Iron Dove

Joe said, “Don’t you work for SISMI?”

“Would I be guessing correctly if both of you are thinking, ‘It’s just not possible this charming man is a SISMI agent.’ But I am. I’m accustomed to that reaction. But I assure you, I am their most important asset in all of Italy. Yes, I am. I am—with all due humility—Italy’s premier artiste of interior design. I have access to the homes of not only the rich and famous, but also the would-be rich and famous. And if I show up at someone’s door, anyone’s door, I am welcomed with open arms. And now, seeing you both, I am certain we shall make a perfect team. You are foreigners and, like me, you look nothing like agents. Amalfi, for her natives, is a small world, and outsiders are always noticed if they are not obvious tourists. You two are perfect.”

Again, Nova flashed on a comparison of Cesare with Penny. Her neighbor owned La Jolla’s most prestigious beauty salon and was every bit as proud of his work as Cesare. But while Cesare was showing every indication of being garrulous, Penny was a man of few, but carefully chosen, words. He shared with Cesare, though, a belief in his importance and artistry. Before long, it should become obvious whether Cesare was a blowhard or the real thing.

He continued to describe every notable point of interest along the freeway leading into the capital. Nova continued to stroke Principessa, who seemed to be a perfect lady.

All at once, Joe chimed in with, “You know, Cesare, Nova and I have both been here before. Several times.”

Nova turned to look back at Joe. He let his eyes roll skyward, clearly not thrilled by Cesare’s steady verbal stream.

“Oh, of course. I would imagine that both of you are experienced travelers.”

The car lurched left, Cesare changing lanes abruptly, ostensibly to avoid crashing into the bakery truck in front of them. She saw Joe grip his briefcase tightly just as she swiveled forward again to watch the road—and Cesare’s driving.

“I myself travel relatively little out of the country as my work consumes any spare time I might have. But it is such a pleasure to point out those features of Rome that only a native is likely to know.”

Nova glanced back at Joe. His arms were crossed, his eyes staring out the window. He was too good an agent to let his feelings show on his face unless he chose to, but she knew him thoroughly and imagined that in his mind he was gritting his teeth.

Poor Joe, she thought, but with a secret smile. She was actually enjoying Cesare—although he did seem a bit too excited by his own conversation to be driving.

“Have you heard about the bombing in Madrid yesterday?” Cesare asked.

“I haven’t heard or read any news since day before yesterday,” Joe answered.

“I predict it will be the handiwork of Al Qaeda,” Cesare continued.

“Determined bastards,” Joe replied.

Soon they were within the city’s embrace. Narrow streets ran beside the arches of a thousand-year-old aqueduct. She simply could not imagine how anything made of bricks and concrete could last that long. What fabulous stories those bricks could tell! Flowers gaily graced second floor windows and balconies of buildings that seemed to sag with age. A constant flow of people in cars and on bikes passed going in all directions.

Their car swept through the Piazza Venezia past the Vittorio Emanuele monument, and then down the crowded Via dei Fori Imperiali. On her right she recognized the grounds of ancient Rome’s heart, the Forum, and farther ahead she could see the northwest side of the Coliseum. She felt an elated buzz. No one could be blasé in this place. From this spot on the globe, the Romans had conquered and ruled the world for a thousand years.

Before they reached the Coliseum, Cesare lurched the car left into the rushing traffic of Via Cavour. From previous trips, Nova knew that not far ahead lay Rome’s central train station. Cesare, however, braked to a teeth-clicking stop in front of the Hotel Imperial Cavour. She gave it a quick assessing appraisal and ranked the seven-story hotel tentatively as three-star.

Again with sprinter-like speed, Cesare leapt out of the car and rushed around to open Nova’s door. Setting Principessa on the passenger seat, she let Cesare play gentleman, which, judging from his happy smile as she stepped from the car, pleased him. Joe, she noted, was glowering.

“Registration is in your own names. Tomorrow morning I will pick you up promptly at nine. You will spend the day in briefings. We are somewhat short on time, so I myself will be making final arrangements for our lodgings in Positano and for our transportation the day after tomorrow to Sorrento by helicopter and from Sorrento to Positano by auto.”

He opened the trunk and took out Nova’s gear. Joe, with quick-time speed to match Cesare’s, grabbed up his own gear. As the doorman piled everything onto a luggage cart, Cesare said, “Tomorrow I will pick you up after your briefings. By the way, don’t let Provenza frighten you.”

Joe blew his breath out.

Cesare looked first at Joe and then at her and shook his head. “But, of course, neither of you will be. What am I thinking? I myself am from Milan and the man is Sicilian, and I never really trust Sicilians.”

He turned, sank into his Alfa and, with a wave and a ciao, took off.

“At last,” Joe said as they strode toward the hotel entrance.

“I think he’s funny. And informative.”

“He’s going to drive me nuts.”

She patted Joe’s arm.

The stones of the street and the pavement already throbbed with heat. By noon, Rome would be as hot as Costa Rica had been.

Once inside the hotel and registered, she said, “I’d like to walk down to the Coliseum and maybe through the Forum. Want to come?”

He hesitated, clearly undecided. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Not really.” In truth, the thought of what they might be facing had her wound up tight. Maybe a walk could calm her. “But you’re right. Tomorrow we need to be bright-eyed and clear-brained.”

“Funny. I’m surprised that I actually forgot your insomniac thing about only needing three or four hours of sleep. I would want to come with you. Anywhere with you. But let me crash now. Tomorrow, after the briefing, we’ll do something.”

They stepped into the elevator and the bellman followed them in with the luggage, crowding the modest space. Her shoulder pressed against Joe’s strong, hard, and utterly male one. She suffered the outrageously out-of-place wish that they weren’t headed for separate rooms, followed immediately by an urge to ruffle his cocky feathers. “I know how kids need their sleep.”

He shrugged. “Just a normal guy who needs the normal amount of sleep. Unlike some weird folks I know.”

He followed her down the hall. Her thoughts switched again to tomorrow. What would they learn? Were they only concerned with the sale of deadly information, or was it the virus itself that was to be sold? Tonight, even four hours of sleep might be hard to come by.

Chapter 9

Jabalya Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip, Palestine

Ali Yassin stared at his brother’s bier, but his thoughts were on his mission in Rome.

“Now, Ali,” his uncle said softly, bringing Ali back to the squalor of the tent he and his mother, brother and two sisters called home.

His brother was dead, killed because he had been throwing stones. As dead as his father and two uncles before him. Ali became once again aware of the noise of the crowd outside, the sounds of the wailing of women and the chanting of prayers by men.

His mother touched Ali’s hand. “Carry him proudly.” Tears welled in her eyes above the veil that would cover her as she followed yet another of her loved ones to his funeral.

“Pride,” he said as he stepped over to the crude bier and, with his uncle and four other men, lifted it off the wooden table. “You can’t eat pride. Pride won’t put clothes on a man’s back. Pride won’t get a man an education. Pride is good, but it’s not enough.”

With the other men, he moved toward the door, and then out into the street.

Shouts of “Revenge! Revenge!” rose. The women’s wailing grew louder.

Waving palm branches and Hamas flags, the mourners moved slowly down the narrow and filthy street toward the camp’s humble mosque.

Soon his mother, sisters and uncle would have reason to be proud of what he would do, something that would make his name famous far beyond Palestine—and his mother would have the money given to the families of all martyrs who went to Allah.

Chapter 10

Cesare and Principessa dropped off Nova and Joe in front of a business with a sign that said Condolezzi, Importo e Exporto. The office occupied the middle of a block in a modest, tree-lined neighborhood halfway between their downtown hotel and the airport.

A small fountain in a pocket park in the center of the street gurgled pleasantly. Shops on either side and across the way proclaimed that they were a bakery, tobacco shop, shoe repair, Internet café and a copying and business supply establishment. The smell of cinnamon and coffee from the bakery lent the whole neighborhood a spirit of hominess.

“When you are ready to be picked up, call me on my cell,” Cesare announced, as full of energy and enthusiasm as he had been yesterday.

With Joe at her side, Nova entered Condolezzi. She would have preferred to be wearing something more professional than casual slacks, but so far she’d had no good chance to shop.

The balding middle-aged man reading a newspaper behind the counter removed his glasses. The smell of his pipe smoke suddenly evoked her father’s presence. Kind, strong, world diplomat, excellent father, loyal husband. His death in a plane crash into the water at Capri when he was much, much too young had changed everything in Nova’s life—for the worse. Her throat tightened.

How very different it all would have been, Papa, if you’d lived. I still miss you.

How ironic that beautiful Capri was such a short distance away and would be even closer tomorrow, when she and Joe reached Positano.

Her father had been, like Nova, tall and dark and with the same emerald-green eyes. Her straight hair and the slightly oriental almond shape to her eyes, though, came from her mother, who now lived in a full-care facility in La Jolla, an hour’s drive from Nova but quite near Star.

Nova’s mother was half Chinese and half Scottish and had been, in her day, an extraordinary beauty. Her father said that the moment he’d set eyes on her mother, at a diplomatic function in Hong Kong, he’d been her slave—or so he’d always claimed, laughing. The very language gifts that brought Nova into this smoke-filled room in Rome began with her life as a diplomat’s daughter.

She traveled, learning about so many places in the world right up until her father’s death and her mother’s tragic marriage to Candido. Rape, killing Candido and prison—that had been the beginning of learning about evil.

The balding man gestured with his pipe stem toward the door at the far end of the sparsely furnished room, then returned to his newspaper. There would be no ID check here in this public section.

Nova shook herself. To focus, she made note of the room’s number of desks (five), number of personnel (two young women, in addition to the senior man), the miscellaneous phones, faxes, posters and a wall clock with times around the world that suggested Condolezzi might actually do some importing and exporting.

The two women smiled at Joe, and Nova felt them watching her as well as she followed Joe to the rear door stamped with a sign saying, in Italian, Private, Store Personnel Only.

Joe opened the door for her. A large room full of shelved items held one man, dressed casually in slacks and sport shirt but armed with a Beretta 92F semiautomatic. He stood up. She and Joe showed the IDs that Cesare had supplied. These indicated that they were Jane and James Blake, Private Investigators. A small mark in one corner gave them immediate access to SISMI channels of communication or operations involved with Global Dread.

In Italian, he said, “Take the elevator and press the Loading Dock button.”

They went down. When the elevator door opened, they entered an entirely different world—ultramodern, with computers on every desk. Condolezzi was actually a SISMI operations center and safe house.

A nattily dressed bull of a man—her immediate thought was Olympic wrestler—stood at once and strode toward them with firm steps. She guessed his age at fifty. Clean-shaven and a bit jowly to match his bulk, he still had a full head of wavy, dark brown hair. He’d been perched on the edge of one of the ten desks in the room, talking to a man whose turban and coloring indicated he was probably a Sikh.

Fourteen SISMI personnel toiled at various tasks. She noted big blow-up maps of Italy and Europe on two of the walls and six huge, wall-mounted TV monitors.

“Glad to welcome you both,” said the Olympic wrestler in flawless English with a British accent. “I’m Aldo Provenza.”

So, she thought, letting a small smile curve her lips. The Sicilian whom Cesare claims not to trust.

Provenza introduced them, using English, and then steered them into a side conference room. Only the Sikh, Sandeep Dev, joined them.

“Would either of you care for something to drink?” Provenza asked, continuing in English. It looked as if Provenza felt the meeting would go most smoothly in English. “Water? Coffee? Tea?”

“Two coffees, black, would be nice,” Joe said. He glanced at her to make sure she, in fact, wanted coffee. She nodded.

Dev sent out a request for three black coffees and one Earl Gray tea. Provenza indicated that she and Joe should take seats at the starkly functional but expensive chrome conference table that occupied the room’s center. The chairs were matching chrome with extremely comfy blue upholstery.

“We’re profoundly glad to have you help us out here, Ms. Blair,” Provenza continued. He took the seat at the head of the table.

Nova sat across from Joe. She noted three thick manila file folders neatly lined up in the table’s center. Two other folders, also labeled in Italian, lay in front of Provenza. “May I call you Nova? I understand you speak quite a few languages.”

“Eight,” Joe chimed in.

“Nova is fine,” she answered.

“Eight. Quite impressive indeed. Although,” Provenza patted one of the files in front of him, “as an ex-field agent, I’m even more impressed with your ability to shoot, bomb, steal and just plain out-wit a lot of other people through your years of work for the Company.”

This sort of talk always made her squirm. “Perhaps we’ll have time for me to show you some of my more positive skills.”

“And these are?”

“I’m a photographer.”

“Oh, yes. Of course.”

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