Authors: The Sacred Cut
Viale's
immobile face flushed. "I'm amazed you think you have the
time."
Falcone
remained silent, waiting for the rest.
"Think
about it, Leo. You're forty-eight. Has anyone asked you to sit the
commissario interview recently?"
Falcone
shrugged. He hadn't even considered promotion of late. Life had been too
busy.
Viale
provided the answer for him, which was interesting of itself. "Not in
three years. And you haven't even asked. That looks bad."
"Promotion's
not everything," Falcone replied, knowing his answer sounded feeble. "Some
of the most important people we have are just plain street cops who'll
never move up the ladder in their lives, or expect to. Where the hell would we
be without them?"
Viale
leaned along the table and breathed booze fumes in his face. "We're
not talking about them. We're talking about
you
. A man who
looked like he was going far. And now he's treading water. Worse,
he's making bad decisions. Backing the wrong people."
Falcone
bristled. He'd an idea now where this was leading. "By which you
mean... ?"
"Shit,"
the grey man hissed. "You know damn well. You're getting
sentimental in your dotage, Leo. You're looking out for people who
don't deserve it. This Peroni idiot, for one thing. If it wasn't
for you he'd be out of the force without a pension. With good reason,
too. Why'd anyone with any sense stick up for a guy like that?"
Falcone
thought carefully before answering. "They asked my opinion. I gave it. Peroni's
a good cop, whatever happened in the past. We can't afford to lose people
of that calibre."
"Peroni's
a disaster waiting to happen. Him and that partner of his. And don't tell
me you never stuck up for him. Hell, if it wasn't for you those two
wouldn't even be working together."
None
of this was SISDE's business. It infuriated Falcone that he was getting a
lecture on personnel issues from someone outside the force. He'd be
damned if he'd listen to it from anyone inside either. Costa and Peroni
were on his team. It was his call who worked with whom.
"These
are two lowly cops on the street, Filippo. They're my problem. Not yours."
"No.
They are two time bombs waiting to destroy what's left of your career. Peroni's
going to go off the rails again before long. Mark my word. And the Costa
kid..." Viale leaned forward and said this quietly, as if it were a
confidence. "Come on, Leo. You know who his old man was? That stinking
Commie who caused us no end of trouble when he was alive."
Suddenly
Falcone recalled the memory that had been eluding him. Some fifteen years
earlier Nic Costa's father, an implacably incorrupt Communist politician,
had exposed a series of financial misdeeds inside both the civilian and
military security services. SISDE in particular came out badly. Heads had
rolled as a.result. A couple of fall guys even found themselves briefly in
jail.
"What
on earth has that got to do with the son?" he asked.
"There's
trouble in the blood," Viale muttered. "People like that have got
ideas above their station. Be honest with yourself. You know it as well as I
do."
"These
are internal police matters," Falcone replied sharply. "You
don't have to concern yourself with our business."
"I'm
concerned with you, Leo. People are taking note. They're starting to
wonder. In this business you're either moving up or moving down. No one
stands still. Which way do you think you're going right now? Huh?"
He
leaned close, wreathed in grappa fumes, to make sure his last point struck
home. "Where I am everyone moves up. You know why? This is our world. We
own it. We have the money. We have the power. We don't need to go
squeaking to a committee of bureaucrats so we can use it. We don't have
to worry whether some asshole of an MP is going to start shooting his mouth off
in parliament about what we do. Not anymore. You're a man who wants
results. That's what I like about you. We've got opportunities for
someone like you. Ten years down the line you're still going to be
employed too. Which, given how things stand..."
Viale
paused and, with an unsteady hand, poured the remains of Falcone's glass
into his.
"...
isn't the case where you are now. Listen to a friend, Leo. These last few
years I've been offering you a job. That's not what's on the
table now. Now I'm throwing you a lifeline. One that could pull you out
of all the crap you're swimming in. Before it's too late."
Falcone's
cell phone rang. He excused himself, answered it, listening carefully to the
familiar voice.
"I'm
needed," he said when the call ended.
Viale's
face creased in a drunken sneer, one Falcone found faintly amusing. "What
is it? Some tourist got mugged again down the Colosseum? The Kosovans getting
uppity about who rules the hooker trade?"
"Not
exactly," Falcone replied, smiling, getting to his feet, reaching for his
camel-hair coat, doubting it really would keep out the cold on such a night. "It's
much more important than that. Excuse me."
Viale
raised his glass. "Ciao, Leo. You have until the New Year. After that
you're on your own."
THEY
LEFT THE CAR where it was, tyre-deep in drifting snow in a blocked dead end off
the Corso, and walked to the Piazza della Minerva through a squally wind. The
weather changed by the moment. Briefly, through a clear patch high overhead, a
full moon illuminated billowing banks of heavy cloud scudding over the city. The
stars shone, bright and brittle in the thin winter air, possessing a piercing
clarity that was almost painful.
Then
the blizzard returned, and the three men pulled their collars around their
faces and turned the corner into the small square, where the plain, brute
cylinder of the Pantheon's rear wall loomed above them, luminous under
the night's silver light. It was a sight Nic Costa had never expected to
see. The vast hemisphere of the dome, the largest in the world until the
twentieth century, so vast that Michelangelo had made the diameter of St.
Peter's dome half a metre smaller out of respect, was now swathed in
snow, cutting an unmistakable semicircle out of the sky, like the meniscus of a
gigantic new moon rising above the dark urban horizon.
Costa
cast a glance at Bernini's famous elephant in front of the church. The
creature was almost unrecognizable. A heavy drift had engulfed the statue and
the foot of the diminutive Egyptian obelisk that sat on its midriff. A perfect,
miniature mountain rose up from the ground to form a triangular peak,
surmounted by the bare needle-like pinnacle of the column, etched with
impenetrable hieroglyphs. Sandri snapped some more pictures. Peroni shook his
head. Then they carried on, walking parallel with the eastern wall of the
Pantheon, into the small, rectangular open space of the Piazza della Rotonda.
Costa
felt he knew every inch of the piazza. He'd arrested pickpockets working
the busy summer crowds who had flocked to see the impossible: an imperial Roman
temple unchanged in its essential form over almost twenty centuries. And a
sight that, just as important to many, was free, since Hadrian's original
shrine to every last god in the heavens had in the seventh century been
converted into the consecrated church it still remained. Once, Costa had picked
up a drunk who'd fallen asleep beneath the spouting mouths of the comical
dolphins and fauns of the fountain opposite the temple's massive,
colonnaded portico. But long before he became a cop, when he was just a school
kid, full of awe and passion for the history of his native city, he'd
come here whenever he could, just to sit on the steps of the fountain and
listen to water trickle from the dolphins' beaks like liquid laughter,
just to stare at the way everything changed in the shifting light of the day
and the season, feeling two thousand years of bustling history brush up against
his face.
Tonight,
however, he scarcely recognized the place. The blustering northerly wind was
funnelling down the narrow alleys facing the piazza, cascading new and fallen
snow straight into the square and the mouth of the Pantheon's portico. Curious,
organically shaped drifts clung to the fountain. The streams of water from the
dolphins' and fauns' mouths were now frozen solid, like lumpen
jewels gleaming in the moonlight.
Peroni
was scanning the piazza for signs of life. Mauro had his camera out, changing
films. Costa approved. This was a rare sight, he thought. It deserved to be
recorded.
"Where
the hell is everyone, Nic?" Peroni asked. "I don't even see
the bums."
The
poor were with you always. Particularly in a place like this.
"Maybe
they're inside already," Costa replied. Or, even better, perhaps
the city had discovered some hidden reserve of compassion and found space to
house them for the night.
"We've
got company," Peroni said, pointing to a figure emerging from behind the
western wall of the building.
The
newcomer shivered inside his dark uniform, shielding his face against the snow,
which seemed to have found newly energized vigour. The caretaker stumbled
forward, stared at them hopefully, then asked, "You the cops?"
Peroni
waved his badge. Costa looked around the square again. More people should have
been there. Falcone ought to arrive soon, too.
"I'm
not going inside on my own," the caretaker said. "Some of these
scum use knives."
Peroni
nodded at the doors. "Best open them up, then."
The
man let loose a dry laugh, then looked at Sandri, once again aiming his camera
right, left and centre. "Sure, Officer. That's all it takes. Is
your man here going to shoot some pictures too? They say you see it just once
in a lifetime. Snow coming down like that, straight through the eye."
"So
what are we waiting for?" Peroni asked.
Costa
knew the problem. Behind the portico lay the largest pair of imperial Roman
doors in existence. Worked bronze, almost as high as the porch itself, and more
than a metre deep. Sometimes, before going on duty, he'd take a coffee in
the square in the early morning, watching the Pantheon being prepared for
another day of crowds. No one who worked in the building ever approached
through the front, not to begin with. The doors opened inwards, their mass
being drawn back slowly from behind.
"We
need the tradesmen's entrance," Costa said.
"Precisely."
The caretaker sniffed, then drew back his collar to reveal a gnarled, florid
face that looked as if half a bottle of grappa could be wrung out of it. "All
three of you coming?"
Costa
looked at Peroni. "I can handle a couple of street people. You stay here
with Mauro. Wait for Falcone."
"No,"
Peroni said, striding out of the snow and towards the shelter of the portico. "I
stay here."
Costa
followed in the caretaker's swift footsteps, walking to the western
flank, where they descended some stairs down to what must have been the
original level of the city when the Pantheon was built. There was a locked iron
gate, then further steps and a long, narrow path, in the shadow of the high
modern wall of the adjoining street, to a small, secure door almost at the rear
of the building.
"The
tradesmen's entrance," the caretaker announced icily, then turned a
couple of locks and threw it open. Costa stepped into the alcove and waited as
the man fumbled with some keys at a second door, which led, he guessed, to the
great circular interior. He wondered briefly what kind of bum locked the doors
behind him.
He
listened to the metal tumblers turn.
"After
you," the caretaker said. "I'll get the lights."
Nic
Costa walked into the darkness and felt the chill of fresh winter air on his
face. The night breeze was circling in the vast hemisphere he knew lay before
him. And there was another sound too. Of a human being moving: short, anxious
steps in the blackness beyond.
He
felt his jacket, wondered about the gun. Then the lights of the building burst
into life, bringing a sudden harsh sun into the shadows of the vast, airy,
artificial universe enclosed beneath the ancient structure's huge dome.
Someone
cried out with surprise. A young voice. The noise reverberated around the vast
emptiness so quickly it seemed to come from everywhere.
"Will
you look at that?" the caretaker said, no longer thinking about the
intruders.
Through
the giant open eye of the oculus of the roof came a steady, swirling stream of
snow, pirouetting around itself with the perfect, precise symmetry of a strand
of human DNA.
It
fell in the dead centre of the room, where an inverted, icy funnel was growing,
spreading out beyond the central marble ring and rising, at its peak, to a
metre or more.
Costa
heard movement to his right. A slight, small figure dashed through a brilliant
yellow beam cast down by a spotlight near the main altar, then fled into the
pool of shadows in a recess on the far side of the building.
"Scum,"
the caretaker muttered. "What are you going to do?"
Costa
had been running the options through his mind. Chase some lone, cold, hungry
bum through the darkness of Hadrian's holiest of holies? And all for
what?