The Lie (14 page)

“Where are you calling from?” Cortlandt asked when Paulie reached him.

“Rome. I’ll be trying my last lead tonight. Roberto Spaderi.”

Staring off at the Via Sistina, Paulie waited for the roar of a passing scooter to fade. “I don’t suppose your computers came
up with any other possibilities.”

“I’d have told you if they had.”

Paulie wondered. He was in that bad a mood.

“About Wannsee,” said Cortlandt. “I’m going to be there myself on the thirteenth, and I’d like you with me. Any problem with
that?”

“No.”

“I’ve just heard the president’s wife wants in too, which will be another complication.”

‘What is she afraid of?” asked Paulie. “That he’ll be chasing the
Frauleins
?”

“Not her style. Nor his. But something is evidently bugging her. At least, according to the boss, who doesn’t want her along
on this any more than we do.”

“The president told you that?”

“By implication. But that’s
his
problem. We have a few other things to worry about. Keep in touch, Paulie. And take care.”

That makes two people who want me to take care
.

* * *

The taxi dropped Paulie in front of an old apartment building within sight of the Ponte Palatino shortly before ten o’clock.
Moments later, he saw the name Spaderi on one of the tarnished brass mailboxes in the vestibule and felt as if he had struck
gold.

He climbed the stairs slowly, wanting to preserve the feeling as long as possible. On the third floor, he stopped in front
of apartment 317, breathed deeply, and knocked.

A broad, aging woman with iron-gray hair opened the door and looked at Paulie without expression.

“Mrs. Spaderi?” he said.

Dark, watery eyes squinted at him behind steel-rimmed glasses. “Do I know you?”

“No. We’ve never met. I’m looking for Roberto.”

She went on staring at Paulie. “You’re looking for my son?”

He nodded.

“Well, you’re looking in the wrong place,” she said.

Paulie felt his good feeling drain.

“Do you know where I can find him?”

Mrs. Spaderi’s face showed nothing. “Try Saint Angelo’s Cemetery. He’s been there for six years.”

Paulie just stood there.

Evidently taking pity on him, the woman stepped back from the door. “Come in,” she said. “You look terrible. Have some wine.
It was mean of me to tell you like that. I seem to be getting meaner by the day.”

Mutely, Paulie followed her into a small living room crowded with dark, heavy furniture. He sat down and watched as she poured
two glasses of red wine.

“I’ve been out of the country a long time,” he said. “I’m sorry to do this to you.”

“I’m used to it. Roberto had friends all over. They keep dropping by like you, not knowing he’s dead.” Mrs. Spaderi’s eyes
pinned Paulie to his chair. “I suppose you’re like the rest. One of the bunch. Still waiting your own turn to get popped.”

Paulie went along with it. “How did it happen with Roberto?”

The woman shrugged. “The way it happened with his father ten years before him. The way it always happens. He just did one
too many.”

Paulie took a sip of wine and waited.

“What’s your name?” she asked, then quickly held up a veined hand. “No. Better not tell me. I still get visits from the
carabiniere
. The bastards don’t leave me alone. Not that they’d get anything out of me. I spit on them. They try to scare me with death
threats, and I spit on death too.”

Paulie was silent.

“And now you come looking for my Roberto,” said Mrs. Spaderi, and she came close to smiling. “I suppose you have something
big planned, something that could probably get him killed all over again but that he’d have loved doing.”

“He’d have done it well, too,” said Paulie, his voice carefully tinged with regret. “Roberto did everything well.”

“I know. There are a lot of crazies around these days, but my son was never like that. He was always controlled, dependable.”

“I was wondering,” he said. “Did you ever meet or did Roberto ever mention a man called Klaus Logefeld?”

The woman looked off somewhere. “I’ve heard the name. It was a long time ago but I remember because it’s German and I’ve never
wanted anything to do with Germans. In this I was right, because one of the few times Roberto was ever picked up by the police
was when he was doing something with this Klaus.”

“Do you know where I might be able to reach him?”

Mrs. Spaderi shook her head.

“You need this German for something important?” she asked.

‘Very important.”

“Why a German? Why not a nice Italian? Or maybe even a good Greek or Palestinian?”

Paulie forced a smile. “For this, I need someone who speaks fluent German.”

“I know two Italians and a Greek. The best. They open their mouths, Hitler himself would swear they were his sons.”

Paulie rose and began to pace the worn carpeting. “I wouldn’t want to get you involved.”

“Don’t talk dumb. I’m involved my whole life. We all run in the same blood. We carry the rich on our backs and fight the brutes
and hypocrites in power. So how can I help?”

Paulie stopped in front of a table of framed photographs. She’s a tough old comrade, he thought, gazing at fading pictures
of what he figured to be the dead son and husband she had already given to her lifelong cause.

“Well,” he said, still considering Mrs. Spaderi’s personal memorial exhibit, “do you think some of Roberto’s other friends
might know where I can find…”

Then Paulie spotted a particular picture on the table, picked it up to study more closely, and stopped thinking about Klaus
Logefeld.

It seemed an ordinary enough photograph of a man, woman, and little girl caught in a moment of summer sun. What made it special
to Paulie was that the man and woman were Angelo and Patty Falanga.

Still holding the photograph, Paulie turned to Mrs. Spaderi. “You knew the Falangas?”

“We were close friends.” She rose to look at the picture with him. “I’m surprised you recognized them. They’ve been gone a
long time.”

“They were my boyhood heroes. I never knew they had a child.”

“Prettiest little thing you ever saw. Everyone called her Firefly. When her parents were killed, she even lived with us for
a while.”

“What happened to her after that?”

Mrs. Spaderi shrugged. “God knows. We were on the run and had to pass her off to another family. They dumped her with others.
Poor baby was a real hand-me-down. At some point she just disappeared.”

“You never saw her again?”

“Never. Those were wild years for us all. We had to keep going underground, moving in and out of the country.”

Abstractedly, Mrs. Spaderi took the framed picture from Paulie and began polishing the glass with her sleeve.

“Of course there was that item in the newspaper just a few months ago,” she said.

“What was that?”

“I ran into this woman I hadn’t met in years, and she asked if I’d seen Firefly’s picture in the paper. What a dumb question!
I mean how could I have recognized the child as a grown woman even if I
had
seen her picture?”

“How did the woman recognize her?”

“It was different for her. She had last seen Firefly at the age of eighteen. I haven’t seen the child since she was seven
or eight.’ Mrs. Spaderi looked at Paulie. “Anyway, I was happy to see how things turned out for her. She was all dressed up
at La Scala in Milan with this crowd of real big shots.”

“You mean you got to see the picture?”

“My friend sent me a copy.”

Faulie felt a faint stirring. “Do you still have it?”

“Probably.”

“May I see it?”

Mrs. Spaderi opened a table drawer and rummaged inside. Pulling out a folded sheet of paper, she smoothed the creases and
handed it to Paulie. “I’m afraid it’s a bad copy.”

It was very bad, blurred with most of the halftones washed away. Still, Paulie was able to make out a group of elegantly dressed
men and women in dinner clothes, laughing, talking, and sipping champagne at what was captioned as a grand opening for the
opera season. Those in the picture were identified simply as the Honorable Evan Billings, the American ambassador to Italy,
with his wife and their guests at a post-performance reception.

‘Which is Firefly?” Paulie asked.

“The one in the white dress.”

Paulie saw a slender woman with ink-black hair and an unidentifiable, dead-white face. The ambassador and his wife looked
only marginally better.

Disappointed, he gave the copy back to Mrs. Spaderi. “Did your friend know what Firefly is calling herself these days?”

“No, but I’m sure it’s not a name that any of us old-timers would recognize.” Mrs. Spaderi studied the picture. “Look who
she’s hanging out with. You think she wants any connection to a bunch of broken-down bomb-throwers? Who can blame her? Look
at all we put her through.”

The old woman dropped tiredly into a chair and poured more wine.

“Then the girl was with you after her parents were killed?” asked Paulie.

“That’s right.”

“Did she know how they died?”

“She knew as much as anyone, which was almost nothing. Just that some shooters had killed them. My God, how she wanted to
know. All she did was ask questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Who shot them? Why? How did it feel to get shot? Poor baby couldn’t leave it alone. You should have seen this little girl,”
she said. “Pretty and delicate as a rose. And as long as I knew her after her momma and poppa were killed, she was never without
her pistol.”

“She actually had a gun?”

“It was just a broken old piece she’d picked up someplace. The firing pin was gone and of course it couldn’t shoot. She was
always practicing with it. You know how kids do when they play. Drawing and aiming at the bad guys. Bang, you’re dead! Except
Firefly was never just playing. She was always preparing.”

“For what?” Paulie asked, although by now he knew.

“For when she grew up and found the bad guys who took away her momma and poppa.”

Close to midnight Paulie reached the United States Embassy on Rome’s diplomatic row, presented his credentials to the duty
officer, and requested what he needed.

Twenty minutes later, he had the relevant public relations
files spread out before him on an empty desk and was going through them.

To locate what he was after was not hard. Once he had the past season’s opening date for La Scala, he simply crosschecked
it against the embassy’s publicity releases for that evening. He found the original news clipping from which Mrs. Spaderi’s
blurred photocopy had been made and sat looking at it for several minutes.

There was no instant, clear-cut reaction. Paulie saw, yet he failed to see.

When he realized who the woman in the white dress actually was, it came to him slowly and in parts. Hair, eyes, nose, mouth,
chin, all joined by an oval face.

Isn’t she lovely
, was his first complete thought.

Then he felt her withdrawing from him like a retreating wave over a quiet sea.

Until she was gone.

U
SING A
U
NITED
S
TATES PASSPORT
under the name of George Lucas, the man that Deputy CIA Director Harris had called Danny Archer passed through customs at
Brussels International Airport without incident and made a brief telephone call to a local number. It was 10:35 on the morning
of September 2.

About forty minutes later Archer had rented a dark blue Ford Sierra and was driving north at a leisurely eighty kilometers
an hour. When he neared the outskirts of Brussels, he turned off the main highway and drove through a series of narrow, winding
streets. As always he watched his rearview mirror. No one was on his back.

Reaching the house he wanted, he drove several hundred meters past its front door. He parked and spent the next twenty minutes
watching the neighborhood and the house from behind a newspaper, while sitting on a curbside bench in the small public park
at the end of the street.

Everything seemed quiet and in order.

Even so, since he had not been here for several months, he approached the house carefully and rang the bell three times. One
long and two short. A husky, cherubic-faced man in a T-shirt opened the door and grinned at him.

“Cautious as ever,” he said in French-accented English. “I’ve been watching you sit out there for twenty minutes. Who’s after
you today?”

“These are dangerous times, Jean. Or haven’t you noticed?”

“Shit, we’re both alive, aren’t we?”

“Barely.”

The husky man named Jean locked the door, secured it with a chain, and took Archer into the kitchen.

“Where’s your wife?” asked Archer.

“You wanted to be alone, so I sent her out to spend money.” Jean poured two coffees and put them on a white enamel table.
“So what do you need?”

“A name.”

“What kind?”

“Arab, fundamentalist, and known American hater.”

“That’s all one word. You want a bomber or a shooter?”

“Bomber. And good. No fuck-ups.”

Jean looked mildly offended. “You hurt me when you say things like that. You know I only give you the best.”

“Sure. But this is special.”

“They’re all special.”

The Belgian put down his coffee and raised both hands as if to block a punch. “I don’t want to hear stuff like that anyway.
I don’t want to know a thing more than I have to.”

“You won’t.”

“What’s the money?”

“A hundred thousand American up front. Twice that when it’s done. That’s for everything, including you. Since you’ll be the
one handling the cash, you can cut it any way you like.”

Jean feigned a smile. “You’re a pleasure to do business with. I think I have the perfect man for you. Just one thing. Is there
a firm date?”

“Either the twelfth or thirteenth of this month.”

Jean rose and started from the room. “Wait here while I make some calls.”