The headphone came alive just after dawn, the sound of the thin traffic working its way just far enough up the hill to break through over the embassy’s electronic fog. Then a car engine, something like the notching of gears.
She was in a vehicle. Kaspar pulled the Fiat forward until its yellow nose edged out into the Via Veneto and watched the big iron gates. A red Ford was coming through them, Emily Deacon behind the wheel.
“Little Em,” he said to himself.
Kids didn’t get to pick their parents. It wasn’t her fault Steely Dan turned out the way he was. From what he’d seen, what little he’d heard on the hidden mike, she wasn’t even part of the current plan. They’d just brought her in for old time’s sake, maybe. Or to tease him, to say: Look, the Deacons just go on and on.
In that case, he thought, they ought to look after their precious belongings more carefully.
There was scarcely any traffic. A good agent-and he knew Emily didn’t fit into that category just from watching her the night before-should have been alert, should have seen that a little yellow Fiat was dogging her all the way.
Little Em drove and drove, all the way out to the Via Appia Antica, where she took a turn into what looked like a farm drive, barely passable in the drifts. He drove on for a few hundred yards before pulling into a deserted bus stop. He loved this place. In happier times he’d walked miles and miles along the Appian Way, thinking about the tombs, wondering about the dead feet that had trudged this way over the centuries.
He popped in the earphone and turned up the volume on the radio. Two voices: Little Em and the young Italian he now recognized.
Bill Kaspar listened intently, wondering all the time about his options.
Then he realized he couldn’t stay here. He heard something he should have figured out long, long before.
You’re getting old and careless, white boy, the ghost of the black sergeant whispered in the back of his head. Git out there and find what belongs to you.
He reached into his bag and pulled out the digital music player he’d stolen from a backpacker in the Corso a couple of weeks before. It had all his favourite music on there: the Dan, the Doobies, Todd Rundgren and a couple of hundred others, all good hippie listening for a sixties child turned spook.
It had stacks of spare space for more recording too and a full battery charge, enough to store another ten hours of conversation right alongside the holy grooves.
There was a spare mini-jack in the bag. He connected the radio to the player and hit the record button. Then he placed the kit carefully in a dry patch behind the bus shelter, where it was hidden, not that anyone was going to walk along this deserted piece of imperial Roman highway on such a bitter, hostile night.
It was a good twenty or thirty minutes to the centro storico and the more he thought about the journey, the more William F. Kaspar realized he was in danger of losing the gift. The voices inside him were getting louder all the time. It was a question of killing them before they killed him.
Nic Costa was nodding off on the sofa when the doorbell rang. Emily Deacon walked straight in, grinning, looking bright and rosy, as if she could go without sleep forever.
She had a briefcase in her hand and a notebook computer bag slung over her shoulder. “Where is everyone? Gianni? Laila?”
“Short version: she ran away. Gianni’s looking for her now.”
“Oh no,” she murmured, genuinely shocked.
“Don’t worry. Gianni will find her. He won’t stop till he does. I got a call from him half an hour ago. He wanted to check out a theory Laila stole something from our friend, then dumped it in the Pantheon. Maybe she’s going back to retrieve it.”
She considered the idea. “I think possessions are important to the killer. Perhaps that’s why he wanted to find Laila. But the idea she could leave something in the Pantheon… Wouldn’t you have found it?”
“Not if it was hidden. I’m starting to come to the conclusion that anything’s possible right now. Besides, if you knew my partner better, you’d understand there’s not much point in arguing.”
He looked at her, trying to remember what he’d promised to do.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” she asked with a smile.
He was trying to drag that morning’s conversation back from the depths of his memory. So much had intervened in the meantime.
“I promised I’d check a couple of names for you.”
She held up the laptop case. “It’s OK. I came prepared. I’ve been following the logs. I know what’s been happening. A busy day.”
Costa doubted she knew half of what had really gone on. He led the way to the living room and watched her set up her gear on the coffee table in front of the low sofa.
“You can say that again. Coffee?”
“I’d rather have a real drink,” she said, throwing the black jacket over the back of the sofa, getting straight down to work. “You do have wine here?”
“Wine,” he sighed and wondered how much longer he could keep his eyes open. Then he went to the kitchen, opened a cold bottle of Alto Adige Sauvignon and brought back a couple of glasses. The hard mountain grape had a kick in it. He ought to be able to stay alert for a little while before crashing completely.
Emily looked animated, a little too much for his liking. The more Leapman froze her out of the case, the more she seemed determined to find herself. It was an attractive transformation to witness and the distraction was beginning to worry him.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “You look exhausted.”
“I’ll survive. You said you know what happened?”
She shrugged. “Just from what I’ve seen in the log. Leapman isn’t updating me on anything at all. I heard a woman was killed. And that you guys managed to find where.”
The memory of the little room, and a head rolling crazily off a chair, John Wayne screaming in the background. “Oh yes.”
The blue eyes blinked at him. “Are you sure you’re OK?”
“I’m sure.” He sighed. He didn’t want to go into detail. “It was different though, somehow. Let’s leave it at that.”
She opened the computer, scanned the room for a phone socket, plugged in the machine, then returned to the sofa, motioning for him to join her. “Different… that’s interesting. I don’t think our guy likes different.”
“You think you’re starting to know him?”
“I gave you his name this morning. Now I’ve got a story. A hell of a one. A story that was supposed to end differently, I think, with heroes and victory and what we like to call ”closure.“ ”
Nic Costa took another sip of the wine and tried to convince himself he wasn’t that tired as he sank into the cushions by Emily Deacon’s side.
She hit a key and a couple of images popped up on the screen.
“These are photos I took of some documents I found in the embassy. Leapman may be acting as if I don’t exist but I got a little help there anyway. It took me to places I couldn’t visit before.”
“Photos,” Costa repeated.
“That’s right. They’d have my hide if they knew I had them.”
He groaned and went to the kitchen, returning with a dish of peanuts.
Emily Deacon cast a wry glance at them. “You Italians really know how to treat a woman.”