The Broker
Ermanno appeared as rattled as Marco by the sudden change in location. He was harried and unsettled, as if he'd chased them all night from Treviso. They walked with him a few blocks to a run-down apartment building. No elevators were evident, so they climbed four flights of stairs and entered a tiny, two-room flat that had even less furniture than the apartment in Treviso. Ermanno had obviously packed in a hurry and unpacked even faster.
"Your dump's worse than mine," Marco said, taking it in.
Spread on a narrow table and waiting for action were the study materials they'd used the day before.
"I'll be back for lunch," Luigi said, and quickly disappeared.
"Andiamo a studiare," Ermanno announced. Let's study.
"I've already forgotten everything."
"But we had a good session yesterday."
"Can't we just go to a bar and drink? I'm really not in the mood for this." But Ermanno had assumed his position across the table and was turning pages in his manual. Marco reluctantly settled into the seat across from him.
Lunch and dinner were forgettable. Both were quick snacks in fake trattorias, the Italian version of fast food. Luigi was in a foul mood and insisted, quite harshly at times, that they speak only Italian. Luigi spoke slowly, clearly, and repeated everything four times until Marco figured it out, then he moved along to the next phrase. It was impossible to enjoy food under such pressure.
At midnight, Marco was in his bed, in his cold room, wrapped tightly with the thin blanket, sipping orange juice he had ordered himself, and memorizing list after list of verbs and adjectives.
What could Robert Critz have possibly done to get himself killed by people who might also be looking for Joel Backman? The question itself was too bizarre to ask. He couldn't begin to contemplate an answer. He assumed Critz was present when the pardon was granted; ex-president Morgan was incapable of making such a decision by himself. Beyond that, though, it was impossible to see Critz involved at a higher level. He had proven for decades that he was nothing more than a good hatchet man. Very few people trusted him.
But if people were still dying, then it was urgent that he learn the verbs and adjectives scattered on his bed. Language meant survival, and movement. Luigi and Ermanno would soon disappear, and Marco Lazzeri would be left to fend for himself.
Marco escaped his claustrophobic room, or "apartment" as it was called, and went for a long walk at daybreak. The sidewalks were almost as damp as the frigid air. With a pocket map Luigi had given him, all in Italian of course, he made his way into the old city, and once past the ruins of the ancient walls at Porta San Donato, he headed west on Via Irnerio along the north edge of the university section of Bologna. The sidewalks were centuries old and covered with what appeared to be miles of arching porticoes.
Evidently street life began late in the university section. An occasional car passed, then a bike or two, but the foot traffic was still asleep. Luigi had explained that Bologna had a history of left-wing, communist leanings. It was a rich history, one that Luigi promised to explore with him.
Ahead Marco saw a small green neon sign that was indifferently advertising the Bar Fontana, and as he walked toward it he soon picked up the scent of strong coffee. The bar was wedged tightly into the corner of an ancient building-but then they were all ancient. The door opened reluctantly, and once inside Marco almost smiled at the aromas-coffee, cigarettes, pastries, breakfast on a grill in the rear.
Then the fear hit, the usual apprehension of trying to order in an unknown language.
Bar Fontana was not for students, or for women. The crowd was his age, fifty and up, somewhat oddly dressed, with enough pipes and beards to identify it as a hangout for faculty. One or two glanced his way, but in the center of a university with 100,000 students it was difficult for anyone to draw attention.
Marco got the last small table near the back, and when he finally nestled into his spot with his back to the wall he was practically shoulder to shoulder with his new neighbors, both of whom were lost in their morning papers and neither of whom appeared to notice him. In one of Luigi's lectures on Italian culture he had explained the concept of space in Europe and how it differed significantly from that in the States. Space is shared in Europe, not protected. Tables are shared, the air evidently is shared because smoking bothers no one. Cars, houses, buses, apartments, cafes-so many important aspects of life are smaller, thus more cramped, thus more willingly shared. Its not offensive to go nose to nose with an acquaintance during routine conversation because no space is being violated. Talk with your hands, hug, embrace, even kiss at times.
Even for a friendly people, such familiarity was difficult for Americans to understand.
And Marco was not yet prepared to yield too much space. He picked up the wrinkled menu on the table and quickly settled on the first thing he recognized. Just as the waiter stopped and glanced down at him he said, with all the ease he could possibly exude, "Espresso, e un panino al formaggio." A small cheese sandwich.
The waiter nodded his approval. Not a single person glanced over to check out his accented Italian. No newspapers dipped to see who he might be. No one cared. They heard accents all the time. As he placed the menu back on the table, Marco Lazzeri decided that he probably liked Bologna, even if it turned out to be a nest for Communists. With so many students and faculty coming and going, and from all over the world, foreigners were accepted as part of the culture. Perhaps it was rather cool to have an accent and dress differently. Perhaps it was okay to openly study the language.
One sign of a foreigner was that he noticed everything, his eyes darting around as if he knew he was trespassing into a new culture and didn't want to get caught. Marco would not be caught taking in the sights in the Bar Fontana. He removed a booklet of vocabulary sheets and tried mightily to ignore the people and scenes he wanted to watch. Verbs, verbs, verbs. Ermanno kept saying that to master Italian, or any Romance language for that matter, you had to know the verbs. The booklet had one thousand of the basic verbs, and Ermanno claimed that it was a good starting point.
As tedious as rote memorization was, Marco was finding an odd pleasure in it. He found it quite satisfying to zip through four pages - one hundred verbs, or nouns, or anything for that matter-and not miss a one. When he got one wrong, or missed a pronunciation, he went back to the beginning and punished himself by starting over. He had conquered three hundred verbs when his coffee and sandwich arrived. He took a sip, went back to work as if the food was much less important than the vocab, and was somewhere over four hundred when Rudolph arrived.
The chair on the other side of Marco's small round table was vacant, and this caught the attention of a short fat man, dressed entirely in faded black, with wild bunches of gray frizzy hair protruding from all parts of his head, some of it barely suppressed by a black beret that somehow managed to stay aboard. "Buon giorno. E libera?" he asked politely, gesturing toward the chair. Marco wasn't sure what he said but it was obvious what he wanted. Then he caught the word "libera" and assumed it meant "free" or "vacant."
"Si," Marco managed with no accent, and the man removed a long black cape, draped it over the chair, then maneuvered himself into position. When he came to rest they were less than three feet apart. Space is different here, Marco kept telling himself. The man placed a copy ofL'Unita on the table, making it rock back and forth. For an instant Marco was worried about his espresso. To avoid conversation, he buried himself even deeper into Ermanno's verbs.
"American?" his new friend said, in English with no foreign accent.
Marco lowered the booklet and looked into the glowing eyes not far away. "Close. Canadian. How'd you know?"
He nodded at the booklet and said, "English to Italian vocabulary. You don't look British, so I figure you're American." Judging by his accent, he was probably not from the upper Midwest. Not from New York or New Jersey; not from Texas or the South, or Appalachia, or New Orleans. As vast sections of the country were eliminated, Marco was beginning to think of California. And he was beginning to get very nervous. The lying would soon start, and he hadn't practiced enough.
"And where are you from?" he asked.
"Last stop was Austin, Texas. That was thirty years ago. Name's Rudolph."
"Good morning, Rudolph, a pleasure. I'm Marco." They were in kindergarten where only first names were needed. "You don't sound Texan."
"Thank God for that," he said with a pleasant laugh, one that barely revealed his mouth. "Originally from San Francisco."
The waiter leaned in and Rudolph ordered black coffee, then something else in rapid Italian. The waiter had a follow-up, as did Rudolph, and Marco understood none of it.
"What brings you to Bologna?" Rudolph asked. He seemed anxious to chat; probably rare that he cornered a fellow North American in his favorite cafe.
Marco lowered his booklet and said, "Just traveling around Italy for a year, seeing the sights, trying to pick up some of the language."
Half of Rudolph's face was covered with an unkempt gray beard that began fairly high up the cheekbones and sprang in all directions. Most of his nose was visible, as was part of his mouth. For some odd reason, one that no one would ever understand because no one would ever dare ask such a ridiculous question, he had developed the habit of shaving a small round spot under his lower lip and comprising most of his upper chin. Other than that sacred ground, the wild frizzy whiskers were allowed to run free and apparently go unwashed. The top of his head was pretty much the same-acres of untouched bright gray brush sprouting from all around the beret.
Because so many of his features were masked, his eyes got all the attention. They were dark green and projected rays that, from under a set of thick sagging eyebrows, took in everything.
"How long in Bologna?" Rudolph asked.
"Got here yesterday. I have no schedule. And you, what brings you here?" Marco was anxious to keep the conversation away from himself.
The eyes danced and never blinked. "I've been here for thirty years. I'm a professor at the university."
Marco finally took a bite of his cheese sandwich, partly out of hunger, but more importantly to keep Rudolph talking.
"Where's your home?" he asked.
Following the script, Marco said, "Toronto. Grandparents immigrated there from Milan. I have Italian blood but never learned the language."
"The language is not hard," Rudolph said, and his coffee arrived. He grabbed the small cup and thrust it deep into the beard. Evidently it found his mouth. He smacked his lips and leaned forward a bit as though he wanted to talk. "You don't sound Canadian," he said, and those eyes appeared to be laughing at him.
"A long story."
Marco shrugged as if he had plenty of time.
"I was once a young professor at the University of Texas law school. When they found out I was a Communist they began pressuring me to leave. I fought them. They fought back. I got louder, especially in the classroom. Communists didn't fare too well in Texas in the early seventies, doubt if much has changed. They denied me tenure, ran me out of town, so I came here to Bologna, the heart of Italian communism."
"What do you teach here?"
"Jurisprudence. Law. Radical left-wing legal theories."
A powdered brioche of some sort arrived and Rudolph ate half of it with the first bite. A few crumbs dropped from the depths of his beard.
"Still a Communist?" Marco asked.
"Of course. Always. Why would I change?"
"Seems to have run its course, don't you think? Not such a great idea after all. I mean, look at what a mess Russia is in because of Stalin and his legacy. And North Korea, they're starving there while the dictator builds nuclear warheads. Cuba is fifty years behind the rest of the world. The Sandinistas were voted out in Nicaragua. China is turning to free market capitalism because the old system broke down. It really doesn't work, does it?"
The brioche had lost its appeal; the green eyes were narrow. Marco could see a tirade coming, probably one laced with obscenities in both English and Italian. He glanced around quickly and realized that there was a very good chance the Communists had him outnumbered in the Bar Fontana.
And what had capitalism done for him?
Much to his credit, Rudolph smiled and shrugged and said with an air of nostalgia, "Maybe so, but it sure was fun being a Communist thirty years ago, especially in Texas. Those were the days."
Marco nodded at the newspaper and said, "Ever read papers from home?"
"Home is here, my friend. I became an Italian citizen and haven't been back to the States in twenty years.1'
Backman was relieved. He had not seen American newspapers since his release, but he assumed there had been coverage. Probably old photos as well. His past seemed safe from Rudolph.
Marco wondered if that was his future-Italian citizenship. If any at all. Fast-forward twenty years, and would he still be drifting through Italy, not exactly glancing over his shoulder but always thinking about it?
"You said 'home,'" Rudolph interrupted. "Is that the US. or Canada?"
Marco smiled and nodded to a far-off place. "Over there, I guess." A small mistake, but one that should not have been made. To quickly shift to another subject, he said, "This is my first visit to Bologna. Didn't know it was the center of Italian communism."
Rudolph lowered his cup and made a smacking sound with his partially concealed lips. Then with both hands he gently pawed his beard backward, much like an old cat slicking down his whiskers. "Bologna is a lot of things, my friend," he said, as if a lengthy lecture was starting. "It's always been the center of free thought and intellectual activity in Italy, thus its first nickname, la dotta, which means the learned. Then it became the home of the political left and received its second nickname, la rossa, the red. And the Bolognesi have always been very serious about their food. They believe, and they're probably right, that this is the stomach of Italy. Thus, the third nickname of la grassa, the fat, an affectionate term because you won't see many overweight people here. Me, I was fat when I arrived." He patted his stomach proudly with one hand while finishing off the brioche with the other.
A frightening question suddenly hit Marco: Was it possible that Rudolph was part of the static? Was he a teammate of Luigi and Ermanno and Stennett and whoever else was out there in the shadows working so hard to keep Joel Backman alive? Surely not. Surely he was what he said he was-a professor. An oddball, a misfit, an aging Communist who'd found a better life somewhere else.
The thought passed, but it was not forgotten. Marco finished his little sandwich and decided they'd talked enough. He suddenly had a train to catch for another day of sightseeing. He managed to extricate himself from the table and got a fond farewell from Rudolph. "I'm here every morning," he said. "Come back when you can stay longer."
"Grazie," Marco said. "Arrivederci."
Outside the cafe, Via Irnerio was stirring to life as small delivery vans began their routes. Two of the drivers yelled at each other, probably friendly obscenities Marco would never understand. He hustled away from the cafe just in case old Rudolph thought of something else to ask him and came charging out. He turned down a side street, Via Capo di Lucca-he was learning that they were well marked and easy to find on his map-and zigzagged his way toward the center. He passed another cozy little cafe, then backtracked and ducked inside for a cappuccino.
No Communists bothered him there, no one seemed to even notice him. Marco and Joel Backman savored the moment-the delicious strong drink, the warm thick air, the quiet laughter of those doing the talking. Right now not a single person in the world knew exactly where he was, and it was indeed an exhilarating feeling.
At Marco's insistence, the morning sessions were beginning at eight, not thirty minutes later. Ermanno, the student, still needed long hours of hard sleep but he couldn't argue with his pupil's intensity. Marco arrived for each lesson with his vocabulary lists thoroughly memorized, his situational dialogues perfected, and his urgent desire to absorb the language barely under control. At one point he suggested they begin at seven.
The morning he met Rudolph, Marco studied intensely for two uninterrupted hours, then abruptly said," Vbrrei vedere l'universita." I'd like to see the university.
"Quando?" Ermanno asked. When?
"Adesso. Andiamo a fare una passeggiata." Now. Let's go for a walk.
"Penso che dobbiamo studiare." I think we should study.
"Si. Possiamo studiare a camminando." We can study while we re walking.
Marco was already on his feet, grabbing his coat. They left the depressing building and headed in the general direction of the university.
"Questa via, come si chiama?" Ermanno asked. What's the name of this street?
"E Via Donati," Marco answered without looking for a street sign.
They stopped in front of a small crowded shop and Ermanno asked, "Che tipo di negozio e questo?" What kind of store is this?
"Una tabaccheria." A tobacco store.
"Che cosa puoi comprare in questo negozio?" What can you buy here?
"Posso comprare molte cose. Giornali, riviste, francobolli, sigarette." I can buy many things. Newspapers, magazines, stamps, cigarettes.
The session became a roving game of name that thing. Ermanno would point and say, "Cosa e quelio?" What's that? A bike, a policeman, a blue car, a city bus, a bench, a garbage can, a student, a telephone booth, a small dog, a cafe, a pastry shop. Except for a lamppost, Marco was quick with the Italian word for each. And the all-important verbs-walking, talking, seeing, studying, buying, thinking, chatting, breathing, eating, drinking, hurrying, driving-the list was endless and Marco had the proper translations at his disposal.
A few minutes after ten, and the university was finally coming to life. Ermanno explained that there was no central campus, no American-style quadrangle lined with trees and such. The Universita degli Studi was found in dozens of handsome old buildings, some five hundred years old, most of them packed end to end along Via Zamboni, though over the centuries the school had grown and now covered an entire section of Bologna.
The Italian lesson was forgotten for a block or two as they were swept along in wave of students hustling to and from their classes. Marco caught himself looking for an old man with bright gray hair - his favorite Communist, his first real acquaintance since walking out of prison. He had already made up his mind to see Rudolph again.
At 22 Via Zamboni, Marco stopped and gazed at a sign between the door and a window: facolta di giurisprudenza.
"Is this the law school?" he asked.
"Si."
Rudolph was somewhere inside, no doubt spreading left-wing dissent among his impressionable students.
They ambled on, in no hurry as they continued to play name that thing and enjoy the energy of the street.
The lezione-a-piedi-lesson on foot-continued the next day when Marco revolted after an hour of tedious grammar straight from the textbook and demanded to go for a walk.
"Ma, deve imparare la grammatica," Ermanno insisted. You must learn grammar.
Marco was already putting on his coat. "That's where you're wrong, Ermanno. I need real conversation, not sentence structure."
"Sono io l'insegnante." I am the teacher.
"Let's go. Andiamo. Bologna is waiting. The streets are filled with happy young people, the air is alive with the sounds of your language, all just waiting for me to absorb." When Ermanno hesitated, Marco smiled at him and said, "Please, my friend. I've been locked in a small cell about the size of this apartment for six years. You can't expect me to stay here. There's a vibrant city out there. Let's go explore it."
Outside the air was clear and brisk, not a cloud anywhere, a gorgeous winter day that drew every warm-blooded Bolognese into the streets for errands and long-winded chats with old friends. Pockets of intense conversation materialized as sleepy-eyed students greeted each other and housewives gathered to trade the gossip. Elderly gentlemen dressed in coats and ties shook hands and then all talked at once. Street merchants called out with their latest bargains.
But for Ermanno it was not a walk in the park. If his student wanted conversation, then he would certainly earn it. He pointed to a policeman and said to Marco, in Italian of course, "Go to that policeman and ask directions for the Piazza Maggiore. Get them right, then repeat them to me."
Marco walked very slowly, whispering some words, trying to recall others. Always start with a smile and the proper greeting. "Buon giorno,' he said, almost holding his breath.
"Buon giorno," answered the policeman.
"Mi pud aiutare?" Can you help me?
"Certamente." Certainly.
"Sono Canadese. Non parlo molto bene." I'm Canadian. I don't speak Italian very well.
"Allora." Okay. The policeman was still smiling, now quite anxious to help.
"Dov'e la Piazza Maggiore?"
The policeman turned and gazed into the distance, toward the central part of Bologna. He cleared his throat and Marco braced for the torrent of directions. Just a few feet away and listening to every sound was Ermanno.
With a beautifully slow cadence, he said in Italian, and pointing of course the way they all do, "It's not too far away. Take this street, turn at the next right, that's Via Zamboni, follow it until you see the two towers. Turn on Via Rizzoli, and go for three blocks."
Marco listened as hard as possible, then tried to repeat each phrase. The policeman patiently went through the exercise again. Marco thanked him, repeated as much as he could to himself, then unloaded it on Ermanno.
"Non c'e male," he said. Not bad. The fun was just starting. As Marco was enjoying his little triumph, Ermanno was searching for the next unsuspecting tutor. He found him in an old man shuffling by on a cane and with a thick newspaper under his arm. 'Ask him where he bought the newspaper," he instructed his student.
Marco took his time, followed the gentleman for a few steps, and when he thought he had the words together he said, "Buon giorno, scusi." The old man stopped and stared, and for a moment looked as though he might lift his cane and whack it across Marco's head. He did not offer the customary "Buon giorno."
"Dov'e ha comprato questo giornale?" Where did you buy this newspaper?
The old man looked at the newspaper as if it were contraband, then looked at Marco as if he'd cursed him. He jerked his head to the left and said something like, "Over there." And his part of the conversation was over. As he shuffled away, Ermanno eased beside Marco and said in English, "Not much for conversation, huh?"
"I guess not."
They stepped inside a small cafe, where Marco ordered a simple espresso for himself. Ermanno could not be content with simple things; instead he wanted regular coffee with sugar but without cream, and a small cherry pastry, and he made Marco order everything and get it perfect. At their table, Ermanno laid out several euro notes of various denominations, along with the coins for fifty cents and one euro, and they practiced numbers and counting. He then decided he wanted another regular coffee, this time with no sugar but just a little cream. Marco took two euros and came back with the coffee. He counted the change.
After the brief break, they were back on the street, drifting along Via San Vitale, one of the main avenues of the university, with porticoes covering the sidewalks on both sides and thousands of students jostling to early classes. The street was crammed with bicycles, the preferred mode of getting around. Ermanno had been studying for three years in Bologna, so he said, though Marco believed little of what he heard from either his tutor or his handler.
"This is Piazza Verdi," Ermanno said, nodding to a small plaza where a protest of some sort was stuttering to a start. A longhaired relic from the seventies was adjusting a microphone, no doubt prepping for a screeching denunciation of American misdeeds somewhere. His cohorts were trying to unravel a large, badly painted homemade banner with a slogan not even Ermanno could understand. But they were too early. The students were hah0 asleep and more concerned with being late for class.
"What's their problem?" Marco asked as they walked by.
"I'm not sure. Something to do with the World Bank. There's always a demonstration here."
They walked on, flowing with the young crowd, picking their way through the foot traffic, and headed generally to il centro.
Luigi met them for lunch at a restaurant called Testerino, near the university. With American taxpayers footing the bill, he ordered often and with no regard for price. Ermanno, the broke student, seemed ill at ease with such extravagance, but, being an Italian, he eventually warmed to the idea of a long lunch. It lasted for two hours and not a single word of English was spoken. The Italian was slow, methodical, and often repeated, but it never yielded to English. Marco found it difficult to enjoy a fine meal when his brain was working overtime to hear, grasp, digest, understand, and plot a response to the last phrase thrown at him. Often the last phrase had passed over his head with only a word or two being somewhat recognizable when the whole thing was suddenly chased by another. And his two friends were not just chatting for the fun of it. If they caught the slightest hint that Marco was not following, that he was simply nodding so they would keep talking so he could eat a bite, then they stopped abruptly and said, "Che cosa ho detto?" What did I say?
Marco would chew for a few seconds, buying time to think of something-in Italian dammit!-that might get him off the hook. He was learning to listen, though, to catch the key words. Both of his friends had repeatedly said that he would always understand much more than he could say.
The food saved him. Of particular importance was the distinction between tortellini (small pasta stuffed with pork) and tortelloni (larger pasta stuffed with ricotta cheese). The chef, upon realizing that Marco was a Canadian very curious about Bolognese cuisine, insisted on serving both dishes. As always, Luigi explained that both were exclusively the creations of the great chefs of Bologna.
Marco simply ate, trying his best to devour the delicious servings while avoiding the Italian language.
After two hours, Marco insisted on a break. He finished his second espresso and said goodbye. He left them in front of the restaurant and walked away, alone, his ears ringing and his head spinning from trie workout.
He made a two-block loop off Via Rizzoli. Then he did it again to make sure no one was following. The long porticoed walkways were ideal for ducking and hiding. When they were thick with students again he crossed Piazza Verdi, where the World Bank protest had yielded to a fiery speech that, for a moment, made Marco quite happy he could not understand Italian. He stopped at 22 Via Zamboni and once again looked at the massive wooden door that led to the law school. He walked through it and tried his best to appear as if this was his turf. No directory was in sight, but a student bulletin board advertised apartments, books, companionship, almost everything, it seemed, including a summer studies program at Wake Forest Law School.
Through the hallway, the building yielded to an open courtyard where students were milling around, chatting on cell phones, smoking, waiting for classes.
A stairway to his left caught his attention. He climbed to the third floor, where he finally located a directory of sorts. He understood the word "uffici," and followed a corridor past two classrooms until he found the faculty offices. Most had names, a few did not. The last belonged to Rudolph Viscovitch, so far the only non-Italian name in the building. Marco knocked and no one answered. He twisted the knob but the door was locked. He quickly removed from his coat pocket a sheet of paper he'd taken from the Albergo Campeol in Treviso and scribbled a note:
Dear Rudolph: I was wandering around the campus, stumbled upon your office and wanted to say hello. Maybe Til catch you again at the Bar Fontana. Enjoyed our chat yesterday. Nice to hear English occasionally. Your Canadian friend, Marco Lazzeri He slid it under the door and walked down the stairs behind a group of students. Back on Via Zamboni, he drifted along with no particular destination in mind. He stopped for a gelato, then slowly made his way back to his hotel. His dark little room was too cold for a nap. He promised himself again that he would complain to his handler. Lunch had cost more than three nights' worth of his room. Surely Luigi and those above him could spring for a nicer place.
He dragged himself back to Ermanno's cupboard-sized apartment for the afternoon session.
Luigi waited patiently at Bologna Centrale for the nonstop Eurostar from Milano. The train station was relatively quiet, the lull before the five o'clock rush hour. At 3:35, precisely on schedule, the sleek bullet blew in for a quick stop and Whitaker bounced off.
Since Whitaker never smiled, they barely said hello. After a cur - son' handshake was complete, they walked to Luigi's Fiat. "How's our boy?" Whitaker asked as soon as he slammed the door.
"Doing fine," Luigi said as he started the engine and drove away. "He's studying hard. There's not much else for him to do."
"Yes. He likes to walk around the city, but he's afraid to venture too far. Plus, he has no money."
"Keep him broke. How's his Italian?"
"He's learning rapidly." They were on the Via dell' Indipendenza, a wide avenue that was taking them directly south, into the center of the city. "Very motivated."
"Is he scared?"
"I think so."
"He's smart, and he's a manipulator, Luigi, don t forget that. And because he's smart, he's also very frightened. He knows the danger."
"I told him about Critz."
"And?"
"He was bewildered."
"Did it scare him?"
"Yes, I think so. Who got Critz?"
"I'm assuming we did, but you never know. Is the safe house ready?" " "Yes."
"Good. Let's see Marcos apartment."
Via Fondazza was a quiet residential street in the southeast section of the old city, a few blocks south of the university section. As in the rest of Bologna, the walkways on both sides of the street were covered with porticoes. Doors to the homes and apartments opened directly onto the sidewalks. Most had building directories on brass plaques next to intercoms, but the one at 112 Via Fondazza did not. It was unmarked and had been for the three years it had been leased to a mysterious businessman in Milan who paid the rent but seldom used it. Whitaker had not seen it in more than a year; not that it was much of an attraction. It was a simple apartment of about six hundred square feet; four rooms with basic furnishings that cost 1,200 euros a month. It was a safe house, nothing more or less; one of three currently under his control in northern Italy.
There were two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, and a living area with a sofa, a desk, two leather chairs, no television. Luigi pointed to the phone and they discussed, in near coded language, the bugging device that had been installed and could never be detected. There were two hidden mikes in each room, powerful little collectors that missed no human sound. There were also two microscopic cameras-one hidden in a crack of an old tile high above the den, and from there it offered a view of the front door. The other was hidden in a cheap light fixture hanging from a kitchen wall, with a clear view of the rear door.
They would not be watching his bedroom, and Luigi said he was relieved by that. If Marco managed to find a woman willing to visit him, they could catch her coming and going with the camera in the den, and that was certainly enough for Luigi. If he got really bored, he could hit a switch and listen for fun.
The safe house was bordered to the south by another apartment, with a thick stone wall separating the two. Luigi was staying there, hiding next door in a five-room flat slightly larger than Marcos. His rear door opened into a small garden that could not be seen from the safe house, thus concealing his movements. His kitchen had been converted into a high-tech snooping room where he could switch on a camera anytime he wanted and take a look at what was happening next door.
"Will they study here?" Whitaker asked.
"Yes. I think it's secure enough. Plus I can monitor things."
Whitaker walked through each room again. When he'd seen enough he said, "Everything's set up next door?"
"Everything. I've spent the last two nights there. We're ready."
"How soon can you move him?"
"This afternoon."
"Very well. Let's go see the boy."
They walked north along Via Fondazza until it came to an end, then northwest along a wider avenue, Strada Maggiore. The rendezvous point was a small cafe called Lestre's. Luigi found a newspaper and sat alone at a table. Whitaker found another newspaper and sat nearby, each man ignoring the other. At precisely four-thirty, Ermanno and his student stopped by for a quick espresso with Luigi.
When the greetings were exchanged and the coats removed, Luigi asked, "Are you tired of Italian, Marco?"
"I'm sick of it," Marco replied with a smile.
"Good. Let's talk English."
"God bless you," Marco said.
Whitaker sat five feet away, partially hidden behind a newspaper, smoking a cigarette as if he had no interest in anyone around him. He of course knew of Ermanno, but had never actually seen him. Marco was another story.
Whitaker had been in Washington for a stint at Langley a dozen or so years earlier, back when everyone knew the broker. He remembered Joel Backman as a political force who spent almost as much time cultivating his oversized image as he did representing his important clients. He'd been the epitome of money and power, the perfect fat cat who could bully and cajole and throw around enough money to get whatever he wanted.
Amazing what six years in prison could do. He was very thin now, and looking quite European behind the arm ani eyewear. He had the beginnings of a salt-and-pepper goatee. Whitaker was certain that virtually no one from back home could walk into Lestre's at that moment and identify Joel Backman.
Marco caught the man five feet away glancing over one time too often but thought nothing of it. They were chatting in English, and perhaps few people did so, at Lestre's anyway. Nearer the university, one could hear several languages in every coffee shop.
Ermanno excused himself after one espresso. A few minutes later Whitaker left too. He walked a few blocks and found an Internet cafe, one he'd used before. He plugged in his laptop, got online, and typed a message to Julia Javier at Langley:
Fondazza flat is ready to go, should move in tonight. Laid eyes on our man, having a coffee with our friends. Would not have known him otherwise. Adjusting nicely to a new life. All is in order here; no problems whatsoever.
After dark, the Fiat stopped in the middle of Via Fondazza, and its contents were quickly unloaded. Marco packed light because he owned practically nothing. Two bags of clothes and some Italian study books, and he was completely mobile. When he stepped into his new apartment, the first thing he noticed was that it was sufficiently heated. "This is more like it," he said to Luigi.
"I'll move the car. Have a look around."
He looked around, counted four rooms with nice furnishings, nothing extravagant but a huge step up from the last place. Life was improving-ten days ago he'd been in prison.
Luigi returned in a rush. "What do you think?"
"I'll keep it. Thank you."
"Don't mention it."
"And thank the folks in Washington too."