The Three Most Wanted (26 page)

“Ha ha,” retorted Bane.

“
Seriously.”

Jon, Bane and I did our best to imitate sardines, and Luciano finally managed to wriggle into the remaining space. The taxi driver guffawed and slammed the seat’s cushions back down.

“Glad someone’s enjoying themselves,” said Jon faintly.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

“Okay with small dark spaces?”

“I’m fine with small spaces, Margo, but my leg is all bent up so please let’s do this as fast as we can…”

Luciano shouted something in Italian which sounded rather like the Latin for, “Make it quick, jackass!” The driver guffawed again. But mercifully he started the engine and off we went.

The road was every bit as bumpy as the early one. It was much like being shut in a sardine tin—or a coffin—and rolled down a hill. Jon suffered especially; he began muttering a rosary under his breath, his body rigid with pain. Luciano ignored him until we heard other traffic around us—a lot of horns beeping. Italian drivers.

“Hush,” he said then, “we’re coming to the city gates. No one make a sound.”

Jon fell silent—I took his hand and pressed it and he seemed to be trying not to crush it in return.

The taxi only stopped, lurched forward and stopped a few times before speeding up again.

“Get here early and you don’t have to wait in line, y’see,” murmured Luciano.

We were through the gates! My heart began pounding quite uncomfortably. So close.
So
close. Of course, we still had to meet the Rome cell and be taken to the tunnel. But by the end of the day? Maybe?

I swallowed my heart back down.
Your will, Lord
.

We passed quickly through the city; we’d definitely beaten the morning traffic. Eventually the taxi drew to a halt and this time it wasn’t a red light, because we heard the back doors open, the seat cushions were lifted and a pistol barrel or two were stuffed into the opening.

“Relax, all’s well,” said Luciano. I think that’s what he said, anyway, it was in Italian. Whatever it was, the pistols were withdrawn and a hand inserted to help him. He immediately reached back in to get Jon, pretty much dragging him out, with me pushing. By the time I emerged Jon sat on the short flight of steps which connected the garage to the house, head in one hand, the other massaging his leg.

“Just breathe,” Luciano was telling him.

“I’m
breathing
. I’m fine...”

Bane scrambled out behind me like a rabbit from a burrow and we went to sit beside Jon.

“Who on earth are
they?”
The three strangers began speaking in Italian and my brain offered a possible translation to some of it and took a guess at the rest.

“Hell, I know who they are!”

“Those three reAssignees.”

“Not the three most wanted?”

“It’s them, isn’t it, Luciano?”

“Yes, it’s them. They just need safe passage into the Vatican and the EuroGov will be cursing fit to burst.”

“Okay. They don’t speak Italian, I take it?”

“Of course not” replied Luciano.

Blearily, Jon opened his mouth to say, actually, he was getting the gist of a lot of it, but I stuck my elbow in his side. His mouth snapped closed again and he went slightly pink. No point giving away any advantage. Especially not to people who seemed so thrilled to see us. Not.

“Come on,” said Luciano cheerfully, in Esperanto. “Let’s go inside. You good to move, Jon?”

“Fine.”

But Jon allowed me and Bane to hoist him to his feet, leaning heavily on the stick as we followed Luciano. Carla’s antagonism to us was hardly unexpected—it was Luciano’s attitude that was more unusual—but I was a little surprised this lot weren’t more welcoming. Surely here in Rome the Resistance should be more used to getting on with the Underground?

When we reached his office and were introduced to him, Gino, the leader of the Rome cell, warmed up a bit. “You look tired. Just sit down in here and have some refreshments while I take care of my business with Luciano.”

We smiled and thanked him—we could hardly demand to be taken to a tunnel at once!—and going into the anteroom indicated, settled ourselves on a battered sofa. After a surprisingly short time, a woman came in with a tray of hard boiled eggs, a sort of pasta soup and a loaf of bread. As she left, I could see Luciano sitting with Gino at his desk, talking.

Hungrily, we demolished the brunch. The last egg eaten, I looked around the little room. We seemed to be unobserved. Slipping up to the door, I put my ear to the hinge. The Italian was fast and quiet and hard to catch.

“What about the three of… …get them in before I go back?”

“Haven’t you heard? …didn’t come back from the raid. All taken.”

“What has that to do with…?”

Gino said something I couldn’t catch, but I caught Luciano’s response quite distinctly, his voice raised in shock and incredulity.

“You want to do
what?
”

***+***

21

CROSSING THE WHITE LINE

Bane was suddenly by my shoulder.

“What’re you doing, Margo?”

“Eavesdropping.”

“You don’t speak Italian.”

“No, it’d help.
Hush
…”

Gino was talking: “…the only way to save…”

Luciano cut in: “Won’t save anything… …no sense at all!”

“They’re the perfect…”

“They
don’t bargain
! …told us what happened to some old hunter… … the same as you’re…”

“We’ll be careful. Make safeguards…”

“Can’t believe you’re even considering… …The EuroGov are the
enemy
. …may be
Pregatori
but… …more our allies than…”

“…have my brother! …know what will happen…?”

“What will happen to us all…” Luciano’s voice was grim. “Doesn’t mean we can
ever
…”

“No! …preaching like one of them! I’ll not let Paulo die, not when thanks to you…”

“I won’t let you do this.”

“You think you can stop me? My city…”

I drew away from the door, my heart pounding now with fear and unease, and said softly to Jon and Bane, “I can’t hear it all and what I can hear I’m not sure I’m understanding correctly. But I’m almost certain—I am certain—Gino wants to sell us to the EuroGov. To save his brother? Something. Luciano’s opposing him, but…”

Bane went pale.

“This is Gino’s patch, Luciano hasn’t a hope…”

Bane bolted across the room to the window—looked out and eased it slowly, cautiously, open. I put my ear to the door again.

“This is wrong. They…”

“Now you really sound like…”

“If you touch that phone, I swear, I’ll…”

“Just try it, Milan rat!”

Hurrying to Jon, I led him to the window. “Come on, quickly...”

Bane shot me a look. “You sure Luciano won’t talk him round?”

“Sounds like they’re about to come to blows.”

“Let’s go, then.” He paused to tug the bandanna further down over my forehead, then flung a leg over the sill. “It’s first floor, just hang and drop. Jon, I’ll break your fall.”

With a grunt of pain as his weight fell on his bad arm, he was gone.

“Over you go, Jon,” I said.

“You first.”

“Get through that window!”

Glad I’d insisted—he needed help lifting his injured leg over the sill. He hissed for a moment in pain, then twisted onto his stomach and let himself down with me hanging onto his collar to take some of the weight off his arms.

He and Bane both went sprawling on the ground as he landed, but Bane got straight up so, waiting only to see Jon sit up too, I scrambled out and dropped. Rather sooner than I’d intended—my one arm wouldn’t hold my weight at all, but I didn’t quite flatten Bane and he took the weight off my ankles as I landed.

Grabbing a nearby broom, Bane poked the window closed so it wasn’t quite so obvious where we’d gone, then we dragged Jon to his feet and headed off down the quiet back street. Bane ventured briefly onto the main street ahead of us to buy football caps for Jon and himself. Why hadn’t I trimmed their hair before we left Milan? Still, the caps hid most of it. It would’ve been good to reapply the makeup on my still conspicuously-bruised face but I didn’t dare spend the time.

“Where’re we heading?” I asked Bane, as we sauntered along as though we hadn’t a care in the world. We must be quite near the historic center of the city; no acting ability required to stare at the magnificent buildings. “I think Gino was going to phone them. We may not have long at all.”

“We probably don’t. He may call them before he even realizes we’ve flown the coop, and even if he finds out first—if he’s stupid enough to think he can do a deal with them he’ll likely try to salvage what he can by letting them know we’re in Rome and headed for the Vatican. We have to get in. Somehow, we have to get in right away.”

We rounded a corner and there, on the skyline, towered a familiar dome. My heart constricted.

“There it is. Saint Peter’s...”

Jon’s head rose. “You can see it?”

“Yes. We’re so close.”

We picked up our pace, still making sure to gawk around a lot, and soon we reached the Vatican wall, an immense, ancient thing, the top festooned in tens of kilometers of very modern razor wire and dotted with CCTV cameras. Several meters away from the base ran a painted white line overlooked by regular guard towers, all sheltering machine guns and EuroArmy soldiers.

“Absolutely no way in here,” muttered Bane. Not that we’d expected one.

“What about the contact procedure Father Mark gave us?” I asked.

“Be at the statue at three o’clock and do the thing with a newspaper. But it’ll be out of date and by three o’clock I’ve a hunch every street in this city will have checkpoints.”

We carried on walking as we talked, mingling with the crowd and keeping well back from that white line. It was common knowledge in the Underground that in Rome, “crossing the white line” was the local euphemism for suicide; it was the favored method in this city.

Sweat trickled down my backbone, though the sun wasn’t high yet. A clock ticked deafeningly in my head. Had Gino and Luciano come to blows? Was Luciano on his way back to Milan with a flea in his ear? Had Gino picked up the phone yet?
Lord, what do we do?
We’re stumped!

We reached St. Peter’s Square, invisible behind the high concrete wall built and manned by the EuroGov, broken only by two sets of massive steel double gates. They stood open—it was late enough that the tour buses had started running. A sign stood beside the embarkation point.

The Forbidden Square: The Official Tour

Enter the Vatican Free State itself!

View the Forbidden Square from the safety and comfort of a EuroGov-approved tour bus.

100% SAFE—100% SECURE

The one and only official tour!

Ệ
300 per person

The
only
tour, period, hence the jaw-dropping price.

Bane stared at the sign, his foot tapping as though he too, heard that clock ticking in his head. Was Gino even now speaking to the EuroGov? Trying to hammer out a deal before revealing what he knew?

A tour bus waited by the embarkation point, partly full. Bane crossed to the signboard and picked up a leaflet, returning to where Jon and I stood, apparently admiring what little we could see of the square through the gates.

“They go every half hour until ten, then every ten minutes,” he told me in English, holding it so I could read it too. A whole lot of stuff about how secure the bus was—yeah, because people really thought the Vatican State would open fire on them! Anyone with even one brain cell knew the buses sported triple-locked doors and bulletproof glass to keep people from getting
off
.

“How would we get out of the bus, Bane?”

“I think we can do it.”

He pulled out his wallet and counted the money inside. Seven hundred Eurons. Oh no. If none of the SpecialCorps were the richer for it, what money Jon and I had been carrying was ash.

“We’re two hundred short,” I muttered.

Jon took a breath.

“If you say ‘leave me,’ I’m going to hit you.” I didn’t look up from the cash.

“So am I,” said Bane.

Jon let the breath out again and said nothing. Bane’s foot tapped even harder. My heart raced. Time was running out. In cold reason I couldn’t be sure, but I
was
. Bane could feel it too.

Bane pulled out his phone. Checking for other ways in? There were no other ways. Only tunnels we couldn’t get to. Oh… he was polishing the screen on his sleeve and blowing dust from the keyboard. He saw me watching him. “This is worth fifteen hundred Eurons. Perhaps we can get, say, seven hundred for it, in cash…”

“Where, Bane? We don’t dare go in a pawn shop.”

He bit his lip. We couldn’t just go up to people and offer to sell them an expensive omniPhone for half its value in cash. How d’you spell “suspicious,” again? But every other stitch and scrap we possessed wasn’t worth more than fifty Eurons put together.

A rather stealthy movement to one side...

A young Italian in a leather jacket was approaching along the side of the buildings. Eyes on us.

“Hi,” he said in Esperanto, seeing he was observed. “Nice phone,
Signore.”

Bane shrugged casually. “Thinking of getting a new one, actually. Like to buy this one?”

“How much?”

“One thousand.”

The Italian guy scoffed in the time-honored manner of bargainers the world over.

“Too much,
Signore
. It is not a new model now. Nice phone, still, but not new. I’ll give you five hundred. Then you go on the Vatican tour,
si?”

My heart climbed to my throat, juddering there as that sense of imminent dread increased by the second, as did my conviction this guy suspected more than he let on. But what was he? Resistance? Underground? Sharp-eyed local sympathizer? Genuinely pursuing a bargain? EuroGov informer?

“Thinking about it, yeah,” drawled Bane. “Don’t want to trek off to a cash machine and seeing I was going to get rid of this anyway… Can’t take less than eight hundred, though.”

Well below the phone’s value. Unlikely this guy would buy Bane’s pretence of being stinking rich and ridiculously lazy.

“I have only five hundred in my wallet,
Signore
. You will have to take it or leave it.”

Bane was trying not to scowl. To give up our sole remaining asset for so little… yet if we didn’t have two hundred Eurons very soon, it’d all be moot. “That’s really not very much.”

The Italian reached into his pocket and Bane’s body tensed—he simply took out a wallet and opened it to display a one hundred Euron note and a pair of two hundred Euron notes. He was telling the truth. He removed a handful of cards and held out the wallet enticingly.

“Five hundred. I give you this…”

He’d left one card in place. Blue and yellow. His ID card. Bane and I were both staring, we couldn’t help it. He suspected… a lot. No one would offer an ID card to a normal tourist. I looked down at the leaflet in my hand; searched for the small print. There, in black and white.

TOUR EXEMPT FROM SMALL TRADERS EXCEPTION TO IDENTIFICATION ACT.

ID MUST BE SCANNED WITH PAYMENT.

Of course. You had to scan your ID, same as in a shop.

Bane read over my shoulder—his eyes flicked to the Italian’s face. For once Bane’s black hair and slightly dark skin did him a favor. The young Italian was clean-shaven. With the beard… Bane’d pass for him on a cursory inspection. They never looked at the picture in shops, anyway. Bane drew in a deep breath, his jaw tightening. In my head a voice shouted,
hurry, hurry, hurry…

“Why not?” Bane shrugged. He flipped open the back of the phone and removed his omniSIM, tucking it securely in a pocket, then held the phone out and exchanged it for the wallet.

“
Grazie
.” The Italian pocketed it. “Enjoy your tour.” Off he walked.

Bane transferred the money and the card to his own wallet, dropped the other in a nearby bin and swallowed hard. “Come on, let’s do this before I have time to think about it.”

Before he had time to wonder if the young man’s ID might be compromised—was he Resistance or criminal, and the ID useless to him? No, surely he was Underground or concerned citizen—or greedy citizen—or even a more decent member of the Resistance—who’d recognized us and realized our dilemma? He’d got a good phone out of it and if he meant us well he’d proceed at a very leisurely pace to the police station to report his wallet—and ID—stolen.

If he didn’t mean us well—we’d be caught when we used the card. Bane was right, better not to think about it.

He went on, “Okay, what we’ll do is… No, they’re about to go, come on…”

We hurried across the street, for the bus had just started up, and climbed on.

“Hi.” Bane deliberately dulled his English accent but didn’t attempt an Italian one—an Italian wouldn’t speak in Esperanto. “Three for the tour, please.”

“Nine hundred.” The driver didn’t take his eyes from his newspaper.

Bane took out the money. The driver probably would look up when he put it through the slot in the bulletproof glass... I wound myself around Jon and hid both our faces in a passionate kiss. Could see the driver out of the corner of my eye and he didn’t glance at Bane at all, thoroughly distracted by me and Jon. Bane calmly inserted the ID card into the reader without being asked, as though buying his groceries, and for a second I forgot to move my lips against Jon’s.