“Hate waiting,” she murmured, then dashed back into the cafe for another cappuccino before returning to her cold and solitary chair by the cheery stone dolphins.
IT WAS LEAPMAN by the doors, trying not to look triumphant. Costa came in behind the figure in the huge parka, watched him shuffle to the centre of the room, heard the huge door close behind them.
“Nice work,” the American murmured, thumping Costa on the back, then striding to catch up with the parka.
“You’re welcome,” Costa replied and stealthily slipped his hand into his pocket, retrieved the pistol, holding it low and hidden by his waist.
The jacketed figure came to a halt in front of the group in the centre of the building: Viale and the two Americans, now joined on either side by Falcone and Peroni.
“Bill Kaspar,” Leapman murmured, no mean measure of respect in his voice. “What a man. You just walk right in here, bold as brass, like you promised. You read that stuff, huh? You happy now? I hope so, Kaspar. Because we’ve been waiting for this moment a long, long time.”
Leapman’s hand came up to the parka hood, a big service revolver in it.
“So you just unwire yourself and the infant here. No tricks. Nothing. We’ve kept to our part of the deal. Indulge us in a discussion and then we’ll be taking you home.”
The only part of the man that was moving was his head, swaying from side to side, as if he were trying to shake something away.
“It’s not as simple as that.”
Leapman blinked, lowered the gun for a moment, turned and glowered at Emily Deacon as if her words were some impudent intrusion into his day. “What?”
“She said,” Costa muttered into his ear, letting the barrel of his own weapon slide with some deliberate menace onto Leapman’s cheek, “it’s not as simple as that. I’m taking your weapon, Agent Leapman.” He glanced at the others. “And the rest of you.”
“What the-?” Leapman yelled, letting the pistol fall into Costa’s grip even as he did so. “Jesus, Falcone-”
To the American’s fury, Falcone and Peroni were relieving his agents of their guns too, with a careful, professional attention that didn’t brook any resistance.
Falcone pocketed Friedricksen’s piece and watched Peroni do the same for his partner. “You’re making too much noise, Leapman,” Falcone replied. “Stop yelling and start listening.”
Then he looked at Viale. “You?”
The SISDE man was flushed with outrage, even under the grey afternoon light. His gloved hands waved at them in anger. “This is insane. What on earth do you think you’re doing?”
He pulled out his phone and started stabbing at the keys.
“Peroni!” Falcone ordered.
The big man was over in two strides, relieving Viale of the phone.
“Check him,” Falcone barked. “He probably thinks he’s too far up the damn ladder to carry a gun but I’d like to know.”
Viale held his arms loose at his side as Peroni gave him a none-too-delicate frisk. “You three are really at the end of the road, you know. You can’t fuck with people like me, Falcone. I’ll crucify you, I swear it.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Peroni grumbled. “Clean,” he announced. “I guess he expects others to do his dirty work for him. Foul mouth, though. If I hear much more, I’ll have to do something about that.”
“As good as dead!” Viale yelled. “All of you!”
Peroni stood very close in front of him and looked down into the SISDE man’s apoplectic face and said, very slowly, in that tone Costa instantly recognized, the one that could silence the meanest street hood: “Now be a good boy and shut the fuck up.”
“Later,” Viale spat, but fell silent. Peroni pushed him up to the silent, resentful Americans.
“So, Miss Deacon?” Falcone said. “Where do we go from here?”
“Straight to the point.” She got up, faced the figure in the parka, and tugged down the hood, exposing the shaking head, then ripped the fat slice of shiny metallic duct tape straight from the man’s lower face.
Thornton Fielding screamed with pain, shot his fingers to his mouth, pulled them away, astonished, then stared at the small assembly of people in front of him as if he’d just woken up from a bad dream, only to find himself slap bang in the middle of another one.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” Fielding yelled. He was looking in horror at the vest strapped to his chest, with its yellow canisters and loom of wires. “Are you serious, Leapman? What the hell is this? Get it off of me. Now!”
Nic Costa was watching the expression on Leapman’s face all along, wondering. There was nothing there but shock and surprise. Leapman screwed up his eyes and turned to Falcone. “What is he doing here?”
“Talking,” Costa said, intervening. “If he wants to stay alive.”
Emily came up to close to Fielding, looked at his jacket, then at hers. “These are BLU-97 bomblets, Thornton. Adapted for the task, specially for the two of us. I watched Kaspar do it this morning. A cap detonator in each. Wired to a remote only he controls. He knows what he’s doing. Also”-she flipped the mike on her collar-“he can hear everything we say.” She nodded at Leapman. “If he doesn’t like what they do, I get to be the martyr. If he doesn’t like what he’s hearing from you-bang, it’s you. Or maybe both of us. Who knows?”
There was a cast of stark terror in Fielding’s eyes. “Sweet Jesus, what does that lunatic want from me?”
Emily stayed close. “The same thing I want, Thornton. Some answers. About what happened here in Rome, back in 1990. You do remember that, don’t you?”
He shook his grey head in astonishment. “What? What are you talking about? Listen…”
He looked at Leapman, then at Falcone, appealing to them. “This is the truth. I swear. One hour ago I’m at my desk in the embassy. I get some crazy e-mail from Emily here saying she was in big trouble with you guys somehow and I had to go to some place near the Corso right then.”
Leapman scowled at him, then at Costa. “She was here an hour ago. She couldn’t possibly have sent that.”
“It was internal!” Fielding screamed. “Came from her PC, goddammit! Made it sound like the world was falling in or something. Like it involved me, too.”
“That’s because it does, Thornton,” Emily said quietly.
“This is ridiculous,” he shouted.
Leapman walked up to Fielding, interested. “What happened?”
“I get there and some hulking lunatic in a uniform jumps me, drags me into an alley, puts this stuff on me, and says if I don’t wait where he says until some guy comes to fetch me I’m dead. And sticks that stinking tape over my mouth too. And that’s exactly where I stay until he”-Fielding pointed at Costa-“turns up.”
Costa got a withering glance from Leapman and smiled wanly in return.
“So what the hell is going on here, Joel?” Fielding demanded. “If this is one of those damn training exercises of yours-”
“It’s no exercise,” Leapman responded. “You were here? In Rome? In ”90?“
“Sure!” Fielding yelled. “It’s no secret. It’s no secret why I’m still here either. I’m the resident queer, remember? I didn’t get moved around back then because I was a security risk. I don’t get moved around now because I’m part of the furniture. Big deal.”
“I didn’t know that,” Leapman said quietly.
“Get this crap off of me!” Fielding screeched.
Costa walked up, took a good look at him. “Can’t do that. Kaspar put it on you. He’s the only one who can take it off.”
Fielding’s face screwed up in disbelief. “You bastards sent me out to meet that lunatic?”
“Looks like it,” Leapman observed. “So where the hell is he now, Mr. Costa?”
“Search me.” Costa shrugged. “I just took the phone call. Could be anywhere in the vicinity from what we understand. He said that, unless he got some answers, he’d start setting those things off in”-Costa looked at the watch again-“a little under ten minutes. If you believe him, that is. What do you think, Mr. Fielding? Do you think he’s really capable of that?”