They ducked, but the driver and front passenger weren’t so lucky. Their bodies bucked as the windshield collapsed and they were riddled with bullets. The large SUV veered off the road and I braced for impact as a tree suddenly loomed ahead.
The Land Rover smashed into the trunk at full pelt. I was hurled against the back seat, the impact winding me.
“Is everyone okay?” I asked, the moment I could suck in a breath.
Antonelli and Luna were dazed, and so was the man beside them, but he didn’t have the sense to stay in the vehicle.
“Stop!” I yelled, as he opened the door and staggered out.
I tried to grab him but he was beyond my reach. He stumbled forward, blood oozing down his face from a head wound, fumbling for a pistol in his waistband.
As he drew it, the men who’d forced the car off the road came over the brow of a rise nearby and opened fire.
The third man got one shot away before he danced to the buck and kick of each bullet that struck him.
I didn’t have time to mourn the unfortunate stranger but climbed over the back seat to join the others.
“Do something!” Antonelli pleaded with me.
“If I get you out of this, you will tell me the truth. Everything you know,” I said, before slamming the door shut.
“Yes. Yes!” he exclaimed, his voice almost breaking. “Anything!”
I climbed into the front of the SUV, opened the driver’s door and pushed the dead man out. I jumped in his seat. Glancing in the rear-view, I saw the team of gunmen running toward us and prayed the Defender’s reputation for reliability was justified.
I turned the ignition and the engine spluttered. A volley of shots hit the back door, thudding into the metal with enough force to make the vehicle tremble. I tried the key again, and this time the engine roared.
I found reverse, backed away from the tree, flipped the car into first and stepped on the gas. Dust, grass and stones were flung up by the tires as we raced forward under a hailstorm of bullets.
I drove between trees, racing across the dry earth, heading for a dip.
The car sped down the hillside. Below us, through a small olive grove, I saw a hedge and beyond it a road.
I put my foot down and we gathered speed as we bounced across the steep ground. By the time we hit the hedge we were doing fifty. As we flew through it, I stepped on the brake pedal and turned the wheel.
The heavy tires screeched and the SUV wobbled as we swerved onto the road.
Breathless, veins full of fire and thunder, I glanced over my shoulder and saw clear road behind.
I didn’t relax for a full three minutes, concentrating on putting some distance between us and our attackers. When I looked back again, I saw a shaken Luna and her father had finally begun to breathe more easily.
“I think we’re okay,” I said to Antonelli. “Which means you’re going to keep your word and tell me everything you know.”
Chapter 95
I drove for ten kilometers before we turned off the road onto an extremely overgrown track that looked as though it hadn’t been used for years. We bounced and bumped our way over long grass that grew in tufts along the median, and the suspension rattled and clattered as the wheels encountered hidden rocks and ruts. I didn’t stop until we crested a rise and went down the slope on the other side. I turned off the track onto rough terrain and parked in the shade of a cluster of stone pines. I cut the engine and jumped out to ensure we couldn’t be seen from the road or any buildings. There was nothing in sight except deserted countryside. I ran over to the Land Rover as Antonelli and his daughter staggered from the vehicle. I opened the passenger door and dragged the dead man out.
Antonelli came over as I set the bodyguard gently on the ground. The man’s eyes were open, but he would never see the beauty of the branches above him.
“Aldo was a good man,” Antonelli said, his voice faltering. “They all were.”
“I’m sorry,” I responded.
Luna joined us. “So, what is the truth, Papà?”
Antonelli shrank from her. “I don’t know. I didn’t mean—”
She interrupted him.
“You’re not getting out of the deal you made. Mr. Morgan risked his life for us.”
Antonelli looked ashamed. For the first time, I saw him as a tired old man rather than a powerful gangster.
“You’re right of course,” he said, stroking her cheek. “Like your mother always was.”
He hesitated.
“I wish she was still with us. She was a good person.”
“Tell him what you know, Papà,” Luna insisted. “Tell me.”
Antonelli smiled.
“I could never refuse my girl. I am a founding member of Propaganda Tre. It was started after the fall of the Berlin Wall to protect this country against anti-Christian socialist ideologies.”
“Oh, Papà,” Luna said, her disappointment so intense I could almost feel it in the air around us.
“I’m sorry, Luna. I was young. I thought I knew what was good for Italy. For Rome. For us. I found myself allied to wicked men with ambitions and plans they did not share with me. Secret plans. Dishonest plans. I thought our group would be different — not like Propaganda Due — but it wasn’t. We lost our way.”
His voice trailed off.
“And?” I prompted.
“We got involved with espionage, extremist groups. Like our predecessors, we laundered money, financed terror all around the world, drifting further and further toward an ideology I didn’t recognize. Not left or right, but one that worships only money.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Luna asked.
“Because he was worried you’d feel it was your duty to investigate,” I replied for him. “And that would have put your life in danger.”
Antonelli nodded. “I swore an oath of loyalty,” he said. “A blood oath. Any betrayal or attempt to leave the organization will result in death. Not just for the renegade, but for everyone they love.”
“So, what’s happening here in Rome? Why the power play? Why have so many died — some of them men of God?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “That’s the thing — I just don’t know what’s going on. I asked Trotta to pay Milan Verde a visit, to see if he could find out who the Dark Fates are working for. Milan is a psychopath. He’s ruthless but doesn’t have the ambition to play at this level, so he’s working for someone higher up.”
“Do you know the other members of Propaganda Tre?” I asked.
“Only the ones in my chapter,” Antonelli replied. “Now Trotta is dead, so is Christian Altmer, and—”
“Altmer?” I exclaimed. “He was in Propaganda Tre?”
Antonelli nodded. “As is his boss, Joseph Stadler.”
I was dumbfounded and took a moment to absorb this revelation.
“What about Cardinal Vito Peralta?” I asked when I found my voice.
“Yes. The Church is represented.”
I paced around for a moment. “What if Stadler didn’t hire Private to solve the case? What if he hired us in order to keep tabs on what we were doing? He knew I’d look into Father Brambilla’s death and I represented a risk to the organization if I was doing things they weren’t aware of. By hiring us he could share what we found, enabling him to gauge the threat of Propaganda Tre being exposed.”
I hadn’t had the chance to make any formal interim reports to Stadler, but I looked back on my informal meetings with our client and thought about all the useful information he would have gleaned from them. Each meeting with him had happened before an attack or an encounter with someone who’d led me into a trap. After our first meeting, Luna and I were shot at by the assassin who tried to kill us out near Poli. I hadn’t made the connection before, but if Stadler was behind everything, those incidents hadn’t been coincidences.