The Vatican Rip (21 page)

‘Now?’ She raised her lovely head and smiled. ‘You’ve come at last, Lovejoy.’ She smiled gently and reached back to ruffle my neck. ‘I don’t care what you’ve done in the past, darling. I take you as you are. And you’ll please forgive the measures. I’ve taken while enduring the long, terrible waiting.’

Until then I’d been absolutely determined to go back to Anna’s divan. Honestly, I really had. The trouble is, women can be very assertive. I’d be well-balanced and even-tempered all of the time if it weren’t for them. So I stayed. I swear it wasn’t anything in the way of a deal between Adriana and me. Honestly it wasn’t. Adriana in her mind had simply given Piero the push, that was all there was to it. I knew divorce from Emilio was out of the question for Adriana. I sighed inwardly. I’d have to give Anna the excuse that I was working on the rip. Anyway, this couldn’t last.

What a mess it all seemed. I’d have stopped to work it all out, but now there was no time left anywhere. The rip was upon us. Here. Now.

Teaching Carlo the rip was like talking to a frigging wall.

‘Repeat it,’ I said wearily for the umpteenth time.

‘Lissern you guys,’ Carlo ground out, flicking ash into his own coffee by mistake. ‘This is the plan, see?’ He did a Cagney hunch-up and chewed gum. ‘We cruise into the saloon—’

‘We walk casually into the cafeteria,’ I corrected.

‘—Get a shot of bourbon—’

‘Wine and cream cake.’

‘—And wait for the Big Wheel’s signal—’

‘And read a newspaper until I say.’

‘All rightee!’ he said grimly, grinding out his cheroot –
cheroot
, for God’s sake. I ask you. ‘Get your holster on, boss, and let’s
go
!’

‘Not till two o’clock this afternoon. And leave your knife here.’ So help me, he’d got a knife long as a sword especially for the occasion.

‘Right, boss. High noon.’

He burned his thumb trying a one-handed strike for another cheroot. The goon was actually wearing a white tie with a black shirt and a black suit with shoulders a mile wide. In the cold light of early morning he was utterly unreal. I could have throttled him.

‘You’ve warned Valerio and Patrizio, Anna?’

Anna patiently passed him some butter for his burn and lit his cheroot at the gas-ring. ‘Yes, Lovejoy.’

‘You got me the phone number?’

‘Here.’ She’d printed it carefully on the face of a postage stamp, a good touch. I smiled approval at her. ‘They’ll be waiting from one o’clock. If the rip aborts they’ll go on stand-by until seven.’

‘You’ve done well, Anna.’ I shoved Carlo’s elbows off the table and checked once again.

‘Bottle.’ The brown bottle Anna had stolen from the chemist’s stood among the Colosseum photographs I had neatly arranged in rows. ‘Photographs. Measurements written out. Suit. Shirt and tie. Case. New shoes. Towel. Gloves. Hygienic sealing tape.’ We went over the entire contents, krypton lamp, coat hook, tubes of adhesive, the lot. My own toolbag felt heavy as lead. ‘Thanks, love.’

The measurements were for the winch. We’d tried the dark sober suit an hour before and it fitted me pretty well. I hadn’t worn a suit since my missus left home. It felt decidedly odd. Anna had lifted it from that elegant gentlemen’s outfitters on the Viale Giulio Cesare. The new shoes pinched a bit, but on the whole she had stolen with uncanny accuracy. I thought uneasily, maybe she watches me as closely as I watch her. I waited while she packed everything neatly into the black rectangular briefcase.

‘Now – breakfast.’

Anna brought out a cloth and began to lay the table. A dozen mental reruns later I scented the fragrant aroma of frying bacon. I looked across questioningly but she did not meet my eye as she cracked some eggs on the side of the pan. Breakfast was usually a roll in a paper bag, and mostly Carlo got to it first. I was looking at the floor when she served it up with a mound of bread and butter.

‘What’s all this?’ Carlo demanded, for once shaken out of his acting career.

‘You’ll both need a big breakfast inside you!’ Anna rasped. ‘The rip starts today – or hadn’t you heard?
Cretino
!’

She slammed an immense meal in front of each of us, and even made tea specially. Hearing somebody else called that instead of me made it a breakfast to remember. Carlo went out in a sulk, so I had his as well.

Piero spotted my little case the instant I stepped in the emporium that morning and grinned all over his face. I tried to look defeated.

‘Going anywhere, Lovejoy?’

‘I have to visit somebody. I only came in to clear up loose ends, Piero. I don’t want any trouble.’

‘Okay.’ Nonchalantly he threw me the keys to the workshop. ‘Finish what you can, then piss off for good.’

I’ve never really been able to whine, not really convincingly, but I did my best. ‘Look, Piero. About that passport . . .’

‘You’ll have it tonight.’

Thank Christ. I pulled a face. ‘Er, the signora hasn’t paid me . . .’

He sneered, his lip curling. No, honestly. It really did curl. I’d never seen a lip curl with scorn before in my whole life. I stared admiringly and only remembered in the nick of time that I was supposed to be a hopeless scrounger. ‘You’ll get your fare,’ Piero promised scathingly. ‘And enough to get drunk on the way home. Now work.’

‘Please don’t say anything to the signora—’

He grinned again. ‘I can handle her.’ I could have hit him.

By the time Fabio swept in I was working like a mad thing, quietly and efficiently testing the strength of my plywood mock-up. The base of a rent table’s essentially a modified cylinder, with tangential walls showing lovely wood patterns. Now, a table top’s always easiest to falsify, so don’t trust it when you’re buying antiques. Also, remember that a table is a flat surface or it’s nothing, which means its top is always the first to suffer should drinks be spilled or serving maids have catastrophes with smoothing irons. Luckily, I was in the enviable position of forging a table whose major surface would be covered by a Presidential cage of synthetic sprawling birds.

But the pedestal base would be in clear view the entire length of that gallery. It had to look genuine, solid and
old
.

Tip: polyurethane varnishes
are
superb and polyurethane hardglazes
look
superb, but only true beeswaxes
feel
absolutely correct. Antique dealers dress a falsely veneered surface by varnish, then by beeswax, which is given a microscopic craquelure by rapid drying. This is done effectively only in two ways: in front of a fan or by a chemical desiccant such as sodium hydroxide in a sealed container. I’d applied both, placing the workshop’s fan heater on ‘cold’ during the day and stuffing the folding veneered plywood into a plastic bag with the crystals overnight. There’s always plenty of these crystals in an antique shop – even honest dealers (should there be any left) use it for putting that golden gleam on oak. Like I say, it’s getting so you can’t trust anybody these days.

With my heart in my mouth on that day I checked Piero was fully occupied, and extracted the veneered plywood. It was beautiful, its gleaming surface now dulled by drying. Microscopic examination would reveal minute cracks in the waxed surface, such as are normally associated with ageing. The corners and intersections were more obviously peeling than the rest, but I helped this artefact along with a little crushed carbon from a piece of drawing charcoal (use Winsor and Newton if you can get it) blown on to a piece of chamois leather and rubbed gently along the edges.

I still had the thin top sections and hinged edges to slot under the cafeteria table, but when Adriana sent to tell me I was to stop for coffee the collapsible pedestal was folded out of the way under the work bench. I was well into machining the metal support rods which would give it strength. Two hours to go.

I was on time. My heart was banging.

Dead at one o’clock Patrizio came for the cafeteria table in his wheezy World War II van. He arrived with the characteristic boredom of the vannie, smoking laconically and humping the steel and formica job on his shoulder without a word. Piero came to see I wasn’t flogging a Regency piece.

‘Get a receipt, Lovejoy,’ he orderd.

‘You,’ I shot back, getting on with my job.

Patrizio gave Piero a don’t-interrupt-me look and drove off leaving Piero looking foolish, to my delight. That was my last smile for a long, long time.

We closed at quarter to two, me strolling unbelievably casual into St Peter’s Square exactly at two.

Valerio was a chip off Patrizio’s block all right. He was a square thickset young bloke. I’d told his dad no drinks, no smokes. Valerio was obediently sitting picking his teeth and reading the
Osservatore Romano
on the end of the lines of chairs set out between the fountains.

‘You want a seat?’ He made to rise. Daft, really. There were four hundred empty places.

‘No,’ I said, mouth dry and voice no more than a croak. ‘I have an urgent appointment.’

He eyed me curiously. I eyed him. It was the first time we’d met. Anna had suggested this ludicrous interchange because security forces everywhere had these directional microphones. He nodded imperceptibly. My words meant the rip was on.

‘Then go well,’ Valerio said.

‘Ta.’ I walked past him on legs suddenly made of uncontrollable rubber and headed for the loo to the left of St Peter’s façade. The Vatican post office was doing a roaring trade. Old Anna was being bothersome among a crowd of amused Americans near the great basilica steps. From the corner of my eye I glimpsed her sudden querulous departure. Judging by the burst of laughter she had made some crack. Her job now was to find Carlo and hurtle him in to the loos after me.

The two usual women attendants were sitting at a little white table by the door. They ignored me. As long as I remembered to throw a hundred-lire coin into their plate as I left I’d remain an invisible passing tourist. Once in a cubicle I frantically started stripping off my clothes, hands shaking. I was sweating like a pig. My shirt and jacket were drenched, the sleeves clinging to me from damp. I cursed and wrestled in the confined space, a couple of times blundering against the door so noisily I forced myself to slow down. Hurry slowly. Good advice for anyone, as long as they’re not frightened out of their skulls.

I dressed in my new sober gear. Make sure the handkerchief’s showing from your top pocket, Lovejoy, Anna had said. It’s a man’s equivalent of white gloves in a woman, she’d said, trying to smile brightly, and I’d promised. Shoes cleaned, and in a plastic bag so as not to soil the clothes. Money – what there was – shifted into the new navy suit. Shirt. Sober tie, monogrammed imaginatively but with careful ambiguity. Cuff-links. Surprisingly, as I flopped on the lavatory pan to lace my shoes, a note on a stolen card. It read, ‘Good luck, darling
cretino
,’ and was signed with three cross-kisses. The card was for a silver wedding. I had to smile, even the shaky state I was in. Obviously she’d had difficulty finding a card with an appropriate good-luck-nicking-the-Pontiff’s-antique motto.

I stood with the customary stiffness of a man in a strange new suit, and checked over the discards. Items into the briefcase, one by one. A moment’s stillness. A quick listen. Deep breaths for control. Hundred-lire coin in my right jacket pocket for the women attendants, a tug on the handle to flush the loo – I’d tried to squeeze out a drop but every sphincter I possessed was on the gripe – and out, walking with purpose.

One old man leaving, tapping his stick. Two German youths combing hair and talking loudly, about to depart. And Carlo, nodding and winking and chewing gum and rolling a cowboy’s cigarette one-handed, doing it all wrong. Sweating worse than ever, I ignored him and went to wash my hands.

From the handbasins the women attendants were talking just out of sight. I ran the water, peering through the mirror towards the entrance. The German lads left, still talking. The old geezer was gone. All the cubicle doors were open. Nobody.

I pulled a third-bottle out of my pocket and swiftly unscrewed the cap. ‘Carlo.’

‘Yeah, boss?’ He slid over, gum-chewing and shoulder-hunching. His hand was thrust deep into his jacket pocket. He now sported a white trilby pulled down over one eye just to prove to the world’s armies of Swiss Guards that he really was a genuine hundred-percent gangster on the prod. With virtually uncontrollable hands I poured him a capful of the dark rum. No good doing things by halves. His eyes widened delightedly. No acting this time, I noticed wryly.

I whispered, ‘Cheers, Carlo,’ and tilted the bottle, my tongue in its neck to stop any leaking into my mouth. ‘But you said—’

‘Shhh! Old custom,’ I told him, gasping to good effect as if stunned by the booze.

‘To the death, Captain!’ He swigged it back, the poor sod. His eyes bled tears and he gasped, ‘A superb shot o’ old red-eye!’

‘Er, yes.’ I screwed the cap on and slipped the bottle into the case. Still nobody. ‘You have fifteen minutes, Carlo.’

‘Sure, boss. Ready? Willco!’

The poor goon slunk out, hunching and glancing, his collar up. The two women rolled eyes to each other showing exasperation at the young. Carlo looked a right carnival, but he no longer mattered much – as long as he made the Museum cafeteria at speed.

Coin casually in the dish, and I was out into the warmth of St Peter’s great square, a picture of the professional gentleman scanning the sights of Rome. There is no real short cut to the Vatican Museum doorway, so it meant making a brisk diagonal under the Colonnade, down the Angelica, round the Risorgimento and along. I was panicking in case there was a queue.

Seven minutes to reach the slope where I could see three coaches reversing into the slip by the Museum doorway. I lost all decorum as I hurried up the street to reach the entrance before the scores of Dutchmen poured out, and only slowing down once I was certain I would be ahead of them.

An elderly lady sold me some violets from the low wall near the entrance. I paid, leaving my briefcase to be swiftly covered by her shawl. Anna squeezed my hand as she gave me the change. While buying my ticket I realized she had short-changed me by five hundred lire, but that was only her joke. Anyway, I was almost smiling as I made my way up that spectacular staircase. Three violets were our signal that Carlo had made it ahead of me by three minutes. A rose would have been the signal to abort, that Carlo had failed to show.