I took out the new phone Mo-bot had given me and connected to Private’s secure server. I sent a message to Justine, Mo-bot and Sci.
We need to meet. Parco di Monte Ciocci, near Vatican City. Two hours.
I pocketed the phone and turned to Antonelli.
“You could have saved us a lot of time if you’d shared the truth of your involvement with this group sooner.”
“I’m sorry. The oath... They would kill me and my daughter. I thought I could handle it. I thought I could—”
Luna cut him off. “Could what? Kill someone? Buy someone off? How can we share the same blood? These are bad things. The way you live your life, the way you make your money, the people you associate with, the things you’ve done...”
“Luna,” Antonelli pleaded, but she left him nowhere to go.
“I’m sorry, Papà. I can’t look away anymore. I can’t pretend. Your business goes against God and man,” she said. “To be under your protection is to be aligned with you. I cannot agree to live my life like that.” She faced me. “Are you going back to Rome?”
I nodded.
“Will you deal with this Stadler?”
I nodded again.
“Then take me with you. I want to help. I want to see him face justice.”
I admired her bravery and couldn’t believe that only a short while ago I’d thought she might be in league with her father and responsible for Father Brambilla’s murder.
“What about me?” Antonelli asked.
“Luigi Calio’s farm is over that hill. He has always been loyal. Stay with him and his family until this is over,” Luna replied.
She walked back to the Land Rover and got in the driver’s side.
“Come on,” she said to me.
“What about us?” Antonelli asked pathetically.
“We’ll talk when this is over,” his daughter told him.
He looked broken, but I didn’t feel sorry for him. Luna was right: his dishonesty had cost lives.
I got in the Defender. Luna said nothing as she started the engine. She eyed her father, who seemed much diminished, standing hunched and dejected in the deserted landscape, a dead man lying close by. She kept her eyes fixed on him in the mirror as she turned the car around and we began our return to Rome.
Chapter 96
We left the track and turned onto Via Roma, a winding country road that would eventually take us back to the city. Soon we were making good progress.
“You didn’t know anything about your father’s membership of this group?” I asked.
Luna shook her head. “He never speaks to me about his business activities. He’s always said it’s because he doesn’t want to put me in a difficult position, but maybe it’s because he felt he couldn’t trust me. So there was a big blank space between us. I mean, I had my suspicions. Through my work I have been able to connect some of the dots. His low-life associates and street-level operations are known to me, places like the Pleasure Hall, but this Propaganda Tre connection was kept from me. Or it was until today.”
She sounded convincing, but someone who’d been born into the mob and had to conceal the truth from her colleagues every single day would be an accomplished liar.
“Must be difficult. You being police. Him doing what he does.”
She nodded. “Very. But families are sent to test us. Love us but test us.”
I smiled. Her expression didn’t soften.
We headed along the valley toward Colle Merulino, a tiny village tucked behind the intersection of two highways. We would join one of them, the Autostrada Roma, and head west into the city.
The country road we were on, the Via di San Vittorino, followed a curve around the shoulder of a tree-covered hill before it narrowed to pass through a tunnel bored through a low cliff. When we emerged into dazzling sunshine, I sensed movement. As my eyes adjusted, I saw the flash of a vehicle speeding beyond some trees, coming along Via Polense toward the intersection we were approaching. It was a large dump truck traveling flat out. The driver showed no intention of slowing. In fact, he was clearly aiming to hit us.
“Luna,” I yelled. “Stop!”
But it was too late. The truck collided with the Defender, mangling the front of the Land Rover, smashing through the engine block, sending us into a terrible, grinding, crashing spin. The cabin filled with smoke, diesel, the stench of burning metal, scorched rubber, and the world went round and round like a Waltzer in a giant hall of mirrors.
My head collided with the side window, which shattered. Everything went distant. I was dimly aware of us bouncing off the truck but still traveling with it, metal caught and hooked on metal as we spun wildly.
Then stillness.
Suddenly movement, hands pulling me.
Thrown onto my back. Above me, snarling unfamiliar faces, tattoos.
The Dark Fates.
A familiar face.
Milan Verde.
Above his bitter, cynical smile, hovering in the sky, was the drone they’d used to follow us from Antonelli’s farmhouse.
Milan Verde lashed out with his boot, and the last thing I saw was his dirty sole filling my vision.
Chapter 97
I was tumbling through time and space, haunted by the dead from Afghanistan to London, Los Angeles to Moscow, time out of joint as it only is in dreams.
“Lo incastreremo per la morte di Antonelli,” a voice said from somewhere.
“Attento che potrebbero sentirti,” another responded.
“I don’t care if they hear me or he understands me,” the original speaker said. “In fact, I will say it in English to be sure he can. We will frame him for Antonelli’s death.”
I realized these speakers weren’t among the many specters in my mind. The words had come from another place, the real world that I’d momentarily left behind.
I opened my eyes to blinding flashes of pain and dazzling light.
“We just need the go-ahead,” the same voice said.
As my eyes adjusted, I realized the light wasn’t dazzling. It was in fact quite low. I just happened to have been facing a wall-mounted spotlight when I opened my eyes. I was in a room made of stone. There were no windows, only uplighters lining the walls, and between each pair of lights was an alcove containing a stone seat. The air had a cool, still quality that made me think I was in a cellar.
I was seated on a chair in the middle of a space about the size of a tennis court. I tried to move and found that both arms and legs were bound to the chair. There were five guys in front of me. I recognized them from the Inferno Bar. Leading the pack of devils was Milan Verde, who prowled closer when he saw I was awake.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” he said, slapping me. “Wake up properly, Mr. Morgan.”
The sting of his palm against my face revived me further and got my heart pumping. We’re predictable creatures, and pain coupled with the prospect of violence sent adrenalin coursing through my body.
My fingers searched out my bonds, and I was relieved to feel cord rather than steel. I couldn’t see the knot but tracked the familiar path of a bowline with my fingertips. It wouldn’t be difficult to slip. I got to work on it immediately.
“Should we kill them now?” one of Milan’s associates asked.
He was looking beyond me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Elia Antonelli and Luna Colombo, bound and gagged, fear in their eyes.
“Not yet,” Milan said, pulling out his phone and making a call. He had a simple message for whoever was at the other end of the line. “He’s awake.”
Chapter 98
A few minutes later, I heard a door open directly behind me. I tried to look round but it was outside my field of view. Milan stepped forward and slapped me.