“All clear?” asks Sterling.
“So far.”
I breathe the funky mist coming off the fountain. The she-wolf statue spits a docile stream as on this balmy evening the drama becomes much smaller than the grand pageantry of Palio, down to a subtle eye movement between an American woman perched on the stone and a balding Italian man wearing a white polo shirt and an Oca scarf coming toward her, who stops in the middle of the piazza, turns his back, and lights a cigarette.
“That’s the contact, wearing green and white. The Oca colors.”
Nicosa says something urgently into the earpiece, maybe Sofri does, too, but I don’t hear them. I am in vapor lock, floating in a pool of now. I hoist the duffel and walk toward the man, who is standing alone, larger and more distinct than anything in the square. Objects become magnified and time slows down. I see the sunlight on the bald spot of his skull, reflecting hot as tin. I see the brown uniforms of a Boy Scout troop, and an orange Frisbee slicing by. The multicolored contrada scarves flying from the tourist shack snap in a silent wind.
I hear the first rifle shot. You wouldn’t hear it unless you were listening with extraordinary care. Not even the pigeons move. I don’t stop walking. As far as I know, the gunfire does not concern me. Ten meters from the contact, though, there is a second blast. This one is heard by everybody. It echoes off the palazzos like the mortaretto cannon at the start of the race, sending tourists diving under tables and birds into the air. The balding man lighting the cigarette drops to the ground with sudden impact, as if he fell from the sky. A red micro-cloud of atomized blood and brain appears and vanishes.
I swerve slightly and keep on going, still carrying the duffel, through the first and second waves of panicked bystanders — not like during the riot after Palio, careening into one another’s arms, laughing and crying, but a one-way, horror-driven stampede for all eleven exits, leaving the sprawling corpse in the Oca scarf in the center of the piazza, bleeding out on the sloping brick.
THIRTY-THREE
Back in the car, we are instantly surrounded by the clanging blare of ambulances and police.
“My God, what happened?” Nicosa says.
“Sterling took out the contact.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you right now, but I promise you, he had a reason.”
“He’s crazy! I knew it!”
“We’re okay,” I tell Nicosa soothingly. “Stay calm and just drive normally.”
I have no idea what went down, except that I am still gripping the bag with two million euros, and the chance to recover Cecilia has vanished.
Everything was set. Why is Sterling taking shots at a kidnap exchange?
It takes thirty agonizing minutes to drive just a few blocks and make it outside the walls, during which there is no communication through the earpiece from anyone. My growing fear is that Sterling went on a rampage caused by post-traumatic combat stress. His behavior over the last few days could add up to that; with a loaded weapon in his hand, he might have snapped.
“We killed their man,” Nicosa says. “They’ll murder her. They’ll murder all of us. My son, the whole family.” He looks into the rearview mirror, swerving crazily across the highway. “They could be following us now.”
“Nobody is following us.”
“What went wrong?”
“We’ll find out. Take a breath; you’re doing great. Just get us to the abbey without running into a tree.”
He is taking the hills at seventy kilometers per hour, churning up gravel like sparks. Still, by the time we roar through the gates, Chris’s Fiat is already parked, and Sterling is in the kitchen, downing glasses of water, the sniper bag slung over a chair.
Barely through the door, Nicosa gasps, “What happened?”
“Took the shot,” Sterling says. “Had to be done.”
“You murder a man in the middle of Il Campo? We had an agreement with Cosimo Umberto! They promised to return my wife. Now there will be a massacre.”
“They were lying. The plan was to draw Ana out. Get her out there in plain view. They had a sniper set up in a third-story window.”
“How do you know?” Nicosa demands.
Sterling reiterates what he said to me: “Nobody sees what I see in that gun sight.”
His face is tight; he’s full of adrenaline after the kill.
“And what was that?” asks Nicosa, barely restrained.
Sterling crooks two fingers and jabs at his own eyes, indicating that this is what he saw:
“The eyes.”
Nicosa doesn’t understand. “Whose eyes?”
“The bald man in the Oca scarf. He should have had more faith in his own guy,” Sterling says. “Instead, he looks up at the last minute, wanting to be sure everything’s going according to plan. Big mistake. Because when you’re looking through the magnifying scope of a Winchester 70, you can see something as small as the movement of an eye. I follow the eyes to where the subject’s looking — a third-floor window, where a shooter is set up with a sniper rifle, tracking Ana across the piazza. In half a second, I’m on target and the threat is eliminated. Half a second later, the contact is down, too. The contact looked up at his own sniper,” Sterling explains. “He was a trained assassin, aiming an incapacitation weapon at Ana. There was no other choice.”
Nicosa slams a palm against the wall.
“Why is all this necessary?” he cries in anguish, while I picture a swarm of complications when the police examine the bodies — not the least of which will be the failure to inform my superior that I was involved in a ransom negotiation that went south. I’m feeling lightheaded, not only because of recriminations at the Bureau, but because the hope of recovering the victim made me expose myself to the mafia’s double cross.
“How is Sofri?” I ask hoarsely.
“When I left his apartment he was still pretty shaken up. Told him to go out and get a cup of coffee and make sure he’s seen around the neighborhood.”
“Mother of God,” says Nicosa. “Were you inside Sofri’s apartment?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you shoot that gun out of his window?”
“It provided the clearest view of the piazza.”
Nicosa smacks his own head. “Are you crazy?”
“Nobody saw, Nicoli. It’s not like I was hangin’ out the window like Billy the Kid.”
“The only way to know where the shot came from would be sophisticated gunshot analysis,” I say.
“You realize the Puppet will immediately murder Cecilia in retaliation,” Nicosa says. “It’s over. Everything is lost.”
“I sincerely trust that is not the case. All I can tell you is they were prevented from killing Ana. That was my objective.”
Nicosa has no idea how breathtaking that is, and what clear-sighted concentration is required. Half a second and on target — twice — at four hundred yards. Through all of this, Sterling has been watching me intently. It’s like the light has come back to his eyes. He saved my life. Inside I’m crumbling, but—code of conduct—all I do is put my arm around his shoulders as he sits in the chair; he puts an arm around my waist. We pull each other close and tight. Nothing has ever felt so good. He’s here. He’s sane.
“Ah,” says Nicosa, scrutinizing. “What is this?” He smiles. “Lei due sono insieme.”