The Small Boat of Great Sorrows (33 page)

Vlado checked inside the
cappella,
but found only another policeman poking around the tomb. Just outside the door he picked up Harkness's flashlight. It was still on, and he swung the beam in a wide arc into the distance. Nothing. All this, and Matek had again slipped away, a survivor for the ages. Vlado was sick with disappointment. He'd at least been able to save the documents, stuffing the envelope into a pocket of his overcoat. But where was Matek? He couldn't have gone far in the shape he was in, but if he'd reached the road, he could have hailed a cab.

Vlado moved past a row of graves, peering into the darkness but seeing only stone angels, marble vaults, and slabs of marble. Nothing living, and nothing stirring. Then the afterburn of his adrenaline brought him sagging atop one of the headstones. He turned off the flashlight, pondering his next move, wondering how late the trains ran.

One of the police cars restarted its engine. They were probably eager to spread the word about the gold. By dawn the whole place would be crazed, and it would be harder than ever to get anyone to look for Matek. But for now they could at least alert the train station and the taxi dispatchers. Vlado rose wearily to his feet in the dark. It would again become a slow, painstaking manhunt, one he probably wouldn't be allowed to join.

The police car began moving, and as it swerved the beam of its headlights swept past Vlado, illuminating the grounds before him like a searchlight. In that brief moment a single name leaped at him from the facing row of tombstones: DIFLORIO.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Vlado turned his flashlight back on to make sure it hadn't been his imagination, and there it was. Blood rushed to his fingertips as he stepped toward the stone. On the other side he found the dates, a perfect match. Giuseppe, the inscription began, and he roughly deciphered the rest as saying,
beloved husband of Lia.
Even though he knew that the grave beneath him was empty, Vlado was moved by the sight of the name. He crouched to place his fingers against the carved letters. Something of his father remained here—in this town, in these hills—no matter where his body reposed.

“So, tell me,” Vlado whispered, this time half believing he'd get an answer. “Where has your old enemy gone?”

But the only response was the chatter of the scanner from the second Italian police car. Vlado looked over and saw two of the officers lighting cigarettes. One was already writing up the report, seated on the hood of the car. Vlado reached into a pocket for his own smokes, feeling his nerves begin to calm. But as he shifted his flashlight he saw something else—two red droplets on the grass, shining up at him from a few feet past the headstone. The hair stood up on his forearms, and he bent down to touch. The drops were warm. Shining his flashlight, he saw that the grass had been disturbed. There was a rough path of smudged footprints through the dew, leading toward the low stone wall on the opposite side.

He stepped in that direction, soon finding another scatter of red droplets, then another, until the smudged footprints reached a small opening in the wall, where a narrow path rose steeply uphill through the trees.

Only a five-minute walk, he remembered Lia saying, and as he began to climb, a patchwork of images and observations began to take shape with a sudden coherence—the old photo of Lia and his father, showing a ladder propped against a tree near a small ring of stones; Matek's careful brooding silence at the
cappella;
the emptiness of the second crate. Last, there was Lia DiFlorio, only an hour earlier, and the way she'd first reacted to the photo, then her adamant insistence that Torello not be told of the
cappella
. But come see her afterward, she'd said, and she would tell Vlado something more. With every step he took, the meaning seemed clearer, and Vlado quickened his pace even as he heard Pine's voice from behind him, well down the hill, plaintively calling, “Vlado! Vlado!” like a parent who has lost track of a wayward child. The sound soon faded, and within minutes there was only the night chirp of a few bugs, the snapping of twigs beneath his feet, a swish of branches overhead as he forded his way upward. The air was cooler here, the moisture clinging to the trees. Above the canopy, only starlight. He was again above the clouds.

The path reached the highway, and across the road was Lia's house, set against the hill. The lights were off. Vlado worked his way around to the left, where he'd earlier seen the citrus trees. He spotted another droplet of Matek's blood. Harkness had insisted he'd done the man no real damage, but Vlado wondered.

He moved slowly now, looking carefully for places where the dew and the grass were smudged or trampled. He passed the house well to the left of the chimney, then eased back into trees, picking up another path, this one fainter, but stained here and there by the tell-tale droplets. A minute or so later Vlado found himself in a grove of lemon trees, and he thought again of the photograph as the path emerged into a small clearing. With the view before him now, everything fell into place, even in the dim starlight. There was the same bluff as in the photo, the same ring of white stones. Before he had assumed the stones were for a campfire, but he had revised that assessment on his way up the hill, and now he saw with certainty that they formed the rim of an old well. Poking just above it now were the top few feet of a long wooden ladder—the same style as the one in the photo. Vlado paused, listening carefully, and heard a tiny scraping sound, like that of a mouse gnawing at a baseboard. It came from inside the well, which surely was dry, and had been for at least fifty years.

Vlado stepped carefully to the rim and peered down. Some twenty-five feet below, illuminated by a flashlight, was the gray head of Pero Matek. He was stooped like an old troll, hunched over his coveted possessions.

“Looking for the last of your nest egg?” Vlado shouted.

Matek lurched in surprise, then picked up the flashlight and shined it upward, momentarily blinding Vlado, who squinted but held his ground. For a moment the old man said nothing, then he began to chuckle, a tired wheezing laugh. “I was right,” Matek said. “Just like your goddamned father. You never know when to let it go.”

“Tell me, then. Was part of his share down there? Or were you the only one who knew about this place?”

“
His
share?” The wheezing laugh again. “His share was my agreement not to turn him in, plus the occasional handout. I got nervous leaving everything down in the
cappella
. Always having to visit it whenever I needed to make a withdrawal. Those old women with their flowers do a lot of gossiping. So I gradually moved half of it up here. And now there's enough for both of us. Here, I'll show you.”

Matek bent over, then straightened up holding a gun, not gold. Vlado jerked his head back just as the shot echoed up the stone shaft like a blast of artillery. Now, where the hell had that come from? One of the police cars, probably. Stolen in all the confusion as the old man had slinked away in the shadows, one last trick in his bag. But the shot had missed, and Vlado now knew that he held a momentary advantage. Taking care to keep himself beyond the narrow cylinder of Matek's line of fire, he grabbed the top rung of the ladder, which was angled just out of harm's way. He gave a great tug, and by the time Matek realized what was happening Vlado had raised the ladder several feet. He heard the gun and flashlight clatter against the stones before feeling the ladder tug back. It felt as if he'd just hooked a huge fish on a large, unwieldy pole, and for a moment his grip wavered as Matek pulled back, gravity and leverage on his side. Then Vlado, no longer worried about the gun, stepped forward to brace his foot on the stone ledge, and pulled with all his might. There was a grunt, then a sharp cry of pain echoing from below, and Vlado nearly lost his balance as the ladder came free. Then he awkwardly raised it, one rung at a time, until the whole thing teetered awkwardly above him and he let it tumble harmlessly onto the grass.

He sagged back onto the wet ground, exhausted. Then he was startled by the sound of a voice, a woman's, coming from the darkness of the trees. “It's him, isn't it?” the voice said. “It's Pero, down in the well.”

Vlado turned to see Lia DiFlorio standing in a long bathrobe at the edge of the path, her breath vaporing into the night. “Yes, it's him. But don't look down there. He has a gun.”

“I know. I heard it. That's what brought me outside.”

“Sorry to wake you.”

“Oh, I was awake already. Far too stirred up to sleep tonight.” She smiled just a bit, then the smile widened, and she broke into a satisfied laugh. “How nice to see him playing the fool for a change,” she said. “Especially when there's been nothing down there to claim for years.”

“Because you took it, didn't you,” Vlado said, with just the slightest hint of scolding, to let her know she should have told him earlier. “I wouldn't have told Torello, you know. You're probably entitled, after all you went through.”

“I'm sorry. But I was afraid. That gold paid for this house. Your father and I had barely been able to pay the rent before.”

“Do you still have any?”

“Not much. But more than enough for me to live on. I don't spend it quickly. And Pero had already gone through a lot of it by the time they left. Which is one reason I never knew there was more than one place. I thought he'd put everything up here, until tonight.”

“So, where is it now, the gold from the well? And when did you take it out?”

“In the house. Somewhere safe. I moved it about ten years ago. I was getting too old to keep climbing that ladder. Then, when you came and showed me that picture, I didn't know what to think. I was scared that you must have known about everything. But once you told me you were Josip's son, I wasn't so worried.”

They were silent a moment, as if sorting out their thoughts. There was again the sound of digging from inside the well, and a band of light from the opening waggled back and forth, the old man again bending to the false promise of treasure. Matek obviously hadn't been able to hear their conversation.

“There's nothing there anymore,” Vlado shouted, easing toward the rim. “Lia took all of it.”

“Lia never knew it was down here,” Matek grunted stubbornly, still digging.

“Josip told me,” she said. “In a note he left me, the day the two of you disappeared.”

With that, the digging stopped. No one said a word. Matek hadn't heard that voice in nearly forty years, and it had silenced him as surely as a ghost might have. Vlado sagged back on his haunches, trousers soaked by the dew. He took a cool, deep breath of the night air and looked back toward Lia, trying to read the look on her face, but there wasn't enough light.

Their silence was broken by voices and footsteps approaching along the path.

“Probably the police,” Vlado said. “They must have heard the gunshot.” Then he turned toward Lia, straining again to see her face. “Don't worry. I'll never tell. And him they won't believe. It's the only secret still worth keeping in this whole mess.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

By late the next day, three nations and two local jurisdictions were fighting over custody of the gold bars found inside the Barzini c
appella
. Italy was first to lay claim, followed in quick succession by Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Envoys from Rome, Zagreb, and Belgrade were en route, but they would have to contend first with the municipal officials of Castellammare di Stabia, who'd gotten the jump on everyone by moving the crate into the vault of a local bank. They'd done so over the strenuous protests of late-arriving officials from the Naples regional authority. By sundown even the
polizia di stato
were mulling a counterclaim, seeing as how nothing of value would even have been discovered if not for the independent actions of one of their officers, who, as they were emphatic in pointing out, had risked his life in the line of duty.

Italy's afternoon tabloids had already laid odds that the fight would go on for years, and with each hour another TV-crew van arrived down the Autostrada. Swiss officials, meanwhile, had begun quietly inquiring whether there was yet any reason they should be either embarrassed or indignant.

Lost somewhat in this hurly-burly was the fact that a major war-crimes suspect had been killed a few blocks away, and that another, more obscure figure, wanted on charges from actions a half century earlier, had been apprehended. And that an indignant American diplomat appeared to be in hot water.

And so it was, in the spate of interviews and interrogations and official paperwork that followed, that Vlado didn't see Pine until nearly noon of the next day, finally running into him in the hotel lobby, where they agreed to share a meal. Their flights back to The Hague had been rescheduled. But the verdict on whether they were to be applauded or excoriated on their return apparently remained a work in progress, with Spratt and Contreras still monitoring prevailing winds from Washington, Paris, and London. Janet Ecker remained on administrative leave.

“Well,” Pine said, as they seated themselves, “the early word is that Matek won't fight extradition.”

“To Croatia?”

“Yes. He's convinced he can beat the rap. He's apparently already been on the phone to his attorneys and his Swiss bankers. Seems to think that if he can get a running start, there just might be enough sentiment in his favor to keep him free, especially with a trial in Zagreb. Who knows, maybe he's right.”

“Maybe,” Vlado said. “But he might be surprised. The Croatians may decide to make him an example. He offers the perfect chance for national atonement. And in the end, he wasn't even a good fascist, just a thief who stole from everyone, the Ustasha included.”

“Which reminds me. The Croatians may want you to testify. If only to help establish provenance on some of the documents.”

“The documents,” Vlado said, shaking his head with a frown. “Now, if only I still had them.”

It was the one aspect of the previous night Vlado was still glum about. He'd handed them over to Torello around midnight. Within an hour, outside forces intervened, and Torello regretfully informed him that the envelope and all its contents were being forwarded “upstairs,” somehow having become part of the equation in the fight over the gold. Torello surmised that a swap was in the works: U.S. backing of an Italian claim in exchange for return of printed material, which, by all rights, was legally the property of the U.S. Army, never mind what the priests at San Girolamo would have once said about that argument.

“I never should have handed them over,” Vlado said. “It's the same old story.”

“I wouldn't be so sure,” Pine said, and he slid a fresh manila envelope across the table.

“That's your set of copies. I've got one for myself. Torello slipped them to me around three in the morning, right after you'd gone back to the hotel. He was able to steal a few minutes at the copy machine just before sending the originals upstairs. I haven't had much time to look, but the little I've seen was interesting reading. Letterheads from Angleton, Colleton, the Vatican. Plenty of people to be embarrassed. And I did see your father's name once or twice about halfway through the pile, so I think you'll be pleased.”

“What will you do with yours?”

“I've already done it. Faxed the entire load to Janet's apartment. She's got some time on her hands now, as well as a few axes to grind. She assures me that by the end of the week she'll have sent copies to three congressmen on the House Intelligence Committee, the attorney general's resident Nazi hunters, plus a fully annotated set to a friend of hers at the
New York Times
. So much for enduring secrecy, huh?”

Vlado felt like laughing out loud, like dancing on the tabletop. It had been a wrenching and emotional week, but this was the perfect finish. “So, what does this mean for Harkness? Criminal charges?”

“Doubtful,” Pine said, smiling ruefully. “He's already gone back to the U.S. embassy in Rome. For all I know he's left the country altogether. Taking a few shots at you probably made it a little tricky. But he missed, fortunately for both of you. The only person he actually hurt was Matek. That was apparently the argument from the U.S. side, and, given his connections plus the fact that he didn't make off with a penny, it was enough. The police are keeping his name out of it, and the press only seems interested in the gold. If anybody's going to be able to make a stink, it's LeBlanc.”

“Where's he?”

“Chasing false leads in Berlin, last I heard. Apparently he knew Harkness was up to something, but couldn't figure out what. Who knows whether he knew about all the stuff buried here. But you can bet he'd like to have a look at these papers, too.”

“So Harkness gets off free, then?”

Pine shrugged. “His career will suffer. That's something, I guess. He'd hitched his wagon to Colleton's, and they'll both be watching the wheels come off during the next few weeks. But chances are he'll get a nice settlement. Probably a new life, somewhere warm.”

“A lot better deal than Robert Fordham ever got.”

Pine nodded grimly. “I called the hospital again this morning,” he said. “They said he passed away a little after midnight. I'm trying to get Torello to ask for an autopsy. But even then they probably wouldn't find an injection mark. Too easy to hide if you know what you're doing.” Pine lowered his voice. “One other thing you should know, for what it's worth. Torello told me Harkness was making some noise last night about you and Popovic in Berlin. Don't ask me how he knew, but I'd assume this won't be the last you'll hear of it. Sorry.”

“It's okay,” Vlado said. “I've decided to make a full report on all that.”

“What do you mean?”

“A sworn statement to the police in Berlin. About what happened with Haris and his friend. What I did. Where the body is. They need to know.”

“Why? Why are you doing this?”

“Because I need to.”

“What, to confess? Then tell a priest.”

“No. Someone from my family needed to come clean.”

Pine grimaced, shaking his head. “So it's for your father, then. ‘Bless me, for he has sinned, and so have I.' I guess some of the Catholicism really did rub off.”

“No. It's for my own peace of mind. And because it's right. My father got his chance at redemption on the last day at Jasenovac, and he seized it. Lia DiFlorio is proof of that. For me there's no life to save, just a story to tell. And when I realized yesterday the way Harkness was using it against me, I knew I'd be under that kind of pressure for the rest of my life.”

“Well, still not too late to change your mind, you know.”

“It is, actually. I spoke this morning with a police lieutenant in Berlin.”

For a moment Pine was speechless. Then he said, speaking slowly, “I'll do what I can for you, of course. I've got some contacts in German law enforcement. A few, anyway. And the tribunal certainly owes you and your family. Everything may yet work out.”

“It already has,” Vlado said, surer than ever that he was right.