The Bible of Clay (16 page)

carlo cipriani immersed himself in the newspaper,

ignoring Mercedes' constant pacing. Hans Hausser was staring vacantly at the curls of smoke that rose from his old pipe, his thoughts a million miles away. Meanwhile, Bruno Miiller sat stolidly, avoiding eye contact with everyone in the room.

Luca Marini had asked to see them at one; it was now one-thirty and the secretary refused to give them any information, even whether Luca was in his office.

It was almost two when the former police officer entered the reception area and, his face grave, asked them into his office.

"I've just had a meeting with the director-general of state security. I wish I hadn't," Luca said, closing the door behind him. "What happened?" Carlo asked.

"The government isn't buying Mercedes' account of my men's trip to Iraq. They need something more, something to help them keep drumming into Italy that Saddam is a monster. That way, the government paves the way for public support if it decides to send troops to Iraq. This case is good for the government. It's even being talked about on TV."

"I'm sorry, my friend," was the only thing that Carlo could manage to say. "We've got you into a terrible mess."

"If only we could tell the truth," Luca insisted. "If only you people would tell me what all this is about."

"Luca, please," Carlo pleaded. "You know that's not going to happen."

"All right, then, here's where we stand. I told state security your version of events, and they looked at me like I was crazy. They pressured me, of course, but I stuck to it. They may call you, Mercedes, possibly just to satisfy their curiosity about a person of your age and position sending private investigators to Iraq."

"We haven't committed any crime," Mercedes said irritably.

"No, you haven't. Nor have I. But two of my men are dead and nobody knows why—except the four of you, of course. Since any investigations into your background, Mercedes, will no doubt reveal that you are a person of unquestionable integrity, you're probably safe. But I want to make crystal clear to you that the director of state security is very, shall we say, concerned. Personally, I've never seen a politician actually concerned about anything—I just think he sees a way to make a little political profit off this. But in order to do that he needs a story. And he's going to keep pushing until he gets one."

"That's something that we are simply not able to give," Hans said flatly.

"I think the best thing to do is go back home," Bruno suggested.

"Yes, that would be best," Luca agreed, "because I have not the slightest doubt that we're all being followed. So please don't all leave the building together—leave one by one, and take your time about it. And try to act naturally. As you said, you haven't done anything illegal."

They were all silent for a few seconds, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Then Hans spoke up again.

"Since that's the way things stand, it's best we face them head on. You, Signore Marini, will continue to tell the truth, precisely as you have been doing thus far."

"No, I haven't told the whole truth," Luca protested.

"Yes, you have, as far as you are able. You can't tell what you don't know," the professor reminded him. "As for us, we should talk a bit before we go our separate ways. I think, Bruno, your anxiety is telling you that we should all go back home. Of course we have to go back, but not just now, not running as though we were fugitives. We are all respectable old men—and women, in your case, Mercedes. We are simply a bunch of old friends. So, Carlo, I will very gladly accept your invitation to lunch, if you're so kind as to invite me, and I think we should all go. If the police want to talk to us, we'll tell them the truth, that we're a group of friends who've met in Rome and that Mercedes, who is the dashing and devil-may-care member of our group, has decided that Iraq is a very good place to do business because, when the war is over, everything the Americans destroyed will have to be rebuilt. There's nothing wrong, or even suspicious, in the fact that she, the owner of a very large construction company, might want a piece of that pie. So far as I know, she hasn't led any demonstrations or carried any signs denouncing the war—or have you, my dear?"

"No, not yet at least, although I really thought I might go to the demonstrations in Barcelona." She smiled.

"Well, now you can't," Hans told her bluntly. "Perhaps another time."

"You take my breath away, Professor," Luca said. "Apparently you didn't hear me: The director-general of state security for Italy is determined to get to the bottom of what happened to these two dead men, because his higher-ups want to get to the bottom of it."

"If there's nothing there, there's nothing the police or anyone else can do," Hausser insisted.

"But there
is
something there—there are two dead bodies," Marini replied angrily.

"Enough!" Carlo broke in. "I agree with Hans; we can't act like criminals. We haven't killed anybody. If need be, I'll speak with some friends in the government, patients of mine. But we need not flee the country or leave this office one by one in secret. I refuse to feel guilty."

Defeat and resignation colored Luca's face. "You all seem very secure about this. . . . All right, so much the better. As far as I'm concerned, the case is closed—unless my old colleagues call me again or we all see each other on television. If something comes up, I'll call you."

Once outside, Carlo indeed suggested that they all go to his house for a late lunch, where they could talk comfortably among themselves.

But they ate practically in silence, making intermittent small talk. When they retired to the living room for coffee, Carlo asked his housekeeper that they not be interrupted and closed the doors.

"We have to make a decision," he said when he'd turned back to his friends.

"It's made," Mercedes reminded him. "We'll hire one of those companies, and send a professional to find Tannenberg and do what has to be done. That's all we have to talk about."

"Are we all still agreed about that?" Carlo asked.

The affirmative reply from his three friends was immediate.

"I have the phone number of a company, Global Group. The owner, a man named Tom Martin, is a friend of Luca's. Luca said we could use his name when we called."

"Carlo, I don't know whether it's a good idea to keep getting Luca involved."

"You may be right, Mercedes, but we don't know anyone else in this business, so I say we call this Martin. I hope Luca will forgive us."

They agreed that Hans would set up the deal. He would make an appointment with Tom Martin in London personally and test the waters. What they intended to ask Martin to do was simple: send a man to Iraq. They already knew where Clara Tannenberg lived, so sooner or later their man would find Alfred. Then he would choose the right moment and kill him. For a professional, that shouldn't be so hard.

Bruno insisted that he wanted to get back to Vienna as soon as possible. He was no longer comfortable in Rome and in fact thought it was past time that they all went their separate ways again. They needed to work out the logistics of staying in touch from their separate locations.

"In case our home phones are tapped, we shouldn't use them," Hans suggested. "We can buy disposable cell phones and use them once only. They're untraceable."

"Let's not get paranoid, please," Mercedes said.

"No, Hans is right," Carlo said. "We need to be careful. I don't think disposable phones are a bad idea. We'll figure out a way to get the numbers to each other, maybe by e-mail," he continued.

"But if they intercept our phone calls, they can do the same thing with our e-mails. The Internet is the least secure place in the world to keep a secret."

"Oh, Bruno, don't be such a pessimist!" Mercedes scolded him. "Each of us will open a fake Hotmail account and send the others the telephone numbers, and we'll stay in contact that way. But we have to be careful, because Hotmail isn't secure; anybody can access our accounts, so we need to be a little cryptic when we send messages."

They devoted part of the evening to deciding the names they would use on the Internet, and Hans came up with a cryptogram in which the letters represented numbers, the numbers of the cell phones they would constantly be buying and discarding once they were used.

It was late when the four friends took their leave of one another, embracing warmly and a bit sadly. The next day, Bruno and Hans would be leaving Rome. Mercedes would linger a couple of days longer so as not to give the impression, if the police were watching them, that the whole group was fleeing.

"So—what's Picot decided to do?" Robert Brown asked impatiently as Ralph Barry hung up the phone.

"My contact says Picot returned from Iraq very impressed, though he does say it would be crazy to go over now to excavate: There's no time. He curses Bush and Saddam both, says they're two of a kind."

"You haven't answered my question, Ralph. I want to know whether he's going to go or not."

"He hasn't decided, but apparently he hasn't discarded the idea completely. In the meantime, he's gone to Madrid."

"Could we get Dukais' Planet Security men into the expedition, if it happens?" Robert asked. George had made it clear to him that they needed their own man on the scene.

"Do you really think Dukais' gorillas can pass themselves off as archaeology students?"

"Of course they can! I need men on that excavation. So Dukais is just going to have to find people with the right look."

"And with a knowledge of history, geography, geology, et cetera—I can't see it, Robert, I just can't see it. Those thugs couldn't even tell you where Mesopotamia is, let alone the difference between it and the newest brew at Starbucks."

"Well, they're going to have to take a quick course in the Middle East, then. We'll give them a bonus if they can manage to pass themselves off as students, or even professors."

"Jesus, Robert! In academia, everybody knows everybody else, at least by reputation. They'll be found out in a second."

Brown opened the door of the office and poked his head out, startling his elegantly suited and very discreet private secretary.

"Is there something I can do, Mr. Brown?" asked Smith.

"Dukais hasn't come in yet?"

"No, sir. I'd have let you know."

"What time did you tell him?"

"At four, sir, as you said."

"It's four-ten."

"Yes, sir. He must have been delayed in traffic." "Dukais is an idiot." "Yes, sir."

At just that moment, the imposing figure of Paul Dukais appeared in the doorway.

"It's about time!" thundered Brown.

"Sorry, Robert. The shuttle was running late, and Washington traffic is hell at rush hour."

"You might have left early."

"A little anal lately, aren't we," the president of Planet Security replied coolly.

In Brown's office, after glasses of whiskey had been passed around, Ralph tried to reduce the tension between the two men.

"Paul, Robert wants men on the archaeological mission that Yves Picot may be preparing to organize. I'll send you Picot's dossier, but for now you should know he's French, rich, an ex-Oxford professor, a womanizer, and a bit of an Indiana Jones. But he knows what he's doing, and he knows everybody in the field."

"So what kind of men are we talking about?"

"For a start, they have to be university graduates, men who can talk naturally about academia. They can't be Americans, and can't be tied to us. You have to find them in Europe, some Arab country maybe, but not here."

"Plus they must have impeccable archaeological credentials and be willing to kill whomever we target, right?" Dukais asked ironically.

"Exactly." The tone of Robert's answer left no doubt of his irritation.

"Which reminds me, Robert—I've prepped the teams of men you wanted stationed at the various borders surrounding Iraq. When you give the order, they'll be deployed."

"They'll have to wait a while longer. Let's fix this problem first."

"I don't know how to fix it, Robert. I don't know any university-graduates-cum-mercenaries, or vice versa. I'll look around the Balkans; there may be somebody there."

"Good idea. They've been killing people there since they were kids. There must be university graduates looking for cash who've been on one side or the other."

Ralph Barry listened to their conversation with a mixture of admiration and revulsion. His conscience had been bought off years ago, and it had gone for a mint. He was no longer astounded by the things he heard, although Robert himself always surprised him. He was a Janus, and there were very few people who had seen both faces. Most people would have said he was a well-educated, refined man of excellent taste and manners, a man of his word, incapable even of running a red light. But Ralph knew another Robert Brown, a man who was cruel, unscrupulous, foul-mouthed, with a greed for money and power that had no bounds. Ralph had a feeling that the powerful George Wagner might be the only man before whom Brown trembled. He'd never asked much about that connection; he knew that he'd get no answer, and what Robert valued most was discreet, even hermetic loyalty.

Paul would call them as soon as he'd found any men who might fit the bill—
if
he
found them.

Once again, Picot was meticulously studying the slides he'd made of the tablets. Fabian Tudela was watching him out of the corner of his eye. He knew that Yves was coming to a decision and that it almost certainly wouldn't be the right one. But that was the way his friend was. They'd known each other since Yves' teaching days at Oxford, when Fabian was working on his doctorate, the subject of which was cuneiform inscriptions. Both men were quasi-misfits at that venerable institution; they'd hit it off immediately.