He worked up the courage to get a little closer. “They come with a parachute cap that lets them down slowly from the main container. Looks like your guy’s taken them off and put in some kind of electronic detonator stub instead. What a lunatic. That thing’s got PBXN-107 inside, which makes dynamite look like Play-Doh. You got three hundred or so preformed fragments built into the case. These bombs are made for piercing armour, not anti-personnel stuff.”

Now Peroni thought about it, the bombs strapped to the khaki vest did look remarkably like soft-drink cans. No wonder kids picked them up.

“Eight,” the American said. “If he detonates them now, we’re all ground beef. Probably enough force in the blast to bring down this creepy hole too.”

Filippo Viale, who had been staying a safe distance behind everyone throughout, came further to the front. He stared at the young woman in the chair and asked, “Disposal?”

“Yeah! Right!” The idiot actually laughed. “Get some guy with an X-ray machine, a week to spare and a death wish and you might just stand an outside chance.”

Viale bent down in front of Emily Deacon, peering into her face like a teacher staring at a recalcitrant child. “What did he say to you, exactly?”

“Who the hell are you?” she asked.

Viale didn’t even blink. “Someone who might be able to save your life. What did he say?”

“Exactly? He said he was giving me precisely ninety minutes from noon. Then he’d push the button. He’s got this mike thing…”

She flipped the collar and showed them the mike.

“He’s got plenty of range,” Costa said. “He could be listening to us from as far away as the Campo or the Corso. Somewhere”-he thought about what she’d told him-“busy.”

“Why do you say that?” Falcone asked.

Emily answered. “He’s got another one of these vests. I saw it. He’s not fooling. He’s wearing the damn thing himself. He said he planned to go somewhere where there are lots of other people. Perhaps a department store. A cafe, I don’t know. The idea is that if you’re dumb enough to try to track him down he can take out dozens of people. He just presses a couple of buttons and I’m gone, so’s he and anyone near either of us.”

Leapman emitted a short, dry laugh. “Jesus. I said he was the best.”

“Comforting,” Costa observed, then he looked at his watch. Kaspar had set the time frame they had to work with. It was too tight to contain any room to manoeuvre. He knew precisely what he was doing. “We’ve got just over an hour. So what are we going to do?”

Viale nodded at the mike on her collar. “He’s listening to this? Every word?”

“That,” Emily said with an icy sarcasm, “is the whole point.”

Joel Leapman pushed in front of Viale and announced, “Let me deal with him.

“Listen to me, Kaspar,” the American said in a loud, clear voice. “This shit has to come to an end. We’ve got some documents you can look at. We can prove you’ve got the people you wanted.”

Viale reached into his leather briefcase, pulled out the blue folder and waved it at Leapman as a reminder.

“We’ve got it with us right now,” Leapman continued. “All you’ve got to do is come and collect. Then you can take off your jacket, put your hands up and come catch a plane home, because I am not wasting any more time on you, man. Maybe we do owe you an apology. Maybe you’ll get one and we can keep you safe somewhere nice and private, in spite of everything. You’ve got to see these things we have for you here and put an end to all this. It doesn’t leave any room for doubt. But you have to pick it up yourself. This is all deep, deep stuff and I am not letting it out of my sight, not for one second.”

“Won’t work,” Emily Deacon said quietly. “What kind of idiot do you think he is? He won’t walk straight in here just on a promise.”

“He has to!” Leapman insisted. “I can’t have a bunch of secret files going astray in a foreign city just because he says so.”

“Kaspar gave you his word!” Emily yelled. “Give him some proof and this is all over!”

Leapman threw his arms up in the air and started yelling, so loudly his cold, metallic voice rang around the circular hall, rebounded from each shady corner. “His word? His word? Fuck his word. The guy’s a loon. A loose, out-of-control maniac. I don’t give a damn-”

Costa walked over and grabbed him loosely by the collar, forcing him to be quiet.

Then Emily Deacon was screaming, writhing on the chair, not knowing whether to move or stay still. A noise was coming from her jacket, a noise that was making her stiffen with shock and anticipation. There were seven men in the hall at that moment. Leapman and his team scurried for their lives, disappearing into the shadows, Viale trying to keep up with them. Nic Costa looked at his two colleagues. Then he walked over to Emily Deacon, found the hidden pocket on the jacket’s front. Something was vibrating beneath the fabric, making a wild, electronic noise, a butchered kind of music, a short refrain that rang a bell somewhere in his head.

Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries.” All reduced to a series of beeps on a piece of silicon.

Costa lowered the zipper and removed the phone.

“Jesus, Nic,” Emily whispered. “I never knew that was there.”

He touched her blonde hair, just for a moment, and murmured, “He’s improvising. So should we.”

Then he looked at the handset, working out the buttons, hit the one for speakerphone and placed it on the chair Filippo Viale had so hastily vacated seconds before.

“Mr. Kaspar,” Costa said evenly, “it’s now a little under twenty minutes to one. By the timetable you set, we have just forty minutes or so to resolve this matter. Best we make this a conference call, don’t you think?”

TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES BEFORE, after briefly calling in at the morgue to pick up some props, Teresa Lupo had taken a taxi to the Via Veneto, then used her police ID to talk herself into reception at the US embassy. She’d checked her notes. She remembered the officer who’d been sent round to clean up after the death in the Pantheon, the one who forgot to take the clothes. In her book, dumb acts denoted dumb people. So she looked up his name from her scribbles and told the security officer at the desk in reception she needed an urgent audience with Cy Morrison that very moment. The uniforms on the door had scarcely looked at the box she was carrying. A bunch of clothes in plastic evidence bags didn’t seem to make much impact on their security scanners.

Morrison, a weary man in his mid-thirties, came out straightaway. He looked overworked and more than a little grumpy. “What can I do for you?”

She held out the box, placed it on the counter and smiled. “Your nice Agent Leapman needs these. He wants them in his office. Now.”

He really didn’t look the brightest of buttons. Or the kind to argue too much. “I tried to call him earlier,” he said. “Agent Leapman’s not here at the moment. I don’t think Agent Deacon’s in the office either. I’ll make sure Leapman gets them.”

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Should I?”

“The Pantheon. Two days ago. You came to pick up the body.”

He swore under his breath. “Oh. That.”

“You forgot something.”

“Miss-”

She flashed the police ID at him. “Doctor.”

“Doctor Lupo. I will take these things and make sure they go to the proper place.”

“Yes, well, you won’t mind if I make sure.”

“What?”

She sighed, as if she were trying to keep her patience. “You left them in the Pantheon, Morrison. I had Joel Leapman screaming down the phone at me this morning as if it were my fault or something.”

“What?” he asked again.

“You came to pick up the body, didn’t you?”

“Yeah! Which we did. Hell, I’m not running some damn funeral-home service here. We shouldn’t be doing this kind of stuff anyway.”

She tapped her shoe on the shiny reception floor. “You took the body. You left her stuff. You wouldn’t be fit to run a funeral home. If it wasn’t for me, these things could have been lost for good. Not that I’m getting any credit for it. Do you wonder Joel Leapman’s going berserk over this?”