“TALLEST FOREST IN THE FIELD”
JUNE 29–31, 1956
1.
She was watching the tratta from her window, trying to find Robertino’s face in the crowd, hoping that this dream come true for him did not fall flat. He had not shown up for her lesson the day after he had caught her and Carlo in San Galgano, or the next day.
The horses were sleek and shiny, blacks, chestnuts, bays and grays, and the fantini (jockeys) all wore identical tunics in the black and white of Siena for this selection heat. The crowds were gigantic, seething, and the barbareschi (grooms) were all gathered inside the courtyard of the Torre del Mangia, so that was probably why she couldn’t spot him. A mare named Ondina was picked for the Porcupine. Knowing that Robertino would lead the mare from the Campo to the contrada stables and stay with her twenty-four hours a day for the next four days, until the Palio was run on the evening of July 2, Scottie decided to go see Signor Banchi and leave the money for the last two lessons for Robertino.
As the sun rose, the city was a churning mass of noise and warm flesh. When she got to Banchi’s, there were three men in suits there, agitated, talking to him out front. Banchi looked upset. She hesitated, but he saw her at the gate.
“Signora,” he said. “Maybe the signora knows something.”
She walked down between the rows of lavender to the front door, bees buzzing around her.
“Have you seen Robertino?” Banchi asked urgently.
“No. He didn’t come for the lesson yesterday or today. I assumed he was busy in the contrada.”
Banchi looked at the men, worried. “These are the officers from the contrada. Robertino did not show up at the sorta this morning. The contrada was given the horse Ondina, but he’s not there to take care of her.”
Didn’t show up? Robertino would never miss the Palio. He’d been talking about it pretty much nonstop since the day she’d met him.
The men from the contrada left, and Scottie put a kettle of hot water on to make some chamomile tea for Signor Banchi.
“Maybe we should talk to the police,” she said.
Banchi frowned. “I’m not sure. My grandson…” His voice trailed off.
“Is there someone you want me to talk to?” she said, setting the tea down in front of the old man, noting his trembling hands. “Someone he might have gone to see?”
“Perhaps his mother,” said Signor Banchi, frowning, his fear becoming anger as Scottie watched. “His mother destroys everything. She has probably asked him to do something for her. I tell him to say no, but he never does.” He slammed his open palm down on the table, making the bread crumbs jump. “And now she’s lost him his job as a Palio groom. They’ll never pick him as a jockey for the August race now!”
Scottie was confused. “I thought his mother was dead?”
“God forgive me, but I wish she were dead.” His watery eyes turned to meet hers. “Her name is Gina,” he said. “She is a prostitute.”
She thought about the way she had asked Robertino about Gina, how uncomfortable he must have been. The poor kid. But Gina was so young—she must have been a teenager when Robertino was born. Scottie did the math in her head: It was during the war. He must have been born in 1942, when German and Italian troops had been fighting side by side in North Africa and Russia.
Scottie left the money she owed Robertino with the old man and went to the corner where Gina could usually be found. She was not there. Scottie looked for the telltale pile of cigarette butts, but there were none.
* * *
It was time to meet Michael to go get the puppy. What should have been a happy event now felt like an unwelcome distraction. She met Michael by the Fortezza, where they now always parked the Ford, safely outside the city’s car-eating center. Michael backed the giant vehicle out of the lot, dodging the merchants setting up for today’s outdoor market. They zigzagged down from the city to Pian del Lago, a vast flat green expanse where cattle grazed here and there. She felt grateful for the space between them in the Ford, so sharply in contrast to the dangerous intimacy of Carlo’s little breadbox on wheels.
She told Michael about Robertino’s disappearance, but he seemed unconcerned. “That kid is like a cat,” he said. “Always lands on his feet. I wouldn’t worry about him.” She did not reveal the secret of his parentage. She felt protective of Robertino, or perhaps ashamed for him.
Michael was talking about the people who owned the puppies. “Apparently they’re leaving their farm and moving up to Turin. The husband has taken a job at a factory there. Common story these days. Huge migration going on. High time. This country’s only hope for the future is to industrialize.” He reached across and put his hand on her knee. “Let me do the talking. They’ll probably claim they’re purebreds, ask for a lot of money, but they’ll be mutts for sure and left behind if they don’t sell.”
“Leave them behind? To starve? That’s horrible.”
The road climbed again, and they picked up the Monte Maggio road. They drove for about a half hour, then turned off and chugged up an unmarked rutted gravel road in low gear, passing through a chestnut forest full of shadows.
When they turned off the gravel road and she saw the state of the farm, she understood that perhaps leaving a dog behind was the least of these people’s worries. Though the family had not moved out yet, the place already had an abandoned air. Grass grew in the gutters of the old stone house, and the roof was falling in, one huge timber already collapsed, a cascade of handmade bricks and rooftiles around it. A couple of skinny sheep and an angry goose followed them across the terra-cotta aia to the steps that led upstairs to the front door, complaining loudly. As at Banchi’s, the farm animals lived on the ground floor, but here the air was full of the acrid odor of manure, and there was a sense of disorder and hopelessness, of defeat. The roots of a large fig tree were pushing up the bricks. Six skinny barefoot children skulked around, staring at Scottie, and a baby cried somewhere inside. One of the thousands of flies flew into Scottie’s mouth, choking her.
Michael called out and went up the stairs and knocked, but no one answered, and finally a white fox terrier with black and brown spots and fabulously furry eyebrows came tearing around a corner, barking like mad, preceding a very tired-looking woman carrying a basket of wet laundry on her hip.
“Mi scusate,” she said. “I’m sorry—I was down at the stream. Basta, Ecco,” she said.
The woman smiled shyly at Scottie, a smile that revealed much warmth but a distinct lack of teeth. She’s not much older than I am, Scottie realized. She did her laundry in a stream. At least the women in the city had fountains of clean water nearly on their doorsteps. You could read statistics about how almost no rural Italian homes had running water, but seeing it written on a woman’s face was another thing.
“The puppies are gone,” she said. “Someone came this morning and bought them. But you can have this one. He’s a good dog.”
Michael, disappointed, began to say that they only wanted a puppy, that they had driven a long way, but Scottie put her hand on his sleeve. “Tell us about the dog,” she said to the woman. “What’s his name?”
“Ecco,” she said. Scottie knew it meant “here,” as in “here he is.”
They sat down in the kitchen, which had a huge open fireplace, soot stains on the ceiling, and just a simple table with a couple of stools. The woman offered them some wine, which they accepted to be polite, Scottie trying not to stare at the three mismatched chipped cups. The woman proudly explained the dog’s family tree, the barefoot children lurking in the shadowy corners of the room. Scottie got the feeling the dog had been a splurge in happier times, now regretted. The dog’s great-great-grandmother apparently belonged to an Italian who used airships to discover the hidden landscape of the North Pole in the 1920s. Titina was the first dog to circle the Pole. On a later voyage there had been a crash, but both the explorer and Titina had survived.
“Are you talking about Umberto Nobile?” Michael asked.
“Sì, sì,” the woman said, brightening. “This dog is the grandson of his dog!”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t take this dog,” said Michael, standing up.
Scottie looked at him questioningly, asked in English, “Why? He’s a cute dog, and yes I wanted a puppy, but I won’t have to house-train him. No chewing, either.”
Michael nodded toward the outside. The woman waved a hand to excuse them, and Scottie followed Michael out.
“Umberto Nobile is a famous Commie!” he whispered. “Notorious!”
“Michael,” she said. “It’s a dog.”
“I don’t want us to have anything to do with Communists.”
“I know you hate Communists, but isn’t there some big thaw going on? Maybe the Cold War is over.”
“Who’s been telling you that?” he demanded, grabbing her arm. The goose squawked, hearing his tone. She looked into his eyes and saw raw fear. “Banchi? Did you know he’s a Communist, too? I don’t want you to see him anymore. Those lessons with Robertino are over. I’ll get you a real teacher.”
“I think you’re overreacting,” she said.
“They want you to think that things are loosening up. It’s a lie, all part of a move by the Soviets to consolidate their power overseas. To bring together the Communists and the Socialists all over Europe. In Italy the left coalition is only two percent behind in the polls. Two percent! This is their big push,” he said. “They want Western Europe. They want bases, and tanks, and nuclear missiles pointed at America. It’s the domino theory coming true. And the next domino is Italy.”
Scottie sighed in frustration. The things Michael was worried about seemed so far away from where they were standing right now, where this poor woman struggled to put food on the table. His blindness made her seethe.
“Fine,” she said, not caring that she was loud. “Let’s go home.”
Michael grabbed her hand. “We’ll take the dog. But I think it’s best if you don’t try to understand politics, okay?”
Michael was quiet in the car. The dog sat on the backseat and stared out the window.
“Ciao, Ecco,” she said to him. She liked the way he looked at her, appraisingly, before he jumped over into the front and sat next to her, his paws on her lap. He was thin and ribby, but his fur was a soft curly fleece, and his ears neatly folded over like her father’s heavy stationery. When she offered him a wafer cookie she’d stuck in her purse, Ecco sniffed suspiciously, then refused it. The dog had an aloofness about him, almost a snobbery, like the Sienese themselves. What was he hiding? She realized she was not thinking of him as a dog, but as an Italian. He would be her ambassador. She gathered him in her arms and hugged him, feeling his little heart beating under her palm. My Communist dog, she thought.
* * *
They took a different road back to Siena, which annoyed her. “I want to get back in time for the evening prova,” she said. Each of the three nights before the Palio, the horses would run morning and evening test heats, or prove. They didn’t count for anything, but gave the jockeys, the horses and the crowds a taste of what was to come on the big day. She hoped she would see Robertino in the crowd with Ondina.
“Forget the horses for one minute,” Michael said, pointing out the simple stone arch of the Ponte della Pia. “I want to show you something beautiful. It’s got a famous tragic story to it.”
She didn’t have the heart to tell him she knew it already.
“In the 1200s a doomed noblewoman named Pia Tolomei left the city over that exact bridge with her husband, who thought she was cheating on him. He locked her in his castle in Maremma,” Michael said. “And she either starved to death or jumped out the window. It got her literary immortality, though. She’s mentioned in Dante.” He had taken out a camera, was snapping a picture of her.
“I’m sorry I’m a disappointment to you,” she said.
“Oh! Oh no!” he said quickly, putting down the camera, genuinely surprised by this. “Why would you say such a thing? Did I make you feel that way?” He looked so tortured by this thought she had to say something to reassure him.
“I’m … a terrible cook. I didn’t mean to get pregnant.”
He laughed, and took her hand and kissed it tenderly. “You’re a wonderful wife,” he said. “Way better than I deserve.” He took her in his arms and held her. “You’re the best thing in my life right now.”
2.
Scottie was bathing the dog as Michael slipped out of the apartment. He stood in the shadows of the Fortezza Medicea. Although transformed during the Fascist era into a lovely public space with tall shade trees, the massive fortress was in fact a bitter symbol for the Sienese of their defeat by the odious Florentines under the leadership of Cosimo de’ Medici in 1555, marking the end of the Republic of Siena.
There is plenty of animosity to this day between the two cities, he had written in his last report.
He shifted anxiously in the darkness, listening for Robertino’s footsteps. The fortress’s almost absurdly massive walls had been built with no sense of refinement or decoration, just intimidation. Michael could imagine the Florentines pouring boiling oil off of them onto obstreperous Sienese below.
The morning after they met on the road, Robertino had passed him in Via di Città and slipped him a note that the break-in had gone smoothly and he had the Communist Party membership list.
Then Robertino had not shown up for the handoff.
What the hell was going on? Did it have to do with Physique Pictorial? There was no way the kid could know he was gay. It had to be a stab in the dark, didn’t it? There was nothing, no trace. It was a scare tactic. That was what being gay meant, that even straight men feared being accused of it. Robertino had to be testing him. Maybe he just wanted more money.
Michael had stood in the window with a newspaper at eight this morning as the crowds filed into the piazza for the damn test race, but the kid had not shown up again. So now he was waiting for him at the Fortezza, their backup meeting point. He hoped the kid had gotten distracted by all this Palio hullabaloo and would reappear. Still. If anyone found the list of party members on him, if they forced him to tell who he was working for … Michael would be at the center of a very ugly scandal, found to be interfering in Italian politics. He would be cut loose without pity. Michael had learned in training that four years earlier, two CIA officers had been captured while trying to remove an agent from China and jailed. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles refused either to acknowledge they were in fact Agency men or negotiate for their release. If Michael went to jail, no one was coming to get him out. What would happen to Scottie, and their child? He felt sick at the thought.
He checked his watch again. He would give the kid fifteen more minutes.
The moon was coming up over the old fortress. It was a warm summer night, with fireflies hovering around the bushes. Michael was reminded of evenings back home, watching movies outdoors in Van Cortlandt Park with his older brother. Marco, I hope you’re watching over me. I hope you’re proud. I hope you’re jealous.
But he wouldn’t be. Marco had teased him mercilessly when he was little, stabbed Michael’s teddy bear with a pencil and called him a fag when he cried. Michael was too little to know what the word meant, but the sense of it was clear. At those movies in the park Marco had threatened Michael if he sat too close, and at the same time protected him, chasing off boys who teased and threw popcorn.
A cloud slid over the moon, deepening the darkness outside the Medici Fortress. Somewhere a radio played “The Great Pretender.”
And then someone grabbed him from behind.
* * *
He woke up in the trunk of a car.
I’m dead, he thought. The idea was something of a relief, as he had imagined it so many times, except he wanted to know what exactly he was being killed for. Was this the KGB? Or just run-of-the-mill thugs like the ones who had attacked the taxi in Rome? It seemed important to know. Oh fuck, he thought, remembering what else was in his briefcase. Physique Pictorial. Could he get rid of it before they killed him? He did not want that mentioned in the eulogies.
They drove for what seemed like a long while. He dug deep into his memories of training and went through all the hand-to-hand combat moves in his mind.
Finally, after ten or twenty minutes of bumping and gear grinding, the trunk opened. There were two men, older than he and very strong. One of them had a bushy mustache that looked fake.
Michael started to yell and raised his fists to strike.
“Relax, it’s a drill.”
“A drill? I nearly pissed myself.”
The two men looked at each other. “Come inside,” they said.
In the darkness it was hard to get the lay of the land, but this was clearly an abandoned farmhouse deep in a forest. Michael could hear insects and saw fireflies. Water was running somewhere. It would have been charming under other circumstances.
The interior of the stone building had a dirt floor and piles of ancient animal dung, some broken glass in the corner and a table and chairs that had seen better centuries. One of the men lit a kerosene lantern.
This was a CIA safe house, they explained. They showed him a map of how to get to it, which he had to memorize, and then they burned it in front of him. Michael could sense that they were skeptical of him, that they didn’t think he was a “real” spy.
“I’m very close to getting my hands on a membership list for the Communists in Siena,” he blurted, wanting to impress them.
“An enemies list. Excellent,” Mustache said.
Michael thought of Signor Banchi and the mechanic Brunetti. “I wouldn’t say they’re all enemies,” he said. “What are you going to do with the list?”
Mustache said this meeting was about the new elections that Michael had cabled Luce about. The Catholic, pro-America candidate, the slimy tax lawyer and now acting mayor Vestri, must beat Ugo Rosini, who, if he won again, might never be shaken out of office.
“It’s going to be tough. He’s very popular,” said Michael cautiously.
Mustache sighed impatiently, as if Michael were a tiresome child. Just in case their man didn’t win, he said, and things degenerated on a national level, an arms cache would be delivered soon.
“Guns?” He was glad Robertino hadn’t given him the list. What would they do to the people on it? Jail them? Kill them? Poor old Banchi.
The man was still talking, saying something about Operation Gladio. Michael must generate a “friends list” of those who could be counted on to take power by force if the Communists took over the government. He would be in charge of arming them.
“You must connect with a network of those friendly to our cause. Create a stay-behind net.”
War. Michael felt slightly faint. The safe house must have been a mill at some point. Suddenly rushing water was all that Michael could hear, the voices diminishing beneath the roar.
“It could come any day.”
“What?” Frogs were bellowing somewhere, and a flurry of moths circled the lightbulb. His heart was racing erratically.
“The coup. The Soviets have tanks in Yugoslavia. They could be here in a day. We have to be ready to fight at the ground level.” Mustache was growing more impatient with him, and swatted angrily at a mosquito. The other guy, large and muscled, had no expression.
“It’s a matter of loyalties,” said Mustache.
Mussolini drained the saltwater swamps and eradicated malaria in Italy, Michael remembered. But now the disease was back again. Couldn’t America just help with that? Send some DDT, build some highways, buy a ton of olive oil and shoes, and stop pushing Coca-Cola down their throats? Trust that true friendship would win them over?
Mustache told him what he had to do in the wake of Manganelli’s death, what would ensure a Catholic victory in the next election.
Blame the left.
A whisper campaign. These were the “Dark Arts” from his training at the Farm. He was to start the rumor that Manganelli’s accident was no accident. That he had been taken down by a bitter left angry at the results of last month’s elections. That the left—headed by Ugo Rosini—intended instability, fear, the end of democracy. Everything, in other words, that was the opposite of Wonder Bread, and I Love Lucy, and Perry Como. He was, in short, to create in others the fear and anxiety he already felt. He was to foment a right-wing revolution.
He thought of that green-lawned boarding school where he would, right now, be teaching wide-eyed adolescents about long-dead artists like Duccio di Buoninsegna and Simone Martini. Instead he had chosen this. The reasons why were suddenly rather obscure to him. To impress Duncan? To prove to the people who made it illegal to be gay that they were wrong? That he was just as good an American as anyone? He had come to Italy to promote American ideals. And, yes, okay, to sway an election by bribery. But it was all in the service of good. Now he had to arrange a pro-American resistance movement? Maintain an arms cache? Run a psy-ops campaign single-handed? Start a war?
If he didn’t, they made it clear, Michael would be transferred not to Rome or Paris, but to some distant snake-infested jungle nation or the front lines of a South American civil war.
3.
She watched the prova through binoculars, but it was not Robertino who had led the bay mare Ondina into the piazza the evening they brought Ecco home, or the next morning. She was trying not to think about Robertino’s disappearance, telling herself he would turn up, that it had nothing to do with her, that he was fine. She took the dog out for a walk and passed Gina’s corner, but there was no one there. Perhaps the police had swept the street of prostitutes before the tourists arrived for the Palio. She bought a nice new collar and leash for the dog, and bathed him. Michael had come in late, tossed and turned all night, and then this morning packed and left for Rome again.
They were both exhausted and preoccupied, she thought. She couldn’t share with him, and it was useless to ask what was bothering him. Other than his outburst at the farm about Communists, he never talked about what was upsetting him. Tractors must not be selling well, but because of male pride he couldn’t talk about it. She tried to think of something she could do for him. She had discovered a book on dating and marriage on his shelf, which she found charming. If he was studying, she could, too. Make your husband’s life better every day! That was how a good wife thought. What can I iron? What can I cook? How can I make our home more comfortable? Why couldn’t she be more like that? Despite Michael’s reassurances, she was a terrible wife, and who knew what kind of a mother she would make.
Her mood slid downhill like an avalanche. Thanks to her stupidity, she couldn’t call Carlo, couldn’t tell him that Robertino had disappeared or ask what he thought. She wandered around the tumultuous, noisy city with the dog, tossed on a turbulent sea of emotions. She stopped again at the place where Gina usually stood, but she wasn’t there.
She dared to go across the street into the ferramenta—hardware store—and ask the thin man at the counter if he had seen Gina lately. He frowned, and she said quickly, “In America we try to find these women other forms of employment—I thought I might help her.” Her lie did not erase his frown, but he said, “She has moved her business elsewhere.” So her suspicions about a pre-Palio sweep were correct. Scottie waited as he served a man who came in to buy one three-centimeter nail, and another who wanted his scythe sharpened. Finally the hardware store owner, clearly eager to get her out of his store, told her that when the police harassed Gina in Siena, she often moved to a pullout on the road from Siena to Grosseto. He described the place not far from there where she took her clients. Scottie was careful not to ask how he had come by this information.
“Better than threatening her, I suggest you tell your husband to stay away from her,” he said. “She’s trouble.”
4.
Michael sat on the train to Rome, trying to keep his hands from shaking as he pretended to be just another man in a hat reading a newspaper. The smoke-filled car was choking him, but the windows wouldn’t open. He had slept badly. The safe house adventure had angered and terrified him. And where was the damn kid?
This was a disaster.
He popped another Benzedrine and tried to focus on the newspaper as the train clicked along.
Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe elope, U.S. revokes his passport.
Red Cross will distribute food in Poland if it carries a label that says “Gift of the American people.”
At the Excelsior: James Stewart in “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”
He had sent a telegram last night after the CIA thugs had dropped him off, asking to meet his CIA contact in person. This sort of sticky situation could not be handled remotely. He needed face-to-face contact, whether it was protocol or not. He had received a message to meet his handler today at the bottom of the Spanish Steps. Someone would ask him if he could recommend a restaurant with a view of the Tiber. That was the code.
He made his way from the train station on foot, passing Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri. People were streaming in and out, women with their heads covered, all of whom reminded him of his mother. He went to mass regularly, but didn’t get comfort from faith the way she did. He felt trapped by sin and guilt. It had begun when he was a child, with the idea that as soon as you received communion and were pure again, the sins began accumulating immediately. He had tried to talk to a priest once about it, but the man’s brows had knitted into one glaring pelt and he had said that Michael was not trying hard enough to be good. “God loathes weakness,” he said.
Michael checked his watch and trotted through Piazza Barberini and down Via Sistina toward the Spanish Steps. It was a sunny afternoon, and the piazza was crowded with tourists snapping photos with their Kodaks and Leicas. Michael was facing the Via Condotti when he heard a voice behind him. “Excuse me, I don’t suppose you could recommend a restaurant with a really excellent view of the Tiber?”
It was Duncan.
* * *
“Wars are waged on many levels,” Duncan said. “Isn’t this better than tanks and bombs?”
They stood in the Borghese Gardens. All around them children were playing, dogs frolicking and people eating gelato. A little girl in a blue dress passed them carrying a red balloon. She smelled like poop. Michael had a sense that none of it was real, that Duncan had hired these people to play these roles, like extras in a film.
“You’re not just a USIS librarian,” Michael said. He had thought he was impressing Duncan by being a big man in the CIA, a veritable James Bond, when in reality Duncan was his superior. Always his superior.
“Could have knocked me over with a feather when you signed up with the Agency. I was delighted, of course.”
“You lied to me. Now I don’t know who to trust.”
“No one, of course.”
He had planned to ask for his superior’s help in extricating himself from the CIA. He needed to confess how he had recruited a fourteen-year-old, how the kid had gone to get the Communist membership rolls, how he had disappeared. How he might have been involved in the disappearance of a prostitute. How Michael was now in way over his head and wanted out before the Italians unmasked him.
“Are you really the Agency’s top man in Rome?” Michael asked.
“Let’s say I have more of an oversight role.”
Duncan must have sent the two men who had grabbed Michael at the Fortezza. What kind of power did Duncan have in the Agency? Michael had heard rumors in training that counterintelligence chief James Angleton often put in place individual, hand-picked agents, who reported only to him, to shadow the CIA’s own agents. Moles to ferret out moles. Whatever Duncan was up to certainly seemed to go beyond clandestine officer, or even station chief. There was something he wasn’t telling him, a connection he had (Someone from Yale? His family? Some sailing school buddy from summers on Nantucket?) that would probably boggle Michael’s mind.
It was like back at Yale, when Duncan hadn’t told him he had joined a secret society. Duncan was always drawn to the elite of the elite, the more secret the better.
“I don’t want to arm a militia,” Michael said.
Duncan slapped his back and whispered, “We can’t stop now. You’ve exceeded our expectations. You have a man inside the Communist Party!” It was the kind of approval Michael had longed for, but now it made him nervous.
“I don’t understand what we’re really doing here,” he said.
“You’re living in the Red center of the entire country,” said Duncan in the tones one would use to explain the mechanics of a seesaw to a child. “It just makes sense to have a resistance movement in place should the Communists seize power or the Soviets invade.”
Michael stared at a plane passing overhead.
“Eisenhower’s not entirely happy about counterintelligence, either,” Duncan admitted. “David K. E. Bruce just sent in his report on Operation Mockingbird. I managed to take a peek.” He giggled like a naughty schoolboy, then rattled on, while for Michael all the ramifications of the truth spread out like a stain. He had not kept secrets from Duncan, but Duncan had kept them from him. What he had taken for love was a power game.
He would not give in, not show weakness. “When you say things like that, ‘managed to take a peek,’ what do you mean, exactly? Did you steal a copy? Did you use your invisible ink decoder? Did you pretend to be dusting someone’s office and read it while wearing a French maid’s outfit?”
“Why are you in such a mood?”
“Because you act like this is all a game. We’re planning a coup in case of a democratically elected Communist government.”
Duncan gave a superior smile. “Want to know a secret? We’ve already done it in Iran.” To Michael’s shock, Duncan told him how the CIA had spread anti-Mossadegh propaganda, including outright lies about Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, and had toppled that regime in 1953 so that the pro-American shah could be installed. “And then we did it again in Guatemala. Really, the same tactic could work anywhere,” Duncan said gleefully.
“Does Eisenhower know about this?”
Duncan shrugged. “We tell him what he needs to know.”
“But … that just seems so wrong,” Michael said. “We say we want democracies and then we overthrow them?”
“Look, they think they’re voting for a better way of life, but we know they’re safer if they stay tied to the U.S. The way I see it, the ends justify the means. Would you rather have World War III?”
“By saying that, you could justify almost anything.”
Duncan was quiet as they passed a bench of nuns eating ice cream cones.
“It’s not like the Soviets aren’t doing the same thing,” he said at last. “We’re just keeping up. Can’t back down now. Can’t blink. Let’s go visit Pauline.”
The statue of Pauline Borghese in the Borghese Gallery was Michael’s favorite. Life-size in snow-white marble, she lay on one hip, topless, a drapery discreetly covering her from the waist down. As tourists milled around them in the still summer air, Michael stared at Pauline, taking in her bold but emotionless stare, the casual way she hefted an apple in her hand, as if she might throw it at a servant who was slow with her coffee. She had been so poor as a child she’d been forced to work as a laundress, but eventually her brother, Napoleon, had married her off to a general, and she had traveled to Haiti, where her husband suppressed a slave rebellion. There both of them came down with yellow fever, which killed him but didn’t stop her from sleeping with anything that breathed. She returned to Europe and married a member of the noble Borghese family and continued her wild and wanton ways until her death at forty-four. She was, Michael thought, utterly disloyal, amoral and without any merit beyond beauty.
A man in a pinstriped suit and derby hat walked past, a furled umbrella in his gloved hand. He nodded at them as he moved on to Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne.
“Who’s that?” Michael asked.
“Lord Sebastian Gordon. Nothing to worry about. Works in fashion. Friend of Clare’s from her days at Vogue.”
Michael sighed. He thought about Scottie, about the baby that was coming. About the normal side of his life. Maybe he was taking everything too seriously. In the grand scheme of things, he was working for the good guys. Michael popped a Benzedrine and pointed to Pauline’s toes. “Her feet are almost as beautiful as mine.”
It was a joke between them, Michael’s absurd vanity about his feet, his pride in the prominent bones and long toes. Duncan was smiling. He was so handsome, eyes you could swim in. The worst part was that even though Duncan had lied to him, Michael still longed to make him proud, to earn the love of this wonderful creature who had singled him out for notice in this huge, cruel world.
“Let’s go get a drink,” Duncan said. “There’s a new bar across the street from the embassy.”
“What if we run into someone? Aren’t CIA men never supposed to be seen together?”
“You take the rules too seriously. The whole staff of the Rome Daily American will be there, half of whom are CIA. Here.” Duncan passed him the briefcase he had been carrying all day. Michael had wondered what was in it.
“Fifty thousand dollars. That was all I could get for now, but don’t worry, there’s more where that came from.”
“What the hell—what’s this for?” He stared at the plain brown leather case with ridiculously flimsy gold combination locks on top.
“For whatever you need. To organize your stay-behind militia. To buy the articles in the local papers about how great Manganelli’s temporary replacement is and why he should be—what’s his name?”
“Vestri. He’s a corrupt weasel.”
“Yes, well, we didn’t all like Ike, either. If you have a discreet way to funnel the cash directly to the campaign, that’s best, but we can’t be seen buying elections.”
“Of course not,” said Michael. “That would be wrong. And illegal.”
“We usually work through journalists. Get them to say something about his plans for the city, how he’s going to make everyone rich. And to say something negative about the other guy.”
“Ugo Rosini. Like he ran over Manganelli?”
“Good idea. You can use your man inside the Party to help discredit him from within. Nothing overt, just watercooler rumors. What kind of a civil servant is your man?”
He thought of Robertino dancing on top of the ox. “He’s in the agriculture department. Livestock inspector.” It was giving him pleasure to lie to Duncan, he realized with dismay.
“Perfect. He can gossip with the cattlemen at the stockyards.”
Michael did not know if there were cattlemen or stockyards in Siena, but he nodded.
“You know journalists, right?”
Michael did not want to admit that though he had met a lot of people, he didn’t really know anyone, except his own wife and a fourteen-year-old “livestock inspector” who’d disappeared.
“Yes,” he lied, the Benzedrine giving him courage. “I’m in the process of flipping a journalist named Rodolfo Marchetti.” In truth he had never met the man. “Been very Red, but he’s ripe for a change, I think.”
“Use this to reward him for positive articles. It’s just like they taught you in training. Be positive, discreet and friendly, never insulting. It’s a gift for a job well done, not a bribe. And have someone write something nice about Clare, would you?” Duncan added, slowing as they turned on the Via Veneto, pulling his straw hat down slightly and putting on what Michael thought of as his public face. Affable, but closed.
“The ambassador?”
“She’s feeling very down lately. Turns out it’s arsenic poisoning.”
“She was poisoned?” Michael was alarmed.
“We thought it was the KGB, but it seems it’s from paint flaking off her bedroom ceiling falling on her while she slept. Her gums are bleeding, teeth falling out. She’s a mess. But she’s determined to make it through the embassy Fourth of July party. She will hand a hot dog to every person in line, or die trying. Then the poor lamb will go to her newly painted lead-free room and collapse.”
The thought crossed Michael’s mind that Duncan might be having an affair with La Luce.
“Say that she’s coming for the Palio in August,” Duncan said.
“Is she?”
“God no. She’ll be on Niarchos’s yacht in August. She’s very disappointed in the Italians. Calls them ‘impossible.’ She’d love to cut off all aid to the damn place entirely. Win this election, would you? It will really cheer her up.”
“Hearts, minds and wallets, huh?”
Duncan frowned at him. “You do love your country, don’t you, Michael? You haven’t developed sympathy for the Italians because of your heritage?”
At first Michael thought he must be joking. His heritage? “Of course I love our country.” Michael stared Duncan down impatiently. “America is the greatest nation in the world, and I would do anything to protect it.”
Duncan smiled, then frowned again. “Oh, and keep your eyes open. Word is that the Soviets have a new man in Siena, too.”
5.
The heat seemed to begin even before the sun rose. Scottie’s limbs felt weighted. Ecco, who was supposed to sleep on a small towel near the front door, had clearly spent the night on the new sofa. She kissed his head and made him half a fried egg on toast. She would have to find out what Italian dogs ate, since they didn’t have Alpo or Thrivo here. After watching the already slick-with-sweat horses run the morning prova—still no Robertino—she closed the heavy shutters, but she couldn’t bear to sit inside in the dark all day. She wanted to go down to Banchi’s and see if Robertino had reappeared or sent word, but probably Michael was right. She, La Straniera, would just be in the way.
It was, after all, none of her business. She had paid Banchi for the last lessons. What right did she think she had to pry deeper?
The right of someone who cares, she thought.
She and Ecco walked as quickly as they could through the choked streets to Signor Banchi’s, but he wasn’t home. On her way back into the city she stopped at the Porcupine contrada office in Via Camollia, but it was locked. As she passed the Church of Saints Vincenzo and Atanasio, she heard voices inside. She hesitated—Catholic churches made her a little nervous, as if lightning were going to strike her the moment she set foot inside. Even though she knew your head and shoulders had to be covered, she felt like there were more secret rules she didn’t know, and like somehow her very presence there was offensive. This was one of the older churches in Siena—low, squat and plain on the outside, in the twelfth-century style. She looped Ecco’s leash over an iron dragon head outside, pulled her straw hat down securely, pushed open the door and stepped into the cool, dark interior. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw baroque flourishes, gold, a carved wooden altar, candlelight reflecting off huge canvases. Two men were talking in a corner. They looked at her in annoyance as she came in, and one of them, the priest, said, “No tours today,” in English. The other man was one of the men she had seen at Banchi’s, an official from the contrada.
“Buongiorno,” she said, continuing in Italian, “I’m wondering if there is news of Robertino Banchi.”
They shook their heads, and waited for her to leave before resuming their hushed conversation. It was probably about the Palio, but then again maybe it was about something else. Someone else.
She didn’t have an Italian driver’s license, but as she left the church, she passed a small mechanic’s garage where a very dark-eyed man with a sinewy body in oil-stained coveralls was lying on the ground working on a Vespa. There was a row of similar Vespas along one wall. He looked up at her and saw, she knew, a tourist ripe for the plucking.
“Do you by chance rent these machines?” she asked in English.