A telegram arrived at the office for Scott: ‘Re. recent find, if you want to talk come to Geneva, Best Western Hotel, tomorrow.’ That’s all it said. The name of the sender wasn’t recorded on the slip of paper, but it had been sent from a Geneva post office. It had to be from Bradley Wyndham. No one else could possibly know that he had a ‘recent find’. Scott didn’t hesitate. He called the airport to check the departure times to Geneva then drove to a travel agent in Via del Corso to book and pay for a flight the following morning. It was expensive but he hoped he would be able to reclaim the cost on expenses.
It was an Alitalia flight on a jet airliner, and the air stewardesses were particularly attractive, in short skirts and livery-green jackets. Scott sat back as a girl brought him a cup of coffee and a cream-filled cannolo. As she leaned across to open his tray table, the man in the opposite row pinched her bottom and she shrieked and scolded that he was a naughty boy. Scott could tell she wanted to say more but was suppressing her annoyance.
On arrival he caught a taxi to the hotel and, when he checked in, the receptionist handed him a note that had been left for him. ‘Come to the outdoor café in Place du Bourg-de-Four at four o’clock.’ Scott almost laughed. He felt like some third-grade secret agent in a dubious Cold War movie, but all the same he caught a taxi to the square at the appointed time. There was a fountain in the middle and just one café with outdoor tables. He examined the clientele but no one appeared to be looking for him so he sat down in a vacant place, wondering how his correspondent expected to recognise him.
‘Scott Morgan?’ a voice behind him asked, and he turned to see a wiry man wearing a business suit and dark sunglasses. ‘Bradley Wyndham.’ They shook hands and he sat down.
‘Good to meet you, Bradley. This all feels a bit hush-hush. Was it really necessary?’
Bradley removed his glasses to reveal intense blue eyes. ‘Yes, it was. You could have been a Cosa Nostra member who’d found my papers in the office and was trying to trick me into meeting. I’m extremely relieved it’s you.’
‘How do you know I’m not from Cosa Nostra?’ Scott grinned.
Bradley wasn’t smiling. ‘I’ve checked you out: Harvard degree in international relations, minor success in the athletics team, and a media mogul father. I’ve seen your photograph in the Harvard Crimson. I wouldn’t have approached you otherwise.’
‘Jeez! You’re that scared of them?’
‘Sure I am. So should you be. These people don’t mess around. I was told I had two days to get out of Rome and disappear for good and I took the hint. It’s not just me on my own – I have a wife and two kids to protect.’
He had a trustworthy face, Scott decided. Probably in his forties, receding hairline with grey hairs beginning to outnumber brown, and a lithe frame. He looked fit. But it was the way those eyes fixed on you directly that made you believe him.
‘Who warned you to leave?’
Bradley glanced around, checking there was no one close enough to overhear. ‘A man named Alessandro Ghianciamina.’
Scott’s chest tightened. ‘My old friend Alessandro,’ he remarked drily. ‘That’s who was responsible for the shape my nose is in.’ The constant dripping had eased off but it was still skewed to one side.
‘Oh Christ! If he already knows you, you can’t write about this stuff. He’ll be after you before the ink’s dry on the paper.’
‘He doesn’t know I’m a journalist.’ Scott explained what had happened and Bradley gave a long, low whistle.
‘You made a play for Alessandro Ghianciamina’s sister! Of all the bad luck … Look, I can see you are young and ambitious, but there are easier ways to earn prestige as a journalist than going after these guys. They won’t hesitate to kill you. In fact, killing would be merciful.’
A waiter came over and they ordered black coffees.
‘But you must want the story to come out,’ Scott protested. ‘Otherwise, why go to all the trouble of hiding the papers in a place where sooner or later someone would find them?’
‘You liked my little carpentry project?’ He smiled. ‘I created that to keep the documents out of harm’s way. When I was ordered to get out of town, I just left them.’
‘Funnily enough, I was working on the same kind of stories. I found someone – a drug addict – whose dealer took her to a villa on the Anzio coast where heroin was being distributed and she identified Alessandro Ghianciamina as one of the guys there. The villa is owned by a company called Costruzioni Torre Astura …’
‘Which is one of the Ghianciaminas’ companies,’ Bradley intervened.
‘Is it really?’ Scott was excited.
‘Yes, construction is a popular way of laundering drugs money. The Ghianciaminas have built luxury villas right along that coast. It’s interesting your witness saw drugs being dealt there, but you can’t print it, can you? Not based on the word of a single addict. You’ll have to find more than that. It’s just a hunch, but I bet there’s a motorboat moored at the villa that takes packages out to container ships in the bay by night. The coastguards will all have been paid to turn a blind eye. If you could get evidence of that, you’d be onto something – but still you’ll only get the little guys who drive the boat. No prosecuting attorney will ever make anything stick to Gaetano or Alessandro, the indomitable father and son team.’
The coffee arrived and Bradley tipped a single spoonful of sugar into his then stirred it thoughtfully. ‘My prediction is they’ll be wiped out by a rival family within the next five to ten years. American crime bosses are being deported from the US and coming back to the home country looking for a piece of the action. There’s a lot of rivalry in the construction industry, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s full-scale war over the next few years, with bodies turning up in the streets of Rome. I just hope yours isn’t one of them.’
Scott felt the hairs on the backs of his arms prickle as he remembered lying on the ground while Alessandro and his friends laid into him. They had been prepared to kill him that day. He could easily have died if one of their vicious kicks had connected with his head. Maybe Bradley was right. Perhaps he shouldn’t pursue this. ‘Are you still working as a journalist?’ he asked.
‘Well …’ Bradley screwed up his nose. ‘Journalism of sorts. I’m employed by a Swiss bank to write a magazine for their investors. We have a great lifestyle, with sailing on the lake in summer and skiing in winter. As jobs go, it’s lucrative, safe and dull. It’s certainly not what I imagined I’d be doing when I graduated college.’
‘Couldn’t you go back to the States and work for a paper out there? Or London? Surely the Ghianciaminas wouldn’t come after you so long as you weren’t writing about them?’
Bradley’s face took on a haunted look. ‘At first, I thought I might tough it out in Rome. I was ambitious, hungry to get the story in print – like you. And then the day after delivering his warning, Alessandro picked up my six-year-old daughter from school. The teachers just let him, then telephoned us. He took her for a ride in his flashy Alfa Romeo and bought her candy before dropping her off at our front door.’ He blinked hard. ‘They were only gone half an hour but my wife and I were frantic. I ran outside when I saw them and Alessandro beeped his horn and waved at me before driving off.’
‘Holy shit!’
‘So you see, I might write for a newspaper again one day, but not while my children are young and the Ghianciaminas are walking free. Even if I wanted to, my wife wouldn’t let me. She didn’t even want me to meet you today … And that reminds me: I don’t know where you got my brother’s number, but will you destroy it? Nothing in that office can give any clue to my whereabouts. I’m placing my trust in you, Scott. Do whatever your conscience dictates about your own research but promise me that nothing you dig up will ever lead to my door. After today’s meeting, you’re on your own.’
He nodded. ‘Message understood.’
Scott asked some questions about the government ministers on the Cosa Nostra payroll and the legislation that had been passed by them in return for bribes, then they went on to talk about the editor of Midwest Daily and his taste for stories about the rich and famous. Scott made Bradley laugh with some of the more ludicrous articles about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
‘The latest news is that Sybil Burton finally broke her silence and gave an interview to the Express in London saying that Elizabeth is a close friend of both her and her husband and that Richard is only taking her out for dinner to comfort her since her latest marriage breakdown. Isn’t that exactly what Debbie Reynolds used to say when Eddie started dating Elizabeth? That he was comforting her after Mike Todd died? History repeats itself.’
‘Poor Sybil. I don’t think she believes it for one moment. She’s desperately trying to maintain her dignity but she’s fighting a rearguard action.’
‘It’s as if the circus has come to Rome. No one will emerge from this with any dignity.’
They talked about the foreign press hacks who frequented the bar of the Eden Hotel. According to Bradley, Joe was a once-great writer who had gradually pissed away his talent in the bars of each city he was posted to.
‘Do you think he really knows Truman Capote?’ Scott asked.
Bradley was scathing. ‘Is that what he says? Maybe they were introduced at a party once but I wouldn’t count on Mr Capote remembering his name.’
Suddenly he checked his watch and rose abruptly to his feet. ‘I have to go. My wife is waiting and she’ll be nervous if I’m late.’
Scott stood to shake his hand. ‘Thanks for meeting me. I appreciate it.’
‘Take care of yourself, Scott. Think about what I’ve said.’ Bradley put on his sunglasses then, with a final nod, he hurried across the square and disappeared down an alley between buildings.
It was too late to catch a flight back to Rome, so Scott had dinner in the hotel then went for a drink in the bar, where he met an English air stewardess called Cheryl. He bought her a few cocktails and managed to lure her upstairs to his room where they had satisfactory if somewhat drunken sex. Next morning she gave him her phone number in London but he lost it on the way to the airport.