James Twining - The Geneva Deception

‘It would explain why he had the Polaroid on him,’ Tom agreed. ‘And why he hid it when he realised what they really wanted.’

‘But not where he got the mask from in the first place.’ She paused, frowning, as the road brought them out on to the Piazza Ponte Sant’Angelo. ‘What are we doing here?’

‘Isn’t this where you said Cavalli was killed?’ Tom asked.

‘Yes, but…’

‘I thought we should take a look.’

A steady two-way traffic of pedestrians was streaming over the bridge’s polished cobbles, the hands and faces of the statues lining the parapet seeming strangely animated under the sun’s flickering caress, as if they were waving them forward. For Tom, at least, the wide-open vista was a welcome relief from the narrow street’s dark embrace.

‘Where did they find him?’ he asked, hands shoved deep into his coat pockets.

‘In the river. Hanging from one of the statues.’

‘Killed on the anniversary of Caesar’s murder, only for Ricci to be murdered on the site of Caesar’s assassination,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘With both Ricci’s and Argento’s deaths staged as a re-enactment of a Caravaggio painting.’ She nodded impatiently. ‘We’ve been through all this.’

‘I know.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just that everything about these murders has been so deliberate. The dates, the locations, the arrangement of the bodies, the careful echoing of some element of the one that had preceded it. It’s almost as if…they weren’t just killings.’

‘Then what were they?’

Tom paused before answering. In the distance the glorious dome of St Peter’s rose into the sky, massive and immutable. Around it swarmed a flock of pigeons, their solid mass wheeling and circling like a shroud caught in the wind.

‘Messages,’ he said eventually. ‘Maybe someone was trying to have a conversation.’

‘If you’re right it started with Cavalli,’ she said slowly, her eyes narrowing in understanding.

‘Exactly. So why kill him here? Why this bridge? They must have chosen it for a reason.’

Allegra paused a few moments before answering, her face creased in thought.

‘It was originally built to connect the city to Hadrian’s mausoleum. Before becoming a toll road for pilgrims who wanted to reach St Peter’s. And in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, famously of course, they used to display the bodies of executed prisoners along it as a warning.’

‘A warning to who?’ Tom frowned, then nodded at the weathered shapes looming over them. ‘What about the statues? Do they mean anything?’

‘Commissioned from Bernini by Pope Clement IX. Each angel is holding an object from the Passion. Cavalli’s rope was tied to the one holding a cross.’

‘Which was then echoed by Ricci’s inverted crucifixion and Argento being found in a church.’ Tom clicked his fingers as two more small pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

‘That’s not the only thing,’ Allegra added excitedly, a thought having just occurred to her. ‘Cavalli’s not the first person to have been killed here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A noblewoman called Beatrice Cenci was tortured and put to death on the Piazza Ponte Sant’Angelo in 1599,’ she explained. ‘It was one of Rome’s most notorious public executions.’

‘What had she done?’

‘Murdered her father.’

Tom nodded slowly, remembering the deliberate violence with which Cavalli’s house had been ransacked.

‘Patricide. Treason. Maybe that’s it. Maybe Cavalli had betrayed the League and this was his punishment?’ He gave a deep sigh, then turned to her with a shrug. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Come on, let’s try and call Archie. He should have landed by now.’

They turned and walked to the end of the bridge, Tom reaching for his phone as they waited for a break in the traffic. But before they could cross, a large armoured truck gunned down the road towards them. Two men jumped down holding what Tom recognized as what the Sicilian mafia called a Lupara-a traditional break-open design shotgun, sawn off a few inches beyond the stock to make it more effective at close range and easier to manoeuvre and hide. The weapon of choice in old-school vendettas.

A woman behind screamed and Tom could hear the fumbling scramble of panicked feet behind him as people scattered.

‘Get in,’ one of the men barked.

Lungotevere Vaticano, Rome 19th March-11.53 a.m.

Looking around him, Tom could see that the truck’s interior had been furnished like an expensive office, the floor laid with thick carpet, the sides lined with a cream wallpaper decorated with tropical birds. To his left a red leather sofa abutted what he assumed was a toilet cubicle, its door latched shut. In the far right-hand corner, meanwhile, stood an elegant cherrywood desk on which a brass banker’s lamp illuminated a laptop and a police scanner spitting static. Overhead were four flat-panel screens, each tuned to a different news or business channel. Most telling, perhaps, was the gun rack opposite the sofa, which contained four MP5s, half a dozen Glock 17s and a pair of Remington 1100s. Neatly stacked on the shelves below were two dozen grenades and several boxes of ammunition. Enough to start and win a small war.

The gears crunched and the truck swayed forward with a determined snarl. The gunman who had followed them inside waved at them to sit down and then instructed them to handcuff themselves to the hoop bolted to the wall above them so that their arms were held above their heads. Stepping forward, he made sure that the ratchets were tight against their wrists and then emptied their pockets and Tom’s bag, pausing over the FBI file and the Polaroid of the ivory mask. In the background, Tom could make out the opening aria of the Cavalleria Rusticana .

There was the muffled sound of the toilet flushing. The latch clicked open and a man walked out, placing a folded newspaper down on the desk as he turned to face them. Tall and square faced, he had a thinning head of hair that rose in white waves at the front and then foundered into a black expanse at the rear. He was smartly dressed in a grey Armani suit and gaudy Versace tie with matching pocket handkerchief. The collar of his white shirt, however, appeared to be several sizes too small, as if he had gambled on not buying a new one in the belief that he would lose some weight. If so, it was a bet that he appeared destined to lose, his once sharp cheekbones sinking into his face like smudged lines on a charcoal drawing, a fleshy crevice forming in the cleft of his chin.

The guard handed him the file and the Polaroid. He glanced at each of them, then sat down. Swivelling to face them, he adjusted his cuffs, carefully covering his watch.

‘Welcome to Rome, Signor Kirk.’ He spoke in a thick accent, his eyes fixing them with a cold, mortuary gaze.

‘You know him?’ Allegra’s voice was both angry and disbelieving.

Tom frowned as he tried to place the face, then gave a small shake of his head.

‘Should I?’

‘Should he?’ the man asked Allegra, his face creased into a question.

‘He’s Giovanni De Luca,’ Allegra replied unsmilingly. ‘The head of the Banda della Magliana.’

Tom’s eyes flickered in recognition. So much for tracking the Delian League down and the element of surprise. Instead, one half of it had come looking for them and sprung its own trap.

‘Felix doesn’t know me,’ De Luca said, his flickering smile suggesting he was pleased that she had recognised him. ‘But I had the pleasure of meeting his mother once.’

‘My mother?’ Tom breathed, not knowing whether to sound angry or astonished.

‘A fundraising dinner many years ago. A beautiful woman, if I may say so. A terrible loss. Of course, it was only many years later that I heard of you.’