A Shadow Falls Read online

  The rest is Aaron’s job.

  To the left, St Peter’s Basilica heaves into her view, unexpected as always, even though her eyes were searching for it. Built to intimidate people and make them feel small, nothing about the palatial hulk is playful. The dome is like something from another world, a UFO that landed five hundred years ago and might take off again at any moment.

  The Via del Gianicolo hugs the old Aurelian city wall. They drive through the antique archway of the Hotel Gran Sasso Rome and arrive in an oasis, where even the bright yellow blossom of the Mahonias being misted by sprinklers smells of money.

  Varga is expecting them at eight. They still have two hours before their chauffeur picks them up again. The manager personally takes them to their suite on the second floor. Aaron has him show her around all the rooms and, unnoticed, activates the radio sensor under her belt buckle. If there are hidden cameras, it will locate the transmitter signal and vibrate.

  Nothing.

  When the manager has left, she complains that her headache is killing her and says she is going to lie down for a while. Aaron takes the bug detector out of her travel bag. Keyes silently watches as she scans the walls and furniture.

  The device registers a weak energy source under a side table in the living room.

  A bug.

  Damn.

  Aaron checks both bedrooms and the bathrooms.

  Another two bugs.

  Damn, damn.

  She steps out onto the enormous terrace.

  Clean.

  Aaron gives Keyes a nod. He joins her, quietly closing the sliding door behind him.

  ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah right. Like a burst motorbike tyre at two hundred kilometres per hour, or a live atomic bomb.’

  ‘He’s cautious.’

  ‘So am I,’ she retorts.

  ‘Do you want to call it off?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Varga could have had me killed in Berlin. He doesn’t need to fly me to Rome to do it.’

  ‘Perhaps he enjoys watching.’

  ‘That’s not what he’s like.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about him.’

  ‘I have excellent insight into human nature.’

  ‘Last words of a murdered missionary in Papua New Guinea.’

  He shrugs. ‘My mother always said: “Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine.”’

  Aaron studies Keyes. His life is at risk. She is serving him a get-out on a silver tablet. And he is prepared to take the gamble?

  ‘Varga told me a story,’ he says, ‘about him and his brother. They’re very close, although his brother doesn’t want to have anything to do with his business activities. He’s a doctor in Naples. They speak on the phone every week and see each other a lot. Varga is the godfather of both his daughters. But that hasn’t stopped Varga from tapping his brother’s phones for years. He said: “It doesn’t hurt him if I sleep well.”’

  Keyes goes to the small terrace bar, opens a twenty-year-old whisky and looks at her. She shakes her head. While he pours himself a drink, her gaze wanders down to the pool, where children are shrieking and trying to splash the sun. Aaron reaches into the pocket of her dress and removes a tiny brown plaster from a plastic case. It’s an artificial birthmark. She sticks the microphone under her chin and moves away a few steps, so that Keyes can’t hear.

  ‘I’m online.’

  ‘Nobody followed you,’ mumbles Pavlik. ‘But that’s no surprise.’

  ‘Where’s the driver?’

  ‘Twiddling his thumbs in the underground car park,’ Vesper reports.

  ‘Blabbermouth,’ says Nowak, quick as a shot.

  Without moving her head, Aaron permits her eyes to wander across to a sixties apartment complex rising up behind the Aurelian wall.

  The Department’s logistician wanted to house the team next to the suite that Varga had reserved for his guests in the Gran Sasso. But the hotel is fully booked, so they had to make do with this solution. Only Vesper is in the building. He’s down in the garage in a transporter with blacked-out windows.

  ‘That mole is making me real horny,’ says Fricke.

  ‘Have the rooms been checked?’ Pavlik wants to know.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  Keyes sips on his drink and watches her. Aaron looks out across the brick-red roofs to St Peter’s Basilica. The cross on the dome shimmers like a mirage.

  If she tells Pavlik about the bugs, he will immediately order them to pull out. She doesn’t know what’s stopping her, but she has learnt to trust her instinct.

  ‘Clean,’ she says.

  She feels wretched as she lies.

  ‘Good,’ she hears his deep voice, ‘we’ll go through with it.’

  ‘I’m off.’ She puts the microphone back in the case.

  Keyes goes over to her. ‘So we’re going ahead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He rotates his Oxford signet ring, brushes a black strand of hair off his forehead. For a second, Aaron thinks he’s going to kiss her.

  Instead, Keyes asks: ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’

  She is silent, thrown off course.

  But not by the question.

  Aaron remembers what her father said in the old quarry when she was twelve years old: ‘Killing is simple.’

  That’s true.

  She is a third Dan in karate. She can do it with her hands, with a gun, a knife, her sunglasses, a cigarette box and, should it become necessary, with the pretty scarf from Hermès that she will wear later on; the scarf that has a piano string woven into it.

  Yet, what her father said next is equally true: ‘But it doesn’t come easy.’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because you’re so young.’ Keyes hesitates. ‘And because my life may possibly depend on you.’

  ‘Not if you’re right about Varga.’

  ‘I could be wrong. Like I was on the morning I went into work and thought everything was OK in my world. Then three of your colleagues made themselves comfortable in my armchairs and informed me that I was no more than a lackey.’

  ‘Shall I get the violins out?’

  ‘Would you die for me?’

  ‘I’ll be in the bathroom.’

  What is it you’re not telling me?

  *

  Before taking a shower, she does the splits and flattens her upper body against the terracotta tiles. She stretches, takes hold of her toes, then comes back up and pushes herself into a one-armed handstand. Slowly she tips her torso until she is floating horizontally over the floor, then twists to touch a heel with her fingers. She rises back up into the vertical position and returns to standing via a backwards arch. This she repeats five times, without breaking into a sweat.

  Then she stands in front of the mirror and says silently: ‘If mastering your body is all you’ve learnt, then you’ve learnt nothing at all.’

  She walks into the living room at quarter past seven, dressed in black leggings, a cream-coloured blouse with a low neckline, the scarf, ballerina shoes and the mole.

  Keyes is sitting on the sofa, leafing through a magazine. He looks up. ‘Is your headache better, darling?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Let’s have a drink before we go.’

  They move out onto the terrace.

  ‘Those shoes won’t work,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘One evening, while sharing grappa and cigars, Varga and I chatted about what we like in women. He grew up in the slaughtering yards of Naples. I aligned myself to his tastes in order to create closeness. He thinks that I like high heels, just like any healthy man would, in his opinion. Sorry, I understand that you’re more mobile in flat shoes. But this evening, Varga needs to see you as the kind of woman I have the hots for.’

  He disappears into his bedroom and returns. ‘I took the liberty to visit the hotel boutique.’

  Aaron eyes the bright red high-heeled shoes that are dangling from his index finger. Zanotti, stilettos. In her earbud, Fricke gives a quiet whistle. She discreetly gives the other side of the road the finger and puts on the shoes. Keyes has judged her size perfectly. With the additional eleven centimetres she is more than one ninety, half a head taller than him. That’s not easy for a man to take.

  But Keyes just grins. ‘You should never wear any other shoes.’

  Aaron moves her ankles, bends her torso to the left, the right, arches her back, lifts the soles, balances on the stiletto heels. That will do.

  ‘I bet you could even sprint in those,’ he mutters.

  I hope I won’t have to.

  ‘Call the chauffeur,’ she replies.

  ‘We still have half an hour.’

  ‘We’ll make a little detour.’

  *

  Varga’s villa is in the south-east, on the left bank of the river, but she wants them to go to the Gianicolo, the hill that rises up this side of the city. Fricke, Nowak and Vesper follow them. They maintain radio silence. There is much that Aaron values in these men, not least that they have a feeling for when she has to concentrate and mustn’t be distracted.

  The Passeggiata del Gianicolo winds its way up the hill in twists and bends. Aaron lowers her window and inhales the pine scent wafting down from the branches that fan out above the road.

  She senses for the first time that Keyes is tense.

  Because he isn’t sure whether I’ve understood the signals.

  At the top, they drive round the Garibaldi monument. Aaron’s black hair swirls out of the window. A flock of white birds suddenly changes direction, like smoke in the wind. The dense green opens out onto a piazza, they are at the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola.

  Aaron asks the driver to stop and gets out with Keyes. As always, she avoids looking to the left at first, and instead gazes over to the baroque marble triumphal arch. Glittering water shoots out of the eagles’ heads and into the basin. The sky is an endless blue, tinted dark by the onset of evening.

  She walks across the road to the stone balustrade. The city lies below her. Ochre-coloured houses tumble down towards the Tiber. Aaron seeks out the Pantheon and delights in its perfect geometry. She imagines herself standing inside it, directly below the large central opening of the oculus, bathing in the last light.

  Next to her, Keyes doesn’t say a word. She’s thankful to him for not buggering up the moment. Aaron looks out across the seven hills as far as the Albanian mountains, where a snowy white bank of cloud is perched like meringue on a cake. She thinks of Keyes’ smile. The hairs on her arms prickle.

  Aaron places a hand under her chin and covers the microphone with her thumb. ‘We’re alone. I’m listening.’

  ‘You’re a good psychologist.’

  ‘I have excellent insight into human nature.’

  ‘What if I turn out to be a cannibal?’ he asks.

  ‘You’d find me a hard nut to crack.’

  ‘Varga has a safe.’

  ‘How exciting.’

  ‘It contains a file with the names of all the European politicians that are on his payroll.’

  The hairs on her arms prickle even more.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because he waved it in front of my nose and bragged about how he can buy anyone.’

  ‘You don’t know the combination.’

  ‘I do.’

  Two words. Sound like one: jackpot.

  ‘Where in the house?’ she asks.

  ‘Depends on what you have to offer me.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Immunity from prosecution. I want my life back.’

  ‘I’m not a public prosecutor.’

  ‘I don’t know who you work for. It certainly isn’t the BKA, they wouldn’t have the guts for this little excursion to Rome. It must be an organization that resides even higher up. I’m important. And so are you. Otherwise they wouldn’t have entrusted you with this mission. Being in the position I’m in has made me amenable. Your promise to put a word in for me is good enough.’

  She hears the murmuring of the city, an aeroplane that invisibly whispers through the sky.

  The blood in her temples.

  ‘Where are you?’ Pavlik asks quietly.

  ‘They’re taking in the sights,’ Fricke replies.

  ‘It’s an extensive file,’ Keyes adds.

  Aaron looks at him. His eyes are no longer grey, they are black like a winter cloud over the Pantheon’s oculus. The lowering of her head by five degrees serves as a nod. ‘Where?’

  ‘In the study, behind an antique map of Rome.’

  ‘What does the safe look like?’

  ‘Around sixty by forty centimetres. Beige. Numeric keypad. There’s a red emblem engraved on the left.’

  A Duke & Pendleton.

  ‘And the combination?’

  ‘One-nine-one-eight-three-zero.’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘I was standing in the door as he entered it.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be that careless.’

  ‘Varga had no idea that I was there. I’d been to the toilet, he didn’t see me. I snuck back and loudly closed the toilet door. That’s the ridiculous kind of man the BKA has turned me into.’

  ‘May we?’ Fricke asks.

  *

  They cross the Tiber on the Ponte Sublicio, head north-east along the embankment road and turn off at the Circus Maximus. A kite has torn free and is reeling over the large sandy oval. Two dogs are chasing a torn ball while beggars dressed up as gladiators count today’s takings. The Daimler drives along the arena, at the same speed as the charioteers two thousand years ago. Back then it was a breathtaking spectacle, now it’s a trundle behind tourist coaches. Eventually, a gate opens up on the right. The two-storey villa is built in antique Roman style. A townhouse in Mayfair would be cheaper.

  The chauffeur opens Aaron’s car door. Before the gate closes, she snatches a glimpse over the Circus and up to the Palatine Hill, home to the ruins of the Imperial palaces. She knows Pavlik is there. Protected by bushes, he is lying in a hollow next to the entrance to the cave in which, according to legend, the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. Aaron pictures him, stretched out, motionless, the stock of the rifle pressed against his shoulder, his pulse the same rate as a sleeping man’s.

  Two hundred and ninety metres.

  At such a distance, Pavlik normally works with his old Mauser, but the armour-piercing ammunition he is using requires the higher muzzle velocity of the Steyr HS. The standard model is a single-shot rifle, but he has modified it and integrated a box magazine. When it’s empty, Pavlik can exchange it for a new one in two seconds. He has the ability to turn the villa’s window into a sieve.

  The other three are taking up position nearby. They can’t intervene inside the property. In an emergency, Aaron will have to make it out onto the road with Leon Keyes. Fricke, Nowak and Vesper are their rescue team.

  Pavlik sees her through the telescopic sight, in twenty-four-fold magnification. ‘Got you,’ he whispers.

  Now Varga has three guests in his house.

  Aaron, Keyes and Pavlik’s rifle.

  The chauffeur says: ‘È permesso.’

  He pats down Keyes. Aaron couldn’t hide a weapon on her body, her clothes are too figure-hugging for that. A short skirt would have been an alternative option to the leggings, with a small pistol on the inside of her thigh. But that would make her gait uneven, so she decided against it.

  She opens her handbag. Smartphone, Dupont lighter, cigarette case, make-up.

  ‘Grazie.’

  They go into the house. Aaron is surprised at how tastefully the entrance hall is furnished. Pale stone, Art Deco dresser and matching wall lamps, silk wallpaper with lily motif; good interior designer.

  Varga lumbers down the stairs, a man like a roughly cut rock. Everything about him is square, even his face, on which there are pores large enough for ants to hide in. His mouth looks like it was broken out of his skull with a crowbar.

  ‘Leon, che bello.’ The words tumble out like boulders.

  ‘Hello, Matteo.’

  Varga turns to Aaron. He kisses her hand the cheap way; his fat lips are moist. ‘Welcome to my humble abode.’

  She was prepared for his good English. When Varga was made ‘captain’ of his clan, the Capo sent him off for further training in New York, where a branch of the tribe showed him how to control trade unions. Later Varga moved to Las Vegas to enter the casino business and stayed there for seven years. He married a waitress from Phoenix because his family expected a man in his forties to settle down. The woman fled from him after six months, but only made it as far as LA, where her body was found in a sewer. Varga returned to Naples and blew the old Capo’s brains across the mirrors of a brothel. He married again, a Campanian beauty, but she left him and survived it because her father’s clan was nearly as powerful as Varga’s. The fact that he, a divorced man, receives the sacraments in the Basilica Clemente every Sunday that he’s in Rome answers any questions concerning his relationship with the Vatican.

  ‘Excuse me, may I briefly…?’ asks Aaron.

  ‘Of course.’ Varga points to a door.

  Aaron goes into the guest bathroom. She stands still, closes her eyes. Five rooms on the ground floor. The kitchen is to the left of the entrance hall. On the right is the hallway that leads to the dining room, where there are three double doors. These open onto the terrace, the living room and a room which Keyes hasn’t been in yet. On the upper floor, there are two bathrooms, three bedrooms and another room of unknown function.

  And Varga’s study.

  She can reach it from the dining table in thirty seconds without rushing. She’ll need another ten to open the door with a hairpin, assuming it doesn’t have a security lock. Fifteen for the safe. Forty until she is back at the table again.

  Ninety-five seconds. It’s doable.

  She activates the toilet flush, lets some water run, then rejoins the others.

  ‘Vieni qui.’ Varga puts his arm around the minuscule waist of a tufty blonde woman, at least thirty years his junior, who swiftly gives Aaron the once-over. The woman glares at her: mine!

  Varga doesn’t introduce her, she’s just a pretty table decoration. He calls the two men that join them friends, ‘Sandrone’ and ‘Vincenzo’. Sandrone is bullish and has taken a fair few hits, judging by his cauliflower ears. Though she can tell from his hips that he isn’t fit, it’s clear he could end a fight with a single blow at any time. Aaron checks out the other one, Vincenzo, while they move into the dining room. His nonchalant gait shows that he knows how good he is. The open black shirt is tapered, outlined underneath is a perfect latissimus. He’s wearing trainers with soft soles, a precision engineer.