In the Wind: Out of the Box, Book 2 (21 page)

Although, based on what Isabella has told me, certain corrupt elements in the Italian government would probably sell us out to Anselmo in about half a heartbeat. So maybe it’s just as well we’re going it alone.

I skim J.J.’s next email, which is a slightly deeper evaluation of those phone numbers Giuseppe called before he died. Five of them are to guys whose names are absolutely unknown to me, and it’s a safe bet that one of them was what got him killed.

The last is to a cell phone registered in Milan to a Diana Cristina Amatore.

I think about her, not daring to show her face, and wish Anselmo was operating under the same fear. Then my mind flashes to Father Emmanuel, petrified by the thought that he’s doing the wrong thing but afraid to expose himself to—I dunno, criticism, ostracism, being wrong? Something.

Then again, after everything I’ve been through in the last couple days, I can’t say I blame him. Whatever Anselmo is up to, he’s got an A-team backing his plays. He’s the invincible man, Lorenzo is like my dark mirror, only stronger, and Fintan is some sort of super-powered, undercover badass. Between the three of them, they can throw some pretty good hurt.

Add in Anselmo’s mobster flunkies, and I’m staring down a threat that could crush me like a fly, rip my lungs out and stake them to a wall. Not that I think they would do that, but—actually, Anselmo would totally do that.

And Sienna is not available. The most powerful fricking meta in the world, she’s on my team, she’s my sister, and I can’t reach her. She’s the weight that could tip the scales.

Uh, never mind. Weight metaphors are not good for use with women. She’s the power that could balance things out, turn this fight into something a lot more trivial. But there’s no guarantee she’s going to get my message before Anselmo’s scheme comes to fruition. I’ve got like thirty-six hours. Assuming she got it right now and hopped a plane from Canada, she’s still nine or ten hours away. That leaves twenty-six hours. An hour from the airport leaves twenty-five. A day, at best.

I know in my heart that I can’t wait on Sienna.

I stare at my phone, at that list of numbers, and I wonder how the hell I’m supposed to take on more flunkies than I can count, in addition to three metas, each of whom could probably clean my clock on their own. I feel so far over my head that I might as well be at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Even J.J.’s gift isn’t going to keep me from getting pulled apart by the mafiosi.

I sigh as my eyes drift over that name again. Diana Cristina Amatore. Father Emmanuel is listed as Moses Ngari on the phone registration.

I glance across the bed at the sole member of my team, and she catches my eye. She gives me an encouraging smile, and I stare at the numbers again before highlighting one. My phone prompts me, asking me if I want to call it, and I hit yes.

It rings, and on the fifth buzz, a female voice answers cautiously.
“Pronto,”
she says.

“Diana, it’s Reed,” I say, and wait to see if she hangs up.

She doesn’t, but she makes a noise of deep disgust. “What do you want now?”

“I figured out what Anselmo is up to,” I say, faking confidence in my tone. “He’s going to kill the Prime Minister.”

“Idiot,” she hisses, “this is an open line, anyone could be listening! I’m hanging up—”

“He wants to be a god, doesn’t he?” I ask, and she falls silent. “He wants to be like you and yours were, bring back the good old days, but with him in charge?” I’m playing a hunch here and hoping it’s right, just based on the little I know of the guy. It’s one hundred percent supposition, but hey, when you’re dealing with an egomaniacal lunatic like Anselmo, assuming he wants some sort of throne upon which he can sit while everyone kisses his feet and pays homage, is probably not a bad bet. “He’s gonna kill his way to it, put himself in charge.” I catch a horrified glance from Isabella as she locks her eyes on mine, and I figure maybe I’ve got it.

Diana is silent for a moment. “Sure,” she says, wearily, “that sounds like him. But what can you do to stop him?” This comes out resigned, like I’m complaining about the weather. It’s hopeless, she tells me without telling me.

“What I can do to stop him is fricking stop him,” I say and wonder if that makes any sense. “And unless you really love the thought of your homeland falling right into that pig’s grasping, lecherous fingers, you’ll at least meet me to talk about what we can do together.”

“You are a fool,” she snaps, but she still doesn’t hang up. “How many does he have? Metas, I mean,” she adds.

“Himself and the other two we’ve already faced,” I say. “Plus as many mobsters as he can muster. But we’ve got a wild card to play.”

She holds for a moment before biting the bait I’ve laid out, and I’m almost afraid she’s going to let it pass. “When and where should I meet you?” she asks, and I pump my fist in silent triumph because now at least I’ve got a few ounces of hope.

It’s after dark when I show up to the café down the street from St. Peter’s Basilica with Dr. Perugini in tow. Father Emmanuel is already waiting for us, his head down. I had to coerce and cajole to get him to come out and talk with us, but it’s worth the guilt as I sit down across from him at the table and Isabella takes the seat at my side.

“Shall we begin?” Emmanuel asks me in that thick accent of his, but I shake my head. “Why not?”

“We’re waiting for our plus one,” I say, catching movement out of the corner of my eye as Diana, wearing a touristy ball cap pulled down to cover her face slides into the seat next to him. “And here she is.”

“Who is this?” Diana asks, her voice a low hiss. There’s one other patron in the café, and he’s way toward the back and looks about seventy-five. The young man working behind the counter is fully absorbed in cleaning an oven, his back turned to us.

“Father Emmanuel, the goddess Diana,” I say, smiling tightly at the thought of the blasphemy I was tossing out. “Diana, Father Emmanuel.” They look at each other with great wariness but shake hands reluctantly. Diana looks disgusted and Emmanuel looks curious. Then they turn their attention to me, and I’m compelled to speak.

“Anselmo Serafini is planning to kill the Prime Minister of Italy the day after tomorrow, either before, during or after his visit with the Pope.” I look straight at Father Emmanuel. “That’s why Fintan O’Niall is still hiding in the Vatican.”

Father Emmanuel can’t even disguise his look of horror. “You have to warn them, immediately,” he says in a hushed voice two notes from runaway panic.

“The Italian government isn’t going to believe a word of it if it comes from me,” I say, shaking my head. “Do any of you have connections that might allow for a warning?” I look at Diana, but she has her head bowed, the bill of her cap keeping me from seeing her eyes. “Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?”

“No,” Diana says sharply. “But in our conversation before you promised that Anselmo was up to more than petty assassinations. Killing the Prime Minister of Italy is hardly enough to grant him apotheosis as you suggested.”

“It’s all about fear,” Isabella says, leaning in to take part in the conversation for the first time. “Think back to Giovanni Falcone. This Prime Minister has been talking about organized crime and a crackdown on a very high level for a while, not taking any action. But if three metahumans were to jump out tomorrow and kill him, put the fear into people that anyone can be killed at any time—”

“Then it will be exactly like any other time dealing with the Cosa Nostra or ’Ndrangheta or Camorra,” Diana says with a shrug of her shoulders. “This is always a threat. Falcone knew it before he was killed, and everyone knows it now. How is this different?” She looks across the table at us. “Other than a bigger target, this is—I don’t mean to be cold enough to say it is not bad, but it is an affair of state, not the end of Italy.”

I’m out of straws to grasp at. “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what his next move is after that, but you’re right. Killing a man who hasn’t even made much of a threat to him is not going to be the end of whatever Anselmo has planned. There’s more. There has to be more, and I don’t know what it is.” I put my palms flat on the table. “But you know the man, and you know he’s not some amateur who’s going to sit back and coast. He’s got ambition, some intent to do real harm. He’s talking pretty grandiose, and I’d bet he’s intending to back that talk up.”

“But how?” Father Emmanuel says, listening intently. “If he is this … corrupt and horrible man that you say he is, then surely he would not commit to such a monumentally dangerous course of action without something to back it up. Surely he would fear reprisal. Surely he would fear … some response?”

I think about that for a second. “He thinks he’s invincible,” I realize slowly.

Diana makes a low sound in her throat. “He is.”

“Could a bomb blow him up?” I ask, focusing intently on her.

“No,” she says with a shake of her head. “Perhaps a nuclear one, or the sort that burns extremely hot—perhaps—but not a conventional one, no. His skin is immune to the fragments, no matter how hard they are propelled.”

“He doesn’t care about anyone,” I say. “Not a soul. He cares about himself and power, and he’s making a play to aggrandize one and seize the other.” I sigh and shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know how, I’m sorry. But it’s happening. I know in my gut that he’s going big, not going home.”

“Perhaps we’ve been thinking about this all wrong,” Isabella says, her voice quiet. She glances sideways at me then looks at the others. “Anselmo is a corrupter of people, yes?”

“One of the worst,” Diana agrees.

“But he’s hardly the only one,” Isabella says. “The other
familias
—Sacra Corona Unita, ’Ndrangheta, La Cosa Nostra—every last one of them has people in different places, has different parts of the country as their territories …” She falls silent.

“Yeah?” I ask, prompting her, and her eyes widen.

“The meeting,” she says. “He has a meeting tomorrow—”

Something clicks into place, something telling. The head of a crime syndicate doesn’t just have a meeting, like it’s another day in a boardroom.

“He wouldn’t treat it like it’s this important—not if it’s with his underlings,” Isabella says, spelling it out for me. “He made it sound important, and that means that whoever he is meeting with
is
important—to him, at least.”

Diana leans back in her chair, and I can see her eyes. She’s gotten there, figured it out, and I can see that there’s some little hint of concern buried underneath all the effort at concealing it. “He’s going to unite them. He’s going to bring them all together.”

Isabella nods slowly. “And when he does, he will own every corrupt politician that they own. And with that much power, that much authority concentrated while everyone else argues and bickers at the fall of the Prime Minister—”

“They find themselves in control of Italy itself,” Diana says, and her voice is a deathly whisper.

“Thank you all for joining me early,” he says, and he walks around the pool deck. The house lights are shining, Firenze is glittering below, and around his long table sit more mafiosi than have been assembled together in a long, long time. Don George sits to the right of his empty chair at the head of the table, his place firmly established. There is unease among them, Anselmo can feel it, a strong scent of fear that is driven by the knowledge—the suspicion—of what he is about to ask of them. “I apologize for summoning you this evening rather than waiting until the appointed hour tomorrow, but … unfortunately, events have necessitated that we hurry things along.”

“Hurry what things along?” This from Vicenzo, the head of one of the smaller families of the south. An upstart, a fool. Anselmo knows he wants the purpose spelled out, to have it clearly stated so that he can register his fear, spit his insults, and leave.

But he has no idea what Anselmo is planning.

“Things,” Anselmo says, with a mysterious smile. The hour is dark, and that darkness is hiding the bloodstains upon the concrete. It would not matter if it did not, however, because the truth is likely already known to at least some of them. “Important things.”

“You play word games with us, Don Serafini,” Vicenzo says abruptly. Anselmo calculates he is seconds away from standing, from storming out in an insulted huff.

“I tease,” Anselmo says, smoothing it over. There is a ripple of amusement down the table, and Vicenzo blushes. “Sit, sit, and I will explain everything.” He takes long steps behind each of the men, behind their seats. There are only a dozen or so. He knows each of their names, but knows each of their territories better still. “Do you not all weary of the constant worry about the Carabinieri? Wondering if you have paid the right people, if you will get word before they take one of your drug houses? Before they crash one of your construction rackets? Before some do-gooding politician with more righteousness than brains intends to make his name by exposing your attempts to barter for government contracts?”

“Does a Carabinieri fuck a pig he’s left alone with?” Vicenzo says with a wide grin, prompting a laugh that ripples down the table.

Anselmo laughs, too. “Very clever. But if you are laughing, you know the truth of these things. There was a day when we could operate freely, when our kind had the reins of power, and no one disputed it. No prosecutor would dare to harass us, no Prime Minister would call us by name, and no president would breathe a word against us.”

“There was also a day when we would kneel to a king instead of elect a Prime Minister,” Vicenzo says. “I doubt we are going to go back to that.” This prompts another laugh down the table.

“Why not?” Anselmo says, this time stopping the laughter cold. He waits, feels the unease settle over the table. “Why not?”

“Because the people would oppose it,” Vicenzo says, as though he is speaking to a fool.

“And the people are the power, yes?” Anselmo smiles.

“Yes,” Vicenzo says. “They are.”

“No,” Anselmo says, “they are not. They perhaps think they are, but it is an illusion.” He grips the back of a chair and swings his other around in a gesture. “The power belongs to those whom the people fear. If we make them fear us, then we rule them.”