The Siren's Sting (5 page)

Dressed in a snakeskin-print silk-jersey wrap dress and delicate leather sandals she went to find a newspaper.

The morning air was still pink and cool, and filled with the smell of coffee and car exhausts and sugar. She picked up
Il Corriere
,
La Nazione
and
La Repubblica
and headed into the covered colonnades that crossed Turin. Modelled on Paris, the boulevards were covered to offer protection from the freezing mountain winters and the scorching sun of summer. The walkways were always dim and cool, the marble floors worn to a grooved and bumped smoothness by the centuries of footfall.

Outside the Caffè Torino in the Piazza San Carlo, a worn brass bull was set flat into the marble floor. As was the custom, Stevie stepped carefully onto its testicles for luck. Then she entered the café and ordered a cappuccino. She only ever drank them in Italy; they just didn't taste the same anywhere else. She began to leaf through the papers.

Il Corriere
ran the story on the third page, describing a cruise ship attacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia. They mentioned La Dracoulis and a lucky escape, but no details. The other two papers had not picked up the story. Someone was working hard to keep it quiet. And so you would, if you were in the shipping business, Stevie thought to herself.

The planet was seventy per cent water and ninety per cent of the world's goods were transported through it. The pirate attacks were driving up the prices of the goods transiting dangerous waters, driving up insurance premiums, and absorbing the attentions of the navies of several nations, including the Dutch. There was also the personal cost in violence and mental anguish to those directly involved, and their families. It was a problem in Southeast Asia, off the coast of Nigeria, and especially Somalia. It was embarrassing to some that there seemed little to be done about the attack teams of wooden dhows full of Somalians with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machine guns and rickety wooden ladders. The civilised world had thought it had moved on from Blackbeard and Barbarossa. These attacks were an uncomfortable reminder of the veins of savagery and violence and hunger that ran so close beneath that civilised skin.

Stevie sat up straighter. She was trying to remember to have good posture at all times. Her grandmother Didi believed posture was at the heart of elegance.

The pirates that had attacked the
Oriana
had been far more than hungry fishermen. Their attack vessels had been new Zodiacs with powerful engines and they had been armed with shiny new weapons, many of them protected by body armour; even more telling was their skill: the assault had smacked of special forces training. Pirates were growing more professional, thanks to experience and the fruits of their earlier attacks, but this was something beyond a hand-held GPS and a better engine. This had been expertly planned and executed. The raiders had made a decision to withdraw. Possibly they had not expected the passengers on the cruise ship to fight back. In a way, this unnerved Stevie more than anything; it pointed to strategy. She also knew in her bones that the next attack would be more vicious.

Stevie shuddered.
The next attack
.

People would die. The pirates would have to use extreme violence to reinstil the paralysing fear that was so useful to them in their attacks. Strategic ferocity—all organised crime groups used it. Fear was the great controller. Machiavelli had put it in his advice to princes: is it better to be loved or feared as a prince? he had asked. The answer to his own question had been ‘feared'. Stevie wondered whether David Rice would have come to the same conclusion. Hazard had recently moved into maritime security, in response to a growing amount of requests from shipping clients for threat assessments, physical protection, and marine kidnap and ransom policies. The pirates were increasingly becoming David Rice's problem.

Stevie finished her coffee and wandered the city for an hour, heading down to the banks of the river where, even on a sunny summer's day, the banks were shrouded in mist. The heat of the day was beginning to build. Turin was one of the most understated cities in Europe. Despite its beauty and its ancient history—it had been a Roman city—it was not a place for ordinary tourists. Perhaps there were not enough splendid monuments, no recognisable landmarks, no obvious reasons to visit, and very few big hotels.

Dark undercurrents of mystery ran through the town, once the home of Italy's kings. It was an area steeped in witchcraft, prone to deep fog, home to the famous shroud of Turin. Its scale was typically regal, dwarfing the average citizen; even its streetlamps were capped with crowns. Massive statues of pilots and steel workers joined those of kings and knights.

Stevie headed back to the Piazza San Carlo to find Leone waiting. He came towards her in the cool shadows of the arcade, dressed in his pale straw-coloured linen suit, a blue shirt of Oxford cloth and a Panama hat. He smiled the moment he caught sight of her and raised his palms.

‘
Cara . .
.' He kissed her on both cheeks then stood back and took a good look at her. ‘What happened?!' Leone was looking at the stitches over her eye.

Stevie smiled. ‘I bumped into a cupboard door on the cruise ship—it's nothing.'

Leone looked at her critically. ‘You haven't changed so much. Maybe a little age, a tiny line of care around your eyes . . .' He traced the edge of her face with a gentle finger. ‘But still
la piccola
Stevie.'

Stevie raised her eyebrows in amusement and winced. Her cut stung. Leone was not an ordinary man. His name suited him, with his heavy head, his thick greying curls, his clipped beard; he was tall and magnetic and utterly eccentric. He had not changed at all.

He offered her his arm. ‘Let's eat.'

The Whist Club owned a building on the square. Their rooms were up on the first floor—the
piano nobile
—and included a huge and splendid ballroom with perfectly polished wooden floors and mirrors and chandeliers everywhere. The room was dark and delightfully cool. Stevie felt an urge to spin across it in her flat sandals, an urge she fortunately managed to resist. They moved to the club sitting room, with its gold silk damask-covered walls and furniture, and ordered Crodino
.
The waiter, very correct and wearing white gloves, brought the bright orange drinks and some salted crackers, then seemed to disappear into the wall. Stevie remarked on it.

‘Oh, the Whist Club is full of secret passages and entry ways. And discreet rooms where a gentleman may retire after a heavy lunch and take a nap . . .'

‘Or . . .?'

Leone smiled. ‘Or.'

Stevie looked over at a tall, handsome man in a dove grey suit—young and slim, with a heavy head of blond curls. She recognised one of the younger members of a major Torinese industrial family. He was having a Campari with a severe-looking bald man, and a very glamorous woman dressed in caramel suede and golden bangles. The sofas were arranged so that the members were visible to each other, but just out of earshot.

Leone noticed Stevie's glance. ‘He might be good for you— though a little young perhaps . . .? Unfortunately, his older brother married in the spring.'

Stevie turned back to Leone and smiled. ‘I'm not looking for an arranged marriage.'

Leone spread his fingers. ‘All marriages are arrangements of one sort or another. Otherwise they would not last.'

‘You don't believe in—to use an old-fashioned term—a love match?'

‘You are an old-fashioned woman. So like your grandmother.'

‘You know I will take that as a compliment,' Stevie replied, sitting up a little straighter.

‘And so you should,' said Leone. ‘And so you should.'

He leant forward, his elbows on his linen-clad knees. ‘But are you very particular?' He made the word sound mysteriously charged with meaning, almost lascivious.

‘You mean in general, or in my choice of men?'

Leone made another gesture.
Of course.

‘In some ways, yes, I am. Shouldn't we all be? I'm not particular in terms of, say, a man's profession or what kind of shoes he wears or whether he smokes or not. Even his looks. But there are some things I cannot move beyond.'

Leone prompted, ‘Such as?'

‘Well, certain character traits, like cowardice or malice or lack of curiosity.'

‘Lack of curiosity. That is an important one.' Leone fixed Stevie with a deep stare, holding her eyes for an uncomfortable length of time before she broke away to rest her empty glass on the coffee table.

‘What are you curious about, Stevie?' His manner was growing more flirtatious as the conversation grew more personal.

‘Why you never married, for one thing.' She flashed him a victorious, teasing smile.

Leone's hand slapped his knee. ‘Eh! No one would have me.'

That might have been true if Leone did not possess a beautiful estate outside Turin, a comfortable fortune, and a title to go with it.

‘You won't have them, you mean, Leone. Maybe you too are . . . particular?' Stevie raised a provocative eyebrow and winced again. She would have to stop doing that.

‘I am too set in my ways to change. A woman—an Italian woman—would demand I change. I cannot betray myself like that.'

‘But you think
I
should?'

Leone shrugged gently. ‘It is easier for a man to be unmarried than a woman.'

Stevie laughed and gently shook her head. ‘I think you are a dinosaur, Leone.'

Leone smiled rather wistfully at Stevie then consulted a pocket watch inlaid with amber. ‘I took the liberty of organising the private dining room. I think you will find it charming.'

It was indeed charming: an octagonal room inlaid with wood and painted pale blue. It was decorated on every wall with paintings and mirrors, like a jewelled box.

The waiter held the dishes as Stevie carefully spooned boiled rice, then creamed fish, onto her plate—it seemed Leone's gout was playing up again. Her wine glass was filled with a rather delicious Nebbiolo, from the Piedmontese word for fog, named so because it grew in the mist in the valleys of the Langhe not far away. Her luncheon companion, having briefly discussed the food, was back on the subject of love.

‘Sooner or later, in love, the reality comes through the veil of fantasy and people are disappointed. I hate disappointing people. Better not begin with hopes. Managing expectation is the key to happiness.'

Stevie took a small sip of wine. ‘Warren Buffett said the same thing once.'

‘Who?' Leone's eyes flared with a tiny flame of jealousy.

‘Never mind.' She put her glass down. ‘You know, you don't have to flirt with me, Leone. You can relax.'

Leone too put down his glass. ‘It is good manners to flirt when in the company of a woman,' he said softly.

‘I thought that only applied to married ones.'

Leone flashed a smile. ‘You are quite right, of course, but it is a hard habit to break.' He helped himelf to more rice and looked up. ‘My ex-girlfriend is now the First Lady of France,' he said suddenly.

Stevie waited for him to continue. When he didn't, she asked, ‘Do you regret not marrying her?'

Leone exploded with laughter. ‘
È matta come un cavallo—
she is as mad as a horse.'

By the afternoon, a warm
rain had begun to fall. The streets glossed over and filled with bustling umbrellas. Stevie, caught without one, hurried to the Piazza della Consolata to meet David Rice. She passed a newsstand on the way and saw the latest copy of
Eva 2000
, a popular weekly gossip magazine that specialised in long-lens photographs of stars on holiday. The cover had a photograph of Skorpios and Angelina—
when had they taken that?

There was a tiny café—the Caffè al Bicerin—full of dim corners and little tables lit with candles. Stevie, her dress and hair quite damp by now, chose a table away from the window. Rice's training made him nervous of windows.

Moments later, the man himself walked in. He stopped in the doorway and carefully closed his umbrella. Stevie noticed he used the action to cover the glances he threw into the dark corners of the café, left, right, then behind him. He was an operative to the bone and the years would never change that. His customary silver-topped cane was missing and he leant on his sturdy British umbrella.

Despite his limp, there was nothing feeble about Rice; even at fifty he was a force. You could feel it radiating from him, like heat from the sun. Today, however, Stevie's heart twisted with concern when she saw his face. The usual serenity of the broad, beloved forehead was gone; there was a tightness around the eyes and a pallor on the cheeks that she had never seen before. He sat without a word, tired beyond belief.

Stevie would have liked to reach out and take his hand but that was out of the question. She wondered very briefly what would happen if she did . . . David would stiffen, then carefully shift his hand just beyond her reach—perhaps even clear his throat—and pretend the wrong-footed gesture had never been made.

It would be a mortifying rejection that Stevie knew she would never have the courage to risk. David Rice would have to remain what he was and always had been: her boss, a family friend, loved from below, adored from afar, the measure of all men.

When the waiter came to take their order, Rice raised a hand in refusal; Stevie, feeling chill and as clammy as a frog, ordered a
bicerin
. It was the specialty of the café: a small glass filled with hot chocolate, then a layer of hot coffee, and finished with a spoonful of cream. She raked her wet hair back off her forehead and met Rice's eyes. ‘Flight alright?' she asked, her question loaded with so many others.

David suddenly smiled. ‘I'm sorry.' His eyes warmed. ‘How are you, Stevie?' His eyes found her wound. ‘What happened?' he asked quietly, the smile gone now.

Stevie touched her forehead gently. ‘It's nothing. Probably a splinter from one of the explosions.' She smiled. ‘I am otherwise very well, thank you. You got my report on the
Oriana
?'