A Glancing Light

This got me nowhere. I took a different tack. Who knew that I was flying to Sicily this morning? That question gave me more answers than I knew what to do with. When I thought back over my conversations of the last few days I realized I'd blabbed to everyone about it. I'd told Salvatorelli, I'd told Luca and Di Vecchio, I'd told Clara, I hadn't missed anyone. I'd told Max, I'd told Calvin, I'd told Tony. Not that I entertained any suspicions about the last three, but who knew whom else they'd mentioned it to?

Of them all, in fact, there was no one, even Salvatorelli, whom I could seriously cast as a murderer in my mind. Certainly not as a mass murderer. Yet one of them must have . . .

Croce. Filippo Croce, the sleazy art dealer from Ferrara, the man with the pointy-toed shoes who'd come to Antuono with his story about the Pittura Metafisica paintings in the Salvatorelli warehouse. Had he still been in the room when I'd told Clara I'd be visiting Ugo, or had he already left? No, he'd been there. It had been right at the beginning; he hadn't yet delivered his harangue on revolutionary perspectival structure. Filippo Croce .. .

When the door finally opened, it wasn't the senior officer who came in, but Colonel Antuono, in his natty uniform, but looking cross and tired in spite of it. 'You can go,' he muttered to Stefano, who rose meekly and left. I heaved a sigh, grateful to see the last of the semiautomatic.

'You understand I have no jurisdiction here, in this matter of the bomb,' he said. 'My official concern is with the pictures.'

'I understand.' Whatever the reason he was there, I was glad to see him. Under these circumstances he qualified as an old friend.

He pulled the vacated chair up to the table and wearily sat down. The tunic strained across his stooped shoulders. He undid a button. He tapped slowly on the table, regarding me with something close to resignation.

'Why do you do these things?' he said at last, very quietly.

'Do what? What did I do?' I said, not that he seemed to expect an answer. 'All I know is, at eight o'clock this morning I got a call from a man who said he was Mr. Marchetti, the assistant—'

'There is no Mr. Marchetti. The name of the assistant manager is Pugliese.'

'Well, sure, it was just a ploy. I've already figured that out. It was just a way for someone to put a bomb in my bag.' When I heard my own words, I came perilously close to letting out a nervous giggle. What was I doing in a situation like this?

Antuono wondered the same thing. 'And why,' he asked with testy patience, 'would someone wish to do such a thing?'

'I have no idea why, but I think I might know who.' I told him what I'd been thinking about when he came in.

'Again you persist with Croce,' he said when I'd finished. 'Why would Filippo Croce want to do you harm?'

'I don't know, goddammit! Didn't I just say that?' I was getting a little testy myself. It hadn't been my idea of a wonderful morning, and the idea that someone had tried to end my life—and was likely to try again—was still filtering through the unreality of the last hour. 'But he was right there when I told Clara I'd be on that plane.'

'And no one else knew? Only Croce and signora Gozzi?'

'Well, no, I also told Salvatorelli—'

'Ah? Is that so?' He took out a little notebook and scribbled in it.

'—and Benedetto Luca and Amedeo Di Vecchio.'

'Luca . . . Di Vecchio. ' He nodded without looking up and kept on writing.

'And Ugo Scoccimarro, of course. And I think I mentioned it to Tony Whitehead . . .'

The pen stopped. He glanced up at me under lifted eyebrows.

'. . . and Calvin Boyer—he works with me in Seattle. He's here in connection with the show.'

'I see.' The notebook was snapped closed and put away. 'Perhaps we go about this the wrong way. Is there anyone in Bologna you forgot to tell? It would make not so long a list.'

I wasn't in the mood for Antuono's arid wit. 'Well, why the hell would I keep it a secret?' I said. 'Why should I think anyone would try to kill me, let alone blow up an entire planeload of people, just to get to me?'

`No, no, they are not such monsters as that. You were carrying a time bomb, dottore. It has been disarmed. The detonation was set for eleven thirty-five.'

'At which time the plane would have been over the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea.'

'Yes, but that would have been your fault, not theirs.'

 'My—I don't understand.'

'Your reservation was on Alisarda flight number 217, no? You were to leave at noon.'

I shook my head. 'No, I changed that to a ten-fifteen flight.'

'Yes, but when did you change it?'

I realized what he was driving at. I had called the airport at 9:15, after my bags had been in the lobby for almost an hour. Then I'd gone quickly back to the hotel—no more than a three-minute walk—to get them. If someone had put a bomb in the duffel bag, which someone had, it had been done between 8:30 and 9:15, at which time 'Mr. Marchetti' had believed that I was booked on the noon flight—half an hour

after detonation.

'The taxi,' I murmured. 'He ordered a taxi for me. At eleven-twenty. The bomb would have gone off while I was on my way to the airport.'

'Yes, that's what it was designed for. It's not a subtle device; it had no chance at all of getting through airport security—a point in your favor with Captain Lepido, by the way. Also, it was not large. It was what is called an antipersonnel bomb, capable of demolishing the inside of a taxi, yes; of bringing down an airplane, highly unlikely. So you see, we are not dealing with a monster after all. It was you alone he was after.'

'He was willing to sacrifice the cab driver.'

'One person, not hundreds.'

'Well, that's very comforting, Colonel. I can't tell you how much better I feel knowing that.'

He allowed himself a wry smile. 'Signor Norgren, I have a favor to ask you. I think it might be helpful if the person who tried to kill you were to believe he succeeded. It would be safer for you if he thought you were, ah, out of the way, and it would perhaps be useful to the police in apprehending him.'

'All right. What's the favor?'

'As I said. To pretend you are killed, at least insofar as Bologna is concerned. For a few days only. Go to Sicily and do your business, but no telephone calls back to Bologna, no contact of any kind.'

'I don't get it. You said the Sicilian Mafia is involved. If I go to Sicily and do my business, they're likely to find out I'm alive, aren't they?'

'Not the people that matter. They're here in Bologna.'

 'But you told—'

'I told you the Sicilian Mafia is behind the thefts. They are. But those concerned are now here.' Even in that tiny, secure room, with no one else around, he leaned forward and lowered his voice. 'Things come to a head; we will very soon have those paintings back. The arrangements have already been made ' He held up a finger. 'I speak in confidence.'

Arrangements had been made, and word of my survival might somehow spoil them, so would I kindly shut up, stop poking around, and play dead; that was what he was telling me. Still, I dearly wanted to see those paintings back, too. So if it would help, I would go along with it even if I didn't like it.

'All right,' I said tentatively, 'but I'd like to let my friends know I'm all right. I wouldn't want them, to hear I'd been killed.'

He waved his hands. 'No, no, no, don't worry, they won't think so I will see to it that the newspapers and the television report only that a taxi was blown up on its way to the airport, resulting in the death of the passenger, but that his name is being withheld until his family is notified. I will say that terrorists are believed responsible. To your friends, it will mean nothing. To the people who planned it, it will mean everything.'

I nodded. 'Okay.'

'There is one more thing. I hope I am correct in thinking that you will go directly home from Sicily, that you are not returning to Bologna?'

The back of my neck prickled. Since coming there, I had been beaten up by thugs and run down by a car; I