TODI
ITALY
RIDGES OF CLOUDS WITH dark bottoms, pregnant with rain, had been gathering above the mountain towns of Umbria throughout the day, and the downpour broke about four o’clock, chasing Kyle and Lauren into the Tempio di S. Maria della Consolazione. It drummed ferociously on the weathered central dome and the four smaller hemispheric rooftops at each of the four corners, then slid harmlessly down the slabs of ancient stone.
“The only day in the past week that we decide to risk some time outside and it rains.” Lauren shook her hair with her open fingers. It had been cut much shorter and colored a deep brown.
Kyle folded the umbrella and left it at the doorway. He had grown a mustache but not a beard. “I don’t care. Being confined to the villa was reminding me of my old cell in Islamabad.”
Lauren gave him a playful slap. “Being alone with me in a romantic Italian villa is like being in prison with those rats you told me about? Is that what you’re saying?”
Swanson pulled her close and kissed her on the lips. She smelled good, tasted even better. “No. But that place is just two big shoe boxes stacked atop one another, with hardly any ventilation and a bathroom the size of a postcard.” Turning her loose, he looked up at the intricate stonework, then wandered into one of the apses and back to the main entrance, his footsteps echoing. They were alone.
As he stared into the curtain of rain pelting the parking lot and grassy slope, she came up behind him, put her arms around his waist, and laid her cheek on his broad back. “We’re leaving soon, aren’t we?”
“Afraid so. Since I contacted the Lizard this morning to pass along your comment that Hall would have just gone to Monaco to play, we have to change positions again. Unfriendly intel people may track the cell phone towers and come up with the right country code.” He had already destroyed the temporary cell phone and bought another. “We can move a little faster now.”
“But why stay around here at all? This area has too many bad memories for me, Kyle. Jim Hall used to take me to his villa up in Tuscany for a weekend. I was so dumb.”
Kyle paused to watch the gusting winds lash the paving stones on the approach road. He would not pass judgment on her. “Defense, Lauren. It is standard evasion and escape technique to think defensively in these situations.” He took her hand, and they walked back deeper into the ornate church. “This place was perfect for a while. I did some training a few years ago with the Gruppo Operativo Incursori, part of the Italian special forces, and one of the guys came from around here. He brought me down to the family farm for a weekend.”
“So you milked a cow? So have I. It isn’t a big deal.”
Kyle laughed. “No. They grew olives. Anyway, I learned about Umbria that weekend, and how the residents of these mountain towns have been suspicious of each other for centuries. Every town was a fort unto itself, and they still compete in everything from who has the best wine to who turns out the best goat cheese. The original city walls still surround Todi.”
“The people have been great to us,” she replied.
“That’s because we are a nice Canadian couple visiting on an out-of-season vacation. The Americans all go to Tuscany, to the north, just like Jim Hall did. So the Umbrians are pretty much left to themselves. Tourists are tolerated only as much as a rival merchant from another hill village. Strangers stand out and are treated differently.”
“So if anybody was after us, we could spot them first?”
“It gave us a narrow edge while things developed. No more than that.” He took her hand. “I don’t like defense, Lauren. Never have. It’s always better to be the hunter than the prey. Are you sure you are up to this next step? Might get messy.”
“Can we go back to our place first? Dry off and wait for the storm to end?”
“Sounds good to me,” he said.
“Yea,” she said softly.
JUST BEFORE DAWN. ALWAYS the best time for an attack. Kyle threaded the little rental car through the curving mountain roads, little more than farming trails, outside of the mountain village of Pienza.
“Just ahead on the right, there’s a small road leading to the north,” Lauren said, using a small flashlight to illuminate the map. “If I remember right, that’s the corner of the vineyard, and there is a water-pumping apparatus sticking out of the ground.”
“Got it,” replied Kyle, turning into the narrow driveway that unspooled down the hillside. The metal tanks in the backseat clanked together with dull thumps. In about a half mile they rolled onto the flat plateau, and he shut off the lights.
The old stone building had been around since the sixteenth century, beginning as a serf’s cottage and growing, layer by layer, into a sturdy home with accompanying outbuildings to shelter farming equipment. Jim Hall owned the place through a false business name and leased the surrounding land, which was thick with neat rows of a vineyard that yielded fat purple grapes that were turned into a delicious wine. The entire place was dark.
They got out of the car, and Lauren walked purposefully up the steps, moved aside a pot of flowers on a ledge, and found the key to the front door. Without knocking, she opened the lock and went inside. “Nobody stays here but Jim, and a housekeeper comes in twice a week. Bastard likes to play lord of the feudal manor.” She went from room to room, switching on lights, and the darkness gave way to light gold colors and white walls. A shudder ran through her as she remembered the time she had spent here as his lover. He had completely fooled and used her.
Kyle moved through the place to give it a quick search and clear. It was spacious and comfortable, with thick rugs on the floors and heavy European furniture. When he reached the rear bedroom, he saw Lauren furiously stripping black silk sheets from the king-sized bed, and then he silently followed her out into the backyard.
Without speaking, she flung the sheets over a clothesline and anchored them with a row of wooden pins. She stalked back to the house and snatched a large, sharp butcher’s knife from the kitchen. Swanson stood aside and let her work, seeing her cheeks wet with tears of fury. Moonlight glinted on the knife blade as she plunged and stabbed and sliced through the soft cloth, ripping it to shreds until she ran out of breath and stood facing the tattered sheets, exhausted, breathing in big gulps. She dropped the knife, and ribbons of silk sheets flapped in a gentle predawn breeze.
By the time she turned around, Swanson was already lugging the heavy dark blue tanks of propane gas into the house. They had purchased the five ButanGas canisters over the past few days from different stores while still in Umbria, explaining that they were about to christen their new Spiedino stainless steel grill with some outdoor cooking at a picnic for friends.
Kyle found an expensive tie, a muted diamond design on lilac, on a closet rack, and a bottle of 80 proof brandy among the cluster of bottles on the marble-topped bar in the living room. He opened the bottle and stuffed the necktie deep inside, letting the rich alcoholic drink wick into the material. “Ready?” he asked.
She picked up a bottle of olive oil and threw it against the wall of the living room, then sailed a second one into the bathroom, where it shattered in the large multiple-head shower. Her face was red with anger. “You bet.”
Swanson went to the bedroom of the villa and twisted the valve of the propane gas cylinder fully open, sniffing the air for the telltale odor. Lauren was doing the same thing in the second bedroom, and he leapfrogged into the hallway and opened the third of the bottles, each of which carried the emblem of a rearing white dragon on a blue shield. Lauren hurried past him to the kitchen and opened the fourth one. They met in the living room, and she opened the final tank.
“Go start the car,” he said, and she dashed into the growing light of day, a smile coming to her face as she slid behind the wheel. Kyle was on the veranda, holding the bottle of brandy high and setting fire to the liquid-soaked tie with his lighter. The flame caught, tiny for only a flickering instant, then began to speed up as it ate into the accelerant. Kyle left the bottle sitting just inside the partially open door, with more of the expensive fuse disappearing every second.
Lauren already had the car turned around and rolling away when he dove inside. She stamped onto the accelerator. The little vehicle seemed to crawl, then gave a lurch, and the tires dug into the gravel.
Behind them, the propane gas had filled the entire house by the time the flaming Piero Tucci tie met the 40 percent alcohol brandy and the house erupted, its heavy stone walls funneling the blast upward in a rolling tower of flame and thunder.