TWELVE
PIAZZA DI SPAGNA
ROME
MONDAY
To anyone passing by, the attractive Japanese girl in tight jeans tucked into knee-high black boots and black t-shirt under a brown leather jacket appeared to be admiring the latest winter fashions and Christmas gift suggestions on display at the Dolce & Gabanna boutique.
In fact, Kara Michelle Deleroux used the highly reflective glass to scan the crowd behind her in the Piazza di Spagna. Trying her best to not move her head, Kara searched for the four Section One agents she knew were tailing her. She had been told they would be in plain sight, but even on a Monday in December, the sun brought the people out to have lunch near the Fontana della Baraccia and on the Spanish Steps and the list of possible targets overwhelmed her.
Kara had been dropped off five minutes earlier on the Via della Croce – an irony not lost on her as she'd stepped out of the passenger seat of Jean's Mercedes at the Condotti Palace hotel as her own handler was "unavailable" to assist in her training session today. She'd hoped the talk she and Michele shared a week ago after the Savellerti mission would have impressed upon him how she felt about his focus on Angelica, however he'd handed her off to Croce and Rissi in order to rush to the hospital at the latest mention of her condition changing.
Kara turned and started walking south towards the fountain and the Via dei Condotti, continuing to use the large windows to try and identify anyone looking out of place or paying more attention to her than what was in front of them.
She reached the CA' d'ORO galleria d'arte and took a moment to look across at the famous Babington's tea room across the way, nestled up against the Spanish Steps. She suddenly regretted wearing boots, as sneakers would have allowed her an excuse to kneel down and re-tie the laces, using the break to perform a sweep of the area in front of her. She crossed the plaza to Babington's and stepped into the famous teashop. As she stared at the over one hundred exclusive blends on offer, Kara noticed a woman with short hair dressed in a long-sleeve turtleneck sweater and slacks looking at a tea set. What stood out in her mind was not her face or style of dress, but the Molskine notebook festooned with colored page markers clutched in her left hand. She remembered seeing a woman leafing through such a notebook in front of the Banca Esperia SPA branch.
Kara made a purchase of a tea she'd seen Michele order once and stepped out of the shop, crossing to the Via dei Condotti and the Prada shop on the corner. Her eyes were drawn first to the red leather coat in the display window and next to a man in an average black suit who'd been staring at the same coat for five minutes. With his spiky hair and pencil mustache blending into a short boxed beard, he struck Kara as a lower-to-middle management type and someone unlikely able to afford a €3000 leather coast for a wife or girlfriend.
She continued down the most fashionable street in Rome; however the street was in shadow and that made it more difficult to use the shop windows to observe pedestrian traffic. Kara took a moment to look both ways for any traffic before rounding the corner onto the Via Mario de' Fiori and stepped into the La Perla store to look at undergarments, using a mirrored display unit to try and identify any tail. Unsuccessful, she exited the store, continuing down the street and entering a ristorante, making her way to the back where Alessandro Ricci sat at a table, a glass of wine in his hand.
"Okay, let me see how you did," Alessandro noted, holding out his other hand. Kara removed her iPhone from her pocket and placed it in his hand.
Alessandro opened the Photo app and started flipping through the pictures of people Kara had surreptitiously taken while acting as if she was looking up something.
"Well you found two of the four," he noted as he deleted the incorrect subjects. He handed the phone back to Kara and she saw one was the woman with the Moleskine notebook and the other was the guy looking at the Prada coat.
Alessandro asked Kara what tipped her off and he laughed when she answered.
"Alas, Elenora would be lost without her notebook and Pietro is about as subtle as a Padania bomb so I'm not surprised you found those two. Okay. I'll reset the other two and try again."
After an hour, Kara successfully identified one of the two remaining tails – a woman wearing jeans and a burgundy jacket, though when Kara first saw her she looked like a teenager with her hair in a ponytail and the jacket had been grey. Kara had noticed that her left Ugg boot had a distinctive black scuffmark and had used that to identify her despite the reversible jacket and change of hair style, successfully recalling Alessandro's lesson on how not to pay attention to faces, but instead look for consistent items like the scuffmark and the Moleskine notebook.
Two hours later, Alessandro put the key into the lock of the motel room on the outskirts of Rome. Beside him, Kara stood, her body tense.
Alessandro preceded her into the room and sat down on the bed. Kara stepped across the threshold and looked around. To her right lay the bathroom area and to her left was the closet. She stepped forward into the main room, dominated by a twin bed. Against the opposite wall was a credenza with drawers and a CRT television. To the right was a desk and chair, an armchair underneath the window with a lamp behind it.
"And…time," Alessandro called, having counted off thirty seconds in his head. Kara closed her eyes and Alessandro escorted her into the closet, having her face the wall as he closed the door on her. He then ordered her to recount all that she had committed to memory in the thirty seconds she'd had to observe the room.
When Kara had given her precursory report, he pressed her to keep going and she recalled items like the number of books on the nightstand, an envelope in the desk drawer, the color of the sheets and the fabric of the armchair and the style of the lamp shade.
"Not bad," Alessandro commented.
After testing Kara's spatial recall, Alessandro subjected Kara to memorization games. He arranged a number of items on the table and covered them with a sheet. He removed the sheet and gave Kara 45 seconds to memorize the items. Once she'd memorized the items, Alessandro increased the number of items and decreased the time allotted. Alessandro referred to it as "elongating", which he defined as pushing the envelope at both ends.
Eventually, Kara had 15 seconds to identify 25 items, ranging from a Glock pistol to a thumb drive disguised as a pen and a picture of three people (two men and a woman – one of the men bald in a muscle shirt, the other with a full head of hair and wearing a sweater. The woman had red hair and sunglasses, wearing a sports bra. At first, Kara thought it was Petrushka, but she was older) to a business card with Cyrillic text and a piece of paper with an international number (Alessandro told Kara to memorize the last eight digits, as that would be enough to identify the country code).
Alessandro made the recollection process harder by requiring Kara to wait five minutes before she could recite the list of items, discussing with her the lead story of that day's La Repubblica.
Kara spent most of the day with Alessandro, including a late dinner at a local trattoria. Kara hoped that Petrushka was not as possessive of her handler as Henrietta was with Jose, though considering how annoyed she felt at her own handler "abandoning" her for that…other…girl, she would have certainly understood if Petrushka took exception.
The sun had been down for some hours when Kara exited the passenger seat of Alessandro's smartfortwo in the handler's parking lot. Compared to Michele's exotics, the 45kW 700cc engine was laughably weak, though the car's diminutive size made it very easy for Alessandro to maneuver in traffic.
She started for the cyborg warehouse, but decided she needed to have another talk with her handler so she turned around and followed Alessandro into the handler's building. She climbed the steps Michele's floor and walked down the hall to his door. She raised her hand to knock, but instead placed it on the doorknob and slowly twisted it, finding it unlocked. She pushed open the door and saw Michele sitting on the edge of his bed. As the door continued to swing open, she saw Claes sitting in the desk chair, idly kicking her feet and an uncomfortable look on her face. Kara gritted her teeth at the sight of yet another cyborg with her handler, but before she could say anything she saw a look of relief wash over Claes and she scooted off the chair, grabbing her coat off the back. She slipped her feet into loafers and as she approached Kara, leaned in close.
"Go easy on him. He's feeling really bad right now," Claes noted in a voice too soft for Michele, but clearly audible to Kara's enhanced hearing. She then exited the room, softly closing the door behind her.
Dismissing Claes' words, she stomped up to Michele and plopped onto the bed next to him, focusing on the toes of her boots as she was afraid to look him in the eyes.
"Have I failed you so badly that you no longer want to have anything to do with me?" she accused. "Did you pawn me off to Ricci so you could discuss taking Claes on in my stead?"
When he didn't respond, Kara looked up into red, tear-stained eyes.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice edged in concern at seeing her handler's emotional condition. As it had in Savellerti, all the anger left her at the site of her handler in distress.
"Angelica passed away this evening," Michele said. His normally deep voice (which reminded her of an Italian Liam Neeson) sounded horse and cracked. "While they were able to repair the damage to her body, unfortunately her brain could no longer handle the conditioning medication and it shut down."
"I see," Kara said. "I'm sorry, I guess?"
For a moment, Michele felt shock at the apparent indifference of Kara to the death of one of her sisters, but then he realized that their indifference to death applied not just to their targets, but also their peers and even themselves. She'd also only known Angelica for a month, where Michele had known her since she'd first come to the attention of the Agency.
"Was she really that important to you?" Kara asked, thinking back to what Triela had told her.
"I loved her," Michele replied, and Kara felt a chill run through her.
"Tell me about her," Kara said, wanting to know more about this girl who she barely knew, but who clearly meant a great deal to her handler.
"Angelica's birth name was Angelina and when I first saw her, I thought an angel had come down to Earth. She was very pretty and her smile could outshine a galaxy. She was also a quadriplegic thanks to her father."
"Her father?" Kara asked.
"He owned a factory that had fallen on hard times and the debts had piled up to the point that he faced bankruptcy and receivership. So he took out a generous life insurance policy on his beautiful 10 year old daughter and when her mother sent her out to get some groceries, he ran her down in the street with his car," Michele said, his voice suddenly seething with contained rage.
Kara had a sudden urge to hunt down Angelina's father and tear his heart out – not for what he'd done to his daughter, but for the pain and anguish her handler felt at those actions.
"Facing a life sentence for attempted murder and insurance fraud, he agreed to let the Agency become the legal guardians of Angelina…"
As he talked, Kara leaned against him to let him know he was not alone.