“Do you call this a life of peace and quiet?” Raul put in.

“What more could you desire? Dining at the finest restaurant in Istanbul after a guided tour. Tomorrow, who knows, Amsterdam, Bangkok.”

“Don’t be funny,” Raul exclaimed.

JC drank a little vigne suyu, cherry juice, to moisten his words. “My life was very quiet until last year. Your friend is the one who stirred things up. Don’t forget it.”

“I know that perfectly well. That’s another story.”

“In any case this year reminded me of my adventurous youth. I’m old. I’ve been old a long time. My appearance doesn’t deceive. I was retired in my villa, making decisions over telephone, with a glass of whiskey in hand, reading the Corriere and La Repubblica, to keep up with the stupidities they publish. For the first time in fifteen years, I feel alive. For someone whose active military, political, and clandestine life began in the Second World War and continued to the end of the Cold War, to be physically inactive is frustrating. Now I’m in the field again, and no price can be put on that.”

He’s human, after all, the Monteiros thought.

“As I see it, this is all a game for you,” Raul commented.

“In a way. A game with grave consequences for whoever loses.”

“Things aren’t black or white, isn’t that so?” Elizabeth asked, more depressed every minute. Time was passing, and she urgently needed news about her daughter.

“Things are black and white, but not for the common person,” he said, taking a little more puree.

“This pope has secrets, too?” Raul inquired.

“Who doesn’t?” He wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin. “As your Messiah said, he who is without sin… Not even the saints that the Holy Mother Church canonizes are without stains. No one passes through life without sin… even if only in thought. It’s not evil. It’s intrinsic to being human.”

“That scares me,” Elizabeth confessed.

“There’s a Brazilian writer, whose name I don’t remember, who said something about this. If we could look through the doors of our neighbors, no one would shake hands with anyone. That’s more or less so.”

“Nelson Rodrigues,” Raul added.

“That’s right,” JC confirmed, remembering the name of the author.

“Do you have any news of my daughter?” Raul asked a question that hadn’t crossed Elizabeth’s lips for a long time.

“Not yet.”

“Is that really true? You’re not trying to avoid telling us bad news in any way?” Her worry as a mother loosened her tongue.

“Look me in the eye.” He waited for her to do it. “Do you believe I’d have any problem telling you that the worst has happened to your daughter, if that were the case? After all that you’ve heard?”

Elizabeth lowered her eyes. Bad news travels fast; good news at a snail’s pace.

“It doesn’t matter to you?”

“It does,” he answered without emotion. “You need to know that the negotiations I’m about to begin can affect her fate… for better or worse.”

“Please, don’t let them hurt her,” Elizabeth implored.

JC sipped a little more visne suyu and expressed no sign of commitment. Elizabeth tried to speak reason to her motherly heart, but it was useless. JC wouldn’t let anything affect his plans. In the end nothing would go beyond business with human lives at stake.

The cripple returned to the table with a tall, impeccably dressed man. He was barely middle-aged, and his muscular body indicated hours a day in the gym, his tan regular hours in a tanning salon. He was a man who cultivated his body, and therefore his health.

“What’s the hurry?” he asked impolitely. He hadn’t come of his own free will. Some customers looked over at the table.

“Please, sit down,” JC invited him, cheerful and serene. Attitude was important.

The man wanted to show his indignation a little more, but the old man’s look made him think twice. He sat down in the cripple’s chair.

“I’m all ears,” he said rudely.

“Ah, you Americans… always so arrogant,” JC sighed.

The man got up immediately.

“I didn’t come here to be insulted. Are you listening to me?”

A firm hand on his shoulder obliged him to sit. The cripple didn’t like this kind of behavior in front of the old man.

“Calm down, Oliver.”

“How do you know my name?” he asked, surprised.

“I know a lot about you, my friend. Oliver Cromwell Delaney, born in 1966, Dover, Delaware, father of two lovely daughters-”

“Who are you? What do you want from me?” His nervousness was apparent. Things get complicated when strangers start mentioning your daughters. He took out his cell phone.

“I’m going to call my security-”

“You’re not going to call anyone,” the cripple warned, grabbing the phone from his hand. “Stay in your chair and be quiet.”

“Excuse my faithful assistant’s bad manners,” JC excused him sardonically.

Raul and Elizabeth looked on, intimidated.

“Where was I? Oh, father of two beautiful twin daughters, Joanne and Kathleen, eleven years old. Consul in Istanbul. I could enumerate your biography in detail, but we don’t have time.”

“What do you want?”

“I need you to put me in contact urgently with George. I could do it through my own channels, but it’d take time to authenticate the call.”

“Who’s George?”

“Your superior.”

“I don’t have any superior named George.”

“No?” JC asked with a sarcastic smile on his lips.

Oliver looked thoughtful. “I’m not… Ah… You’re talking about George…”

“The same.”

67

With every step the body weighed more. The sweat that a short time ago was only scattered drops on their faces had become streams that dripped off their chins onto the floor. The two men dragged the mound of inert flesh, bent over in the shared effort.

“Do they think we’re pack mules?” Staughton protested.

“Apparently,” Thompson said. Talking only wasted energy necessary for carrying out the task.

“Do you think he opened his mouth?”

“No. If he had, we’d be carrying a corpse.”

“Barnes kicked the shit out of him,” Staughton said.

“True. He gave it to him good. Old-school.”

He was alluding to the fact they hadn’t used the most modern methods of extracting information. Electric shock was still idolized within this community. Sleep deprivation was extremely efficient, when you had time, which was not the case here. A battery of drugs and injections might or might not work, depending on the mental and physical condition of the individual. None of these techniques had been used on Rafael. They’d thrown unexpected punches or slapped him and kicked him down below, which is what had left him in the sorry condition we witness here. Barnes, Herbert, and Phelps himself hadn’t had to ask or stand on ceremony to use Rafael as a punching bag. There was a close relationship between the degree of pain a person could support and death. It was the fine line that marked the difference between good and bad work. So we see the two men from the agency carrying Rafael’s inert but still living body. It only meant he hadn’t said anything to his interrogators, or, if he had, it wasn’t satisfactory. Still, there was time to drag that information out by the same method, or others.

Thus the discouraged faces of Barnes, Herbert, Phelps, and the others, spread around the Center of Operations for the agency in Rome.

“The guy is tough,” Littel said, seated, smoking a cigar, where he’d been during the whole interrogation. He hadn’t stained his expensive suit or carefully manicured hands. That was work for others. They didn’t pay him to get dirty.

“He’s a son of a bitch,” Barnes contradicted him. He turned to Phelps with a critical expression. “I told you you wouldn’t get anything out of him.”

“Calm down, Dr. Barnes. In five minutes bring the woman in. You’ll see how we find things out,” he declared confidently.