The Italian Mission (4 page)

An hour later, the conductor announced “
Attenzione, attenzione, prossima fermata Siena
.” Conti squeezed through the still-packed aisle toward the exit. The South Africans were also waiting for the doors to open, carrying what looked like aluminum brief cases. Conti lingered behind a family loaded down with shopping bags, and waited for everyone else to detrain before he descended the narrow steps. The sun had begun to set over the Tuscan hills. He had perhaps an hour of twilight to get to his destination, a ruined abbey three miles south of the city where he’d read that it was possible to camp for the night.

Tourists, slowed by pasta and wine, clogged the center of Siena. He dodged through the narrow streets, finally arriving at the city’s southern gate. Outside the old town wall and down a long hill, he found the first trail sign, a trekking monk with a bindle over his shoulder, and set off down the path, following the narrow cone of his flashlight in the gathering dusk. Once away from the paved streets, he had only the crickets and the gurgling of a small stream for company.

After a few kilometers, he arrived at his destination for the night, a tumbledown compound of red tile buildings, once an Abbey complex, but now a campground for pilgrims. He walked once around the ruin, found a patch of long grass under an ancient chestnut tree and laid out his sleeping bag. Suddenly famished, he wolfed down a couple of granola bars and sat back, drowsing against the trunk. Within a few minutes, the peace and quiet of the old monastery lulled him to sleep.

A sharp kick to the ribs shocked him awake.

6.

United States Capitol, Washington, D.C., Monday Morning

Jill rocked sideways to try and gain a few centimeters of space from the men on each side. She hated this room deep in the basement of the Capitol, where the Joint Committee on Intelligence met. It was so small that the chairs lining the walls around the conference table had to be jammed in tight against each other. She wobbled again and the smarmy Assistant Director for European Affairs gave her a sidelong grin. He smelled of stale tobacco. She suspected he leered at her bottom whenever she stood up.

“Miss Burnham, I need your help here, please.” The CIA Director, Thomas Mobley, who had been a Chicago Alderman, an Illinois Senator, then Chair of this same Committee, glared at her, an impatient stare belying his polite tone. She’d always gotten on well with him. Unlike most politicians in her experience, he understood that the rest of the world didn’t necessarily think America was God’s gift to civilization.

She grabbed her files, rose and stepped forward a few feet, then leaned down to within whispering distance of the Director. “Yes?”

“Did you hear the Senator’s question?”

“Would you repeat it, sir? The acoustics in this room aren’t very good.”

“He asked about the recent student demonstrations in Lhasa. Do we expect them to continue?”

“Unclear. We’re monitoring the situation. We have several people on the ground.”

The Director turned, smoothed his tie, and passed this information along to the Senator from Ohio.

The Senator, a large man with a bad comb-over, grumbled for a moment before it turned into intelligible speech. “We have people on the ground in Lhasa, do we? Are these people undercover students, or what? Are they involved in the demonstrations in any way? I thought we were out of the business of fomenting rebellion in Tibet.”

“You’re right, Senator. They are undercover operatives posing as students.” The Director looked at Jill for confirmation and she nodded. “And they aren’t fomenting anything. Just doing normal intelligence …”

“Because,” the Senator barged in, “if they are doing anything other than observing, you are going to have one hacked off Senator from Ohio to deal with, Mr. Mobley.” He pointed a pudgy finger encircled by a ring embedded with gold nuggets at the Director. “I hope I don’t have to remind you of what we discussed here a couple of weeks ago. There are several big American companies, some of them from my state, that are bidding on contracts in China. Hydroelectric dams, factories, nuclear power plants, big stuff. The Chinese expect us to be a positive influence, not to encourage … dissidents. Otherwise, they can’t build these projects to improve living conditions for everyone, including the national minorities. Civil unrest hurts the Chinese, hurts the Tibetans, hurts us. We want to see economic progress over there. The war’s over.”

“I take your point, Senator.” Jill heard the tension in the Director’s voice. Even after several years in his position, he hated deferring to men he used to intimidate.

“Our national security depends on the health of our economy as much as military strength, right?” The Senator surveyed the faces around the table. His gaze was met by anxious glances from the staff and deeply bored expressions from his colleagues — if they bothered to look up at all from their piles of correspondence.

“So do we have agreement here that there will be no fomenting of anything in Tibet by American undercover agents, whether they work for your agency or any of the other multitude of organizations we always seem to be appropriating money for?”

“We are in complete agreement, Senator.”

“Good. Thank you. Then we’re done with this. Let’s move on.”

Jill’s back was getting sore from bending down in case she had to answer a question or provide information to the Director. Now that the bi-weekly trip to the woodshed was over, she straightened up and smoothed her skirt.

“Excuse me.” This came from the other end of the table. The Senator from California, a spry seventy-five year-old, took off her reading glasses and looked up from a newspaper she’d been skimming. “On this fomenting thing.”

“Yes, Senator.” The Director turned his attention to her.

“With no disrespect to my colleague,” she shot the Senator from Ohio a look she usually reserved for tobacco lobbyists, “I’m not sure we’ve adequately ventilated this matter. While I agree that we cannot afford …” she emphasized the word ‘afford,’ staring at the Senator from Ohio over her glasses, “to start a rebellion in Tibet, I believe it is also true that the Chinese have made a habit of crushing the legitimate human rights aspirations of the Tibetan people. Isn’t that right, Director Mobley?”

“Perhaps, ‘crushing’ is a loaded word
,
Senator.”

The Senator folded up her newspaper and removed her reading glasses. She put her elbows on the table and focused an intense stare on the Director.

“What word would you use? Suppress, crack down on, stamp out, defeat? The point is that the Chinese are kicking the shit out of the Tibetans and, by the way, taking whatever natural resources they want while we stand around with our thumbs up our butts.”

After another hour of discussion, Jill left of the room with the Director, both of them silent until they were out of earshot of the Committee members and staff.

“Goddamn those sons of bitches,” the Director seemed to be letting off steam rather than expressing any real hostility. “They wouldn’t agree that Robert E. Lee was a white man if you held a gun to their heads. Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you before the meeting. Had to have coffee at the White House. They already have their shorts in a twist about the election. Did you figure out who those Tibetans running around Italy are?”

“Not yet. Whoever they are, though, they must be important. The Chinese radio traffic is getting pretty frantic. All their people in Europe are on high alert.”

“Well, what in hell are Tibetan monks doing hiking around Italy anyway? Do we at least know where they’re going?”

“Not for sure. There are quite a few possibilities — Buddhist monasteries and retreat centers where they could find sanctuary. A good many Tibetan nationalists are holed up in Italy. They raise money in Western Europe and send it back to the government in exile in Dharamsala. If this guy is wanted by the Chinese, he’s safer in Italy than in India. Lots of political support for Tibetan independence in Italy. The newspapers would go crazy if the government tried to deport a Tibetan monk.
”

“Are we … involved in any way?”

“No. We’re clean. Except that the monks asked Conti for help, of course. But that’s it.”

“Good. I’d hate to think I just lied to the distinguished asshole from Ohio.”

Jillian excused herself to visit the ladies room, then ducked around the corner looking for a window. She fished her phone out of her purse and tried Conti’s number for the umpteenth time since she’d rolled out of bed that morning.

7.

The Via Francigena, south of Siena, Monday Afternoon

Conti woke up on the floor of a dark, musty cell with dirt walls. He unbuttoned his shirt and examined the large bruise on his ribs in the narrow shaft of light that squeezed through the wooden planks a few feet above his head. Nothing broken, or badly broken, at least. He felt his cheek. They must have hit him there for good measure. Swollen, but all the teeth still in place. His shoes were gone, as was his backpack. The events of the night before seeped back into his consciousness slowly. He’d dozed off, been assaulted in his sleep. South African accents. He looked at his watch. 2:00 p.m. More than twelve hours had disappeared. He felt a small bump on his shoulder. They’d injected something. An opiate, no doubt. That’s what he would have done. They were professionals all right.

He examined the beams supporting the floor above him. Very old, axe hewn. He was probably still near the ruined monastery, drugged and thrown in an empty root cellar of some sort. Hunched over, he explored the room searching for a way out. In the corner of the ceiling he found a small trap door, and pushed on it. Wouldn’t budge. They’d put something heavy on top of the door. He sat back, considering his predicament. What did he have to work with? He searched the floor but all he found was his phone, smashed to pieces. Could he use the metal shell to dig into the dirt walls? As he was considering this, he heard noises outside. Low chanting in Latin. Women’s voices. Coming nearer.

“Hello. Anyone out there?” he yelled. “I need help, please.”

After a few moments of shouting, an eye peered back at him through the planks in the floor above. “What are you doing in that hole?”

Conti thought of a number of smart aleck answers but contented himself with “Trying to get out. Could you help me, please?” He flattened his face against the boards to get a glimpse of the woman above. She drew away a few inches and he made out a black veil surrounding a sweet, pink-cheeked face.

“Yes, I suppose we could,” she replied. There was a bit of commotion behind her, other female voices buzzing. Conti couldn’t hear the discussion but did hear the leader’s response.

“No, Sister Paula, I do not think this is the Devil lying in wait for us. Or one of his minions either. I told you to stop reading that
Crusade
magazine. Now if we all push at once, we should be able to move this tree stump.”

Conti listened as the women grunted and groaned, accompanied by the occasional exclamation.

“Ouch. Shit!”

“Sister Alexis!”

After a few moments of scraping, the stump tumbled away and the women opened the trap door. Conti gazed up, blinking in the sun, at the flushed faces of six nuns, jostling to get a look at him. They backed away quickly as he crawled out of his hole, as if half expecting some sort of demon after all.