Madonie Mountains, Sicily
In the distance, the weathered town of Gangi clung to a sharp slope below the sun-dried peak of Monte Marone. The snaking streets and the sandstone steps that connected the medieval town’s levels were invisible from where Liz hiked down a hillcrest. All she could see of it now was the sea of red-tiled roofs faded over the centuries to the color of exhausted flesh. Earlier today, she had gone into Gangi, asking for her father by name and by three of his aliases—Alex Bosa and Alessandro Firenze and César Duchesne. She showed a drawing of what he had looked like at Dreftbury.
In his proper black suit, the mayor proudly assured her he knew personally everyone in this remote area but did not recognize the face or names. Of course, the Mafia capo did not either, and neither did the carabinieri. Shopkeepers and housewives knew nothing, had seen nothing.
For her, time had run out. It was September, and she had been in Sicily nearly a month, going first to the beautiful resort city of Cefalù on the northern coast, because it was the ancestral home of the Firenzes and the Bosas, from whom her father, she, and Sarah were descended. That was where he had secretly built a villa, retired, and supposedly died.
When she found no clue there, she moved inland along the SS286, searching to the east and west among the isolated farms and villages that dotted Sicily’s wild central mountains. Some villages were so small they appeared on no map. According to rumor, Bernardo Provenzano, the Cosa Nostra’s brilliant capo di tutti capi, the “boss of all bosses,” was hiding somewhere among them. Provenzano had avoided police capture for forty years. This being Sicily, the only unusual aspect of his disappearance was the remarkable duration. The capo before him—his friend Salvatore Riina, known as “the Beast”—had hidden for a mere twenty-three years before finally being caught in 1993.
Liz gave the town of Gangi one last suspicious look and turned off into a cortile that fronted a tumbledown stone building, weathered and gray. In the dirt courtyard stood a dozen tables covered by crisp, blue-checked cloths, waiting for the night’s crowd. She had learned that people gathered here from miles around to eat, drink, and gossip after a day in the fields and olive groves. Sometimes it was called Il Santuario; other times, Il Purgatorio. The owner of the ristorante, who had an encyclopedic memory, was allegedly connected.
The door was open. From the doorway drifted the odors of garlic, spicy tomato sauce, and wine. She put a pleasant smile on her face and stepped into cool darkness, hiding her eagerness. The stone building was very old, with small windows that gave little light. But the room was large. In it was only one person.
“Signore Aldo Cappuccio?” she asked.
A man stood behind a wooden bar. The top was worn smooth by decades of elbows and glasses. He opened his hands over it, palms up, and smiled in return, the gracious host.
“Buon giorno. Che cosa desidera?”
Short and wiry, he was around fifty years old, with a black mustache, a swarthy complexion, and green Sicilian eyes. She saw no sign of a weapon. In the dusky room, he looked like a good-natured imp, not a man who commanded respect on both sides of the law. Still, there was something about his face. It was a mask, she decided.
She smiled broadly. “Buon giorno. Il vino della casa, per favore.”
He cocked his head as if to hear better. “Basta così?”
“Sì, grazie.”
“Buono. You’re developing a Sicilian accent,” he decided, continuing in Italian as he reached behind for the house wine. “You’re English, yes? Welcome to my home.”
As he poured three inches into a simple glass, he kept glancing at her.
Curious, she glanced back. “I’m English and American. Live in California now.” She picked up her wine, leaned against the bar, and scanned the room, controlling her excitement. Since Dreftbury, every time she approached a doorway, every time she walked down a street, every time she met someone new, she wanted to shake them, ask them, Do you know my father? Have you seen him?
“You’ve come a long way,” he said.
While Cappuccio’s place appeared near ruin from the outside, the room was gracious, filled with fine antiques, expensive fabric-covered chairs, varnished tables, and old photos in heavy frames. The clothing in the photographs told her they had been taken long ago. Beside them was a tranquil fresco of angels with pipes and harps. It was far older than the photos.
She picked up her glass and walked toward the fresco. “Gaspare Vazzano?”
“Sì. You know Vazzano’s work?” He left the bar and followed.
“I know he painted a lot of frescoes around here, but I thought they were mostly in churches. Your place must date back to the sixteenth century.” Vazzano was born in the mid-1500s in Gangi, where she first had seen his work.
“No one knows for certain exactly when, but yes. Here, the years run together.” He snapped his fingers. “There. That’s my life.” He snapped them again. “And yours. We have a saying that life’s not a gift, it’s a surprise, and death is never a surprise, but it’s often a gift. This is a hard land. A hard country with hard rules and even harder customs. You know my name, signorina. It’s only fair I know yours. Come si chiama?”
“Elizabeth Sansborough.” She sipped her wine. It had a rough coat to it, a taste of good local grapes but not aged enough. “I’m looking for my father.” She took out the drawing from her backpack and handed it to him, watching his expression. “He may be using the name Bosa or Firenze. Those are family names. Perhaps even Duchesne.”
“So?” He stared down at it a long time, expressionless. At the square face and bald head and even features. When he raised his gaze, it was to study her again. There was knowledge in those eyes. He made no effort to hide it.
Breath seemed to catch in her throat. “You know him, don’t you? Where is he!”
He shrugged. For a flash, she saw beneath the mask. He was a man who calculated risks. For whatever reason, he had decided there was little this time.
“He was a Bosa, Don Alessandro Bosa. Yes, that’s what he was called. There are changes in his face.” He tapped the drawing. “He was reading The Leopard.” He stared into space. “Ah, yes. ‘Bare hillsides flaming yellow under the sun.’ He quoted it to me, because he’d come from Cefalù to see our summer.”
“Where is he now?” She kept her tone neutral, but her heart was racing with excitement, with hope.
He frowned. “Didn’t you know? He died. Someone dynamited his villa, and it killed him. Several years ago. Maybe eight. A big event like that, word spreads.”
“I heard he’d survived.”
He shook his head. “Who could’ve survived that?” He handed back the drawing. “Drink your wine. Don’t be upset. How long have you been looking?”
“I heard he reappeared recently.”
“I see only with my eyes, hear only with my ears. I have no magical powers. I’ve told you what I know.” He returned to the bar, no longer interested.
She watched his straight back and thin, ropy shoulders as he rounded the counter. He was a man who had managed to create some kind of neutrality in a country where old grudges and simmering passions exploded with ease.
“You haven’t seen him lately?” she demanded.
He made a dismissive gesture. “It’s what I told you. He’s gone. Dead. Not alive…even to you. Go home. You won’t find him here. Why do you persist in looking for what no longer exists? If he’s really alive, he doesn’t want to be found. If he’s dead, give him his peace. Go back to California. Find your own life. Leave his memories here, where they belong. Respect him enough to make your way without him.”
She glanced away. The lined, formidable face of an old Sicilian woman in one of the photos caught her eye. As she stared at it, an odd relief swept through her. She felt comforted.
Then she looked back. Her gaze bored into him. “You haven’t seen him?”
“No!” He threw up his hands. Then calmly: “I have customers who’ll be here soon. Sit. Drink your wine. I have work.” He pulled up bottles of red wine from somewhere beneath the bar and stacked them behind it, against the wall.
She walked to the bar and set down her glass. “Quanto costa questo?”
He told her the euros. She left them next to her wine and walked out into the long shadows of twilight.
The wind was dying down at last. As she crossed the courtyard, she took off her straw hat and rubbed her forearm across her brow. Immediately, it was wet again. The rainy season had not yet begun. All day, hot sirocco winds from North Africa had blasted across the parched hills and valleys, sucking the last molecules of moisture from people and land. Astoundingly, tempers were seldom short. After being conquered and reconquered for three thousand years, Sicilians accepted acts of God and nature with equanimity.
Three middle-aged men strolled in from the road, laughing, cigarettes dangling from their lips, and sat at one of the outside tables. Signore Cappuccio emerged and, without a look at her, asked what they were drinking.
She hiked away, passing a grizzled goatherd, his dog, and a herd of mangy goats. As night approached, the wind changed directions, coming from the north. She lifted her face, finding relief in its coolness. The lonely sound of a car engine carried clearly from the east through the quiet mountains. She checked her watch. Yes, he was on time.
Eagerly, she climbed another hill and stood there waiting as sunset painted the western horizon the brilliant colors of the oranges and lemons for which this region had once been known. Now half the residents of a decade ago were gone to the cities of Europe in search of work. People had told her over and over how empty their mountains were—only the old, the lazy, and the drunk remained. Globalization had struck even here, stealing the young and leaving their elders to pine. Like the seasons, globalization was inevitable. The only question was whether its leaders would push it forward with the least damage to the voiceless or with the greatest profits to themselves.
As she stared out over the darkening hills and valleys, her memory returned again to her father. In her mind, she saw him clearly, leaving the Dreftbury hotel room. She could have called his name, revealed him, fired a round over his head. But she had not, because he had been the one to walk away. After that, she had waited almost a month, a dull pain near her heart. Then she went in search with a desperate, hopeful longing to find him, his love.
Behind her, the pickup pulled off the road. She turned and ran to the door. “Come look at the sunset with me. Did you learn anything?”
Simon’s craggy face smiled at her, his thick hair shiny in the waning light. “A few things,” he told her, climbing out. “How about you?”
As they walked back toward her spot on the hill, she told him, “I met an interesting man. If anyone knows whether Papa’s here somewhere, it’d be him. But he believes Papa’s dead. So I think Papa’s probably not here.”
He nodded. “None of my people turned up anything about Jack O’Keefe or any of his compadres, including Elaine and George Russell. O’Keefe’s got to be in his seventies by now, so he could’ve died quietly somewhere in his sleep.”
“Or he could be alive. With Papa.” It was through O’Keefe that Sarah had sent the message that had trapped the Carnivore at his Cefalù villa.
Simon shrugged. “True. But if O’Keefe were active, I think we’d know.”
She had been wrong to assume that MI6 would not want Simon back. As for Sarah and Asher, they had returned to Paris, determined to finish their vacation. Gary Faust was alive and healthy, still flying his Westland Lysander wherever the circus pitched its tent. She and Simon had replaced Paul Hamilton’s Jeep and sent a cash donation to the studio apartment in Pigalle for clothes and food. The agitators arrested that day at Dreftbury were quickly bailed out, represented by lawyers hired by an umbrella group that was bringing together the disparate branches of the movement, hoping to make it more effective by taking it mainstream.
And so life went on, too often filled with interest, not passions. For a few brief days, Nautilus was in Europe’s spotlight, and the nature of the group—whether sinister or benevolent—was an issue discussed in barrooms and board-rooms and even a few bedrooms. Then another small war broke out somewhere, and British and American soldiers in Iraq came under fire, and the news value of the still-clandestine organization plummeted.
As it turned out, the vanished César Duchesne was the only outside witness to the Coil’s bloody plot. The authorities had found Henry Percy’s information intriguing, but only as background. As for the damage to his mansion caused in the fake attack, he had laughed, saying he had enjoyed the adventure, and after all, what was money for but to have a good time occasionally? Gregory Gilmartin’s brother, the second eldest, had assumed the reins of the family construction empire and was pressuring EU Commissioner Santarosa to render a favorable decision in the merger with Tierney Aviation.
It was no surprise Richmond Hornish, Nicholas Inglethorpe, and Christian Menchen did not turn against one another but instead brought in their lawyers. The Coil would continue, shaken but resolute. They lived by their own golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
When Liz reached the crest of the hill, she gestured at the seamless panorama of rolling hills draped with shadows, their tops burnished with the radiant light of the setting sun. It was one of those moments she wished would extend forever, standing there with Simon, looking out at a world that seemed unsullied.
He took her hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed her fingers. She leaned against him, her side to his, as they continued to stare out, soaking up the wild beauty.
“Have you decided?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m going to Santa Barbara with you.”
She pulled away. She looked into his eyes, saw a weariness that had been growing since July. She kissed him, and he kissed her back, lingering.
“I can’t do it anymore,” he told her at last, stepping back. “Somewhere while I was in MI6, I got lost. It’s such a bore, but it’s the truth. I want to find out what else there is.”
“I’m glad you’ll come. Very, very glad. And I feel the same way. That’s why I have to keep teaching. The students give me hope.”
“I know.” He tugged on her hand, pulling her close again, and they resumed their watch. “The best is, we’ll be together.” The sun had dropped below the hill. The sky was red.
“Did you see that?” she asked.
“No. What?”
“Across on the next hill. A flash of light. It’s gone now.”
“Probably a bicyclist, or maybe a shepherd with some metal on his knapsack. We should go. It’s a long drive out to Cefalù.”
She nodded, and he swung his arm across her shoulder, holding her close as they walked to the pickup.
She slipped her arm around his waist, her body matching the rhythm of his. “Did you know that Gangi has a pagan festival? The Christians don’t much like it, of course. It’s called the Sagra della Spiga, and there’s a procession of the old gods—Pan, Bacchus, and Demeter, the fertility divinities. When I was in town, a man at the Bongiorno palace told me Monte Alburchia may be the site of an ancient fertility temple built by the Greeks.”
“The Greeks? I’d forgotten they’d gotten this far inside Rome’s territory.”
“Curious, isn’t it? Wherever humans go, we take our gods, in one form or another.”
As they continued to talk in low, intimate voices, a man rose to his haunches on the hill opposite, where Liz had seen the flash of light. He had been lying on his belly under the leafy branches of an olive tree, using a powerful directional microphone as he listened and watched through binoculars. For an instant, he had worried he would be discovered. But the moment passed, because Liz was involved in Simon and the future. This was good; what he wanted.
He ran a hand over the new growth on his head. Soon his hair would be full again, thick and gray. He repressed a wave of yearning to be with his daughter, packed away his equipment, and hiked off into the night.