Extreme Denial Read Free Page A

established rapport, then got to the point. “The people we’re after are extremely dangerous,” he said in Italian. “I don’t want you to do anything that puts you at risk. If you have even the slightest suspicion that you’ve attracted their attention, ease off. Report to my friend.” He gestured toward McKittrick. “Then disappear.”
    “Would we still get the bonus we were promised?” one of the brothers asked.
    “Of course.”
    “Can’t ask for anything fairer than that.” The young man finished a glass of beer.
    Decker’s throat was beginning to feel scratchy from the dense cigarette smoke in the room. It didn’t help the headache that his jet lag had begun to give him. “What makes you confident you’ve found the people we want?”
    One of the brothers snickered.
    “Did I say something amusing?” Decker asked.
    “Not you. Them—the group we were asked to look for. We knew immediately who they were. We went to university with them. They were always talking crazy.”
    “Italy for Italians,” their sister said.
    Decker looked at her. Until now, she hadn’t said much. Since the afternoon, she’d changed her T-shirt. Now it was blue. Even with a denim jacket partially covering it, she obviously still wasn’t wearing a bra.
    “That’s all they talked about. Italy for Italians.” The sister had been introduced as Renata. Her sunglasses remained tilted up on her boyishly short, dark hair. “They couldn’t stop complaining about the European Commonwealth. They kept insisting that lowering national barriers was just a way for Italy to be contaminated by outsiders. They blamed the United States for backing the unified-European movement, for trying to create a vast new market for American goods. If the rest of Europe wanted to be corrupted, that was fine, but Italy had to fight to keep the United States from dominating it economically and culturally. So when American diplomats began being killed in explosions, the first people we thought of were this group, especially when they made those phone calls to the police, calling themselves the Children of Mussolini. Mussolini was one of their heroes.”
    “If you suspected them, why didn’t you go to the police?” Decker asked.
    Renata exhaled cigarette smoke and shrugged. “Why? These people used to be our friends. They weren’t hurting us. But they would hurt us after they were released from jail because of insufficient evidence against them.”
    “Maybe the authorities could have found sufficient evidence.”
    Renata scoffed. The movement of her slim, sensuous body made her breasts move under the T-shirt. “I assure you, these people are not fools. They wouldn’t leave proof of what they had done.”
    “Then I’ll ask you again. Without proof, what makes you sure you’ve found the people we want?”
    “Because after Brian started paying us”—she gestured toward McKittrick, alarming Decker that McKittrick had given her his real name—”we kept a close watch on our friends. We followed them one night. They were in a car a half block behind the limousine when the explosion killed your ambassador as he was being driven back to the embassy after attending the opera. They must have used a remote detonator.”
    Decker concealed the tense emotion that made him briefly silent. The assassination of Ambassador Robbins had been the outrage that caused extremely powerful figures in Washington to lose their customary caution and demand that something be done to stop these monsters—one way or another. The covert pressure on Decker’s superiors was the reason McKittrick had attracted so much favorable attention among them. If McKittrick’s contacts could positively identify the terrorists responsible for the assassination, half the problem would be solved. The other half would be what to do with the information.
    “Maybe they just happened to be in the area,” Decker said.
    “They drove away laughing.”
    Decker’s throat felt constricted.