I lower the photo and notice that Sterling has been stroking my neck.
“Are you feeling me?”
“Yes, babe. I’m very glad you’re here.”
I put my hand over his hand.
“You know, all the time we were in Italy, whenever you’d touch me, I couldn’t feel it,” he says. “I mean, literally, I was numb.”
I look into his face, surprised. “I guess you were still getting used to buildings that didn’t have bomb craters in them.”
He pulls back. “Should we take a walk on the beach?”
It is close to sundown and the air is chilly. We throw sweatshirts over our bathing suits. You have to go down a long flight of redwood steps, and then there is a tiny cove the other houses share, with big charcoal gray carved-out volcanic cliffs on either side; if you go around them you would be on a wide state beach. A steady gust is coming off the ocean and everything seems to be in motion — seagulls, waves, pelicans, sailboats way out. We walk along the wet sand, mirrored with flocks of long-legged pipers needling for crabs.
“What happened was, they changed the rules of engagement,” Sterling says.
“This was after London?”
“When I left you back in London, yeah. The mission was in Pakistan. We paid the right people and crossed the border to Afghanistan. The target was a senior Hamas commander who was supplying guns to the militants. He was responsible for a lot of deaths, not only in Gaza. As you know, it’s hard to get close to these guys, so they have a new policy — like with all these predator drones now, they’re willing to accept a certain number of civilian casualties. I’m a sniper. It ain’t how I was trained. For me, you sit in a hole for three days and surgically remove the bad guy. I was very vocal about the changes, but they overrode me. The client was just going to go ahead with it, knowing there could be other deaths, including family members. It became a numbers game. Like seven people is acceptable, but not eight.
“The way we pulled it off, we put a bomb in his cell phone. We switched out his phone and planted a small explosive charge in one exactly like it — had the same wear and feel as the old one. We were in a hide site in the desert. He showed up on the road driving his Land Rover. We called, he answered the phone. Our interpreter confirmed his identity: ‘Is this Colonel So-and-So?’ He said yes. We tapped in a code on the keypad, and it sent a signal and blew his head off. Surgical strike and no collateral damage. Mission accomplished. I should have felt good, right? Except the Hamas commander was also a dad, and he got his head blown off in front of his wife and kids, who were also in the car.”
I suck in brackish air. “Doesn’t quite sit right, does it?”
“I never used to have a problem. This time I didn’t feel justified. I just felt dirty.”
“Quit.”
“And do what?”
“Go back to horses?”
We have been walking in surf up to our ankles. The damp salt wind keeps pushing, wrapping itself around our legs and insistently through our hair, as if nuzzling us to pay attention. The light is holding strong. Against the tide we walk into the water, finding ourselves waist-deep in a forest of rust-colored kelp, the soup of life. No longer resisting loneliness, I fold into his arms. My fingers dig into his flesh with desperation. He never flinches. He never once lets go. Halfway hidden, he pulls off my bikini bottom, and I wrap my legs around his hips, and the swells lift us together.
In Siena, Italy, a miracle occurs. The 1476 bronze sculpture of
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I must first acknowledge the work of others that has informed this journey. Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah, a first-person account of organized crime in Naples for which he is still at this time forced to live in hiding, was inspirational, along with McMafia by Misha Glenny. To understand the meaning of the Palio, La Terra in Piazza by Alan Dundes and Alessandro Falassi was an essential text, and Palio, The Race of the Soul by Mauro Civai and Enrico Toti was an insightful tribute.
I am obliged to those who unstintingly shared their expertise. Michael Grunberg and Tim Collins provided crucial background on private military operatives. Dr. William Skinner was an indispensable medical adviser. Jesse Sweeney at Caffe Umbria coffee roasting company in Seattle, Washington, kindly provided a spur-of-the-moment tour. Ines Cortez graciously described her experiences growing up in El Salvador.
The enduring love of my husband, Douglas Brayfield, and daughter, Emma, allowed me to stay sane during the roller coaster of writing a novel. While our son, Benjamin, was living in Italy, he suggested that a crime taking place during Palio might make an intruging thriller. He has continued to be an invaluable webmaster and photographer throughout this project.
On the home front at Alfred A. Knopf, I owe a huge debt to production editor Maria Massey and her crack crew, Maralee Youngs and Elizabeth Schraft, for meticulous reading; Paul Bogaards, Nicholas Latimer, and Pam Henstell for getting the word out; Anne-Lise Spitzer for state-of-the-art marketing; and Diana Coglianese for editorial support. I would like to offer profound gratitude to Sonny Mehta for his brilliant leadership, and to express special appreciation to Edward Kastenmeier, executive editor at Vintage Books, for gracing the manuscript with his keen attention.
Thank you to my friends at CAA, and to my longtime literary agent, Molly Friedrich, whose many gifts hardly fit in the four words of the dedication. She is unstoppable when it comes to excellence in publishing — a passionate advocate for both authors and readers.
