12
North Rome (Soviet sector)
There were no primaries at the Albergo Grimaldi. Nobody like Borodin, or Skarov, or himself. Only sleepy guards and anxious-looking hotel staff. The two conscripts on the front door hurried to shuffle out of his way as he stomped up the steps and reached for his stolen ID. The trench coat, the badge, the air of entitlement and threat were enough for them.
Of course, thought Ivanov.
The foyer was a mess. Four more troopers lounged around inside, two of them asleep. The other pair played cards and smoked. They started a little when he stalked in but returned to their game when the NKVD man evinced no interest in them. The Albergo’s entry and reception area was not large and what space there was had been taken up by piles of luggage, suitcases, and so on, and by the squaddies’ equipment, which included a small gas stove on which they were heating coffee. Probably spiked with vodka, and almost certainly stolen from the hotel stores.
Muddy footprints ran everywhere over the threadbare carpet. A couple of lightbulbs had failed, adding to the gloomy atmosphere. A man and a woman, both with the underfed, anxious look of locals about them, worked behind the counter, mostly trying not to catch his eye. Ivanov had Borodin’s identity card and badge out by then and bruted his way over to them, jutting his chin out and allowing the contempt that all secret policemen felt for their fellow beings to run free across his features. A brief wave of the NKVD badge was enough to ensure their attention and drain what little color was left in the face of the night manager.
“I am here under the direct orders of district coordinator Kuznetzov,” he informed them while keeping an eye on the Red Army squad members in the dirty, fly-specked mirror behind the counter. The name of Kuznetzov caught the attention of the corporal who was playing cards, and the young man kept one eye on Ivanov while attending to the little gas stove. Like a good Russian, however, he took no initiative to act beyond the orders he had been given. Watch the foyer.
“There was an incident here earlier today,” continued Ivanov, in character. “I have flown up from Naples to investigate the handling of this matter. I will need to inspect the rooms and property of all involved, and to speak with the controlling officer, Colonel-General Skarov. Where is he?”
The name of Lavrenty Beria’s hatchet man caused both of the troopers to turn his way now, warily, and the poor Romans behind the desk to shake uncontrollably. The man and woman exchanged a nervous glance and seemed even more nervous for having done so.
“Conrad … Comrade Skarov is not here,” said the man.
The woman clutched at her throat—probably reaching for the rosary beads she dared not wear in public, Ivanov thought.
“He is at the Wall,” the night manager added. “There have been incidents. Terrorists and criminals.” The woman nodded gravely, still clutching at the religious totem that was not there.
“The keys then,” he demanded.
The manager looked confused, perhaps even a bit reluctant. Ivanov glowered at him. “These terrorists, these criminals—you have some sympathy with them, comrade?”
The poor Italian almost choked on his response. “Oh no, no, no …” he said quickly, while reaching around to pluck two keys from a board on the wall behind him.
Ivanov snatched them out of his hand and stalked away from the counter, stopping to bestow a withering gaze on the corporal, who was staring at him.
“You there, soldier!” he barked.
The man jumped, spilling some of his coffee. Ivanov was certain he could smell ouzo.
“Do you know where Colonel-General Skarov might be? I am to report to him and seek information about what took place here earlier.”
The noncom stumbled to his feet. His two sleeping comrades disturbed themselves. “No …” the corporal said uncertainly, before adding with more vigor: “No, comrade. We were detailed here when your section was finished with the scene. Partisans attacked today. They are everywhere in this part of the city. We are to secure the hotel against them.”
Ivanov stared at the steaming coffee he held. “Good job,” he said drily. “What can you tell me of the partisan attack? Quickly now, I must be about my investigations.”
“It was a serious attack,” the other man replied. “They came up through the sewers. We heard that many of Colonel-General Skarov’s men were killed down there. The colonel chases them now. That is what we hear, anyway. But the NKVD does not always inform us of details. We have been given orders, comrade. To stay here in the foyer. That is really all I know. If you cannot find Colonel-General Skarov, it is because he is in pursuit of the partisans.”
Ivanov allowed himself to look only slightly dissatisfied with the answer. It rang true. Skarov was not a man to step back from the blow that the Furedi brothers had delivered to him this afternoon. He would take it as a personal affront and a failure. Ivanov was familiar with that way of thinking.
With a wave, he dismissed the soldier, who resumed his seat, his card game, and his drink. The would-be NKVD master sergeant turned away without another word. He took the stairs to the second floor, where Sobeskaia and his mistress had taken adjoining rooms. The crowded foyer with its piles of luggage and unwashed floor had given the impression of a poorly run, typically drab state hotel. But the muddy footprints petered out on the first landing of the stairwell, and from what he could see of the hallway, the staff had done a better job of maintaining some order up here.
Ten rooms ran off either side of the long corridor, which was well lit and tidy. Halfway down, a small table held a bowl of fruit. That in itself was testimony to a standard of luxury not easily found on this side of the Wall. The apples, pears, and grapes looked fresh. It was significant, he thought, that they remained untouched. To provide them in the first place was an uncommon measure of largesse in the Soviet sector; that nobody had stolen every piece of fruit gave some indication that the guests here were more familiar with material ease than the Romans on the streets outside. It also meant, he would bet, that the conscripts he had seen downstairs had not wandered up here. The accommodation fitted with Ivanov’s image of Sobeskaia as a privileged boyar. At least, until very recently.
He stopped outside room 203, where Anna, the mistress, had stayed. He could hear two guests talking in another room nearby, and the clink of cutlery on dinner plates as somebody ate a room-service meal. But nothing from 203. Drawing the pistol he had taken from Borodin, Ivanov entered the room.
It had been professionally searched. The bed was stripped, the mattress flipped. Dresser drawers had been removed and stacked. A watercolor painting leaned against the wall, an outline of its frame showing where it had hung until a few hours ago. He could see no personal effects. There would be nothing here, and probably nothing next door in Sobeskaia’s room.
A connecting door gave him access to 204, where he found the scene repeated. The room had been taken apart efficiently, methodically: no personal effects strewn everywhere; no curtains ripped down from the rails; no feathers or foam spilling out from where rough, impatient hands had slashed open the mattress, searching for contraband. There was nothing here for him. Still, it had to be searched, and he did so as thoroughly as whoever had come through here before.
Ivanov was in the en suite bathroom, lifting the lid on the toilet cistern, when he heard them coming for him. The thunder of boots up the stairs and along the corridor.
He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t stop to think. He took a grenade from his weapons satchel, pulled the pin, and tossed it through into the bedroom a fraction of a second before he used the heavy ceramic cistern lid to smash open the fixed window of the bathroom. It sounded like all six of the squad members had come for him, but others were with them too.
Skarov. He recognized the devil’s voice as it called his name.
“Ivanov! Give up. We have you.”
But they didn’t. He ripped the plastic shower curtain from its moorings, looped it around a tap at the washbasin, which was directly below the broken window, and dived through, holding one end in each hand. The improvised rope allowed him to drop a few feet, and playing out the curtain by raising his right hand lowered him farther.
Hobnail boots crashed on a wooden door somewhere above him. He heard it burst inward and smash against the wall like the crack of a rifle shot a second before the grenade exploded. The entire building shook as he dropped through clear air, trailed by the screams of dying men. He seemed to fall forever, yet hit the ground immediately, allowing his legs to fold up underneath him, breathing out and dropping into a judo roll as glass and burning splinters rained down around him. The impact slammed up through his ankles and knees like an electric shock. He rolled to his feet and ran, not sure exactly where he was or in which direction he was heading.
He ran—surprised that he could, that a shinbone was not protruding from his lower leg like a broken spear. A single shot rang out and sparked off the cobblestone beside him, but he threw himself to the left and around the corner, out of the line of fire.
Skarov would be coming for him. The NKVD colonel-general would not have led the way into the hotel room, knowing of the danger within. Ivanov cursed himself—his foolishness, his obsession—then he put it all aside and ran, stripping off the heavy trench coat as he dived into a barely lit, narrow passageway.
More shots, but muted by distance and the buildings that now stood between him and his pursuers. They were firing at shadows, at nothing. He had maybe a minute or two’s advantage, a head start before Skarov threw hundreds of men onto the streets of North Rome to find him.
Another left turn, then a right, however, and Ivanov suddenly found that his precious advantage was gone.
He had run blindly into a dead end. Darkened tenements rose three and four stories above him; behind him, he could hear shouts and the barking of dogs. At the very edge of perception, he was aware of being observed. Not by the men who were now hunting him but by the city itself. By hundreds of eyes in these darkened tenements. By blank walls, empty windows, and shadows.
He checked his satchel. Two Makarovs, the MP5, and night-vision goggles; in his pockets, three clips of ammunition for the pistols. His pursuers were drawing close. Ivanov could hear the engines of motorbikes and a truck, and the deep industrial growl of a troop carrier. He could not risk doubling back out of this cul-de-sac. But he seemed to have no options here, no external fire escapes or trellises he might scale, no open doors through which he could dive.
He was just fitting the NVGs, planning to scan for an entrance to the drains, when he heard her voice.
“Come with me, Russian. Quickly.”
He jumped. She had emerged from the pitch-black shadows.
“Who are …?” And then he recognized her. “Carlo’s little girl.” It was as much a question as a statement.
“You come now,” she said, urging him into a building entrance he had not noticed until just now. The heavy steel door stood slightly ajar.
Ivanov moved toward her, but cautiously. “The last Russian who followed you is dead,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. As if that ended it. “Come.”
He could hear the deep bass thud of inbound choppers. The gunships that had been loitering over the Wall, he was certain. That closed off any debate he might have had with himself.
Ivanov dived into the darkness, following the girl into the building and dragging the heavy door closed behind him. He didn’t have a chance to power up the goggles before she’d struck a match and lit a single candle, which looked as though it had come from a church. The lower half of the bright red crucifix design stood out on the half-burned remnants. The girl shielded the flame with her hand as she led him up a flight of stairs.
“What is your name, girl?” he asked. “I know you only as Franco’s cousin.”
“You can call me Eva,” she said. “Franco is cousin to my papa, but he is very old so I call him uncle. Come now, Russian.”
He could hear more vehicles outside, and the shouts of Red Army noncoms and barking dogs. But the dogs were too numerous to all be trackers, surely. It seemed every flea-bitten cur for a mile around had spilled onto the streets.
“Do not worry about the dogs,” Eva told him. “They cannot track you.”
“What?” Ivanov was momentarily confused but continued to climb the stairs behind her all the same.
The building seemed to be empty, but he knew that was not true. It was big enough, and generally, he had learned, the Romans were crowded into their apartments in such great numbers, that up to three hundred people might well have been resident here. But he could see no one, other than Eva. She rounded the banister on the very top landing and hurried toward a knotted rope hanging from an attic opening.
“The Stalinists sometimes use dogs to track us,” she explained as she blew out the candle and flew up the rope with no more difficulty than she’d had ascending the stairs. “But we have trained our own dogs. They will fall on the handlers and their beasts before they even pick up your scent.”
Eva did not relight the candle and Ivanov wasted no time in hauling himself up after her. He was about to fit the goggles again when she reached out and touched his arm, stopping him. It was a curiously adult gesture.
“You will not need them,” she said. “And it is better that you do not have them on if the helicopters come with searchlights.”
Ivanov did not need that explained to him, but he did need to know where she had come from, and why. “I am in debt to you for your assistance, young lady,” he began. “But how is it you came to offer your assistance? It has been many hours since I separated from Franco, and I did not tell him I was returning to the hotel.”
Eva was crouched in the attic space, her small face illuminated by a shaft of moonlight pouring in through a hole in the roof. Where she had seemed strangely grown-up just a few seconds ago, she now rolled her eyes like a young girl beset by the stupidity of the adult world.
“You are our responsibility, Russian. We have been watching you since you set foot here. We lost you once or twice, but as soon as you returned this way, we picked you up again. Uncle Franco and Father Marius warned me you might come back to the Albergo and that it would be my job to guide you away from whatever foolishness and trouble you caused. So come now, Russian, we must go.”
For just a moment he was struck dumb and immobile. Ivanov had the unpleasant sensation of perceiving a much greater truth, of snatching a glimpse for a mere second of how he fitted into the machinations of others as a flimsy, disposable cog. And then he heard dogs barking and fighting and the crackle of gunfire nearby, and he put it all aside to follow the girl, who was already on the move.
The wide attic space was cramped, forcing him to move along beneath the centerline of the pitched roof while crouched over. His eyes had readjusted to the darkness, which was split here and there by shafts of silvery light piercing through gaps and holes in the terra-cotta tiles above them. Much of the space here was taken up with boxes and sacks of supplies. He could smell garlic, as always, but even more strongly, the ubiquitous dried fruit, preserved meat, and cheeses. Two rifles, German Mausers from the previous decade’s war, were propped up in one corner, visible in a shaft of moonlight.
Wood creaked on wood as Eva pushed against a solid wooden shutter in the roof. Ivanov came up behind her and lent his strength to the task. The skylight squealed open, making him cringe, but the streets were already alive with confusion and noise. He could hear hundreds of men down there now, and dozens of vehicles. The dogfighting was over, seemingly coming to an end with the crack of a single pistol shot. He followed Eva out onto the roofline, feeling terribly exposed as he emerged into the bright starlit night.
To the south, the lights of Free Rome twinkled and shimmered like a vast illuminated sea lapping all the way out to the horizon. The dome of St. Peter’s, lit from below by spotlights, stood out in glorious relief. Even the guard towers of the Roman Wall twinkled as if wrapped in fairy lights.
“Follow me,” said the young girl. “Do not stray. A giant oaf like you will fall straight through.”
He did as he was told, carefully stepping not just in line with her, but as far as possible in her footsteps. The ancient tiles shifted and once or twice even cracked beneath his weight, but he could feel the solid, reassuring strength of a supporting beam directly beneath them. Eva flew across the roof like a cat.
They moved in tandem, as though tethered together by an invisible line. After reaching the end of the tiled roof, Eva vaulted up onto the neighboring building—a gymnast’s leap of at least her own height. For one crazed, disassociated moment, Ivanov imagined her in another life, in another world, where Stalin and Beria were already dead, as they should have been, and cousin Carlo’s little girl capered and played in the streets below. Perhaps she was a gymnast there, perhaps just a carefree child. But here, on the rooftops of Occupied Rome, she was a fugitive and his guide. She was almost certainly a killer as well, he reminded himself.
The special forces operative heaved himself up onto the next rooftop, taking considerably more care and time to execute the move than his diminutive pathfinder had. She was already running ahead of him.
This building was topped by a flat roof garden. Simple wooden furniture, trestle tables and benches, were scattered about between huge pots containing groups of herbs and simple vegetables like string beans and cucumbers. There was less of an imperative to track along in her footsteps here, but he did so anyway. They moved quickly, covering the length of the building in half a minute.
He was wondering how they were going to cross the gap he could see gleaming up ahead, when Eva accelerated toward it … launching herself into the air like a triple jumper, or perhaps a parkour adept. She sailed across the void between the closely spaced apartment blocks, landing softly on the far side. Ivanov did not give himself a chance to hesitate or overthink the jump. His longer strides ate up the distance in a heartbeat. He shortened his last step by a few inches, flexed his knees, and pistoned out into space. The gap was small, less than four feet across, but he felt his balls crawling up into his body as he sailed through clean air. Far below him, the hard, black cobblestones seemed to wait for him to miscalculate and fall.
He crunched down on the other side, rolling forward and coming up on the balls of his feet next to the little girl. She nodded as though he were a child who had passed a simple test.
They had landed on another flat roof, this one covered in washing lines from which sheets and blankets had been left to dry overnight. The bedclothes swayed in the soft breeze. Below, on the streets, the Red Army and NKVD paramilitary forces were kicking in doors, rousing the locals from their beds. A shot cracked out somewhere, followed by screams. First of terror, then of anger.
“Come, Russian, we must move quickly.”
Eva took off again, threading her way through the flapping laundry.
“Wait,” said Ivanov. “Look …”
He pointed to the south, where two gunships were hammering toward them. He could tell from their size and the deep percussive thrumming of the rotors that they were big monsters. Augmented-tech Mi-24s, at least one-and-a-half times the size of their uptime progenitors—partly because the Communists had not yet mastered postindustrial miniaturization, and partly because in Joseph Stalin’s psychology, quantity had a quality all its own. These flying behemoths seemed to claw through the air, as though they might lose their grip on flight at any moment, so loaded down were they with armament and armor. As Eva turned to face the threat, crouching, just like a cat on a ledge, columns of bright white light speared down from each of the choppers, searching and playing out over the city below with a strange, contrary beauty.
“They are heading right for us,” said Eva. She did not panic, but he could hear the promise of it in her voice.
The gunships were reviled wherever they flew. As Ivanov and his new Roman guide watched, the nearer one opened up on some unknown target, pouring down a bright yellow ribbon of tracer fire; a neon stream of destruction fired into the heart of one of the oldest, most densely populated cities in Europe. Two seconds, the burst lasted, delivering one thousand rounds of alternating tracer, armor-piercing, and high-explosive munitions. Smoke and flames rose from the impact point. The crash and rumble of collapsing masonry reached the two of them a second later.
Eva made as if to take off again and continue the headlong flight, as though they could simply outrun the airborne menace. Ivanov shot out one hand, grabbed the girl by the scruff of her neck, and yanked her back—ripping a blanket from the nearest washing line and driving her down. The leading helicopter was just seconds away. All four of its searchlights swept over the roofline of the church, three blocks away.
“Be still, be quiet,” he commanded, on top of her now, with the damp blanket covering them both. “And pray they do not have infrared sensors.”
Of that at least he was reasonably sure. Had the gunships been fitted with FLIR or LLAMPS vision, the pilots would not have been using old-fashioned spotlights. But you never knew. Perhaps they were just poorly trained.
The girl squirmed once underneath him, complaining that he was crushing her. But she lay silent and still as the miniguns roared again and the cold white light crept along their rooftop.
Ivanov waited to die, hoping only that the shield of his body might afford Eva a false sense of security. Because in truth, if the gunners opened up on them, they would be shredded instantly.
He clutched the blanket tightly around them, grinding his teeth together, as the Mi-24 seemed to hover directly overhead. The downblast of the rotor wash tried to rip the cover away from them, and he could feel the little girl giving in to her fears as violent tremors ran through her tiny frame. They endured a hell of sound and fury and supernova radiance … and then it was gone. The flying beasts moved on and left them in darkness and relative quiet.
He waited a full minute before throwing back the blanket. His ears hummed, and he blinked dust from his eyes even though he had shut them tightly against the violent rotor wash and the glare of the searchlight.
“Come, Roman,” he said gently to the girl. “We must hurry.”
She stood up slowly and shakily. Ivanov watched, impressed and somewhat saddened to see her gather up whatever fears had run wild, squeeze them all into a bitter little ball, and swallow it down.
“Yes,” she agreed. “We must hurry.”
She led off again and he followed her to the far corner of the building, where it all but kissed the corner of a neighboring apartment block. Eva stepped across the gap carefully, but her limbs were still shaking and she nearly lost her footing.
“Careful, little one,” warned Ivanov, as he steadied her with a firm hand. “You are still in charge here. I need you to get us out of this.”
The next building was possessed of a peaked roof, covered in terra-cotta tiles again, forcing him to attend to exactly where Eva was putting her feet. It was a difficult, anxious task, with the need to keep an eye out in case the helicopters swung back. For now, the Hinds seemed to be concentrating their search pattern around the part of the city where he had killed Borodin.
The Italian girl and her Russian charge ghosted across the roofline, crouched over, careful not to expose their silhouettes any more than was necessary. Ivanov could see a major gap coming up and wondered whether he would be expected to make such a giant leap. But Eva pulled up before they reached the edge, turned to him, and pointed to an old wooden ladder.
“Lay it across to the next building. It will reach.”
It did, but the journey across was nerve-racking. The experience took him back to his earliest days of special forces training, when instructors had forced a young Pavel Ivanov and his fellow superheroes-in-waiting to perform any number of gravity-defying feats of life-threatening stupidity. He forced himself to forget the memories of one young friend who had fallen and snapped his spine like a twig. Best just to look ahead, keep the eyes level, breathe.
He stepped off the ladder just behind Eva, pulled it in toward them, and laid it down carefully in the gutter. The building beneath them overlooked a small square, into which now drove an army truck and a BMP tank—an unwelcome sight that immediately had the rooftop pair crouch-scuffling around to the reverse slope. The helicopters were far enough off that they could hear the crash of the truck’s tailgate as a platoon of soldiers alighted, the crunch of their boots on the cobblestones, the shouts of officers and NCOs.
Eva and Ivanov stayed low and hidden on the lee side of the roofline before dropping down onto a building next door, leaping across a small gap to the one beyond it, and repeating the trick with another ladder after that. It took well over an hour but eventually the girl delivered them to a church overlooking a section of no-man’s-land between the Allied and Soviet sectors. Work on the Roman Wall was incomplete here. A minefield and rows of razor wire still separated the different worlds, and here on the northern side of the divide, an armored personnel carrier idled away next to an incomplete guard tower. The soaring concrete battlements that bisected the ancient settlement elsewhere had not yet been raised here. Ivanov could see that the Communists had made inroads with earthmoving equipment, but they were still many months from completing one of the last links in the giant prison wall.
He leaned back against the steeply pitched roof of the old church, looking back to where they had come. Half of North Rome seemed to be blacked out. Fires burned here and there, and four gunships snarled and swooped and occasionally spat out long tongues of fire.
“I did all this?” Ivanov asked quietly.
A few steps ahead of him, Eva paused before edging her way around the bell tower at the front of the church. “No, Russian, you did not do this,” she replied. “Stalin did.”
Having delivered her rebuke, she pushed on, leaving Ivanov to ponder where this girl had been and what she had done in her brief life to see so deeply into things. Eva Furedi—if that was her name—looked like she was only eleven or twelve years old, but it was possible, he supposed, that she’d had a few more years on the planet than that. She grew up in the postwar years, when food was scarce, even more so than now. Perhaps the urchin was a young woman. Or perhaps life in the slave city had simply squeezed all the youth from her at a very early age.
He carefully followed Eva around the tower installation, just as the troop carrier grunted and rumbled before suddenly lurching forward and driving off. He cursed softly and wondered aloud what was happening, and was surprised to be answered by a familiar voice.
“A pig can always be led to the smell of a tasty treat somewhere else.”
Marius … Ivanov cursed again, louder this time.
“Please, please,” said the priest, from his comfortable repose against the small twin to the tower around which the Russian had just edged. “The young lady does not need to hear such language.”
Ivanov was about to point out that the young lady was one of the more ruthless females he had met since encountering the black widows of Chechnya, far off in the future. But he held his tongue. Eva was staring at Marius with rapt attention. The Russian had seen that sort of devotion before. And it would’ve been oafish to speak ill of her. Ivanov owed her his life, in all probability.
“So, where to now?” he asked instead.
“Into the light,” said Marius, waving one hand toward the glitter and sparkle of Free Rome.
He reached down beside him and lifted up an old bolt-action rifle. Ivanov recognized the cumbersome attachment at the end of its muzzle: the priest intended to shoot a line over the Wall. Heavy black climber’s rope ran down from the sabot into a small window of the belfry behind him.
Furedi braced himself and casually fired the weapon. Hundreds of meters of light, high-strength nylon twine snaked out across the gap between the divided city.
“It will take a moment for my brethren in the holy city to make fast the line.” Even as he spoke, though, the rope went taut.
“The girl should go first,” said Ivanov.
“The girl will stay here, Russian. With me. We have the Lord’s work to do.”
Ivanov started to protest, to insist that it would be too difficult and dangerous for her to remain undetected, with Skarov and Beria raking at the city for any sign of him. He turned toward Eva to ask if she wanted to escape with him, but the girl was already gone. She had disappeared inside the belfry through another window.
“Bastards,” Ivanov spat. “You would use a little girl —”
“Like you just did?” Marius said, not unkindly. “You would not have escaped the city without her help, my friend. Without all of our help. Good men and women died for you today. They died for Rome and for their God too, lest you feel you cannot bear the burden of their sacrifice alone. Eva Corleone has her part to play in God’s design, as do we all. She will play her part here, with me. You have another path to walk.”
The line was secure now. The priest tested it and nodded.
“But their lives were wasted,” said Ivanov with real bitterness. “My mission was a failure.”
Furedi shook his head and gestured for the Russian to come forward, as he slung a glider over the line.
“We have poked the bear today,” said the priest. “Bled him well—a cut here, a cut there. Even the largest and most ferocious bear cannot sustain itself while it bleeds constantly. You did not achieve your goals perhaps. But we did well today, and those of us who died can go to our judgment knowing that we died well, for a good cause. For our city, and for God. Now go, Russian. Time is short.”
Ivanov took a grip on the glider mechanism. He turned to speak to Marius one more time, but the priest gave him a push and out he sailed, away from the church tower and across the wasteland toward the free city.