Italy. She’s originally from El Salvador. Just like your dad.”
I had the sensation of ice cubes slipping down my neck.
Audrey Kuser was looking at the file. “Your father’s name is Miguel Sanchez, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
I was shocked to hear her speak my father’s name. He was an immigrant from El Salvador who married my American mother. He disappeared from my life when I was five years old, in a darkened yard in Santa Monica, California, bludgeoned to death because he had brown skin.
“How do you know about Miguel Sanchez?”
Audrey Kuser glanced at me over her reading glasses.
“You wrote your father’s name on the application when you joined the Bureau,” she explained. “We confirmed ‘Sanchez’ as belonging both to you and to this woman. Sanchez is her maiden name. She’s claiming to be related to your father’s family. She wrote several letters, in fact.”
“Why did I never receive them?”
She narrowed her eyes mockingly. “Are you serious?”
I understood the implication. Personal mail from a foreign source to a special agent would have been sent to FBI HQ, where it was probably still being examined by umpteen layers of intel analysts.
“Here’s what we’ve learned about your family member, and what we want you to do. Cecilia Maria Nicosa is married to Nicoli Nicosa, a wealthy coffee importer who made his money supplying the restaurant business. We believe the husband may be dirty. He was carrying on a very public affair with a woman called Lucia Vincenzo, a mafia operative who recently disappeared. Lucia Vincenzo had connections with international drug trafficking, and because of his history, we suspect Nicosa might, too. Ms. Vincenzo is not the only victim who has vanished in northern Italy in recent months; there has been a cluster of the ‘disappeared.’ Italian citizens are afraid the government cannot control the violence associated with global criminal networks — and in fact, the government has asked for our assistance. This case will give us the opportunity to help the Italians and also get intel on drug trafficking to the United States. We want you to check Mr. Nicosa out. We want to know if he’s dangerous. You’ll report to the legat in Rome. When you get there, he’ll give you an official passport that says you’re on U.S. government business.”
We were pulling up to the Georgian mews house. The curtains were drawn over the basement window. I knew exactly what it would smell like inside.
“Palio starts next week,” Audrey Kuser was saying. “Do you know what that is?”
“A horse race?”
“It’s a festival in the city of Siena that draws huge crowds, ends with a big race. If you
We got out of the car and she accompanied me down the basement steps. She would not leave my side until I was delivered safely to the plane to Rome.
As I turned the key, the borrowed flat seemed dead; whatever warmth and hopefulness Sterling and I had kindled was gone along with him. Audrey Kuser stood with feet planted, thumbing her BlackBerry, while I pulled out a suitcase. I could see from her aggressive stance the solid street agent she once had been.
“I’m sure you would rather take a shower and sleep for twelve hours,” she observed.
“It sounds like a lot of planning went into this.”
“The ball’s been in play since we made the connection between you, your relative, and Nicoli Nicosa. We’ve been interested in him for a while, but with Italian-controlled crime syndicates, it’s impossible to get inside unless you’re trusted kin.”
“I’m not exactly trusted kin.”
“Not yet, but it could be a good fit. We had been looking at you going undercover, but last night’s events pushed the time frame.”
“Why is that?”
“The fact that you were on Edgewater Crescent Road. We had to ask ourselves, was it a coincidence you were there during the attack? Mike Donnato calls from Los Angeles to inform you of our interest, and an hour later our agent is caught in a hail of machine gun fire. Did someone overhear that conversation? Is someone out to eliminate Ana Grey — or the entire operation? The better part of valor is for you to leave London.”
Vacation was definitely over. I’d been awake twenty-four hours and traumatized more than I knew, overwhelmed by manic exhaustion. The notion of putting up a front for some long-lost relative seemed beyond my capabilities. I found myself staring numbly at a jumbled drawer of T-shirts.
Audrey Kuser looked at her watch and began to fold each one and lay it flat in the suitcase.
“When you raise three boys, you get good at this,” she said briskly. “Let me help.”
ROME
THREE
Rome is burning in the blaze of June. The heat comes at you in scorching puffs, like the fiery breath of seraphim, that eternal chorus of angels who do nothing but praise God. They must work extra hard in this fervent air, singing their adoring prayers in clashing discord with the earsplitting racket of motor scooters and jackhammers.
The ancient, toothless cabdriver has installed a navigation system in his vehicle, but not air-conditioning. We ride with the windows down, ripening by the minute, like olives. The summer crowds are global, colossal. As we come to a standstill in heavy traffic yet again, I am starting to feel as if I might evaporate along with my own sweat, leaving an empty black Brooks Brothers suit on the seat.
The taxi crawls up the Via Veneto. Every town in the U.S.A. has a “Via Veneto”—an Italian restaurant or shoe store named after the famous avenue lined with sycamore trees. Swank cafes have taken over the sidewalks in front of stately old hotels and apartment buildings, flaunting awnings and wicker chairs, tables separated by gauzy billowing curtains. I am not going there. I am going to an armed fortress.
The American embassy in Rome is housed in the Palazzo Margherita, which sounds grand, and probably was, until the threat of terrorism made it prudent to enclose the entire block in a web of concrete buttresses. We used to build embassies with walls of glass to demonstrate the pride of an open democratic society in a foreign land. Now the symbol of American diplomatic presence has been buried inside a depressing and impenetrable military stronghold.
I disembark on the Via Veneto at a confusing maze of stanchions, furnace-heated air gusting up my skirt. Somewhere close by is the disconcerting sound of fresh bubbling water. The driver has left the cab idling in the middle of the street in order to fill a water bottle from an archaic moss-covered fountain behind the barriers that has survived since God knows who was emperor. I would like to stick my head in it.
Young carabinieri are directing traffic while talking on cell phones. There are a lot of uniforms, but none seems to know the location of the main entrance, or how to interpret my paltry Italian. Why did I assume Americans would be guarding the American embassy? After several phone calls and three separate checks of credentials by three humorless Italian officers, I go through the gate and am met by a robust young lady from Virginia, who guides us through a blazing inner courtyard, zigzagging through a den of construction, until at last we come to the old chancery building, home of the ambassador and the site of sensitive consular activities, where I am relieved to be greeted by a pair of alert on-duty U.S. Marines.
We go through a gap in the scaffolding and enter a hundred-and-twenty-year-old palazzo, cross burgundy marble floors, and trudge up a stone staircase. It gets weirder.
