“No!” Her eyes were pleading with him. “He won’t buy that, Nic. He’s too smart. You do things his way. Or…”
Kaspar would be utterly inflexible, Costa understood this. He was offering to surrender. The terms would surely be his.
“I’ll call Falcone when I can get through,” he promised her. “I’ll make the arrangements.”
“And me?” Teresa asked.
Emily reached into her jacket, took out a plastic security swipe card, then scribbled an incomprehensible jumble of letters and numbers and an e-mail address on the napkin. “If you can talk your way into Leapman’s office, this will get you on the system. After that… You and Nic need to try and find some way to work this out together. I can’t…”
Maybe it was some kind of delayed shock. She rocked back onto her chair. Her face was white. She was on the verge of breaking. Costa could see it and he didn’t have the words to help.
Teresa Lupo intervened. She bent forward and put her arms around Emily’s slight shoulders. “Emily,” she whispered, “keep going. We can do this.”
Then Teresa was gone, not looking back, not wanting to see what Costa knew would be a difficult moment of intimacy.
The American’s hands felt his again, just the briefest touch. She was cold now, she was sweating.
“Make it work, Nic,” Emily Deacon told him softly. “This isn’t just for me.”
She leaned forward, kissed his cheek, her lips cold. Then she shuffled the hood around her head, disappeared into its bulk and, eyes firmly on the floor, walked away, out into the bright, biting morning, out towards the hulking presence of the ancient building around the corner.
PERONI LISTENED WITH a growing sense of unease as Falcone forced them to focus on the message Kaspar had given him the previous night: proof.
Leapman was adamant, in a confident way that worried Peroni no end. “It was Dan Deacon. This was Deacon’s show all along. Kaspar’d know that if he had half a mind left.”
That wasn’t the point, Peroni thought, and surely they knew it. “Can you prove it?” he asked. “I looked into that man’s face last night and he’s going to take some convincing. I told you. He spoke with Deacon. I don’t think-”
“Deacon! Deacon!” Leapman yelled. “The bastard was a traitor! How the hell can anyone rely on a word Dan Deacon ever said?”
“The man was trying to save his life at the time. I don’t think people are very adept at lying in those situations.”
Leapman glowered at the SISDE man. “Tell him.”
Viale made that slight, amused gesture he used to put people down. “We lie anytime we damn well feel like. Welcome to our world. Best accept it.”
“What we accept,” Falcone said curtly, “is that Kaspar is making a direct threat, one he is doubtless determined to carry out, in this city.We’re under a duty to understand and respond to that. It’s important we know what we can offer him to get him to back down. Can you prove it was Deacon?”
“No,” Leapman replied. “If you want a straight answer.”
Peroni felt like grabbing the guy by the throat again. He seemed so detached from the problem. He looked as if he were turning down an expense account. “Why not? These things must cost millions of dollars. You’ve got to have accounts, records, something.”
The American actually laughed. Gianni Peroni found he had to make a conscious effort to stay in his seat.
“What planet are you people living on?” Leapman asked. “That’s the last thing any of us would want. These operations are specifically designed so that if they go wrong, the shit stays on the ground and doesn’t seep anywhere near the rest of us. That’s the only way they can succeed. Kaspar knows that as well as anyone. He invented half the rules. Asking for an audit trail now shows how deranged the guy is. He might as well ask us to go public and hang ourselves.”
“You’ve got-” Peroni persisted.
“No!” Leapman snapped. “Listen. These were the rules Kaspar played by. He can’t buck them now. Deniability’s everything. No papers. No bank transactions. Nothing. Just a bunch of money going missing in some accounts in Washington, in ways no one’s ever going to notice.”
Commissario Moretti finally found his voice. “You heard what they said, Viale. I’ll go along with this so far, but I don’t want trouble here on the streets of Rome. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“It’s a tough world out there,” Viale said softly, staring at the table. “We’ll cope.”
“Dammit!” Moretti screeched. “We do cope. We’re the police. We’re here for a reason.”
“You’re here because you’re convenient,” Viale reminded him nastily. “I’ve never met a cop who rolled over as easily as you did. Jesus. Leo here wouldn’t have fallen for a trick like that. He’d have checked. He did check. You…”
The grey man didn’t even attempt to disguise his contempt for the man in the uniform. “You’re just a stuffed-up buffoon with a pen and a few shiny buttons on your jacket. You’re useful to me, Bruno, but don’t overestimate your value. And don’t get in the habit of talking back.”
The commissario went silent, shaking his head. Shock, Peroni thought. And maybe even a little well-deserved shame.
“He’s going to contact us somehow,” Falcone insisted. “He’s going to want something.”
Viale reached over, took Moretti’s pen and notepad and made a couple of indecipherable scribbles. “Then we’ll give him it. I’m not having another innocent death here. I can put some documents together. Keep him occupied until we find him.”
Peroni wanted to scream. “Don’t you understand? This guy’s no fool. You can’t just slip him some phoney letters and hope he’ll swallow it. He’s wise to tricks like that.”
Leapman nodded. “He’s right. If you give him fake stuff it’ll only make him madder. Then what?”
Viale looked immensely pleased with himself. “Who said it was going to be fake, Joel?”
“What?” the American snarled.
“You heard.”
The SISDE man got up from the desk and walked over to the far side of the office where there was a set of heavy-duty, old-fashioned filing cabinets secured by combination locks. He flicked through some numbers on the nearest, slid open a drawer and retrieved a blue file.
Leapman uttered a low, bitter curse.
“Oh, please!” Viale was loving this. “This was your show. We were just housekeeping. And”-he waved the file at the American-“housekeepers keep records. I was just rereading them last night, Joel. To refresh my memory. We have a habit around here. We note down conversations afterwards. We like to make sure we remember what we can. You may have had lots of reasons to cut off everything at the source. We had just as many to keep a few reminders of what really happened. Just in case someone started pointing fingers in our direction later. We’re your allies. We’re not your lackeys. Or your fall guys. You didn’t really think we’d be willing to go down with the ship, if it came to that, did you?”
“Well, well, well,” Leapman spat back at him. “It’s the people on your own side who fuck you up the most.”
Viale withdrew a photo from the file and threw it on the desk. It was of a group of men and women in casual, semi-military uniform, working on a jeep. The shot looked unposed. None of them knew they were being photographed. The location was wild countryside, maybe Italy, maybe not.
Leapman glowered at the image in front of them. “What the hell were you doing taking that?”
Viale scattered some more photos on the desk, all of the same scene.
“Being prudent,” Viale answered, pointing at one picture. “Look at the date.”
It was printed on the bottom of the photo: 12 October 1990.
“This is before Kaspar even knew about the mission. And there’s Dan Deacon.”
“That just means Deacon was in on the deal,” Peroni objected. “Doesn’t mean he was running it.”
“Details, details.” Viale dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. He patted the file. “Kaspar just needs something new to interest him and here it is. Some documents. Some photos. Something that points the finger straight at Deacon. While Kaspar’s looking at that… Can’t you see what I’m offering you?” Viale opened his arms, a gesture of generosity. “These men you have here? They’re good, aren’t they?”