Mason went directly to the Valadier Hotel; room service, a hot shower, and fresh clothes refreshed him. He had no intention of contacting Italy’s minister of culture. The fat bureaucrat provided nothing but complications, and Mason’s new agenda was to simplify. Besides, the thought of spending time with the pompous Alberto Betti was too painful.
He called a number in Rome he’d been given by Father Pasquale Giocondi. A man answered. Mason introduced himself and said it was important that he speak with Giocondi. He gave the man the number of the hotel, saying he would be there most of the day.
Giocondi returned the call two hours later. He did not sound happy.
“Has anyone approached you since you returned?” Mason asked.
“Si. Of course.”
“And you told them only what I instructed you to say?”
The smarmy priest responded angrily in a barrage of Italian: “This is no good. No good. You lied to me. Too many people asking questions. I can no longer live in my home. The press, it looks every day to find me. I have moved in with my cousin. Idiota meschino! This is not what I want.”
The cousin was petty minded and an idiot, thought Mason. He tried to say something when Giocondi paused for breath, but he started in again. He wanted more money, a lot more, or he would go to the authorities and tell them everything.
Mason made a decision. He would not be blackmailed into giving him more. Not one more lira. “Now you shut up and listen to me,” he said, surprised at the force in his voice.
There was silence on the other end.
“We made a deal,” Luther said. “And you will live up to that deal.”
“Signor Mason, I only wish to—”
“You only wish to rip me off.”
“Non capisco.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Luther Mason raised his voice to the most menacing level he could muster. “Remember one thing,” he said. “The painting has come from very dangerous people here in Italy. Murderers, killers, mafiosi. You would not be the first man of the cloth to be found hanging in front of a church. Capisce?” That you do understand. Giocondi said nothing. Luther added to his threat: “If you do anything stupid, I will see that you face them.”
“I understand. Si, I understand, Signor Mason.”
The old man sounded frightened. Good. “Perhaps one day when this is all over, I will be able to arrange for you to receive a bit more money,” Mason said.
“Grazie.”
“I think it is good that you stay with your family. Your cousin, you say?”
The mention of the cousin set Giocondi off on another monologue, none of it flattering. He ended with, “Scemo innato!”
Whether the cousin was also a feebleminded fool was irrelevant. “Arrivederci, Father Giocondi. I will be in touch.”
Mason hung up with a smile on his face. In this deal, he’d never been one to confront, to lay down demands. But that was before. He’d decided during the long flight to Rome that unless he stiffened his backbone and met challenges head-on, everything he’d put into play could be, would be, lost.
The next call, to Paris, was answered in what sounded, based upon background noise, like a restaurant. The man spoke a language Mason identified as Greek.
“Do you speak English?” Luther said.
He said he did, but his garbled attempt said otherwise. Luther told him he wanted to speak with Jacques Saison. “The artist. Upstairs.” He realized he was shouting, which would do nothing to break through the language barrier.
“Saison? Artiste? Uh huh. Saison. You hang over.”
Hang over? Mason heard the phone drop on a hard surface. Not yet. Hang on now, a pleasant hangover in Paradise later.
Jacques Saison spoke in French. He slurred his words. Was he drunk?
“Are they ready?” Mason asked. “The two copies. The painting Signore Giliberti brought to you.”
“Ah. Oui. Oui. They are ready.”
“I will be there to pick them up tomorrow.”
“Oui. What time?”
“In the afternoon. You will be there?”
“Oui. You will have the money?”
“Yes, I will have the money.”
The money. The money. It was the sound of the Greek chorus, and the Italian, and the French. Mason booked a flight from Rome to Paris, then went to a bank, where he withdrew the balance of funds from a joint account he’d shared with Carlo Giliberti, converting the lire to francs. He returned to the Valadier, where he packed his suitcase, placing most of the money beneath his neatly folded clothing.
He enjoyed an early, expensive dinner of risotto fiori di zucca at an outdoor table at La Maiella on the Piazza Navona, and a bottle of mineral water.
He was wide awake after dinner, despite his recent lack of sleep, and decided to walk back to the hotel. Mason walked slowly, admiring shops and busy cafes and the smart-looking men and women going in and out of them. But when he reached the via del Corso, he was suddenly overcome with fatigue. He took a table at a small outdoor cafe and ordered a sambuca alla mosca, more interested in the coffee beans on which to munch than the alcohol. It felt good to rest his legs. The travel, the anxiety, the talk of money had caught up with him. He needed to go to bed.
As he searched for his busy waiter to get a check, he looked into an adjacent cafe. He’d seen the man earlier that evening, remembered the colors: black raincoat, red beret, scraggly beard and moustache, a cigarette dangling from his lips. The man had passed several times as Mason ate at La Maiella. And he’d seen him again while walking to the hotel. Seeing someone twice wouldn’t strike him as unusual. But three times in one evening? The chances of coincidence vanished. His stomach knotted, his heart pounded. Sensi. The man must work for Luigi Sensi.
How would the old mafioso know he was in Rome? Who knew he’d come there? Scott Pims. Court Whitney. The travel agent in San Francisco. None of them would have a connection with Sensi, nor would they have reason to hurt him.
He dropped lire on the table and left the cafe, turned the corner, and walked at a brisk pace to the next corner, where he stopped and looked back. The red beret had left his cafe and was looking in Mason’s direction. Abruptly, Mason ran, cutting through a small park and down a narrow alley linking two streets, then stopping to lean against a tree in front of yet another cafe. His lungs threatened to explode. He went inside and joined a throng of drinkers at the end of a long bar. “Mineral water,” he ordered, looking for a rear exit, looking to the front window. No sign of the red beret. He waited a half hour before venturing out to the street again. He told the cab driver to take him to the Valadier. Once there, he lingered in the lobby to make sure he wasn’t being followed. Confident he wasn’t, he went to his room, bolted the door, and stepped out onto the small terrace overlooking the Borghese Gardens. It took a long time for his nervous system to return to near normal. He sat in a white wrought-iron chair and looked up into a pristine night, the sky black, the stars unusually bright. He lingered there a long time, trying to sort through what was occurring.
He knew from the moment he’d turned fantasy into reality that there would be great risks. If he were caught, he would be branded a fraud and a thief. Everything he had worked so hard to gain professionally would be stripped away in an instant. Worse, he might be charged with theft, or fraud, or both, and face a jail sentence. That thought, during his darkest hours, frightened him.
But those potential ramifications seemed almost silly now. The one thing he’d never considered was murder. The murder of his good friend, Carlo.
Certainly not his own murder.
Fear and fatigue fought for control. Fatigue won. He undressed, brushed his teeth, slid beneath the sheets, turned out the light, and for the first time in years, prayed. The old expression, no atheists in foxholes, crossed his mind as he fell asleep.
As Mason drifted into unconsciousness, the man in the black raincoat and red beret ordered a cappuccino downstairs in the Valadier’s small coffee bar. “Grazie,” he said to the young waitress. He sipped. Good coffee. Sometimes you get lucky, he thought. This was a good assignment.