ He pointed in Herbert’s direction, who noticed his sardonic tone.
The door opened to let in Thompson.
‘We have news.’
‘Spit it out.’ Barnes jumped up.
‘Between five and six a Metropolitan policeman, returning to his house after his shift, saw a Mercedes of the same description as our alert enter the garage of a house on Clapham.’
‘What are we waiting for, gentlemen?’ Barnes asked as he grabbed his gun.
43
Mirella
May 7, 1983
At the age of sixteen the libido renewed itself every second that passed. The awakening of sensual, lustful feelings, satisfied with the simple stare of a longing male, avid for a contact that is never permitted. The first steps in the art of seduction began, the looks, the signs one body sends to another, under control at this stage or not, affected by an urgent immaturity satisfied by a simple smile, an anxious voice greeting one from a distance, a compliment shouted from a Lambretta that made one blush secretly, the more direct the better, a furtive touch, without delicacy, on a buttock covered with a tight skirt. Triumph was an invitation to go out, or a kiss on the mouth, with or without the tongue, according to what she wanted — it’s always she who asks — or, the gold medal, an invitation to dinner with an older man. Not with just any twenty-year-old student, studying architecture or law, which would also be a victory, but with a man turning thirty-seven or forty, with a car, house, settled life, perhaps divorced, in fact separated, one or two children he doesn’t bother to mention, desiring the new feeling of a younger woman, a woman capable of turning the clock back to former years of passion.
Mirella looked at herself in the mirror for the umpteenth time. One couldn’t run risks in an encounter of this kind. Any error was harmful, able to shake the confidence of an adolescent who considered herself an adult. Of course she wasn’t actually thinking of these technicalities. She acted with an instinct for self-preservation humans can’t escape no matter how intelligent they consider themselves.
Obviously, when she was sixteen, her parents were not going to permit a candlelit romantic dinner, as she imagined, with a man old enough to be her father, enchanted with her femininity, ready to smother her with expensive presents and endless gallantries. So she’d accepted his suggestion to tell her parents she was staying with an old friend from school. That way no suspicions were aroused. Not to do that invited a serious paternal interrogation that would conclude with a prohibition without appeal, tears on Mirella’s part, locking herself in her bedroom for hours lamenting her bad luck and cursing her bad parents, and a long face for days until she found a new source of diversion to make her forget the previous one. But none of that was necessary.
‘Where are you going to eat?’ asked her mother, who had just come in the bedroom where Mirella, elegant and beautiful, was admiring herself in the mirror.
‘At Campo dei Fiori. I still don’t know where,’ Mirella replied without taking her eyes off what looked like the inopportune beginning of a pimple on her chin. ‘What a bother. It’s starting to look red.’