The Vatican Rip

'People make allowances for men.' Bravely she explained, 'A woman taking a lover is a hedonistic bitch. A rich gentleman is merely a roué, a gay old dog. And it's women do the damage—at least, in Rome it is. They're on to you like wolves.'

'What now?' I asked after a pause.

'Now?' She raised her lovely head and smiled. 'You've come at last, Lovejoy.' She smiled gently and reached back to ruffle my neck. 'I don't care what you've done in the past, darling. I take you as you are. And you'll please forgive the measures I've taken while enduring the long, terrible waiting.'

Until then I'd been absolutely determined to go back to Anna's divan. Honestly, I really had. The trouble is, women can be very assertive. I'd be well-balanced and even-tempered all of the time if it weren't for them. So I stayed. I swear it wasn't anything in the way of a deal between Adriana and me. Honestly it wasn't. Adriana in her mind had simply given Piero the push, that was all there was to it. I knew divorce from Emilio was out of the question for Adriana. I sighed inwardly. I'd have to give Anna the excuse that I was working on the rip. Anyway, this couldn't last.

What a mess it all seemed. I'd have stopped to work it all out, but now there was no time left anywhere. The rip was upon us. Here. Now.

CHAPTER 22

Teaching Carlo the rip was like talking to a frigging wall.

'Repeat it,' I said wearily for the umpteenth time.

'Lissern, you guys,' Carlo ground out, flicking ash into his own coffee by mistake. 'This is the plan, see?' He did a Cagney hunch-up and chewed gum. 'We cruise into the saloon—'

'We walk casually into the cafeteria,' I corrected.

'— Get a shot of bourbon—'

'Wine and cream cake.'

'—And wait for the Big Wheel's signal—'

'And read a newspaper until I say.'

'All rightee!' he said grimly, grinding out his cheroot—cheroot, for God's sake. I ask you.

'Get your holster on, boss, and let's go!'

'Not till two o'clock this afternoon. And leave your knife here.' So help me, he'd got a knife long as a sword especially for the occasion.

'Right, boss. High noon.'

He burned his thumb trying a one-handed strike for another cheroot. The goon was actually wearing a white tie with a black shirt and a black suit with shoulders a mile wide. In the cold light of early morning he was utterly unreal. I could have throttled him.

'You've warned Valerio and Patrizio, Anna?'

Anna patiently passed him some butter for his burn and lit his cheroot at the gas-ring.

'Yes, Lovejoy.'

'You got me the phone number?'

'Here.' She'd printed it carefully on the face of a postage stamp, a good touch. I smiled approval at her. 'They'll be waiting from one o'clock. If the rip aborts they'll go on stand-by until seven.'

'You've done well, Anna.' I shoved Carlo's elbows off the table and checked once again.

'Bottle.' The brown bottle Anna had stolen from the chemist's stood among the Colosseum photographs I had neatly arranged in rows. 'Photographs. Measurements written out. Suit. Shirt and tie. Case. New shoes. Towel. Gloves. Hygienic sealing tape.'

We went over the entire contents, krypton lamp, coat hook, tubes of adhesive, the lot.

My own toolbag felt heavy as lead. 'Thanks, love.'

The measurements were for the winch. We'd tried the dark sober suit an hour before and it fitted me pretty well. I hadn't worn a suit since my missus left home. It felt decidedly odd. Anna had lifted it from that elegant gentlemen's outfitters on the Viale Giulio Cesare. The new shoes pinched a bit, but on the whole she had stolen with uncanny accuracy. I thought uneasily, maybe she watches me as closely as I watch her.

I waited while she packed everything neatly into the black rectangular briefcase.

'Now—breakfast.'

Anna brought out a cloth and began to lay the table. A dozen mental re-runs later I scented the fragrant aroma of frying bacon. I looked across questioningly but she did not meet my eye as she cracked some eggs on the side of the pan. Breakfast was usually a roll in a paper bag, and mostly Carlo got to it first. I was looking at the floor when she served it up with a mound of bread and butter.

'What's all this?' Carlo demanded, for once shaken out of his acting career.

'You'll both need a big breakfast inside you!' Anna rasped. 'The rip starts today—or hadn't you heard? Cretino!'

She slammed an immense meal in front of each of us, and even made tea specially.

Hearing somebody else called that instead of me made it a breakfast to remember.

Carlo went out in a sulk, so I had his as well.

* * *

Piero spotted my little case the instant I stepped in the Emporium that morning and grinned all over his face. I tried to look defeated.

'Going anywhere, Lovejoy?'

'I have to visit somebody. I only came in to clear up loose ends, Piero. I don't want any trouble.'

'Okay.' Nonchalantly he threw me the keys to the workshop. 'Finish what you can, then piss off for good.'

I've never really been able to whine, not really convincingly, but I did my best. 'Look, Piero. About that passport…'

'You'll have it tonight.'

Thank Christ. I pulled a face. 'Er, the signora hasn't paid me…'

He sneered, his lip curling. No, honestly. It really did curl. I'd never seen a lip curl with scorn before in my whole life. I stared admiringly and only remembered in the nick of time that I was supposed to be a hopeless scrounger. 'You'll get your fare,' Piero promised scathingly. 'And enough to get drunk on the way home. Now work.'

'Please don't say anything to the signora—'

He grinned again. 'I can handle her.' I could have hit him.

By the time Fabio swept in I was working like a mad thing, quietly and efficiently testing the strength of my plywood mock-up. The base of a rent table's essentially a modified cylinder, with tangential walls showing lovely wood patterns. Now, a table top's always easiest to falsify, so don't trust it when you're buying antiques. Also, remember that a table is a flat surface or it's nothing, which means its top is always the first to suffer should drinks be spilled or serving maids have catastrophes with smoothing irons.

Luckily, I was in the enviable position of forging a table whose major surface would be covered by a Presidential cage of synthetic sprawling birds.

But the pedestal base would be in clear view the entire length of that gallery. It had to look genuine, solid and old.

Tip: polyurethane varnishes are superb and polyurethane hardglazes look superb, but only true beeswaxes feel absolutely correct. Antique dealers dress a falsely veneered surface by varnish, then by beeswax which is given a microscopic craquelure by rapid drying.

This is done effectively only in two ways: in front of a fan or by a chemical desiccant such as sodium hydroxide in a sealed container. I'd applied both, placing the workshop's fan heater on 'cold' during the day and stuffing the folding veneered plywood into a plastic bag with the crystals overnight. There's always plenty of these crystals in an antique shop—even honest dealers (should there be any left) use it for putting that golden gleam on oak. Like I say, it's getting so you can't trust anybody these days.

With my heart in my mouth on that day I checked Piero was fully occupied, and extracted the veneered plywood. It was beautiful, its gleaming surface now dulled by drying. Microscopic examination would reveal minute cracks in the waxed surface, such as are normally associated with ageing. The corners and intersections were more obviously peeling than the rest, but I helped this artefact along with a little crushed carbon from a piece of drawing charcoal (use Winsor and Newton if you can get it) blown on to a piece of chamois leather and rubbed gently along the edges.

I still had the thin top sections and hinged edges to slot under the cafeteria table, but when Adriana sent to tell me I was to stop for coffee the collapsible pedestal was folded out of the way under the work bench. I was well into machining the metal support rods which would give it strength. Two hours to go.