Besides, she knew what he was going to say. There could be other ways. They could try and sneak in a sniper. Or track down Kaspar before he had the chance to hit the trigger.
“I want to go through with this, Nic. I need to know.”
“Understood,” he said, stood up, reached forward, took her face in his hands, kissed her forehead, just for a moment.
The caretaker was standing beside them, tapping the stone floor with his right foot. The sound echoed round and round the hemisphere, bouncing back from every angle of its curves.
“So?” the man said petulantly. “Procedures? Where’s the rest of you, huh?”
Costa ran his hand to Emily’s neck, found the zip, pulled it gently down, carefully, carefully. She was taking shallow breaths, looking at him, not what he was revealing.
He’d got the zip halfway down when the caretaker saw. Strapped to Emily Deacon’s slight young chest was a military green vest loaded with bright yellow canisters, familiar shapes, joined to one another by a writhing loom of multicoloured wires.
“It’s a bomb,” Costa said again, hearing the man retreat in a flurry of hurried footsteps behind him. “Several, actually. I’ll clear the building myself. When it’s empty, lock the doors, go to your office and await my instructions.”
The other four visitors were French, two couples. Not Joel Leapman’s team, not unless they were unusually good at hiding who they were.
Nic Costa let them out of the building, took a good look around and wondered where and how William F. Kaspar had hidden himself in the tangled warren of alleys that made up this ancient quarter of Rome. Then he took a second chair out of the seating area, placed it next to Emily Deacon and began a long, long phone conversation with Leo Falcone.
BACK IN THE GREY BUILDING off the Via Cavour, Commissario Moretti squared the closure of the Pantheon on unspecified security grounds, then fled to the Questura pleading other appointments. Viale and Leapman went into a huddle on their own. No one seemed much surprised by the news Costa had imparted through Falcone. No one saw it as anything other than an opportunity to snatch Kaspar either. Peroni was genuinely appalled that the idea of Emily Deacon sitting with explosives strapped to her body, a deadline ticking over her head, one that expired in precisely ninety minutes, seemed peripheral somehow, an inconsequential fact in a larger, darker drama. Even to Leo Falcone, in a way. The game had moved on. It was now about closure and survival. A part of Peroni-not a part he liked-almost envied the way Moretti was able to duck out of the door, hide in his office and try to pretend this was just another ordinary day.
When Viale gave the order, they left the SISDE building in two cars. Falcone sat in the passenger seat of an unmarked police Fiat as Peroni drove through the slushy, empty streets. The others followed in a plain grey van with a couple of small antennae sprouting from its roof, a vehicle that to Gianni Peroni screamed “spook” to anyone with half a mind and a small measure of imagination.
Two of Leapman’s henchmen had materialized outside the building as they left, unbidden as far as Peroni could work out. They were anonymous-looking creatures, youngish, short hair, long dark winter coats, hands stuffed deep in their pockets.
Peroni thought about them as he drove. These men were trained in firearms and covert operations. It was what they did and, in spite of Viale’s doubts, Peroni was in no doubt they were extremely efficient at it. Whereas he was a cop, one who hated guns, hated the use of violence as a means of resolving an issue, saw bloodshed as the ultimate failure. As did Costa. And, Peroni hoped, Leo Falcone.
The dour inspector made another call, to Costa from what Peroni could make out. It wasn’t easy. Falcone had spent most of the time listening, then asking brief, cryptic questions.
When Falcone was done, Peroni navigated a couple of patches of grubby snow still staining the Piazza Venezia and decided he couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “You mind if I ask you something, Leo?”
“Is there an answer I can give that will stop you?” Falcone replied.
“No. What are we doing here? I mean, even if that SISDE bastard does have us trussed up like a Christmas turkey, what’s the point in making it all worse? If we’re screwed, we’re screwed. Why do it twice over? Why not make ourselves a few friends by throwing up our hands and letting someone else sort out this crapfest?”
Falcone rubbed his chin and stared at a pair of tourists wandering idly across the road, oblivious to the presence of traffic.
“Very good question,” he conceded after a while.
“Do I get a very good answer?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
The grey van was now a couple of hundred metres in front, disappearing towards the main drag of Vittorio Emanuele and the street which turned down to the Pantheon.
“They’re right in one respect,” Falcone told Peroni quietly. “Kaspar has to come off the street. You know that as well as I do.”
“Of course I know that!” It was as if Falcone was trying to be exasperating. And succeeding too. “It doesn’t mean we just rub him out. I mean… what kind of a world are we living in? I don’t want to act like I’m judge, jury and executioner. If I wanted that I’d move to South America or somewhere.”
“Pragmatism-”
“Bullshit!”
Falcone pointed to the grey van ahead of them. “Keep up. So what do you suggest we do?”
“OK! Here’s an idea. We go back to the Questura. We find some nice, powerful uniform one office above Moretti. There has to be someone there who will listen.”
“In the end,” Falcone agreed. “But then we don’t get Kaspar. Or they get him anyway and disappear off the face of the planet, leaving us to answer all the awkward questions. Plus, there’s the small matter of Agent Deacon. Who’s looking out for her now, do you think? Leapman?”
Peroni turned that one over in his head. Bombs were terrorism. Terrorism, inevitably, fell outside the Questura’s remit. Everything got handed on, to SISDE and some specialist guys, probably in the Carabinieri. It all took time, resources, intelligence. Everything they didn’t have.
Falcone observed, “You’ve gone uncharacteristically quiet all of a sudden.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” Peroni bellowed. “Stop kicking me in the teeth every time I come up with a suggestion. It’s no wonder you never stayed married. Always the fucking smart-ass, Leo. No one likes smartasses.”
It was an uncalled-for outburst. Falcone now sat in the passenger seat giving him that glacial stare Peroni knew so well.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry. I apologize. I’m a little tense. What do you think we should do? Short of rolling over and letting these bastards screw us any which way they feel like?”
Falcone let out a curt laugh. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Your own partner understands. Judging by the conversation we just had, he understood straightaway.”
Peroni thought his head might explode. He took one hand off the steering wheel and waved a fist towards Falcone’s face. “Yeah. That’s because you and Nic come out of the same mould, except neither of you recognizes it. The one marked ”sneaky bastard, handle with care, will bite when you least expect it.“ Whereas I-”
“You’re just an old vice cop who got busted down to the ranks for one transgression of a minor and personal nature.”
“Quite,” Peroni replied and wondered why there was such a wheedling tone in his voice. “Enlighten me, Leo. My head hurts.”
Falcone glanced at him. Just for a second something in his expression bore a slight resemblance to sympathy. “It’s simple,” he said. “People like Leapman and Viale, they get their power from just one thing.”
“Which is?”
“They play outside the rules. They think they’re immune from them. They do that for a good reason, too. The people they deal with-terrorists, others doing the same job-take the same view. They’re all willing to do things most human beings, through matters of breeding and responsibility and taste, would find repugnant.”