AT SOME POINT IN OUR WINE-FUELED Exchange of confidences, Lola had told me that Cortona was the site of a major battle between two implacable enemies, the legions of Rome and the Carthaginian general Hannibal, who, seeking to avenge his family's earlier defeat, had done the impossible and marched on Rome from the north by crossing the Alps in the dead of winter.
Ever the clever strategist, Hannibal ambushed the Roman army, under Flaminius, in the early morning, when, as is often the case, a thick mist covered the low-lying areas at the foot of the hill on which Cortona stood. The Romans, lost in the fog, panicked, some of them to be cut down by Hannibal's troops and the Etruscans of Cortona, who came down upon them from the hilltop. Others, disoriented, fled, only to plunge into nearby Lake Trasimeno and drown.
I know exactly how the Romans felt. It was pitch dark as I left the hotel and negotiated the road between Arezzo and Cortona. A thick fog covered the road that morning, too, and from time to time headlights of oncoming cars would appear out of the haze, startling me. I missed the turnoff for the town and had to do a U-turn, a hazardous undertaking at the best of times, and almost suicidal under the circumstances, narrowly missing a collision with a red sports car heading the other way.
The mist thinned only slightly as I started up the hill toward the town. I almost passed the sign for the Ta-nella di Pitagora but caught sight of it just in time. Cautious now, and a little frightened by the isolation of the place, I drove around the next switchback before pulling the car over to the side.
I walked back to the sign for the archaeological site and followed a path up the side of the hill, moving as quietly and carefully as I could. It was still dark, just before dawn, but the sky was lightening. The Tanella, a rather odd-shaped, arched stone structure on a large stone pad, sat perched on the side of the hill, surrounded by cypresses, in a enclosure of chain-link fence. There was a gate, locked, and a bell to summon the custodian, but no one was there.
I circled the enclosure on the uphill slope so that I could see someone coming from the road below. Sure enough, as Lola had predicted, there was a place on the downhill side of the site where the fence had been pulled up, and where someone with a reasonable degree of agility could climb under and up a slight rise to the tomb.
I was several minutes early, deliberately so, and found myself a position, a rather damp one, where I could watch the site without, I hoped, being seen, and settled down to wait. I tried not to think too much about my circumstances. I'd had pretty much the whole night to think about Lola and the vase, and what exactly it was I was going to say to Lake when he asked to see it. 'Where is it?' would be only one of the many questions for which I had no answers. For instance, how had the vase gotten in my room in the first place? Had it been delivered to the hotel and placed in my room by the staff? I went down to the desk after Lola's disappearance, but the day porter had gone home and wouldn't be back for a couple of days. Antonio himself? But why? And how had he gotten in, in the first place? The last person who had it was the unpleasant Pierre Leclerc or whatever his name was. If Lake wanted it, and Antonio had it, why didn't he just give it to him? And what about Lola in all of this? Had she just seen an opportunity and taken it, knowing, given her interest in the Etruscans, that it was real, despite my ridiculous story about the art student, or was she more actively involved in this mess?
Seven o'clock came and went with no sign of Lake, and soon a slight breeze caused the mist to swirl. Rather than thinning, it became thicker, as the valley mists started to lift with the sunrise. Soon I could see no more than a few feet around me. Olive trees that had been quite distinct a few minutes earlier became ghostlike wraiths that hovered about me. Sounds became muffled, and I couldn't discern the direction they were coming from.
I had a sense of unreality, of being in some netherworld where alien beings, malignant in intent, lurked.
I thought I heard footsteps, but then I wasn't sure. Next I thought I heard voices, whispers almost, but it could have been the wind in the cypresses or early morning birdcalls.
A minute or two later, I was certain there was someone nearby. A foot slid in the mud, and a slight cough pierced the silence.
"She's not here," a voice said. I think that's what I heard.
"She'll be here," another voice said.
"Then we wait," said the first. Utter silence followed. I sat on the wet ground, wondering whether to announce myself or wait until the mist rose and I could see who was there.
All of a sudden, there was a great flapping of wings and a shriek. Was it a bird? A person crying out in terror? I didn't know.
I simply could not sit there another minute. I got up, and without worrying about how much noise I was making, tried to make my way back to the road. I could just see a few feet in front of me and had only a vague sense of whether I was heading up the hill or down. I kept telling myself that, because of the switchbacks, I had to come out to the road at some point. Just when I thought I should have reached safety, I found myself back at the Tanella. Mist swirled about the stones, and what just a few minutes before had been an interesting architectural novelty was now cold and menacing. For just a second, I could have sworn I saw a man on the downside of the hill, his back to me, but then he disappeared, if he existed at all, into the fog.
The Tanella had given me my bearings, so I went uphill, away from the man I might or might not have seen. There was a path of sorts, and I took it, keeping my eye on the ground ahead of me. A bump appeared on the path. It took only a second or two to ascertain that the bump was a man, that man was Pierre Leclerc, and that Pierre Leclerc was dead, garrotted. The wire was still around his throat. I stumbled the remaining few yards to the road and, scratched and frightened, got into my car and fled.
As I headed back down the slope, a police car, blue light flashing, came up the road from below. In my agitated state, I debated about flagging them down and telling them about Leclerc. Fortunately, I didn't have to. As I rounded the next turn, I saw the car pull over at the bottom of the path that led to the Tanella, and two carabinieri get out and head up the hill.
I went back to the hotel, packed, and checked out, and moved again, this time to a hotel in Cortona. I left only my cell phone number on Antonio's voice mail.
EIGHT. CORTONA
THE DARK FIGURE, FACE HOODED against the rain, stared for a moment at the osteria's window display, then walked past it and turned the corner down a tight little cobblestoned street. A few yards along the way, a door was checked, then the end of the street surveyed. As I watched, the figure turned right, then right again, and went into a church, reappearing a minute or two later, finally retracing the route back to the osteria.
"Hello, Lola," I said. "You have something of mine that I would like back, please."
She started and turned as if to flee, but I had blocked her escape route.
"You have no business with something like that," she said, obviously deciding that the best defense was a strong offense. "I may not know antiquities the way you do, but I bet that hydria is real. I have no idea how you got it, and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you think it's legal, even though you made up that ridiculous story about an art student. I saw the way you looked at it, and kept looking at it. It's Etruscan, and it should be in a museum, not in the hands of a collector!"
"Lola," I said. "Believe me, you do not want to have that hydria. It could be dangerous. If you would give me a—"
"People blame the tombaroli" she said. "But they are usually just poor farmers. If there wasn't a market for what they loot, they wouldn't do it. Who said that collectors are the real looters?"