Sign of the Cross

the legal rights of Dr Boyd. The fact that he sounded like Ringo Starr, had bandages all over, and carried a stolen handgun in his shorts made no difference to the guard. He looked at Payne, shrugged, and let him inside. No questions asked.

Snooping around the first floor, Payne looked for anything that might explain why Boyd was at the library. He figured it might’ve been something perverted, since the women’s room was sealed off with yellow tape that said Polizia. Then again, that didn’t make much sense, since Boyd was too smart to do anything that would draw attention to himself, like peeping into the ladies’ room. Unless this had something to do with the mysterious female who was mentioned on the radio. Maybe she was the one who did something in the restroom? Maybe she was the reason he was running for his life after all these years toying with Interpol?

Whatever the case, Payne needed to find out what had happened in that bathroom.

Paranoid, he crept over to the door, not sure what to expect. A corpse? Some bloodstains? A battered female? At the very least he was hoping to overhear some juicy facts about Boyd and his partner, yet the only thing he saw was a technician dusting for prints. Disappointed, he turned from the door and started walking when he felt someone latch on to his arm.

‘Where is you going?’ demanded a man in a thick Italian accent.

Son of a bitch, Payne thought to himself. The security guard at the front door must’ve told some of the cops about him, and they were getting ready to haul his ass out. Payne turned around, half expecting to see a gun pointed at his chest. Instead, he found a tiny man with a smiling face and a head filled with the curliest black hair he’d ever seen in a nonpubic region.

Payne was so stunned he started babbling. ‘I was, just, ah, I was — ’

‘Just what? Running off and no introducing yourself?’

Confused, Payne stood there trying to size up this guy who was at least a foot shorter than he was. He wore a light-gray suit and a starched white shirt. A picture ID hung from his coat pocket, but the writing was microscopic and in Italian, so he had no idea what it said.

‘Well,’ he laughed, ‘if you no gonna speak, I do the talking. My name is Francesco Cione. My English-speaking friends call me Frankie. I am university’s media man, which, as my feet tells you, makes me busiest man in all of Milan — at least on this night no?’

And just like that, Payne knew Frankie would be a wonderful ally.

Thinking quickly, he whispered, ‘Are you really the media liaison for the Boyd case?’

Intrigued by the hushed tone, Frankie looked around for eavesdroppers. ‘Yes, I am media man for this school. Why do you ask?’

Payne put a finger to his lips. ‘Shhhhh! Not here. Is there somewhere we can talk?’

‘In private?’ he asked softly. ‘Yes, I can do that. I can do anything. Follow me.’

In all honesty, Payne didn’t have anything to speak to him about — at least not at that moment. But he figured he couldn’t risk standing in the hallway with a dozen cops liable to spot him. Plus, he realized he had to give Frankie some kind of explanation and figured a long walk to a secluded part of the library would give him enough time to develop a believable cover story.

Frankie led Payne to a private reading room filled from floor to ceiling with stacks of leather-bound books. Then he asked, ‘What is this? Some secret, no?’

Payne countered the question with one of his own. ‘Do you have any idea who I am?’

He shook his head. ‘One of guards tells me you are from British embassy, but after listening to you voice, I knows that he is wrong. You an American, no?’

‘Very good.’ Payne applauded. ‘That means you’re smarter than your guards.’

Smiling at the half compliment, Frankie said, ‘So, tell me, who you are?’

‘Not yet. We’ll get to that in a second. But first I have another question for you. Do you like what you do for a living? I mean, I get the sense that you’re capable of doing so much more. I picture you as someone who should be making news instead of helping others report it. And do you know what? I’m the type of guy who can make that happen. If that would appeal to you.’

Intrigued, Frankie invited Payne to sit down. ‘What, are you some kind of magic wizard? You can go poof and fix my life?’

‘How would you like to help me and my team capture Dr Boyd? Not a behind-the-scenes job, but one in which you actively participate in his capture. Would that interest you?’

Drool practically leaked from his mouth. ‘Would that interest me? Mamma mia! I have been trying to help the polizia all night, but they no have been receptive. What do you need?’

‘I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, I need your help with something trivial.’

‘You need my help before you need my help. This is very confusing, no? What is you need?’

‘Actually, I just need help getting my partner inside.’

‘Is that it? I can do that with my eyes tied behind my back.’

That sounded painful, but Payne didn’t have the heart to correct him. Instead, he gave him all the information he needed and told him where he could find Jones. ‘Before you go, though, let me officially introduce myself. My name is Jonathon Payne, and I’m working for the CIA.’

‘The CIA?’ he gasped. ‘I heard of that in cinema, no? It is an honor to meet you Signor Payne. Yes, a big honor… So, is there anything you need besides your friend?’

‘Yeah, Frankie, now that you mention it, there is…’

Dante marched into the library like he owned the place, around the crowd of onlookers, past the worthless security guard, and through a dozen cops in the lobby. He never slowed to make small talk, never gave anyone a chance to ask him what he was doing or where he was going until he reached the police tape outside the women’s bathroom.

‘What happened?’ he growled at the lead detective.

The officer recognized him immediately and knew his connection to Benito Pelati. ‘Multiple assaults followed by a well-planned escape. They eluded a SWAT team like they were statues.’

‘Who was assaulted?’

‘An off-duty library guard was attacked more than once. The girl hit him first. Boyd got him next, then the girl got him again. She must’ve been coked up or something, because he said she had the strength of ten men.’

Dante grimaced, surprised at the detective’s gullibility. Didn’t he know that every guy who had his ass kicked by a female was going to have an excuse? ‘How’d they get off the roof?’

‘A scrap tube. They slid to the alley.’

‘Do we have pictures of anything?’

‘Maybe. We’re looking through security tapes as we speak.’

Dante frowned. The last thing he needed was for a batch of photographs to be leaked to the press. In his mind that would be more difficult to contain than the bus explosion had been. ‘What about fingerprints? Are we even sure it was Boyd?’

The detective shrugged as two men — one of them short, the other one black — walked past them down the hall. ‘The guard swears it was him, and so do several witnesses. We won’t know for sure until later. There are a lot of prints to sort through in a building like this.’

The longer, the better, thought Dante. He needed all the time he could get to paint the appropriate picture with the media. ‘Last question: Do we know what they were doing here?’

‘Research, I think. They spent most of the day in a study room working on some kind of project. I can show you if you’d like.’

Dante nodded, hoping to hell that they weren’t working on anything that they’d found in Orvieto. That’s the one thing he couldn’t contain if Boyd decided to go public.

Jones strolled into the library, bemused. He’d been standing outside, trying to find anyone who would talk to him about Boyd, when a tiny man grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the steps. His initial reaction was to pull away, which wouldn’t have been hard, considering Frankie’s size. Then Frankie said he was a friend of Agent Payne’s and Jones was needed inside.

As they walked down the corridor, Jones kept his head on a swivel, memorizing the layout while trying to figure out what had taken place. A murder? A kidnapping? A rape? The only thing that stood out was the police tape