Daniel Silva - The Fallen Angel

“All in all,” said Gabriel, staring morosely at the dog, “it’s not the sort of place one would normally expect to find a museum curator.”

He dialed Falcone’s number from his mobile phone. After five rings without an answer, he severed the connection.

“What now?” asked Chiara.

“We give him an hour. Then we come back.”

“Where are we going to wait?”

“Somewhere we won’t stick out.”

“That’s not so easy in a town like this,” she said.

“Any suggestions?”

“Just one.”

The Necropoli della Banditaccia lay to the north of the city, at the end of a long, narrow drive lined with cypress pine. In the car park was a kiosk-style coffee bar and café. A few steps away, in a featureless building that looked oddly temporary, were an admissions office and a small gift shop. The lone attendant, a birdlike woman with enormous spectacles, seemed startled to see them. Evidently, they were the first visitors of the day.

Gabriel and Chiara surrendered the modest admission fee and were given a handwritten map, which they were expected to return at the end of their visit. Playing the role of tourists, they descended into the first tomb and gazed at the cold, empty burial chambers. After that, they remained on the surface, wandering the labyrinth of beehive-shaped tombs, alone in the ancient city of the dead.

To help pass the time, Chiara lectured quietly on the subject of the Etruscans—a mysterious people, deeply religious but rumored to be sexually decadent, who treated men and women as social equals. Highly advanced in the arts and sciences, Etruscan craftsmen taught the Romans how to pave their roads and construct their aqueducts and sewers, a debt the Romans repaid by wiping the Etruscans from the face of the earth. Now little remained of their once-flourishing civilization other than their tombs, which is precisely what they had intended. The Etruscans had fashioned their homes of transitory materials, but their necropolises were built to last forever. In the rooms of the dead they had placed vessels, utensils, and jewelry—treasures that now were displayed in the world’s museums and in the drawing rooms of the rich.

After completing the tour, Gabriel and Chiara dutifully returned the map and headed out to the parking lot, where Gabriel dialed Roberto Falcone’s number a second time. Once again, there was no answer.

“What now?” asked Chiara.

“Lunch,” replied Gabriel.

He walked over to the kiosk and bought a half-dozen premade sandwiches in plastic wrappers.

“Hungry?” Chiara asked.

“They’re not for us.”

They climbed into the car and headed back to Falcone’s villa.

WITHIN THE FRATERNITY OF WESTERN intelligence, Gabriel’s fear of dogs was as legendary as his exploits. It was not an irrational fear; it was supported by a vast body of empirical evidence gathered during violent encounters too numerous to count. It seemed there was something in Gabriel’s very appearance—his catlike demeanor, his vivid green eyes—that caused even the most docile of dogs to revert to the feral, prehistoric beasts from which they all had sprung. He had been stalked by dogs, bitten by dogs, mauled by dogs, and, once, in a snowbound valley in the mountains of Inner Switzerland, the Alsatian guard dog of a prominent banker had broken his arm. Gabriel had survived the attack only because he had shot the dog in the head with a Beretta pistol. Gunplay was surely not the preferred option here in Cerveteri, but the current agitated state of Falcone’s dog meant that Gabriel would not be able to rule it out entirely. The shepherd’s mood seemed to have deteriorated in the hour since they had last seen it. There was only one reason to keep such a disagreeable creature—Roberto Falcone was obviously hiding something on his property, and it was the dog’s assignment to keep the curious at bay. Fortunately for Gabriel, it appeared the animal had been mistreated, which meant he was ripe for recruitment. Thus the large bag of sandwiches from the café at the Etruscan necropolis.

“Maybe you should let me do it,” said Chiara.

Gabriel gave her a withering glance but said nothing.

“I was just thinking—”

“I know what you were thinking.”

Gabriel turned into the property and headed slowly up the pitted gravel drive. The dog set upon the car instantly—not the passenger side, of course, but Gabriel’s. It galloped alongside the front tire, pausing every now and again to drop into an aggressive crouch and bare its savage teeth. Then, when the car came to a stop, it launched itself toward Gabriel’s window like a missile and tried to bite him through the glass. Gabriel regarded the animal calmly, which incensed it even more. It had the pale yellow eyes of a wolf and was frothing at the mouth as though it were rabid.

“Maybe you should try talking to it,” suggested Chiara.

“I don’t believe in negotiating with terrorists.”

Gabriel sighed heavily and removed the plastic wrapper from one of the sandwiches. Then he cracked the window and quickly shoved the sandwich through the gap. Six inches of Parma ham, fontina, and bread disappeared in a single ravenous bite.

“He’s obviously not kosher,” said Chiara.

“Is that a good sign or bad?”

“Bad,” she replied. “Very bad.”

Gabriel slipped another sandwich through the window. This time, the dog’s incisor nicked the tip of his finger.

“Are you all right?”

“It’s a good thing I’m ambidextrous.” He quickly fed the dog three more of the sandwiches in assembly-line fashion.

“The poor thing is starving.”

“Let’s not start feeling sorry for the dog just yet.”

“Aren’t you going to give him the last one?”

“Better to keep it in reserve. That way I’ll have something to fling at him if he decides to go for my throat.”

Gabriel unlocked the door but hesitated.

“What are you waiting for?”

“A declaration of his intentions.”

He opened the door a few inches and put a foot on the ground. The dog growled low in its throat but remained motionless. The ears were up, which Gabriel supposed was a positive development. Usually, whenever a canine was attempting to tear him to shreds, the ears were always back and down, like the wings of an attack aircraft.

Gabriel placed the last sandwich on the ground and emerged slowly from the car. Then, with his eyes still fixed on the animal’s jaws, he instructed Chiara to get out. He did so in rapid Hebrew, so the dog wouldn’t understand. Partially satiated, it devoured the food at a more decorous pace, its yellow gaze fixed on Gabriel and Chiara as they made their way toward the back door of the house. Gabriel knocked twice but there was no answer. Then he tried the latch. It was locked.

He removed the small, thin metal tool he carried always in his wallet and worked it gently inside the lock until the mechanism gave way. When he tried the latch a second time, it yielded to his touch. Inside was a cluttered mudroom filled with old work clothes and tall rubber boots caked with earth. The utility sink was dry. So were the boots.

He motioned for Chiara to enter and led her into the kitchen. The counters were stacked with dirty dishes, and hanging in the air was the acrid stench of something burning. Gabriel walked over to the automatic coffeemaker. The power light was aglow, and on the bottom of the carafe was a patch of burnt coffee the color of tar. Clearly, the machine had been on for several days—the same number of days, Gabriel reckoned, the dog had gone without food.

“He’s lucky he didn’t burn the house down,” Chiara said.

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“About what?”