The Girl With the Botticelli Eyes (31 page)

A wad of something undigested rose in her throat, and she turned to run. She had no idea where she was running or what she was looking for until she actually saw it. It lay on a table amid a lot of other debris she couldn’t immediately identify. But once she saw it, nothing could deflect her eye. It glittered like a jewel in the gloomy light—a fine, light coping saw, its blade slim and graceful as a steel thread. It sat amid a chaos of other tools. She thought they were carpenter’s tools, but some had a more clinical look, like surgical instruments.

Moving about now, the cot still lashed to her back, she found the going easier, the way she imagined one grows accustomed to crutches or an artificial limb. The sight of the coping saw lying there, so near, so accessible, sharpened her determination. Forgetting that her hands were bound, she lunged for it. As she did so, the top of the cot clipped a naked lightbulb dangling from a bare wire in the ceiling.

A dull, rushing pop followed and she was standing in a shower of glass. More startled than injured, she barged forward and nearly shrieked as the scattered shards of glass bit into the bare soles of her feet.

Reaching the saw was more difficult than she’d imagined. While her fingers were free, the cords round her wrists were so tight that her fingers had stiffened and grown numb. Moreover, the saw lay at a far corner of the work-table. With a low joist overhanging the table and the cot lashed to her back, it couldn’t be reached by merely walking around to it. The only way to reach it was by stretching herself directly across the table from where she stood. That involved folding herself nearly in half over the table’s edge and inching her way to it with the cot bouncing and bumping about on top of her.

Stretching and twisting until her limbs ached, when she actually touched the saw, numbed fingers grazing the cold, ridged metal of the blade, all she could manage was to slap and flail at it helplessly. Several times, she succeeded in pincering it between two fingers, but each time she dropped it and had to start in anew. That went on for a time, until she devised a. method of using the cord that linked both wrists as a means of dragging the saw across the table toward her.

In the triumphant moment that she held the saw dangling between thumb and forefinger, she heard the outside door upstairs slam and the anxious, hurried tread of someone entering.

Panting heavily, still bent over the worktable, she peered up at the creaking ceiling above her, her eyes tracking the footsteps as they crossed overhead. She followed their sound as they moved off to another room to her left. Moments later, she heard something like a chair being pulled out from beneath a desk, followed by the rattle of a phone being dialed. Then someone was talking. The sound of it drifted to her in a rapid, breathy murmur. No one had to tell her who it was.

The thing she imagined would be the most difficult turned out to be the most simple. Perhaps it was the return of the boy, the prospect of awful things to come, and the terrible certainty that time was running out that focused the last of her dwindling energy.

Under no circumstances did she wish to encounter Beppe again, particularly not while strapped down to a cot in a filthy cellar. The numbness in her fingers still prevented her from holding the saw in her hands. Instead, she pinned it blade upward between her knees and proceeded to push down hard on the cord between her bound wrists, rubbing it back and forth over the blade. It was a matter of two or three strokes, no more. So sharp was the blade, the cords were no match for it. They yielded quickly.

With her hands suddenly free, numbness and prolonged lack of circulation made them feel distant and ungainly, as though they were no longer a part of her body. But clenching and unclenching them, a rush of warmth entered her hands. Circulation returned, and in the next moment she tore off her gag and was tearing at the last belt—the one around her middle. The buckle had been lashed so tightly she could scarcely budge it.

Overhead, the conversation had ended. She heard the phone bang back into the cradle and the chair scrape over the floor. The footsteps started back out from the other room. They crossed directly overhead, moving toward the cellar door at the top of the stair, roughly thirty feet away.

The door swung open with a hard, angry yank, sending a shaft of mote-filled fight streaming down the stair. Inhaling deeply, she sucked her stomach inward as far as it could possibly go. All the while, her free right hand tugged hard at the belt. Still the prong would not disengage the buckle.

The first footstep hit with a thud at the top of the stair. She felt a rush of adrenaline surge through her. It moved like a current of electricity down the muscles in her arms and shoulders. She felt her hands and wrists tauten and, with a final desperate suck inward, she pulled, and the prong slid loose.

Through the slats of an upright ladder, she could see cut off at the waist the trousered legs of someone up ahead. They appeared and disappeared, then reappeared with each shift of position their owner made. The figure, halfway down the stairs, drove her backward into the dank gloom at the rear of the cellar.

“I
’M SORRY I COULDN’T
get to you sooner. I wish I had something to report, but I don’t. Nothing tangible at least.”

Manship listened to the clipped, syntactically perfect English of Ettore Foa.

“If it is of any comfort. Dr. Gigli, the Italian ambassador, is on the case himself.”

“Did the Lloyd’s people reach the British ambassador in Rome?”

“That’s what I’m getting to. They have.”

“And?”

“The news is not good.”

It was shortly after midnight. Manship was already in bed, the earliest he’d gotten to bed in nine months. Maeve was asleep across the hall, she and Osgood and himself having had a quiet dinner at a restaurant over near Second Avenue.

“I tried to reach you at five o’clock at your office,” Foa went on hastily, as though he, too, felt pressed. “Your assistant, Miss—”

“Taverner.”

“
Giusto.
Taverner. She told me you were gone for the day.”

“I was tied up with the conservator. We’ve been trying to get the last few pieces ready for the show. We’re supposed to open in forty-eight hours. Listen—for God sake, tell me. What’s this now with the British ambassador?”

“It’s not the ambassador. He’s a very good friend of Dr. Gigli. Eager and more than willing to help.”

“Then, damn it, what’s the problem?” Manship tried to subdue the edge in his voice. “Is there something I can do at this end?”

“No, no, dear fellow.” Foa made a sympathetic clucking sound.

“At this point, I’m ready to fly over myself.”

“I quite understand your anxiety. But your barging off to Italy now would be rash, and, if you don’t mind my saying so, counterproductive. Besides, you have your show.”

“Right. Of course. The show.” Manship repeated the words without much enthusiasm.

“I didn’t mean to weigh the girl’s well-being against the show,” Foa hastened to explain.

“But you agree there’s reason for concern?”

“No doubt. The police have been in touch with Miss Cattaneo’s housekeeper. The lady’s missing all right. Fallen into the wrong hands.”

“Wrong hands?”

“Wrong people, I should say. This Borghini—”

“Who?”

“Borghini—Ludovico Borghini. You know, the chap we spoke of, the one I told you I knew as a boy.”

“Yes. Of course. Is it him?”

“It looks more and more that way. An unsavory character. Up to his ears in all sorts of mischief.”

“Mischief?”

“Fascist mischief. Throughout Italy, with global connections to like organizations around the world. Everything from bombings and assassinations to simple kidnappings. The targets are mostly centrist and left-leaning political figures.” Foa laughed bitterly. “They’re also not above the desecration of priceless works of art—statuary, paintings of great masters—when it suits their purpose—their purpose in all of this being to intimidate the nation by discrediting the ability of the government to protect its national treasures. If you can walk into a museum and destroy a da Vinci or take a hammer to a Michelangelo, what, then can’t you do? I can assure you, it makes the government sit up and take notice. No government wants to look that weak and feckless.”

Manship thought about the attacks on the Botticellis in Turkey and Italy. They’d start once it was publicly announced that he intended to bring the paintings home for exhibition in the United States. “These people must be insane.”

“Many of them are. Certifiable lunatics with no place else to go. No one else would have them. A few years ago, we asked the federal police to investigate this organization. They actually infiltrated it. An unpleasant group of people made up largely of xenophobic rabble-rousers. They loathe foreigners. They suspect all non-Italians. They long to see the good old days of Il Duce and the blackshirts return. Mostly old men, along with a smattering of bored juveniles who know zero about fascism and shave their heads and affect bizarre dress. You have those quasi-militia groups in America, too. Mostly misfits. They crave excitement—violent excitement. But also among them are a few aspirants of genuine political genius.”

“Such as Signor Borghini?”

“Precisely. People with carefully worked out ideological agendas. The police today don’t find these people quite so laughable as they used to. For one thing, their numbers seem to be growing.”

“Yes, yes. But what does all this have to do with Isobel Cattaneo?”

“I’m coming to that” Foa’s slightly raspy voice betrayed signs of fatigue.

“Was Isobel one of these people?”

“At one time. In her student days. As you well know, when one is young, there’s no limit to the seductiveness of stupid things. She had a slight brush with them. It was brief, and with her, it never had a strong political appeal. The appeal was more romantic, I’d say.”

“Romantic? You mean with Borghini?”

Foa laughed a tired, world-weary laugh. “No, no. You misunderstand. If you saw Borghini, you’d know what I mean. By romantic, I mean the situation itself, the very clandestine nature of it. A small upstart group of outsiders full of grievances, banished to the periphery of respectable society, defiant of all authority, scornful of the daily circus of corruption and scandal that is Italian political life today. These people dream of returning to the discipline and grandeur of old Europe. Well, you can see for yourself, that sort of thing could well hold a certain allure to an idealistic young mind.”

Manship’s mouth was dry. Sprawled in bed, propped against a stack of pillows, his hand reached for the glass of ice water on his night table. “You mentioned something about the British ambassador.” He gulped deeply. “In Rome. Something about bad news.”

There was a pause at the other end of the line, as if the deputy ambassador had been anticipating yet dreading this part of the call. When he resumed talking, it was with a sigh of resignation. “We’ve been watching Signor Borghini’s movements with extreme interest. His palazzo on the Quirinal has been under surveillance since early today. The Lloyd’s people, who have a particular interest in wanting your show to come off without further incident, have been watching the little framing establishment in Parioli.”

“The Quattrocento.”

“The very same. At this hour, the palazzo on the Quirinal appears to be dark. No one has gone in or out of there for the past sixteen hours. As for the framing shop—”

“Yes?”

“As I told you, this Ferro Pugno bunch has a seventy-five-year lease on the place. It’s set up to give the appearance of a business, but it isn’t. It’s what I believe you people call a ‘front.’ No business is conducted there. It’s a meeting place for Borghini and his various business cronies from Italy and abroad, According to my contacts, there are people there during the day—aliens, foreigners. The carabinieri at this moment are trying to identify them. At night, there’s a caretaker on the premises—a young boy, apparently, who goes in and out at odd hours. But for the most part, the place is in darkness. If Signorina Cattaneo is being held anywhere, it’s there.”

“Then, by God, let’s go in and find out.”

“That’s the bad news I must tell you.”

Manship’s heart sank. Propped on an elbow, phone cradled between cheek and shoulder, scribbling notes on a pad, he listened, slightly out of breath.

“As I told you,” Foa rushed on, “the name Borghini is an influential name in Italy. Perhaps not as influential as it once was, but in certain quarters, it stilt exerts a force. Apparently, the British ambassador, upon being informed of the situation today, immediately called the Italian foreign secretary, who at once notified the magistracy in Rome, directing them to issue warrants for the police to search not only the palazzo in Rome but the little gallery in Parioli as well.”

“And?”

“I’m coming to that. Apparently, Borghini also has a friend or two in the magistracy, if not the chief magistrate himself.” The deputy ambassador’s voice dropped to a near whisper. “You didn’t hear that from me. And if you say I told you so, I shall deny it In any event, the moment the order to issue warrants was given, someone in the magistracy, someone obviously quite high up, immediately warned Borghini. He’s now disappeared. Gone completely off the map.”

“But what about the warrants? Can we get into the gallery?”

There was another lengthy pause, followed by the thick growl of Foa clearing his throat.

“The chief magistrate has ordered the warrants to be issued, but as of this moment, to the best of my knowledge, the police have received no warrants. They cannot move until the warrants are in hand.”

“The magistrate is stalling,” Manship reflected aloud.

“Obviously,” Foa quickly agreed. “Someone there is clearly dragging his feet.”

“But why? Unless there’s something to hide.”

“Precisely.” Foa gave an angry burst of laughter. “And also to give Colonel Borghini enough time to make himself scarce—or, more probably, to get out of the country.”

“Leaving Miss Cattaneo to the tender mercies of the present occupants.”