FIFTY
Banco Rosalia head office, Via Boncompagni, Rome 19th March – 9.24 p.m.
‘So? How much are we down?’ Santos sniffed, helping himself to a half tumbler of Limoncella from the drinks trolley.
Alfredo Geri looked up from his laptop, frowning slightly as he worked through the math. Five feet ten, he was wearing a grey suit, his tie yanked down, jacket trapped under the wheel of his chair where it had fallen on to the floor and he’d run over it. His thin black hair was slicked down against his marbled scalp, his face gaunt and bleached a cadaverous shade of white by lack of sleep and sunlight. To his right, balancing precariously on a slumping battlement of stacked files, was a pizza box that he’d not yet had time to open.
‘Now I’ve had a chance to look properly…eight…maybe nine?’
‘Eight or nine what?’ Santos snapped. He sat down heavily at the head of the table, a blanket of scattered paper stretching along its polished surface like an avalanche over a valley floor. ‘It’s a big number. Show it some respect.’
‘Eight or nine hundred million. Euro.’
‘Eight or nine hundred million euro.’ Santos closed his eyes and sighed heavily, then gave a rueful smile as he kicked back. ‘You know, the strange thing is that a few months ago losing just fifty million would have felt like the end of the world. Now, it feels like a rounding error.’
He reached for his tin of liquorice, shook it, then popped the lid.
‘It’s the CDOs that have killed us,’ Geri continued, putting his half-moon glasses back on and hunching over his screen. ‘The entire portfolio’s been wiped out. The rest is from currency swings and counterparty losses.’
‘I thought we were hedged?’
‘You can’t hedge against this sort of market.’
‘And the League’s deposits and investments?’ Santos asked hopefully.
‘Antonio, the bank’s entire capital base is gone,’ Geri spoke slowly as if trying to spell out complicated directions to a tourist. ‘It’s all gone. Everything.’
Santos sniffed, then knocked the Limoncella back with a jerk of his wrist.
‘Good. It makes things easier. This way I only need to worry about myself. Where did I come out in the end?’
‘I’ve liquidated what I can,’ Geri sounded almost apologetic. ‘Most of it at a loss, like I told you when we spoke. But the bulk of your portfolio would take weeks if not months to sell.’
‘How much?’ Santos snapped.
‘Three, maybe four million.’
‘That barely gets me a chalet,’ Santos said with a hollow laugh. ‘What about the money market positions?’
‘Already included, minus what you had to sell to fund your fun and games in Las Vegas last week,’ Geri reminded him in a reproachful tone.
A long pause.
‘Fine,’ Santos stood up. ‘It is what it is and what it is…is not enough. I need the painting.’
‘You’ve found a buyer?’
‘The Serbs are lined up to take it off my hands for twenty million,’ Santos said with a smile. ‘I’m flying out to meet them later tonight.’
‘And the watches?’
‘I’ve got one already and another on its way. I’ll get the third on the night from De Luca or Moretti. They always wear theirs.’
‘They won’t let you get away with it,’ Geri pointed out, closing his file.
‘They won’t be able to stop me if they’re dead.’ Santos shrugged, moving round to stand behind him.
‘For every person you kill, the League will send two more. You can’t kill them all. Eventually they’ll find you.’
‘How?’ Santos shrugged, stepping even closer until he could see the liver spots and tiny veins nestling under Geri’s thin thatch. ‘The world’s a large place. And you’re the only other person who knows where I’m going.’
‘Well, you know I’ll never tell them,’ Geri reassured him, shoulders stiff, staring straight in front of him.
‘Oh, I know.’ Santos smiled.
In an instant, he had locked his left arm around Geri’s throat and pulled him clear of the table. Geri lashed out with his legs, catching the edge of his file and sending it cartwheeling to the floor, paper scattering like feathers. Then with his right hand, Santos reached round and grabbed Geri’s chin.
With a sharp jerk, he snapped his neck.
FIFTY-ONE
Nr Anguillara Sabazia, northwest of Rome 19th March – 9.56 p.m.
‘Drink?’
Fabio Contarelli had turned in the passenger seat to face them, battered hip flask in hand. In his mid forties, short and pot-bellied, he had the warm, jovial manner of someone who prided himself on being on first-name terms with everyone in his village, and who the local butcher had come to favour with the best cuts. Shabbily dressed, his weather-worn face was brown and cracked like a dried river bed, although his fern green eyes shone, as if he was permanently on the verge of playing a practical joke. There was certainly little there to suggest that he had been responsible for the horrors Allegra and Tom had witnessed in the basement of his house.
‘
‘How long have you been a tombarolo?’ Tom asked.
‘Since I was a boy,’ Contarelli said proudly. He spoke fast and mainly in Italian, with a booming voice that was too big for his body. ‘It’s in the blood, you see. I used to come out to these fields with my father. In those days the earth would be littered with fragments of pottery and broken statues surfaced by the farmers’ ploughs. That’s when I realised there was another world under there.’ He gestured longingly out of the window towards the earthquake-scarred landscape now shrouded by night. ‘I sold what I found in the market, used the money to buy some books, got smarter about what pieces were and how much they were worth, climbed through the ranks. Now I’m a
‘And you always go out at night?’
‘It depends on the site.’ He shrugged, lighting a cigarette from the smouldering stub of the one which had preceded it, his fingernails broken and dirty. He seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘For some of the larger ones, we offer the landowner a share in the profits. Then my boys turn up in the day with a bulldozer and some hard hats. If anyone asks, we tell them we’re working on a construction project. If they ask again, we pay them off. Or shut them up.’
Allegra felt her anger rising, its delirious scent momentarily blinding her to the danger they were in and to the armed man seated in the back with her and Tom. She’d seen enough already to know that this wasn’t just tomb robbing. It was cultural vandalism, Contarelli’s brutal methods probably destroying as much as he found. The fact that he was now happily boasting about it only made it worse.
‘So you’ve never been caught?’ Tom asked quickly, his worried glance suggesting that he could tell she was about to snap.
‘The Carabinieri need to find us before they can catch us,’ he explained with a grin. ‘They do their best, but there are thousands of tombs and villas buried out here and they can’t be everywhere at once. Especially now the politicians are tablethumping about immigration, drugs and terrorism. You know, a few years ago, I even cleared out three graves in a field next to the police station in Viterbo. If they can’t stop us there, right under their snouts,
