Джозеф Файндер - Extraordinary Powers

I was in a foul mood. I had sworn I’d never return to this terrible game, and now I was back. And once again I would have to draw upon my dark, violent side, which I thought I had buried once and for all.

I wrapped it back up, slipped it into my carry-on bag, and left the envelope in the compartment, which I pressed closed.

As soon as I left the restroom and headed for the taxi stand, however, I felt something wrong. A presence, a person, a stirring. Airports are chaotic, hectic, bustling places, and so they are perfect for surveillance. I was being observed. I felt it. I can’t say I heard or read anything — far too many people in too many little throngs, a Babel of foreign languages, and my Italian was only serviceable. But I sensed it. My instincts, once so finely tuned, then so long out of use, were slowly returning.

There was someone.

A compact, swarthy man, perhaps in his late thirties or early forties, wearing a green-gray sports jacket, lounging near the farmacia , his face mostly hidden behind a copy of the Corriere della sera.

I hastened my pace somewhat until I was outside. He followed me out: very unsubtle. Which concerned me. He didn’t seem to worry about being noticed, which probably meant there were others. Probably also meant that they wanted me to notice.

I got into the next available cab, a white Mercedes, and said, “Grand Hotel, per favore. ”

The watcher was in a cab immediately behind mine, I saw at once. Probably by now there was another vehicle involved, perhaps two or three. After about forty minutes of crawling through the morning rush-hour traffic, the cab pulled up the narrow Via Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and in front of the Grand Hotel. At once, four liveried bellmen descended upon the cab to remove my luggage, load it onto a cart, help me out of the car, and escort me into the hotel’s subdued, elegant lobby.

I tipped each one of them more than generously and gave my cover name at the reception desk.

The clerk smiled, said, “Buon giorno, signore,” and quickly inspected his reservation sheets. A troubled expression crossed his face. “ Signore ... ah, Mr. Mason?” he said, looking up apologetically.

“Is there a problem?”

“There appears to be, sir. We have no record—”

“Perhaps under my company’s name, then,” I offered. “TransAtlantic.”

After a moment he shook his head again. “Do you know when these were made?”

I slammed my open palm down on the marble surface of the reception desk. “I don’t care , dammit!” I said. “This damned hotel screwed up—”

“If you need a room, sir, I’m sure—”

I signaled to the bell captain. “No. Not here. I’m sure the Excelsior doesn’t make these kinds of mistakes.” To the bell captain I commanded: “Bring my bags around to the service entrance. Not the front, the back. And I want a taxi to the Excelsior, on the Via Veneto. At once.”

The bell captain bowed slightly and gestured to one of the bellboys, who turned the cart with my luggage around and began to push it toward the back of the lobby.

“Sir, if there is some kind of mistake, I’m sure we can straighten it out very quickly,” the reception clerk said. “We have a single room available. In fact, we have several small suites available.”

“I don’t want to trouble you,” I said haughtily as I followed the luggage cart to the rear of the lobby, toward the service entrance.

Within minutes a cab pulled up to the rear of the hotel. The bellboy loaded the suitcase and carry-on bag into the Opel’s trunk, I tipped him handsomely, and got in.

“The Excelsior, signore ?” the driver said.

“No,” I said. “The Hassler. Piazza Trinità dei Monti.”

The Hassler overlooks the Spanish Steps, one of the most pleasant locations in Rome. I had stayed here before, and the Agency had booked a room for me here, at my request. The Grand Hotel episode, of course, had been a ruse, and it seemed to have worked — I had lost the followers. I didn’t know how long I could stay here unobserved, but for the time being, things seemed to be okay.

Exhausted now, I showered and collapsed onto the king-size bed, slipped between the luxurious, crisply ironed linen sheets, momentarily at peace, and drifted into a deep, much-needed sleep, which was troubled by apprehensive dreams about Molly.

A few hours later I was awakened by the distant honking of a horn somewhere near the Spanish Steps. It was midafternoon, and the suite was flooded with light. I rolled over, picked up the phone, and ordered a cappuccino and a bite to eat. My stomach was growling.

I looked at my watch and calculated that the business day was just beginning in Boston. I placed a call to a bank in Washington where I still maintained an old but active account I’d opened years ago. My broker, John Matera, had indeed wired my Beacon Trust “earnings.” (Earnings, of course, was the one thing they weren’t.) No sense, I figured, in making it easy for the CIA to monkey around with my money. I knew their tricks and was determined not to trust them fully.

The coffee came fifteen minutes later, served in a large, deep gold-rimmed cup, with beautifully presented sandwiches: thick slices of moist white bread topped with paper-thin slices of prosciutto, arugula, a few slices of pecorino fresco , and ringed with beautiful deep red slices of tomato, glistening with fragrant olive oil.

I felt as alone as I’d ever felt. Molly, I was sure, was fine — was, in fact, being protected as much as she was being kept hostage. Still, I worried about her, about what they were telling her about me, how scared she was, how she was holding up. But I was convinced that she would not buckle; she would instead make her captors’ lives hell.

I smiled to myself, and just then the phone rang.

“Mr. Ellison?” came the American-accented voice.

“Yes.”

“Welcome to Rome. You’ve picked a nice time to come.”

“Thank you,” I said. “It’s much more comfortable here than it is in the States this time of year.”

“And a lot more to see,” my CIA contact said, completing the coded exchange.

I hung up.

Fifteen minutes later, in the soft light of a late Rome afternoon, I came out of the Hassler. The Spanish Steps swarmed with people, standing, sitting, smoking, taking pictures, shouting at each other, laughing at one another’s jokes. I surveyed the bustling scene, felt terribly out of place amid the vivacity, and, my stomach already knotted with tension, got into a cab.

At the Piazza della Repubblica, not far from Rome’s main train station, I rented a car at Maggiore, using my phony Bernard Mason driver’s license and gold Citibank Visa card. (Actually, the credit card itself was real; but the bills run up by the fictitious Mr. Mason were paid, through a Fairfax, Virginia, law firm, by the CIA.) I was given a gleaming black Lancia as big as an ocean liner: the sort of car that Bernard Mason, nouveau riche American businessman, would undoubtedly hire.

The cardiologist’s office was located a short drive away, on the Corso del Rinascimento, a noisy, traffic-snarled main street just off the Piazza Navona. I parked in an underground lot a block and a half away and located the doctor’s building, whose entrance bore a brass plaque that was engraved DOTT. ALDO PASQUALUCCI.

I was early for my appointment, almost forty-five minutes, and I decided to walk over to the piazza. For a variety of reasons, I knew it was best to adhere to the schedule set for me. I was to meet the cardiologist at eight that evening — unusually late in the day, but deliberately so. The inconvenience, I suppose, was designed to further my legend: this was the only time that the reclusive American tycoon, Bernard Mason, could meet the physician. Thus inconvenienced, Dr. Pasqualucci would presumably be more inclined to be cooperative and deferential. Pasqualucci was considered one of the finest cardiologists in Europe, which was surely why the former KGB chief had consulted him. So it was logical that Mr. Mason, who resided several months of the year in Rome, would seek out his services. All Pasqualucci knew was that this American had been referred by another physician, an internist whom Pasqualucci knew casually, and that a fair degree of discretion was called for, since Mason’s extensive business empire would suffer incalculable financial harm if word got out that he was being treated for a cardiac problem. Pasqualucci did not know that the physician who had referred Mason was in fact on a CIA retainer.