The Fourth K (44 page)

But Sebbediccio did take it seriously. He considered it another mockery of justice, another example of scorn for authority. And he hoped Romeo might let something slip when he talked to his mother.

As head of the antiterrorist division for all Italy Sebbediccio had a great deal of power. The defense lawyer was already on the secret list of left-wing radicals who were put under surveillance. His phone was tapped, his mail intercepted and read before it was delivered. And so it was easy to find the electronic company the defense planned to use to
sweep the governor’s office. Sebbediccio used a friend to set up an “accidental” meeting in a restaurant with the owner of the electronics company.

Even without the help of force, Franco Sebbediccio could be persuasive. It was a small electronics corporation, making a profit but by no means enjoying an overwhelming success. Sebbediccio pointed out that the antiterrorist division had great need of electronic sweeping equipment and personnel, that it could interpose security vetoes on the companies selected. In short that he, Sebbediccio, could make the company rich.

But there must be trust and profit on both sides. In this particular case, why should the electronics company care about the murderers of the Pope, why should it jeopardize its future prosperity over such an inconsequential matter as the recording of a meeting between the mother and son? Why could not the electronics company plant the bug as it was supposedly debugging the governor’s office? And who would be the wiser? And Sebbediccio himself would arrange to have the bug removed.

It was done in a very friendly way, but somewhere during the dinner Sebbediccio made it understood that if he was refused, the electronics company would run into a great deal of trouble in the coming years. Although he himself had no personal animosity, how could his government service possibly trust people who protected the murderer of the Pope?

It was all agreed and Sebbediccio let the other man pick up the check. He was certainly not going to pay for it out of his personal funds, and to be reimbursed on his expense voucher might lead to a paper trail years later. Besides, he was going to make the man rich.

The meeting between Armando “Romeo” Giangi and his mother was therefore fully recorded and heard only by Sebbediccio,
and he was delighted with it. He took his time in removing the bug simply out of curiosity at what the snotty governor of the prison was really like, but there he got nothing.

Sebbediccio took the precaution of playing the tape in his home while his wife slept. None of his colleagues must know about it. He was not a bad man and he almost wept when Mother Giangi sobbed over her son, implored him to tell the truth that he had not really killed the Pope, that he was shielding a bad companion. Sebbediccio could hear the woman’s kisses as they rained down upon the face of her murderous son. Then the kissing and wailing stopped and the conversation became very interesting to Sebbediccio.

He heard Romeo’s voice attempting to calm his mother down. “I don’t understand why your husband killed himself,” Romeo said. He felt such disdain for the man, he could never acknowledge him as his father. “He didn’t care about his country or the world, and, forgive me, he didn’t even love his family. He lived a completely selfish and egocentric life. Why did he feel it necessary to shoot himself?”

The mother’s voice came hissing from the tape. “Out of vanity,” she said. “All his life your father was a vain man. Every day to his barber, once a week to his tailor. At the age of forty he took singing lessons. To sing where? And he spent a fortune to become a Knight of Malta and never a man so devoid of the Holy Spirit. On Easter he had a white suit made with the palm cross woven especially into the cloth. Oh, what a grand figure in Roman society. The parties, the balls, his appointment to cultural committees whose meetings he never attended. And the father of a son graduated from the university, he was proud of your brilliance. Oh, how he promenaded on the streets of Rome. I never saw a man so happy and so empty.” There was a
pause on the tape. “After what you did, your father could never appear in Roman society again. That empty life was finished, and for that loss he killed himself. But he can rest easy. He looked beautiful in his coffin with his new Easter suit.”

Then came Romeo’s voice on the tape saying what delighted Sebbediccio. “My father never gave me anything in life, and by his suicide he stole my option. And death was my only escape.”

Sebbediccio listened to the rest of the tape in which Romeo let his mother persuade him to see a priest, and then when the TV cameras and reporters were let into the room Sebbediccio turned it off. He had seen the rest on TV. But he had what he wanted.

When Sebbediccio paid his next visit to Romeo, he was so delighted that when the jailer unlocked the cell he entered doing a little dance step and greeted Romeo with great joviality.

“Giangi,” he said, “you are becoming even more famous. It is rumored that when we have a new Pope he may ask mercy for you. Show your gratitude, give me some of the information I need.”

Romeo said, “What an ape you are.”

Sebbediccio bowed and said, “That’s your last word, then?”

It was perfect. He had a recording that said Romeo was thinking of killing himself.

A week later the news was released to the world that the murderer of the Pope, Armando “Romeo” Giangi, had committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell.

In New York, Annee had mounted the mission. She was very conscious of the fact that she was the first woman chief of
a First Hundred operational strike. She was determined she would not fail.

The two safe houses, apartments on New York’s East Side, had been stocked with food, weapons and other necessary material. The assault teams would arrive a week before the strike date, and she would order them to stay in their apartments until the final day. The escape routes had been set up for any survivors, through Mexico and Canada. She planned to remain in America for a few months, in still another safe house.

Despite her duties Annee had a lot of time to kill and spent it roaming through the city. She was appalled by the slums, especially Harlem; she thought she had never seen a city so dirty, so ill kept, with whole districts looking as if they had been hit by artillery fire. She was disgusted by the mass of homeless, the snarling rudeness of the service people, the cold hostility of the public servants. She had never been to a place so mean-spirited.

The ever-present danger was another matter. The city was a war zone, more perilous than Sicily, for in Sicily violence had strict laws of self-interest, logically conceived, whereas in New York the violence sprang from the malodorous sickness of some animal herd.

There had come one particularly eventful day that made Annee resolve that she would stay in her apartment as much as possible. She went to a late-afternoon American film, a film that irritated her with its moronic machismo. The muscular hero she would have loved to encounter, just to show him how easy it would be to shoot his balls off.

After the film she had strolled along Lexington Avenue to make calls in public phone booths required by her mission. She went into a famous restaurant to give herself a small treat and was affronted by the rudeness of the staff and
enraged by the pale imitation of Roman cuisine offered to her. How dare they. In France the owner of the restaurant would be lynched. In Italy the Mafia would burn the restaurant down as a public service.

So, in truth, it came as a tonic when the city of New York tried to make her submit to the final indignities it visited on thousands of its inhabitants and visitors.

During her late evening stroll, the exercise necessary to enable her to sleep, she suffered two separate attempts to rape or rob her.

The first attack, at the beginning of twilight, truly astonished her. It happened right on Fifth Avenue as she was looking at the display in Tiffany’s store window. A man and a woman, very young, not more than twenty, pressed her on either side. The young man had the lynxlike face of the hopeless drug addict. He was extremely ugly, and Annee, who admired physical beauty, immediately disliked him. The young girl was pretty but had the petulance of the spoiled American teenager Annee had observed on the streets. She was dressed in the harlot’s mode made fashionable by the latest screen idols. Both were white.

The young man pressed hard against her and Annee felt hard metal through the thin jacket she was wearing. She was not alarmed.

“I’ve got a gun,” the young man whispered. “Give my girl your bag. Nice and friendly. No fuss and you won’t get hurt.”

“Do you vote?” Annee asked.

The young man, distracted, said, “What?” His girlfriend stretched out her hand for the bag. Annee took the girl’s hand, then swung her around as a shield, at the same time using her other hand to hit the girl full in the face with her ringed other hand. An incredible amount of blood splashed
Tiffany’s elegantly dressed window, causing passersby to stop in amazement.

Annee said coolly to the young man, “You’ve got a gun, shoot.” By this time he had swung his body around away from where he held the gun in his pocket. The fool had seen that move in gangster movies. He didn’t know it was a completely useless stance unless the victim froze. But to be on the safe side she grabbed the man’s other arm and pulled it out of its socket. As the young man screamed in agony his hand came out of the pocket and a screwdriver clanged against the pavement. Of course, Annee thought, stupid adolescent cunning. She walked away from them.

At this point it would have been prudent to return to her apartment, but out of some territorial imperative she continued her stroll. But then, right on Central Park South, lined with its expensive luxury hotels, guarded by its uniformed doormen, and limousines parked along the street with burly chauffeurs, she was surrounded by four black youths.

They were handsome high-spirited fellows that she liked on sight. They were very much like the youthful rascals in Rome who felt it their duty to accost women in the streets. One of the youths said to her playfully, “Hey, baby, take a walk in the park with us. You’ll have a good time.”

They barred her path, she could not move forward. She was amused by them, she did not doubt she would have a good time. It was not they who angered her, it was the doormen and the chauffeurs who deliberately ignored her plight.

“Go away,” she said, “or I’ll scream and those doormen will call the police.” She knew she could not scream, could not afford to do so because of her mission.

One of the youths, grinning, said, “Go ahead and scream, lady.” But she could see them poised on their toes ready to flee.

When she did not scream, another of the youths understood immediately that she would not. “Hey, she won’t scream,” he said. “You hear her accent? I bet she has some drugs. Hey, lady, give us some.”

They all laughed with delight. One of them said, “Or else we’ll call the police.” And they laughed again.

Before leaving Italy, Annee had been briefed on the dangers of New York. But she was a highly trained operational agent and had absolute confidence in that training. So she had refused to carry a gun, fearing that it might compromise the mission. However she wore a specially designed zircon ring that could do a great deal of damage. And in her handbag was a pair of scissors more lethal than a Venetian dagger. So she did not feel herself in any danger. She only worried about the police becoming involved and being questioned by them. She was sure that she could escape without any fuss.

But she had not taken into account her nervousness and natural ferocity. One of the youths reached out a hand to touch her hair and Annee hissed, “Get out of my way, you black bastard, or I’ll kill you.”

All four went quiet, their good humor gone. She saw the hurt brooding look come into their eyes and she felt a pang of guilt. She realized that she had made a mistake. She had called them black bastards out of no racial prejudice. It was merely a form of Sicilian invective, where when you quarreled with a hunchback you called him a hunchback bastard, if you quarreled with a cripple you called him a cripple bastard. But how could these young men know this? She almost apologized. But it was too late.

One of the youths said, “I’m gonna punch this white cunt in the face.” And in that moment Annee went out of control. She flicked her ringed hand into his eye. A hideous slit appeared that seemed to detach the youth’s eyelid from his face. The other youths stared in horror as Annee calmly turned a corner and then ran.

That was enough even for Annee. Back in her apartment she was filled with remorse for having been so rough, for endangering the mission with her willfulness. She had actually sought out trouble to relieve her own attack of nerves.

She must take no further risks, she must not leave the apartment except for the duties necessary to complete the mission. She must stop calling up her memories of Romeo, control her rage at his murder. And most important of all she must make a final decision. If all else failed, would she turn this into a suicide mission?

Christian Klee flew to Rome to have dinner with Sebbediccio. He noted that Sebbediccio had almost twenty bodyguards, which did not seem to affect his appetite.

The Italian was in high spirits. “Wasn’t it fortunate that our Pope killer took his own life?” he said to Klee. “What a circus the trial would have been with all our left-wingers marching in support. It’s too bad that fellow Yabril wouldn’t do you the same favor.”

Klee laughed. “Different systems of government. I see you’re well protected.”

Sebbediccio shrugged. “I think they are after bigger game. I have some information for you. That woman, Annee, that we’ve let run loose. Somehow we lost her. But we suspect that she’s now in America.”

Klee felt a thrill of excitement. “Do you know what port of embarkation? What name she is using?”

“We don’t know,” Sebbediccio said. “But we think she is now operational.”

“Why didn’t you pick her up?” Christian said.

“I have high hopes for her,” Sebbediccio said. “She is a very determined young lady and she will go far in the terrorist movement. I want to use a big net when I take her. But you have a problem, my friend. We hear rumors that there is an operation in the United States. It can only be against Kennedy. Annee, as fierce as she may be, cannot do it alone. Therefore, there must be other people involved. Knowing your security for the President, they will have to mount an operation that would require a goodly number with material and safe houses. On that I have no information. You had better set to work.”