The car park above the winery was right against the vines, and the roads were still visible in the half-light. There was a thin pall of dust above the downward-tending track along which the guest residences lay, as if a car had just driven there. He was a little wine-groggy—another careless mistake—but as soon as he was in the car his senses sharpened. He went down the hill and then parked the car to one side of the track in deep forest and walked down to the tower on foot.
The track ran between two majestic vineyards before ending in the forecourt of the ancient building, a tower from the Middle Ages. There was only one car here, but it was not the Peugeot. The upper rooms were occupied. He went up silently and explored the landing that connected the two doors. From one room came the sound of Italian television and a rustling of papers; from the other, nothing at all. Disappointed, he went back down to the parking area and from there out to the terrace, filled with sofas and cushions, and he sat in filtered moonlight thinking it over. It made little sense. He wondered if the impostor had been aroused by some instinct, as impostors often were.
When he returned to the parking area, the vineyards were dark and the track itself was difficult to see. But he was halfway to the car when he saw a pair of headlights barreling down toward him. He stepped aside into the undergrowth and the blue Peugeot swept past him at high speed, swerving to a stop by the tower. He was sure that the driver had seen him—he fancied that he caught the white flare of his eyes for a split second—and that the driving was nervous and frenetic. From the undergrowth he saw the door open and a man step out onto the gravel. He decided not to follow, however: the exit to the road was behind Rockhold and so all he had to do, in theory, was wait.
He got back into his car and turned on the engine. But he kept the lights off since they would be seen from the tower. As he began to reverse up the hill, he saw the man from the Peugeot approach the gates and stare at him. He was clearly unsure, puzzled. He advanced a few paces and then stopped. There was, obviously, some dumb confusion between them. Rockhold had reached a clearing where he could turn the car, and he drove off to the winery at the summit where any car already inside the estate would have to pass in order to gain the main road. There he waited while wondering if the man was going to retire to his room and sleep away the night. He was uncertain one way or the other, and caught in his confusion, he called Susan.
“Cancel the last card, my dear. I think I have him.”
“Yes, Mr. Rockhold. I’ll cancel it at once. But are you calling the police?”
“Soon. I want to talk to him myself.”
“Do you think that’s wise, Mr. Rockhold?”
“I didn’t say anything about wisdom, Susan. I said I wanted to talk to him. I want to get a sense of him.”
Clearly astonished, she made no reply.
He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll call them soon. Within a few hours.”
He sat back in the car and waited. Somehow he knew that he would not be there all night, that things would erupt. He was not disappointed this time. When the winery had closed and the last guests had drifted away from the restaurant the Peugeot came up the long track and appeared with its lights off. It crawled slowly and quietly across the car park and reached the downward dip to the surfaced road. There it hesitated for a moment before rolling over it and out of view, and almost in the same moment Rockhold drew out of the car park just as quietly, with his lights also extinguished, and followed the taillights down to the road where the cypresses cast their shadows horizontally across the tarmac.
TWENTY-ONE
Faoud drove with the lights off until he was at the bottom of the hill, then turned them on. Confused in a mountainous and unlit landscape, he decided to follow the signs to the autostrada, which would take him up to Arezzo more rapidly. Within minutes he was within sight of a gas station near a junction, with auto-pay pumps standing forlorn in a hot wind. He stopped there and looked around, then turned off the lights and walked around the pumps. He was aware how disheveled he now looked, as if a sharp decline had overtaken him. His shirt had long lost its poise, and his stubble was not a flattering five o’clock shade. He felt exhausted and unloosened from within. There were credit-card machines and no one to man them; he took out his last card and decided to take the risk, since the machine could not swallow it anyway. He had a third of a tank left and not enough cash to fill it. He slipped the card into the slot, selected his fuel, and waited for the authentication. It was refused.
He tried a second time, and a third. Growing impatient, he cursed and snatched the paper receipts and tossed them into the wind. They whirled away from him toward the office, and he was left with nothing but a third of a tank and a useless piece of plastic. Putting the card back in his pocket, he strode over to the windows and peered through them into a shuttered room. He rapped on the glass, but it was futile. This area lit by lamps and, as he realized now, under surveillance from four cameras was not the place to throw a tantrum. He calmed himself, returned to the car, and drove back onto the smooth and empty highway into Arezzo.
It was brightly lit with streetlamps, and in the rear mirror he saw, far off, a ghost of a car following him with its lights off. At first he ignored it and then wondered why its lights were off. He slowed, and it seemed to slow as well. The alternative was to accelerate, and he pushed the car to eighty and let it coast into the outskirts of the town.
The map was of no use in navigating Arezzo, and as soon as he was in the old center he was lost in an infuriating maze of lanes. There were a few bars still open with crowds of teenagers, and he had to pick his way through them slowly. He came out on a wider street that curved around to the railway station. He went past it and onto a highway with roundabouts that clearly led out of town, passing through a suburb and on northward to Bibbiena. Within minutes he was back in the rural darkness, but moving much faster and not concerned about conserving his precious fuel.
In fifteen minutes he had passed Bibbiena and he could no longer see the ghost in his mirror. Instead of following the main route eastward he swung left onto a much smaller road that shadowed a river, the Arno, of which he had heard long ago in a classroom somewhere. Stopping here for a moment, he got out of the car and listened for the motor of the pursuer in the dark, but there was nothing but the sound of pines ruffled by wind. By the road was a sign for a monastery, which he assumed must be secluded. He wondered about it. If he turned off there, anyone following him would be thrown off his trail; the road up to the mountain was narrow and unlit, a surfaced path to nowhere. But the trees near the road glittered with fireflies. He resolved to try it.