Chapter 25

Donald Poole, the head of President Mitchell’s security team, was pacing the floor of the windowless room on the mezzanine level of the Nuvola Convention Center. It was a study in sterility, bright lighting turned up to the max, drab tables and chairs and a cart of bitter coffee set up in a corner—but he wasn’t there for amenities, and what the place lacked in comfort it made up for in peace of mind. Well, not exactly, since he didn’t have eyes on the commander in chief—codename Keystone—despite the two-dozen forty-inch flat-screen monitors positioned along one wall, four rows of six screens each, floor to ceiling.

Each of these was displaying real-time HD video of the entire motorcade route, beginning at the Aleph Rome on Via di S. Basilio. It was a beautiful hotel, everything luxurious and very presidential, while most of the other world leaders at the summit were staying at the Rome Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria. Also quite nice, but Mitchell wished to play by his own rules, so he and his entourage had reserved the two top floors of these much more centralized digs on the other side of the Tiber River.

The immediate problem for Poole—the one that was keeping him up at night and overloading him with caffeine every day—was that getting to and from the summit took President Mitchell through a maze of narrow streets, none of them remotely straight for more than a few blocks. Line of sight along the route was for shit, with precisely twenty-seven left and right turns, buildings on both sides that could trap the motorcade like a box canyon. It had windows and rooftops everywhere, and far too many trees lining Vialle della Terme di Caracalla. A sniper’s heaven. Only when the route finally merged into Via Cristoforo Colombo was it a straight shot the rest of the way, mostly protected by Italian national police forces.

Key word: mostly.

Even then, the security chief couldn’t allow himself to breathe easily, not that he ever did in this job, particularly after the close call two years ago when the president had almost lost his life to a rogue assassin. Poole had been certain that incident would cost him his job and his pension, but the president had been in a good mood when he’d tendered his resignation, and had actually laughed it off…with a caveat, of course

“Don’t ever let it happen again.”

Again, due to the nature of his job, was potentially every day after that one, leading up to now. And he sure as fuck didn’t like what he was seeing.

It wasn’t all his responsibility alone, not by any stretch. Every country represented at the G20 had some sort of armed presence. The larger member nations imported a respectable contingent of security personnel sworn to protect and serve their president or prime minister, while the smaller states, not wanting to be embarrassed by the size of their budgets, still made a grand show of their uniformed detail.

The Italian government had the most at stake, since they needed to prove to the world that they could quell any political uprising or protest, turn back any kind of terrorist attack. Thus, the city of Rome had sealed off a 10-square kilometer section of the EUR district, and had established an armored perimeter around the Nuvola and the nearby Palazzo dei Congressi. Additionally, a number of roads had been closed, and police sharpshooters had taken up strategic positions on rooftops along the routes where government leaders were expected to travel.

The military also was making a show of force with drones and helicopters in the air, and soldiers on the ground. All of them were prepared for combat in Army fatigues, smartly dressed with peaked caps perched on their heads and freshly pressed slacks. There was no doubt about who they were and that they were there for.

An entire floor of the convention center had been given over to event security, and Poole’s advance team had set up surveillance and communications systems according to their unique specs. As a matter of goodwill, he’d pledged to share any pertinent data his team collected with the other seventeen national security directors on the ground, and vice versa.

“Only one more day of this shit,” he muttered to himself. He was a lanky, sinewy man in his early sixties, with thinning hair swept back over his crown. Today, as every day, he was dressed in a charcoal gray suit, bland tie with seemingly colorless diagonal stripes, glasses with black frames that made his eyes look bigger than they were. A requisite pigtail device was embedded in his left ear.

He glanced from one screen to the next. So did the four fulltime agents assigned to “the pocket,” a football reference that designated the protective bubble surrounding the quarterback. In total, ten eyes scanned constantly for any surreptitious movement or suspicious behavior that might warrant intervention, or a need to switch to an alternate itinerary. Of which there were several, known only to a privileged few, but none that had as many cameras as the main route.

With so many monitors to watch, so many angles on so many streets, so many known and unknown variables at play, Poole easily could have missed it. He almost did, in fact, as his eyes lingered just a moment or two on one screen before shifting to the next, and then the next. But then he spotted something that in retrospect didn’t seem all that much out of the ordinary, but just…well, odd. Different.

“What the hell is that?” he said, out loud but mostly to himself.

“What?” asked his deputy director of security, who was seated at a table with a digital switching console in front of him. His name was Andy Park, young and ambitious, second-generation son of Korean immigrants. Like his boss, he was keenly studying the live video, methodically shifting his eyes from one monitor to another.

“Back up nineteen,” Poole directed him. “To seven-twelve.” Meaning twelve minutes after the hour, just forty seconds ago.

Without saying a word Park reversed the footage, hit “play.”

“Look for the van,” Poole continued, pointing at the screen. The camera lens was pointed up Via Druso through an intersection at Porta Metronia, the infamous arched remains of a 3rd-century waterway gate within the Aurelian city walls. “Right about…now.”

Park did as instructed, peered closer as if that would help his vision. Then he saw it, or at least thought he saw it.

“There,” Poole said. “White and unmarked. It stops at the edge of the frame, right under that tree, there.”

“People are getting out of it,” Park replied. “Five of them. Looks like they’re Army.”

“Precisely,” Poole replied. “Except it’s outside the red zone, and not one of the official staging areas. I’ve seen the Defense Department’s plan, and that’s why we positioned a camera there, instead of troops.”

By now, the other three agents assigned to scan the screens were huddled close, intently focused on the video playing on monitor nineteen. “Go back to real time, and let’s keep an eye on the other monitors,” Poole went on. “Park, you take the top row. Benson, you get row two, and Donahue, you’re on three. Sciuto, watch the bottom six.”

“Are we looking for more vans?” Angela Sciuto asked. She was the newest recruit to the presidential detail, just six years out of Georgetown Law.

“If there’s one of them, there’s bound to be more,” Poole said as he felt his stomach flip. “Meanwhile, I’ve got to make a call.”

“The orders come from the top,” Captain Segreto said to the nine heavily armed soldiers seated around him on wooden crates and stacks of tires. Each of the ten officers was fitted with heavy-duty body armor and equipped with both an M4 carbine and a Beretta 92FS pistol, plus extra rounds of both 5.56×45mm and nine-millimeter ammo. “I know this may sound very last-minute, but I have it on good authority that this threat not only is very real, but imminent.”

Given the vagaries that Colonel Marchetti had relayed to him yesterday in the men’s room at Guardia di Finanza, he remained unconvinced of the reality and imminence of what some unnamed source had revealed. His job had been to assemble a tactical response team, and that’s what he’d done. Orders were orders and, at the very least, this assignment gave him something tangible to do, rather than stand at a checkpoint with the rest of the international security presence that was protecting the G20 summit.

Marchetti had described it as a code red assessment, which—although Segreto had never heard of the term—he assumed meant critical to the nation’s interest.

The nine men and women gathered with him in the shuttered automobile repair shop had been hand-picked because of their efficiency in putting down the armed invasion at the Palazzo Montecitorio last February. They were smart, quick, committed, and all of them highly proficient at the firing range. Two of them had sustained minor injuries during the incident, and another two were credited with the deaths of two gunmen. All were active duty, and—like Segreto—relieved to be rid of the boredom that came with standing at attention all day, expecting the worst during the global meeting but figuring the entire deployment would turn out to be another lesson in tedium.

“We will form up in two teams of five each,” he went on. “Audio and video surveillance has already been established, and we will move out immediately if and when action is warranted. On my orders, and my orders only. You’ve already been briefed on the target, whose identity should be no mystery to any of you. Any questions so far?”

Segreto drew his glance across nine pair of eyes, all gazing back at him from beneath their bullet-resistant helmets: six men, three women, each of them shaking their heads in response to his question. It was not a rhetorical inquiry; since they were putting their lives on the line, they had a right to know what was going on. Up to a point; after all, this was the military, which was not known for being a free and open institution.

No one had a question, at least none that any of them wished to voice.

“All right, then. We’ll be riding to the site in two separate vehicles. You’ve already been assigned your team—A or B—so roll out and join up with the other members of your squad. While this might turn out to be only a combat readiness exercise, it could become a serious engagement with enemy forces. Be careful and let the hand of God be at your side.”

Logan stepped out of the shower and toweled himself off with a small scrap of hotel terrycloth that barely fit around his waist.

He glanced in the mirror, winced at the dark circles under his eyes caused by only five hours of sleep. It was hardly enough, but more than the night before. He gently massaged his forehead, then slipped into the bedroom and pulled on fresh trousers and a short-sleeve shirt, a light blue button-down, and a pair of comfortable shoes. He’d started to charge his cell the moment he’d come in, but it was only at sixty percent. Hopefully it would be enough to last the day, unless he got dragged into overtime.

He slipped it into his pocket, and had just grabbed his wallet and sunglasses when a drum riff alerted him that a text had arrived. He dug the device back out, saw the message was from a local number. It was a reply to the one he’d sent not long after he’d left Raleigh’s room, a private number Alvize had given him with great reluctance. After six months, Renate Azzone would still be wondering where his boy toy had gone, and Logan wanted to lure him in: bait the hook to see if anything might bite.

Dove cazzo sei? the text read. Translation, via the language app: “Where the fuck are you?”

A jolt of adrenaline surged through Logan’s blood, as he recalled what his Uncle Stuart had told him that summer he’d spent out on Catalina. Many years ago, back when his teenage sense of invincibility was leading him down a self-destructive path, and his parents had shipped his sorry ass out to California for a lesson in tough love, and mostly so they could be rid of him for a couple months.

“Don’t be too quick trying to reel the fish in, Carter,” the old L.A. Times reporter had said. “Give him plenty of time to get a good taste. His priority here is different than yours, so you have to be patient. Then, when you feel him tug on the line, pull it just a bit to set the hook. Only when you truly know you’ve got him should you start to reel him in.”

It was an invaluable lesson which, over time, he realized applied to much more than old men and the sea—just about anyone and anything, in fact. With that in mind, he texted back a two-word response: Intorno a, or one word in English: “Around.”

He knew he had to play it carefully here: short sentences only, since no phone-based translation app would get the colloquial subtleties of a particular region, much less the repartee of a personal relationship. The program had earned four-point-eight stars out of five, but some of the reviewers had left such comments as, “Great for navigating your way through the streets of Rome or Venice, but not so useful if you’re trying to hook up.” Or, alternately, “Good for getting around, but don’t be surprised if you order an avocado and a lawyer shows up instead.”

The phone indicated that the person on the other end was typing something, and a minute later a reply appeared. Logan copied and pasted the message into the app, which translated it from Italian: “I’ve been worried sick about what happened to you. I thought you might be dead.”

There were several ways he could proceed, but he needed to sound legit. The number Alvize had given him was for Renate Azzone’s personal cell, but the young man had also explained—his voice trembling with fear—that il bastardo was cunning and slippery. One wrong move and he would see through whatever ruse Logan might have in mind.

So, he typed back, I felt dead. In Italian, of course.

Which, after a few seconds, brought the response, Because of me?

Because of everything, Logan typed.

But we were…are…perfect together.

I’ve had time to think, Logan wrote back, worried that his translated verb phrasing might be mangled.

And?

And I’m having second thoughts. Fucking verbs again.

Meet me. It was the precise response Logan was hoping for, and much quicker than he’d anticipated. Which meant he couldn’t let his guard down.

Not sure, he replied, playing the fish slowly. I need time.

Time for what? Azzone asked.

Time to decide, Logan wrote back.

Then why did you text me?

Logan contemplated his response. He wanted—needed—to craft a reply that would appear as if Alvize was writing it. Then he remembered something the young man had told him, something crude that Azzone would whisper in his ear during late-night intimate encounters in the chambers above the Vatican library. Two words that urged him to go slower.

Andante, andante.

Oh, my dear boy, Azzone wrote back. You remember.

How could I forget? Logan typed in return.

There was no immediate reply. Logan worried he’d fucked up somehow, hoped it was only because something had unexpectedly interrupted their text exchange. Five minutes passed, and then a fresh message arrived: Meet me at that place we went that first time. Eleven o’clock this morning.

Shit. Logan had no idea what place Azzone was referring to; it could have been just about anything, anywhere, given all there was to do in Rome. He supposed it was the sort of thing that would trigger an instant memory in Alvize’s mind, and probably not something noble. But inquiring about it now would send up a red flag.

I’ll be there, he typed in response.

Then he called Alvize’s number, hoping the wary young man would pick up.

As Deputy Secretary General of the Governate for the Vatican City State, Renate Azzone spent most of his working hours at the Palace of the Governorate, located behind St. Peter’s Basilica. It was well off the tourist route, a secluded hermitage where he would be free to think and ponder. And plan.

He had awakened early, as could be expected on this morning that Allesandro Bortolotti genuinely believed would mark his transcendence into European history. The imperious bastard also would want assurance that the Pope was on board with the end game, if not necessarily the means by which the win would be achieved. As before, Azzone had demurred by saying His Holiness wished to reserve final judgment until there was something to judge, insisting that God’s plans could not be rushed or presumed—not quite what Bortolotti wanted to hear, but there were no alternate truths to play here.

As with most despots, the lunatic was possessed of a wild notion that he was ordained to change the course of world history, destined to impose a new order on a populace that was too complacent to fully comprehend their own collective ignorance.

La pazzia. Madness.

Indeed, Azzone was genuinely worried about what insanity might be in place by the end of the day, including his complicity in it. God surely did not approve of bullets in the air or blood in the streets, not at the hands of a psychopath. He could have nipped this scheme in the bud months ago, but he’d been too preoccupied by the escape of his young compango to think of much else. Reporting his disappearance to the police or the Pontifical Gendarmerie had been out of the question, so he’d paid rather dearly for the services of a private investigator whose search thus far had resulted only in the transfer of a sizeable amount of Euros from one bank account to another.

How surprised he’d been, therefore, to have received a text on his private phone from the young man that read, Buongiorno, mio caro signore. The very same words that Alvize would greet him every morning in the secret residential quarters above the library.

His heart had jumped instantly.

Then, just as quickly, it skipped a beat. What if this was a trap? How could he be sure it was his ragazzo amante, suddenly communicating with him after all these months?

His mind had gone dizzy, and he’d felt light-headed. Was he being set up, or had Alvize finally come to his senses? Perhaps even missed him, missed them…everything they’d had together. His mind had jumped back and forth, one side of his brain telling him to forget the young man and move on. The other side, however—the side that had always been in control of his urges and had landed him in the confessional many times—insisted he reply, but with caution.

After much deliberation, he had crafted an honest response and sent it on its way. He’d received a quick message back, and engaged the sender in a casual but earnest dialogue, one that did little to overcome his excitement, or quell his doubts—until he saw those two words on his screen: Andante, andante.

It was Alvize. The boy was alive and, it seemed, willing to come home. What’s more, despite the tumultuous events the coming day might bring, Renate Azzone would be seeing him in just a few hours, at that place he’d taken him not long after Cardinal Giudice had abruptly died; run over by a truck, of all things. It was a glorious place from which they were able to look out over most of the city and exult in the power of history, the beauty of Rome.

Il Parco Savello. Also known as Giardino degli Aranci, the orange grove at the top of the Aventine Hill.

How wonderful it would be to hold him in his arms, gaze into his eyes, feel the warmth of his heart pounding so close to his own once again. Then he would slide the sharp steel edge of his snap-blade stiletto between his fourth and fifth ribs, near their articulation with the costal cartilages—deep and steady, with passion.

He would hear him take his last breath, then release his body as he bled out.

Il figlio di puttana.