She just about managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes. GICO - properly known as the Gruppo di Investigazione Criminalità Organizzata - the special corps of the Guardia di Finanza that dealt with organised crime. And by reputation an old-school unit that frequented the same strip joints as the people they were supposedly trying to lock up.
‘So what’s the deal?’ she asked. Her boss hadn’t told her anything. Just that he owed someone a favour and that she should get down here as soon as she could.
‘You know this place?’ he asked, gesturing anxiously at the sunken area behind him.
‘Of course.’ She shrugged, slightly annoyed to even be asked. Presumably they knew her background. Why else would they have asked for her? ‘It’s the “Area Sacra”.’
‘Go on.’
‘It contains the remains of four Roman temples unearthed during an excavation project ordered by Mussolini in the 1920s,’ she continued. ‘They were built between the fourth and second centuries BC. Each one has a different design, with…’
‘Fine, fine…’ He held his hands up for her to stop, his relieved tone giving her the impression that she had just successfully passed some sort of audition without entirely being sure what role she was being considered for. He turned to make his way back down the steps. ‘Save the rest for the boss.’
The large site was enclosed by an elegant series of brick archways that formed a retaining wall for the streets some fifteen or so feet above. Bleached white by the floodlights’ desert glare, a forensic search team was strung out across it, inching their way forward on their hands and knees.
Immediately to her right, Allegra knew, was the Temple of Juturna - a shallow flight of brick steps leading up to a rectangular area edged by a row of travertine Corinthian columns of differing heights, like trees that had been randomly felled by a storm. They were all strangely shadowless in the artificial light. Further along the paved walkway was the Aedes Fortunae Huiusce Diei, a circular temple where only six tufa stone Corinthian columns remained standing, a few surviving bases and mid-sections from the other missing pillars poking up like rotting teeth.
But Salvatore steered her past both of these, turning instead between the second and third temples and making his way over rough ground scattered with loose bits of stone and half-formed brick walls that looked like they had been spat out of the earth. Here and there cats, strays from the animal shelter located in the far corner of the Area Sacra, glanced up with disdainful disinterest or picked their way languidly between the ruins, meowing hopefully for food.
With a curious frown, Allegra realised that Salvatore was leading her towards a large semipermanent structure made of scaffolding, covered in white plastic sheeting.
Wedged into the space between the rear of the second and third temples and the retaining wall, she immediately recognised it as the sort of makeshift shelter that was often erected by archaeologists to protect an area of a site that they were excavating or restoring.
‘I’d stay out of the way until the colonel calls you over,’ Salvatore suggested as he paused on the threshold to the shelter, although from his tone it sounded more like an order.
‘The colonel?’
‘Colonel Gallo. The head of GICO,’ Salvatore explained in a hushed tone.
She recognised the name. From what she remembered reading at the time, Gallo had been parachuted in last year from the AISI, the Italian internal security service, after his predecessor had been implicated in the Mancini corruption scandal.
‘He’ll call you over when he’s ready.’
‘Great.’ She nodded, her tight smile masking a desperate urge to make some pointed observation about the irony of having been harried halfway across the city only to now be kept waiting.
‘And I’d lose that if I were you, too,’ he muttered, nodding at her cup. ‘It’s probably better he doesn’t know you stopped off for a coffee.’
Taking a deep breath, she theatrically placed the cup on the ground, then looked up with a forced smile. It wasn’t Salvatore’s fault, she knew. Gallo clearly orbited his waking hours like a small moon, the gravitational pull off his shifting favour governing the ebb and flow of Salvatore’s emotions. But that didn’t make him any less annoying.
‘Happy now?’
‘Ecstatic.’
Greeting the two uniformed men guarding the entrance with a nod, Salvatore held a plastic flap in the sidewall open and they stepped inside. It revealed a long, narrow space, the scaffolding forming a sturdily symmetrical endoskeleton over which the white sheeting had been draped and then fixed into place. In one place some of the ties had come loose, the wind catching the sheet’s edges and snapping it against the metal frame, causing it to chime like a halyard striking a mast.
Salvatore motioned at a crumbling pediment, his gesture suggesting that he wanted her to sit there until she was called forward, then made his way towards a small group of people standing in a semi-circle fifteen or so feet in front of her - all men, she noted with a resigned sigh. Making a point of remaining standing, she counted the minutes as they ticked past - first one, then three, then five. Nothing. In fact no one had even turned round to acknowledge that she was there. Pursing her lips, she decided to give it another few minutes and then, when these too had passed, she made an angry clicking noise with her tongue and set off towards them. Busy was one thing, rude was another. She had better things to do than sit around until Gallo deigned to beckon her over like some sort of performing dog. Besides, she wanted to see for herself whatever it was they were and discussing so intently.
Seeing her approaching, Salvatore frantically signalled at her to stay back. She ignored him, but then stopped anyway, the colour draining from her face as a sudden gap revealed what they had been shielding from view.
It was a corpse. A man. A half-naked man. Arms spread-eagled, legs pinned together, he had been lashed to a makeshift wooden cross with steel wire. Allegra glanced away, horrified, but almost immediately looked back, the gruesome scene exercising a strange, magnetic pull. For as if drawn from some cursed, demonic ritual, the cross had been inverted.
He had been crucified upside down.
Arlington National Cemetery, Washington DC 17th March - 11.46 a.m.
‘You sure about this?’ Special Agent Bryan Stokes stepped out of the car behind her, his tone making his own doubts clear.
‘Absolutely,’ Jennifer Browne nodded, surprised at the unforced confidence in her voice as she watched Tom set off towards them, his short brown hair plastered down by the rain. He had seemed pleased to see her, his initial surprise having melted into a warm smile and an eager wave. That was something, at least.
‘So what’s the deal with you two?’ Stokes wedged a golf umbrella against his shoulder with his chin and flicked a manilla file open. Medium height, about a hundred and seventy pounds, Jennifer guessed that Stokes had been born frowning, deep lines furrowing a wide, flat forehead, bloodless lips pressed into a concerned grimace. In his early forties, he was dressed in a severe charcoal suit and black tie that had dropped away from his collar, revealing that the button was missing.
‘There is no deal,’ she said quickly, looking away in case he noticed her smile.
‘Then how do you know him?’
‘We’ve worked a couple of cases together, that’s all.’
Tom was navigating his way towards them through the blossom scatter of white gravestones like a skiff through a storm, tacking first one way and then the other as he plotted a route up the hill. Not for the first