take a table in Piazza del Popolo. He takes a deep breath and gestures at the cherry-colored sky: “What a spectacle. Why do people ever leave Rome? Why travel, when you can stay here, in this fabulous city?”
Barbara nods and sips her drink. She knows all too well how this meeting will go. She’ll obtain neither redress nor consolation from her former mentor. So she takes what’s on offer: several quips, some observations, a few more or less verifiable theories. And questions. One of them takes her by surprise: “This kidnapped, arrested, or disappeared Italian citizen, rotting away in that shithole of a place—have you at least been able to form some sort of idea about who he really is?”
“His girlfriend maintains that some magistrates are persecuting him.” Barbara sighs and raises both hands. “I’m reading all the documents I’ve been given so far. Maybe what she says is true.”
“How about the mother? What does she think?”
“I’ve never been able to speak to her again. She’s sick, and she’s gotten worse recently. I know she’s withdrawn a lot of her savings and sold some property to send money to the people holding her son. . . . I’ve seen the transfers. She’s already paid more than a hundred thousand dollars since March.”
“My goodness!” the senatore says in surprise. “What do our magistrates here in Rome say about all this? They should be taking some steps as a matter of course . . .”
“They say our man has had various run-ins with the law in Italy. He’s got a right-wing past and dangerous friends, they say. They’ve been watching him for years. I get the impression that there are some judges using him to catch bigger fish. People in the upper echelons of the intelligence community that the judges want to settle accounts with.”
“What a fantastic country this is!” the senatore says, chuckling.
“I read everything I could find about him on the Internet,” Barbara continues. “Confused information. Many contradictions. But I’ve realized I can’t delay any longer. Manuela . . . I must see Manuela. She probably knows him better than anyone. I can’t explain to you why she knows him, but I have my suspicions. . . .”
“So this is a guy with nine lives, so to speak?”
“Maybe not nine, but . . . Look, I have the distinct impression that he’s not simply a former Carabiniere who became an airline pilot and did some consulting work for the ROS.* He’s something more than that. Maybe a lot more.”
She pauses. The senatore seems less distracted now. “Go on,” he says.
“Well, I found several newspaper articles, including a recent one in the Phnom Penh Post, which is published in English. It reports the arrest of an Italian and an American, our man and the guy they call Clancy. According to the newspaper, the two of them were investigating something . . . something odd.”
“Investigating? A pair of bar owners who investigate. Strange.”
“They were investigating something, that’s what it says. The other guy, Clancy, is described as an ex-CIA agent. And there’s a word that keeps recurring: ‘supernotes.’”
“Supernotes. And they are . . .?”
“Supernotes are counterfeit U.S. banknotes, hundred-dollar bills, very high quality, practically perfect. Significant quantities of them are circulating in various countries, apparently, for example, Cambodia and North Korea. The only big Western paper that has done any reporting on this topic is the Frankfurter Allgemeine. The articles were all written by the same journalist, Klaus W. Bender, who also wrote a book on the subject a few years ago.”
“So somebody’s producing this fake money,” the senatore murmurs.
“Fake, but very well done, apparently. So perfect they seem real.”
“You think our ex-Carabiniere may be in trouble for having discovered . . .”
“I don’t know yet,” Barbara replies. “But I remember what Giovanni Falcone used to say . . .”
“‘Follow the money.’”
“Exactly. Why shouldn’t that apply in this case too?”
* Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale, the Special Operations Group of the Carabinieri, the Italian national police force. The ROS specializes in investigating terrorism, organized crime, and drug and arms trafficking.
9
The Jump
Preah Monivong Hospital, Prison Ward, Phnom Penh, CambodiaSeptember 2008
The American arrived a few days ago.
His name is Thomas Rolfe, an entrepreneur doing business in India. He’d been hoping to expand into Cambodia, but then he was asked to pay some bribes. His response was to tell the collector on duty to go fuck himself. He didn’t know that in Cambodia, bribery’s a serious matter. If you don’t pay, it can mean only one of two things: either you have someone powerful protecting you, or you haven’t yet figured out where you are.
The cops accused him of molesting two young girls. Then they gave him a severe beating, so severe that he’s now three beds away from Kasper. Considering the marks on his face when he arrived, Kasper guessed that Rolfe wasn’t prudent. He must have taken many body blows as well, because he could barely stand up, and every time they moved him he made sounds like a mistreated animal. But his mind was clear. Clear enough, at least, to take in his surroundings.
He noticed that there was another Westerner in the hospital. He made some signs in Kasper’s direction that first day, and asked him if he spoke English. When the answer was yes, his blue eyes lit up. “Where are you from?” he stammered.
“I’m an Italian, but part American,” Kasper said with a smile. “Rest. There’ll be time.”
Now Kasper and Thomas are inhaling some fresher air together in the little courtyard outside the big room. On one side of the courtyard are armed guards; on the other, the gate that leads to the two-meter-high pyramid of refuse in what must once have been a garden. And beyond the ex-garden, separated by a little wall a meter high, Boulevard Pasteur.
The traffic around the capital’s central market is like a basso continuo punctuated by high-pitched sirens, unmuffled motorbikes, screeching brakes. Every now and then detonations that sound like gunshots can be heard.
Thomas lights a cigarette. He’s recovering. The American embassy has let him know that they’re going to have him released. A couple of days, a week at most, and then he’ll be able to leave this terrible place.
“Tell me how I can help you once I get out of here,” the American asks Kasper.
“You can’t,” says Kasper, smiling. “The U.S. is the reason I’m in here. As far as they’re concerned, I’m supposed to die in here.”
“Not all Americans are the same.”
“Maybe I got mixed up with the wrong Americans.”
Kasper has told Thomas his story without giving any details. He hasn’t told him exactly what he was working on, just that what he was doing was justified. But Thomas Rolfe isn’t stupid. He looks Kasper in the eye and says, “Listen, my handsome Italian pilot, I don’t know what skies you’ve been flying in, but I know you can’t stay here. They don’t just blow you away here. Here they kill you slowly.”
Kasper nods. And wonders: Can I trust him? Trust this American who dropped in here out of nowhere? He could be one of them.
“That stuff you’re hooked up to,” says Rolfe. “That IV they drip into you every day—”
“Vitamins.”
“Vitamins