All He Saw Was the Girl (8 page)

    Ray
said, "If you're finished, I'm going back to bed."

    Sturza
flashed a grin and shook his head.

    "You're
the one who's finished," Tracey said. "I'll tell you one thing, you
won't be on another protective assignment for the rest of your career. That I
can pretty much guarantee." His pale white face was flushed red now like
he was going to explode.

    Ray
was called back to Washington and dressed down by the Director of Protective
Operations who told him he was in trouble, a walking time bomb.

    The
director said, "What were you thinking? You know what on-call means.
Secret Service regulations strictly forbid the consumption of alcohol at any
time during a protective assignment. Violations or slight disregard for this
rule are cause for removal from the Service."

    He
was a big man with a folksy style, talking down to Ray in that bureaucratic
voice, like Ray was an idiot.

    "I
have Agent Tracey's report right here. In it, he states: When you didn't check
in, and didn't answer numerous phone calls, he went to your hotel room. He said
he found you in an intoxicated, disheveled condition. In Agent Tracey's
opinion, you were not in full possession of your mental and physical abilities.
He observed a bottle of Scotch whisky in your room, and he said you smelled
like you had been drinking. Further, when he questioned you about it you were
belligerent and uncooperative. Agent Pope, you've demonstrated a pattern of
behavior that is extremely troubling. This is your third breach of conduct.
You're what the Service defines as a risk. Your bad judgment could've put the
protectee and everyone in your detail in serious jeopardy. We can no longer
trust you in a protective capacity. We no longer have confidence in you as a
field agent, and as you know, trust and confidence are the core values upon
which the Service was built."

    He
sounded like he was reading it out of the agency manual. He told Ray his
behavior warranted dismissal, but they would make an exception and let him
finish out his career in the uniform division. Ray pictured himself at the
entrance to a foreign embassy, bored out of his mind, watching cars go by. He
told the director "no thanks" and that was it.

    McCabe
opened his eyes and had no idea where he was. His head hurt where he'd been
hit, a lump the size of a fifty-cent piece over his ear. The room was dark and
musty. His hands were cuffed to a chain that went over the edge of the bed. He
couldn't see its end point. Not yet, eyes adjusting to the light coming from a
window high up on one the walls, light beaming in sharp and bright at the
margins where the dark paper or cloth didn't cover it.

    He
heard water dripping. Heard a train, the
ticket-ticket- ticket
sound as
it passed close by, shaking the beamed ceiling above him, sending dust through
the cracks. He thought he was in the country outside Rome, no idea where, which
direction. He pictured the farmhouses he'd seen on train trips to Florence,
tile roofs and stucco walls painted colors like umber and sienna, colors he'd
never seen anywhere but Italy. The houses and their outbuildings were built
close to the tracks and he wondered why with all the acreage they had.

    He
heard a dog bark somewhere outside. Heard a car pull up, tires crunching on
gravel. Heard two car doors close. And voices. He pictured the scene in Villa
Borghese. They had cuffed his hands behind his back and picked him up and
carried him to a van parked nearby. Borghese had streets and walking paths
crisscrossing through it.

    He
tried to remember how long he was in the van, how long it took to drive there,
but couldn't. He was dazed, in and out of consciousness. They blindfolded him
and lifted him out of the van and led him across a gravel area through a
doorway into the house and down an old wooden staircase that creaked and
groaned, into the cellar.

    He
was lying on a stained mattress on a bed with a metal frame. The room was
twenty by twenty, the walls made out of brick, reminding him of the ancient
brickwork in the Forum, the same simple style. There was a chair ten feet or so
from the bed. He saw something moving out of the corner of his eye, a rat
walking along one of the walls, long tail dragging. The rat looking over at
him. What're you doing here? This cellar is mine. The rat went through a hole
in the wall and disappeared.

    He'd
felt something crawling on him during the night and swatted it off. Probably
the rat checking him out. He thought of the movie
Papillon,
Steve
McQueen in solitary confinement, making friends with a bug. If McCabe was down
here long enough, he might hang out with the rat, give it a name. How about Caesar?
That sounded like a good Italian rat name.

    He
was handcuffed to a chain that snaked across the floor and looped around one of
the wooden support posts that held up the house. Picking the lock or breaking
the chain wasn't going to happen, so he'd have to come up with another way to
escape. Behind him he could see meat hanging from ropes attached to the
ceiling, cylindrical rolls of salami and the skinned carcasses of game animals.

    There
were shelves against the far wall. He moved as far as the chain would let him
and looked at the jars of canned fruits and vegetables, McCabe starving,
thinking it had been close to twenty-four hours since he'd eaten, but the chain
wouldn't go far enough. There were also wine racks against a wall, filled with
bottles. He couldn't reach those either.

    He
went back to the bed and sat with his legs over the side, feet on the floor. He
thought about Angela setting him up, if that was really her name. Did this have
something to do with the newspaper article that transposed his name with
Chip's? The kidnappers thinking they had the son of a United States senator, a
slam-dunk ransom. McCabe didn't have his wallet with him, rarely carried it
unless he was traveling and needed ID. He'd left it at school so there was no way
they could identify him. All they knew, he was Charles Tallenger III.
Eventually they'd find out he was the wrong guy. They'd call the school and Mr
Rady would check and see that Chip was in Sicily, call his cell phone and that
would be that. They'd realize McCabe wasn't who they thought he was and let him
go.

    Hours
later he heard keys rattle and a door open upstairs. Then he heard someone
coming down and saw him appear, first his feet and legs and then the rest of
him. It was the big guy, the nose guard from Villa Borghese, carrying a tray
like he wasn't used to it, taking small steps so he wouldn't tip the wine
bottle over. He still wore the blue-and-white bandana over his face like an
outlaw waiter. He came over, stood in front of McCabe, fingers thick as
sausages, holding the tray that had olive branches painted on it.

    
"Mangia
,"
he said.

    McCabe
took the tray, staring at the plate of salami, bread and cheese, and put it on the
mattress next to him. The big man picked up the wine bottle, filled a stemmed
glass about halfway and handed it to McCabe. He took the wine bottle and the
other glass and sat in the chair. He drank wine, lifting the bandana to bring
the glass to his mouth.

    McCabe
folded a piece of salami in half and put it in his mouth and drank some wine
while he was chewing. He ate some cheese, broke off a piece of bread and washed
it down with more wine.

    McCabe
said, "Where are we?"

    He
looked at him but didn't answer, poured another glass of wine. Drank that and
filled the glass again. When the wine was gone he put the bottle and glass on
the brick floor. Closed his eyes, leaned back and a few minutes later he was
snoring, big chest rising and falling, big body dwarfing the chair, making it
look like it was designed for a little kid.

    He'd
been asleep for a few minutes when McCabe got up and gathered the chain, trying
not to make noise. He was watching the big man's face, not paying attention,
and kicked the wine bottle over, rolling on the brick floor, making a racket.
McCabe picked it up and stood frozen next to him, holding his breath, expecting
him to wake up and hoping he wouldn't. Now he heard a voice calling from
upstairs.

    "Noto…"

    McCabe
was squatting next to him, staring at the ring of keys on his belt. He heard
footsteps on the stairs. Someone came partway down and stopped.

    "Noto,
you down there? What are you doing?"

    "I
tell him I have one of his students," Mazara said. He took out a pack of
Marlboro reds and lit one, blowing smoke across the table.

    Angela
sipped cappuccino and wiped foam from her upper lip with a napkin. "What
did he say?"

    "'Who
are you?'" Roberto said.

    "You
can't criticize him for that, uh?"

    "I
say, 'Signor Rady, it does not matter who I am, it is who I have.'"

    "That's
a good line," Angela said.

    "He
say, 'What is this about?' I say, 'It's about a kidnap- ping.

    Angela
said, "Is he stupid? What did he think it was?"

    "He
must be. He say, 'Who do you have?' I say, 'Chip Tallenger.' He say, 'How do I
know you have him?' 'I tell you I do. Check around. Do you see him? No, because
he is not there.'"

    "What
did the man say?"

    "You
will not believe this. He say, 'Call back in twenty minutes.' "

    Angela
said, "Come on, he did not."

    "I
say, 'Listen, I am the one give the orders. You have twenty-four hours to get
this money, half a million euro. Do you understand?' He say, 'That's 650,000
dollars.'" Mazara took a long drag on the cigarette, blowing out smoke.
"He say, 'What if we need more time?'"

    "Did
you tell him there is no more time?"

    "Yes,
of course."

    They
were sitting at a table at a
tavola calda
in Orvieto, Angela sipping
cappuccino, Mazara smoking.

    Angela
said, "Did he understand? I do not have much confidence in this Signor
Rady. Is there someone else?"

    "It
will be okay. Signor Rady will call the father and the father will know what to
do."

    "Did
you tell him Signor Tallenger's life is in danger? Does he understand what will
happen if the ransom is not paid? Did you impress that upon him?"

    Roberto
nodded. "I made sure to tell him."

    Angela
said, "We better go, uh?"

    "What
is the hurry? He is not going anywhere."

    Angela
was thinking about the American. She was expecting him to be different, this
student from a wealthy family, the son of a well-known American politician, a
senator, an important man. The senator was profiled in
Corriere della sera
as a self- made multi-millionaire living in Greenwich, Connecticut, one of the
wealthiest cities in the United States. The one she met didn't seem to fit this
background - his attitude, his clothes.

    Pulling
the thief off the motorcycle was the first indication. That was unexpected, but
made it all work. Her job was to get his attention and hope he wanted to meet
her. The thieves had made it much easier. But what really surprised her was how
tough he was, fighting four of them. It was lucky Mazara hit him when he did or
Chip Tallenger would have gotten away for sure.

    She
wondered what might have happened if they had met under different
circumstances. There was something about him.

    McCabe
unlocked the handcuffs and placed them on the floor, trying not to make any
noise. The big man was asleep, snoring. He went up the stairs, stopped and
listened. He turned the handle, opened the door a crack and looked down a hall
into the house. He smelled onions cooking. Went through the door, moving to his
left and looked into the kitchen. There was a skillet on the stovetop, the
smell of pancetta and onions filling the room. There was a cigarette burning in
an ashtray.

    A
voice said, "What are you doing in there? You are worse than a woman."

    He
came in the kitchen now, the stocky guy with red hair from the holding cell,
picked up his cigarette, took a drag and put it down. He wore a shoulder
holster over a white tank top. He moved toward the doorway and yelled, "No
to…" And to himself he said, "Where is he?"