The Medusa Amulet (18 page)

“No, I don’t.”

She shrugged again and said, “It’s the best café in Firenze. I have an apartment next door to it.” Having cleaned every crumb from her plate, she leaned back in the chair and fumbled in her pocket for a pack of cigarettes. She held them out to David, who declined, then lighted one herself.

“But what are you?” Olivia asked. “You are American. But a tourist?”

David wasn’t sure if this was just polite conversation, or if he was being sized up as a potential customer.

“I’m actually here on some business.”

“You do not look like a businessman.”

David decided he’d take that as a compliment. “I’m researching something. I work in Chicago, at a library.”

“I have been to Chicago,” Olivia said triumphantly. “It was very cold. And I also lived in New York, for five years.” She spread her fingers to emphasize the point. “I was writing a dissertation, at Columbia.” She said it like Col
om
bia the country. “Now I work here.”

“On a book?” David asked.

A furtive look crossed the tour guide’s face. “A very big book,” she said. “A history—I cannot tell you more. I have been working on it for seven years.”

“So you must be nearly done?” David said encouragingly.

But Olivia shook her head and exhaled a cloud of smoke over one shoulder. “No. I have met with much resistance. And it will cause a lot of arguments.” Glancing at her watch, she said, “And now I must go. I have a private client for a tour. Where are you staying?”

“The Grand.”

“The Grand?” David could see another reappraisal going on in Olivia’s eyes. “And who is it you work for? What library is this?”

“The Newberry. It’s a private institution.”

“And are you going to work at the university here?”

“No, at the Biblioteca Laurenziana.”

It was as if David could actually hear the wheels spinning in her head, like a slot machine that was coming up all cherries. He expected another volley of questions, and was beginning to wonder if he should have been quite so forthcoming. Was it really just by chance that she had followed him to the café and joined him? Or was he being paranoid? Ever since that guy had tried to run him down in the street, he’d been uncharacteristically suspicious.

Olivia stood up, taking one last drag on her cigarette. “I will be
late,” she said, dropping the butt in her empty espresso cup. “But I thank you for the meal.”

“You’re welcome,” David said.

“You may join another of my tours, anytime. Also for free.”

“Careful,” David replied, “I might take you up on that.”

She smiled and said, “It is possible I could teach you a thing or two.”

And then, as he pondered the full import of that, she hurried off across the square, the tails of her old coat flapping around her. He was still looking when she turned her head unexpectedly and caught him. Her laugh rang out across the piazza.

Chapter 12

Damn, damn, damn
. What should he do now, Escher wondered, from his vantage point across from the café. The girl was leaving, and David was staying, but he couldn’t very well tail both of them.

Who was she? An accomplice of some kind? Or just a tour guide who’d taken a fancy to the guy who’d joined her group?

On Ambassador Schillinger’s orders, Escher had followed David all the way from Chicago, never more than a few hundred yards behind. While David flew in the first-class compartment, Escher had squeezed into the last available seat—back by the bathrooms—in coach.

And while David traveled into the city in a private car, Escher had followed in an unlicensed cab.

And as David had checked into the Grand Hotel, Escher had lurked in the lobby. He was still carrying his overnight bag slung over one sturdy shoulder.

On a hunch, he followed the girl. She was good-looking, though with less meat on her bones than he liked. Maybe in her late twenties, she walked with the brisk pace of someone who was intent on getting a lot done. As she passed a trash bin, she pulled the iris out of her lapel and dropped it in. Escher snorted in approval, thinking she must have worn the flower solely for the benefit of the tourists.

A few blocks from the piazza, she ducked into a used-books store
and came out half an hour later with a fat volume tucked under one arm. With her other hand, she was fishing in her coat pocket, and when he realized that she was looking for her car keys, he hailed the first passing cab, jumped in, then had the driver wait until she stopped beside a beat-up little Fiat and got in. The thing was more dents than car.

“Follow it,” he told the cabbie, tossing some bills onto the front seat.

She drove like she did everything else—fast and direct, cutting through the traffic like a knife, honking her horn, whipping around the traffic circles, taking corners so sharply that pedestrians had to jump back to keep their feet from being run over.

“This woman’s crazy!” the cabbie said, doing his best to keep up.

“Just don’t lose her,” Escher said, tossing another bill.

At the Piazza della Repubblica, she went up and down the local streets a couple of times, apparently looking for a parking spot—in Florence, it was never easy—before someone in front of a busy café pulled out. Another car made a beeline for the spot, but the little Fiat, clattering like a tin can, cut it off at the pass and dove in headfirst, one tire bumping over the curb, the back end sticking out into the street.

Escher could hear a brief shouting match, but the girl grabbed her book, locked the car—who would ever steal that hunk of junk, he wondered?—and marched up the steps of a small, dilapidated apartment building without so much as a glance back.

Once she was inside, Escher got out of his cab and watched the windows. She appeared on the third floor, yanking open some curtains, and when he consulted the apartment roster, he was able to deduce that her name was Levi, first initial O.

He’d have to run it by Schillinger in Chicago and see if it rang any bells. If not, Schillinger could always kick it upstairs.

He waited in the cold for another hour or two before deciding to call it quits for the day. He was damn tired of running around. He hadn’t been to Florence in years—the last time he’d been there, he
was part of the official Swiss Guard accompanying the Pope—but he remembered where Julius Jantzen, his local contact, lived, and fortunately it wasn’t far.

He set out on foot, into the increasingly seedy districts of the city, now inhabited by immigrants and foreign workers. Many of the shops had signs in Arabic and Farsi, and the streets were littered with dirt and refuse. This part of town was definitely off the tourists’ maps. There were dozens of cheap hotels, betting parlors, and kebab joints, punctuated, oddly enough, by the occasional ancient church, or—and wasn’t it another sign of the times—a makeshift mosque.

On the corner of a dismal street, there was a sliver of a building painted a faded orange, with a tobacconist’s shop on the ground floor. Escher brushed past a few young men loitering in front and into a shadowy courtyard surrounding a stagnant green fishpond. At the back there was a sheet-metal door—the only thing in the building that looked new and intact—and dropping his overnight bag on the threshold, he banged on the metal with his closed fist three times.

He eyed the window beside the door and saw two fingers part the dingy blind. Stepping back to make sure Julius could get a good look at him, he heard the locks being turned and the bolts unlatched, and while waiting he noticed one of the young men he’d just passed—they looked like Turks to him—watching him from the street.

“What are you looking at?” Escher called out.

The man didn’t answer, but his dark eyes lingered on the overstuffed bag on the threshold. Ernst had half a mind to go back and kick the shit out of him.

But the door opened partway, revealing Julius’s hand waving him in. Escher slipped in, and the door slammed closed behind him. After the locks and latches had all been resealed, Jantzen turned around and looked his visitor up and down.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

“Nice to see you, too.”

“I told them, I’m done. They have already ruined my life.”

Looking around the place—one lousy room with a cracked linoleum floor and an unmade bed behind a Chinese screen—Escher thought he might have a point.

“You’re never done,” Escher said, “You know that.”

Julius Jantzen had once been a respectable doctor in Zurich, best known for his work with Swiss athletes and cyclists. He had also been a pioneer in the use of anabolic steroids, blood oxygenation, and other performance-enhancing techniques. Escher had been one of his best clients … before it all came crashing down.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Julius asked, brushing some unruly curls of hair back off his forehead. He looked like a sick little rabbit, with stooped shoulders and a concave chest under a flannel shirt and rumpled trousers. Escher suspected him of using some of his own pharmaceuticals—just not the right kind.

“Running a fool’s errand, if you ask me.” He threw some newspapers off the couch and sat down. “What are you going to offer me to drink?”

Julius let out a breath of disgust, went into the kitchen, and came back with a cold bottle of Moretti.

“You’ve gone native,” Escher said, raising the bottle, then drinking off half of it at once. A soccer match was playing on the TV, with the sound muted. Escher had grown to prefer American football. More action, more scoring, more physical contact.

Julius sat down in what was clearly his favorite chair, a battered Naugahyde monster next to a side table littered with a full ashtray, a beer bottle, a TV remote, and a scattering of pistachio shells. Now that he looked around, Escher saw that there were pistachio shells all over the floor, too.

“Why don’t you get your pistachios already shelled?”

“I enjoy the exercise.”

Julius turned the sound back up, and for a while they watched the game in a wary, if companionable, silence. Escher was tired and could use a bit of a boost himself. Back in Rome, Jantzen had visited the barracks once every month or two with a bulging satchel of everything
from B-12 to Oxycontin. To stay in the Swiss Guard you had to keep fit, and with the help of some regular injections Escher had always remained ahead of the pack. But judging from the looks of Jantzen now, and the dump he lived in, his dealing days were over. Escher had been sent here for two things—a gun (there was no way to smuggle one aboard the flight from Chicago) and a base to work from.

He would take the gun, but he’d sooner check into any flophouse than try to sleep here even for one night.

Still, he put his head back, closed his eyes, and gradually drifted off. When he awoke with a start, the soccer match was over, and the evening news was on. No daylight at all was slanting in through the front blinds.

And he was alone.

“Julius!” he called out. “Where the hell are you?”

He got up, looked behind the Chinese screen, then went down the short hall, between a galley kitchen and an immense old wardrobe, to the bathroom. But he wasn’t in there, either. Nor was there any note lying around.

“Jantzen!” he called out one last time, and as if out of nowhere, the man appeared behind him, in a white surgical apron. The door to the wardrobe was open, and Julius said, “Christ, you snore.”

“Where were you?” Escher said, peering around the wardrobe door. There was no back to the thing, and a bright light washed into the hallway from a room tucked away behind the cabinet’s false front.

“Working,” Jantzen said, stepping back through the armoire, with Escher close behind.

No one would ever have guessed the lab was there. It was spotlessly clean and antiseptic, with bright fluorescent lighting overhead, an examining table, sink, and metal racks well stocked with everything from medical equipment to drug supplies. And suddenly, it all made much more sense to Escher.

“I put out something you might want,” Julius said, gesturing at a Glock nine-millimeter, with its silencer already attached to its muzzle, on the counter. Escher was glad to see that Jantzen had followed
orders, and he picked up the gun and examined it. “It’s loaded, so please be careful,” Jantzen said, as he finished counting out a pile of pills into waiting vials. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a decent little place down the street,” he said, brushing his hands on his apron, then taking it off and folding it on the examining table.

“Looks like you’ve got quite an operation here,” Escher said, impressed.

“We have a small, but loyal, clientele.”

When they were back in the hall, Jantzen slid a panel across the back of the armoire and pulled a bunch of old shirts and jackets across on the rod.

“You can leave your things here,” Jantzen said, “and spend the night on the sofa. Tomorrow, I expect, you’ll want to find better accommodations.”

Escher said nothing though he had no intention of waiting that long. He rummaged in his bag for a pack of cigarettes as Jantzen pulled on an overcoat, stuck a silly Cossack-style hat on his head, and undid the locks. He had no sooner thrown the last bolt and cracked the door open—“The restaurant’s run by Spaniards”—when the door flew back and he was hit so hard by a flying tackle that he was carried halfway into the room, with a dark-skinned man in a sweatshirt still gripping his shoulders. Escher looked up just as two more men—the Turks who’d been watching him when he arrived—charged into the room, one with a knife drawn, the other holding a gun.