The Italian Mission (15 page)

The two of them jumped out of the van and walked quickly down the street to Li Huang’s building. A young black man in dreadlocks sat on the stoop, sketching the other side of the street.

“Excuse me.”

The young man looked up. “Yeah?”

“We’re to meet some friends at this address. Chinese. Have you seen them?”

“The Chinese guys, man? Yeah. Totally
patzo
. Came running in here an hour ago. Pushed me right off this step, didn’t they? Sat back down again. Five minutes later, they’re coming back down the steps. Push me right off again. Don’t apologize or nothing. Hop in a truck and drive away a hundred kilometers an hour. Crazy bastards.”

“How many were there? How many went up and how many came back down?”

The young man looked at Conti as if he were crazy too. “Three going up and three going down. What do you expect? They would multiply like bunnies?” He flashed a big smile at his own wit.

“Thanks.” Conti said, grabbing Jill by the hand and rushing past him through the front door and up the stairs.

“Tell your friends they should be more careful, man. They gonna hurt somebody,” the young man shouted after them, then shook his head and returned to his drawing.

Conti took the steps three at a time and got to the apartment first. When Jill arrived a moment later, he was standing in front of a door that had been pried open with a crow bar. The knob hung at an angle and the strike plate sat on the floor in a pile of wood splinters. He motioned for Jill to wait and pushed into the apartment.

“Come on.” He waved her in. “They may have only been here for a few minutes, but they were pretty thorough.” Nothing in the studio apartment had been left undisturbed. The drawers of a plastic dresser lay on the floor, shirts, stockings and underwear scattered around the room. They had also ransacked the galley kitchen and ripped the stuffing out of a futon now draped forlornly on its wooden frame.

“So I guess they didn’t find him, huh?” Jill asked.

“I assume not. If they had, there would have been no reason to make such a mess. No, they were searching for clues as to where to find him. Let’s pray he’s with Li …”

“What happened?” Li Huang came running breathlessly through the door. “Did they get Dawa?”

Conti and Jill glanced at each other before replying. Finally, Conti spoke. “We hoped he was with you. No, the Chinese don’t have him as far as we know. They were here,” he gestured at the shambles that had been her apartment, “but it seems that they left without finding him. Did you go to the stores? Had he been there?”

“Yes,” the young woman answered, her voice trembling. “I checked the places where I sent him. He bought a few things, and left more than an hour ago. By now, he should have come back here, then gone to meet me at the Academy. Something went wrong. He wouldn’t wander around Florence alone. He doesn’t know anyone, or have anywhere safe to go.”

Jill’s phone rang and she walked into the hall to answer. After a couple of minutes, she returned, her face two shades paler. “Mobley wants to talk to the two of us and Cadiz together.”

“What’s up?” Conti asked.

“The South Africans have the Lama, and they’re plastering his face all over the Internet.”

23.

Florence, Wednesday Midnight

“Do you take cream or sugar?” A young Italian officer with wavy black hair, piercing blue eyes and a lilting accent asked Jill as he poured steaming coffee from a silver pitcher. They sat around a large mahogany conference table in a basement room of the central police station. It had taken only an hour to get full cooperation from the internal Italian security agency, AISI.

“Black is fine, thank you,” she smiled warmly, unaware of Conti’s frowning, sidelong glances.

“Now,” the lieutenant went on, “you may use the room as long as you have need. And call me when you have finished, no? I will escort you out the back through the loading dock the same way you came in. It is unfortunate but reporters sometimes, how would you say, ‘stake out’ our front entrance. Some of the more radical political factions and their newspapers have not yet gotten over the events of the past decade. They believe we conspired with your Mr. Bush to attack Iraq without reason. Ridiculous, of course. We had every reason. Now, I believe your connection to Washington is available. I will be right down the hall if you need anything.”

Jill watched him leave while Conti and Cadiz bent over the control panel. Mobley’s impatient face appeared on the large screen at the end of the table.

“We see you, can you see us?” Conti asked.

“Yes, except for Burnham. Where is she?”

“She’s been hypnotized by an Italian in uniform. Jill, would you mind turning your chair back toward the camera. He’s too young for you anyway.”

Jill swiveled around, shielded her hands from the camera with her shoulder and gave Conti the finger, then flashed a tight smile at Mobley.

“Good evening, sir. Do our communications people think this is a secure link?”

“Probably isn’t,” the Director responded in a gruff voice. “Doesn’t matter. We may need the Italians’ help soon. They might as well know what’s going on now as later.”

“What is going on?” she asked.

“Quite a bit.” Mobley sounded tired.

There was silence around the conference table. They waited while Mobley asked his assistant for a cup of coffee.

“I’ve finally spoken to the President about this. I hope we’re now on the same page. I acquainted him with the Agency’s strong view that having the Panchen Lama run around encouraging rebellion against the Chinese government is not in the best interests of the United States or our allies. Rabbi Cadiz, good to see you again. It’s been years since we worked on that … other project. Do you agree with our assessment of the situation?”

Cadiz nodded. “Good to see you as well, Senator. Yes, my orders are to help you accomplish whatever you decide to do with respect to the Lama. But my superiors do, in fact, agree that nothing good can come of civil unrest in Tibet at this time. They believe the Chinese military is far too powerful for any nationalist minority, and an uprising will result in violent suppression and strengthening of the anti-Western factions in Beijing.”

“Exactly,” Mobley replied. “Unfortunately, there was a small group in our government that had convinced the President to take a different tack. They felt that if Tibetan nationalism were encouraged, it would force liberalization of the Chinese regime.”

“What world are they living in?” Conti asked.

“One where every agency runs its own foreign policy,” Mobley replied. “And to that end, they hired a private security force to keep the Chinese from recapturing the Lama.”

“So it’s true,” Jill groaned. “The South Africans are working for …”

“The White House.” Mobley sighed. “Well, to be precise, the National Security Council’s Special Projects Director. But I’ve put a stop to that. So, here’s what I want you to do. I’m texting you a phone number, Burnham. Call the South Africans and find out where they’re holding him. Get over there and tell them the game is up — they’ll want to contact Major Ellis in Washington to confirm — and bring the Lama back to AISI headquarters. You’ll all be safe there. When that’s done, let me know and I’ll call the Chinese Ambassador and get down to brass tacks.”

“What are you going to say to him?” Jill asked.

“I’m going to find out just how badly they want the young Lama back. Oh, and one more thing. And it’s even more troubling than the rest of this mess.”

The three of them exchanged puzzled glances.

“Yes?” Jill asked.

“The Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama head up the, um, committees … that pick each other’s successor, right?”

“Close enough.” Jill said. “When either one dies, a group of High Lamas from the
Gelugpa
lineage searches for his
tulku
, his reincarnation. The Panchen Lama is the second highest ranking after the Dalai Lama, so he is expected to play a leadership role in choosing …”

Mobley cut her off. “O.K., O.K., I get it. The point is that the Chinese want their own guy, the counterfeit Panchen Lama, to be the one who picks the next Dalai Lama — so they have someone in the job they can control. They want the real Panchen Lama, the one you’re chasing, back under wraps when the Dalai Lama …”

“So what’s the big deal?” Conti broke in, leaning forward and drumming his fingers on the table.

“The big deal, pal,” Mobley didn’t try to hide his irritation at the interruption, “is that the Dalai Lama’s seriously ill. He’s been flown to Cedars-Sinai in L.A. — the intensive care unit.”

24.

Florence, Thursday Afternoon

Conti and Jill sat in a small, out-of-the way
trattoria
on a back street a few blocks off the
Piazza del Duomo
as the last of the lunch crowd filtered out. An elderly waiter dressed in a frayed white coat brought a tray of several kinds of salami, paper-thin slices of proscuitto, peppers, and cheese. Conti picked up a piece of hard salami, rolled it up and munched as he eyed the front door.

“You should eat something,” he said.

“How you can eat at a time like this?” Jill asked.

“Gotta keep your strength up in this business. Never know when you’ll be able to eat again.” He popped a hot pepper into his mouth. “Can’t get this stuff in Washington, much less Langley.”

“I eat yogurt for lunch.” Jill tapped her foot on the floor and looked at her watch. “Maybe we’ve got the wrong place.”

“Nope, there’s only one
Giampietro’s
in Florence. Been here forever. Best unknown place in town. Been unknown since the twenties.” Conti chuckled at his own joke.

Jill gave him a bemused look. “Why are you in such a good mood?”

“Guess I like the cloak and dagger life more than I realized. It’s good to be back in the game. Don’t mind the company either. You’d make a good undercover agent. Kind of a Jackie O vibe you’ve got going there.”

Jill had tied a scarf around her head and wore sunglasses. She scoffed. “I was going for Audrey Hepburn.”

“Yeah, I can see that too. Maybe a few years ago.”

“You sure know how to make a girl feel good.”

“There they are.” Conti pointed to two men coming through the front door. He gestured to them and they walked over warily, pulled out chairs and sat down.

“So nice to see you again,” Conti greeted them. “The back of my head is almost healed from the last time we met.”

The tall, pinch-faced South African ran his hand over his buzz cut. “Sorry about that. All in the line of duty, right?”

As he spoke, the shorter, stocky man scowled at Jill, fingering an angry red welt on his chin. She met his glare without flinching. The first man noticed the staring contest and laughed harshly. “Now, now, Tony, bygones are bygones and all that. You two had a go at each other. I’d call it a draw and say we forget the whole thing. Like I said, just business.”

They continued to glower at each other.

“I’m John Conti and this is Jill Burnham.”

“We know who you are — now. I’m called Skinhead and this is my partner Tony. You and I crossed paths once before, but you probably don’t remember. In Kabul. We were doing a little job for Blackstream at the time. Looking for a weapons cache in the back of a mosque in Jada Maiwand.”

“Ah, yes,” Conti speared a cube of provolone with a toothpick and pointed it at the South African. “Now that you mention it, I do remember. Didn’t recognize you without the black hood. As I recall, your brilliant plan was to blow the whole place up.”