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The last member of the staff to see the couple that night was Margherita, who watched them cross the courtyard from her static post above the chapel. Like all housekeepers, Margherita was a natural watcher-and, like any good watcher, she took note of small details. She found it odd, to say the least, that the woman was leading the way. She also thought she could detect something different about the restorer’s movements. Something vaguely hesitant in his step. She saw him once more, when he appeared in the upstairs window and gazed in her direction over the courtyard. There was no soldierly nod this time; in fact, he gave no indication that he was even aware of her presence. He just peered into the gloom, as if searching for an adversary that he knew was there but could not see.
The shutters closed with a thump and the restorer disappeared from sight. Margherita remained frozen in her window for a long time after, haunted by the image she had just seen. A man in a moonlit window with a heavy bandage over his right eye.
Unfortunately, Count Gasparri’s predictions about the restorer’s mood turned out to be accurate. Unlike in summer, when he had been predictably aloof, his moods now fluctuated between chilling silences and flashes of alarming temper. Francesca, while apologetic, offered few clues about how he had sustained the injury, stating only that he had suffered “a mishap” while working abroad. Naturally, the staff was left to speculate as to what had actually happened. Their theories ranged from the absurd to the mundane. They were certain of one thing: the injury had left the restorer dangerously on edge, as A
At first, he did not venture beyond the Etruscan walls of the garden. There, he would spend afternoons beneath the shade of the trellis, drinking his Orvieto wine and reading until his eye became too fatigued to continue. Sometimes, when it was warm, he would wander down to the pool and wade carefully into the shallow end, making certain to keep his bandaged eye above water. Other times, he would lie on his back on the chaise and toss a te
He soon felt strong enough to resume his walks. In the begi
With each passing day, he walked a little farther, and by the middle of October he was able to hike to the gate and back each morning. He even began venturing into the woods again. It was during one such outing, on the first chilly day of the season, that the Villa dei Fiori echoed with a single crack of a small-caliber weapon. The restorer emerged from the trees a few moments later with a sweater knotted casually round his neck and the dogs howling with bloodlust. He informed Carlos that he had been charged by a wild boar and that the boar, unfortunately, had not survived the encounter. When Carlos looked for evidence of a gun, the restorer seemed to smile. Then he turned and set out down the gravel road toward the villa. Carlos found the animal a few minutes later. Between its eyes was a bloodless hole. Small and neat. Almost as if it had been painted with a brush.
The next morning, the Villa dei Fiori, along with the rest of Europe, awoke to the stu
Ten minutes later, in Paris, the French president strode before the cameras at the Élysée Palace and a
Similar scenes played out in rapid succession in Madrid, Rome, Athens, Zurich, Copenhagen, and, finally, on the other side of the Atlantic, in Washington, D.C. Flanked by his senior national security staff, the president told the American people that eight SA-18 missiles had been discovered aboard a motor yacht bound for Miami from the Bahamas and six more had been found in the trunk of a car attempting to enter the United States from Canada. Four suspected terrorists had been detained and were now undergoing interrogation. Based on what had been gleaned thus far, both by American and European investigators, it appeared the plot had been timed to coincide with the Christmas holidays. American and Israeli aircraft were the primary targets of the terrorists, who were hoping to maximize casualties among “the Crusaders and the Jews.” The president assured the American people that the plot had been fully disrupted and that it was safe to fly. The traveling public apparently did not agree. Within hours of the a
By nightfall, all eyes were on Moscow, where the Kremlin had maintained a Soviet-like silence as the story unfolded. Shortly after 11 P.M., a spokesman for the Russian president finally issued a terse statement categorically denying any link between the terrorist plot and legitimate arms sales by Russia to its clients in the Middle East. If the missiles had indeed come from a Russian source, said the spokesman, then it was almost certainly a criminal act-one that would be investigated to the fullest extent possible by Russian authorities. Within a few hours, however, the veracity of the Russian statement was called into question by a dramatic newspaper report in London. It was written by someone the men of the Kremlin knew well: Olga Sukhova, the former editor in chief of Moskovsky Gazeta.