David Hewson (34 page)

A killer
.

No,
that didn't worry him. Bill Kaspar had killed plenty in his career. Never
unnecessarily, never without good reason. It went with the job. Sometimes it
was the only way to stay alive. He'd killed in the jungles of Colombia
and on the streets of Managua. He'd taken men down in Afghanistan and
Indonesia. And the Middle East. He'd been there a lot, enough to speak
good Arabic, Kurdish and Farsi. Enough to help him convince a few people who
should have known better, men who, temperamentally, hated everything American,
that he really could be on their side, put some weapons their way, provided
they had the money and information to share.

He'd
read every last book he could find on Hadrian, knew every twist and turn of his
career all the way from Italica to Rome. Long before these new voices came to
occupy his head, Bill Kaspar had thought he heard Hadrian talking to him
sometimes, a strong, educated voice carrying across almost two millennia. The
voice taught him lessons that kept a man like him alive. How it was impossible
to fight battles on multiple fronts, which made it necessary, on occasion, to
convert an enemy into a friend. How important it was to be a true leader, one
everyone could look up to. And how the ambition was, invariably, more important
than the achievement because, in the end, everything was dust and death and failure,
a shallow, temporary grave in a foreign place far from home.

Hadrian
had been rash sometimes, too, and arrogant. The mind that could imagine a
building like the Pantheon had also seen fit to slaughter those who stood in
his way. Kaspar had murdered Monica Sawyer brutally, his head full of screaming
voices, feeling his power enter her body, and still he couldn't quite
work out why, still he knew that the patterns he'd painted with her
blood, the holy frieze of interlocking shapes, was powder over a stupid
misdeed, a disguise that failed to hide the enormity of the crime. Monica
wasn't a part of the endgame now playing out on the streets of Rome. She
hadn't--there was no avoiding the thought--
merited
that particular death.

He
was Bill Kaspar. He could have prevented that, locked her in the bedroom with a
gag round her overactive mouth, and stayed safe and warm in her apartment
knowing not a soul could see there was anything wrong. He could have tried to
explain to her that he was in his own frame of reference, an honourable man set
upon an honourable mission. A man who had been abandoned, cheated, robbed, even
here in Rome.

Bill
Kaspar didn't kill people because he wanted to. Only because he
had
to. Hadn't he let Emily Deacon live that night? The bug was a long shot. He
was lucky it provided anything. Or was his reluctance to kill a symptom of a
greater problem? Had some unconscious part of his head now started to operate
on its own, demanding a victim, any victim, just because it hated the idea of
being cheated?

Hadrian,
the brightest emperor of them all, the man who set limits to the empire, who
said
this far, no further
, was crazy by the end and Bill Kaspar knew
he couldn't even hope to stand in the shadow of that colossus.

He
wasn't sure about any of this. He wasn't sure it was worth worrying
about either. What mattered was finishing the job. For the life of him he
couldn't think of any way he could do that without involving Emily
Deacon. It was possible she was the key to the whole damn thing anyway, and that
Steely Dan Deacon, in spite of appearances, in spite of the way Deacon had
protested his innocence just before he died, had been in charge all along. Kaspar
knew he was running out of alternatives. He didn't dare hang around Net
cafes anymore in case they were being watched. Steely Dan's girl had to
provide the answers. Somehow.

The
headphone came alive just after dawn, the sound of the thin traffic working its
way just far enough up the hill to break through over the embassy's
electronic fog. Then a car engine, something like the notching of gears.

She
was in a vehicle. Kaspar pulled the Fiat forward until its yellow nose edged
out into the Via Veneto and watched the big iron gates. A red Ford was coming
through them, Emily Deacon behind the wheel.

"Little
Em," he said to himself.

Kids
didn't get to pick their parents. It wasn't her fault Steely Dan
turned out the way he was. From what he'd seen, what little he'd
heard on the hidden mike, she wasn't even part of the current plan. They'd
just brought her in for old time's sake, maybe. Or to tease him, to say:
Look,
the Deacons just go on and on
.

In
that case, he thought, they ought to look after their precious belongings more
carefully.

There
was scarcely any traffic. A good agent--and he knew Emily didn't fit
into that category just from watching her the night before--should have
been alert, should have seen that a little yellow Fiat was dogging her all the
way.

Little
Em drove and drove, all the way out to the Via Appia Antica, where she took a
turn into what looked like a farm drive, barely passable in the drifts. He
drove on for a few hundred yards before pulling into a deserted bus stop. He
loved this place. In happier times he'd walked miles and miles along the
Appian Way, thinking about the tombs, wondering about the dead feet that had
trudged this way over the centuries.

He
popped in the earphone and turned up the volume on the radio. Two voices:
Little Em and the young Italian he now recognized.

Bill
Kaspar listened intently, wondering all the time about his options.

Then
he realized he couldn't stay here. He heard something he should have
figured out long, long before.

You're getting old and careless, white boy
, the ghost of the black sergeant
whispered in the back of his head.
Git out there and find what belongs to
you
.

He
reached into his bag and pulled out the digital music player he'd stolen
from a backpacker in the Corso a couple of weeks before. It had all his
favourite music on there: the Dan, the Doobies, Todd Rundgren and a couple of
hundred others, all good hippie listening for a sixties child turned spook.

It
had stacks of spare space for more recording too and a full battery charge,
enough to store another ten hours of conversation right alongside the holy
grooves.

There
was a spare mini-jack in the bag. He connected the radio to the player and hit
the record button. Then he placed the kit carefully in a dry patch behind the
bus shelter, where it was hidden, not that anyone was going to walk along this
deserted piece of imperial Roman highway on such a bitter, hostile night.

It
was a good twenty or thirty minutes to the centro storico and the more he
thought about the journey, the more William F. Kaspar realized he was in danger
of losing the gift. The voices inside him were getting louder all the time. It
was a question of killing them before they killed him.

NIC
COSTA WAS nodding off on the sofa when the doorbell rang. Emily Deacon walked
straight in, grinning, looking bright and rosy, as if she could go without
sleep forever.

She
had a briefcase in her hand and a notebook computer bag slung over her
shoulder. "Where is everyone? Gianni? Laila?"

"Short
version: she ran away. Gianni's looking for her now."

"Oh
no," she murmured, genuinely shocked.

"Don't
worry. Gianni will find her. He won't stop till he does. I got a call
from him half an hour ago. He wanted to check out a theory Laila stole
something from our friend, then dumped it in the Pantheon. Maybe she's
going back to retrieve it."

She
considered the idea. "I think possessions are important to the killer. Perhaps
that's why he wanted to find Laila. But the idea she could leave
something in the Pantheon... Wouldn't you have found it?"

"Not
if it was hidden. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that
anything's possible right now. Besides, if you knew my partner better,
you'd understand there's not much point in arguing."

He
looked at her, trying to remember what he'd promised to do.

"You
forgot, didn't you?" she asked with a smile.

He
was trying to drag that morning's conversation back from the depths of
his memory. So much had intervened in the meantime.

"I
promised I'd check a couple of names for you."

She
held up the laptop case. "It's OK. I came prepared. I've been
following the logs. I know what's been happening. A busy day."

Costa
doubted she knew half of what had really gone on. He led the way to the living
room and watched her set up her gear on the coffee table in front of the low
sofa.

"You
can say that again. Coffee?"

"I'd
rather have a real drink," she said, throwing the black jacket over the
back of the sofa, getting straight down to work. "You do have wine
here?"

"Wine,"
he sighed and wondered how much longer he could keep his eyes open. Then he
went to the kitchen, opened a cold bottle of Alto Adige Sauvignon and brought
back a couple of glasses. The hard mountain grape had a kick in it. He ought to
be able to stay alert for a little while before crashing completely.

Emily
looked animated, a little too much for his liking. The more Leapman froze her
out of the case, the more she seemed determined to find herself. It was an
attractive transformation to witness and the distraction was beginning to worry
him.

"Are
you all right?" she asked. "You look exhausted."

"I'll
survive. You said you know what happened?"

She
shrugged. "Just from what I've seen in the log. Leapman isn't
updating me on anything at all. I heard a woman was killed. And that you guys
managed to find where."

The
memory of the little room, and a head rolling crazily off a chair, John Wayne
screaming in the background. "Oh yes."

The
blue eyes blinked at him. "Are you sure you're OK?"

"I'm
sure." He sighed. He didn't want to go into detail. "It was
different though, somehow. Let's leave it at that."

She
opened the computer, scanned the room for a phone socket, plugged in the
machine, then returned to the sofa, motioning for him to join her. "Different...
that's interesting. I don't think our guy likes different."

"You
think you're starting to know him?"

"I
gave you his name this morning. Now I've got a story. A hell of a one. A
story that was supposed to end differently, I think, with heroes and victory
and what we like to call "closure." "

Nic
Costa took another sip of the wine and tried to convince himself he
wasn't that tired as he sank into the cushions by Emily Deacon's
side.

She
hit a key and a couple of images popped up on the screen.

"These
are photos I took of some documents I found in the embassy. Leapman may be
acting as if I don't exist but I got a little help there anyway. It took
me to places I couldn't visit before."

"Photos,"
Costa repeated.

"That's
right. They'd have my hide if they knew I had them."

He
groaned and went to the kitchen, returning with a dish of peanuts.

Emily
Deacon cast a wry glance at them. "You Italians really know how to treat
a woman."

"Yes
and I'll show you sometime. So you're stealing information from
your embassy?"

Her
narrow, pale eyebrows rose perceptibly. "I thought that's what you
wanted. Besides, this is not the kind of stuff you can photocopy, Nic. Are you
turning prissy on me? Do you want to hear about it or not?"

He
raised the glass and toasted her. "Talk away, Agent Deacon. I'll
try not to fall asleep on you."

"This
is a story that begins in 1990. The Gulf War is about to happen. We were kids
then. You do remember the first Gulf War?"

"Sort
of. My old man was a Communist Deputy at the time. I remember him burning the
Stars and Stripes outside your embassy."

She
stared at him. "You're kidding me."

"Not
at all. He took me with him. We're an unusual family."

"I
can believe that," she conceded. "So you do remember the war. Better
than me, but then, you're a couple of years older. It's like any
war. Each side, naturally, wants some intelligence. And they want it before the
fighting even starts. So they put people in beforehand. For reconnaissance. To
establish links with the Iraqi opposition. Name the reasons, it really
doesn't matter. They're putting together a team, mainly American,
maybe a couple of Iraqis for local knowledge. They're putting it together
here, in Rome. Don't ask me how I know. I just do. They don't want
anyone outside their immediate circle to find out. Does that sound
plausible?"

Military
affairs weren't Costa's scene. His late father had a favourite rant
about the army. Something along the lines that war was a hangover from another
era in mankind's development, one they'd soon leave behind. Marco
Costa hadn't lived long enough--quite--to see how wrong he was.

"It's
a story," Costa said.