Rosa lowered it very slightly.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “What are you after?”
“What do you think? You.”
“Did Alessandro send you?” She didn’t seriously think so, and he shook his head. “Who, then? Cesare?”
“Hell, no. You nearly broke my nose.”
Sarcasmo whined again and licked her ear.
“Open this door, Rosa. Come on.”
“Who says I can trust you?”
“I’ve never hurt you, have I?”
“I’m not too popular with the Carnevares.”
“Cesare doesn’t know I’m here. None of them know.”
“So what are you here for, then?”
“To pick you up.”
She closed the window and put her foot on the gas. Just a light tap on the pedal. The Mercedes leaped forward and then stopped again. She was only two yards from the road now.
With a few steps, Fundling was beside her again. He looked nervous now, the way he had at their first meeting, when he was picking Alessandro up at the airport. He gestured to her to open the window again.
She let it down two fingers’ breadth.
“Quattrini sent me,” he said quietly, his lips very close to the opening. “She wanted me to fetch you because she thought you’d be more likely to trust me than her own people.” The corners of his mouth twitched. “Seems like that was a lousy plan.”
Her first impulse was to deny everything. Act as if she had never heard the name of Quattrini before. But then she asked, “You know her?”
“I sometimes talk to her. When she needs information. Just like you.” He looked intently at her. “If you mention that to anyone, I’m dead.”
Ditto, she thought. If he was telling the truth, then he was informing on the Carnevares for the judge. Until now she had assumed that he was loyal to the baron, devoted to the man who had taken him in as a baby. But Cesare wasn’t the baron.
“You saw it.” The words slipped out of her. “You saw Cesare kill the baron, didn’t you?”
For a moment he looked surprised. Then he nodded. “I can’t leave now. Cesare would think I’d given him away. He’d murder me.”
“But instead you betray him but stay with him, and keep acting as his driver. Not stupid.” All the same, she didn’t trust him. He
was
a traitor—like her, strictly speaking—and traitors were not to be trusted.
“Will you open the door now?” he asked impatiently.
Sarcasmo was panting on the backseat.
“Did you drive them there?” she asked. “Cesare and the others?”
He nodded. “I was on my way back to the castle when the judge’s people intercepted me. They sent me to you with the envelope and the cell phone.”
“But the other car—”
“I was alone,” he interrupted her, shaking his head. “No idea who you were speeding away from, but it wasn’t anyone from her unit. At least, I don’t think so. Probably just someone who happened to be driving down the road.”
“Where did you take the Carnevares?”
He hesitated. “Don’t go there, Rosa. It’s not something you ought to interfere with.”
She stared at him. “You know, don’t you? What’s going to happen there? To Iole?”
“They’ve done it often enough before. The baron was always against it, but Cesare…”
She swallowed. “Did you take Iole there?”
“No. That was one of his immediate circle. I was only driving two of his guests. One of the baron’s cousins from Catania and his wife.”
So there really was a whole pack of Panthera gathering to hunt the girl. Once again, she had to swallow a lump in her throat.
“Where are they?” she asked again.
“Let me in first.”
She shook her head vigorously. “Where, Fundling?”
He looked down. “Gibellina. The monument.”
“The
what?
”
“Don’t do it. They’ll kill you.”
“Alessandro’s there.”
“He’s one of them.”
“No. He’s different.” She opened the glove compartment. There were several road maps inside.
Sarcasmo settled down on the backseat. She dared not unlock a door to let him out. Anyway, he was obviously happy enough with her at the wheel.
Fundling rattled the handle. “Please!”
All she said was, “Stand back.” She gave him a moment, then hit the gas. The engine roared. The Mercedes started. Out onto the dark highway. The keys to the Maserati were lying on the passenger seat next to her along with the cell phone.
Fundling leaped back, shouting something over the engine noise.
Sarcasmo sighed happily as he dropped off to sleep.
Rosa turned on the headlights and raced toward the expressway as fast as she could.
A
T FOUR THIRTY IN
the morning Rosa was still at the wheel. The exit should be coming up any moment now, but she had thought that half an hour ago. After she had left the southern coastal road and turned inland again, the drive seemed to go on forever.
Only a few more miles. She rubbed her eyes. A fog of nervous exhaustion surrounded her determination. Once she stopped the car at a rest area and burst into tears. It was a good fifteen minutes before she could drive again.
A buzzing startled her. The cell phone was vibrating, knocking against the keys to the Maserati. This wasn’t the first time. So far she had ignored it, because it could only be Quattrini with more threats and accusations.
But it didn’t stop. The buzzing was sending her crazy, and when it stopped briefly and then began again her nerve broke. She picked up the cell phone and pressed the answer key.
“Yes?”
“It’s me.” A man’s voice, and one that she ought to have recognized at once. But in her present state of mind it took her a couple of seconds to place it.
“Pantaleone,” she said wearily. “Where did you get this number?” Even as she asked, the answer dawned on her. His phone conversation in the palazzo. The men at the gate had told him about the envelope waiting for her and had made a note of the cell phone’s number. Did the old man know who it came from?
“The guards didn’t recognize the boy, but it didn’t take long to check him out,” he said. “Next time young Carnevare has something delivered to you, he might as well just write the sender’s name on the envelope.”
“What do you want?” She spoke quickly so he wouldn’t notice her sigh of relief.
“You need help.”
“Not yours, for sure.”
“Is there anyone else you can think of?”
On the backseat, Sarcasmo uttered a doggy growl in his dreams, shifted his position, and went on sleeping.
“I mean that seriously,” said Pantaleone. “Where you’re going, you’ll need someone to stand by you.”
“And you’re the man?” she said derisively.
“Are you in Gibellina yet?”
It ought to have come as a shock that he knew her destination, but she was too tired even for that.
“You’re playing into their hands, and you know it. Because you still hope. But hope is something many of us have lost. That’s another reason why I value you so much, Rosa. You and I together can lead the Alcantaras and all of Cosa Nostra to a new dawn.”
She snorted contemptuously. “The Hungry Man has you running scared, doesn’t he?”
“Of course. Along with many of us.”
“I told you before, I’m not interested.”
“That will change. It will, believe me.”
She wanted to rub her eyes again, but with one hand on the wheel and the other holding the cell phone, she couldn’t. “Is that all?”
“Don’t hang up. You’re going to need my help. Without me, you can’t rescue the girl. And young Carnevare will die.”
“Alessandro knows exactly what—”
“What he’s doing? No, my dear Rosa. The truth is that they picked him up some time ago. They have him locked up in Gibellina. Same as the little Dallamano girl who means so much to you.”
“How do you know this?”
She could picture his self-satisfied smile. “You don’t have to like me, Rosa. Or even respect me. But don’t make the mistake of underestimating me. Enough talking. I’ll guide you to Gibellina. Along a better route than those old road maps from your father’s time.”
She did prick up her ears at that. At least he didn’t know she was in Fundling’s Mercedes.
“What do you want from me in return?”
“Your trust. Your word that you’re on my side. And that you’ll listen to me without any ifs, ands, or buts.”
“I could say yes and not mean it.”
“If you say yes, it’s a pact. The same pact I made with your aunt, and others before her. To break it would have far-reaching consequences.” He paused for a moment. “Well?”
Oh fuck, she was at her wits’ end. “Agreed,” she said.
“Where are you now?”
“On the A29, going north.”
“What’s the next exit road?”
“It’s for Salemi. And Gibellina Nuova.”
“You don’t take that one,” he said firmly, going on to give her directions to the exit after next off the expressway, where she was to follow the road through an isolated chain of hills.
At first she saw signs to remote farms at the few turns off this road. Then it just went on and on, winding its way uphill around many bends. Finally the road petered out into a bumpy gravel track. Now and then her headlights had shown poorly tended vineyards and olive groves along her route, but a large part of the countryside seemed to be barren or lying fallow.
“That’s close enough,” said Pantaleone on the phone. “Leave the car somewhere—behind bushes or trees if you can find any. You’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot.”
Sarcasmo had woken up when she stopped, and was sitting upright on the backseat. His black coat stood on end at the back of his neck; he looked at her expectantly. She left all the windows slightly open and told him he would have to wait here in the car—for her or for someone else, if something happened to her. In that case, she felt sure, the Carnevares would find the Mercedes and set the dog free.
“Do you still have the revolver you were going to shoot me with?” asked the old man on the telephone. “Interesting model, by the way. With a silencer fitted. The Russian secret service likes that kind of thing.”
She quietly closed the door of the car. “Yes, I have it here.”
“How much ammunition?”
“No idea. How do I find out?”
He explained. In the moonlight, she felt the bulges of the cartridges in the cylinder. “Six,” she said.
“And you don’t know how to use it?”
“No.”
“But you are American.”
“Ha-ha.”
“If you do as I say, and go about it cleverly, I hope you won’t need it. Unless Cesare Carnevare crosses your path, in which case please be kind enough to shoot him.”
“How about the concordat?”
He laughed. “Shoot him when no one’s looking. But apart from that, he won’t be there anyway. The tribunal ought to keep him busy all morning.”
“Where’s it meeting, anyway?”
“In Corleone. Only a short flight away by helicopter… Have you started walking?”
“I will as soon as you tell me where to go.”
“You must follow the trail, but be careful. No one is likely to be approaching from that side, because it’s a long detour and the path is so bad. All the same, keep your eyes open, and watch for headlights.”
Sarcasmo didn’t bark as she walked away from the car. Good dog.
Pantaleone directed Rosa along the trail for about a mile, around several bends, until an expanse of land opened up in front of her. To her right, the terrain rose higher toward the top of the mountain, to the left there were boulders, and beyond them a stony slope overgrown with bushes.