The Sacred Cut

“Straight to the point.” She got up, faced the figure in the parka, and tugged down the hood, exposing the shaking head, then ripped the fat slice of shiny metallic duct tape straight from the man’s lower face.

Thornton Fielding screamed with pain, shot his fingers to his mouth, pulled them away, astonished, then stared at the small assembly of people in front of him as if he’d just woken up from a bad dream, only to find himself slap bang in the middle of another one.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” Fielding yelled. He was looking in horror at the vest strapped to his chest, with its yellow canisters and loom of wires. “Are you serious, Leapman? What the hell is this? Get it off of me. Now!”

Nic Costa was watching the expression on Leapman’s face all along, wondering. There was nothing there but shock and surprise. Leapman screwed up his eyes and turned to Falcone. “What is he doing here?”

“Talking,” Costa said, intervening. “If he wants to stay alive.”

Emily came up to close to Fielding, looked at his jacket, then at hers. “These are BLU-97 bomblets, Thornton. Adapted for the task, specially for the two of us. I watched Kaspar do it this morning. A cap detonator in each. Wired to a remote only he controls. He knows what he’s doing. Also”-she flipped the mike on her collar-“he can hear everything we say.” She nodded at Leapman. “If he doesn’t like what they do, I get to be the martyr. If he doesn’t like what he’s hearing from you-bang, it’s you. Or maybe both of us. Who knows?”

There was a cast of stark terror in Fielding’s eyes. “Sweet Jesus, what does that lunatic want from me?”

Emily stayed close. “The same thing I want, Thornton. Some answers. About what happened here in Rome, back in 1990. You do remember that, don’t you?”

He shook his grey head in astonishment. “What? What are you talking about? Listen…”

He looked at Leapman, then at Falcone, appealing to them. “This is the truth. I swear. One hour ago I’m at my desk in the embassy. I get some crazy e-mail from Emily here saying she was in big trouble with you guys somehow and I had to go to some place near the Corso right then.”

Leapman scowled at him, then at Costa. “She was here an hour ago. She couldn’t possibly have sent that.”

“It was internal!” Fielding screamed. “Came from her PC, goddammit! Made it sound like the world was falling in or something. Like it involved me, too.”

“That’s because it does, Thornton,” Emily said quietly.

“This is ridiculous,” he shouted.

Leapman walked up to Fielding, interested. “What happened?”

“I get there and some hulking lunatic in a uniform jumps me, drags me into an alley, puts this stuff on me, and says if I don’t wait where he says until some guy comes to fetch me I’m dead. And sticks that stinking tape over my mouth too. And that’s exactly where I stay until he”-Fielding pointed at Costa-“turns up.”

Costa got a withering glance from Leapman and smiled wanly in return.

“So what the hell is going on here, Joel?” Fielding demanded. “If this is one of those damn training exercises of yours-”

“It’s no exercise,” Leapman responded. “You were here? In Rome? In ”90?“

“Sure!” Fielding yelled. “It’s no secret. It’s no secret why I’m still here either. I’m the resident queer, remember? I didn’t get moved around back then because I was a security risk. I don’t get moved around now because I’m part of the furniture. Big deal.”

“I didn’t know that,” Leapman said quietly.

“Get this crap off of me!” Fielding screeched.

Costa walked up, took a good look at him. “Can’t do that. Kaspar put it on you. He’s the only one who can take it off.”

Fielding’s face screwed up in disbelief. “You bastards sent me out to meet that lunatic?”

“Looks like it,” Leapman observed. “So where the hell is he now, Mr. Costa?”

“Search me.” Costa shrugged. “I just took the phone call. Could be anywhere in the vicinity from what we understand. He said that, unless he got some answers, he’d start setting those things off in”-Costa looked at the watch again-“a little under ten minutes. If you believe him, that is. What do you think, Mr. Fielding? Do you think he’s really capable of that?”

Fielding wasn’t playing this game. “I never met the man! Not till you tell me he just leapt out and put me in this crap. Joel-this isn’t going to look good on anyone’s record.”

Emily Deacon reached forward and touched one of the wires on Fielding’s vest. He jumped back like a man who’d had a sudden shock.

“He’ll do it, Thornton,” she insisted, “unless you talk. Now’s the time. We’re good listeners.”

“About what?”

“About the Babylon Sisters. About who was behind-”

“Jesus, Emily! I told you. I did everything I could. Didn’t you read what was there? Didn’t you get the message? Do I have to spell it out for you?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “You do.”

“Fine! All that crazy private army stuff was Kaspar and your old man’s idea. Dan was the boss. Kaspar was the soldier. Just a couple of old hippies with guns and a blank cheque from the CIA or someone. You wonder it all got screwed up?”

“No!” She was adamant. “You showed me what you wanted to, Thornton, and for a reason. It was nothing to do with me. It all was about protecting yourself.”

“This is insane. What the hell are you talking about?”

“You!” she yelled. “You were pulling the strings then, you’re still pulling them now. I couldn’t figure out why there was just one document left on the system when you let me in. Was that an accident? Of course not. It was the document that pointed straight to my dad, not to you. That was why you put it there. For me to find.”

“Joel? We need your men in here.” Fielding wasn’t budging. Costa thought of the minutes, ticking away, and wondered how long the unseen Kaspar would wait.

Emily Deacon stood directly beneath the oculus and allowed herself a glance through the eye above. “It’s about places, Thornton. That’s what Kasper’s been trying to work out for himself all along. Places like this. He and my dad used to meet here, talk things through. He told me so. But my dad was discussing that mission with someone else too. Someone in the Piazza Mattei, someone Kaspar never did get to know.”

That scared him. Just a little. “What of it?”

“That’s what my dad said to Kaspar. Before he died. The one thing. That he wished he’d never gone to see the man in the Piazza Mattei. Kaspar thought he’d found that man, too. He went back there a couple of months ago. He’d worked out there was a property in the square the spooks had been using for years and years. He attacked the guy living there, trying to get some information out of him. He didn’t kill him, though. This wasn’t his man. He was just after intelligence and the man had none. Kaspar didn’t kill just anyone. Not then.”

“So?”

“So he didn’t get his information. But we did. We know.”

Fielding looked at her, astonished. “You’re taking the word of that lunatic? I’m here because of that?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I am.”

Then she put a hand to the front of her own vest, took hold of the tangle of coloured wires.

Costa watched in horror. “Emily-”

“I can show you why, Thornton,” she said, ripping at the wires on her chest, tearing them from the canisters in one rapid, bold movement.

Fielding cowered, half crouching down on the floor. Nothing happened. She just stood there, making the point. Then she threw off the parka, let it fall to the floor and ripped down the zipper on the vest, got rid of that too.

Friedricksen turned and fled for the shadows.

“Get back here!” Leapman yelled at the man, then picked up the vest to look at it. He pulled out the detonator from one of the canisters, upending the contents so sand fell onto the floor in a steady stream. Cocking his head to one side, he took a closer look, scratched at the metal with his finger.