(6) Crucia

"I asked for Monica Paladin as my assistant," Sanguineus said to Rolgo the next morning, "but she's on assignment in Sydney, wearing a bikini all day and pretending to be drunk."

"Pretending?"

"Pretending to be pretending, I should've said. So, who's this Sally Anne Bern? She posted my assignment on G Plus, is all I know about her."

They were having a late breakfast on the balcony of Sanguineus' hotel room, located on the floor above Rolgo's. The table cloth rippled in the breeze off the gulf.

"She's nineteen," Rolgo said, lifting the coffee pot with an inquiring look.

"No thanks." Sanguineus was rolling a smoke, a Turkish Egyptian blend.

"She's finished her basic training and has qualified in all the fundamentals except cryptography and its protocol, not surprisingly," Rolgo said with a twist in his smile. "She had a package delivered here last night, to me, when she ought to've brought it with her, when she arrives tonight. I had to send in a report to Dringle reprimanding her."

Todd Dringle was Red Rum's Head of Training, a former Colonel in Special Forces who oversaw a confederation of militias, called 'ghost units.' He acted as the official liaison between them and Army Intelligence, a relationship that facilitates the pinpointing and execution of foreign agents and budding terrorists within US borders, acts kept under the radar of the news media, and, as often as not, under that of the FBI.

In thinking of him, Sanguineus remarked to himself that there is no civilian paramilitary or private intelligence service that isn't in some way useful to one of the many shadows in the federal government, that particular shadow that is fiercely patriotic. It has one rule: 'Do whatever is necessary.'

"I had to have hotel security put the package through the Inspectoscope," Rolgo was saying, pushing away his plate of cold waffles. "The contents are a sheaf of papers. Then I faxed the fingerprints to our ICS colleague in Milan. She sent me a name in parallel code. Our Sally Anne."

Sanguineus smiled. On principle he did not approve of unprofessionalism, but he admired the nonconformist approach.

"Sally Anne Bern will do just fine after she's got some practical experience under her belt," he remarked. He lit his handrolled cig. "What did you learn from the analysis?"

"Not as much as we'll know once she gets here with the most sensitive information in her head," Rolgo said, his cup held bent-wristed at his chin, his vulturish features in shadow from the sun behind him. "But the gist is this: according to the PI's, the suicide of Ambrosia's mother and step-dad, Kastri, a low-level mobster, was not what it appears. She killed them, with help from her gangster lover, Christofer Agapi. He's believed to be retired from the Greek syndicate known as Provlita Andres, 'the Wharf Men.' But that's not something one just walks away from, especially with a lot of loot in one's pockets and stepped-on toes in one's wake."

Sanguineus stretched out his legs. He stared at the scuffed toes of his boots. "We already knew that Agapi was involved in Ambrosia's shooting of Pella," he said, "for which we have no known motive. And now we understand that she and Agapi bumped off her folks. The motive for that would seem pretty straight forward." He smiled at Rolgo. "Inheriting the vineyard. I suppose the judge was bribed? Or threatened?"

"The latter," said Rolgo. "Why do with money what you can do with a snarl? Also, a gangster orchestrating the death of a colleague is not a sport. It's a business transaction. But what is of interest to us, is how best to fulfill the contract for which Tragos has paid a third of his life savings." He looked into his coffee cup like a tea reader. "Sally Anne Bern is to be your assistant," he mused. "She knows something more valuable to you than anything we've seen in the analysis."

Sanguineus blew smoke forcefully through his nostrils. "What I want to know is how and why Ambrosia, a.k.a Crucia, nails victims to crosses and in some sense fires them up to the clouds. I can hope that Sally Anne has the answers, but it's a hope that is a bit fragile."

He stood and leaned his crossed arms on the balcony railing. In his introspective mood he saw nothing of the artful chaos in the street scene below, not even the yellow Volkswagen Beetle crawling past the hotel parking lot, a blond girl looking up at him.

"I don't like leaving a job whose strings remain dangling," he said. "Too often I haven't much choice about it. But to snuff Crucia without discovering what the hell she is up to, is something I don't want to take away with me."

Rolgo nodded sympathetically. "I'm meeting with Tragos at the villa this afternoon," he announced in a tone of despair. "Ambrosia knows that I have friends in private investigation work, and that I'm aware of the contract. She'll be on her guard and I don't expect to learn much, if anything, that we don't already know. You'll be observing the pruning in the vineyards?"

"Yes, pretending to, anyway."

Sanguineus straightened up, and turning to Rolgo he said, "Sally Anne's first assignment might end up being the most dangerous one she will ever have. Or worse, it might be her last."

In the horse pasture, between the upper and lower acres of vineyards on the Kastri estate, two wooden crosses, each nine feet in length, lay on the level ground.

The carpenter was walking away. The hammer and nail pouches swung on his belt. His sweaty hat was in his hand. His head was bowed.

Fabienne watched him until the path took him down toward the lower vineyard and he vanished from sight.

The pruners were still occupied with the lower rows. Fabienne was quite alone, or so she thought. She picked up a feed bucket of cracked corn kernels. She poured feed on the beams of the two crosses. Then she picked up a second bucket filled with chunks of hard molasses and poured it over the kernels. She knelt and mixed the feeds together. She was happy and very excited.

"Pegasus!" she called, clapping and waving. "Ela! Ela! Myga!"

Through his binoculars Sanguineus, behind an olive tree at the top of the higher vineyard, watched the grey horse leap the six-foot-high rock fence and gallop across the south end of the pasture to where the girl in her blue smock stood near the crosses.

Sanguineus had reached his vantage point just as the carpenter finished nailing the crossbeam to the second cross. Fascinated by the simple expedient of covering the crosses with feed to attract the horse, and by the mysterious evil that underlied the procedure, he watched the girl pet the flanks of the horse as it ate. It cleaned the two crosses spotlessly in the space of five minutes.

Sanguineus had come up on an impulse. He had wanted to see the horse and to examine it as closely as possible. He intended for Sally Anne to examine it as thoroughly as a veterinarian, once she arrived and her bogus credentials were established, along with a contrived excuse for visiting the villa's stables.

The impulse that brought him stemmed from a nagging sense that the horse was key to a successful assignment. He felt that it was more than just a horse named after a favorite mythological beast. In some way that perhaps only a deranged mind could understand, it brought the myth to life; but not for any benevolent purpose, apparently, though the seeming innocence of the girl Fabienne lent the scenario a charming aspect.

A woman came through the gate at the northeast corner of the pasture. Sanguineus focused his binoculars on her.

She had some grey in her black hair, moderately long and frizzy. She had a rather coarse face, aged beyond its years. She wore a homely flower-print sundress, a narrow brimmed straw hat, and ankle-length black shoes.

"Fabienne!"

The girl turned and stared at her, her back to the olive tree in its gnarly stance thirty yards away.

"Metira," she said. ('Mother.') The voice was emotionless.

"Daskalos sas thelei." ('Your teacher wants you.') "Ela, viasou!" ('Come, hurry!')

It was plainly evident that Fabienne would rather stay with Pegasus. But when the horse romped in a circle and then charged for the rock fence, leaping it gracefully, the girl went obligingly to her mother, who put a hand on her back and escorted her through the gate.

Sanguineus lowered the binoculars. He had seen photos of Berenice Chora, showing different expressions in different situations. He recalled what the body language expert explained to him about the one he had just seen in the coarse face. This convinced him that Berenice was not a prisoner in any significant sense. She was here voluntarily.

Why? he wondered. She surely had seen the crosses. She probably knew about the bizarre feeding procedure. Was she an assistant to Crucia?

And what part did the little girl play in this sadistic game?