The cruisers swept past him, unable to slow down in time to catch the turn. He had lost them—at least for the moment. He powered down the streets until he reached the via Parboni, and took a left.
Yet what was that ahead of him? He could scarcely hear himself think above the blaring siren, the straining motor, the squealing tires.
It seemed impossible! Ahead of him, at the corner of the via Bargoni, he saw a roadblock. How had they put it up so fast? He squinted, saw that it was made up of two cruisers and a portable wooden barricade. He could try to crash it…
Except that, behind him, roaring up seemingly from out of nowhere, was an unmarked car from the polizia municipale’s highway-patrol unit, a three-liter-turbo-engined Lancia sedan especially equipped for high-speed vehicular apprehension.
Belknap gunned the van fully, watching four carabinieri standing at the roadblock—large men with sunglasses and arms folded on their chests—scramble out of the way. Then he jerked the gearshift into neutral and seized the parking brake at the exact same moment he gave the steering wheel a half-turn toward the left. The car had slewed around perpendicular to the road, and the tires of the high-powered Lancia screamed as it veered off to the side of the road to avoid colliding with the postal van, shuddering to a halt as its front crumpled into a fire hydrant.
Now Belknap released the parking brake, floored the accelerator, and straightened out the steering wheel. The vehicle juddered, and a loud clattering noise told him that the pressure on the sidewalls had caused the hubcaps to fly off. At the same time, the torque on the transmission had caused oil to surge into the system, and in the rearview mirror he could see a cloud of thick black smoke pouring from his exhaust. But he had reversed direction without pausing. Now he was skimming the wrong way down via Bargoni, except this time the street was nearly empty. By blocking it off at the other end, the police had unwittingly done him a favor. He turned left on the via Bezzi, whipped onto the speedy viale de Trastevere, past the Autorità per la Informatica nella Pubblica Amministrazione—and lost his pursuers.
Ten minutes later, he was seated at a café, where he finally ordered the espresso Gianni Mattucci had recommended. He disguised his exhaustion as the ennui of a bored tourist, but phoned his carabiniere contact at first opportunity.
“Now we can talk,” Belknap said quietly, keeping his voice conversational. Many fugitives swiftly gave themselves away by their anxiety; they were keyed up in a way that invariably brought them attention. Belknap would not make that mistake.
“Ma che diavolo! Do you have any idea what I’m dealing with right now?” Mattucci’s voice was beyond strained. “You must tell me what you know!”
“You first,” said Belknap.
Chapter Six
“I’m serious,” Hank Sidgwick was saying over the telephone, and Andrea Bancroft realized, with a sinking feeling, that he was. “I’m telling you, this guy could really use the bucks.”
She could picture him at his desk. Sidgwick, pushing forty, retained his all-American looks: blue eyes, blond hair, the body of a middleweight wrestler, though the sun-reddened furrows of his forehead foretold a less-than-flattering middle age. Somehow he always smelled like fresh laundry. He was a friend and colleague at Coventry Equity Group, but she had first met him years earlier, when he was dating a girlfriend of hers in college.
“You know the most interesting people,” she said carefully. She had always enjoyed Hank’s company and was at first pleased by his call. He had, in turn, been fascinated by her recounting of her first foundation meeting. Now, though, she wondered whether she should have been so forthcoming. Hadn’t she promised, strictly speaking, to treat the foundation’s proceedings as “privileged and confidential”? But what really took her aback was how callow Hank’s response had been when she told him about the test that Paul Bancroft had put her to. Hank’s wife had a friend who was an independent documentary maker. “He could put twenty million to good use,” Hank had told Andrea: his first response. Evidently the filmmaker wanted to complete a documentary about East Village performance artists who engaged in bizarre body-modification practices. Andrea glanced at the door, unconsciously signaling her impatience. She had been talking about saving lives, and all Hank could think of was this trivial endeavor?
“Just something to mull over,” Sidgwick said in a fake offhanded tone as he stood up to go.
“Of course,” she said automatically.
Didn’t anybody get it? Yet she would not let herself express her indignation. She was self-conscious about coming across as a snob. It was important to her, somehow, that everyone saw her as the same old Andrea, unchanged by sudden fortune.
But I’m not, she reflected. That’s the truth. I’m different now.
Yes, it was time to stop pretending, she decided. Everything was different.
Almost as soon as she hung up, the telephone rang again.
“Miss Bancroft?” the caller asked. A voice that sounded slightly hoarse and somehow smoky.
“Yes,” she said, instantly feeling a pang of unease.
“I’m calling from the Bancroft Foundation, the security desk. Just wanted to make sure you were clear about the details of the nondisclosure agreement.”
“Of course.” A silly, paranoid thought came to her: It was as if they knew. As if they’d heard her speaking indiscreetly and were calling her to account.
“And there are other security protocol and compliance issues. We’ll be sending someone to you shortly, if that’s all right.”
“Sure thing,” Andrea said, still spooked, and when she put the phone down, she realized that she was hugging herself for warmth.
Something small and disquieting was beginning to bud in the back of her mind, so she forced herself to think about other things. She once again found herself walking—trudging—in a dreamlike state through her small home. Welcome to your new life, she thought.
But she wasn’t going to live for herself alone. That was the thing. She was going to be part of an incredible project—something truly large, truly important. Merlin’s assurance: On your say-so.
What project would be deserving? So much needed to be done. Water and sanitation was a life-or-death issue for many, and so were diseases like AIDS and malaria, conditions like malnutrition. Then there were issues like global warming. Endangered species. There were so many challenges, so many unknowns, so many partially knowns. How to target the funds for maximal results—the biggest bang for the buck? It was hard, all right, damned hard. Because, really, you had to do the math and think five steps ahead, as Paul Bancroft had explained. Twenty million was too much for some problems, way too little for others. As different scenarios filled her mind, she found that her appreciation for what Paul Bancroft had managed to achieve mounted.
There was a knock at the door, and her thoughts dissipated like smoke rings. At the door was a man she did not recognize, a man whose well-tailored suit failed to conceal how heavily muscled he was: To her, he looked like a cross between a banker and a…bouncer.
“I’m with the Bancroft Foundation,” the man said.
No surprise there.
“You’d asked to have certain case files delivered,” he went on.
She noticed he had a briefcase in one hand, and remembered the request that she’d made the day before. She had been expecting a courier service, or a UPS deliveryman. “Oh, of course,” she said. “Please come in.”
“And there are various security details to review. I hope someone called before to say I was coming.” His steel-gray hair was combed in a knife-sharp part. He had a square face with undistinguished features. He was at some indeterminate point of middle age; she wasn’t even sure which decade.
“Someone called, yeah,” Andrea said.
He stepped inside, his movements like those of a jungle cat; muscles seemed to ripple beneath costly fabric. He opened the briefcase and handed her a clutch of folders. “You have any questions about procedure at the foundation? Protocol’s been laid ou
t?”
“Everything’s been carefully explained.”
“Good to know,” he said. “You have a shredder?”
“Like for cheese?”
The man did not smile. “We can supply you with a DoD-grade crosscut shredder. Otherwise we’ll ask you to be sure that the contents of these files, photocopied or otherwise, are returned to the foundation offices.”
“Okay.”
“Just the procedure. You’re new, so I’m supposed to remind you about the terms of the nondisclosure agreement you’re party to.”
“Look, I was in finance, I get the nondisclosure thing.”
His eyes seemed to study her face. “Then you understand that you’re forbidden to discuss any foundation business with outsiders.”
“Right,” Andrea said nervously.
“Easy to forget.” The man spoke the words with a twinkle, but not, it somehow seemed to her, a friendly twinkle. “Important not to.” He began to make his way to the door.
“Thank you. I’ll bear that in mind.” Andrea tried not to let it show, but, again, she was spooked. Was it really possible that the foundation had her under surveillance? That it knew about the conversation she’d had just a little earlier? Had her house been bugged?
Nonsense. It was all nonsense, the paranoid imaginings of an unsettled mind, she assured herself. But was there something about the way the man looked at her: a hint of a smile, a certain curious familiarity? No, she was being paranoid again.
Andrea was about to ask him whether they had ever met before when, just before he stepped onto her porch, he offered a terse explanation. “You look a lot like your mother.”
The way he said it chilled her further. She thanked her visitor politely, formally. “I’m sorry—I forgot what you said your name was,” she prompted.
“I didn’t,” he replied blandly. As he turned and walked to an idling Town Car, the phone rang again.
Cindy Lewalski, a realtor with the Cooper Brandt Group, was returning a call Andrea had almost forgotten she had made.
“So I gather you’re interested in looking at apartments in Manhattan,” the woman said. A whiskey voice, businesslike but friendly.
“That’s right,” Andrea said. She had always dreamed of a loft in New York, and, darn it, now she could afford it, with twelve million dollars earning two percent interest in her savings account. She didn’t want to put on airs, but she wasn’t fooling anybody, and she wasn’t going to martyr herself by staying “humble”—that would be the worst affectation of all. She could make an all-cash offer on a place in the big city, get something nice. Something really nice.
Cindy Lewalski took down Andrea’s basic information as she opened a client file on her computer, establishing a price range and the features that Andrea was looking for—size, neighborhood, and so forth. She verified the spelling of Andrea’s name. “You wouldn’t happen to be one of those Bancrofts, by chance?” she asked.
Andrea replied without a flicker of hesitation. “You’ve got my number.”
West End, London
To the world, he was Lukas. The Edinburgh-born rock star had sported the mononym since his early days with the band G7; and the first of the four platinum albums he had recorded since starting a solo career was, as the industry had it, “self-titled.” Someone charted the frequency of babies named Lukas and showed a sharp upturn that began with his hit-making career. Hardcore fans knew he was born Hugh Burney, but the knowledge never stuck. Lukas was the truer identity. He had come to look like Lukas, even to himself.
The sound studio, tucked away in what had once been a girls’ school on Gosfield Street, was gleaming and state-of-the-art, a far cry from the places he had been used to before his career took off. But certain aspects of the enterprise remained the same. For instance, the headphones were getting itchy, as often happened after twenty or so minutes. He pulled them off, put them on again. His producer, Jack Rawls, played another sequence of bass lines.
“Too heavy, man,” Lukas said. “Still too heavy.”
“You don’t want it to fly away,” Rawls protested mildly. “This song, it’s like a picnic blanket in a windstorm. You need to weight it down with a heavy object. A curling stone, like.”
“Yeah, but you’ve given us a boulder. It’s just too much. You feelin’ me?” This wasn’t the glamorous part of the business. The air inside the recording studio was getting stuffy—“fuggy,” as Rawls would say—because mechanical ventilation produced noise. Rawls was seated before an array of synthesizers. These days, the line between producers and instrumentalists was getting blurry, and Rawls, a former keyboard player, combined both roles. Lukas was aiming for an atmospheric soundscape—an ambient electronic groove. When Lukas and Rawls were at the Ipswich Art School together, they experimented with using tape recorders as instruments. The hiss of a blank tape itself could be a powerful sonic element. Lukas was aiming for something like that now.
“How about we try it both ways?” Rawls said, in an agreeable tone of voice that meant he was determined to get his way.
“How about you just dial it back a titch?” Lukas grinned, displaying his famously dazzling smile. Not this time, Jack.
It was his first album in two years, and Lukas was fastidious about every detail. He owed it to people. His fans. Lukas hated the word “fans,” but there it was. What did you call the people who bought not just the albums, but the singles, too? Who traded so-called basement tapes with one another? Who knew his music even better than Lukas himself did?
An assistant, wildly pantomiming outside the glass: telephone.
Lukas made a blow-off gesture in return. He’d told them that he wasn’t taking phone calls. He was working. The Pan-African tour was going to start in just two weeks, so he didn’t have a lot of time at the recording studio. He had to make the most of the sessions he had scheduled.
Now the assistant reappeared holding the phone, pointing to it. “You’ll want to take this,” she mouthed.
Lukas took off his headphones, stood up, and retreated to the jury-rigged office he had made for himself across the hall.
“They said yes!” His agent, Ari Sanders, crowing.
“What are you talking about?”
“Eighty percent of the house. Madison Square Garden. You’re wondering: How did Ari Sanders swing this one? Yes, you are. Well, forget about it. A magician never reveals his secrets!”
“I’m a slow Scotsman, Ari. You need to break it down for me nice and easy. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Okay, okay, I can refuse you nothing. We got word that the Garden had to cancel the hip-hop gala because of insurance problems. Can you believe? Suddenly, they’ve got a humungous hole in their schedule. A Friday night and they’re dark, can you believe it? So that’s when your faithful knight commits armed robbery. A daylight hijacking. I tell the manager, There’s one guy who can sell out the house in four days, and that’s my guy. Am I right? You put an ad on the radio saying Surprise Lukas Concert! So the goniff’s practically wetting himself. He wants it. This is headline news, right?”
“News to me,” Lukas said warningly.
“Oh, but I had to play it this way. I got his balls in my hand. Then I squeezed, hard. I say, Lukas hasn’t performed a live concert in the United States for a long, long time. But if you want him to break his goddamn self-denying ordinance, you have to do right by him. Eighty percent of the house. That’s what I said. The bastard starts bellyaching, about how they’ve never given more than fifty percent, on and on. I said, ‘Fine. This conversation is over.’ He says, ‘Hold on a sec.’ I’m counting to myself: one Mississippi, two Mississippi…And he caved. Can you believe it! He caved! New York, make some noise for…Lukas!”
“Listen, Ari,” Lukas said. An eel of unease squirmed through his innards. “I just don’t know whether—”
Ari Sanders steamrollered on with his customary manic energy. “You’re a saint! A goddamn Scottish saint! All those benefit concerts you’ve been d
oing for the past three years—I mean, it chokes me up to think about it. All those orphans and widows you’ve helped. It humbles me. It humbles me. Your Children’s Crusade? Truly an inspiring thing. Like Time magazine says, nobody has done more to draw the world’s attention to the worst off among us. A rock star with a social conscience—I mean, who would have figured? But Lukas?”
“Yeah?”
“Enough’s enough. Oh, sure, widows and orphans—you gotta love ’em. But the secret to life is balance. You gotta show love to the hordes of Lukas fans out there. And you gotta show love to little Ari Sanders, who’s been busting his heinie for you out on the front lines every day.”
“A twenty percent cut’s not enough, all of a sudden?”
“Do this,” Ari said. “I made history today. I made history for you. Eighty percent of box office receipts—the Pope doesn’t get that.” He paused to take a breath. “Then again, how many Grammy Awards has he won?”
“I’ll think about it, okay,” Lukas said weakly. “But I’ve got these benefit concerts all lined up, and—”
“So they’ll be heartbroken in Ouagadougou for a day. Change your plans. You cannot say no to this.”
“I’ll—I’ll get back to you.”
“Jesus, Lukas, you sound like someone’s got a gun to your head.”
Lukas clicked off. He noticed that he was sweating.
Moments later, his personal cell phone chimed its Jimi Hendrix ringtone. “Lukas here,” he said.
It was an all-too-familiar voice: electronically altered, eerily devoid of humanity, of affect. “Stick to the plan,” the voice said. If a lizard could speak, Lukas thought, this is what it would sound like.
He swallowed hard. It felt as if there was a stone lodged in his throat. “Look, I’ve done everything you told me to—”