Nameless Night (36 page)

To make matters worse, Jacobson was late. Bob checked his watch again, sighed and stamped his feet to keep warm. That’s when he caught sight of the feet sliding along the edge of the stone staircase, moving his way. Had to be Jacobson . . . and about damn time, too. A single large rhododendron bush separated them now. Bob readied his verbal salvo. He opened his mouth as the hand pushed the bush aside and he stepped into the narrow clearing at the back of the flower bed. His body began to vibrate. He felt as if he must be emitting a humming noise. It wasn’t Jacobson but a white-haired man in a trench coat, with a well-trimmed mustache and bright blue eyes. The man felt his panic and held up a restraining hand. He pulled a leather case from his pocket. “FBI,” he said. Bob looked to his right. Another figure approached. Vaguely familiar. Bigger. Younger. Wearing a black wool cap.

“There’s nowhere to run,” the white-haired man said.

“Do you have any idea—” Bob began.

“Please.”

“Has it suddenly become a federal crime to stand in a public park in broad daylight? What exactly do you imagine you’re . . .”

The FBI agent was waving a photograph of what was obviously a dead body. Bob recognized the corpse. His stomach churned. He looked away.

“Do you know this man?”

“Never seen him before in my life. Now if you will . . .”

The FBI agent gestured toward the photo. “Ronald Jacobson hired this man to kill you.”

Bob felt his knees weaken. The contents of his stomach flipped over and threatened to spew from his lips. “No one was supposed to get hurt,” he forced out.

The other two men looked at him as if he were speaking in tongues.

“The tiles . . .” he stammered. “We were just trying to . . .” Bob looked from one man to the other. “We just wanted to stop the program for a while, don’t you understand?” Neither man seemed to have heard. “It wasn’t personal,” Bob insisted. “It was about money. About appropriations . . .” he tried. When the men appeared not to comprehend, he went on. “The generals wanted the space program stopped for a while so they could use the money for the war.” He looked for understanding. Finding none, he segued, “We are at war, you know,” he tried. The righteous indignation fell flat.

“Which generals?” the younger man asked.

Bob Reese began to stammer. “I wasn’t the one who—” He stopped himself. Sirens began to fill his ears. Above his throbbing head vehicles screeched to a halt. More sirens, whooping their way, closer, louder, groaning to silence, and then the sound of voices followed by the slap of feet running down the stairs in the seconds before the sound of something metal, something on wheels bouncing his way.

“Mr. Reese,” Agent Moody said. “We’re going to go through a little charade here for Mr. Jacobson’s benefit.”

“I . . . I don’t understand . . . I . . .”

Another pair of agents pushed their way through the shrubbery. Agent Moody gestured toward the pair of younger men. “Please go with these gentlemen,” he said.

“It wasn’t personal,” Bob muttered. “We just wanted to . . .”

They took Bob Reese by the elbows and led him away. Randy and the FBI agent followed them out into the park. A cadre of agents was keeping gawkers at a distance as the ambulance attendants carried the gurney back up the stairs to the waiting aid car. Even up close, the bloodstains on the sheet looked real. Agent Moody looked over at Randy.

“Go,” he said.

RANDY RECITED THE directions in his head as he walked along Beacon Avenue. Three blocks north. Left on Cavanaugh. Halfway down the block . . . just past the Gnu Deli Delhi, left into the alley, all the way down the end.

He checked his watch: 5:57 a.m. This part of the city was strictly business. Housing was virtually nonexistent. Nobody was on the street as he stopped at the mouth of the alley. Somewhere in the distance the roar of a truck rumbled to his ears. He took a deep breath and made it a point not to look over his shoulder. The alley was long and dark, running, without interruption, for an entire city block. A collection of overflowing Dumpsters jutted out from the right-hand side of the alley. He kept as far left as he could, trying to keep his feet out of the stinking refuse and broken glass as he worked his way across the rough stones. Halfway down the alley, Randy could make out a jagged silhouette standing at the far end. He hesitated as the figure stepped away from the bricks, into the center of the narrow confines. He kept his hands in his pockets as he moved along. To his right the scurrying of rat feet made his skin crawl. He kept moving. The figure bent at the waist and set the attaché case on the ground.

“I had hoped we would never have occasion to meet,” the figure said. “Nothing personal, I’m sure you understand.”

“Everything’s personal,” Randy said.

The guy kept his right hand in his pocket as he gestured with his head toward the case. “As promised.”

Randy stood still. Something about the guy set his nerves to jangling. Beneath the layer of bureaucratic blubber, Randy could sense something . . . something . . . He squatted and groped for the case’s handle, keeping his eyes glued on the dark shape and wondering where in hell Moody and the rest of the FBI were. The deal was done. Money was changing hands. They were supposed to be appearing about now. The roar of the truck drew ever nearer. Without willing himself to do so, Randy found himself looking back over his shoulder, back the way he’d come, back in the direction the cavalry was supposed to be riding to his rescue just about now. Big mistake. Damn near his last.

Jacobson was quick. He had the silenced automatic out of his pocket in a flash.

All Randy could do was raise the case in front of his face. The slug came out of the barrel as nothing more than a loud hiss, a lead comet tearing through the metal, coming out the far side so close to Randy’s face he felt as if he’d been branded on the cheek in the second before he threw the case at the guy and began to reel backward like a Fridaynight drunk, flailing his arms as he sought to regain his balance. The guy blocked the case with his forearm and raised the gun again.

Randy dove behind the nearest trash bin as another hiss gouged a furrow in the brick closest to his face. He used every bit of his strength to propel the oversize metal container in a half circle, forcing the rank, rusted wheels across the littered surface until he thought his shoulder would surely break from the socket, staying low, angling the Dumpster across the alley sideways, filling the entire space with a ton and a half of metal-clad garbage. He cradled his aching shoulder, scrambled to his feet, and ran. Ran toward the street in the seconds before the mouth of the alley filled with the diesel roar and the bright lights of the garbage truck whose groaning bulk filled the alley, leaving only inches to spare on either side. He heard a curse from inside the truck and then another as the red-hot buzz of another slug tore past his ear and smashed itself against the grille.

He ran. It was all he could do. He was still forty yards from the truck when the driver pulled himself out the window, climbed quickly to the roof of the cab, and scrambled over the length of the truck before dropping out of sight as another bullet smashed one of the headlights.

Unsure his aching legs could jump high enough to get up on the hood of the truck, Randy, in the time-honored manner of the pursued, went to ground, diving under the front bumper of the garbage truck, crawling beneath the roaring collection of pipes and engines and mufflers, using his elbows to walk himself forward faster than he would have believed possible.

Despite the throb of the exhaust and the scrape of moving parts, Randy could hear the slap of feet coming up the alley behind him, could sense the moment when his pursuer went high, scratching and crawling his way over the hood and up onto the roof and the top of the truck, moving much faster on his feet than Randy could manage on his bleeding elbows.

Whatever advantage Randy might have gained was gone. They arrived at the back of the truck in the same instant. As Randy flipped over onto his back and began to pull himself to his feet, his pursuer jumped down into the yawning mouth of the trash compartment. He was close enough for Randy to see the beads of sweat covering his face. The guy pointed the gun at Randy’s face and smiled. Trying desperately to get to his feet, Randy reached for the nearest piece of metal, sending the hydraulic compactor platform snapping upward with the speed of a freight train, crushing Jacobson’s legs like matchsticks. The guy screamed like nothing Randy had ever heard before as Randy pulled himself to his knees, still using the handle to pull himself upright, the truck groaning and shaking as the compactor drum rose in the air like a massive metal moon. The gun clattered to the ground. Jacobson was howling at the moon and shaking back and forth like a branch in the wind. Randy glanced over his shoulder in time to see Moody and his FBI minions arrive at the mouth of the alley. He grabbed the handle again.

“Which generals?”

Jacobson mumbled something. Randy pulled the handle. In his peripheral vision he could see Moody holding his agents back. The crushing power of the truck pulled a full-fledged scream from Jacobson’s lungs.

“Which generals?” Randy yelled again.

“Samuels,” Jacobson said in a high-pitched voice.

“Who else?”

Randy made a fake reach for the handle.

“Crane . . . Crane.”

Randy tweaked the handle. Jacobson went back to baying at the moon.

“Who else?”

Randy eased off on the power.

“That was it. Swear to God,” Jacobson wheezed. “Swear to God.”

Moody was at Randy’s shoulder now, pulling his hand from the handle and leading him out to the mouth of the alley.

“You recognize the names?” Randy asked.

Moody’s expression said he wished he hadn’t. “Joint Chiefs of Staff,” he said. “Both of them.”

54

The late afternoon sun wore a smog halo as it splashed its last orange rays onto the ancient buildings. The worn paving stones of the Via Minerva seemed to glow from within. Behind the couple, the ancient dome of the Pantheon rose in the air like a brick-andmarble mountain. Kirsten slid the front page of the International Herald Tribune across the table. “Seems you’ve caused quite a stink,” she said. He winced and pretended to ignore the page, sipping at his coffee until he couldn’t stand it anymore and then sneaking a peek at the lead story about how a pair of resignations in the Joint Chiefs of Staff were being scrutinized by a Senate subcommittee whose charge it was determine the extent of possible military involvement in an alleged effort to undermine the space program. While embattled NSA deputy director Ronald W. Jacobson was refusing to testify on advice of council, former undersecretary of defense Robert Reese was cooperating with the congressional investigation and was expected to testify in open session early next week. Recent allegations regarding the Venture tragedy . . . He pushed the paper back across the table. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys,” he said.

Kirsten spread her arms and stretched. A yawn escaped from her mouth. She covered it with the back of her hand and apologized. He smiled. “Sounds like somebody could use a nap,” She gave him a wolfish grin. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

He squinted into the setting sun. “Let’s head back,” he said. By way of agreement, she yawned again.

Paul . . . Randy . . . Adrian . . . Gavin. He wasn’t sure what to call himself these days. He threw a ten-euro note on the table and rose to his feet.

A sudden break in the traffic along the Via del Cestan revealed the army of feral cats who made their home in and around the Pantheon, skittering from sunshine to shadow and back in search of whatever tidbits they could find, constantly in motion like a fastrunning river of fur winding in and around the foundations. They strolled arm in arm along the narrow streets until they arrived at the Hotel Coronet, where they had been staying for nearly a month. As they mounted the three steps to the vestibule, a flash of yellow in his peripheral vision pulled his eyes back along the route they’d just traveled.

She read the concern in his eyes. “What?” she asked.

“I thought I saw something,” he said.

A grandmother shepherded a pair of young boys along the street. He rubbed his eyes. “I’m the one needs a nap,” he joked as they stepped inside. Something in his voice told her the levity wasn’t sincere.

The entire building had once been a private palace called the Doria Pamphili. Modern sensibilities and Italian taxes had reduced the once-proud Pamphili family to living exclusively on the sixth floor and leasing out the remaining space. Retail shops filled the ground floor. The Roman offices of the Associated Press occupied the second, while the Hotel Coronet did business on the fourth. Three and five were an eclectic collection of doctors, dentists, accountants, and bond brokers. His name tag read Vincenzo DeGrazia. He manned the small registration desk of the Hotel Coronet. He was scheduled to leave at four, a mere fifteen minutes away, when he looked up from the desk to see the familiar couple now approaching him. Big, both of them. The man was a bruiser. She was tall for a woman but beautiful. Must be newlyweds, Vincenzo decided. The way they clung to each other.

“Aaah . . . Mr. and Mrs. Landis. Welcome back,” he said in his heavily accented English. “I hope you enjoyed your day in Roma,” he said.

“Thank you, we did,” said Kirsten.

The man nodded pleasantly and cast a backward glance toward the empty street. Before Vincenzo could muster up enough English to make further small talk, the man took her by the elbow and pulled her off down the hall and out of sight. Room 43 was the third door on the left. The maid had pulled the curtains. The room was cool and dark. Kirsten excused herself and headed for the loo.

He waited to hear the snap of the lock and then walked over to the window. He pulled back the drapes in time to catch yet another flash of yellow as it disappeared around the corner. He snatched a room key from the top of the desk, let himself out into the hall, and hurried back to the lobby. “Mr. Landis . . . What may I . . .”