The Ultimate Secret Read Free

figures were starting to look sinister, even demonic. The drink had begun to flow, and the revellers were singing, dancing, hooting and capering in the street.
    Most seemed to assume that his habit was a costume, laughing and demanding to know why he didn’t have a mask. A tall girl in a fox mask, no more than half his age, seized him and kissed him sloppily on the mouth, slurring and breathing grappa into his face. He stammered, trying to extricate himself from her grip, and she pouted at him and pleaded to be confessed, before being dragged away, laughing, by her friends.
    Giacomo had stared around wildly, looking for any Carabinieri, or for anyone watching the exchange closely; he’d heard the Party used secret police. She’d been joking, of course, but he remembered the Irish soldier’s warning. He didn’t want to be arrested on sedition charges because someone decided he was offering absolutions.
    No-one seemed to be paying attention, so he went on his way, eventually reaching the bridge. He paused to regain his composure, watching the Tevere flow underfoot.
    Not everyone made the same assumption, unfortunately. A handful of people realised he was a genuine monk, and hurled abuse at him. A policeman even spat at his feet, shouting at him that he should return to the Vatican where he belonged. Giacomo had not been sure what to do. He’d just shown the man his visa, apologised – why had he apologised, he wondered; for doing what? – and walked on, hoping he would leave it at that.
    He reflected, not for the first time, on Rome’s twin role as the heart of both the Holy Church and godless Communism; not just as the capital of Italy, but de facto leader of the whole League of Socialist Republics, from Yugoslavia to Bulgaria.
    Not Communism , of course. “Analytical Socialism.” Giacomo stopped himself from sneering in the street. The great machine that filled one whole floor of the Palazzo Senatorio supposedly knew where every grain of wheat grown in the whole of the League was, and where best to send it to the greatest benefit of the people. How listening to the precepts of some machine god was any better than following the orders of mortal men, he didn’t know. The very idea of a machine having so much power seemed stupid and perverse.
    He shook his head. That was the kind of blinkered feeling that the Superior General had criticised him for. It was the same as the British automaton, after all; nothing more than science, a remarkable application of natural laws.
    Wait. Was that the same girl in the fox mask? The drunken one?
    Giacomo couldn’t be sure. She looked similar, but surely there were hundreds of girls in fox masks out in Rome tonight?
    Even if it was, she couldn’t be following him, could she? Spying for the Party?
    That was foolish. The Italian government wouldn’t need to set up some sort of elaborate scheme to spy on him. If anyone were watching or following him, it would most likely just be a uniformed Carabiniere. And he’d seen one or two this evening...
    It was now full dark. A pair of lampionai were making their way down the road ahead of him, firing the gaslamps and bathing the cobbles in warm yellow light. Shaken, starting at shadows, Giacomo made his way west.
     
     
    I T WAS NOW full dark. Otto was perched on the roof of the Palazzo Poli, looking down on the Trevi Fountain, and on the small hotel across the square where Adler had said their quarry was staying. Ingo was out of sight on the roof of one of the other buildings. Adler himself was down on the street, browsing through the papers on sale at a newsagent’s stand just outside the hotel.
    As Otto watched, Adler frowned, checking his watch for the third time, and then looked up at the roof of the Palazzo and waved towards the roof of the hotel. Otto nodded his understanding – although he doubted if the Obersturmbannführer could see him on the roof – and took to the air, as Adler stormed in the front door of the hotel.
    Otto