… death, they called it, somewhere this man knew very well indeed. Somewhere he liked to visit often, in the company of others.
“Just let her go,” Peroni mumbled, aware that the iron taste of his own blood was feeding into his mouth as he spoke, bowing his head now, knowing what was to come. “What can a kid do to you?”
He saw the butt of the pistol now, racing down towards him through the dark, heard what the figure at the other end of that powerful, sweeping arm was saying, over and over again.
Busy, busy, busy, busy.
He was a busy man, Peroni thought. That was about all they knew of him. Then even that was gone once the pistol butt connected, gone into an agonizing blackness where nothing made sense, not even the words he heard through the rushing bloody haze inside his head.
“THIS ZIGGURAT IS UNIQUE, Nic,” Emily said. “Read the report. That design is not uncommon, but an entire room, the holiest of holies, was decorated with it throughout. There’s nowhere like it in the whole of Iraq. Probably in the world. The place was uncovered back in the 1980s, at which time no one had the money to excavate it properly. It’s only now people are starting to see what’s really there. The irony is the Romans probably knew about this kind of architecture all along. They borrowed from it for buildings like the Pantheon. The resemblance can’t be coincidence. Hell, it even had an oculus. Hadrian could have copied the whole damn thing.”
“So what do you think happened?” he asked.
“Let’s start with some facts. He knew my dad. They were in the ziggurat together. My dad and those other people got out. Kaspar didn’t. Work it out.”
It wasn’t hard.
“Laura Lee?” he asked again.
“I think she was the woman who died in the Pantheon. It’s not her real name. God knows what that is. I tried to look at the files on her this afternoon. All gone. Buried so deep they might as well not exist. Why would anyone want to do that?”
The answer was always the same. “Because something went wrong.”
“Exactly. Listen: none of this is random. It never has been. He’s had thirteen years in some stinking Iraqi pit to think about this. So, come this year, Iraq’s free. He doesn’t walk up to the nearest American base and say, ”Hey, take me home.“ For some reason he doesn’t want to come in from the cold. He wants to get even. So he begins on the line that led to my dad.”
There was something missing. She knew it too.
“Why?” Nic asked. “If you were in jail that long, why’d you want to prolong the pain?”
“I don’t have the answer to that yet. Maybe Joel Leapman does, but he isn’t telling. You heard him. Publicly he’s just sticking to the line that Kaspar’s insane. But listen to the tone of some of their messages. You said it yourself. They’re offering this guy a lifeline. This sounds stupid, but I think in some way they still regard him as a hero. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise, why send an FBI unit and God knows who else here? Why not just leave it to you people to clean up all the crap?”
“He doesn’t trust Leapman,” Costa suggested. “Or anyone.”
“I know. Maybe he really is just plain crazy. Until we get the chance to ask him there’s no way of telling. Hell, if I’d known this last night I would have asked. Perhaps that’s all it needs. You just have to leech the wound.”
Costa didn’t like the idea one bit. “I don’t think that’s your job.”
“You could be right,” she agreed hesitantly. “But someone’s got to do it. Bill Kaspar has some entire messy chapter of history running around and around in his head, and until we understand that we get nowhere. I went back over the names of his victims again this afternoon. Most of them just don’t exist, but those that do have some interesting histories. The second victim was an executive with a private oil-distribution service. He’d worked in Iraq before the war. One of the women had been attached to the US embassy in Tehran for a while, civilian contract supposedly. It’s obvious, isn’t it? They’re just the kind of people who could be involved in this kind of covert activity. One way or another they got out and he didn’t. Now he’s back and he’s killing his old comrades. One by one. And I don’t think he’s done.”
The doubt must have been obvious in Nic’s face.
“You have a problem with that?” she asked.
“Yes. Why the hell did Laura Lee or whoever she was come here to Rome in the first place? Surely she must have known. And how did he track down all these people?”
“He’s a professional, remember? It’s what he does. You’ve got to see him close up to understand that, Nic. He must have been something. Maybe that’s what’s eating him up. Knowing he failed.”
“It doesn’t answer the question about her. If she knew, why would she deliberately put herself in danger?”
“I can give you one simple reason,” Emily replied with a grim certainty. “Because she didn’t have a choice. She’s still in the service. Leapman made her come to Rome, just as he made me. We were both bait. She got unlucky. Kaspar took her from straight under Leapman’s nose, snatched her out of his grip and carved her up. No wonder Leapman’s running around like a bear with a sore head. Imagine what his boss is saying right now.”
Costa could. Men like Leapman attracted their own kind. Someone kicked down on him. He kicked down in return.
“Are you with me so far?” she asked.
“I think so. But what do you want me to do?”
“You’ve done it. I wanted you to listen. I was sort of half-hoping you’d tell me I was crazy.”
“You are crazy. Just not about this.”
“Thank you, Mr. Costa,” she said primly, then closed her eyes and gently let her head slip down onto the back of the sofa. “Jesus, I feel as if I could sleep for a million years. And, maybe, when I wake up all of this could be gone, just a bad dream.”
She was close enough for him to smell her hair. A part of him wanted to reach out and touch a shining, golden strand, know what it felt like under his fingers.
“I don’t know what the hell to do,” she said in a quiet, half-scared voice. “Aside from not dreaming.”
He looked at the wine bottle. It was just about gone.
“I am going to find us something to eat,” he said. “Then…”
It was just a glance, he told himself. Just an expression in her eyes.
“… we sleep on it.”
She’d moved against him, just enough for him to feel her shoulder against his. He hadn’t meant it that way. Not consciously.
The blue eyes fixed him. Nic Costa felt lost in them. She looked grateful. Sharing the burden of doubts had helped her, brought the two of them closer. A brief smile flickered on her face. She was very close. On another occasion, under different circumstances…
He stirred uncomfortably on the sofa, looking for something to divert the way the night was moving.
“So what the hell is the Scarlet Beast, then?” he asked her.
It worked. There was a flash of delight on her face, an expression he was beginning to recognize, beginning to look forward to.
“First,” she said, pushing aside the bottle, “no more wine. We need all the concentration we’ve got. And food, Mr. Costa. This odd bachelor pad does run to food and water, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good. There’s just one more secret. And then”-Emily Deacon made a conscious effort to get the words right-“I’m through.”
LAILA WAS HALF YELLING, half pleading, in another language, a musical one quite foreign to him, though he knew somehow what it was. Her own: Kurdish. He’d heard enough of the street immigrants speaking it to be familiar with the odd cadences, half Western, half oriental.
And in his hurting, confused head, Peroni knew what she was saying too.
Please, please, please.
She was a thin, dark figure dancing on her light, light feet in this shadowy hall, pleading for her life from an unseen stranger while the big, burly cop who was supposed to be keeping her safe curled into a pained ball on the stone floor like a damaged child.