Yes, you're reading this right. You're about to get a look at the first, redone chapter of
. You can buy them cheap when you can.
is ... wow, you have to be new here. It ate up ten years of my life, and the best use I have ever gotten out of my Masters in History.... okay, that, and writing the biographies of older vampires.
But here you go, here's the first chapter. When you're hooked,
in the coming days. You have been warned.
Chapter I:
A Pious Cop
Giovanni Figlia stood in the
lobby of Leonardo da Vinci Fiumicino Airport in a solid black polo
shirt and a black suit jacket. The color scheme made him seem shorter
than his 5’9” height. His hand ached for his Beretta to reassure
himself that he was still armed, but instead he ran his fingers
through his thick dark hair.
It must be something about
Americans that brings out the Clint Eastwood in people.
He scanned the crowd for his
target, comparing each face with the photograph he had memorized down
to the dots on the color printout: hazel eyes, brown hair, Germanic
cheekbones, not bad-looking. Wilhelmina Goldberg, a former member of
the Americans’ National Security Agency, with degrees in esoteric
languages and mathematics, had transferred into her current
profession some time ago, and was supposed to be good at it.
Now all I have to do is
hunt her down.
“Looking for me?”
Figlia looked down. Three feet
away from him stood a woman just under five feet tall. He recognized
her as Goldberg; she wore black jeans and a tight-fitting,
long-sleeved turtleneck. Over one shoulder she carried a duffel bag
as large as she was. She also dragged a wheeled suitcase as big as
Figlia.
“Io ho pensato che Lei
ha…supposed to be
in formal attire,” he said in his own combination of Italian and
English. He glanced at her. “Not attracting attention.”
She replied in crisp, formal
Italian. “On the former, you thought wrong. As for the latter…”
she looked down at her chest and shot him a look. “If 28B passes
for attention-getting in Italy, you people need to open a Playboy,
pop a Viagra, and get a life.”
Giovanni Figlia stepped to one
side. “This way?”
“You lead. I don’t want
you stepping on my equipment. You want this job done, we’ll need
this intact.”
He led. Goldberg moved
forward. “You’re Gianni,
right?”
“Mi chiamo
Figlia, si.”
I’m Figlia, yes.
“I’m surprised,” she
told him. “You’re the head of this outfit; why would you meet
me?”
Figlia shrugged. “Because I
like to get out of the office every once in a while. And we’ll be
working together for a while. We might as well get used to each
other, starting now.”
“Done. Where’s our first
stop?”
“The Vatican.” Figlia
stepped around more passengers just getting in and made his way to
the automatic doors. It was still dark outside, despite the fact that
it was 6:30 in the morning.
“What are you packing?”
she asked.
Figlia blinked. “This is
Italy. What do you think?”
Wilhelmina Goldberg rolled her
eyes. “Beretta, then.” She looked around before answering. “I
just got on a plane from Spain with security that’s a joke. I’m
carrying a Sig and they didn’t even notice.
Forgive me for wondering about Europeans.” She pronounced it
Euro-peons.
“We’re not exactly in a safe business.”
When Giovanni Figlia stopped
at a four-door silver Jetta, Goldberg shrugged. “Not a bad little
toy. You own it?”
“Depends on my wife.” He
smiled. “Come on, I’ll load the bags.”
Goldberg laughed. “No way in
hell, buddy. I’ll manage. You just start this thing up.”
Once she loaded herself into
the passenger seat, he sped away.
“You know, I’m halfway
surprised that you carry outside of your target area.”
Figlia glanced at her briefly.
“You expected me to live on a hundred-acre leash? Check my gun at
the colonnade?”
“Given your line of work,
I’m surprised they allow you to have a gun.”
“Don’t worry, we’re
allowed to shoot back. There are some situations where force is
required. Mind if I ask you something?”
She shrugged. “Whatever.”
“What’s your religion?”
“I’m Jewish…Orthodox,”
she added as an afterthought. “My parents say an Orthodox Jew is a
‘real Jew’ … you don’t want to hear what they have to say
about the others.” Goldberg shrugged. “So, tell me a little bit
about what you do here.”
They continued to discuss
their mutual professions, the conversation punctuated long enough for
her to look out at the city and take an occasional photo with her
iPhone. He began to decelerate as he followed the Tiber River and
hung a right onto the Via
della Conciliazione,
making a right in front of the colonnade, onto Via
Ottaviano.
It led right to their target,
the Vatican.
At that moment, one of the
buildings exploded in a massive fireball, dropping glass, brick and
debris down upon their car in a shower of destruction. A moment
later, another object smashed into the hood of Figlia’s car,
smashing the windshield, and denting the hood in front of him.
Giovanni Figlia instinctively
swerved away from the explosion, and braked hard. The object on his
windshield stayed there.
After a few seconds, Goldberg
and Figlia got out of the car and studied the scene, wondering if it
was safe to go check the damage. She bounced up on her toes to check
what had killed Figlia’s car. It was the body of a young-looking,
olive-skinned male...without a face.
“Between 25 and 35?”
Figlia asked.
“...Sounds like a
serial-killer profile,” she answered.
Figlia grunted and again
wanted to reach for his gun. He glanced at the short, pixie-like
woman and muttered, “Damn Americans. Here for fifteen minutes and
Dante’s Inferno rises to surface level.”
The only carabinieri
in the area ran to the scene, leaving his motorcycle behind. He let
out a small string of curses, ran back to his vehicle, and
immediately radioed for help.
The police were the first
responders, followed immediately by the fire department. The firemen
quickly moved to douse the flames with the fire hose. Giovanni Figlia
tackled the main man on the hose, grabbing him before he could attach
the hose to its water supply.
“What are you doing?” the
fireman shouted. He tried to fight back, but Figlia had already
locked one arm into place, totally immobilizing him.
“You’re going to wash away
all evidence of the bomb,” Figlia growled. “Use a fire
extinguisher or buckets.”
The other firefighters didn’t
know what to make of him. He was an utterly unremarkable fellow in
basic black. With the addition of a white collar, he could have been
wearing a priest’s uniform … if the material were better. He
wasn’t even that big, but held the burliest member of their team
immobile with minimal effort.
Figlia shoved the firefighter
aside, and reached into his inner jacket pocket before someone shot
up. He pulled out a wallet and flashed his identification, as well as
his badge. “Commandatore Giovanni Figlia, Vatican’s Central
Office of Vigilance. That body over there is dead, and not only is my
car a secondary crime scene, do you see that line?” He pointed to a
white painted line on the cobblestone street. “Sixty years ago, the
Nazis put that line down to clearly mark the territory. This side,
right now, is Rome.” He sidestepped to in front of his car and
pointed toward the colonnade of St. Peter’s Basilica. “Where I’m
standing now is Vatican City.”
Wilhelmina Goldberg laughed.
“Now you see why American cops call firemen the evidence
destruction unit.”
The fireman scowled at her.
She was short, so she wasn’t a member of Figlia’s security force.
Her dye job was obvious and ugly, so she wasn’t working for the
Vatican. Her accent sounded more like American actors trying too hard
to sound like she was from New York City, and so became a
self-parody. “And what are you? His puttana?”
She shook her head,
unconcerned as she reached into her pocket. “First of all, you’re
thinking more like a Calabrese.” She pulled out a leather wallet of
her own and flipped it open. “Second, I’m a consultant:
Wilhelmina Goldberg of the United States Secret Service.”
Giovanni Figlia looked around
frantically, hoping no one else would try to wash away the evidence.
A shiny silver object caught his attention, and he narrowed his eyes,
focusing on…the cover for a hotel serving tray?
“And,” he continued, “the
explosion radius extends into my jurisdiction. I have a body and half
a crime scene over here—you only have half a crime scene, I win.
I’ll head up there myself, if you don’t mind…and if you do, too
bad. Frankly, if you’d like to do something useful, secure the
street!”
Figlia caught a familiar sight
at the edge of his peripheral vision. The black cassock of a priest
was more than enough to identify him as such from thirty yards away.
It looked like the priest gave the crowd more attention than he had
given the scene of the crime, which was odd—most of the time, far
too many people wanted to look at the destruction. At that distance,
the only other detail he could make out was the man’s silver hair.
“Padre! Venga,
per favore!”
The priest looked up, then
left, then right, and finally, he shrugged and stepped forward
cautiously, eyeing the building as though he wanted to make sure it
wouldn’t collapse.
“What’s with the priest?”
she asked, sotto voce.
“He might be able to provide
a barricade between you and the polizia
when they arrive. Have him standing by ready to give the corpse last
rites, while you snap photos of the body. I suspect we won’t get
another chance for pictures after this.”
Goldberg gave him a look as
though he had sprouted three heads. “You want
a murder case?”
He flashed a Casanova grin.
“I’m going to check the room. Stay close to the priest.”
She raised an eyebrow. Before
she could make a scathing remark, Figlia bolted into the damaged
hotel and flew up the stairs.
*
Wilhelmina Goldberg looked
over her shoulder at the body-covered car, absentmindedly tapping her
iPhone for photos. “And I thought this would be a nice, quiet
little trip—some consulting, audit security, but no,
I get the one cop on the planet who makes Hoover look mildly sane,”
she muttered in English.
“Excuse me,” came a gentle
voice from right next to her, also speaking in English.
She adjusted her line of sight
to the priest, only a foot away from her, and tried not to jump. Do
priests in Rome get ninja training?
The priest was … odd. He had
a piercing set of violet eyes. And while his hair was solid silver,
there were only a few lines on his face, so he couldn’t have been
older than forty. If she were sending out an APB or a BOLO for him,
she would have actually said he was only about 5’6” – maybe
5’8”, she was looking up at him, and his shoulders were slumped.
Goldberg bunched her lips,
trying to figure out how to speak to a priest over a corpse. “Uh.
Hello …Father … could you wait a moment while I take a few
pictures of this poor schlub?”
He nodded. “Of course. Are
you a friend of Gianni’s?”
She shrugged and turned to the
corpse. Goldberg twisted her lip and stepped around the priest to get
back into the car. She slid onto the seat and clicked at the corpse
through the windshield, getting every possible angle with her phone.
Click.
“I’m a consultant.”
“From … New York, I
presume by the accent.” Click.
There was another flash from the phone flash. “I grew up there …
briefly. It’s an odd story.”
Click.
“I don’t doubt it.” You’ve
decided to spend the rest of your life without sex, so you must
be odd somehow.
“So what kind of consultant
work do you do?”
Click.
She checked the quality of the photos, and then slid out of the car.
“Security.”
I’d ask how you know
Figlia, she
thought. But he
called you Father without using a name, so I’m guessing he only
knows you because of the outfit, and you only know of him because
he’s papal security.
*
“Ah. Of course,” the
priest answered.
Commander Figlia wouldn’t
hire out some lone American gun-toting security hack,
he thought. You’re
Secret Service, aren’t you? Not very talkative, either.
They turned the body over once
she had taken all of the photos she needed.
The priest knew exactly who
this man was, and knew him well—his entire life story, in fact. He
had been raised as a red-diaper baby in a family loyal to the brigate
rosso,
the Italian Red Army.
He performed the last rites
over the body, blessing him as he went on into the next world. Rest
in peace, you schmuck.
*
Giovanni Figlia walked into
what was left of the hotel room, and he took it in with a sweep of
his eyes. On the floor was another dead man, a hole clearly visible
under his chin. This second corpse—Gerrity, according to the hotel
people he passed on his way up here—was on its back, hands out like
a crucified martyr. Furniture had been scattered across the room,
thrown against the wall, much of it shattered.
Figlia rubbed the back of his
neck. “Benone,
a double cross.”
One of the hotel staff in the
hall raised a brow. “Scusi,
signore? Non
capisco.”
Figlia waved at the room. “The
spherical pattern of the bomb suggests a normal explosive, not
plastique—plastique tends to be directional. Besides, you can smell
the black powder, si?
Maybe homemade.”
He looked into the ceiling,
and saw silver forks embedded like shrapnel, surrounded by other
pieces of metal. I
wonder if it matches the tray lid that landed outside.
Below the forks were wheels, separated by a flat metal sheet pressed
into the carpet.
“Serving cart,” Figlia
muttered.
“Che?”
a bellboy asked. What?
He carefully stepped around
the body and pointed at the sheet of metal. “The lower level of the
serving tray, beneath the forks.” His eyes flickered across the
room as though they were tracking a soccer ball. “Not to mention
the silverware in the walls, the bed, the floor, as well as the plate
fragments—either he had a grand celebration with an American
fraternity, or they came from a full room-service cart that
exploded.”
He pointed out the shattered
window. “Our amico
on the street wore a busboy’s white coat; assume the cart was his.
The cart is in the center of the room; too far inside if he was
lugging dirty place settings all over the hallway. He would have
stayed outside in the hall and collected them. This person on the
floor is dead from the nice neat bullet hole under his chin. Given
the position of the cart, it had to have been pulled around this
man’s body—the poor fool probably opened up for his killer.” He
made brief eye contact with the men out in the hall. “That killer
is, by the way, the one who ruined my car.” He waved at Gerrity’s
corpse. “At least this man’s killer. Who killed the busboy is
another quandary. He was killed with the explosion from his own cart,
so it is either stupidity on the busboy’s part, or murder on
someone else’s.”
Figlia walked over to the
window, and shouted out, in English, “Signora
Goldberg, look
around for a pistol! I’ll check up here!”
He stepped back from the
window, looking back as he did so. He opened up his cellular phone
and hit autodial. “Veronica, bella,
could you please bring the team down to the hotel?”
Veronica Fisher smiled; he
could hear it in her voice. “Which hotel?”
“Outside the colonnade,”
Figlia told her. “Follow the smoke; we have a bomb, black powder
composition.”
“Some priest playing with
leftover fireworks?”
“A double homicide.”
Fisher paused a moment.
“Gianni, isn’t the hotel outside
our jurisdiction?”
“The body isn’t. You’ll
also have to process what’s left of our car.”
Fisher, who was Figlia’s
forensics expert as well as his wife, paused a moment. “The bomb
destroyed the Jetta?”
“No, the corpse did it.”
Figlia paused for a moment, wondering if that was a double entendre,
as the corpse had done both the first murder and the destruction to
the car. Perhaps in
American English.
“I’ll have the locals secure the crime scene.”
“You sound like the FBI back
home.”
“Heaven forbid. A
più tardi. I won’t
be here when you arrive, I have a guest.”
“You picked him up?”
Fisher asked.
Figlia furrowed his brow.
“Him?”
There was some light laughter.
“You weren’t sent to pick up Hashim Abasi? Remember, the Egyptian
coordinating with you about Josh’s visit … what am I, your
secretary?”
Figlia felt like the dead man
had it easy. “I’ll get him as soon as possible.”
*
The Secret Service agent,
Goldberg, leaned against the door of the dead car, glancing at the
priest. “When did he start thinking he was a homicide detective?”
The priest said, “You should
ask him about it sometime.”
Commander Figlia dashed out of
the hotel and waved at Goldberg to follow him. She offered the priest
her hand. “It’s been nice talking with you, Father…?”
“Francis Williams, of the
Compania.”
“Ah, a Jesuit.”
The priest smiled. “Just
call me Frank.”
