The Network - Jason Elliot [80]
‘Bella pistola,’ I say. ‘Beretta 92.’ Another very accomplished Italian invention, it now occurs to me.
‘Chi cazzo sei?’ says a voice at the other end of the weapon. Very colloquial Italian, somewhat lacking in humour, with what I suspect is a Lebanese accent.
‘Sono un amico del tuo capo.’ I’m hoping if I tell him I’m a friend of his boss, he’ll think twice about misbehaving.
‘Cosa vuoi da lui?’
‘É una faccenda privata.’ It’s time to switch to what seems likely to be his native language. ‘Haida beini w’beinu w’bein Allah,’ I say, switching to my best Lebanese. That’s between him and me and God.
While his partner watches me from a standing position beside the door, he turns me over, returns the Beretta to its holster and frisks me carefully twice, emptying my pockets in the process.
‘Siediti,’ he says, more calmly now. I oblige by sitting in the chair by the window, as he tosses my phone, wallet and passport onto the bed. I massage the side of my head as he scrutinises my things. Then he takes a mobile phone from his pocket, dials a number and speaks briefly in Arabic. The phone is passed to me and, as I’ve hoped, I hear Gemayel’s voice. He sounds older and I’m unexpectedly reminded of how much time has passed since I last saw him. But the tone is unmistakable.
‘I will be happy to meet an old friend,’ he says. ‘You have some news?’
‘I can give it only to you.’
‘My men will bring you. Forgive me if I do not tell you the location on the telephone.’
Without much further ado, because Gemayel’s men don’t seem to be the type for small talk, I’m escorted in silence to a black Mercedes parked outside the hotel. We speed through the Roman night. To judge from the number of times we change direction, I’m guessing the driver is doing his best to disguise the location we’re heading for, and he’s succeeding because I don’t know Rome and we might be anywhere. But I’m not too bothered. Even though it’s switched off, my phone will keep track of me and, more importantly, I’ve got my meeting.
It’s past midnight. I have no sense of where we are. The car pulls to a halt in a narrow cobbled street and I’m hastened towards a heavy wooden door in a high wall. Beyond it I find myself descending several steps from street level towards a crypt-like space which smells faintly of incense and ancient stone. A second door opens into a small windowless church, its vaulted roof supported on three pairs of polished pillars in oak-coloured Carrara marble. The walls are ochre and the lines of the vaults are decorated with elaborate floriated mouldings in white plaster. There are a dozen dark wooden pews on the chequerboard marble floor, and the whole space is poorly lit by a pair of bulbs inside frosted domes.
I’m shown forward to the apse, to one side of which is a dusty velvet curtain. Another, smaller door lies behind it, and opens onto stone steps leading down. I count twenty-four, which means we are a good way underground and the signal from my mobile won’t survive. Nor will any sound carry to the outside world. It’s the perfect site for a clandestine meeting. A transmitter won’t work, and there’s no chance of eavesdropping through the walls. But the isolation makes me uncomfortable.
There’s a crossroads of passages and we descend again as the walls roughen and take on a prehistoric look. They are cold to the touch, though the air is surprisingly warm. One of the bodyguards leads and the other follows me as we turn into a long broad tunnel with horizontal niches on either side. I realise now we are in a portion of one of the city’s many catacombs, and the ghostly mounds lying in the niches are the calcified contours of human skeletons. Then the tunnel opens into a series of rooms decorated with ancient murals depicting gardens and animals. They have