‘Let’s take it off the stretchers so we can roll it up,’ Archie suggested.
‘Be careful with it,’ Moretti warned him.
Tom fixed him with a questioning look, detecting a proprietary tone.
‘Is it yours?’
‘Not any more,’ he admitted. ‘We donated it as a gesture of good faith when the League was founded. The De Luca family contributed this villa.’
‘I’ll return it,’ Tom reassured him. ‘You have my word.’
‘Then why take it?’ De Luca demanded.
Tom paused before answering, not wanting to give Santos the pleasure of hearing him stumble over his words.
‘You know the FBI officer I asked you about, the one who was shot in Vegas three nights ago?’ De Luca nodded with a puzzled frown. ‘A few weeks back she got a tip-off about one of your US-based distributors. An antiquities dealer based in New York. Under questioning, he volunteered Luca Cavalli’s name.’
‘I knew Luca,’ Moretti frowned. ‘He was careful. He would never have revealed his name to someone that far down the organisation.’
‘He didn’t,’ Tom agreed. ‘Faulks did.’
‘What?’ Faulks gave a disbelieving laugh.
‘Remember that photo of the ivory mask we came across in Cavalli’s car?’ Allegra glanced up at De Luca from where she was helping free the painting from the wooden stretchers. ‘We found it in Faulks’s safe. It’s worth millions. Tens of millions.’
‘My guess is that Cavalli had been secretly bringing you pieces for years,’ Tom said, turning to stand in front of Faulks, whom he noticed had slid his chair a little way back from the others. ‘Pieces his men had dug up and that he had deliberately not declared to the League, so that you could sell them on and share the profits between you. But then one day he unearthed something really valuable, didn’t he? Something unique. And you just couldn’t help yourself. You got greedy.’
‘Cavalli sent me the mask, it’s true,’ Faulks blustered, looking anxiously at De Luca and Moretti. ‘A wonderful piece. But my intention was to split the proceeds with the League in the usual way after the sale. And not just the mask. I have the map showing the location of the site where he found it. Who knows what else might be down there?’
‘Can you prove any of this?’ De Luca challenged Allegra, fixing her with an unblinking, stony-faced stare.
‘Who told you that Cavalli had betrayed you?’ Tom shot back.
De Luca paused, then pointed a wavering finger towards Faulks. ‘He did.’
‘I had no choice,’ Faulks protested. ‘It’s true that Cavalli wanted me to deal with him direct. But when I refused he threatened to go public with everything he knew. What I told you was the truth. He was planning to betray you. He was planning to sell us all out. You know yourself that your informants backed me up.’
‘The FBI had Cavalli’s name,’ De Luca acknowledged, turning his gaze back to Tom. ‘They wanted the authorities here to arrest him.’
‘Cavalli was ripping you off, but I doubt he was going to go public with anything,’ Tom said with a shrug, thinking back to the moment in front of Faulks’s open safe when this had all clicked into place. ‘The simple truth is that Faulks wanted him out of the way so he could have the mask for himself. So he came up with a plan. First feed Cavalli’s name to the New York dealer. Then sell the dealer out to the FBI to make sure he would talk. Finally accuse Cavalli of betraying you, knowing your police informants would confirm that the FBI was investigating him and that you would think he was collaborating.’
‘This is crazy,’ Faulks spluttered. ‘I’ve never…’
‘The clever thing was the way he set both sides of the League against each other,’ Allegra mused, rising to her feet. ‘He knew that Don Moretti would retaliate once you’d killed Cavalli, leaving him free to sell it for himself, while you were busy fighting each other.’
‘That was never my intention,’ Faulks pleaded angrily. ‘Cavalli was a threat. I was simply acting in the best interests of the League. As I have always done.’
‘Of course, while all this was going on, Santos was busy taking out a contract on my friend,’ Tom continued, turning to face him. ‘My guess is…’
‘How much more of this do we have to listen to?’ Santos interrupted, his palms raised disbelievingly to the ceiling. ‘I’ve never-’
‘
Santos sat back with a scowl, muttering to himself.
‘My guess is that, when she searched the dealer’s warehouse, she found something implicating the Banco Rosalia and started kicking the tyres,’ Tom continued. ‘When Santos realised that she was on to him, he had her taken out, using the prospect of recovering your Caravaggio to lure her to Las Vegas where he had a gunman waiting.’
‘She was a threat to us all,’ Santos blurted out defiantly.
‘You mean this is true? You killed an FBI agent without our permission?’ De Luca jumped to his feet, violence in his voice now.
‘I did what I had to do to protect the League,’ Santos protested. ‘I’d do the same again.’
‘At first we thought everything was connected,’ Allegra admitted. ‘It was only later that we realised that the Rome murders and the ivory mask had nothing to do with Jennifer’s assassination, or with D’Arcy, who was killed for his watch.’
‘The irony is that it was Faulks’s tip-off about the dealer in New York that unknowingly led to the FBI looking into the Banco Rosalia in the first place,’ Tom said with a rueful smile. ‘Without that, Jennifer would probably still be alive, and Santos wouldn’t be preparing to explain to his Serbian friends why he hasn’t been able to deliver the painting.’
‘No, Kirk,’ Santos said with a cruel smile. ‘The biggest irony is that-’
A single gunshot cut him off. Tom’s head snapped towards the doorway. A uniformed policeman in a bullet- proof vest was standing there, gun pointed towards the roof, five, maybe eight armed police filtering into the room either side of him, machine guns braced against their shoulders.
Tom snatched a look at Allegra. Ashen faced, she mouthed one word.
Gallo.
EIGHTY
20th March-11.13 p.m.
‘Colonel Gallo, thank God you’re here!’ Santos rose gratefully from his seat and stepped towards him, switching back to Italian.
‘Sit down,’ Gallo ordered him back.
‘I’ve been kidnapped. Held against my will. Shot!’ He held out his bloodied arm, his voice rising hysterically.
‘Sit down, Santos, or I’ll shoot you again myself,’ Gallo warned him in an icy tone.
‘This is an outrage,’ Santos insisted. ‘In case it’s slipped your mind, Gallo, I have diplomatic immunity. You have no legal right to detain me here. I demand to be released immediately.’
‘No one is going anywhere,’ Gallo fired back. ‘Get their weapons.’ Two of his men shouldered their machine guns and quickly patted everyone down, tossing whatever they found into the far corner of the room. Santos sank into his chair. Gallo turned to Allegra. ‘Lieutenant Damico, are you hurt?’
‘N-n-no,’ Allegra stammered, bewildered. This was the man she’d been running from; the man she’d seen execute Gambetta and then pin the crime on her; the man who had supposedly supplied Santos with Cavalli’s watch. And yet, this same man was now holding Santos at gunpoint and asking if she was okay.
‘Good.’ Gallo twitched a smile. ‘Then maybe you can tell me what the hell is going on down here?’
Again she looked for signs of the person who had been haunting her thoughts for the past few days. But it was almost as if she’d imagined the whole thing.
