He keyed up shots of the corpse on the floor of the temple in Beijing.
“It wasn’t some poor stupid tourist he killed this time. This guy was someone important. The military attaché at the US embassy in Beijing. Career diplomat. Talented guy. Came from one of those old New England families that put their offspring into public service just to prove what wonderful citizens they are, never once asking themselves whether it’s the right job for the spoiled little brats in the first place.”
Leapman looked at the picture of the dead diplomat again and sighed. “That’s what class is about, don’t you think? Being able to make choices?”
Then he pulled up another photo. It was the same man at a formal occasion, wearing a dinner jacket, shaking the hands of a smiling Chinese official. He was staring sourly at the camera, clutching at a full glass of booze as if it were a lifeline.
“His name was Dan Deacon,” Leapman explained. “I don’t see a family resemblance myself, but I guess it’s there. Good old Dan fixed up his daughter with a fine career, huh? Not that I reckon he asked her once if it was what she wanted. One minute she’s sitting in Florence congratulating herself on getting an architectural degree. Next she’s doing push-ups in boot camp because Daddy says so and, my, doesn’t Daddy know how to glad-hand some of the people on the interview panels too. Still, it gives me an opportunity.”
He switched off the projector and rolled up the lights so they could see his face all the more clearly.
“You know what it’s all about, folks?” Agent Leapman asked. “Motivation. I’m giving you one motivated girl here. I picked her myself for that very reason. Use her well, won’t you? And try to bring her back in one piece.”
MONICA SAWYER’S APARTMENT was in a dark side street near the Palazzo Borghese, some way north of the Pantheon. The place was a square modern cabin built directly on top of the roof of a solid grey nineteenth-century block. It sat unnaturally on the summit of the building like a child’s construction made of toy bricks. The estate agent boasted she had the best view in Rome. It was bullshit, but Monica had quite a view all the same, one so astonishing that she’d already booked another month at $3,500 a week, for May, when she and Harvey would be able to use to the full the terrace that stretched out on three sides of the ugly modern structure.
A perfect layer of snow, marked only by bird prints, now hid the warm terra-cotta tiles she’d seen when she arrived three days before. Monica walked carefully across the snow, which was close to ankle deep, listening to Peter O’Malley talk with wonder about what they could see. He had a soft, musical voice like that of an actor, one whose slightly metallic Irish tint reminded her how much the Hibernian accent had influenced American. The night was clear now, with a scattering of dark stratus high in a sky bright with a full moon. They had checked the TV when they arrived. Peter wanted to know what the weather would do and when he could return to Orvieto. She poured herself a Scotch while he listened to the impenetrable Italian on the box. There were pictures of cop cars around the Pantheon, shots of a police press conference with a tall, goatee-bearded inspector facing down the cameras and looking as if he wouldn’t say a damn thing.
That wasn’t what interested Peter, though. He wanted to know what the sky would bring. When the bulletin was done he told her. There would be more snow after midnight.
Now, on the terrace, still in her fur coat, she clutched the glass of Scotch and followed him round, listening. He’d stopped drinking. In truth, she thought, he hadn’t consumed much at all in the enoteca. It was hard to tell.
Peter O’Malley was laughing now. They were standing on the northern side of the terrace, looking away from the river, up towards the rising lights of some hill.
His arm slipped through hers and squeezed gently.
“Symmetry,” he said. “Can you see it?”
“Where?” she replied, feeling stupid.
“Everywhere. You just have to look.” He pointed to the twinkling street lamps on the distant hill. “You know where that is?”
“No idea.”
“Trinità dei Monti. The church at the top of the Spanish Steps.”
She nodded. She’d walked there before the snow came and had been surprised to find there was a McDonald’s near the foot of the twin staircases and an American-style Santa ringing a bell and yelling for money in Italian.
“Been there. So what?”
He led her round to the opposite wall of the apartment. The bright, white, wedding-cake building in the Piazza Venezia stood out like a sore thumb: in front of it the jumble of Renaissance rooftops, with the huge half sphere of the dome she had come to recognize.
“That I do know,” she said, a little proud of herself. “I went inside yesterday. It’s beautiful. The Pantheon.”
“The home of all the gods,” he said. “That’s good.”
Then they went to the western wall, which had the larger part of the terrace, an expanse of open space a good ten yards deep, with flower pots, an old stone table and a permanent, brick-built barbecue with a little sink by it. An awning had been built in front of the full-length windows. The shrivelled and leathery stems of a couple of meagre grapevines wound their way around the supporting pillars. A few blackened leaves still hung on the furled, wiry whips feeling their way through the trelliswork. Two tall gas heaters whistled away, pumping out enough warmth to make it possible to sit outside, even on a night like this, to be alone in Rome, above everything, out of sight.
He was gesturing. She looked over the river, where a snow-clad circular building rose, brightly illuminated by a forest of spotlights.
“And that is?”
“I told you,” she objected. “It’s only my first time here.”
“Castel Sant” Angelo. Think, Monica. Draw a line from Trinità dei Monti to the castle. Draw another line from the Pantheon, out to the Piazza del Popolo over there. What do you get?“
She looked out to the north, the direction he was pointing, out into the face of the icy breeze, then ducked beneath the trellis and fell into one of the hard, cold summer seats. She got what he was driving at. She wasn’t stupid.
“A cross. A crucifix.”
“And we are?”
“Where the two arms meet? But so what, Peter? Don’t get scary on me. It’s just coincidence. It’s just…”
She looked out over the city, shining under the icy, bright moon, then shivered. “It’s just how things are.”
He walked under the shelter of the awning, stole her glass from the table, took a sip of whisky from it.
“What if there are no coincidences? What if everything has history? A reason?”
He wasn’t serious, she thought. It was just some game. “In a place like this, you could come up with stuff like that anywhere,” she protested. “I could say, look, here’s the Colosseum. Or the Capitol. Or whatever. Look. It makes a circle. A square. An octagon. It’s Rome, for God’s sake. It’s all here.”
“Quite,” he replied.
“You’re sounding like a priest now,” she said softly, slurring the words a little. “I’d forgotten for a while that’s what you are.” She didn’t know what to do. Whether to feel stupid for letting a stranger into her home, into her mind, like this. Or just to roll with it and see where everything went. He was a priest. There was nothing to be scared about.
“Must be hard doing what you do,” she said. “Having to stay apart from other people.”
“There’s nothing hard in that. It helps you think about what really matters.”
“You don’t miss the comfort of another person?”
His smart eyes clouded over. “You can’t miss what you never knew.”
“I don’t believe that, Peter. Not of you.”
Peter O’Malley was not a happy man. He was looking for something, all the time. Why? Monica wondered.
“Why are you a priest? It doesn’t seem right. Whatever would make a man like you do this?”
“A man like me…” He laughed lightly, breaking the fragile spell that had begun to hover around them, something dark at its edges, and she felt relieved, light-headed even. “A man like me is just a fool looking for magic where none exists. And then…”