“Yes and I’ll show you sometime. So you’re stealing information from your embassy?”
Her narrow, pale eyebrows rose perceptibly. “I thought that’s what you wanted. Besides, this is not the kind of stuff you can photocopy, Nic. Are you turning prissy on me? Do you want to hear about it or not?”
He raised the glass and toasted her. “Talk away, Agent Deacon. I’ll try not to fall asleep on you.”
“This is a story that begins in 1990. The Gulf War is about to happen. We were kids then. You do remember the first Gulf War?”
“Sort of. My old man was a Communist Deputy at the time. I remember him burning the Stars and Stripes outside your embassy.”
She stared at him. “You’re kidding me.”
“Not at all. He took me with him. We’re an unusual family.”
“I can believe that,” she conceded. “So you do remember the war. Better than me, but then, you’re a couple of years older. It’s like any war. Each side, naturally, wants some intelligence. And they want it before the fighting even starts. So they put people in beforehand. For reconnaissance. To establish links with the Iraqi opposition. Name the reasons, it really doesn’t matter. They’re putting together a team, mainly American, maybe a couple of Iraqis for local knowledge. They’re putting it together here, in Rome. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do. They don’t want anyone outside their immediate circle to find out. Does that sound plausible?”
Military affairs weren’t Costa’s scene. His late father had a favourite rant about the army. Something along the lines that war was a hangover from another era in mankind’s development, one they’d soon leave behind. Marco Costa hadn’t lived long enough-quite-to see how wrong he was.
“It’s a story,” Costa said.
“No, Nic,” she said firmly, “it’s the truth. The man we’re looking for now was the leader of that team, on the military side anyway. William F. Kaspar. And somehow what happened to him then is behind what’s happening now.”
She paused. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“You smoke?”
“Sometimes. I have been known to have a boyfriend on occasion too. Are you shocked? What is this? A monastery?”
“Not always,” he answered. “But no one-and I mean no one-smokes in here. If you need a cigarette, do what everyone else does-go outside.”
She looked at the door.
“Later,” he added. “Please.”
He was thinking about what she said. Every military campaign had to be preceded by some kind of covert activity. It still seemed light-years away from a bizarre streak of killings more than a decade later.
“This is all a long time ago, Emily.”
She shook her head vigorously. “Oh no. Only for those of us who were young then. For the people who fought there it’s like yesterday. That’s what wars are like, Nic. Haven’t you talked to an old soldier? It’s the first thing you notice. It lives with them, day in, day out, often for the rest of their lives. Usually it’s the most important thing that ever happens to them.”
“This is Italy. We don’t have many old soldiers.”
There was a sharp intake of breath and a cold flash of those blue eyes. “OK, OK. I represent the great imperial power and we’re just brimming over with soldiers. So take my word for it. When It comes to war, memories don’t fade easily. Especially for him…”
She pointed to the name in the middle of the weird, rambling memo that was on the screen. The one that said: Subject: Babylon Sisters. Status: You have to ask?
He read it, page by page, stumbling over the odd, colloquial language.
“William F. Kaspar again,” he said when he’d finished. “OK. I didn’t have time to chase the diplomat I mentioned. But I called the desk about him. Honest. There’s nothing.”
“I’d be amazed if there was. I didn’t find out much myself. There are no military records. Nothing personal out there. Just this one memo.”
“This is all about some big secret or something?”
“I think so.”
“Then why’s there still some evidence left? Just this one piece?”
“I don’t know!” Something about its provenance exasperated her too. “Maybe it was a mistake,” she suggested, and didn’t look him in the eye when she said it. “They happen. It was filed under the wrong keywords.”
Costa was starting to convince himself she knew more than she was revealing at that moment. But before he could pursue the point she was moving on, impatient to get over her point.
“It isn’t just this memo, Nic. It’s what’s in here too. My dad knew this guy. I vaguely remember him coming to our house. A big, noisy man, all laughter and presents. Loud. And scary too. He was sort of the boss, I think. You can hear it in the tone of this memo. He’s the guy who’s leading this assignment, assembling the teams, taking them into action. My dad with him.”
Cases went bad when they began to bite into your own private life. Nic knew that only too well from his own experience.
“Are you sure? That your father was a part of this?”
“Absolutely. There’s a whole chunk of 1991 when he wasn’t around. I remember it clearly. I’m an only child. They notice things like that. He was gone and while he was away you could touch the atmosphere in that apartment the embassy gave us. Everything felt so odd. I’ve tried to talk to my mom about it and all she says is he was away somewhere, working.”
“Maybe he was.”
“I don’t doubt it. Now I know where. And I know it did something to him, too. When he came back he was… different. He’d changed. Something had marked him. He wasn’t…”
She hesitated, determined to be precise about this last point.
“He wasn’t the same dad anymore. A part of him-the good part, all the life and joy-had gone. He was cold and unhappy. It wasn’t long and he was gone too. Out of the house, talking to the divorce lawyers. There was just my mom and me and a lot-I mean a lot-of bad feeling.”
“I’m sorry.”
Emily Deacon was waving a hand at him in embarrassment. “OK, OK. I know what you’re thinking. This is just a run-of-the-mill family break-up I’m trying to rationalize by blaming it on something else. First point: Bill Kaspar murdered my dad. No arguments there. I knew that without a doubt when I looked into his face and watched him trying to decide whether to kill me, too. Second point: yes, I do want to know why, but it’s not just for me. It’s for all of them. Whatever brought him to kill my dad was the same thing that brought him to kill those others. Knowing that will solve this case for everyone.”
He could see what she’d been through, getting scarred twice over. By the change in her father when she was a kid and by his death a few months ago. Nonetheless there was a strong, rational line in her argument. Emily Deacon could tough it through the pain, or so she thought.
“We need proof, Emily,” he said.
She fired up a Web browser, hammering in a flurry of words. “And you don’t just get it from hacking embassy computer systems. Sometimes it’s waiting out there on the Web. Take a look at this and see what you think.”
Costa vaguely recognized what he was now looking at. It was a newsgroup, one of those anonymous bulletin boards the surveillance people regularly browsed for raw intelligence. There was a short message starting a thread with the title “Babylon Sisters.” The first entry, the one opening the discussion, had been posted on 30 September.
Emily Deacon stared at the screen and said without emotion, “I found this just by looking on the Net. It’s public and it’s meant to be. Someone put it there for a reason. The memo tells you what Babylon Sisters meant. It was the code name for the operation. My guess is that Babylon was the closest notable location to where they were headed. The name’s from an old rock song my dad liked. Maybe Kaspar had the same tastes. And here it is thirteen years later. Think of the timing, Nic. This was posted three days after my dad was murdered.”