Ride a Pale Horse (22 page)

With the kit and envelope securely in hand, he strolled along the corridor. Any hurry would have roused more stares than he did encounter from a party-dressed group of late revellers.

Karen had just ended her call to Schleeman. She looked with a moment’s astonishment at Bristow. “Modest,” was her amused comment, “but definitely more comfortable.”

“Definitely. The best I could do. I travel light.” He threw the toilet kit onto the couch, handed her the envelope. “Tomorrow’s cram course.”

She pulled out the sheaf of newspaper clippings, and her eyes widened. “Peter! Background material—this is what I hoped Aliotto would give me. How did you manage it?”

“Friends in the right places. No, honey, don’t start reading now. We’ve got all of tomorrow.”

“No Forum?” She picked out the note with the Via Borgognona address, glanced at it.

“Another time.”

She half smiled.

“I mean that,” he said.

She looked at the note. “Borgognona. So that’s how it’s spelled. It’s somewhere between the Corso and the Spanish Steps—just north of the main post office. We’ll reach it within half an hour at most, wouldn’t you say?”

He stared at her. It was hard to remember that anyone who was as beautiful as Karen was also sharp as a needle. “You know your Rome.”

“I managed to get that out of Aliotto,” she admitted as she tucked the note back into the envelope.

If Aliotto knew, then so did Sam Waterman and his Bulgarian friends. “The best-kept secret.” Bristow hid his alarm. “Reminds me of Washington.” He glanced at his watch. “Time for some sleep.” He noted that she had left open one of the doors in the sitting-room. He walked over to check if it led to a closet or communication with another suite and found a small bathroom. Tactful, he thought. “All the comforts of home.” Almost. He shook his head, returned her good-night wave. I’m beat, he admitted at last.

But he made sure of the lock on the room door, unzipped the toilet kit, and placed it close to his hand as he dropped gratefully on the couch. A lot to think about, he told himself: Aliotto had found out Monday’s address in advance—why? Natural curiosity? Or perhaps he had been instructed. He was being played like a damned yo-yo, the poor bastard. Then quite suddenly exhaustion hit Bristow. Thoughts drifted, ended, and he was asleep.

Ten minutes ahead of time, they arrived at Via Borgognona. (As difficult to pronounce as it was to spell, thought Karen.) They left the taxi at the street’s corner, both of them interested in the surroundings but for entirely different reasons. Bristow noted with approval that each end of this block had been shut off to traffic: one had four men at work on its pavement, the other had a water-department truck and three men seemingly surveying a problem with its main. Pedestrians were scarce. And the restaurant they passed, just before entering the disused police station, had
MONDAY CLOSED
posted on its door. Karen was studying the setting—the narrow street, the low old buildings—that would probably start the first paragraph of her article. She was back in her own world, with yesterday’s cram course on terrorist activities giving her a feeling of confidence in the background of the two young people she was about to meet. With her blue linen suit and smoothly brushed hair she was as attractive as ever, Bristow considered, but definitely the professional. She had scarcely spoken since they left the Imperial, and he had kept silent, not intruding into her thoughts. He had plenty of his own. But security on Borgognona was good; he relaxed a little. Now for the interior itself.

They entered directly into a rectangular hall, brightly lit but bare and shabby, with worn wooden floor and peeling plaster on its walls, stretching to the rear of the building. Half-way along its length, a staircase on its right had been roped off. The floor above looked as if a demolition project had begun and was abandoned for this morning. At the foot of the stairs, a table had been set up along with a metal detector of the type used at airports. Beyond that point, as the hall narrowed, there was a wide doorway on its left wall which must lead to the meeting room. It was guarded on either side by uniformed policemen. The rest wore civilian clothes—one checking the list of visitors along with their credentials; two at the detector; two more (one a woman) at the table where contents of shoulder bags and pockets were being examined. There was a thin line of people passing slowly through these checkpoints. Where’s Tasso? Bristow wondered, his eyes searching the small group of officials who stood near the staircase wall and watched the slow traffic at the table. Tasso was there, half-hidden by the large bulk of a detective.

“We wait,” Bristow advised Karen. Tasso had seen them and was coming forward.

“How many journalists? I thought there were to be only five of us.” She could count eight right now. Some had cameras and tape recorders, too. “I didn’t think those were allowed,” Karen said.

Tasso had heard her. He shook hands with them both, expressed his pleasure in seeing her here, and then said, “All cameras—if small—are examined most thoroughly. Larger cameras are not permitted. The same procedure applies to tape recorders. You brought none, Miss Cornell?”

“I just wasn’t told.” She tried to hide her chagrin. Dammit, she thought, Aliotto should have warned me. A recording would be really useful.

Tasso said, “No need to bring one here, Miss Cornell. We are taping all the proceedings. I will make sure you have a full transcript by this evening. Believe me, it will be much more accurate than these small gadgets—he waved a hand at a cassette that was being removed from its machine with protests from its owner—“can capture at a distance.”

Bristow watched the policewoman replace the cassette with one she lifted from a supply under the table. “I wondered about that,” he told Tasso. “Your precautions are good.”

What were they expecting? Karen looked from Bristow to Tasso and decided not to display her ignorance by any question.

“Security is tight,” Tasso said, not displeased with the American’s compliment. He nodded in the direction of the tall and massive detective. “He is responsible.”

He definitely was, thought Bristow, conscious that the chief of Security had twice eyed him thoroughly.

Tasso guided Karen to the table. “You will have to empty your handbag, Miss Cornell. No contraband?” The grave face almost smiled.

“Only my notebook, pencils and pen.” She opened the shoulder bag and let all its contents fall on the table’s surface. Bristow held back, remembering Security’s sharp look as he thought of the machine waiting to signal that he carried a pistol tucked into his trouser belt.

Tasso returned. “Something to declare? In your pocket perhaps?”

“Under my jacket. In my belt.”

“How big?”

“A Beretta.”

“I think you should hand it over now. To me.”

There was no arguing with that voice. Bristow slipped his hand inside his linen jacket, quietly freed the pistol. Tasso grasped it, slid it into an inside pocket of his suit. It was quick and unobtrusive. “No need,” Tasso said, “to carry that around.”

Bristow looked over at Karen. “She’s my responsibility.”

And perhaps something more, thought Tasso. “It will be returned to you. I suppose you have a permit for it?”

“In the United States, yes.” Complete honesty, Bristow had decided, was the only policy with Tasso. “I have no permit to enter as Miss Cornell’s translator. Don’t I need one?”

“Unnecessary. You are my guest. We shall enter the room together. No problem, Mr. Bristow. I have already explained your presence to Security. This way.”

They walked through the detector. It registered briefly as Tasso passed its alarm, but that only raised smiles from the men in charge. Karen was already through, watching with some astonishment as a young couple, well-dressed, were undergoing further search by expert hands.

Tasso said, “These are the boy’s relatives: brother and sister. The girl’s relatives haven’t yet arrived. Her cousins, I believe.”

The young couple was cleared, their small camera was returned to them (“With a new spool inside,” Tasso murmured to Bristow), and they entered the room. Tasso nodded to the two guards as he followed with Karen and Bristow. “Where do you want to sit?”

“Not in the first row,” Bristow said. Aliotto was already there, in a front seat, partially hidden by a group standing around him, engrossed in conversation. “Towards the back of the room, perhaps?”

“Wise,” said Tasso and led the way.

“No objections?” Bristow asked Karen.

“Not if it’s wise.” But she was puzzled.

“I like to see all the room, not just sit facing a stage.”

“Not a bad idea for me, too. The audience is part of the scene.” And she would see the stage clearly enough—a narrow platform running along one end of the room—for there were only four well-spaced rows of chairs set out to face it, with six chairs to each row. Not too many were expected, but more than she had thought. And as Tasso, hurrying off to talk with another journalist, left them alone, she could ask, “Relatives, Peter? Why on earth relatives?”

He told her, as he led her to the last row of chairs and selected two on its far end with the emergency exit close by. “Sure this is all right?” he asked as they sat down.

“Fourth row? Perfect. Clear view and all the reactions to watch.”

And nothing behind us except a blank wall, Bristow thought. The room, he estimated, was less than forty feet long and about twenty feet wide. The chairs formed a central island, leaving broad aisles on either side. In front was the long platform backed by another blank wall with a high row of small windows, almost at ceiling height, slanted open for ventilation but barred on the outside. The platform had two wooden chairs separated by a small table, powerful overhead lamps along with a dangling microphone, and a lectern at a front corner where a plain-clothes officer was adjusting his recording machines. Only two doors: the entrance on the right side of the room, the emergency exit on the left. A simple place for a complicated morning, and one big headache for Tasso and his colleagues. When they had agreed to this meeting, it was to be only a rather cosy little affair for five journalists and two recanters who could have twenty-five-year prison sentences for murder, kidnapping, kneecappings, and bombings reduced to five for their co-operation. Now, the front row held four journalists; the second row had its full complement of six. The third row had the two young relatives sitting directly in front of Karen and Bristow—but the girl was no taller than five feet and blocked no view—and next to them were two sombre-faced men and then two empty chairs. Presumably, guessed Bristow, for the late-arriving cousins.

“Comfortable, I hope,” said Inspector Tasso as he returned.

No one would fall asleep on these wooden seats, thought Karen and smiled as an answer.

“You seem troubled,” Tasso said to Bristow.

“No. Just speculating. What’s outside that wall behind the platform?”

“A courtyard. Well guarded. The prisoners will arrive there.”

“And where does the fire-exit door lead?”

“Into a corridor, with two men on duty.”

“And the corridor’s entrance?”

“It is on the street. A narrow door. Cannot be opened from the outside—like the fire exit on your aisle. Everything has been checked—table, lectern, chairs, walls, floor, and ceiling. The inspection ended at ten o’clock this morning. You approve?”

“Very much. You must have had major problems to face.”

“We still have, my friend. No, thank you, I won’t sit down. I like to move around.” Tasso noted Bristow’s second glance at the sombre-faced men who sat so silently in the row in front of him. “Lawyers,” Tasso said. “One for each of the criminals. They brought the suggestion for this meeting to our public-relations department.” He spoke with distaste.

“So they were the link between the terrorists?” To Karen, Bristow said, “I wondered how those two got together on this idea—they weren’t likely to be in the same cell.”

Tasso almost smiled. “Not even in the same prison.”

“There’s Aliotto!” Karen exclaimed as the Italian rose to look around the room.

“He arrived early,” Tasso said. “Insisted on that seat.”

It lay on the right-hand side of the aisle, a front-row seat, as Bristow had noted, with an empty chair beside Aliotto, presumably for Karen. But no chair reserved for any translator—Aliotto’s last word, no doubt.

“I never saw him when we came in,” Karen said. She had been too absorbed by a terrorist’s relatives—obviously a well-to-do family: it wasn’t poverty that had induced his taste for violence.

“I did,” Bristow acknowledged, “but he seemed occupied with some other journalists.” A poor excuse, perhaps. How else did he say that the less Karen saw of Aliotto the better?

Aliotto caught sight of Karen, waved, gestured to the empty seat beside him. She rose to wave back and shook her head. Out of custom, Bristow got to his feet, too.

Tasso seized that moment to slip the Beretta from his own pocket into Bristow’s. With a side glance at Karen, who was now signalling her refusal of a front-row view, he murmured, “As you said, your responsibility.” Then he moved down the aisle towards the platform, taking out his small transceiver.

Aliotto stood irresolute for a long moment, gave up with a small wave, and sat down.

“Perhaps I should have gone over and explained,” Karen said as she and Bristow resumed their seats.

“He damn well should have come here and talked with you,” Bristow told her. Aliotto hadn’t wanted to risk leaving that front-row position.
Insisted on that seat
—Tasso’s words. It had puzzled Tasso, as it now puzzled Bristow. His attention switched to the doorway, where a janitor was carrying in two extra chairs. Behind him, a young helper brought two more. “Are we packing more people in?” Bristow looked at his watch; the meeting ought to be starting any minute.

Quickly, the janitor placed one chair at Aliotto’s right and the other behind it. There was still ample leeway for movement on that aisle. But Tasso, on the other side of the room, disagreed. And vehemently. He broke off his talk on the transceiver to shout, “No, no! Out, out!” Then some report was being sent him, important enough to hold all his attention, and he was listening intently with a hand over his free ear to blot out the buzz of comment around him.