Private Rome

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

•••

Chapter 1

I WAS ALONE in a room full of strangers. They all knew who I was, but only a handful of them were familiar to me. I guess that’s why I was there. A curiosity, a minor celebrity, someone to draw a crowd. Starting a new overseas office was always exciting and I’d never missed a launch, but there was more at stake now. My exploits in Delhi, Berlin, Moscow, and elsewhere had given me a degree of notoriety in law-enforcement and intelligence circles and I felt I had a reputation to live up to. Matteo Ricci, the former City of Rome police inspector I’d hired to start the Private Rome office, had been busy promoting me and the detective agency to Rome’s rich, powerful, and influential citizens.

Matteo, a personable man in his mid-thirties with an impressive track record as a cop, had spent the entire evening at my side, introducing me to a succession of potential clients. Roman entrepreneurs, politicians, clergy, journalists, police officers, lawyers, bankers . . . a blur of faces atop interchangeable tuxedos or glamorous cocktail dresses. I would only be able to put a handful of names to faces, but that wasn’t my job. Matteo knew who these people were and would follow up when the office was fully running.

“Mr. Morgan,” he said, drawing my attention away from the small group I was talking to. It was his way of signaling they’d had their time. “I’d like you to meet Joseph Stadler, Chief Operating Officer of the Vatican Bank.”

He nodded toward a tall, angular silver-haired man in a well-tailored tux.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Morgan,” he said, in excellent English spoken with a strong Swiss accent. “This is my executive assistant, Christian Altmer.”

The man beside him had a thick crop of blond hair and a tan that spoke of too much time wasted on the slopes or at the beach. Altmer oozed easy charm, flashing a smile of pure white, and I disliked him instantly.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, offering me his hand.
“Likewise,” I replied, shaking hands with both men.
“This is quite a party,” Altmer remarked.

We were at La Posta Vecchia, a well-known hotel overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, some fifty kilometers from the center of Rome. The splendid converted palazzo evoked Renaissance Italy, a time when people studied the achievements of classical antiquity and strove to match or surpass them. The building itself was equal to anything the ancient Romans had left behind; heavy stone walls, grand terraces overlooking the sea, cobbled pathways running through ornate gardens, ancient beams, polished wooden flooring, painted plaster walls, and in some rooms sculpted reliefs on walls and ceilings.

“I just wanted to put out a sign saying we were open for business, but Matteo said Rome prefers a party,” I told the bankers.
“Come on! When do I get to meet the hero of Moscow?” a woman standing behind Stadler and Altmer asked loudly.

She wore a figure-hugging black mini-dress and her blond hair was pulled back into a tight bun.

“Jack,” Matteo said to me with a smile, “this is Esther Cavalli.”

If Stadler was put out, he didn’t show it, but Altmer did, eyeing Esther with a look of disdain.

“Perhaps we will get a chance to talk later?” Stadler observed to me.
“I hope so,” I replied, and he and Altmer moved on, allowing the brash blonde to take center-stage.
“It’s like waiting to meet a king,” she scoffed. “I only tolerate it for Matteo’s sake.”
“He assured me lots of people would be interested in meeting me, and it seems he was right,” I replied.
“Matteo knows Rome better than most.”
“Not so well as you do, Esther,” he countered. “Esther is one of Italy’s best corporate lawyers,” he told me. “A grand attorney,” he added with a low bow.

He was charming without being a creep. Knew when to engage, press a conversation, back off, which suggested a high degree of empathy, one of the many qualities that had impressed me when I’d interviewed him a little over four months ago. We’d met each other three times before tonight. The first was a formal interview in the Hotel Hassler; the second for a coffee at a little place he knew near Vatican City where we’d bonded over our mutual passion for boxing and Formula One. Our third encounter had been for dinner in the Hassler’s rooftop restaurant where I’d offered him the job of head of Private Rome, which, judging by the width of his smile for the remainder of the evening, had meant a great deal to him. His track record with Rome police was faultless and he was athletic and good-looking, which I had observed made him the target for flirtatious advances from several of the men and women he’d invited here to meet me.

“How long do we each get?” Esther asked, glancing over her shoulder at the line of people standing behind her.

It was a question I’d been pondering myself. How long would I be expected to continue to make small talk? The line extended through several groups of people I’d already been introduced to, across the large function hall, toward an antechamber by the main door. There must have been another fifty people waiting.

“There is no time limit for someone as special as you,” Matteo assured Esther.

He was naturally smooth, which was another quality he’d need to draw on in his new position. Gearing up the Rome office had proved to be more of a challenge than I’d anticipated. We were still short of people, and were probably about a month away from being fully operational. Matteo still needed a second-in-command, and our principal investigators and support teams were currently going through their training and induction. The launch party was a little premature in my opinion, but Matteo had wanted it this way. It would take all his natural charm to keep potential customers interested in engaging us until we could actually fulfill their requirements.

Esther rolled her eyes and punched him playfully on the shoulder. She was about to reply but the words went unspoken when a commotion broke out by the doorway.

“Release me!” a man shouted.

His voice echoed against the stone walls of the antechamber. I noticed an American accent.

The two hundred or so guests in the main hall fell silent at the sounds of a scuffle breaking out. Moments later a priest in a black three-piece suit and clerical collar burst into the room, trailed by the private security personnel we’d hired for the party.

The priest was in his mid-fifties, with curly gray hair. His ruddy cheeks were marked with a map of burst blood vessels and other blemishes that suggested a history of drinking. He scanned the room, eyes wild with fear, and when he caught sight of Matteo, shook off the restraining hands of our security guards and ran over to us.

I stepped forward to put myself between Esther and the priest, but I needn’t have worried. He wasn’t a threat, at least not to any of us.

He stopped abruptly. Glancing around fearfully, taking in the sight of the partygoers, he cried, “The right hand of God will strike me down! Tonight, here in this place, I will die.”

•••

Chapter 2

MURMURS OF CONCERN rippled through the room as all our guests focused on the priest. Undeterred, he took hold of both Matteo’s hands.

“I came to ask for your help,” he said, glancing around nervously as though all the eyes fixed on him belonged to enemies, “but it’s no good. I cannot be saved. I must pay for my sins and pray that God will forgive me when I stand before Him. Only He sees all, but the Devil sees almost as much.”

The poor man seemed very distressed, quite possibly in the grip of a mental-health crisis.

“I’ve put you at risk,” he said suddenly. “I’m a fool. I came here to talk, but by doing so I only endanger you.”

Matteo shook his head and soothed the priest. “Father Brambilla, let’s get you somewhere you’ll feel safe and then you can tell me what’s troubling you.” He turned to me. “You don’t mind, do you, Jack?”
“You do what you need to do,” I replied.
“I’ll look after Jack for you,” Esther said, taking Matteo’s place at my side. He smiled. “You’re in good hands, then.”
Matteo took the distressed priest by the arm and led him away. “Come with me, father.”

The priest glanced back at me, raw fear visible in his eyes. For a moment I thought about following. There were few things in life that could make a man look so afraid. This had to be serious.

“Jack, I’d like to introduce Aldo Accardi and his wife, Sofia,” Esther said, trying to get my attention.

I watched Matteo and the priest go through a service door at the far end of the large function room. Once they were out of sight there seemed to be a collective exhalation of breath and the party resumed its former momentum.

I turned to find a distinguished man in his late sixties and his glamorous, much younger wife waiting to greet me.

“Aldo is chief executive of Russo Bank,” Esther went on. “And Sofia runs Happy Paws, a local charity that rehomes abandoned pets.”
“Very pleased to meet you,” Aldo said, offering me his hand.
“Thank you for coming,” I replied, returning the gesture and then shaking Sofia’s.
“I would not have missed it,” Aldo responded. “I have a friend in Italian intelligence. He’s told me about some of your exploits. Is it true you staged a rescue mission in the mountains of the Hindu Kush?”

I had resigned myself to the fact I would always be an object of curiosity to some people because of my history, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed being treated like an exhibit. I had almost died numerous times while trying to rescue U.S. Special Forces pilot Joshua Floyd, a traumatic experience that would forever be imprinted on me, but which for others was simply a thrilling anecdote. They would never understand the toll it took on me to cast my mind back to those events.

I nodded without saying anything.

“Those are some of the harshest conditions in the world,” Sofia remarked. “It must have taken much inner strength to endure them, Mr. Morgan.”

I didn’t need the praise of strangers. I would much rather have been in my Los Angeles home, having dinner with Justine, but this was part of the job of running Private. Building a client base was the first step toward establishing a successful office in Italy.

“It’s not something I’d want to do again,” I conceded.
“What pushes you on in such circumstances?” Aldo asked.
“Where do you find the will to survive?”

I knew the answer. The quest for truth, justice, the love of friends, family, Justine most of all, but I wasn’t about to share those parts of myself with strangers.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Until you’re in a situation where your life depends on —”

A loud bang cut me off. While the sound startled everyone in the grand room, I recognized instantly what it was.

A gunshot.

I raced to the doorway on the other side of the hall, weaving through the startled guests. Behind me, a couple of guards sprang into action. I sensed a few people at my heels, but reached the door first and pulled it open to reveal a wide corridor with a number of rooms leading off it and a grand staircase rising to the upper floors.

One of the doors halfway along the corridor was ajar and I rushed toward it.

At the door I slowed down, taking the time to push it further open, alert for any danger inside. No sound or hint of movement came from within the room.

I stepped into a grand old library with stacked bookcases lining the walls, and two leather-covered couches and a gilded coffee table arranged on top of a huge red Persian rug.

The area nearest the door was now a crime scene. The priest Matteo had addressed as Father Brambilla lay face-down, blood soaking into the deep fibers of the rug beneath him as it flowed from a bullet wound in his temple. Standing over him, holding a smoking pistol, was my new manager for Italy, the former police inspector I’d hired to head up Private Rome.

Matteo Ricci.

•••

Chapter 3

“AND YOU FOUND Signor Ricci holding the gun?” Chief Inspector Mia Esposito asked me.

I nodded.

“For the recording, please,” she said, gesturing at her phone.
“Yes,” I replied. “I found Signor Ricci with the gun.”

It seemed Esposito was leading the investigation into the priest’s death. There were several senior Polizia di Stato officers at the party, and more junior ranks outside, providing security, so measures had been taken promptly to secure the crime scene, prevent guests from leaving, and ensure Matteo was taken into custody. The situation hadn’t come fully under control, though, until Esposito had arrived, striding into the grand function room in gray trousers and a blue shirt, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She’d deployed her team to interview every single one of the guests, staff and security personnel, as well as the officers who’d been on duty outside and her superiors who had been inside with us. As the person who’d discovered Matteo with the victim, she interviewed me herself, and so far had made me recount my story twice.

I was familiar with the tactic. It was a fairly basic way of trying to get a witness to reveal inconsistencies or holes in their version of events by comparing one with another, but she could find none in mine as I stuck rigidly to the facts.

Matteo had said nothing while two uniformed officers from Esposito’s team had cuffed him and taken him into custody. I wondered if he knew them as former colleagues. Maybe he couldn’t quite believe the way his evening had turned from attending a mundane corporate launch party into a full-blown murder investigation, with himself as the prime suspect.

But why would Matteo kill a priest? And even if he’d wanted the man dead, why would a former police inspector with a reputation as a highly effective investigator choose to murder someone at a public event while surrounded by friends and colleagues? A crime of passion, perhaps? Matteo and Father Brambilla seemed to know one another. Matteo’s résumé said he’d trained as a priest at a seminary for a time before joining the police force, but there was nothing in the background checks our Rome attorney had conducted to suggest he was in a relationship of any kind, and certainly not with a priest. And what about Father Brambilla’s dramatic announcement? He’d prophesied his own death, but if he’d known it was coming, why would he choose to be alone with his killer? Was the priest mentally ill or had he genuinely known he was in mortal danger? Something here didn’t add up.

“I think I have everything I need,” Esposito said, switching off her phone’s voice recorder.

She signaled the officer near the door that led to the main entrance, pointed at me and nodded. It was the sign all her colleagues were using to tell the man that an interviewee could be released. There were dozens of others currently being questioned and many more waiting for their turn.

“Thank you, Inspector,” I replied, heading for the door.
“One more thing, Mr. Morgan,” Esposito said, and I paused.
“Why do you think he did it?”
“I’m not sure he did,” I replied. “Doesn’t fit with what I know of him.”
She nodded. “I never worked with Inspector Ricci, but I know his reputation. Normally I would agree, based on what colleagues have said about his character, but the evidence in this case is overwhelming.”

I couldn’t argue with that and made for the door. The uniformed officer let me pass, and I walked through the empty stone antechamber to the open double doors where I caught the scent of the sea on the evening air. There were more police outside, some gathered near a side entrance, about a dozen others holding back journalists in a cordon on the lawn some fifty feet away. A handful of guests were waiting for their cars in a nearby semi-circular parking lot, while others were walking down the driveway leading to the main road. I guessed they were looking for their chauffeur-driven cars or taxis, moved on by the police whose own vehicles now surrounded the building.

It was a chaotic end to the evening and not at all the one I’d hoped for. I was about to call Justine Smith, my colleague and girlfriend, but the press pack suddenly became agitated and I saw movement at a side door not far from me. The group of police officers standing nearby expanded like a lung taking in air, and the door opened to reveal Matteo being frog-marched by a couple of cops in uniform.

I hurried over.

“Matteo,” I said, but my voice didn’t carry above the hubbub, and his attention was elsewhere.
“Luna!” he yelled. “Luna!”

His attention was fixed on a tall, dark-haired woman in a tight black cocktail dress and heels. She stood at the edge of the semi-circular driveway, staring at him with pity in her eyes.

“Luna!” he yelled to her one last time before she kicked off her heels and started across the lawn toward the police cordon.

Matteo was hustled toward a waiting police car, and the press pack pushed against the line of cops, shouting questions, taking pictures, calling his name.

He looked around fearfully as he was manhandled into the back of the vehicle.

“Jack,” he said when his eyes met mine. “I’m innocent. I didn’t do it!”

I tried to get closer but was held back by one of the officers in his dishonor guard.

“Talk to that woman,” Matteo called to me. “Luna Colombo — my former police partner. Speak to her!”

An officer slid in beside him, slammed the door shut, and another cop thumped the roof. The car sped away.

I hurried around the squad of cops and ran for the lawn, to see the woman called Luna still jogging barefoot toward the police cordon. She produced an identity card from a small purse and showed it to one of the officers, who stood aside and allowed her to pass into the crowd of journalists.

I tried to follow, but when I raced over to him and pleaded for admission the same officer only replied in terse Italian and waved me toward the long driveway on the other side of the lawn. I stood on the tips of my toes and tried to pick out the fleeing Luna, but she had already vanished into the trees on the far side of the lawn. She was beyond my reach for now.

Matteo had brought me to the hotel and his keys would undoubtedly be in the back of the police car with him, so I joined the handful of bemused guests walking down the driveway, heading for the main road where they hoped to find transportation back to the city.